Library of
Emory University
1W*Y73
£EB 21 1946
CONSIDERATIONS
RESPECTING THE
@mras ©IF HUES PHSMlBVOIKt
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO A PAMPHLET
ENTITLED
THE CONNEXION BETWEEN
GEOLOGY AND THE PENTATEUCH:
BY THOMAS COOPER, M. D.
BY ROBERT MEANS, A. OT.
COLUMBIA:
PUBLISHED BY J. R & W CUNNINGHAM, BOOKSELLERS.
SAMUEL WEIR, PRINTER.
1834.
J» JR JB FACE.
The dissertation presented to the reader, in the following pages,
originally appeared in the columns of the " Southern Christian
Herald". The writer did not enter the field of controversy unpro¬
voked, nor without manifest necessity. A point of great importance,
in relation to the authority of revealed religion, had been assailed,
in a spirit of uncompromising hostility, with a startling array of ar¬
guments and objections, and by an individual long accustomed to
dictate to the public mind, upon all subjects, even upon those most
beyond his appropriate sphere.
The attack was, moreover, accompanied by a haughty defiance.
It was repeatedly, and without qualification, stated, that no honest
and intelligent man, acquainted" with the merits of the question,
would dare to maintain the genuineness of the Pentateuch. Under
the circumstances of the case, then, the necessity of replying to
the attack made, was commanding.
The failure to do so, would be regarded as an abandonment of
the point at issue.
To the argument now submitted, the writer would most earnestly
solicit the attention of the public. Whatever may have been their
sentiments hitherto, in relation to the matter discussed, he hopes to
obtain from his readers a candid and patient examination of his ar¬
guments. To those whose minds have not yet been satisfied, with
respect to the claims advanced by the religious system exhibited
in he Jewish and Christian Scriptures, he would respectfully sug¬
gest—that the inquiry prosecuted in the following sheets, can not
be uninteresting to the general scholar, and that in a religious as¬
pect, it must be of the highest importance, when the possibility
only, is admitted—that our conclusions are just—that the obliga¬
tions of religion are founded in truth, imperative in their character,
and not to be neglected without incurring fearful guilt.
Nor are the considerations proposed on the present occasion,
alone intended to satisfy the minds of unbelievers ; they are designed
to enable Christians, speculative or practical, to furnish reasons for
the belief which they cherish. No one then, professing a submis¬
sion to the claims of revelation, who is not well instructed respecting
the evidence by which it is supported, should deem an attention to the
following argument, in his instance unnecessary. It were a discred¬
itable thing for him to receive opinions, with the reasons of which he
is unacquainted. And were he even content to rest in this blind and
irrational conviction, religion is in perpetual danger of being dishon¬
ored and injured, through his inability to meet the objections with
which it is at all times assailed.
iv
PREFACE.
The writer has no more to add, but that the publication, in a
more permanent form, of what was originally offered to the commu¬
nity in the fugitive character of newspaper essays, has been induced
by the hope of giving a wider circulation to what, it is thought may
be useful, and the wish to furnish to those interested in the subject,
a condensed, yet comprehensive view of the whole controversy re¬
specting the genuineness of the writings ascribed to the Jewish
lawgiver.
SECTION I.
At the present period, a special call seems to be
made upon the defenders of revealed religion to sustain
the credibility of some of its most important records.
No very long interval of time has elapsed since the pub¬
lication of a tract entitled "The Connexion between
Geology and the Pentateuch," which is intended to un¬
settle the popular belief in the divine origin of the
Jewish, and by consequence of the Christian revelation
also. Proceeding from an individual, who possesses so
many real and adventitious sources of influence, this
production is not to be disregarded, whatever may be
the judgment which we may be called to pronounce up¬
on its intrinsic merits. The author occupies a high
literary station in this community, and with a great and
extended reputation actually possesses an erudition ex¬
ceedingly various, if not the most profound.
The style, moreover, of the essay in question, is such
as to make a strong impression upon the unthinking,
the uninformed, and those whose minds are already
biased towards the conclusions which it is designed to
establish. With a shew of logical precision and an
affectation of considerable candor, there are joined
much confident assertion, and many unwarrantable as¬
sumptions both of facts and principles. The author
has also brought within a narrow compass, and exhibit¬
ed in a popular manner all the difficulties, real or im¬
aginary, which are attached to the theory of the Mosa¬
ic origin of the Pentateuch. That question then,
which is at all times one of importance, becomes now
one of peculiar interest. By those who sustain the the¬
ory just mentioned, some attention must be paid to it,
if they would prevent the prevalence of erroneous opin¬
ions derived from a one sided view of the subject. It
is not meant that the matter has not hitherto been fully
6
discussed. The contrary is the fact. As the objec¬
tions to the genuineness and authenticity of the books,
commonly ascribed to the Hebrew lawgiver, have been
frequently produced; so they have been patiently con¬
sidered, learnedly met, and we think satisfactorily refu¬
ted. In making this statement I am aware that the
writer under view has asserted the direct contrary. He
has pronounced with all authority, "that not one of the
objections in question, has been refuted or attempted to
be refuted."* The affirmation is an astounding one,
and so utterly at variance with fact, that we cannot im¬
agine under the influence of what hallucination it was
made. Partiality to our own views may readily lead us
to deny the soundness of arguments proposed against
them, but it cannot surely pervert our apprehensions so
as to render us unaware of the fact of their having been
offered. Professing therefore an entire incompetency
to explain this mystery, it is again affirmed that very
many attempts have been made to answer the objec¬
tions proposed. But these do not exist in a form fitted
to produce an impression on the public mind in general;
but are found in voluminous works of a grave charac¬
ter, which few persons excepting theologians consult.
Of the multitudes who may read Dr. C's pamphlet—so
pregnant with difficulties, which are alledged to be in¬
superable, so full of scornful denunciations of his ad¬
versaries, and sovereign contempt for their arguments
—how few can be expected to seek information from
any source such as those above indicated. On this ac¬
count it has been thought desirable that this community
should have presented to them, some considerations re¬
specting the genuineness and authenticity of the Penta¬
teuch, with a statement of the mode in which the usual
objections can be obviated.
In the outset of the investigation, let us survey the
ground which it is proposed to occupy. It is not then
designed to mingle in the inquiry any personal or tem¬
porary considerations whatever. No reference will
be had to the origin or merits of that controversy which
seems to have been the occasion of the hostile demon¬
stration against the Hebrew Scriptures, which it is now
*GooJ. Pent. p. 50.
7
intended to meet in a spirit of candor, and with the
weapons of legitimate argument.
The point at issue is this—Was the Pentateuch the
production of Moses ? Is it genuine, really proceeding
from him to whom it is ascribed? Let it be remember¬
ed, that this is a consideration entirely distinct from the
question respecting the authenticity of an historical re¬
cord. Admit the Pentateuch to have been written by
Moses; we may still inquire, are its statements authen¬
tic? Prove that it proceeded from some other source—
still its historical details may be true. To say then
that this book abounds with falsehoods and absurdities,
is not, consistently with the views of the Infidel, to sug¬
gest any proof that Moses did not write it, although such
would be the fact upon the principles maintained by the
Jew or Christian.
Before proceeding any farther, it may be well to in¬
quire—what influence the decision of this question may
have upon the authority of revealed religion in general,
and upon that of the Christian religion in particular.
What is the nature of the connexion between the Old
and New Testaments, and between the religious dis¬
pensations which they severally established? To what
extent does the latter affirm the authority of the former?
And how far may the manifest error involved in any
portion of the one, affect the question respecting the
truth of the other? These are questions of importance.
Let us hear in reference to them the observations of
the judicious Paley: " Undoubtedly our Saviour assumes
the divine origin of the Mosaic institution—undoubt¬
edly also, he recognizes the prophetical character of
many of their ancient writers. So far, therefore, as
Christians, we are bound to go. But to make Chris¬
tianity answerable with its life, for the circumstantial
truth of each separate passage in the Old Testament,
the genuineness of every book, the information, fideli¬
ty, and judgment of every writer in it, is to bring, I
will not say great, but unnecessary difficulties into the
whole system. These books were universally read and
received by the Jews in our Saviour's time. He and
his apostles, in common with the other Jews, referred to
them, alluded to them, used them; yet except where he
8
** xpressly ascribes a divine authority to particular pre¬
dictions, I do not know that we can strictly draw any con¬
clusion from the books being so used and applied, be¬
sides the proof, which it unquestionably is, of their no¬
toriety and reception at that time. In this view our
scriptures afford a valuable testimony to those of the
Jews."—Evidences, part Hi, chap, 3.
It is not by this intended to say, that the inquiry con¬
cerning the genuineness and authenticity of the books
of the Old Testament, is not an important one; nor
that this inquiry cannot to our minds be satisfactorily
terminated; it is only meant to affirm that this is a dis¬
tinct question from the one respecting the divine author¬
ity of the Christian religion, excepting in so far as has
been above stated.
It is no easy matter to follow our author in his some¬
what desultory observations and arguments. He sets
out with laying down many principles—some in a great¬
er or less degree correct, others the reverse, but taken
as a whole, covering the entire ground of the contro¬
versy. With respect to the admission of these, he pro¬
fesses to anticipate no difficulty. He, however, enters
more into detail, and again and again suggests various
theories, derived from others, respecting the origin of
the Pentateuch; with many objections to its genuine¬
ness, and mixing up the question in reference to this,
with the consideration of its authenticity, throws out ma¬
ny scornful accusations of falsehood, folly, and corrupt
intentions on the part of its fabricators. In this essay
a stricter method will be attempted. With a careful dis¬
crimination between the characteristics and proofs of
genuineness and authenticity, I shall consider the rea¬
sons which induce the belief that the Pentateuch was
written by Moses, examine the validity of the several
objections to this hypothesis, correct various errors of
the writer, upon whom I have already made some re¬
marks—and then investigate the subject of the truth and
divine origin of that book, which is the great deposito¬
ry of the laws of the Jews and the most important of
their historical records.
9
SECTION IL
The Pentateuch traced to the Babylonish Captivity.
The Jewish people is the most remarkable of all
those to whom the earth has been assigned as an habi¬
tation. Other nations have been more renowned in arts
or arms, in literature or civil polity. No one has been
comparable to it, in its religious distinctions, or resem¬
bled it in its peculiar destiny. Presenting for ages,
amid the almost universal defection of the human race
from the primeval and pure worship, an example of a
monotheistic faith and elevated moral system j posses¬
sing historical and sacred records extending into the re¬
motest antiquity; and after a national existence of fif¬
teen centuries, and the continuance in a state of disper¬
sion for a still longer period, yet remaining an insulated
portion of the family of man, resisting all the amalga¬
mating influences of time, servitude, and an active spirit
of proselytism in those among whom they live—the
Hebrews have occupied and still possess a station of
solitary pre-eminence on the pages of history. Nor
are they alone distinguished, by the circumstances just
indicated ; they possess a more remarkable prerogative
derived from the fact, that the religious systems, which
sway the minds and influence the conduct of the most
important portion of mankind, are founded upon that
which was promulgated among the descendants of the
renowned individual, to whom the divine promise was
given, that in "his seed should all the families of the
earth be blessed." The Christian and Mohammedan re¬
ligions, widely differing in their genius, their moral influ¬
ence and the character of the evidence upon which they
rest—alike refer to the revelations made through Mo¬
ses and the prophets. And while the disciples of the
former, regard themselves as the spiritual children of
Abraham; the tribes of the desert among whom the
latter originated, glory in him as their natural progeni¬
tor. And with respect to the great law-giver of the
Jews, as observed by J. Von Muller, " his institutions,
his history and his name, are now, after near four thou¬
sand years, the objects of veneration among all the
10
nations from the Tagus to Hindoostan, from the frozen
seas of Scandinavia to the country of myrrh and frank¬
incense." Apart therefore from the sacred considera¬
tions associated with the Hebrew scriptures, there should
be produced in reference to them, a high respect and
lively curiosity—as records of an age long gone by, as
a picture of a very primitive condition of society, and
as the great original depository of those religious truths
or errors, as they may be differently esteemed by vari¬
ous persons, which have powerfully and permanently
influenced the human mind in these latter ages. Such
being the interest attached to these writings, the inquiry
into their antiquity, genuineness and credibility has been
often prosecuted, and must ever be deemed an important
one, in a point of view both literary and religious.
It is intended in the following essay to attempt a brief
outline of the reasons, which induce a belief of the
Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch, the most ancient of
those writings which constitute what is called the Old
Testament. The name has respect to the division of
this production into five parts. The four last of these
divisions, contain a full account of the organization of
the Jewish polity, civil and religious, with a narrative
of those events which preceded or attended its estab¬
lishment. The first book furnishes a necessary histori¬
cal introduction to the others, exhibiting brief notices
of the origin of the human race, and the distribution
of it into several tribes and nations, with a more par¬
ticular account of the immediate progenitors of the
Jewish people.
It will be recollected that reference has already been
made to the distinction between the genuineness and
authenticity of any book. It is not doubted that both
these characteristics can be shown to belong to the work
under consideration. These topics will, however, be
made the subjects of separate investigation, and in the
first place the proposition will be maintained—that the
Pentateuch was written by Moses, at or about the time,
to which it is usually assigned. Pursuing this course
we shall not be liable to embarrasment from the extrava¬
gant requisitions, which are grounded upon the supposi¬
tion of the perfect accuracy and divine inspiration of
11
this production ; a thing which however true, it is not
necessary in the first instance to establish, being more
properly the subject of after consideration. The point
which it is incumbent on us first to ascertain, is that the
Pentateuch possesses the same character of genuineness
which marks other productions of antiquity—the works
for instance, of Herodotus, Thucydides, Tacitus or Li-
vy. It is manifest that evidence of a higher nature or
of a different kind should not be sought in one instance,
which is not required in the other. But here the prin¬
ciple is interposed by our objectors, that the extraordi¬
nary or miraculous nature of the facts detailed in any
book demand that a more exalted standard of proof in
reference to its genuineness should be applied—The
principle might have force with respect to the authenti¬
city, or. truth of the incidents recorded in any author;
otherwise it is perfectly futile and irrelevant. And no
one ever thought of doubting that Livy wrote the histo¬
ry which bears his name, because there are many pro¬
digies recorded in it.
It is now between three and four thousand years,
since the delivery of their law to the Israelites in the
Arabian desert. In tracing the existence of any litera¬
ry production througbso prolonged a period, it will be
convenient to fix upon some great land marks; some in¬
termediate points, at which we may pause in our investi¬
gation, and taking a survey of the results already ascer¬
tained, prepare to penetrate into a still more remote an¬
tiquity. There are two such epochs as those above re¬
ferred to—the more recent, the coming of Christ; the
more remote—the return from the Babylonish captivity,
about five hundred years before. We might, indeed, at
once, advance to this earlier period, and assume the
existence at that time, in their present form, of the books
ascribed to Moses. Of all the theories respecting the
origin of the Pentateuch, to which more particular ref¬
erence may be made in the sequel, whether proposed
by theologians, heterodox as well as orthordox, or even
by infidels, not one ascribes it to any writer later than
Ezra. This fact, while it ensures the admission of our
principle, does not preclude the necessity of some refer¬
ence to the grounds upon which it rests. Have we then
12
a perfect assurance of the existence of these writings
at the period of our Saviour's birth? We have the
most unquestionable evidence of this fact. Indepen¬
dent copies have been preserved both by Jews and Chris¬
tians, between whom there can be no collusion. We
possess besides, the Samaritan Pentateuch, of which we
shall presently speak more particularly. In the New
Testament, which, without any reference to its divine
origin, is good evidence on this subject, we find mani¬
fest reference to these more ancient documents, as then
existing. More particularly there is a distribution of
the entire sacred writings of the Jews into the three
classes, in which they have been at all times arranged ;
the law, the prophets and the Psalms or poetical books.
In Josephus, an author living in the first age of Chris¬
tianity, of a priestly family, well versed in the learning
and antiquities of his nation, we find the following
testimony: "For we have not innumerable books which
contradict each other; but only twenty-two which com¬
prise the history of all times past, and are justly held
to be credible. Five of these books proceed from Mo¬
ses ; they contain laws and accounts of the origin of
men, and extend to his death. Accordingly they include
a period not much less than three thousand years.—
From the death of Moses onward to the reign of Ar-
taxerxes, who, after Xerxes, reigned over the Persians,
the prophets who lived after Moses, have recorded in
thirteen books, what happened in their time. The oth¬
er four books contain songs of praise to God, and rules
of life for man. Since Artaxerxes, up to our time, eve¬
ry thing has been recorded; but these writings are not
held to be so worthy of credit, as those written earlier,
because after that time there was no regular succession
of prophets. What faith we attribute to our Scriptures
is manifest in our conduct. For although so great a
period of time has elapsed, no one has yet undertaken,
either to add any thing, or to take away, or to alter any
thing. For it is, so to Speak, innate with all Jews, to
hold these books to be God's instructions, and firmly to
stand by them, nay, if necessity required, gladly to die
in their behalf."—Contra Apion, Lib. 1, S. 8. Philo, the
learned Alexandrian Jew, also expresses himself in the
13
strongest terms respecting Moses and his books* The
Targums or Chaldee paraphrases on these writings,
likewise furnish evidence of their existence at the time
for which we are contending.
Let us now examine the proof of the Pentateuch,
having been extant since the age of Ezra. In the pas¬
sage of Josephus above cited, we find it stated, that
" since Artaxerxes, up to our time, every thing has been
recorded, but these writings are not held to be so worthy
of credit, as those written earlier," &c. i. e. not having
been written by prophets, they have no divine authority
attached to them. Many of them however, are useful
moral and historical writings—of this character is Ec-
clesiasticus, written two or three hundred years B. C.—
and in it we find express reference to the ancient sacred
books of the Jews, under the expressions: "the law, the
prophets, and the rest of the books."
The celebrated translation of the Hebrew Scriptures,
into Greek which is termed the Septuagint, moreover
took place 280 B. C. in the reign of Ptolemy Philadel-
phus. It is not to be supposed that the original work
did not exist long before this time, the more especially
since the Hebrew ceased to be a spoken language about
the era of the captivity, and books were no longer com¬
posed in it. But the least shadow of doubt is removed
from this subject, by a reference to the fact, that a to¬
tally distinct edition of the Pentateuch is preserved by
the Samaritans. This people received their name from
Samaria, the capital of the kingdom of the ten tribes,
after their revolt from the house of David. About 700
years B. C. this kingdom was subverted by the Assy¬
rians, a great part of its inhabitants transported, and
their place supplied by colonies, brought from beyond
Euphrates. The new inhabitants of the land becoming
incorporated with those of its original occupants, who
remained, and being instructed by an Israelitish Priest,
formed a mingled race, with a religion substantially Jew¬
ish, but with sundry modifications derived from their an¬
cient Heathenism. There had been a long religious
and political rivalry between the two kingdoms of Ju-
dah and Israel, previously to the overthrow of the lat¬
ter. For the first Jeroboam had not only gained for
2
14
himself a throne, but had established a schismatical
worship. It was not then to be expected that relations
more amicable, would exist between those contiguous
nations, now that new and still greater differences had
arisen.
Two hundred years afterwards when the Jews re¬
turned from the captivity in Babylon, the Samaritans
proffered their assistance in rebuilding the temple of
Jerusalem; which being rejected, they threw every ob¬
stacle in the way of the accomplishment of the work.
Out of these incidents, grew up a still more bitter ani¬
mosity. Eventually the son of the Jewish high priest,
having married the daughter of the Samaritan leader,
and having been driven from Jerusalem, a temple was
built on Mount Gerizim in which he might officiate.—
During the career of the Macedonian conqueror, and
in the age of Antiochus Epiphanes, many circumstan¬
ces of an exasperating nature, took place between these
already hostile races; and to the time of our Saviour
there had yet arisen among them " no friendly dealings
with each other."
Of the Samaritans, there are yet existing some rem¬
nants in their original seat, and elsewhere. They have
in their possession a copy of the Pentateuch, written
in the Phoenician or ancient Hebrew character, such
as was used previously to the captivity. This has been
obtained from them in modern times only, by the learn¬
ed of Europe, although several of the early Christian
fathers were apprised of its existence in their age.
Concerning the antiquity of this copy and the source
whence it has been derived, there has been much con¬
troversy among the learned. Two different opinions
however, have gained for themselves, the greatest sup¬
port. Some suppose it to be very ancient, and think,
that in the form in which we now have it, it existed
among the ten tribes before Jeroboam. Others on the
contrary, who do not refer the Pentateuch to Moses,
but to some author about the time of the exile, conclude
that the fugitive priest, Manasseh, to whom allusion has
already been made, took with him from Jerusalem, the
Jewish copy of the law and translated it into the an¬
cient Phoenician character, to which the Samaritans
15
were more accustomed. This is the theory of R. Si¬
mon, Fulda, Paulus, DeWette, and Gesenius.* Rosen-
muller Pro. in Pont. S. 6. referring to these two opinions
gives in his adherence to the former; alleging as a very
forcible reason for this belief, that in the whole space of
time which elapsed from the revolt of the ten tribes un¬
til the destruction of the Samaritan kingdom, the
prophets, Israelitish as well as Jewish, always and ear¬
nestly exhorted the people to render worship to Jeho¬
vah alone, such as is enjoined in the Pentateuch; and
to the observance of the whole mass of laws prescribed
in it; the same remarkable care in guarding the Mosaic
institutions, being exhibited by the true prophets, both
of Judah and Israel; and this entire agreement, proves
that there must have been a code of laws, common to
both kingdoms. These considerations, we think, ena¬
ble us to trace the Pentateuch to the age of Solomon,
B. C. 1000—at all events, the second theory above
mentioned, proposed by our adversaries, enables us to
establish the fact of its existence immediately subsequent
to the captivity. As then, our investigations are likely
to be protracted and may become tedious to some, and
as the fact under discussion is on all hands admitted,
we shall regard it as incontrovertible, that the Pentateuch
did exist in the age of Ezra, who flourished 444 B. C.
* It may be well to observe, for the information of some, that no particular au¬
thority should be attached to the opinion of any German writer, in virtue of his being a
Theologian, inasmuch as the wildest and most daring spirit of Speculation, untramelled
by any regard to the truth or inspiration of the Scriptures, has long prevailed in the
churches of Germany.
16
SECTION III.
Concerning the agency of Ezra, in reference to the Penta¬
teuch; the authority of the hooks which hear his name,
and the subject of the Jewish canon in general*
The age at which we have now arrived, is celebrated
in the annals of the world, and of the highest interest
in the Jewish history. Cyrus, the illustrious founder of
the Persian Empire had lived, and his successors had
undertaken those memorable expeditions against Greece,
in which was remarkably demonstrated, the inefficiency
of mere physical force, when opposed to the energies of
freedom, and in which such moral, and. intellectual
qualities were developed in the invaded people, as have
covered them, with imperishable renown. The illustri¬
ous schools of Grecian philosophy then originated.—
Herodotus, the father of profane history, was preparing
his immortal work. The various nations of the earth,
were becoming introduced to nearer connexion with
each other. And the shadows which rested over a
remote antiquity, were in the act of being lifted up.
To the Jews, however, this was a period of still
greater moment. It was the era of their renewed po¬
litical existence, of the rebuilding of their desolated
capital and temple, and of the re-establishment of its
imposing worship. During several successive irrup¬
tions into Judea, the King of Babylon had carried into
captivity, multitudes of Jews—the holy city had been
captured, and the house of Jehovah destroyed by fire.
At the expiration of seventy years, the period announ¬
ced by the prophet Jeremiah, as the term of their cap¬
tivity, an edict of Cyrus was issued authorizing their
return to their own country. Successive colonies, led
by Zerubbabel of the royal line, by Ezra and by Nehe-
miah, between the years 536 and 444, B. C. amid many
obstructions and delays, succeeded in rebuilding the
temple and city walls. The Jewish polity, civil and re¬
ligious, was under the auspices of the two leaders last
mentioned, placed upon that basis substantially, on
which it continued until the final dispersion of the na¬
tion. Of the general history of Ezra, we know not
17
much, except what is furnished by the record that44 he
was a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which the Lord
God had given," and by the narrative of the reforms
which he effected, and the observances which he restored
among his countrymen, in conformity to the requisitions
of that law.
