This, critics affirm, was written when Psameticus was king of Egypt. He reigned from 663 to 609 B.C.
33. “Neither shalt thou set thee up any image [pillar]” (Deut. xvi, 22).
This proves the late origin of the Pentateuch, or at least of Deuteronomy. Isaiah (xix, 19) instructs them to do the very thing which they are here forbidden to do, and as he would not have advised a violation of the law it is evident that this statute could not have existed in his time. Isaiah died about 750 years after Moses died.
34. The worship of the sun, moon, and stars by the Jews, is mentioned and condemned (Deut. iv, 19; xvii, 3). This nature worship was adopted by them in the reign of Manasseh, 800 years after Moses.
35. “Wherefore it is said in the book of the Wars of the Lord, what he did in the Red Sea, and in the brooks of Arnon” (Num. xxi, 14).
The author of the Pentateuch here cites a book older than the Pentateuch, which gives an account of the journeyings of the Israelites from Egypt to Moab—from the Exodus to the end of Moses’ career.
36. “And thou shalt write upon the stones all the words of this law very plainly” (Deut. xxvii, 8).
“And he [Joshua] wrote there upon the stones a copy of the law of Moses” (Josh. viii, 32).
Christians affirm that the Law of Moses and the Pentateuch are one. That this Law of Moses was not the one hundred and fifty thousand words of the Pentateuch is shown by the fact that after the death of Moses it was all engraved upon a stone altar.
37. “Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth” (Num. xii, 3).