ON THE HISTORIC CHARACTER OF THE

BOOKS OF MOSES.

IN A LETTER TO A TEACHER OF A BIBLE CLASS.

You tell me, my dear W., that you have been troubled in your class by enquiries that arise from the book on the Pentateuch, which is now occasioning a little stir, having been talked of in their hearing. The book does not contain much to trouble those who have thought a little on the subject on which it treats-it need not trouble you it is however, as you say, very desirable that if you refer to the subject at all, you should say what may prove a correct reply to the questions arising, and may guard your class against the scepticism and unbelief which the book is adapted to awaken and foster. I readily, therefore, comply with your request, and offer, if not a reply to the book, such observations as may afford you help in the endeavours you deem yourself called upon to make towards checking its mischievous tendency.

The objections which the book urges against the historic character, in other words against the truth, of the records contained in the five books usually attributed to Moses, range over a very narrow and exclusive field. Many of the circumstances in the Pentateuch are, it is said, improbable, some of them impossible. This seems to be the chief allegation which the book in question makes and repeats. Of course, the objection would be sufficient if it were true. Would it not, however, be wiser and more satisfactory to enquiring minds to get a little beyond the supposed probability or possibility of these circumstances? The books which state these circumstances are here. They have been in existence from a time far beyond that to which any other history can be traced. The people of whose origin and early annals they give the account are with us; still presenting the same peculiarities in all that is possible in their dispersed condition, which distinguished them from the first: and among their most cherished traditions, they maintain the most vivid remembrance of the peculiarities which are not now possible to them, and they still nurse a very strong affection for these peculiarities. How can this people be all that thus distinguishes them, if the Mosaic record is to be given up as untrue? Take, for example, their religious observances. The expense those observances involve; the self-denial they impose; their consistency, and their universal and long-continued prevalence, make it impossible to assign them to the freaks of an early superstition, or the influence of a gorgeous

fiction. These observances were what they are now more than eighteen centuries ago. They were not new then. Ages before had been familiar with them.

The historic character of the Books of Moses seems to be involved in these observances and traditions. Those books give at least a probable account of the origin to which, severally, these observances are to be attributed. The account is consistent. It has about it, to say the least, a great deal of verisimilitude; and the facts or fictions which it records, are of a kind which could not be invented after the race it speaks of had become a separate people.

Considerations of this kind may not be regarded as sufficient to invalidate objections to the historic character of books full of fiction and fable; they are, however, worthy of some attention, in relation to a book which has so long and so widely been taken as a veritable history. You, at all events, may urge them. If the Mosaic record be not historic, how can we explain and account for the belief, and the practices which unquestionably have prevailed among the Jews for ages, the suppression of which has baffled all the efforts both of ridicule and persecution?

If you attempt to meet the objections urged, you must take care that you do not concede too much. For example-It is said that six hundred thousand strong men, or men in the vigour of life, as the expression translated able to go forth to war, Num. 1. 45. may mean, with the much larger multitude implied in that number of fighting men, together with their flocks and herds, could not, within the brief period indicated in Exodus xiii. have been collected at any one place within the district of Egypt where they lived, so as to set forth on their march not even leaving one of their number behind. To this, some have replied, that the Hebrew mode of writing numbers was specially liable to error in the numerous transcriptions of the text, ere it can have come to us. It has been said, "We need not suppose so large a number to have left Egypt." I heard it somewhat adventurously added the other day, "Reduce the six hundred thousand to six thousand my faith in the historic character of the writings of Moses is not thereby shaken."

I should tremble for the effect of your thus replying to the objection. There is force certainly, very much force, in the suggestion of a special liability to error in transcribing Hebrew numbers. A few examples will make this plain. Gimel, the third letter of the alphabet, represents 3. Nun, a letter very much resembling Gimel Daleth, represents 4. Resch, greatly like He, stands for 5. Cheth, almost the same, for 8.

in form, represents 50. it, represents 200.

Vau, represents 6. Zain, easily mistaken for a Vau, represents 7. Hundreds, thousands, &c., are indicated by slight marks over certain letters resembling the accents which in our spelling books and dictionaries mark particular syllables. Thus, the number 6 above, might become 600 or 6,000, &c., according to the number of these slight marks. Everybody will see that such a mode of notation is exceedingly open to mistake, especially with mere mechanical and ignorant copyers.

But whatever force there may be in this consideration, the numbers in the Pentateuch are often written in words at length; they are for the most consistent throughout; and since they agree generally with what are found in the Samaritan and Septuagint versions, they must have been in existence as we have them when those versions were made. A reduction of numbers in one case, moreover, will involve the necessity of a similar reduction in other cases; so that if one difficulty be met, another is created. Six thousand men able to go forth to war, instead of six hundred thousand, will bring the whole number of the Israelites so low as to awaken questions in reference to such promises as those in Gen. XI. 16., xxxii. 12.