As in the discussions respecting the genuineness of
the earlier portion of the Old Testament scriptures, much
has been said, in relation to the agency of this distin¬
guished individual, in writings compiling, or issuing a
new and corrected recension of those Scriptures—it
will he necessary to inquire, what are the decisions up¬
on this subject—of contemporary documents—of trust¬
worthy national tradition—and of probable conjecture.
What documents have we then existing, derived from
that age? Besides the works of the prophets, Haggai,
Zechariah, and Malaehi, we have the historical books of
Ezra and Nehemiah, all furnishing corroboration to each
other. In addition to these, the writer of " Geology and
the Pentateuch," wishes to introduce two other sources
of evidence: what are termed in our translation of the
Bible, 1st and 2d Esdras,^ but in the primitive Church,
3d and 4th Esdras; Ezra and Nehemiah being reckoned
the 1st and 2d books of that name. It is indeed only
the 4th book of Esdras, which will at all serve his pur¬
pose, inasmuch, as in this alone is contained the legend,
respecting the burning of the law and its miraculous res¬
toration through the instrumentality of Ezra. We may,
however, institute an inquiry into the credit due to each
of these books, not as inspired, but simply a& contem¬
porary documents, bearing upon their face a presump¬
tion of truth. In this aspect of the case, it is not ne¬
cessary that we should 'enter at all upon the subject of
the Jewish canon of Scripture, either in a general view,
or with reference to these books in particular, yet since
our author has led the way, we shall not shrink from fol¬
lowing him. Let us then hear his objections to the de-
terminateness of the canon in general. There is no
known criterion of the books called "apocryphal,"—
every ancient ecclesiastical author, and every division of
Christians, have different notions of books 44 canonical,"
* Greek Orthography of Ezra.
18
and books "apocryphal." "Professor Michaelis uses
the term apocrypha] for authentic, as distinguished from
" inspired," and merely in opposition to " canonical."
" There was no enumeration of canonical books by any
christian writer, until the time of Melito, Bishop of Sar-
dis, A. D. 170." "No canon settled by authority, un¬
til the Council of Laodicea, A. D. 468." "Council of
Carthage, A. D. 397, admitted the two books of Esdras."
"The Greek and Romish Church-receive Esdras as
canonical." These passages occur Geo. and Pen. p.
51. 52. and on p. 7. it is said the canon was settled by
Church authority, at the Council of Carthage. A. D.
397, although as is seen above, it is alledged not to
have been settled by ecclesiastical authority until the
council of Laodicea, A. D. 468, and on the same page,
we read: " There is no Jewish writer on the canon,
now known anterior to the Tahnudists," several centu¬
ries after Christ; although on p. 52, the duthor observes
"I am aware of the argument in favor of the present
canon, drawn from Philo, Josephus," &c., who were
certainly Jewish writers. These however, are trivial
inconsistences, in comparison with others which shall
be cited in the course of this essay.
We here observe that the first objection to the deter-
minateness of the Jewish canon, is grounded upon the
ambiguity of the terms used in the discussion. It is
granted that those terms have by different persons been
used in various significations, at one and another peri¬
od. There is no doubt that, according to the statement
of Eichhorn, the term "Canon," meant: 1st, a public¬
ly approved catalogue of all the books which might be
read in the assemblies of Christians for instruction and
edification; 2nd, a collection of divine and inspired writ¬
ings. In like manner the term apocryphal was first ap¬
plied to obscurely written books, which in consequence
were " set aside," and from them, nothing allowed to be
read publicly. It was then used to designate supposi¬
titious writings, which in consequence of their worth-
lessness, were not used for public instruction, and finally
writings not inspired. It matters not however, what terms
were used by the writers on the subject which we have
now in hand; provided there be an entire consent re-
19
specting the matter itself. Eichhorn has well stated, as
the true and perspicuous notion of the canon, " that at
tha time of our Saviour's appearance, there was in Pal¬
estine a collection, which made up a complete whole,
and in the New Testament, was sometimes comprised
under the appellation Scripture or Holy Scriptures;
sometimes paraphrased by law and prophets, or by
by law, prophets and psalms." That there did exist
such a collection, is fully demonstrated by this writer,
in a lucid and beautiful treatise on the canon of the Old
Testament, a translation of which may be found in a
volume, entitled " Essays and Dissertations on Biblical
Literature," published in New York, 1829.
With the "learned and condensed arguments," pre¬
sented in this work, our author professes to be well ac¬
quainted, as also, with those of a later writer, John,
whom he terms "far more suspicious." And in re¬
ference to both, in his usual uncourteous style, he ob¬
serves, "they do well perhaps to defend the cause,
which they were employed to support, and which sup¬
ported them." He did not advert to the fact, that Ger¬
man theologians allow themselves all freedom of thought
and discussion, and that Eichhorn especially was far
from being subject to any trammels of authority. But
to return—by these arguments it does not appear that
our learned antagonist was convinced, and he therefore
presumes that they will be equally ineffectual with oth¬
ers.
I have no hesitation however in asserting my convic¬
tion that they must prevail with all intelligent and can¬
did persons, who will bestow upon them, a proper atten¬
tion.
The great variety of topics which must necessarily
pass under our review, does not permit the attempt to
give an exhibition of these arguments. The reader is
earnestly recommended to examine them, in the above
cited work of Eichhorn, and in Jahn's Introduction to
the Old Testament, a translation of which, has also
been made in this country. The confident assertion
" that every ancient ecclesiastical writer, and every divi¬
sion of Christians, have different notions of books ca¬
nonical and apocryphal, is there shewn to be entirely
20
unwarranted. And with regard to the statements, that
there was no Christian writer on the subject of the
Jewish Canon, until Melito, Bishop of Sardis, A. D. 170,
nor any canon settled by Church authority, until the
Councils of Carthage or Laodicea, A. D. 397 or 458, I
would merely observe, that it is difficult to conceive for
what purpose they were made. I do not know how
much earlier than the period first indicated, a Christian
writer could have been expected to advert to the subject,
in a systematic way. Little more, than a century had
passed, since the first preaching of Christianity.—
Where the great object was to extend the knowledge
of the truth, by the oral communications of living
teachers, there were few writers; and those who did ex¬
ercise themselves in this way, were engaged with sub¬
jects which presented more urgent claims upon their
attention. The few literary productions of the first
century, and of the earlier portion of the second, were
brief addresses to Christian Churches principally of an
hortatory nature; and apologies to the Roman Empe¬
rors, in which were repelled t^ie calumnies, with which
the new religion was assailed both by Jews and Heath¬
ens.
Moreover, when Christianity was principally confined
to Judea, and the regions adjoining, when in all places
there were many Hebrew Christians, from whom the
associated Gentile believers, would necessarily learn
the number and names of the books anciently account¬
ed sacred; what could be expected other than such inci-
dentarallusions to this collection in general or to its
particular parts, as abound in the New Testament, and
in the writings of those, who immediately succeeded
the apostles. At a somewhat later period, however,
when Jerusalem was finally destroyed, under the reign
of Hadrian, and the Jews dispersed from their own land;
and when in many parts of the world, where the Gospel
had been preached, there existed little acquaintance
with Jewish opinions, and no minute knowledge of that
previous religious system, out of which Christianity
had grown; we might expect Christian writers to refer
to these subjects in a more systematic way. Accord¬
ingly, we find Melito, Bishop of Sardis, who travelled
21
into the East, with a view to ascertain from the ac¬
counts of the Jews there, the contents and number of
their sacred books, communicating to his brother One-
simus, the result of his investigations.
In almost every Christian writer of repute, during the
next three or four hundred years, we meet with enumer¬
ations of the Old Testament scriptures, agreeing in all
important particulars. Many of these are cited by
Eichhorn, and other writers on the canon, and all may
be found in " Lardner's Credibility of the Gospel His¬
tory."
It is, therefore, ridiculous to talk of no canon being
established by church authority, previously to the
Council of Carthage, or that of Laodicea. In truth,
the Christian Church had no authority to declare any
thing in relation to this matter. It is a mere subject of
historical inquiry—what was the collection of sacred
writings extant among the Jews, in the time of our Sa¬
viour, to which he and his apostles gave their sanction?
In determining this, all we need is the testimony of
credible witnesses living at, or near the time. And of
this we have all that can be desired.
We are now to examine the assertions of our author,
in relation to some particular books—the 1st and 2d,
or, as they were anciently reckoned, 3d and 4th books
of Esdras. " The Greek and Romish Church, receive
Esdras as canonical." The Council of Carthage ad¬
mitted the " two books of Esdras;" and page 11, it
is said, the Greek Church and the Roman Catholics
admit this book of Esdras, (the fourth,) as genuine. A
quotation is also made from Prideaux, which will pres¬
ently be cited; by which the authority of this book is
attempted to be supported. The first remark which I
would make upon these statements is, that here we
have an artful blending together of the claims of two
books, having no necessary or actual connection with
each other. What may be true of the third book
of Esdras, he attempts, in this way, to establish respect¬
ing the fourth. Of the various portions of Christendom,
the Greek Church alone recognizes the canonical au¬
thority of the third (called in our Apocrypha, the first)
book of Esdras—and this recognition, it is attempted
3
22
by a skilful generality in terms, to extend to the fourth
book, (or second of our Apocrypha.) A still more
striking illustration of this remark, is furnished by the
mode in which Prideaux's testimony is used. The fact
of a suspension of the building of the temple, for the
space of two years, being referred to by this author,
in his " Connexion," &c., gives occasion to the fol¬
lowing remark: " so saith the writer of the first, apocry¬
phal book of Esdras; and although he be an apocry¬
phal writer, and is, in most things wherein he doth not
translate from the canonical book of Ezra, very fabu¬
lous, yet, in this particular, he may be well supposed to
deliyer himself according to the received traditions of
the age in which he lived and the histories then extant;
and this was very ancient; for it is certain he wrote
before Josephus: and an ancienter evidence than this,
we cannot have from any writer, since the Scriptures of
the Old Testament, concerning this matter."— Vol. II.
p. 31.—Charlestown, 1815. Now this passage is quoted
by our author, and prefixed to an attempt to prove that
Ezra wrote the Pentateuch, a thing asserted not by the
writer of the 3d, but of the 4th book of Esdras. Pri¬
deaux's testimony is therefore clearly irrelevant; but the
uninformed might be thence led to conclude that this
distinguished divine intended to guarranty the compe¬
tence and credibility, as an historical witness, of the
writer of fourth Esdras. But what does Prideaux say,
concerning this book? Controverting the opinion of
certain fathers, he observes, p. 103, Vol. II. Connexion,
—" They had no other foundation for it, than that fab¬
ulous relation which we have in the second (4th) apoc¬
ryphal book of Esdras; a book too absurd for the Ro¬
manists themselves to receive into their canon."
The second remark which I would make, respecting
the statements now under view, is, that with an excep¬
tion or two they are grossly incorrect. The Greek
Church does not receive 4th Esdras; neither does
the Roman Catholic; nor did the Council of Carthage.
What could have led our author info these errors? He
seems to have forgotten that Ezra and Nehemiah were
anciently reckoned as the 1st. and 2d Esdras. For
once his universal learning has failed him, or he has
23
voluntarily erred to serve a purpose. But were Ezra
and Nehemiah accounted as 1st and 2d Esdras, as I
have asserted? The proof is abundant. Let us hear
the Council of Trent, in its " Decretum de Canonicis
Scripturis." In the enumeration of the books of the
Old Testament* we perceive "Esdrae primus et secundus
qui dicitur Nehemias." No notice is taken of the 3rd
and 4th books. Lactantius, whom Gibbon has pronoun¬
ced the most eloquent of the Latin fathers, A. D. 306,
quotes Nehemiah, under the name of Esdras, because
it was reckoned the 2nd book, under that title.—Lardner,
Vol. III. p. 527, London Edition, 1831. Jerome, A. D.
392, in that preface, concerning all the books of the
Old Testament, which he terms, " Prologus Galeatus,"
giving an enumeration of them, consistently with our
received canon, only grouping two together, in some in¬
stances, after the manner of the Jews, who aimed at a
correspondence with the number of letters in their al¬
phabet, observes—" The 8th of the class Hagiographia
is Ezra, which among the Greeks and Latins, makes
two." And in the preface to his translation of Ezra
and Nehemiah, he says, "by the Hebrews, they are
reckoned as one book, called Ezra; but reckoning them
as two, he had not translated the dreams of those apoc¬
ryphal books, 3rd and 4th Esdras, which were not found
among the Jews, and were therefore not to be regarded."
Lardner IV. p. 420. Origen, A. D. 230, speaks of Es¬
dras 1st and 2d, as being in one book, called by the
Jews, Ezra. To the same purpose express theniselves,
Epiphanius, Rufinus, and Athanasius, in his Paschal
epistle. We need no farther proof of our position, and
when in the canon recognized by the Council of Car¬
thage, we find mentioned 1st and 2nd Esdras, no man
of common intelligence, can suppose that any other
books are referred to, but those of Ezra and Nehemiah.
In relation to the 4th book of Esdras, I would only re¬
mark farther, that it is not extant in Greek, and never
was in Hebrew, and subjoin the observation of the
learned Basnage: "We suppose the author to have been
a Jew who was educated in Chaldea. In his writings,
he has borrowed his arrangement, style and prophetical
expressions from Daniel." " He was in reality a Chris-
24
tian, for he often speaks of Jesus the Son of God; but
he retained after his conversion, the reverence which
was felt by all the Jews in the time of Christ, for their
cabalistic learning and traditions."—Basnage, appended
to Jahn's Heb. Com. p. 578. Such then is the poor au¬
thority, upon which rests the legend of the miraculous
restoration of the law by Ezra, after it had been burnt;
a writer living 500 years afterwards, utterly unsupported
by any contemporary, or intermediate document, at va¬
riance with national tradition, and opposed by authentic
records. That some of the early Christian fathers
should have confided in his statements, can add nothing
to his authority; We have access to all the sources of
evidence which they possessed. And we thus perceive,
of how little force is the remark of our author: "Esdras,
would never have ventured to publish this, as a fact, to
the whole Jewish nation, which the production of one
copy could confute, if the assertion could be contradict¬
ed." This remark would have full force, provided the
spurious Ezra had made his statement at the time when
the fact was alleged to have taken place; but with the
understanding, that it was made five hundred years af¬
terwards, it is entirely futile. To this we may add the
consideration stated by Jerome, that this 4th Esdras,
was not found among the Jews.
But we have it again suggested, " that it is not true,
that certain ancient fathers had no other reason- for
their opinion, than the passage in 4th Esdras-—they
were supported by the traditions of the whole Jewish
nation, leaving it uncertain, whether the Pentateuch was
a composition, or compilation by Ezra, or partly one,
and the other." How very logical is the conclusion ar¬
rived at, in this remark; the fact that the book of the
law, was burnt and restored by Ezra, is proved, by the
universal tradition of the Jewish nation, declaring what?
—why "leaving it doubtful whether, the Pentateuch
was composed, compiled, or partly one, or partly the
other."
And here, I would note, once for all, the artful and
disingenuous use, which our author, makes of the phrase,
" the Pentateuch, as we now have it." If Ezra had added
a single note, or modernized a single name, it might be
25
said, that the book as we now have it, was not the work
of Moses. So, also, if in the lapse of ages, any, the
least accidental corruption, or omission in the text had
occurred. When, therefore, an author is cited by our
antagonist, as holding that the Pentateuch, as we now
have it, was not the work of Moses; let him state what
degree of change, was believed to have passed upon it.
Let him also, more particularly explain his meaning,
•when he declares, that he would not believe upon his
oath, any well informed man, who should assert, that
the Pentateuch, as we now have it, was written by Mo¬
ses. But we are told, that " after the complete destruc¬
tion of Jerusalem no positive evidence of the loss of
all documents, is necessary. In reference to this, let us
remember our objector's favorite adage, "affirmantis est
probare." It is no where said, that all the copies of
the law were in Jerusalem, much less in the temple.—
Had it been so, they might have been preserved .among
the precious things; the vessels of the house of God,
which were carried off, by the conqueror. But Daniel,
had long before gone into captivity, and being an individ¬
ual of great learning and piety, doubtless had with him
the sacred books of his nation. So would we remark of
Ezekiel, who prophesied among the exiles—and of Jer¬
emiah, who remained in Judea, until a party of his
countrymen compelled him to accompany them into
Egypt. Surely also, some of the priests and Levites, a
body of men especially devoted to performing the cer¬
emonial observances, and teaching the moral precepts
of their law, must have had copies of it. Confirmation
of this conjecture is furnished by contemporary docu¬
ments, as will be shewn in the next section.
26
SECTION IV.
Of the agency of Ezra, in relation to the Pentatench, as
appears from history; as affirmed by tradition, and as
indicated by the probabilities of the case.
The utter worthlessness of the fourth book of Esdras,
as furnishing any evidence of an historical fact, having
been clearly shewn, it only remains for us to inquire,
what light is thrown upon the subject of our present in¬
vestigation, by the productions which are, unquestiona¬
bly, derived from the age to which it refers. In the
book which bears his name, Ezra is introduced to our
notice as a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which
the Lord God of Israel had given. Certainly then we
are to understand this law as existing and in writing; for
in the account given in a previous chapter (in,) of the
return of the first band of exiles under Zerubbabel, more
than fifty years before, it is recorded that they built the
altar of the God of Israel, to offer burnt offerings there¬
on, as it is written in the law of Moses the man of God.
Ezra is farther represented as leading a second colony
to Jerusalem, authorized by the Persian king to estab¬
lish and enforce all ordinances necessary to the well-be¬
ing of his nation. Various abuses are reformed by
him; and under his auspices, with the concurrence of
the succeeding governor, Nehemiah, there takes place a
solemn recital of the law, in the hearing and at the re¬
quest of all the people. "All the people gathered them¬
selves together as one man; and they spake unto Ezra
the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses which
the Lord had commanded Israel,"—ch. viii, 1. On the
24th of the seventh month, a solemn fast is held, with
confession of sin. The Levites on this occasion, in
the course of their acknowledgment, make a particular
recital of those incidents in the history of the Jews,
connected with their deliverance from Egypt and settle¬
ment in Canaan. This circumstance furnishes proof
that the Pentateuch,substantially in its present form then
existed. The time taken for its deliberate reading is
a corroborating consideration; and there is not the least
intimation, that on this occasion, any production was
27
brought under view of the people, of which they were
before ignorant. And here it may be a matter of curi¬
osity to collate two passages, connected with this sutn
ject, from "Geology and the PeQtateuch." In page47,
we read: " Ezra the scribe brings out the book of the
law of Moses, and reads it to the assembled people. This
took up from the morning until mid-day, including the
time occupied by the comments and explanations of
thirteen priests, besides Ezra and Nehemiah. Now,
this could not have been the Pentateuch, whatever it was
—a morning could not have sufficed for the purpose."
Nor did it. The reading was continued for seven suc¬
cessive days, as we shall find our author with strange
inconsistency arguing, in the extract which I shall next
adduce. Page 50. In giving reasons for his belief of
the Esdrine origin of the Pentateuch, the third consid¬
eration alleged is : " Because the book of the law com-,
posed or compiled by Ezra, took him seven days to read
it to the people." Was there ever a more glaring con¬
tradiction? Can we have any confidence in a writer
who is so Utterly careless as to commit such an over¬
sight? Or can it be possible that it was intentionally
committed, with the hope that it would pass unobserved
by the multitude of his readers?
The account of the solemn reading of the law, which
I have above extracted from the book bearing the name
of Ezra, is all that we meet with in documents, Written
at that time, concerning his connexion with the Penta¬
teuch. We find elsewhere abundant recognition of
its existence, but no specific account of any critical
care bestowed, in correcting, editing, or arranging it.
It is well known, however, that according to the tradi¬
tions received by the Jews of later times, much of this
nature has been ascribed to the individual who so large¬
ly shared in the work of reorganizing the Jewish polity
after the captivity. Let us see what the representation
of that tradition is. Let us take it from Prideaux, who is
admitted by Dr. C, to be a witness of unquestioned com¬
petency. He observes in his Connexion, Vol. II.—
"But the great work of Ezra, was his collecting togeth¬
er and setting forth a correct edition of the Holy Scrip¬
tures. This both Jews and Christians give him the hon-
28
or of, and many of the ancient fathers attribute more to
him in this particular than the Jews themselves; for they
hold that all the Sacred Scriptures were lost and des¬
troyed in the Babylonish captivity, and that Ezra re¬
stored them all again by divine revelation. Thus saith
Irenseus," &c. We thus perceive that the Jewish tra¬
ditions extend no farther than the ascription to Ezra
of a collection and correct edition of their sacred books
with an illustrative observation occasionally introduced.
The favorite position of Dr. C. was only maintained by
certain Christian fathers, whose sole authority was the
4th book of Esdras.
But while on the subject of Jewish tradition, it is
necessary to advert to what that tradition is supposed
to mean, when it speaks of the law of Moses. Our au¬
thor says, p. 15, 44 one concession I am compelled to
make, that the expressions, the Law, the Law of Mo¬
ses, the Law of the Lord, and the Book of the Law,
are often met with throughout the Bible." He is
sure they do not mean the Pentateuch, but observes,
44 In explaining them I know of no better authority than
the universal and uniform account given of them by the
Jews themselves." Again: 44 The references to Jewish
writers and authorities by Prideaux, is laborious and am¬
ple; and from them, and from his summary of Jewish
opinions, it appears that these expressions do not mean
the Pentateuch, except so much as was written at Sinai
by Moses himself, as we shall see, i. e. the two tables
of stone; but they mean and refer to the collection
made by Ezra, from the traditionary information de¬
livered to him. All this is so plain that I shall assume
it as undeniable, and consider the law, and the law of
Moses, mentioned in the Old Testament, as expressions
that refer, not to the law that Moses did write, but
chiefly to the law that Moses did not write." Now it is
strange that expressions occurring in books long ante¬
rior to Ezra should refer to a collection which he made
from the traditionary information delivered to him; but
I suppose there is here a little confusion of thought,
and that it was meant to be asserted, that what is spo¬
ken of, in the historical books of the Jews, as the law
of Moses, was merely that unwritten, traditionary law.
29
which Ezra afterwards committed to writing. Yet it is
strange that the designation "book of the law," should
foe given to a mass of civil and religious observances,
regulated by traditionary information communicated
orally. But we have seen the principle of our author
—now for the proof which he gives. He contents him¬
self with refering to Prideaux's summary of Jewish
opinions, and the authorities cited by him. And what
do Prideaux and his authorities affirm on this subject?
Absolutely nothing, I unhesitatingly and broadly assert,
in the remotest degree, sustaining this principle.—
The reverse is clearly established. It is utterly ama¬
zing that a writer, having any pretentions to candor or
intelligence, should have so mistaken the matter himself
or should have attempted thus to mislead his readers.
Let us examine the passage relied on for proof. The
Jews have a two-fold law, both given by Moses at Si¬
nai; one committed to writing; the other handed down
by tradition from generation to generation—both set¬
tled by the authority of Ezra; for while he published
a correct edition of their sacred books, he also exam¬
ined and allowed certain observances among the Jews,
resting only on oral tradition. This is what Prideaux
and his authorities declare. But is it said that Ezra
committed this traditionary law to writing, and that to
it chiefly refer the expressions, occurring in the vari¬
ous historical books of the Old Testament, the law, &c.
Not one word of this. Here is the statement given,—
Prid. Con. Vol. ii. 93. Charlestown ed. "As to the an¬
cient and approved usages of the Jewish church, which
had been in practice before the captivity, they had, by
Joshua and Zerubbabel, with the chief elders, their con¬
temporaries, and by others that after succeeded them,
been a gathering together from their first return to Je¬
rusalem, as they could be recovered from the ancients,
&c. All these, and whatever else was pretended to be
of the same nature, Ezra brought under a review; and
having, after due examination, allowed such of them as
were to be allowed, and settled them by his approbation
and authority, they gave birth to what the Jews now call
their oral law." This oral law, it is well known, was never
committed to writing, until after the time of Christ.
4
30
when Rabbi Judah collected them and the Mishnah was
formed. This, with the comments on it, termed Gema-
ra, constitute the Talmud.
