CHAPTER IV. MOSES AND THE PENTATEUCH

_“But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart.”—2 Cor. 3:15._

THE first five books of the Old Testament, supposed by many to have been written by Moses, are called the Pentateuch. In the early chapters of Genesis, in the “Authorized Version,” there is placed at the head of the page in the margin, “a. m. 1,” which mean Anno Mundi—the year of the world—one, and immediately below it are the letters “b. c.”—which mean Before Christ—“4004.” This is the system of chronology established by Archbishop Ussher, and means that 4004 years before Christ the world was _one_ year old. It is claimed that Moses promulgated the law about 1451 b. c., and this must have been about two thousand five hundred and fifty-three years after the Creation, which added to 1890, the present date, would make the world just five thousand eight hundred and ninety-four years old. Lyell, a most judicious geologist estimated the delta of the Mississippi at one hundred thousand years, and some persons think these figures should have been doubled. Professor John Fiske thinks the glacial period began two hundred and forty thousand years ago, and that human beings inhabited Europe at least one hundred and sixty thousand years earlier, thus giving an antiquity to our race of not less than four hundred thousand years. Other scientists talk of hundreds of thousands, and even _millions_, of years, but we attach no importance to specific figures. We simply insist upon an antiquity which very far exceeds six thousand years.

Learned Egyptologists place Rameses II., the Pharaoh of the Jewish captivity, whose mummy is now to be seen in the museum at Cairo, at 1390 years b. c. It seems strange that his mummy should be on exhibition in a museum when “he and all his hosts were swallowed up in the Red Sea.” If we are told that Rameses II. was succeeded by Sethi II., we find from Egyptian records that both of these kings lived to a good old age, and the mummy of each has been preserved, and not even a hint is given that either of them was drowned. But we have, according to the tables of Abydos and Bunsen, which are generally accepted, three thousand six hundred and twenty years before Christ as the time in which Menes, the first monarch of Egypt, reigned, making two thousand two hundred and thirty years as the period of the Egyptian monarchy before the reign of Rameses II.

But I contend that Egyptian civilization extends back at least seven thousand years, and Miss Amelia

B. Edwards, the Egyptologist, who has recently lectured in our Pennsylvania University course, thinks ten thousand years not too high an estimate. In support of ibis hypothesis, the great antiquity of man, which no scholar now disputes, carries us back many thousands of years beyond Menes, and there are many facts which favor the assumption that the valley of the Nile was one of the places inhabited for an indefinite period. The works of art—monuments, architecture, paintings, etc.—show an antiquity that cannot be estimated. Manetho, an Egyptian priest, who wrote a history of Egypt, by request of Ptolemy II., two hundred and eighty-six years before Christ, carries us back more than seven thousand years.

The Pentateuch is a compilation by several authors, and hence its patchwork character. Professors Ewald and Kuenen and others have proved this, and Dean Stanley, of the English Establishment, has admitted it. Some portions may have been compiled eight hundred or nine hundred years before Christ, but not the two contradictory accounts of the creation and fall of man. The Assyrian cuneiform tablets, which were discovered in 1873 and 1874 a. d., and which are now in the British Museum, show that this ancient people had this story about two thousand years before the time of Moses. The Jews learned it in Babylon, and none of the other Old-Testament writings contain any notice of it, because it was not known until after the return of the Jews from their captivity in Babylon, five hundred and eighteen years before Christ. Is it not reasonable to suppose that the various Old-Testament writers would have made some reference to the Pentateuch had they known of its existence? Professor François Lenormant of the National Library of France, a most learned archaeologist and palaeontologist, and a most devout Christian, in his _Beginnings of History_ admits that the Jews borrowed substantially the story of the creation and the fall from more ancient nations, and furnishes the original copies. The legends recorded in Genesis are found among many ancient peoples who lived many centuries before Moses; and Berosus, a priest of the temple of Belus, who wrote two hundred and seventy-six years before Christ, affirms that fragments of Chaldean history can be traced back 15 Sadi or 150,000 years. I have mentioned these things because they are germane to what is to follow.

