THE 
 
 AGE AND AUTHORSHIP 
 
 OF THE PENTATEUCH 
 
 (■((NSIDEUKI), 
 
 IN FURTHER REPLY TO 
 
 BISHOP COLE N SO 
 
 Part II. 
 
 REV. WILLIAM H. ^ HOARE, M.A. 
 
 LATE FELLOW OF SJ'. JoHx's COLLECJK, fAMUHlDUE ; 
 AlTilOJ! OF ''(irUTLINES OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTOllY,' " VEKAtlTV oF GKNKSIft 
 
 EIC. Ei"C. 
 
 LOKDOX: 
 
 RIVIXGTOXS, WATEELOO PLACE. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE :— DEIGHTON, BELL & CO. 
 
 1803. 
 
 Prica One Shilllmj. 
 
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 ^1- 
 
 ^~, 
 
 C-1 H7 
 
THE \^9^/!?ALf''" 
 
 AGE AND AUTHORSHIP 
 
 OF THE PENTATEUCH 
 
 CONSIDERED, 
 
 IN FURTHER REPLY TO 
 
 BISHOP CO LENS O, 
 
 Part II. 
 
 BY THE ^ 
 
 REV. WILLIAM h/hOARE, M.A. 
 
 LATE FELLOW OF ST. JOHN's COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE ; 
 AUTHOR OF " OUTLINES OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY," " VERACITY OF GENESIS. 
 
 ETC. ETC. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE :— DEIGHTON, BELL & CO. 
 
 1863. 
 
u 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 R. CLAY-, SON, AND TAYLOR, PRINTRR5, 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Samuelist Theory of the Authorship of the Pentateuch considered, — 
 First, on its own Merits, as tested by its Consequences ; Secondly, 
 in Connexion with the supposed Conclusions of Bishop Colenso's 
 Part I. , Page 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 On the Genuineness of the Pentateuch Page 15 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Who were the ' Elohist ' and ' Jehovist ' ? The ' Document-theory ' not in- 
 compatible with the full admission of the Canon : — the danger lying, 
 not in the principle, but in the misapplication of the principle. — Further 
 Objections to the Samuelist Origin of the Pentateuch. — The Name 
 Jehovah not unknown in Patriarchal, and even ante- Patriarchal Times. 
 The Origination of this Name, and its first use among the Hebrews, 
 justly called by Bishop Colenso ' the Pivot of his whole Argument. ' 
 The Argument showm to be erroneous and inconclusive . . Page 28 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Tlie general Argument recapitulated. Its absolute dependence on the ante- 
 cedent Assumptions of Part I. Argument from the incidental ' Signs of 
 a later Date of the Pentateuch ' stated, with examples. Explanation of 
 examples. Concluding Remarks Page 53 
 
 W 
 
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE READER. 
 
 The most perfect reverence for Scripture is not incompatible with 
 the admission that, by lapse of time, and human infirmity in the 
 care and transcribing of manuscripts, some errors may have crept 
 into the text. And here, undoubtedly, is presented a fair field 
 for sacred criticism, in detecting and, if possible, rectifying these 
 errors. 
 
 In the following pages, however, there is nothing but what may 
 be easily judged of by any who possess a moderate acquaintance 
 with the Scriptures, and who bring to the study of them, among 
 other necessary qualifications, a fai"^ "hare of the " plain common 
 sense " which is the boast of our countrymen, and to which Bishop 
 Colenso emphatically appeals. " Difficulties are to be found," says 
 an eloquent layman of our own day ; " but, blessed be God ! they 
 " melt away before the loving heart, the patient search, the prayer 
 " of faith. Objections there are to which no sufficient answer 
 " could at one time have been given, but this only, that they may 
 " yet prove to be unfounded, and that, in the course of God's 
 " providence, the full solution may yet be revealed. This expecta- 
 '' tion has, in modern times, beeix repeatedly realised long after the 
 " faithful heart that cherished it had ceased to beat." * 
 
 * Rij^ht Hon. Joseph Napier, M. P. for Dublin University. 
 
ON THE PENTATEUCH 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE SAMUELIST AUTHORSHIP CONSIDERED. 
 
 The Bishop has brought before us a new class of pheno- 
 mena, so to call them, distinct altogether from those in the 
 former part of his book, yet pointing, he thinks, to the same 
 conclusion, and both unfavo'^'^nble to the age and authorship 
 usually assigned for the Pentateuch. The former class of 
 phenomena, the reader will remember, consisted in certain 
 alleged ^contradictions,' 'errors,' 'absurdities,' &c., on the 
 face of the sacred history, rendering it wholly unreliable as an 
 historical document, and only to be explained on the hypo- 
 thesis of something like mythical and legendary origin, but 
 quite inconsistent with the notion of inspiration. 
 
 And now, in this Second Part, our attention is called to a 
 set of facts and observations connected more with the style, 
 language, and ' composite structure ' of the books — to the 
 occurrence of words, phrases, and incidental pieces of in- 
 formation, which betray the work of a much later age than 
 is at all compatible with the idea that the books could pos- 
 sibly have been written by Moses. On these two classes of 
 observed phenomena, the Bishop proceeds to build his induc- 
 tion, that the books cannot possibly be of Mosaic, or even of 
 inspired, origin. His work of destruction ended, he then 
 passes on to the really more interesting part of his book, 
 
 B 
 
where he gives us at last some positive ideas of his own, and 
 tries his hand on the more difficult work of constructing; 
 what we may call his own theory on the composition of the 
 books hitherto called^ or considered, the Books of Moses. 
 His belief and conclusion is that the groundwork was by 
 Samuel (293, 462, 473, 485) ; that this was supplemented by 
 some following disciple of that prophet (285, 286, 336, 342, 
 488) ; while Deuteronomy was added by a still later hand 
 (473 (xx.), 474), probably by Jeremiah. 
 
 It can scarcely be necessary to contrast with this theory 
 the canonical view of the same books. We may assume for 
 the moment, that the canon gives them entirely to Moses. 
 What 1 would first remark is, that here we have an induction 
 of facts on the Bishop's part, and a theory constructed to 
 meet the facts. And now that we have got him on positive 
 ground, we have the right to test his induction and theory 
 by one or two simple examples. 
 
 (1.) By way of an example, then, of the Samuelist passages 
 of Scripture, let us take the following : " And Moses went 
 " up unto God, and the Lord called unto him out of the 
 " mountain, saying. Thus shalt thou say to the house of 
 " Jacob, and tell the children of Israel : Ye have seen what 
 "I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' 
 " wings, and brought you unto myself Now, therefore, if 
 " ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then 
 " ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people, 
 
 " for all the earth is mine And the Lord said unto 
 
 " Moses, Lo ! I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the 
 " people may hear when I speak with thee, and believe thee 
 
 " for ever And Moses brought forth the people out of the 
 
 " camp to meet with God ; and they stood at the nether part 
 *' of the mount. And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, 
 *' because the Lord descended upon it in fire ; and the smoke 
 " thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole 
 " mount quaked greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet 
 " sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, 
 " and God answered him by a voice. And the Lord came 
 
" down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mount ; and the 
 *' Lard called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses 
 " went up, . . . And God spake all these words, saying " . . . . 
 [Here follow the Ten ComraandnientSe] Ex. xix. 3, 4, 5, 9, 
 17 — 20 ; XX. 1. On this passage it is obvious to remark, 
 that the Sinaitic covenant is here traced to its original in a 
 solemn proclamation on Mount Sinai, by the voice of God 
 Himself, to his servant Moses, shortly after the departure of 
 the Israelites from the land of Egypt ; the people are further 
 addressed in this passage as the very people who HAD SEEN — 
 i.e. who HAD BEEN EYE-WITNESSES of— the w^onders which God 
 had wrought among the Egyptians. And the solemnities of 
 the proclamation were with this special view, " that they may 
 "BELIEVE THEE FOR EVER." But, if Samuel was the author, 
 there was no need of "belief in Moses '^ at all — much less of 
 the perpetual belief here spoken of, as if dating from Moses, 
 and as if the covenant was secure of being carefully handed 
 down from him to all future generations of Israel. The 
 terrors of Mount Sinai became indelibly associated, in the 
 minds of this people, ever afterwards, with the delivery of 
 * the Law,' and with the writing of it, by Moses, as we see 
 exemplified in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the pealing 
 sound from the Mount is contrasted with the gentler accents 
 of the Gospel, and we have that vivid description of "the mount 
 '' that might be touched, and that burned with fire, and black- 
 " ness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, 
 " and the voice of words .... and so terrible was the sight, 
 " that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake'' (Heb. xii. 
 18 — 21). The same awful scene is twice commemorated in 
 the sixty-eighth Psalm. "The earth shook, the heavens also 
 " dropped at the presence of God; even Sinai itself was moved 
 " at the presence of God, the God of Israel." "The chariots 
 " of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels : the 
 " Lord is among them as in Sinai, in the holy place" (ver. 
 8, 17). But in the original passage, what particularity, and 
 what life there is in the account ! " The smoke as the smoke 
 " of a furnace," and " the voice of the trumpet exceeding 
 
4 
 
 " loudl' and " all tlie mountain quaking greatly, ^^ and the 
 audience with the Almighty " on the top of the mount." 
 Referring again to Deuteronomy, where precisely the same 
 scene is in view, how similar the language, how equally 
 characteristic of the eye-witness of the scene ! " These words 
 " the Lord spake unto all your assemhly in the mount out 
 " of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick dark- 
 '' ness, WITH A GREAT VOICE : and He added no more. And 
 '' He wrote them in two tables of stone and delivered them 
 " UNTO ME." Deut. V. 22. The declaration, too, in Exodus 
 is remarkable * — " When the voice of the trumpet sounded 
 " long .... Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice'' 
 And this ^ voice,^ be it observed, was at first in the audience 
 of all the people; but alarmed at the fearful sound, they 
 appealed to Moses to wait alone upon the mount, and so it 
 was that " Moses spake, and the Lord answered him by a 
 voice." Can all this have been an invention of Samuel ? 
 mere ' legend' improved by his 'genius' into the semblance 
 of a Divine revelation ? 
 
 (2.) For another example, let us try Exod. xxxi. 18. " And 
 " he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of com- 
 " muning with him upon Mount Sinai, two tables of testi- 
 " mony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God." 
 Here is something more circumstantial still. Yet the same 
 act is repeated ; and after the breaking of the first two tables, 
 they are again replaced by others, said expressly, as before, 
 
 * If it be tliouglit that some precepts of the Mosaic law were of inferior 
 sanction, as not proceeding directly from Divine command, but rather from the 
 authority of Moses, acting under the Divine dispensation committed to him ; 
 and if the words so frequently occurring in such instances — " The Lord said," 
 *^ The Lord spake imto Moses, saying," &c. &c. be considered as a kind of 
 customary preamble, as one might readily think, where they occur so repeatedly 
 in Numbers and Leviticus ; — yet this certainly cannot be said of such a thing 
 as the solemn delivery of the Law on ]\Iount Sinai amidst all the attendant 
 circumstances referred to in the text. The Hebrews, certainl}^ were quite 
 accustomed to distinguish between the extraordinary sanctity of what was 
 received by the Bath-Col, or express voice of Jehovah, and the sanctity of 
 that which came through the hand, and upon the authority of their several 
 priests and lawgivers. 
 
to be ''written by the finger of God" (eh. xxxiv. 1, 281). 
 From which we may naturally infer, that if Moses himself 
 was directed to "write" yet other '* words" of the law, such 
 writing would extend to many other particulars besides the 
 Ten Commandments. And accordingly the Samuelist passage 
 which I am about to take next, is usually considered to 
 embrace the greater part of those precepts of the law which 
 extend Exod. chap. xx. — xxiii., or even to include the ritual- 
 istic ceremonial of ch. xxv. — xxx., xxxiv. 12 — 2Q. 
 
 (3.) The passage is, '^ And the Lord said unto Moses, Write 
 "thou these WORDS; for after the tenor of these words, I 
 " have made a covenant with thee and with Israel " (Exod. 
 xxxiv. 27). Now, if this precept had never been recorded 
 before the time of Samuel, it surely would have been better 
 for Samuel's reputation — who, according to the Bishop, had 
 only his own taste and sense of expediency to guide him, 
 and was not bound to the literal historical truth (285 — 287, 
 485) — to have suppressed all mention of the supposed 
 command to Moses; for it could serve only to bring his 
 mission into contempt, that so plain a precept should for 
 many years have been so wantonly neglected and disobeyed 
 (488, 500). 
 
 (4.) But there is another curious Samuelist relic about the 
 * manna,' if we are to be guided by the Bishop ! The Jews, 
 in the time of our Blessed Lord, inquired, '• What sign 
 " showest thou, then, that we may see and believe thee ? What 
 " dost thou work ? Our fathers did eat manna in the desert ; 
 *' as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to 
 *' eat. . . . Jesus said unto them . . . Your fathers did eat 
 " manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread 
 " which Cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat 
 "thereof, and not die" (John vi. 30, 31, 43, 49, 50). 
 The allusion here is to Exod. xvi. 12 — 36; and Ave observe 
 how it is clearly verified by our Lord. But it is a Samuelist 
 passage, according to the Bishop, and ends with that excep- 
 tionable verse, "Now an omer is the tenth part of an ephah" 
 (Exod. xvi. 36), of which more hereafter. Surely, if it was 
 
6 
 
 Avritten by Samuel, the wonder is greater than ever that the 
 imposture was never discovered till St. John's time, to say- 
 nothing of its being passed over in silence by our Lord 
 Himself. But there remains — 
 
 (5.) The most perplexing passage of all, on the Samuelist 
 theory, viz. Exod. vi. 2, 3 : *' And God spake unto Moses 
 " and said unto him_, I am the Lord ; and I appeared unto 
 "■ Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God 
 " Almighty, but by my name Jehovah was I not known to 
 " them." 
 
 For my part, I should shrink from characterizing the act 
 of Samuel, if he really invented such a passage as this, as 
 the Bishop's theory requires him to have done. I shall, 
 therefore, leave it to the Bishop's pen to make the most 
 handsome apology for this act of a man who, in his old age, 
 and upon the review of his past life, seems to have been re- 
 markably sensitive on the point of honour and integrity, for 
 he says, " Behold, here I am : witness against me before the 
 " Lord, and before his anointed . . . Whom have I de- 
 " frauded ? or of whose hand have I received any bribe to 
 " blind mine eyes therewith ? . . . I will teach you the good 
 " and the right way. Only fear the Lord, and serve Him 
 " IN TRUTH with all your heart" (1 Sam. xii. 3, 23, 24). 
 
 To describe, then, the transaction here attributed to 
 Samuel, " From what we have already seen," writes the 
 Bishop, " of the unhistorical character, generally, of the 
 " account of the Exodus, we have no longer any reason for 
 '' supposing it to be necessary to believe that the name 
 " Jehovah really originated in the way described in Ex. vi. 
 " Yet it must have originated in some way— at some time or 
 " other in the real history of the Hebrew people, just as the 
 " Zulu name for the Creator, Unkulunkulu, ' the Great- 
 " Great One,' must have been first used by some one, in 
 " some part or other of their past history. Is it not possible, 
 *' then, that the name Jehovah may have been first employed 
 " by Samuel in order to mark more distinctly the difference 
 "between the Elohim of the Hebrews and the Elohim of the 
 
" nations round them, and make it more difficult for them to 
 ** fall away to the practice of idolatry" (839)? How curiously 
 near to the truth this latter remark is, I need scarcely stop 
 to observe ; would that the Bishop improved it into the 
 further reflection, how worthy'such a purpose was to be made 
 the foundation of an express Divine revelation, — and he, too, 
 would have turned his thoughts to Moses as the more likely 
 agent of the Divine purpose in this respect. But, true to 
 his theory, the Bishop writes again : " The Elohist writer 
 " [supposed to be Samuel, and to whom * it is certain that 
 " E. vi. 1 — 13 is due ' (473, iii.)] represents the name as 
 "having been first announced to Moses and the Israelites 
 " at the time of the Exodus. And he carefully avoids using 
 " it in all the foregoing part of the story from Adam down- 
 *' wards, through the times of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and 
 " Joseph, to that of Moses. The Jehovist [a later and sup- 
 plementary writer, who is also supposed to have been the 
 chief contbiuator of the Elohist after Exod. vi. 342, 344] 
 *' uses it freely all along. . . . May it not be possible that 
 " the Elohist -wrote at a time when the word w as quite new 
 " and fresh coined (!)... and, wishing to enforce the 
 *' adoption of this strange Name, may have composed for the 
 " purpose this portion of the Mosaic story, while the later 
 " Jehovist uses it freely from the first, without perceiving, or 
 " at least without feeling very strongly, the contradiction 
 "thereby imported into the narrative?" (338). But, to com- 
 plete the picture of Samuel in the part here attributed to 
 him. " It is not necessary to suppose that the narrative of 
 " Samuel [in Ex. vi. and elsewhere throughout the Penta- 
 " teuch !] is a pure fiction or invention of the Prophet's own 
 " imagination — in short, merely ' a pious fraud.' It is very 
 " possible that there may have been, as we have said, floating 
 " about in the memories of the Hebrew tribes, many legen- 
 " dary stories of their ancestors . . . it is quite possible that 
 " the passage of the Bed Sea, the manna, the quails, and 
 " other miracles, may thus have had a real historical founda- 
 " tion (!) . . . And Samuel may have desired to collect these 
 
B 
 
 " legends and make them the basis of a narrative . . . by 
 " which he might be able to help forward their civil and 
 " religious welfare under kingly government, and more espe- 
 " cially under the rule of his favourite David, im.parting to 
 ''them their high religious tone and spiritual character" 
 (465, 466). 
 
 This, let it be observed, would have happened some four 
 hundred years after the time of the Exodus, and thus 
 entirely cuts away the authority of the books as the compo- 
 sition of an eye-witness, or of an historian contemporary 
 with the events which he relates. 
 
 But, if the Elohist ventured manfully, the Jehovist carried 
 it with a still higher hand! Observing that the Elohist — for 
 whom at the same time he had a great respect (342, 343) — 
 had broken oiF the chain of his narrative at or about Ex. vi., 
 he determined to take upon himself to retouch the whole 
 work without too strictly adhering to the plan and method 
 of the Elohist (287, 253). And thus, even in the preceding 
 as well as subsequent parts of the history, he introduced 
 freely the new Name of the Almighty. In which case, " he 
 " must have retained deliberately the grand Elohistic 
 '' chapter, Ex. vi., as too interesting and important to be 
 " omitted in the story of the Exodus, though aware of the 
 " inconsistency thus occasioned, or, it may be, because he 
 " did not /<°e/ very strongly the contradiction thus involved, 
 " as he clearly did not feel the contradictions which exist 
 '' between his own accounts of the Creation and the Flood, 
 " and those of his predecessors, or even as multitudes of 
 " devout and thoughtful readers have studied the Bible 
 " closely in our own days, without perceiving these obvious 
 " discrepancies." (344.) 
 
