242. (iii) Thou shalt put the blessing upon Mount Gerizim, and the curse upon Mount Ebal. Are they not on the other side Jordan, by the way where the sun goeth down in the land of the Canaanites, which dwell in the champaign over against Gilgal, beside the plains of Moreh? D.xi.29,30.

These words are attributed to Moses. It must seem strange, however, that Moses, who had never been in the land of Canaan, should know all these places, and be able to describe them so accurately. But it is still more strange that he should know the name Gilgal, which, according to the book of Joshua, was not given to the place till the people had been circumcised after entering the land of Canaan. And Jehovah said unto Joshua, This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you. Wherefore the name of the place is called Gilgal unto this day.' Jo.v.9.

It is plain that the text in Deuteronomy was written at a later age, when these places and their names were familiarly known.

243. (iv) And pursued them unto Dan. G.xiv.14.

Jehovah showed him (Moses) all the land of Gilead unto Dan. D.xxxiv.1.

But the place was not named Dan till long after the time of Moses. For we read, Jo.xix.47, The coasts of the children of Dan went out too little for them. Therefore the children of Dan went up to fight against Leshem, and took it, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and possessed it, and dwelt therein, and called Leshem, Dan, after the name of Dan, their father.'

Further, in Ju.xviii, we have the whole transaction detailed at length. And at the end of it it is added, v.29, 'And they called the name of the city, Dan, after the name of Dan their father; howbeit, the name of the city was Laish at the first.' Now, as we are told in v.1 of this chapter, that these events

took place when there was no king in Israel,' and 'every man did that which was right in his own eyes,' xxi.25, they must have occurred, not only after the death of Moses, but after the death of Joshua. Hence the book of Joshua, of which the chapter, xix, from which the above quotation is made, is an integral portion, could not have been written by Joshua.

A fortiori, the narratives in Genesis and Deuteronomy, where references are made to this place, and where the name, Dan, occurs, not as the mere modern representative of an older name, (as Bela, which is Zoar,' 'the vale of Siddim, which is the Salt Sea,' &c. G.xiv.2,3,)—in which case it might have been explained as being possibly a note, inserted by a later writer — but as a substantial part of the very body of the story, cannot have been written by Moses, or by any contemporary of Moses.

244. KURTZ admits the force of this argument, and says, iii. p.522:

In i.p.216 I adopted HENGSTENBERG's explanation that the Dan of G.xiv.14 and D.xxxiv.1 was the same as the Dan-Jaan of 2S.xxiv.6, and denoted a very different place from the ancient Laish. But a closer examination has convinced me that the very same Dan is alluded to in the Pentateuch and 2 Samuel, as in Jo.xix.47 and Ju.xviii.29.

And so writes KUENEN, p.25:

HENGSTENBERG, in fact, tries to maintain that the Dan here named is not the same as the place which is usually so called, but on the contrary agrees with the place which is named, not Dan, but Dan-Jaan. It is plain, however, that by DanJaan in 2S.xxiv.6, as the whole context shows, is meant the usual northern Dan, whatever meaning may be attached to the distinctive ‘Jaan.'

RAWLINSON, Aids to Faith, p.246, can only say with HENG

The Dan intended may be Dan-Jaan, and not Laish.

245. (v) And these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel. G.xxxvi.31.

The phrase, before there reigned any king over the children. of Israel,' is here used in such a way as to imply that one king, at least, had reigned, or was reigning, over the children of Israel,'—that is, apparently, not over one of the separate king-. doms of Judah or Israel, but over the united people,—at the time when it was written. In other words, it could not have been written before the time of SAMUEL.

HENGSTENBERG believes that here is a reference to G.xvii.16, xxxv.11, where Abraham and Jacob receive the promise that kings shall come out of them; according to him the text says, 'while that promise is still unfulfilled, Edom has already had kings.' But one feels that such a genealogical list is a most unsuitable place for such a fine reference; and besides, in the passages quoted, it is not said that Israel shall be governed by kings, but that Abraham and Jacob should have kings among their descendants, which, as regards Abraham, was actually fulfilled in the existence of the kings of Edom themselves. KUENEN, p.27.

The fact is that HENGSTENBERG's meaning cannot honestly be got out of the words of the text.

246. RAWLINSON writes on this point, Aids to Faith, p.247:

The eight kings of Edom may possibly be a dynasty of monarchs intervening between Esau and Moses, the last of the eight being Moses' contemporary, as conjectured by HÄVERNICK. The remarkable expression, 'These are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any king over the children of Israel,' may be understood prophetically. Moses may have intended in the passage to mark his full belief in the promises made by God to Abraham and Jacob, that 'kings should come out of their loins,' a belief which he elsewhere expresses very confidently, D.xvii.14-20.

