THIS scholarly production, which is appropriately dedicated to “The Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Ground of the Truth,” is in one respect a book for the many; in another respect it is a book for the few. The general aim of the book is to vindicate the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. In that respect the production is one in which all believers will feel an interest. At the same time it holds true that the process of argumentation by which this vindication is gone about can be fully appreciated only by the few. Mr. Munro builds his argument for the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch on two main pedestals, one of these being of the nature of certain conclusions respecting the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the other being of the nature of facts arising out of the higher comparative philology.
The Samaritan Pentateuch and Modern Criticism. By J. Iverach Munro, M.A., United Free Church Minister, Canisbay. With an Introduction by the Rev. Professor James Orr, D.D. London: James Nisbet & Co., Ltd. Small 8vo, xxviii. and 106 pp.
It is matter of general knowledge that until the discovery of printing in the fifteenth century the Bible existed only in manuscript—the New Testament (I speak of the primary sources) in Greek, and the Old Testament in Hebrew. Speaking of the Pentateuch only, we may say that before the age of printing the Pentateuch (that is, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) existed not only in several hundred Hebrew manuscripts, but also in a goodly number—Kennicott collated sixteen—of what are called Hebrew-Samaritan manuscripts. These so-called Hebrew-Samaritan manuscripts are to all intents and purposes Hebrew manuscripts, save that they are written in characters differing from the script made use of in the Hebrew manuscripts, and that the underlying text, although agreeing in the main with the Hebrew, contains a large number of minor differences in detail.
Mr. Munro’s first main argument for the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is based on his view of the source of this Hebrew-Samaritan text. His view, in brief, is that the text of the Hebrew-Samaritan Pentateuch is primarily the text of the Pentateuch current among the ten tribes of Israel up to the time of their transportation to Assyria, say about 730 B.C., and that the main differences between this text as we now have it in the Samaritan manuscripts, and that found in our Hebrew manuscripts, arose in the way now to be stated. At what time the king of Assyria deported the ten tribes to Assyria (see 2 Kings xvii.) he replaced those exiled Israelites by idolaters from without Israel, from Babylon, that is, and from Cuthah, and from Arva, and from Sephervaim. In the providence of God, some of these idolaters were slain by lions, and they concluded that the reason of this visitation was that they did not know the manner of the God of Israel. In their extremity they appealed to the king of Assyria, by whom an Israelitish priest, one of the exiles, was sent to Samaria to instruct those heathen in the ways of the God of Israel. It is natural to suppose that this instruction should be based upon the Law, and Mr. Munro’s contention is that all the differences which are found actually to exist, as between the Hebrew text and the Hebrew-Samaritan text, find their most natural explanation in the supposition that those to whose assistance the Israelitish priest was sent in Samaria required that instructions should be given them in the simplest possible form, and that with a view to this, the Israelitish possessors of the Hebrew text of the Pentateuch in Assyria were compelled, under the supervision of Assyrian censors, to whom Hebrew was an intelligible language (see 2 Kings xviii. 27), to write out a copy of the Pentateuch in which archaic forms were dispensed with, ellipses were filled up, and references to instructions on cognate subjects made easy. That natural supposition, Mr. Munro maintains, accounts for almost all the differences between the Hebrew and the Hebrew-Samaritan text. In proof of this position Mr. Munro finds it necessary at the outset to correct Gesenius’s depreciation of the Samaritan Pentateuch—a depreciation which for nearly a century has had the effect of causing scholars of almost all shades of opinion to put little value on the Samaritan Pentateuch, either as a witness to the authenticity of the Mosaic records or to the genuineness of the common Hebrew text. Having thus cleared the ground, Mr. Munro shows that the grammatical construction of the alterations introduced by the exiled Israelitish scribes, working under the censorship of Assyrian scholars, bears the water-mark of the age of Hezekiah. A comparison between the language of these emendations and, say, the inscription found in 1880 on the walls of the tunnel which Hezekiah’s men digged through Mount Zion in the eighth century B.C., or, say, those portions of Second Kings which almost every one allows to belong to the age of Hezekiah, establishes the truth of this contention. The characters too in which the Hebrew-Samaritan manuscripts are written are almost identical with those of the inscription found in Hezekiah’s tunnel.
