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PROF. H. EDOUARD NAV1LLE, D.C.L., LL.D., ON 



the Lord, the covenant which God made with him, the promise 

 that he would receive Canaan as his inheritance, and that his 

 seed would become a numerous nation possessing Canaan as an 

 inheritance, this is the corner stone on which rests the whole 

 future of Israel. ~No wonder, therefore, that Moses dwells at 

 great length on his ancestor, on the various episodes of his life, 

 on his character, on the nature of Ids intercourse with God. What 

 he is aiming at is to make a good portrait of him, to have a 

 faithful record of his deeds. The future generations must know 

 who was the man whom God considered as fit to become the 

 head of a posterity to which He would commit His laws, and 

 whose chief mission w T ould be to serve the Lord faithfully. 



In writing such a biography, there was no need to follow a 

 strictly chronological order. No doubt this order would be most 

 convenient, but this was not the ruling principle. Moses was 

 not writing a book of history. History, such as we understand 

 it, did not exist in his time. There was nothing but biography. 

 Even historical inscriptions in Egypt, or the books of Kings and 

 Chronicles, are nothing but biographies of the king, or events 

 connected with his person. In a biography, if the author has to 

 emphasize an idea, or if he wishes to group certain facts, he will 

 leave aside chronological order, which is no rule for him ; we 

 shall find at least one instance of this in Abraham's life. 



Since Moses is going to write a running narrative, his tablets 

 will be much more closely connected than the first six. He 

 probably did as the Assyrians, and repeated at the beginning the 

 last word or the last sentence of the former tablet. Therefore, 

 his tablets are not as easy to distinguish as before. But here 

 arises a question which is as difficult for the critics as for those 

 who hold to the Biblical tradition. How did Moses know all 

 he relates about Abraham ? Were there any written records 

 kept during Abraham's life ? Perhaps there may have been, 

 especially concerning his dealings with his neighbours, or his 

 military expeditions against the kings who had carried Lot away. 

 One can fancy one of his men, like Eliezer his servant, the elder 

 of hishouse,that "ruled over all that he had,"putting down in writ- 

 ing on a clay tablet the principal events of his master's life, which 

 would be transmitted to his descendants, but the episodes which 

 are most striking, those in which he was alone a witness, like the 

 wonderful dialogue between Abraham and God about the impend- 

 ing destruction of Sodom, an episode to which we shall have to 

 revert further, how are we to explain these ? Here it seems 

 impossible not to pronounce the word at which some of the 

 critics scoff — revelation. Moses was directed by the Spirit to 



