THE UNITY OF GENESIS. 



3G1 



I bog to second most cordially the vote of thanks to Dr. Naville. 



Dr. Wace : I entirely sympathise with the remarks made by Lord 

 Halsbury about the alleged writers, J., E., and P. 



The xivth chapter of Genesis seems to me to stand out like a 

 block of granite to prove to subsequent generations that here we 

 have a contemporaneous record, and, if this chapter is authentic, it 

 carries with it the probability that the rest of the book is authentic 

 likewise. These discussions appear to me to have a high practical 

 interest, and I feel that I can almost agree with our President's 

 designation for the theory that assigns Genesis to a number of 

 imaginary authors — J., E., and P. and the rest — as " rubbish." That 

 which is of real concern to us is the question, " Are these stories which 

 we find in Genesis, true or not *? " If they are not true then these 

 books that we have been accustomed to regard as sacred are untrust- 

 worthy. Take, for example, what one writer has said in his remarks on 

 the Pentateuch, that God's Covenant with the people of Israel began 

 with Mt. Sinai; the Bible, on the contrary, states that it began 

 four hundred years earlier, with Abraham. If we are to adopt the con- 

 clusions of the Higher Critics, we must face the fact that the Biblical 

 narratives are not true, and that is a conclusion I cannot accept 

 under any circumstances. As Voltaire put it, " If a sacred book 

 contains falsehoods, can it be considered as sacred 1 " Dr. Naville 

 uses the expression " the forgery of Deuteronomy." The Higher 

 Critics object to the use of such a term. But they make a very 

 grave charge against the unknown author to whom they ascribe 

 it, when they represent him as having put into the mouth of 

 Moses records, documents, and laws with which Moses had nothing 

 to do. 



The value of Dr. Naville's suggestions is that if they can be 

 generally substantiated, then they prove that we have, in Genesis, 

 contemporary documents. As to the authorship of the Pentateuch, 

 we have a uniform tradition which has lasted down to within one or 

 two hundred years ago, that the Pentateuch was written by Moses. 

 This is evidence : it is the testimony of the Jewish race to the author- 

 ship of the books. In law, we are accustomed to ask, " In whose 

 custody did the document lie 1 " These documents have been 

 throughout in the custody of the Jews. When the Speakers' Com- 

 mentary was first written, a learned Hebraist, Dr. Brown, felt 

 himself compelled to prove that Moses could write. 



