Pentateuch

VIEW:54 DATA:01-04-2020

the five books of Moses
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary


PENTATEUCH.—See Hexateuch.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909

(See MOSES; LAW; GENESIS; EXODUS; LEVITICUS; NUMBERS; DEUTERONOMY.) A term meaning "five volumes" (teuchos in Alexandrian Greek "a book"); applied to the first five books of the Bible, in Tertullian and Origen. "The book of the law" in Deu_48:61; Deu_29:21; Deu_30:10; Deu_31:26; "the book of the law of Moses," Jos_23:6; Neh_8:1; in Ezr_7:6, "the law of Moses," "the book of Moses" (Ezr_6:18). The Jews now call it Torah "the law," literally, the directory in Luk_24:27 "Moses" stands for his book.
The division into five books is probably due to the Septuagint, for the names of the five books, Genesis, Exodus, etc., are Greek not Hebrew. The Jews name each book from its first word; the Pentateuch forms one roll, divided, not into books, but into larger and smaller sections Parshiyoth and Sedorim. They divide its precepts into 248 positive, and 365 negative, 248 being the number of parts the rabbis assign the body, 365 the days of the year. As a mnemonic they carry a square cloth with fringes (tsitsit = 600 in Hebrew) consisting of eight threads and five knots, 613 in all. The five of the Pentateuch answer to the five books of the psalter, and the five megilloth of the hagiographa (Song, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther).
MOSES' AUTHORSHIP. After the battle with Amalek (Exo_17:14) "Jehovah said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in the Book," implying there was a regular account kept in a well known book. Also Exo_24:4, "Moses wrote all the words of Jehovah"; (Exo_34:27) "Jehovah said unto Moses, Write thou these words" distinguished from Exo_34:28, "He (Jehovah) wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments" (Exo_34:1). Num_33:2 "Moses wrote their goings out according to their journeys by the commandment of Jehovah." In Deu_17:18-19, the king is required to "write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests, the Levites"; and Deu_31:9-11, "Moses wrote this law and delivered it unto the priests, the son of Levi," who should "at the end of every seven years read this law before all Israel in their hearing"; and Deu_31:24," Moses made an end of writing the words of this law in a book," namely, the whole Pentateuch ("the law," Mat_22:40; Gal_4:21), "and commanded the Levites ... put it in the side of the ark that it may be a witness against thee," as it proved under Josiah.
The two tables of the Decalogue were IN the ark (1Ki_8:9); the book of the law, the Pentateuch, was laid up in the holy of holies, close by the ark, probably in a chest (2Ki_22:8; 2Ki_22:18-19). The book of the law thus written by Moses and handed to the priests ends at Deu_31:23; the rest of the book of Deuteronomy is an appendix added after Moses' death by another hand, excepting the song and blessing, Moses' own composition. Moses speaks of "this law" and "the book of this law" as some definite volume which he had written for his people (Deu_28:61; Deu_29:19-20; Deu_29:29). He uses the third person of himself, as John does in the New Testament He probably dictated much of it to Joshua or some scribe, who subsequently added the account of Moses' death and a few explanatory insertions. The recension by Ezra (and the great synagogue, Buxtori "Tiberius," 1:10, Tertullian De Cultu Fem. 3, Jerome ad Helvid.) may have introduced the further explanations which appear post Mosaic.
Moses probably uses patriarchal documents, as e.g. genealogies for Genesis; these came down through Shem and Abraham to Joseph and Israel in Egypt. That writing existed ages before Moses is proved by the tomb of Chnumhotep at Benihassan, of the twelfth dynasty, representing a scribe presenting to the governor a roll of papyrus covered with inscriptions dated the sixth year of Osirtasin II long before the Exodus. The papyrus found by M. Prisse in the hieratic character is considered the oldest of existing manuscripts and is attributed to a prince of the fifth dynasty; weighed down with age, he invokes Osiris to enable him to give mankind the fruits of his long experience. It contains two treatises, the first, of 12 pages, the end of a work of which the former part is lost, the second by a prince, son of the king next before Assa, in whose reign the work was composed. The Greek alphabet borrows its names of letters and order from the Semitic; those names have a meaning in Semitic, none in Greek Tradition made Cadmus ("the Eastern") introduce them into Greece from Phoenicia (Herodot. 5:58).
Joshua took a Hittite city, Kirjath Sepher, "the city of the book" (Jos_15:15), and changed the name to Debir of kindred meaning. Pertaour, a scribe under Rameses the Great, in an Iliadlike poem engraved on the walls of Karnak mentions Chirapsar, of the Khota or Hittites, a writer of books. From the terms for "write," "book," "ink," being in all Semitic dialects, it follows they must have been known to the earliest Shemites before they branched off into various tribes and nations. Moses, Israel's wise leader, would therefore be sure to commit to writing their laws, their wonderful antecedents and ancestry, and the Divine promises from the beginning connected with them, and their fulfillment in Egypt, in the Exodus, and in the wilderness, in order to evoke their national spirit. Israel would certainly have a written history at a time when the Hittites among whom Israel settled were writers.
Moreover, from Joshua downward the Old Testament books abound in references to the laws, history, and words of Moses, as such, universally accepted. They are ordered to be read continually (Jos_1:7-8); "all the law which Moses My servant commanded ... this book of the law" (Jos_8:31; Jos_8:34; Jos_23:6). In Jos_1:3-8; Jos_1:13-18 the words of Deu_11:24-25; Deu_31:6-12, and Deu_3:18-20 Num_32:20-28, are quoted. Israel's constitution in church and state accords with that established by Moses. The priesthood is in Aaron's family (Jos_14:1). "Eleazar," Aaron's son, succeeds to his father's exalted position and with Joshua divides the land (Jos_21:1), as Num_34:17 ordained; the Levites discharge their duties, scattered among the tribes and having 48 cities, as Jehovah by Moses commanded (Num_35:7). So the tabernacle made by Moses is set up at Shiloh (Jos_18:1). The sacrifices (Jos_8:31; Jos_22:23; Jos_22:27; Jos_22:29) are those enjoined (Leviticus 1; 2; 3).
The altar built (Jos_8:30-31; Exo_20:25) is "as Moses commanded ... in the book of the law of Moses." Compare also as to the ark, Jos_3:3; Jos_3:6; Jos_3:8; Jos_7:6; circumcision, Jos_5:2; Passover, Jos_5:10; with the Pentateuch. There is the same general assembly or congregation and princes (Jos_9:18-21; Jos_20:6; Jos_20:9; Jos_22:30; Exo_16:22); the same elders of Israel (Jos_7:6; Deu_31:9); elders of the city (Deu_25:8; Jos_20:4); judges and officers (Jos_8:33; Deu_16:18); heads of thousands (Jos_22:21; Num_1:16). Bodies taken down from hanging (Jos_8:29; Jos_10:27; Deu_21:23). No league with Canaan (Joshua 9; Exo_23:32). Cities of refuge (Joshua 20; Num_35:11-15; Deu_4:41-43; Deu_19:2-7). Inheritance to Zelophebad's daughters (Jos_17:3; Numbers 27; 36).
So in Judges Moses' laws are referred to (Jdg_2:1-3; Jdg_2:11-12; Jdg_2:20; Jdg_6:8-10; Jdg_20:2; Jdg_20:6; Jdg_20:13; Deu_13:6; Deu_13:12-14; Deu_22:21). The same law and worship appear in Judges as in Pentateuch. Judah takes the lead (Jdg_1:2; Jdg_20:18; Gen_49:8; Num_2:3; Num_10:14). The judge's office is as Moses defined it (Deu_17:9). Gideon recognizes the theocracy, as Moses ordained (Jdg_8:22-23; Exo_19:5-6; Deu_17:14; Deu_17:20; Deu_33:5). The tabernacle is at Shiloh (Jdg_18:31); Israel goes up to the house of God and consults the high priest with Urim and Thummim (Jdg_20:23; Jdg_20:26-28; Exo_28:30; Num_27:21; Deu_12:5). The ephod is the priest's garment (Jdg_8:27; Jdg_17:5; Jdg_18:14-17).
The Levites scattered through Israel are the recognized ministers (Jdg_17:7-13; Jdg_19:1-2). Circumcision is Israel's distinguishing badge (Jdg_14:3; Jdg_15:18). Historical rereferences to the Pentateuch abound (Jdg_1:16; Jdg_1:20; Jdg_1:23; Jdg_2:1; Jdg_2:10; Jdg_6:13), especially Jdg_11:15-27 epitomizes Numbers 20; 21; Deu_2:1-8; Deu_2:26-34; compare the language Jdg_2:1-23 with Exo_34:13; Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28; Deu_7:2; Deu_7:8; Deu_12:3; Jdg_5:4-5 with Deu_33:2; Deu_32:16-17. In the two books of Samuel the law and Pentateuch are the basis. Eli, high priest, is sprung from Aaron through Ithamar (1Ch_24:3; 2Sa_8:17; 1Ki_2:27). The transfer from Eli's descendants back to Eleazar's line fulfills Num_25:10-13.
The tabernacle is still at Shiloh, 1Sa_2:14; 1Sa_4:8; the rabbis say it had now become "a low stone wall-structure with the tent drawn over the top," attached to it was a warder's house where Samuel slept. The lamp in it accords with Exo_27:20-21; Lev_24:2-3; but (1Sa_3:3) let go out, either from laxity or because the law was not understood to enjoin perpetual burning day and night. The ark in the tabernacle still symbolizes God's presence (1Sa_4:3-4; 1Sa_4:18; 1Sa_4:21-22; 1Sa_5:3-7; 1Sa_6:19). Jehovah of hosts dwells between the cherubim. The altar, incense, ephod are mentioned; also the "burnt offering" ('owlah), the "whole burnt offering" (kalil), "peace offerings" (shelamim): 1Sa_10:8; 1Sa_11:15; 1Sa_13:9; Exo_24:5. The "bloody sacrifice" (zebach) and "unbloody offering" (minchah): 1Sa_2:19; 1Sa_3:14; 1Sa_26:19. The victims, the bullock, lamb, heifer, and ram, are those ordained in Leviticus (Lev_1:24-25; Lev_7:9; Lev_16:2; Lev_15:22).
The priest's perquisites, etc., in Lev_6:6-7; Deu_18:1, etc., Num_18:8-19; Num_18:25; Num_18:32, are alluded to in 1Sa_2:12-13. The Levites alone should handle the sacred vessels and ark (1Sa_6:15; 1Sa_6:19). The historical facts of the Pentateuch are alluded to: Jacob's descent to Egypt, Israel's deliverance by Moses and Aaron (1Sa_12:8); the Egyptian plagues (1Sa_4:8; 1Sa_8:8); the Kenites' kindness (1Sa_15:6). Language of the Pentateuch is quoted (1Sa_2:22; Exo_38:8). The request for a king (1Sa_8:5-6) accords with Moses' words (Deu_17:14); also Deu_16:19 with 1Sa_8:3. The sacrificing in other places besides at the tabernacle was allowed because the ark was in captivity, and even when restored it was not yet in its permanent seat, Mount Zion, God's one chosen place (1Sa_7:17; 1Sa_10:8; 1Sa_16:2-5).
Though Samuel, a Levite not a priest (1Ch_6:22-28), is said to sacrifice, it is in the sense that as prophet and judge-prince he blessed it (1Sa_9:13). Whoever might slay it, the priest alone sprinkled the blood on the altar. So Joshua (Jos_8:30-31), Saul (1Sa_13:9-10), David (2Sa_24:25), Solomon (1Ki_3:4), and the people (1Ki_3:2) sacrificed through the priest. Samuel as reformer brought all ordinances of church and state into conformity with the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch and Mosaic ordinances underlie Samuel's work; but, while generally observing them, he so far deviates as no forger would do. The conformity is unstudied and unobtrusive, as that of one looking back to ordinances existing and recorded long before.
David's psalms allude to and even quote the Pentateuch language (Psa_1:3, compare Gen_39:3; Gen_39:23; Psa_4:5; Deu_33:19; Psa_4:6; Num_6:26; Psa_8:6-8; Gen_1:26; Gen_1:28; Psa_9:12; Gen_9:5; Gen_15:5; Exo_22:25; Exo_23:8; Lev_25:36; Deu_16:19; Psa_16:4-5-6; Exo_23:13; Deu_32:9; Psa_17:8; Deu_32:10; Psa_24:1; Deu_10:14; Exo_19:5; Exo_26:6; Exo_30:19-20; Psalm 30 title; Deu_20:5; Psa_39:12; Lev_25:23; Psa_68:1; Psa_68:4; Psa_68:7-8; Psa_68:17; Num_10:35; Deu_33:26; Exo_13:21; Exo_19:16; Deu_33:2; Psa_86:8; Psa_86:14-15; Exo_15:11; Exo_34:6; Num_10:10; Psa_103:17-18; Exo_20:6; Deu_7:9; Psa_110:4; Gen_14:18; Psa_133:2; Exo_30:25; Exo_30:30.
When dying, he [David] charges Solomon, "keep the charge, as it is written in the law of Moses" (1Ki_2:3). The Pentateuch must have preceded the kingdom, for it supposes no such form of government. Solomon's Proverbs similarly rest on the Pentateuch (Pro_3:9; Pro_3:18; Exo_22:29; Gen_2:9. Pro_10:18; Num_13:32; Num_14:36. Pro_11:1; Pro_20:10; Pro_20:23; Lev_19:35-36; Deu_25:13. Pro_11:13 margin; Lev_19:16,"not go up and down as a talebearer".) Solomon's temple is an exact doubling of the proportions of the tabernacle. No one would have built a house with the proportions of a tent, except to retain the relation of the temple to its predecessor the tabernacle (1Ki_6:1, etc.). The Pentateuch must have preceded the division between Israel and Judah, because it was acknowledged in both. Jehoshaphat in Judah used "the book of the law of Jehovah," as the textbook for reaching the people (2Ch_17:9).
In 2Ki_11:12 "the testimony" is put in the hands of Joash at his coronation. Uzziah burning incense contrary to the law incurs leprosy (2Ch_26:16-21; Num_16:1 etc.). Hezekiah kept the commandments which Jehovah commanded Moses (2Ki_18:4; 2Ki_18:6). He destroyed the relic, the brazen serpent which remained from Moses' time, because of its superstitious abuse. Jeroboam in northern Israel set up golden calves on Aaron's model, with words from Exo_32:28, "behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of Egypt" (1Ki_12:28). Bethel was chosen as where God appeared to Jacob. The feast in the eighth month was in imitation of that of tabernacles in the seventh month (1Ki_12:32-38), to prevent the people going up to sacrifice at Jerusalem (1Ki_12:27); the Levites remaining faithful to the temple, Jeroboam made priests of the lowest people.
In 1 and 2, Kings references to the Pentateuch occur (1Ki_21:3; Lev_25:23; Num_36:8. 1Ki_21:10; Num_35:30; Num_22:17; Num_27:17. 2Ki_3:20; Exo_29:38, etc. 2Ki_4:1; Lev_25:39. 2Ki_6:18; Gen_19:11. 2Ki_7:3; Lev_13:46). In Isa_5:24; Isa_29:12; Isa_30:9; Hos_4:6; Hos_2:15; Hos_6:7 margin; Hos_12:3-4; Hos_11:1; Hos_8:1; Hos_8:12; Amo_2:4, references to the law as a historic record and book, and to its facts, occur (Gen_25:26; Gen_28:11; Gen_32:24. Amo_2:10; Gen_15:16. Amo_3:1; Amo_3:14; Exo_27:2; Exo_30:10; Lev_4:7. Amo_2:11-12; Num_6:1-21. Amo_4:4-5; Num_28:3-4; Deu_14:28; Lev_2:11; Lev_7:12-13; Lev_22:18-21; Deu_12:6).
Plainly Amos' "law" was the same as ours. Mic_7:14 alludes to Gen_3:14, and Mic_7:20 to the promises to Abraham and Jacob; Mic_6:4-5, to the Exodus under Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, and to Balak's attempt through Balaam to curse Israel. Under Josiah the Passover is held "according to the word of the Lord by the hand of Moses" (2Ch_35:1; 2Ch_35:6; 2Ch_35:2 Kings 23) on the 14th day of the first month. The sacrifices accord with the Pentateuch; priests, "the sons of Aaron," and Levites kill the Passover and sprinkle the blood. The Passover is traced back to Samuel's days, there being no such, Passover from that time to JOSIAH eel (?). The strange fact that the finding of the book of the law by Hilkiah in the temple so moved Josiah's conscience, whereas the Pentateuch had all along been the statute book of the nation, is accounted for by the prevalent neglect of it during the ungodly and idolatrous preceding reigns, especially Manasseh's long and awfully wicked one. (See HILKIAH.)
Moses had ordered the book of the law (not merely Deuteronomy) to be put in the side of the ark for preservation (Deu_31:26). The autograph from Moses was the "book" found, "the law of Jehovah by. the hand of Moses" (2Ch_34:14). Seven hundred years had elapsed, not nearly as long as many manuscripts have been preserved to, us; we have papyri older than Moses, more than 3,000 years ago. The curses in the book read to the king are in Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 27; 28; compare Deu_28:36 with 2Ki_22:13, where the king is especially mentioned as about to be punished. When the ark was removed (2Ch_35:3) during Manasseh's sacrilegious reign the temple copy or autograph of the law was hid somewhere, probably built into the wall, and discovered in repairing the temple. Josiah, as yet young, and having been kept in ignorance of the law by the idolatrous Amon his father, was still only a babe in knowledge of spiritual truth. The immediate recognition of its authority by Hilkiah the high-priest, the scribes, priests, Levites, elders, and Huldah the prophetess (2Ki_22:8-14; 2Ki_23:1-4), when found, marks that, however kings, priests, and people had forgotten and wandered from it, they recognized it as the long established statute book of the nation.
So entirely is Jeremiah, who began prophesying the 13th year of Josiah, imbued with the language of Deuteronomy that rationalists guess him to be its author. The part of Jer 2:1-8:17 is admitted to have been written before the finding of the law by Josiah. In Jer_2:8; Jer_8:8, he alludes to the law as the established statute book. For allusions compare Jer_2:6 with Deu_8:15; Num_14:7-8; Num_35:33-34; Lev_18:25-28; also Jer_2:28, "circumcise ... take away the foreskins of your heart," with Deu_32:37-38; Deu_4:4; Deu_10:16; Deu_30:6, a figure nowhere else found in Scripture; Jer_5:15 with Deu_28:31; Deu_28:49. In Eze_22:7-12 there are 29 quotations from the Hebrew words of Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy. In Eze_22:26 four references: Lev_10:10; Lev_22:2, etc.; Lev_20:25; Exo_31:13. So in Ezekiel 16; 18; 20, a recapitulation of God's loving and long suffering dealings with Israel as recorded in the Pentateuch.
Ezra on the return from Babylon read the book of the law of Moses at the feast of tabernacles (as enjoined Deu_31:10-13) "before the men and women who could understand (Hebrew), and the ears of all were attentive to the book of the law" (Neh_8:3). Their accepting it even at the cost of putting away their wives (Ezra 10) is the strongest proof of its universal recognition for ages by the nation. For the younger people, who had almost lost Hebrew and spoke Aramaic, Syriac, or Chaldee, he and the Levites read or gave after the Hebrew law a Chaldee paraphrase which they understood (Ezr_10:8). He arranged the older books of Old Testament, and probably with Malachi fixed the canon, and transcribed the Hebrew or Samaritan character into the modern Chaldee square letters. The ancient Jews and Christian fathers knew of the Samaritan Pentateuch. (See THE SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH.)
It was first brought to light in modern times (A.D. 1616) by Pietro della Valle, who obtained a manuscript of it from the Samaritans of Damascus. The agreement of this with our Jewish Pentateuch is a sure proof that our Pentateuch is the same as Israel used, for no collusion could have taken place between such deadly rivals as Jews and Samaritans. (See BIBLE; OLD TESTAMENT.) Manasseh brother of Jaddua the high priest, having married Sanballat's ("laughter" (Neh_13:28), was expelled and became the first high priest on Mount Gerizim in concert with others, priests and Levites, who would not put away their pagan wives (Josephus, Ant. 11:8, section 2, 4). (See JADDUA; GERIZIM.)
Probably he and they brought to Samaria the Samaritan Pentateuch from Jerusalem. As it testifies against their pagan marriages and schismatical worship, the Samaritans would never have accepted it if they had not believed in its genuineness and divine authority. It certainly could not have been imposed on them at a later time than Ezra; so from at least that date it is an independent witness of the integrity of the five books of Moses. This testimony may be much older for probably the Samaritan Pentateuch was carried by the priest sent by Esarhaddon in Manasseh's reign (680 B.C.) to teach Jehovah's worship to the Cuthire colonists planted in Samaria (2Ki_17:24; 2Ki_17:28; Ezra 2-10). The Septuagint Greek translated shows that the Egyptian Jews accepted the Pentateuch. Antiochus Epiphanes directed his fury against the books of the law (1 Maccabees 1). The Chaldee paraphrase of Onkelos in our Lord's time agrees with our Pentateuch.
New Testament attestation. Our Lord and His apostles in New Testament refer to the Pentateuch as of divine authority and Mosaic authorship (Mat_19:4-5; Mat_19:7-8; Mat_4:4; Mat_4:7; Mat_4:10; Mat_15:1-9; Mar_10:5; Mar_10:8; Mar_12:26; Luk_16:29; Luk_16:31; Luk_20:28; Luk_20:37; Luk_24:27; Luk_24:44-45; Joh_1:17; Joh_5:45-46; Joh_8:5; Act_3:22; Act_8:37; Act_26:22). The two dispensations, separated by 1,500 years, having each its attesting miracles and prophecies since fulfilled and shedding mutual light on one another, could not possibly be impostures. The very craving of the Jews after "a sign" indicates the notoriety and reality of the miracles formerly wrought among them (Joh_6:13). The author of the Pentateuch must have been intimately acquainted with the learning, laws, manners, and religion of Egypt (Spencer, De Leg. Heb.; Hengstenberg, Egypt and Books of Moses).
The plagues were an intensification of the ordinary plagues of the country, coming and going miraculously at God's command by Moses (Bryant, Plag. Egypt.). The making of bricks (generally found to have chopped straw) by captives is represented on the Egyptian monuments (Exo_1:14; Exo_5:7-8; Exo_5:18; Brugsch, Hist. d'Egypt., 106). Moses' ark of papyrus suits Egypt alone (Exo_2:3); Isis was borne upon a boat of papyrus (Plutarch de Isaiah et Osiri; Herodotus ii. 37, 96). Bitumen was much used, it was a chief ingredient in embalming. The cherubim over the mercy-seat resemble Egyptian sculptures. The distinction clean and unclean was Egyptian, also the hereditary priesthood as the Aaronic. The Egyptian priesthood shaved their whole bodies and bathed continually (Herodotus ii. 37), and wore linen (the sole ancient priesthood that wore only linen except the Levites: Num_8:7; Exo_40:12-15; Exo_28:39-42).
Aaron's anointing in his priestly robes resembles that of the king on Egyptian monuments with royal robes, cap, and crown. The scape-goat answers to the victim on the head of which the Egyptians heaped curses and sold it to foreigners or threw it into the river (Herodotus ii. 39). Answering to the Urim and Thummim on the high priest's breast-plate was the sapphire image of truth which the Egyptian chief priest wore as judge. The temples and tombs have hieroglyphics inscribed on their doorposts, in correspondence to Deu_11:20. Pillars with inscriptions on the plaster were an Egyptian usage; so Deu_27:2-3. So the bastinado on the criminal, made to lie down, is illustrated in the Benihassan sculptures (Deu_25:2). The unmuzzled ox treading out the grain (Deu_25:4). The offerings for the dead forbidden (Deu_26:14) were such as were usual in Egypt, a table being placed in the tombs bearing cakes, etc.
Frequent memorials of Israel's wilderness wanderings remained after their settlement in Canaan. The tabernacle in all its parts was fitted for carrying. The phrases "tents of the Lord," applied to precincts of the temple; the cry of revolt, "to your tents O Israel"; "without the camp," for the city, long after the expression was literally applicable, are relics of their nomadic life in the desert. So Psa_80:1; "Thou that dwellest between the cherubim, shine forth! Before Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh, stir up Thy strength, and come," represents Israel's three warrior tribes on march surrounding the ark, with the pillar of fire shining high above it. The elders of the synagogue succeeded to the elders or chiefs of the tribes. The ark itself was of acacia (shittim) wood of the Sinaitic peninsula, not of cedar, the usual wood for sacred purposes ill Palestine. The coverings were of goats' hair, ramskin dyed red in Arab fashion, and sealskins from the adjoining Red Sea, and fine Egyptian linen. (See BADGER.)
So the detailed permission to eat the various game of the wilderness, wild goat, roe, deer, ibex, antelope, and chamois, applies not to Canaan; it could only have been enacted in Israel's desert life previously. The laws and the lawgiver s language look forward to life in Canaan (Exo_12:25-27; Exo_13:1-5; Exo_23:20-23; Exo_34:11; Lev_14:34; Lev_18:3; Lev_18:24; Lev_19:23; Lev_20:22; Lev_23:10; Lev_25:2; Num_15:2; Num_15:18; Num_34:2; Num_35:2-34; Deu_4:1; Deu_6:10; Deu_7:1; Deu_9:1, etc.). The objection from the author's knowledge of Canaan's geography against its Mosaic authorship is answered by Moses' knowledge of the patriarchs' wanderings in Canaan. Further, the Egyptians knew Palestine well from the reign of Thothmes I. Moses in his 40 years in Midian and the Sinai wilderness was sure to hear much about Palestine, and probably visited it and sent agents to learn the character of the country, cities, and people.
The prophecies, as Deu_12:10, when ye go over Jordan ... and He giveth you rest ... round about," are just such as would not have been written after the event. For neither at the close of Joshua's career (Jos_23:1), nor under the judges and Samuel (to whom some rationalists assign the Pentateuch), nor in any reign before Solomon, was there a fulfillment which adequately came up to the language. No forger would put into Moses' month words promising seemingly "rest" immediately after entering Carman, whereas it was not realized for 500 years after. The language is archaic, suiting the time of Moses. Archaisms are found in the Pentateuch not elsewhere occurring. The third person pronoun has (unpointed) no variety of gender, the one form serves both for masculine and feminine. So na'ar is both boy and girl in Pentateuch, elsewhere only "boy," na'arah is "girl." 'Eel stands for the later 'eelleh, "these." The infinitive of verbs ending in -h ends in -o instead of -ot (Gen_31:28; Gen_48:11; Exo_18:18).
The third person plural ends in -un instead of -u. Words unique to Pentateuch are 'abiyb, "an ear of grain"; 'amtachath, "a sack"; bathar, "divide"; bether, "piece"; gozal, "young bird"; zebed, "present"; zabad, "to present"; hermeesh, "a sickle"; mene, "basket"; hayiqum, "substance"; keseb for kebes, "lamb"; masweh, "veil"; 'ar for 'ir, "city"; se'er, "blood relation." Moses mainly moulded his people's language for ages, so that the same Hebrew was intelligible in Malachi's time, 1,000 years subsequently; just as the Mecca people still speak the Koran language written 1,200 years ago. Joshua the warrior had not the qualifications, still less had Samuel the knowledge of Egypt and Sinai, to write the Pentateuch. The theory of a patchwork of pieces of an Elohist and several Jehovist authors constituting our homogeneous Pentateuch which has commanded the admiration of all ages, and which is marked by unity, is too monstrous to be seriously entertained.
In Deu_17:18-19, "when he (the king) sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites, and he shall read therein all his life," i.e. he shall have a copy written for him, namely, of the whole Pentateuch. It was as necessary for him to know Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, being that law and history on which Deuteronomy is the recapitulatory comment and supplement, as it was to know Deuteronomy. At the feast of tabernacles every seven years a reading took place, not of the whole Pentateuch, but of lessons selected out of it and representing the whole law which Israel should obey (Neh_8:18). Latterly only certain parts of Deuteronomy have been read on the first day alone. In Deu_27:3 Moses charges Israel "thou shalt write upon (great stones plastered) all the words of this law," namely, not the historical, didactic, ethnological, and non-legislative parts, but the legal enactments of the Pentateuch (the Jews reckoned 613, see above).
In Egypt the hieroglyphics are generally graven in stone, the "plaster" being added afterward to protect the inscription from the weather (Jos_8:32). The closing words of Num_36:13, also of Lev_27:34; Lev_25:1; Lev_26:46, and the solemn warning against adding to or taking from Moses' commands (Deu_4:2; Deu_12:32), are incompatible with a variety of authors, and imply that Moses alone is the writer of the Pentateuch as a whole. A future life not ignored, but suggested. Though Moses did not employ a future state as a sanction of his law, yet he believed it, as the history proves. The Pentateuch contains enough to suggest it to a serious mind. All other ancient legislators make a future state of reward and punishment the basis of the sanctions of their law; Moses rests his on rewards and punishments to follow visibly in this life, which proves the reality of the special divine providence which miraculously administered the law. Its one aim was obedience to Jehovah (Deu_28:58).
Many particulars were impolitic in a mere human point of view: e.g. their peculiar food, ritual, and customs, excluding strangers and impeding commerce; the prohibition of cavalry (Deu_17:16); the assembling of the males thrice a year to the sanctuary, leaving the frontier unguarded, the sole security being God's promise that "no man should desire their land" at those sacred seasons (Exo_34:24); the command to leave their lands untilled the seventh year, with the penalty that the land should enjoy its Sabbath during their captivity if they did not allow it rest while dwelling upon it, and with the promise that God would command His blessing in the sixth year, so that the land should bring forth fruit for three years (Lev_25:21; Lev_26:32-35). Nor could human sagacity foresee, as Moses did, that not the hostile nations around them, but one from far, from the ends of the earth, the Romans (led by Vespasian and Hadrian, who both came from commanding Roman legions in Britain) whose language they understood not, whereas they understood most of the dialects around Palestine, should be their final conquerors.
Their dispersion in all lands, yet unity and distinctness, and preservation in spite of bitter persecutions for almost 1,800 years, all fulfill Deu_28:64-68; whereas in former captivities they were conveyed to one place, as in Goshen in Egypt, and in Babylon, so that their restoration as one nation was easy. "A few million, so often subjugated, stand the test of 3,000 revolving years, and the fiery ordeal of 15 centuries of persecution; we alone have been spared by the undiscriminating hand of time, like a column standing amidst the wreck of worlds." (Transactions of the Parisian Sanhedrim, p. 68.) But Moses does not ignore spiritual sanctions to his law, while giving chief prominence to the temporal. The epistle to the Hebrew (Hebrew 11) distinctly asserts the patriarchs "all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them and embraced them, and confessed they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth ... they desire a better country, that is an heavenly, wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He hath prepared for them a city" (Heb_11:13-16).
Man's creation in God's image, God directly breathing into him a "living soul" (Gen_1:26-27; Gen_2:7-17); his being threatened with double death if he ate the forbidden fruit, and made capable of living forever by eating of the tree of life, and after the fall promised a Deliverer, the sacrifices pointing to One who by His death should recover man's forfeited life: all imply the hope of future immortality. So Abel's premature death, the result of his piety, requires his being rewarded in a future life; otherwise God's justice would be compromised (Heb_11:4). So other facts: Enoch's translation, Abraham's offering Isaac, symbolizing Messiah to the patriarch who "desired to see His day, and saw it and was glad" (Joh_8:56; Genesis 22); "Moses' choosing to suffer affliction with God's people, rather than enjoy sin's pleasures for a season, and his esteeming Christ's reproach greater riches than Egypt's treasures, because he had respect to the recompence of reward" (Heb_11:24-27); God's declaration after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were dead, "I AM the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" (Exo_3:6), requiring a future eternal recompence in body and soul to make good God's promise of special favor, so inadequately realized while they were in their mortal bodies (Mat_22:29); and Balaam's prayer (Num_23:10).
ORDER. The development of God's grace to man is the golden thread running through the whole, and binding the parts in one organic unity. Chronological sequence regulates the parts in the main, as accords with its historical character; so Genesis rightly begins, Deuteronomy closes, the whole. Grace runs through Seth's line to Noah; thence to Abraham, whose family become heirs of the promise for the world. Israel's birth and deliverance as a nation occupy Exodus. Leviticus follows as the code for the religious life and worship of the elect people. Numbers takes up the history again, and with renewed legislation leaves Israel at the borders of the promised land. Deuteronomy recapitulates and applies the whole. Blunt (Undesigned Coincidences) notices the incompleteness of the Pentateuch as a history, and consequently the importance of observing the glimpses given by its passing hints.
Thus Joseph's "anguish of soul when he besought" the brothers, unnoticed in the direct story, but incidentally coming out in their confession of guilt (Gen_42:21); the overcoming of Jacob's reluctance to give up Benjamin, briefly told in the direct account as though taking no long time, but incidentally shown to have taken as long time as would have sufficed for a journey to Egypt and back (Gen_43:10); the hints in Jacob's deathbed prophecy of his strong feeling as to Reuben's misconduct, not noticed in the history (Gen_35:22, compare Gen_49:4); so as to Simeon and Levi (Gen_49:6). The allusion to Anah (Gen_36:24). The introduction of Joshua as one well known in Israel, though not mentioned before (Exo_17:9). The sending back of Zipporah by Moses (Exo_18:2), noticed at Jethro's taking them to Moses but not previously. The phrases "before the Lord," "from the presence of the Lord," marking the spot where sacrifices were brought and where Jehovah signified His presence, probably where the cherubim were, E. of Eden (Gen_4:16).
The minuteness of details in the Pentateuch marks truth, also the touches of nature: e.g. "the mixed multitude," half castes or Egyptians, are the first to sigh for Egypt's cucumbers, etc. (Num_11:4.) Aaron's cowardly self exculpation, "there came out this calf," as if the fire was in fault (Exo_32:24). The special cases incidentally arising and requiring to be provided for in the working of a new system; e.g. the man found gathering sticks on the Sabbath (could an impostor have devised such a trifle?); the request of Zelophehad's daughters for the inheritance, there being no male heir (Num_15:32; Num_36:2): matters inconsiderable in themselves, but giving occasion to important laws. The simplicity and dignity throughout, without parade of language, in describing even miracles (contrast Josephus Ant. 2:16 and 3:1 with Exodus 14; 16).
Moses' candor; as when he tells of his own want of eloquence unfitting him to be a leader (Exo_4:10; Exo_4:30); his want of faith which excluded him from the promised land, omitted by Josephus (Num_20:12); his brother Aaron's idolatry (Exo_32:21); the profaneness of Nadab and Abihu his nephews (Leviticus 10); his sister's jealousy and punishment (Numbers 12); his tribe Levi's spy being faithless as the other nine; his disinterestedness, seeking no dignity for his sons, and appointing Joshua his successor, no relation of his; his prophecies fulfilled in Messiah (Deuteronomy 18) and in the fall of Jerusalem (Deuteronomy 28). The key afforded in the Pentateuch to widely scattered traditions of pagans, as the golden age, the garden of the Hesperides; the fruit tree guarded by the dragon, the deluge destroying all but two righteous persons (Ovid, Met. 1:327), the rainbow a sign set in the cloud (Homer, Iliad xi. 27-28), the seventh day sacred (Hesiod, Erga kai Hem., 770).
The onerous nature of the law, restraining their actions at every turn (Deu_22:6; Deu_22:9; Deu_22:8; Deu_22:10; Lev_17:13; Lev_19:23; Lev_19:27; Lev_19:9; Lev_19:19; Lev_25:13), implies there must have been extraordinary powers in the legislator to command acceptance for such enactments. The main facts were so public, singular, and important, affecting the interests of every order, that no man could have gained credence for a false account of them. The Pentateuch was published and received during, or immediately after, the events, and is quoted by every Jewish writer and sect from Joshua downward. A whole nation so civilized could not have been deceived as to a series of facts so public and important.
The details of the tabernacle given so minutely are utterly unfit to convey an idea of magnificence, nay are wearisome, if it were not that they are just what Moses would give, if really the author, and if he detailed the particulars for instructing the artists at the time, and according to the divine model given him (Exo_25:8-9; Exo_25:40; Exo_39:42-43). The genealogies of the Pentateuch must have existed at the first distribution of land, for the property was unalienable from the family and tribe. So also the geographical enumerations (Numbers 33-35) have that particularity which is inconsistent with imposture. The author exposes the weak and obscure origin of Israel (Deu_26:5); their ungrateful apostasy from Jehovah's pure worship, to the calf (Exodus 32); their cowardice on the spies' return (Numbers 13-14; Deuteronomy 9; Deuteronomy 31).
No people would have submitted to the Jubilee law (Lev_25:4-5; Lev_26:34-35) except both legislator and people were convinced that God had dictated it, and by a peculiar providence would facilitate its execution. Miraculous interpositions such as the Pentateuch details alone would produce this conviction. The law was coeval with the witnesses of the miracles; the Jews have always received it as written by the legislator at the time of the facts, and as the sole repository of their religion, laws, and history. No period can be assigned when it could have been introduced, without the greatest opposition, if it were a forgery. None can be pointed out whose interest it was to frame such a forgery. The minute particularity of time, place, person, and circumstance marks an eye witness. The natural and undesigned coincidences between Moses' address in Deuteronomy and the direct narrative in the previous books, as regards the common facts and the miracles, point to Moses as the author (Graves, Penteuch, 6).
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
By Andrew Robert Fausset, co-Author of Jamieson, Fausset and Brown's 1888.