But again: this oral law, thus conveyed down by tra¬
dition, was the comment of which the Pentateuch was
the text. I shall not cite the long accounts which ac¬
cording to Prideaux, the^Jews give of the delivery of
both these laws, by Moses, at Sinai; I would only ob¬
serve, that Moses first delivered to Aaron the written
law, and then the oral, which was its interpreter.—
Aaron did the same to his sons; then to the seven¬
ty elders, and they to the whole congregation; that
they put the text into writing, but the interpretation of
it they delivered down by word of mouth to the succeed¬
ing generations. It is farther related, that many years
afterwards, immediately before his death, " Moses de¬
livered to them thirteen copies of the written law, from
the beginning of Genesis to the end of Deuteronomy, one
to each of the twelve tribes, to be kept by them through¬
out their generations, and the thirteenth to the Levites,
to be laid up by them in the tabernacle before the Lord."
The oral law was also committed to Joshua; by him to
the elders succeeding; from them extended to the pro¬
phets, from age to age, until the time of Ezra; from
him, still unwritten, it passed to various individuals,
successively, until the time of Rabbi Judah Hakkadosh,
who wrote it in the book called Mishnah. Prid. Vol. ii.
98. Again,p. 107: "Thefive books of the law are di¬
vided into fifty-four sections. This division many of
the Jews hold to be one of the constitutions of Moses
at Mount Sinai." Moreover, " the written text consist¬
ed of 613 precepts, into which they divide the law."
Surely this was more than the decalogue, or a few
chapters of Deuteronomy. Can any thing then be
plainer, than that the universal Jewish tradition reports
Moses as having delivered in writing, at Sinai, the very
books which we now have under the name of the Pen¬
tateuch. And may we trust our eyes, when, in refer¬
ence to an opinion directly opposed to all this, and after
an appeal for support to an authority utterly contra¬
dicting it, we read, "all this is so plain that I shall
assume it as undeniable !!" Must we not admire the
31
promptness with which .our author advances to his con¬
clusion, when after this formidable array of proofs, he
says, " I trust I have shewn that by the expressions, the
law, &c. the Jews do not, and never did, understand the
Pentateuch." Surely no clerical logic can be worse
than this, nor can the patrons of orthodoxy furnish any
rarer specimen of " impudent hardihood of assertion."
Every honorable and candid man must admit, that what¬
ever may be the true state of the case, such a mode of
managing the controversy is utterly discreditable to him
who uses it.
We have seen then what contemporary documents as¬
sert, respecting the agency of Ezra in relation to the
sacred books of his nation ; what is the tradition on
this subject, be its value more or less; we have only
briefly to inquire, what is dictated by probability or
analogy. On this topic I shall merely cite a passage
from Knapp's Theology, Vol. i. 82. He observes that at
particular periods in a nation's history, learned men ap¬
pear who interest themselves in its literary productions.
" They take pains to preserve their text or to restore it
when it has become corrupt: they shew the distinction
between genuine and spurious writing; and they make
collections or lists, comprising only those which are
genuine. Such persons anciently appeared among the
Israelites, and afterwards among the Christians. And
such among the Greeks, were the grammarians of Al¬
exandria, under the Ptolemies. - They distinguished
between the genuine and spurious works of Grecian
literature. The books admitted into the canon they
called syxgnofxsvoi, and the books excluded exxgwopsvot. The
excluded books were of course less used, and have since
mostly perished, vide Ruhnken, Historia Oratorum
Grsecorum Critica, page 96. These remarks illustrate
the origin of the collection of the Holy Scriptures."
We may reasonably conclude, therefore, that Ezra
with other learned men, his coadjutors, did bestow that
care in collecting and editing the literary monu¬
ments of their nation, which we know to have been ex¬
ercised in other instances.
It appears then—I. That we have the fullest evidence
32
of the existence of the Pentateuch, immediately after
the return from the captivity.
II. There is nothing in contemporary or trust-worthy
documents, or tradition, asserting that it then first ex¬
isted—that Ezra fabricated it.
III. It is national tradition that he collected and edi¬
ted the sacred books of the Jews.
We have now to inquire—what reasons sustain the
belief that the Pentateuch was not written in any inter¬
mediate age, but must be referred to Moses as its au-
thor?
SECTION V.
Various theories respecting the origin of the Pentateuch—
Positive evidence that it is the production of Moses.
The author of the " Connexion between Geology
and the Pentateuch," observes,* "that this book is by
universal acknowledgment, so garbled and interpolated,
as well as so utterly uncertain as to its author or com¬
piler that it carries with it no historical credibility." He
also remarks, f " that the fact of these supposed writings
of Moses having been compiled at some unknown time,
subsequently to the captivity, is on all hands admitted.''''
This writer assuredly uses terms of universality in a
very extraordinary acceptation. If there be this entire
agreement, why does he so zealously and perseveringly
exert himself in sustaining his proposition? Are there no
ignorant or interested supporters of orthodoxy who
maintain a different opinion? Surely there are. Oth¬
erwise our antagonists, with their rare benevolence and
unquestionable disinterestedness,—who, in the very spir¬
it of martyrdom, are resolved to emancipate their fellow
men from the thraldom of priestly domination,—would
have a light task to accomplish. But perhaps it is meant
to affirm this universal consent, respecting the spurious-
ness and worthlessness of this production, of those on¬
ly who having the same critical acumen, and the same
* Page 18. t Page 53.
33
honesty of purpose, which are possessed by our author
himself, deserve to have something conceded to their
opinion. But here again the assertion is, unfortunately,
utterly opposed to the true state of the case. Neither
among avowed Infidels, nor among the free thinking
theologians of Germany, may we find this harmonious
acquiescence in the theory above suggested. Rosen-
muller, in his " Prolegomena in Pentateuchum," has giv¬
en a full enumeration of the conjectures of those who
dissent from the received hypothesis respecting the ori¬
gin of this book. Some of these may be here briefly
stated. Le Clerc, at one period of his life, ascribed the
Pentateuch to the Israelitish priests, sent by the king of
Assyria, to instruct the inhabitants whom he had trans¬
ported into the conquered kingdom of the ten tribes.
This was two hundred years before the return of the
Jews from their captivity. Frid. Carl. Fulda thought
that the Pentateuch was not older than the time of Da¬
vid. Nactigal supposed that previously to the time of
Samuel, there were existing nothing but genealogical
tables with few or no literary remains; that the achieve¬
ments of ancient times were only commemorated in
songs and on monuments; that at this period these his¬
toric odes, which had been in a great measure drawn
from inscriptions on stone or brass, were in the schools
of the prophets committed to writing; that in suc¬
ceeding times many books were written by wise and
erudite men, which contained these odes, narrations con¬
cerning ancient affairs, and a collection of laws; and
that from books of this sort, brought together by the
care of the learned of that age, under the direction per¬
haps of Jeremiah, the Pentateuch was compiled at the
time of the exile. To Bertholdt it seemed probable
that this book was reduced to its present form by Sam¬
uel, and deposited in the ark of the covenant; and
that a copy of it, written upon Egyptian linen, was that
volume of the law found by Hilkiah in the temple.—
EvenVolney supposes it to have been written by Hil¬
kiah—of course not after the captivity. What then are
we to think of the agreement on all hands that it was not
more ancient than the latter period! Spinoza, Vater,
De Wette, and Hasse, maintain this, but a large majori-
34
ty even of the opposers of the Mosaic origin of the
Pentateuch affirm the contrary; while the great body of
theologians and biblical critics, trace it to the age of
the Jewish law-giver, and to himself as the writer. It
may be well also to observe, that of the authors above
cited, Le Clerc and Hasse subsequently changed their
opinion and wrote in favor of the genuineness of the
Pentateuch. Rosenmuller likewise, a most distin¬
guished German commentator, having originally denied,
afterwards sustained this view* As to any deference
which should be shown to the judgment of such re¬
nowned critics as Vater and De Wette, it should be re¬
membered that they, as well as the advocates of more
orthodox sentiments, had their preconceived opinions
under the influence of which the reasonings were con¬
ducted by which they arrived at their particular conclu¬
sion. The latter, for instance, assumes it as impossible
that miracles or prophesy should exist. He rests his
belief of the modern origin of Genesis, upon the con¬
sideration of the miraculous events related in it, for he
argues, " Such accounts can only owe their origin to
popular report, which must have been of very long stand¬
ing to have become exaggerated in the degree in which
it is given in this book." J
We are now prepared to examine the evidence by
which the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch is demon¬
strated. In the out-set of the investigation, however,
it will be necessary to institute the inquiry—what does
this document bear upon its face in relation to its age
and authorship? If it do not purport to have appeared
at a time coeval with the origin of the Jewish polity,
and to have proceeded from the law-giver himself, it
were useless for us to assert claims on its behalf which
itself disavows. We are repeatedly told by the wri¬
ter of the tract, to which reference has been so of¬
ten made, that such is not the fact. It is denied "that
any passage of the Pentateuch assigns itself generally,
or any book of it specifically, to Moses." Again it is
said " that Moses does not claim the Pentateuch as his
| " Common sense determines that such miracles are impossible. * * * Might not
events have happened which seemed to be miraculous?—a close inspection of the narra¬
tive will negative this supposition. The result is already attained, that the narration is not
contemporary, nor derived from contemporary sources."—De Wette Ev. $ 145.
35
production, in any one assignable part, and that it is not
ascribed to him from the beginning of Genesis to the
end of Revelation." Yet again it is authoritatively pro¬
nounced, "Moses no where claims the authorship of
these books, nor are the five books of Moses, nor any
book among them, mentioned, or cited, or referred to, in
any part of the Bible." In view of these assertions
it is incumbent on us to ascertain what can be learned,
with respect to the antiquity and origin of the Pentateuch
from its own declarations, and from the remaining Jew¬
ish historical documents. And yet in meeting this very
requisition of our antagonist himself, we are doomed to
smart under his sarcastic reflections upon clerical log¬
ic. "No author is permitted to fabricate evidence in
his own favor. You must establish the genuineness and
authenticity of the Pentateuch before you can quote its
authority for any thing contained in it." Then follows
his specimen of clerical logic, which I shall not conde¬
scend to transcribe. All that I will here observe is—
how unhappy is the lot of the poor theologians. If
they attempt to prove from its own declarations that the
book under our view claims to be written by the He¬
brew legislator, they are accused of employing the ab¬
surd reasoning to which allusion has just been made;
if they omit to do this, they are triumphantly told, the
Pentateuch makes no pretension to be his production.
But let us advance to the proof of our principle.
Moses in express words testifies, Deut. xxxi, 9-13, 22,
24-26, that this whole book was written by him from
beginning to end, delivered to the elders of the people
and priests, that it might be kept in the tabernacle by the
side of the ark of the covenant; to be read in the hear¬
ing of all the people every seventh year at the feast of
the tabernacles. And throughout the entire work, of
which Deuteronomy is a part, " Moses says that he com¬
mitted to writing—now particular laws—now accounts
of transactions occurring. Thus in Exodus xvii, 14,
the conduct of the Amalekites and the destruction des¬
tined for them in a coming age, he declares that he had
by divine command written in a book, without doubt al¬
ready begun, as may be gathered, says Rosenmuller,
from the words being written with the article—by
36
which it is signified that he spake of one particular and
well krfown book. Ex. xxiv, 4,7. After the Israelites
had received the law from Moses " he wrote allthe words
of Jehovah in the book of the covenant wlpch he read to
the assembled people." When to these pfecepts others
were added, he was also commanded, Ex. £xxiv, 27, to
commit them to writing. Moreover, Num. ixxiii, 1, 2,
he is said, by the command of Jehovah, to have written
out the journeyings of the Israelites. The book of
Numbers is closed with these words: " These are the
commandments and the judgments which the Lord com¬
manded by the hand of Moses unto the children of Isra¬
el in the plains of Moab, by Jordan, near Jericho."—
Lastly, in Deuteronomy, in which are contained the
conclusion, the explanation and supplement of his laws,
Moses in his addresses to the people, again and again
speaks of "this law," and " the book of this law." Es¬
pecially to be remarked is the place, Deuteronomy, xxviii,
61, where in the address in which Moses threatens the
Israelites with all calamities, in case of disobedience
to the divine commands, among other things there we
read "Every sickness and every plague which is not
written in the book of this law, them will the Lord
bring upon thee." Whence it follow s that Moses had
delivered this book to the people and so had himself
committed his communications to writing.
The result, then, at which we have arrived by
this hasty review of the contents of the document
whose claims we are discussing, is, that Moses is
represented as at intervals writing much; as record¬
ing not only laws but narratives of transactions, pre¬
dictions of future events; directions respecting par¬
ticular works, with an account of their completion—for
instance the various instruments of the solemn and im¬
posing worship which was instituted. The whole char¬
acter of the book, with its expressed contents, is en¬
tirely conformed to what we observe in the Pentateuch
now possessed by us. That the writer speaks of him¬
self in the third person, need excite no surprise in one
whose reading has extended so far as Caesar's Commen¬
taries.
But in many parts of the Old Testament, the " law of
37
Moses," and the law which Jehovah gave by Moses, is
mentioned. In the book of Joshua,—which though it
be much more recent than the age of that leader, was
doubtless composed, as respects its greatest part, from
documents, if not obviously contemporary, certainly
very ancient,—we find it recorded, that very soon after
the death of Moses, Joshua was admonished that he
should read the book of the law continually.—Josh. i.
7, 8. And again, in an address to the people, ch. xxiii.
3-16, this ruler admonishes the elders of Israel, that
they should do all things which were written in the
book of the law of Moses; and he not only makes men¬
tion of many laws, but many occurrences are described,
and promises and threats proposed in it. At a still
later period of the Jewish history, David, about to die,
exhorts Solomon his son to observe all the precepts
" which are written in the law of Moses."—1 Kings, ii.
3. Nor does the 2d Kings, xiv. 6, admit of any ques¬
tion, in which Amaziah, king of Judah, is said to have
spared the children of the murderers of his father, " ac¬
cording to what is written in the hook of the law of Mo¬
ses;" and to which there is subjoined the passage now
read in Deut. xxiv. 16. Jehoshaphat, 2d Chron. xvii.
9, sends priests " with the book of the law of Jehovah"
throughout the cities and villages to instruct the people.
In the reign of Hezekiah, (2 Chron. xxx. 16-18—xxxi.
3, 4, 21,) this king causes the passover to be celebra¬
ted " as it is written in the book of the law of Jeho¬
vah." Under Josiah, (2 Chron. xxxiv. 15,) it is said
that the book of the law of Jehovah, by the hand of
Moses, was found in the temple.* During the captivity
the book of the law of Moses is mentioned by Daniel,
chap. ix. 13. References to this book after the return
from Babylon, and before the time of Ezra, have been
already cited in a former part of this discussion.
The above collection of passages, by which, we
think, is proved the existence of the Pentateuch, in eve¬
ry period of the Jewish history, from the time of Mo¬
ses to the era of the captivity, may suffice. Those who
desire farther satisfaction may consult Jahn's Introduc-
* The supposition that this book is a forgery of Hilkiah, we shall consider elsewhere.
Its being mentioned here, is a valid argument against those who ascribe the Pentateuch
to Ezra, and refer it to a period subsequent to the captivity.
38
tion. The only mode in which the argument grounded
upon them can be evaded, is that adopted by Vater,
who asserts that these citations only prove that certain
laws, and ancient written histories existed, but not the
whole Pentateuch. In this opinion, which is a mere
conjecture, he is, in substance, followed by Dr. C., who
peremptorily denies that the phrases " law of Moses"
&c. mean the Pentateuch. We have already seen how
" lame and impotent" was the conclusion attempted to
be drawn from modern Jewish opinion, by a reference
to " Prideaux and his authorities," to prove that about
which they affirm not one word. As no additional rea¬
son is urged to sustain an opinion which our author
again pronounces " ex cathedra," we can only request
a candid and careful examination of the testimonials
above recited, and suggest some general considerations
corroborative of the - position which they are intended
to sustain. In what age and by what author any book
was written, are facts which can only be determined by
historical evidence. This _ evidence may be, 1st, the
testimony of those who possess the means of informa¬
tion, and who have no inducement to mislead us. 2d.
Certain marks in the work itself, as respects language,
style and sentiment, which point out its age and author¬
ship. The evidence of the former class possessed by
the work in question, is most ample. It has been hand¬
ed down from generation to generation as the produc¬
tion of him whose name it bears. Those who lived
contemporaneously with its origin, and transcribed this
book, together with those who in successive ages trans¬
cribed it, form a series of witnesses to its genuineness.
This is a proof which we never hesitate to ad¬
mit in regard to the profane authors of antiquity, and
this national testimony is, in regard to the Penta¬
teuch, particularly satisfactory. Books, at so early a
period as the one at which it dates its origin, were rare,
and it was less difficult to retain the recollection of the
author from whom they proceeded. This recollection
was preserved in the familiar instruction of fathers
to their children.—Deut. xxxii. 7; Ps. lxxviii. 3-7. A
whole tribe, moreover, was devoted to the services of
religion, which were intimately connected with a proper
39
preservation of their sacred records. Nor was there
any motive to induce the Hebrews to corrupt the pure
tradition relative to the source whence they were
derived; I mean so as to ascribe to Moses what did
not belong to him. Rather might they have been tempt¬
ed to deny that a book containing many representations
discreditable to their nation had been written by their
illustrious and honored legislator. And the very fact
that the Jews acknowledged their ignorance of the date
and authorship of several of their historical books, fur¬
nishes to us a guaranty that when they do affirm any
thing on the subject, they speak from adequate informa¬
tion.
We find then, by a reference to the passages cited by
the later writers of the Old Testament, that there was
at all times a " book of the law of Jehovah, written by
Moses." We perceive that the laws, the promises, and
threatenings, the historical narrations referred to, are
all such as we now find in the Pentateuch. Particular¬
ly is this manifest from many allusions in the Psalms
and prophets, which I have omitted to cite, but which
may be seen in Rosenmuller's Prolegnomena,* and in
Jahn. The "book of the law" then was the Pentateuch
as appears from the ancient national testimony of the
Jews. Nor do their accredited modern traditions at all
oppose this conclusion, notwithstanding the re¬
peated and confident assertions of our antagonist,
SECTION VI.
Positive evidence of the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch,
continued.
But the internal marks of genuineness exhibited by
this book are not less satisfactory than the external
proofs which support it. The historical, political, and
geographical details respecting the most remote anti-
* An excellent abstract of his arguments with additional considerations, may be seen
in an article on the Samaritan Pentateuch, originally published in the North American
Review April, 1826; afterwards in Biblical Repository, Oct 1832, by Professor Stuart,
Dr. C. speaks respectfully of it, and opposes some assertions to its arguments.
40
quity which it contains, especially what pertains to the
history and physical character of Egypt and Arabia, are
so composed as to afford a strong presumption that they
were written by a man who, at an ancient age, was libe¬
rally educated in the former couutry. What we read
respecting the Exodus of the Israelites and their jour-
nies through the Arabian desert, is in remarkable ac¬
cordance with the statements of modern travellers.—
The genius and conformation of the entire work, are
moreover in exact correspondence with the character
and circumstances of the author. In the last of the
five books, we hear the legislator addressing the people
whom he had governed many years; but now advanced
in life, as the more diffuse style, which all observe in
Deuteronomy, proves. In this book we hear the ruler
now near his end, recalling to the remembrance of his
people all things which had happened to them during
his government and solemnly exhorting them to obey
the laws which he had by divine authority communica¬
ted to them, repealing also some, and supplying others.
But Deuteronomy supposes the existence of the books
which precede it, to whose matter it often refers, urging
an observance of the laws contained in them, by a con¬
sideration of the events which they narrate. Again the
order of composition exhibited in these books—the
slight connexion sometimes existing between its several
parts having their own distinct closes, shew an author
not writing continuously, but with frequent interrup¬
tions, such as we know Moses to have been, oppressed
with incessant engagements, and distracted by constant
journeyings.
But among the internal evidences of genuine¬
ness possessed by the Pentateuch, may be mentioned
that derived from its style, or the character of the lan¬
guage in which it is written. I am aware that reference
has been made to this consideration for a purpose entire¬
ly different. It has been alledged as an argument
against the antiquity of this book, that its language does
not sufficiently differ from that which was common in a
much more recent age. No difficulty is felt in making
the admission that the Hebrew language in the ages of
Moses and David, did not present the degree of diver-
41
sity which we observe in some other instances. This,
however, is the result of a characteristic which it pos-
seses in common with the oriental, and by which it is dis¬
tinguished from the occidental dialects. The perma¬
nence which marks eastern usages in general, is also an
attribute of their languages. The facts, moreover, that
these so little vary during the lapse of ages, is in a consid-
rable degree attributable to the neglect to express their
vowels, the consonants alone having been originally used.
Of course the spoken language might at different periods
present a great diversity, of which no trace would be
exhibited by the same language in its written monu¬
ments. Accordingly, as Rosenmuller remarks, the Ara¬
bic of the Koran, but slightly differs from that used in
the productions of ages much more recent. The same
remark is also applicable to the Syriac. But having in
th&fullest manner made this admission, it is still undeni¬
able, that the language of the Pentateuch exhibits the
most unquestionable evidence of antiquity, and is re¬
markably distinguished from that of the later books of
the Old Testament. Professor Stuart, in his article on
the Samaritan Pentateuch, to which I have already refer¬
red in_a note, makes the following statement, which is
also made by Rosenmuller. The late Professor Jahn,
by betaking himself to his Hebrew Concordance, and
looking the whole store of words through, to ascertain
where and by whom they were used, arrived at the fol¬
lowing result: " He .collected from the Pentateuch more
than two hundred words which are either not used at all
in the other books; or are not used in the same sense;
or have not the same form; or if employed at all, are
employed but in a few instances, principally by the po¬
ets, who prefer the older diction. To this class he has
• added a second still larger, of words frequently used in
the later writings, but seldom or never in the older.—
From these classes are excluded all proper names, and
in general all such as from different circumstances of
ages and countries, and from the peculiarities of the
writer, might be expected to be used at one time rather
than another." This result attained by Jahn, Professor
Stuart observes, seems to have settled the controversy
on this point in Germany; Gesenius not having in his
42
last work ventured on the argument against the early
date of the PentateUch drawn from its language. We
conclude then, that so far as the testimony of a whole na¬
tion,, the citations in subsequent writers, numerous instances
of correspondence with the characteristics of the repu¬
ted author and age in which he lived, and the antique
style of composition, can establish the genuineness of
any book, that of the Pentateuch is sustained in a man¬
ner to which we can find no parallel in literary history.
But it is alleged, with an air of triumph, that the
learned and refined nations of antiquity were unac¬
quainted alike with the Jews and their reputedly sacred
books. Now, in the first place, it is an altogther unpre¬
cedented procedure, to require the testimony of for¬
eign nations to the existence or authorship of any liter¬
ary production. He that should demand that the gen¬
uineness of the poems of Homer, for instance, should
be established by Egyptain or Phoenician testimony,
and who in the absence of this, should pertinaciously
reject the most ample, and universal, and unchanging
testimony of the Greek nation, would certainly not de¬
serve to be argued with; and precisely of this nature is
the requisition made upon the defenders of the Hebrew
Scriptures. But again, where are we to look for con¬
firmation, either of the authorship and age of these
books or of the authenticity of the incidents mentioned
in them?, At the dawn of profane history, in the age
when certainty began to distinguish its records, there is
no question respecting the existence of the Pentateuch
in its present form. The litigated point is, did it exist
many ages anterior to this? Jewish historical books,
of posterior origin, recognize this fact. But we are
called upon to sustain it by a reference to authors of
foreign nations. And where shall we find them? We
shall not of course be expected to look to India, or
China, countries claiming great antiquity, but whose
remoteness forbids the expectation of finding any re¬
ference to the national concerns, and much less to the
literary productions of the Jews, in their early writers,
even admitting that any existed contemporaneously with
the period of which we are treating. With more rea¬
son might we turn to the Chaldean, Egyptian, and Phce-
43
mcian records, as likely to furnish some notices of a
people, connected with these nations by consanguinity,
by language, or by a long series of transactions alter¬
nately of an amicable and hostile character. But
where are those records? Of Berosus, the Babylonian
historian we have only a few fragments remaining pre¬
served by Josephus and Eusebius, and he lived in the
age of Alexander, a century after the time of Ezra.
Manetho wrote his Egyptian history by order of Ptol¬
emy Philadelphus, at a period no earlier than the date
of the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Of this history we have likewise very little remaining.