There is good reason for thinking that the book of Deuteronomy was written about six hundred and twenty-one years before Christ, and the remaining books of the Pentateuch were of later date, coming down to four hundred and fifty years before Christ. This Professor Kuenen has demonstrated beyond controversy in his _Religion of Israel_, to which I must refer for his arguments in detail. The best scholarship of the world does not believe that what is called the Law of Moses was written prior to the fifth or sixth century before Christ, and learned men in Holland, Germany, and England, as well as the most advanced thinkers in America, now accept this opinion. Professor Robertson Smith, in the _Encyclopœdia Britannica_, adopts this view, and Dean Stanley, in his _Jewish Church_, does not leave us in doubt as to his opinion.

Take the following as an example of what I mean (Gen. 12:6): “And the Canaanite was then in the land;” whereas the expulsion of the Canaanites did not occur until several centuries after the death of Moses, when this must have been written. In Gen. (36: 31) we read, “Before there reigned any king over Israel.” This must have been two hundred years after the death of Moses. “The nations that were before you” (Lev. 13: 8) of course presupposes that the Canaanites had already been subdued. “Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men that were upon the face of the earth” (Num. 12:13), could hardly have been written by Moses himself. The expression “unto this day” frequently occurs, and shows that the time was long after the events took place. It is also implied in various places that the writer resided in Palestine, and so it could not have been Moses. In Deuteronomy (19: 14) we read, “Thou shalt not remove thy neighbor’s landmark which they of old time have set in thine inheritance.” They had no landmark to remove, unless this was written concerning the land of Canaan long after the death of Moses. They are reproached for not keeping the Sabbath in the past for a long time, and this is given as a reason for the Captivity; and hence Leviticus 26:34, 35, 43 was written after the Captivity, which began in 597 b. c. In Gen. 14:14, Lot is taken prisoner and rescued from his captors, whom they “pursued unto Dan.” Now, there was no such place as Dan until after the entrance into Canaan. We read in Judg. 18:27, 29 that this city was called Laish, which was burned by the Israelites, and then they built a city, and they called it “Dan, after the name of their father: howbeit the name of the city was Laish at first.” This “trout in the milk” is as striking as if some one should write of Chicago when the Declaration of Independence was signed. In Gen. 36:31 we read, “And these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any king over the children of Israel.” This passage shows that it was written after there had been kings in Israel, and could not have been written by Moses. I could show similar incongruities concerning the manna in Gen. 16: 35, compared with Josh. 5: 12. So Deut. 24: 14 must have been written after the entrance into Canaan, as until then they had no _lands_, and there were no gates and no “strangers within their gates.” The same might be said of the fourth commandment of the Decalogue: the Israelites had no _gates_ until after they entered Canaan. It could not have been written by Moses in the wilderness of Arabia.

These illustrations might be produced indefinitely, but enough have been given to show that the Pentateuch was written several hundred years after the death of Moses, and that we are justifiable in fixing the date for most of it in the fourth, fifth, or sixth century before the Christian era. The Pentateuch abounds in duplicate traditions of the same transactions, and also in diversity and contradictions. These numerous repetitions are fatal to the supposition that it was written by Moses. If Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, we should expect to find a good many hints of this in other parts of the Bible; whereas we have no reference to Sinai and its awful thunders, and, although Moses is mentioned in the New Testament, it only shows the existence of traditions to that effect at that time. Not until the time that Christianity arose, about thirteen hundred years after the death of Moses, did the tradition obtain currency that he was the author of the Pentateuch.

The fact is, the Jews are a comparatively modern people, and were not known as a nation until the time of Alexander the Great (356-325 b. c.), and Herodotus, by never mentioning them, so indicates. While the Hindoos, Egyptians, Grecians, Romans, Chaldeans, and Babylonians had their men of science, literature, and law, whose fame only brightens with the flight of time, the Jews have no _history_ except what was written by themselves, and that is so absurd, impossible, and contradictory that nobody can believe it.

