NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8664, 5 September 1891, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

An Inquiry into the Origin of the Pentateuch.—This is a small book, comprising a short series of popular lectures, by John Gammell, B.A. (Lond.-Univ.) It is published by Lyon and Blair, Lambton Quay, Wellington. In the preface the author tells us that the lectures have boon delivered at Dunedin and Invercargill, and also on two occasions at Sydney. The preface, by the way, is dated from Queenstown. The subject of the lectures is a very important one. During the last titty years there have been several controversies between' Scripture and Science. For centuries there had been an agreed upon method of understanding the statements of tho Bible. For instance, it was thought that the work of Creation had been achieved about 6000 years ago in a week of six days. When the science of geology began to question this a great controversy arose. That controversy is settled many years ago. Science has been victorious, and all tho defenders of the old belief have been swept from the field. For many years good and able men laboured hard to reconcile science with what) they conceived to bo the statements of the Bible. Now even that is given up as a work which it is not thought worth while to trouble about. Ib is agreed that the Bible has more important purposes than to teach accurate geology, and that Genesis contains the traditions as to the Creation prevalent among , tho, Jews. Then came the groat Evolution controversy, which has ended by the conversion of all thoughtful religious men to be evolutionists. For some years past there has been gathering a controversy which is probably destinod to have more lasting effects than even those two we have mentioned—a controversy as to the date of writing and authorship of the Scripture writings. This controversy is of early date, but has long been sleeping, till it is now revived by recent researches and scholarship. With a part of this the present pamphlet deals, in a popular and sometimes, wo are sorry to say, a flippant style. The author accepts tho results of the most advanced scholarship of the day. Ho contends that Moses had nothing to do with tho writing of the Pentateuch, which was not known to the Jews till the generation that was carried away captive to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar. Deuteronomy, lie says, was the Book of the Law, whose finding is recorded in the 22nd chapter of tho Second Book of Kings, and the author of it was clearly the Prophet Jeremiah. The writer of this pamphlet also quotes various phrases which show, as he bolieves, that Jeremiah also wrote the Book of Kings. We quote a passage from this pare:—

And this conclusion that Jeremiah wrote the Books of Kings will be less startling to those who remember that the century of the Captivity was certainly the most productive age, the Golden Age, of Hebrew literature. And this thought again affords an additional proof of the late authorship of the Book of Deuteronomy; for that book, whoever wrote it, is a noble work, and breathes noble sentiments ; it is a book full of genius, eloquence, and passionate patriotism, that, could only have oeen produced or appreciated in an age of some literary culture, in an age of sufficient knowledge and mental development to enable men to rise up to the grand ideas of Monotheism, ideas which, we have already said, the orthodox churches of to-day have not risen up to yet. _ But in the years of Captivity the Jewish nation got beyond this Christian stage, their contact with other nations seems to have quickened • them mentally and morally, to have taught them that God must be infinitely higher and grander than they had hitherto conceived him ; in contact with their conquerors they learnt spiritual ideas, and such of them as returned to the land of their fathers returned wiser and better men.

