families proves, some such catalogue of families as we find in the Pentateuch must have existed at the very first division of the country. These must have been carefully preserved, because the property of every family was unalienable, since, if sold, it was to return to the original family at each year of Jubilee. The genealogies of the Pentateuch, if they differed from this known and authentic register, would have been immediately rejected, and with them, the whole work. They therefore impart to the entire history all the authenticity of such a public register. For surely it is not in the slightest degree probable, that the Pentateuch should ever have been received as the original record of the settlement and division of Judea, if so important a part of it as the register of the genealogies had been known to exist long before its publication, and to have been merely copied into it from pre-existing documents. Again, we may make a similar observation on the geographical enumerations of places in the Pentateuch ;* the accounts constantly given, of their deriving their names from particular events and particular persons; and on the details of marches and encampments which occur, first in the progress of the direct narrative, when only some few stations distinguished by remarkable facts are noticed, and afterwards at its close, where a regular list is given of all the stations of the Jewish camp. All this looks like reality. Whenever the Pentateuch was published, it would have been immediately rejected, except the account it gives of the origin of these names, and of the series of these marches, had been known to be true by the Jews in general. For the book states, that many of these names were adopted in consequence of these events, from the very time they took place; and it also states, that the entire nation was engaged in these marches. Now, the memory of such circumstances as these cannot long exist without writing. If the Pentateuch was not what it pretends to be, the original detail of these circumstances, it could not have been received. For, if it was published long after the events, and there was no pre-existing document of these details, which it delivers as things well known, how could it be received as true? If it was copied from a known pre-existing document, how could it be received as being itself the original? Besides, it Vide Exod. xiv. 2. xv. 27. xvii. 7. And compare Numbers, xx, xxi. and xxxiii. xxxiv. xxv.; also Deut. i. ii. iii. is natural for the spectator of events to connect every circumstance with the place where it happened. An inventor of fiction would not venture upon this, as it would facilitate the detection of his falsehood; a compiler long subsequent would not trouble himself with it, except in some remarkable cases. The very natural and artless manner in which all circumstances of this nature are introduced in the Pentateuch, increases the probability of its being the work of an eye-witness, who could introduce them with ease; while to any body else it would be extremely difficult and therefore unnatural; since it would render his work much more laborious, without making it more instructive. All these things bespeak a writer present at the transactions, deeply interested in them, recording each object as it was sug gested to his mind by facts, conscious he had such authority with the persons to whom he wrote, as to be secure of their attention, and utterly indifferent as to style or ornament, and those various arts which are employed to fix attention and engage regard; which an artful forger would probably have employed, and a compiler of even a true history would not have judged beneath his attention. Now, though it does not at all follow, that where these arts are used, falsehood must exist; yet their absence greatly increases our confidence, that we shall meet nothing but truth. When the writer has no vanity, no anxiety about the eloquence or beauty of his composition; when he writes without art, without any solicitous selection of circumstances to interest or gratify his reader; what can he design, but to instruct and inform? Must he not feel, that what he writes is true, and therefore ought to be told, and so important, that it is sure of being attended to? IMPARTIALITY. But the most decisive character of truth in any history is its And here the author of the Pentateuch is distinguished perhaps above every historian in the world; whether we consider the manner in which he speaks of the Hebrew patriarchs, the Jewish nation in general, or of its legislator and his nearest relations. Of the patriarchs, he speaks in such a way as not only did not gratify the vanity of his countrymen, but such as must have most severely wounded their national pride. He ranks some of their ancestors very high indeed, as worshippers of the true God, and observers of his will, in the midst of a world rapidly degenerating into idolatry; yet there is not one of them (Joseph perhaps excepted) of whom he does not recount many weaknesses, which a zealous partisan would have been careful to suppress; and to many he imputes great crimes, which he never attempts to palliate or disguise. In this point, the advocates of infidelity may be appealed to as judges. They dwell upon the weaknesses. and crimes of the patriarchs with great triumph. Let them not deny then, that the scripture account of them is impartial and true in all its points, good as well as bad; and we fear not but it will be easily proved, that, notwithstanding their weaknesses and even crimes, they were upon the whole, and considering the moral and religious state of the human mind in that age, characters not unworthy of pardon and acceptance with God, and fit instruments for the introduction of the divine dispensations. Of the Jewish nation in general, the author of the Pentateuch speaks, it may be said, not only impartially, but even severely. He does not conceal the weakness and obscurity of their first origin, that "a Syrian ready to perish, was their father;"* nor their long and degrading slavery in Egypt; their frequent murmurings and criminal distrust of God, notwithstanding his many interpositions in their favour; their criminal apostasy, rebellion, and resolution to return to Egypt; first, when they erected the golden calf at mount Sinai ;† and next on the return of the spies from the land of Canaan, when they were so afraid of the inhabitants, that they durst not attack them ‡ he repeatedly reproaches the people with these crimes, and loads them with the epithets of stiffnecked, rebellious, and idolatrous.