Everybody knows that the ancient Jews were the constitutional imitators of other peoples. They have always been the second-hand clothes-dealers of the world. As a race they never have been noted for originality, but have always been ready to borrow what belonged to other people, and then, with characteristic self-complacency, have claimed to be the “original Jacobs” of everything good and great. We intend this as no reflection upon the Jews of the present day.

C. Staniland Wake, an English writer, in his great work on the _Evolution of Morality_, vol. ii., page 59, thus expresses his views: “Judging from this fact, many persons imagine—or at least, from the superstitious reverence that they have for the Decalogue, appear to do so—that until the time of the Hebrew lawgiver the most ordinary rules of morality were unknown. The mere fact of Egypt being the starting-point of the Exodus ought to be sufficient to disabuse the mind of this idea, without reference to the contents of the code itself. But the moral laws given in the Decalogue are of so primitive a character that it is absurd to suppose, except on the assumption that the Hebrews were at that period in a condition of pure savagery, that God would personally appear to give his immediate sanction to them. The commands, Honor thy father and thy mother, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor, Thou shalt not covet, were simply _reiterations_ of laws to which the Hebrews had been subject during their whole sojourn in Egypt, and which must, in fact, have been familiar to them before their ancestors left their traditional Chaldean home.”

Then we must bear in mind that Moses himself was an Egyptian by birth, and that he was brought up at the court of Pharaoh until he was forty years of age, and in Acts 7: 22 we are told that “Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.”

The whole matter relating to the Pentateuch is thus summed up by the late Prof. John Wm. Draper, M. D., LL.D., late of the University of New York, in his _Conflict between Religion and Science_: “No man may dare to impute them (the books of the Pentateuch) to the inspiration of Almighty God, their inconsistencies, incongruities, and impossibilities, as exposed by many learned and pious modern scholars, both German and English, are so great. It is the decision of these critics that Genesis is a narrative based upon legends; that Exodus is not historically true; that the whole Pentateuch is _unhistoric_ and _un-Mosaic_: it contains the most extraordinary contradictions and impossibilities, sufficient to involve the credibility of the whole—imperfections so conspicuous that they would destroy the authenticity of any modern historical work.”... “To the critical eye they all present peculiarities which demonstrate that they were written on the banks of the Euphrates, and not in the desert of Arabia. They contain many Chaldaisms.”... “From such Assyrian sources the legends of the creation of the earth and heavens, the Garden of Eden, the making of man from clay and the woman from one of his ribs, the temptation of the serpent, etc.,... were obtained by Ezra.” “I agree in the opinion of Hupfeld, that the discovery that the Pentateuch is put together out of the various sources of original documents is beyond all doubt, is not only one of the most important and most pregnant with consequences for the interpretation of the historical books of the Old Testament—or rather for the whole of theology and history—but it is also one of the most certain discoveries which have been made in the domain of criticism and the history of literature.”

But not only do the laws of Egypt antedate the laws accredited to Moses, but the Hindoos had laws which were yet more ancient. The writings of Buddha, who died in 477 b. c., refer to older books and quote from them, and these again refer to still older books, until we reach laws which existed many thousands of years before the Law of Moses, as the laws of Manu were drawn from the “immemorial customs” of the nation and constitute a kind of _common law_. “The most accurate scholars point to India as the origin of Egyptian civilization,” says Le Renouf, the learned Egyptologist.

