in a very summary way. The old theory of anticipation, he very properly does not seem to regard as worthy of notice. But the knot that cannot be untied, must be cut. He maintains that both these texts are spurious, and advances his interpretation of the one in Genesis, "supposing the latter half of the second verse and the third to be genuine," plainly enough intimating his suspicion that they are not. As his course of argument tends, in my opinion, to unsettle our confidence in the genuineness of such passages in the Pentateuch as may seem to us inconsistent with others, or may be irreconcileable with our own views, I must beg the reader's indulgence while I endeavor briefly to examine it. In order to enable him to judge for himself, and to give at the same time a full representation of the author's reasoning, I shall extract the whole argument.

"I would ask whether any one can compare this verse (Ex. xx. 11,) carefully with its parallel in Deuteronomy, and then be confident in the opinion that it did make an original part of the decalogue. In Deuteronomy (v. 15,) we find no such words, but instead of them the following, which accord entirely with the view of the institution first given above: 'And remember that thou wert a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence with a mighty hand, and by a stretched-out arm; therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbathday.'

"Will it be said, that one of these texts cannot be used to invalidate the other, inasmuch as the reason given in Exodus, and that in Deuteronomy, were both good, and not mutually inconsistent, reasons for the institution; that they were both accordingly announced on Sinai; and that in Exodus the mention of only one was preferred, in Deuteronomy only of the other? I apprehend that, under the circumstances, this view is altogether untenable. What the writer of the

Pentateuch is doing in both these instances, is not prescribing an institution, and assigning reasons for it. In that case he might, no doubt, with perfect propriety, select, from among good reasons, one to be urged at one time, and another at another time. But what he has undertaken to do, is to relate to us a fact; to tell us what God declared, by a supernatural voice, at a certain place and time; and those too, I may add, a place and time when every word was to be chosen, to make the most effectual impression. Under these circumstances, can it be maintained that Moses, designing to act the part of a veracious narrator, in acquainting us with specific words which God spake,* could give important words in one place, then omit them in another, where he is relating the same occurrence, and give us other important words, significant of a quite different cause of a material provision of his law, in their stead?

"I have said, that Moses undertakes, in these two texts, if he wrote both, to apprize us of words which God spake* in the people's hearing; and yet they differ from each other. But we are told still more respecting the specific character of the words in question. God 'wrote them,' it is said, (that is, wrote the words recited in the context,) in two tables of stone.' Deut. v. 22. If he wrote the precise words recorded in Deuteronomy as the decalogue-those words, and no other, (and under the circumstances it seems unavoidable to interpret with all this precision,)-then the decalogue did not contain the words attached in Exodus to the fourth commandment, in which that precept is said to be founded on the event of God's creation of the world. And, as if to preclude all doubt upon the point, it is even declared, in the passage last quoted, that no other words were used than the words which it specifies. These words the Lord spake—

6

*The use of the italics is the author's.

1

and he added no more; and he wrote them in two tables of stone.'

"If, then, under the circumstances, the essential character of an exact narrative precludes the supposition of both these passages having been written by Moses, which is to be regarded as having proceeded from his hand? Certainly no reasons appear why the authenticity of that in Exodus should be asserted to the prejudice of the other; and if the question had to be left altogether in suspense, I apprehend that the remarks which have been made would show it to be altogether unsafe to argue, from the passage in Exodus, that the sabbatical institution was contemporaneous with the creation of the world. But further; in comparing the claims of the two passages to be considered authentic, one to the exclusion of the other, we cannot lose sight of the fact, that the passage in Deuteronomy presents the same view of the sabbath with that exhibited so fully in the texts quoted above: a circumstance which affords strong presumption of its superior authority.

"These views, I think, dispose one strongly to the conclusion, that the verse of Exodus in

question was not written Nothing could be more

by Moses, but by some later hand. natural than for some possessor of his writings, struck by an apparent coincidence between the command to keep the Jewish sabbath, as inserted in the decalogue, and God's reposing on the seventh day, as related at the beginning of Genesis, to have recorded his remark as a gloss in the margin of his book, whence, as is known to have been the case with some of the most important interpolations of the Bible, it subsequently found its way into the body of the page. And I will not disguise my opinion, that the history of the text in Deuteronomy was probably the same, though it presents what I believe to be the true view of the sabbath. I have argued that both texts could not be genuine. I think

1

it most likely that neither is so; and my chief reason for this persuasion is, that, supposing the genuineness of either, it presents a fragment differing in its tone and structure from all the rest of the decalogue, since the decalogue, in every other case, studying the utmost brevity, deals only in laws and their sanctions, without exhibiting the reasons on which they were founded: a topic which seems foreign to its purpose.

"And the same view, I think, is to be taken, perhaps with even greater confidence, of the only other important text bearing upon this point, Ex. xxxi. 17. I will not say that this text is rendered suspicious by the abrupt change of persons which it exhibits, indicating the second clause to be but a gloss, though certainly its structure is strikingly consistent with that view. But, if I mistake not, the second clause, which is all that concerns us in this inquiry, is a palpable contradiction to the first, such as strongly to discredit the supposition that Moses was its writer. The children of Israel,' it is said, 'shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant; it is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever.' And why were the children of Israel to observe this sign, which was a token of their covenant with God? 'For,' the text goes on, 'in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed,' (took breath.) That is, for a sign between me and themselves, they are to keep a day, in which all the world, as much as themselves, has an interest. I can scarcely entertain a doubt that the last clause of the verse in question was, in the first instance, a note upon the passage to which we now find it attached, suggested by the reading of the related passage in the second chapter of Genesis.

"I have thus submitted what seems to me good reason for believing that neither of the two texts, quoted from the law

to prove the ante-Mosaic origin of the sabbatical institution, originally made part of that document, and for adhering accordingly to the conclusion, that the Jewish sabbath was simply a Jewish festival. The course which I take might be more questionable, were it not precisely the same, which reasons of the case, scarcely, I think, more urgent than those which have application here,-compel us to take with respect to several texts, for which the mere external evidence is as complete as it is for any part of the Pentateuch, but which, notwithstanding, no one can deny to be spurious, provided he is of opinion that Moses wrote the book which contains them. There is no other alternative. We must either refer the whole Pentateuch to a later age, or we must allow that, after Moses had composed that volume, it shared, in some degree, the lot of other books, and received occasional interpolations, originating often in marginal comments. Believing that we have sufficient proof of Moses having written the books, we accordingly adopt that theory, along with its necessary incident of the spuriousness of certain parts; and this we do the more readily, because often a little observation shows us that these parts are of a parenthetical character, not breaking by their removal the continuity of the sense, and so presenting precisely the appearance which glosses of foreign origin would naturally wear." pp. 190–195.

Preparatory to a review of the Professor's arguments, I would also ask, whether any one can compare those three texts, and not perceive and feel that they exactly harmonize with each other, and also with the opinion of a paradisaical origin of the sabbath as a day of holy rest and worship. If spurious, then, the probability is exceedingly strong, that they were introduced with the view of supporting this opinion; which, consequently, must have been pretty generally admitted in the time of their author. This, of course, will carry up the opinion itself to a very early period; if it