Wright

(Was Israel ever in Egypt? Oxford, 1895). The legends of Creation, Eden, and the Fall, become incredible as teaching man’s creation 6000 years ago, when we consider the geological record of millions of years of life on this planet, or the centuries that light requires—as astronomers tell us—to reach us from some of those stars which are so simply said to have been made by Elohim on the fourth day (Gen. i, 16). Dr Driver, as an exponent of current German opinion, “ finds no foundation for the opinion that the canon of the Old Testament was closed by Ezra, or in his time... Joseph us adopted the current views of his day.... The age and authorship of the books can only be determined, so far as this is po ible, upon the basis of the internal evidence supplied by the books _ themselves... no external evidence worthy of credit exists.... The books are all composite structures put together by various compilers and editors—generally with a didactic motive easily traced... they excerpt (he thinks) from sources at their disposal, such pa ages | as are suitable to their purpose, and incorporate them in their work, sometimes adding matter of their own, but often (as it seems) introducing only such modifications of form as are nece ary for the purpose of fitting them together, or of accommodating them to their plan.” We have therefore it seems not a Mosaic work, but a mosaic _ of shreds and patches. ‘I'hus does Canon Driver follow in the steps of the great bishop of Natal, whom his Church had persecuted some _ thirty years earlier. One author we are taught was a “ Jehovist ” (J): another an “ Elohist” (E), whose work is fused however (J, E) and not easily disentangled. There is again a “ Priestly writer” (P) who _ Wrote the ceremonial chapters of Exodus, Levitic us, and Numbers, about 500 B.c., and in the fourth place there is the author of most of _ Deuteronomy and of other chapters (D), with his laws of the “ central sanctuary,” and of “the kingdom.” And after these comes the final compiler of all these materials. Dr Driver “declines to brand Deuteronomy as an invention and a forgery.” He follows Kuenen and Well hausen, and the latest school of German scholars, in supposing P to be the latest of the four writers, but thinks Ezekiel may have been one of this group of priestly authors. He takes what is now an ancient view in dividing Isaiah between a prophet (or prophets) of the time of Hezekiah, and another who wrote after the appearance of Cyrus, and when the Captivity was drawing to a close (xl to lxvi). He says that J “wrote the Book of the Covenant” (Exod. xx, 22 to the end of xxiii). Though the “ Law of Holine ” (H now separated from P) is equally said to have been received by Moses on Sinai, this document (Levit. xvii-xxv) was not known, according to these critics, before the time of Ezekiel (590-570 n.c.), It is very clear that the author of Deuteronomy (D) was not Moses, but one living W. of Jordan (i, 1-5, iii, 8), whose tone presents a moral advance on that of older writers (J, E). ‘The Hexateuch is thus made to be a composite work, dating from about 700 down to 400 Bc. 328