If Egyptian literature was derived in a remote period from India, what must be the date of old India’s laws as compared with the laws of the Hebrews? It is no wonder that Max Müller, professor in the orthodox University of Oxford, says (in Chips, vol. i., p. 11): “After carefully examining every possible objection that can be made against the date of the Vedic hymns, their claim to that high antiquity which is ascribed to them has not, as far as I can judge, been shaken.” The same learned Sanskrit scholar says, “The opinion that the pagan religions were mere corruptions of the religion of the Old Testament, once supported by men of high authority and great learning, is now as completely surrendered as the attempt at explaining Greek and Latin as corruptions of Hebrew” (_Science of Religion_, p. 24). This great Sanskrit scholar admits in many places in his voluminous writings the greater antiquity of the pagan scriptures, and gives many weighty reasons to show how impossible and absurd it is to suppose that they have been changed and interpolated to adapt them to more modern times.

The Vedas, the sacred writings of the Hindoos, according to Sir William Jones the Orientalist, “cannot be denied to have an antiquity the most distant.” According to the Brahmans, they are coeval with the creation, and the Sama-Veda says, “They were formed of the soul of Him who exists by, or of, himself.” The Hindoo laws were codified by Manu and copied by all antiquity, notably by Rome in the compilation or digest of the laws of all nations called the Code of _Justinian_, which has been adopted as the foundation of all modern legislation. I could, did time permit, furnish the laws of Manu, the Justinian Code, and the Civil Code of Napoleon in parallel columns, in a way to show their common origin beyond a doubt. Laws of betrothal and marriage, paternal authority, tutelage, and adoption; property, contract, deposit, loan, sale, partnership, donation, and testamentary bequest,—all were elaborately promulgated by the Code of Manu in 2680 _slocas_.

Laws were arranged under eighteen principal heads, concerning as many different causes for which laws are enacted: Debts, deposits and loans for use, sale without ownership, gifts, non-payment of wages, agreements, sale and purchase, disputes, boundaries, assaults, slander, robbery and violence, adultery, altercation between man and wife, inheritance, and gaming. “The court of Brahma with four faces” is where four learned Brahmans sat in judgment, one of whom was the king’s chief counsellor.

One of their trite sayings was, “When justice, having been wounded by iniquity, approaches the court, and the judges extract not the arrow or dart, they also shall be wounded by it.”

The mode of conducting lawsuits was, in a great degree, similar to that used in all civilized countries of the present day. The oath taken by witnesses was as follows: “What ye know to have been transacted in the matter before us, between the parties reciprocally, declare at large and with truth, for your evidence in the cause is required.”

“The witness who speaks falsely shall be fast bound under water in the snaky cords of Varuna, and be wholly deprived of power to escape torment during a hundred transmigrations.”

Brahmans were banished for giving false evidence, but all others were punished by blows on the abdomen, the tongue, feet, eyes, nose, and ears, and in capital cases blows were inflicted upon the whole body.

Some of the moral sayings of the Hindoos run thus: “He who bestows gifts for worldly fame, while he suffers his family to live in distress, touches his lips with honey, but swallows poison. Such virtue is counterfeit. Even what he does for his spiritual body, to the injury of those he is bound to maintain, shall bring him ultimate misery, both in this world and the next.

“Content, returning good for evil, resistance to sensual appetite, abstinence from illicit gains, knowledge of the Vedas, knowledge of the Supreme Spirit, veracity, and freedom from wrath, form the tenfold system of duties.

“Honor thy father and thy mother. Forget not the favors thou hast received. Learn whilst thou art young. Seek the society of the good. Live in harmony with others. Remain in thine own place.

“Speak ill of none. Ridicule not bodily infirmities. Pursue not a vanquished foe. Deceive even not thy enemies. Forgiveness is sweeter than revenge. The sweetest bread is that earned by labor. Knowledge is riches.

“What one learns in his youth is as lasting as graven on stone. The wise is he who knows himself. Speak kindly to the poor. Discord and gaming lead to misery. He misconceives his interest who violates his promise.

“There is no tranquil sleep without a good conscience, nor any virtue without religion. To honor thy mother is the most acceptable worship. Of women the fairest ornament is modesty.”

