hausen, "is not to prove that the Mosaic law was not in force in the period before the Exile. There are in the Pentateuch three strata of law and three strata of tradition, and the problem is to place them in their true historical order." So far as the Jehovist (or the composite document usually styled JE) and Deuteronomy are concerned, there is no longer any question. The Jehovist is the earlier, and Deuteronomy rests upon it. But what are we to say of the Priest

Code? Is this the earliest or is teuch?

it the latest portion of the Penta

I do not propose to travel over the whole of the ground involved in these questions. It would be impossible to do so within the limits. of this article. I shall confine myself mainly to a single questionviz., the age of Deuteronomy. This, it is admitted on all hands, is the point on which the whole controversy turns.

But first of all let us just look at the theory as a whole. According to it the bulk of the Pentateuch and Joshua in their present form are post-exilic.

What follows? In the first place, Ezra, or whoever was the first redactor of the Hexateuch, must have been aware at least of some of the facts. When he set to work to construct this elaborate legislative and historical romance, he must have presumed on the complete ignorance of the majority of his readers, and he must have been determined so to marshal his materials as to obliterate entirely their chronological order, and to leave to all future generations a monument of ingenuity, a literary puzzle, which they might take to pieces and reconstruct at their pleasure. The redactor, whoever he was, could not have been ignorant that Deuteronomy was not a Mosaic work at all, but was first composed and edited in the reign of Josiah, yet he deliberately places it last in the code of laws professing to come from Moses, as if on purpose to mystify his readers. He must have been well aware that "the Law of Holiness (Lev. xvii.-xxvi.) was an independent corpus marking the transition from Deuteronomy to the Priestly Code "; in fact, that it was the connecting link between Ezekiel and the Priestly Code, so that, as Wellhausen (p. 379) observes: "Jehovist, Deuteronomy, Ezekiel are a historical series; Ezekiel, Law of Holiness, Priestly Code must also be taken as historical steps, and this in such a way as to explain at the same time the dependence of the Law of Holiness on the Jehovist and on Deuteronomy"; of all this, I say, he must have been aware; and yet he adopts an arrangement of his materials which completely obscures their proper mutual relation. No reason whatever is given by the critics for this extraordinary proceeding, except that it was done "in the interest" of the Priest Code; in other words, I suppose, in order to get it generally accepted. Kuenen merely says: "When he (the redactor) set his hand to the work,

the Deuteronomico-prophetic sacred history (DJE) had long been recognized and highly revered, whereas the priestly historico-legislative work had only quite recently been promulgated and put into practice. The problem was how to make P share in the reverence that DJE already commanded. In other words P must be incorporated with DJE. This was required in the interest of P, and there can be no doubt that it was carried out by some one imbued with the spirit of the document. R [the redactor], then, belonged to the school of Ezra, to the priest-scribes of Jerusalem. And, indeed, they were the only men to whom it could ever occur to execute such a work; for no one else would either feel called to it or be competent to undertake it." And he then proceeds to ask whether the redactor follows the rules which flow spontaneously from this view of his task, viz.: (1) whether DJE is kept as far as possible intact, and (2) whether, when unity of design imperatively demands some sacrifice, the changes are made in the spirit and in the interest of P. These questions he answers in the affirmative. But why such a proceeding was necessary he does not attempt to explain.

So again, if the Priestly Code is not Mosaic, but post-exilic, no plausible reason has been given why the 'Ohel Moed, or "Tent of Meeting," should occupy so large a place in it. Nothing can be more elaborate or more minute than the account of its construction as given in Exodus. Its various parts, its dimensions, its coverings, its boards, its bars, its pillars, and its sockets, its curtains, and the material of which they were to be made, the number and the colour of them, even the very manner in which they were to be looped; the very precise and particular directions given for the construction of the ark, with the mercy seat and cherubim; the table of shewbread, the candlestick with its lamps and instruments, the altar of incense, the preparation of the holy oil and the incense, the altar of burnt offering, the laver of brass, the clothes of service, and the holy garments for the priest; and, in a word, the whole of the furniture of the Sacred Tent down to its smallest details, all this is described in Exodus xxxv.-xl. with the utmost care, and in such a way as to leave the impression on the mind of the reader that he has an actual structure before him. And yet we are told that the Tabernacle never existed but in the imagination of the writer. It is a fiction of the time of Ezra. There may have been some rude Mosaic tent, of which the tradition remained; but this elaborate Tabernacle never existed. The redactor of the Pentateuch wished to find a foreshadowing of the Temple in Mosaic times; though why he should have done so is not very clear; but having this wish, he reduced the measurements by exactly one-half, and filled up the description from Solomon's Temple. What possible object could this elabora te invention have served, unless it were to claim Mosaic sanc