 And so pleased is the Bishop with his discovery, that he 
 says, " Thus we have something like sure ground to stand 
 " upon ; — and can at once account for many of the strange 
 '' phenomena which we observe in the Pentateuch ^^ (464). 
 And, especially, we can see, how there is not an atom of in- 
 spiration about the books from beginning to end ! as other- 
 
9 
 
 wise, " It is inconceivable how any pious Israelite, much less 
 " a Prophet or a Priest, should have ventured to mix up, 
 " without distinction, large and important sections of history 
 " of their own composition with writings so venerable and 
 '' sacred, which had been handed down from the time of 
 " Moses, and were really believed to have been written by his 
 " hand, and, chiefly, from the very mouth of Jehovah Himself. 
 " It is inconceivable that he could have dared to commit an 
 " act of such profanity, under any circumstances. But, cer- 
 " tainly, he could not have done so, without distinguishing in 
 " some way the Divine words as written down by Moses, 
 
 " from his own We are compelled, it would seem, to 
 
 " the conclusion, that the later writer or writers did not be- 
 " lieve in the unspeakably sacred character of any older do- 
 " cuments, which may have come down to them, — that they 
 '' did not receive them, as really written by the hand of 
 " Moses, and conveying, on his own authority, the astonish- 
 " ing facts of his awful communion with God." (253, 254.) 
 No ! they certainly ' did not perceive ' an infallible authority 
 *in the preceding Elohistic documents,' but for this very 
 sufficient reason, as we shall presently see, viz., that those 
 documents were first invested with authority when the col- 
 lection and revision of them was made, and not till then. 
 Before that time, they existed in the form of traditions, held 
 in sacred esteem, as handed down among the faithful from 
 father to son ; but they had never yet been made the ground 
 of a directly divine dispensation. 
 
 And here I should like one word with the Bishop, who, 
 without regard to the venerable traditions of the Jews — 
 without respect to the express letter of Scripture, as at 
 Exod. iii. and vi. — ventures to build scheme after scheme upon 
 pure assumptions of his own, gathered by his own light of 
 nature from the prima facie appearances of certain Scripture 
 words, phrases, appellations, and so forth. "Would he himself 
 believe it, I would ask, if he heard it affirmed with all the 
 confidence in the world, that whereas it was reported, and 
 there seemed some around for the belief, that the Bishop of 
 
10 
 
 Natal had published a work that went by the name of 
 '' Bishop Colenso on the Pentateuch," yet it was perfectly 
 certain that no Bishop could have written such a book, inas- 
 much as the avowed purpose of it was to overthrow the 
 credibility of the Scriptures (or, at least, of the Pentateuch 
 and the Book of Joshua) ; and that no other Bishop of the 
 Church of England had ever been known to treat the Bible 
 with such evident disrespect ? That, indeed, it was ^* impos- 
 sible " and " inconceivable " that the writer of such a book 
 should ever have been in England in his life, still less have 
 borne honours in the Church ; and, if there was any founda- 
 tion for the report at all, it must have been a stranger from 
 foreign parts that wrote the book — perhaps a Zulu, who had 
 studied the English language with some success, but certainly 
 knew nothing of the habits, feelings, or faith of the English 
 people. 
 
 But the reader is getting, perhaps, by degrees a little 
 better acquainted with the Zulu tongue, and also with the 
 general plan of this Second Part ' on the Pentateuch ' ? We 
 must be careful, however, in following the Bishop, to take 
 our vocabulary — I mean our premisses — with us ; — or we 
 shall lose ground and find him suddenly shooting ahead, 
 and not be able to overtake him. Let me just explain, 
 therefore, that the premisses quietly assumed in the Second 
 Part are no other than the conclusions supposed to have been 
 successfully arrived at in Part L, and which are henceforth 
 to be made the ground or foundation for some new and more 
 important propositions. Let no one, therefore, imagine for 
 one instant that the speculations in Part I. are to pass away 
 as an idle dream, and be no more thought of; they are, on 
 the contrary, to be carried about wdth us as so many first 
 principles and fundamental axioms, to help us in taking a 
 true and correct view both of the Pentateuch and of all the 
 remaining books of the Old Testament. This cannot be too 
 well understood — or it will be not easy for us in the sequel 
 to explain to ourselves the confidence and satisfaction with 
 which the Bishop presses on from one deduction to another. 
 
11 
 
 I shall place, first, a passage which refers at once to the par- 
 ticular subject which we are just leaving, and embraces the 
 more general purport of the argument in this Second Part. 
 *' Thus, then, even if it were conceivable that Moses should 
 " have written a story, about matters in which he was per- 
 " sonally concerned, involving such contradictions, exaggera- 
 ** twns, and impossibilities, as we have already had before us " 
 (viz. in Part I.), " yet the fact above noticed would alone be 
 " decisive against such a supposition. The great body of the 
 " Pentateuch, and all the other historical books which follow 
 *' it, could not have been compiled until the name Jehovah 
 *' was in common popular use, and that was not till after, 
 *' at all events, the middle of David's reign." To clear his 
 meaning from all possibility of mistake, the Bishop devotes 
 an entire chapter in this Second Part (Part II. chap. I.) to 
 show that he considers his former reasons unanswerable, and 
 is still prepared to stake the whole historical credit of the 
 books on the little matters of detail — such as the number 
 of armed men ; the sheep * in the wilderness ; the number 
 of the congregation compared to the size of the Tabernacle ; 
 Moses and Joshua addressing all the people ; the extent 
 
 * At the risk of being tedious, I will briefly recapitulate the substance of 
 the answers made to one of the above supposed difiicultios ; viz. the supply of 
 sheep in the wilderness. Why .should they have longed " for the fiesh-pots of 
 Egypt," if they had had so many sheep of their own ? (Bishop Colenso 
 reckons 2,000,000 !) And for the one instance where they celebrated a Pass- 
 over, how easy to serve themselves of 'kids ' instead of 'lambs,' for it might 
 be "taken from the sheep or from the goats." (Ex. xii. 5.) If it be thought 
 that they must have taken lambs, why not buy them of the Midianites, who 
 were used to carry merchandise that way ? Moses knew the country well, 
 and was well known ; his orders would be obeyed, and the lambs served, 
 without any necessity of supposing flocks of "2,000,000 sheep, male and 
 female. " This is the substance of the answers to be given to this one objec- 
 tion. And this is all the difficulty ; for as to sacrifices in general they were 
 for the most part discontinued, as was the initiatory rite of circumcision, and 
 as were the passovers altogether after the first, till they came to the land of 
 Canaan. I am giWng the substance of a former reply on this single diffi- 
 culty : the other instances which occur in Part I. ch. iv. — ix. have not 
 been found insuperable ; — such as "Joshua addressing all the people," the 
 "priest carrjnng the off"al three-quarters of a mile on his hack on foot,'' (cor- 
 rected in the Bisliop's second edition to, '^ prrhnps vifh ihr ]if1p of nthrrs.") 
 
12 
 
 of thu camp and daily necessities of the people ; the census 
 taken twice, and the poll-tax once, with other difficulties; 
 armed Israelites to the number of 603,250 men ; and various 
 other small matters of detail which formed the main sub- 
 stance of his first number. He draws special attention to 
 this chapter in the Preface^ and says, "No reliance whatever 
 " can be placed on any of the details of the story . . . they 
 " are inextricably bound up wdth the Numbers/' (Pref. xv.) 
 And here, again, " Undoubtedly, as I have shown, I believe, 
 " sufficiently in Fart /., an unquestioning, implicit faith in 
 " all the details of the story of the Exodus, as recorded in 
 '' the Pentateuch, involves, again and again, assent to propo- 
 " sitions as monstrous and absurd as that two and two make 
 '' five." (490.) 
 
 But this plan of Samuel was far surpassed in audacity by 
 that of the ^ Deuteronomist.' To believe that Deuteronomy 
 Avas by a still later hand, as the Bishop seeks to prove, we 
 must believe that the writer did not scruple to pass under 
 a fictitious name, and moreover in assuming the name to 
 appropriate also the office and honours of one of the most 
 celebrated persons that ever lived. Let us test this theory 
 again by an example or two. 
 
 (1.) "And I spake unto you at that time, saying, I am 
 " not able to bear you myself alone.'' — Deut. i. 9. " And 
 " I commanded you at that time all the things which ye 
 '' should do." — Deut. i. 18. And this address in the first 
 person, as from Moses himself speaking personally to the 
 people, is the continual style throughout the book, with but 
 very few exceptions. How unprincipled a fabrication this, 
 if it was not indeed the work of Moses ! — reason enough, 
 were there no other, to conclude that this at least could 
 not have been the act of ' Samuel ' or ' Jeremiah.' A man 
 must have required to have been trained in a difi'erent school 
 from that of Samuel (if we were right in our former estimate 
 of his character) before he could have attempted such an ab- 
 solute imposture as this in the face of all Israel ! And if the 
 Scriptures had not even begun to be written in the time of 
 
13 
 
 Samuel, as the Bishop pretends^ he may well find it difficult 
 to imagine what possible occupation there could have been 
 for the ' Schools of the Prophets/ which were at that time 
 beginning to make a name in Israel. From them, indeed, the 
 Bishop ingeniously argues that the first writings of Holy 
 Scripture emanated. But if they neither wrote Scripture, 
 nor had any to read, nor any copies to make or to preserve, 
 they must indeed have had little to occupy their minds. 
 And one cannot well see what means were at hand of 
 bringing them up to any useful occupation at all, though 
 the Bishop thinks that ' among the promising young men of his 
 time' (286) Samuel would have naturally found the exact 
 sort of youth who might help him in reducing to order the 
 floating traditions of the people, and in composing just such 
 a work as the Pentateuch (287) ! 
 
 (2.) Let us try a few more examples. We read that King 
 David, when his end was approaching, called his son to him 
 and said, " I go the way of all the earth : be thou strong 
 " therefore, and show thyself a man ; and keep the charge of 
 *' the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, to keep his statutes, 
 '' and his commandments, and his judgments, and his testi- 
 " monies, as it is written in the law of Moses, that thou 
 " mayest prosper in all that thou doest, and whithersoever 
 " thou turnest thyself." — 1 Kings ii. 2, 3. This description 
 of the law with the appended promise of a blessing runs 
 clearly in the style of Deuteronomy, as chap. iv. 1 : " Now 
 *' therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the 
 " judgments, which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may 
 " live, and go in and possess the land which the Lord God of 
 " your fathers giveth you.^^ We have the like blessing four 
 times repeated in connexion with the same injunction, chap, 
 vi. 2, 3, 1 8, 25. Between these appear the Ten Command- 
 ments, chap. V. 6—21. In chap. xi. 1: "Thou shalt love 
 " the Lord thy God, and keep his charge, and his statutes, 
 " and his judgments, and his commandments, alway.'^ In 
 chap. xvii. we have even a prospective exhortation to kings 
 themselves : '• When thou art come unto the land which the 
 " Lord thy God giveth thee . . . and shalt say, I will set a 
 
14 
 
 " king over me, like as all the nations that are about me. . , . 
 " It shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his king- 
 " dom, that he shall write him a copy of this law. . . . And 
 " he shall read therein all the days of his life : that he may 
 " learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of 
 " this law and these statutes, to do them. . . . that he 
 " may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, 
 " in the midst of Israel."— v. 14, 18, 19, 20. 
 
 Here, then, we have a King, who reigned subsequent to 
 the time of Samuel, but was well known to that prophet, 
 as the Bishop himself tells us (356), quoting the famihar 
 words of Moses in Deuteronomy, as words which he must 
 have known to be Samuel's, if the Samuelist theory be true; 
 and yet quoting them as genuine to Solomon himself, who 
 certainly would have known better than to allow the mis- 
 nomer to have remained upon the sacred page, had they 
 not certainly been the words of Moses. And yet the Bishop 
 avers that the Book of Deuteronomy was not even written 
 in Samuel's time ; but was the work of Jeremiah, wI\o lived 
 in the days of Jehoiachin, four hundred years after the ac- 
 cession of Solomon, here spoken of in the Book of Kings ! 
 
 (3.) But the Apostle St. Peter was as much deceived as 
 Solomon : for he tells us, '^ Moses truly said unto the 
 " fathers, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto 
 '' you of your brethren, like unto me ; him shall ye hear in 
 " all things whatsoever he shall say unto you." — Acts iii. 22. 
 The original of which is to be found, Deut. xviii. 18. But 
 if Jeremiah was the prophet, it makes sad work indeed with 
 types and ante-types, besides that it wholly belies, as in the 
 last instance, the word of inspiration itself. 
 
 Thus much may suffice to give us some idea of what the 
 consequences would be if the Bishop's theory were true. In 
 Avhat has been said, I have not, of course, been pretending 
 to unravel all the difficulties, nor even glance at all the 
 ingenious arguments by which the Bishop supports his view. 
 Keserving these for their proper place, I pass on now to the 
 general discussion of the broad question before us, concerning 
 '' the affe and authorship of the Pentateuch J' 
 
15 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ox THE GENUINENESS OF THE PENTATEUCH, 
 
 As we are challenged to a full investigation of the age 
 and authorship of the Pentateuch, let us divest ourselves 
 as far as we can of all preconceived opinions on either 
 side, and endeavour to look the whole subject in the face, 
 and not to lose ourselves altogether in minor matters of 
 detail. 
 
 The genuineness and authenticity of the five canonical 
 books of Scripture, called the Pentateuch, and commonly 
 ascribed to Moses, has from the earliest ages been the re- 
 ceived belief and persuasion of the Church. They have been 
 considered genuine, as being on the whole truly and properly, 
 under Divine inspiration, the work of Moses himself: and 
 authentic, because of the undoubted credit due to him, both 
 as the great lawgiver of Israel, and as a man eminently raised 
 up in the Divine counsels to be the founder of their national 
 law and ecclesiastical polity. 
 
 On the other hand, in the course of the two last centuries, 
 this general belief of the Church has been called in question. 
 It has been denied that the books of the Pentateuch were 
 written by Moses, and they have been pronounced the work, 
 or compilation, of some later hands. The reasons alleged 
 for this opinion are such as the following : — 
 
 1. The apparent variety of style in the different portions 
 of the books. 
 
 2. The notable instance, which may be called the Elohist 
 and Jehovist controversy. 
 
16 
 
 S. The mauifest occasional interpolations and additions, 
 which could not possibly have been the work of a contem- 
 porary writer^ such as Moses must have been. 
 
 4. The supposed opposition between many of its details, 
 and the known results of scientific discovery, or the con- 
 clusions of modern criticism. 
 
 5. Some have objected to the miracles, as altogether dis- 
 crediting the books. 
 
 6. Others have alleged certain apparent difficulties in the 
 way of ' contradictions/ ^ errors/ * absurdities/ &c. in the 
 contents of this portion of Scripture. 
 
 Briefly reviewing the above objections, we might say that 
 the fifth of them is, happily, put out of court by the Bishop 
 having expressed his cordial acceptance of the miraculous 
 parts of the books in question. He says, " I wish to repeat 
 " here most distinctly that my reasons for no longer receiving 
 " the Pentateuch as historically true, is not that I find in- 
 " superable difficulties with regard to the miracles or super- 
 '' natural revelatio7is of Almighty God recorded in it. . . . 
 " The notion of miraculous or supernatural interferences does 
 " not present to my own mind the difficulties which it seems 
 " to present to some. I could believe and receive the miracles 
 " of Scripture heartily, if only they were authenticated by a 
 '' veracious history." — Part I. (10). Again, on objections 
 (4) and (6), we may trust he has received some satisfaction 
 from the answers that have already, in considerable number, 
 appeared on that part of the subject. Having myself laboured 
 in this behalf, I am now in condition to ofter some further 
 observations on the remainder of the objections. 
 
 It will be the best course, however, to consider the subject 
 in the order which has been indicated above ; and to take, 
 first the positive side of the question in support of the 
 genuineness and authenticity of the Pentateuch ; and after- 
 wards to review at length the arguments on the contrarj^, or 
 negative side. By this means, the reader will be able to form 
 a more full and comprehensive view, and to be in better 
 condition to form his judgment upon the subject. 
 
17 
 
 I. Let us inquire, then, first :— 
 
 How came the books of the Pentateucli into the canon of 
 Scripture ? Or ou what grounds have tliey been received iu 
 the Church as the genuine and authentic production of tlie 
 inspired writers to whom they are ascribed. 
 
 (I.) In answer, we have, first, the uniform and ancient 
 tradition of the Jewish people. 
 
 It is impossible this whole people should have been de- 
 ceived as to the main facts of their history. The argument has 
 often been stated, and is incontrovertible. What should have 
 induced them to submit to a code of laws prescribing some 
 of the most burdensome rites and ceremonies, and to make 
 themselves conspicuous for the way in which they were 
 marked off from all other nations of the earth? — conspicuous 
 for an amount of credulity and prejudice which would have 
 been unparalleled in the history of any people. What, but a 
 certainty that the facts of their history compelled them to 
 such a line of conduct, and left them no choice as to what 
 they were at liberty to believe or to reject ? But now, if they 
 had reason to know for certain that Moses was their law- 
 giver, and the founder of their national polity, no less certain 
 did they esteem it, that the books in Avhich the beginnings of 
 their national history are recorded, were equally his work. 
 This was handed down as part and parcel of their national 
 belief, equally with the other. Why should the people be 
 less competent witnesses — and why should tlie world be less 
 ready to assent to their testimony — in the one case than in the 
 other? Living, as their forefathers did at the time, and 
 handing down their knowledge in writing, as well as by word 
 of mouth, from ftither to son — they are surely as good 
 evidence for the authorship of the documents as for the 
 person of the legislator. Alike in both instances, they must 
 have had every facility for detecting imposture, and for veri- 
 fying the pretensions made. At all events, such a persuasion 
 is a guarantee for the antiquity of the books, and that they 
 were, at least, coeval with Moses; that Moses, therefore, 
 authenticated, if he did not compose, the writings. A people 
 
 D 
 
IS 
 
 jealous for tlieir national institutions, would have looked well 
 to tbe preservation of the sacred books, in which the history 
 of them was contained. They had once been attached to 
 Egyptian rites, and hankered after Egyptian pleasures. 
 Before they could be weaned from these early associations, 
 they would require the highest degree of assurance that the 
 change proposed to them, the new conditions of their polity, 
 were founded on the clearest authority, and laid down in 
 the clearest and fullest form. Would a people thus situated, 
 and thus disposed, have sufiPered their Lawgiver to depart 
 without depositing among them some unquestionable gua- 
 rantees for the genuineness and authenticity of the laws 
 under. tvhich he would leave them, and on obedience to which 
 their national greatness was to depend ? Moses gave them 
 ample warning when he was about to be called away from 
 them ; is it likely they took no pledge of him, that the 
 Sacred Writings were his own, or were fully authenticated by 
 him ? Could the persuasion of such authorship, or of such 
 authentication (for it seems to me very much the same thing), 
 have grown up among them, and been so constantly perpe- 
 tuated, unless it had been originally founded in fact ? 
 
