department of Jewish worship. As such it accords with its assiJned position on the threshold of the promised land; or it may even represent a later,oodi.flcation of the Mosaio legislation on -the :w_bject. Turning now to the nalT6tive1,we, find that it is exceedingly uneven- and intermittent in its.,oharaoter- as .11,,.reo0rd1 Three himdred and twenty-six verses a.re devoted to the -arrangements, andievents of the fifty-days which pn:,cecied. the march from Sinai; one hundred, and fifty~ five more contain the story of the few months which ended with the., defeat- at Kadesh ; to the next thirty-eight years belong only sixty-three verses, relating in detail a single episode without date or place ; the rest of the narrative, con. sisting of three hundred and sixty-one verses, relates to the last period, of little· more than eleven months according to the accepted chronology. -Even-in -this lest portion, which is comparatively fu11, it is evident bf· a -reference, to ·the Itinerary that no notice is taken of many-places where ·the- camp was halted1 and where no doubt incidents of greater or less interest occurred. -The Boo][,,the:re- fore, does not profess to be a continuous narrative, but only to record· certain incidents-some briefly, some at considerable length-of the journeys £rom Sinai· to Kadesh, and from Kadesh to Jordan; together with-a,single episode-from-the long years between. But the narrative; broken as it is in cha.in of incident,-is further broken in literary character. The questions which arise out of the•&tol'Y of Balaam are discussed in their proper place ; but it is impossible to believe· (unless some iveryetrong necessity can be ehown for believing) that the, section eh. mi 2--mv. has the same literary history as the rest of the Book,, llll!erted in the Book, and that in its proper place as to order- of events, its• distinctness is nevertheless evident, both from other considerations and espeoially-from)ta rhetorical and dmmatic· character. It requires no knowledge of Hebrew1.and,no acquaintance with learned theories, to recognise in this section an epic ,(partly prose &nd partly verse) which may indeed have come- from. the same-author 11&- the narrative which surrounds it, but which must have. had within that author's mind a wholly different origin and history. • What is said of .the story of. Balaam may be said in a somewhat different sense of the archaio quotations in ch,il:xi Imbedded as these are in the story, they a.re on the-face of.them as plainly foreign as the erratics which the icebergs -of o, vanished age have left behind. But, more tha.n this, the very presence of these quotations gives a peculiar cha.meter to the narrative in which they occur. It is hard to believe that the historian, e. g., of the exodus would stoop to cull these snatches of old song, which are for the most part devoid of any religious import; it is hard not to think that they- are due to popular memory, and were repeated by many a camp-fire before .they got written down by some unknown hand. Looking, therefore, at the Book of Numbers simply as one.of the sacred books of the Jewa, we find that it presents the following features. It narrates a.variety of incidents at the beginning and ending of the dese1t wanderings between Sinai and Jordan, &nd earriea on the story of Israel (with one remarkable break) from THE BOOK OF NUMBEI;lS. vii
the holy mount of con.~eoration to the holy land of habitation. The narrative, however, incomplete as to matter, is also inconsecutive as to form ; for it is interspersed with legislative matter which does no\ seem for the most, part to have any special connection with its context, but would find its natural place among the laws of LeviticllS. Moreover, while the main part of the narrative entirely harmonises in literary style and character with that of the previous book& (at least from Gen. xi 10 onwards), there are portions towards· the end which bear internal evidence-the one Iese, the other more strongly---0f a different origin. • If we had no other data. to go upon, we should probably come to the conclusion-I. That the materials used in compiling the Book were in the main from one hand, and that the same to which we owe both the previous history of the Beni-Israel and the Sinaitic legislation. 2. That the materials had existed in a somewhat fragmentary state, and had· been arranged in their present order by some unknown hand. 3. That in one chapter at least some other material of a more popular kind had been drawn upon. 4. That in one ease an entire section had been inserted, complete in itself, and of a charaetei- very distinct from the rest. These conclusions are, however, by no means so certain -but that they ma.y be set aside by sufficient arguments if such can be found.
D. ON THE. AUTHORSHIP OJI' THB Boox. It has bean until lately assumed ea a mattei- of co\ll'Be that the whole of this Book, together with,the other four of the Pentateuch1 was- written by Moses. With regard to eh. xii. 3 alone, the obviollS difficulty of ascribing- such a state- ment to Moses himself has always led many to regard it as an interpolation by some later (sacred) writer. When we come to examine the evidence for the Mosaic.authorship of the whole Book as it stands, it is astonishing how little it amounts to. There is not a single statement attached to the Book to show that it was written by Moses. There is indeed a statement in eh. xxxili. 2 that "Moses wrote •their goings out according to their journeys by the command- ment of the Lord ; " but this, so far from proving that Moses wrote the Book-, somewhat strongly militates against it. For the statement in question is found in a section which is obviously distinct, and which l1as more the appearance of an appendix to the narrative than of an integral parL of it. Moreover, it does no~ even apply to the Itinerary as it stands, but only to the bare list of marches upon which it is founded; the obs~rvations appended to some of the names (e. g. to Elim and to Mount Hor) are much more like the work of a later writer copying from the list left by Moses. If we found in an anonymo119 work a list of names inserted towards the end with the statement that the names had been written down by such and such a person (whose authority would be unquestioned), we should not certainly quote that statement in order to prove that that person wrote all the rest of the book. Supposing the statement to be true (and thero Beems no alternative between accepting it as true within the knowledge of thli' Till INTRODUCTION TO