In the person of Sanchoniathon, the Phoenicians fur¬
nish us with a writer of much greater reputed antiquity.
But while some question the fact of his existence, the
point cannot be contested that there is the greatest un¬
certainty respecting the time in which he lived. And
the small portion of what he is supposed to have writ¬
ten, which remains to us, is possessed in a manner very
indirect. Philo Byblos, who lived in the second centu¬
ry of our era, professed to translate his works ^ into
Greek. Porphyry made citations from them in his at¬
tack upon Christianity. These were adverted to with a
different object by Eusebius, in whose Preparatio Evan-
gelica they have come down to us. It is then most un¬
reasonable to object that we have not the testimony of
writers in neighboring nations to the existence of the
Pentateuch, prior to the Babylonish captivity. We
have in truth no contemporary literary productions of
those nations; and if this be the fact respecting these
ancient divisions of the human race, it is more remark¬
ably so in relation to the Greeks, whose civilization, al¬
though high, and arts and learning, admirable, were
yet comparatively of a recent date. Concerning them,
indeed, we cannot express ourselves in terms more
appropriate, than those used by Josephus in his trea¬
tise against Apion. He observes that many are so
superstitiously attached to the Greeks, as to regard
them as the very oracles of history, and then pro¬
ceeds to remark, " we shall find nothing among them
that is not novel, I mean with respect to the building
of their cities, the invention of their arts and the
44
description of their laws; the writing of history is
of very late date among them; whereas, by their
own confession, the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Phoe¬
nicians (to say nothing of ourselves) have from time
tp time recorded and transmitted to posterity memo¬
rials of past ages in monumental pillars and inscrip¬
tions." "Their bare pretence to the knowledge of let¬
ters is of a late date. The antiquity of which they
boast goes no father back than the Phoenicians, and
they value themselves on the reputation of having had
CadmUs for their first master. But so far are they from
being able to produce, either in their temples or public
registers, any one authentic memorial of these times,
that when it came to be propounded as a question,
whether the use of letters was so much as knpwn at
the time of the Trojan war, it was carried in the nega¬
tive, It is universally acknowledged that there is no
Creek manuscript in date antecedent to the poems of
Homer. Nor has it been admitted that Homer ever
committed this production to writing. The prevailing
opinion runs, that it passed like a kind of ballad which
the people committed to memory, till in the end copies
were taken from oral dictation."—Whistorfs Josephus
Vol. 4, 364. New York, 1824.
SECTION VII.
The Pentateuch not fabricated in an age subsequent to that
of Moses.
A rapid sketch having been thus given of the argu¬
ment by which the reference of the Pentateuch to Mo¬
ses, as its author, is in our apprehension completely
justified; it remains that a single consideration be urged,
which respects the great difficulty, amounting under the
circumstances of the case almost to an impossibility;
of palming upon the Jewish nation in any age subse¬
quent to that of their lawgiver, such a book as the one
in question, provided it were a fabrication. Upon the
contents of that book rested their whole political, civil.
45
and religious constitution. Their sacred rites, their
municipal regulations, their domestic institutions, were
all connected with events detailed in the history which
it contains. « This production purports to be the most
ancient record of the nation. Let us then suppose
that at any period Comparatively modern, it had first
made its appearance. Could the existing generation
have been made to believe, that what then first came
to their knowledge had existed as a sacred and highly
valued production, the directory of their ceremonial
worship and the measure of their moral obligations.
And had such an incident occurred, would there not
have been some discussion respecting it, and might we
not expect to find some traces of it in their history.—-
But here our adversary supposes himself to have actu¬
ally met our requisition, and points to the age of Josiah
as the period, and to the High Priest Hilkiah as the au¬
thor of the alleged forgery. I shall not pause to inquire
how this hypothesis consists with the other, so zeal¬
ously laboured throughout the pamphlet, which regards
Ezra as the fabricator of the Pentateuch, but attempt,
as briefly as may be, to meet the difficulty involved in
the objection.
The circumstances of the case were briefly these.
During the repairs of the temple, undertaken in the reign
of Josiah, the High Priest, Hilkiah, is reported to have
" found a book of the law of the Lord given by Moses."
This was by him delivered to Shaphan the scribe, who
carried it to the king and read it in his presence. The
king was affected in an extraordinary manner by its con¬
tents—he rent his clothes, and directed a reference to
be made to some authorised interpreter of the will of
Jehovah, to ascertain what should be done in view of the
sins of the people, and the judgments, in consequence,
impending over them. Two inferences have been drawn
from this narrative by De Wette, Volney, and others.
That the king and the principal ministers of religion,
as well as of state, had never seen the book in question
before, and that it was therefore a fabrication of Hil¬
kiah. The former supposition may have been correct,
without involving the truth of the latter. Let us then in¬
quire what probability distinguishes the one or the
46
other. Now let it be observed, first, that there must
have been an acquaintance with the fact that there had
been a book of the law given by Moses. There is man¬
ifestly a reference to something known to have existed,
but of which they had perhaps not recently been in pos¬
session. The case might be an analogous one to that
of Cicero's treatise De Republica, which he was known
to have composed, but which was for a time lost to the
world, being recovered only about twelve years since,
through the researches of the Abbe Mai.
The only difficulty then, in the instance now in ques¬
tion, is the conceiving how a book of such a character
should have been so completely lost, even among those
whom we should most reasonably expect to possess it.
In the reign of Jehoshaphat, between two and three hun¬
dred years previously, it existed, according to the testi¬
mony of the very same writer who records its discovery
by Hilkiah. This pious king is represented, 2 Chron.
xvii, 8—9, as commissioning certain princes, Levites and
priests, " who taught in Judah, and had the book of the
law of the Lord with them, and went about through all
the cities of Judah and taught the people." Had this
book then entirely disappeared in the age of Josiah, or
was there something merely in the particular copy found,
which produced so deep an impression upon the mind of
the young king ? Was it the autograph of Moses, the
very copy which he was directed to lay up beside the ark
of the covenant ? Did this circumstance, in connection
with the high degree of national guilt which had been
incurred, and of the perilous condition of the kingdom,
give to such menaces of divine judgments, as are con¬
tained in Deuteronomy, an import far more alarming?
A degree of probability is attached to this supposition
by a view of the phraseology of the passage in Chroni¬
cles—" Hilkiah found a book of the law of the Lord by
the hand of Moses"—so it is in Hebrew, as indicated
by a note in the margin of our bible, although the trans¬
lation in the text is " given by Moses"
But it may have been that copies of the law had become
exceedingly scarce, especially in the vicinity of the
court, and among those who had been exposed to its
influence during the preceding reigns. Manasseh, one
47
of the worst sovereigns who had ever occupied the throne
of David, had during fifty-five years labored to efface
the knowledge of the true religion and to introduce an
idolatrous worship. Amon, his son, pursued a similar
course. Josiah succeeded to the kingdom when but a
child, and early exhibited the best dispositions; and it
was in the eighteenth year of his reign and the twenty-
sixth of his age, at the beginning of the reformation
which he undertook, that a copy of the law was found
in the temple. The Rabbins say that Ahaz, Manasseh
and Am on endeavored to destroy all the copies of the
law, and that this was only saved by having been buried
under a paving stone. This may or may not have been
the case. We can, however, scarcely doubt that in the
remoter parts of the kingdom, and among the more pious
portion of the people, there were other copies secur¬
ed and cherished, ready to be brought to light at a more
auspicious era. But let us admit that the volume dis¬
covered by the High Priest, was the only one of the kind
existing in the kingdom of Judah, the question arises,
was there any thing in the circumstances of the case,
to justify the suspicion, or sustain by adequate proof,
the fact that Hilkiah fabricated the work which he pro¬
fessed to have found. Our author thinks that there was.
He supposes that Hilkiah had enlisted his pupil, the
young king, in support of the Jewish priests against the
priests of Baal, and as the Jews knew nothing of the
law of Moses, something of the kind was necessary as
a system of religious ceremonies. He composed a book
of the law, and pretended to have found it, after bind¬
ing the workmen to secrecy. Now observe a glaring
inconsistency in this passage itself: He refers to the ex¬
istence of Jewish priests, and yet supposes that they
had no system of religious ceremonies, until one was
constructed for them on the present occasion. Again,
this supposition is directly opposed to his own admis¬
sion, page 26 ^>f his pamphlet. In reply to the argu¬
ment that the laws of the Jews, appealed to throughout
the Old Testament, are the same as those contained in
the Pentateuch, he answers, "granted; they are a part
of the oral law recited to the people." Here then is an
acknowledgment that their laws and observances were.
48
by means of tradition, known to the Jews through every
period of their history. There was therefore no occa¬
sion for the High Priest to fabricate them, although he
might commit them to writing. But to our main ques¬
tion—As already observed, we know from the testimo¬
ny of the same writer, who records the discovery of the
book of the law, that a document bearing that name
had been employed for the instruction of the people,
several hundred years previously. We are also appris¬
ed, from numerous passages in the historical and pro¬
phetical writings of the Jews, that this book had been at
various periods well known, and recognized as the pro¬
duction of Moses. And it does not appear that Josiah
was at all surprised at the finding of such a book, but
simply was appalled at a portion of its contents, which
may have been unknown to him, while he possessed a
general acquaintance with its religious system and code
of laws. The matter then to be determined is—was this
ancient document the one produced by the High Priest,
or did he in the room of it substitute something of his
own. The latter supposition is utterly incredible. We
have already considered the strong evidence which sus¬
tains the belief that the Samaritan Pentateuch existed,
independently of that possessed by the Jews, at a period
long anterior to the one now under view; and this seems
an insuperable objection to the hypothesis I am combat¬
ting. But could Hilkiah have written in a style so an¬
tique? Had he ever affected the use of archaisms, the
occasional occurrence of words belonging to the lan¬
guage of a more modern age, would have betrayed him.*
He could not, moreover, have possesed the qualifications
manifestly necessary for writing such a book as the
Pentateuch. He had not the requisite knowledge of
Egypt, as respects its manners and institutions and phys¬
ical character. He could not have been so well acquaint¬
ed with Arabia and its localities. And upon the sup¬
position that from pre-existing materials, he compiled
the book which he palmed upon the Jewish nation as the
work of Moses, the following objections present them¬
selves, as observed by Jahn : "1st, He would not have
* The alledged anachronisms which may be regarded as something of this nature will
be presently considered.
49
arranged them in the manner of a diary, following the
order of time, so as to introduce, now a law, then a his¬
torical fact, and then again a law. 2nd, He would not
have repeated some laws as often as they were published;
or 3rd, he would have omitted in the former parts of the
work, the laws which are altered in Deuteronomy; nor
would he, (4th,) after having previously given a minute
description of the tabernacle, and of all its parts and
utensils, have repeated that minute description when he
recorded its completion." These considerations, which
induce us to reject the opinion that the " book of the
law" was either fabricated or re-written by Hilkiah, are
equally conclusive against the supposition of its being
forged or re-modelled by any other writer who lived in
an age subsequent to that of Moses. Whatever con¬
jectures may be formed, or whatever possibilities imagin¬
ed, we have no hesitation in appealing to enlightened
and candid inquirers, to determine, whether the greatest
improbability is not attached to them; and whether the
Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch is not sustained by as
high a degree of evidence, as, under the circumstances
of the case, could be expected or desired. It is the
height of absurdity to require, in literary discussions of
this kind, the same quality and amount of proof as is
demanded to substantiate recent transactions in ordina¬
ry courts of justice. But there are many grave objec¬
tions made to the proposition which I have been en¬
deavoring to maintain, which call for a patient exami¬
nation in order to their satisfactory solution. The at¬
tempt to furnish this will be made in some succeeding
sections.
SECTION VIII.
First objection to the genuineness of the Pentateuch—Al¬
leged anachronisms.
When there are found in any book, evident allusions
to the circumstances of a later age, when, for instance,
places are designated by names different from those
50
originally borne; when institutions, the growth of
times more modern are mentioned; or when acquaint¬
ance is implied with arts not known to the sup¬
posed author, there is so far a presumption furnished
against the genuineness of that book. Yet it is a pre¬
sumption more or less violent, which may be neutralized
or overthrown by other manifest considerations. These
parts may be shewn to be excrescences on the origin¬
al work; their origin may be clearly accounted for,
or if not, they may in general be referred to that liabil¬
ity to glosses and interpolations to which all works de¬
rived from a very remote period are subject. Concern¬
ing the anachronisms alleged to exist in the Pentateuch,
there has been, at various times, much discussion. Our
author has entered into the subject largely and repeat¬
edly. He represents the case in the instance under view,
as one of the most aggravated kind; the interpolations
and text being undistinguishably blended, so that no
confidence whatever can be reposed in such a book. A
most unfair coloring is also given to the whole contro¬
versy, by the representation, that his antagonists assume,
without any proof, that Moses wrote the Pentateuch,
and then, with an equal want of evidence, regard every
thing occurring in it incompatible with this hypothesis,
as the consequence of interpolation. Whereas the
true state of the case is this:—Here is a book possess¬
ing very strong proofs of genuineness—such evidence
as we cannot resist. Occasionally there is something
occurring, which could not have been written by the
supposed author. What is the conclusion which we
are bound to adopt ?—that the whole work is spurious ?
Certainly not. The entire genius and confirmation of
the production prove the reverse. What remains ? We
determine that in someway or other these passages have
been introduced into the original text. Now, in obvi¬
ating the difficulties of the objector, it is necessary to
inquire—what is the character and amount of these
anachronisms which are so much spoken of? Are they
intentional corruptions ? • Are they so incapable of be¬
ing distinguished from the original text as to cast a sus¬
picion over the whole work ?
In respect to the inquiry, concerning the number of
51
alleged anachronisms, we shall find, that admitting
them to the full extent, they are not considerable; and
if we take away those which are doubtful, or which can
be shown not to belong to this class, they are still less
worthy of note. It was not left for the enemies of Rev¬
elation to detect these. The Rabbins had, at an early
period, distinguished eighteen instances of what they
supposed to be additions to the text, posterior to the age
of Moses. Christian writers had also referred to the
same subject. It is believed, however, that many of these
passages, do not necessarily involve the supposition of
a more recent origin, than that of the body of the work.
Let us consider a few of them. In Gen. xii. 6, it is said
that when Abraham first entered Palestine " the Canaan-
ite was then in the land." This is supposed to mean
that the original inhabitants had not yet been expelled
by the Israelites, and of course to imply that the writer
of the passage lived at a time when this had been done.
But neither is this interpretation, nor this inference un¬
questionable. It is well known that Palestine was not
the first seat of the Canaanites, that they came from
Arabia, and that all which the sacred writer meant to
indicate, was that even at that early period this migra¬
tion had taken places—they were then in the land.
The next passage which we may consider in Gen. xxii.
14. " as it is said to this day, in the mount of the Lord,
it shall be seen." Mount Moriah, which is here meant,
was not so denominated, until the building of the tem¬
ple, several hundred years afterwards—it is therefore
supposed that this expression could not have been used
by Moses, but by some writer long subsequently to his
age. But respecting this passage we need experience
no difficulty. It is susceptible of an interpretation, and,
indeed, according to the just principles of interpretation,
requires it, which is entirely consistent with the fact of
its genuineness. With no view to the present exigency,
there have been several translations given of what is
confessedly a different passage. Houbigant and others
had rendered it " In monte, Deus videbitur"—In the
mount God shall be seen—supposing it to be a prophet-
coming of the Messiah
Rosenmuller, is—"In
52
monte* Dei providebitur, curabitur, prospicietur." Ill
the Mount it will be provided for, cared for, or looked
to by God. According to an observation of Jerome, it
passed into a proverb among the Hebrews, if at any
time they were placed in distressing circumstances, and
hoped to be delivered by the divine interposition,—they
said " In the Mount, God will provide; as He had com¬
passion on Abraham, He will pity us." We thus per¬
ceive that the phrase, "Mount of the lord," which creates
the whole difficulty, does not appear in the passage.
Another passage usually cited in the discussion in
which we are now engaged is Gen. xxxvi. 31. "These
are the kings that reigned in Edom, before there reign¬
ed any kings over the children of Israel." It is sup¬
posed that in two points of view this implies an age
posterior to Moses. 1. It argues that there were kings
reigning over the children of Israel when this statement
was made. 2. It is not to be conceived that in the space
of between two and three hundred years which inter¬
vened between Esau and Moses, there could have lived
14 dukes or phylarchs—then eight kings and afterwards
eleven dukes. In reply to this C. B. Michaelis observes
that the expression, " before there reigned any king over
the children of Israel," is not at all incompatible with
the age of Moses and the circumstances of his people
at that time. For both he and they were apprized by
the promises long since made to Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob, that kings would at a future period reign over
the chosen people of Jehovah—Gen. xvii. 5—xxvi. 3—
xxxv. 11.
As regards the second objection, it is replied—that it
is affirmed upon insufficient grounds that the Idumaeans
had three forms of government, at several times exist¬
ing among them; that their dukes were the heads or
princes of families, not existing successively but con¬
temporaneously ; that they and the kings lived simul¬
taneously, as appears from Num. xx. 14, compared with
Ex. xv. 15, in the latter it being said that Moses sent am¬
bassadors to the Kings of Edom, in the former the dukes
of the same country being represented as in consterna¬
tion at the approach of the Israelites. Besides in form¬
ing our judgment respecting the catalogue of the Idumse-
53
an kings, it will be important to consider that they did
not exist, according to hereditary succession, but were
elevated to power either by election or violence. Among
the kings enumerated we do not find ope who had a son
as his successor. Nor were foreigners excluded from
the succession, as is apparent from the different cities
and countries mentioned in the table of those who suc¬
cessively bore the regal title. These cities and coun¬
tries must have been the places of their birth, inasmuch
as it is extremely improbable that eight rulers, in imme¬
diate succession, should each have chosen a different
metropolis for his kingdom. In a monarchy then, such
as the one just described, we might expect shorter reigns
and a more rapid succession of those who held the su¬
preme power, than under one differently constituted;
and since dukes and kings appear to have existed togeth¬
er, it is easily conceivable that eight of the latter might
have lived in the space of time allotted to them.* This
interpretation of his father, the younger and more cele¬
brated Michaelis has adopted.
But again the expression occurring Ex. xvi. 36* " now
an omef* is the tenth part of an epha," is supposed to
furnish unequivocal evidence of a modern age, inas¬
much as it is not customary to define measures while still
in use. To this, however, Le Clerc forcibly replies—
it does not appear that the Hebrews ever used any meas¬
ures, while in Palestine, different from their original
ones, so that it might become necessary to define these,
nor can it be shewn that an epha was any better known
than an omer. Yet Moses who founded the Jewish com¬
monwealth, inserted here and there, the fit occasions be¬
ing given, something respecting their measures, lest at
a future period they should be changed,
I shall particularly consider no other passage, although
many more, which are usually regarded as additions to
the text, might be satisfactorily explained. What has
already been done, is sufficient to shew that the number
of texts calculated to produce difficulty, inconsiderable
upon the largest enumeration, may be much reduced.
Of the portions of the Pentateuch really belonging to a
subsequent age, we may reckon as the most important,
* The average of the reigns of the Roman Emperor8, was ten years.
54
being by far the most extensive, the last chapter of Deu¬
teronomy. Others consist in the substitution, on a few
occasions, of the modern name of a place for one more
ancient. Some are of such a character as the following:
Ex. xvi, 35:—"And the children of Israel eat manna forty
years." This term had not expired at the death pf Moses;
it is therefore concluded that he could not have written
it. This inference is, however, by no means inevitable.
He might have recorded it, immediately before his death,
when the period indicated was so near its expiration as
to justify the expression. But we have no occasion to
insist on this consideration.
Now the appeal is confidently made to every man of can¬
dor and reflection, whether a very few passages of this
kind oceuring in an ancient book, furnish any evidence
against its genuinenes, or show it to be so corrupted as
tp be undeserving of any regard; or whether these inter¬
polations are so undistinguishably blended with the text
as to cast a suspicion over the whole work. It is quite
easy to conceive, how these passages might have been
introduced, without the least censure being attached to
the author of them, or the least uncertainty being pro¬
duced as to the genuineness of the residue of the work.
The last chapter of Deuteronomy might very well have
been added by any successor of the Hebrew law-giver,
who wished to complete the account of his eventful life.
The substitution of a few modern for the ancient names
of places, or an explanatory remark, from being a mar¬
ginal gloss, might readily pass into the text, perhaps
with some distinguishing mark, which through the neg¬
ligence of scribes was afterwards omitted. Or, accor¬
ding to the much ridiculed theory, these additions might
have originated in the Esdrine edition of the Scriptures,
and been intended for their illustration.
There is a large class of passages, to which I have as
yet made no reference, which Dr. C. following De
Wette, regards as anachronisms. Every instance of a
prophetical declaration is so esteemed, For example,
predictions made respecting the future condition of the
Israelites to which the event corresponded, are suppos¬
ed to furnish, in themselves, evidence that they were
not delivered until after that event. Now were we to
55
meet, in any narrative of facts, a notice of occurrences
as then taking place, which belonged to a later period,
we should regard as highly absurd a solution of the dif¬
ficulty thus presented, by the supposition of an insight
into futurity. But very different from this is the case
of a man, who professing to possess the spirit of pro¬
phecy, makes a reference to the events of a coming age,
as yet future, but destined certainly to occur. When
an illustrious individual, such as the dying patriarch
Jacob, or Moses himself, when his end was approaching,
undertakes to foretel the future destiny of his children
or people, is the fact that the prediction made corres¬
ponded to their actual subsequent condition, conclusive
proof that such prediction was fabricated after the
event ? Should we not rather inquire whether it were
within the competency of human sagacity to have fore¬
seen what occurred, or whether there might not have
been some fortunate, although accidental coincidence.
If neither of these suppositions were admissible, would
it not be incumbent upon us to consider whether the
Supreme Being may not have lifted up the veil covering
futurity for the consolation of a good man, or for the
confirmation of a great system of moral and religious
truth, designed, in the first place, to benefit a whole na¬
tion, and eventually all mankind.
Our author speaks with contempt of Professor Stu¬
art's remark, that such portions of the Pentateuch as^
those last referred to, cannot with propriety be denied
to have been written by Moses, since no one can prove
that he did not possess a prophetical spirit. And yet
the remark is perfectly just. This is the very question
upon which we are at issue. The unbeliever has no
right to assume that his theory is correct; although it
is competent for him to advance reasons in its favor.
The Jewish system professes to be of divine origin. Its
claim is to be substantiated by the miracles wrought in
attestation of it, or by the predictions proceeding from
those who taught it. Whether such miracles were
wrought, or such predictions made, is a suitable subject
of inquiry. The evidence offered may be thoroughly
sifted by the skeptic, but surely it outrages all propriety,
to take it for granted that prophecy is impossible, and
56
then to assume, with no respect to other considerations,
and even in defiance of the strongest proof, that all
predictions occurring in any book are either interpola¬
tions or conclusive evidence of the spuriousness of the
entire work. This view of the subject is correct under
any circumstances. But surely it will not be denied that
there is some peculiarity attached to the Jewish system
and sacred books, which might induce the expectation,
that traces of divine power and knowledge should be
there recognized which are not seen elsewhere. In
their own character, in the degree and nature of the
evidence which sustains them, and in the religious and
moral system which they teach, they are surely widely
removed from all competition on the part of works, re¬
putedly sacred, existing in e,ny other nation. Besides,
Judaism is intimately connected with a more perfect
and extensively diffused modification of religious belief,
prevailing over the only enlightened part of the earth,
and supported by the most ample proof, which can be
brought more immediately under our view, being blend¬
ed with the transactions of a more recent age. If to
the decision of Christianity any authority is to be con¬
ceded, a divine origin must be ascribed to the Scriptures
of the Old Testament, and the occurrence of prophet¬
ical passages in them may reasonably be expected.
The result then of the observations proposed in the
present section may be thus stated:
1. The reference of the Pentateuch to Moses as its
author is sustained by the most convincing evidence.
2. Of various passages, supposed to be inconsistent
with this theory, many are susceptible of an explanation
entirely satisfactory.
3. Of those which remain, none are to be regarded
as intentional corruptions, nor do they attach any uncer¬
tainty to the text in general. They are either to be
accounted for upon the supposition of the accidental
transfer of a marginal note into the body of the work;
or to be referred to some subsequent authorized writer,
whose object has been either to complete what was defi¬
cient or illustrate what is obscure.
