ne Hutoric Character of the Pentateuch. - BiblicalStudies.org.uk

410 '/.'lIe Historic Character of the Pentateuch. [ APRil.,
girded loins and staff in hand, in perpetual commemoration
of events of which the original participants are addressed
as personal witnesses, and which they h.and down from
parent to child, with the observance and the testimony
conjoined; (2) the Feast of Tabenacles, going down coeval
with the nation's history, - the people dwelling in booths,
"that your generations may know tbat I made the children
of Israel to dwell in booths when I brougbt them out of
Egypt"; (3) the Feast of Pentecost, a memorial of the
transfer to the land of " milk and honey," and containing in
its perpetual formula (Deut. xxvi. 1-10), a reiteration of the
doings in Egypt; (4.) the perpetual ordinance for the consecration
and redemption of all the first-born, botb of man
and beast, in commemoration of a miraculous deliverance
from the general slaughter of the first-born in Egypt; (5)
the enforcement of the law of Sabbath rest by an appeal to
their personal experience of Egyptian bondage (Deut. v. 15);
- and it is evident that none but a whole nation of idiots
could at any period of their history have been fooled into
the reception of sucb ordinances on such prete:Lis, unless
the pretexts were true.. The thing may safely be pronounced
impossible. We ought not to omit all mention
of the ark of the covenant, which unquestionably remained
in the nation an object of the greatest veneration till far
into the times of the kings, and which had its name from
the tables of the covenant therein alleged to be deposited_
b. Directly to our purpose, also, are the continual appeals,
everywhere inwrougkt with tIle fundamental law of the
nation, to remember the transactions ill Egypt and t.he
wilderness, which the original subjects of that law experienced
in person. Such references are too abundant even
to be quoted - they are continual. Thus in Denteronomy,
which (as is admitted even by De Wette)l claims to be
I Introdaction to the O. T., Parker's translation, Vol. n. p. 159. De Webe,
of coarse, denies the claim. Dr. Davidson recognizes and apparently admill it
(Horne's Introduction, 10th ed., Vol. II. p.614). Knobel simply assigns the
book to the time of Josiah. It is for sach men as De Wette and Knobel 10
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