BRIEF LITERARY NOTICES. Introduction to the Pentateuch: an Inquiry, Critical and Doctrinal, into the Genuineness, Authority, and Design of the Mosaic Writings. By the Rev. Donald Macdonald, M.A. Two Vols. 8vo. THE Old Testament promises to be the field on which the modern Rationalism will fight its last battle with the ancient faith in the Bible and the Holy Ghost. It was here it first entered the lists with it; and we are greatly mistaken if it is not destined to die an inglorious death on the very ground on which it won, as it is proud to believe, its original laurels. For some time past its forces have been gathering more and more thickly towards this point. The space which the earlier canon of Scripture holds in the hostile feeling and purposes of the party in question, may be seen in the endeavours which the Essays and Reviews made to discredit its Divine claims. And it must strike the commonest observer, that for every opponent of orthodox views of the Bible who builds his hopes on the demolition of St. Matthew or St. Paul, there are half-a-dozen who look with something like confidence to the speedy exploding of Moses and the Prophets. And assuredly, if the Scripture revelation is to be got rid of, this is the only philosophical and sensible way of going to work. Why trouble yourself about the trustworthiness of Evangelists and Apostles, if it can be shown that they believed a lie in assuming the historical truth and Divine inspiration of the Old Testament? The older and the newer Scriptures are one. They cannot be sundered. Essentially, organically, vitally, they, form the same homogeneous, indivisible Bible. The Old Testament without the New is an antecedent without a consequent. The New without the Old is simply the reverse of this. No man can maintain the New Testament for an hour who is not prepared to vindicate the Divine authority of the Old. If the defenders of Revelation do not see this, the sooner they open their eyes to it the better. It was seen long ago by their adver Brief Literary Notices. 537 saries; and, though some of them now-a-days affect to draw a line between the two Testaments, and would have us suppose they are independent of each other, we must be excused if our faith in their logical acumen and consistency is too strong to allow us to believe that they mean what they say. There is no greater service at present open to Christian scholarship and mind than that of assisting to put the criticism of the Old Testament upon a right foundation, and of meeting front to front on its own ground and with its own weapons the self-satisfied and imperious scepticism which challenges at once its inspiration and its facts. It was partly a conviction of this sort which gave birth to the book named at the head of this notice; and we greatly rejoice that a man so well equipped for the task as Mr. Macdonald proves himself to be, has had the wisdom, grace, and industry to produce a critical defence of the Old Testament generally, and of what is far more truly all Hebrew Scripture than Homer was ever all Greek-the Books of Moses in particular, so nearly answering to the immediate requirements of the Church and the Truth. Our author would be the last person in the world to pretend that his work disposes of all the difficulties of the case. We believe that some of these difficulties are not to be disposed of without better lights than those we are at present able to hold up to them; and that they must remain for a while, at least, as the mote in the eye of the Faith, over which Unbelief with its beam may make merry if it will. Nor are we sure that the book before us is always successful in dealing with the difficulties with which it actually grapples. But, however this may be, Mr. Macdonald's argument in the main is unanswerable; and, with all the obligations he owes to Hengstenberg, Hävernick, and others, he has given us a work which is as truly independent in its general build and shaping, as it is scholarly, comprehensive, and well arranged. The author proposes to himself two leading objects: first, to establish the genuineness of the Pentateuch by a critical inquiry into its unity, antiquity, and authorship; and secondly, through a copious and careful induction of external and internal evidence, to vindicate its historical truth and Divine authority. In prosecuting the former part of his design, he devotes a preliminary chapter to a more precise and detailed statement of the aim and plan of his book; to a consideration of the relations in which the Books of Moses stand to Judaism and Christianity; and to the history of the attacks which have been made upon the Pentateuch, particularly in modern times. Here, of course, we are carried past a long line of gainsayers, from the author of the Clementines and Ptolemy the Valentinian, down through certain heretical rabbins of the Middle Ages, to Eichhorn, Vater, De Wette, and their most recent imitators and disciples at home and abroad. At the same time we are introduced to the principal defenders of the truth, as they appear one after another