Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/32

 all its force, even if not only Gen. 34, the blessing of Moses in Gen. 33, whose title proves it to be an appendix to the Thorah, and the song in Gen. 32, are included in the supplement added by a different hand, but if the supplement commences at Gen. 31:24, or, as  Delitzsch supposes, at Gen. 31:9. For even in the latter case, the precepts of Moses on the reading of the Thorah at the feast of Tabernacles of the year of release, and on the preservation of the copy by the side of the ark, would have been inserted in the original prepared byMoses himself before it was deposited in the place appointed; and the work of Moses would have been concluded, after his death, with the notice of his death and burial. The supplement itself was undoubtedly added, not merely by a contemporary, but by a man who was intimately associated with Moses, and occupied a prominent position in the Israelitish community, so that his testimony ranks with that of Moses. Other objections to the Mosaic authorship we shall notice, so far as they need any special refutation, in our commentary upon the passages in question. At the close of our exposition of the whole five books, we will review the modern hypotheses, which regard the work as the resultant of frequent revisions.

§4. Historical Character of the Books of Moses
Acknowledgment of the historical credibility of the facts recorded in the books of Moses requires a previous admission of the reality of a supernatural revelation from God. The widespread naturalism of modern theologians, which deduces the origin and development of the religious ideas and truths of the Old Testament from the nature of the human mind, must of necessity remit all that is said in the Pentateuch about direct or supernatural manifestations or acts of God, to the region of fictitious sagas and myths, and refuse to admit the historical truth and reality of miracles and prophecies. But such an opinion must be condemned as neither springing form the truth nor leading to the truth, on the simple ground that it is directly at variance with what Christ and His apostles have taught in the New Testament with reference to the Old, and also as leading either to an unspiritual Deism or to a comfortless Pantheism,