But there is existent not only a Hebrew-Samaritan Pentateuch; there is also a Samaritan paraphrase of the said Pentateuch. The Hebrew-Samaritan Pentateuch now being referred to is not Samaritan at all, although it is written in Samaritan characters. The paraphrase is Samaritan. Mr. Munro contends that not only is the Hebrew-Samaritan Pentateuch not later than Hezekiah, but that the paraphrase is almost as old. The Samaritan dialect is found to be a precipitate, or perhaps better, a conglomerate of Aramaic, Hebrew, and Assyrio-Aramaic. It is such a language as would arise among the Samaritans of the age of Hezekiah, when we may well suppose that in the land of Samaria the poorest of the Hebrew people (speaking Hebrew), Syrians (speaking Aramaic), Babylonians (speaking Assyrio-Aramaic), commingled. It was only about the period of Hezekiah that this dialect could have come into being. Besides, if the language of this complex people had been long spoken before being put to sacred use in this paraphrase, the resultant would have been something more unified than this conglomerate. The fact, however, that it was early put to a sacred use, helped to stereotype it in this conglomerate form.
Other proofs of the correctness of the date given when the Samaritan dialect became stereotyped are (1) that differently to the Septuagint (say 250 B.C.)—differently to the Jewish Targums also—the name Jehovah is given in the Samaritan version just as in the Hebrew originals. This is regarded as a sure sign of ancientness. Nor does the Samaritan text or paraphrase attempt to improve on the Hebrew Scriptures in those places where God’s action immediately terminates on a creature, as do the Jewish Targums, by interpolating such expressions as “by the word of,” or “by his word.” All this evidence points to the conclusion that the Samaritan paraphrase ought to be dated as only a little later than Hezekiah, and if the paraphrase is thus early, a fortiori, that of which it is a paraphrase, must be still earlier. That position once secured, the contention of the destructive Higher Critics is once and for all overthrown. For according to them, the oldest portion of the Pentateuch, as we now have it, is Deuteronomy, and Deuteronomy itself is by them dated within the reign of Hezekiah’s grandson, Josiah. The Samaritan text of the Pentateuch, argues Mr. Munro with great cogency—and he has been at the trouble of examining the sources for himself—is about a century older than Josiah.
That by way of defence. In an aggressive sense Mr. Munro goes on to show that no period between Moses and Hezekiah can be suggested as one in which the production of Deuteronomy singly, or of the Pentateuch as a whole, can with any likelihood be placed. It could not have been written in the age between Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, and Hezekiah; for in that case how could the supposed Jewish fabricator have given the place of honour to Shechem in the north (see Deut. xxvii. 4)? Neither could it have been written in the age of Solomon or of David, seeing that, whilst Deuteronomy makes so much of one central place of worship, there is not a word in the whole book about Jerusalem nor yet about Mount Zion. In short, no period save the Mosaic, nor any author save Moses, can have the least claim.
The other main pedestal on which Mr. Munro builds belongs, as we have said, to the Higher Comparative Philology. Mr. Munro, who has been specialising in Semitic for the past twenty years, is convinced that not only does the Hebrew of the Pentateuch rule the Hebrew of the rest of the Old Testament, but that in the Hebrew of the Pentateuch we have Semitic, in some remarkable respects, of the most ancient type extant. Not only so, but the existence of the personal pronoun, huw, epicene in the Pentateuch alone, places us here in sight almost of the time when the sons of Shem and the sons of Japheth held, in respect of language, much more in common than they did, say, at the date of the exile, so hoary is the antiquity. This is a part of the argument, however, so technical that it is almost impossible to state it popularly, and moreover, Mr. Munro has as yet given us but the first instalment of his case under this head, and on both these accounts we refrain from dealing further with the matter here and now. What significance this part of the argument has for Mr. Munro may be shown by a brief quotation. On page 98 he writes, “Evidence of the kind afforded by this pronoun thus embedded in the Pentateuch, is better (to attest, that is, the authenticity of the Pentateuch) than if Moses had signed every page of the original Pentateuch.”
But enough has been said in order to indicate the great value and significance of the publication under review. We congratulate Mr. Munro on the appearance of this, his—so far as known to us—first contribution to Biblical science, and heartily recommend the production to theological students everywhere. The price is only 3/6.
J. R. M.
Rochester and Isaiah liii.
It is well known that this extraordinary man was, for many years of his life, an avowed infidel. One of his biographers has described him as “a great wit, a great sinner, and a great penitent.” Even this man was converted by the Holy Spirit in the use of His Word. Reading the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, he was convinced of the truth and inspiration of the Scriptures, the Deity of the Messiah, and the value of His atonement as a rock on which sinners may build their hopes of salvation. On that atonement he rested, and died in the humble expectation of pardoning mercy and heavenly happiness.