The following, from the laws of Manu (lib. iii. Sloca 55), will contrast strangely with the law of Moses regarding the treatment of women and the esteem in which they should be held:

“Women should be nurtured with every tenderness and attention by their fathers, their brothers, their husbands, and their brothers-in-law, if they desire great prosperity.”

“Where women live in affliction the family soon becomes extinct; but when they are loved and respected, and cherished with tenderness, the family grows and prospers in all circumstances.”

“When women are honored the divinities are content; but when we honor them not all acts of piety are sterile.”

“The households cursed by the women to whom they have not rendered due homage find ruin weigh them down and destroy them as if smitten by some secret power.”

“In the family where the husband is content with his wife, and the wife with her husband, happiness is assured for ever.”

That there were many trivial things in the ancient pagan laws, and many practices prevailed among a portion of the people which seem idolatrous, we freely admit; but the same is true of many of the Hebrew laws, which are too obscene for quotation here. We also find among the Hebrews all forms of _nature-worship_, such as sun-worship, tree-worship, fire-worship, ser-pent-worship, and phallic-worship. Of this more later on.

Besides the Hindoos and the Egyptians, there were many nations more ancient than the Hebrews. The Grecian Argos was founded 1807 b. c. Athens and Sparta existed 1550 b. c. Then there were the Phœnicians, a maritime people who flourished more than five thousand years ago, whose monuments and inscriptions are found in Palestine to-day, while the Hebrews have left us neither monument nor inscription. The Chaldeans established a monarchy four thousand or five thousand years ago, and three thousand five hundred or four thousand years back the Assyrians became masters of the valley of the Euphrates and the Tigris, and from these people the Jews got all they ever knew about things subsequently recorded in the Pentateuch.

The Jewish and Christian religions (for they are claimed to be one) are next to being the _youngest_, or most modern, of any of the _great religions_ of the world, the Mohammedan being the last. Each claimed divine authority; all had their lawgivers, priests, and prophets, who wrote, as they claimed, their bibles by _divine_ inspiration. The error of Judaism is in claiming the greatest antiquity, as well as claiming to be the only religion having the divine sanction.

I cannot refrain from mentioning some things which cannot be regarded as wholly irrelevant. Moses had a very remarkable experience in his infancy. At his birth he was placed in an ark and set afloat on the Nile, and was rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter, who called a nurse for him who proved to be his mother. We have many counterparts of this in Grecian and Egyptian mythology. _Perseus_ was shut up in a chest and cast into the sea by the king of Argos, and was found by Dictys, who educated him. _Bacchus_ was confined in a chest by order of the king of Thebes, and was cast upon the Nile. He had two mothers—natural and adopted. _Osiris_, the Egyptian divinity, was confined in a coffer and thrown into the river. He floated to Phœnicia. His mother wandered in silence and grief to Byblos, and was selected by the king’s servants and taken to the palace, and was made _the nurse_ of the young prince. We could give several other parallel cases, but we pause and wonder whether the reported experience of Moses was not another version of the same myth.

We next find this “greatest of statesmen and lawgivers” a fugitive from justice (Ex. 2: 11-15). He had killed a man and buried him in the sand, and when he learned that the murder was known by the Hebrews, and Pharaoh sought to slay him, he fled to the land of Midian and tended the flocks of Jethro, a priest, until he was eighty years old. He knew then that it was wrong to kill just as well as he did after receiving the Ten Commandments; for he “looked this way and that” to find out whether any one saw him, and “he feared, and said, Surely this is known.” He showed a sense of _guilt_. He always seemed afraid of Pharaoh on account of this murder.

He was next commissioned to deliver his brethren from their bondage in Egypt, and was instructed to say that “_I Am that I Am_” had sent him (Ex. 3: 14). Now, it seems to me very strange that Nuk-Pa-Nuk was the Egyptian name for God, and means, “_I Am that I Am!_” (Bonwick, _Egyptian Belief_, p. 395). This name was found upon an Egyptian temple, according to Higgins (_Anacalypsis_, vol. ii. p. 17), who says, “_I Am_ was a divine name understood by all the initiated among the Egyptians;” and Bunsen affirms, in his _Keys of St. Peter_, that the “_I Am_ of the Hebrews was the same as the _I Am_ of the Egyptians.”

