APPENDIX, No III.

On the Authenticity and Antiquity of the Pentateuch.

AMONG the points which have been confessedly proved already, beyond the doubt of any reasonable man, I must be allowed to reckon the antiquity and authenticity of the Pentateuch. "Common sense requires that every thing proposed to the understanding, should be accompanied with such proof as the nature of it can furnish. He who requires more, is guilty of absurdity; he who requires less, of rashness." any part of the premises on which the argument depends, may not appear to be quite overlooked, I will briefly show that these demands of Bolingbroke are in the present instance strictly satisfied.

That

The authenticity has been proved *, first, by a comparison of the style of the

* See an excellent pamphlet, "The Authenticity of the Five Books of Moses vindicated," by Bishop Marsh.

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early historical books with that of the rest of the Old Testament. "No language continues during many centuries in the same state of cultivation; and the Hebrew, like other tongues, passed through the several stages of infancy, youth, manhood, and old age. If, therefore, on comparison, the several parts of the Hebrew Bible are found to differ not only in regard to style, but also in regard to character and cultivation of language; if the one discovers the golden, another the silver, a third the brazen, a fourth the iron age; we have strong internal marks of their having been composed at different and distant periods. No classical scholar, independently of the Grecian history, would believe that the poems ascribed to Homer were written in the age of Demosthenes, the orations of Demos. thenes in the time of Origen, or the commentaries of Origen in the days of Lascaris and Chrysoloras. For the very same rea son, it is certain that the five books ascribed to Moses were not written in the time of David, the Psalms of David in the age of Isaiah, nor the prophecies of Isaiah in the time of Malachi. But as the Hebrew ceased to be the living language of

the Jews during the Babylonish captivity, the book of Malachi could not have been written much after that period; before that period, therefore, were written the prophecies of Isaiah, still earlier the Psalms of David, and much earlier than these the books which are ascribed to Moses*.

The difference of style, here argued, upon, is of course a subject of very nice and critical observation. The most popu→ lar proof of it is the remarkable simplicity which pervades the narrative part of the Pentateuch, and is a characteristic, in all countries, of the infancy of literature. He rodotus, the oldest profane historian of whom we have any considerable remains, bears a stronger resemblance to Moses in this respect than is to be found between any two other authors of a different age and country. Expressions and idioms also occur in the Pentateuch, which had become obsolete as early as the time of David. What is still more decisive, is the use of Egyptian words, confirming the place of birth and education of the writer; and used to

Marsh, p. 6 and 14.

express things which subsequent authors expressed, as might be expected, in their native Hebrew.

The second and most powerful argument is derived from the unanimous consent of the Jews, who undeniably ascribed to Moses the books in question, from the period of their conquest of Palestine and first observance of the law, as long as they continued to be a people. "We are re

duced, therefore, to this dilemma; to acknowledge, either that these laws were actually delivered by Moses, or that a whole nation, during fifteen hundred years, groaned under the weight of an imposture without once detecting, or even suspecting the fraud*." If we dispute the evidence of history so clear as this, we may at once throw off the mask, and reject the belief of all facts with which we are not made acquainted by personal observation. The only narrative we possess of any part of the siege of Troy, is that of a poet who lived above two hundred years after the supposed events, and whose poems were not collect

ed, or, as some conjecture, not even committed to writing, till three hundred years later. That this poetical narrative abounds with inconsistencies and improbabilities which render it utterly undeserving of historical credit, has been shown not more ingeniously than satisfactorily*. And yet

the idea of rejecting on that account, the concurrent testimony of antiquity, which tells us that Troy was taken by an armament fitted out from Greece, has been always justly treated as a learned delirium. Why is this, but because the concurrent testimony of successive generations, from the supposed event to the time we dispute about it, is exactly the sort of evidence which we want, and which the case allows? so that to require more, becomes, as Bolingbroke justly says, absurd.

Against the whole weight of this evidence it is merely alleged, that a few expressions and passages are found in the Pentateuch which must have been written after the time of Moses: such as that a city which was originally called Laish, but

* Bryant's Treatise on the Siege of Troy.