170 



PEXTATKITH. 



pout-office aJJresH of each. Those who live in the city 

 win-re an aeoncy is located, or in its vicinity, manOy 

 appear in person at the office of tin- I'm?-: 

 MM quarterly pay-day, and receive a drift on the U. S. 

 Treasury ; to other, a like draft is forwarded by mail. 

 A liirm <!' affidavit <>r voucher must be exeonted by 

 the pensioner U-foro a magistrate, which with li 

 BOD certificate um-t U- exKibtted t tin- l'i -n.-ion 

 before payment is made. The largest number 

 menu at any one agency is that of Columbus. Ohio. 

 where 44,405 pensioners are paid. The largest number 

 of pensioners in anyone State is that of New V,.ik. 

 where 45,249 reside, to whom are psid $5,486,019.84 

 annually. M. F. u. 



PENTATEUCH AM- JOSHI'A. The article on 

 this subject in the KM VCLOP/EDIA 



606 I 51 "' BBBAKiaOA is essentially a presenta- 

 '\ Hl p. , ' lion of one out of several controverted 

 views. In the present state of Penta- 

 teuchal discussion this is not a seven- eritieism, but is 

 merely a statement of a fact which largely determines 

 the form of the present supplementary article. 



It would be generally agreed, no doubt, that the 

 Hexateuch is essentially a literary unity. One scholar 

 might claim that this unity arises from the fact that 

 Moses personally wrote the Pentateuch, while some 

 one in sympathy with him supplemented his work by 

 writing the Book of Joshua ; and another might claim 

 that it arises from the Hexateuch having been put 

 together, partly from older documents, by a scribe or 

 succession of scribes who lived a thousand years after 

 Moses ; and others might make still different claims : 

 but as to the unity itself there would be no difference 

 of opinion. It is a single work, with a single purple. 

 ever}' part of it bending to that purpose, no matter 

 how it came to be so. It would also be agreed that 

 the unity of this work is not that of strictly continuous 

 composition in one vein. It has a great variety of 

 contents. It is a prose work, but includes a consider- 

 able number of poems, e. g. pen. xlix. ; Ex. xv. ; 

 Num. xxiii.. xxiv. ; Deut. xxxii. 1-^43; Deut. xxxiii. 

 It also includes scvc.i-.il formal orations, or addresses, 

 e. g. Deut. i. 3-iv. 40; Josh, xxiii. ; Josh, xxiv.j 

 etc. It further contains a large body of legislation of 

 the greatest possible variety of form and scope. In 

 xi.-xxiii., in connection with Ex. xx. and xxxiy. 

 is a compact, codified list of precepts, largely in 

 the apparent form of decisions on adjudicated c. 

 shape to be easily memorised, and suited to practical 

 judicial use. Again, in Deuteronomy there is a more 

 extensive collection of laws, with a bulky historico- 

 homilctical comment on them. These two codes are 

 designed for magistrates and people of all classes. 

 Besides these, and of considerably larger bulk, is an 

 additional collection of laws, sc.-ttered through the 

 different books, and designed especially for tin' in- 

 formation of the priestly class. This legislation con- 

 irtly in records of precedents, partly in manuals 

 for particular services, partly in alleged proclamation*, 

 general orders, return-rcporte, and the like. While 

 certain portions of it are very carefully arranged in 

 order, this class of the legislation as a whole exhibits 

 mi trace of orderly arrangement or of codification. 

 These various poems, addresses, laws, hetero. 

 > they are in themselves, are bound together, partly 

 by being arranged in a certain order, but mainly by 

 imbedded in a connecting narrative. The narra- 

 tive itself, moreover, is frequently duplicated, and this 

 and other phenomena are supposed to indicate that 

 previously existing narratives nave been incorporated 

 into it. 



