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scription. But why then left he the other two passages. unaltered? This indeed, I cannot account for, nor am I obliged to account for "it: but this I affirm, the present Hebrew text is inconsistent with it"self, the Samaritan is consistent; let the reader choose whether of "the two he will abide by." Now I should have no hesitation in choosing the consistent text; but I really think it not very candid in the learned Doctor, to impute to his imaginary compiler of the present Hebrew Pentateuch exactly knavery enough to alter, so as to accommodate to the existing bounds of the land of Judea, a text where no allusion to these bounds occurs, and dulness enough to leave unaltered passages which prophetically and directly pointed out these bounds, in a manner contrary to what Dr Geddes supposes to have been their extent in the compiler's time. Let us, however, consider on what grounds this charge of inconsistency against the Hebrew text, as it now stands, is founded. Gen. xv. 18 to 21, relates, In that same day the Lord made a co"venant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, "from the river of Egypt, unto the great river, the river Euphrates: "the Kenites, and the Kennezzites, and the Cadmonites, and the Hit"tites, and the Perrizzites, and the Rephaims, and the Amorites, and "the Canaanites, and the Gergashites, and the Jebusites." Here God promises to the Jews a great extent of country, from the Nile to the Euphrates, inhabited by ten distinct nations or rather tribes, of whom one was distinguished by the name of CANAANITES, who therefore inhabited only a part* of this extended country. Now Genesis, x. 15

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-19, states that "Canaan begat Sidon his first-born, and Heth, and the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Gergashite, and the Hivite, " and the Arkite, and the Senite, and the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, " and the Hamathite; and afterward were the families of the Ca"naanites spread abroad. And the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon, as thou comest to Gerar unto Gaza; as thou goest unto So"dom and Gomorrah, and Admah, and Zeboim, even unto Lashah.” This country is certainly only a part of that included in the subsequent promise to Abraham. But is it not obvious that there are two natural and credible hypotheses, on which this apparent difference can be reconciled; one that of the numerous descendants of Canaan, some one tribe were particularly distinguished by the name of Canaanites : and that when the text says, "and afterwards were the families of the Canaanites enlarged," it means to mark out the peculiar extension of this tribe, and describes in the 19th verse the borders of their territory. This is not an imaginary hypothesis, because it appears from Gen. xv. 21. and Exod. xxiii. 28, that in the time of Abram and also of Moses, one peculiar tribe or nation descended from Canaan were called Canaanites, while others also descended from him had other

The learned Bochart, Phaleg, Lib. IV. cap. xxxvi. remarks that "the Canaanites were those "who inhabited partly on the sea and partly on the banks of Jordan; deriving their name either "from their being merchants, which the word in Hebrew imports, or because they held the chief 66 place for some time amongst the descendants of Canaan." Vide p. 348. Bochart remarks that "of the eleven families of the Canaanites enumerated, Gen. x. 15, six were not involved in the "anathema or condemnation which the Jews were authorized to execute, the Sidonii, Arkæi, "Sinæi, Avadii, Samarai, Hamathæi; a new proof, if any were wanting, that it was their own “national guilt, not merely their descent from a guilty ancestor, which drew down on the con"demned nations the judgments of God."

names. Admitting this, is there any inconsistency between the passage which states, Gen. x. 19, that this single tribe occupied a small country, and Gen. xv. 18 to 21, which states, that this tribe united with nine others, occupied a much larger space? But if this solution be not admitted, and it be maintained that Gen. x. 19, describes the entire country occupied by all the descendants of Canaan; is there yet any inconsistency in supposing that this is only the country occupied by them soon after their first division into distinct tribes, or as the text expresses, "after the families spread abroad;" but that in three hundred years after, when the promise was made to Abraham, the same nations occupied a much greater extent of country, and four hundred years after Abraham, in the time of Moses, a still greater? which is then (as Dr Geddes observes) more particularly marked out, for this plain reason, that then it became more necessary to point out its precise bounds, that the Jews might know how much they were authorized to take possession of. Such then is the foundation on which this critic charges the sacred text with inconsistency, and its compiler with fraud. I feel no inclination to give any man injurious language; but the friends of this learned Doctor must excuse me, if I do not in this instance give him credit for that caution, judgment and candour, which such a discussion requires; and if, taught by this single example, I feel indisposed to adopt his conclusions, where he has not stated the reasons by which they are maintained.