This word, which is derived from the Greek Πεντατευχος, from πεντε, five, and τευχος, a volume, signifies the collection of the five books of Moses, which are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. That the Jews have acknowledged the authenticity of the Pentateuch, from the present time back to the era of their return from the Babylonish captivity, a period of more than two thousand three hundred years, admits not a possibility of doubt. The five books of Moses have been during that period constantly placed at the head of the Jewish sacred volume, and divided into fixed portions, one of which was read and explained in their synagogues, not only every Sabbath with the other Scriptures, but in many places twice a week, and not unfrequently every evening, when they alone were read. They have been received as divinely inspired by every Jewish sect, even by the Sadducees, who questioned the divinity of the remaining works of the Old Testament. In truth, the veneration of the Jews for their Scriptures, and above all for the Pentateuch, seems to have risen almost to a superstitious reverence. Extracts from the Mosaic law were written on pieces of parchment, and placed on the borders of their garments, or round their wrists and foreheads: nay, they at a later period counted, with the minutest exactness, not only the chapters and paragraphs, but the words and letters, which each book of their Scriptures contains. Thus also the translation, first of the Pentateuch, and afterward of the remaining works of the Old Testament, into Greek, for the use of the Alexandrian Jews, disseminated this sacred volume over a great part of the civilized world, in the language most universally understood, and rendered it accessible to the learned and inquisitive in every country; so as to preclude all suspicion that it could be materially altered by either Jews or Christians, to support their respective opinions as to the person and character of the Messiah; the substance of the text being, by this translation, fixed and authenticated at least two hundred and seventy years before the appearance of our Lord.
But, long previous to the captivity, two particular examples, deserving peculiar attention, occur in the Jewish history, of the public and solemn homage paid to the sacredness of the Mosaic law as promulgated in the Pentateuch; and which, by consequence, afford the fullest testimony to the authenticity of the Pentateuch itself: the one in the reign of Hezekiah, while the separate kingdoms of Judah and Israel still subsisted; and the other in the reign of his great grandson Josiah, subsequent to the captivity of Israel. In the former we see the pious monarch of Judah assembling the priests and Levites and the rulers of the people; to deplore with him the trespasses of their fathers against the divine law, to acknowledge the justice of those chastisements which, according to the prophetic warnings of that law, had been inflicted upon them; to open the house of God which his father had impiously shut, and restore the true worship therein according to the Mosaic ritual, 2 Kings 18; 2 Chronicles 29; 2 Chronicles 30; with the minutest particulars of which he complied, in the sin-offerings and the peace- offerings which, in conjunction with his people, he offered for the kingdom and the sanctuary and the people, to make atonement to God for them and for all Israel; restoring the service of God as it had been performed in the purest times. “And Hezekiah,” says the sacred narrative, “rejoiced, and all the people, that God had prepared the people; for the thing was done suddenly,” 2Ch_29:36; immediately on the king's accession to the throne, on the first declaration of his pious resolution. How clear a proof does this exhibit of the previous existence and clearly acknowledged authority of those laws which the Pentateuch contains!
But a yet more remarkable part of this transaction still remains. At this time Hoshea was king of Israel, and so far disposed to countenance the worship of the true God, that he appears to have made no opposition to the pious zeal of Hezekiah; who, with the concurrence of the whole congregation which he had assembled, sent out letters and made a proclamation, not only to his own people of Judah, 2Ch_30:1, “but to Ephraim and Manasseh and all Israel, from Beersheba even unto Dan, that they should come to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, to keep the passover unto the Lord God of Israel; saying, Ye children of Israel, turn again to the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he will return to the remnant of you who are escaped out of the hands of the kings of Assyria; and be not ye like your fathers and your brethren, which trespassed against the Lord God of their fathers, who therefore gave them up to desolation as ye see.
Now be ye not stiff-necked, as your fathers were; but yield yourselves unto the Lord, and enter into his sanctuary which he hath sanctified for ever, and serve the Lord your God, that the fierceness of his wrath may turn away from you. So the posts passed from city to city through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh even unto Zebulun,” 2Ch_30:6, &c.
Now, can we conceive that such an attempt as this could have been made, if the Pentateuch containing the Mosaic code had not been as certainly recognised through the ten tribes of Israel as in the kingdom of Judah? The success was exactly such as we might reasonably expect if it were so acknowledged; for, though many of the ten tribes laughed to scorn and mocked the messengers of Hezekiah, who invited them to the solemnity of the passover, from the impious contempt which through long disuse they had conceived for it. “Nevertheless,” says the sacred narrative, “divers of Asher and Manasseh and of Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem; and there assembled at Jerusalem much people, to keep the feast of unleavened bread in the second month, a very great congregation; and they killed the passover, and the priests and Levites stood in their places after their manner, according to the law of Moses, the man of God. So there was great joy in Jerusalem; for since the time of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, there was not the like at Jerusalem: and when all this was finished, all Israel that were present went out to the cities of Judah, and brake the images in pieces, and cut down the groves, and threw down the high places and the altars out of all Judah and Benjamin, in Ephraim also and Manasseh, until they had utterly destroyed them all,”
2Ch_30:11; 2 Chronicles 31. Can any clearer proof than this be desired of the constant and universal acknowledgment of the divine authority of the Pentateuch throughout the entire nation of the Jews, notwithstanding the idolatries and corruptions which so often prevented its receiving such obedience as that acknowledgment ought to have produced? The argument from this certain antiquity of the Pentateuch, a copy of which existed in the old Samaritan character as well as in the modern Hebrew, is most conclusive as to the numerous prophecies of Christ, and the future and present condition of the Jews which it contains. These are proved to have been delivered many ages before they were accomplished; they could be only the result of divine prescience, and the uttering of them by Moses proves therefore the inspiration and the authority of his writings. See LAW, and See MOSES.
Biblical and Theological Dictionary by Richard Watson
PRINTER 1849.

