Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/24

 characteristics of divine revelation, whether in the form of miracle or prophecy. The evidence of this will be given in the Commentary itself, in the exposition of the passages which have been supposed to contain either allusions to historical circumstances and institutions of a later age, or contradictions and repetitions that are irreconcilable with the Mosaic origin of the work. The Thorah “answers all the expectations which a study of the personal character of Moses could lead us justly to form of any work composed by him. He was one of those masterspirits, in whose life the rich maturity of one historical period is associated with the creative commencement of another, in whom a long past culminates, and a far-reaching future strikes its roots. In him the patriarchal age terminated, and the period of the law began; consequently we expect to find him, as a sacred historian, linking the existing revelation with its patriarchal and primitive antecedents. As the mediator of the law, he was a prophet, and, indeed, the greatest of all prophets: we expect from him, therefore, an incomparable, prophetic insight into the ways of God in both past and future. He was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians; a work from his hand, therefore, would show, in various intelligent allusions to Egyptian customs, laws, and incidents, the well-educated native of that land” '' (Delitzsch). In all these respects, not only does the  Thorah satisfy in a general manner the demands which a modest and unprejudiced criticism makes upon a work of Moses; but on a closer investigation of its contents, it presents so many marks of the Mosaic age and Mosaic spirit, that it is  a priori ''probable that Moses was its author. How admirably, for example, was the way prepared for the revelation of God at Sinai, by the revelations recorded in Genesis of the primitive and patriarchal times! The same God who, when making a covenant with Abram, revealed Himself to him in a vision as JEHOVAH who had brought him out of Ur of the Chaldees (Gen. 15:7), and who afterwards, in His character of EL SHADDAI, i.e., the omnipotent God, maintained the covenant which He had made with him (Gen. 17:1ff.), giving him in Isaac the heir of the promise, and leading and preserving both Isaac and Jacob in their way, appeared to Moses at Horeb, to manifest Himself to the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the full significance of His name JEHOVAH, by redeeming