These facts as to the contents of the Hexaicueh 

 throw light upon the nature of the literary processes 

 b'y which it was produced. One who holds that Moses 

 wrote the Pentateuch in subst intially its present form 

 should also hold that Moses first accumulated a mass j 

 of materials in the shape of poems, addresses, laws in 

 various forms, narratives, and afterward wove these' 



together, adding whatever was needful for t he purpose. 

 ( Inc who holds that the book is divinely inspired should 

 also hold that tin- method just mentioned was the 

 method through which divine inspiration o|icratcd in 

 this cax-. And those who do not hold to the Mosaic 

 authorship, or to divine inspiration, should yet hold 

 that these previously existing materials, in some shape, 

 were a fact, and that they were somehow put together 

 to form the present unity known as the' llcxatcuch. 

 Km t her, no one probably would dispute that the differ- 

 ent parts of the Hexateuch present differences of 

 literary style, vocabulary, local and temporary point 

 of view, and the like, as decided as the difference in 

 the contents of these different parts. 



Such, in outline, arc the phenomena indisputably 

 presented. The views now current may of course be 

 generic-ally classified as two : the views of those who 

 hold that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch, and 

 the views of those who deny this. Of those who 

 deny the Mosaic authorship some reject, in the main. 

 the external testimony in the case, including that of 

 the Old and New Testaments, as unhistorical, and 

 deny that the distinctively Israclitish legislation is 

 properly of Mosaic origin ; while others affirm the 

 historicity of the Scriptures and the genuine Mosaic 

 origin of the law. Again, the present generation of 

 the scholars who deny that Moses wrote the Pentateuch 

 arc pretty well agreed (though not unanimous) in the 

 opinion that the legislative portion of Deuteronomy 

 was written about the time of the great reformation 

 under King Josiah. As to the dates of most of the 

 other parts they disagree greatly. In particular, one 

 schoolof them (that represented in the KM vn.oi-.KDiA 

 BKITANNICA) hold that the priestly legislation^ is later 

 than Deuteronomy, dating from the times of Ezra and 

 later ; while another school, formerly very prominent. 

 and now again coming to the front, hold that the 

 priestly legislation is earlier than the Deuteronomic. 



Those who hold that Moses wrote the Pentateuch 

 may be classed in three groups. The first group hold 

 to a mechanical theory of Mosaic authorship Moses 

 wrote the Pentateuch by dictation from God, or in 

 some such way, so that he may as well have written 

 the account of his own death as any other part of it. 

 Probably it would now be difficult to find scholars who 

 deliberately teach this ; the place where it mainly 

 crops out is in the assumptions made by certain men. 

 notably by certain newspaper controversialists when 

 they attack men whom they suspect of heresy. The 

 second group hold to what may fairly be called the 

 traditional view of the Mosaic authorship, namely, that 

 Moses personally wrote the five books, but that the post- 

 Mosaic elements in them were added by later hands, at 

 some unknown period or periods. This view at first 

 sight seems simple and satisfactory, each person who 

 holds it admitting the existence of a very few pa 

 that contain elements later than Moses. But while 

 some make one concession and some another, the 

 number of conceded instances on this theory of irre- 

 sponsible or at least anonymous tampering with the 

 Mosaic text becomes quite appalling. The third group 

 hold what we may fairly call the modified view of the 

 Mosaic authorship. Kor uiy own part, I should state 

 this view thus: Moses is the author of the Pentateuch, 

 and Moses and Joshua the authors of the Hexateuch, 

 in the sense of being_rcsponsible for the literary exist- 

 ence of these books in their present form. But they 

 may have been, and most likely were, the authors of 

 t hcni in the way in which one would naturally expect 

 public leaders, such as they, to IK- the authors of such 

 writings as these. That is to sav, they are likely to 

 have written some parts panotttflj. to have written 

 some parts through amanuenses, to have caused other 

 parts to be written by directing secretaries to write 

 them, or by accepting documents prepared to their 

 hand, to have taken other parts from the works of 

 earlier authors. In such a case, the question whether 

 they thcuibclvcs gathered the writings into their preae.nl 



