The Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch Author:William Henry Green Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: m MOSES THE AUTHOE OF THE PENTATEUCH If the Pentateuch is What it claims to be, it is of the greatest interest and value. It professes to record the origin... more » of the world and of the human race, a primitive state of innocence from which man fell by yielding to temptation, the history of the earliest ages, the relationship subsisting between the different nations of mankind, and particularly the selection of Abraham and his descendants to be the chosen people of God, the depositaries of divine revelation, in whose line the Son of God should in due time become incarnate as the Saviour of the world. It further contains an account of the providential events accompanying the development of the seed of Abraham from a family to a nation, their exodus from Egypt, and the civil and religious institutions under which they were organized in the prospect of their entry into, and occupation of, the land of Canaan. The contents of the Pentateuch stand thus in intimate relation to the problems of physical and ethnological science, to history and archaeology and religious faith. All the subsequent revelations of the Bible, and the gospel of Jesus Christ itself, rest upon the foundation of what is contained in the Pentateuch, as they either presuppose or directly affirm its truth. It is a question of primary importance, therefore, both in itself and in its consequences, whether the Pentateuch is a veritable, trustworthy record, or is a heterogeneous mass of legend and fable from which only a modicum of truth can be doubtfully and with difficulty elicited. Canwe lay it at the basis of our investigations, and implicitly trust its representations, or must we admit that its unsupported word can only be received with caution, and that of itself it carries but little weight ? In the settlement of ...« less