 2. By the very nature of the ease, any later forgery is 
 precluded ; for at all subsequent periods we find the polity 
 of the Jewish people in actual operation, and developing 
 itself in the successive stages of their history. That polity 
 could not have been invented as they went on. It was far 
 too rigid and unbending in its nature, too precise in its laws 
 and regulations, to admit of such gradual construction. It 
 must clearly have been based on something antecedent, from 
 which it derived all its force and validity. And this could 
 have been nothing else than these very writings of which we 
 speak. Certainly, during the reigns of the kings of Judah 
 and Israel— reigns which fell upon historic days — there was 
 no room at all for invention or fraud. The services of the 
 Temple were, for the greater part of that time, in full 
 operation, and all implying the previous existence of the 
 documents. During the Judges there is no trace whatever, 
 
19 
 
 or shadow of pretence, for imagimng a person, or persons, 
 who would be capable of so splendid an invention — if inven- 
 tion it was — to put together that whole framework of the 
 polity thus practised and enforced by the Kings — nor any 
 account to be given of it, except we go back to Moses himself 
 as the author. Besides that, in those intermediate times of 
 the history, we find allusions which imply the pre-existence 
 of the documents, just as in the time of the Kings. The 
 most that can be attributed to Samuel is, that he may have 
 revised the Canon, and perhaps added the Books of Joshua 
 and Judges. But the very composition, or collection, of new 
 documents implies the existence of others antecedent to 
 them; especially when in these others there are found the 
 first traces of customs, laws, and historic facts alluded and 
 referred to in the later ones. The whole of these later times 
 point evidently back to the great events of the Mosaic 
 history. The ^ ark ' * — the ' tabernacle ' t — the ' sacrifices ' % 
 ■ — the ^priests' § — '^ Jehovah being King,^ and the assertion 
 of this by Gideon, as a reason for his own declining the king- 
 dom II — ' circumcision,^^ and the reproach of being ' uncircum- 
 cised-' — the * Nazarite vow ^ ** — the rehearsal of the great 
 ^delivenvuce from Egyptian bondage 'ft — the division into 
 'tribes ' ij — these are unmistakeable marks of the constitu- 
 tion and laws set up and framed by Moses, which are referred 
 to in the time intermediate between Moses and the Kings. 
 It does not signify at all, even if it were true that Moses was 
 ** only twice named in the Prophets before the Captivity " 
 (500), when the laws framed by him, all the leading institu- 
 tions of that law, and some leading circumstances of his 
 history, were thus kept continually before the minds of the 
 people — yes ! when, in spite of the Bishop^s assertion to the 
 contrary, " there were signs §§ of the Levitical laws in the age 
 
 * 1 Sam. iv. 3. t 1 Sain. i. iii. X 1 Sam. xiiis 8 ; xv. 15—22. 
 § 1 Sam. i. ii. xxi. Il Judg. viii. 25. 
 
 ^ Jiidg. xiv. 3. ** Judg. xiii. 5 ; comp. Numb. vi. 2. 
 
 ++ Judg. vi. 8, 9. n Judg. V. 15, 18. 
 
 §§ It is sometimes objected that >vheie " the Law '" is mentioned, it means. 
 
20 
 
 " of Siinuiel beiiij;-- known, honoured, revered, quoted, and 
 " referred to " (487). But it is not true, "that Moses was 
 only twice named by the Prophets before the Captivity, viz. 
 Jer. XV. 1 ; Mic. vi. 4 " — besides being " once referred to, 
 but not named, viz. Hos. xii. 13." Why should we omit 
 all mention of the Psalms usually entitled the Psalms of 
 * Moses,' and especially the Ninetieth Psalm, of which, I 
 believe, there was never any question of the title being 
 genuine? But the Bishop's assertion was, perhaps, not in- 
 tended to include the Psalms. Among 'the Prophets,' 
 then, how came he to overlook Isaiah? He states it as 
 a fact, that "Moses was only mentioned twice" (in the 
 Prophets, we will suppose him to mean, particularly), " before 
 the Captivity." Was not Isaiah ' before the Captivity ' ? 
 And why, then, is there no mention of the following pas- 
 sage : "But they rebelled, and vexed his "holy Spirit: 
 
 T>erhaps, only the "Ten Commaudnients " — said to have been deposited 
 within the ' Ark of the Covenant ' (I Kings viii. 9). But though the expres- 
 sion may sometimes be used in a limited sense, there are many passages which 
 require a more extended meaning. Such a i)assage is that in Joshua, chap. i. 
 7^ 8 : — "Observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant 
 commanded thee ;" and soon after (v. 8), where it is called "the book of 
 the Law." Josh. \'iii, 31, the allusion shows that Ex. xx. 25, and Deut. 
 xxvii. 5, 6, are included among the things " \TOtten in the book of the law of 
 Moses." Similar allusions (v. 34) to the "blessings and curses," show that 
 Levit. xxvi., Deut. xi. 26 — 28, and all Deut. xxviii., are in view. Neh. viii. 
 13, 14, refers to Levit. xxiii. 34. That an entire copy of the Law was depo- 
 sited with each of the kings of Judah, on his accession, is implied, 1 Kings ii. 
 3, and we have an example of it, 2 Kings xi. 12. 
 
 It is perfectly nugatory to say, "There is no sign of the law being obeyed in 
 all the time from Samuel to the reign of Solomon " (488 — 550). The books 
 of Samuel, as appears in the text, are full of allusions to diflerent parts of the 
 law — * Sacrifices,' ' The ark,' &c. Li contradistinction to the great Temple at 
 Jerusalem, it is expressly asserted, in the book of Samuel, that up to that 
 time the worship of God had continually taken place in ' the Tabernacle ;' 
 — "Thus saith the Lord, Shalt thou build me an house for me to dwell in ? 
 " Whereas I have not dwelt in any house since the time that I brought up the 
 " children oj Israel out of Egypt, even to this day, but have Avalked in a tent 
 " and in a tabernacle " (2 Samuel vii. 6). The Psalms of David contain similar 
 allusions — to "the Law" (Ps. i., xix. , cxix., &c.) — to 'Sacrifices' (Ps. 1. 8, 
 li. 10, cxli. 2,)&c. &c. 
 
21 
 
 therefore He was turned to be their enemy, and " He 
 " foiiglit against them. Then He remembered the days of 
 " old, Moses, and His people, saying, AYhere is He that brought 
 " tl^em up out of the sea uith the shepherd of His flock ? 
 " where is He that put His Holy Spirit within Him ? T/mt 
 " led them by the right hand of Moses with His glorious arm, 
 " dividing the water before them, to make Himself an ever- 
 " lasting name?" (Isaiah Ixiii. 10 — 12.) 
 
 3. We may remark, thirdly, the singular coherence and 
 connexion of the separate portions of the Pentateuch — the 
 almost dramatic unity and progress throughout the piece,* 
 which seems to denominate it the emanation of one mind 
 and the work of one pen. There might, indeed, be inter- 
 polations and additions here and there by a later hand ; but, 
 taken as a whole, these books bespeak one common origin 
 • — the conception and execution of one interpreter of the 
 Divine will, gifted supernaturally for the work. 
 
 4. But, further, in many parts there is an express indi- 
 cation of the author byname. And these are such important 
 and conspicuous parts, and occupy so large a proportion of 
 the whole narrative, that they seem to draw after them the 
 small remainder of the books, or at any rate involve a super- 
 vision of this remainder by the same hand. Take first the 
 greater part of Deuteronomy ; — (the exceptions are — i. 1 — 3, 
 iv. 44 to V. 1, xxvii, 1, xxix. 1, and xxxii., which last, as it con- 
 tains the death of Moses, is clearly added by a later hand). With 
 these exceptions, we have Moses constantly speaking in his 
 own person of himself, and of the actions in which he was con- 
 cerned. In chapter xxxii. we have a celebrated poem, called 
 the 'Song of Moses;' and in chapter xxxiii. "the blessing 
 wherewith,^' it is expressly said, " Moses the man of God 
 blessed the children of Israel before his death." In chapter 
 xxxi. 9, we find that the 'writing' as well as the dictation 
 
 * ' The v.liole Pentateuch— its five books, an<l all the portions of which it 
 is at present raatle up— is the basis and the necessary antecedent of the history 
 of die Jewish people, commonwealth, religior., manners, and literature.'— 
 KrjRTZ. 
 
22 
 
 of ' tlie Iciw ' was done ' by Moses' — " and Moses wrote this 
 law, and delivered H unto the Priests, the sons of Levi ; " 
 and further, v. 26, 26, that it was written by him in ' a book/ 
 which " Moses commanded the Levites to take, and put it in 
 the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord/^ But 
 while these were the ^ writings ' of Moses, the rest of the 
 Book of Deuteronomy presents us with his very words — words 
 expressly delivered in his own person to the very people who 
 liad followed him out of Egypt — '' Know ye this day: for I 
 " speak not with your children which have not known, and 
 " which have not seen the chastisement of the Lord your 
 " God, His greatness, His mighty hand, and His stretched 
 " out arm ; His miracles, and His acts which He did in the 
 " midst of Egypt unto Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and unto 
 " all his laud. . . . and what He did unto you in the wilder- 
 " ness, until ye came unto this place. . . . but your eyes 
 " HAVE SEEN all the great acts of the Lord which He did." 
 xi. 2, 3, 5, 7 (comp, iv. 32—40). And as these addresses 
 are in his own name to his own contemporaries, so in other 
 places he describes their past experiences, as being himself a 
 chief actor witli them in the scene. Does he send out spies ? 
 The style is, '' And / tooh men of you, one of a tribe ^' 
 (ch. i. 23). Does he encourage the people? it is, " Then / 
 " said unto you. Dread not neither be afraid of them" (ch. i. 29), 
 " / sent messengers unto Sihon king of Heshbon " (ii. 26) ; 
 " I stood between the Lord and yon at that time, to show 
 " you the Word of the Lord " (v. 5) ; " / am. a hundred and 
 " thirty years old this day" (xxxi. 2), &c. &c. The actor in the 
 narrative is clearly also the writer — or else we must suppose 
 the book to be an entire fabrication, and that, while the 
 history in which it is embedded and with which it is inse- 
 parably interwoven cannot for a moment be questioned, 
 there is this glaring absurdity on the face of it, that the 
 writer passes himself oiF for the great leader and lawgiver of 
 Israel without being really so ! that, moreover, he took par- 
 ticular pains to draw public attention to the pretence — and 
 yet, that such pretence was never discovered till of quite 
 
recent times ! As no pretence could have gone higher than 
 this, so none, surely, would have provoked more strict exami- 
 nation ; and the result we find in the universal persuasion 
 among his own people, that the lawgiver himself wrote at 
 least the Book of Deuteronomy, as he specially claims to have 
 done; or, if he did not write it, that the words at any rate 
 are his. The last chapter, it is true, containing an account 
 of his death, must have been added by a later hand ; but, 
 with this exception, or if there be any other trifling interpola- 
 tions, I think we have good grounds for maintaining the 
 Mosaic authorship of this last book of the Pentateuch * And 
 this being so, what follows ? From the fact of his hnving 
 thus handed down the record of his later years, is it likely he 
 should have taken no pains to secure an authentic record of 
 his earlier work, and of the events connected with his mission, 
 as we read them in Exodus and the Book of Numbers ? The 
 events there related were clearly connected with the very 
 original of the covenant made with Israel. Is it likely that the 
 antecedents of such a history should have been left to be col- 
 lected at random, and from no authentic sources? especially 
 when we consider the long opportunities which must have been 
 had for the diligent collection and preparation of the neces- 
 sary documents. If he were not himself the author of the 
 earlier collection of laws which were henceforth to be at the 
 foundation of the national polity, and of the events through 
 which the nation were to pass, can he be supposed to have 
 overlooked the necessity of providing, at least, for some re- 
 
 * It is by no means out of course to take Deuteronomy first in order of the 
 books. Dr. Davidson well observes, " In comparing Deuteronomy with the 
 " first four books of the Pentateuch, it has been too generally assumed that it 
 " was composed after these. "With this view, the comparison has been con- 
 " ducted as if deviations and additions pre-supposed the earlier existence of 
 •' Genesis, Exodus, Le\4ticus, and Numbers ; and as if the writer of Deute- 
 *• ronomy knew what was already written in the four books." [He " knew " 
 it, most likely, but was not bound by it, because it was not yet drawn up 
 and published in the set-form in which it was afterwards arranged.] " All 
 " this we believe to be erroneous. It may be that Dcuteronomij was n-ritten 
 ''first 0/ «//."— Davidson ; Te:d of Old Testament. 
 
24 
 
 liable accounts? and would he not have bestowed some pains 
 in correcting and revising them ? Would he have left it to 
 an inferior hand to detail, what he alone could have been well 
 qualified to do — his interviews with the Most High, his call 
 to his office — the communings of his spirit with the deep 
 things of the Spirit of God '? AVere it even uncertain, 
 whether he did so or not, we find in these earlier books, 
 many passages Vv'hich are expressly ascribed to his hand — such 
 as Exod. xxiv. 7, xxxiv. 27, &c. 
 
 5. The preceding reasons apply, in great part, to Genesis 
 also; yet not, perhaps, so strictly as those which follow'. 
 Genesis was not exactly a part of ' the law^ — that law which 
 IS so invariably coupled with the name of Moses. It is, how- 
 ever, a most material part of the history of that people, to 
 whom ^ the law ^ was given ; and without it that history would 
 be perfectly unintelligible. It contains their lineage — the 
 birth of their forefather Abraham, the history of the Patriarchs, 
 the going into Egypt, and the sojourn there : to make no 
 mention of the more ancient times before and after the Flood, 
 when the knowledge of God was diffused impartially among 
 the divers nations of the world. These, and many other things 
 of common interest, are found in Genesis, besides the begin- 
 nings of the Hebrew nation itself. It reveals, in the clearest 
 manner, the Unity of the Godhead, and His sovereignty over 
 all His creatures. With this it couples the disobedience of 
 our first parents, and the promise of a Deliverer to the fallen 
 race of man. And all this it does with a grandeur and sub- 
 limity worthy of the pen of inspiration, and, altogether, in a 
 manner which makes it unlikely that the name of the author 
 should have been entirely buried in oblivion. The same prin- 
 ciple which would have incited Moses to furnish an authentic 
 history of his own days, equally points to him as the most 
 probable composer of the antecedent history of his people: the 
 only difference being, that in the one case he might partially 
 have been indebted to more ancient sources for his informa- 
 tion, while, in the other case, his own experience would have 
 sufhced. Indeed, through no inconsiderable portion of this 
 
book (cli. xl.-l.) the account transports us to a country with 
 which none was ever more familiar than Moses ; and perhaps 
 no other man in the world could have interspersed his account 
 in so easy and natural a manner with familiar traits of daily 
 life among the Egyptians, which more and more surprise us 
 by their truthfulness, as we become better acquainted with 
 the manners and customs of that celebrated land. 
 
 We turn now to the constant tradition of the people whose 
 great lawgiver and ruler he was, and we find ourselves con- 
 firmed in our belief that Moses was truly, as he was thus 
 eminently fitted to be, the author of this wonderful book. 
 And as this belief originated in the earliest days of the Hebrew 
 commonwealth, it is the belief of contemporaries, and as such 
 is entitled to the most unhesitating assent. Had it been 
 otherwise, it would have been in the power of Moses himself 
 to disown the work; but as he, on the contrary, adopted its 
 contents and statements as his own, and as it comes down 
 as a great inheritance of the Hebrew people, we may accept 
 his silence, at least, and the consentient voice of his nation, 
 as sufficient evidence that Genesis may be rightly considered 
 (in common with the other books of the Pentateuch) the 
 real and undoubted work of Moses. 
 
 6. Another reason of importance in favour of the Mosaic 
 authorship of the Pentateuch, may be derived from the general 
 style and language of the Books. I do not mean tliat the 
 style is everyv/here the same, or that no difference is percep- 
 tible in this respect between Deuteronomy and Genesis. Such 
 as there does exist, however, is at once accounted for by the 
 different occasions and circumstances under which the two 
 works were drawn up — one being historical, the other hor- 
 tatory in its character; the one composed with studied terse- 
 ness and brevity ; the other, purposely diflfuse and animated 
 ■■ — the one, as it were, the labour of the study; the otlier, 
 the language of immediate contact with the people, and 
 suggested by an earnest zeal for their welfare. Where, again, 
 the style varies from itself it is only what is due to the 
 different documents which were brought together and worked 
 
 E 
 
26 
 
 up in the composition of the history. Thus mucli concerns 
 the actual language of Genesis, and also of the Pentateuch 
 generally. It also requires to be considered what its language 
 is not ? And here I can only refer to works more directly 
 devoted to Hebrew criticism, to show that from the date we 
 have assumed for Genesis and the Pentateuch, down to the 
 time of Ezra, to whom the last revision of these books is 
 usually ascribed, the phraseology of the language underwent 
 such a change, that the Book of Ezra is full of new words 
 and phrases which are not found anywhere in the compass 
 of the earlier books. 
 
 7. It remains only to add the testimony of Holy Scrip- 
 ture itself. AVhen I say its ' testimony,' I am not asserting 
 that anywhere in Scripture every letter or every word in the 
 Pentateuch is even by implication auth.enticated. It is 
 enough if they be ascribed in the main to Moses; so that 
 not only ' the law ' might be said to be his, but the ante- 
 cedents also of the history of tl e Jews, and those likewise 
 of the Gentile world, may be received as equally authen- 
 ticated by him. To this effect, then, it is conceived that the 
 references made to the ' books of the law/ and to the 
 * writings of Moses ' in the New Testament decidedly 
 extend. St. Peter sets his seal to tlie truth of these early 
 Scriptures where he adopts, in Ids Epistles, several principal 
 particulars in the Mosaic records, as the history of Balaam 
 (2 Pet. ii. 15), the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrahy 
 Lot, Noah and the Ark (2 Vet. ii. 5—7; 1 Pet. iii. 20). 
 St. Paul declares his belief to be grounded on the same 
 Old Testament records, "saying none other things than those 
 which the Prophets and Moses did say should come '* 
 (Acts xxvi. 22). A still earlier disciple exclaimed, ^' We 
 " have found Him of whom Moses in the law and the Pro- 
 '' phets did write " (John i. 45). On occasion of one of the 
 latest manifestations of our Blessed Lord to His disciples ^ 
 " Beginning at Moses, and all the Prophets, He expounded 
 " to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Him- 
 " self" (Luke xxiv. 27). And in what appears a parting 
 
27 
 
 charge to the eleven Apostles (Luke xxiv. 44) : " These are 
 " the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with 
 " you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in 
 " the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms 
 " concerning Me." * 
 
 * A few other passages may be referred to— Matt. xix. 7 ; Mark xii. 1J>, 26, 
 .?ohu v. 46, 47 ; Rom. x. 5, 
 
28 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WHO WEKE THE * ELOHIST ' AND 'jEHOVIST'? 
 
