assigned the Pentateuch to Moses? As in the case of many other traditions, the basis for this belief proves sadly lacking in solidity.

(1) In our English version the titles of these books seem to determine their authorship-" The First Book of Moses, called Genesis," etc. These titles, however, form no part of the original text. They are not found in the Hebrew editions and manuscripts, nor in the Septuagint, nor yet in the Vulgate, but only in some modern translations. Books which appeared anonymously have had their present titles fathered upon them anonymously, and no one knows by whom.

Nowhere in them is there a claim of Mosaic authorship for the Pentateuch as a whole, nor for any one of its five books, with the possible exception of Deuteronomy. Genesis has not the slightest hint as to its authorship, nor any clue that links it with Moses. The three books which make`up Ewald's second part of the Pentateuch, The Law,1 readily resolve themselves into an historical narrative, in which lie imbedded legislative records. The historical narration nowhere professes to have come from the pen of Moses as a complete composition. Two entries in the narrative are attributed to Moses. One is the brief paragraph that records the battle with Amalek, in Rephidim.2 The other is the epitome of the journeyings of the Hebrews in Arabia, 2 Ex. xvii. 8-13.

'Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers.

}

which looks very much like a veritable memorandum from the journal of the Hebrew Xenophon.1 This special ascription of two items in the narrative to Moses, inferentially, excludes his pen from the rest of the history.

The legislation bedded in this history is also nowhere said to have been, as a whole, recorded by Moses. At least three distinct codes are embodied in this second group of books. The first code, The Decalogue, is said to have been written by Moses, in the durable form which he might naturally have chosen in order to its preservation, by his rude Nomads. The second code, the body of simple, social "Judgments," found in Exodus, and the third code, the body of Levitical legislation scattered through this whole division of the Pentateuch, are not said to have been put in writing by Moses.

2

On the contrary, in the first mention of the fact that the Decalogue was recorded on stone tables by Moses, there seems to be an express and careful exclusion of the judgments from this Mosaic record; although this body of laws stands in immediate connection with the Ten Words, and in this very passage is included in the legislation which Moses is said to have given the people from Jehovah. The entire legislation of this second division of the Pentateuch is certainly everywhere described as having been given to the people through Moses, as the mouth-piece of

4

'Num. xxxiii. 3-49. Ex. xxxiv. 28. xxi.-xxiii. 19. xxiv. 3, 4.

1

Jehovah. This is the fundamental idea of the book --an idea which expressed a certain truth to the ancient Hebrews that we ought to be able to recognize and revere, without following them in their literal ascription of this whole mass of heterogeneous legislation, of legislation that is sometimes rude and even savage, to the Divine Being. The uniform description of this legislation, as orally given, may point us to its original nature, and thus place in our hands the clue to the true character of the book—a late codification of early Hebrew law, piously received as from Jehovah.

Not until we reach the last part of the Pentateuch do we find a single statement that Moses wrote down any laws but the Ten Words. In Deuteronomy, however, at the conclusion of the farewell address of the great Lawgiver, we find this record"And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests, the sons of Levi, which bare the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, and unto all the elders of Israel." We have seen that Deuteronomy is, by its own account of itself, clearly separable from the rest. of the Pentateuch, though fitly concluding it. It professes to be a new statement of the Law, given a generation after the original legislation, as the form in which Moses saw fit to commend that legislation to his successors. We are therefore wholly unwarranted in referring the language-" the words of

this law "—to anything back of the code which was formulated in the great address recorded in this book.1 There would seem to have been a Jewish tradition limiting the reference of these words to Deuteronomy.2

But it is by no means clear that even this much is to be understood by this passage. In the twenty-seventh chapter, at the eighth verse, Moses commands that "all the words of this law" are to be written on the plaistered stones" that are to be set up on Mount. Ebal; by which some most conservative commentators have thought that only a summary of the law was meant, because of the difficulty involved in supposing the whole of Deuteronomy to have been inscribed on such material. If the Law could mean only a summary of Deuteronomy in one case, it might also in the other. But if this statement be taken in its fullest sense, as covering the whole of the book of Deuteronomy, its authority remains to be weighed. Waiving the modern view of Deuteronomy, the book is still an anonymous production, and the particular

1i.-xxxi., or more accurately, perhaps, v., with xii.-xxvi.

2 Cf. Horne, ii. 543. This venerable work, which still forms the text-book in Episcopal seminaries, airily dismisses this tradition by referring the reader to Keil for its disproof, who in turn is found to refer to his edition of Havernick. Surely so voluminous a work as Horne's might have spared a paragraph to sum up this evidence. Of course the view of Deuteronomy's complete, original independence, held by most scholars, however they differ as to its date, robs its language of any possible reference to the other books.

'

34

BOOK OF THE BEGINNINGS.

passage in which these words are found is fairly open to the suspicion of being an appendix. The last chapter is universally admitted to be a postscript, since it narrates the death and burial of Moses. But the two preceding chapters look more or less like additions to the main body of the book. The great address of Moses closes with the end of the thirtieth chapter. This is followed by an historical narration, in which the legislator gives directions for the preservation and observance of his law, receives a warning from Jehovah of his approaching death, recites "a song" to the assembled people, pronounces a 'blessing" on the tribes-a poem patterned upon Jacob's Blessing-and finally goes up the mountain of Nebo to die. The weaving in of these two poems. gives the air of an addition to the whole of this passage. A cautious critic like Bleek admits all after verse twenty-four of chapter thirty-one to be an appendix; but there seems to be no especially strong reason for drawing the line there. A possible appendix to an anonymous book-this is the historic authority for the statement, which cannot be proved to refer to even the whole of Deuteronomy.

Reviewing, then, our examination of the Pentateuch's testimony as to its own authorship, we find that a brief record of a battle in Exodus, a memorandum of camping stations in Numbers, together with the Ten Words and the book of Deuteronomy, in whole or in part, constitute all the narrative and