A 'work. alleged to be the production of one man, it is urged, first of all ought to contain neither unnecessary repetitions of considerable length, nor contradictions, nor anachronisms. There ought to be a plan and a unity. Yet, there can be no doubt, they say, about the fragmentary character of the Pentateuch. Many portions, evidently com plete in themselves, are strung together without the slightest logical sequence, nay, in an unehronological order. As to repetitions and contradictions, there is, to begin with, the very history of the creation, which occurs twice in the first chapters of Genesis, is each time given differently, and in each account the divine name is consistently mentioned in a different way. The same is to be said witli regard to the account of the deluge, and several incidents in the lives of the patriarchs; the important conversation between God and Moses respecting Aaron (Exod: iv. 10-16, and vi. 0); the descriptions of the taber nacle; the priestly vestments; the story of the manna as given in Exodus and Numbers; the account of the appointment of the council of.the 70 elders in the same book; etc. Again, the work itself sometimes seems tc indicate an author who is not the legislator himself, such as the phrase of Moses being the humblest of men; the account of his own death; the passage in Genesis "before there reigned any king over the children of Israel" (xxxvi. 31); the occurrence of the name of the city of Dan (Gen. xiv. 14, Deut. xxxiv.1), so called Gnly after the conquest by that tribe. In Numb. xxxii. 34, again, we have an enumeration of a certain number of towns and villages built by the tribes of Gad and Ifeuben—an event which could not have happened during Moses's lifetime; further, the frequent occurrence of the forMula "unto this day" (e.g., Dent. x. 8, where the author speaks of the institution of the Levites as being still in " up to this day"), etc. It is contended, also, that the language of the Pentateuch varies very little from that of the last prophets, and that it can hardly be assumed that 1000 years should have made no perceptible difference in the idiom; more particularly has Deuteronomy been supposed to Nar a striking resemblance, in style and language, to Jeremiah. The Pentateuch is furtl•cr said to contain many facts palpably contradictory to natural laws, as they are established in the experience of the whole historical human race, and systematized by science.' Of the many ways to get rid of these and similar—old and new—exceptions, the most generally adopted is that which we mentioned as the method 'of "interpolation," by which the apologetic school strikes oat some 50 or more passages, as not belonging to the original work, but having crept in, by way of note, or explanation, in post-Mosaic times—the body of the work being thus saved, so to say, by a most extensive amputation.. As to the argument from the language, it is said that the Pentateuch, being the divine book, by way of eminence, and embodying the very phrases (to the letter) made use of by the Almirlity, must needs have served as a model for the next 1000 years, and priests and Levites, the teachers of the people, were enjoined constantly to study and read it: hence the small difference in the later writers. Arabic and Syriac, it is argued, did likewise not change essentially for many centuries—an'assertion, however, which only holds good if "many" is taken in a very vague sense indeed. That Deute• onomy differs in style and manner, is verbose, etc., is explained by Moses's advanced age. On the rifler hand. events which are not in harmony with the " natural laws" are accepted by the orthodox simply and literally as "miracles." while "conservative" rationalists of the school of Eiehhorn, Rosenmuller, and others, who stand by the authen ticity of the Pentateuch, have been at great pains to find sonic kind of poetical interpre tation for them.
Some of the recent attacks on the authenticity are chiefly founded upon arithmetical grounds. The numbers of the people, their cattle, and the like, at various periods, do not seem to conform to the laws of natural increase, or even to the geometrical limits within which they were at times stated to have been confined. Among the direct proofs, however, proffered by the defenders of the authenticity, the following chiefly deserve attention. Deuteronomy, it is averred, can only be the work of Moses. Ile speaks in it o the men whom he has led for many years, as one who has lived through all the events himself. There is no possibility of any one imitating the local coloring in such a man ner. If, then, Deuteronomy must be allowed to be the work of Moses, the three preced lug books, to the contents of which frequent allusion is made, must equally be supposed to be finally redacted, if not written, by the same hand; and it further follows naturally, that the introduction to these books, which is Genesis, must have emanated from it.