4. It is a manifest begging of the question to regard
as interpolations the numerous prophetical passages
which are found in these writings.
57
SECTION IX.
Second objection to the genuineness of the Pentateuch.—
Passages incompatible with the actual circumstances of
the reputed author.—Deut. i. 1. Meaning of the He¬
brew word (eber,) and the Greek m^av. (reran.)
The prosecution of a simple philological inquiry,
would not seem to furnish any occasion, or present much
inducement, to indulge in vituperation against one's ad¬
versaries. Yet is this reasonable expectation disap¬
pointed in the instance of our author, whose advanced
age, long subjection to the softening influences of liter¬
ary cultivation, and abundant professions of being ac¬
tuated solely by the love of truth and a regard to the
happiness of mankind, would seem to authorize the
hope, that he would form a candid and just, if not a
liberal and generous estimate of the character and mo¬
tives of his opponents. The critical discussion in which
we are now about to follow him, is closed, on his part,
with a long and virulent invective, to which there are
too many parallels throughout the work upon which I
am commenting. The " clerical profession is denounced
as one that renders impartial examination a crime, and
which requires those who adopt it, to insist on as true,
what no man, who is a searcher for truth alone, can
possibly accept as truth." "It is said to be disgusting
to observe the virulence of clerical reproaches made
against those whom they are pleased to denominate " in¬
fidels." These latter persons are represented as "brav¬
ing the reproaches of the interested, the lamentations
of the hypocrite, and the fierce bigotry of the ignorant
dupe of an interested clergy." We who are " hired,"
and paid, and salaried witnesses in favor of the cause
by which we get our living, are admonished to recol¬
lect " that thq day has passed by when infidels and infi¬
delity may be made with impunity the hated subjects of
clerical abuse." 4<-The clerical craft is in danger and
the members of the church militant will do well to hast¬
en to the rescue, better armed than they have hitherto
been." " The glove is thrown down before them, let
those who choose take it up." A defiance given quite
58
in the forms of the ancient institution of chivalry! Pity
it were that more of knightly honor and courtesy had
not been shewn in the management of the combat!
The guantlet has for a considerable time lain untouch¬
ed, and doubtless the accomplished cavalier, armed at
all points for the conflict, has feared that, through the
recreancy of his adversaries, no farther opportunity
would be furnished for the exhibition of his prowess.
This delay has arisen from considerations very differ¬
ent from any apprehension of the issue of the test being
unfavorable. Many there are who in the cause of truth,
and clad in its impenetrable panoply, are ready to meet
at any time and on any field their boastful assailant.
We rejoice that the number of those in the christian
ranks who are competent to do this, in an effective
manner, is daily increasing. Yet we regard with sur¬
prise and pity the insinuation that revelation has ever
wanted adequate defenders. We triumphantly refer
to days that have gone by, and challenge a comparison
in point of profound and various learning, and the pow¬
ers of a masterly and convincing argumentation, between
them and their adversaries. That the petulance of our
author has not been sooner rebuked, and his arguments
earlier met, is to be attributed to the fact that his pamphlet
has not attracted the attention which he expected, and
which from considerations apart from its intrinsic mer¬
its, it should have received. From its title.it was sup¬
posed to relate merely to the geological exceptions tak>
en against the Mosaic record. These, so far as any
considerations drawn from a science so largely hypo¬
thetical, are deserving of attention, it was thought
might with propriety be referred to those friends of rev¬
elation, whose pursuits particularly qualified them for
this investigation. And in reference to those, to whom
the character of the production in question became
better known, it is to be observed, that in general they
deemed it unnecessary to renew a discussion which in
their apprehension had been terminated in a manner satis¬
factory to the public mind. In this opinion it is thought
they erred. It is not enough that the enemy has been
once met and vanquished, the battle must be renewed
in every age. As old objections are revived they must
59
be again answered. As new modifications of errone¬
ous opinions appear, they must be exposed and refuted.
In the absence of a worthier champion, the writer of
these essays has not hesitated to accept the defiance.
He is willing to attempt the succor of the beleagured
citadel, imperfectly armed although he may be. In spite
of the strong temptation to a contrary course, he is not
conscious that he has in any degree indulged in person¬
al invective, when he should alone feel concerned to con¬
trovert the arguments of his opponent. He has been
solicitous to ascertain and vindicate truth, and not to
render odious either an individual or a class.
Let us then return from this digression, and consider
the objections to the genuineness of the Pentateuch,
founded on passages occurring in it, incompatible with
the actual circumstances or known sentiments of the
reputed author. The first which I shall examine occurs
Deut. i. 1. "These are the words that Moses spake
unto all Israel on this side Jordan in the wilderness."
To this version Dr. Cooper takes exception, asserts
that it should be translated beyond, on the other side Jor¬
dan, and concludes that the author of Deuteronomy
must have lived on the west of this river, and that he
could not therefore have been Moses who died east¬
ward of it.
Now the question to be determined is, what is the
proper rendering of -ojn. (be-eber.) It will be readily
conceded that the term is often susceptible of the inter¬
pretation which it is wished to attach to it as its sole
and exclusive signification. But does it not sometimes,
unquestionably, mean on this side, and is there not there¬
fore some general idea involved in the term, which au¬
thorizes its employment in this diversified manner?
This cannot be denied. Our author himself refers to
two passages Deut. iii. 8, and Gen. i. 10 and 11, where
the word in question must be translated on this side; but
he assumes that in these instances it is manifestly mis¬
applied, remarking that in a book so full of mistakes
and interpolations, this may well be. Surely this is a
summary mode of getting rid of a critical difficulty.
The signification of words is determined by the usage
of good writers^—here are two cases in which a partic-
60
ular meaning is necessarily attached to a term—that
meaning, however, is opposed to what seems to be in¬
dicated by other passages from the same writer. Should
we not attempt an explanation of the matter upon some
Other principle than the assumption of a corruption in
one class of our texts. Is it not unlikely that in a pro¬
duction of moderate length, two instances of a precise¬
ly similar mistake, in writing a simple and well known
term, should occur? But we have-not merely this de¬
gree of improbability to contend against. There are
many other passages not at all alluded to by Dr. Cooper,
where the original term must be rendered on this side.
1 o these I would solicit the reader's particular atten¬
tion. There is no question that the book of Joshua
was written after the conquest of Canaan, and of course
by one living west of Jordan. In the xii. ch. 7 v. of
this book, we find the following passage: " These are
the kings of the country which Joshua and the children
of Israel smote on this side (-oj\) Jordan on the west."
Again, Joshua xxii. 7, it is said " Now to the one half
of the tribe of Manasseh, Moses had given possession
in Bashanbut unto the other half thereof gave Joshua
among their brethren, on this side (-or,) Jordan westward.
As connected with this we may cite a remarkable pas¬
sage in Num. xxxii. 19. The two tribes and a half, who
had received their lot in the region which had been
conquered east of Jordan, expressed their determina¬
tion to assist their brethren in the conquest of the re¬
maining part of the promised land, and then to return
to their own possession—"For wTe will not inherit with
them on yonder side of Jordan, or forward, because our
inheritance is fallen to us on this side Jordan eastward."
Here we have the same word in the original, different¬
ly rendered in the several parts of the same sentence.
Other passages I shall not cite in full, but make a sim¬
ple reference to them: Josh. v. 1.—1 Chron. xxvi. 30.—
Josh. i. 15.—1 Kings iv. 24. Let the reader examine
them for himself, and he will be convinced that the term
in question does mean on this side, not once or twice,
but very commonly. But we are told, that in many fin-
stances, it has a meaning directly opposite, and some ill-
timed pleasantry is indulged in on the occasion: " This
61
is truly a most convenient word, it means white; it
means black; it signifies neither white nor black, but any
color you please." It will be well for our author to
defer his jesting until he has accounted for the passages
above cited, and has replied to the considerations which
I shall here subjoin.
Is he not then aware of an instance analagous to this,
in the Latin word sacer, which at once means—sacred,
holy, divine, and—cursed, detestable, horrible. " Auri
sacra fames."— Virgil. "Intestabilis et sacer esto."—v
Horace. " Ego sum malus, ego sum sacer, scelestus."
—Plautus. Has not his Hebrew erudition made him
acquainted with the usage respecting the word y-n, (Ba¬
rak,) which, according to Gesenius, means, 1. To bless.
2. To greet, or salute, 3. To take leave, renounce, re¬
vile. 1 Kings xxi. 10. "Thou hast reviled God and the
King." Job i. 5.—ii.5. Perhaps also the term -oj (nakar)
has escaped the accuracy of his research, which ac¬
cording to the same lexicographers signifies not only to
understand but to mistake : not merely to be known, but
to let oneself be unknown; to dissemble. In illus¬
tration of this peculiarity Gesenius refers to the insep¬
arable German prepositions ent and ver, which in com¬
position sometimes express a negation or antithesis,
sometimes not. *
I trust then that the diverse significations ascribed to
•oy will not seem so completely absurd or so entirely
without parallel, as they are represented to be. But,
as has already been suggested, there is-, in reference to
all such words as those above cited, some primary mean¬
ing, from which all other acceptations, however appa¬
rently unconnected, naturally flow. This is clearly and
beautifully apparent with respect to the term -pa. (Ba¬
rak.) No two things seem more opposite than to bless
and revile or curse, and yet the transition from one
meaning to the other is easily traced. 1. It means to
bless. 2. To greet or salute, because on such occa¬
sions persons speak well to each other; and in primi¬
tive times invoked a blessing. 3. To take leave, depart,
because the same salutations were usual then, as took
place at meeting. From parting amicably, the transi¬
tion is easy to a simple separation, then to one involving
8
62
a renunciation of all friendly intercourse, accompanied
even by reproaches.
~ Let us now inquire what is the leading idea express¬
ed by (eber.) The radical -or (abar) which is a verb,
means according to Gesenius—1. To pass on. 2. To
go or pass through. 3. To pass by. 4, To pass over.
5. To overflow, spoken of water, &c. Here we find
the notion of passage entirely the predominant one.
This is the fact also, with respect to the various expli¬
cations quoted by Dr. C. from Davies' Celtic Research¬
es. Is it then absurd to conclude with Pagnini, Arias,
Montanus, Huet, and others, that the fundamental idea
of the derivative word is " in transitu ?" This idea is
of course expanded and modified as we have seen to
be the fact in reference to certain other words before
mentioned. The statement of Rosemuller seems to be
entirely correct. Scholia in Deut. chap. i. 1, ^ which
properly denotes transitum, trajectum—passage—thence
it is used to denote all that tract which is washed by a
river or which is divided by water flowing in the midst
of it, whether this tract be on the one side or the other."
In other words, it denotes in its greatest amplitude of
signification the valley of any stream—and the express¬
ion -j-rrrr may well be rendered at, near, or in the
valley of Jordan. It does not occur to me that there
is any passage in which the original word is ren¬
dered beyond, where it will not be equally well ex¬
pressed by the explanation given above. And what
is very remarkable, we find this word often con¬
joined, with some other phrase which more definitely
fixes its signification. This is to be observed in the
passage already cited from Numbers xxxii. 19, where in
the different parts of the same sentence, this term has
a different sense, indicated by an adjunct express¬
ion. "For we will not inherit with them on yonder side
of Jordan, forward" that is westward-^-the Israelites
being advancing in that direction " because Our inheri¬
tance is fallen to us on this side Jordan, eastward." An¬
other exemplification of our principle is furnished by
Deaf), iv. 47, 49. Two kings of the Amorites are men¬
tioned as> being "on this side Jordan towards the sun ris¬
ing?* and we have also reference made " to all the plain
63
on this side Jordan, eastward." Again, in Joshua xii. 27,
the inheritance of the tribe of Gad is spoken of by the
writer as on the other side of Jordan eastward.
Instances might be multiplied were it necessary.—
These may serve to show that the term under discussion,
is not, in the sense which we attach to it, so utterly
vague as it is represented to be. I have hitherto made
no reference to the decision of any lexicographer res¬
pecting the meaning of the derivative word, ->-r, because
it is more satisfactory to appeal at once to that authori¬
ty, by which all their opinions must be sustained—the
usage prevailing in the Hebrew writings. Yet it may
be well to state that Gesenius who assigns to our term,
beyond, as its leading signification, gives as his second
definition—-"that which is on this side," adding the
strange remark "as if used by one living on the other
side." He refers to 1 Kings, iv. 24, in illustration. Yet
it is impossible to conceive what this text furnishes in
support of the limitation attached to his explanation.
He also takes no notice of the numerous passages re¬
sembling the one which he cites, many of which I have
on the present occasion quoted.
He gives us his third definition—" side quarter gen¬
erally refering to 1 Samuel, xiv. 40—" on one side, on
the other sideto Ex. xxviii. 26, " which is on the side
■oy of the ephod inward;" and to Exodus xxxii. 15,—
" the tables were written on both their sides, on the one
side and the other were they written."
It appears then to the writer that we have an exceed¬
ingly strong case made out, in favor of the signification
which we attach to the word under view. And in re¬
viewing the evidence by which our conclusion is sup¬
ported, it is amazing to reflect on the contemptuous
terms in which it is spoken of by our adversary. Let us
hear, however, what he has to allege.
He pleads the universal assent of the Jews, ancient
and modern, that -»ar means exclusively beyond. After
observing the total want of correctness, which marks Dr.
C's statements respecting the Jewish traditions, which
he professes to derive from Prideauxand his authorities,
the reader will feel little inclination to repose confidence
in any similar, sweeping and unsupported assertion.
64
*Nor will the opinion of Dr. C's. teacher, although he
may have been a pupil of the celebrated Vater, be enti¬
tled to any weight when contradicted by the numerous
instances which I have adduced of the usus loquendi
of the ancient Hebrew writers.
But it is said that the ancient versions, with the excep¬
tion of the Syriac, translate Deut. i. 1, "beyond Jordan."
What are these versions? The Samaritan is spoken
of, but in such terms, as to leave it doubtful whether it
is regarded as a version or not. What is properly call¬
ed the Samaritan Pentateuch is merely a document in
the Hebrew language, expressed in the ancient Phseni-
cian character—of course we have no translation of the
disputed word, but the term itself differently written.
The Chaldee, Septuagint, Syriac, Arabic, and Vulgate
are the principal versions mentioned. The Vulgate may
render the word in question, trans, and yet it may be a
misconception of Jerome—who although one of the
greatest proficients in Hebrew among the early fathers,
cannot be placed in competition with the author of the
old Syriac version, who spoke a cognate dialect, and
whose interpretation is different. If the Chaldee Tar-
gum and Arabic, do translate as they are asserted to do,
it may be that the terms which they employ are marked
by the same peculiarity of signification, which distin¬
guishes the Hebrew word. I am inclined to suspect
this, by the consideration that this is demonstrably the
case with regard to the Septuagint, which is cited as sus¬
taining the view of our adversary. n^«v, according to
classical usage, certainly means " beyondbut what
is its signification according to that peculiar modification
of the Greek language, which appears in the version
of the Seventy, and in the writings of the New Tes¬
tament ? The citation of a few passages will settle this
point beyond all possibility of dispute. Let us then ex¬
amine in the Septuagint a fact already cited from the He¬
brew. Numbers xxxii. 19—it was seen that the word -oy
in the former and latter parts of the same Verse, had a dif¬
ferent meaning attached to it, in consequence of the con¬
nexion in which it stood. The case is precisely the same
with respect to the Greek word ns^av. " For we will not
inherit with them a^ro rou <xsguv 'iog5avou xat itfsx$iva, for we have
65
received our inheritance sv tw itspav tou 'iogSavou sv uvunXaTg."
Here we find the original word whose meaning we are
discussing, alike used to denote the regions west and east
of Jordan—in the one instance connected with the term
srtsxsivu, beyond, in the other with the phrase sv uvaroXaig
—rtowards the east—on this side.
But there is another passage equally decisive of the
point in controversy; the quotation from Isaiah, which
occurs in Matthew iv. 15, "The land of Zebulon and
the land of Nepthalim, by the way of the sea, tfs^otv tou
'io^avou, Galilee of the nations." Here we perceive that
a tract of country which every one knows is on the
same side of the river with Jerusalem, where Isaiah liv¬
ed, is designated by him as ts^av tou 'lo^Javou—our transla¬
tors omitting to consider how the Hebrew idiom had af¬
fected in many instances the signification of terms in
the Greek language, have rendered this passage " be¬
yond Jordan." Many critics have since noted the in¬
correctness of this version. Campbell, whose accurate
learning and great candor none will question, translates
thus: " on the Jordan," remarking that both the Hebrew
and Greek words signify indifferently "on this side" and
on "the other side"—and that they should be rendered in
general terms, unless limited by such expressions xaT'
avaToXa or xara ba\a<s<ir\<s. Kuinoel also observes in his
note on Matthew iv. 15, that should be understood
as meaning " ad, juxta, prope." And again, in John i,
28, adds that ws^av answers to the Hebrew and not
only signifies trans but juxta, prope, cis, sustaining his
opinion by a reference to Vorstius de Hebraism, N. T.
and Bielii, Thes. sub. v. ws^av, ed. Schleusneri. Park-
hurst, also, in his Greek Lexicon gives as one of the sig¬
nifications of peran, about, near. And yet Dr. Cooper
cites this writer to prove that the corresponding He¬
brew word always means beyond, over; and annexes the
taunting observation, " I hope the orthodox will not ob¬
ject to Parkhurst." I might go on and make many
other citations both from the Septuagint and the New
Testament, in confirmation of our principle. To the
general reader, however, it would be tedious, and to
those particularly qualified to judge in the controversy,
it cannot be necessary.
66
The result then at which we have arrived with a de¬
gree of certainty, equal to that attainable in any litera¬
ry investigation, is—I. That, both the Hebrew term and
that by which it is rendered in the Septuagint, are used
to expess the nearer or farther side of a river indiffer¬
ently.
II. Their inherent indeterminateness of signification
is shewn by the fact that in numerous instances they
are associated with phrases which limit them—"on the
side of Jordan eastward—on the side of Jordan west¬
ward."
III. These, therefore, according to the definitions of
Kuinoel and Rosenmuller, not only mean at, on, near,
but with considerable latitude, express the whole region
or valley washed by a stream in its course.
Our version of Deut. i. 1, is therefore correct, and
the passage furnishes no argument against the Mosaic
origin of the Pentateuch.
SECTION X.
Objection to its genuineness derived from the occurrence
of passages incompatible with the known sentiments of
Moses.
In sustaining any abstract truth, or in vindicating the
accuracy of any historical record, it is often necessary
to bestow much attention in obviating the difficulties
which are supposed to be attached to the subject. It
matters not what force of reasoning or amount of evi¬
dence be brought to bear upon the point in question, a
single objection suggested is sometimes sufficient to sus¬
pend our belief or prevent it altogether. Hence it arises
that the most laborious portion of the duty devolving
upon the apologist for Revelation, is the replying to the
numerous cavils presented by its adversaries. Nor is
the importance of this duty less remarkable than its dif¬
ficulty, In supporting truth, we are bound to present
it in as clear a light as possibie, and to answer all rea¬
sonable objections. Yet is this task far more difficult
67
of accomplishment than the office assumed by our an¬
tagonist. It requires neither learning nor ingenuity to
make exceptions to the history or the doctrines
of the Bible; nor is there any intelligence, patience,
or industry, necessary on the part of the commu¬
nity, in order to its comprehension of them. Unfor¬
tunately, however, for the interest of truth, the case
is otherwise when a reply is to be made to these ex¬
ceptions. Profound research is often requisite to ex¬
pose the inaccuracy of an assertion recklessly made, or
to render intelligible a circumstance which belonging
to a remote age and a very different state of society, is
naturally productive of some perplexity; and the mind
which would understand the elucidation which is given,
must be something more than the indolent recipient of
some brief remark thrown out in conversation, or some
brilliant, although fallacious sentiment, occurring in the
fugitive productions of the day.
It is manifest, therefore, that the advocate of grave
and important truths contends under the greatest disad¬
vantages; yet difficult as it is to obtain adequate atten¬
tion to the considerations which we may suggest, in con¬
sequence of the aversion to intellectual labor so com¬
mon among men—the effort must be made. In the
course*of the investigation which we have been pursu¬
ing, I trust that something of this duty has been satis¬
factorily accomplished. I amnow to attempt its entire
fulfilment.
The next objection to be met is—that the Pentateuch
contains sentiments and regulations irreconcilable with
the known opinions and purposes of the Hebrew law¬
giver. It is. therefore inferred that he cannot be the
author of this book. In support of this view, Deut,
xvii. 14—20, has been cited, where reference is made to
the future appointment of a king, directions given re¬
specting his election, and restrictions imposed upon his
conduct. Moses, it is asserted, established a theocra¬
cy; he never contemplated the existence of a regal gov¬
ernment among the Hebrews, and when at a period long
subsequent, a request was made on the part of the peo¬
ple, to the prophet Samuel, to ordain a king over them
who might lead them forth to battle, it was regarded by
68
the Almighty as equivalent to a rejection of his author*
ity. These are the suggestions of Ilgen, in which De
Wette has followed him. I do not, however, conceive
that any importance is to be attached to such considera¬
tions. Undoubtedly, according to the original organi¬
zation of the Israelitish commonweath, it might with pro¬
priety of speech be termed a theocratic establishment,
inasmuch as their laws proceeded directly from God,
were expounded by the priests and Levites, as holy per¬
sons, and executed by the judges as divine vicegerents;
to which we may add that in difficult cases relating to
government and war, Jehovah was consulted by Urim
and Thummim, or made known his will by the prophets,
his authorized ministers. It is equally evident, that
Moses desired this constitution to be a permanent one,
because he deemed it most advantageous to the people
for whom he felt interested. But is there any thing
irreconcilable with these views in the passage before us?
Does the writer direct or even approve a change in the
form of government originally established among the
Hebrews ? By no means. He simply declares, " When
thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giv-
eth thee, and shall possess it, and shall dwell therein, and
shalt say, I will set a king over me, like as nil the nations
that are about me; thou shalt in any wise set him king
over thee, whom the Lord thy God shall choose," &c.
He merely anticipates what will be their future wishes.
This might have been the result of natural sagacity,
even without the prophetical insight into futurity which
we suppose him to have possessed. "He well un-
understood the temper of the orientals whose propen¬
sity to kingly government was also remarked by the
Greeks and Romans in later times. The example of
all their neighbors, the idea of a nation being more
respectable with a king at their head, the corruption of
morals which gradually crept into the priestly order, the
desire or the necessity of being always prepared for
war—these and other causes may have induced the
Hebrews earnestly to desire a king." Michaelis' Com.
on the Laws of Moses, Art. liv. Sec. 1, page 1. In pros¬
pect of this state of things, Moses allows of the exist¬
ence of a form of government somewhat modified, but
69
attaches to it such restrictions as would in a great
measure obviate the evils incident to its establishment.
"In this," continues the philosophical writer above quot¬
ed, " his judicious conduct merits commendation, since
he thus avoided the error into which other legislators
both ancient and modern, have fallen, in wishing to pre¬
scribe for their nation a form of government never to be
changed. For even the best constitution of a state may
become in a manner antiquated and enfeebled by abuses
that are too strong for the laws, in which case it is expe¬
dient to alter it, and to convert, for instance, into a mon¬
archy, a free republic, where the people have become
lawless, or certain citizens too powerful or ambitious.—
History confirms the observation, and the government
which has in itself no inherent power of changing its
form, will sooner or later experience a revolution, not¬
withstanding, with this difference only, that it will not be
effected peaceably, but by force."
