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P.EV. J. E. H. THOMSOX, M.A., D.D., OX 



viii, 1, They transgressed My covenant and trespassed against 

 My law ; further, the Law is a thing already committed to 

 writing — viii, 12. *' I have written unto him the great things of 

 My Law.*' There is an endeavour to invahdate these references 

 by asserting that these things miglit be traditions. Of course, 

 possibility is a very wide thing ; we have to do not with possi- 

 bilities but with probabihties. When Hosea, as we have just 

 seen, speaks of God having written to Israel great things in His 

 Law/' it is beside the question to refer to the possibility of un- 

 written tradition. This is confirmed by the way in which the 

 words of the Pentateuchal narrative are echoed in the prophetic 

 reference. If it were a question of secular jiterature, such evi- 

 dence would be regarded as conclusive proof that the prophets 

 had read the Law, and expected that their hearers had read it 

 also. It is even stronger when consideration is directed to the 

 sacrifices and feasts named by Amos with technical exactitude. 

 Amos was not a priest, does not claim to be a regular prophet, 

 brought up in the prophetic schools. Yet plain man as he is, he 

 not only himself knows the technical terms for the sacrifices but 

 expects that those whom he is addressing are acquainted with 

 them also, and with all the regulations in regard to them. 



We can thus claim to have shown that it is so highly probable 

 as to be almost a certainty, and that is the utmost that can be 

 attained in regard to the remote past : that the whole Torah, 

 not only aU the books, but aU the strata into which Critics have 

 split it up, was in the possession of the Ephraimites in the reign 

 of Jeroboam II. The case of Amos, not only as an individual, 

 but as a prophet whose exhortations impHed a certain amount 

 of intelligence and information in his audience, requires us to 

 believe that the acquaintance with the Law was widespread, 

 embracing all strata of society. But this impHes a very consider- 

 able space of time. Even the century during which the dynasty 

 of Jehu ruled, is insufficient to account for it. Ahab or his 

 father Omri would be unlikely to introduce a legal system which 

 condemned alike their practices at home and their foreign 

 alliances ; scarcely more Hkely to do so were the short -Hved 

 dvnasties which had preceded. We are thus led to conclude 

 that the Pentateuch was a possession which Israel had in common 

 before the division of the Kingdom. If, as Dr. Bumey 

 {Kings, p. 105) admits, the ceremonies of the Dedication of the 

 Temple agree with the enactments of the Priestly Code (he 

 explains this in the usual high-handed Critical fashion by alleging 



