influence of graves and of the bodies of the dead,—notions which the Law had certainly only adopted, sanctioned, and regulated, and had not been the first to in. troduce, we -were sufficiently powerful to guard against any such danger as this. Abraham's sepulchre was known to everybody. But it never entered the mind of any Israelite under the O. T. to pay idolatrous or even superstitious veneration to it, however nearly the reverence of later Jews for the person of Abraham might border upon superstition and idolatry. The remains of Jacob and Joseph were carried to Palestine, and buried there. But we cannot find the slightest ground for supposing that they were the objects of superstitious adoration.

857. KURTZ then attempts to account for this strange burial. If Moses, therefore, was buried by Jehovah Himself, the reason must certainly have been, that such a burial was intended for him, as no other man could possibly have given. That there was something very peculiar in the burial of Moses, is sufficiently evident from the passage before us. And this is confirmed in a very remarkable manner by the N. T. history of the Transfiguration, where Moses and Elias appeared with the Redeemer. We may see here very clearly that the O. T. account may justly be understood, as implying that the design of the burial of Moses by the hand of Jehovah was to place him in the same category with Enoch and Elijah, to deliver him from going down into the grave like the rest of Adam's children, and to prepare for him a condition, both of body and soul, resembling that of those two men of God. It is true that Moses was not saved from death itself in the same manner as Enoch and Elijah; he really died, and his body was really buried; this is expressly stated in the Biblical history. But we may assume with the greatest probability, that, like them, he was saved from corruption. Men bury the corpse that it may see corruption. If Jehovah, therefore, would not suffer the body of Moses to be buried by men, it is but natural to seek for the reason of this in the fact, that He did not intend to leave him to corruption, but at the very time of his burial communicated some virtue by His own hand, which saved the body from corruption, and prepared for the Patriarch a transition into the same state of existence, into which Enoch and Elijah were admitted without either death or burial. The state of existence in the life beyond, into which Moses was introduced by the hand of Jehovah, was, probably, essentially the same as that into which Enoch was taken, when he was translated, and Elijah, when he was carried up to heaven, though the way was not to be the same. What the way may have been we can neither describe nor imagine. We are altogether in ignorance as to what the state itself was. The most that we can do is to form some conjecture of what it was not. For example, it was not one of absolute glorification and perfection, of which Christ alone could be the firstfruits, 1Cor.xv.20,23; nor was it the dim 'sheol' life, into which all the other children of Adam passed. It was something between the two-a state as inconceivable as it had been hitherto

unseen.

858. KURTZ goes on to say that he considers his view to be supported by the mention in Jude v.9 of a conflict and dispute

between the archangel Michael and the Devil respecting the body of Moses. CLEM. ALEX., ORIGEN, and DIDYMUS, he says, speak of an apocryphal book entitled the Ascension or Assumption of Moses,' from which Jude took this story. But this he cannot allow the author of that book and of Jude most probably drew from the same source, tradition, and independently of each other. In short, he considers the epistle of Jude to be 'canonical and written under the guidance of the Holy Spirit,' and that 'the adoption and use of this tradition in a canonical epistle gives it all the sanction of apostolical authority,' which means, in other words, that it is 'accredited by the Spirit of God.' When, therefore, it is said that He, Jehovah, buried him,' KURTZ understands it to mean that the Angel of Jehovah,' who was Jehovah's personal representative in all transactions with Israel in the wilderness, did so, and this Angel of Jehovah' he regards as identical with Michael the Archangel, and not with the Logos, as HENGSTENBERG does. In conclusion, he adds

6

The death of Moses was not like the death of the first Adam, which issued in corruption, nor was it like that of the second Adam, which was followed by a resurrection. It was rather something intermediate between the two forms of death, just as Moses himself occupied an intermediate position between the first and the second Adam,-between the head of sinful, dying humanity, and the Head of humanity redeemed from sin.

859. We might embrace KURTZ's view in this quotation, if there was any ground for believing that this narrative contains. an historically true account of the death and burial of Moses. But the above notes of KURTZ show to what extremities an honest mind must be driven in the attempt to recognise such a statement as infallibly true, and to realise it, as in that case we should be bound to do, in its details and consequences. There is no greater intellectual cowardice than to shrink from contemplating the results to which any tenet fairly leads, and so to profess a belief in the gross, which we shrink from analysing in particulars.

611

CHAPTER XXI.

RESULTS OF THE EXAMINATION OF DEUTERONOMY.

860. We have now completed the review of this book, and, even if we had not previously proved the fact upon other grounds, the phenomena which we have here observed, the contradictions, variations, and numerous indications of a more advanced state of civil and religious development,—would be sufficient to satisfy us that it must have been written in a different age from that in which the other four books, generally, of the Pentateuch were written, and in a much later day.