The next objection which demands our attention is
derived from a class of passages, which are conceived
to represent the Almighty as visible, and which cannot
therefore have proceeded from Moses who taught the
spirituality of the divine nature. We scarcely deem
this imagined difficulty worthy of a passing notice, al¬
though much importance seems to be attached to it.—
Several texts are cited such as Exodus xxxiii. 11—
where it is said that the Lord spake unto Moses, face to
face, as a man speaketh to his friend. It is astonishing
that any one who pays attention to the context, or who is
at all acquainted with the genius of the Hebrew lan¬
guage, and the modes of expression common among all
nations in the early stages of their existence, should un¬
derstand the author as here ascribing to the Deity, a cor¬
poreal form. In a passage immediately succeeding the
one under view, it is declared no man can see God's face
and live. We cannot suppose that any writer, however
blundering, could within so short a space, have fallen
into so palpable a contradiction. The truth is, that the
expression, " the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as
a man speaketh to his friend," is merely a figurative
representation of the high regard in which the Almighty
held his minister, and the direct communication which
9
70
he maintained with him. The tropical significations of
the word face, are exceedingly numerous. I need only
refer to Gesenius, where the instances are noted, and
shall merely cite a single passage from the very chapter
which is supposed to present the difficulty which I am
called upon to obviate. In our version God is represent¬
ed as saying. " My presence shall go with you"—
meaning that he would by his power attend and protect
the Israelites. A literal translation would be—"my
face shall go with you." While on this topic, it may be
well to suggest a general remark in relation to the an¬
thropomorphical and anthropopathical representations
occurring in the Bible—that is expressions ascribing
human form or passions to.the Deity. No candid man
of intelligence can fall into any misconception on this
subject. We find it exceedingly difficult under any cir¬
cumstances to conceive of God in his pure spirituality,
much less to speak of his operations consistently with
ihis character. Much more difficult then, and even im¬
possible was it to hold communication in respect to
these things with a people as a whole, rude and unculti¬
vated, and having in their language no words for the ex¬
pression of abstract or spiritual ideas. Much therefore,
as Moses and the sacred writers succeeding him insist¬
ed upon the immensity and invisibility of Jehovah—
greatly as they censured any attempt to give a corpore¬
al representation of him—even although it were taken
from man—the possessor of intelligence which assimi¬
lated him to the Divinity, and constituted him Lord of
this lower world; still were they compelled to fall into an
apparent inconsistency in their language. It was ne¬
cessary to employ terms drawn from the objects of sense,
using them however, in a metaphorical signification. To
denote the commandments of God, they spoke of his
mouth—in speaking of his knowledge of the actions of
men, they referred to his eyes and ears—his hand was the
expression of this power, and his heart the indication of
his dispositions and feelings.
Still more frivolous than the objection which I have
just discussed, is another respecting the imagined incon¬
sistency between the prohibition to worship images,
and the direction to form the brazen serpent in order to
71
an emblematic use of it. It was sufficiently strange that
the weak minds of a former age, should have supposed
the second commandment to forbid the execution of any
work of statuary, even without the purpose of employ¬
ing it as the instrument of an idolatrous worship. It is
utterly amazing that such a notion should have entered
the brain of an enlightened philosopher of the nine¬
teenth century. In connexion with this objection, our
author animadverts on the supposed inconsistency be¬
tween the curious and costly works accomplished by the
Israelites in the desert, and the state of destitution, re¬
lieved only by miraculous supplies, which marked their
wanderings. This was a favorite theme with Voltaire,
who asserted that the quantity of gold employed in the
fabrication of the golden calf alone, must have far ex¬
ceeded the resources of the people. This and various
other exceptions of that ingenious and lively, but super¬
ficial and dishonest writer have been well answered in
a volume entitled "Letters of certain Jews to Mons.
Voltaire"—a work written with great spirit and talent,
distinguished by much urbanity, and enriched with many
valuable illustrations of the Old Testament Scriptures.
It may, however, on the present occasion, be only ne¬
cessary to observe, that all the employment of the pre¬
cious metals in the formation of these works, which re¬
quired moreover the agency of ingenious artists, took
place within one year after the departure from Egypt,
when the resources of the Hebrews are represented as
being most ample, and when having just emerged from
a country marked by a high degree of civilization, they
doubtless had with them artizans of every kind and of
the most consummate skill.
We may now advance to the next difficulty proposed,
grounded on Numbers xii. 3: "Now the man Moses was
very meek, above all the men which were upon the face
of the earth." It is thought that such an observation re¬
specting himself is entirely alien from the dignity and
modesty inseparable from our conception of the char¬
acter of the Jewish law-giver. The passage has at¬
tracted the attention of biblical critics as well as that of
infidels. Eichhorn regards it as an addition to the text
subsequently made. In this view, Rosenmuller coin-
72
cides, alleging that the connexion is perfect and even
more natural without the third verse. He insists, in ad¬
dition, upon the consideration that the phrase, " the man
Moses," is without example in the Pentateuch. We
might safely concede this point, in accordance with the
principle laid down in a former essay. Such a reflec¬
tion might well have been put down as a marginal note
by one who was struck with the consideration of the for¬
bearance evinced by the distinguished minister of Jeho¬
vah. Through the negligence of some copyists it
might have passed into the text. All this may be suppo¬
sed, without there being attached to us the censure in¬
volved in the following remark of Dr. Cooper: "If Mo¬
ses wrote these books such passages are interpolations,
but it is strange logic to assume that they are interpola¬
tions for the sole purpose of making Moses the author."
How uncandid is this insinuation. We do not act, as
in this passage we are charged with doing. We have
various, independent, and satisfactory proofs that Mo¬
ses wrote the Pentateuch; we merely find it necessary,
as in relation to all the most accredited works of anti¬
quity, to make some critical emendations, and sometimes
to reject a passage which is manifestly spurious. That
the text which we have been considering is of such a
character, is, however, by no means universally conce¬
ded. Dr. Adam Clarke thinks that all difficulties will
be obviated by a correct understanding of the meaning
of the passage. His suggestions are valuable, and al¬
though nothing can be more ridiculous or unauthorized,
than the varying the translation of any passage in the
Scriptures which becomes the object of misconception,
it is equally unreasonable to persist in a false rendering
which is productive of serious embarrassment either in
the conception of truth itself, or in the vindication of it
from the charges made by its adversaries. "I think," ob¬
serves the learned writer just referred to, "that the word
rendered meek has not been rightly understood, ur (anav)
which we translate meek comes from nar (anah,) to act
upon, humble, depress, afflict, and is translated so in
many parts of the Old Testament, and in this sense
should be understood here." " Now the man Moses was
depressed or afflicted more than any man of that land—
73
borne down by the weight of the cares devolving on him,
and afflicted by the perverseness and rebellions of the
people confided to his charge." The reader may, in ad¬
dition to what is here suggested, consider Gesenius'
illustration of the meaning of the word in question.
Of the objections belonging to that class to which this
number has been devoted, there remains but one to be
considered. It is drawn from the occurrence of the
plural word Elohim to express the Deity. This is sup¬
posed to imply polytheistic notions inconsistent with the
Mosaic doctrine concerning the unity of the divine na¬
ture. By one in the slightest degree embued with a
knowledge of the Hebrew language, such a difficulty
could never, in good faith, have been suggested. As,
however, our author's acquaintance with this language,
may not be more perfect than that which Voltaire pos¬
sessed of the Greek,* and as the confident assertion of so
profound a scholar, will, at all events sway the opinions
of multitudes, it is incumbent on us to exhibit its fallacy.
We have then no difficulty in allowing that the form of
the word Elohim is plural, and that it is sometimes neces¬
sary to translate it accordingly. Why then do we often
render it in.the singular, and how does it appear that its
use by the Jewish writers does not involve the belief in
many Gods ? By attending to a principal of construc¬
tion belonging to the Hebrew language, recognized by
all grammarians and lexicographers. In Gesenius' Lexi¬
con, under the word Elohim, we find the following
description:—"As a pluralis excellentise God in the
singular. It is sometimes construed (contrary to the
general rule concerning the pluralis excellentise) with
plural adjectives ex: gr: 1 Sam. iv. 8—xvii. 26; but the
verb is almo-st constantly in the singular, as in Gen. i. 1.
The exceptions are Gen. xx. 13; xxxi. 53; 2 Sam. xvii.
23; Ps. lviii. 12." The same principle is laid down in
the Hebrew Grammar, essentially that of Gesenius,
which Professor Stuart has published. Some farther
illustration of the doctrine is added, which I do not think
it necessary to quote. Rosenmuller on Gen. i. 1, ob¬
serves, "The plural Elohim is customarily used to
* For some carious and amusing instances of ignorance in relation to the simplest ele¬
ments of the Greek language, drawn from the works of this most superficial writer of
universal pretensions, see ' Jew's Letters,' pages 463, 464.
74
express God. In poetic style, and in the later books of
the Old Testament, the singular is found. Otherwise
the Old Testament writers use the plural Elohim, but
construed like the singular, concerning the one true God.
For according to the peculiarity of the Hebrew tongue
the plural, as well masculine as feminine, is employed
concerning one thing great and excellent in its kind."
As I am not aware that any Hebrew scholar has ever im¬
pugned the accuracy of the above representation, I do not
think it necessary to advance anything more in its sup¬
port. It will be sufficient to add a remark on Dr. Coop¬
er's reference to Parkhurst and Dr. A. Clark, to illus¬
trate one or two exceptions to the general rule estab¬
lished in the citations which I have made. The refer¬
ence alluded to is in these words:—" That Elohim is in
the plural, and that it is joined with plural adjectives,
verbs and pronouns, Dr. A. Clark, after Parkhurst's Lex.
has collected abundant instances in his note on Gen. i.
1." Now it may be inquired whether Parkhurst and Dr.
Clark meant to assert that Elohim was uniformly or even
generally used in connexion with plural adjectives, pro¬
nouns and verbs. We shall perceive in the sequel what
was the opinion of the latter; and as respects the former,
the very purpose which he meant to accomplish by his
citations would be frustrated by the establishment of
such a principle. He proceeds upon the admitted doc¬
trine that the plural designation Elohim is used to de¬
note the one true God, a main proof of which is, that it
is subject to the construction of a word in the singular;
i. e. it has joined to it singular verbs, pronouns and ad¬
jectives. Hence he infers, fancifully, as is thought by
many orthodox theologians, that a proof is thus furnish¬
ed of a Trinity in Unity. He endeavours to corroborate
his argument by shewing that this plural denomination
of Deity, although manifestly referring to the true God,
who is one, and construed as a singular, is nevertheless
not unfrequently connected with plural verbs, &c. What
were Dr. Clark's views will appear from his note on Gen.
xx, 13. "Here the word Elohim is used with a plural
verb, which is very unusual in the Hebrew language, as
this plural noun is generally joined with verbs in the sin¬
gular number." The passage upon which this observa-
75
tion occurs is one of the few exceptions to the rule
which holds good, generally, respecting all the attribu¬
tive parts of speech, and almost universally in relation
to verbs. Rosenmuller's remark is that these exceptions
usually occur when respect is had rather to the plural
form than to the signification of the word.—That in this
very text where the plural form obtains, both in the sub¬
ject and predicate of the proposition, the discourse is
concerning the one true God, is manifest by a reference
to a parallel passage. In this place Abraham says, when
Elohim caused me to wander (verb in plural form) from
my father's house, that I said, &c. His allusion is to
what is narrated Gen. xii. "Now the Lord (Jehovah)
had said unto Abram, get thee out from thy country," &c.
It is thus demonstrated that the word Elohim, even when
construed with a plural verb, is used to designate that
one God who was known to the Israelites by his proper
name Jehovah. Other instances where plural adjectives
are joined to the word in question, when there can be no
doubt that the true God is spoken of, are furnished Ps.
lviii, 12. Joshua xxiv. 19. It is time however, to close
this discussion, with which I shall terminate the present
section.
SECTION XI.
Objections particularly referring to the Book of Genesis.
"From the last verse of Genesis, to the end of the Rev¬
elation, there is no reference made to the book of Gen¬
esis or its contents." Such a remark proceeding from
any other writer than the author of the "Connexion be¬
tween Geology and the Pentateuch," would greatly sur¬
prise us.—It, however, perfectly corresponds to many
assertions with which we meet in that production. The
total absence of truth which distinguishes it, I need not
attempt to prove, so far as my concern is with those who
are at all acquainted with the Bible, either in its earlier
or its later portions. Yet to those less informed on the
subject, the inquiry may be addressed—how could the.
76
succeeding books be at all understood without the his¬
tory contained in this introductory one? How would
the Israelites have known anything respecting the God of
their fathers ; He who is ever called the God of Abra¬
ham, Isaac, and Jacob, and whose promises, repeatedly
made to these patriarchs, are so frequently referred to?
And how could they have known any thing in relation to
their migration into Egypt, and the events which there
occurred?
It must be manifest then, to every one who will reflect
on the subject, that the book in question is absolutely in¬
dispensable to the completeness of the historical records
of the Jews.
To this book however, apart from its imagined want of
connexion with those which succeed, our author takes
the strongest exceptions. There are several reasons
which he suggests, against its reception as a genuine
production.
1. It is composed of various independent documents.
I am at a loss to conceive what bearing upon the subject
this consideration can have. Dr. Cooper furnishes a full
account of the several theories which have been offered
respecting the sources whence Moses derived his mate¬
rials for writing the history contained in Genesis. He
seems to think that the admission of the correctness of
these theories which agree in the essential fact, that pre¬
existing documents were used, and differ only in respect
to the number of them, is equivalent to an abandonment
of the position that the first book of the Pentateuch is a
Mosaic production. Absurd imagination! Such an as¬
sumption is entirely inconsequential. Does he not know
that the orthodox Vitringa first suggested the opinion urn-
der view in his Observationes Sacrse Lib. l,civ. s 23, p.
36, Franeq. 1712, long before it was fully developed by
Astruc, A. D. 1753, and modified by Eichhorn and Ilgen?
Is he not aware that many have since adopted it, who
never for a moment questioned the authority of Genesis,
as proceeding from Moses? Such is especially the fact
in reference to Jahn and Rosenmuller among the biblical
critics, and Knapp among the Theologians; who have
however shewn the impotence of the attempts to ascer¬
tain the precise number of documents used, or to define
71
accurately their beginnings or endings—and wherein
consists the incompatibility of this theory with the views
which we advocate? There are only three sources
from which we can suppose Moses to have derived his
materials. He must have received them directly from
the Deity by inspiration, or derived them from oral tradi¬
tions, or possessed some ancient written memorials of
the human race. Admit the latter supposition to be true
either wholly or partially, and how does it derogate
from the character of Genesis? Still its accuracy is
vouched for by Moses, able, as he is allowed on all hands
to have been, to judge respecting the trust-worthiness of
any ancient documents, and qualified according to our
apprehension to given them the sanction of an inspired
prophet.
But it is alleged that these documents are conflicting,
exceptionable in themselves, or manifestly derived from
another people long subsequent to the age of Moses.—
There is supposed to be a contrariety between the two
accounts of the creation of man, contained in the first
and second chapters of Genesis, which are regarded as
being two of these documents. The plain state of the
case is—that in the former chapter there is a brief men¬
tion of the formation of man in the general account of
the work of the six days. In the latter the subject is re-
resumed, and some details of the transaction are given
entirely consistent with the mere succinct statement pre¬
viously furnished.
But in the one narrative the designation given to the
Creator is Elohim; in the other it is Jehovah Elohim.
And what does this prove? that there were separate ac¬
counts in the hands of Moses, which he had derived
from his forefathers? Let this be allowed, and what
does the adversary gain? Who supposes that it at all
detracts from the value of an historical work, that in its
compilation two distinct, although harmonious authori¬
ties have been used—the one going more into detail
than the other? And these documents are not confused¬
ly thrown together, or barely compiled by one who as¬
sumed no responsibility in regard to them. Modes often
blends them intimately, as is the case in Gen. vi. 5, 6;
" And God (Elohim,) saw that the wickedness of man
78
was great on the earth, and it repented the Lord (Jeho*
vahj) that He had made man."
By the way, I would remark upon a considerable over*
sight of Dr. Cooper, in referring to Eichhorn's classifi¬
cation of texts. They who read the works of this wri¬
ter, must have often wondered at his studious display of
Scriptural erudition, and at his commendable zeal in en¬
forcing upon them an actual and careful examination of
the texts which he cites: "I request," he in the present
instance observes, "the reader to take his Bible and pe¬
ruse the account of the creation by the Gods (Elohim,)
in the following order, Gen. vi. 12,13, &c. &c. and the
Jehovah narration. Gen. vi. 5. 7." &c.
Alas! he has imposed upon the reader a difficult-—an
impracticable task. How can we read what is not writ¬
ten? When the entire discourse is of the wickedness
of the human race, leading to the desolation of our
globe by an universal deluge—how may we find two sep¬
arate accounts of the creation of man? Surely it be¬
comes the writer to examine the texts which he cites, and
to ascertain their subject, before he refers the reader to
them for his satisfaction, in relation to a particular hy¬
pothesis. The strong hold, however, in which the ad¬
versary entrenches himself is the plural termination of
the word Elohim. But after the full discussion of this
topic in the last number, I do not deem it necessary to
add a single remark.
The fallacy thus being shewn, of any conclusion det¬
rimental to the authority of Genesis, drawn from the fact
that Moses used pre-existing documents, and the asser¬
tion that these are conflicting, satisfactorily refuted; we
are prepared to meet the exceptions to these original
sources of information independently considered. The
Elohim document is said to be a Chaldee tradition added
to a Jewish one, and the assertion is, that the produc¬
tion which they constitute, did not exist until after the
transportation to Babylon. And what are the reasons
for this belief? An attempt is made to exhibit a formida¬
ble array of them, by a double enumeration of one, and
by the fabrication of others which involve the inference
of the actual from the possible.
The first proof, so called, that the book of Genesis
79
had its origin during the captivity, is that Elohim is plu-
ral. So fond of this argument is our author, that in
addition to his former reference to it he has twice men¬
tioned it in the single paragraph which we have now un¬
der view. For an exhibition of tho insufficiency of this
consideration, the reader must again be referred to the
discussion gone into, on a former occasion. I may, how¬
ever, suggest one additional remark. Greatly as the
Jews were prone to idolatry, prior to the chastisement
inflicted by their long and mournful captivity; after this
period, they never gave the slightest indication of a sim¬
ilar propensity. Any respect paid to the gods of other
nations, any thing derogatory from the honor of Jeho¬
vah, they appear to have regarded with extreme abhor¬
rence. Now let it be admitted that they had adopted
or compiled any historical document, at that time, is
it credible that they would have tolerated in such doc¬
ument, any thing which recognized a multiplicity of
Gods?
But the word El is not Hebrew but Chaldee. This is
a remark for which our author is indebted to Voltaire;
although, by a singular neglect, this lively writer is not
mentioned in the general list of authorities which is fur¬
nished. Perhaps it was thought that a more imposing
display of learning was made by a reference to Hobbes,
and Spinoza, and Father Simon.
"These puppies of Jews," writes the courteous French¬
man, "are of so late a date that they had not a word in
in their language to signify God, the name El was ori¬
ginally Chaldean."—Phil. Diet.
What if it were so? Was not Abraham a native of
Ur of the Chaldees? Did not Isaac his son, obtain a wife
from Mesopotamia? Is it forgotten that the wives of
Jacob were Chaldean, and that the Patriarch himself
spent many years of his life in the "land of the children
of the East?" Is it then surprising that a designation
of the Deity derived from this oriental dialect, should
have been in use among the descendants of these indi¬
viduals? Moreover, Hebrew and Chaldee are languages
now nearly vesembling each other, they are both branch¬
es of one original stock, and of course varied from each
other less at a former and remote period than they do
80
at present. This being considered, who can doubt that
they had not a few, but many words in common? We
have as authority for this, Mons. Voltaire, who in singu¬
lar contradiction to what is above quoted from him says,
" This word El signified God among the first Phoeni¬
cians," (who spake Hebrew.)—Phil, Diet. Art Phcen.
The position therefore in reference to this word which
is attempted to be maintained, we perceive to be utterly
untenable.
But the traditions contained in Genesis, are farther
said to be Chaldean, because they agree with the Phoe¬
nician and Chaldean writers, as cited by Josephus, Al¬
exander, Polyhistor, and Eusebius from Berosus." Chal-
dee, because they agree with the Phoenician writers!
Why not Phoenician rather? And if the Phoenician
and Chaldean writers, independent authorities, concur
in a particular representation, in wThich they are ajso
sustained by the Hebrew records, why should not these
latter be considered a separate and additional witness?
But two other of our adversary's reasons remain to be
considered—the one that Ezra, educated at Babylon,
would derive all his knowledge from Chaldean writers;
the other, that the Jews of that period would be conver¬
sant with the literature and traditional cosmogony of the
country in which they lived. I would here simply repeat
a suggestion already made, that this involves an argu¬
ment from the possible to the actual. It is a mere beg¬
ging of the question. It is saying nothing more, than
that«/*Moses did not write Genesis, Ezra or some other
Jew might have done it, during the exile.
It seems then that the imposing array of objections
brought up against us, is so much diminished, that but two
require to be seriously met. These are—that El is a Chal¬
dean word, and that the cosmogony, or account of the or¬
igin of created things contained in Genesis, is Chaldean.
A sufficient refutation of the argument founded upon them
it is thought, has been furnished by the observations al¬
ready made. The latter of the considerations above
mentioned, may perhaps deserve some additional atten¬
tion. It is admitted that the traditions preserved by Be¬
rosus, do greatly resemble the narration which Genesis
presents,—This observation also applies in a degree even
81
more remarkable to the fragmentary records of the
Egyptians and Phoenicians, as they are exhibited in Dio-
dorus, Siculus and Sanconiathon. A similar correspon¬
dence may be traced in the accounts of the origin of
things existing among the ancient Persians. To the
Hindoos and Chinese, it is not deemed necessary, at
present, to make any reference. Now it is not proba¬
ble that from any one of these nations, all the rest bor¬
rowed their cosmogonies. The obvious conclusion is
that they were derived from some common and more
ancient source, and that they were founded on transac¬
tions really taking place.
But the other document assumed as one of the ori¬
ginals of Genesis, in which the term Jehovah is used, is
also denounced as suspicious. To support this proscrip¬
tion a reference is made to the following passage, Ex.
vi. 3: "And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and
unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty: but by my
name Jehovah was I not known to them."
The difficulty connected with this passage is, that in
many parts of the preceding history the name Jehovah
occurs. Yet here it is supposed to be declared that this
name was not previously applied to the Deity. The in¬
ference is, that the book of Genesis, containing this
history must have been written after Exodus, and is con¬
tradictory to it. The only and the entirely satisfactory
solution of the difficulty presented is, that the text cited
does not prove the name Jehovah to have been entirely
unknown to the ancestors of Moses. Various writers
use different methods of establishing this conclusion.
We premise to a statement of some of these, the gen¬
eral consideration that there can be no real inconsisten¬
cy between the passage in question and the numerous
texts in Genesis, where Jehovah is employed as a well
known divine appellation. If it were so, would not they,
who according to the gratuitous supposition of our ad¬
versary, at a late period foisted the book of Genesis in¬
to the collection of the Jewish historical records, have
avoided an inconsistency so glaring, by new modelling
the spurious production which they are assumed to have
borrowed, or expunging the single passage which seem¬
ed to create any embarrassment? Upon the supposition
82
we have made, principle could have presented no obsta¬
cle to such a proceeding—interest and common sense
would have imperatively enjoined it. But to return—
some understand the phraseology of the text, Ex. vi. 3,
as employed not in an absolute but comparative sense.
God was not so much known to the patriarchs by the
designation of Jehovah, as by that of El Shaddai—God
Almighty. Others think that in the present instance the
word only is to be understood as supplied—that He was
not only known to them by the name Jehovah, but by
that of El Shaddai. Such, according to Dr. Gill, was
the view of Saadais Gaon, a Jewish Rabbi, head of a
School at Sora, near Babylon, author of an Arabic trans¬
lation of the Old Testament, &c. who flourished A. D.
930. This interpretation is supported by a reference to
Gen. xxxii. 28: " Thou shalt no more be called Jacob,
but Israel," where the meaning necessarily is: " Thou
shalt no more be called Jacob only—but Israel likewise."
Some again propose to read the passage interogative-
ly: " By my name Jehovah, was I not known?" An af¬
firmative answer being supplied.
The explanation most generally approved, however,
is that furnished in the following paraphrase. To your
ancestors, I have shewn myself to be the Almighty, but
as a God, faithful, unchangeable, (the idea involved in
the term Jehovah,) and fulfilling the promises which I
gave them concerning the occupation of the land of
Caanan-—they have not known—had no experience of
me. He does not intend that the name itself was un¬
heard of by the ancestors of Moses—but that they had
not seen brought to pass what was signified by that
name—as among the sacred writers " to be called," is
sometimes the same as " to be," so here the name is de¬
nied i to one, who has not yet exhibited the character, or
exercised the influence involved in it. See the subject
more fully developed in Rosenmuller.
