[3] Something like this seems to have been the final position of the late Professor Delitzsch, who said: "We hold firmly that Moses laid the foundation of this codification" (of the "priest-code" of Leviticus, etc.), "but it was continued in the post-Mosaic period within the priesthood, to whom was entrusted the transmission, interpretation, and administration of the law. We admit this willingly; and even the participation of Ezra in this codification in itself furnishes no stumbling block for us. For it is not inconceivable that laws which until then had been handed down orally were fixed by him in writing to secure their judicial authority and execution. The most important thing for us is the historico-traditional character of the Pentateuchal legislation, and especially the occasions for (the laws) and the fundamental arrangements in the history of the times. That which we cannot be persuaded to admit is that the so-called Priestly Code is the work of the free invention of the latest date, which takes on the artificial appearance of ancient history."--_The Presbyterian Review_, July 1882; article, "Delitzsch on the Origin and Composition of the Pentateuch," p. 578. We do not indeed here argue either for or against any of these suppositions, which were apart from the scope of the present work. We are only concerned here to remark that Christ has not incontrovertibly settled these questions. These things may be true or not true; the decision of such matters properly belongs to the literary critics. But decide them as one will, it will still remain true that the law is "the law of Moses," given by revelation from God. So much as this, however, is certain. Whatsoever modifications may conceivably have passed upon the text, all work of this kind was done, as all agree, long before the time of our Lord; and the text to which He refers as of Mosaic origin and of inspired authority, was therefore essentially the text of Leviticus as we have it to-day. We are thus compelled to insist that whatever modifications may have been made in the original Levitical law, they cannot have been, according to the testimony of our Lord, such as in any way conflicted with His affirmation of its Mosaic origin and its inspired authority. They can thus, at the very utmost, only have been, as suggested, in the way of legitimate logical development and application to successive circumstances, of the Levitical law as originally given to Moses; and that, too, under the administration of a priesthood endowed with the possession of the Urim and Thummim, so as to give such official deliverances, whenever required, the sanction of inerrant Divine authority, binding on the conscience as from God. Here, at least, surely, Christ by His testimony has placed an immovable limitation upon the speculations of the critics.