AUTHORSHIP, COMPOSITION, AND DATE OF THE PENTATEUCH.
ONE of the first questions connected with the Pentateuch is that of authorship. Whether it be of so great importance as some would represent, admits of grave doubts. It appears to us to have been magnified into more consequence than properly belongs to it. We shall begin with some passages shewing a later origination of these books than the time of Moses; and proceed to other considerations tending to support the same conclusion.
I. The following places in the Pentateuch itself convey wellfounded doubts of Mosaic authorship. They contain notices historical, geographical, archæological, and explanatory; or statements implying a post-mosaic time and writer.
"And the Canaanite was then in the land." (Gen. xii. 6.) "And the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelled then in the land." (Gen. xiii. 7.)
These words obviously imply, that when the writer lived, the Canaanites and Perizzites had been expelled from the land. If they were written when the two races still dwelt in the country, they are unmeaning and superfluous. Hence many advocates of the Mosaic authorship have conceded that a later hand appears in them. Thus Prideaux says, that the first is an interpolation made when the Canaanites, having been extirpated by Joshua, were no longer in the land. But Hengstenberg, after Witsius, thinks the passages have no bearing on the question of authenticity, because they are easily explained and justified in their respective connexions. Objecting to the supplementary words still and already, which in his opinion are arbitrarily added, he
1 The Old and New Testament connected, etc., Part I., Book V., p. 343, ed. 1719.