Bunsen's Opinion on the Subject.

829

rear of the people (Deut. xxv. 18), and perhaps by the statement (Num. xi. 31) that the quails fell about the camp a day's journey each way. That the journey after leaving Sinai must have been for a time oppressive and discouraging, would appear from the aspect of the country, and is distinctly declared in the narrative. Twice the people complained bitterly-at Taberah and Kibroth Hattaavah-and only the terrific judgments of God quelled their murmurings. But when they reached the north-eastern portion of the wilderness, it may be safely assumed that they would spread over the comparatively arable country, and would, with the supernatural aid still continued to them, find a tolerable subsistence.

Now it has been truly remarked by Mr Drew, that "we find a correspondence absolutely perfect between the details of the narrative and the respective localities of the peninsula to which they are assigned. Those stages of the journey where the people are represented as suffering and exhausted in their enterprise, and consequently as desirous to abandon it, are even now recognised as just the distressing stages in a route which, through a considerable portion of it, would not entail upon them excessive fatigue, or involve them in unbearable privations. When the history alludes to supernatural help, it represents the people as being then in a position where such helps would evidently be required for such a multitude.*

In view of this accuracy of the narrative, so far as it can be traced; of all the testimony to be gathered from the Bible concerning the occupancy of that region; of the known and established facts relating to its present and former condition, taken in connection with similar changes in other once fertile countries; and of the circumstances of the journey as represented in the narrative, including the divine superintendence, -we have no hesitation in declaring the objection to be unsustained.

We cannot better close this branch of the subject than with the words of Bunsen, who, while boldly rejecting all the supernatural from the narrative, is therefore the more likely to be heard when he, with equal boldness, declares the objection to be null and void. He grants that in the present condition of the peninsula the transaction would be an impossibility. "But wherefore? Because for thousands of years nature has pursued the work of destruction unhindered, washing away the productive soil by great torrents of rain, and filling up the rivulets with earth and sand; while a careful husbandry might, by easy methods, create a paradise almost everywhere in this land. Terraces protect cultivated places on the declivities; canals

* Drew's Examination, p. 47.

prevent the formation of bogs; artificial ponds, in high enclosed valleys, secure the means of artificial irrigation. In this manner was Fayoum a paradise; so South Arabia, in the old kingdom of Himjar. Both are now desolate. Is therefore the history of Lake Moeris and the description by Strabo and Herodotus of the inexpressible prosperity of that Egyptian tract a fable; or the account of the blooming kingdom of Lokman in Arabia a fiction? Certainly not for our time, in which the remains of both establishments have been brought to light. But the Sinaitic peninsula contained Egyptian colonies already, fifteen hundred years before Moses; he found there comfort and civilisation. Nor must we forget the antiquity of commerce on the water and by caravans, Abu Selimeh on the Red Sea was an excellent harbour; Lepsius has set forth the importance of this place in connection with the journey of the Israelites. Ezion-geber, also, was a half-way station for caravans and for the naval trade for the Arabian world. There was easy intercourse with the opposite coast of Arabia on the Aelanitic Gulf. The Israelites went out not poor, as is shewn by many allusions to the jewels they carried. Moreover, their herds were an inexhaustible treasure, both for sustenance and for traffic. Finally, we forget that a nation so vigorous, so accustomed to heat and toil, knew how to help themselves. They cannot create water where it is not, but they can make pure well-water out of a boggy pool. In short, we have only to free ourselves from the unthinking habits of the common belief in miracles, in order to grasp with our hands the groundlessness of the objections of a shallow criticism.”*

(iv.) It is asserted that the Pentateuch contains "notices historical, geographical, archæological, and explanatory, implying a post-Mosaic time and writer."

On this portion of the subject three things are noteworthy : first, the exceedingly small number of passages that can be forced into the service; second, the singular and inconsistent pertinacity with which the objectors refuse to make any allowance for possible changes, in the course of centuries, by accidental corruption or intentional revision; and, third, the slight occasion which is found by the advocates of Moses to suppose a change of text,-the Rabbins admitting some eighteen interpolations; Jahn, ten or twelve; Witsius, four; Hengstenberg, apparently none.