From early Christian times, and possibly before, the first five books of the Old Testament have collectively been known as the Pentateuch. The name comes from two Greek words, penta meaning ‘five’, and teuchos meaning ‘a volume’. The Hebrews usually referred to the whole Pentateuch as ‘the law’ (2Ch_17:9; Neh_8:14; Neh_8:18; Mat_5:17; Mat_11:13; Mat_12:5; Luk_24:44). It was originally one continuous book, but was divided into five sections for convenience. The English titles of the five separate books are taken from the early Greek translation known as the Septuagint.
Authorship
Age-old Hebrew and Christian tradition recognizes Moses as the author of the Pentateuch, though the Pentateuch itself nowhere names its author (2Ch_35:12; Neh_13:1; Mar_12:26; Joh_5:46). The Bible speaks frequently of Moses’ literary activity. He wrote down the law that Israel received from God (Exo_24:4; Exo_34:27; Deu_31:9; Deu_31:24), he kept records of Israel’s history (Exo_17:14; Num_33:2) and he wrote songs and poems (Exo_15:1; Deu_31:22; Deu_31:30).
Moses would certainly have been familiar with the family records, ancient songs and traditional stories that people had preserved and handed down from one generation to the next (cf. Gen_5:1; Gen_6:9; Gen_10:1; Gen_11:10; Gen_11:27). Like all writers he would have used material from a variety of sources, particularly if writing about times and places other than his own (cf. Gen_26:32-33; Gen_35:19-20; Gen_47:26; Num_21:14). In addition he received direct revelations from God and spoke with God face to face (Exo_32:7-8; Exo_33:11; Num_12:6-8).
In different eras, critics who reject Moses’ authorship of the Pentateuch have suggested various theories for a much later composition. Most of these theories are based on the different names used for God, the similar or contrasting features in narrative accounts, the varying features of Israel’s religious system, and the usage of certain words and phrases. Broadly speaking, these critics have suggested four independent documents that date no earlier than the period of Israel’s monarchy, and that a later editor (or editors) combined into one. The four documents are referred to respectively as J (because it speaks of God as Jehovah, or Yahweh), E (because it speaks of God as Elohim), D (because it bases its content on Deuteronomy) and P (because it deals mainly with matters of priestly interest).
These theories have been argued, answered, revised and contradicted many times over. Debating the mechanics of composition, however, may not always be profitable. The important consideration is not how the Pentateuch was written, but what it means. It stands in both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles as a book whose unity is clear and whose message is the living Word of God (Joh_5:39; Joh_5:45-47; Joh_7:19; Luk_16:31; Act_15:21).
Message
Genesis introduces the basic issues concerning God the Creator and the people and things he created. It shows that he created human beings good and wanted them to live in harmony with him. Instead of doing so, they rebelled and God punished them. In his grace, however, he did not destroy the human race, but gave it the opportunity for a fresh start. People went the same way as before, but God still extended his favour, promising to work through one of the few remaining believers (Abraham) to bring blessing to the whole world.
God promised that Abraham would produce a notable line of descendants, that those descendants would enjoy a special relationship with himself, and that he would give them a national homeland. In due course Abraham started the family and his descendants began to multiply, but through a variety of circumstances they eventually found themselves slaves in Egypt. The book of Exodus shows that God, faithful to his promise, gave them a leader (Moses) through whom he brought them out of Egypt, gave them his law, and established them in a special covenant relationship with himself. He was their God and they were his people.
Leviticus and the beginning of Numbers give details of how the people were to maintain and enjoy their covenant relationship with God. The remainder of Numbers shows how the people moved on towards the promised land, and Deuteronomy shows the life God required of them once they settled in that land.
The grace of God and the sovereign choice of God are prominent themes in the Pentateuch. The deliverance from Egypt was the turning point in the people’s history, the covenant was the basis of their existence, and the law was the framework for their behaviour. The purposes of God were on their way to fulfilment (cf. Gen_12:1-3; Gal_3:16; cf. Deu_18:18-19; Act_3:18-23).
Bridgeway Bible Dictionary by Don Fleming
PRINTER 1990.

pen?ta-tūk:
I. TITLE, DIVISION, CONTENTS
II. AUTHORSHIP, COMPOSITION, DATE
1. The Current Critical Scheme
2. The Evidence for the Current Critical Scheme
(1) Astruc's Clue
(2) Signs of Post-Mosaic Date
(3) Narrative Discrepancies
(4) Doublets
(5) The Laws
(6) The Argument from Style
(7) Props of the Development Hypothesis
3. The Answer to the Critical Analysis
(1) The Veto of Textual Criticism
(2) Astruc's Clue Tested
(3) The Narrative Discrepancies and Signs of Post-Mosaic Date Examined
(4) The Argument from the Doublets Examined
(5) The Critical Argument from the Laws
(6) The Argument from Style
(7) Perplexities of the Theory
(8) Signs of Unity
(9) The Supposed Props of the Development Hypothesis
4. The Evidence of Date
(1) The Narrative of Genesis
(2) Archaeology and Genesis
(3) The Legal Evidence of Genesis
(4) The Professedly Mosaic Character of the Legislation
(5) The Historical Situation Required by Pentateuch
(6) The Hierarchical Organization in Pentateuch
(7) The Legal Evidence of Pentateuch
(8) The Evidence of D
(9) Later Allusions
(10) Other Evidence
5. The Fundamental Improbabilities of the Critical Case
(1) The Moral and Psychological Issues
(2) The Historical Improbability
(3) The Divergence between the Laws and Post-exilic Practice
(4) The Testimony of Tradition
6. The Origin and Transmission of the Pentateuch
III. SOME LITERARY POINTS
1. Style of Legislation
2. The Narrative
3. The Covenant
4. Order and Rhythm
IV. THE PENTATEUCH AS HISTORY
1. Textual Criticism and History
2. Hebrew Methods of Expression
3. Personification and Genealogies
4. Literary Form
5. The Sacred Numbers
6. Habits of Thought
7. National Coloring
8. How Far the Pentateuch Is Trustworthy
(1) Contemporaneous Information
(2) Character of Our Informants
(3) Historical Genius of the People
(4) Good Faith of Deuteronomy
(5) Nature of the Events Recorded
(6) External Corroborations
9. The Pentateuch as Reasoned History
V. THE CHARACTER OF THE PENTATEUCH
1. Hindu Law Books
2. Differences
3. Holiness
4. The Universal Aspect
5. The National Aspect
LITERATURE

I. Title, Division, Contents
(תּורה, tōrāh, ?law? or ?teaching?). - It has recently been argued that the Hebrew word is really the Babylonian tertu, ?divinely revealed law? (e.g. Sayce, Churchman, 1909, 728 ff), but such passages as Lev_14:54-57; Deu_17:11 show that the legislator connected it with הורה, hōrāh (from yārāh), ?to teach.? Also called by the Jews תּורה חוּמשׁי חמשּׁה, ḥămishshāh ḥūmeshı̄ tōrāh, ?the five-fifths of the law?: ὁ νόμος, ho nómos, ?the Law.? The word ?Pentateuch? comes from πεντάτενχος, pentáteuchos, literally ?5-volumed (book).? The Pentateuch consists of the first five books of the Bible, and forms the first division of the Jewish Canon, and the whole of the Samaritan Canon. The 5-fold division is certainly old, since it is earlier than the Septuagint or the Sam Pentateuch. How much older it may be is unknown. It has been thought that the 5-fold division of the Psalter is based on it.
The five books into which the Pentateuch is divided are respectively Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and the separate articles should be consulted for information as to their nomenclature.
The work opens with an account of the Creation, and passes to the story of the first human couple. The narrative is carried on partly by genealogies and partly by fuller accounts to Abraham. Then comes a history of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the collateral lines of descendants being rapidly dismissed. The story of Joseph is told in detail, and Genesis closes with his death. The rest of the Pentateuch covers the oppression of the Israelites in Egypt, their exodus and wanderings, the conquest of the trans-Jordanic lands and the fortunes of the people to the death of Moses. The four concluding books contain masses of legislation mingled with the narrative (for special contents, see articles on the several books).

II. Authorship, Composition, Date.
1. The Current Critical Scheme:
The view that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, with the exception of the concluding verses of Deuteronomy, was once held universally. It is still believed by the great mass of Jews and Christians, but in most universities of Northern Europe and North America other theories prevail. An application of what is called ?higher? or ?documentary criticism? (to distinguish it from lower or textual criticism) has led to the formation of a number of hypotheses. Some of these are very widely held, but unanimity has not been attained, and recent investigations have challenged even the conclusions that are most generally accepted. In the English-speaking countries the vast majority of the critics would regard Driver's, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament and Carpenter and Harford-Battersby's Hexateuch as fairly representative of their position, but on the Continent of Europe the numerous school that holds some such position is dwindling alike in numbers and influence, while even in Great Britain and America some of the ablest critics are beginning to show signs of being shaken in their allegiance to cardinal points of the higher-critical case. However, at the time of writing, these latter critics have not put forward any fresh formulation of their views, and accordingly the general positions of the works named may be taken as representing with certain qualifications the general critical theory. Some of the chief stadia in the development of this may be mentioned.
After attention had been drawn by earlier writers to various signs of post-Mosaic date and extraordinary perplexities in the Pentateuch, the first real step toward what its advocates have, till within the last few years, called ?the modern position? was taken by J. Astruc (1753). He propounded what Carpenter terms ?the clue to the documents,? i.e. the difference of the divine appellations in Genesis as a test of authorship. On this view the word 'Ělōhı̄m (?God?) is characteristic of one principal source and the Tetragrammaton, i.e. the divine name YHWH represented by the ?LORD? or ?GOD? of the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American), shows the presence of another. Despite occasional warnings, this clue was followed in the main for 150 years. It forms the starting-point of the whole current critical development, but the most recent investigations have successfully proved that it is unreliable (see below, 3, (2)) Astruc was followed by Eichhorn (1780), who made a more thorough examination of Genesis, indicating numerous differences of style, representation, etc.
Geddes (1792) and Vater (1802-1805) extended the method applied to Genesis to the other books of the Pentateuch.
In 1798 Ilgen distinguished two Elohists in Genesis, but this view did not find followers for some time. The next step of fundamental importance was the assignment of the bulk of Deuteronomy to the 7th century BC. This was due to De Wette (1806). Hupfeld (1853) again distinguished a second Elohist, and this has been accepted by most critics. Thus, there are four main documents at least: D (the bulk of Deuteronomy), two Elohists (P and E) and one document (Jahwist) that uses the Tetragrammaton in Genesis. From 1822 (Bleek) a series of writers maintained that the Book of Joshua was compounded from the same documents as the Pentateuch (see HEXATEUCH).
Two other developments call for notice: (1) there has been a tendency to subdivide these documents further, regarding them as the work of schools rather than of individuals, and resolving them into different strata (P1, Secondary Priestly Writers, P3, etc., J1, Later additions to J, etc., or in the notation of other writers Jj Je, etc.); (2) a particular scheme of dating has found wide acceptance. In the first period of the critical development it was assumed that the principal Elohist (P) was the earliest document. A succession of writers of whom Reuss, Graf, Kuenen and Wellhausen are the most prominent have, however, maintained that this is not the first but the last in point of time and should be referred to the exile or later. On this view theory is in outline as follows: J and E (so called from their respective divine appellations) - on the relative dates of which opinions differ - were composed probably during the early monarchy and subsequently combined by a redactor (Rje) into a single document JE. In the 7th century D, the bulk of Deuteronomy, was composed. It was published in the 18th year of Josiah's reign. Later it was combined with JE into JED by a redactor (Rjed). P or Priestly Code the last of all (originally the first Elohist, now the Priestly Code) incorporated an earlier code of uncertain date which consists in the main of most of Lev 17-26 and is known as the Law of Holiness (H or Ph). P itself is largely postexilic. Ultimately it was joined with JED by a priestly redactor (Rp) into substantially our present Pentateuch. As already stated, theory is subject to many minor variations. Moreover, it is admitted that not all its portions are equally well supported. The division of JE into J and E is regarded as less certain than the separation of Pentateuch. Again, there are variations in the analysis, differences of opinion as to the exact dating of the documents, and so forth. Yet the view just sketched has been held by a very numerous and influential school during recent years, nor is it altogether fair to lay stress on minor divergences of opinion. It is in the abstract conceivable that the main positions might be true, and that yet the data were inadequate to enable all the minor details to be determined with certainty. See CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE.
This theory will hereafter be discussed at length for two reasons: (1) while it is now constantly losing ground, it is still more widely held than any other; and (2) so much of the modern literature on the Old Testament has been written from this standpoint that no intelligent use can be made of the most ordinary books of reference without some acquaintance with it.
Before 1908 the conservative opposition to the dominant theory had exhibited two separate tendencies. One school of conservatives rejected the scheme in toto; the other accepted the analysis with certain modifications, but sought to throw back the dating of the documents. In both these respects it had points of contact with dissentient critics (e.g. Delitzsch, Dillmann, Baudissin, Kittel, Strack, Van Hoonacker), who sought to save for conservatism any spars they could from the general wreckage. The former school of thought was most prominently represented by the late W.H. Green, and J. Raven's Old Testament Introduction may be regarded as a typical modern presentation of their view; the latter especially by Robertson and Orr. The scheme put forward by the last named has found many adherents. He refuses to regard J and E as two separate documents, holding that we should rather think (as in the case of the parallel Psalms) of two recensions of one document marked by the use of different divine appellations. The critical P he treats as the work of a supplemented, and thinks it never had an independent existence, while he considers the whole Pentateuch as early. He holds that the work was done by ?original composers, working with a common aim, and toward a common end, in contrast with the idea of late irresponsible redactors, combining, altering, manipulating, enlarging at pleasure? (POT, 375).
While these were the views held among Old Testament critics, a separate opposition had been growing up among archaeologists. This was of course utilized to the utmost by the conservatives of both wings. In some ways archaeology undoubtedly has confirmed the traditional view as against the critical (see ARCHAEOLOGY AND CRITICISM); but a candid survey leads to the belief that it has not yet dealt a mortal blow, and here again it must be remembered that the critics may justly plead that they must not be judged on mistakes that they made in their earlier investigations or on refutations of the more uncertain portions of their theory, but rather on the main completed result. It may indeed be said with confidence that there are certain topics to which archaeology can never supply any conclusive answer. If it be the case that the Pentateuch contains hopelessly contradictory laws, no archaeological discovery can make them anything else; if the numbers of the Israelites are original and impossible, archaeology cannot make them possible. It is fair and right to lay stress on the instances in which archaeology has confirmed the Bible as against the critics; it is neither fair nor right to speak as if archaeology had done what it never purported to do and never could effect.
The year 1908 saw the beginning of a new critical development which makes it very difficult to speak positively of modern critical views. Kuenen has been mentioned as one of the ablest and most eminent of those who brought the Graf-Wellhausen theory into prominence. In that year B.D. Eerdmans, his pupil and successor at Leyden, began the publication of a series of Old Testament studies in which he renounces his allegiance to the line of critics that had extended from Astruc to the publications of our own day, and entered on a series of investigations that were intended to set forth a new critical view. As his labors are not yet complete, it is impossible to present any account of his scheme; but the volumes already published justify certain remarks. Eerdmans has perhaps not converted any member of the Wellhausen school, but he has made many realize that their own scheme is not the only one possible. Thus while a few years ago we were constantly assured that the ?main results? of Old Testament criticism were unalterably settled, recent writers adopt a very different tone: e.g. Sellin (1910) says, ?We stand in a time of fermentation and transition, and in what follows we present our own opinion merely as the hypothesis which appears to us to be the best founded? (Einleitung, 18). By general consent Eerdmans' work contains a number of isolated shrewd remarks to which criticism will have to attend in the future; but it also contains many observations that are demonstrably unsound (for examples see BS, 1909, 744-48; 1910, 549-51). His own reconstruction is in many respects so faulty and blurred that it does not seem likely that it will ever secure a large following in its present form. On the other hand he appears to have succeeded in inducing a large number of students in various parts of the world to think along new lines and in this way may exercise a very potent influence on the future course of Old Testament study. His arguments show increasingly numerous signs of his having been influenced by the publications of conservative writers, and it seems certain that criticism will ultimately be driven to recognize the essential soundness of the conservative position. In 1912 Dahse (TMH, I) began the publication of a series of volumes attacking the Wellhausen school on textual grounds and propounding a new pericope hypothesis. In his view many phenomena are due to the influence of the pericopes of the synagogue service or the form of the text and not to the causes generally assigned.