There is no really valid or insuperable objection to any of these explanations, which may not strike us as clever or dexterous, yet which may be true, nevertheless. Or the right explanation may be the more commonly received one,- that these words, phrases, and passages, together with a few others similar to them, are later additions to the text, either adopted into it upon an authoritative revision, such as that ascribed to Ezra, or, perhaps, accidentally introduced through the mistakes of copyists, who brought into the text what had been previously added, by way of exegesis, in the margin. Such additions constantly occur in the case of classical writers; and there is no reason to suppose that a special Providence would interfere to prevent their occurrence in the Sacred Volume.

The soberminded in every age have allowed that the written Word, as it has come down to us, has these slight imperfections, which no more interfere with its

value than the spots on the sun detract from his brightness, or than a few marred and stunted forms destroy the harmony and beauty of Nature.

247. The above is a specimen of the loose, superficial replies, by which such difficulties as these are too often set aside, as unworthy of closer consideration, by men from whose ability and general love of truth we might have expected better things.

Ans. (i) In no case of any classical writer would the conjecture of interpolations be allowed to such an extent, as would be necessary in order to get rid of these anachronisms in the Pentateuch.

(ii) By those, who would maintain at all cost the authenticity and credibility of the Pentateuch, of course something like the above must be said. But it is difficult to see how either of the above 'reconciling' processes can be seriously believed to apply to some of the difficulties here noticed, as (i), (ii), (iv).

(iii) The proposal, to understand such words as these prophetically, is, in fact, only an euphemism for declining to understand them at all in their plain, literal, meaning, and for substituting something else for them.

(iv) But these difficulties, after all, are by us regarded as only of secondary importance. They are not those on which we rest the stress of our argument. Being satisfied, on other sure grounds, as set forth in Part I, that the story of the Pentateuch has no claim to be regarded as historically true, much less as divinely infallible, we are not obliged to have recourse to such suppositions as the above, to escape from the conclusions, to which we should certainly be led, if we were discussing a classical,' and not a 'sacred,' writer.

248. (vi) Beforetime in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, thus he spake, Come and let us go to the Seer'; for he, that is now called a Prophet ('7, Nabi), was beforetime called a Seer (, Roeh). 18.ix.9.

This being the case, it is remarkable that, throughout the Pentateuch and the books of Joshua and Judges, the word Roeh is never once used, but always Nabi. From this it follows that those portions of these books, which contain this later word, as G.xx.7, E.vii. 1, xv.20, N.xi.29, xii.6, D.xiii.1,3,5, xviii.15,18, 20,22, xxxiv.10, Ju.iv.4,vi.8, can hardly have been written before the days of Samuel. In that age the word Nabi may have been known, and employed by some, though Roch was, it seems, the word in popular use. But in still older times, as

those of Moses and Joshua, we should expect to find Roeh generally employed, and certainly not Nabi exclusively. Nay, in 2S.xv.27, we read, 'The king said also unto Zadok the Priest, Art not thou a Seer (Roeh)?' Hence the word Roeh was in use, at all events, till the latter part of David's reign, though, it would seem, no longer exclusively, as in the older time, since Nabi was the word now commonly employed.

In those days also or, rather, in the days of the writer of David's history, and in still later times, another word, nțin, Khozeh, was in use for Seer, 2S.xxiv. 11, 2 K.xvii.13, and frequently in the Chronicles. We find both words in Is.xxx.10,- which say to the Seers (Di, Roim), See not, and to the Prophets (Din, Khozim), Prophesy not?' And in 2 Ch.xvi.7 we read of Hanani the Seer (Roeh) in the time of Asa. In 1 Ch.xxix.29, the three terms are employed in one verse, where we read of the book of Samuel the Seer (Roeh), and the book of Nathan the Prophet (Nabi), and the book of Gad the Seer (Khozeh).'

249. (vii) And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? Jo.x.13.

First, it is inconceivable that, if Joshua really wrote this book, he should have referred for the details of such an extraordinary miracle, in which he himself was primarily and personally concerned, to another book, as the book of Jasher.

But in 2S.i.18 we read, 'Also he (David) bade them teach the children of Judah the use of the bow, (or 'teach it,' that is, the song in question, thoroughly to the children of Judah,' EWALD). Behold, it is written in the book of Jasher.'

Here, then, we have a fact in the life of David recorded in this same book of Jasher.' The natural inference is, that this 'book of Jasher,'- which probably means the book of the righteous,' that is, of Israel or Jeshurun, the righteous one, the 'righteous people, that keepeth the truth,' and contained a

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