o. high statue and reputation ; their compositions were engraved upon temple walls; 1 and it passed into a proverb that literature was the first ancl best of all employments. 2 Moses, educated at the court under one or other of these dynasties, and intended doubtless for official life, would necessarily receive a literary training, and would be perfectly competent to produce an extensive literary work, the exact merit of which would of course depend on his ability and genius. If then there is no obstacle arising out of the circumstances of the time when Moses lived, to hinder our regarding him as the author of Exodus, and if tradition is unanimous in assigning it to him, nothing remains but to ask what internal evidence the book itself offers upon the subject- does it support, or does it make against, the hypothesis of the Mosaic authorship? And first, as to language and style. We have already noticed 3 the simplicity of style observable in Exodus and the Pentateuch generally, which places it on a par with the early writings of other nations, anrl proves it to belong to the dawn of Hebrew literature. The language is generally allowed to be archaic, or at any rate to contain archaisms; and though some writers deny this, and assert that the unusual forms ancl words which characterise the Pentateuch are "not so much archaisms as peculiarities," yet this conclusion is contrary to the general opinion of Hebrew scholars,' and has the appearance of being rather a position forced on its maintainers by the exigencies of controversy, than one assumed spontaneously from a dispassionate consideration of the linguistic facts. Such features as the employment of the pronoun N\i1 for the third person of both genders, of il!~ for "girl" as well as "boy," and of the full form j1 instead of the abraded~ for the termination of the third person plural of the preterite, are by the very nature of things and the universal laws of language, archaic. The archaic character of other peculiar forms is also indicated by the fact that several of them occur besides only in Joshua, while some are common to the Pentateuch with none but very late books, e.g. Chronicles and Ezekiel, books written in the decay of the language, when it is notorious that writers studiously imitate the old forms. 5 Exodus has its full share of these peculiarities, which we must venture, with the bulk of Hebrew critics, still to term " archaisms," and has therefore at least 1 As the poem of Pentaour, which may to this day be read on the wo.lls of the great Temple of Karnak. 2 In the 'Praise of Learning' we read-" Consider that there is not anything beyond letters " (' Records of the Past,' vol. viii. p. 147); o.nd age.in-" Lo,e letters e.s thy mother; it is a greater possession the.n e.11 employments" (ib. p. 148); e.nd-" Consider, there is not an employment destitute of superior ones, except the scribe's, which is the first" ( ib. p. 153). • Supra, p. x. • The archaic character of the lo.nguage of Exodus and the Penta.tench generally is main- tained by Jahn, Fritzsche, De Wette, Hiivernick, Keil and Delitzsch, Marsh, Stuart, Bishop Iluroltl. Browne, Canon Cook, Denn Perowne, and others; it is impugned by Vater, Geseuius, nncl a few more. • Perowne, in Dr. Smith's 'Dictionary of the Bible,' ,·ol. ii. p. 783 INTRODUCTION.
as much daim as any other of the five books to be regarded as Mosaic on this ground. The language of Exodus has also another peculiarity, which, if it does not prove the Mosaic authorship, fits in exactly with it, viz. the frequent occu1Tcn.ce of Egyptian words and phrases. 'l'his subject has been treated elaborately by Canon Cook 1 and M. Rarkavy, 2 who have proved beyond all question that in that part of his narrative which deals with Egyptian matters, words are constantly used by the author of Exodus which are either pure Egyptian, or common to Egyptian with Hebrew. From thirty 1-0 forty such words occur in the first sixteen chapters. 3 Subsequently they are more rare ; but a certain number of Egyptian words occur even in the later chapters, 4 showing how familiar the writer was with the language, and how naturally he had recourse to it where the vocabulary of his native tongue was defective. Egyptian phrases are also not unfrequently used, as "the lip of the river" ( eh. ii. 5) for "the brink of the river;" "chiefs of tribute" ( eh. i. 11) for " taskmasters ; " an "ark of bulrushes" (ii. 3); "making persons' sa..-our to stink" ( v. 21) ; "consuming enemies as stubble" ( eh. xv. 7), etc. Next, with respect to the matter of the book, it is to be remarked that the writer-whoever he was-shows a notable acquaintance with the customs, climate, and productions of Egypt; an acquaintance such as to imply long residence in the country, and the sort of familiarity which it takes years to acquire, with the natural phenomena, the method of culti- vation, the religious ideas, and other habits and usages of the people. Under this head it is important to observe that large additions are con- stantly being made to the stock of our Egyptian knowledge by learned research into the native documents, which are copious, even for the time anterior to Moses, with this result hitherto-that fresh illustrations of the truthfulness with which Egypt and the Egyptians are portrayed in Exodus continually reveal themselves, while contradictions of the narrative, dis- crepancies, even difficulties, are almost wholly absent. There was a time when the author of the Pentateuch was boldly taxed with ignorance of Egyptian customs, 5 and when it was argued on this ground that he could not possibly be Moses. Now, no one ventures on such an assertion. The works of Hengstenberg 6 and Canon Cook 7 are sufficient to preclude the
• • Appendix to Exodus,' Esse.y ii• On Egyptian Words in the Pente.teuch,' in the• Speaker's Commente.ry,' vol. i. pp. 476---492. • See e.n article entitled 'Les Mots :Egyptiens de Ja Bible,' published in the 'Joume.l Asia.- tique ' for March, 1870. • Cook, in the' Speaker's Commentary,' vol. i p. 244, note· • E.g. Sheah, in eh. xxv. 4 ; tacb.arah., in eh. xxviii. 32; thumm{m, in eh. xxviii. 30; a.nd hin, in eh. xxix.. 40. • Von Bohlen,' Commente.r,' p. 360 • ' Ael!:TI)ten und Moses,' Berlin, 1840. Translated by Robbins, with a.dditione.l notes by Dr Cooke Tajfor, in Clark's Edinburgh Series, Edinburgh, 1845. ' • Cowmeot on Exodus' in the' Spea.ker'5 Commeote.ry,' vol. i. London, 1871 INTllODUCTION. xiii