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PROF. H. EDOUARD XAV1LLE, D.C.L., LL.D., OX 



writing a book like Genesis ? He was not like Moses at the 

 moment when the glorious promises were to he fulfilled, when 

 the promised land was in sight, when they were to take posses- 

 sion of the inheritance which God Himself had guaranteed to 

 his ancestor. On the contrary, he was part of a remnant of a 

 people, the glory and power of which were gone. He could 

 look back to the reigns of David and Solomon as being the 

 most brilliant epochs of the nation's life, but after them the 

 kingdom had been rent in twain, and from that day the decay 

 had been going on fast ; one of the kingdoms bad disappeared, 

 the inhabitants of the other had known again a life of bondage 

 in a foreign land. A few of them had returned ; they 

 had rebuilt the temple, but they were not independent of the 

 Persian king, and after the destruction of the Persian Empire 

 they had to feel the heavy and cruel yoke of the Syrian 

 kings. Was this a time when a writer would picture to his 

 readers the glorious prospects which God had opened before 

 their ancestor more than a thousand years before ? Comparing 

 the life of Abraham with the condition of his descendants after 

 the return from the Captivity, the life of the patriarch could 

 not appear otherwise than as a record of unfulfilled promises 

 and battled hopes. 



"Who was the author ? "Who gave him the authority to speak 

 in the name of God \ He was neither a legislator nor a prophet ; 

 and what special claim could he put forward to be listened to ? 

 Why should his countrymen believe him ? It is true that he 

 hides himself behind Moses ; he puts his book at the beginning 

 of the five Mosaic books : but it seems very doubtful whether 

 the Moses of the critics could appeal to the redactor's contem- 

 poraries. It is one of the favourite arguments of the critics in 

 all the domains of antiquity that a late author, in order to give 

 his writing a weight of which, by itself, it would be completely 

 destitute, puts it under the name of some undisputable authority. 

 Here it is Moses. But the Moses whose mere name commands 

 respect and obedience, and who would silence opposition, is the 

 man whose character and actions come out of the traditional 

 view of Pentateuch. One can hardly understand how the name 

 of Moses had any weight with the post-exilian Jews, if Moses 

 was the man who has been restored to us by the critics. His 

 legislative work was nothing, since the oldest part of it, 

 Deuteronomy, is a forgery dating from the year 621, and the bulk 

 of his laws also are a forgery due to Ezra or one of his contem- 

 poraries. As for his biography, the record of it was contained in 

 two documents, the earlier due to a man or to a school belonging 