tion for the post-exile cultus and ritual? But why was this necessary? Solomon's Temple, its furniture, and its vessels were all perfectly well known, as we see from the narrative in the Kings. Why not rest contented with restoring them? Why set to work to construct out of these a purely imaginary Tabernacle, and to write of it such an elaborate description, for no conceivable purpose but the mere exercise of a profitless ingenuity? Or why in particular should the ark be described so fully as it is in the Levitical Code, and such importance be attached to it, when, as we know it perished in the destruction of the first Temple, and no attempt was ever made to restore it, nor is any allusion made to it in Ezekiel's ideal Temple.

In the relation of the Temple to the Tabernacle there is one striking circumstance, of which the higher criticism takes no notice, but which appears to me of considerable importance. The measurements of the Temple were in all respects, as Mr. Ferguson was the first to point out, exactly double those of the Tabernacle. Which is more probable, that a writer of the time of Ezra should have shown such masterly ingenuity as to have drawn the Tabernacle in all its points as exactly half the size of the Temple; or that the Tabernacle having really existed in Mosaic and post-Mosaic times, and its measurements being well known, Solomon in building his Temple, which was to be to the Jews settled in Palestine what the Tabernacle had been to their fathers in the wilderness, the centre of all their worship, should have taken care to follow its proportions line for line, only making the one building exactly double the size of the other? The latter proceeding is perfectly intelligible and rational; for the former no plausible reason can be given. Indeed, a very striking parallel to the proceeding, which seems the obvious and intelligible one, is furnished by the excavations which have recently been made in my own cathedral. We came there upon remains of the old Saxon church; we have been able to trace its outline very accurately, and we have ascertained that the measurements of the ground-plan of the present Norman cathedral are exactly double those of its old Saxon predecessor. This is perfectly intelligible. But would any one, setting to work to describe an imaginary Saxon church, have ever thought of construcing it as exactly half the size of the present Norman building?

We are reminded, indeed, that the early history never mentions the Mosaic Tabernacle at all. Not only is there no reference to it in Judges and Samuel, but whereas the Chronicler says that Solomon on his accession offered upon the altar of the Tabernacle at Gibeon, the compiler of Kings, on the contrary, not only omits all allusion to the Tabernacle, but expressly says that he offered " upon a high place, and excuses him for this, on the plea that at that time no house to the name of Jehovah had as yet been built " (1 Kings iii. 1-4).

But as the 'Ohel Moed, Tent of Meeting (or Tabernacle of the

We

Congregation, as the A.V. renders it), is mentioned in 1 Sam. ii. 22, this passage is quietly set aside with the remark that it is "badly attested and from its contents open to suspicion," inasmuch as the passage is not found in the LXX., and further because everywhere else in 1 Sam. i.-iii. the Sanctuary at Shiloh is termed Heykal, "that is to say certainly not a tent." But why is this distinct statement of 1 Sam. ii. 22 to be rejected merely because the verse is wanting in the LXX. ? Or what is there contradictory in the use of the term Heykal, which may be used of any larger structure? have only to suppose that the Tabernacle was surrounded by buildings of a more permanent character, the name of Heykal being given to the whole of the sacred enclosure, together with the Tabernacle, and the Tabernacle itself being described as the 'Ohel Moed, and the whole difficulty vanishes. And again, why are we to set aside the express statement of the Chronicler? According to Wellhausen (pp. 39-41), the statement in Chronicles (2 Chron. i. 3) that Solomon offered at the high place that was at Gibeon, " for there was God's Tent of meeting which Moses the servant of Jehovah had made in the wilderness," is in express contradiction to to the statement in 1 Kings iii., that Solomon went to Gibeon to offer there, "for that was the great high place." But where is the contradiction? The Tabernacle had been placed at the Bamah in Gibeon. The site of a Canaanite sanctuary was chosen for the site of the sanctuary of Jehovah. Because the Tabernacle was set up there, it became "the Great Bamah,” “ the great high place." Both narratives tell us that Solomon went to Gibeon to offer there; both mention that there was "a high place," there, which made it suitable for sacrifice; but the narrator in Kings says nothing about the Tabernacle being there, while the narrator in Chronicles gives us this information. And this is the whole extent of the contradiction on which so much stress is laid.

