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the promised Seed that bruised the serpent's head, and his Church one from Abel downward, whose "neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men." For all this Schleiermacher had no comprehension; for him the Jewish revelation was but a higher level than that of the heathen; and the inference was at the door, if he did not draw it, that the future may show a stage of illumination higher still than that which is introduced by Christ.

DANIEL EDWARD.

ART. V.-Professor Robertson Smith on the Pentateuch.1 PROFESSOR ROBERTSON SMITH tells us on p. 216 of his

recently published lectures on Biblical Criticism,2 that "the discrepancy between the traditional view of the Pentateuch and the plain statements of the historical books and the Prophets is marked and fundamental." This view is accordingly discarded by him and another commended to us as representing "the growing conviction of an overwhelming weight of the most earnest and sober scholarship." He asks us to believe that Deuteronomy made its first appearance in the reign of Josiah, and that the Levitical law was not in existence until the time of Ezra.

The hypothesis which the Professor has undertaken to unfold and to defend has only very recently attracted any serious attention. Professor Reuss of Strasburg claims the credit of having given the original impulse to this newest school of Pentateuch criticism, by propounding this view in his lectures as early as 1833. His pupil, K. H. Graf, elaborated it more fully in his treatise, "De Templo Silensi," in 1855; in his "Prophet Jeremiah" (1862); and in his "Geschichtliche Bücher des Alten Testaments" (1866). As proposed by him, however, it was burdened with fatal inconsistencies which

1 From the Presbyterian Review.

2 "The Old Testament in the Jewish Church." Twelve Lectures on Biblical Criticism, by W. Robertson Smith, M.A. New York, 1881. 12mo,

pp. 441.

were speedily pointed out by its antagonists. The divisive critics, who parcelled out the Pentateuch among different writers, had previously conducted their analysis and based their conclusions upon literary considerations chiefly, the style and diction and quality of thought and acquaintance shown with other parts of the work. Graf drew his arguments from legislative considerations, the supposed development of laws, and the order in which successive enactments may be thought to have been made. And conceiving the legislation of Deuteronomy to be simpler and more primitive, and that of Leviticus to be more complicated and developed, he inferred, contrary to the prevailing sentiment of preceding critics, that Deuteronomy is of earlier date than Leviticus, and belongs to a prior stage in the history of the people. Meanwhile he allowed the conclusions of the critics in relation to the narratives of the Pentateuch to remain undisturbed, conceding a higher antiquity to the Elohistic portion which is in the closest affinity with Leviticus than to the Jehovistic portion to which Deuteronomy attaches itself. This self-contradiction Kuenen undertook to remove by reversing the relation of the Elohist and the Jehovist, thus boldly challenging the position which all preceding critical investigations had been supposed to settle beyond peradventure.

To disinterested spectators of these hostile critical camps, this looks very like a fresh demonstration of the precarious and inconclusive nature of their entire process of argument. Experiments without number have been made of running the dissecting knife through the Pentateuch; and each fresh operator has pronounced, with the utmost positiveness, upon the various age of its several portions, and has pointed out the influences under which each was written and the condition of affairs when it was produced. And now everything has been thrown into a fresh jumble again; the whole order of production, confidently insisted upon before, is suddenly declared to be a mistake; everything must be reconstructed on a new basis. In the midst of this jargon of voices, clamouring on the one hand for the priority of the Elohist, and on the other for the priority of the Jehovist, it may be safe to wait a while before attaching ourselves to either party. Possibly the next critical discovery may be that they were contemporaneous.

The latest hypothesis.

315

We cannot deny to the authors of this latest hypothesis the praise of a high degree of ingenuity in its construction, of consummate dexterity in adapting it to the emergencies of the case, and in marshalling all available materials for its support, and of unflinching intrepidity, or rather a veritable audacity, in pushing it to its last results, so that it is absolutely beyond the reach of the reductio ad absurdum argument; for the most preposterous conclusions are accepted without hesitation, and paraded as genuine discoveries. Kuenen and Wellhausen have shown us by what clever tricks of legerdemain they can construct castles in the air and produce histories which have positively no basis whatever but their own exuberant fancy; while Lagarde makes the practical application of their principles by demanding the overthrow of the Christian Church and its institutions as the mere outgrowth of Pharisaical superstition. The temporary applause which has followed upon the performance of these novel feats is no augury of its abiding popularity, much less of its assured success. The boastful claims of its advocates will not disturb the equanimity of those who remember with what rapidity hypothesis has succeeded hypothesis, and one phase of criticism has grown up after another in the fruitful soil of German speculation.

