06.08. Why Question the Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch?

Chapter 7 Why Question the Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch?

After reading the last chapter some young beginner in the study has been led to ask, Why was the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch ever questioned? Well, I think the deep underlying motive that questioned it arose out of the repugnance of the natural heart to believe in a supernatural revelation from God. Mark you, I do not charge this upon all the critics, or believe that such a motive is present to all their minds, but the more one familiarizes himself with the subject the more is he impressed with the abstract fact itself. The evolution theory of creation now in vogue is applied to the sacred Scriptures, and the critics say the Pentateuch is a growth, a development, corresponding to the growth and development of the nation of Israel itself. Their idea is that as need were felt for more legislation by that nation in the course of centuries, it was provided, and associated with the name of Moses to give it sanctity and persuasive force in the minds of the people.

Moses wrote the germ of the Pentateuch most of the critics will admit, but later writers, redactors, or editors they are sometimes called, developed these germs and added to them as the occasion called. Still later redactors again added to their work, and so on, until at length, somewhere about the time of Ezra, or a thousand years after Moses’ death, the Pentateuch took on its present literary form. These redactors or editors, the more evangelical of the critics would say, were as divinely inspired for their work as Moses was for his, so that we may repose in the authority by which they spake as well as his.

Now all this sounds very simple and very reasonable, and we might well be prepared to believe it if it did not seem to flatly contradict what the Scriptures themselves say as quoted in the preceding chapter, and more; if it did not approach the danger point of deliberately charging those Scriptures with a pious fraud. The case of Deuteronomy illustrates this. The critics boldly affirm that it was not written by Moses but by some priest or Levite in the period of King Josiah, B.C. 621; that it was the book supposed to have been found in the Temple as recorded in 2 Kings 22:10, but really prepared by Hilkiah himself perhaps, and palmed off upon the people as the work of Moses in order to stimulate them more heartily to the work of reform in that reign. What right-minded Christian does not shrink from such an imputation of literary forgery? And what leads the critics to such an imputation? This, that there are differences in some respects between the legislation in Deuteronomy and that in Leviticus, and that one seems to contradict the other. But a rational answer is that these laws were given on different occasions and for different ends. Leviticus was for the priests, Deuteronomy for the people, the nation at large. Moreover, Leviticus was given at Sinai, and Deuteronomy at Moab, with forty years between. When Leviticus was given the people were living in the wilderness, but when Deuteronomy was given they were about to enter on the settled life of Canaan. And, indeed, as the late Professor Green, of Princeton pointed out, some of the laws which on a cursory examination appear contradictory, will, on further reflection, prove to be supplemental. The point of departure for the critics was somewhere about the eighteenth century when a French Roman Catholic physician, by the name of Jean Astruc, thought that he discovered the Pentateuch to be not an original production, but a compilation of earlier and differing documents. The thought was not altogether new with Astruc, for as early as the twelfth century a certain Jew, named Eben Ezea, called attention to it, and from time to time mention had been made of it by others; but Astruc was the first really to force it on the consideration of biblical scholars. He was soon followed by others, by Eichhorn, a German theologian of the same century, by Kuenen, Wellhausen, Canon Driver, Professor Briggs, and many more down to our own time, who have come to be known by the general title of “Higher Critics.” But we should not be misled by that word “Higher” as though it meant a superiority in scholarship or importance, which is not the case. The lower criticism deals with the text, examines the manuscripts and versions as we did, for example, in some of our earlier chapters, while the higher criticism takes the text thus examined and seeks to discover its source and history. Someone suggests that the “Further Criticism” or the “Historical Criticism” would better indicate its chief aim and result. The first thing that fastened itself on the attention of Astruc and his predecessors was a difference in the names of God recorded in Genesis. In the Hebrew we sometimes meet with Elohim, “God,” and sometimes with Jehovah Elohim, “Lord God,” from which has arisen the hypothesis of an “Elohistic” document and a “Jehovistic” document with different authors. These authors are sought to be traced through all the books of the Pentateuch, and latterly in Joshua. Other dislocations have followed this until now by some, the whole of Genesis has been reduced to legend; the Hebrew religion has sprung from Babylonian mythology; the patriarchs are myths; Jacob’s sons are the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Saul and Jonathan are the constellation Gemini; David is a solar hero; and other extravagances are almost without end. We cannot pursue the subject further now, but in the next chapter we shall see something of what may be said on the other side.