 It is useless in the present day, after so mucli has been 
 written on the subject, to shut our eyes to the real difficulties 
 of the question concerning the Elohist and Jehovisi writers 
 (as they are called), who are supposed to have contributed 
 their separate shares to the composition of tlie Pentateuch,* 
 and especially of the Book of Genesis. To illustrate the con- 
 ditions of the problem, let us look at Genesis alone. At 
 chapter v, 1, we may observe a remarkable break in the style 
 and subject, leading us back to the first portion of the book at 
 chapter i. — ii. 3, the identical expressions of which are taken 
 up and repeated at ch. v. such as ^* in the likeness of God 
 made He him,^^ "male and female created He them." While 
 this is the case with these separate portions, the intermediate 
 part, chapter ii. 3, to the end of chapter iv. seems complete in 
 itself, and distinguished by some little difference in style. The 
 chief ditrerence, however, consisting in this, that while in the 
 above-mentioned two sections the Almighty is spoken of 
 under the name of Eloiitm, in the intermediate section 
 the term Jehovah is introduced, either singly or in com- 
 position with the other, to express the sacred name. And 
 by a similar mode of comparison carried on through the 
 remaining chapters, we come to the conclusion generally, 
 that in some distinct portions of this book, the generic term 
 Elohim prevails, while others are equally marked by the pre- 
 vailing occurrence of the corresponding and more specific 
 
 * In the historical portions of the Pentateuch we must admit the existence 
 of two distinct sources, which may he described as the ' «;round-work,' and the 
 ' supplementary work.' — Kurtz. 
 
29 
 
 term, so to speak, Jehovah. And fuitlier, in the Elohistic 
 portions there may generall}- be traced a kind of continuity 
 of subject and sense, which makes them, to a certain extent, 
 complete in themselves ; while the Jehovistic portions seem 
 rather intercalated between them, to fill up the same, or to 
 furnish additional matter, with an evident regaj-d to the future 
 history of the chosen seed. 
 
 The following table contains a list of the principal chapters 
 or parts of chapters in Genesis, which may be described 
 generally as Elohistic or Jehovistic portions : — 
 
 The following may be called Elohistic : — Chap. i. to ii. 3 ; 
 V. ; vi. 9—22; vii. 11 to viii. 19; ix. 1—17, 28, 29 ; xi. 10— 
 32; xiv. ; xvii. ; xx. ; xxi. ; xxii. (^all but 14 — 18); xxiii. ; 
 xxiv. to xxviii. 9. ; xxix. to xxxvii. (except part of xxx.) 
 
 Uncertain in parts, xxv., xxvi. 
 
 The following are, perhaps, Jehovistic : — Chap, ii, 4 to end 
 of iv.; vi. 1—8, vii. 1—10; viii. 20—22; ix. 18—27; x. ; 
 xi. 1 — 9 ; xii. ; xiii. ; xv. ; xvi. ; xvii. 1 ; xviii. ; xix. ; xxviii, 
 10 — 22; xxx. 14 — 16, 25 — 43; xxxviii. ; xxxix. 1 — 5. 
 
 Mixed, xl. to 1. 
 
 Thus, nearly half of Genesis may be traced to the Elohist, 
 whose style appears to indicate a greater antiquity in the 
 materials v/hich he had to work upon, than in those which 
 fell to the portion of the Jehovist. We may select such a 
 portion as that ending ix, 29, as serving to exemplify our 
 statement, that the work of the Elohist had a kind of 
 order or method of its own. On the other hand, the at- 
 tempt to discriminate exactly between the two, has con- 
 fessedly been an endless source of difference among the 
 critics. " Nothing," says Dr. KaHscli, " can better show 
 " than the series of chapters xxv. — xxviii., how incorrect it 
 " is to assert that we have in Genesis two documents which 
 " we are still able to resolve into their component parts.^^ 
 Ewald, in his difficulty, was driven to suppose no less than 
 five principal contributors. And in other writers, Ewald, 
 Hupfeld, &c., we find numerous speculations equally vague 
 and unsatisf actor V. 
 
80 
 
 At the outset of tlie argument, it is important to observe 
 that, on the supposition of the writers liaving served them- 
 selves of these more ancient documents, neither Elohist nor 
 Jehovist is to be judged of by the actual time or date when 
 each individually lived and wrote ; — they might have worked 
 up their materials in a different style and order, but much of 
 the style would depend on the original documents themselves. 
 At first sight, considering that the account of so ancient an 
 event as the Creation falls to the Elohist, it might be imagined 
 that the Elohist himself belonged also to an extremely remote 
 age. But this and the later accounts collected by the Elohist 
 — from the Creation to the Flood — and from the Flood on- 
 wards to the Twelve Patriarchs (ranging over an immense 
 periodof time), must imply very different dates of composition ; 
 and whoever collected them, the collection might have been 
 by one hand, though the original, so to speak, was by many, 
 and was in fact the accumulated work of ages. The same 
 exactly with the Jehovist. It follows from this, that neither 
 Elohist nor Jehovist need necessarily be supposed to have 
 lived at very different dates, merely because of the differences 
 in their phraseology, and of the greater or less antiquity in 
 the matters handled. It would be sufficient to say that the 
 Elohist, adopting tliat name of the Supreme Being which 
 he had found in that ancient account of the Creation which 
 occurs in the beginning of his compilation, naturally con- 
 tinued the use of it through the subsequent accounts. He 
 might have done so the rather as the new name in Exodus 
 vi. had not yet been revealed. So soon as it was revealed, if 
 we suppose these authors to have been nearly contemporary, 
 it would have been revealed alike to Elohist and Jehovist.* 
 But the Elohist, having already completed his roll of tradi- 
 tions, might have seen no necessity, or even felt no authority, 
 
 * There is no necessity, on tlie plan here proposed, to debate the point with 
 so much earnestness, as a matter of life and death, whether Ex. vi. and Ex. iii. 
 are EloMst or Jehovist passages (330, 336, 473, iii. iv.). And yet the Bishop, 
 when he knew how mnch depended on it in the interest of his own scheme, 
 might have hesitated to give it so decidedly as he has done to the Elohist, 
 especially as he is obliged to make the following admission himself, — ''And yet 
 
31 
 
 to go back and make any alteration in the Sacred Name ; 
 while tlie Jehovist, beginning his share of the work not till 
 after the revelation of this name had been made, felt at liberty 
 to use the name throughout his compilation, and even to 
 remodel the part drawn up by the Elohist. The Elohist, 
 I would suggest, might very well have been Aaron, while 
 the Jehovist was Moses. And these, under Divine direction, 
 might have even agreed as to the measure and degree in 
 which the nev>^ Title of Deity, more directly expressive, as 
 it was, of a covenant-relationship between God and his 
 people Israel, should be worked up into the past accounts. 
 And, thus far, there would be room for the supposition of 
 Hengstenberg (approved, I think, by Dr, M'Caul), viz. — 
 that when either of these names occurs in the Pentateuch 
 there is always some distinct reason that may be assigned 
 for the selection, and consequently that there is no necessity 
 to suppose, with Kurtz and others, tliat two distinct writers, 
 or compilers, were concerned in the composition of the Sacred 
 Narrative. If it should further seem not unreasonable to 
 imagine in the Elohist contributor a certain inflexibility in 
 his adherence to traditional forms, and to the Jehovist, the 
 character rather of an original thinker, and a taste for 
 improvement, we have just the subjective distinction in the 
 writers, which might help to account for the objective differ- 
 ence in the style and manner of the writings. And lastly, 
 ■vve should have, on the supposition just made, no difficult}^ 
 whatever in admitting the perfect authenticity of the two 
 component parts, however we may trace a corresponding 
 difi^erence of style between them. It would, indeed, in this 
 case be no more than the difference between some two of the 
 Evangelists, where each may be thought to have had a third 
 document in view, handed down, perhaps, in the Church, 
 '^ even as they delivered '^ the same, " which from the begin- 
 *' ning were eye witnesses, and ministers of the Word." 
 (Luke i. 2.) 
 
 ' ' there are phrases in it which are never used by the Elohist, such as ' a land 
 ** flowing with milk and honey ' — a very characteristic expression, which does 
 " not occur, however, in any of the Elohistic promises in Genesis" (331). 
 
32 
 
 It is not without some diffidence that I dwell on these 
 critical distinctions, which yet cannot be wholly passed over 
 in estimating the merits of the question before us. I should 
 certainly feel myself compelled to stop, were I at all appre- 
 hensive that the truth could suffer by fairly looking into this 
 difficulty ; but I am about to show — 
 
 (1.) That there is no such difficulty here, when fairly re- 
 presented, as should impugn in any degree the canonical 
 authority of Genesis. 
 
 (2.) To what kind of unfair representations the difficulty 
 is principally due. 
 
 Before entering on either of these points, there is one 
 general remark applicable to all such considerations; viz. 
 that whereas upon the theory of revelation, which would 
 make the writers alone responsible for the facts recorded, 
 while the doctrines alone came directly and essentially from 
 the teaching of the Spirit, it may seem easy to shift the 
 blame of any apparent misrepresentation on the human 
 agent, so as not to charge it upon the Deity ; yet, wherever 
 the blame is thrown, the imputation is in itself derogatory to 
 all the parties concerned, and tends to shake one's faith 
 in the entire system. This method should, therefore, be 
 resorted to with extreme caution, and never till other means 
 of explanation have been exhausted ; never, perhaps, at all, 
 without waiting for further means of information than are 
 at present within our reach. Many things once thought 
 strange and contradictory have at a later period been ex- 
 plained through some happy discovery — the light afforded by 
 a manuscript — a disentombed relic of antiqviity — or, as 
 Bishop Butler speaks, by " thoughtful persons tracing on 
 obscure hints, as it were, which seem to come into our minds 
 by chance.'^ 
 
 We have therefore, at starting, this rock to avoid; and 
 rather to withhold too confident a mode of concluding, than 
 to display our own ingenuity at the possible expense of 
 truth. 
 
 I have said, however, that the Mosaic authorship, asserted 
 
33 
 
 generally in the canon, will not be found to suffer by a fair 
 representation of the Elohist and Jehovist subdivisions of 
 Genesis. The law of Moses had its original from Heaven, and 
 came to him by direct revelation ; not so, necessarily, every 
 scrap and portion of the historical parts. In Numbers xxi. 14, 
 he specially refers to a document from which he had bor- 
 rowed — " Wlierefore it is said in the book of the wars of the 
 " Lord, What he did in the Red Sea, and in the brooks of 
 " Arnon." Similar references we find elsewhere * in Scrip- 
 ture to the historical records of the time. 
 
 When Moses writes of geography, the information, in all 
 probability, is due to his own individual pains and research ; 
 and most painstaking and exact in such particulars he was. 
 We may safely repudiate any of the absurd contradictions, 
 inconsistencies, and errors, attributed to him merely as an 
 historian. Nay ! it was his very love of accuracy, and his great 
 reputation for it, that seems, in some measure, to have induced 
 Ezra, or whoever may have revised the books, to venture here 
 and there upon some slight additions to the text, with a view 
 of making it still more perfect, by carrying down, as it were, 
 the chain of information to a later date. But to return to the 
 principle from which we started, viz., the use which we find 
 made, even by the scripture-writers, of antecedent sources of 
 history : Suppose now, in the days of Moses — a man of as 
 much meekness t as learning — a document like this of the 
 
 * "The Book of Nathan the Seer," 2 Chron. ix. 29 ; ** The Acts of Solo- 
 mon," 1 Kmgs xi. 41 ; " The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel," 
 1 Kings xiv. 19 ; xv. 31, &c. &c. &c. are some examples that may be 
 mentioned. 
 
 t If the "meekness" of Moses had never specially been recorded as a re- 
 markable trait in his character, we might have inferred it from many an 
 undesigned incident in the narrative. So far from being ambitious of office, 
 he courplained of his unfitness, and exclaimed, " Who am I that I should go 
 unto Pharaoh ? ... ray Lord, I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue " 
 (Ex. iii. 11 ; iv. 10). So far fi-om grasping at the honours which awaited him 
 from an admiring people, he exclaims again, " I am not able to bear all this 
 " people alone. . . . And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee, 
 " out of hand, if I have found favour in Thy sight ; and let me not see my 
 "wretchedness" (Numb. xi. 14, 15. Comp. ib. 26—29). 
 
 F 
 
34 
 
 Eloliist (sn.ipo^iiig the above distribution of the passages to 
 br^ correct) to have been preserved and handed down, what 
 sliould prevent Moses adopting it as iu a measure his guide 
 through the ages that were past ? We may suppose, further, 
 that lie was actually directed, by Divine authority, to make 
 use of the document. A. title of the Almighty being there 
 found, different from the title expressly revealed to Moses 
 (Ex. iii. and vi.), would raise no suspicion of the document 
 being worthless or incorrect ; on the contrary, it would show 
 the independence and truthfulness of those who had preserved 
 and handed it down.* And here I am tempted to apply a 
 test to our theory, similar to that which we applied to the 
 Samnelist theory of the Bishop, viz. to try it practically in 
 a given instance. Let us take the account of Melchisedec. 
 What does the Epistle to the Hebrews say of him ? He is 
 there called expressly, not the priest of Jehovah, but ' Priest 
 of the Most High God ' (Heb. vii. 1). Now, this being 
 another title f of the Supreme Being, peculiar to the 
 Elohistic portions of Genesis, we turn to the passage, and 
 accordingly find it (exactly where it ought to have been 
 according to this passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews) 
 among the Elohistic portions of the book. This may not 
 have been commonly noticed by critics, but is remarkable 
 enough in itself, and seems to show that St. Paul, or who- 
 ever was the writer of that Epistle, had not been unobservant 
 of the distinction of style in certain portions of the book, 
 any more than the learned men of our own day. 
 
 * The traditions of the primitive ages were, in a great nioa:;ure, free from 
 the uncertainties of more recent times. The longevity of mankind at that 
 period secured the transmission of awy facts of history througli very few 
 hands. Thus Adam was contemporary' with Methuselah for 243 years, and 
 Methuselah with Noah for 600 years. It was, therefore, easy to arrive at the 
 truth Avathout need of letters ; but as soon as letters were invented (and 
 they are found on inscriptions in Egypt before the time of Moses), they 
 would of course be preserved in writing, and this would become more neces- 
 sary as the period of life grew shorter. 
 
 + '* El Shaddai." It occurs xxviii. 3 ; xxxv. 11 ; xliii. 14 ; xlviii. 3; xlix. 
 25 ; Ex. vi. 3, &c. 
 
35 
 
 But our supposition goes further. It explains why the 
 Jehovist, Avho would in this case be Moses himself, could 
 venture to insert the newly-revealed * name in the older 
 document, wherever he thought fit ; his object being evi- 
 dently to show that the same God who had now entered 
 into covenant with Israel, had of old times entered into cove- 
 nant-relationship v.'ith the Patriarchs also. Tie was ' Jeho- 
 vah ' to them, though they knew Him not generally by tliat 
 exact appellation ; and if He was what Moses thus ventured 
 to call Him, there was surely nothing inappropriate in his 
 venturing to insert,t on his own rcsponsibiUty, in the history 
 
 * How grievous to the Christian ear to hear the Bishop calling it this 
 " iiewlij-coined name " ! (338). 
 
 t The title Jehovau is clearly the cognate of the words, " I am." We might 
 I think, if it were necessaiy, justify this insertion of it by Moses, from those 
 words of our Lord, " Before Abraham was, I AM " (John viii. 59). Jeiiovaii, 
 rriJT?, it may be observed, is derived, Avith slight alteration of the vowel-points, 
 from the third person singular, present tense (!^?.ni), of the verb rnn, ' to be. ' 
 The idea of considering Exod. vi. 3, " I ai^jjeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, 
 " and unto Jacob, by the name o/God Almighty, but by my name Jeuovah 
 "was I not knoA\Ti to them," as 'wholly unliistoiical,' is an assumption 
 simply intolerable, and which strikes at the root of all possible inspiration in 
 the sacred AVTiters. It woidd be far more consistent with tmth, to suppose 
 that Moses, with or without the assistance of Aaron (for this is not material to 
 the argument), might have prepared the piimary form of the Ehohistic and 
 Jehovistic documents at some previous time, when only partially illuminated 
 by Divine wisdom ; but when the plenary revelation was made to him, as in 
 Exod. iii, and vi., that he revised his own previous writing by the light of his 
 present more perfect knowledge. 
 
 But there is another mistake to be guarded against, in connexion with this 
 same passage. We absolutely deny the inference that the Divine Name here 
 revealed could not have been at all in use before this particular and public 
 revelation of it. Whether such an inference be admissible or not, is, perhaps, 
 a fair question that might be raised upon the passage. Was this name known 
 to the Patriarchs before Moses' time, or was it revealed for the first time to 
 Moses at the Bush? The Bishop himself admits that " Kuktz, Kalisch, 
 and many other able commentators," agree in explaining the passage to mean, 
 "My name, Jehovah, has not been understood and comjirchended by the 
 " Patriarchs in its essence and depth, although it was even then by no means 
 ' ' literally unknown "(299). Supposing this, then, to be the case, and taking this 
 idea with us, let us now look at Exod. iii, 13 — 15. Moses asks by what luime 
 he is to aunouuco to the people the God who now declares Uimself to have 
 taken them, as a nation, under His peeuliar protection : is the National God 
 
36 
 
 of those times, the same most sacred name, which was uow 
 more fully revealed to himself! 
 
 The subject having thus beeu opened — with, 1 trust, a 
 proper regard to the reverence always due to the Sacred 
 Scriptures — it may be well to support our view by a passage 
 which, I think, from the name and reputation of the author, 
 will secure our most respectful attention : — 
 
 " It is not intended to assert that Moses was the original 
 " composer of all the documents contained in his volume. The 
 " Book of Genesis bears tnarks of being to some extent a com- 
 " pilatioiL Moses probably possessed a number of records, 
 " some of greater, some of less antiquity, whereof, under 
 " Divine guidance, he made use in writing the history of 
 " mankind up to his own time. It is possible that the Book 
 " of Genesis may have been, even mainl}-, composed in this 
 " way from ancient narratives, registers and biographies, in 
 " part the property of the Hebrew race, in part a possession 
 " common to that race with others. Moses, guided by God's 
 " Spirit, would choose among such documents those which 
 '* were historically true, and which bore on the religious 
 " history of the human race. He would not be bound 
 ** slavishly to follow, much less to transcribe them, but 
 " would curtail, expand, adorn, complete them, and so make 
 
 to be called Elohim or by any other Name ? The answer is — ** And God said 
 * ' unto Moses, I AM that I am ; and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the 
 " children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you" (v. 14), i.e. the "Self- 
 existent Jehovah " is the name by which henceforth the people are to designate 
 their God, as opposed to such titles as might be considered common to the 
 gods of the Egyptians, or other countries. It is not expressly said, that 
 the name had never been in use before ; but it is now declared to be ajjpro- 
 priated, peculiarly, exclusively, and nationally, to the use of the Israelitish 
 people. And then, as if purposely to identify this name with that current, 
 under the same or some similar form, of old time among the Patriarchs, it is 
 added in the very next verse—" And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus 
 " shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Jehovah, the Godof ijoiirfatliers, 
 " the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me 
 " unto you : this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all 
 " generations" (v. 15). The parallelism between the two verses, surely tends 
 very strongly to show that the Patriarchs also had known Him as the great 
 I am, and even by the very name in dispute, the Kame of Jehovah ! 
 
a? 
 
