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The Universal Anthology, a Collection of the Best Literature, With Biographical and Explanatory Notes, Ed. by R. Garnett, L. Vallée, A. Brandl.
The Universal Anthology a Collection of the Best Literature With Biographical and Explanatory Notes Ed by R Garnett L Valle A Brandl Author:Richard Garnett Title: The Universal Anthology, a Collection of the Best Literature, With Biographical and Explanatory Notes, Ed. by R. Garnett, L. Vallée, A. Brandl. Imperial Ed General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1899 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or ... more »missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: WHO WROTE THE PENTATEUCH? By Ret. A. H. 8AYCE. (From " Early History of the Hebrews.") [For biographical sketch, see p. 25.] It is clear that if the modern literary analysis of the Pentateuch is justified, it is useless to look to the five books of Moses for authentic history. There is nothing in them which can be ascribed with certainty to the age of Moses, nothing which goes hack even to the age of the Judges. Between the Exodus out of Egypt and the composition of the earliest portion of the so-called Mosaic Law there would have been a dark and illiterate interval of several centuries. Not even tradition could be trusted to span them. For the Mosaic age, and still more for the age before the Exodus, all that we read in the Old Testament would be historically valueless. Such criticism, therefore, as accepts the results of " the literary analysis " of the Hexateuch acts consistently in stamping as mythical the whole period of Hebrew history which precedes the settlement of the Israelitish tribes in Canaan. Doubt is thrown even on their residence in Egypt and subsequent escape from "the house of bondage." Moses himself becomes a mere figure of mythland, a hero of popular imagination whose sep- ulcher was unknown because it had never been occupied. In order to discredit the earlier records of the Israelitish people, there is no need of indicating contradictions -- real or otherwise -- in the details of the narratives contained in them, of e...« less