The Pulpit Commentary — Genesis — Section 71

documents, but the existing Pentateuoh ae far as it conld be composed (vide 'Intro• duction,' § 4), and hold with Bleek that it oannot be certainly established that eithor the book "·hich Moses was instructed to compose, or the law which Moses fini~hed or made Rn end of writing, and committed to the Levites to be deposited in tho side of the ark of the covenant, was " the connected historical work " of the Pcntnteuch "as we have it" (' lntrotluction,' vol. i. § 128); that is to say, if from each of tho passages taken separately it might be perilous to infer the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, it is yet observable that the cumulative weight of all four distinctly points towards this conclusion. 'When it is considered that almost on entering the wilderness the Hebrew Lawgiver received a Divine order to write in the ( or a) book, that on reach- ing Sinai he is discovered again wiiting in a Book of the Covenant, that as the wander- ings are drawing to a termination he is again stated to have prepared a written record of the halting-places on the desert march, and that just before he dies he is once more exhibited as writing" this book of the law," the deduction seems obvious and natural that here at least is a prfrn4faciecaseinfavour of the book in question being the present Pentateuch. In the third place, this presumption is strengthened when on examination it is further discovered that the contents of the present Pentateuch are of such a nature as to call for an :mthor possessed of most, if not all, of the qualifications that are seen to meet in Moses. The singular accuracy of the Egyptology of the Pentateuch, which is constantly receiving confirmation from every fresh decipherment of the monumental remains of that ancient land, has already been commented on. The minute acquaintance which it displays witb the social and religious customs of the people, e.nd with the officials and etiquette of the Egyptian Court, is so remarkable that only an Egyptian could have written it. Sir Gardiner Wilkinson testifies (' Ancient Egyptians,' vol. i eh. iv. p. 328, ed. 1878) that, like the Chinese, the ancient inhabitants of the Nile valley were proverbially jealous of foreigners, whom they prevented, if possible, from penetrating into the interior of the country, and to whom they imparted as little information as possible concerning the institutions of their country. Herodotus, it is true, contrived to collect a large amount of information concerning Egypt ; bnt no one can compare the pages of Herodotus with those of Moses without discovering that the Egyptology of the Greek historian is that of a foreigner, as distinguished from that of a native, which is the Egyptology of the Hebrew law- giver. And a similar remark will hold good concerning the desert life depicted in the Books of Exodus and Numbers, which Bohlen, Colenso, and others have attempted to discredit, but which travellers have frequently and fully authenticated as, even in circumstantial detail, so accurate that it could only have proceeded from a writer who had an intimate acquaintance with the Sina.itic peninsula.. "It is not merely that the length of each division of the journey, the numerous halting-places, are distinctly marked,-for although such notices could not possibly have been invented, or procured at any later period by a dweller in Palestine, the fact might be accounted for by the supposition gratuitously made, but hard to be rebutted, that some ancient records of the journey had been preserved by written or oral tradition,-but the chapters which belong either to the early sojourn of Moses, or to the wanderings of the Israelites, are pervaded by a peculiar tone, a local colouring, an atmosphere so to speak of the desert, which has made itself felt by all those who have explored the country, to whatever school of religious thought they may have belonged" (' Speaker's Com- mentary,' Introduction to the Book of Exodus, p. 244). Hence, if in Moses are found, as confessedly they can nowhere else be diffcovered, such intimate acqua:intance with the Arab:an <le:-iert and such familiarity with Egypt as are manifestly required for t!Je 1-'rocl :.iclion of the Pentateuch, the rational conclusion seems to be that he, and he  THE AUTilORSHIP OF TUE PENTATEUCH. ][9'