I must not, however, omit to mention, that an elabo¬
rate investigation has been made of this subject in a
late number of the Biblical Repository, by an American
writer, who has proposed a new, and as he thinks, more
satisfactory interpretation.—Not, however, regarding it
as preferable to the one above stated, I shall content
83
myself with referring to the article itself.-—Bib. Rep.
No. xii. Art. 4.
In connexion with the topic now under discussion,
and with a view to deprive the Jews of all originality
whatever in their religious system, it has been asserted
that even the name Jehovah—the most remarkable ap¬
pellative of the God whom they worshipped—was de¬
rived from the Phoenicians and Egyptians. The exis¬
tence of such an opinion, furnishes a remarkable exem¬
plification of the facility with which error is transmitted
from one writer to many succeedings ones—who are
content to receive, without examination, the assertions of
those who have gone before them. No principle seems
to have been generally recognized as a more certain
truth than that the name Jehovah, or, i««, was known to
the nations above mentioned. Yet Professor Tholuck of
Halle, has shewn to a perfect demonstration the total
fallacy of this supposition.—Bib. Rep. No. xiii. 3.
He traces the general prevalence of this opinion to
Schiller's Essay on the Mission of Moses, the leading
ideas of which are derived from the book of Brother
Decius, or the Hebrew mysteries by the celebrated
Reinhold. The latter individual who speaks of the Egyp¬
tian origin of the name Jehovah, as a well known fact,
introduces as a guaranty, Voltaire, who says: "The
most sacred name among the Egyptians was the same
which the Hebrews afterwards adopted in their language,
viz: I-ha-ho. This was pronounced in various ways,
and Clemens Alexandrinus assures us, in his Stromata,
that no one might enter the temple of Serapis, who did
not bear on his breast or forehead the name I-ha-ho or
Jao, which denotes the eternal God."
"What a remarkable fact of antiquity," observes
Tholuck; but—if it could only be found in Clement; I
have never succeeded in finding it." This able writer
whom I have just quoted, proceeds to investigate the
grounds of the opinion, the history of which he had just
given. He sets out with the statement that not one sin¬
gle ancient writer affirms that God was called iau by the
Egyptians; and he establishes this statement beyond all
dispute, by an examination of the few passages usually
cited on tjie subject. Thb first is Diodorus Siculus i. 94.
84
where the author speaking of the Egyptians incidentally
makes the observation: "It is related that among the
Hebrews, Moses professed to have received his law from
the God Jao." The whole paragraph in the original may
be seen in the Biblical Repository, No xiii. page 95. No
one can avoid sympathizing in the astonishment ex¬
pressed by Tholuck, that any author should have quoted
this as sustaining the belief of the Egyptian origin of the
word in question, nor avoid concurring in the supposi¬
tion that there was some unaccountable slip of the mem¬
ory in the writer who first cited the passage, and that
the error once committed, has been successively propa¬
gated by those who adopted the quotation without veri¬
fying it. In addition to the passage from Diodorus, only
two testimonies of antiquity have been brought forward
to shew that the name Jehovah or Jao, existed beyond
the limits of the Mosaic institutions; the one from Ma-
crobius, proving, it is thought, the employment of this
name in the Grecian mysteries—the other in Porphyry,
shewing its existence among the Phoenicians. Macrobi-
us flourished in the first part of the fifth century of the
Chistian era, under Theodosius the younger. The pas-
age in his writings above referred to, consists of verses
ascribed to Apollo Clarius. According to Tholuck,
Jablonsky, in his Pantheon Egyptiacum, has clearly
shewn that these verses belong to a Judaizing Gnostic.
Besides, does the knowledge of the name Jao among
the Greeks, or Egyptians, or Orientals of Western Asia,
in the second or third century of our era, prove that
it originated among them, and not rather that it was de¬
rived from the Jews then universally dispersed ?
"We know from Jamblichus, that the syncretic theo-
sophists of that age were accustomed to adopt foreign
names of God, and employ them in their incantations."
—Tholuck.
The passage from Porphyry is professedly derived
from Sanchoniathon, and is preserved by two of the fa¬
thers of the church, Eusebius and Theodoret. It, how¬
ever, fails entirely in answering the end for which it is
cited. Porphyry simply says, " Sanconiathon gave a
true account of the Jewish history, and this because he
received his accounts from a priest of jsvu—Jevo.
85
There are two other data which are supposed to fur¬
nish proof of the hypothesis which I am opposing, one
of which is an inscription on the temple of Isis at Sais,
transmitted by Plutarch, but of which no mention is made
by Herodotus, or Diodorus, or Strabo. For an expo¬
sure of the insufficiency of these testimonials, the rea¬
der must, however, be referred to the article ofTholuck,
where entire satisfaction may be obtained.
The present section has already reached and undue
length, and we have yet before us a class of objections,
which, if I mistake not, our author regards as particu¬
larly forcible. The next section will contain an examin¬
ation of their validity.
SECTION XII.
Objection to its genuineness, derived from the alleged fact,
that Moses was unacquainted with Hebrew, the Egyptian
being his vernacular language
To the class of objections discussed in the last sec-*
tion, belong the suggestion, " that Moses was never out
of Egypt, except so far as the land of Moab," and the
consecutive inquiry, "What could induce him to place
Paradise upon the Euphrates? And what could he know
of Pison and Gihon, and Hiddekel?" Prior, therefore,
to the consideration of the difficulty, stated at the head
of the present essay, it will be necessary to inquire how
far the Hebrew lawgiver was qualified by his attainments
in geographical knowledge, at least, for communicating
the information contained in the book of Genesis. It is
thought that the above stated questions although cap¬
tiously proposed, will, in their solution, lead to the adop¬
tion of views entirely at variance with the result at which
the author of them hoped to arrive. For where, in the
whole range of history may we find an individual in
whom so many qualifications for writing the production
in question, meet, as in Moses—descended from Chal¬
dean ancestors—nurtured at the court of Pharaoh, and
instructed in all the learning of the Egyptians—having,
11
86
doubtless, intercourse with the Phoenician merchants,
whose pursuits led them to all parts of the world, then
accessible to commercial enterprise, and who in fine,
spent eighty years of his life in Arabia—during forty
of which as a private individual, his acquaintance must
have been extensive with the Nomadic tribes who ran¬
ged from Egypt to the Euphrates, and who throughout
the forty years succeeding, as the leader of the Israelites,
had extensive dealings, peaceful as well as warlike, with
various surrounding nations. Surely, it is alone neces¬
sary to direct the reader's attention to the facts thus has¬
tily enumerated, to produce in him a feeling of surprise
that any one should for a moment have questioned the
entire competency of Moses, to furnish all the geograph¬
ical and historical details which are contained in the
early Hebrew writings—and when the question recurs,
" What could induce Moses to place Paradise upon the
Euphrates?" we have only to answer, that there was the
first seat of the human race, and that with this fact the
historian had ample means of becoming acquainted.
But let us now advance to the consideration of the ob¬
jection, " that Moses and the Israelites did not, and could
not write, or read, or speak Hebrew, which was the lan¬
guage of the Phoenicians and Ganaanites, until after the
invasion and peaceable settlement of the promised land."
What then is the proof of this startling assertion? It
is said " that Chaldee was Abraham's native language and
that Hebrew was the language of the Canaanites which
Abraham and his posterity learnt by travelling among
them." Who doubts this? And yet our author, prodi¬
gal of testimony where none is wanted, cites in support
of it, Dr. Rees, and his authorities quoted under the head
Hebrew character in the Encyclopedia—which authori¬
ties are Le Clare, and Joseph Scaliger, and Walton, and
Selden.
I have said, who questions the statement above made?
I know of no other but Dr. Cooper himself, who leans
on it for Support, and yet who professes to disbelieve it
in part. He admits that Abraham acquired the Hebrew
language, but "naturally infers that he wotild not teach
it to his descendants, from his great reluctance to per¬
mit Isaac to marry in Canaan."—However natural may
87
be this inference, it appears to be not only entirely with¬
out proof, but opposed by the learned authorities which
are above quoted, and conclusively shewn to be false by
a passage in the patriarchal history. Respect is had to
Genesis xxxi. 46, 47, where at the parting of Jacob, and
his father-in-law Laban, a pile of stones was erected as
a memorial of a covenant into which they had entered,
"Laban called it Jegar-sahaduthy, but Jacob called it
Galeed." Their languages were therefore different—
Laban spoke Chaldee, but Jacob, the grandson of Abra¬
ham, and the progenitor of the Israelites, who at the
close of his life, with his family, made Egypt his perma-
manent residence, spoke a different dialect which was
Hebrew. It appears then to be incontrovertible that not
only did Abraham, according to the admission of our an¬
tagonist, acquire a knowledge of Hebrew, but that this al-
soHbecame the language of his descendants. And all this
occurred by a process the easiest imaginable—Hebrew
and Chaldee, now cognate dialects, nearly resembling
each other, originally presented still less diversity than
is at present manifest. For according to the opinions of
almost all critics, there was originally but one language
in that section of Asia, which includes the region of
the Euphrates, Syria, Palestine and Arabia. The ori¬
ginal identity of the languages subsequently prevalent
throughout this part of the world, is proved, not merely
by their having many words in common but by their
whole genius and structure. It is generally supposed that
a full exhibition of this primitive speech is furnished by
no one of those derived from it; and that these latter have
by their respective deviations from it, assumed their spe¬
cific character. Many, however, do assert that the He¬
brew itself is that primeval tongue which gave rise ac¬
cording to Gesenius:—I. To the Aramean, spoken in
Syria, Mesopotamia, and Babylon, and which includes
the West Aramean or Syriac, and the East Aramean or
Chaldee; II. To the Hebrew spoken in Palestine and
Phoenicia, from which the Punic is descended ; and III.
To the Arabic, with which the Ethiopic is nearly alli¬
ed. The claims of Ahe Hebrew to this prerogative are
well stated in an article of the Biblical Repertory—
Princeton, Vol. II. No. 2, p. 320, on the Antiquity, His¬
tory, &c. of the Hebrew language.
88
But to recur to the course "of our argument, there is
110 doubt that the Israelites carried the Hebrew language
with them to Egypt—the contrary opinion is not only
totally without evidence, but in direct opposition to it.
The question then is—did they lose it during their con¬
tinuance in that country ? Our opponent thinks that
they did. He asserts that they adopted the Egyptian
language and that they did not acquire that of Canaan
until after the entire conquest of the promised land,
perhaps in the reign of Solomon, Truly, we may
adopt the remark of our author with some slight varia¬
tion : " The hardihood of assertion exhibited by the
patrons of heterodoxy is absolutely amazing." To sus¬
tain the fact which Dr. Cooper assumes, there is not the
least shew of evidence m the Jewish records themselves,
nor the testimony of a single author, nor, as far as my
information extends, the corroborating opinion of any
modern writer. This is the first instance in which I
have not been ablo to trace Dr. Cooper's reasonings
and objections to some source beyond himself, and re¬
garding this as a specimen of his inventive powers,
there is no reason to apprehend that the cause of reve¬
lation is placed in greater peril by the assaults of this
new champion, than it has frequently been in days past.
In the absence then of any shadow^ of proof \ how is
it attempted to shew that the Israelites lost their lan¬
guage in Egypt? Simply by a reference to an analo¬
gous instance in which a similar result is supposed to
have taken place. I allude to the Babylonish captivity.
Now admitting for the present, that the Jews did total¬
ly lose their language during the seventy years trans¬
portation, it would nt>t follow that their ancestors had
lost it during their abode in Egypt, even for a period
still longer. The cases are marked by strong features
of discrimination. The Jews when carried beyond
the Euphrates, were much dispersed—their communi¬
cation with each other, in consequence, much obstruct¬
ed—and there was nothing in their political or civil con¬
dition which tended to perpetuate their language. But
how different were the circumstances of their ances¬
tors, at a former period, even when most depressed by
Egyptian servitude; they had gone down to Egypt as
89
the kindred of an highly distinguished favorite and min¬
ister of the king of the country.—There had been as-
sgned to them a distinct portion of the land as their
peculiar and exclusive possession. This had been the
result of the provident management of Joseph himself,
who was anxious to preserve his family from the cor¬
rupting influence of Egyptian customs and supersti¬
tions. He had directed his brethren to announce them¬
selves to Pharaoh, as shepherds, with the avowed ob¬
ject of obtaining for them, a place of abode, of which
they would be the exclusive occupants, inasmuch as
" every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians."—
Gen. xlvi. 34.
Occupying, therefore, the land of Goshen, admira¬
bly suited to their pastoral occupations, and for more
than a hundred years distinguished by the royal favor,
it is not surprising that " the children of Israel were
fruitful and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and
waxed exceedingly mighty, and the land was filled with
them.—-Ex. i. 7. Under these circumstances no one
can suppose that they lost their language, nor was this
effect to be anticipated, when a reverse was experienc¬
ed by them and the munificence of former kings was
followed by the oppression of their successor.—-Still
the Hebrews remained in a body—They were not slaves
occupying a station of domestic servitude—they were
the disfranchised subjects of a despotic monarch—in
lieu of a heavy pecuniary tribute, severe and continu¬
ed labors were exacted from them. But out of this
condition grew neither the necessity nor the induce¬
ment to adopt the language of their oppressors, no ne¬
cessity, inasmuch as the daily intercourse of life could
be maintained in the Hebrew—no inducement for they
could not admire nor wish to imitate a speech which
had then become the vehicle only of arbitrary man¬
dates or stern reproaches.
That they should therefore have relinquished the use
of their own language in order to the adoption of that
of Egypt, is an assumption as utterly improbable as it is
altogether destitute of evidence. But in case this had
been done, how would the dialect of Canaan, ever have
come into use among the Isrealites. If according to
IK)
our author, they refused to adopt it, while they were yet
a single family of wandering shepherds, sustaining ami¬
cable relations, and having daily intercourse with the
inhabitants of the land, is it to be supposed that they
would do this—when as a conquering nation they en¬
tered Palestine—when they were the executors of the
divine judgments upon a devoted people, and when
they were forbidden to retain, even as slaves, those
whom the Almighty Ruler of nations had adjudged to
death for their crimes ? And although a portion of this
condemned race, was under the arrangements of Prov¬
idence, permitted to occupy, for several generations, a
part of their original territory, and occasionally to har-
rass, and even sometimes subjugate the Israelites, yet
in all this, there was nothing which could induce the
latter to substitute for their own language that of a ri¬
val and most odious people.
But in the considerations presented above, I have
admitted a fact, upon which alone rests even the sem¬
blance of an argument offered by our adversary. I
have conceded the point, that the Jews did lose their
language during the Babylonian - captivity. Had this
been really the case, the alleged result would have been
greatly facilitated by the striking similarity of the Chal¬
dee and Hebrew dialect.
But the fact thus admitted, is by no means unques¬
tionable. It is, on the contrary, extremely improbable
that the Jews after their restoration to their own land,
spohe only the Chaldee. This opinion which has been
very generally entertained is supported principally by
the passage in Nehemiah viii. 8, where an account is
given of the solemn recital of the law under the direc¬
tion of Ezra—" So they read in the book of the law of
God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to
understand the reading." But this statement which is
supposed to refer to a translation of the law from He¬
brew into Chaldee, made by the Levites in the course of
their reading, may well be understood of such an inter¬
pretation or illustration of the sacred text, as is now
given by Christian teachers in their ordinary ministra¬
tions. In confirmation of this view, we may add, that
the prophets, after the captivity, addressed the people in
91
Hebrew, and that Nehemiah xiii. 24, speaks of those
who by their marriage with the daughters of Ashdod,
brought up their children to speak partly the language
of Ashdod, and partly that of the Jews. Doubtless,
during their residence in a foreign land, many of the
Jews either acquired its language in full, or adopted a
mixed dialect. The effect thus begun to be produced
was continued and increased by the ascendency of the
Syrian monarchy under the Seleucidse, and the final re¬
sult, after several ages, was the establishment of the
Syro-Chaldaic—a mixture of the East and West Ara-
mean as the vernacular language of Palestine. But this
process was one which went on very gradually, for in
the time of the Maccabees, we find inscriptions on coins,
which prove that the use of the Hebrew was not then
abandoned.
It appears that even the single analogous instance
upon which Dr. C. grounds his opinion, that the He¬
brews lost their language in Egypt, is a very dubious
one—and that of any other proof, his assertion is en¬
tirely destitute. We must, therefore, regard his objec¬
tion, that Moses speaking in Egyptian, could not have
written a book in Hebrew, as completely overthrown.
SECTION XIII.
Alleged impossibility of such a work having been produc¬
ed in the age of Moses, derived from a consideration
of the characters then used in writing and the substan¬
ces upon which they were impressed,
It was a favorite object with the philosopher of Fer-
ney, in his numerous diatribes against the Jews and
their religion, to establish the principle above stated.
He asserts "that in the time of Moses, Hieroglyphic
writing only was in use, and that the art of engraving
upon polished stone, upon brick, upon lead and upon
wood, was the only method of writing, and that the
Egyptians and Chaldeans wrote in no other way." It
was therefore Mons. Voltaire's opinion that nations em-
92
ployed more difficult processes in the earlier than in the
later period of their existence, although he has else¬
where observed that " before Hieroglyphics, men paint¬
ed their conceptions in a clumsy manner." The use of
colors then, by his own shewing, being known, it would
have been much easier to have traced figures by their
means upon cloth, or other light substances than to
have engraven them upon stone and metal. But we
shall pass by this consideration at present, and remark,
that he seems at a subsequent period to have learned
that the Jews employed at least one more facile meth¬
od of representing their ideas—i. e. by tracing charac¬
ters in soft plaister with which stones were covered,
Of this discovery, our author upon whom the mantle of
the patriarch of French literature seems to have fallen,
has availed himself, and with singular ingratitude, in
adopting and appropriating it, has flatly contradicted the
opinion maintained by his instructor—-that engraving
upon polished stone, &c., was in use among the Egyp¬
tians. For lie peremptorily denies that Moses, who
came out of Egypt, and whose circumstances there had
been such as to forbid the supposition that he was not
acquainted with its arts, knew any other, or better
mode of writing than the tracing of characters in soft
plaister spread over stone.
There seems, moreover, to be a want of entire coinci¬
dence of sentiment between these two great men on
another subject. The one asserts that Hieroglyphic
writing only, was in use in the time of Moses—the other
seems to leave the matter in doubt, although afterwards,
with no great consistency, he affirms, in reference to
the particular instance of the Jewish historian, that " he
did not Write one line of phonetic Egyptian." I shall
cite in full what he says on this subject with a view to
the addition of .some critical remarks. On page 36, of
Geol. and Pent, we meet the following passage: " in
what language Moses wrote, whether in the Hieratic or
phonetic Hieroglyphics of the Egyptians, in which we
are to presume he was instructed, is no where said." In
this passage I would note two things—One is a new
and surprising use of the word languages where the ap¬
propriate term would have been character. We do not
93
speak of the hieratic or hieroglyphic language—but
of the hieratic or hieroglyphic character, or mode of
representing ideas by one set of sensible images rather
than another.—Intending to express the fact that our
Hebrew scriptures are written in the Chaldee character
or letters we would not say they were written in the
Chaldee language. This, however, may have been an
oversight committed in the haste of composition—but
there cannot be given the same excuse for the error
which is the subject of my second remark.
There is displayed in the passage upon which I am
commenting, an utter confusion of ideas in reference
to the modes of writing in use, among the Egyptians.
We have here a phonetic, hieroglyphic language of this
people, distinguished from a hieratic, hieroglyphic lan¬
guage. What a total incongruity and absurdity there
is in these expressions, will appear from some observa¬
tions which I shall subjoin to the next quotation. At
page 57 of his pamphlet, Dr. C. again says, " whether
Moses wrote in the hieratic, the demotic, or the pho¬
netic character, or in what form of hieroglyphic, or
whether he used the ta prota stoicheia, described in the
Stromata of Clemens Alexandrinus, I shall not stop to
inquire." Here is dust thrown into the eyes of the un¬
learned, he does not intend to investigate the subject,
but thinks it well to excite the admiration of the won¬
dering multitude by the display of an acquaintance with
all the intricacies of the ancient Egyptian learning. Un¬
fortunately, however, there are almost as many errors
as there are words in the sentence above cited. In the
first place he distinguishes the phonetic—from the hi¬
eratic and demotic character, whereas the former is on¬
ly a particular class of signs, common to the different
kinds of writing expressed by the two last mentioned
terms. Phonetic is opposed, not to hieratic or demotic,
but to ideographic—a phonetic character, is one ex¬
pressing sound, such as the letters of our alphabet, which
do not present ideas but words : W^hereas an ideogra¬
phic character is expressive of the object itself \ and does
not merely enter into the composition of a word by which
it is designated. Again, the clause, " or in what form
of hieroglyphics," either implies that the hieratic, de-
94
motic and phonetic were distinct species of hieroglyphic
writing, of which there were other kinds, or that this
hieroglyphic writing was something entirely different
from the modes of representing ideas denoted by the
terms first mentioned. Now the hieratic and demotic,
were not subdivisions of hieroglyphic writing, but they
were two independent kinds of writing in general, in use
among the Egyptians, of which the hieroglyphic was a
third and collateral one. To make this entirely clear
let the following remarks be attended to. The most
definite information respecting the written character of
the ancient Egyptians, is derived from a passage of Cle¬
mens Alexandrinus in his Stromata, Lib. v, Tom. ii. p.
657. With this concur substantially the brief state¬
ments of Herodotus and Diodorus. The information
given by Clement, was however never rendered perfect¬
ly intelligible until the recent discoveries of Champol-
lion, with which it presents a remarkable correspond¬
ence. M. Letronne in a letter to Champollion, publish¬
ed in the Precis du Systeme Hieroglyphique, has given
a translation of this celebrated passage of the Christian
father, with a comment illustrating it. See an Essay on
the hyeroglyphic system of Mons. Champollion by J. G.
Greppo, p. 26.
There are, says Clement, three kinds of Egyptian let¬
ters. 1. The epistolographic, 2. The hieratic, 3. The hie¬
roglyphic. Herodotus and Diodorus furnish but two
classes—the demotic or popular, and the hieretie or sa¬
cred. It appears that they grouped together under one
denomination the two last divisions of Clement.
All the three kinds of writing mentioned by him have
been recognized upon the monuments by Champollion
—on the famous Rosetta stone, however, the term en¬
chorial, national or belonging to the country, was used
to express what Clement calls epistolographic and the
Greek historians demotic. " The demotic writing was
the most flowing and simple of the three, and employed
chiefly phonetic or alphabetic sounds. The hieratic, less
simple than the demotic, differs from the hieroglyphic in
the delineation of its characters, which are a kind of
reduction, or rather the tachygraphy, (the short hand)
of the hieroglyphic signs to which they correspond.—-
95
It employs much fewer ideographic signs than the hiero¬
glyphic , but more than the demotic or popular writing.
But in their phonetic parts, these three writings form (so
to speak) but one, their only difference consisting in
the differently formed signs which they employf' Grep-
po's Essay, p. 28, 29.