But Doctor Geddes insists strongly on the text, Gen. xxxv. 21. "Israel journeyed, and spread his tent beyond the tower of Edar." (Vide the texts considered before No. IX.) He founds his objection not so much on the identity of this tower with that over the gate of Jerusalem, as on the use of the word beyond. He observes, "whether "this tower were not far from Bethlehem, or near to the sheep-gate "of Jerusalem, if Moses had written this, he would not, he could "not have expressed himself in this manner; in describing a journey "from Bethel to Jerusalem, he could not with propriety say of any "intermediate place, that Jacob had come beyond it, when such an " event happened; whether he be supposed to have written his history "in Egypt or in his way to Canaan." As this objection did not occur to any preceding writer, let us consider it. The expression translated beyond is N, compounded of the word N, which by itself signifies trans, ultra, beyond, further on, or as Leigh (vide his Critica Sacra) expresses it, "loci et temporis distantiam et remotionem signi"ficat, and the præfix, which signifies a, ab, from. The compound is translated by Montanus, ab ultra, from beyond, i. e. he stretched his tent from beyond the tower of Edar, or from a distance beyond the tower of Edar to that tower, marking an approximation to the place of the writer, as a person journeying from Bethel to Jerusalem or Bethlehem, must have approximated to a writer coming from Egypt towards the land of Canaan. Compare Gen. xix. 9, where the words П are employed to signify removal to a greater distance; accede ultra, says Montanus; stand back, says our translation; the præfix D, marks a removal in the contrary direction. Now if this remark be just, what becomes of Dr Geddes's criticism? I do not question his

skill in the Hebrew; but I do discover a most unwarrantable negligence and temerity, combined with a most eager zeal to overturn the genuineness of the Pentateuch. "But indeed (he concludes) every thing convinces me that the Pentateuch was composed at Jerusalem, or at least in Palestine." Yes, truly, every thing convinces him of it, even what ought to have convinced him of the contrary.

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But as I am compelled to expose what appear to me Dr Geddes's errors on this important subject, so I feel much more gratified at acknowledging his fairness where he has reasoned fairly. On Gen. xxxvi. 31. considered above (vide No. X.) Dr Geddes remarks, "this and the "twelve following verses were by Spinoza urged, as one clear proof "that the Pentateuch could not be written by Moses; if he had only "said that this part of the Pentateuch could not have been written by Moses, he would have said no more than what any discerning reader must in my conception acknowledge. Nothing to me can be plainer than that all this was written after there were kings, or "at least a king in Israel." True. And are we then to understand Dr Geddes's strong assertions, that "the Pentateuch in its present form was not written by Moses," &c. &c. to mean only this, that though the substance of it consists of the Journals of Moses, yet there were parts of it added in Palestine, even after the reign of Solomon? This assuredly is all he can prove; how is it to be lamented that he was not cautious or candid enough to say no more. Then his criticism might have exerted itself freely, to distinguish the genuine text from the interpolations; and the more accurately he distinguished them, the greater thanks would he have received from the friends of religion and of truth, who are now compelled to regard him as an enemy, and view all his proceedings with suspicion and distrust.

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An Article in the Appendix to the Eighth Volume of the Critical Review for September, 1806, in which Mr De Wette's Work on the Old Testament is briefly considered. An humble remonstrance to the Reviewers.