It is substantially a revival of ideas which were almost. simultaneously suggested by Vatke, George, and Von Bohlen, in 1835, but which then fell utterly flat. De Wette,1 in his review of these "three young critics," dryly suggested that there was a reason for this hypothesis coming to the surface, inasmuch as the criticism of the Pentateuch could only thus complete the entire round of possible assumptions. And he said of the reconstruction of the Israelitish history upon the basis proposed, that "the only thing lacking to make it attractive is truth;"" whether from a dread of individualism inspired by the Hegelian philosophy, a predilection for development and self-impelled struggles upward, or a love of paradox, they have linked the history of Hebraism not with the fixed point of the grand creations of Moses, but have suspended its beginnings. upon airy nothing." Hupfeld' repudiated in the strongest terms the distinctive principle of their hypothesis (as of Graf's

1 66 Studien und Kritiken" for 1837, pp. 955, 981.
2. De Primitiva Festorum Ratione," 1851, p. 1.

and Kuenen's) that Deuteronomy is the earliest instead of the latest portion of the Pentateuch, calling it "a monstrous error that turned everything topsy-turvy and perverted and entangled the questions at issue, but did not solve them." Riehn,' in 1854, considered it "a critical or rather uncritical view," which was already "antiquated" and unworthy of attention. And there is little likelihood that this hypothesis, even in its most recent phase, will win its way to universal favour, when critics such as Riehm, Dillmann, Kleinert, Marti, Delitzsch, Klostermann, Bredenkamp, and D. Hoffmann2 have pronounced against it, not to speak of the assaults made upon it from the rear by those who charge it with a timid conservatism and with not being thoroughgoing enough in the work of demolition. It is apparent that this hypothesis affords us no firm footing were we to embrace it. If all that has thus far been asked were to be conceded, no guarantee is, or can be, given against fresh demands in the same direction. It is only the arbitrary pleasure of the critics and nothing in the nature of the case which leads them, with their principles and methods, to stop where they do.

In five passages in the Pentateuch (Ex. xvii. 14; xxiv. 4; xxxiv. 27; Num. xxxiii. 2; Deut. xxxi. 9, 22, 24), as Professor Smith correctly informs us, Moses is said to have written down certain things. The express statement of his authorship in these cases does not exclude it in others any more than it follows from Isa. viii. 1 and xxx. 8, that Isaiah wrote nothing but what is referred to in those verses. The natural presumption, on the contrary, is that if he wrote those scraps of the history and those sections of the law, he also wrote others which it was quite as important to have recorded. These recognitions of the fact that whatever was memorable should be committed to writing for safe preservation, and that Moses

1 "Die Gesetzgebung Mosis im Lande Moab, Vorrede."

2 Riehm reviewed Graf's positions in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1868 and 1872; Dillmann, "Die Bücher Exodus und Leviticus," 1880; Kleinert, "Das Deuteronomium und der Deuteronomiker," 1872; Marti, "Traces of the so-called Grundschrift of the Hexateuch in the Pre-exilic Prophets of the Old Testament," in the "Jahrbücher für Protestantische Theologie," 1880; Delitzsch, a series of articles in Luthardt's "Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Leben," 1880; Klostermann, in the "Zeitschrift für Lutherische Theologie und Kirche," 1877; Bredenkamp, "Gesetz und Propheten," 1881; D. Hoffmann, "Magazin für die Wissenchaft des Judenthums," 1876-80.

The laws of the Pentateuch.

317

was the proper person to write it, would rather lead us to expect that Moses would record the history and the legislation in which he bore so prominent a part, and incline us to believe that "the book," to which reference is made, Ex. xvii. 14 (Heb.), is such a comprehensive work upon which he was then already engaged, or which at least he intended to prepare.

But we shall lay no stress upon presumptions. We shall concern ourselves simply with duly certified facts; and as the discussion of Professor Smith relates merely to the laws of the Pentateuch, we shall confine ourselves to these. And here we adopt the appropriate division which he gives us, pp. 316 ff., into "three principal groups of laws or ritual observances in addition to the Ten Commandments," viz.: 1. The collection Ex. xxi.-xxiii.; 2. The Deuteronomic code, Deut. xii.-xxvi., as distinguished from what is purely hortatory and historical in the book; 3. The Levitical legislation, which does not form a compact code like the preceding, but is scattered through several parts of Exodus and the books of Leviticus and Numbers. Three of the passages above adduced speak of Moses as writing laws. In Ex. xxiv. 4 he is said to have written "all the words of the LORD." This Professor Smith, p. 331, would restrict to the Ten Commandments. But after God had uttered these by His own voice, and the terrified people had asked that Moses should henceforth speak with them and not God, the LORD gave them His commands through Moses, Ex. xx. 22 ff., including a body of judgments or ordinances, ch. xxi.-xxiii. Then (xxiv. 3) Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD, of course not merely the ten words which they had themselves heard Him speak, but all that God had charged him to say to them, and particularly "the judgments," which are therefore separately specified. "And all the people answered with one voice and said, All the words which the LORD hath said will we do." Now, unless any one is prepared to maintain that the people here promised obedience to the Ten Commandments only, and not to the judgments which Moses had just repeated to them from the mouth of God, he must admit that both are included in the words of the Lord, which the very next verse declares that Moses wrote, and which (verse 8) entered into the covenant then formed between Jehovah and Israel. It could not be more explicitly stated

VOL. XXXI.-NO. CXX.

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