 " them tliorcughly Iiis own, iafasin^' into them the religious 
 " tone of his own mind, and at tlie sarae time re-writing them 
 " in his own language. Thus it would seem that Genesis was 
 " produced. With regard to the remainder of his history, 
 " he would have no occasion to use the labours of others 
 " but would write from his own knowledge/^ * 
 
 Thus considered, how does even the meekness of i\Ioses 
 show itself in his handling of these early documents ! He 
 might have desired to be esteemed the sole and original 
 author of the whole book ; and if this had been the object 
 of his ambition, how easily might he have obliterated all 
 marks of superior antiquity in the Eloliist document, by 
 omitting the wori Elohim altogether! But we see, on the 
 contrary, tliat he has carried the alterations no further than 
 he thought necessary to bring into strong rehef the history 
 of the chosen seed, with whom the Almighty Elohim had 
 entered all along into the covenant-relations impHcd in the 
 name Jeliovahj by which He had been pleased to reveal 
 Himself, of late, as the Theocratic Head of His people 
 Israel. 
 
 The account now given is I believe, on the whole, the 
 most reasonable and most probable solution of the difficulty. 
 Aaron, or Eleazar h\^ son, may fairly contest with Samuel the 
 honours of the Elohist, and Moses with the " promising young 
 " men of Samuel's time " (286), the honours of the Jchovist, 
 It is not even necessary to suppose two collectors or com- 
 pilers. It might have been Moses alone who made two 
 separate compilations, under different degrees of Divine 
 illumination. The general idea of dividing the documents, 
 in the manner that has been indicated, has, I believe, been 
 shown to be based on more than mere critical conjecture ; 
 while the particular application of it, which I Imve ventured 
 to suggest, has the additional advantage that it maintains, 
 intact and inviolate, the canonical authority of Holy Scrip- 
 ture. We proceed, then, to a brief consideration of the 
 difficulties with which the Bishop has needlessly hampered 
 
 * Professor Rawlinson, Aid^ io Faith, p. 261. 
 
38 
 
 and obscured the subject — observing first^ that he has clearly 
 made this matter of the Elohist and Jehovist authorship of 
 the separate portions of the Pentateuch, in his own particular 
 view of it, the chief hinge of his argument in this Second 
 Part, so far as it can be viewed independently of the conclu- 
 sions supposed to have been arrived at in the First. Six 
 entire chapters (Ch. ii., vii.— xi.) are devoted to this point; 
 seven more to the same subject in its application to the 
 Book of Psalms (Ch. xii. — xvii. ; xviii.) ; two to a similar dis- 
 cussion on the Book of Judges and the two Books of Samuel 
 (Ch. xix., XX.). The plan of his work throughout these 
 chapters is clear and distinct, and has some sound reasoning; 
 and if there were any necessity for going out of our way to 
 find an author for the Pentateuch, if there was any great 
 and considerable gain to accrue to the cause of truth, we might 
 have thanked the Bishop for his labours, and congratulated 
 ourselves on the little glimmering of liglit which seems to 
 fall upon the history of Samuel and his times. But what is 
 the main stress of his argument ? * Simply this : ^ That even 
 ' so late as the time of David, the term " Jehovah " occurs but 
 ' rarely in the language and writings of the Hebrews ; that 
 
 * up to that time it had evidently not been in frequent use, 
 ' either directly, or as a formative in proper names and names 
 ' of places ; that there are, therefore, plain marks of this 
 ' name being quite a recent discovery ; that we have no need 
 
 * to assign any more mysterious origin to it than simply an 
 ' expedient of Samuel (who was a particular friend of David) 
 
 * for giving stability to the Jewish Theocracy, which he 
 
 * thought to fortify, by a sort of consecration of this name 
 ' to the national use' (360, 461, 3-il, 342). 
 
 But in all the Eishop's arguments there are certain under- 
 lying assumptions, which involve what I must call fundamen- 
 tal errors, utterly subversive of any faith in Revelation. 
 
 (1.) A fundamental error surely it must be considered in 
 his theory, that it makes a complete farce and mockery of 
 the whole matter of the Pentateuch! // charyes Samuel tvith 
 
 * AVe shall return to this part of the argument, pp. 43 — 46. 
 
39 
 
 a rJownright forgery ! It is not so mucli as protended that 
 he acted from an}- other motive than a mere principle of 
 expediency, while he perpetrated, in the name of the Almighty, 
 one of the greatest frauds that ever was known in the world. 
 And this, not only when he invented the story of the Burning 
 Bush, and the revelation of the Divine Name from the lips 
 of Jehovah Himself, but throughout every portion of these 
 writings ; for, if the Bishop of Natal is any judge, they are all 
 alike a tissue of 'glaring contradictions,' ' monstrous absur- 
 dities/ and ' incredible stories,' making the account alto- 
 gether 'unreal/ and valueless as a history, though, as *a 
 work of imagination' (239), or as ' an historical experiment ' 
 (499) [the italics are the Bishop's], it may show some consi- 
 derable 'genius' (497), or, at least, escape the detection of 
 'ignorant people^ (239), and serve, I suppose, to amuse or 
 frighten children ! 
 
 (2.) Again, if Samuel was the author, the reputed anti- 
 quity of the books must, of course, be given up ; their autho- 
 rity, as a contemporary document, and as the testimony of 
 eyewitnesses, goes for nothing. We have now no more 
 authority for this portion of Holy Writ, and consequently no 
 more fonndation for the rest of Scripture (which so much 
 hangs upon, and is so intimately connected with, the earlier 
 revelation), than we have for the fabled heroes of antiquity, or 
 for Ovid's Metamorphoses. 
 
 (3.) If the same theory be true, we must next give up all 
 that authority for the books of the Old Testament which 
 they receive from the testimony of the New. The order, as 
 ivell as veracity, of the Canonical Boohs is broken up. The 
 Scriptures " err,'^ instead of those being in error " who 
 know not the Scripture" (Matt. xxii. 29). Holy men 
 and apostles, though they never suspected it, were under a 
 gross delusion when they announced Him, " of whom Moses 
 in the law, and the Prophets had spoken'^ (John i. 45). 
 And, what is worse, the risen Saviour Himself was equally 
 in error, or else greatly misrepresented the case, when 
 " beginning at Moses .... He expounded unto them in 
 
40 
 
 " all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself" (Luke 
 xxiv. 27). 
 
 (4.) I observe that many of the alleged reasons are, in 
 reality, reasons the other way. 
 
 The Jehovist making so free with the Elohisf, and interpo- 
 lating his favourite word with so little ceremony, is a shocking 
 thing in the Bishop's eyes — at least, if we mean to say that 
 the Elohistic, in common with other parts of Genesis, arc 
 inspired. But he will forgive us this wrong if we only allow, 
 on our side, and as a handsome excuse for the Jehovist, that 
 he had not the least idea that the Elohist was in any way 
 inspired, or that he made the slightest pretensions to it I 
 But, unhappily, we cannot allow this, and sj it must needs 
 be confessed, that the Jehovist reviser did use some liberty 
 with the Elohist's portion of the documents^ and did freely 
 alter and remodel. I would not be thought in any way to 
 be misrepresenting the Bishop on this leading point in his 
 argument, and will therefore repeat it in his own words : 
 " It cannot be supposed that any later writers would have 
 " presumed to mix up without distinction large and important 
 " sections of history of their own composition, with writings 
 " so venerable and sacred as any must have been which 
 '•' had been handed down from the time of Moses, and were 
 " really believed to have been written by his hand, and chiefly 
 " from the very mouth of Jehovah Himself It is inconceivable 
 " that any 2)ious Israelite, much less a prophet or priest, 
 " would have dared to commit an act of such profanity under 
 " any circumstances. But, certainly, he could not have done 
 *' so without distinguishing in some way the Divine words, as 
 " written down by Moses, from his own. There is not, how- 
 *' ever, a single instance of any such distinction . . . and 
 '' therefore we are compelled to the conclusion, that the later 
 " writer or writers did not believe in the unspeakable sacred 
 " character of any older documents which may have come 
 *' down to them, that they did not receive them as really 
 " written by the hand of Moses, and conveying, on his own 
 " authority, the nstonishing facts of his awful communion 
 ^' with God '^ (254). 
 
41 
 
 ' To the same effect, and not less strongly stated, is the 
 Bishop's reasoning (216, 298) : '' The interpolator must have 
 " known that the older document was not written by Moses, 
 " and had no such sacred character attached to it." I answer 
 — the interpolator did, in a measure, ' know' this, but for a very 
 different reason ! He knew he was not altering the ' writings 
 of Moses,' because he himself was Moses, and the author of 
 the Pentateuch ; which explains at once his supposed mis- 
 conduct and ' profanity ' ! If he ventured to * amend,' ' add 
 to,' ' erase,' and otherwise ' meddle with the Elohist,' it was 
 because he was his natural superior, and the interpreter, by 
 Divine appointment, of the revealed Word and Will of his 
 Heavenly Master. Certainly all acts of profanity are worse 
 in ^ pious people ' than in those who know no better. But if 
 Moses was the Jehovist, notwithstanding that he felt some 
 regard to ' piety ' and truth, what should hinder him from 
 taking counsel with Aaron or Eleazar, and revising with them 
 their own collection of documents, made perhaps in some 
 measure independently and by their own research, but brought 
 by them of their own accord, and cast into the common 
 treasury of the Lord's house ? 
 
 (5.) Another point which requires particularly to be'noticed 
 
 is, the extreme unfairness of representing the Elohist as at 
 
 variance in his account with the Jehovist. It is asserted that 
 
 there are '' contradictions between the two cosmogonies " (205, 
 
 206)— and, indeed, everywhere " a number of strange and 
 
 unaccountable contradictions " between the two writers (210). 
 
 To enter fully into the supposed points of difference would 
 
 be to occupy ourselves with a minute examination of the 
 
 entire Pentateuch. But with respect to the ' contradiction ' 
 
 here asserted, it is a mere assumption of the Bishop's, quite 
 
 contrary to the received opinion of the ablest critics. Thus 
 
 Dr. Kalisch remarks : " The Jehovist author designed full 
 
 " harmony with the Elohist, and he has preserved it in 
 
 "almost all respects, and has so closely interwoven his 
 
 " additions with the former document, that it is now 
 
 •' impossible and perfectly inadmissible to separate both, and 
 
 G 
 
42 
 
 " to dismember the narrative/^ — {Critical Commentary on 
 Genesis, p. 184 ; see also pp. 386, 423.) The same is the con- 
 clusion of Kurtz : *' Even if the separate portions of the 
 " Pentateuch are not all the production of one and the same 
 " pen, they form one complete work, and the whole is uniform, 
 " well-planned, well-arranged, and harmonious." " Tuch and 
 " De Wette/^ says Dr. Samuel Davidson, '' have greatly ex- 
 " aggerated the differences of delineation, so as to make not 
 " only discrepancies, but irreconcileable ones. TJiis cannot 
 " he allowed. The descriptions are diverse, because both 
 " writers had different objects in view. The differences are 
 " not so great or so marked as has been contended, nor 
 '*' are they usually contradictory." — Text of Old Testament 
 (599—607). 
 
 (6.) The point of all these objections will still further 
 appear, if we test the Bishop's scheme by a few plain and 
 practical illustrations. But, as this has been already done 
 in our first chapter, there will be no occasion to repeat the 
 experiment here. I must refer the reader to what has gone 
 before, pp. 2 — 14. 
 
 We seem now to have gone over the chief objections to 
 the Samuelist theory, as to the age and authorship of the 
 Pentateuch; and the same remarks would apply to almost 
 any theory which denies the Mosaic origin and composition 
 of the Pentateuch. 
 
 The Bishop may perhaps complain that his arguments are 
 * but partially met/ and may still imagine himself entrenched 
 in an unassailable position. Among other things, he may 
 ask, if we have not observed that he Mays the whole stress' 
 of his reasoning on something else, where he says, " I am 
 " sure that no one will blame the fulness of detail in chapters 
 " xii. — xviii., who realizes the importance of this particular 
 " point of the inquiry, — who sees that the question as to the 
 " time when the Name Jehovah first came into use amons^ the 
 " Hebrews, is really the pivot, as it were, upon which the 
 " whole argument turns, since the revelation of that Name 
 " to Moses is the very core and centre of the story of the 
 
43 
 
 " Exodus; and, if it appeirs, as I believe it will, on sufficient 
 " grounds, that the Name rea^y did not originate in so early 
 *' an age, it would follow that one of the most vital portions 
 " of the narrative is shown to be unhistorical ? " — (Part II., 
 Pref. ix.) 
 
 The ^revelation of the Name to Moses' in the burning 
 bush may perhaps justly be called the ' very core and centre ' 
 of the account in Exodus — but who would doubt it, after the 
 numerous proofs which I have given of the authenticity of 
 this Book of Moses ? However necessary, then, to the esta- 
 blishment of a Samuelist theory may be the details through 
 which the Bishop carries us as to the critical history of this 
 Name — they are of no vital importance on any other theory, 
 except as a literary curiosity. This, I grant, they are ; — and, 
 if published separately, the chapters on which Bishop 
 Colenso lays such particular stress, might be useful as serving 
 to throw some additional light on the composition of the 
 Book of Psalms. Meantime the lever has yet to be dis- 
 covered which will suffice to move the authority of the 
 Books of Moses. I wish to do every justice to the Bishop's 
 ingenuity and ability ; but if he is pleased to trust so im- 
 plicitly to his own calculations, and to magnify so prodi- 
 giously the importance of his numerical ' details,' there is no 
 help for it but to leave him to the enjoyment of his imagined 
 victory. Let him say, if he pleases, that he is ' only par- 
 tially ' answered ; — I answer, that we, too, have a right to 
 expect answers from him ; and far more profitable is it to 
 feed on something positive, and to confirm ourselves in 
 acknowledged truths, than to split straws upon trifles, and to 
 hunt up little difficulties and apparent contradictions and 
 errors, which have no other effect than to destroy every 
 vestige of belief, and lead to the negation of all positive 
 revealed truth. 
 
 To sum up, then, what has been advanced in support and 
 confirmation of the canonical status of the Pentateuch ; I 
 think it has been shown in a preceding chapter, and further 
 corroborated in the present — 
 
44 
 
 (1.) That the Books of the Pentateuch may justly be con- 
 sidered, as they are denominated in the Canon, the Books of 
 Moses. 
 
 (2.) That it being common with the sacred writers to avail 
 themselves freely of existing documents, there are found 
 traces of the same practice in various parts of the Penta- 
 teuch; but that, notwithstanding this, the authenticity of 
 the Books remains unimpaired. 
 
 These two propositions having, I trust, been fully esta- 
 blished, it will only remain to show further, and — 
 
 (3.) That passages may be observed in the Pentateuch 
 which bear the marks of having been introduced, by way of 
 addition or interpolation, by some later hand ; which will give 
 occasion further to comment on a distinct portion of Part II. 
 which we have not yet noticed, viz., that which undertakes, 
 chiefly upon account of these additions, &c., to damage the 
 credit of the Books. See " Signs of Later Date in the Pen- 
 tateuch/' Part II., Chap. v. vi. When this has been ac- 
 complished (and it will form the subject of the following 
 chapter), the only omission of which I shall be conscious is, 
 the not having gone into the critical history of the Psalms, 
 the Book of Judges, and the two Books of Samuel. As it would 
 not help my argument to have done so, and as these are points 
 which turn purely on criticism, I must leave them to others. 
 
 All I will here attempt is to report the Bishop's conclusion 
 on the whole matter, for what it may be worth. He 
 begins by dividing the Psalms into Five Books, according to 
 a recognised division among the Jews (228, 355 — 58). The 
 Pentateuch, it is remarked by the way, might have been set 
 out in its present quintuple form about the same time, viz. 
 the time of Ezra, B.C. 450 (227). To continue with the 
 Psalms. Among the Five Books we find the most frequent 
 use of the term Elohim in the Second Book, viz. in Ps. xlii. 
 to Ixxii. ; and as these comprise six of the earliest Psalms 
 ever written by David (355), we may conclude that in the 
 youthful days of David the term Jehovah was not yet in 
 frequent use. As wc advance, however, the comparative use 
 
45 
 
 of Jehovah begins gradually to prevail over that of Elohim, 
 till, in the Fifth Book, the former term prevails decidedly 
 over the latter in the proportion of 7 : 1. 
 
 Now, the Bishop considers that " David's own Psalms are, 
 " surely, the best possible proof of the actual state of things 
 " at the time when he lived'' (449) ; and that it is quite clear 
 (by his own showing out of these Psalms), that when David 
 began to write, " he could have no such idea of the sacred- 
 " ness of the name Jehovah, as the Pentateuch, upon the 
 " ordinary view of its historical character, would lead us to 
 "expect" (448). It is further certain that up to this same 
 period — i.e. from the time of Moses to that of Samuel- 
 while there were frequent instances of proper names com- 
 pounded with el (for Elohim), the compounds with yod initial, 
 or -iah final (for Jehovah), were almost entirely unknown 
 (446). Joshua, indeed, and Jochebed, the mother of Moses, 
 are acknowledged to be apparent exceptions (305), but 
 acknowledged only to be discarded as later interpolations. 
 Then, again, such names as we have frequently in Chronicles, 
 as Azaria^, 1 Chron. ii. 8, in the third generation from 
 Judah; Khiah, ii. 24; Ah\jah, ii. 25, &c. &c., are adduced 
 only to be disposed of by similarly denying the authenticity 
 'of the Chronicler' in toto (236, 307). A similar process is 
 applied to certain names in the Book of Judges, particularly 
 e/bash, Jotham, MichazaA, and /onathan (Judg. vi. 11 ; ix. 5; 
 xvii. 1 ; xviii. 30), (456, 458); and also to the supposed in- 
 stance from Gen. xxii. 2, of a mountain ' in the land of 
 Moriah,' supposed by many to be of the same signification 
 with the proverb quoted, v. 14: " In the Mount of the Lord 
 it shall be seen." And now, by this eliminating process, 
 we are fairly rid of the term Jehovah, except as an invention 
 of Samuel's day, which thenceforwarii came freely into 
 popular use ; but the supposed revelation of it, Exod. iii. 
 and vi., is to be discarded as altogether fictitious (Chap. viii. 
 and passim, Part II.) ! 
 
 I must be satisfied, for the present, to meet these various 
 reasonings by the assertion — 
 
46 
 
 (1.) That the Books of Chronicles * arc 7iot so contemptible 
 an authority as the Bishop supposes. 
 