2. The Evidence for the Current Critical Scheme:
The examination of the Graf-Wellhausen theory must now be undertaken, and attention must first be directed to the evidence which is adduced in its support. Why should it be held that the Pentateuch is composed mainly of excerpts from certain documents designated as J and E and P and D? Why is it believed that these documents are of very late date, in one case subsequent to the exile?

(1) Astruc's Clue.
It has been said above that Astruc propounded the use of the divine appellations in Genesis as a clue to the dissection of that book. This is based on Exo_6:3, ‛And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as 'Ěl Shadday (God Almighty); but by my name YHWH I was not known to them.' In numerous passages of Genesis this name is represented as known, e.g. Gen_4:26, where we read of men beginning to call on it in the days of Enosh. The discrepancy here is very obvious, and in the view of the Astruc school can be satisfactorily removed by postulating different sources. This clue, of course, fails after Exo_6:3, but other difficulties are found, and moreover the sources already distinguished in Genesis are, it is claimed, marked by separate styles and other characteristics which enable them to be identified when they occur in the narrative of the later books. See CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE.

(2) Signs of Post-Mosaic Date.
Close inspection of the Pentateuch shows that it contains a number of passages which, it is alleged, could not have proceeded from the pen of Moses in their present form. Probably the most familiar instance is the account of the death of Moses (Deu_34:1-12). Other examples are to be found in seeming allusions to post-Mosaic events, e.g. in Gen 22 we hear of the Mount of the Lord in the land of Moriah; this apparently refers to the Temple Hill, which, however, would not have been so designated before Solomon. So too the list of kings who reigned over Edom ?before there reigned any king over the children of Israel? (Gen_36:31) presumes the existence of the monarchy. The Canaanites who are referred to as being ?then in the land? (Gen_12:6; Gen_13:7) did not disappear till the time of Solomon, and, accordingly, if this expression means ?then still? it cannot antedate his reign. Deu_3:11 (Og's bedstead) comes unnaturally from one who had vanquished Og but a few weeks previously, while Num_21:14 (the King James Version) contains a reference to ?the book of the Wars of the Lord? which would hardly have been quoted in this way by a contemporary. Exo_16:35 refers to the cessation of the manna after the death of Moses. These passages, and more like them, are cited to disprove Mosaic authorship; but the main weight of the critical argument does not rest on them.

(3) Narrative Discrepancies.
While the divine appellations form the starting-point, they do not even in Genesis constitute the sole test of different documents. On the contrary, there are other narrative discrepancies, antinomies, differences of style, duplicate narratives, etc., adduced to support the critical theory. We must now glance at some of these.
In Gen_21:14 f Ishmael is a boy who can be carried on his mother's shoulder, but from a comparison of Gen_16:3, Gen_16:16; 17, it appears that he must have been 14 when Isaac was born, and, since weaning sometimes occurs at the age of 3 in the East, may have been even as old as 17 when this incident happened. Again, ?We all remember the scene (Gen 27) in which Isaac in extreme old age blesses his sons; we picture him as lying on his deathbed. Do we, however, all realize that according to the chronology of the Book of Genesis he must have been thus lying on his deathbed for eighty years (compare Gen_25:26; Gen_26:34; Gen_35:28)? Yet we can only diminish this period by extending proportionately the interval between Esau marrying his Hittite wives (Gen_26:34) and Rebekah's suggestion to Isaac to send Jacob away, lest he should follow his brother's example (Gen_27:46); which, from the nature of the case, will not admit of any but slight extension. Keil, however, does so extend it, reducing the period of Isaac's final illness by 43 years, and is conscious of no incongruity in supposing that Rebekah, 30 years after Esau had taken his Hittite wives, should express her fear that Jacob, then aged 77, will do the same? (Driver, Contemporary Review, LVII, 221).
An important instance occurs in Numbers. According to Num_33:38, Aaron died on the 1st day of the 5th month. From Deu_1:3 it appears that 6 months later Moses delivered his speech in the plains of Moab. Into those 6 months are compressed one month's mourning for Aaron, the Arad campaign, the wandering round by the Red Sea, the campaigns against Sihon and Og, the missions to Balaam and the whole episode of his prophecies, the painful occurrences of Nu 25, the second census, the appointment of Joshua, the expedition against Midian, besides other events. It is clearly impossible to fit all these into the time.
Other discrepancies are of the most formidable character. Aaron dies now at Mt. Hor (Num_20:28; Num_33:38), now at Moserah (Deu_10:6). According to Dt 1; Deu_2:1, Deu_2:14, the children of Israel left Kadesh-barnea in the 3rd year and never subsequently returned to it, while in Nu they apparently remain there till the journey to Mt. Hor, where Aaron dies in the 40th year. The Tent of Meeting perhaps _ provides some of the most perplexing of the discrepancies, for while according to the well-known scheme of Ex 25 ff and many other passages, it was a large and heavy erection standing in the midst of the camp, Exo_33:7-11 provides us with another Tent of Meeting that stood outside the camp at a distance and could be carried by Moses alone. The verbs used are frequentative, denoting a regular practice, and it is impossible to suppose that after receiving the commands for the Tent of Meeting Moses could have instituted a quite different tent of the same name. Joseph again is sold, now by Ishmaelites (Gen_37:27, Gen_37:28; Gen_39:1), anon by Midianites (31:28a, 36). Sometimes he is imprisoned in one place, sometimes apparently in another. The story of Korah, Dathan and Abiram in Nu 16 is equally full of difficulty. The enormous numbers of the Israelites given in Nu 1 through 4, etc., are in conflict with passages that regard them as very few.

(4) Doublets.
Another portion of the critical argument is provided by doublets or duplicate narratives of the same event, e.g. Gen 16 and 21. These are particularly numerous in Genesis, but are not confined to that book. ?Twice do quails appear in connection with the daily manna (Num_11:4-6, Num_11:31 ff; Exo_16:13). Twice does Moses draw water from the rock, when the strife of Israel begets the name Meribah ('strife') (Exo_17:1-7; Num_20:1-13)? (Carpenter, Hexateuch, I, 30).

(5) The Laws.
Most stress is laid on the argument from the laws and their supposed historical setting. By far the most important portions of this are examined in SANCTUARY and PRIESTS (which see). These subjects form the two main pillars of the Graf-Wellhausen theory, and accordingly the articles in question must be read as supplementing the present article. An illustration may be taken from the slavery laws. It is claimed that Exo_21:1-6; Deu_15:12 ff permit a Hebrew to contract for life slavery after 6 years' service, but that Lev_25:39-42 takes no notice of this law and enacts the totally different provision that Hebrews may remain in slavery only till the Year of Jubilee. While these different enactments might proceed from the same hand if properly coordinated, it is contended that this is not the case and that the legislator in Lev ignores the legislator in Exodus and is in turn ignored by the legislator in Deuteronomy, who only knows the law of Exodus.


(6) The Argument from Style.
The argument from style is less easy to exemplify shortly, since it depends so largely on an immense mass of details. It is said that each of the sources has certain characteristic phrases which either occur nowhere else or only with very much less frequency. For instance in Gen 1, where'Ělōhı̄m is used throughout, we find the word ?create,? but this is not employed in Gen_2:4 ff, where the Tetragrammaton occurs. Hence, it is argued that this word is peculiarly characteristic of P as contrasted with the other documents, and may be used to prove his presence in e.g. Gen_5:1 f.

(7) Props of the Development Hypothesis.
While the main supports of the Graf-Wellhausen theory must be sought in the articles to which reference has been made, it is necessary to mention briefly some other phenomena to which some weight is attached. Jeremiah displays many close resemblances to Deuteronomy, and the framework of Kings is written in a style that has marked similarities to the same book. Ezekiel again has notable points of contact with P and especially with H; either he was acquainted with these portions of the Pentateuch or else he must have exercised considerable influence on those who composed them. Lastly the Chronicler is obviously acquainted with the completed Pentateuch. Accordingly, it is claimed that the literature provides a sort of external standard that confirms the historical stages which the different Pentateuchal sources are said to mark. Deuteronomy influences Jeremiah and the subsequent literature. It is argued that it would equally have influenced the earlier books, had it then existed. So too the completed Pentateuch should have influenced Kings as it did Chronicles, if it had been in existence when the earlier history was composed.

3. Answer to the Critical Analysis:
(1) The Veto of Textual Criticism.
The first great objection that may be made to the higher criticism is that it starts from the Massoretic text (MT) without investigation. This is not the only text that has come down to us, and in some instances it can be shown that alternative readings that have been preserved are superior to those of the Massoretic Text. A convincing example occurs in Ex 18. According to the Hebrew, Jethro comes to Moses and says ?I, thy father-in-law ... am come,? and subsequently Moses goes out to meet his father-in-law. The critics here postulate different sources, but some of the best authorities have preserved a reading which (allowing for ancient differences of orthography) supposes an alteration of a single letter. According to this reading the text told how one (or they) came to Moses and said ?Behold thy father-in-law ... is come.? As the result of this Moses went out and met Jethro. The vast improvement in the sense is self-evident. But in weighing the change other considerations must be borne in mind. Since this is the reading of some of the most ancient authorities, only two views are possible. Either the Massoretic Text has undergone a corruption of a single letter, or else a redactor made a most improbable cento of two documents which gave a narrative of the most doubtful sense. Fortunately this was followed by textual corruption of so happy a character as to remove the difficulty by the change of a single letter; and this corruption was so widespread that it was accepted as the genuine text by some of our best authorities. There can be little doubt which of these two cases is the more credible, and with the recognition of the textual solution the particular bit of the analysis that depends on this corruption falls to the ground. This instance illustrates one branch of textual criticism; there are others. Sometimes the narrative shows with certainty that in the transmission of the text transpositions have taken place; e.g. the identification of Kadesh shows that it was South of Hormah. Consequently, a march to compass Edom by way of the Red Sea would not bring the Israelites to Hormah. Here there is no reason to doubt that the events narrated are historically true, but there is grave reason to doubt that they happened in the present order of the narrative. Further, Deuteronomy gives an account that is parallel to certain passages of Numbers; and it confirms those passages, but places the events in a different order. Such difficulties may often be solved by simple transpositions, and when transpositions in the text of Nu are made under the guidance of Deuteronomy they have a very different probability from guesses that enjoy no such sanction. Another department of textual criticism deals with the removal of glosses, i.e. notes that have crept into the text. Here the ancient versions often help us, one or other omitting some words which may be proved from other sources to be a later addition. Thus in Exo_17:7 the Vulgate (Jerome's Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) did not know the expression, ?and Meribah? (one word in Hebrew), and calls the place ?Massah? simply. This is confirmed by the fact that Deuteronomy habitually calls the place Massah (Deu_6:16; Deu_9:22; Deu_33:8). The true Meribah was Kadesh (Nu 20) and a glossator has here added this by mistake (see further (4) below). Thus we can say that a scientific textual criticism often opposes a real veto to the higher critical analysis by showing that the arguments rest on late corruptions and by explaining the true origin of the difficulties on which the critics rely.

(2) Astruc's Clue Tested.
Astruc's clue must next be examined. The critical case breaks down with extraordinary frequency. No clean division can be effected, i.e. there are cases where the Massoretic Text of Genesis makes P or E use the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) or Yahweh (Yahweh). In some of these cases the critics can suggest no reason; in others they are compelled to assume that the Massoretic Text is corrupt for no better reason than that it is in conflict with their theory. Again the exigencies of the theory frequently force the analyst to sunder verses or phrases that cannot be understood apart from their present contexts, e.g. in Gen_28:21 Carpenter assigns the words ?and Yahweh will be my God? to J while giving the beginning and end of the verse to E; in Genesis 31, Gen_31:3 goes to a redactor, though E actually refers to the statement of Gen_31:3 in Gen_31:5; in Genesis 32, Gen_32:30 is torn from a J-context and given to E, thus leaving Gen_32:31 (Jahwist) unintelligible. When textual criticism is applied, startling facts that entirely shatter the higher critical argument are suddenly revealed. The variants to the divine appellations in Genesis are very numerous, and in some instances the new readings are clearly superior to the Massoretic Text, even when they substitute 'Ěl̄ohı̄m for the Tetragrammaton. Thus, in Gen_16:11, the explanation of the name Ishmael requires the word 'Ělōhı̄m, as the name would otherwise have been Ishmayah, and one Hebrew MS, a recension of the Septuagint and the Old Latin do in fact preserve the reading 'Ělōhı̄m. The full facts and arguments cannot be given here, but Professor Schlogl has made an exhaustive examination of the various texts from Gen_1:1 to Exo_3:12. Out of a total of 347 occurrences of one or both words in the Massoretic Text of that passage, there are variants in 196 instances. A very important and detailed discussion, too long to be summarized here will now be found in TMH, I. Wellhausen himself has admitted that the textual evidence constitutes a sore point of the documentary theory (Expository Times, XX, 563). Again in Exo_6:3, many of the best authorities read ?I was not made known? instead of ?I was not known? a difference of a single letter in Hebrew. But if this be right, there is comparative evidence to suggest that to the early mind a revelation of his name by a deity meant a great deal more than a mere knowledge of the name, and involved rather a pledge of his power. Lastly the analysis may be tested in yet another way by inquiring whether it fits in with the other data, and when it is discovered (see below 4, (1)) that it involves ascribing, e.g. a passage that cannot be later than the time of Abraham to the period of the kingdom, it becomes certain that the clue and the method are alike misleading (see further EPC, chapter i; Expository Times, XX, 378 f, 473-75, 563; TMH, I; PS, 49-142; BS, 1913, 145-74; A. Troelstra, The Name of God, NKZ, XXIV (1913), 119-48; The Expositor, 1913).

(3) The Narrative Discrepancies and Signs of Post-Mosaic Date Examined.
Septuagintal manuscripts are providing very illuminating material for dealing with the chronological difficulties. It is well known that the Septuagint became corrupt and passed through various recensions (see SEPTUAGINT). The original text has not yet been reconstructed, but as the result of the great variety of recensions it happens that our various manuscripts present a wealth of alternative readings. Some of these show an intrinsic superiority to the corresponding readings of the Massoretic Text. Take the case of Ishmael's age. We have seen (above, 2, (3)) that although in Gen_21:14 f he is a boy who can be carried by his mother even after the weaning of Isaac, his father, according to Gen_16:3, Gen_16:16, was 86 years old at the time of his birth, and, according to Genesis 17, 100 years old when Isaac was born. In Gen_17:25 we find that Ishmael is already 13 a year before Isaac's birth. Now we are familiar with marginal notes that set forth a system of chronology in many printed English Bibles. In this case the Septuagintal variants suggest that something similar is responsible for the difficulty of our Hebrew. Two manuscripts, apparently representing a recension, omit the words, ?after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan? in Gen_16:3, and again, Gen_16:16, while in Gen_17:25 there is a variant making Ishmael only 3 years old. If these readings are correct it is easy to see how the difficulty arose. The narrative originally contained mere round numbers, like 100 years old, and these were not intended to be taken literally. A commentator constructed a scheme of chronology which was embodied in marginal notes. Then these crept into the text and such numbers as were in conflict with them were thought to be corrupt and underwent alteration. Thus the 3-year-old Ishmael became 13.
The same manuscripts that present us with the variants in Gen 16 have also preserved a suggestive reading in Gen_35:28, one of the passages that are responsible for the inference that according to the text of Genesis Isaac lay on his deathbed for 80 years (see above, 2, (3)). According to this Isaac was not 180, but 150 years old when he died. It is easy to see that this is a round number, not to be taken literally, but this is not the only source of the difficulty. In Gen_27:41, Esau, according to English Versions of the Bible, states ?The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother Jacob.? This is a perfectly possible rendering of the Hebrew, but the Septuagint translated the text differently, and its rendering, while grammatically correct, has the double advantage of avoiding Isaac's long lingering on a deathbed and of presenting Esau's hatred and ferocity far more vividly. It renders, ?May the days of mourning for my father approach that I may slay my brother Jacob.? Subsequent translators preferred the milder version, but doubtless the Septuagint has truly apprehended the real sense of the narrative. If we read the chapter with this modification, we see Isaac as an old man, not knowing when he may die, performing the equivalent of making his will. It puts no strain on our credulity to suppose that he may have lived 20 or 30 years longer. Such episodes occur constantly in everyday experience. As to the calculations based on Gen_25:26 and Gen_26:34, the numbers used are 60 and 40, which, as is well known, were frequently employed by the ancient Hebrews, not as mathematical expressions, but simply to denote unknown or unspecified periods. See NUMBER.
The other chronological difficulty cited above (namely, that there is not room between the date of Aaron's death and the address by Moses in the plains of Moab for all the events assigned to this period by Numbers) is met partly by a reading preserved by the Peshitta and partly by a series of transpositions. In Num_33:38 Peshitta reads ?first? for ?fifth? as the month of Aaron's death, thus recognizing a longer period for the subsequent events. The transpositions, however, which are largely due to the evidence of Deuteronomy, solve the most formidable and varied difficulties; e.g. a southerly march from Kadesh no longer conducts the Israelites to Arad in the north, the name Hormah is no longer used (Num_14:45) before it is explained (Num_21:3), there is no longer an account directly contradicting Dt and making the Israelites spend 38 years at Kadesh immediately after receiving a divine command to turn ?tomorrow? (Num_14:25). A full discussion is impossible here and will be found in EPC, 114-38. The order of the narrative that emerges as probably original is as follows: Nu 12; Num_20:1, Num_20:14-21; Num_21:1-3; 13; 14; 16 through 18; Num_20:2-13, Num_20:12; Num_21:4-9, then some missing vs, bringing the Israelites to the head of the Gulf of Akabah and narrating the turn northward from Elath and Ezion-geber, then Num_20:22-29; Num_21:4, and some lost words telling of the arrival at the station before Oboth. In Num_33:40 is a gloss that is missing in Lagarde's Septuagint, and Num_33:36-37 should probably come earlier in the chapter than they do at present.
Another example of transposition is afforded by Exo_33:7-11, the passage relating to the Tent of Meeting which is at present out of place (see above 2, (3)). It is supposed that this is E's idea of the Tabernacle, but that, unlike the Priestly Code (P), he places it outside the camp and makes Joshua its priest. This latter view is discussed and refuted in PRIESTS, 3., where it is shown that Exo_33:7 should be rendered ?And Moses used to take a (or, the) tent and pitch it for himself,? etc. As to theory that this is E's account of the Tabernacle, Ex 18 has been overlooked. This chapter belongs to the same E but refers to the end of the period spent at Horeb, i.e. it is later than Exo_33:7-11. In Exo_18:13-16 we find Moses sitting with all the people standing about him because they came to require of God; i.e. the business which according to Ex 33 was transacted in solitude outside the camp was performed within the camp in the midst of the people at a later period. This agrees with the Priestly Code (P), e.g. Nu 27. If now we look at the other available clues, it appears that Exo_33:11 seems to introduce Joshua for the first time. The passage should therefore precede Exo_17:8; Exo_24:13; Exo_32:17, where he is already known. Again, if Ex 18 refers to the closing scenes at Horeb (as it clearly does), Exo_24:14 providing for the temporary transaction of judicial business reads very strangely. It ought to be preceded by some statement of the ordinary course in normal times when Moses was not absent from the camp. Exo_33:7 ff provides such a statement. The only earlier place to which it can be assigned is after Exo_13:22, but there it fits the context marvelously, for the statements as to the pillar of cloud in Exo_33:9 f attach naturally to those in Exo_13:21 f. With this change all the difficulties disappear. Immediately after leaving Egypt Moses began the practice of carrying a tent outside the camp and trying cases there. This lasted till the construction of the Tabernacle. ?And there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee? (Exo_25:22). After its erection the earlier tent was disused, and the court sat at the door of the Tabernacle in the center of the camp (see, further, EPC, 93-102, 106 f) .
Some other points must be indicated more briefly. In Nu 16 important Septuagintal variants remove the main difficulties by substituting ?company of Korah? for ?dwelling of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram? in two verses (see EPC, 143-46). Similarly in the Joseph-story the perplexities have arisen through corruptions of verses which may still be corrected by the versional evidence (PS, 29-48). There is evidence to show that the numbers of the Israelites are probably due to textual corruption (EPC, 155-69). Further, there are numerous passages where careful examination has led critics themselves to hold that particular verses are later notes. In this way they dispose of Deu_10:6 f (Aaron's death, etc.), the references to the Israelirish kingdom (Gen_36:31) and the Canaanites as being ?then? in the land (Gen_12:6; Gen_13:7), the bedstead of Og (Deu_3:11) and other passages. In Gen 22, ?the land of Moriah? is unknown to the versions which present the most diverse readings, of which ?the land of the Amorite? is perhaps the most probable; while in Gen_22:14 the Septuagint, reading the same Hebrew consonants as Massoretic Text, translates ?In the Mount the Lord was seen.? This probably refers to a view that God manifested Himself especially in the mountains (compare 1Ki_20:23, 1Ki_20:28) and has no reference whatever to the Temple Hill. The Massoretic pointing is presumably due to a desire to avoid what seemed to be an anthropomorphism (see further PS, 19-21) . Again, in Num_21:14, the Septuagint knows nothing of ?a book of the Wars of Yahweh? (see Field, Hexapla, at the place). It is difficult to tell what the original reading was, especially as the succeeding words are corrupt in the Hebrew, but it appears that no genitive followed wars? and it is doubtful if there was any reference to a ?book of wars.?

