User:TomS TDotO/Hexateuch
The Hexateuch According to the Revised Version Arranged in its Constituent Documents By Members of the Society of Historical Theology, Oxford Edited by J. Estlin Carpenter and G. Harford-Battersby London, New York and Bombay: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1900 Volume 1: Introduction and Tabular Appendices page 21 CHAPTER III SIGNS OF POST-MOSAIC DATE The byways of both Jewish and Christian literature are not without traces of occasional departure from the customary view. In the absence of critical method the reasons for divergence might at first have no other basis than legend or doctrinal dislike; until the attention of scholars was slowly and hesitatingly called to facts which appeared inconsistent with the received tradition, and the search was at length fairly begun for the true principles of literary and historical inquirya. 1. Before the first century of our era ran out, the apocryphal work known as the Fourth Book of Ezrab related a strange story which showed how deep an impression had been made by the tradition of Ezra's literary labours. The law had been burned, and Ezra prayed for the gift of holy spirit that he might write anew all that had happened in the world since the beginning 2 Esdr 1421... He was directed to take with him five men, and they went forth into the field. There on the next day he heard a voice bidding him open his mouth, and drink what was given him. It was a draught like fire, so that his heart poured forth understanding and for forty days he dictated to his companions, who needed food only at night, till ninety-four books were complete. These were divided into twenty-four, the former number of the Hebrew scriptures, with seventy new ones; and Ezra was thus represented as the great restorer of a lost literature. The tale was not without its influence on later writers. Irenaeus represents a moderate form of it in ascribing to Ezra the inspired rearrangement of the words of earlier prophets and the re-establishment of the Mosaic legislationc. Clement of Alexandria affirms that by the exercise of prophecy Ezra restored again the whole of the ancient Scripturesd, Tertullian, arguing that Noah preserved through the Deluge the memory of the book of Enoch his great-grandfather, asserts that even if it had been destroyed by the violence of the flood he could have renewed it by the inspiration of the Spirit, as Ezra was generally admitted to have done in the case of the entire Jewish literaturee. After two centuries more Jerome was equally willing to speak of Moses as the author of the Pentateuch or Ezra as its renewerf. This view did not of course affect the question of a Mosaic origin. But this was early called in question both within and without the Church. The Jewish sect of Nasareans were said by John of Damascus in the eighth century to have asserted that the Pentateuch was not by Mosesg. The author of the Clementine homilies assumed that Moses had promulgated a See the catena in Holzinger's Einleitung i § 6 p 25 ; Westphal Sources du Pentateuque i. b Commonly ascribed to the reign of Domitian. c Adv Haer iii 21. d Strom i 22. e De Cult Fem 3. f 'Sive Moysen dicere volueris auctorem Pentateuchi, sive Esdram eiusdem instauratorem operis non recuse' Adv Helvid (de Perpetua Virginitate B Mariae) 7. g De Haer 19. Cp Epiphan Adv Haer i 18, and Dict of Christ Biography, 'Nasaraei.'
page 22 his teaching orally, and communicated the law to seventy elders. They in their turn departed from the founder's intention by reducing it to writing, but even their work had undergone so many vicissitudes of destruction and renewal, that the form in which the Church received it stood at many removes from the original injunctions of its first authora. These casual speculations were plainly founded on grounds of doctrine or usage, and had no genuine critical base. The only contribution towards a real historic criticism which this age affords, is to be found in Jerome's identification of the law-book of Josiah with Deuteronomyb. 2. The first beginnings of criticism came from the Spanish Rabbis. The Mosaic convention was so deeply impressed on the life and thought of Israel, that it could only be questioned under a veil of the most cautious reserve. Nevertheless a certain Isaac, sometimes identified with Isaac ben Jasos (otherwise known as Jischaki) of Toledo, A D 982-1057, pointed out that Gen 3631 must be later than the foundation of the Hebrew monarchy, and proposed to assign the chapter in its present form to the age of Jehoshaphat. Ibn Ezra (1088-1167) through whom alone Isaac's criticism reaches us, was himself prepared to proceed much further. To the words 'beyond Jordan' in Deut i1 he attached this mysterious commentary: 'and if thou understandest the mystery of the twelve; and Moses wrote; and the Canaanite was then in the land; in the mount of Yahweh it shall he provided; also behold his bed was a bedstead of iron,—thou shalt discern the truth.' The riddles are most of them plain for all to read. Of the first, however, more than one solution is