With this explanation of the Egyptian system of
writing, the reader may at once perceive how extremely
inacurate and confused are the terms in which Dr. C.
refers to it. Nor is his allusion to the ta prota stoicheia
of Clement at all more happy—he speaks of these as a
certain class of written characters totally distinct from
hieroglyphics, whereas they constitute one of the two
kinds of signs employed in the hieroglyphic method.—
" This writing, i. e. the hieroglyphic, says Clement, is
of two kinds; one of these the cyriologic employs the
primitive alphabetic letters; the other is symbolic. Such
is M. Letronne's translation in which it is to be observ¬
ed that he renders tpuruv tfroixs'wv, the primitive alphabetic
letters. For an illustration of the correctness of this
version, see Greppo's Essay, p. 30. This passage then
merely confirms the statement already made, that in the
hieroglyphic writing some of the signs were symbolic or
ideographic, i. e. expressive of ideas, while others were
phonetic, i. e. representatives of sound—in other words
alphabetic characters. Such then is the accuracy of
our author's learning; I shall now exhibit a rare speci¬
men of his logic. After having in the first extract from
his pamphlet which is given above, admitted that Moses
was instructed in the several kinds of writing employ¬
ed by the Egyptians, and after having in the second,
declined inquiring which of these varieties was used by
him, he advances the assertion, the incorrectness of
which shall be shewn in the sequel, that "no man ever
yet saw an Egyptian book, or part of a book, or any
other historical record beyond an inscription of mere
names, 'till the settlement of the Greeks at Alexandria,
under the Ptolemies and the introduction of Christiani¬
ty among the Copts." By the way, this joining togeth¬
er two distinct events, three or four hundred years
apart, to indicate the era of a particular transaction is
somewhat extraordinary. Let this pass, however, while
96
we attend to the chain of our author's reasoning. " Mo¬
ses therefore did not write one line of phonetic Egyp¬
tian, and whether he wrote any thing in any form of hi¬
eroglyphic, we know not." Here Dr. C. again uses
the term phonetic instead of demotic to express the
popular and most simple form of writing, and still seems
uninformed that many of the hieroglyphic signs (Cham-
pollion says the greatest number) were phonetic. But
we proceed with our citation. " Upon these points his
whole history is silent; no wonder! What account
could Moses give of them ? Did he write in Hebrew ?
No.—Hebrew like Samaritan is Phoenician," &c. Ad¬
mirable demonstration ! Moses did not write Hebrew,
but Egyptian—and therefore he could give no account
whether he wrote any thing in the phonetic [understand
demotic] or hieroglyphic character of the Egyptians.
After having by so unexceptionable a process reached
this irrefutable conclusion, he rambles off with citations
from Bochart and Petit and Walton, to prove that the
Hebrew is identical with the Phoenician. To this state¬
ment, which no one ever dreamed of contesting, he adds
the remark, " A man must be sadly ignorant of literary
discussions. who doubts this at this day." What an
air of condescending superiority is here assumed in
reference to the imagined ignorance of his opponents.
With what beautiful propriety may they retort the ob¬
servation. A man must be sadly ignorant of the dis¬
coveries of the last ten years, to say nothing of the in¬
vestigations of the learned, for the last fifteen hundred,
who exhibits such a total want of correct acquaintance
with the system of writing employed by one of the
most renowned nations of antiquity. But the merits of
the question under consideration are distinct from the
inquiry, how far Dr. Cooper is qualified to sustain the
office which he assumes to himself of being an instruc¬
tor in universal science. The objections which he has
proposed may be valid, however superficial his acquaint¬
ance with related topics. Yet it is not foreign from
the object had in view in these essays, to estimate the
acquirements and expose the errors of one, whom many
regard, as in an eminent manner, their guide, philoso¬
pher, and friend—and to whom this community in gen-
97
oral have been too much accustomed to defer on all
points involving profound literary research. Opinions
often attain extended currency, through the imagined
superiority in intellectual power or scientific attainment
of him who promulgates them. It is hoped that hence¬
forth no man will regard the decisions of Dr. C. as con¬
clusive upon any subject, literary, or scientific, or mor¬
al, where there is requisite for its comprehension, ei¬
ther deep learning or candid investigation.
We return to the subjects proposed, and inquire
whether there is any reason to doubt concerning the
production of the Pentateuch in the age, during which
it purports to have appeared, derived from the consid¬
eration that the art of writing was not then in use. There
can exist in the mind of a well informed man no diffi¬
culty on this subject. There are the most satisfactory
grounds for concluding that the invention of letters took
place in an age long anterior to that of Moses. We
shall omit the consideration of those pictured repre¬
sentations by which we may suppose men originally
communicated their ideas ; and in regard to alphabetic
writing, it may be observed that all the early writers
attribute the invention to a very remote age, and to
some country of the East. Cadmus, according to
their report, introduced letters from Phoenicia into
Greece, B. C. 1519—a little after the death of Moses,
Anticlides, an ancient Greek historian, as quoted by
Pliny, vii. 57, asserts and attempts to prove that letters
were invented in Egypt 15 years before Phoroneaus,
409 years after the deluge, and in the 117th of Abra¬
ham. Epigenes informs us that observations made on
the heavenly bodies for 720 years at Babylon, were
written down on baked tiles. Pliny, from these state¬
ments draws the conclusion that the use of letters, as
he expresses it, must have been eternal, i. e. very an¬
cient. Jahn's Biblical Archaeology, Sect. 85. That
Cadmus first introduced letters into Greece, rests upon
the statement of Herodotus, L. V. 58, who, however,
expresses himself with an air of doubt, using the limit¬
ation, " as it appears to me." He is contradicted by
Diodorus Siculus, V. 57, 74, who states that many gen¬
erations before Cadmus, the Greeks were in possession
98
of written characters and used them for public monu¬
ments. Pausanias I. 43, makes mention of an inscrip¬
tion which he had read at Megara, the date of which
was 1678 years before our era, which was therefore
anterior to Cadmus, and consequently Pelasgic. See
*Anthon's Lempriere, Art. Pelasgi. Mitford's Greece,
C. ii. Sec. 3, p. 118, 125. Beloe's Herodotus, v. 58.
Note by translator. I might here make a quotation
from Voltaire, who asserts that 800 years before Mo¬
ses, there were books written by the help of the alpha¬
bet. See letters of certain Jews, ect. p. 68. The au¬
thorities however, given above, can derive no addition¬
al weight from the opinion of an author who did not
hesitate to express the most opposite conclusions, when
by this means, he could effect a favorite purpose. In
truth we might well dispense with all the information
which has been recited above, inasmuch as there are
now actually existing specimens of alphabetic writing,
which have come down to us from an age prior to that
in which we suppose the Pentateuch to have appeared.
I allude to the manuscripts which have been deciphered
by Champollion, as well as to the monumental inscrip¬
tions which he has enabled us to read. These, howev¬
er, will again be brought up for our consideration,
while examining the objection that " Moses could not
have written the Pentateuch, because in his age the ma¬
terials were not such as would have enabled him to pro¬
duce so extended a work." It is proposed to meet this
imagined difficulty in the next section.
* The original work of Lampriere, remodelled, greatly extended and vastly improved.
The edition of 1833 etho third in quick succession) contains many articles of great in¬
terest, involving much research, and presenting the most important results of the criti¬
cal labors of the profoundest scholars of Modern Germany. In its present form, al¬
though doubtless susceptible of much improvement, it is indeed a Bibliotkeca Classica.
99
SECTION XIV.
Did there exist in the age of Moses any suitable material,
upon which the Pentateuch might have been written?
" The Egyptian priests, told all their chronological lies
to Herodotus, but they proved them from no book."
Thus writes our courteous and candid, and accurately
informed author, whose enmity to the priestly order lo¬
ses no opportunity of displaying itself and whose ama¬
zing sagacity enables him to determine, in the absence
of all evidence, what took place in a remote country
more than two thousand years ago. Upon what authori¬
ty rests the assertion, that the Egyptian priests did not
confirm their statements by a reference to any written
documents? Does Herodotus declare this? Certainly
not. He rather gives us to understand the contrary,
when in his Euterpe, s. 145, he says "the Egyptians
profess always to have computed the years and kept
written accounts of them with the greatest accura¬
cy." Surely this pretension could not have been sup¬
ported in reference to ancient transactions, of which the
historiam is speaking, if they had not been able to ex¬
hibit any written documents even of a more modern date.
Does the assumption then, which we are considering, rest
upon the fact that there are now in existence, no Egyp¬
tian writings derived from a remote period? Were it
even so, would it be at all surprising, that in a country
over which the tide of conquest has repeatedly rolled,
and in which the sway of barbarians has for many ages
prevailed, there should have taken place a destruction
of all the productions of a learned antiquity? Concern¬
ing Heliopolis, whose inhabitants are termed by Hero¬
dotus the most ingenious of the Egyptians, where Plato
studied philosophy and Eudoxus astronomy, Savary re¬
marks " a barbarous Persian has overthrown her tem¬
ples, a fanatic Arab burned her books, and one solitary
obelisk overlooking her ruins, says to passengers, this
once was Heliopolis." But the fame of Egypt is not
supported alone by the testimony of ancient historians,
who visited it when just declining from its high and
palmy state, and recorded the results of their own ob-
100
servations and inquiries; while its " old magnificence is
attested by its architectural remains, and the specimens
which exist of its proficiency in the arts, useful and orna?-
mental; there is abundant evidence of the acquaintance
with letters which distinguished its people, furnished by
the inscriptions which cover its temples and palaces, as
well as the rolls of papyrus, which have been brought
to light by the ardent spirit of modern discovery. Ma¬
ny most interesting memorials of the latter kind have
been made known to us by the indefatigable French¬
man, who has created a new era in the study of Egyp¬
tian antiquities. " In the rich collection of Mr. Sallier
at Aix, a roll of papyrus has recently been discovered
which has aroused the curiosity of all the learned of
Europe. The manuscript which is in the demotic char¬
acter is a history of the campaigns of Rhamses the
great." It gives a circumstancial account of his con¬
quest, of the force and composition of his army, and it
was written in the 9th year of his reign." Champollion,
Bulletin, des Sciences Historiques torn, x. p. 200, cited
by Greppo, p. 177. This great King who was the Ses-
ostris of Herodotus, the Sesoosis of Diodorus, the Se-
thos of Manetho, and the Rhamses of the monuments,
lived about 1500 years before Christ, near the period of
the Exodus. In reference to this subject, and in confir¬
mation of what the modern decipherers of Egyptian in¬
scriptions have read, the reader may consult the remark¬
able passage of Tacitus, Lib. ii. Sec. 60, Annals.
We may thus judge of the degree of information pos¬
sessed by a writer, who asserts, " no man ever yet saw
a line of phonetic Egyptian." It is also apparent that
papyrus was in use as a writing material, at a much ear¬
lier period than has been generally supposed. But of
this fact we have a yet more striking confirmation.—
The burial vaults of the ancient Egyptians, their necro¬
poleis, as they are termed, among many other relicts of
past ages have furnished numerous manuscripts on pa¬
pyrus. " Some filled with hieroglyphics and adorned
with paintings of the divinities of Amenti or Egyptian
hell, and with mystic scenes of the passage of souls, are
only repetitions more or less complete of a kind of fu¬
neral ritual. Other manuscripts are traced usually in
101
hieratic writing. They present various kinds of acts
promulgated by Egyptian monarchs, and they hear the
names and dates of the reigns of these monarchs. Tp
this class belong a series of papyrus fragments, which
for a long time remained unnoticed in the Turin Muse¬
ums, but which have now been recognized by Champol-
lion! An immense number of acts are there found,
which belong for the most part to the eighteenth dynas¬
ty, and of which none are later than the nineteenth.
But the most remarkable of all, contains an act of the
fifth year of the reign of Thouthmosis III, the 5th
king of the eighteenth dynasty, who governed Egypt
two hundred years before the time when Moses wrote
the Pentateuch."—Essay on the Hieroglyphic system,
see p. 165. Here then I might let the controversy rest;
one fact is worth a thousand theories and assumptions,
and of that we are in possession. We have a manu¬
script, written on papyrus, long anterior to Moses; he
might then have used the same material. But before
dismissing the subject, it may be well to add a remark
or two, illustrative of the merits of the question, inde¬
pendently of the decisive fact just stated. We shall
thus perceive that with no reference to facts disclosed
by modern investigation, the assertion that the only
mode of writing practised in the age of Moses, was
•engraving upon stone or metal, or the tracing of char¬
acters upon soft plaster, spread over the former sub¬
stance, is rash and unauthorized. The notion enter¬
tained by some, that papyrus was not in use before the
foundation of Alexandria, rests on the assertion of
Yarro. But Pliny observes, " many striking examples
are found which contradict the opinion of Varro con¬
cerning charts."—Gaylus, according to Guilandin, cites
also many similar passages from the ancients: see Diss,
sur le papyrus in Tom. xxvi. Memoirs of Academy of
Inscriptions. But even had the papyrus not been known
thus early—there can be no question that many other
materials for writing would have been used before stone
or metal, which manifestly require, of all others, the
most skill and labor. Every one must assent to the
correctness of the following remark of the Count de
Cayius. " It is clear that as soon as writing was found
102
but, it was laid On every thing which could receive it.
The substances have varied according to times and
Countries. It may, however, be affirmed that the most
common substances and the lightest for carriage claim
the preference in a thing so necessary." Accordingly
we find on linen envelopes of the mummies, many of
which are not less than 4000 years old, painted inscrip¬
tions. Moreover, Pliny states that the Egyptians used
the palm leaf for writing, previously to the employment
Of papyrus* This was so abundant in Palestine that
the whole country was called ■Jcivi xrj from $ojvi| a palm
tree.*—*-
But passing from the general question, respecting the
Materials for writing used by other nations, let us take
a view of the subject, so far as the Hebrews are con¬
cerned, and guided alone by their historical records.
Our adversary has attempted to prove by these very
records, that Moses knew of no other or better way of
writing than by tracing characters upon plaster which
had been spread over stone. A reference is made to
Deuteronomy xxvii. 2, 3* " and it shall be on the day
When ye shall pass over Jordan unto the land which
the Lord thy God giveth thee, that thou shalt set thee
tip great stones and plaster them with plaster, and thou
shalt write upon them all the words of this law," &c.
Let us be sure that we understand this passage. Is it
theii certain that the plaster was spread over the surface
of the stones, and while in a soft state, made to re*
CCivC eertain characters ? In opposition to this view,
We might refer to the passage in Josh. viii. 30, 32,
Where ail account is given of the execution of this com¬
mand of Moses. No mention whatever, is made of
plaster—it is simply said, " and he wrote there upon the
stones a copy of the law." "Plastering the stones with
plaster," may then have been done with some other
view than to fit them for receiving an inscription. It
Will be remembered that these stones were designed to
form an altar. It was customary to erect, as memori¬
als of particular events, and as altars, where offerings to
God Were to be made, piles of stone rudely put togeth-
* I am aware that different derivations have been given by Bochart and L'Abbe
Migtiot.
103
Moses may, therefore, in the passage under view,
be understood as directing the Hebrews* to bestow more
than ordinary pains in the construction of their altar,
instead of piling the stones loosely together, they were
required to " cement them with cement," for thus we may
render plaster them with plaster. According to anoth¬
er opinion the writing was to be in relievo, and the
spaces between the letters were filled up with mortar.
Inscriptions in the East were frequently executed in
this way. Dr. Clarke mentions, as in his possession, a
large slab of basaltes, on which there is an inscription
in Persian, Arabic, and Tamul; in the two former, the
letters are all raised—the Tamul is indented.
Michaelis supposes that Moses commanded that his
laws should be cut in the stones themselves, and then
coated with a thick crust of lime, that the engraving
might continue for many ages secure from all injuries
from the weather and atmosphere, and then when by the
decay of the covering it should, after hundreds or thou¬
sands of years, first come to light, serve to shew to
the latest posterity whether they had suffered any
change. An instance somewhat analogous to this, is
presented in the case of Sostratus, architect of the fa¬
mous tower of Pharos, near Alexandria, who while he cnt
the name of the then King of Egypt in the outer coat of
lime, took care to engrave his own name secretly in the
stone below, in order that it might come to light in after
times, when the plaster with the King's name should
have fallen off. For a full and beautiful developement
of this theory, see Smith's Michaelis, vol. 1, 357. Art.
69, Sec. 1. Let us however grant that the proper mean¬
ing of the passage is, that Moses did direct the inscrip¬
tion to be traced in the plaster with which the stones
were covered. We then inquire into the reason of this
direction. Did it arise from his ignorance of any other
or better mode of perpetuating his law? We have sat¬
isfactory evidence that it was not. The art of engra¬
ving upon stone and metal was well known and practi¬
sed at that period. I shall not cite the instance of the
tables of the law prepared at Sinai, lest our author
should assume without evidence, that they too were
covered with plaster. I would refer to the direction
104
given in Ex. xxviii. 9, 11, "and thou shalt take two
onyx stones and grave on them the names of the chil¬
dren of Israel—with the work of an engraver in
stone, like the engraving upon a signet," &c. Again,
Ex. xxxix, 30, " And they made the plate of the holy
crown of pure gold, and wrote upon it, a writing like to
the engraving of a signet, Holiness to the Lord." Who
then can doubt that the Hebrews in the age of Moses
understood the art of engraving on metal and wood.—
That suitable materials for committing to writing more
extended works were also in use, is implied in many
passages. Let it not be objected that these testimonies
are from a book, the authority of which is not ac¬
knowledged by our adversaries. It is to be remembered,
that we are not now considering the general historical
question respecting the ancient materials for writing—
but that we are rebutting the assertion, that from the
Pentateuch itself appears that no other mode of writing
was known than the tracing of characters upon soft
plaster. In this view of the subject, the evidence against
the assertion amounts to perfect demonstration. Were
we then unable to assign any reason why Moses chose
this particular mode of preserving any portion of his
law, it would avail the adversary nothing. Yet we may
suggest an explanation of the subject, furnished by the
context and in accordance with the ideas developed in
other passages. With the direction to build an altar,
on the stones of which certain promises and threats
were to be inscribed, there is joined the prohibition
thou shalt not lift up any iron tool thereon." In the
account which is given in Joshua, of the execution of
this command, it is recorded that an altar was built of
whole stones over which no man hath lifted any iron.—
And in Ex. xx. 25, we read the general declaration, "and
if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not
build it of hewn stone, for if thou lift up any tool upon
it thou hast polluted it." We thus perceive a very man¬
ifest reason why an inscription on an altar was not en-
graved, which would have required the use of an iron
tool, but traced in soft plaster, which might be done with
a wooden instrument. In reference to the farther inqui¬
ry, respecting the intention of the general law above re?
105
cited, we may accept the solution offered by the learned
Spencer DeLegibus.—Hebrseorum Ritualibus, Lib. ii. c.
vi. Sec. 1., " that stones unwrought and retaining their
original and entire form, are endowed with a certain na¬
tive purity, and therefore remarkably correspondent to
the sanctity of an altar." He adds that in the earlier
ages it passed into a law that most symbols and instru¬
ments of divine worship should be rude and destitute of
ornament.
I must here terminate the protracted consideration
which we have given to the various difficulties which
are supposed to attend the belief that the Pentateuch
proceeded from the hand of Moses. An attempt has at
least been made to answer the objections, which Dr.
Cooper declares to have been hitherto unanswered.—
What degree of success has attended the effort, an in¬
telligent community will determine.
SECTION XV.
Of all the objections to the genuineness of the Pen¬
tateuch, advanced in the pamphlet which has given oc¬
casion for the present remarks, it is believed that no
one of any importance has escaped our consideration.
There is indeed one assertion made, to which I have
not yet adverted, which furnishes a striking example of
what cannot be regarded as any other than wilful mis¬
representation. It is said that at the dedication of the
temple by Solomon, " search was made for the ancient
documents and records of the national religion ; but there
was nothing found in the ark, save the two tables of the
law which Moses put there at Horeb." Now the latter
fact is announced both in the book of Kings and that
of Chronicles, but in vain may we look for any confir¬
mation of the former. "Search was made for the an¬
cient documents and records of the national religion !"
Where this is mentioned, I confess, I have been un¬
able to discover. Here it may not be inappropriate to
remark, that it was not in the ark that the book of the law
might be expected to be found. It was not directed to
106
be deposited within this receptacle, but to be laid up be•
side it.
I would now repeat the remark, that I am not aware
of having omitted to consider any objection proposed
in our author's pamphlet, although it has been through
close attention and diligent and repeated perusal of it
that I have been enabled to throw into any order, the
undigested mass of his reasons and exceptions.
In the outset of this investigation, it was proposed to
examine the question respecting the authenticity, as
well as that relating to the genuineness of the Penta-
teuch.—For the present, at least, this must be omitted.
The writer has found the subject grow under his hands,
and he fears that he has already exhausted the public at¬
tention, even if he has been so fortunate as to gain it.
There are several additional inducements to abstain
from the farther prosecution of the subject. A refer¬
ence to the arguments which prove the authenticity of
the early biblical records, is not uncommon in the reli¬
gious publications of the day, and in consequence, in¬
formation on this point is pretty generally diffused.
Again, it is the question concerning the genuineness of
the Pentateuch, which is principally and almost exclu¬
sively discussed by Dr. Cooper. Indeed this is the on¬
ly point, on which, ostensibly, controversy exists, al¬
though throughout his work there are many indirect at¬
tacks upon facts recorded and the system of religioq
taught in the Bible.
To meet and repel the various exceptions to the sub¬
ject matter of our sacred records, which are scattered
throughout his tract, would require space equal to that
which I have already occupied.
As respects, however, the connexion between Geolo¬
gy and the Pentateuch, and the consistency of the re¬
cords of revelation with the appearances of nature, that
which furnishes to Dr. C. the title of his pamphlet, but
which occupies a very small portion of it—it is suffi¬
cient that I refer the reader to an interesting essay of
Professor Silliman, in the edition of Bakewell's Geolo¬
gy, issued in 1833. It is not the syllabus of his lectures,
appended to a former edition of this work, but a dis¬
tinct treatise, in which, without naming Dr. €. or at all
107
adverting to his uncourteous attack, he meets all the
Geological difficulties of the latter.
But although our researches have stopped short of
their final result, we have attained a point of elevation
whence we can clearly perceive the conclusion of our
progress. Many important principles have been settled,
many facts authenticated; the way is cleared up for our
further advance. Enough has been accomplished, to
shew that the Pentateuch was written by Moses, and
promulgated in the very age of its production. So far
then as the credibility of an historian is established, by
his being contemporary with the transactions which he
describes, and thus able to obtain an acquaintance with
them—we may confide in the Jewish records. An im¬
portant consideration, auxiliary to this, is furnished by
the fact of the historian's connexion with the events
which he describes. That he was well informed, no one
can doubt; that his narration is true, we have this guar¬
anty, that it was addressed to eye and ear witnesses,
who would have lost all respect for a leader who endea¬
vored to palm upon them fables for truth, who would re¬
late a series of prodigies, as having come under their
own observation, when no such things had occurred.
For although national vanity might connive at false
representations, designed to advance the glory of the
Jewish people, or to exhibit them as the peculiar favor¬
ites of heaven; it would most assuredly have been out¬
raged by an account of their disgraceful conduct in nu¬
merous instances. We may then regard the establish¬
ed fact, that the Pentateuch was written for contempo¬
raries and addressed to them as carrying with it a
strong proof of the authenticity of the record.
In connexion with the truth of the history contained
in the five books of Moses, it would be interesting to
consider the question of the divine authority of the sys¬
tem of religion taught in them; which would be estab¬
lished by a view of the miracles wrought in attestation
of it; the accurate prediction of events to occur in a
remotely succeeding age, and by its sublime Theology
and pure morality, to which we shall in vain seek a par¬
allel in the instance of any other nation, however re-
108
nowned for its antiquity, its arts, or its literary and sci¬
entific cultivation.
But there are topics which however attractive, I do
not think it advisable to introduce at the close of
what has been a protracted, and I fear tedious discus¬
sion. Such it has necessarily been. The adversary
has occupied a wide field. Many of his objections, al¬
though frivolous, could not be satisfactorily answered
Within a moderate space; others rendered necessary in¬
vestigations, in which the public generally will, it is
probable feel little interest. The whole inquiry may be
neglected by many who will be influenced by various
reasons. Some feejjng already satisfied with respect to
the conclusion meant to be established, will not care to
examine the process by which it is reached; others will
shrink from the intellectual effort requisite for the com¬
prehension of an argument, necessarily treating of re¬
condite matters, while many, not wishing to be con¬
vinced of the truth of religion, fondly cling to pre-con-
ceived opinions.
But whatever attention his argument may excite, or
whatever estimate may be made of its merits, the writer
possesses the satisfaction of knowing, that his object has
been to sustain what he deems important truth, that he
has used no disingenuous arts of controversy, and ad¬
vanced no statement which he did not believe to be true.
So far as the discussion has assumed a personal as¬
pect, he is conscious of never having, without necessity,
used a harsh expression; although he regrets that a con¬
cern for the interests of truth and a wish to guard
against the evil influence exerted by a great name, has
compelled him in a few instances to abandon that tone
of courtesy which would otherwise have been preser¬
ved toward his antagonist, on account of his elevated
station and advanced age, as well as in accordance with
the ordinary proprieties of social intercourse.