Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/34

would therefore not only admit nothing that was contradictory, but would erase anything contradictory that might have found its way in before. The liberty to make additions does not appear to me to be either greater, or more involved in difficulties, than that to make particular erasures.” And on the supposed discrepancies in the historical accounts, C. v. Lengerke himself says: “The discrepancies which some critics have discovered in the historical portions of Deuteronomy, as compared with the earlier books, have really no existence.” Throughout, in fact, the pretended contradictions have for the most part been introduced into the biblical text by the critics themselves, and have so little to sustain them in the narrative itself, that on closer research they resolve themselves into mere appearance, and the differences can for the most part be easily explained. — The result is just the same in the case of the repetitions of the same historical events, which have been regarded as legendary reduplications of things that occurred but once. There are only two miraculous occurrences mentioned in the Mosaic era which are said to have been repeated; only two cases, therefore, in which it is possible to place the repetition to the account of legendary fiction: viz., the feeding with quails, and bringing of water from a rock. But both of these are of such a character that the appearance of identity vanishes entirely before the distinctness of the historical accounts, and the differences in the attendant circumstances. The first feeding with quails took place in the desert of Sin, before the arrival of the Israelites at Sinai, in the second month of the first year; the second occurred after their departure from Sinai, in the second month of the second year, at the so-called graves of lust. The latter was sent as a judgment or plague, which brought the murmurers into the graves of their lust; the former merely supplied the deficiency of animal food. The water was brought from the rock the first time in Rephidim, during the first year of their journey, at a spot which was called in consequence Massah and Meribah; the second time, at Kadesh, in the fortieth year, — and on this occasion Moses and Aaron sinned so grievously that they were not allowed to enter Canaan.
It is apparently different with the historical contents of the book of Genesis. If Genesis was written by Moses, even between the history of the patriarchs and the time of Moses there is an interval of four or five centuries, in which the tradition