There is another peculiarity about Moses that seems strange to me. In his statue in Fairmount Park he is represented as having horns, and he is so portrayed in the statue by Michael Angelo. Now the sun-god Bacchus had _horns_, and so had Zeus, the Grecian supreme deity. _Bacchus_ was called “the Lawgiver,” and it is said that his laws were written upon _two tables of stone_. It is also said that he and his army enjoyed the _light of the sun_ (pillar of fire) during the night-time, and he, like Moses, had a _rod_ with which divers miracles were wrought. The Persian legend relates that Zoroaster received from Ormuzd the Book of the Law upon a _high mountain. Minos_ received on Mount Dicta, from Zeus, the supreme god, _the law_. There are many such cases. Even Mohammed, it is said, so received the Koran.

Then the crossing of the Red Sea by Moses and his three millions of absconding slaves “dry-shod,” and the “rock in the wilderness giving forth water when struck by the rod of Moses,” both have several parallels. Orpheus, the earliest poet of Greece, relates how _Bacchus_ had crossed _the Red Sea dry-shod_ at the head of his army, and how he “divided the waters” of the rivers Orontes and Hydaspis and passed through them “dry-shod,” and how he _drew water from the rock with his wonderful rod_. Professor Steinthal notes the fact “that almost all the acts of Moses correspond to those of the _sun-gods_.” It may seem strange that the Hebrews were acquainted with Grecian mythology, yet we know this was the fact. Rev. Dr. Isaac M. Wise says, “The Hebrews adopted forms, terms, ideas, and myths of all nations with whom they came in contact, and, like the Greeks, in their way cast them all in a peculiar Jewish religious mould.”

Moreover, there are strange inconsistencies and contradictions connected with the alleged giving of the Law to Moses. In both Exodus and Deuteronomy God is represented as _speaking_ the words, and in Deut. 5:22 it is said God “_wrote_ them on two tables of stone” after speaking them, and in Ex. 24: 28 _Moses_ is represented as doing the writing: “And _he_ wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.” We here find a hundred commandments, more or less, of a ceremonial character, and only _one_ of the original ten, the one relating to the Sabbath, and we here find “earing-time and harvest” made a season of rest just as much as the Sabbath. Then there are different reasons given for the observance of the Sabbath in Ex. 20 and Deut. 5—the one that God “rested on the seventh day” after creating all things in six days (of course this was in six days of twenty-four hours each, else there was no pertinency in the reason); and the other, that it was in commemoration of the deliverance of the Hebrews from the bondage in Egypt.

It has been claimed that at least the Sabbath is an institution first established in the Decalogue of Exodus, and yet even this must be denied. Evidences of the observance of the seventh day as sacred are found in the calendars of the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians, and the _Records of the Past_ assert that Sabbath observance was in existence at least eleven hundred years before Moses or Exodus among the Accadians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians.

There are also great variances in the language of the two accounts in Exodus and Deuteronomy, which could not have existed if copied from what God had written in stone. The second table of stone was an exact copy of the first (Deut. 10:2). When Moses got excited at Aaron’s golden calf and broke the two tables of stone containing the Law, and God was going to destroy the people, Moses dissuaded him from doing so by telling him what the Egyptians would then say about him! (Num. 14; 13-16.)