In our judgment, the strenuousness with which Hengstenberg rejects the idea of solving any difficulty on the ground of a possible or probable change of text is uncalled for; and the resistance made to it by such writers as Davidson and Colenso

* Bunsen's Bibelwerk, ii., Abtheilung, i., Thiel, p, 163.

Notices supposed to Prove Post-Mosaic Authorship. 831

is inconsistent alike with all the antecedent probabilities of the
case and with well-known facts in the history of the New Tes-
tament text. In the case of the New Testament, the recovery
of early manuscripts enables us to prove these things; while
in the Old Testament, unfortunately, we cannot to any great
extent go back of the Masoretic recension. Such minor addi-
tions and alterations in the lapse of time are intrinsically
probable. They might take place by the error of transcribers,
or by the incorporation of a marginal note into the text.*
Even the critics are sometimes obliged to assume such changes
in order to sustain their objections; as when Thenius would
arbitrarily change (2 Sam. xxiv. 6, ) into , and
Gesenius and others, on the sole guidance of the Vulgate, into

They might be intentionally introduced by authorised
persons, as changes required for understanding the text, or for
the completeness of the narrative. One such addition is the
account of Moses's death. That such completions of the narra-
tive should have been made is an entirely admissible supposi-
tion, in view of the facts: (1.) that writings so ancient would
require it; (2) that there continued to exist till the close of
the canon, a class of men like Samuel and Ezra, claiming and
admitted to stand on the same plane of inspired authority with
the original writer. It is rendered a probable supposition, first
by actual statements in the Scriptures concerning Ezra and his
work. He is pointedly described as not only "the scribe"
(Neh. viii. 1, 4; xii. 26); he is "the scribe, even the scribe of
the words of the commandments of the Lord and of his statutes
to Israel" (Ez. vii. 11), "a scribe of the law of the God of
heaven" (ver. 12, 21), "a ready scribe in the law of Moses"
(ver. 6); he had prepared his heart to seek the law of the
Lord and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judg-
ments" (ver. 10); the royal decree recognised his function "to
teach the laws of his God to them that know them not " (ver.
25); and he most diligently read and explained to the people
the book of the law of Moses," day after day (Neh. viii. 1–5,
8, 18). These are weighty as well as trustworthy statements.t
Concurrent with these statements, secondly, is the Rabbinic
tradition (invested, as usual, with marvellous circumstances),
declaring his eminent services in furnishing a corrected edition
of the Scriptures. While we cannot, with the great body of
the Christian fathers, accept all the embellishments, neither

* Thus Davidson supposes such a process in Isa. vii. 17 (Bib. Criticism, vol.
i. p. 68), while in the New Testament, e. g. John v. 4 and part of 3 are generally
regarded, on manuscript grounds, as interpolations. See a discussion of the
subject of changes of text in Davidson's work just cited,

† See Lord Hervey's Article on Ezra in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.
See references in Winer's Realwörterbuch.

are we called upon to doubt the historic foundation of the tradition. Even Dr Davidson could say, in 1853, "nor is the historic basis of the view that Ezra bore a leading part in collecting and revising the sacred books shaken by the fabulous circumstances in the writings of the early fathers, in passages of the Talmud, and in later Jewish authors."* Winer also declares it to be "entirely supposable that such a man performed many services for religious restoration and civil regulation, of which the written tradition gives no account."+ And Stuart well says, in speaking of him and his associates :—“ All Rabbinic antiquity takes for granted that in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah there was a select body of men in Judea who were named the Great Synagogue, and who had much to do with arranging the Jewish Scriptures, making provision for their circulation, and furnishing the best text to be had."‡

While therefore we shall have but slight occasion to resort to the supposition of any changes of the text, we will not, in every instance, be debarred from availing ourselves of a supposed occurrence, which is not only probable in the nature of the case, but almost inevitable in fact, which is authorised by the general statements of Scripture, and by the special deliverances of antiquity, and which finds reasonable support in the individual instances.