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In the Appendix to the eighth volume of the Critical Review, September, 1806, I find a work noticed on the Old Testament, by a Mr De Wette, teacher of philosophy at Jena; which, as it appears, to maintain opinions very inconsistent with what seems to me the truth, and very injurious to the authority of the Pentateuch, I was anxious particularly to examine. I have not, however, been able to procure as yet either this work, or Vater's Commentary on the Pentateuch, which is represented as maintaining nearly the same opinions. And I think it is unfair and uncandid to combat an author, whose system is known only through the medium of a Review, in which it must necessarily be stated indistinctly and imperfectly, and possibly may be misunderstood and misinterpreted. I shall therefore advert to the article in which this work is noticed, only so far as relates to some positions immediately connected with my subject, and which are distinctly stated as supported by Mr De Wette. The first is, that the book of Deuteronomy appears to have been the work of a very different writer from him or them, who wrote the second, third and fourth books ascribed to Moses. It is said, "this constitutes a whole, and breathes a spirit which in a very remarkable manner distinguishes it from other books. And we are afterwards told, of a bold dissertation of De Wette, in which "the book of Deuteronomy is proved to be different from the preceding "books of the Pentateuch, and the work of a later writer, by the "deviations in the phraseology of Deuteronomy from that of the preceding books." On this point Mr De Wette and I are fairly at issue. That the book of Deuteronomy constitutes a whole, and that it is composed in a different manner, and with a different view from the three preceding books, I have stated. The three preceding books are narratives and journals formed at the time the events took place, or laws and regulations, recorded as they were gradually and occasionally promulgated, either by the public and miraculous voice from the glory of God, or through the medium of the inspired legislator; while the book of Deuteronomy is a recapitulation of those events delivered near forty years after the principal facts had taken place, in a public address to the Jewish nation, designed to impress the Divine authority of the Mosaic law on their minds, and to inculcate the necessity of perpetual obedience to the divine commands. But while this difference of object must have produced a difference of style and manner, I have endeavoured to prove that the book of Deuteronomy, and the three preceding, must have been equally the production of Moses himself,

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not from phraseology* alone, (for as to the variations in the phraseology of a language spoken above 3,300 years ago, by a nation of whose compositions so few have reached us, I conceive they cannot be clearly ascertained so as to form any very clearly conclusive ground of argument,) but from the internal structure of the works; from the nature of the facts they dwell on, the circumstances they select, the feelings they display; in a word, from the difference as well as the coincidences observable between them, which appear to me to be exactly such as nature and truth must have produced, had all these works really been written by the Jewish lawgiver himself; and which exhibit a harmony so exact, so natural, and evidently undesigned, that it cannot be accounted for on any other hypothesis. It affords me some gratification to find that this topic of argument appears to repel by anticipation the objections of Mons. De Wette on this part of the subject, and in this instance vindicate the authority of Scripture: I refer my readers to the preceding work, Part I. Lect. III. and IV.

Another assertion imputed to this author, relates to the tribe of Levi :-" Moses (says he) may have introduced a priesthood; but "who can define what portion of the laws relating to it was his pro"duction? If the tribe of Levi had been distinguished in the times "of Moses in the sense and in the manner in which it is represented "in the Pentateuch, and had been sanctioned as a cast of priests, "a hierarchy would have directed every thing; which history does not 66 'shew."

To this I answer, that the constitution of the tribe of Levi must to a certainty have been fixed before, or at the original settlement of the Jews in Canaan, because we cannot otherwise account for one entire tribe being excluded from the possession of landed property, living, not in one body, as each of the remaining tribes did, but in cities dispersed through the entire land of Canaan, even on both sides of the river Jordan, and possessing amongst these cities all those which were appropriated as cities of refuge to fugitives in consequence of homicide. We cannot, I affirm, account for this, but on the supposition that the tribe of Levi had been set apart before the settlement of the Jews in Canaan, to be supported by tithes and offerings instead of land, and that they had consented to the arrangement. Here then is a full proof that the entire system concerning the tribe of Levi, their distribution, the tithes and offerings by which they were to be maintained, must have been promulgated and admitted before the settlement of the Jews in Canaan; it follows therefore that every part of the Law of Moses respecting these points, was coeval with Moses himself. Can we, then, doubt whether it was written and published by Moses? What inferior authority would have been competent to establish so singular an arrangement, unfavourable to the temporal interests of the Levites, whom

*I would not be understood to say that the phraseology of the Pentateuch affords no presumptive proof of its authenticity; much less do I in any degree admit that it supplies any presumption against its genuineness-but purely that this ground of argument is not so clear or convincing as that derived from the general structure of the history, and the prevailing sentiments and feelings pervading it, and the harmony and connexion of the various parts of the narrative. In proof that the phraseology of the Pentateuch supplies a strong presumption in favour of its genuineness, I beg leave to refer to the learned Mr Marsh's tract on the Authenticity of the Five Books of Moses, pp. 5, 6, 7, and 13. I have briefly adduced his chief arguments in Part I. Lect I.

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