§ He inculcates upon them most emphatically, that it was not for their own righteousness that God gave them possession of the promised land. He declares to them his conviction, that in their prosperity they would again|| relapse into their rebellions and idolatries, and imitate the foul vices of those nations, whom God had driven out from before them for these very crimes. Here again we may appeal to the judgment of infidels. They triumph in the apostasies and crimes of the Jews, and represent them as totally unworthy the divine protection and regard. Surely then they must confess, that the historian who has thus described them is strictly impartial; and that as he has concealed nothing that would disgrace, we may also be confident that he has feigned nothing to exalt his countryNumb. xiii. and xiv. | Vide Deut. xxxi. *Deut. xxvi. 5. + Exod. xxxii. Vide in particular Deut. ix. also Exod. xxxii. men. And admitting this we may easily show that, notwithstanding the crimes and the subbornness of the Jews, it was not yet unworthy of the divine wisdom to employ them as the medium of preserving the worship of the true God amidst an idolatrous world, and of preparing the way for the introduction of a pure and universal religion. The impartiality of the author of the Pentateuch, is not less remarkable in the mode in which he spoke of the nearest relations and connexions of the Jewish Lawgiver. His brother * Aaron, is related to have been engaged in the great crime of setting up the golden calf, to have joined with his sister + Miriam, in an unjustifiable attack on the authority of Moses, and to have of fended God so much, that he was excluded from the promised land: and the two eldest sons of Aaron are related to have been miraculously put to death by God himself, in consequence of their violating the ritual Law. The tribe and kindred of the Lawgiver are not represented as exempt from the criminal rebellion of the Jews on the return of the twelve spies. Caleb and Joshua, who alone had opposed it, were of different tribes, one of Judah, and the other of Ephraim. In a word, nothing in the narrative of the Pentateuch exalts the characters of any of the near relatives of Moses and Aaron, except only in the instance of || Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron; who, for his zeal in restraining and punishing the licentiousness and idolatry into which the Midianitish women had seduced his countrymen, was rewarded by the high priesthood's being made hereditary in his family. Of the family of the legislator we are told nothing, but that his § fatherin-law, Jethro, was a wise inan, who suggested to Moses some regulations of utility; that his ¶ wife was an Æthiopian woman, and as such the object of contempt and opposition even to his own brother and sister; and that he had two sons, of whom, or their families, the history takes no notice, so that nothing about them is known, but that they were undistinguished from the rest of the Levitical tribe. How different is all this from the embellishments of fiction or the exaggerations of vanity? How strongly does it carry with it the appearance of humility and truth? The most decisive proof of impartiality is, however, found in VOL. II, *Exod. xxxii. + Numb. xii. Numb. iii. 4, and Deut. x. 6. || Numb. xxv. C the manner in which the Pentateuch speaks of Moses himself. To point out this more clearly, let us compare it with the account which Josephus has compiled of the same facts. He indeed, received the Pentateuch as authentic, true, and sacred; he there.fore preserves all the leading events of his history, but he sometimes departs from its simple narrative, and in almost every instance of difference, we shall perceive a wish, either to adorn with fictitious splendour the character of the Jewish Lawgiver, to increase the credibility of his miracles in the eyes of the Gentiles, or to disguise and palliate the misconduct of his countrymen. 66 The entire account which the book of Exodus delivers of the private life of Moses, for the eighty years which preceded his divine mission to deliver the Israelites, is comprised in twentytwo verses.‡ All is plain and artless, full of the simplicity of patriarchal life, and unmixed with a single circumstance tending to exalt the personal character of the Lawgiver, or mark him out as peculiarly fitted for so high a destiny; but one action of his maturer years is mentioned, "that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens; and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren" (probably attempting to murder him ;) “and he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the "sand." When he finds the fact discovered, and that Pharaoh sought to slay him, he flies to Midian, marries, and remains there for a long series of years, unaspiring and unknown, till at the advanced age of fourscore, the divine command urges and compels him to become the instrument of executing the will of heaven, in the deliverance of his nation. 66 Compare with this short and modest narrative, the embellishments which national vanity added in subsequent traditions, and which Josephus collected and adorned.† We are told that the sacred scribe of the Egyptians announces to their monarch, that about this time a child should be born to the Israelites, who would bring the Egyptian dominion low, and raise theirs; who would excel all men in virtue, and obtain a glory which would be remembered through all ages; and to the terror arising from this prediction, (of which not one word occurs in the Pentateuch) Josephus ascribes the edict to put to death all the male children of the Hebrews. Nor is this all; the birth of this future hero * Exod. ii. +Vide Josephus's Antiquities, B. II. ch. x. xi |