translation is in the main strictly literal; the idiom is often rather Hebrew than German. As in his other works, Delitzsch adheres closely to the Massoretic text, and rarely admits that it may be at fault. The commentary brings us not only the fruits of the author's own studies for many years, in which every word has been weighed over and over again as in assayer's balances, but the results of Biblical scholarship to the present time; it exhibits the actual state of learning and of controversy in this field. Foreign as well as German exegetical literature has been included in the survey. The style is so much more concise and direct than in the old commentary, and so much that was no longer of interest has been dropped, that notwithstanding the great increase of matter the volume is somewhat smaller than the fourth edition. The Excursus by Wetzstein are not reprinted; instead we have one by Friedrich Delitzsch, on Larsa-Ellasar," and one or two short ones by the author.

Special interest is given to this volume by the position which Professor Delitzsch takes in it to the questions of Pentateuch criticism. As regards the analysis, he long ago recognized the composite character of Genesis, and accepted the so-called supplement hypothesis. The table at the end of the volume of 1872 presents the analysis essentially on the lines of Tuch, with references to Hupfeld and Schrader. He now adopts without reserve the results of the investigations of Wellhausen, Kuenen, and particularly Dillmann. The main lines of the analysis are, in fact, so well established that there is no serious controversy over them among those who admit the right of critical analysis at all. With those who do

not, it is fruitless to discuss the details of the analysis, since we have no common principles of criticism to serve as a basis for argument. Delitzsch says: "That the investigation has not moved in a circle, but has made progress, no competent scholar will deny. The factors which enter into the composition of the Pentateuch are certainly known, and since the supplement hypothesis has been disposed of scholars are divided not so much by differences in the results of the analysis as by their religious attitude to the Scripture and the different way they make use of the results for the history of religion."

In regard to the order of the sources, Delitzsch has gone over to the views of the new school. The priestly history and laws are the youngest stratum in the Hexateuch. Expressed in Wellhausen's signatures, the series is: JE, D, Q. The final redaction which gave the Pentateuch its present form was subsequent to the Babylonian exile. The Jewish and Christian tradition as to the authorship and age of the Pentateuch is completely abandoned. The Old Testament gives no support to this tradition; the Pentateuch makes no such claim for itself; "nowhere in the canonical books of the Old Testament where the Tora, the Book of the Tora, the Tora of God, the Tora of Moses, is spoken of, is the Pentateuch in its present form meant." That Jesus and his apostles believed that Moses was the mediator of the law, that through him Israel became the people of the law, is important; "but historico-critical investigation as to his part in the authorship is not bound by the language of the New Testament." 66 They thought of the Tora as we should expect members of their people to think; they regard it as the work of Moses, and as proceeding from divine revelation; but it is not God's full and final revelation, and they take pains to emphasize, therefore, the human side of its origin, without raising the question whether Moses was immediately or only mediately and indirectly its author, a question

which was aside from their high practical aim, and, moreover, foreign to the character of their time."

But although Delitzsch goes so far with the new critical school, he lays stress upon the fact that his conception of the process through which the Pentateuch came into being is essentially different from that which prevails in this school. The chief point at issue is the relation of Moses to the law. He maintains that a considerable part of the legislation in the Pentateuch goes back in substance to a Mosaic tradition. However much these laws may have been subsequently expanded, amended, wrought over, the Mosaic origin of the law is still the ultimate fact. The whole legislative development, which continued till after the exile, was determined by the root on which it grew. His position is set forth and defended at greater length in a series of articles in Luthardt's Zeitschrift for 1880 and 1882; with which may be compared the author's "Suggestive Jottings" in the "Sunday School Times" for 1886 (December) and 1887. In the introduction to the commentary the argument is briefly outlined. There is nothing in the circumstances of Moses' time to make the assumption that he had such a part in the origination of the law antecedently improbable. The art of writing had been practiced in Egypt for ages; under the 18th and 19th dynasties science and art attained their most splendid development; literature in all its forms was cultivated. It is not too early for the beginning of Israelitish literature. Moses himself was brought up at court as the adopted son of a royal princess, and was initiated into all the science and the mysteries of the priesthood. The legislation of the Pentateuch undeniably bears in many of its provisions the stamp of Egyptian influence. A law-giving is not out of place at the beginning of the history of Israel, for that history does not begin with a state of barbarism, but with a people which had long been in contact with the highest civilization of the time, a civilization founded upon law. The time of Moses was, as all but a few extreme skeptics admit, the creative period of Israel. From this alone it may be inferred that a Mosaic Tora lies at the basis of the Pentateuch. And it is antecedently probable that it contained more than merely the Ten Words. The history and literature of Israel sustain this inference. The life of the people did not, indeed, conform to the standard of the law. In that there is nothing strange; for the law of Israel was not customary law with a religious sanction, but revealed, that is, ideal, law aiming to become custom. On the other hand, the religious history of Israel is inexplicable without such a basis. Ethical monotheism is, as the antagonism to it shows, not a natural growth, but the requirement of a revelation which set up an ideal the realization of which was frustrated by the natural propensities of the people. The assumption of a Mosaic Tora is justified, too, by testimony in the later literature which can hardly be challenged.

