The Pulpit Commentary — Genesis — Section 72

alone, ie lte author; o.nd the more so ns, in the fourth placo, there are certain water• marks, us it wero, in the book iteelf which not only vouch fer its antiquity, but appear to require it to have been composed about the time of Moses. It is doubtful if the existence ot !lrchaisme in tho lnngue.ge of the Pentateuch is a certain index of thri nntiquity of the ,vriting, since these might pe.rtake of the nature of survivals from oCLrly times; but it is not a little remarkable that a larger number of these archaic forms of expression are to be found in the Pentateuch than in compositions of a later date than Moses. Then perhaps the explanatory clauses in Gen. xxiii. 2; xxxv. 6, &c., &c., should not be pressed as indications of the non-Palestinian standpoint of the author, since exception has already been taken to Gen. xii. 6 and similar passages as establishing the author's Palestinian standpoint; but the one set of clauses may be fairly regarded as neutralising the other. A surer mark of high antiquity is found in the blessing of Jacob upon Levi (Gen. xlix. 5, 6) as compared with the Mosaic benediction of the tribe (Deut. :xxxiii. 8). It is apparent that between these two prophetic utterances Levi's elevation to the priesthood has taken place. ls it likely that n late author, writing, say in the eighth or seventh century B. c., would have been careful to say nothing in the earlier benediction about Levi's promotion, and nothing in the second about Lev i's sin?· But if Moses wrote both, the difficulty disappears. 3. THE EXISTENCE OF THE PRESENT PENTATEUCH CAN BE TRACED BACKWARDS WITH CONSIDERABLE CLEARNESS FROM THE DAYS OF CHRIST TO THOSE OF MOSES. That the volume which we now possess was recognised in Christ's day as one bock does not require demonstration. Even the interval between the birth.of Christ and the return from captivity in Babylon may be overleaped at a bound, since critics of the most advanced type (Bohlen, Kuenen) are prepared to grant that at least it dates from the restoration under Ezra and Nehemiah. It is when we pass this lintlt on our backward journey that we encounter opposition in attempting to identify tho Pentateuch. In Josiah's time, for instance, which was in the seventh century B. c., the Book of the Law of the Lord which Hilkiah found in the temple, and which there is prima fade ground for believing was the whole Pentateuch, is affirmed by modern theorists to have been only the Book of Deuteronomy, which was first fabricated by the Mosaic party and then put (perhaps by Hilkiah himself) where Hilkiah could find it (Kuenen, 'The Religion of Israel,' vol. ii. eh. vi. pp. 18, 19). The arguments on which this conjecture is bnsed are mainly three : the difficulty of understanding how, if ever the Pentateuch existed, it should have been lost; the impossibility of reading through the entire Pentateuch to the king in one dny, .as is represented to have been done ; and the apparent fortuitousness (which it is believed was a designed fortuitousness) of finding the lost Pentateuch exactly at the moment when it was needed to assist the plans of the Reformers. As to the first, the deplornble idolatry that prevailed throughout the land during the preceding reigns of Manasseh and Amon, which extended over up- wards of half 11 century, might well enough occasion the Pentateuch, or Book of the Law of Jehovah, to be neglected and in a mnnner lost. As to the second, it is one assumption th11t the whole of what was found was read in one day either to the king or to the people, nnd another that what waR read was the Book of Deuteronomy. The writer of the account in 2 Kings xxii.-xxiii. certainly states that Shaphan " read " the book first to himself, and then before the king, and then that the king read it in the ears of the people; but the chronicler (2 Chron. x.xxiv. 18) informs us more exactly thnt this only signifies that Shnpho.n and the king rend in the book. As to what they read, it is styled the Book of the Lnw, nnd the Book o.f the Covenant; but if the former of these expressions may appenr to refer more particularly to Deute- ronomy, the l,1ttor just as certainly alludes to Ex•>dus i whence the probability is tld  THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE PENTATEUCH.