in the course of the ages, and are wisely taught at more than one point to remark, how the good cause suffered from the weakness and inconsistency of its advocates. It is a well-drawn picture which the author gives us, and forms a fitting frontispiece to his volumes. We fear he is only too right, when he finds the explanation of many of the sceptical theories which figure in them in unworthy views of the nature of sin and of the moral character of God. The introductory chapter paves the way for an elaborate conspectus of the names, divisions, and contents of the Pentateuch, each of its five books being subjected to separate examination, and many important questions as to the nature of their component parts, and their connexion with one another, or with the general argument of the author's work, being distinctly and in some cases very fully discussed. The chronology of the several books, the character of the Mosaic legislation, and the view which should be taken of the prophecies of the Pentateuch, may serve as specimens of the topics on which Mr. Macdonald dwells. He appropriately closes this part of his book with a chronological list of the chief commentators on the Pentateuch and its several portions. The next eighty pages of the work are occupied with a review of the famous Document-Hypothesis of the Germans, according to which large parts of the Pentateuch consist of cuttings taken by Moses from older records, and ingeniously, but not always very happily, dovetailed into his narrative. The grounds on which this theory is built are well known to be certain distinctions observable in the employment of the Divine names, and certain evidences, as it is alleged, of diversity of authorship arising from difference of style, the presence of duplicate accounts of the same events, and sundry discrepancies in matter of fact. This entire doctrine, with all its pleas and appurtenances, our author puts through the sieve of a keen-eyed and firm-handed literary logic. He is perfect master of the position. Nothing escapes him; and he does even justice on all sides. And we are bound to say that, if he does not reduce this darling scheme of his opponents to nothing, he leaves them so small a residuum of it, that nothing at all would be almost as good for the purposes of their argument. We are glad to find the writer expressing dissatisfaction with the principle on which Hengstenberg has endeavoured to account for the phenomena connected with the Divine names. We have long thought this theory, at least in the length to which its author pushed it, scarcely less arbitrary and incongruous than the one which he so meritoriously sought to demolish. And we believe Mr. Macdonald takes the only right ground when he contends, that whatever difficulties may belong to this question, the Document theory is no resolution of them whatever, and that they are best explained by striking a mean between the views of Hengstenberg on the one hand, and of those who regard the use of them as simply fortuitous and mechanical, on the other. We commend this very learned and elaborate section of Mr. Macdonald's work to the admiration and sedulous attention of all young students whom the Document-Hypothesis may have either bewildered or bewitched. The unity of the Pentateuch being established, our author proceeds to the proofs of its antiquity, supplied by the references which the other books of the Old Testament make to it, and by the nature of the contents themselves. Under the latter of these heads, he argues Brief Literary Notices. 539 very satisfactorily-first, that the Mosaic writings must have been composed before the settlement in Canaan, and while the political and religious system of the Israelites was in course of formation; and, secondly, that it is evident the author of them was intimately acquainted with the Sinaitic Peninsula, and with the internal life of Egypt, both civil and social, at a very remote period. At the same time he urges with great force the proof which the archaisms in language, traceable in the Pentateuch, afford as to its historical headship in the Hebrew literature. As a necessary supplement to this division of his subject, the writer discusses the very interesting question of the geographical, historical, and other anachronisms supposed to exist in the books of Moses, and then goes on to consider their authorship. In dealing with this point, he finds his main argument for their Mosaic original, as may be supposed, where the strength of it lies, in the testimony which the Pentateuch and the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures as a whole bear to the fact. We could wish, however, that some little space had been given to the corroborative evidence of ancient heathen authorities; for, though it is true that that evidence is comparatively modern and in itself not very considerable, it is not true, as the Westminster Review affirms, for the purpose of disparaging Mr. Rawlinson, that there is not an atom of external testimony' on its behalf; and we do not see that, such as it is, it needed