(4) The Argument from the Doublets Examined.
The foregoing sections show that the documentary theory often depends on phenomena that were absent from the original Pentateuch. We are now to examine arguments that rest on other foundations. The doublets have been cited, but when we examine the instances more carefully, some curious facts emerge. Gen 16 and 21 are, to all appearance, narratives of different events; so are Exo_17:1-7 and Num_20:1-13 (the drawing of water from rocks). In the latter case the critics after rejecting this divide the passages into 5 different stories, two going to J, two to E and one to Pentateuch. If the latter also had a Rephidimnarrative (compare Num_33:14 P), there were 6 tales. In any case both J and E tell two stories each. It is impossible to assign any cogency to the argument that the author of the Pentateuch could not have told two such narratives, if not merely the redactor of the Pentateuch but also J and E could do so. The facts as to the manna stories are similar. As to the flights of quails, it is known that these do in fact occur every year, and the Pentateuch places them at almost exactly a year's interval (see EPC, 104 f, 109 f).

(5) The Critical Argument from the Laws.
The legal arguments are due to a variety of misconceptions, the washing out of the historical background and the state of the text. Reference must be made to the separate articles (especially SANCTUARY; PRIESTS). As the slave laws were cited, it may be explained that in ancient Israel as in other communities slavery could arise or slaves be acquired in many ways: e.g. birth, purchase (Gen_14:14; Gen_17:12, etc.), gift (Gen_20:14), capture in war (Gen_14:21; Gen_34:29), kidnapping (Joseph). The law of Exodus and Deuteronomy applies only to Hebrew slaves acquired by purchase, not to slaves acquired in any other way, and least of all to those who in the eye of the law were not true slaves. Lev 25 has nothing to do with Hebrew slaves. It is concerned merely with free Israelites who become insolvent. ?If thy brother be waxed poor with thee, and sell himself? it begins (Lev_25:39). Nobody who was already a slave could wax poor and sell himself. The law then provides that these insolvent freemen were not to be treated as slaves. In fact, they were a class of free bondsmen, i.e. they were full citizens who were compelled to perform certain duties. A similar class of free bondsmen existed in ancient Rome and were called nexi. The Egyptians who sold themselves to Pharaoh and became serfs afford another though less apt parallel In all ancient societies insolvency led to some limitations of freedom, but while in some full slavery ensued, in others a sharp distinction was drawn between the slave and the insolvent freeman (see further SBL, 5-11 ).


(6) The Argument from Style.
Just as this argument is too detailed to be set out in a work like the present, so the answer cannot be given with any degree of fullness. It may be said generally that the argument too frequently neglects differences of subject-matter and other sufficient reasons (such as considerations of euphony and slight variations of meaning) which often provide far more natural reasons for the phenomena observed. Again, the versions suggest that the Biblical text has been heavily glossed. Thus in many passages where the frequent recurrence of certain words and phrases is supposed to attest the presence of the Priestly Code (P), versional evidence seems to show that the expressions in question have been introduced by glossators, and when they are removed the narrative remains unaffected in meaning, but terser and more vigorous and greatly improved as a vehicle of expression. To take a simple instance in Gen_23:1, ?And the life of Sarah was a hundred and seven and twenty years:...the years of the fife of Sarah,? the italicized words were missing in the Septuagint. When they are removed the meaning is unaltered, but the form of expression is far superior. They are obviously mere marginal note. Again the critical method is perpetually breaking down. It constantly occurs that redactors have to be called in to remove from a passage attributed to some source expressions that are supposed to be characteristic of another source, and this is habitually done on no other ground than that theory requires it. One instance muse be given. It is claimed that the word ?create? is a P-word. It occurs several times in Gen 1:1 through 2:4a and Gen_2:3 times in Gen_5:1, Gen_5:2, but in Gen_6:7 it is found in a J-passage, and some critics therefore assign it to a redactor. Yet J undoubtedly uses the word in Num_16:30 and D in Dt 4:82. On the other hand, P does not use the word exclusively, even in Gen 1 through 2:4, the word ?make? being employed in Gen_1:7, Gen_1:25, Gen_1:26, Gen_1:31; Gen_2:2, while in Gen_2:3 both words are combined. Yet all these passages are given unhesitatingly to P.

(7) Perplexities of the Theory.
The perplexities of the critical hypothesis are very striking, but a detailed discussion is impossible here. Much material will, however, be found in POT and Eerd. A few general statements may be made. The critical analysis repeatedly divides a straightforward narrative into two sets of fragments, neither of which will make sense without the other. A man will go to sleep in one document and wake in another, or a subject will belong to one source and the predicate to another. No intelligible account can be given of the proceedings of the redactors who one moment slavishly preserve their sources and at another cut them about without any necessity, who now rewrite their material and now leave it untouched. Even in the ranks of the Wellhausen critics chapters will be assigned by one writer to the post-exilic period and by another to the earliest sources (e.g. Gen 14, pre-Mosaic in the main according to Sellin (1910), post-exilic according to others), and the advent of Eerdmans and Dahse has greatly increased the perplexity. Clue after clue, both stylistic and material, is put forward, to be abandoned silently at some later stage. Circular arguments are extremely common: it is first alleged that some phenomenon is characteristic of a particular source; then passages are referred to that source for no other reason than the presence of that phenomenon; lastly these passages are cited to prove that the phenomenon in question distinguishes the source. Again theory is compelled to feed on itself; for J, E, the Priestly Code (P), etc., we have schools of J's, E's, etc., subsisting side by side for centuries, using the same material, employing the same ideas, yet remaining separate in minute stylistic points. This becomes impossible when viewed in the light of the evidences of pre-Mosaic date in parts of Genesis (see below 4, (1) to (3)).

(8) Signs of Unity.
It is often possible to produce very convincing internal evidence of the unity of what the critics sunder. A strong instance of this is to be found when one considers the characters portrayed. The character of Abraham or Laban, Jacob or Moses is essentially unitary. There is but one Abraham, and this would not be so if we really had a cento of different documents representing the results of the labor of various schools during different centuries. Again, there are sometimes literary marks of unity, e.g. in Nu 16, the effect of rising anger is given to the dialogue by the repetition of ?Ye take too much upon you? (Num_16:3, Num_16:7), followed by the repetition of ?Is it a small thing that? (Num_16:9, Num_16:13). This must be the work of a single literary artist (see further SBL, 37 f).

(9) The Supposed Props of the Development Hypothesis.
When we turn to the supposed props of the development hypothesis we see that there is nothing conclusive in the critical argument. Jeremiah and the subsequent literature certainly exhibit the influence of Deuteronomy, but a Book of the Law was admittedly found in Josiah's reign and had lain unread for at any rate some considerable time. Some of its requirements had been in actual operation, e.g. in Naboth's case, while others had become a dead letter. The circumstances of its discovery, the belief in its undoubted Mosaic authenticity and the subsequent course of history led to its greatly influencing contemporary and later writers, but that really proves nothing. Ezekiel again was steeped in priestly ideas, but it is shown in PRIESTS, 5b, how this may be explained. Lastly, Chronicles certainly knows the whole Pentateuch, but as certainly misinterprets it (see PRIESTS). On the other hand the Pentateuch itself always represents portions of the legislation as being intended to reach the people only through the priestly teaching, and this fully accounts for P's lack of influence on the earlier literature. As to the differences of style within the Pentateuch itself, something is said in III, below. Hence, this branch of the critical argument really proves nothing, for the phenomena are susceptible of more than one explanation.

4. The Evidence of Date:
(1) The Narrative of Genesis.
Entirely different lines of argument are provided by the abundant internal evidences of date. In Gen_10:19, we read the phrase ?as thou goest toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and Admah and Zeboiim? in a definition of boundary. Such language could only have originated when the places named actually existed. One does not define boundaries by reference to towns that are purely mythical or have been overthrown many centuries previously. The consistent tradition is that these towns were destroyed in the lifetime of Abraham, and the passage therefore cannot be later than his age. But the critics assign it to a late stratum of J, i.e. to a period at least 1,000 years too late. This suggests several comments. First, it may reasonably be asked whether much reliance can be placed on a method which after a century and a half of the closest investigation does not permit its exponents to arrive at results that are correct to within 1,000 years. Secondly, it shows clearly that in the composition of the Pentateuch very old materials were incorporated in their original language. Of the historical importance of this fact more will be said in IV; in this connection we must observe that it throws fresh light on expressions that point to the presence, in Genesis of sources composed in Palestine, e.g. ?the sea? for ?the West? indicates the probability of a Palestinian source, but once it is proved that we have materials as old as the time of Abraham such expressions do not argue post-Mosaic, but rather pre-Mosaic authorship. Thirdly, the passage demolishes theory of schools of J's, etc. It cannot seriously be maintained that there was a school of J's writing a particular style marked by the most delicate and subjective criteria subsisting continuously for some 10 or 12 centuries from the time of Abraham onward, side by side with other writers with whom its members never exchanged terms of even such common occurrence as ?handmaid.?
Gen_10:19 is not the only passage of this kind. In Gen_2:14 we read of the Hiddekel (Tigris) as flowing East of Assur, though there is an alternative reading ?in front of.? If the translation ?east? be correct, the passage must antedate the 13th century BC, for Assur, the ancient capital, which was on the west bank of the Tigris, was abandoned at about that date for Kalkhi on the East.

(2) Archaeology and Genesis.
Closely connected with the foregoing are cases where Genesis has preserved information that is true of a very early time only. Thus in Gen_10:22 Elam figures as a son of Shem. The historical Elam was, however, an Aryan people. Recently inscriptions have been discovered which show that in very early times Elam really was inhabited by Semites. ?The fact,? writes Driver, at the place, ?is not one which the writer of this verse is likely to have known.? This contention falls to the ground when we find that only three verses off we have material that goes back at least as far as the time of Abraham. After all, the presumption is that the writer stated the fact because he knew it, not in spite of his not knowing it; and that knowledge must be due to the same cause as the noteworthy language of Gen_10:19, i.e. to early date.
This is merely one example of the confirmations of little touches in Genesis that are constantly being provided by archaeology. For the detailed facts see the separate articles, e.g. AMRAPHEL; JERUSALEM, and compare IV, below.
From the point of view of the critical question we note (a) that such accuracy is a natural mark of authentic early documents, and (b) that in view of the arguments already adduced and of the legal evidence to be considered, the most reasonable explanation is to be found in a theory of contemporary authorship.

(3) The Legal Evidence of Genesis.
The legal evidence is perhaps more convincing, for here no theory of late authorship can be devised to evade the natural inference. Correct information as to early names, geography, etc., might be the result of researches by an exilic writer in a Babylonian library; but early customs that are confirmed by the universal experience of primitive societies, and that point to a stage of development which had long been passed in the Babylonia even of Abraham's day, can be due to but one cause - genuine early sources. The narratives of Genesis are certainly not the work of comparative sociologists. Two instances may be cited. The law of homicide shows us two stages that are known to be earlier than the stage attested by Exo_21:12 ff. In the story of Cain we have one stage; in Gen_9:6, which does not yet recognize any distinction between murder and other forms of homicide, we have the other.
Our other example shall be the unlimited power of life and death possessed by the head of the family (Gen_38:24; Gen_42:37, etc.), which has not yet been limited in any way by the jurisdiction of the courts as in Exodus-Deuteronomy. In both cases comparative historical jurisprudence confirms the Bible account against the critical, which would make e.g. Gen_9:6 post-exilic, while assigning Ex 21 to a much earlier period. (On the whole subject see further OP, 135 ff.)

(4) The Professedly Mosaic Character of the Legislation.
Coming now to the four concluding books of the Pentateuch, we must first observe that the legislation everywhere professes to be Mosaic. Perhaps this is not always fully realized. In critical editions of the text the rubrics and an occasional phrase are sometimes assigned to redactors, but the representation of Mosaic date is far too closely interwoven with the matter to be removed by such devices. If e.g. we take such a section as Dt 12, we shall find it full of such phrases as ?for ye are not as yet come to the rest and to the inheritance? etc.; ?When ye go over Jordan,? ?the place which the Lord shall choose? (the King James Version), etc. It is important to bear this in mind throughout the succeeding discussion.

(5) The Historical Situation Required by Pentateuch.
What do we find if we ignore the Mosaic dress and seek to fit P into any other set of conditions, particularly those of the post-exilic period? The general historical situation gives a clear answer. The Israelites are represented as being so closely concentrated that they will always be able to keep the three pilgrimage festivals. One exception only is contemplated, namely, that ritual uncleanness or a journey may prevent an Israelite from keeping the Passover. Note that in that case he is most certainly to keep it one month later (Num_9:10 f). How could this law have been enacted when the great majority of the people were in Babylonia, Egypt, etc., so that attendance at the temple was impossible for them on any occasion whatever? With this exception the entire Priestly Code always supposes that the whole people are at all times dwelling within easy reach of the religious center. How strongly this view is embedded in the code may be seen especially from Lev 17, which provides that all domestic animals to be slaughtered for food must be brought to the door of the Tent of Meeting. Are we to suppose that somebody deliberately intended such legislation to apply when the Jews were scattered all over the civilized world, or even all over Canaan? If so, it means a total prohibition of animal food for all save the inhabitants of the capital.
In post-exilic days there was no more pressing danger for the religious leaders to combat than intermarriage, but this code, which is supposed to have been written for the express purpose of bringing about their action, goes out of its way to give a fictitious account of a war and incidentally to legalize some such unions (Num_31:18). And this chapter also contains a law of booty. What could be more unsuitable? How and where were the Jews to make conquests and capture booty in the days of Ezra?
?Or again, pass to the last chapter of Nu and consider the historical setting. What is the complaint urged by the deputation that waits upon Moses? It is this: If heiresses 'be married to any of the sons of the other tribes of the children of Israel, then shall their inheritance be taken away from the inheritance of our fathers, and shall be added to the inheritance of the tribe whereunto they shall belong.' What a pressing grievance for a legislator to consider and redress when tribes and tribal lots had long since ceased to exist for ever!? (OP, 121 f).
Perhaps the most informing of all the discrepancies between P and the post-exilic age is one that explains the freedom of the earlier prophets from its literary influence. According to the constant testimony of the Pentateuch, including the Priestly Code (P), portions of the law were to reach the people only through priestly teaching (Lev_10:11; Deu_24:8; Deu_33:10, etc.). Ezra on the other hand read portions of P to the whole people.


(6) The Hierarchical Organization in Pentateuch.
Much of what falls under this head is treated in PRIESTS, 2., (a), (b), and need not be repeated here. The following may be added: ?Urim and Thummim were not used after the Exile. In lieu of the simple conditions - a small number of priests and a body of Levites - we find a developed hierarchy, priests, Levites, singers, porters, Nethinim, sons of Solomon's servants. The code that ex hypothesi was forged to deal with this state of affairs has no acquaintance with them. The musical services of the temple are as much beyond its line of vision as the worship of the synagogue. Even such an organization as that betrayed by the reference in 1Sa_2:36 to the appointment by the high priest to positions carrying pecuniary emoluments is far beyond the primitive simplicity of P? (OP, 122).

(7) The Legal Evidence of the Pentateuch.
As this subject is technical we can only indicate the line of reasoning. Legal rules may be such as to enable the historical inquirer to say definitely that they belong to an early stage of society. Thus if we find elementary rules relating to the inheritance of a farmer who dies without leaving sons, we know that they cannot be long subsequent to the introduction of individual property in land, unless of course the law has been deliberately altered. It is an everyday occurrence for men to die without leaving sons, and the question What is to happen to their land in such cases must from the nature of the case be raised and settled before very long. When therefore we find such rules in Nu 27, etc., we know that they are either very old or else represent a deliberate change in the law. The latter is really out of the question, and we are driven back to their antiquity (see further OP, 124 ff). Again in Nu 35 we find an elaborate struggle to express a general principle which shall distinguish between two kinds of homicide. The earlier law had regarded all homicide as on the same level (Gen 9). Now, the human mind only reaches general principles through concrete cases, and other ancient legislations (e.g. the Icelandic) bear witness to the primitive character of the rules of Numbers. Thus, an expert like Dareate can say confidently that such rules as these are extremely archaic (see further SBL and OP, passim).

(8) The Evidence of Deuteronomist.
The following may be quoted: ?Laws are never issued to regulate a state of things which has passed away ages before, and can by no possibility be revived. What are we to think, then, of a hypothesis which assigns the code of Deuteronomy to the reign of Josiah, or shortly before it, when its injunctions to exterminate the Canaanites (Deu_20:16-18) and the Amalekites (Deu_25:17-19), who had long since disappeared, would be as utterly out of date as a law in New Jersey at the present time offering a bounty for killing wolves and bears, or a royal proclamation in Great Britain ordering the expulsion of the Danes? A law contemplating foreign conquests (Deu_20:10-15) would have been absurd when the urgent question was whether Judah could maintain its own existence against the encroachments of Babylon and Egypt. A law discriminating against Ammon and Moab (Deu_23:3, Deu_23:4), in favor of Edom (Deu_23:7, Deu_23:8), had its warrant in the Mosaic period, but not in the time of the later kings. Jeremiah discriminates precisely the other way, promising a future restoration to Moab (Jer_48:47) and Ammon (Jer_49:6), which he denies to Edom (Jer_49:17, Jer_49:18), who is also to Joel (Joe_3:19), Obadiah, and Isaiah (Isa_63:1-6), the representative foe of the people of God.... The allusions to Egypt imply familiarity with and recent residence in that land ... And how can a code belong to the time of Josiah, which, while it contemplates the possible selection of a king in the future (Deu_17:14 ff), nowhere implies an actual regal government, but vests the supreme central authority in a judge and the priesthood (Deu_17:8-12; Deu_19:17); which lays special stress on the requirements that the king must be a native and not a foreigner (Deu_17:15), when the undisputed line of succession had for ages been fixed in the family of David, and that he must not 'cause the people to return to Egypt.' (Deu_17:16), as they seemed ready to do on every grievance in the days of Moses (Num_14:4), but which no one ever dreamed of doing after they were fairly established in Canaan?? (Green, Moses and the Prophets, 63 f). This too may be supplemented by legal evidence (e.g. Deu_22:26 testifies to the undeveloped intellectual condition of the people). Of JE it is unnecessary to speak, for Ex 21 f are now widely regarded as Mosaic in critical circles. Wellhausen (Prolegomena6, 392, note) now regards their main elements as pre-Mosaic Canaanitish law.

