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REV. J. E. H. THOMSON, M.A., D.D., ON 



Manasseh, to give him the name which Josephus gives him^ fled 

 to his father-in-law. It is not said in Nehemiah that he did ; 

 he certainly might have done so — that, however, is not to say 

 that he probably did so. As according to the Critical hypothesis 

 Ezra had brought the completed Law, and had now been several 

 years in Jerusalem, no chronological difficulty stands in the way 

 of the assumption that Manasseh took the completed Torali 

 with him to Samaria. There are, however, what seem to be 

 overwhelming psychological obstacles to acceptance of this. 



Even for the sake of argument it is extremely difficult to admit 

 that the Jerusalem priests would accept the new teaching of 

 Ezra. They had for nearly a century been offering gifts and 

 sacrifices according to some ritual ; Ezra, who comes to teach 

 them what he maintains is the true ritual, had not only never 

 taken part in a legitimate sacrifice, he never had even seen one. 

 Was it likely that they would submit to all the new regulations 

 without remonstrance ? The only thing that they fought against 

 was Ezra's strained interpretation of the marriage law. Inconceiv- 

 able as it appears to us, still let it be admitted. Would Manasseh 

 convey to his father-in-law this new ritual ? When Sanballat 

 got permission from Darius Nothus to build a Temple and made 

 him High Priest, would he (Manasseh) introduce into it the arrange- 

 ment of rites and ceremonies which had been introduced by the 

 man through whose influence and authority he had been banished 

 from Jerusalem and deprived of his priesthood ? What would 

 be thought of the verisimilitude of a tale which represented a 

 man who had been an Episcopalian curate in Scotland but had 

 been, at the Revolution Settlement, hustled out of his church 

 and home by a mob of Presbyterian zealots, coming to London 

 and opening a Presbyterian conventicle there ? It would be 

 regarded as a travesty of human nature. The Critical hypothetical 

 history of Manasseh is as preposterous : — unless human nature 

 differed then from what it is now. 



But a difficulty in accepting the Critical hypothesis emerges 

 from another quarter. Would the Samaritans accept the 

 amended Pentateuch at the hands of Manasseh ? The Samaritans 

 since the days of Esar-haddon had been worshipping JHWH ; 

 and their claim to have done so is not denied by Zerubbabel. 

 Worship in those days meant sacrificial offerings and this meant 

 a certain fixed ritual. If that brought by Manasseh differed 

 from that to which they had been accustomed for a couple of 

 centuries, would they have readily given up their own for this 