to be suppressed by a writer who knows so well as Mr. Macdonald how to give it its precise value. But we are now brought to the last great section of our author's first volume, which is an extended and important discussion of the credibility of the Pentateuch, considered both as to the miraculous and non-miraculous elements of its history. Some of the most formidable difficulties which the defenders of the inspiration of Moses are called to encounter, fall within this circle of inquiry. The cosmogony, the unity of the human race, the longevity of the antediluvians, the flood, the confusion of tongues, the early migrations and settlements of the primeval tribes of mankind, these are some of the points at which science and literature have come most violently into collision with the express statements of Moses; and they deserve and have received the close attention of the writer. Mr. Macdonald's. limits prevent him from going much into detail on some of these topics; but they all pass under review, and are carefully and critically handled in the light of the most recent discoveries and investigations. With respect to the geological knot, Mr. Macdonald does wisely in refraining from any direct attempt to untie it. The Essays and Reviews cut it a very simple method of resolution, no doubt, but one against which we protest, alike in the name of science and religion. We believe in the facts of geology. We believe on quite as good grounds in the inspiration of the Mosaic account of the creation. We may not be able to show how the two revelations, the natural and the written, agree with one another. But to escape from the dilemma by denying the Divine authority of Moses is to act the part of a child, and to surrender one of the first principles of the inductive philosophy. We may add, that the concluding chapter, on the proof which the success of Moses furnishes as to the divinity of his mission, is among the most valuable parts of our author's book. There is much striking thought and much good writing in it, and it forms an admirable bridge for passing to the object of his second volume, which is to exhibit the design of the Pentateuch as a Divine revelation, and the basis of the Hebrew polity and constitution,' and so to account for its peculiar character, and to cut away the ground from under those manifold errors in regard to it which have sprung from misconception of its proper scope and bearing. This is neither the least original nor least important division of Mr. Macdonald's work. He has done good service to the cause of truth by coping so vigorously as he does in his first volume with the historical scepticism of our times. He deals this scepticism a no less serious blow by arguing so fully, systematically, and forcibly as he does in his second volume on the great thesis to which it is devoted. The Pentateuch is not a collection of ancient Semitic legends and annals. It is not a formal and scientific treatise on the beginnings and early history of the world and of man. It is not a venerable monument of Oriental jurisprudence in the olden times. It is an historical revelation of the character, will, and purposes of God, addressed to a people whom His providence designed to be the medium through which the highest religious blessing should flow to mankind at large, and intended by its teachings and ordinances to become the means of carrying forward and completing their moral training for this great function. And in this simple and sublime aim of the Mosaic books not only have we the key to what on any other principle must be pronounced their omissions, their disproportions, their redundancies; but their entire mould and character are explained and more than justified. Such is substantially the text which Mr. Macdonald labours to establish and illustrate in his second volume. We cannot follow him into the details of this branch of his argument. We trust a multitude of grateful readers will do themselves and him the justice to track his steps through the whole length of it. One omission has somewhat surprised us. The Sabbatic Institute is never once brought into prominence in his train of reasoning. It naturally falls within it. The Sabbath is one of the most peculiar appointments of the Pentateuch. It was one of the greatest moral instruments which the Mosaic legislation employed for the education of Israel. It is intimately connected with the widest and most permanent aims of the original revelation of God to man. And we are at a loss to understand how our author should have omitted to wield the weapon which this most ancient Divine ordinance puts into his hand, and the value of which suggests itself at so many points of his polemic. On the whole, however, Mr. Macdonald's reasoning is as complete as it is fair and cogent; and, though the style of his book throughout, and particularly in the second volume, is cumbrous, diffuse, and not unfrequently rhetorical, he makes out his case, and leaves a candid reader no alternative between accepting the Pentateuch as the writing of one who was moved by the |