(9) Later Allusions.
These are of two kinds. Sometimes we have references to the laws, in other cases we find evidence that they were in operation. (a) By postulating redactors evidence can be banished from the Biblical text. Accordingly, reference will only be made to some passages where this procedure is not followed. Eze_22:26 clearly knows of a law that dealt with the subjects of the Priestly Code (P), used its very language (compare Lev_10:10 f), and like P was to be taught to the people by the priests. Hos_4:6 also knows of some priestly teaching, which, however, is moral and may therefore be Lev 19; but in Lev_8:11-13 he speaks of 10,000 written precepts, and here the context points to ritual. The number and the subject-matter of these precepts alike make it certain that he knew a bulky written law which was not merely identical with Ex 21 through 23, and this passage cannot be met by Wellhausen who resorts to the device of translating it with the omission of the important word ?
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.

Pen?tateuch is the title given to the five books of Moses. The Jews usually call the Pentateuch the law.
In considering the Pentateuch, the first question which arises is?Who was its author? It is of great importance to hear, first, what the book itself says on this subject. The Pentateuch does not present itself as an anonymous production. It is manifestly intended and destined to be a public monument for the whole people, and it does not veil its origin in a mysterious obscurity; on the contrary, the book speaks most clearly on this subject.
According to Exo_17:14, Moses was commanded by God to write the victory over the Amalekites in the book. This passage shows that the account to be inserted was intended to form a portion of a more extensive work, with which the reader is supposed to be acquainted. It also proves that Moses, at an early period of his public career, was filled with the idea of leaving to his people a written memorial of the Divine guidance, and that he fully understood the close and necessary connection of an authoritative law with a written code. It is, therefore, by no means surprising that the observation repeatedly occurs, that Moses wrote down the account of certain events (Exo_24:4; Exo_24:7; Exo_34:27-28; Num_33:2). Especially important are the statements in Deu_1:5; Deu_28:58. In Deu_31:9; Deu_31:24 the whole work is expressly ascribed to Moses as the author, including the poem in Deuteronomy 32. It may be made a question whether the hand of a later writer, who finished the Pentateuch, is perceptible from Deu_31:24 (comp. Deu_33:1; Deu_34:1-12), or whether the words in Deu_31:24-30 are still the words of Moses. In the former case we have two witnesses, viz. Moses himself, and the continuator of the Pentateuch; in the latter case, which seems to us the more likely, we have the testimony of Moses alone.
Modern criticism has raised many objections against these statements of the Pentateuch relative to its own origin. Many critics suppose that they can discover in the Pentateuch indications that the author intended to make himself known as a person different from Moses. The most important objection is the following: that the Pentateuch, speaking of Moses, always uses the third person, bestows praise upon him, and uses concerning him expressions of respect. The Pentateuch even exhibits Moses quite objectively in the blessing recorded in Deu_33:4-5.
To this objection we reply, that the use of the third person proves nothing. The later Hebrew writers also speak of themselves in the third person. We might adduce similar instances from the classical authors, as Caesar, Xenophon, and others. The use of the third person, instead of the first, prevails also among Oriental authors. In addition to this we should observe, that the nature of the book itself demands the use of the third person, in reference to Moses, throughout the Pentateuch. This usage entirely corresponds with the character both of the history and of the law contained in the Pentateuch. If we consider that the Pentateuch was destined to be a book of divine revelation, in which God exhibited to his people the exemplification of his providential guidance, we cannot expect that Moses, by whom the Lord had communicated his latest revelations, should be spoken of otherwise than in the third person. In the poetry contained in Deu_33:4, Moses speaks in the name of the people, which he personifies and introduces as speaking. The expressions in Exo_11:3, Num_12:3; Num_12:7, belong entirely to the context of history, and to its faithful and complete relation; consequently it is by no means vain boasting that is there expressed, but admiration of the divine mercy glorified in the people of God. In considering these passages we must also bear in mind the far greater number of other passages which speak of the feebleness and the sins of Moses.
It is certain that the author of the Pentateuch asserts himself to be Moses. The question then arises, whether it is possible to consider this assertion to be true?whether Moses can be admitted to be the author? In this question is contained another, viz. whether the Pentateuch forms such a continuous whole that it is possible to ascribe it to one author? This question has been principally discussed in modern criticism. In various manners it has been tried to destroy the unity of the Pentateuch, and to resolve its constituent parts into a number of documents and fragments. Eichhorn and his followers assert that Genesis only is composed of several ancient documents. This assertion is still reconcilable with the Mosaical origin of the Pentateuch. But Vater and others allege that the whole Pentateuch is composed of fragments; from which it necessarily follows that Moses was not the author of the whole. Modern critics are, however, by no means unanimous in their opinions. The latest writer on this subject, Ewald, in his history of the people of Israel, asserts that there were seven different authors concerned in the Pentateuch. On the other hand, the internal unity of the Pentateuch has been demonstrated in many able essays. The attempts at division are especially supported by an appeal to the prevailing use of the different names of God in various portions of the work; but the arguments derived from this circumstance have been found insufficient to prove that the Pentateuch was written by different authors.
The inquiry concerning the unity of the Pentateuch is intimately connected with its historical character. If there are in the Pentateuch decided contradictions, or different contradictory statements of one and the same fact, not only its unity but also its historical truth would be negatived. On the other hand, if the work is to be considered as written by Moses, the whole style and internal veracity of the Pentateuch must correspond with the character of Moses. Considerate critics, who are not under the sway of dogmatic prejudices, find that the passages which are produced in order to prove that the Pentateuch was written after the time of Moses, by no means support such a conclusion, and that a more accurate examination of the contents of the separate portions discovers many vestiges demonstrating that the work originated in the age of Moses.
In the remote times of Jewish and Christian antiquity, we find no vestiges of doubt as to the genuineness of the Mosaical books. The Gnostics, indeed, opposed the Pentateuch, but attacked it merely on account of their dogmatical opinions concerning the Law and Judaism in general; consequently they did not impugn the authenticity, but merely the divine authority of the Law. Heathen authors alone, as Celsus and Julian, represented the contents of the Pentateuch as being mythological, and paralleled them with Pagan mythology.
In the Middle Ages, but not earlier, we find some very concealed critical doubts in the works of some Jews?as Isaac Ben Jasos, who lived in the eleventh century, and Aben Ezra. After the Reformation, it was sometimes attempted to demonstrate the later origin of the Pentateuch. Such attempts were made by Spinoza, Richard Simon, Le Clerc, and Van Dale; but these critics were not unanimous in their results.
In the period of English, French, and German deism, the Pentateuch was attacked rather by jests than by arguments. Attacks of a more scientific nature were made about the end of the eighteenth century. But these were met by such critics as John David Michaelis and Eichhorn, who energetically and effectually defended the genuineness of the Pentateuch. These critics, however, on account of their own false position, did as much harm as good to the cause.
A new epoch of criticism commences about the year 1805. This was produced by Vater's Commentary and de Wette's Beitr?ge zur Einleitung in das alte Testament. Vater embodied all the arguments which had been adduced against the authenticity of the Pentateuch, and applied to the criticism of the sacred books the principles which Wolf had employed with reference to the Homeric poems. He divided the Pentateuch into fragments, to each of which he assigned its own period, but referred the whole generally to the age of the Assyrian or Babylonian exile. Since the days of Vater a series of the most different hypotheses has been produced by German critics about the age of the Pentateuch, and that of its constituent sections. No one critic seems fully to agree with any other; and frequently it is quite evident that the opinions advanced are quite arbitrary, and destitute of any sure foundation.




The Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
by John Kitto.

