writer &nd rejecting it as a wilful falsehood), it simply aseuree ue that Moeee kept a written record of the marches, &nd that the Itinerary in question ie baaed on that record. Turning to the external testimony as to authorehip, we come to the evidence afforded by the opinion of the later Jews. No one doubts that they ascribed the whole Pentateuch to Moses, &nd comparatively few doubt that their tradition was subst.antially correct. But it ie one thing to believe that an opinion handed down from an uninquiring age as to the authorship of a book was subst.antially correct, and quite another thing to believe that it was formally correct. That the Law was of Mosaic origin &nd authority may have been per- fectly true for all practical religious purposes; that the Law was written down verbatim as it stands by the hand of Moses may have been the very natural, but at the same time inaccurate, form in which a true belief presented itself to minds wholly innocent of literary criticism. To eet the tradition of the later Jews against the strong internal evidence of the writings themselves ie to exalt tradi- tion (and that at its weakest point) at the expense of Scripture. It may be very true that if the Law was not really of Mosaic origin, the eaints and prophets of old time were grievously deceived; it may be quite false that any particular opinion current amongst them as to the precise character of the Mosaic author- ship has &ny claim upon our acceptance. That "the Law was given by Moeee" is a thing eo const&ntly affirmed in the Scriptures that it can hardly be denied without overthrowing their authority; that Moses wrote every word of Numbers as it stands ie a literary opinion which naturally commended iteelf to an age of literary ignorance, but which every ensuing age is at liberty to revise or reject; It is, however, argued that our Lord himself has testified to the truth of the ordinary Jewish tradition by using the name " Moses " as tantamount to the Mosaic books. This argument has more special reference to Deuteronomy, but the whole Pentateuch is included within its scope. It ie answered-and the answer is apparently incontrovertible-that our Lord merely used the common language of the J ewe, without meaning to guarantee the precise accuracy of the ideas on which that language was based. As a fact, the Pentateuch was known as "Moses," just as the Psalms were known as" David." No one, perhaps, would now contend that Ps. x.cv. must of necessity be ascribed to David himself becau.se it is cited as "David" in Heh. iv. 7; and few would maintain the like of Pa. cL, even though our Lord certainly aeewned that " David " epake therein (Matt. nil. 45). Both these psalms may have been David's own, and yet we need not feel ourselves tied up to that conclusion because the ordinary language and opinion of the J ewe concerning them is followed in the New Testament. The common sense of the matter seems to be, that unless our Lord's judgmeut had been directly challenged on the subject, he could not have done otherwise than nee the common terminology of the day. To do otherwise had been the part, not of a prophet, but of a pedant, which he assuredly never was. We may be sure that he always spake to people in their own language, and accepted their THE BOOK OF NUMBERS. ix
eurrent ideas, unless those ideas involved some practical religious error. He took occasion, e. g., to say that Moses did not give the manna from heaven (John vi 32), and did not institute circumcision {ibid. vii 22), for these exaggerations in the popular estimate of Moses were both false in themselves and might be known to be false; but to open up a literary controversy which would have been unintelligible and UDpractical for that and many succeeding generations was wholly foreign to that Son of man who was in the truest sense the child of his own age and of his own people. To take an instructive instance from the region of physical science : it has actually been made a reproach against the sacred writers that they speak (as we do) of the sun rising and setting, whereas in truth it is the movements of the earth which cause the appearances in question. It does not occur to such critics to ask themselves how the sacred writers could have used in that age scieD.tific language which even we cannot use in common conversation. That our Lord epake of the sun rising and setting, and not of the earth revolving on its axis from west to east, is a thing for which we have perhaps as much reason to be thankful as those who heard him. Simi- larly, that our Lord spake of Moses without hesitation or qualification as the author of the Pentateuch is a matter not of surprise, but of thankfulne.ss to us all, however much modem investigation may have modified our conception of the Mosaic authorship. What could possibly be more alien from the revealed character of that adorable Son of man than a display either of scientific or of literary knowledge, foreign to the age, which had no bearing upon true religion or the saving of the world from sin 1 External testimony, therefore, only seems to force upon us the conclusion that the substance of "the Law" (in some general sense) is of Mosaic origin; but it does not oblige us to believe that Moses wrote down either the legislative or narrative portions of our Book with his own hand. We are therefore left to internal evidence for the determination of all such questions. Now it must be at once conceded that internal evidence is extremely difficult to weigh, especially in writers so remote from our own age and our own literary canons. But a few points come out strongly from the study of the Book. I. AB already shown, its very form and character point to the probability of its having been compiled from documents previously existing, and put together for the most part very inartificially. Scarcely a trace appears of any attempt to aoften down the abrupt transitions, to explain the obscurities, or to bridge over the gaps with which the Book abounds; its multiplicity of beginnings and endings is left to speak for itself. 2. The great bulk of the Book bears strong evidence to the truth of the ordinary belief that it was written by a contemporary, and that contemporary none other than Moses himself. If we look at the narrative, the curiously minute touches here and the equally curious obscurities there point alike to a writer who bad lived through it all; a later writer would ho.ve had no motiva z L~TRODUCTION TO