The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal SecretsWestbrook, Richard B. (Richard Brodhead)
Religion
The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets
Westbrook, Richard B. (Richard Brodhead)
Free thought
There is good reason for thinking that the book of Deuteronomy was
written about six hundred and twenty-one years before Christ, and the
remaining books of the Pentateuch were of later date, coming down to
four hundred and fifty years before Christ. This Professor Kuenen has
demonstrated beyond controversy in his _Religion of Israel_, to which I
must refer for his arguments in detail. The best scholarship of the
world does not believe that what is called the Law of Moses was written
prior to the fifth or sixth century before Christ, and learned men in
Holland, Germany, and England, as well as the most advanced thinkers in
America, now accept this opinion. Professor Robertson Smith, in the
_Encyclopœdia Britannica_, adopts this view, and Dean Stanley, in his
_Jewish Church_, does not leave us in doubt as to his opinion.
Take the following as an example of what I mean (Gen. 12:6): “And the
Canaanite was then in the land;” whereas the expulsion of the Canaanites
did not occur until several centuries after the death of Moses, when
this must have been written. In Gen. (36: 31) we read, “Before there
reigned any king over Israel.” This must have been two hundred years
after the death of Moses. “The nations that were before you” (Lev. 13:
8) of course presupposes that the Canaanites had already been subdued.
“Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men that were upon the
face of the earth” (Num. 12:13), could hardly have been written by Moses
himself. The expression “unto this day” frequently occurs, and shows
that the time was long after the events took place. It is also implied
in various places that the writer resided in Palestine, and so it could
not have been Moses. In Deuteronomy (19: 14) we read, “Thou shalt not
remove thy neighbor’s landmark which they of old time have set in thine
inheritance.” They had no landmark to remove, unless this was written
concerning the land of Canaan long after the death of Moses. They are
reproached for not keeping the Sabbath in the past for a long time, and
this is given as a reason for the Captivity; and hence Leviticus 26:34,
35, 43 was written after the Captivity, which began in 597 b. c. In Gen.
14:14, Lot is taken prisoner and rescued from his captors, whom they
“pursued unto Dan.” Now, there was no such place as Dan until after the
entrance into Canaan. We read in Judg. 18:27, 29 that this city was
called Laish, which was burned by the Israelites, and then they built a
city, and they called it “Dan, after the name of their father: howbeit
the name of the city was Laish at first.” This “trout in the milk” is as
striking as if some one should write of Chicago when the Declaration of
Independence was signed. In Gen. 36:31 we read, “And these are the kings
that reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any king over the
children of Israel.” This passage shows that it was written after there
had been kings in Israel, and could not have been written by Moses. I
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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