possible. The mystery or 'secret of the twelve' seems most appropriately explained of the twelve verses of Deut 34 which describe the death of Moses. It has also been identified with the twelve curses which the Levites were to recite on Gerizim 2715-26, or the twelve stones of which (said the Rabbis) the altar on Ebal was built 274. Josh 830. As the whole law was to be written on these stones, it must have been far less copious than the present Pentateuch. The citation 'and Moses wrote,' derived from Deut 31', is apparently the statement of another person. The allusion to the Canaanite Gen 126 is only intelligible when the Canaanites had ceased (as in Solomon's reign) to be a distinctive portion of the population. The proverb in 2214 was understood to refer to the 'mount of Yahweh' or Temple-mountain (cp Moriah 2), and again pointed to the age of Solomon at the earliest. Lastly the 'bedstead' of Og Deut 311 is specified as an interesting relic of a vanished race; but how is such a description consistent with the view that Moses is relating the victory of a few months (or weeks) before? These passages, therefore, clearly proved the existence of post-Mosaic additions or expansions in the Five Books. 3. The hints of Ibn Ezra remained long unfruitful. No teacher of the Synagogue was found to venture further along his perilous pathc. But with the advent of the sixteenth century the new learning began to work upon men's minds. Already in 1520 Carlstadt published at Wittenberg an essay concerning the canonical scriptures, in which he observed that as the style of narration after the death of Moses remained unchanged, it was a defensible view that Moses was not the author of the Five Books. On the other hand the definite ascription of writing to Moses and Joshua Deut 319.. Josh 2426, and the story of the discovery of the law-book under Josiah 2 Kings 22, a Clem Horn iii 47. b Comm in Ezek i1. c A word should perhaps be said of the learned Isaac Abravnnel (Abarbanel) who died at Venice in 1509, after a life of romantic vicissitude which proved not inconsistent with copious literary production. He expounded the Pentateuch, but his most distinguished work was a commentary on the 'Prophetae Priores,' the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. In the preface to Joshua he advocated a theory of the composition of the books out of collections of documents in which public scribes from time to time recorded important events. The theory of archivists was destined to gain some prominence afterwards, at the hands of Du Maes; and is expressly cited by Father Simon (Critical History of the OT, 1683) chap ii. Cp chap IV 1<greek>delta</greek>.
page 23 rendered it impossible to attribute them to Ezra. Their real author, therefore, remained obscure. Luther, who maintained a highly independent position towards the ecclesiastical tradition about scripture, asked what it mattered if Moses had not himself written the Pentateuch, and pointed, like R Isaac, to the allusion to the monarchy in Gen 3631. Catholic scholars, also, began to call attention to neglected facts. Andrew du Maes, a Flemish priest, published a commentary on Joshua in 1570 at Antwerp. He boldly regarded the book as part of a series of records extending through Judges, Samuel, and Kings, which were arranged out of previous materials by some man of piety and learning like Ezra or one of his contemporaries, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. He cited the reference to the Book of Jashar Josh 1013 as the mark of a later writer producing ancient testimony in confirmation of what had been lost in dim antiquity. He pointed to the use of the name Dan in 1947 and Gen 1414 as evidence of composition long after the days of Moses and Joshua; and drew a similar conclusion with respect to the Pentateuch from Josh 1415. If Caleb's family gave the name Hebron to a city which was formerly called Kiriath-arba, then the references to Hebron in the previous books (eg Gen 1318 232 19 3527 3714 Num 1322) must be all post-Mosaic. The Jesuit theologians followed along the same lines. The Spanish Bento Pereiraa ranged himself with Du Maes, quoting his words though not his name. A quarter of a century later another Fleming, Jacques Bonfrere, argued that if Joshua made additions to the sacred law Josh 2426, there could be no objection to the view that the Pentateuch had received insertions from a later hand. Such passages, like the reference to the Danite conquest in Josh 1947, might have been appended by Samuel or Ezra. Nor were the Reformers of Holland less willing to acknowledge post-Mosaic material than the members of the Society of Jesus. The learned Episcopius, who died at Leyden in 1643, expressed his beliefb that not only had the last six verses of Deuteronomy been added by Joshua or Eleazar, but a good many others also had been inserted here and there by Ezra (i e in Deut), as well as throughout the other books, examples being found in Num 123 Gen 3519 487 aliaque complura. a In commentaries published at Lyons, 1594-1600. b Institut Theol III v i, Amsterdam, 1650.