Pentateuch
the collective title commonly given to the first five books of the O.T. In the present article we treat this important section of Scripture as a whole, in the light of modern criticism and discussion, reserving its component books for their separate heads. See Moses.
I. The Name. — The above is the Greek name given to the books commonly called the Five Books of Moses (ἡ πεντάτευχος sc. βιβλος; Pentateuchus sc. liber; the fivefold book; from τοῦχος, which, meaning originally “vessel, instrument,” etc., came in Alexandrine Greek to mean “book”). In the time of Ezra and Nehemiah it was called “the Law of Moses” (Ezr_7:6); or “the book of the Law of Moses” (Neh_8:1); or simply “the book of Moses” (Ezr_6:18; Neh_13:1; 2Ch_25:4; 2Ch_35:12). This was beyond all reasonable doubt our existing Pentateuch. The book which was discovered in the Temple in the reign of Josiah, and which is entitled (2Ch_34:14) the book of the Law of Jehovah by the hand of Moses,” was substantially, it would seem, the same volume. In 2Ch_34:30 it is styled “the book of the Covenant,” and so also in 2Ki_23:2; 2Ki_23:21, while in 2Ki_22:8 Hilkiah says, I have found “the book of the Law.” Still earlier, in the reign of Jehoshaphat, we find a “book of the Law of Jehovah” in use (2Ch_17:9). This was probably the earliest designation, for a “book of the Law” is mentioned in Deuteronomy (Deu_31:26), though it is questionable whether the name as there used refers to the whole Pentateuch or only to Deuteronomy. The modern Jews usually call the whole by the name of Torah (תּוֹרָה), i.e. “the Law,” or Torath Mosheh (תּוֹרִת משֶׁה), “the Law of Moses.” The rabbinical title is חֲמַשָּׁה חוּמְשֵׁי הִתּוֹרָהthe five fifths of the Law.” In the preface to the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, it is called “the Law,” which is also a usual name for it in the New Testament (Mat_12:5; Mat_22:36; Mat_22:40; Luk_10:26; Joh_8:5; Joh_8:17). Sometimes the name of Moses stands briefly for the whole work ascribed to him (Luk_24:27). Finally, the whole Old Testament is sometimes called a potiori parte, “the Law” (Mat_5:18; Luk_16:17; Joh_7:49; Joh_10:34; Joh_12:34). In Joh_15:25; Rom_3:19, words from the Psalms, and in 1Co_14:21, from Isaiah, are quoted as words of the Law. SEE LAW.
II. Present Form. — The division of the whole work into five parts has by some writers been supposed to be original. Others (as Leusden, Havernick, and Lengerke), with more probability, think that the division was made by the Greek translators. For the titles of the several books are not of Hebrew, but of Greek origin. The Hebrew names are merely taken from the first words of each book, and in the first instance only designated particular sections and not whole books. The MSS. of the Pentateuch form a single roll or volume, and are divided not into books, but into the larger and smaller sections called Parshiyoth and Sedarim. Besides this, the Jews distribute all the laws in the Pentateuch under the two heads of affirmative and negative precepts. Of the former they reckon 248; because, according to the anatomy of the rabbins, so many are the parts of the human body; of the latter they make 365, which is the number of days in the year, and also the number of veins in the human body. Accordingly the Jews are bound to the observance of 613 precepts; and in order that these precepts may be perpetually kept in mind, they are wont to carry a piece of cloth foursquare, at the four corners of which they have fringes consisting of eight threads apiece, fastened in five knots. These fringes are called צַיצְית, a word which in numbers denotes 600: add to this the eight threads and the five knots, and we get the 613 precepts.
The five knots denote the five books of Moses. (See Bab. Talmud. Maccoth, sect. 3; Maimon. Pref. to Jad Hachazakah; Leusden, Philol. p. 33.) Both Philo (de Abraham. ad init.) and Josephus (c. Apion. 1:8) recognize the division now current. Vaihinger supposes that the symbolical meaning of the number five led to its adoption; for ten is the symbol of completion or perfection, as we see in the ten commandments (and so in Genesis we have ten “n generations”), and therefore five is a number which, as it were, confesses imperfection and prophesies completion. The Law is not perfect without the Prophets, for the Prophets are in a special sense the bearers of the Promise; and it is the Promise which completes the Law. This is questionable. There can be no doubt, however, that this division of the Pentateuch influenced the arrangement of the Psalter in five books. The same may be said of the five Megilloth of the Hagiographa (Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther), which in many Hebrew Bibles are placed immediately after the Pentateuch. In some Jewish writers, however, there are found statements indicating that the Pentateuch was formerly divided into seven portions (comp. Jarchi, ad Proverb. 9: 1; ibique Breithaupt). In the Jewish canon the Pentateuch is kept somewhat distinct from the other sacred books of the Old Testament, because, considered with reference to its contents, it is the book of books of the ancient covenant. It is the basis of the religion of the Old Testament, and of the whole theocratical life. SEE OLD TESTAMENT.
For the several names and contents of the five books we refer to the articles on each book, where questions affecting their integrity and genuineness separately are also discussed.
III. Unity of the Pentateuch. —
1. This is evinced in its general scope and contents. With a view to this point, we need only briefly observe here that this work, beginning with the record of creation and the history of the primitive world, passes on to deal more especially with the early history of the Jewish family. It gives at length the personal history of the three great fathers of the family; it then describes how the family grew into a nation in Egypt, tells us of its oppression and deliverance, of its forty years' wandering in the wilderness, of the giving of the law, with all its enactments both civil and religious, of the construction of the tabernacle, of the numbering of the people, of the rights and duties of the priesthood, as well as of many important events which befell them before their entrance into the Land of Canaan, and finally concludes with Moses's last discourses and his death. The unity of the work in its existing form is now generally recognised. It is not a mere collection of loose fragments carelessly put together at different times, but bears evident traces of design and purpose in its composition. Even those who discover different authors in the earlier books, and who deny that Deuteronomy was written by Moses, are still of opinion that the work in its present form is a connected whole, and was at least reduced to its present shape by a single reviser or editor (see Ewald, Geschichte, 1:170; Stfahelin, Kritische Unters. p. 1).
The question has also been raised whether the book of Joshua does not, properly speaking, constitute an integral portion of this work. To this question Ewald (Geschichte, 1:175), Knobel (Genesis, Vorbem. § 1, 2), Lengerke (Kenaan, 83), and Stahelin (Kritische Unlters. p. 91) give a reply in the affirmative. They seem to have been led to do so, partly because they imagine that the two documents, the Elohistic and the Jehovistic, which characterize the earlier books of the Pentateuch, may still be traced, like two streams, the waters of which never wholly mingle though they flow in the same channel, running on through the book of Joshua; and partly because the same work which contains the promise of the land (Genesis 15) must contain also — so they argue — the fulfillment of the promise. But such grounds are far too arbitrary and uncertain to support the hypothesis which rests upon them. All that seems probable is that the book of Joshua received a final revision at the hands of Ezra, or some earlier prophet, at the same time with the books of the law. The fact that the Samaritans, who it is well known did not possess the other books of Scripture, have besides the Pentateuch a book of Joshua (see Chronicon Samaritanum, etc., ed. Juynboll, Lugd. Bat. 1848), indicates no doubt an early association of the one with the other, but is no proof that they originally constituted one work, but rather the contrary. Otherwise the Samaritans would naturally have adopted the canonical recension of Joshua. We may therefore regard the five books of Moses as one separate and complete work.
2. More particularly, the order which pervades the book manifests its unity, although this is not, indeed, tediously formal or monotonous.
(1.) Chiefly its chronological order, the simplest of all, and such as might be expected to be predominant in a book which is in a large measure historical. This characteristic is obvious in respect to the position of the two books of Genesis and Deuteronomy at the beginning and the end; the former serving as an introduction, and the latter as a recapitulation. In like manner the story of the family of Abraham expands, when we come to Exodus, into that of the people of Israel: first, enslaved Israel attains to redemption, and next redeemed Israel is consecrated to the service of its Lord, who meets his people, delivers his law of life to them, and instructs them to set up his tabernacle in the midst of them. The book of Leviticus contains scarcely any history, and is occupied with the rules for the service of God in this tabernacle: it is the code for the spiritual life of Israel as the congregation of the Lord code published almost at once, and in a form substantially complete. The fourth book, that of Numbers, resumes the thread of the history, and conducts the redeemed and consecrated and organized host from Mount Sinai through the wilderness to the Land of Promise; including further legislation, of which they stood in need if they were to take a suitable place among the kingdoms of the world.
(2.) Yet obviously this book is not a dry series of annals, in which the chronological order is alone observable; still less is it the mere leaves of a journal in which the narrative of the three middle books was written down at the dates of the several occurrences, and left unchanged in all time coming. Whatever may have been written down in the form of a journal at the first (of which we have possibly an instance in Numbers 33), would be revised, extended, abbreviated, and rearranged by the author, ere it came from his hands a finished history. Therefore we find a systematic order, according to the internal or logical connection of the parts, even in the purely narrative portions. Thus Genesis 38 furnishes the account of transactions in the family of Judah which cannot but have stretched over a long course of time, of years apparently, including the greater part of the time that Joseph was alone in Egypt, and which very probably extended back to a date considerably earlier than that at which his captivity began: the entire series of events, however, being recorded in this one chapter, with a twofold advantage — that of being itself more distinctly set before us, and that of not interrupting the thread of Joseph's history in Egypt. Sometimes indeed we may be unable to determine whether the order in which events are narrated is the order of time or that of logical sequence; an uncertainty which meets us in other portions of sacred history, as well as outside of the Bible. But it is not surprising that this logical order predominates in the legislation; though even here the chronological order is by no means uncommon, because the laws sprang, to a considerable extent, out of the circumstances in which the people were placed from time to time. This peculiarity has given rise to repetitions, enlargements, rearrangements, and even in a limited degree to modifications, of earlier enactments, of which we have an instructive example in the varied order in which the parts of the tabernacle and its furniture are mentioned, first in the directions given to Moses in the mount, and, secondly, in the narrative of its actual construction.
(3.) A third principle of arrangement is the rhetorical, of which the instances are fewer. Indeed it is very much confined to Deuteronomy, in which Moses appears as the great prophet of Israel. It was a corollary from the plan of these discourses that Moses should present the topics in the form likeliest to tell upon the audience to whom he was giving a parting address; that he should group incidents and laws according to certain affinities or contrasts for the purpose of effect; that he should pass over some subjects in entire silence, should touch upon others lightly, and on another class still should enlarge at some length; and that he should often present them under peculiar aspects, in forms somewhat different from those in which we should have seen them if we had known them only from the earlier books. Yet such variety, subordinate in its amount, and existing for a special purpose, is in reality an additional proof of the unity of the Pentateuch, and of the comprehensiveness of the plan on which it has been written.
IV. Authority and Date of Composition. — This is preeminently the subject which calls for discussion here, as it has been largely disputed. The reply we give is the old and common one, namely, by Moses, during the wandering in the wilderness. We shall endeavor to state plainly and fairly the views and reasons both for and against it.
1. History of the Controversy. —
(1.) Adverse Writers. — At different times suspicions have been entertained that the Pentateuch as we now have it is not the Pentateuch of the earliest age, and that the work must have undergone various modifications and additions before it assumed its present shape.
So early as the 2d century we find the author of the Clementine Homilies calling in question the authenticity of the Mosaic writings. According to him the Law was only given orally by Moses to the seventy elders, and not consigned to writing till after his death; it subsequently underwent many changes, was corrupted more and more by means of the false prophets, and was especially filled with erroneous anthropomorphic conceptions of God, and unworthy representations of the characters of the patriarchs (Hom. 2:38, 43; 3:4, 47; Neander. Gnost. Systeme, p. 380). A statement of this kind, unsupported, and coming from a heretical, and therefore suspicious source, may seem of little moment; it is however remarkable, so far as it indicates an early tendency to cast off the received traditions respecting the books of Scripture; while at the same time it is evident that this was done cautiously, because such an opinion respecting the Pentateuch was said to be for the advanced Christian only, and not for the simple and unlearned.
Jerome, there can be little doubt, had seen some difficulty in supposing the Pentateuch to be altogether, in its present form, the work of Moses; for he observes (contra Helvid.): “Sive Mosen dicere volueris auctorem Pentateuchi sive Esram ejusdem instauratorem operis,” with reference apparently to the Jewish tradition on the subject. Aben-Ezra († 1167), in his Comment. on Deu_1:1, threw out some doubts as to the Mosaic authorship of certain passages, such as Gen_12:6; Deu_3:10-11; Deu_31:9, which he either explained as later interpolations, or left as mysteries which it was beyond his power to unravel. But for centuries the Pentateuch was generally received in the Church without question as written by Moses. In the year 1651, however, we find Hobbes writing: “Videtur Pentateuchus potius de Mose quam a Mose scriptus” (Leviathan, c. 33). Spinoza (Tract. Theol.-Polit. c. 8, 9, published in 1679) set himself boldly to controvert the received authorship of the Pentateuch. He alleged against it (1) later names of places, as Gen_14:14 comp. with Jdg_18:29; (2) the continuation of the history beyond the days of Moses, Exo_16:35 comp. with Jos_5:12; (3) the statement in Gen_36:31, “before there reigned any king over the children of Israel.” Spinoza maintained that Moses issued his commands to the elders, that by them they were written down and communicated to the people, and that later they were collected and assigned to suitable passages in Moses's life. He considered that the Pentateuch was indebted to Ezra for the form in which it now appears. Other writers began to think that the book of Genesis was composed of written documents earlier than the time of Moses. So Vitringa (Observ. Sacr. 1:3), Le Clerc (De Script. Pentateuchi, § 11), and R. Simon (Hist. critique du V. T. lib. i, c. 7, Rotterdam, 1685).
According to the last of these writers, Genesis was composed of earlier documents, the laws of the Pentateuch were the work of Moses, and the greater portion of the history was written by the public scribe who is mentioned in the book. Le Clerc supposed that the priest who, according to 2Ki_17:27, was sent to instruct the Samaritan colonists, was the author of the Pentateuch. It was not till the middle of the last century, however, that the question as to the authorship of the Pentateuch was handled with anything like a bold criticism. The first attempt was made by a layman, whose studies we might have supposed would scarcely have led him to such an investigation. In the year 1753 there appeared at Brussels a work entitled Conjectures sur les memoires originaux, dont ii paroit que Moyse s'est servi pour composer le livre de Genese. It was written in his 69th year by Astruc, doctor and professor of medicine in the Royal College at Paris, and court physician to Louis XIV. His critical eye had observed that throughout the book of Genesis, and as far as the 6th chapter of Exodus, traces were to be found of two original documents, each characterized by a distinct use of the names of God; the one by the name Elohim, and the other by the name Jehovah. Besides these two principal documents, he supposed Moses to have made use of ten others in the composition of the earlier part of his work. Astruc was followed by several German writers on the path which he had traced; by Jerusalem, in his Letters on the Mosaic Writings and Philosophy; by Schultens, in his Dissertatio qua disquiritur, unde Moses res in libro Geneseos descriptas didicerit; and with considerable learning and critical acumen by Ilgen ( Urkunden des Jerusalemischen Tempelarchivs, 1er Theil, Halle, 1798) and Eichhorn (Einleitulng in d. A. T.).
But this “documentary hypothesis,” as it is called, was too conservative and too rational for some critics. Vater, in his Commentar uber den Pentateuch (1815), and A. T. Hartmann. in his Linguist. Einl. in d. Stud. der Buicher des A. Test. (1818), maintained that the Pentateuch consisted merely of a number of fragments loosely strung together without order or design. The former supposed a collection of laws, made in the times of David and Solomon, to have been the foundation of the whole: that this was the book discovered in the reign of Josiah, and that its fragments were afterwards incorporated in Deuteronomy. All the rest, consisting of fragments of history and of laws written at different periods up to this time, were, according to him, collected and shaped into their present form between the times of Josiah and the Babylonian exile. Hartmann also brings down the date of the existing Pentateuch as late as the exile. This has been called the “fragmentary hypothesis.” Both of these have now been superseded by the “supplementary hypothesis,” which has been adopted with various modifications by De Wette, Bleek, Stahelin, Tuch, Lengerke, Hupfeld, Knobel, Bunsen, Kurtz, Delitzsch, Schultz, Vaihinger, and others. They all alike recognize two documents in the Pentateuch. They suppose the narrative of the Elohlst, the more ancient writer, to have been the foundation of the work, and that the Jehovist, or later writer, making use of this document, added to and commented upon it, sometimes transcribing portions of it intact, and sometimes incorporating the substance of it into his own work.
Yet though thus agreeing in the main, they differ widely in the application of the theory. Thus, for instance, De Wette distinguishes between the Elohist and the Jehovist in the first four books, and attributes Deuteronomy to a different writer altogether (Einl. ins A. T. § 150 sq.). So also Lengerke, though with some differences of detail in the portions he assigns to the two editors. The last places the Elohist in the time of Solomon, and the Jehovistic editor in that of Hezekiah; whereas Tuch puts the first under Saul, and the second under Solomon. Stahelin, on the other hand, declares for the identity of the Deuteronomist and the Jehovist, and supposes the last to have written in the reign of Saul, and the Elohist in the time of the Judges. Hupfeld (Die Quellen der Genesis) finds, in Genesis at least, traces of three authors, an earlier and a later Elohist, as well as the Jehovist. He is peculiar in regarding the Jehovistic portion as an altogether original document, written in entire independence, and without the knowledge even of the Elohistic record. A later editor or compiler, he thinks, found the two books, and threw them into one. Vaihinger (in Herzog's Encyklopadie) is also of opinion that portions of three original documents are to be found in the first four books, to which he adds some fragments of the 32d and 34th chanters of Deuteronomy. The fifth book, according to him, is by a different and much later writer. The pre-Elohist he supposes to have flourished about 1200 B.C., the Elohist some 200 years later, the Jehovist in the first half of the 8th century B.C., and the Deuteronomist in the reign of Hezekiah.
Delitzsch agrees with the writers above mentioned in recognising two distinct documents as the basis of the Pentateuch, especially in its earlier portions; but he entirely severs himself from them in maintaining that Deuteronomy is the work of Moses. His theory is this: the kernel or first foundation of the Pentateuch is to be found in the Book of the Covenant (Exodus 19-24), which was written by Moses himself, and afterwards incorporated into the body of the Pentateuch, where it at present stands. The rest of the laws given in the wilderness, till the people reached the plains of Ioab, were communicated orally by Moses and taken down by the priests, whose business it was thus to provide for their preservation (Deu_17:11, comp. 24:8; 33:10; Lev_10:11, comp. 15:31). Inasmuch as Deuteronomy does not pre-suppose the existence in writing of the entire earlier legislation, but on the contrary recapitulates it with the greatest freedom, we are not obliged to assume that the proper codification of the law took place during the forty years' wandering in the desert. This was done, however, shortly after the occupation of the land of Canaan. On that sacred soil was the first definite portion of the history of Israel written; and the writing of the history itself necessitated a full and complete account of the Mosaic legislation. A man, such as Eleazar the son of Aaron, the priest (see Num_26:1; Num_31:21), wrote the great work beginning with the first words of Genesis, including in it the Book of the Covenant, and perhaps gave only a short notice of the last discourses of Moses, because Moses had written them down with his own hand. A second — who may have been Joshua (see especially Deu_32:44; Jos_24:26; and comp. on the other hand 1Sa_10:25), who was a prophet, and spake as a prophet, or one of the elders on whom Moses's spirit rested (Num_11:25), and many of whom survived Joshua (Jos_24:31) — completed the work, taking Deuteronomy, which Moses had written, for his model, and incorporating it into his own book. Somewhat in this manner arose the Torah (or Pentateuch), each narrator further availing himself when he thought proper of other written documents.
Such is the theory of Delitzsch, which is in many respects worthy of consideration, and which has been adopted in the main by Kurtz (Gesch. d. A. B. i, § 20, and ii, § 99, 6), who formerly was opposed to the theory of different documents, and sided rather with Hengstenberg and the critics of the extreme conservative school. There is this difference, however, that Kurtz objects to the view that Deuteronomy existed before the other books, and believes that the rest of the Pentateuch was committed to writing before, not after, the occupation of the Holy Land. Finally, Schultz, in his recent work on Deuteronomy, recognises two original documents in the Pentateuch, the Elohistic being the base and groundwork of the whole, but contends that the Jehovistic portions of the first four books, as well as Deuteronomy, except the concluding portion, were written by Moses. Thus he agrees with Delitzsch and Kurtz in admitting two documents and the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy, and with Stahelin in identifying the Deuteronomist with the Jehovist. One other theory has, however, to be stated before we pass on. The author of it stands quite alone, and it is not likely that he will ever find any disciple bold enough to adopt his theory: even his great admirer Bunsen forsakes him here. But it is due to Ewald's great and deserved reputation as a scholar, and to his uncommon critical sagacity, briefly to state what that theory is. He distinguishes, then, seven different authors in the great Book of Origins or Primitive History (comprising the Pentateuch and Joshua). The oldest historical work, of which but a very few fragments remain, is the Book of the Wars of Jehovah. Then follows a biography of Moses, of which also but small portions have been preserved. The third and fourth documents are much more perfect: these consist of the Book of the Covenant, which was written in the time of Samson, and the Book of Origins, which was written by a priest in the time of Solomon. Then comes, in the fifth place, the third historian of the primitive times, or the first prophetic narrator, a subject of the northern kingdom in the days of Elijah or Joel. The sixth document is the work of the fourth historian of primitive times, or the second prophetic narrator, who lived between 800 and 750. Lastly comes the fifth historian, or third prophetic narrator, who flourished not long after Joel, and who collected and reduced into one corpus the various works of his predecessors. The real purposes of the history, both in its prophetical and its legal aspects, began now to be discerned. Some steps were taken in this direction by an unknown writer at the beginning of the 7th century B.C.; and then in a far more comprehensive manner by the Deuteronomist, who flourished in the time of Manasseh, and lived in Egypt. In the time of Jeremiah appeared the poet who wrote the Blessing of Moses, as it is given in Deuteronomy. A somewhat later editor incorporated the originally independent work of the Deuteronomist, and the lesser additions of his two colleagues, with the history as left by the fifth narrator, and thus the whole was finally completed. “Such,” says Ewald (and his words, seriously meant, read like delicate irony), “were the strange fortunes which this great work underwent before it reached its present form.”
(2.) Writers in favor of the Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch. — On the other side, however, stands an array of names certainly not less distinguished for learning, who maintain not only that there is a unity of design in the Pentateuch — which is granted by many of those before mentioned-but who contend that this unity of design can only be explained on the supposition of a single author, and that this author could have been none other than Moses. This is the ground taken by Hengstenberg, Havernick, Drechsler, Ranke, Welte, and Keil. The first mentioned of these writers has no doubt done admirable service in reconciling and removing very many of the alleged discrepancies and contradictions in the Pentateuch: but his zeal carries him in some instances to attempt a defense, the very ingenuity of which betrays how unsatisfactory it is; and his effort to explain the use of the divine names, by showing that the writer had a special design in the use of the one or the other, is often in the last degree arbitrary. Drechsler, in his work on the Unity and Genuineness of Genesis (1838), fares no better, though his remarks are the more valuable because in many cases they coincide, quite independently, with those of Hengstenberg. Later, however, Drechsler modified his view, and supposed that the several uses of the divine names were owing to a didactic purpose on the part of the writer, according as his object was to show a particular relation of God to the world, whether as Elohim or as Jehovah. Hence he argued that, while different streams flowed through the Pentateuch, they were not from two different fountain-heads, but varied according to the motive which influenced the writer, and according to the fundamental thought in particular sections; and on this ground, too, he explained the characteristic phraseology which distinguishes such sections. Ranke's work (Untersuchungen uber den Pentateuch) is a valuable contribution to the exegesis of the Pentateuch. He is especially successful in establishing the inward unity of the work, and in showing how inseparably the several portions, legal, genealogical, and historical, are interwoven together. Kurtz (in his Einheit der Genesis [1846], and in the first edition of his first volume of the Geschichte des Alten Bundes) followed on the same side; but he has since abandoned the attempt to explain the use of the divine names. on the principle of the different meanings which they bear, and has espoused the theory of two distinct documents. Keil, also, though he does not despair of the solution of the problem, confesses (Luther. Zeitschr. [1851-2] p. 235) that “all attempts as yet made, notwithstanding the acumen which has been brought to bear to explain the interchange of the divine names in Genesis on the ground of the different meanings which they possess, must be pronounced a failure.” Ebrard (Das Alter des Jehova-Namens) and Tiele (Stud. und Krit. 1852-1) make nearly the same admission. It is not fair, however, to require the advocates of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch to explain positively the reasons which impelled him to the peculiar use of these names. The causes of such a selection are often inscrutable, even to the writer himself. A sufficient reason is perhaps given in the supposition that Moses made use of documents written by different persons which contained those peculiarities. The want of uniformity observable in the same section in this respect shows that it is due to a twofold influence. It must be borne in mind that this peculiar distinction in the use of the sacred names is mostly confined to the book of Genesis (q.v.).
2. Direct Testimony of the Book to its own A uthorship and Date of Composition. —
