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REMARKS

On Criticisms of the Pentateuch, by Eichhorn, Bertholdt, &c.

No. I.-EICHHORN.

WHATEVER may have been the religious doctrine of the Israelites before the days of Moses, it must be confessed that he stamped a certain originality and stability on it, which the nomadic lives of their ancestors prevented them from acquiring. Yet, we must at the same time suppose, that he selected his history from the ancestorial traditions and poetical remains of the patriarchs, as well as a vast multitude of his institutions from some in use among them, and in a certain degree common to the Oriental world.

But, although sound criticism obliges us to admit this fact ;when we observe the types, by which he prefigured the advent of the Messiah, continuing unimpaired to the Babylonian captivity, and resuming their primitive force and intent, when the people became once more settled in Jerusalem; and when we remark those wise precautions, which he adopted to preserve the higher knowlege of his day among the Priests, we must likewise assent to those claims of inspiration, which he asserted. Having had opportunities of examining the esoteric dogmata of the Egyptians, and being acquainted with the bigoted Polytheism of the common mass, he was able to trace the gradual rise of the human intellect from the personifications of atmospheric phænomena, and the deification of inert matter, up to the exalted doctrine of One Incorporeal and Supreme Being. The Babylonian and Egyptian systems of Theology were placed within his inquiry; hence, he was qualified to separate the true from the false, to retain such rites and customs, as were borrowed in these from the Patriarchal Church, to enact such salutary laws and restrictions, as would deter his rising colony from imitating their errors and their abominations. These, together with the Phoenicians and Hebrews, are the four most ancient civilized nations on record; but the religion of the other three was not subjected to the severe tests, by which the divine origin and credibility of that of the Hebrews were assayed. Enduring one continual circle of political changes, conquered by fierce

and savage despots, as soon as they had settled' themselves in Canaan, torn in subsequent times from their altars and their hearths, transplanted into the highest seat of idolatry then existing, they afforded ample proof, notwithstanding their many aberrations from the Mosaic law, that these revolutions could not make their religion extinct, that amidst all their hardships and wanderings they retained still recognizable, and indeed, indelible marks of their national peculiarity, and preserved that Pentateuch inviolate, to the forming instructions of which they were indebted for the preservation of all their records. Eichhorn, Michaëlis, and others, have attributed the survival of the sacred writings to the care, with which the Priests deposited them in the Temple, which, in fact, was a custom with every known nation of antiquity. Here, the genealogies and public registers found a place, as well as the oracles of the Prophets, affording one general point of reference for legal and sacred purposes; so that, although much bas, assuredly, been lost from the several writers, through the vicissitudes to which the nation was exposed, we must nevertheless refer the existence of all that remains, to this salutary precaution.' But we must, at the same time, take into the account, that had not Cyrus permitted the resettlement of the Jews on the Jordan, that had not such men as Ezra and Nehemiah been raised up by Providence to superintend the rising state, as well in temporals as in spirituals, all this solicitude for the safety of these MSS. had been frustrated, nor had a vestige survived the wreck of Hebrew literature on the shores of the Euphrates. Since that time, all that has escaped these desolations has been watched with an indefatigable diligence; and as laborious a method, as could have been devised, has been adopted to prevent interpolations or omissions in the sacred text. If we, therefore, consider our present Hebrew Scriptures as originally transcribed from the copies in the Tabernacle and Temple, and revised, as accurately as the materials would allow, by Ezra after the captivity and most probably collated with every MS. in the possession of the returned exiles; they must, with the exception of some few incidental variations, remain correct to this day, having been much better defended by the Masoretic scheme, than the writings of Homer, Pindar, Eschylus, and others, as we may easily perceive from the various transpositions, and unwarranted guesses of their several editors. We are enabled to arrive at this conclusion from the quotations

1 Eichhorn's Einleitung im Alte Testament, (German text.)

of the Mosaic Law in subsequent books, and from the relation of the same events in the books of the Kings, the Chronicles, and Isaiah, which could not agree the one with the other, were the case different. Yet many textual variations must exist, and that they do exist, we may ascertain from a collation of differ ent MSS.; but, these may reasonably have been expected to be more numerous, and in general they do not appear to affect any point of doctrine or of history. It is true that many divines of the German school affect either to allegorise a part of the Pentateuch into a μubos, or to determine it to be a late compilation : the first may be referred to the reveries of a fanciful mind, and the latter is absolutely defective in proof, and supported by no authority. It is indeed a fact not a little singular, that the eastern and western copies of the Pentateuch exhibit the most striking similarity, and therefore correctness; as any one, who will be at the pains of comparing the present textus receptus with the MS. brought from India, and now in the public library at Cambridge, may observe. But to a class of men, who seem systematically to scepticise, and apply arbitrary rules of criticism to Hebrew literature, abundant opportunities must present themselves from the many desideranda necessary rightly to analyse and explain a production of such ancient date.

No reasonable theologian can hesitate in supposing, that Moses had documents before him, of which he made use, in the history of events preceding his time-his enumeration of the genealogical tables of the nation, of itself, would determine the question. Eichhorn has, in part, argued this from the title prefixed to Psalms lviil-viii-lix. (-) which appears to have been borrowed from Deut. ix. 26.; but this caunot, in any way, be regarded either as an evidence or an objection. He says, "denn man könnte die Inschriften dieser Psalmen für zusätze späterer hände, oder das citirte hied für ein altes Volkslied erklären, das, ohne aufgeschrieben zu seyn, bloss von mund zu mund gegangen wäre; sondern auf citationen eines GESCHRIEBENEN Ganzen." To this hypothesis, however, demonstration is wanting.