It is worthy of note that the first commandment is of doubtful _monotheism_: Thou shalt have no “other gods before me,” implying that there were other gods. Then there is something not pleasant in the idea of a “jealous God,” as used in this commandment and frequently in other places. Contrast this with the Hindoo _Geeta_, where God is represented as saying, “They who serve even other gods, with a firm belief in doing so, involuntarily worship Me. I am He who partaketh of all worship, and I am their reward.” God is defined in the Hindoo _Vedas_ as, “He who exists by himself, and who is in all because all is in him; whom the spirit can alone perceive; who is imperceptible to the organs of sense; who is without visible parts, Eternal, the Soul of all being, and whom none can comprehend.” “God is one, immutable, without form or parts, infinite, omnipresent, and omnipotent.” No need to prohibit the making of a “graven image” to represent such a god.

Now take Moses’ description of God. He only saw his “back parts” (Ex. 33: 22, 23), and God held his hand over him when in the cleft of the rocks while he passed by, that he might not see his glory. And, while it is said, “Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me and live” (Ex. 33: 20), yet “the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend” (Ex. 33:11). He was with him in the mountain forty days and nights, and saw him and talked to him, and so did at least seventy-three other persons (Ex. 24: 9). Yet we are told in John 1:18, “No man hath seen God at any time.”

Then there are many other “commandments” in the Bible which cannot be reconciled with the “Ten Commandments,” and very many acts regarded as criminal in this nineteenth century which are not forbidden, but indirectly or tacitly sanctioned. One of the “Ten Commandments” is, “Thou shalt not kill,” but husbands are directed to _kill_ their wives if they propose to them a change of religion, and killing is commanded in numerous instances and for trivial offences, such as picking up sticks to make a fire on the Sabbath.

Take the following as specimens of the cruelty of Moses:

“But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save nothing alive that breatheth” (Deut. 20:16).

Here is another of his injunctions: “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor” (Ex. 32:27).

Here is another: “Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel [some four hundred years before], how he laid wait for him,” etc. “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass” (1 Sam. 15: 2, 3). This was sweeping, merciless revenge on the innocent.

He commands the Jews to swindle the Egyptians by false pretence, “spoiling” them of their jewelry (Ex. 3:19-22). He authorized them to take _usury_ of strangers, but not of one another; and to sell the “flesh of animals that had died of themselves” to strangers and aliens, but not to run the risk of poisoning themselves (Deut. 14:21).

In the affair with the Midianites _Moses was more cruel than the officers and common soldiery_. He was “_wroth with them_” because they had saved all the women alive, and required that they should go back and finish the brutal butchery. I cannot do this subject justice without transcribing a large portion of Num. 31:

“And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses; and they slew all the males.

“And they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were slain; namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian; Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword.

“And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods.

“And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire.

“And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts.

“And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto Moses and Eleazar the priest, and unto the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by Jordan near Jericho.

“And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp.

“And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle.

“And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?

“Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord.

“Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.

“But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”

What shall we say when we remember that Moses found a refuge with the Midianites for forty years when he was a fugitive from justice for the murder of the Egyptian, and the Midianites were the first to show the Jews hospitality when they escaped from the bondage of Egypt? Moreover, Moses had married a woman of Midian, and might have been supposed to have some regard for her kinswomen. It cannot be claimed that Moses was compelled by the low condition of the people to treat the Midianites thus, for he was the _sole author_ of this extreme butchery of women and children, and was “wroth” with his officers for not committing the atrocity in the first place. True, he charges the women with having “caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor but this could not justify the butchery of some forty-eight thousand women and twenty thousand boys, besides the old men. And then the thirty-two thousand virgins had a fate _worse than death_, though called the ’Lord’s tribute’,” and the priests got their full share of the spoil. For those who would justify such cruelty and wholesale butchery, as they would justify famine and pestilence the effect of natural laws, I can have no very great respect.

It has been said, “Cruel as many of the Mosaic punishments undoubtedly were, it is well to remember that two hundred years ago the criminal code of England was almost, if not equally, bloody. If Moses stoned adulteresses to death, it is not very long since we put witches and Quakers to death, while in many other countries the stake and the fagot were the chief arguments in aid of orthodoxy. It would not be just to judge of the punishments inflicted over three thousand years ago from the standpoint of the present century, when the Mosaic dispensation has passed away and that of the law of love substituted. There was no mercy in the smoking rocks of Sinai. There was nothing but the law in all its sternness.”