 (2.) That Moriah may very possibly have been so named 
 in patriarchal times^ and may have been expressive of the 
 vision or manifestation of Jehovah, according to the ver- 
 sion of the LXX, 7^v rf/? Q-rrTaaia^, and the Vulgate, 
 ' terram visionis.' Kalisch conjectures n^"^")b, ^'Jehovah 
 is my instructor.''' Gesenius, too, makes it a compound 
 of Jah, 
 
 (3.) That, besides the compounds found in the Book of 
 Judges and in the Chronicles, we have also, unaccounted for 
 by the Bishop, the remarkable patriarchal name of Judah. 
 See Gen. xxix. 35: "Now ivill I praise Jehovah; therefore 
 she called his name Judah. '^ 
 
 (4.) That, perhaps, Sarah was a similar compound. 
 
 When the name of Sarai was changed to Sarah (Gen. 
 xvii. 15), could it have meant only a change from ' Prince' 
 to ' Princess ? ' or v»^as not the latter an abbreviated form o 
 iah final with Sarai, making ' Sara'-i«^, or ' Princess of 
 Jehovah?^ There is now some meaning in the appella- 
 tive, which would appropriately designate the mother of the 
 chosen Seed. 
 
 (5.) " Jehovah-jireK' again (Gen. xxii. 14 — '* Jehovah will 
 provide ") is not an instance to be put aside, unless it can 
 be shown that the Jehovist writer was not Moses, or that the 
 passage is only an interpolation. 
 
 (6,) Japheth (Gen. v. 32 ; vi. 10, &c.). The root of this 
 word is T\T\'^, to extend (see Kalisch, p. 236), prefixing H^^ 
 Japheth = ^' Jehovah will extend," which is accordingly taken 
 up into the prophecy. Gen. ix. 27. Jobab, Dni% Gen. x. 29 ; 
 xxxvi. 33, if we knew the history of this name, seems 
 another example in point. 
 
 (7.) " Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord " 
 (Gen. iv. 26). This, in another version of it, means, " Then 
 
 * "The chronicler's statements, when not ,sii])ported by other evidence, are 
 not at all to he rclird or." The italics are tlie l^ishop's (236). 
 
47 
 
 began men to CALL themselves by the name oe Jehovah." 
 Bat I will not bear hard upon a passage which, like that in 
 example (5), may possibly be rejected as a Jehovistic addition. 
 But at the best how is it possible, at this remote period, 
 to form any tolerable idea upon what principle the Hebrew 
 people went in the formation of their appellatives, and in 
 what proportion they might compound with an initial Yod^ 
 a final iah, or a final el ? Any one who likes to give away 
 his belief in Scripture upon a pretence of being able to decide 
 such matters of "detail," must reconcile it to his conscience 
 as well as he can. But as, doubtless, it will be mortifying 
 to see so large a part of his labours treated merely as a 
 literary curiosity, and not as carrying with them all the 
 weight which was expected, I am the more desirous, before 
 passing on, to put the question on the Bishop^s side (even 
 including this portion of it) as fully and as impartially 
 before the reader as I can. And for this purpose I will here 
 present it in the Bishop's own words, where he gives us the 
 following summary of his argument : — 
 
 "Chapter xi. (348.) 
 
 " (i.) We have seen reason already to conclude mtli certaiuty (282), that the 
 main portion, at least, of the story of the Exodus must have been written long 
 after the time of Moses and Joshua, whatever relics of that earlier age may 
 still, perhaps, he retained in the nan-ative ; 
 
 " (ii.) We can scarcely doubt that the age of Samuel is the earliest age, after 
 the time of the Exodus, at which such a history can be conceived to have 
 been written ; 
 
 "(tii.) "We have observed some indications (245), Avhich seem to point to 
 the age of Samuel as the time at which some portions of the Pentateuch may 
 have been written ; 
 
 " (iv.) "We have reason to believe (283) that Samuel and his pupils did 
 actually employ themselves in historical composition." 
 
 Again, chapter xx. (461, 462) — 
 
 " Thus we see that, in the time of David's manJiood, it was not an unusual 
 thing for parents to give their children names compounded with Jehovah. 
 Since, therefore, wherever lists of names occur in the Pentateuch, we do not 
 find a single name of this kind (except, as before, Joshua and Jochebed), 
 it would seem that the author or authors to whom such lists are due, could 
 hardly have lived in a vtuch later age than this. On the other hand, .since, in 
 David's earlier Psalms, nay, even in his ' last tcords, ' we have had clear evidence 
 that the name Jehovah was, at the time of his writing, not in such, fi'ee poptdar 
 
48 
 
 use as the name Elohim, this fact alone proves that all theJehoristic portion 
 of the Pentateuch were written after the time of David, or, at least, not 
 before the latter part of his life." 
 
 It is impossible to forbear remarking the extreme tone of 
 confidence with which the Bishop here speaks of "not finding 
 " a smgle name before the time of Samuel, compounded with 
 " Jehovah, except Joshua and Jochebed." When he has time 
 to collect his thoughts he may have something to plead in 
 excuse for his omission of tvro such remarkable names as 
 Japheth and Judah, (see pp. 45, 46.) 
 
 I remark further, in passing, that there is something rather 
 inconsequential in the reasoning which I have italicised in the 
 above sentences. How could ' David's last words ^ be any 
 proof of ' the popular use ' of the time when his ' earlier ' 
 Psalms were composed ' ? But overlooking this, the argu- 
 ment ought to be, In the time of " David's manhood,'' the 
 name Jehovah was so freely in popular use that it entered 
 familiarly into the composition of proper names ; whereas 
 David himself, in a solemn address on his deathbed, uses the 
 term ' Jehovah ' but once, and ' Elohim ' three times (see 2 
 Sam. xxiii. 1 — 6). In other words, he was Jehovistic in the 
 prime of his life, and Elohistic at his death — progressing, as 
 it were, backward, and leaving the whole history of the 
 names more hopelessly confused than ever ! The one fact 
 at any rate contradicts the other, and shows how hopeless 
 and impossible it is to conclude anything certainly from such 
 premises (with all the learning bestowed on them) as form 
 the substance of these chapters (xii. — xviii.) so lauded by 
 the Bishop (see Pref. viii.). 
 
 But to continue the extracts : — 
 
 " 462. Thus, then, even if it were conceivable that Moses should have 
 written a story, about matters in which he was personally concerned, involving 
 such contradictions, exaggerations, and impossibilities, as we have already 
 had before us, yet the fact above noticed would alone be decisive against such 
 a supposition. The great body of the Pentateuch, and all the other historical 
 books which follow it, could not have been compiled until the Name Jehovah 
 was in common popular use, and that was not till after, at all events, the 
 middle of David's reign. "Whereas the Elohistic portions of the Pentateuch, 
 which appear to have been composed when the Name Jeliovah was not in 
 
49 
 
 common use, and with the very purpose of commendiug it to popular accepta- 
 tion, must have been v/ritten during, or shortly before, the earlier part of 
 David's life, when that word was only cocasionally employed by him. Hence 
 we may, with very good reason, abide by our supposition that they were 
 written, very probably by the hand, or, at least, under the direction, and 
 certainly in the time, of Samuel. " 
 
 One more summary of the remaining arguments, and it 
 shall be in the Bishop^s own words : — 
 
 ** 473. The following are the principal steps of the argument, as it has been 
 developed up to this point. 
 
 " (i) There are different authors concerned in the composition of the book 
 of Genesis, whose accounts in some respects contradict each other. 
 
 " (ii) One of these authors is distinguished by abstaining altogether from 
 the use of the name Jehovah in that book, while the other uses it freely from 
 the first. 
 
 " (iii) The former writer composed also E. vi., as all critics admit, and as 
 internal evidence shows ; and it would seem from this chapter that he de- 
 signedly forbore the use of the name Jehovah, until he had announced its 
 revelation to Moses. 
 
 * ' (iv) Either the Name vxis actually made known to Moses, in the way 
 described, or else, it is plain, the Elohist must have had some special reason 
 for commending it in this way to the reverence of those for whom he wrote. 
 
 *' (v) If the Name loas first revealed to Moses at this time, then the Jeho- 
 vistic story, which puts it in the mouths of persons of all classes from the days 
 of Eve downwards, cannot be historically true ; and this involves at once the 
 historical truth of all the other statements of the Jehovist. 
 
 *' (vi) And this unreal character of his story is further confirmed by the fact 
 that, amidst the multitude of names which are given in the book of Genesis, 
 down to the age of Joseph, though there are numerous names compounded with 
 Elohim, there is not a single one compounded with Jehovah. 
 
 " (vii) But the impossibilities, which we have found existing throughout 
 the whole story of the Exodus, are equally conclusive against the historical 
 truth of the whole. 
 
 *'(viii) We must return, then, to the other supposition, viz. that the Elo- 
 hist had some special reason for commending the Name to the regard and 
 veneration of the people. 
 
 " (ix) The most natural reason would be that he himself was introducing it, 
 as a new Name for the God of Israel. 
 
 '* (x) We find an indication of the fact that the Name did not exist before 
 the time of Samuel, in the circumstance that, throughout the history in the 
 book of Judges, there is no single name which can be appealed to with confi- 
 dence as compounded with Jehovah, while there are names compounded with 
 the Divine Name in the form of El. 
 
 " (xi) Dui-ing and after the time of Samuel we observe, in the books known 
 
 H 
 
50 
 
 by his name, a gradually increasing partiality for the use of names compounded 
 with Jehovah, while not one name of this kind occurs at such an age as is 
 inconsistent with the sujiposition that this name may have been introduced by 
 Samuel. 
 
 "(xii) Hence arises the suspicion that Samuel was the Elohist ; and the 
 position he held, together with the circumstances of his time, and the accounts 
 which are handed down as to his doings, and especially the tradition with 
 respect to his historical labours, tend strongly to confirm this suspicion. 
 
 " (xiii) It is further confirmed, and, it seems to me, confirmed almost to a 
 certainty, by the fact that David, in his earlier Psalms, as Ps. li., Ps. Ix., 
 Ps. Ixviii, made little or no use of the name Jehovah, while in his later 
 Psalms he seems to have used it more freely ; and the same aj^pears to be true 
 of other Psalmists of that age. 
 
 "(xiv) We conclude, then, with some degree of confidence, that Samuel 
 was the Elohistic writer of the Pentateuch. 
 
 * * (xv) Since the Jehovistic writer makes free use of the name Jehovah, he 
 must have written in a later age than the early days of David, and not earlier 
 than the latter part of David's life, when the Name became more common, and 
 names began to be compounded with it freely. 
 
 " (xvi) This is confirmed by finding that one Jehovistic passage, N.x. 35, is 
 manifestly copied from a Psalm of David, the name Elohim, which David 
 used, being changed to Jehovah. 
 
 " (xvii) But this later writer can hardly have lived long after Samuel, and 
 the time of the introduction of the name Jehovah ; since even he does not 
 introduce freely into the story names compounded with Jehovah, as a later 
 writer would most probably have done, though he uses freely the Name itself. 
 
 " (xviii) In point of fact, we shall find reason to believe that all those 
 portions of the first four books and the book of Joshua, which are not due to 
 the Elohist, were composed by one or more writers who wrote in the latter 
 days of David, and in the early part of Solomon's reign, — with the exception 
 of some interpolations, of which a few smaller ones occur in Genesis, but 
 larger ones in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Joshua. 
 
 " (xix) These interpolations are all due to the same hand, that of the 
 Deuteronomist, who revised the book as it stood in his time, and added to it 
 almost the whole book of Deuteronomy. 
 
 " (xx) The book of Deuteronomy was written about the time of Josiah, 
 and, as some suppose, by the hand of the prophet Jeremiah. 
 
 "474. The last three points will have to be considered at length in Part 
 III., as we shall need to form an estimate of the style and character of the 
 book of Deuteronomy, in order to be able to detect the passages due to its 
 author in the books of Genesis, Exodus, &c." 
 
 Against all which, however, it has now been shown, that 
 to make Samuel the author of the Pentateuch, is to make 
 him an impostor, and the whole composition one continuous 
 
51 
 
 forgery, inasmuch as it runs, for the most part, in the name 
 of Moses ; and whereas Sam^iel was eminently " The Seer 
 OF Israel," and, at the expiration of his public charge 
 (1 Sara, xii.), made it his particular boast to have walked in 
 truth and uprightness before all the people, this theory would 
 make him belie his own pretensions, and bring himself under 
 the very mark and denomination of 2i. false prophet, saying, 
 '* Thus saith the Lord God, when the Lord had not spoken ' ' 
 (Ezek. xxii. 28, xiii. 4). That, besides 'new-coining' and 
 inventing the sacred name of Jehovah (Ex. vi.), and pre- 
 tending a special revelation of it down from the time of 
 Moses, this Prophet had the audacity to parade his invention 
 before the eyes of the people, interspersing it everywhere, 
 without shame or compunction, in the sacred books, as of 
 Divine appointment, though be knew it to be entirely a 
 fabrication of his own. 
 
 Again, concerning the age of the writings, though it be 
 granted there is more uncertainty on this point than on 
 the authorship — yet in favour of the age of Samuel we have 
 scarcely any argument at all, except the alleged ' freer use of 
 the name Jehovah,' which may be traced to a sort of begin- 
 ning in the days of Samuel, and of which there are faint 
 signs in the six earliest Psalms of David ; but as the name 
 occurs more and more frequently, till it attains a kind of 
 maximum in the fifth, or last Book — and as at this later time 
 it is found to enter more freely into the composition of proper 
 names, we seem "compelled," says the Bishop, ''to believe 
 it of no earlier origin than the days of Samuel; " while it 
 would be unsafe to think it much later than David ! 
 
 To which it has been answered, that, so far from being 
 new in the days of Samuel, it was not * even new in the days 
 of Moses, but was most likely known in patriarchal and 
 even ante-patriarchal times ; and that, if not yet publicly 
 and authoritatively consecrated to the peculiar use of the 
 Abrahamic seed, yet, in some latent but intelligible form — 
 some other part, it may be, of the Hebrew verb n\'l 'to 
 
 * See pp. 45, 46, and the note, p. 35. 
 
52 
 
 be/ — this Name had passed down from age to age among the 
 faithful to express the Grfat Self-EXISTENT One;* that the 
 text (Exod. vi. 3) does not by any means contradict this 
 idea, while Exod. iii. positively confirms it ; that, accordingly, 
 w^e have many clear instances of its use so far back as in 
 the earliest chapters of Genesis, and where there is no room 
 for supposing a later interpolation ; we find even instances 
 of its having entired into the composition of some distin- 
 guished proper names, sucli as Japheth and JuDAH (perhaps, 
 also, Sarah and Moriah) ; so that the argument built on the 
 contrary supposition must be seen to fail in this chief element 
 of its strength. That, however, the most probable account to 
 be given why the Bishop should have fancied he saw some 
 force in this argument is, that he had taken up, in the first 
 instance, some prejudice against the contents of the Books 
 themselves, before he impugned their authorship : that his 
 mind was biassed by a suspicion, which he has not, however, 
 been successful in making good, that the Pentateuch was 
 wholly 'unreal' and '^ unhistorical,' full of 'errors,' 'contra- 
 dictions,' 'impossibilities,' ' absurdities,' and so forth! 
 
 Having, in a former number, done something, in the first 
 place, to remove these preliminary objections to the whole 
 character of the Pentateuch, and having further, in the 
 preceding pages, considered fully the Samuelist authorship 
 which it was the Bishop's next attempt to prove and establish 
 — we may now pass on to some minor considerations 
 advanced by him in support of this latter argument. We 
 may call them ' minor,' though they occupy a somewhat 
 prominent position in his work, being the substance, as was 
 before observed, of Chapters V. and VI. 
 
 • * It is remarkable, in connexion witli the patriarchal nse and knowledge of 
 this great Name, that the verb nvr (' to be '), from which Jehovah (Ex. vi. 3) 
 is derived (see the note, p. 35), is considered by grammarians a more ancient 
 form than n^rr, which is the root of the cognate form rrris (I am) (Exod. iii. 14) 
 — which seems to indicate, further, an earlier origin of the Name itself — far 
 earlier, certainly, than the time of Samuel ! 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ANSWER TO OBJECTIONS ON THE SUPPOSED LATER ADOPTION OF THE 
 NAME 'JEHOVAH.' 
 
 We have now before us the chief steps of the reasoning by 
 which the Bishop would conduct us to a belief iu the Samuel- 
 ist authorship of the Pentateuch. Assisted the author may 
 have been by ' some of the more promising young men of 
 his time,' whom he ' may have endeavoured to train, to the 
 ' best of his power, in the art of writing. . . and who thus 
 * may have had their first lessons in the writing of history ' 
 (286, 287). "We are warranted/' however, the Bishop 
 thinks, " in asserting that the Pentateuch and Book of Joshua 
 " must have been composed in a later age than that of Moses 
 " and Joshua ; '' and " while it is possible, as far as we know 
 " at present, that laws, songs, &c., may be included in the 
 " Pentateuch which are of very ancient date, and may have 
 " even been handed down from the times of Moses, we can 
 " scarcely suppose that they were Avritten by his hand, any 
 " more than we can believe that the whole story of the 
 " Exodus, containing, as we have seen, such flagrant contra- 
 " dictions, could liPcve had Moses for its author '^ (255) ; 
 and to confine ourselves only to ' sure ground ' (!) — being 
 " compelled to the conclusion that the Name Jehovah was 
 " quite new to the Hebrew people in the days of Samuel, we 
 " can scarcely avoid the inference that he himself must have 
 " first introduced it '' (340), and so have " written the 
 '' groimclworh of the Pentateuch" (289), which would then 
 be filled up, amplified, and completed " by his disciples " 
 (286, 287, :34], 342), till we come to the two Books of 
 
54 
 
 Chronicles, when the authority of the Sacred Canon dwindles 
 nearly to zero, since all we can say of the Chronicles is, that, 
 from the partiality shown by the writer for such matters as 
 the Levitical choristers and doorkeepers, we should judge them 
 the work of ' some Levite chorister who lived after the time of 
 Nehemiah, B.C. 409, or even so late as about B.C. 332 (234).' 
 But so long as we see that the 'groundwork' was by 
 Samuel, that is the chief point, and the rest falls easily into 
 place. 
 
 And now we see the great use of Part I. ; since, notwith- 
 standing that the Book of Psalms was at hand to correct any 
 possible misunderstanding that might have arisen from the 
 literal acceptation of such a passage as Exod. vi. ! — if it had 
 not been for the Bishop's First Part, we should never have 
 suspected the entire unhistorical character of all that Samuel 
 and the 'promising young men of his day' succeeded in 
 putting together, under the name of the Pentateuch and 
 Book of Joshua! Prepared, however, by Part I., we shall 
 be less in condition to withstand the arguments of Part II. 
 
 But we must pass on to another particular class of objec- 
 tions, which are, as it were, subsidiary to the main argument 
 derived from the use and origin of the sacred Name JEHOVAH, 
 to which I have thus far given precedence. I think it un- 
 likely that if we have passed the ordeal of the main argument, 
 we shall be shaken by this inferior one. But if I have 
 postponed to the present chapter a part of the subject which 
 is placed by the Bishop in an earlier division of his argu- 
 ment (Ch. iii. — vi.), it was merely that I might begin with 
 the more difficult and, perhaps, more novel class of objec- 
 tions; nor could I see why the Elohistic and Jehovistic 
 parts, so to call them, should be treated in separate chapters 
 as the Bishop has done — thus interrupting a subject begun 
 in Chap. ii. by four intermediate chapters, which are for 
 the most part independent of the Elohistic question alto- 
 gether. The order which I have thought preferable was, to 
 reserve these intermediate chapters for separate considera- 
 tion, and to treat the remainder as one consecutive whole. 
 