The author then takes up the testimony of the Pentateuch itself. Moses is expressly said to have written: two groups of Sinaitic laws, Ex. 20-23; 34; the command to exterminate Amalek (v. Ex. 17, 14); the list of halting-places, Num. 33; the Tora contained in Deuteronomy (v. Deut. 31. 9, 24); the Song, Deut. 32. The Decalogue is primary document of the Sinaitic legislation, and must be regarded as "das Echteste des Echten; we may recognize in it, if anywhere, the characteristics of Moses' thought and style. But the Decalogue, in both forms in which we have it, exhibits the distinctive peculiarities of expression

VOL. XII. NO. 71.

36

which we call Jehovistic-Deuteronomic. The hypothesis that in Exodus 20 it has been conformed to Deuteronomy 5 is rejected. The inference to be drawn from the facts is that if either of the two characteristically different modes of expression in the Pentateuch goes back to a primitive Mosaic type, it is the Jehovistic-Deuteronomic rather than the Elohistic. The law of the Second Tables, Ex. 34, is a later recapitulation of the Book of the Covenant, Ex. 21-23. As regards the latter, there is at least no decisive reason for rejecting the statement that, later editorial additions aside, it was written down by Moses as the fundamental law of the Sinaitic covenant. We have thus in the Book of the Covenant, as in the Decalogue, the genuine Mosaic type in its relatively oldest and purest form. The Doom of Amalek contains nothing characteristic; that Numbers 33 is the list which Moses wrote out cannot well be proved. Deuteronomy 31. 9, 24, refers not to the whole book, but at most to the legislative part, chapters 12-26. The author of the last discourses of Moses is not Moses himself and does not pretend to be. In them a traditional basis is reproduced with so much intelligence and so much artistic skill, that neither the words which are put into the mouths of the old prophets in the books of Kings and Chronicles, nor the Psalms in which the poet has entered most completely into David's situation, and writes, as it were, out of David's own soul, afford a parallel. The relation of the Deuteronomist to Moses is like that of the author of the fourth Gospel to his Master. The laws, as well as the discourses, have passed through the subjectivity of the Deuteronomist. In the latter he reproduces material which had been handed down in outline by tradition, expanding and supplementing it in the spirit of Moses; in the laws he remodels the traditional legislation of the fortieth year as the moral and religious needs of his own time suggested. This legislation was the Mosaic deuterosis of the Book of the Covenant; the Deuteronomy as we have it is a post-Mosaic deuterosis of this deuterosis.

In regard to the Elohistic history and the priestly legislation, Delitzsch defines his present position in three theses: 1. The primeval and patriarchal history, from the Elohistic account of the creation to the story of Joseph, was committed to writing long before the exile; that legends and traditions of this sort were extant is to be presumed, and that they had substantially the form in which we have them in Genesis may be gathered from the pre-exilic literature. 2. The history of the law-giving is not in the Priests'-code any more than in JE or D, fabricated in order to falsely attribute to the laws Mosaic origin, but is derived from tradition which was not in all points, e. g. in regard to the Tabernacle (whether it was an oracle-tent, or a place of worship), consentient. 3. The foundation of the legislation which was ultimately codified by the Elohist was already laid when the Deuteronomist wrote. Deuteronomy 24. 8, e. g., refers to the law of leprosy which is now incorporated in the Priests'-code, Lev. 13; 14. There is sufficient evidence of this kind to show that the Elohistic type of legal phraseology existed before the date of the Deuteronomy beside the Mosaic and the Jehovistic-Deuteronomic type. The interval of time is insufficient to account for the difference between these types. As the latter originated with Moses, so the Elohistic type must go back to some eminent priest whose legislative and historical style was perpetuated among the priesthood as the prophetic historical style in the schools of the prophets. The Priests'code is the product of a gradual development, which, allowing that it

continued into post-exilic times, has, nevertheless, its roots in the Mosaic age.

Inspiration, defined as the work of the Spirit which coöperates in the production of an authentic record of the history of redemption, is to be ascribed not to the sources, which separately may be incomplete, onesided, and inadequate, but to the whole in which they are now united. To the Christian as such the Pentateuch, the whole Bible, is one, the work of one Spirit, having one meaning and one end. And in reality this unity is in all essentials beyond the reach of any discoveries of the critical analysis.

