Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by

JOHN GORHAM PALFREY,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

CAMBRIDGE:

METCALF AND COMPANY,

PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.

PREFACE.

In the work now completed, I have aimed to show what it is, in the ancient Jewish books, that a Christian is called on to believe; and that all that he is called on to believe is credible and well substantiated.

I have not shrunk from any conclusions to which the facts and reasons conducted my mind, "being persuaded," with good Hooker, "of nothing more than this, that, whether it be in matter of speculation or of practice, no untruth can possibly avail the patron and defender long, and that things most truly are likewise most behoovefully spoken."

Judaism is not our rule of faith and conduct. It was superseded, eighteen centuries ago, by Christianity. But Christianity recognizes the Jewish religion as a revelation from God. It assumes a responsibility for the divine origin of that religion. Hence the evidence for the authority of Judaism complicates itself with the evidences of Christianity. The nature and intimacy of the connection between the two systems have been differently understood. Opinions very vague, and, when not vague, often very erroneous, have been entertained by Christians on that subject. Their

a*

wrong opinions have given a great advantage to the unbeliever. Doctrines and interpretations have been admitted by them to be involved in a belief in Christianity, which the unbeliever has been able to represent with great plausibility, and often with truth, to be incredible, and dishonorable to religion. I have long been under the impression, that no other cause obstructs so powerfully the intelligent reception of Christianity at the present day, as the mistaken notions which prevail concerning the Old Testament Scriptures and dispensation, and their connection with the New; and that the great service to be rendered to Christianity is that of relieving it, by a careful but not timid criticism, from the objections arising out of those errors. My hope for these volumes is, that they may be found to be of some value as proving that the Old Testament, rightly understood, in no way conflicts with, or embarrasses, a Christian's faith.

In this survey of the Jewish Scriptures I have endeavoured to ascertain the authority, the design, and the sense of the several books. Rejecting altogether the idea, that the mere presence of a book in what is called the Canon is proof of its having been written by inspiration, or of its possessing in any way an authoritative character, the proofs of that authority which has been indiscriminately attributed to this mass of writings have been sought, where alone, if in fact existing, they are to be found, in the external history and in the contents of the books respectively.

In opposition to many modern critics of the high

est name, I believe the traditional and common opinion to be correct, that the Pentateuch is substantially the composition of Moses, the lawgiver of the Jews, though it has since received some interpolations and other alterations, most of which, it is probable, we are still able to detect.*

There is a tradition mentioned by several of the Christian Fathers, which seems to me very credible, and which, could we know it to be true, would afford a satisfactory explanation of the present textual condition of the Pentateuch, supposing it to have been the work of Moses. It is, as expressed in Tertullian's words, that," after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, the whole body of the Jewish writings was renewed by Ezra."† This statement, supposing it well founded, disposes of many questions. In his labors on the Pentateuch, to fit it for the convenient use of the people of his age, Ezra might be

The subject of the testimony of the New Testament to the authorship of the books of the Old, is one which I have not in these volumes undertaken to discuss. But every reader calls to mind such references of parts of the Pentateuch to Moses as those in Matt. xix. 7, 8; John v. 46; vii. 19–23. — Since the publication of my earlier volumes, important light has been thrown upon the question, whether alphabetical writing was in free use anywhere as early as the time of Moses, by the discoveries in Nineveh, and, what is more to the purpose, in Egypt. The Turin papyrus of the "Book of the Dead," published by Lepsius ("Todtenbuch der Aegypter," Leipzig, 1842), is referred to the thirteenth, fourteenth, or fifteenth century before the Christian era (Vorwort, s. 17). And the substance of the book is traced seven centuries further back. (Comp. Bunsen, "Egypt's Place in Universal History," in Cottrell's translation, Book I. Chap. I. § 4.)

†"De Cultu Fœminarum," Cap. I. § 3 (p. 151, edit. Rigalt.). The word is "restauratum "; literally, renewed, repaired, or reconstructed. For other forms of this tradition, see above, Vol. I. pp. 81, 82, note; and for others yet, see Fabricius," Codex Pseudep. V. T.," Tom. I. pp. 1156 et seq.

expected to transfer it from the ancient Hebrew character to that Chaldee character with which his countrymen in his time were better acquainted, and in which it has actually come into our hands. He would be likely to change ancient forms of language for others more familiar and intelligible; and herein would be another answer to the argument for a modern origin of the Pentateuch, drawn from the resemblance of its phraseology to that of later books.* And he would be likely to introduce those notes, and other additions, which, as was shown in the examination of the Pentateuch, in my previous volumes, must be referred to a later time than that of Moses.

In the writings which I understand to have come to us on the authority of the Hebrew lawgiver, I find nothing which, fairly interpreted and rightly understood, is incredible, unworthy of God, or dishonorable to religion. To rescue the Law from objections of this nature, occasioning uneasiness to many Christian minds, was an object continually kept in view in my Lectures on the Books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Nor am I aware of any objection

* The orthography of our English version has been changed from time to time, and is now very different from that of the original edition. To what has been already said, however, on this subject in its place (Vol. I. p. 83), I might have added that the phraseology of the laws in the Pentateuch, which, or many of which, even by those who contest the authenticity of the whole book, are commonly allowed to have descended from Moses, resembles the phraseology of later times as much as does that of the historical passages; that the ancient written language of the Hebrews, consisting only of consonants, would not be so liable to change as a modern tongue; and that the written modern Arabic differs very little from the most ancient, though the spoken language has undergone great alterations.