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An introduction to the Old Testament (v. 1)
An introduction to the Old Testament - v. 1 Author:Samuel Davidson 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: presumption in favour of the latter view. Here the remarks already made respecting the Deuteronomist's testimony in favour of Mosaic authorship are again appropr... more »iate, since he put the book of Joshua into its present form, and assigned to Moses the growth of later centuries — all the laws and institutious which had arisen on the basis of the Mosaic legislation. The book of the law of Moses, spoken of in 2 Kings xiv. 6, may or may not have been the whole Pentateuch. The notice in question proceeds from the compiler of the Kings, who wrote after the present Pentateuch was completed. The collection of Mosaic precepts was gradually enlarged till the five books were put together in their present form. In this passage we understand the book of the law as coextensive with the Pentateuch. The same meaning may be assigned to the same phrase in 2 Kings xxii. 8, 11. In 2 Chron. xvii. 9; xxxiv. 14, 15, the phrase has the same sense. The last passage is parallel to 2 Kings xxii. 8, 11, and therefore the meaning must be identical. The compilers of Kings and Chronicles respectively use somewhat different expressions ; the one writing that Shaphan read it before the king (2 Kings xxii. 10), the other that Shaphan read in it (2 Chron. xxxiv. 18). In Nehemiah viii. 1, 3, 18, it may be freely conceded that the phrase book of the law of Moses means the Pentateuch in its present form. It was certainly in existence at that time. In passing from this last argument of Keil's, it will be seen that it is incorrect to assert that the phrase under examination had always a uniform meaning. Even if it could be shewn that it continually denotes the whole Pentateuch, it would not prove that Moses wrote it all; because the expression law of Hoses would be fully justified by Moses's partial authorship. ...« less