17'-' 



PENTATEUCH. 



reasons compel us to understand them an hav- 

 ing lens than their natural meaning. Their is no dis 

 putt' tli.it the testimony in the rase in hand, in the 

 meaning it naturally eoiivev-, attributes tin- responsible 

 litemrv authorship of the Pentateuch to M>-es. It is 

 true tliat most nl' the Mutenieiit.s in the Bible might 

 possibly lie understood to mean something less than 

 this, provided there were sufficient proof that this 

 cannot IK' their true meaning. Hut this possibility 

 amounts to nothing unless Mich sufficient proof is forth- 

 coming. This argument is entirely dependent mi the 

 question: What positive evidence is there that MOM- 

 ia not the responsible authorof the Pentateueh ? 



_'. The argument I'nnn alleged mixture and corrup- 

 tion of texts mainly applies to the pre-exilic books of 

 the Old Testament. In several of the more prominent 

 of these l">ks, they will upon us to accept tlie alleged 

 fact that the book has been formed by piecing together 

 writings that really belong centuries apart ; the}' allege 

 that we must first dissect the composite work into its 

 original parts, before we take its testimony to matters 

 of fact In the process of dissection, as they perform 

 it, most of the testimony to writings by Moses is 

 assigned to the Inter documents that entered into the 

 eon i POM te works, and is therefore ^regarded as untrust- 

 worthy. But there yet remain in the earlier docu- 

 ments and in other pre-exilic writings a considerable 

 number of passages that testify to sacred literature 

 written by Muses ; tbese they dispose of by regarding 

 them as interpolations corruptions of the text In 

 other words, before we are permitted to take the testi- 

 mony of these books to the matters of fact under con- 

 sideration, we are expected to admit that the larger 

 Sart of the literary work commonly assigned to Isaiah. 

 ercmiah, and the other later pre-exilic prophets, and 

 substantially all that commonly assigned to the earlier 

 men, Solomon, David, Nathan, Samuel. Joshua, 

 Moses, for example, was written, not by these men, 

 but by unknown scribes, obscure men, who made no 

 mark on their own generation, and left no name to the 

 generations that followed. Views like these are not 

 credible, except upon strong evidence. That some one 

 work should have the text-characteristics just men- 

 tioned would not be surprising, but it is difficult to be- 

 lieve that nearly the whole of a nation's literature is 

 marked by these characteristics ; it is easier to believe 

 that almost any supposed criteria of emu posite struc- 

 ture are mistaken. It is not surprising if we find that 

 some great man did not perform work that has been 

 commonly attributed to him ; or if we find that some 

 obscure man has done great work ; but when we arc 

 called upon to believe that throughout a nation's his- 

 tory the great men have done substantially nothing. 

 and the nobodies have done everything, that is beyond 

 the bounds of ordinary credibility. That these texts 

 have been thus mixed and corrupted, to the extent and 

 jn the way required by the argument, is on the face of 

 it very unlikely, and is not to be admitted except upon 

 cogent evidence. And if the mixture and corruption 

 of the text were admitted or proved, that would not 

 prove that Moses is not the author of the Pentateuch ; 

 it would simply diminish the amount of the evidence 

 of his being the author. The testimonies to his 

 authorship would remain in existence, and would con- 

 tinue to nave the character of a respectable tradition, 

 and the question would still be : What positive evi- 



! is there against this? 



3. The same principles cover the argument from the 

 alleged jack of historicity in the writings that contain 

 the testimony. It is alleged that the testimony dates 

 several centuries after the events, that it is not contem- 

 porary testimony, and is on that account of less value. 

 The allegation depends entirely on the i|iic*;ion of 

 text-distribution which we have just considered. If 

 we take the text as it stands, without rearranging it, 

 the testimony begins in the time, of Moses himself, 

 and is continuous from that date. It is further urged 

 that in the later times, and particularly in the times of 



the New Testament, the witnesses may have thought 

 of the Mosaic authorship at a matter of practical in- 

 struction and of received dogma, rather than of his- 

 torical fact ; but admitting this, it remains to be 

 proved that they did not also regard it as a historical 

 fact Further, it is urged, especially in regard to the 

 Old Testament narratives, that these, by their contra- 

 dictions, by the nature of many of the statements 

 they make, and by other marks, show themselves to 

 be unhistorical. The principal alleged marks of this 

 sort we will consider presently, in another connection. 

 For the moment we content ourselves with noticing 

 that the alleged unhistoricity of the testimony is not to 

 be accepted without sufficient proof, and that it will 

 take very cogent proof to be sufficient, and secondly, 

 that if the proof were forthcomingj that would have no 

 direct weight to show that Moses is not the author of 

 the Pentateuch ; it would only weaken the evidence of 

 his being its author. The question would still be : 

 What proof is there that he was not so? 



4. The principles in hand still cover the argument 

 from alleged unhistorieity, when the argument assumes 

 the form o_f the fictional hypothesis. On the ' 

 it there is no absurdity in supposing that .lewish 

 statesmen of the times of Josiah and later might have 

 given the literary form of a Mosaic tradition to laws 

 codified by themselves. It is possible that such a fic- 

 tion is morally defensible, and it is supposable that 

 they might have done the thing, even if it were mor- 

 ally wrong. But if this fictional hypothesis be resorted 

 to at all, it must be applied not to the testimony in the 

 Hcxateuch alone, but to much of that in the other 

 books, both the pre-exilic and the post-exilic. If this 

 fictional mode of describing the laws of Israel existed, it 

 existed as consciously fictional for several centuries, cov- 

 ering several national revolutions, and we have a 

 pretty abundant literature for those centuries. The 

 absence of any distinct mention of it in that literature, 

 as well as the difficulty of the thing itself, shows it to 

 be quite improbable that it ever existed. In the cir- 

 cumstances, if the fictional hypothesis be affirmed, 

 purely on the ground of its being necessary in order to 

 explain the circumstance that Moses did not write the 

 Pentateueh, that circumstance needs first to be estab- 

 lished by sufficient proofs. Unless the proofs are 

 forthcoming, the hypothesis amounts to absolutely 

 nothing. 



The difficulty of establishing the charge of lack of 

 historical credibility, as against the testimony of the 

 Old Testament, has of late years greatly inen 

 The outcome of recent excavations and explorations 

 is altogether against it. As long as these books con- 

 tained, in the main, the only known accounts of the 

 events they mention, there was some plausibility in the 

 theory that perhaps these accounts were written rather 

 to teach moral lessons than to preserve an exact 

 knowledge of events. It was easy to say that in those 

 times men had not the historic sense. But the recent 

 discoveries touch the events^ recorded in the Bible at 

 very many different points, in many different genera- 

 tions, mentioning the same persons, countries, peoples, 

 events that are mentioned in the Bible, and showing be- 

 yond question that these were strictly historic. The 

 point is not that the discoveries confirm the correctness 

 of the Biblical statement*, though that is commonly 

 the case, but that the discoveries show that the peo- 

 ples of those, ages had the historic sense, and specific- 

 ally, that the Biblical narratives they touch are narra- 

 tives of actual occurrences. 



It is also a familiar and acknowledged fact that the 

 general contents of the Hcxateuch and most of the 

 phenomena it presents agree with the account of its 

 origin as given in the testimony, and thus confirm that 

 account. There is no room here for details under this 

 statement, though some instances will presently be 

 given. 



II. Alleged I'rooft of the Late Origin f thr Ilr.rn- 

 triich. By universal admission, then, we nave an ac- 



