legislation is introduced (e.g. eh. xii. l-20; 43-50; eh. xiii. 1-16; eh. xx.), the style and modo of expression recall the general tone of the Book's later sections. Style indeed is so much a matter of instinctive perception and fooling, and unity of style is a thing so little admitting of proof, that no writer can do much more than state his own impressions on the subject, it being quite impossible adequately to represent the grounds of them. For our own part, we feel bound to echo the conclusion of Kalisch, who says- .. We see the completest harmony in all parts of Exodus; we consider it as perfect whole, pervaded throughout by one spirit and the same leading .deas." 1 The only reasonable ground which exists for any doubt or hesitation on the question of the unity is the fact, already noted, 2 of the markedly sectional character of the work-its division into a number of distinctly separate portions, not very skilfully or artistically joined together. But this peculiarity is exactly what might have been looked for in a work which was written by snatches in the rare intervals of leisure allowed by a life of extreme and· almost constant activity, and under circumstances that precluded attention to literary finish. If the writer of Exodus was a con- temporary, who from time to time placed on record the series of events whereof he was a witness, soon after their occurrence, and who ultimately arranged his various pieces into a volume, the result would naturally be that which the Book of Exodus presents to us. 3 Had a compiler, a mere man of letters, effected the arrangement, it is probable that the result would have been, in a literary point of view, better, i.e. more artistic-the breaks in the narrative would have been fewer and less abrupt; repetitions would have been avoided; the roughness inseparable from a work hastily accom- plished in odds and ends of time would have been smoothed down, and we should have had a more finished literary composition. Thus, the "frag- mentary character" of Exodus is an important and precious indication that we have the work in its original form-the statue as it was rough-hewn in the quarry-and that it has not undergone the process of polishing and smoothing at the hands .~fa redactor, compiler, or supplementariet.
§ 4. MOSAIC AUTHORSHIP. It is an axiom of sound criticism that books are to be attributed to the authors to whom tradition assigns them, unless tJery strong reasons can be shown to the contrary. 4 Exodus, and indeed the Pentateuch generally, has author of the Second Legislation," it is perfectly clear that the supposed notes of authorship are wholly arbitrary and fanciful. 1 • Historical and Critical Commcntury,' Introduction, p. L 2 See above, § 2, p. iii. 3 Compare Rosenmiiller, "Prolegomena in Exodum," § 2, in his 'Scholia in Vetus Testa
mentum, vol. ii. pp. 2-4. , • See ' Aids to Faith,' E~say vi. § 3 ; pp. 238-9 Yiii INTRODUCTION.
been assigned to Moses by a unanimous tradition, current alike among Pharisees and Sadducees, among Jews and Samaritans, among those who ascribed a sacred character to the work and those who regarded it as a mere human production. No other author has ever been put forward as a rival candidate to Moses; 1 and we must either ascribe the work to a wholly unknown and nameless writer, 2 who, with a marvellous humility and self-abnegation, while composing the most important treatise which the world had seen, concealed himself so effectually as to seclll'e his own complete oblivion, or we must admit that the tradition is in the right, and that Moses, the hero of Exodus, and of the three following books, was also their composer. It has sometimes been argued that the historical Moses, considering the time when he lived, and the condition of the world at that period, could not possibly have been the author even of a single book of the Pentateuch. Some have supposed that alphabetic writing was not at the time invented, and that if the Egyptian hieroglyphic system was anterior to Moses, it could not have been employed to embody with any definiteness the articulate sounds of the Hebrew language. 3 Others, without going these lengths, have maintained that so grand a work as the Pentateuch could not possibly have been produced at so early a period of the world's history, when literature, like everything else, must have been in its infancy. Thus De W ette urges that the Pentateuch is altogether beyond the literary capabilities of the age, containing within it, as he says it does, " every element of Hebrew literature in the highest perfection to which it ever attained, and so necessarily belonging to the acme and not to the childhood of the nation." It is absurd, he thinks, to suppose that in so rude and primitive a time the Hebrew nation should have produced a writer poBSessing such powers of mind, and such a mastery over his native language as to "leave nothing for succeeding authors but to follow in his footsteps." 4 In answer to these preliminary objections it is to be noted-first, that alphabetic writing is a much earlier discovery than has sometimes been supposed, and that there is every reason to believe that its use was widely spread over the world in ages long anterior to Moses. Berosus believed it to have been an antediluvian invention, and related that Xisuthrus, or
1 When Jerome says that the Pentateuch may be considered either the work of Moses or of Ezra, he does not mea.n to ascribE> to the latter anything more than that sort of verbal revision (modernising of language, explanation or possibly alteration of obsolete names, and the like) which tradition connects with his name. He distinctly cells Moses the " author " and Ezra the " restorer " of the work. • It does not much mend the matter if we suppose, with Ewe.Id, half-a-dozen such writers, ell equelly reticent; while this theory introduceti the fresh difficulty that the patchwork of six or seven different hands is follD.d to be pervaded by a marked unity of st_yle e.nd of design. • See Norton, 'Genuineness of the Gospels,' vol. ii. Appendix, Note D, § 3; pp. 439-441 • De W ette, ' Einleitung in d. alt. Test..' § 163, sub ti.a. INTRODUCTION. ix