pent a teuch

[Lat. pent a teuch us, from Gr. pente -five, and teuchos a tool, a book; French pentateuque; Ital. & Sp. pentateuco.] Script. Canon: A term applied exclusively to the first five books of the Old Testament collectively, termed in Hebrew torah the Law. The first men tion of the fivefold division is by Joseph us. It seems to have been made by the Septuagint translators, who then bestowed on the volume a Greek name expre ive of what they had done. [Etym.] In its undivided state it is called in Ezra vii. 6, "the Law of Moses;" in Neh. viii. 1, "the Book of the Law of Moses," and, more simply, in 2 Chron. xxv. 4, xxxv. 12, Ezra vi. 18, Neh. xiii. 1, "the Book of Moses." It is the "Book of the Law of the Lord" (Jehovah) in 2 Chron. xvii. 9. Either the Pent a teuch or the book of Deuteronomy is the "Book of the Covenant" in 2 Kings xxiii. 2, 21, and "the Book of the Law" in xxii. 8. The titles in both of the A. Pros. A measure or series of five feet. attribute the five books to Moses. The Hebrew text prefixes his name only to Deuteronomy (Deut. i. 1), chin, bench; go, gem; thin, this; Pentecost and to portions of the others (Exod. xvii. 14, xxiv. 3, 4, xxxiv. 27). No critic attributes Deut. xxxiv. 5 to Moses. Some other pa ages seem of later date, Gen. xii. 6, xiv. 14 (cf. with Judges xviii. 29), Gen. xxxvi. 31, Lev. xviii. 28, Deut. iii. 11, .; others, such as modesty would have prevented Moses from writing (Exod. xi. 3, Num. xii. 3). These are often attributed to Ezra. Except the author of the Clementine Homilies, who disbelieved, and Jerome, who doubted it, the Mosaic authorship of the Pent a teuch seems to have been universally accepted by the early Christians. Samaritan Pent a teuch : Script.: The Pent a teuch in use among the Samaritans. Words which have in them dandr, and again i and v , letters unlike in the Samaritan, but very similar in Hebrew [(d) and (r), also ( i ) and ( v )), are sometimes interchanged, showing that the work was derived from a Hebrew original. The pa ages attributed to Ezra are in it. It substitutes Mount Gerizim for Mount Ebal in Deut. xxvii. 4. The text in various places differs from the Hebrew, generally, however, agreeing with the Septuagint. The chronology also is in places at variance with that of the Hebrew Bible. If Joseph us is correct as to the date of the building of the Temple on Monut Gerizim, the Samaritan Pent a teuch was made probably about 330 B. C., though the popular belief is that it is much older. pěn-ta-teūch'-al, adj. [Eng. pent a teuch; -al.] Pertaining or relating to the pent a teuch; contained in the pent a teuch. "The leaders of the nation were as far from the Pentateuchal standard of righteousne as the ma of the people."-W. Robertson Smith: Old Test. in Jewish Church, lect. viii., p. 220.