Then on the question of interpolations, our author confesses that there are many of them in the Pentateuch, most of them showing that they belong to a much later age than Moses; yet he denies that any of them are material, or in any way change the original meaning or sense of the text. Thus I went thru over 250 pages, devoted, not so much to the questions of divine inspiration and supernatural revelation, as these seemed to be very largely taken for granted; but to the defense of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch upon which seemed to hinge the whole question of its authenticity and infallible authority. As the author puts it, "If the Pentateuch was not written by Moses it is a forgery." To do this he quotes quite elaborately from the higher critics, Bauer, Davidson, Bleek, Ewald, Kuenen, Wellhausen, and others, for the ostensible purpose of answering and refuting them. Now I had, up to this time, never read a line of such Biblical criticism, except that quoted by this author. Naturally, I not only had no sympathy with it, but was strongly prejudiced against it. But I could not fail to note that the refutations and explanations of my author very often failed to either refute or explain. To sum the whole thing up, when I had gone thus far, I could not avoid the impression that from the standpoint of logical argument, based upon any _known facts_, the whole thing was a failure. It was simply a continued series of apologetics; in legal parlance, a sort of "confession and avoidance." I began in the firm _belief_ that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, and that he was divinely inspired in doing it. I expected to find the definite proofs that this was true. When I got thru I didn't know who wrote it. I was equally certain the author I was reading didn't know; and I doubted if any one else did. I felt the incipient doubts of my school days returning, only in much larger volume and greater force. If the reader will pardon the phrase: "I felt myself slipping." Then followed a study of the authorship, origin, character, and purpose of the remaining canonical books of the Old Testament. These may all be grouped into two or three divisions. Of the historical books of Joshua, Judges, First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings and First and Second Chronicles, I found to my surprise, that nobody knows who wrote any of them; nor anything definite about the time, or circumstances under which they were written. Joshua was merely _believed_ to have been written not later than twenty-five years after the death of Joshua, by some person or persons who were personally familiar with the events therein narrated. As the book is clearly divided into two distinct parts, the first ending with the twelfth chapter and the second beginning with the thirteenth, it is _supposed_ that it was written by Eleazar and Phinehas. But this is admitted to be mere conjecture.