55 
 
 Having performed the latter task, I now proceed to the dis- 
 cussion of those earlier chapters in the Bishop's work. And 
 if anything has been done towards untying the knot* which 
 holds all the minor difficulties together, these, I hope, will 
 run easily off the string and fall to the ground together. 
 
 There are one or two observations, however, before we 
 proceed to the consideration of the earlier chapters, which 
 may seriously claim our attention. (1.) The first is, that 
 unless the Bishop had grounded his ideas as to the age and 
 authorship of the Pentateuch on what he would call the 
 clear reasonings of Part I., he never would have made the 
 attempt which we see him to have done in Part II. He never 
 would have moved the authorship, had he not first been 
 shaken in his own mind as to the internal veracity of the 
 Pentateuch. And this being the case, it must be evident 
 how much will depend on the result of his former number. 
 If the objections there made be now seen to be unfounded, 
 his argument, by his own showing, cannot stand ; he cannot 
 ask, or expect any one to assent to, a solution of ' the 
 age and authorship ^ which involves the internal untruthful- 
 ness of the books. I have already adduced passages from 
 Part II. in support of this general assertion. But none can 
 be so blind as not to have observed, that an assumption of 
 this kind is at the very bottom of the whole argument in 
 Part II. It is the ever-ready voucher for the otherwise un- 
 conscionable demand on the assent of the astonished reader 
 — the forlorn hope continually led out, when the attack is 
 brought to the most desperate pass. This is so necessary to 
 be kept in view, that I may, perhaps, be pardoned, before we 
 proceed, if I support my assertion by one or two passages 
 besides those which I have adduced in another part of my 
 Reply. (See Letter to Bishop Colenso, &c. Pref. Ed. 3.) 
 
 * The Eloliistic and Jehovistic question may be called the knot winch ties 
 all the minor difficulties together — if there be truth in the Bishop's remark, 
 ** Who sees not that the question as to the time when the name Jehovah first 
 *' came into use among the Hebrews, is really the pivot, as it were, upon which 
 " the whole argument turns 1 " — Part II., Preface ix. 
 
58 
 
 In answer to the very just observation of Dr. McCaul 
 (Aids to Faith, p. 197) : " Most recent writers admit that, 
 " whether there be different sources or not, the author has 
 '' formed them into one narrative. There cannot, therefore, 
 " be contradiction " — the Bishop thinks it a sufficient answer 
 to say, " Why not ? It is certainly inconceivable that, if the 
 " Pentateuch be the production of one and the same hand 
 " throughout, it should contain such a number of glaring in- 
 " consistencies as those which we have ah*eady observed. No 
 '' single author could have been guilty of such absurdities." 
 [The * absurdities,' observe, taken for granted !] " But it is 
 " quite possible, and what was almost sure to happen in such 
 " a case, that if the Pentateuch be the worU of different authors 
 " in different ages, this fact should betray itself by the existence 
 " of contradictions in the narrative ^^ (207). Again: ''The 
 " impossibilities which we have found existing throughout the 
 " whole story of the Exodus, are equally conclusive against 
 " the historical truth of the whole '' [of the Pentateuch] 
 (473, vii.). And, to repeat a quotation already made : 
 " Undoubtedly, as 1 have shown, I believe, sufficiently in 
 " Fart I., an unquestioning, implicit faith in all the details 
 " of the story of the Exodus, as recorded in the Pentateuch, 
 " involves, again and again, assent to propositions as mon- 
 " strous and absurd as ' that two and two make five ' '' 
 (490). 
 
 Supposing, even, that the Samuelist theory propounded 
 by the Bishop were ever so conclusive and correct — was it 
 necessary, was it even justifiable, to throw such odium upon 
 writings, held sacred in all ages, and, for aught he has shown 
 to the contrary, really deserving (as far as man's blindness 
 can presume to judge) of the sacred character they hold ? 
 Had — I say — his discovery been ever so valuable in itself, 
 what a drawback from its merits would be this wholesale 
 depreciation of the sacred writers! Nay, rather, what a 
 strong presumption against the theory is it, when we see it 
 bought at such a price ! built upon such noble ruins ! 
 
 It would be unjust to one's own side, to pass over these 
 
57 
 
 general grounds of objection. Every one knows how deeply 
 they are felt by the friends of Scripture truth — how keenly 
 this insult to the common faith is resented. At the risk of 
 being tedious, I feel it also a duty to recall to the reader's 
 recollection (and to commend it also to his serious attention), 
 a remark in a former reply to Part I., which was to the effect 
 that the assailant of the veracity of Scripture is altogether 
 differently circumstanced to the defendant : and that while 
 on the side of the defence, any fair probability deduced from 
 reasonable considerations, in any particular case in dispute, 
 may justly be accounted of great weight — sufficient, in many 
 cases, to carry conviction to the judgment ; on the side of 
 the attack, a mere pr oh ability is not enough, for here there is 
 nothing to back the probability alleged, except the abstract 
 idea of possible or impossible, reasonable or absurd, which, 
 in matters of remote antiquity especially, is one of the most 
 uncertain of all things. Very different is it on the other 
 side ; because here, besides the particular probability, there 
 comes in the general weight of Scripture and the esteem 
 accorded to it in all ages of the Church, the witness of 
 Apostles and Prophets, and the approving testimony of our 
 Blessed Lord Himself* 
 
 To proceed : among the much that is wrong in spirit and 
 in tendency, there is something, too, that is valuable in a 
 critical point of view, and might be commended to respectful 
 attention, if it had occurred in any other book. One might, 
 in fact, be glad to find the Bishop at last on some clear 
 tangible position of his own : and for my own part, there 
 is much in the earlier chapters, where he may be said to be 
 reconnoitring the ground, which I am not inclined to dis- 
 pute. My object being truth, and not criticism only, I will 
 therefore omit for the present any further notice of Chapters 
 i. — iv., viz. (i.) " Signs of different authors in the Pentateuch ; " 
 (ii.) " The Elohistic and Jehovistic writers ; " (iii.) " The earlier 
 
 * See this illustrated by a parallel case, "Letter to Bishop Colenso on his 
 Objections to the Pentateuch," Part I. Third Edition, p. o, note. 
 
 I 
 
58 
 
 historical Books of the Old Testament ; " and (iv.) 'The later 
 historical Books of the Old Testament ^' — and come to the 
 consideration of Chapters v. and vi. viz. " Signs of a later date 
 in the Pentateuch." 
 
 The ' signs of a later date,' we find thus enumerated : — 
 
 (i.) The use of the term ^' shekel of the sanctuary /' (Exod. 
 XXX. 13, xxxviii. 24, 25, 26 ; which indicates a writer of later 
 days, when the ' sanctuary,^ i.e. the temple or the tabernacle, 
 was standing (239). 
 
 (ii.) '^ And Jehovah turned a mighty strong west wind, which 
 took away the locusts^ and cast them into the Red Sea '' 
 (Exod. X. 19). The scene being Egypt, and ' the west wind^ 
 being in the Hebrew ' wind of the sea ' — it is evident no writer 
 who was in the situation of Moses at the time would thus 
 have denominated any such wind as would have answered the 
 purpose of the narrative (240). 
 
 (iii.) "The plains of Moreh," eastward of the Jordan, are 
 described in Deut. xi. 29, 80, as " over against Gilgal," while 
 there was no place of that name till Josh. v. 9 (242). 
 
 (iv.) The same applies to Gen. xiv. 14, " And pui^sued them 
 unto Dan;'' while there was no place of this name till 
 Josh. xix. 47 (243). 
 
 Similar instances (271—274), (276—280). 
 
 (v.) "And these are the kings that reigned in the land of 
 Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of 
 IsraeV (Gen. xxxvi. 31.) If Moses was the author, how 
 could he have known anything about the time when ' the 
 kings of Israel reigned ' ? (245). 
 
 (vi.) The word *>:2^ [Nahi) is used (Gen. xx. 7, Exod. vii. 1, 
 XV. 20, Numb. xi. 29, xii. 6, &c. &c.) for a prophet ; but could 
 not have been so used by Moses, if another Scripture be true 
 which says, " He that is now " (viz. in the time of Samuel) 
 ''called a prophet \lSahi\ was beforetime called a seer 
 [Roeh];' (1 Sam. ix. 9), (248). 
 
 (vii.) A certain " Book ofJasher " is spoken of, Joshua x. 13; 
 but the same book seems to contain events of a much later 
 time: see 2 Sam. i. 18 (249). 
 
59 
 
 (viii.) Events of only a week or so before are made the 
 subject of an ancient song, recorded "in the book of the wars 
 of Jehovah:' (Numb. xxi. 13—15), (250). 
 
 (ix.) The Israelites are called • Hebrews'— ^^ an appellation 
 ' well-known even in Egypt ' (251). 
 
 (x.) Events seem spoken of as long past — the spoiling of 
 the Amorites, the bedstead of Off, &c. — which, if the narrator 
 had really been Moses, he could not have spoken of in this 
 way (252). 
 
 The following, according to the Bishop (ch. vi.), are " addi- 
 tional signs of a later date in the Pentateuch:" — 
 
 (xi.) " Jair the son of Manasseh took all the country of 
 Argob unto the coasts of Geshuri and Maachathi ; and called 
 them after Ms own name, Bashan-havoth-jair, unto this day'' 
 (Deut. iii. 14). " Wherefore the name of the place is called 
 Gilgal unto this day" (Josh. v. 9). 
 
 In these and similar passages, the expression " unto this 
 day," 'could have had no meaning,' unless the 'day' referred 
 to was considerably later than the time of Moses or Joshua 
 (257). 
 
 (xii.) " And the Canaanite was then in the land" 
 (Gen. xii. G). 
 
 How could this have occurred to any writer of Moses* 
 time, who was not yet acquainted with the expulsion of that 
 people from Canaan ? (258). 
 
 (xiii.) These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel 
 on the other side (for so, the Bishop thinks, ought the 
 word "131/3 to be translated, and not, as in the English 
 version, ' on this side ') Jordan in the wilderness (Deut. i. 1). 
 Several other passages are quoted to the same effect (259). 
 
 (xiv.) " And the children of Israel did eat manna, until they 
 came unto the borders of the land of Canaan!' (Exod. xvi. 35) 
 — indicates a writer who had reached the land of Canaan, 
 and who could not, therefore, be Moses (261). 
 
 Similar instances (263 — 267). 
 
 (xv.) " For only Og king of Bashan remained of the rem- 
 nant of giants ; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron ; 
 
60 
 
 is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits 
 was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after 
 the cubit of a man'' (Deut. iii. 11). 
 
 Since ' nine cubits '=16| feet, and ' four cubits '=7 J feet 
 — " Kurtz supposes," writes the Bisliop, " that the king had 
 " his bedstead designedly made larger than necessary, in order 
 " that posterity might form a more magnificent idea of his 
 " stature ! '' And, again : " But only a very short time, 
 " according to the story (173), could have elapsed since the 
 " conquest of Og. How, then, could his bedstead have been 
 " removed in that interval to Rabbath-Ammon ? There was 
 " not one of his people left alive (Deut. iii. 3) to bear off in 
 " safety this cumbrous relic of their lord. Or how could 
 " Moses, so soon after the event, have spoken of Og at all in 
 *' such terms as these ? ^^ (268.) 
 
 (xvi.) Now an omer is a tenth part of an ephah (Exod. 
 xvi. 36). 
 
 A thing so well known at the time would surely not have 
 been mentioned, if Moses had been the writer ! '* The words 
 " plainly imply that, at the time when they were written, the 
 " ' omer' had gone out of use, and was not likely to be known 
 " to the ordinary reader''' (275). 
 
 (xvii.) '' Also, such passages as the following could hardly 
 have been written by Moses himself :" — 
 
 Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of 
 Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh's servants, and in the sight of 
 his people (Exod. xi. 3). 
 
 Now the man Moses was very meeh, above all the men which 
 were upon the face of the earth (Numb. xii. 3). 
 
 These are that Moses and Aaron, to whom Jehovah said. 
 Bring out the children of Israel from the land of Egypt, accor- 
 ding to their armies. These are they lohich spake to Pharaoh, 
 king of Egypt, to bring out the children of Israel from Egypt : 
 these are that Moses and Aaron (Exod. vi. 26, 27). 
 
 And if ye have erred, and not observed all these command- 
 ments, which Jehovah hath spoken unto Moses, even all that 
 Jehovah hath commanded you by the hand of Moses, from the 
 
61 
 
 day that Jehovah commanded Moses, and henceforward among 
 your generations, ^c." (Numb. xv. 22, 23). 
 
 " Such passages, surely, giv^e plain signs of having been 
 " written by some one who lived in an age after that of 
 " Moses ^^ (281). 
 
 Among these evidences, as the Bishop considers them, of 
 ' later date,' and which preclude the supposition of Moses 
 having been the author, particular stress, it would seem, is to 
 be laid on examples (i.) (ii.) and (iv.) — for '' To these," the 
 Bishop writes (24^7, ii.), "it is difficult to see how either of the 
 above ' reconciling ^ processes can be seriously believed to 
 apply. '^ But, that the reader may be early acquainted with the 
 ' processes ' here alluded to, we must have patience to follow 
 another extract from the preceding paragraph, which is to 
 this effect: — "The remarkable expression. Gen. xxxvi. 3], 
 " ' These are the kings that reigned in Edom before there 
 " reigned any Icing over the children of Israel,^ may be 
 '' understood prophetically. Moses may have intended in 
 " the passage to mark his full belief in the promises made 
 " by God to Abraham and Jacob, that ' kings should come 
 " out of their loins,' a belief which he elsewhere expresses 
 " very confidently (Deut. xvii. 14 — 20). Or the right ex- 
 " pla nation may be the more commonly received one, — that 
 " these words, phrases, and passages, together with a few 
 " others similar to them, are later additions to the text, 
 " either adopted into it upon an authoritative i-e vision, such as 
 " that ascribed to Ezra, or, perhaps, accidentally introduced 
 " through the mistakes of copyists, who brought into the 
 " text what had previously been added, by way of exegesis, in 
 " the margin." — Professor Rawliuson, Aids to Faith, p. 247. 
 
 And now that we are upon a passage (Gen. xxxvi. 31) 
 which is the ground of objection (v.), it will be as well, 
 though somewhat out of order, to take this objection first. 
 It is, in fact, one of a class, and might be grouped with the 
 following— viz., (iii. 242), (iv. 243), compare (271—273, 276 
 ^280), (v. 245), (xi. 257), (xii. 258), (xiv. 261), and (xv. 268) ; 
 ■ — and, I think, (vii.) and (viii.) come under the same head. 
 
62 
 
 It may be thought a somewhat arbitrary proceeding to 
 group thus together a set of objections which are evidently 
 intended as, in some measure^ distinct and independent of 
 each other. And I should have thought so myself, but that 
 I find it so done to my hand, on the excellent authority of 
 Prideaux, A.D. MDCCXXV., and of Le Clerc, MDCXCVI. 
 
 The following passages, or words and phrases belonging 
 thereto, are classed together by Prideaux, as all involving 
 the same kind of difficulty, viz. — what is said of the ' Kings 
 of Edom and Kings of Israel,' Gen. xxxvi. 31, Colenso (245) ; 
 — Dan, and Hebron, Gen. xiv. 14, xxiii. 2, xxxv. 27, Colenso 
 (242, 271, 273) ; 'unto this day; Deut. iii. 14, &c. &c., 
 (257) ; * The Canaanite then in the land^ Gen. xii. 6, (258) ; 
 ^ As Israel did unto the land of his possession', Deut. ii. 12, 
 (265); ' The bedstead of Og in Rabbath-Ammon,' Deut. iii. 11, 
 (268, 269); 'The death of Moses,' Deut. xxxiii. 1, xxxiv., 
 (279, 280). The first of these passages, it will be noticed, 
 was the ground of objection (v.). It admits of the same 
 solution as the rest ; and that of Dean Prideaux is, I think, 
 satisfactory. And if so, we shall then have disposed of all such 
 objections, generally, as (iv.), (v.), (xi.), (xii.), (xiv.), and (xv.) 
 The ' Manna,' said not to have ceased ' till they came unto 
 the ' borders of the land of Canaan ' (Exod. xvi. 35), which is 
 the immediate ground of objection (xiv.), (261), is explained 
 by Le Glerc in the same manner as the above passages by 
 Prideaux; and objections (iii.), (vii.), and (viii.) may, I think, 
 be seen to be of the same kind. So that one mode of treat- 
 ment may be safely apphed to all this class, if the opinion of 
 these learned men is worth any consideration. 
 
 Now, I think the reader will have almost anticipated the 
 answer to be given to this whole class of difficulties. We 
 should hardly, perhaps, say with the Bishop (251) : "Expres- 
 " sions current in a later age have been allowed inadvertenily (!) 
 " to slip into the narrative." He is nearer the mark, and 
 must have known it, when he admits that " glosses of later 
 " writers may possibly have been designedly inter])olated in the 
 " original text.'^ The Bishop would know how to defend the 
 
63 
 
 faith, if he had a mind to do it. But now we must go to 
 others. I admire the simple note of Bishop Patrick on 
 Deut. iii. 14, which figures on the Bishop's objectionable list, 
 number (xi.) ; Patrick says, " added probably by Ezra.^' Le 
 Clerc, on the same passage : " If this were added by a later 
 " hand, it would not follow from thence that the greatest 
 " part of the Pentateuch was not written by Moses." The 
 same author, in his commentary on Gen. xiii. 8, observes : 
 " The name Hebron seems added by another hand since the 
 '' time of Moses, to expound an obscure name by one that 
 " was better known." And this method of expounding ob- 
 scure places was perfectly agreeable to the law and customs 
 of the Jews ; as we see in Nehemiah, in the account of the 
 celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles, when all the people 
 were gathered unto Ezra to hear the law: " So they read in 
 " the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, 
 " and caused them to understand the reading " (Neh. 
 viii. 8). 
 