This résumé, which I have given as far as possible in the author's own words, is necessarily incomplete, but is perhaps sufficient to indicate Delitzsch's position. A criticism of it would soon overrun the limits of this notice. I must content myself here with one observation. The order JE (or EJ?), D, Q, which Delitzsch accepts is determined not merely by the relations of the sources to one another, but by their relation to a definite historical situation; Deuteronomy to the reforms of Josiah, the Priests'-code to the work of Ezra. The earliest legislation, Ex. 20-23, presupposes a settled people, tilling the soil. For the rest it represents chiefly ancient customary law, in which there is nothing to connect it with Moses or his time. Tradition attests only that Moses wrote down the fundamental laws of the covenant at Sinai (p. 20). Delitzsch's belief that Exodus 21 ff., excluding later additions, is this Mosaic collection of laws, rests on literary grounds almost exclusively. But are the criteria by which he thinks we may recognize the genuine Mosaic type adequate? I hardly think there will be two answers to that. Setting aside the very reasonable hypothesis that the Decalogue in Exodus has been conformed to that in Deuteronomy, as, for example, in the received text, the Lord's prayer in Luke to that in Matthew, Delitzsch's own examination of the language of the Ten Words would prove that the genuine Mosaic style is not that of J, but of the Deuteronomist. But Deuteronomy is not Mosaic. With all respect for the motive which makes the author wish to vindicate in some sense the Mosaic origin of the law while giving up the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, I cannot regard the attempt as successful. But no one can help admiring the love of truth and the intellectual and moral courage which such a book from such a man attests. "God is the God of truth, nes ! To love the truth, to yield to the constraint of the truth, to surrender traditional views which cannot stand the test of truth, is a sacred duty, a part of the fear of God." These are words which cannot be deeply enough impressed on the conscience of every student of Scripture. It is not the smallest part of the value of this book that it adds the example to the precept.

SO

Of the translation it is impossible to say much good. Delitzsch is not always the easiest of authors to understand, and he often expresses himself in a fashion which is anything but easy to turn into English, much it is but just to say in advance of any criticism. We should not quarrel with the awkward and unidiomatic English, nor judge too severely occasional misapprehensions, if, on the whole, the meaning were fairly well conveyed. I am compelled to say that this is not the case. The translator has in many places completely misunderstood her author, and still oftener has not understood him at all. I put together here a few examples, taken almost at random from the introduction.

De

litzsch writes, p. 6, that the Urim and Thummim remind us of the sapphire image of the Goddess of Truth which, in Egypt, the ȧpxidikaστýs wore on a golden chain upon his breast. In the English we read: "The Urim and Thummim [recall] the sapphire image of the Goddess of Truth, who wore the apxidikaσrýs hanging from a golden chain on her bosom"! The position of judge was surely an unenviable one! The invention of writing, we are told three times, culminated in the acro-phoenician [acrophonetic] principle. "Die aus Davids Lage und Seele herausgedichteten Psalmen," are, "Those Psalms in the Psalter composed on the subject of David's condition and state of mind." "Skizzenhaft Ueberliefertes is a "sketch of traditional occurrences." In the Preface Delitzsch predicts that, in spite of all the progress which the New Commentary shows, it will still fail, by reason of his theological position, to receive the praise of being thoroughly scientific; the translation makes him say: "The praise of full and complete scholarship will still be withheld from it," a thing which no one would dream of saying. I shall give one more extended illustration of the translator's method. Speaking of the hypothesis that the phraseology of the Decalogue in Exodus has been colored by the influence of Deuteronomy 5, Delitzsch writes as follows: "Wir verzichten auf diese Hülfsannahme, bei welcher die Urgestalt des Dekalogs zum x wird; es giebt für masshaltige Forschung keine Urgestalt des Dekalogs als die aus dem Zusammenhalt der zwei Texte sich ergebende, u. s. w." This becomes: "We however relinquish these expedients, and renounce the reduction of the Decalogue to an imaginary original form."

Words which belong to the terminology of criticism are seldom rendered by the English equivalents. The supplement hypothesis, e. g., is uniformly the completion hypothesis, etc. Misprints are also much too numerous, especially in the titles of books.

George F. Moore.

WHITHER? A THEOLOGICAL QUESTION FOR THE TIMES. BY CHARLES AUGUSTUS BRIGGS, D. D., Davenport Professor of Hebrew and the Cognate Languages in the Union Theological Seminary. Pp. xv, 303. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1889.

The occasion of this book is the proposed revision of the theological standards of the Presbyterian churches in the United States. Professor Briggs advocates either a revision of the Westminster Symbols, or an additional article qualifying subscription to them. His book is principally devoted to an exhibition of the departures which have already been made from those standards by all Presbyterian ministers and churches in this country. In various matters of polity, worship, and doctrine the whole Presbyterian body has drifted away from the Westminster standards, in some respects for the better, in some respects for the worse, and he argues that in common honesty the symbols should be revised, or subscription should be relaxed. He also contends that, inasmuch as important revisions have been made at various times in respect to the classification of church officers, the structure of presbyteries, and the order and character of public worship, there is no good reason why the doctrinal utterances of the Westminster divines should be considered too sacred to be altered. He believes, however, that there should be a return to some of the doctrinal statements of the symbols,