And now let us turn to Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy, as I have said, is the pivot on which the whole question turns. If we can settle the date of Deuteronomy, the controversy is at an end.

Is this Book, then, rightly ascribed to Moses? Have we here his last great discourses, his recapitulation of the laws which he had given to Israel during the forty years' wandering in the wilderness, with such modifications as a larger experienee and different circumstances might suggest or require? Or is it the composition of some unknown author at or about the time when, according to the history, the Book of the Law was discovered in the Temple? The former is not only the traditional belief concerning the Book, it is the impression which the book itself intends to convey. The latter is the view which has so completely established itself in the domain of "the higher criticism" that Wellhausen does not hesitate to write that "in all circles where appreciation of scientific results can be

looked for at all, it is recognised that it was composed in the same age in which it was discovered, and that it was made the rule of Josiah's reformation, which took place about a generation before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans" ("History of Israel," English translation, p. 9). A thorough and impartial investigation of this point therefore is necessary, if we are to come to any satisfactory conclusion.

In attempting this investigation, I shall assume the literary unity of the book as a whole. All are agreed that the great legislative nucleus, chaps. xii-xxvi., is the work of a single author. There is some difference of opinion as to the historical preface (chaps. i.-iv. 40) and the hortatory introduction which follows (chaps. iv. 40-xi. 32); * but the only point on which there can be said to be anything like a consensus among the critics is that Deut. xxxiii. is not by the same author as the rest of the book. This, however, does not touch the main question at issue. That the book may have undergone editing I am not concerned to deny, nor that in the editing it may have received some addition or modification; but in the main it is one book. Far more distinctly than any other book of the Pentateuch, it carries within itself the evidence of unity of authorship. Can we settle who was the author? I shall begin by examining the evidence furnished by the Book itself. What then does the Book say about its authorship? First of all we read (I quote only from those parts of the book which Kuenen considers to be by one author, the author of the code): "This is the law which Moses set before the children of Israel. These are the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgements, which Moses spake unto the children of Israel when they came forth out of Egypt; beyond Jordan, &c. . . . . . . And Moses called unto all Israel and said unto them, hear, O Israel, the statutes and the judgements which I speak in your ears this day," &c. (chap. iv. 44-46, v. p.) In like manner the Mosaic origin of the Deuteronomic law is vouched for in chapter xxvii. verses 1, 9 and 11. And as if this were not enough, we are expressly told that "Moses wrote this Law," and delivered it to the custody of "the priests, the sons of Levi," with a command that it should be read before all the people at the end of every seven years, on the Feast of Tabernacles (chap. xxxi. 9-12), and further that when he "had made an end of

* Kuenen contends for unity of authorship, at least, from chap. iv. 45 to the end of vi. He says: The objections to the unity of authorship which have been urged most recently by Wellhausen and Valeton are not convincing. The position occupied by the author of xii.-xxvi. is faithfully indicated in the superscription iv. 45-49. The hortatory character and diffuseness of v.-xi. by no means compel us to ascribe it to another author. In details, v.-xi. and xii. xxvi. completely and yet spontaneously agree. Finally, in language and style they present just that degree of agreement and difference that we should be justified in expecting on the hypothesis of a common origin" (p. 112). Kuenen gives a list of Deuteronomic words and phrases, but says truly that such a list can never adequately characterize the style of an author, the true impression of which can only be gained from the work read as a whole. Dillmann also arques strongly for unity of authorship.