Practically, then, as just said, there are but two alternatives--that of genuine laws written in the time of Moses, and that of deliberate frauds. And bearing this in mind, we must ask, is it likely that men with such a passion for truth and righteousness as the Jewish prophets--men who themselves so denounced lying and deception in every form[65]--should have spent their time in composing such forgeries? Could they, moreover, have done it so _skillfully_, as the laws contain the strongest marks of genuineness; and could they have done it so _successfully_ as never to have been detected at the time? This is the great _moral_ difficulty in assigning these laws to a later age, and to many it seems insuperable. [Footnote 65: Jer. 8. 8; 14. 14; Ezek. 13. 7.] We have thus two _very strong_ arguments in favour of an early date for the Pentateuch: one derived from its _Egyptian references_, the other from its _Laws_. The former shows that no Israelite in later times could have written the book; and the latter that he would not have done so, if he could. (_C._) THE THEORY OF A LATE DATE. We pass on now to the opposite theory, or that of a _late date_. According to this the Pentateuch, though no doubt containing older traditions, and fragments of older documents, was not written till many centuries after the death of Moses. And the four chief arguments in its favour are based on the _language_ of the Pentateuch, its _composite character_, its laws being _unknown_ in later times, and the _finding of Deuteronomy_ in the reign of Josiah. We will examine each in turn. (1.) _The language of the Pentateuch._ Now in general character the language of the Pentateuch undoubtedly resembles that of some of the prophets, such as Jeremiah; so it is assumed that it must date from about the same time. But unfortunately critics who maintain this view do not admit that we have _any_ Hebrew documents of a much earlier date, with which to compare it. Therefore we have no means of knowing how much the language altered, so this of itself proves little.