This is all very well, but we should remember that the cruel criminal codes of modern times got their cruelty from the Mosaic code. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Ex. 22: 18) was one of the laws of Moses, and from first to last thirty thousand witches were’ executed in Great Britain and two hundred thousand in Germany. Sir Matthew Hale pronounced the death-sentence on a “witch,” and Blackstone, the great commentator, thought that witchcraft must be real because the Bible said there were witches! Scotland continued to burn witches until 1722, and Germany until 1780, while in 1515 there were five thousand witches burned at Geneva. I am ashamed to speak of our own hanging of witches in Massachusetts, but it is very well known that it was done by authority of the law of Moses: “A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them” (Lev. 20: 27).(1)

Rev. Rabbi Hirsch sums up his conclusions as the result of his study of the Pentateuch:

“The non-authenticity of the Pentateuch is shown by the work itself. It is indicated by—(1) The impossible occurrences in the desert; (2) The various contradictions and repetitions, as in the descriptions of the festivals; the provision of the officiators for the sacrifices; the appropriations of the tithes; the rules for sacrificing the first-born children to Deity—the law regulating these matters varying in Deuteronomy and Numbers; (3) Certain phrases used, as “up to the present day,” which lose all significance if applied to Moses. Thus the book itself shows not one author, but many.

“The non-authenticity of the Pentateuch is shown also by lack of reference to it in the prophetical and historical books. Jeremiah, when denouncing in unmeasured terms the very sins prohibited by the Decalogue, never uses the language of those cardinal rules of morality; the prophecies show no trace of the priestly ordinances; and, though most of the laws refer to Sinai, the name occurs in none of the prophetical books.

(1) In 1865 the witch-laws were yet in force in South Carolina!

“It contains old songs; embodies the written law or judicial decisions of the Israelites in the Book of the Covenant; springs from two currents of history, the Elohist and Jehovist, the former composed of the younger Elohist of the South and the older Elohist of the North; shows Deuteronomy very much altered from its original form by emendations and additions, being formerly without the first four and the closing chapters, and the Levitical Law or Priestly Codex having been later incorporated with Joshua and the books of Moses; and lastly it is marred by changes made in accordance with the new religious spirit.”

We know very little about Moses. If there ever was such a man—which is very doubtful, taking the writings accredited to him for authority—he is not shown to have been “the greatest statesman and lawgiver the world has ever produced.” Neither have the Jews ever developed, in ancient or modern times, such a moral character as a people as to justify the supposition that they had a great and inspired leader among them, and that he taught them anything not well known for many centuries before to more ancient and more intelligent nations.

The assumption that Moses was the author, under divine guidance, of what is commonly called the _Ten Commandments,_ about one thousand four hundred and fifty-one years before the Christian era, is _assumption_ only, without a particle of proof to sustain it. What are commonly called the laws of Moses were written by some person or persons unknown in the fifth or sixth centuries before the beginning of Christianity. Most of the matter of what is called the Pentateuch was borrowed from older and wiser nations—the Egyptians, the Hindoos, the Greeks, etc. But for the unbounded credulity on this subject it would seem like an insult seriously to discuss the question, Which are the older writings? and, Which the substantial copies? Unless a man is ready to take assumptions for demonstrated facts, to ignore the museums and libraries, to question the conclusions of the profound-est antiquarians, and to make the stream of history flow backward, he must admit that the Hebrews were the borrowers.(1)

(1) The substance of this chapter was published in March, 1890, in _An Open Letter_ to Hon. Edward M. Paxson, Chief-Justice of Pennsylvania, who had affirmed in a lecture before the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania that the “law of Sinai was the first of which we have any knowledge,” and that “Moses was the greatest statesman and lawgiver the world has ever produced.”