Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

whether treating of events synchronical with the heaven-taught legislator, or detailing facts which preceded the age wherein he flourished.

Doubtless the Israelites, who were contemporaries of Moses, must, by tradition from their pious ancestors, have been acquainted with all the leading circumstances recorded in the early history of the Pentateuch. For, though I am inclined to follow the lengthened postdiluvian chronology of the Samaritan in preference to the short postdiluvian chronology of the Hebrew; still the time between Abraham and the deluge was such, that that awful catastrophe and the subsequent dispersion from Babel must have been perfectly familiar to him.' The Gentiles indeed themselves, to a much later age, preserved, in all main points, a sufficiently accurate remembrance of the flood: for they made it even one of the grand foundations of their extraordinary theological system. Much more then must Abraham have known the fact, when we consider both the period in which he flourished and the exactness with which his genealogy from Noah was preserved. But, as it has often been remarked, such was the longevity of the antediluvian patriarchs, that, in the possibility of oral communication, there is only a single middle link between Adam and Noah: for each of those personages might have conversed with one and the same intermediate connecting individual, Under such circumstances, the Israelites, in con

[ocr errors]

See my Origin of Pagan Idol. book vi. c. 2. § v. 5.

sequence of their being preserved from idolatry during the entire period between Abraham and Moses, would possess the patriarchal traditions in their plain historical form, undisguised by the fictions and symbols and allegories of the pagan hierophants.

Still however it is to be expected, that their accounts of these early matters would be characterized both by inaccuracies and additions and omissions. As yet, in the patriarchal Church, there was no inspired written word. That defect, since the world had now extensively apostatised into idolatry, was to be remedied upon the inauguration of a new and limited dispensation, which was appointed to be as a lamp shining in the midst of surrounding darkness. Moses therefore was enjoined to commit to imperishable writing, what had hitherto subsisted only in rapidly deteriorating tradition: and for this purpose, as God's prophet, he must have received such a measure of divine inspiration, as precluded in his narrative. the possibility of error.

The reason is obvious: unless we admit this to have been the case; we shall be obliged to suppose, that the man, who was empowered to work miracles and to deliver from God himself a Law to the Israelites, was yet suffered to prefix to that inspired Law an uninspired and frequently erroneous history. Such an opinion however seems to involve a self-contradicting absurdity.

CHAP. V.

THE DIVINE INSPIRATION OF THE PENTA

TEUCH DEMONSTRATED

DENCE OF MIRACLES.

FROM THE EVI

AN establishment of the position, that the Pentateuch was written by Moses, inevitably draws after it the position, that the history which he gives of his own times is an authentic history, For, as the author studiously courted publicity in his life-time, as his work was openly read to the people through a long series of generations from the very day of its original composition, as the matters recorded were not done in a corner, and as every contemporaneous Israelite must have been an adequate judge whether they occurred or not: it is abundantly clear, that no history, written by Moses or indeed by any person who flourished synchronically with him, could have been unreservedly adopted and afterwards have been zealously maintained; if, all the while, each individual, who left Egypt under his guidance, had had the testimony of his own senses that the whole

composition was a tissue of monstrous and extravagant falsehoods. The impossibility of such an occurrence is rendered yet more glaring by the consideration, that the Pentateuch of Moses not only contains a history of his own times, but that it likewise comprehends a code of national law both civil and ecclesiastical. Now it is utterly incredible, that the Israelites should so implicitly resign themselves to the guidance of a man, whose fabricated history of transactions, in which they themselves were immediately concerned, proved him to be an impudent impostor, as to receive from his hands, in his quality of God's prophet, both their religion and their statutes. No person, whose strangely incautious narrative thus immediately exposed his total disregard of truth, could have obtained the extraordinary ascendancy over his followers, which the very reception of the Law of Moses proves that remarkable person to have obtained over the Israelites.

!་་

The whole matter, in short, resolves itself into this single question: if the miraculous events, recorded by Moses as having taken place both in the day of the exodus and during the travels of the people in the wilderness, never really occurred; how did he persuade his contemporaries to receive a history as authentic, which boldly sets forth various gigantic falsehoods, and which absolutely appeals to themselves as knowing and owning these falsehoods to be realities?

I see not how the question can possibly be answered by an unbeliever; except either by main

taining the history to have been the production of a much later age, or that the Israelites must have been imposed upon by certain tricks which their ignorance led them to mistake for miracles.

}

With respect to the history being the production of a later age, that point has already been so amply discussed that it need not here be resumed: before an infidel can be allowed to make such an assertion, he must undertake to confute, one by one, all the preceding arguments. I have only therefore at present to inquire, what probability there is for the supposition, that the Israelites were imposed upon by certain tricks, which the dexterity of Moses and his confederates persuaded them to receive as genuine miracles.

I. Ere this inquiry be prosecuted at large, it will be necessary, that the subject of it should be accurately stated.

It is the ordinary cant of unbelievers, that artful men in all ages have contrived to make dupes of their followers, that superstition has ever readily coöperated with imposture in persuading such followers that they beheld miracles, and that Moses was but one of the numerous political jugglers who at different periods have abused the credulity of the gaping and ignorant vulgar. Now, in the case of Moses, writers of this stamp may find it convenient to omit stating, that, of whatever description his miracles might be, those connected with the exodus produced the same conviction of their reality upon the oppressing Egyptians as upon the oppressed Israelites. Much as the latter

« AnteriorContinuar »