MOSAIC ORIGIN OF THE PENTATKUCH. 



51 



From the Rev. Professor A. Natrne, D.D. : I thank you very much 

 for a very interesting gift. lb is, I am afraid, unlikely that, after 

 changing my mind once on (as I felt) the compulsion of abundant 

 evidence, I shall change it back again lightly. But a bit of scholar 

 ship is always a pleasure, and of course I value every fresh present- 

 ment of the other view. Let me touch on the point where we 

 agree. I object to the idea of the Redactor as much as you do. Who- 

 ever made the final book, and whenever it was completed, the last 

 author was an author, not a redactor : he (or they) used material 

 rather than made extracts. And accordingly I too doubt whether 

 any precise analysis, showing junctions, can be generally made — 

 not, e.g., in the Flood narrative ; yet sometimes it seems difficult 

 to deny this — e.g., Ex. xix. ad fin. "^Ob^^'l and then fresh start. 

 To me the characteristics of J.E.D.P. do not seem confused together, 

 except just so far as this intelligent use of original material by a later 

 author tends to blending. 



But it is the history of Israel and the Jews, as presented by the Old 

 Testament as a whole, that refuted my former opinion : you hardly 

 touch on that. 



From the Very Rev. Moses Gaster, Ph. D., chief Rabbi of Spanish 

 and Portuguese Jews' Congregations : I deeply regret that I cannot 

 be present, for I should like to testify personally to the great value 

 of your paper. I have read it with a steadily growing satisfaction : 

 I have followed line by line the cumulative evidence which you are 

 marshalling so skilfully in defence of the old traditional antiquity 

 of the Torah and the Mosaic authorship. 



The tide of the so-called Higher Criticism is ebbing fasfc. The 

 spade has done its work : the discoveries in Babylon and Egypt 

 have adduced an ever-growing number of evidences to the absolute 

 accuracy even of the stray allusions in the Pentateuch. Nothing 

 has as yet come to light which could call in question such accuracy : 

 on the contrary, the reverse has been the case, and I need only allude 

 among the latest discoveries to that of the Aramaic papyri in Egypt, 

 which with one blow has destroyed the artificial structure of the 

 Higher Criticism of Ezra and Nehemiah. 



The Rock of Scripture, for a time submerged under the waves of 

 that turbid flood, is emerging higher and higher, and the ingenuity 

 of scliolars is happily no longer placed at the service of destructive 



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