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

426 The Historic Character of the Pentateuch. [APRu.,
To concede the Mosaic authorship and then deny the
contents of the books, would be to maintain a miracle of
monstrosity more amazing than all the miracles of majesty,
judgment, and mercy recorded in the volume - a leader
promulgating, more than three thousand years ago, a moral
law whose breadth and purity are above all criticism and all
improvement, and maintaining his ascendency till his death,
in the presence of that law, yet all the while piling up
falsehood upon falsehood, deliberate and ci,.cumstantial,
heaven-high '-and what is more, forcing or cajoling a
whole nation to receive with' reverence those falsehoods in
matters the most public and palpable, in matters of which
they were all witnesses and participants, and to hand them
down embalmed in the most solemn observances to all
coming time. The absurdity is too monstrous even for
rationalism. The alternative is, to impugn the authorship.
We propose in the next Article to show that the Mosaie
authorship of the Pentateuch ill, on the ground of historic
evidence, one of the best authenticated facts in all ancient
history, and that the objections admit of ready solution.
IV. The Lord Jesus Christ and the inspired writers of
the New Test.ament, abundantly vouch for the historic
truth of the Pentateuch, by explicity endorsing all its leading
statements. The chief events from the beginning, are
in positive forms re-allserted by them, and made the essential
basis of their own arguments and inl:ltructions.
Thus the Saviour endorses the narrative of the creatioo,
and union of the first pair in Eden (and thereby the narrative
of which it forms an integral part), by quoting Gen.
i. 27 and ii. 24, and establishing upon those statements the
indissoluble nature of the marriage tie (Mark x. 6; Matt.
xix. 4-6).1 He cites''' the blood of Abel" as the beginning
of human bloodshed (Luke xi. 51; Matt. xiii. 35). He
clearly affirms the temptation and fall, whE'n he calls the
devil "a murderer from the beginning." "a liar and the
1 It will he observed that he cites wha, in modem parlance are termed bodI
the Elohistic aod Jehovistic portioos of the record.
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