Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/33

 which ignores the working of God on the one hand, and the inmost nature of the human mind on the other. Of the reality of the divine revelations, accompanied by miracles and prophecies, the Christian, i.e., the believing Christian, has already a pledge in the miracle of regeneration and the working of the Holy Spirit within his own heart. He who has experienced in himself this spiritual miracle of divine grace, will also recognise as historical facts the natural miracles, by which the true and living God established His kingdom of grace in Israel, wherever the testimony of eye-witnesses ensures their credibility. Now we have this testimony in the case of all the events of Moses’ own time, from his call downwards, or rather from his birth till his death; that is to say, of all the events which are narrated in the last four books of Moses. The legal code contained in these books is now acknowledged by the most naturalistic opponents of biblical revelation to have proceeded fromMoses, so far as its most essential elements are concerned; and this is in itself a simple confession that the Mosaic age is not a dark and mythical one, but falls within the clear light of history. The events of such an age might, indeed, by possibility be transmuted into legends in the course of centuries; but only in cases where they had been handed down from generation to generation by simple word of mouth. Now this cannot apply to the events of the Mosaic age; for even the opponents of the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch admit, that the art of writing had been learned by the Israelites from the Egyptians long before that time, and that not merely separate laws, but also memorable events, were committed to writing. To this we must add, that the historical events of the books of Moses contain no traces of legendary transmutation, or mythical adornment of the actual facts. Cases of discrepancy, which some critics have adduced as containing proofs of this, have been pronounced by others of the same theological school to be quite unfounded. Thus  Bertheau says, with regard to the supposed contradictions in the different laws: “It always appears to me rash, to assume that there are contradictions in the laws, and to adduce these as evidence that the contradictory passages must belong to different periods. The state of the case is really this: even if the Pentateuch did gradually receive the form in which it has come down to us, whoever made additions must have known what the existing contents were, and