To this we must and shall demur, giving our reasons for it in a few words. The “Hebrew _Bible_” exists no more, as has been shown in the foregoing pages, and the garbled accounts, the falsified and pale copies we have of the real Mosaic _Bible_ of the Initiates, warrant the making of no such sweeping assertion and claim. All that the scholar can fairly claim is that the Jewish _Bible_, as now extant—in its latest and final interpretation, and according to the newly‐discovered key—may give a partial presentment of the truths it contained before it was mangled. But how can he tell what the _Pentateuch_ contained before it had been re‐ composed by Esdras; then corrupted still more by the ambitious Rabbis in later times, and otherwise remodelled and interfered with? Leaving aside the opinion of the declared enemies of the Jewish Scriptures, one may quote simply what their most devoted followers say. Two of these are Horne and Prideaux. The avowals of the former will be sufficient to show how much now remains of the original Mosaic books, unless indeed we accept his sublimely blind faith in the inspiration and editorship of the Holy Ghost. He writes that when a Hebrew scribe found a writing of any author he was entitled, if he thought fit, being “conscious of the aid of the Holy Spirit,” to do exactly as he pleased with it—to cut it up, or copy it, or use as much of it as he deemed right, and so to incorporate it with his own manuscript. Dr. Kenealy aptly remarks of Horne, that it is almost impossible to get any admission from him That makes against his church, so remarkably guarded is he [Horne] in his phraseology and so wonderfully discreet in the use of words that his language, like a diplomatic letter, perpetually suggests to the mind ideas other than those which he really means; I defy any unlearned person to read his chapter on “Hebrew characters” and to derive _any knowledge_ from it whatever on the subject on which he professes to treat.(356) And yet this same Horne writes: We are persuaded that the things to which reference is made proceeded from the original writers or _compilers_ of the books [_Old Testament_]. Sometimes they took other writings, annals, genealogies, and such like, with which they _incorporated additional matter_, or which they put together with greater or less condensation. The _Old Testament_ authors used the sources they employed (that is, the writing of other people) with freedom and independence. Conscious of the aid of the Divine Spirit, _they adapted_ their own productions, or the productions of others, to the wants of the times. But in these respects they cannot be said to have corrupted the text of Scripture. _They made the text._(357) But of what did they make it? Why, of the writings of other persons, justly observes Kenealy: