And Jeremiah makes Jehovah distinctly say: "I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice “And I will be your God, shall be my people.' ye "1 (4) The history of the nation, down to the exile, thus amply evidences the total inoperativeness of the Pentateuchal Law during that period. It discloses an habitual, persistent, and general violation of its fundamental principles, by the greatest as well as by the least of the people; a complete absence of any sign that such a system of legislation was even as much as known to be in existence. It reveals a radical and irreconcilable unlikeness between the religion of this Law and the religions of the nation. It shows a contemptuous attitude of the prophets, who were sent by Jehovah to reform the nation's religious life, toward the institutions which He himself is supposed to have founded, through the agency of Moses. The hypothesis of an apostasy wholly fails to meet the facts of the case. It seems impossible to conceive of such a history with a Mosaic Law, like that which is described in the Pentateuch, hidden away in the archives of the nation. When we see this state of affairs com 1 vii. 22, 23. pletely change, as the nation emerges from the Babylonian exile, and when we see the nation of the Restoration present just such a picture of religion as would be natural under a law of the land like the Pentateuch, the conclusion seems irresistible that this Law was then first throned above Israel-the cap-stone and not the corner-stone of its polity. IV. We have thus seen that the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch rests simply upon tradition, being confirmed by no testimony of the book itself, or of the other Old Testament writings, and finding no real support in the language of the New Testament. We have seen that there are in the Pentateuch very many and very various touches of a hand writing in a much later date than the period of the Exodus; touches which, both by their number and their nature, make the supposition of a later edition of the work of Moses exceedingly improbable. We have also seen that the whole history of the nation, down to the period of the exile, denies the operation and even the existence of any such book. All this we have learned after having found that the Pentateuch is a composite work, of such a character, that, at best, Moses could merely have been the third of an author, or an editor of other men's compositions. It would certainly seem to the average man that only a very Stalwart of Traditionalism could, in the face of such facts, continue to affirm, with the antique scholar who duly instructs divinity students in the Episcopal ChurchNothing is more certain than that this book was written by Moses."1 66 'Horne. Intro. Old Test., ii. 511. CHAPTER III. THE GROWTH OF THE PENTATEUCH, AND THE RECONSTRUCTION WROUGHT BY THE NEW CRITICISM. IF Moses did not write the Pentateuch, who, then, did write the works which make up the five-fold book, and when were they written? Questions, these, much easier to ask than to answer. In truth, we do not know at all the names of its authors, though we have a little more approach to reasonable certitude as to the age of its leading documents, and of its final revision. As it stands before us, it is the result of a long growth. It embodies the labors of many unknown hands, each working over the rich store of material furnished by the traditions of a great race. As says Matthew Arnold"To that collection many an old book had given up its treasures and then itself vanished forever. Many voices were blended there, unknown voices, speaking out of the early dawn."1 We may picture this growth somewhat as follows: 1 God and the Bible, page 161, chapter iv., § III. 71 I. Far back in the early days of the Hebrew tribes, oral traditions circulated among the people, told from father to son in family gatherings, and recited in the festivals of the clans. Later in the history of the people we find their writers alluding to this original fount of historic knowledge: "Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations; ask thy father and he will shew thee, thy elders and they will tell thee.” 1 "Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation." The seventy-eighth Psalm, which recites the history of the people from the Exodus onward to the age of David, opens this patriotic narration by ascribing its data to tradition: "2 "Give ear, O my people, to my law : "Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. "I will open my mouth in a parable: "I will utter dark sayings of old, 'Which we have heard and known, "And our fathers have told us." Among the contents of these oral traditions may have been the great group of primeval sagas, which the early Hebrews doubtless learned before their migration from the borders of Chaldea; where Semitic and Accadian civilizations had, even in those 2 Joel, i. 3. Deut. xxxii. 7. |