861. Upon this point RIEHM observes, p.78 :—

The different character of the Deuteronomistic laws from the legislation of the earlier books, and the numerous, and in part important, differences between them, make it impossible to assume that one man should have delivered the earlier, as well as the Deuteronomistic, laws. So that, if the earlier books of the Pentateuch, in the form in which they have reached us, had been written by Moses-which I certainly cannot assume, while fully recognising that many laws entirely, and others at least as to their substance, (though not as to their present form,) are derived from Moses,—yet Deuteronomy, certainly, is composed by another man, living in a considerably later age. In particular, the complete alteration of the law about tithes and firstlings compels us to this conclusion; for, assuredly, one and the same lawgiver could not have laid down such different directions for the application of the selfsame holy gifts. We cannot help ourselves with the assumption, (in order to maintain the Mosaic origin of the whole Pentateuch,) that Moses himself in the land of Moab, shortly before his death, and the passage of the people over the Jordan, had so changed the laws about those institutions, as well as some others, that they might become more suited to the new relations, into which the people stepped through the possession of Canaan. For, as is quite obvious with respect to the tithe-arrangement, these institutions of the old legislation were themselves already calculated for the people settled in the holy land, and needed at that time no change. [Besides which, it could hardly be supposed that Moses, in his last

address, would change completely these earlier laws, which Jehovah Himself had issued only a few months previously.]

862. If we now proceed to sum up the 'signs of time,' which we have observed in the course of our examination, we may state the conclusions to which they would lead us, as follows:

(i) Deuteronomy was written after the Elohistic and Jehovistic portions of the other four books, since reference is made throughout to matters of fact related in them, and expressly to the laws about leprosy (556).

(ii) Hence it was written (473.xiv,xv,) after the times of Samuel and David; and this is further confirmed by the fact that the laws referring to the kingdom (709) seem not to have been known to Samuel, 1S.viii.6-18, nor to the later writer of Samuel's doings.

(iii) The mention of the kingdom in xvii.14-20, with the distinct reference to the dangers likely to arise to the State from the king multiplying to himself' wives,' and 'silver and gold,' and 'horses,' implies that it was written after the age of Solomon; and this is confirmed by the very frequent references to the place which Jehovah would choose,' that is, Jerusalem and the Temple.

(iv) The recognition of the independence of Edom (593) carries down its composition to the time of their complete liberation from the control of the kings of Judah in the reign of Ahaz.

(v) It was written after the time of Hezekiah's Reformation (637–648), when the high places were removed, which the former kings of Judah, even the best of them, had freely permitted.

Upon this point KUENEN observes, p.150:

The Reformation of Hezekiah, as well as that of Josiah, had in view the putting down of idolatry, and the centralisation of public worship. Both, therefore, agree in their object with that of the Deuteronomistic legislation. This latter preceded the reformation of Josiah. Did it also that of Hezekiah?

We must answer this question in the negative:

(i) Because the oldest record about Hezekiah's Reformation makes no mention whatever of its legislative foundation, whereas it is quite otherwise in the case of Josiah ;

(ii) Because Hezekiah's contemporaries, Isaiah and Micah, give no sign of knowing the book of Deuteronomy, which is inexplicable, in case it had exercised so very important an influence upon their lifetime.

(vi) It was written after the Captivity of the Ten Tribes, in the sixth year of Hezekiah's reign; since the sorrows of that event are evidently referred to (608) as matters which were well known, but which now were things of the past.

(vii) It was written after the great spread in Judah, in Manasseh's time, of the worship of the 'sun and moon and the host of heaven' (605).

(viii) It was written before the time of Josiah's Reformation, since the words ascribed to Huldah (574.v) expressly refer to it, and, indeed, there can be little doubt (570–1) that this book, whether alone or with the other books, was that found in the Temple by Hilkiah, and was the direct cause of that Reformation.

(ix) Hence it can scarcely be doubted that the book of Deuteronomy was written, either in the latter part of Manasseh's reign, or in the early part of Josiah's.

863. EWALD, RIEHM, BLEEK, KUENEN, and others, are of opinion that the most probable supposition is that the book was written in the latter part of Manasseh's reign; DE WETTE, VON BOHLEN, KNOBEL, &c. (with whom we agree, for reasons which shall be presently stated), place its composition in the reign of Josiah. The difference in this point of detail is, of course, inconsiderable, and of no importance whatever with reference to the main question, whether or not this book of Deuteronomy was written by Moses. The above able critics may vary within a limit of thirty or forty years in fixing the precise date of its composition; but they are all agreed in assigning it to the same later period of Jewish history; and this, indeed, may be ranked among the most certain results of modern scientific Biblical criticism.

864. RIEHM, p.98-105, fixes the age of the Deuteronomist,

SS