You may more effectively deal with the objection by requiring that he who urges it, should be certain of his facts, or supposed facts. He alleges that a notice given to upwards of two millions of people (for that no doubt was the number of the Israelites) inhabiting an extended district, could not have collected them with all their possessions at Rameses between the morning and evening of one day, so that they should be ready by the next day-dawn to set forth on the march to Succoth; and farther, as it seems to be reported they did set forth. Very well. In what part of the history does Moses record what the objector has supposed? The people must have been anticipating their departure from Egypt from the date of the first of the ten plagues, which humbled the haughty monarch's heart. The contest between that monarch and Moses lasted, for aught that appears in the history, for weeks, perhaps for months. The immediate preparation for setting out, certainly does not date later than the intimations given to Moses of the last and most terrible plague. The history knows nothing of a notice given to two millions of people living over an extended district, in a morning, of their assembling by the same evening at Rameses, celebrating their passover, and being driven out of the land, with their old and their young, their flocks and their herds, and all their moveables, before dawn next morning. If, in the argument that may be found needful, you are not to assume anything, neither may the objector. Ground must be made good as you proceed. Objections are worth

nothing if they rest on mere suppositions, and obviously the objection from the time between the notice, (Exod. xI. 45.) and the event, (Exod. XII. 30, 39.) has nothing better than supposition to

sustain it.

The number of Israelites escaping from Egypt, according to the narrative, furnishes other objections; and among them the two following are mentioned in your note. How could nearly two millions and a half of people of all ages, with large flocks, herds, and other property, pass through the Red Sea in one night; the thousands able to go forth to war, harnessed, or, as the margin of our Bibles indicates that word may be rendered, by five abreast? How, moreover, could so vast a multitude be gathered and addressed at the door of the Tabernacle, a space within which not twenty thousand, to say nothing of two millions, could stand?

In answering the first of these questions, you might feel yourself entitled to fall back upon the miraculous character of the whole passage of the Red Sea : but probably this may not be held to furnish a sufficient reply. Take care, then, I repeat, against the objector's assuming more than appears in the record. Where does he find that the passage through the Red Sea was effected in one night? The expressions Exod. xiv. 13, 14, certainly do not affirm this. I do not say that the passage was not effected in one night. I am not told in the narrative how long it occupied; so that on that point, I say nothing. But he who says the narrative is untrustworthy, because so rapid a passage is impossible, must show chapter and verse for this alleged rapidity.

The second question scarcely deserves a reply. Everybody knows that the meeting of a people's representatives is called, in common language, the meeting of the people. What is said to these representatives, is said to all. The people of Birmingham met the other day to take proceedings in relation to the Distress in Lancashire,and those proceedings are described as the proceedings of the people of that flourishing town in relation to the matter brought forward. Who will think a hundred years hence of objecting to a narrative of what was done, that it cannot be historically true because the Town Hall was not large enough to contain a twentieth-part of the people of Birmingham? Royal proclamations, address in certain cases all Her Majesty's loyal subjects; who will dream of those subjects, all and every of them, having assembled at Westminster or Windsor, because it shall be written in some future record that the Queen addressed the whole body of her people?

The sojourn in the wilderness for so many years is spoken of as requiring for the ritual prescribed to the people, flocks and herds

utterly beyond the capacity of the "wilderness," even in its most fertile districts, to sustain. Whence, it is asked, were the myriads of passover lambs, and lambs for daily sacrifice obtained? and how were they supported year after year? You may with great propriety meet this enquiry with another. Where does it appear that the Israelites kept the passover, and offered their morning and evening lambs during the wilderness sojourn? I do not say that they did not, but from several circumstances in the narrative, their having done so seems to me very improbable. I might insist on the circumstance, so frequently repeated in the precepts of the ritual, that the thing to be done is expressly required for the time when they should have come to the land which the Lord should give them. I might quote from the ritual itself, obvious indications that it was intended rather for a settled abode than for desert wanderings, see Exodus xxi. 5, 6; xxii. 5, 6.; Leviticus xxiii. 9-14. Instead however of dwelling on these particulars, I would rather trace the epochs, if they may be so called, of the wilderness sojourn. Within less than two years after the people had left Egypt, their whole ritual was prescribed. This covers the narrative from Exodus xv. to Numbers xii. Numbers xiii. and xiv., contain the account of the spies sent to search out the land; their report; the disobedience of the people; and the sentence to the long wanderings by which that disobedience was punished. Precepts are added in Numbers xv. which, as appears from verse 2, and other parts of the chapter, were intended to guide the people when they should be come to the land of their habitations. Between these precepts and chapter xvi., a gap occurs in the history of eighteen years or more, during which, either as to the ritual which had been but recently completed, or as to anything else, we know positively nothing. Numbers xvi. and xvii. contain an account of certain events which issued in the firmer establishment of the impugned authority of Moses and Aaron in their respective offices, together with certain directions in chapters xviii. and xix., some of which one would imagine would scarcely have been deemed necessary if the ritual had been observed during the gap which has been mentioned.

Before the events of the next chapter, another gap of about twenty years occurs. The people were soon to enter upon their promised inheritance, Aaron dies, and is succeeded by Eleazar. The wars and victories begin, which were to give the people their land, and again ritual precepts are given, which one would imagine, would not have been required if the observances prescribed during the second year after the escape from Egypt had been kept up among the people through the thirty-eight years that had rolled over.