Here, however, let us insist upon a right apprehension of the issue and the argument. Our position is simply this an attested fact of authorship being encountered by certain difficulties, we meet those difficulties with an explanation warranted both by general principles and by special grounds. This being the case, it is entirely unworthy in Dr Davidson to say of such an explanation, "it is a mere hypothesis framed to evade the difficulty lying in the way of an assumed authorship."§ The authorship is not "assumed," but sustained by testimony, all on one side; the mode of explanation is not " mere hypothesis," but is countenanced by general probabilities and justified in individual applications. The method of reasoning is strictly judicial.

We proceed to the passages alleged in proof of a later composition. Gen. xii. 6, "And the Canaanite was then in the land;" xiii. 7, "And the Canaanite and the Perizzite then dwelled in the land." These words, says Davidson, obviously imply that, when the writer lived, they had been expelled. But (1), as Kalisch shews, they never were entirely extirpated, and therefore no Hebrew writer could, at any period of the

* Davidson's Biblical Criticism, vol. i. p. 103.
+ Winer's Realwörterbuch, i. p. 349.

Stuart on the Old Testament, p. 82.

§ Davidson's Introduction, vol. i. p. 6.

Notices Supposed to Prove Post-Mosaic Authorship. 833

commonwealth, speak of their occupancy as a bygone epoch (see 1 Kings ix. 20, 21; Ezek. ix. 1). (2.) Even if we lay a special emphasis on the word then, it does not necessitate supplying the ellipsis "though not now;" it may equally well imply "though not at some previous date," or "though it was not to continue," or, simply and absolutely, it may chronicle a fact which gave significance to the faith of Abraham. (3.) We have before us three explanations, either of which removes all difficulty from Gen. xii. 6: (a) Knobel's.-that not the whole Canaanitish people, but the single tribe of that name, which in the time of Moses dwelt by the sea and on the Jordan, in the time of Abraham still dwelt in the land, in its very interior, at Sichem; (b) Kalisch's,-that the Canaanites already dwelt there, having migrated from the south; (c) Delitzsch's,—that the "then" contains no reference to the time of the narrator, but to a subsequent change involved in the promise (ver. 7) now made to Abraham. Substantially this last is Turner's view (so Gerlach, after Chrysostom), that the remark illustrates Abraham's faith, who believed that God would give that land to his posterity although the Canaanite was then (at that very time) in the land. This is, in our apprehension, the simple and correct explanation. In the other instance (Gen. xiii. 7), the remark is necessary to explain the full state of the case in the strife between the herdsmen of Lot and Abraham,-the insufficiency of pasturage, or (as some would say) the dangers of strife enhanced by the fact that then, at this same time, the Canaanite and Perizzite were still in the land. The simple, absolute emphasis is sufficient; though, if we must find a relative emphasis, we are as much at liberty to understand it already as still, which is virtually Davidson's interpretation. The passages must be given up.

"In Kirjath Arba, the same is Hebron" (Gen. xxiii. 2, xxxv. 27). The name Hebron is pronounced to be posterior to Moses. 'The place did not obtain it till Caleb, having got it into his possession after the division of the land, called it Hebron, after one of his sons.' The statement is wholly destitute of foundation. It nowhere appears that Caleb had a son Hebron† (see his children, 1 Chron. iv. 15). But we are referred to Josh.

* Davidson's Introduction, vol. i. p. 2.

Dr Davidson probably confounded Caleb the son of Hezron and brother of Jerahmeel, with Caleb the son of Jephunneh. But Caleb the brother of Jerahmeel was the great-grandfather of Bezaleel, the builder of the tabernacle at Sinai. See 1 Chron. ii. 19, 20, and Exod. xxxi. 2. This, of course, settles the point, notwithstanding each Caleb had a daughter Achsa. Dr Davidson, also, perhaps, confounds Caleb, the name of a place (1 Chron. ii. 42, 43), with a personal name. See Bertheau on this passage, who shews that the names in these verses (42-49) are of places, as in verse 21, 24, Gilead and Tekoa. Hebron, as a man's name, was at least one generation older than Moses (Exod. vi. 18).