Again, any one writing after Moses, could not possibly have possessed the extraordina rily correct knowledge of contemporary Egypt and Arabia, which appears throughout the Pentateuch. A writer who might be supposed to have acquired it by dint of study of antiquities, must, it is said, have betrayed himself on every page by inaccuracies and anachronisms. Nineveh is in Genesis a city of as yet little importance; while Resets, of which no trace is to be found in any other part of the Bible, is the peat metropolis of Assyria of the time. Tyre, great in the days of David, and mentioned already in Joshua, is not to be met with in the Pentateuch, where a later writer would certainly have spoken of it in connection with Sidon. The Canaanite gods and altars are often spoken of; never their temples, of which yet we read in Joshua. Why, then, should that very ancient author, to whom must needs be traced the Pentateuch, not he Moses him self, rather than some contemporary of his ? The fragmentary, abrupt, and, as it were, confused character of the work, the apologists further urge, so far from testifying against Moses, confirm the tradition of his authorship. Would not a later historian have worked the mixed mass of historical, geographical, legal, and personal material into a methodi cal and systematic whole ? Who else could have imparted to the book the impress of a diary, so to say, but the man who was in the midst of the events, jotting down all the items important either in his own individual or the national career? And who but one standing in its very center could depict with such glowing colors the life that moved around him?—Ent a further direct argument for the authenticity is found by them in the Very item of the language of the Pentateuch. True, they say, it resembles as much as can be that of tie later because, as we said before, it remained the classical lan guage for all later generations; but, on the other hand, it offers certain peculiarities— such as the use of a common pronoun of the third person singular for both the masculine • and feminine genders; the same term for boy and girl; and the like archaisms—all of . which distinctly prove it to be a work of a very much older date. The existence of in ancient Mosaic code of laws would further appear proved beyond any doubt by the con stant recurrence of quotations from "the law of Jehovah" or "the of Moses" throughout the other books of the Old Testament from Joshua to Hosea. Had there it reality been no such code in existence, the authors of the different biblical works could not possibly have so unanimously spoken of it without betraying a conscious forgery somewhere. That Ezra should have been the author, or, at all events, the refouuder of the Peatatenelt, is equally improbable, on account of the spirit, tone, language, and all those smaller peculiarities of which mention has been made; and he would, on the other hand, never have been able so skillfully to avoid his own individual manlier and style, as it appears in his own book. The Samaritan Pentateuch, it is further said, which, with a very few characteristic alterations, is an accurate transcript of our Pentateuch, would have been an utter impossibility, considering the hostile relations between the Samaritans and the Jews, if it had not been well known as a genuine document before the division of the empire. That Hilkiah, who is said to have found the Book of the Law in the temple in the days of Josiah (2 Kings xxii. ; 2 Chron. xxxi7.) should have been its real author—an opinion first advanced by De Wette—would imply a complicity in the forgery not only on the part of Jeremiah, Huldah, and the elders, but almost of the whole people, among whom, on the contrary, there certainly seems to have been living a very vivid tradition of the former existence of the book or some of its portions at least. Moreover, had it been first written in those days, there surely would have been introduced some kind of prophetical allusion to the royal house of David, pr, at all events, a pedigree and origin differing from the incestuous one given in Gen. xxxviii. Deuter onomy would altogether have changed its language about royalty (xvii. 15-20) very con siderably; and Joseph's would not have stood out so prominently as a favored tribe. The alleged difficulties respecting the numbers are explained away more or less convincing7y in the most difficult eases, by miraculous interference. Corruptions, interpolations, and the many fates that befall ancient documents, are allowed to have crept in, in son.e places; although this argument is given up by those who hold that a special providenec watched over the divine work. In other respects, they hold these books are exactly as they were written by Moses under direct "inspiration."—Thus far, in swiftest out lines, the pros and contras most commonly adduced, and wThrthy of some consideration.