(1.) Of this character is Exo_17:14, “And the Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua; for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven:” a statement which becomes the more pointed if we read, as we have little hesitation in doing, not “in a book,” but “in the book” (בִּסֵּפֶר). This passage shows that the account to be inserted was intended to form a portion of a more extensive work, with which the reader is supposed to be acquainted. It also proves that Moses, at an early period of his public career, was filled with the idea of leaving to his people a written memorial of the divine guidance, and that he fully understood the close and necessary connection of an authoritative law with a written code, or זכרון. At any rate, the direct testimony to the fact that particular passages were written by Moses is of vast importance as a presumption that other passages were written by him also, although the contrary assertion has often been put forward: nay, many passages may be inferred a fortiori to have come from his pen. Or, where the inference might be unsafe, as in the instance now given, it is because of the extraordinary emphasis of the testimony in such a passage; not merely that the doom of Amalek was written by Moses in the book of the Lord for Israel, but also its being so expressly recorded that it was written. See also Exo_24:4-7; Num_33:1-2; Deu_17:18-19 (a remarkable passage); 28-30, which repeatedly mention the written blessings and curses; Deu_27:1-13, a command to “write all the words of this law” on plastered stones, preparatory to the solemn reading of the blessings and the curses beside the altar which was to be erected when the people took possession of the center of the Promised Land (comp. the account of the fulfillment, Jos_8:30-35). The most remarkable passage, however, is at Deu_31:9 : “And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it to the priests the sons of Levi, which bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and unto all the elders of Israel,” and charged these ecclesiastical and civil heads of the community to read it to the assembled congregation of Israel during the eight days of the Feast of Tabernacles, on the occasion when it was most largely attended in the seventh year, the year of rest. Further (Deu_31:24-27): “And it came to pass when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished, that Moses commanded the Levites, which bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying, Take this book of the law, and put it in [or rather at] the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God; that it may be there for a witness against thee. For I know thy rebellion and thy stiff neck: behold, while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the Lord; and how much more after my death?” It has often been said that no assertion could be more explicit, or made in more solemn circumstances, or with additions more calculated for discovering and demonstrating its falsehood unless the truth had been notorious. With this mass of evidence we must connect the warnings against adding to what Moses commanded, or taking from it (Deu_4:2; Deu_12:32); the circumstantial statement as to the discourses being addressed by Moses to the people (Deu_1:1-5); and along with these opening words of Deuteronomy, the closing words of Numbers (Num_36:13), as also the last words of Leviticus (Lev_27:34; also 25:1; 26:46). If all these statements are not to be set aside as an idle dream or a tissue of deliberate falsehoods, the very least which can be inferred from them is that the Pentateuch (at all events the part of it from the time when the people came to covenant with God at Mount Sinai) is from one writer; that the divine legislation was in the first place given from that mount, the substance or essence of which was concluded in the book of Leviticus; that there were appendices to this, recorded in the book of Numbers, on to the time when Israel stood upon the eastern bank of the Jordan, ready to cross over upon Jericho; and that there was a very solemn renewal of the covenant on the part of the generation which had grown up in the wilderness, to whom, in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses repeated much of the legislation and addressed his parting counsels. It may be made a question whether the hand of a later writer, who finished the Pentateuch, is perceptible from Deu_31:24 (comp. Deu_33:1, and ch. 34), or whether the words in Deu_31:24-30 are still the words of Moses.
In the former case we have two witnesses, viz. Moses himself, and the continuator of the Pentateuch; in the latter case, which seems to us the more likely, we have the testimony of Moses alone. It is true that the above passages do not define the limits of the book, nor prove its absolute identity with the existing copies of the Pentateuch. But other evidences will be found to supply this proof. We have already the fact that a book was written by Moses under the immediate authority of God, and that this book was intended to be of perpetual obligation. Now, supposing that the scriptural testimony of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch had ended here, although we shall see this is not the case, yet, even so, no moral doubt could exist that this design was carried into effect, and that the books thus preserved were substantially identical with those which have come down to us. For at this period the Jewish people suddenly take their place amid the settled nations of the world, and enter upon that grand and mysterious national life which has continued till our own day. It will not be denied by any that this race was distinguished from all others by many peculiar characteristics. Some of their national habits exhibited affinity in various points of detail with the surrounding polytheism amid which they dwelt; but their whole system was sharply separated, alike by the grandeur of its religious monotheism and by its complex social and civil organization, from that of all other nations. Their code of laws was penetrating enough to affix its indelible peculiarities on the race who lived under them, and to endow it with a force and elevation, a perpetuity of national life, and a world-wide influence, to which no parallel can be found in history, Such an effect would itself prove the existence of a cause as permanent as itself, for the precise ritual and ceremonial enactments of the system could never have been maintained without an authorized code of directions. When we inquire into the nature of that peculiar polity to which it is to be attributed, we find it in the books of Moses. The Pentateuch contains a system which explains the national life of the Jewish race, and which, in its turn, is equally explained by it. As we know, on the one side, that the Pentateuch was reduced by Moses to a written form, and, on the other side, that the phenomena of national Jewish life can only be explained by the influence of a positive written code, it is impossible not to put the two facts together, and identify the Mosaic books of the law with the code of subsequent times. In other words, the permanence of the effect proves the permanence of the cause. The subsequent history of the Jewish race would have sufficed to prove that the Mosaic code must have existed in a permanent form from that period till the present, even if no positive external proofs of the fact had existed. From the passages adduced above it is apparent, indeed, that the most numerous and direct testimonies occur in Deuteronomy; and the opinion has had learned advocates that these testimonies are to be restricted to this one book, which is therefore admitted to be from the pen of Moses, whereas it is alleged that there is no clear evidence as to the authorship of the other four. But he who takes up this position in good faith is likely soon to discover that Deuteronomy presupposes the existence of the others, and the general knowledge of their contents, by its incidental reference to subjects which are intelligible only when we turn to the fuller accounts given in these books: for example, the dispersion and settlement of the nations by the hand of God; the call of Abraham, that in his seed the families of the earth might be blessed; the patriarchal history generally, and the result of it, the sojourn of the children of Israel in Egypt; the destruction of Sodom and the neighboring cities; the relationship of the Edomites, Moabites, and Ammonites to Israel; the laws in reference to leprosy; the entire rules for the sacrificial services; the consecration of Aaron's family, and of the whole tribe of Levi in a wider sense, to these services; and the method of their support; and the laws on the subject of murder and manslaughter. Besides, the age of generalizations, such as we find in Deuteronomy, must be preceded by the age of particular enactments. Hence there are scarcely any who have intelligently believed that Deuteronomy is the work of Moses, who have not come to feel the necessity of acknowledging him to be (substantially at least) the author of the entire Pentateuch.
(2.) Pressed by these arguments, some of the sceptical critics have resorted to the opposite conclusion that the book of Deuteronomy itself, in which these striking testimonies are so largely found, is likewise not the production of Moses. It is of importance therefore to consider this question separately.
All allow that the Book of the Covenant in Exodus, perhaps a great part of Leviticus, and some part of Numbers were written by Israel's greatest leader and prophet. But Deuteronomy, it is alleged, is in style and purpose so utterly unlike the genuine writings of Moses that it is quite impossible to believe that he is the author. But how, then, set aside the express testimony of the book itself? How explain the fact that Moses is there said to have written all the words of this law, to have consigned it to the custody of the priests, and to have charged the Levites sedulously to preserve it by the side of the ark? Only by the bold assertion that the fiction was invented by a later writer, who chose to personate the great Lawgiver in order to give the more color of consistency to his work! The author first feigns the name of Moses that he may gain the greater consideration under the shadow of his name, and then proceeds to re-enact, but in a broader and more spiritual manner, and with true prophetic inspiration, the chief portions of the earlier legislation. But such a hypothesis is devoid of all probability. For what writer in later times would ever have presumed, unless he were equal to Moses, to correct or supplement the Law of Moses? And if he were equal to Moses, why borrow his name (as Ewald supposes the Deuteronomist to have done) in order to lend greater weight and sanction to his book? The truth is, those who make such a supposition import modern ideas into ancient writings. They forget that what might be allowable in a modern writer of fiction would not have been tolerated in one who claimed to have a divine commission, who came forward as a prophet to rebuke and to reform the people. Which would be more weighty to win their obedience, “Thus saith Jehovah,” or “Moses wrote all these words?” It has been argued indeed that in thus assuming a feigned character the writer does no more than is done by the author of Ecclesiastes. He in like manner takes the name of Solomon that he may gain a better hearing for his words of wisdom. But the cases are not parallel. The Preacher only pretends to give an old man's view of life, as seen by one who had had a large experience and no common reputation for wisdom. Deuteronomy claims to be a law imposed on the highest authority, and demanding implicit obedience. The first is a record of the struggles, disappointments, and victory of a human heart. The last is an absolute rule of life, to which nothing may be added, and from which nothing may be taken (Deu_4:2; Deu_31:1).
But, besides the fact that Deuteronomy claims to have been written by Moses, there is other evidence which establishes the great antiquity of the book.
(a) It is remarkable for its allusions to Egypt, which are just what would be expected supposing Moses to have been the author. It is a significant fact that Ewald, who will have it that Deuteronomy was written in the reign of Manasseh, is obliged to make his supposed author live in Egypt, in order to account plausibly for the acquaintance with Egyptian customs which is discernible in the book. Without insisting upon it that in such passages as Deu_4:15-18, or Deu_6:8, and Deu_11:18-20 (comp. Exo_13:16), where the command is given to wear the law after the fashion of an amulet, or Deu_27:1-8, where writing on stones covered with plaster is mentioned, are probable references to Egyptian customs, we may point to more certain examples. In Deu_20:5 there is an allusion to Egyptian regulations in time of war; in Deu_25:2, to the Egyptian bastinado; in Deu_11:10, to the Egyptian mode of irrigation. The references which Delitzsch sees in Deu_22:5 to the custom of the Egyptian priests to hold solemn processions in the masks of different deities, and in Deu_8:9 to Egyptian mining operations, are by no means so certain. Again, among the curses threatened are the sicknesses of Egypt (Deu_28:60; comp. Deu_7:15). According to Deu_28:68, Egypt is the type of all the oppressors of Israel: “Remember that thou wast a slave in the land of Egypt,” is an expression which is several times made use of as a motive in enforcing the obligations of the book (Deu_5:15; Deu_24:18; Deu_24:22; see the same appeal in Lev_19:34, a passage occurring in the remarkable section Leviticus 17-20, which has so much affinity with Deuteronomy). Lastly, references to the sojourning in Egypt are numerous: “We were Pharaoh's bondmen in Egypt,” etc. (Lev_6:21-23; see also Lev_7:8; Lev_7:18; Lev_11:3); and these occur even in the laws, as in the law of the king (Lev_17:16), which would be very extraordinary if the book had only been written in the time of Manasseh.
(b) The phraseology of the book, and the archaisms found in it, stamp it as of the same age with the rest of the Pentateuch. The form הוא, instead of היא, for the feminine of the pronoun (which occurs in all 195 times in the Pentateuch), is found thirty-six times in Deuteronomy. Nowhere do we meet with היאin this book, though in the rest of the Pentateuch it occurs eleven times. In the same way, like the other books, Deuteronomy has נִעִר of a maiden, instead of the feminine נִעֲרָה, which is only used once (Deu_22:19). It has also the third pers. pret. חִי, which in prose occurs only in the Pentateuch (Ewald, Lehrbuch, § 142 b). The demonstrative pronoun הָאֵל (which, according to Ewald, § 183 a, is characteristic of the Pentateuch) occurs in Deu_4:42; Deu_7:22; Deu_19:11, and nowhere else out of the books of Moses, except in the late book, 1Ch_20:8, and the Aramaic Ezr_5:15. The use of the ה locale, which is comparatively rare in later writings, is common to Deuteronomy with the other books of the Pentateuch; and so is the old and rare form of writing תַּמְצֶאן, and the termination of the future in אּיּן. The last, according to Konig (A.-T. Stud. 2 Heft), is more common in the Pentateuch than in any other book: it occurs fifty-eight times in Deuteronomy. Twice even in the preterite (Deu_8:3; Deu_8:16) a like termination presents itself; on the peculiarity of which Ewald (§ 190 b, note) remarks, as being the original and fuller form. Other archaisms which are common to the whole five books are: the shortening of the Hiphil, לִרְאֹת, 33; לִעְשֵׁר, Deu_26:12, etc.; the use of קרה קרא, “to meet;” the construction of the passive with אֵה of the object (for instance, Deu_20:8); the interchange of the older כֶּשֶׂב (Deu_14:4) with the more usual כֶּבֶשׂ; the use of זָכוּר. (instead of זָכָר), Deu_16:16; Deu_20:13, a form which disappears altogether after the Pentateuch; many ancient words, such as שְׁגִר יְקוּם אָבַיב (שֶׁגֶי, Exo_13:12). Among these are some which occur besides only in the book of Joshua, or else in very late writers, like Ezekiel, who, as is always the case in the decay of a language, studiously imitated the oldest forms; some which are found afterwards only in poetry, as אֲלָפַים (Eze_7:13; Eze_28:4, etc.) and מְתַים, so common in Deuteronomy. Again, this book has a number of words which have an archaic character. Such are, חֶרְמֵשׁ(for the later מִגָּל), טֶנֶא(instead of סִל); the old Canaanitish הִצּאֹן עִשְׁתְּרוֹת, “offspring of the flocks;” יְשֻׁרוּן, which as a name of Israel is borrowed, Isa_44:2; הֵהַין (Deu_1:41), “to act rashly,” הִסְכַּית, “to be silent;” הֶעֵַניק, (Deu_15:14), “to give,” lit. “to put like a collar on the neck;” הַתְעִמֵּר, “to play the lord;” מִדְוֶה, “sickness.”
(c) A fondness for the use of figures is another peculiarity of Deuteronomy. See Deu_29:17. Deuteronomy 18; Deu_28:13; Deu_28:44; Deu_1:31; Deu_1:44; Deu_8:5; Deu_28:29; Deu_28:49. Of similar comparisons there are but few (Delitzsch says but three) in the other books. The results are most surprising when we compare Deuteronomy with the Book of the Covenant (Exodus 19-24) on the one hand, and with Psalms 90 (which is said to be Mosaic) on the other. To cite but one example: the images of devouring fire and of the bearing on eagles' wings occur only in the Book of the Covenant and in Deuteronomy. Comp. Exo_24:17 with Deu_4:24; Deu_9:3; and Exo_19:4 with Deu_22:11. So again, not to mention numberless undesigned coincidences between Psalms 90 and the book of Deuteronomy, especially chap. 32, we need only here cite the phrase מִעֲשֵׂה יָדִיַם (Psalms 90, 17), “work of the hands,” as descriptive of human action generally, which runs through the whole of Deu_2:7; Deu_14:29; Deu_16:15; Deu_24:19; Deu_28:12; Deu_30:9. The same close affinity, both as to matter and style, exists between the section to which we have already referred in Leviticus (chap. 17-20, so manifestly different from the rest of that book), the Book of the Covenant (Exodus 19-24), and Deuteronomy.
(d) In addition to all this, and very much more might be said — for a whole harvest has been gleaned on this field by Schultz in the Introduction to his work on Deuteronomy — in addition to all these peculiarities which are arguments for the Mosaic authorship of the book, we have here, too, the evidence strong and clear from post-Mosaic times and writings. The attempt, by a wrong interpretation of 2 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 34, to bring down Deuteronomy as low as the time of Manasseh fails utterly. A century earlier the Jewish prophets borrow their words and their thoughts from Deuteronomy. Amos shows how intimate his acquaintance was with Deuteronomy by such passages as Deu_2:9; Deu_4:11; Deu_9:7, whose matter and form are both colored by those of that book. Hosea, who is richer than Amos in these references to the past, while full of allusions to the whole law (Hos_6:7; Hos_12:4, etc.; Hos_13:9-10), in one passage (Hos_8:12) using the remarkable expression, “I have written to him the ten thousand things of my law,” manifestly includes Deuteronomy (comp. 11:8 with Deu_29:22), and in many places shows that that book was in his mind. Comp. 4:13 with Deu_12:2; Deu_8:13 with Deu_28:68; Deu_11:3 with Deu_1:31; Deu_13:6 with Deu_8:11-14. Isaiah begins his prophecy with the words, “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth,” taken from the mouth of Moses in Deu_32:1. In fact, echoes of the tones of Deuteronomy are heard throughout the solemn and majestic discourse with which his prophecy opens. (See Caspari, Beitr age zur Eninl. in d. Buch Jesaia, p. 203-210., The same may be said of Micah. In his protest against the apostasy of the nation from the covenant with Jehovah, he appeals to the mountains as the sure foundations of the earth, in like manner as Moses (Deu_32:1) to the heavens and the earth. The controversy of Jehovah with his people (Mic_6:3-5) is a compendium, as it were, of the history of the Pentateuch from Exodus onwards, while the expression עֲבָדַים בֵּית, “slave-house” of Egypt, is taken from Deu_7:8; Deu_13:5. In 6:8 there is no doubt an allusion to Deu_10:12, and the threatenings of 6:13-16 remind us of Deuteronomy 28 as well as of Leviticus 26. Since, then, not only Jeremiah and Ezekiel, but Amos and Hosea, Isaiah and Micah speak in the words of Deuteronomy, as well as in words borrowed from other portions of the Pentateuch, we see at once how untenable is the theory of those who, like Ewald, maintain that Deuteronomy was composed during the reign of Manasseh, or, as Vaihinger does, during that of Hezekiah.
(e) But, in truth, the book speaks for itself. No imitator could have written in such a strain. We scarcely need the express testimony of the work to its own authorship. But, having it, we find all the internal evidence conspiring to show that it came from Moses. Those magnificent discourses, the grand roll of which can be heard and felt even in a translation, came warm from the heart and fresh from the lips of Israel's lawgiver. They are the outpourings of a solicitude which is nothing less than parental. It is the father uttering his dying advice to his children, no less than the prophet counseling and admonishing his people. What book can vie with it either in majesty or in tenderness? What words ever bore more surely the stamp of genuineness? If Deuteronomy be only the production of some timorous reformer, who, conscious of his own weakness, tried to borrow dignity and weight from the name of Moses, then assuredly all arguments drawn from internal evidence for the composition of any work are utterly useless. We can never tell whether an author is wearing the mask of another, or whether it is he himself who speaks to us. In spite, therefore, of the dogmatism of modern critics, we declare unhesitatingly for the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy. SEE DEUTERONOMY.
3. Testimony of other Witnesses to the Author. —
(1.) Our Lord and his Apostles. — Their language is such that the hypothesis of the Pentateuch not being the work of Moses must create a very painful feeling in the mind of every true and simple-hearted follower of Christ. Comp. Mat_15:1-9 and Mar_7:1-13, where the fifth commandment and the law which sentenced to death the man who cursed his parents are ascribed indifferently to God and to Moses, and are put in opposition to the commandments of men which had grown up by a course of traditions. In Mat_22:24 we read of the Sadducees attempting to puzzle our Lord about the resurrection: “Master, Moses said,” etc., or as it is in Mark and Luke, “Moses wrote unto us,” referring to the law in Deu_25:5-10. Jesus answered them, “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God... But as touching the resurrection of the dead. have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying,” etc.; or as in Mark, “Have ye not read in the book of Moses;” or as in Luke, “That the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord,” etc.; all three quoting from Exo_3:6. Again, in Mat_19:4-5, in answer to the Pharisees who tempted him on the subject of divorce, our Lord said to them, “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning, made them male and female, and said,” etc., quoting Gen_2:24. Upon this they asked him, “Why did Moses then commanded to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?” referring to Deu_24:1. He replied, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives.” The language is not less distinct in the parallel passage (Mar_10:2-9). There is also the testimony of the risen Savior to the written law of Moses as distinguished from the other Scriptures, namely, the Prophets and the Psalms (Luk_24:27; Luk_24:44-45). Without insisting on others of less distinctness (such as Luk_2:23-24; Joh_8:17; Act_7:37; Act_7:44; Act_15:21; Rom_10:5; Rom_10:19; 1Co_9:9; Heb_8:5), we ask particular attention to two statements by our Lord. In Luk_16:29; Luk_16:31, “They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them. .... If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.” Without even the slight intervention of a parable, our Lord said (Joh_5:46-47), “Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words? “In illustration of our Lord's argument, and as a last testimony to Moses by the apostles, we quote the confession of Paul to king Agrippa (Act_26:22), “Having therefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this (lay, witnessing both to small and great, saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come;” and his earlier confession to Felix (24:14), “After the manner which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and the prophets.” These two statements by Paul make it plain that what he meant by the writings of Moses was the written law as received among the Jews of his day, and not any shorter work, such as critics have imagined to be the genuine work of Moses and the germ which expanded into our present Pentateuch; a hypothesis which is also contradicted by the fact that the quotations of our Lord and his apostles are as freely made from the portions which the critics ascribe with greatest confidence to later writers as from the other portions which they concede to be more ancient. In reference to these testimonies we observe,
(a) the habitual reply has indeed been that it was not the business of our Lord and his apostles to teach Biblical criticism. But the rejoinder of Witsius is as satisfactory as ever, though the precise matter in debate has somewhat shifted since his time. “Certainly Christ and his apostles were not teachers of criticism, such as those men demand that they themselves shall be considered, who at the present day claim as their own the realm of literature in every branch of knowledge whatsoever: yet they were teachers of the truth, and they did not permit themselves to be imposed upon by the ignorance of the masses or by the astuteness of the ruling class. They certainly did not come into the world to foster vulgar errors and to protect them by their authority, and to spread them, not among the Jews alone, but also far and wide among the nations who depended exclusively upon them.”
(b) A fairer reply has been that the name “the law of Moses,” or the expression “Moses wrote,” etc., implies no more than “the psalms of David,” “David said,” etc.; and that if the latter class of phrases may be used without affirming the entire psalter to be David's own composition, or without decisively attributing to David the particular psalm which is quoted, we are justified in taking the former class of phrases equally in an indeterminate sense. It is probably in this way that a man's mind most readily finds relief when critical objections disturb his faith in the composition of the Pentateuch by Moses. and at the same time he holds fast his faith in Scripture as a whole; and it is well that there are such halting-places where one may rest in a downward course, and from which he may start in the hope of recovering himself. But we cannot concede that the phrases are really parallel. Were there no other difference, there is plainly a broad distinction between a collection of devotional poetry, which may be partly or wholly anonymous without injury to its character and usefulness, and the authoritative history of the commencement of Israel's national existence, of its covenant relation to God, and of its constitution and laws as a state; for this is a document whose value is intimately connected with the age and circumstances of its author.
(2.) The Rest of the Old-Testament Scriptures. — These were in existence centuries before these testimonies of Jesus and his apostles, and they contain copious evidence that the Pentateuch was written at the time of Moses, and by himself or under his directions. Beyond all doubt there are numerous most striking references both in the prophets and in the books of Kings to passages which are found in our present Pentateuch. One thing is certain, that the theory of men like Von Bohlen, Vatke, and others, who suppose the Pentateuch to have been written in the times of the latest kings, is utterly absurd. It is established in the most convincing manner that the legal portions of the Pentateuch already existed in writing before the separation of the two kingdoms. Even as regards the historical portions, there are often in the later books almost verbal coincidences of expression, which render it more than probable that these also existed in writing. All this has been argued with much learning, the most indefatigable research, and in some instances with great success, by Hengstenberg in his Authentie des Pentateuchs. We will satisfy ourselves by pointing out some of the most striking passages in which the coincidences between the later books and the Pentateuch (omitting Deuteronomy here) appear.
(a) Beginning with the historical books, the references to the law of Moses as a written work of supreme authority in Israel are particularly numerous and distinct in the book of Joshua, as might be expected in the history of the personal friend of Moses, and the close attendant upon him, to whom, by divine direction, Moses intrusted the completion of the work of conquering the Promised Land, and settling the people in it, and establishing among them the worship and the laws of God. The evidence is so abundant and indubitable that the only resource of our opponents has been an allegation, without any evidence, that the book of Joshua is comparatively of very recent origin, written perhaps after the Exile, or at least not long before it; an allegation which has been somewhat modified by others, but only to make it more arbitrary and improbable, when they pronounce it to be a sixth book of that history of the original of the Hebrew nation which has come down to us under the name of the five books of Moses, with certain ancient elements in it, yet wrought up to its present form only in a very late age, much as they imagine the Pentateuch to have been. The book of Judges has been said to want such clear evidence to the Pentateuch; if so, the reason must be sought, partly in the greater distance from it in point of time, and still more in its nature, as a series of sketches of the defections of the people and the chastisements which followed in order to lead them to repentance. Yet the entire work is meant to bring the conduct and condition of the people to the test of the law of God, as the known and acknowledged standard of duty: the opening account of the criminal neglect which left so many remnants of Canaanites in the midst of the tribes of Israel is meaningless except on the supposition that the law of Moses and the transactions of Joshua are already known; and some parts of it, such as the histories of Gideon and of Samson, abound in admitted references both to the facts of the Pentateuch and to its language. Nay, the cases of, grossest divergence from the law of Moses which it records are no proof that this law was unknown, or destitute of authority, at the time its author lived, as has been rashly asserted: on the contrary, they carry evidence within themselves that they were sinful; because they were the acts of men whose whole conduct was vile and disorderly, or because it is noticed that they drew down divine judgments on those who were concerned in perpetrating them. The succeeding historical books of Ruth, Samuel, and Kings present similar evidence. In the books of Kings we have references as follows: 1Ki_20:42 to Lev_27:29; Lev_21:3 to Lev_25:23, Num_36:8; Num_21:10 to Num_35:30 (comp. Deu_17:6-7; Deu_19:15); 22:17 to Num_27:16; Num_27:11; 2Ki_3:20 to Exo_29:38, etc.; Exo_4:1 to Lev_25:39, etc.; Lev 5:27 to Exo_4:6, Num_12:10; Num_6:18 to Gen_19:11 to Lev_26:29; Lev_7:2; Lev_7:19 to Gen_7:14; Gen_7:3 to Lev_13:46 (comp. Num_5:3).
(b) Especially remarkable is the testimony arising from the existence of the line of prophets in Israel;
CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.

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