Rev. Rabbi Hirsch sums up his conclusions as the result of his study of the Pentateuch:
“The non-authenticity of the Pentateuch is shown by the work itself. It is indicated by—(1) The impossible occurrences in the desert; (2) The various contradictions and repetitions, as in the descriptions of the festivals; the provision of the officiators for the sacrifices; the appropriations of the tithes; the rules for sacrificing the first-born children to Deity—the law regulating these matters varying in Deuteronomy and Numbers; (3) Certain phrases used, as “up to the present day,” which lose all significance if applied to Moses. Thus the book itself shows not one author, but many.
“The non-authenticity of the Pentateuch is shown also by lack of reference to it in the prophetical and historical books. Jeremiah, when denouncing in unmeasured terms the very sins prohibited by the Decalogue, never uses the language of those cardinal rules of morality; the prophecies show no trace of the priestly ordinances; and, though most of the laws refer to Sinai, the name occurs in none of the prophetical books.
- In 1865 the witch-laws were yet in force in South Carolina!
“It contains old songs; embodies the written law or judicial decisions of the Israelites in the Book of the Covenant; springs from two currents of history, the Elohist and Jehovist, the former composed of the younger Elohist of the South and the older Elohist of the North; shows Deuteronomy very much altered from its original form by emendations and additions, being formerly without the first four and the closing chapters, and the Levitical Law or Priestly Codex having been later incorporated with Joshua and the books of Moses; and lastly it is marred by changes made in accordance with the new religious spirit.”
We know very little about Moses. If there ever was such a man—which is very doubtful, taking the writings accredited to him for authority—he is not shown to have been “the greatest statesman and lawgiver the world has ever produced.” Neither have the Jews ever developed, in ancient or modern times, such a moral character as a people as to justify the supposition that they had a great and inspired leader among them, and that he taught them anything not well known for many centuries before to more ancient and more intelligent nations.
The assumption that Moses was the author, under divine guidance, of what is commonly called the Ten Commandments, about one thousand four hundred and fifty-one years before the Christian era, is assumption only, without a particle of proof to sustain it. What are commonly called the laws of Moses were written by some person or persons unknown in the fifth or sixth centuries before the beginning of Christianity. Most of the matter of what is called the Pentateuch was borrowed from older and wiser nations—the Egyptians, the Hindoos, the Greeks, etc. But for the unbounded credulity on this subject it would seem like an insult seriously to discuss the question, Which are the older writings? and, Which the substantial copies? Unless a man is ready to take assumptions for demonstrated facts, to ignore the museums and libraries, to question the conclusions of the profound-est antiquarians, and to make the stream of history flow backward, he must admit that the Hebrews were the borrowers.(1)
- The substance of this chapter was published in March, 1890, in An Open Letter to Hon. Edward M. Paxson, Chief-Justice of Pennsylvania, who had affirmed in a lecture before the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania that the “law of Sinai was the first of which we have any knowledge,” and that “Moses was the greatest statesman and lawgiver the world has ever produced.”
[CHAPTER V. ANCIENT SYMBOLISM AND MODERN LITERALISM]
“Which things are an allegory.”—Gal. 4:24.