cherubim, are spoken of by Ezekiel as topics which those whom he addressed understood without explanation. The manner of Abraham's call is noticed by Isaiah, and the various passages in Jacob's life by Hosea. The peculiarities of Melchizedech's character and situation were known to David; and the covenant which God made with Abraham to all the Jewish prophets. All, or nearly all, mention the destruction of the offending cities of the Pentapolis. To the captivity in Egypt allusions occur in the Psalms, in the prophecy of Micah, (the contemporary of king Jotham,) in Isaiah, who prophesied in the days of Uzziah, and in Jeremiah, who lived during the reign of the Jewish monarchy. The passage of the red sea, and the miracles wrought in the wilderness, are celebrated by Asaph, David, Isaiah, Amos, Habakkuk, and Micah.Micah speaks also of the malice of Balak and Balaam. If it were contended that the Pentateuch of Ezra was copied from the same traditions to which, and not to that Pentateuch, these passages of the prophets allude, it would, at least, establish the credit of Ezra as a faithful collector of ancient

1 Ezek. xxviii. 14. Isa. xxix. 22. Hosea xii. 2-4. 12. Psalm cx. 4. lxviii. 7. İxxvii. passim. lxxx. 8. lxxxi. 5. Micah vi. 4. vii. 15. 20. Isa. iv. 5. lxiii. 11. et sequ. Jer. ii. 6. xvi. 14. xxxi. 32. Amos ii. 10. iii. 1. v. 25. Habbak. iii. 3-15. Haggai ii. 5. Micah vi. 5. The number of these citations might be greatly enlarged, but from the Psalms I have only adduced those which bear the names of David and Asaph, and I have avoided all those references in the other prophets which might admit of hesitation or ambiguity.

history. But the coincidence not only of facts but expressions, is, in many of these instances, too close to admit of this solution; and it would even, I apprehend, be possible to show, by a collection of the passages to which I refer, on the same plan with Lardner's "Collections of Citations of the New Testament in the Christian Fathers," that the prophets before Ezra had both seen and quoted the Mosaic history, a proof which would in itself be decisive of the question whether Ezra were the author of the Pentateuch. Fifthly, it might be asked, why, if Ezra were really engaged in so great a work as that of collecting and arranging the scattered and neglected annals of his country, why is no mention made of this illustrious labour, either in the acknowledged writings of Ezra himself, or those of his coadjutor Nehemiah? Surely, if he did it openly, and as a faithful antiquary, it was at least as well worth recording as his exactness in weighing out the gold of the temple, or his diligence in the public exposition of the law. Or, if he should be suspected of having imposed his collection on the world as the original work of Moses, yet would the previous loss and fortunate discovery of such an inestimable manuscript have been surely noticed with some degree of parade by those who thus sought to deceive, not only their contemporaries, but posterity.

As, therefore, neither the composition nor the discovery of the records now called Mosaic, is no ticed either by Ezra or Nehemiah, it is next to

certain that no such composition or pretended discovery took place at the time of which we are speaking; and that the Pentateuch, as we now receive it, must have proceeded from a more ancient author.

Above all, however, it should be recollected that these books, in their present form, are received not only by the Jews and Christians, but, with some few and unimportant variations, by the Samaritans also. Now there are only three points of time at which there is the remotest likelihood that such a volume could have obtained a sacred authority among these inveterate enemies of the Jewish name and nation; the first when the Cuthoean settlers were converted, by the orders of Shalmanezer king of Assyria, to a corrupt and mutilated Judaism; the second when Josiah reformed, by a short lived and violent exertion of authority, the religious rites of the scattered remnant of Israel; the third when Manasseh the son of Jehoida apostatized from the worship of his ancestors, and established his schismatical temple on the summit of mount Gerizim'. But if, with Vandale and Simon, we take the last of these dates, it is evident that Manasseh (degraded as he had been from his priestly character and his hereditary rank in the state, by Ezra's influence and authority) would never have taken with him to the sect and city of his refuge, a Scripture of Ezra's composition, or which, on Ezra's testimony alone, was received as the work of Moses. He would rather, it may be

2 Kings xvii. 27, 28. xxiii. 2, 3 2 Chron. xxxiii. 4, 5.

thought, have made the novelty of his Scripture a pretext (and a very plausible pretext it would have been) for the separation which he was meditating. Had Laud, for instance, composed a body of ecclesiastical history, it will hardly be said that the puritans were likely to have adopted it as a text book. And if Manasseh did really introduce the Pentateuch to the knowledge and veneration of the Samaritans, he can only have done so because it was a work in prescriptive possession of the minds of men, and one to which both Ezra and his opponents alike deferred as of ancient and sacred authority. But, in truth, if we believe with the universal stream of Hebrew tradition, that the square or Babylonian letters were invariably employed by the Jewish scribes, from the time of the removal of their nation to Shinar; it is apparent that the more ancient and uncouth Phoenician character, in which the Samaritan Pentateuch still remains, is an evidence as satisfactory as can be reasonably expected, that this last nation did not derive their Scripture from Manasseh or any other Jew of the second temple.

I am aware, indeed, that there are critics, who have attempted to show, from some remarkable false readings of the Samaritan Pentateuch, that it must have been originally copied from some manuscript in the Babylonian letter'. But, for such a

1 Prideaux ubi supra. p. 597-8. In opposition to whom see the admirable and convincing statement in Walton's Prolegomena to the Polyglott, ix. 74.

transfer from a beautiful and convenient to a singularly rude and perplexing alphabet, no reason has been assigned, and it would be, apparently, not easy to find any. To the priests who apostatized together with Manasseh, it would have been a hinderance instead of an advantage. To them a translation of the Hebrew text might, indeed, have been useful, and such a translation was, not many years after, prepared as an aid to those persons whose office it was to interpret after the public readers in the synagogue. But a mere transcription of the same Hebrew text into the Samaritan character, would no more have enabled a Samaritan to understand the Scripture, than a transcription of the text of Luther's Bible from Gothic into Italic letters, would confer on an Englishman the power of reading German. Nay, more, as the Samaritan Pentateuch is without points, the public reader would have been incompetent, however familiar he might be with the alphabet, even to pronounce by rote the words for which such letters stood, without a previous knowledge of the Hebrew tongue. It is surely, therefore, more reasonable to account, with Mede and with Walton, in another manner for the circumstances so much insisted on; to conclude with these eminent scholars, that the Samaritans had really received their Pentateuch before the captivity, and to make our choice between the only two epochs which remain, that of Josiah and that of Shalmanezer.

But the short reign (short at least for so great a