 Having remarked that many of the foregoing objections 
 are grouped together by Prideaux, I will here subjoin the 
 explanation given by the learned Dean, which, indeed, is as 
 simple as it is convincing. Dean Prideaux says : " The 
 " third thing which Ezra did about the Holy Scriptures was, 
 " he added in several places what appeared necessary for the 
 " illustrating, connecting, or completing of them ; wherein he 
 " was assisted by the same Spirit by which they were at first 
 '' wrote. . . . These additions do not detract anything from 
 " the Divine authority of the whole, because they were all 
 " inserted by the direction of the same Holy Spirit which 
 " dictated all the rest. . . . And mani/ other examples may he 
 " given (N. B.), whereby it appears that the study of those 
 " who governed the Church of God in those times, was to 
 " render the Scripture as plain and intelligible to the people 
 " as they could, and not to hide or conceal any of it from 
 " them.''^ {Connexion of the History of the Old and New 
 Testament. Part I. Book V.) We should not omit the paral- 
 lel case suggested by this learned writer (Prov. xxv. 1) : 
 
64 
 
 " These are the proverbs of Solomon, which the men of 
 " Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied out " — a passage which 
 "must have been added many ages after Solomon/' but does 
 not prevent the Proverbs generally being his. With this 
 general consent among the best commentators, we may safely 
 rest satisfied, though neither the objection nor the defence 
 be new. We have thus disposed of objection (v.), and'all that 
 class. Let us now take the objections in order from the 
 beginning, and 
 
 (i.) '' The shekel of the sanctuary (Exod. xxx. 13, &c.), 
 mentioned by this name " before there was any Sanctuary 
 in existence ! This," says the Bishop, " is clearly an over- 
 sight " (239). Nor can it be explained, he thinks, upon the 
 prophetical principle, nor yet as a later interpolation (246, 
 247, ii.). For one answer to this difficulty — (which is repeated, 
 I observe, from Part I. (46) — we may say that there is ?io 
 certainty in our translation here. The very word for 
 " Sanctuary " is by the Bishop himself in another place (see 
 Part II. 434), on Ps. Ixxvii. 13, rendered as an adjective, 
 " holy," and he even prefers this rendering to that in the 
 E. V. ' the sanctuary/ An eminent Hebrew scholar of our 
 time prefers the same translation in this passage from 
 Exod. xxx, : "What improbability is there in supposing that 
 " U}1^J1 7)p^ means ' the holy shekel''? And inasmuch as the 
 *' Egyptian priests had in a particular manner occupied them- 
 " selves with the science of weights and measures, why should 
 " it be deemed improbable that, even before the sanctuary 
 " existed, the Jews might have had a standard weight that 
 " bore that name ? '' &c. &c. (See Letter hj the Lord Bishop 
 of Llandaff to the Clergy of the Diocese, p. 34.) It may be 
 added, that Moses himself was not less exact than the 
 Egyptian priests about weights and measures, as the follow- 
 ing special provision of the law indicates : "Thou shalt not 
 " have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small. Thou 
 *' shalt not have in thy house divers measures, a great and 
 " a small" (Dent. xxv. 13, 14). 
 
 Of a piece with this objection is xvi. — " Now an omer is 
 
t)5 
 
 a tenth ])art of an ephah'' (Exod. xvi. 36). Such a piece of 
 information, it is said^ " we must ascribe to the pen of a later 
 arcluTologist '' (276). Very likely ; and why shouhl we not ? 
 Certainly, there is no occasion to consider it an express piece 
 of revelation, and to reason upon it accordingly, as the Bishop 
 really does in all such instances. We could help him to 
 another such passage, Exod. xxx. 13, — A shekel is twenty 
 gerahs. If he objects to give it to Moses, according to our 
 reasoning on the preceding example, then by all means let 
 him give it to " a later archaeologist ! " 
 
 (ii.) Comes next under our consideration, where we seem 
 to have an anachronism in the use of terms of the same kind 
 with the last. But here the Bishop himself will help us to 
 an answer. '' It may, perhaps, be said that the Hebrews 
 " retained their own language, and their old forms of ex]^res- 
 " sion^ after they went down to Egypt, and so used mecha- 
 " nically, as it were, the word ' sea ' for ^ West,' though 
 " inappropriate " (241) ; a solution of the difficulty which 
 appears to me sufficient, in treating of a people like the 
 descendants of Abraham. Were such a people likely to 
 forget the homely and familiar phrases of their ancestry, 
 when it was their constant hope and ambition to return to 
 their native land ? 
 
 (iii.) . . . The land of the Canaanites, which dwell in the 
 champaign over against Gilgal, beside the plains of Moreh 
 (Deut. xi. 30). ' It must seem strange that Moses, who had 
 ' never been in the land of Canaan, should know all these 
 'places, and be able to describe them so accurately' (242). 
 Strange indeed, unless we believe in his Divine mission 
 and inspired character ! At the same time, considering his 
 antecedents in Egypt — the forty years of his sojourn in 
 Midian, and another forty in the desert which divided the 
 land of Canaan from the Red Sea — there never was a man 
 more likely, even in his human capacity, to know every step 
 of the way which lay before the advancing hosts of Israel. 
 
 The rest of this objection comes under the considerations 
 before suggested on objection (v.), to which the reader can 
 refer (pp. 62, 63). 
 
 K 
 
(iv.) The objections to tlie naming of the place ' Dan ' in- 
 stead of ' Laish/ or ' Leshem ' (as it seems to have been called 
 in the time of Moses, Judges xviii. 29, Josh. xix. 47), yields 
 to the considerations before applied to objection (v.)^ the same 
 as the last example. 
 
 According to Josephus, the Advo<; was one of the sources of 
 the river Jordan ; and the country adjacent to it was named 
 ' Dan,' long before the events above alluded to. (See Josephus, 
 1. i. c. 10, and Le Clerc, in loc.) This Dan might be alluded 
 to here. 
 
 (v.) See before, p. 62, 63. 
 
 (vi.) Why is ' Nabi ' used in Genesis, when ' Roeh ' was, 
 most probably, at the time of Moses, the proper appellation 
 of a ' Prophet ' ? 
 
 This is the substance of the objection ; and as the word 
 Nabi occurs somewhat frequently in the Pentateuch, as at 
 Gen. XX. 7, Ex. vii. 1, xv. 20, Numb. xi. 29, xii. 6, Deut. xiii. 
 1, 3, 5, xviii. 15, 18, 20, 22, xxxiv. 10, the objection is an 
 important one. Yet a way is opened to us out of this diffi- 
 culty, if for once we suffer ourselves to be led by Moses. 
 For what do we find ? We find he calls Abraham a prophet 
 {^ Nabi') Gen. xx. 7, Aaron a prophet {' Nabi*) Exod. vii. 1, 
 &c. &c., but he nowhere at all uses the word Hi^h * Roeh,* i.e. 
 Seer ; whereas, in 1 Sam. ix. 9, it is declared that " he that 
 is now called Nabi was beforetime called Roeh.** But 
 what further appears ? Why that Samuel himself was called 
 ' Roeh'— vide 1 Chron. ix. 22, xxvi. 28, xxix. 29. Thus the 
 ' beforetime ' spoken of in 1 Sam. ix. 9, was not the time of 
 Moses, but the time of Samuel himself, and the 'now' must 
 in this case relate to the time of some later reviser. The 
 whole verse seems to have crept as a gloss into the Book 
 of Samuel, but the idea of ''D^ {Nabi) having been wrongly 
 adopted in Genesis is shown to be unfounded. Nabi, in fact, 
 might have been the original word for Prophet, and used 
 accordingly in Genesis ; and though the word T)^^ came 
 into use about the time of Samuel, the older word Nahi 
 may have been resumed at a later time when the Book of 
 
67 
 
 Samuel was revised, probably by Ezra. This is only con- 
 jecture ; Bishop Patrick, on Exod. vii. 1, gives an explanation 
 of the passage, which others may prefer, by taking two 
 different senses of the word Prophet — the one expressed by 
 ISabi, the other by Roeh. 
 
 (vii.) The Booh ofJasher (Josh. x. 13, 2 Sam. i. 18). 
 
 There is always a great difficulty about these older docu- 
 ments, as appears both in this place, and where the " Book of 
 " the wars of the Lord " is referred to (Numb. xxi. 14). This 
 latter passage evidently goes on to recite a portion of some 
 ancient song (v. 14, 15). Yet how could it have been ancient 
 at the time when the event itself happened which it cele- 
 brates ? It remains, therefore, that we conclude these verses 
 in Numbers to have been a later interpolation. And so, per- 
 haps, Josh. x. 13. This objection, therefore, comes much under 
 the same denomination as objection (v.) and all that class. 
 
 (viii.) Numb. xxi. 13 — 15, already considered in (vii.) 
 
 (ix.) See^ he hath brought in an Hehreio unto us to mock us. 
 Gen. xxxix. 14. 
 
 The word ' Hebrew ' is deemed by the Bishop to have been 
 a later appellative of the Israelitish people, not known at the 
 time when Moses wrote. This, however, appears extremely 
 doubtful, when we remember that Eber was forefather in the 
 seventh generation of A hraham ; and Hebron a name very 
 early given to Kirjath-aila : for who shall say that Kirjath- 
 aila had not begun to take the name of Hebron, from the 
 Hebrew patronymic of the Israelites, so early as the time of 
 Moses, and even much earlier ? (See Gen. xxiii. 2, xxxv. 27.) 
 Observe, also, that the whole people are denominated ' the 
 ' children of Eber' (Gen. x. 21). 
 
 (x.) The war against Sihon, king of the Amorites, and Og, 
 the king of Bashan, seems spoken of in Dent. ii. 30 — 36, as a 
 thing long past when Moses was speaking ; and yet pur- 
 porting to have taken place within the very same year. 
 
 This is a pure fancy. Moses had been speaking primarily 
 about the events of nearly forty years ago, when the Exodus 
 took place (Deut, i. to ii. 1), — the rest merely following as a 
 
68 
 
 rider to his general theme, wherein, as usual, the greater 
 topic rules the less. And besides, Moses knew that his own 
 end was approaching ; his whole life, therefore, at such a time 
 would appear thrown back into the distance, and he would 
 be speaking, in a manner, irrespectively of a few days or 
 months, 
 
 (xi.) Examples, such as Deut. iii. 14 ; — considered before 
 under objection (v.). 
 
 (xii.) Answered also in (v.). 
 
 (xiii.) Moses is constantly represented as addressing Israel 
 " *l?^Il Jordan/^ which means, says the Bishop, "decidedly, 
 " beyond Jordan ; and indicates, therefore, a writer living in 
 " Canaan." But this, notwithstanding Bleek, is not the case. 
 We will take passages where Moses is speaking in the first 
 person in both instances alike, so that no difference can be 
 made on this score, " because of the stand-point of the 
 speaker" (See Bleek, quoted by Colenso, 260). 
 
 Being, then, exactly at the same stand-point, Moses in 
 chapter iii. 8, says, " We took at that time out of the hand 
 " of the two kings of the Amorites, the land that was on this 
 " side {1^)J3,) Jordan, from the river of Arnon unto Mount 
 " Hermon " — clearly the East side of Jordan. And yet, in 
 chap. xi. 39, 40 (the words being still put into the mouth of 
 Moses), '* Thou shalt put the blessing upon Mount Gerizira, 
 " and the curse upon Mount Ebal. Are they not (15^5) 
 " on the other side Jordan, by the way where the sun goeth 
 " doiim in the land of the Canaanites ; " where it is equally 
 clear that the West side is intended. If, again, we compare 
 iv. 41, 47, we find the expression, " 07i this side Jordan, toward 
 the sunrisingy Why ! if the word had a fixed conventional 
 sense, what need to explain it in this manner? But, in- 
 deed, the very explanation shows its double sense; for in 
 one place it is explained ' towards the sunrising,' and in the 
 other, ' where the sun goeth down/ Can anything be plainer 
 than that the Hebrew inj|/3^ used alike in all these pas- 
 sages, is not employed, as the Bishop surmises (260), " as a 
 standing designation for the country cast of Jordan " [the 
 
69 
 
 italics are the Bishop's] ; but is employed indifiPereiitly (us 
 Bishop Patrick observes on Deut. i. 1) "to either side of 
 " any place, the particular side being determiued by the 
 " matter iu hand." And this removes the whole ground of 
 objection (xiii.) 
 
 (xiv.) See on (v.). 
 
 (xv.) Compare (x.), where the present difficulty is partly 
 anticipated. It remains to think, 'how the bedstead of Og 
 ' could have been removed in so short an interval into Rab- 
 
 * bath-Ammon ^ ? Answer : Perhaps it had been taken there 
 long ago, after some former encounter with the Ammonites. 
 Le Clerc remarks, * How it w^as carried, who can tell ? But 
 
 * because there is no absurdity in this story, nothing can be 
 
 * gathered from a thing the reason of which is altogether 
 'unknown' {Commentary y in loc). But, says the Bishop, 
 ' there was not one of his people left alive, to bear off in 
 ' safety the cumbrous relic' See this answered in a Letter 
 to Bishop Colenso, Part I. on Ch. xxii. 
 
 (xvi.) See on (i.). 
 
 (xvii.) The substance of the remaining objection is not 
 very considerable. 
 
 It might, at first sight, appear somewhat incompatible 
 with the ' meekness of character ' which Mosos appai-ently 
 ascribes to himself^ Numb. xii. 3, but which, without his 
 having done so, would have been self-evident on the face of 
 the history, to parade before the eyes of the public so many 
 particulars of his family, his pedigree, his rank and office, 
 and the ^ mighty words and deeds ' in which he had been 
 concerned ; but the whole character of Moses shows a man 
 singularly free from selfish regards and mere private con- 
 siderations. " Enviest thou for my sake?" were his noble 
 words when it was reported to him that the young men in 
 the camp were assuming to themselves some portion of his 
 office, — " Would God that all the Lord^s people were pro- 
 phets, and that the Lord would put His spirit upon them!" 
 (Numb. xi. 29.) We find him, again, even more careful to 
 confess God's chastisement of himself in condemning him to 
 
70 
 
 a premature death in the noonday of his strength, '' when 
 his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated," than to 
 enhirge on the distinctions and honours of his past hfe : 
 " The Lord was angry with me for your sakes, saying, Thou 
 also shalt not go in thither" (Deut. i. 37; repeated iii. 
 26, 27). " Beliold, thy days approach that thou must die " 
 (xxxi. 14). ''And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Get 
 " thee up into this mountain Abarim, unto Mount Nebo. . . . 
 '' And die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be 
 " gathered unto thy people, as Aaron thy brother died in 
 "Mount Hor and was gathered unto his people" (xxxii. 
 48 — 50). All that such a man could have intended, if ever 
 he appeared to magnify himself, was the advantage of the 
 whole Church. He was speaking to future generations — to 
 all times and ages. To them it would be of interest, and of 
 service too, a8 indeed it is to ourselves in the present day, 
 to be certified under his own hand of the full particulars and 
 antecedents of his life and history. If examples be needed, 
 we have it in the Evangelists, as where St. Matthew relates 
 his own call (Matt. ix. 9) ; and in his catalogue of the Apostles, 
 where he even specifies his own trade or profession : " Philip 
 and Bartholomew, Thomas, and Matthew the puhl lean'''' (x. 3). 
 Who would have suspected St. John, while testifying to his 
 own authorship, of having been likely to add, " and we know 
 that his testimony is true" ? (John xxi. 24.) 
 
 Here these objections end ; but I may take the opportunity, 
 before we conclude, of alluding to a matter which seems 
 much to have troubled the Bishop, as we find him repeatedly 
 referring to it in the course of his work — as thus, " the 
 *' command to a poor man, after recovery from leprosy, to 
 " bring two turtle-doves or two young pigeons (Levit. xiv. 22) 
 " [is] a command which is expressly laid down, as for the 
 " camp in the loilderness (v. 3, 8) ; but which plainly betrays 
 " its character, as a law laid down in later days, by enjoining 
 '' the performance of this act, which was impracticable in the 
 "wilderness" (506). Again — after remarking about ^\tJie 
 sheJcel of the sanctuary'' (Exod. xxx. 13), "This is clearly 
 
71 
 
 " an oversight j '^ the Bishop adds — '' as is also the comraand 
 " to sacrifice ' turtle-doves or young pigeons/ in Lev. xiv. 22, 
 " with express reference to their life in the wilderness^ — arising 
 " from a writer in a later age employing inadvertently (!) an 
 *' expression common in his own days, and forgetting the 
 " circumstances of the times which he is describing " (239). 
 I answer — that, in the first place, it is nowhere said in 
 Levit. xiv. that this was required to be done when 'the 
 camp ' was * in the wilderness.^ All that is said about it is at 
 V. 3, '''And the priest shall go forth out of the camp ^' — but I 
 do not find mention of ' the camp in the loilderness. ' To let 
 this pass — the difficulty (for a difficulty there certainly is) 
 arises, not from any mistake or ^ inadvertence ' in the sacred 
 writer, but from the unbelief and disobedience of the IsraeUtes, 
 who were condemned, in consequence, to wander forty years 
 in the wilderness — during which time their laws and religious 
 rites continued in abeyance. The * camp ' is, indeed, speci- 
 fied ; but it was not necessarily in contemplation that this 
 camp should be situated in the wilderness. The leper was 
 not permitted within the walls of an inhabited place, and he 
 would naturally, therefore, require the attendance of the 
 priest * without the camp,' which seemed a kind of standing 
 appellation for ' without the city' (See Heb. xiii. 13.) If we 
 read on a little in this very chapter, we find (v. 34), an ex- 
 press limitation of the laws of leprosy to the time when the 
 people should be settled in Canaan, '* When ye he come into the 
 land of Canaan, which I give to you for a possession/' &c. &c. 
 But, indeed, the Law and the Land were originally intended 
 to go together ; the one was constructed upon the supposi- 
 tion that the people were settled in the other. The wilder- 
 ness condition of the people was, therefore, an anomalous 
 condition ; and it would be rather ' inadvertence ' in the 
 reader than in the writer, if he was so incautious as to con- 
 strue everything in Leviticus upon the full pontifical scale, 
 which was adapted really to the land of promise, and not to 
 the passage through ' the wilderness. ' Among the passages 
 confirmatory of this assertion, I have already, in a former 
 
72 
 
 Part^ adduced the following from Deuteronomy : " And the 
 '* Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes 
 <* and judgments, that ye mAght do them in the land whither 
 '' ye go over to possess it" (Deut. iv. 14). For all that was 
 known or understood to the contrary (except in the Divine 
 Mind), the journey out of Egypt was to have been of brief 
 accomplishment ; and when the Levitical law was given by 
 MoseSj at the end of the first year in the wilderness, neither 
 its burdens nor its privileges were ever construed as of 
 necessary application till that journey was completed. 
 
 We have thus followed the Bishop as impartially as was 
 possible through the whole line of his argument. I trust 
 something may have been said in elucidation of some appa- 
 rent difficulties on the face of the Divine records — some- 
 thing that, without disparaging free inquiry or the results 
 of modern criticism, may have tended to uphold the authority 
 and Divine inspiration of the Books. Let the idealism of a 
 false philosophy pretend, as it may, to consign Moses and 
 the Patriarchs to the shadowy regions of imagination : — 
 more noble is the stamp of mind, which would venerate their 
 footsteps as real characters in Sacred history, — characters 
 that have played their part, and a most important part, too, 
 on the actual stage of human life. In conclusion, I would 
 respectfully invite the Bishop to join with me in the humble 
 but hearty prayer. That in no mythical sense, but as a deep 
 and abiding reality, it may be granted to us and to all who 
 earnestly contend for ^the Truth as it is in Jesus,' to be 
 admitted, at the last day, "to sit down with Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob, in the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matt. viii. 22). 
 
 END. 
 
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