The Evolution of Old Testament ReligionOrchard, W. E. (William Edwin)
Religion
The Evolution of Old Testament Religion
Orchard, W. E. (William Edwin)
Bible. Old Testament -- Theology; Judaism -- History -- To 70 A.D.
heathen origin of customs that had become to all pious Israelites
expressions of Jehovah's special revelation to Israel. If we are going
to call this fraud, then it means that we are going to force on that
early age a conception of historical accuracy which it certainly did
not possess, and which, as a matter of fact, is only a late demand of
the human mind. And after all, there was truth in this reference of all
their religion to the revelation of Jehovah. It witnesses to the fact
that behind even the crudest religion there is something which defies
explanation, and that we have in heathen religions the slow dawning
consciousness of God within man's soul. In Israel these things never
stood still. That central idea of the localisation of Jehovah grew
too small to contain the widening conception of Him as it was evolved
through reflection and national experience, until the Prophets burst
forth with the proclamation that He was the God of the whole earth, and
His relation to Israel not tribal or territorial, but moral, and only
to be maintained by righteousness and true holiness.
MOSAISM
The reader is recommended to make a careful study of the following
passages, which are among the most important adduced by the critics
as evidence for the non-Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch.
(1) Mosaic authorship is never claimed for the Pentateuch as a
whole. Only in certain places is it noted that Moses wrote down
special things (Exod. xvii. 14; xxiv. 4; xxxiv. 27; Num. xxxiii.
2; Deut. xxxi. 9, 22, 24). Moses is consistently spoken of in the
third person, and it is hardly likely that this is a style purposely
adopted, or the statement of Num. xii. 3 would be extraordinary in
the circumstances. Obviously the last chapter of Deuteronomy was not
written by him, nor is the common opinion that it was added by Joshua
at all probable, for there is no difference in style from the rest
of the book discernible, and, moreover, Dan is referred to (Deut.
xxxiv. 1; cp. also Gen. xiv. 14), which was not so named until after
the conquest. (Josh. xix. 47; Judges xviii. 29.) Would Moses need to
authenticate his history of contemporaneous events by quoting from
what are regarded as ancient books: from the Book of the Wars of
Jehovah (Num. xxi. 14), wars which could have only just commenced, or
from the poem which refers to the victory over Sihon (Num. xxi. 27
ff.), which took place at the very end of the forty years' wandering?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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