To the proofs, which Eichhorn adduces, that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, we can in general assent; although we conceive many of his proofs "from the style," (beweis aus ihrer sprache) very wild and absurd. That he wrote books, which pass under his name, whoever he or they may have been, who

· ' V. ii. p. 242. § 406.

reduced them to their present form, the contents of the Old Testament very satisfactorily determine. We discover Joshua i. 8. mentioning the D, which he elsewhere particularises as then, and David citing, as a thing well known, a roll manuscript (Ps. xl. 8. a) in which the laws of offerings were specified, by which nothing else could be intended, than the law which we find in the Pentateuch. Similar mention is made of it in the historical books: 2 Kings xxii. 11. (027

.Chron 2 (כל הכתוב בתורת יהוה) .10 .Chron. xvi 1 (תורה

xvii. 9. (M) 2 Chron. xxxi. 3.; & xxxv. 26. (I

1) Nehem. viii. 3, 8, 18.; ix. 3. (770). Such arguments as these contain sufficient and intrinsically solid force to establish them: his citation from the fortieth Psalm alone (8. v.) establishes his position, as David's allusion cannot be mistaken. The " MEGILLATH SEPHER" could, in this instance, be a name applicable to no other book, because the context restricts it to this particular division of the sacred records. "

50 (says Rosenmüller,) volumen libri, h. e. liber, qui oblongis membranis convolvitur, nam, quemadmodum Latinis volumen a volvendo, ita Hebræis an a 55 convolvit, et adhuc Judæi non solum in libris, qui vulgata forma plicabilibus foliis constant, sed in Synagogis in oblongis membranis, quæ ex antiquo more super cylindrum seu axen ligneum in orbem circumvolvuntur, legem scriptam habent. Per hoc, autem, libri volumen Davidis tempore, cum hæc scriberet, intelligi aliud non potest, quam Pentateuchus." As Eichhorn well urges, the author of these books must have both lived and written at the time of the delivery of the law: a later writer must necessarily have been ignorant of many circumstances connected with it, which long prior to his day would have descended to oblivion.

Add to this, as we shall more fully exhibit in the sequel, that these books are quoted in many subsequent parts of scripture, in a great variety of which they are unequivocally referred to Moses. We trace extracts from the Genesis and the Exodus in Psalms civ. cv. cvi. cvii. which, with the preceding observations, amount almost to a positive conclusion; in David's last charge to Solomon, obedience to "the statutes, the commandments, the judgments and testimony of God, AS WRITTEN IN THE LAW OF MOSES," is strongly enforced: we may therefore define, without violence, the D to be the corpus juris Mosaici, which was the standard of religion, and continued

'V, ii. pp. 246, 247. § 407.

2V. ii. p. 250. § 409.

to be such with Judah and Benjamin, after the revolt of the ten tribes. 'And, "with the exception of these five books, we discover none of the canonical scriptures of the Old Testament, among the descendants of the members of the Israelitish kingdom :" (whereas) "from this time to its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, there was, almost every fifty years, in the kingdom of Judah, a renewal of the law, and a reformn of the worship of God undertaken, according to it." Hence (2 Chron. xvii. 9.) we remark Jehoshaphat commanding the Levites to instruct the people throughout all the cities of Judah from the, and (2 Chron. xxiii. 18.) Jehoiada the priest, as well as (2 Chron. xxxi. 3.) Hezekiah arranging, in times of great corruption, the

All of which .ככתוב בתורת משה,worship of the Sanctuary

wholesome regulations were neutralised by Manasseh's irreligious reign; but, at the expiration of it, we see Josiah proceeding to a fresh reform according to the model (nach der vorschrift) of these books (2 Chron.xxxiv-xxxv.). We find Jeremiah admonishing his contemporaries to observe them, and Daniel (ix. 11.) citing their defection from them, as the cause of the captivity; at the termination of it, the service of God was arranged according to the precepts therein contained ;3-the burnt offerings, the feast of Tabernacles, and of the new moon (Ezra iii. 2. et seqq.) were solemnised, (Nehem. viii. 1, 3, 8, 14, 18.; ix. 3.)

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The reasons produced in § 410 (dass Esras kann sie nicht abgefasst haben) that Ezra is not the author of the Pentateuch, are not to be answered: but we abstain from entering into the various minutiæ of the question, in which he has indulged himself, in §§ 411, 412, 413, 414, 415, and content ourselves with transcribing a note from p. 267.: "Josephus in Antiq. Jud. lii. c. 19. § 9. gives the same explanation of the name Moons. U signifies in Cophtic WATER, and OTXE to preserve from, or rescue. In the sound of the Egyptian word is only as well imitated as it could be; but means extrahens, not extractus, as we must interpret his name on the authority of Moses himself, (Ex. xxv. 10.) So likewise OTBEPER (Gen. xli. 43.) is artificially imitated in 778." Gentile historians corroborate the proofs which we extract from the writings themselves; and much has been collected, and yet

IV. ii. p. 251. 252. § 409.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

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