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VERACITY

OF THE

FIVE BOOKS OF MOSES.

IT is my intention to argue in the following pages the Veracity of the Five Books of Moses, from the instances they contain of coincidence without design, in their several parts. I am not aware that this test of truth (to which alone I shall appeal) has been deliberately applied to these writings, except by Dr. Graves in two of his useful Lectures upon the Pentateuch. In them he has done much, but much he has still left to be done by others; and though I do not lay claim to the merit (whatever it may

B

be) of actually discovering all the examples of consistency without contrivance which I shall bring forward in this volume, and though in many cases, where the detection was my own, I found on examination that there were others who had forestalled me

-qui nostra ante nos yet some of them I have not seen noticed by commentators at all, and scarcely any of them in that light in which only I regard them, as grounds of evidence. It is to this application, therefore, of expositions, often in themselves sufficiently familiar, that I have to beg the candid attention of my readers; and if I shall frequently bring out of the treasures of God's Word, or of the interpretations of God's Word," things old," the use that I make of them may not perhaps be altogether thought

So.

But before I proceed to individual in

stances, I will endeavour to develope a principle upon which the Book of Genesis goes as a whole, for this is in itself an example of consistency.

I.

THERE may be those who look upon the Book of Genesis as an epitome of the general history of the world in its early ages, and of the private history of certain families more distinguished than the rest. And so it is, and on a first view it may seem to be little else; but if we consider it more closely, I think we may convince ourselves of the truth of this proposition, that it contains fragments (as it were) of the fabric of a Patriarchal Church, fragments scattered indeed and imperfect, but capable of combination, and when combined, consistent as a whole. Now it is not easy to imagine

that any impostor would set himself to compose a book upon a plan so recondite; nor, if he did, would it be possible for him to execute it as it is executed here. For the incidents which go to prove this proposition are to be picked out from among many others, and on being brought together by ourselves, they are found to agree together as parts of a system, though they are not contemplated as such, or at least are not produced as such by the author himself.

I am aware that, whilst we are endeavouring to obtain a view of such a Patriarchal Church by the glimpses afforded us in Genesis, there is a danger of our theology becoming visionary:-it is a search upon which the imagination enters with alacrity, and readily breaks its bounds-it has done so in former times and in our own. Still the principle of such investigation is good;

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