Now, I think it is not to be doubted that some few nobler spirits of the nation had reached this elevation of thought and feeling even before the Captivity, and strove hard to educate their countrymen up to their own level. That amongst these, and probably the foremost of these—perhaps, indeed, the only one of these—was the Prophet Jeremiah, and that his prophetic soul mourned over the moral degradation of his idolatrous countrymen, whose consciences he sought to quicken, if so be he might yet rouse them by his exhortations and warnings to discipline themselves for the great struggle with the Chaldeans and Assyrians, which he saw was impending.' Under the impulse of these feelings, it may be, ho determined to write the life and work of their first great national deliverer, Moses; to give them his idea, by means of the speeches he would put into the mouth of his hero—his idea of their first great prophet, and of the charge which, as he believed, Moses had laid upon the nation. It was a kind of work which the times demanded—the trumpet-call of a pious patriot to a corrupt generation—a call that failed of its effect, but remains to tins day one of tho choicest contributions which a most gifted race has made to the sacred literature of the world Mr. Cammoll then proceeds to discuss who was the author of tho Book of Leviticus. His contention is that the ceremonial law there laid down had no existence down to tho time of the captivity, and that the writers of tho historical books know nothing whatever of the Levitical legislation. Mr. Cammed says :— This chapter of Leviticus prescribes that every seventh year the Hebrews shall cease all agricultural operation?!, shall neither sow their fields nor prune their vineyards, but allow their lands to be entirely fallow. Well, we can readily understand that where the principle of rotation of crops was unknown, it might be proper that the fields should have rest one year in seven ; but tho priestly legislator was not content with this reasonable provision, he wanted to make the whole life of the Hebrews revolve round the number seven, and so goes 011 to prescribe the fanciful injunction that after a week of Sabbatical years, i.e.., after the lapse of fortynine years, another year of rest shall be imposed upon the farmers, and an institution called the year of Jubilee shall be celebrated by these much-pestered and hard-used men. The characteristic of tho year of Jubilee, however, is this, that not only shall the fields again lie fallow, but all landed property which had changed hands during the previous fifty years shall return unredeemed to its original owners, whilst all Hebrew slaves shall recover their freedom 011 the same liberal terms. These provisions show what a joyful event the Jubilee year would be to the whole nation, what an era its occurrence would be in the national life, what, a sensation in fact it would make whenever it occurred, so that the historians of the nation could not fail to allude to it again and again in their chronicles. But here once more we are met with the astonishing fact— inexplicable, indeed, on the orthodox hypothesis of the Mosaic origin of this ritual— that the live historical books of the Old Testament I have so often mentioned are as silent 011 the subject of these festivals as the historians of Greece and Rome are silent about them. The inference is inevitable: the Hebrew historians say nothing about them for the same reason that the Greek and Roman historians say nothing about them, because no such institutions as sabbatical years and years.of jubilee existed at the time in the legislation of either of them ; and, by consequence, because the whole system, of which these institutions ware such a prominent part, was unborn at the time.

But, besides the historical books, we have another source of information as to the real condition of things and the mode of life of the Hebrew nation throughout the centuries preceding the Captivity, and that is tho works of the earlier prophets, the remonstrances which Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah, and others addressed to their countrymen. What is the character of the wrong-doing of which these great prophets complain? Is not this the one thought that runs through all their utterances, that Jehovah hates forms and ceremonies, that sacrifices are an abomination to him, and that what He requires of his worshippers is the love of their hearts, and the obedience of their lives? We may remark that those who believe in land nationalisation have often felt greatly strengthened by finding provisions amongst the ancient Israelites for the return ' of land at certain periods—that ib could nob be alienated for ever from the original family. It has often been a puzzlo how, considering the law, we have no account) of any such thing in practice, and that pieces of land are bought and sold by individuals precisely as they are now. The solution which advanced scholarship gives is that these provisions as to the return of land were as fanciful as the theories of Edward Bellamy. Mr. Garamell contends that Ezra was the author of the whole Levitical legislation. He says :— Some will say, however. Does not this hypothesis that Ezra and his fellow-priests

were the authors of the Levitical legislation, does not this imply conscious fraud on their part, and that of a very heinous character, inasmuch as they claimed a divine origin for that which they knew proceeded from themselves? Granted, such persons will say, that the Jehovist reported in good faith the mythology of the past, and that the Deuteromist, whether Jeremiah or somebody else, was only following a well-understood device, when he put uiihistorical speeches into the mouth of Moses, neither of these pleas will avail the priests of the return when they drew up a vast scheme of ritual and palmed it off upon their countrymen as divine communications to Aaron and Moses. The phrase repeatedly adopted in the Book of Leviticus is : "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying," or else this : " And the Lord spake unto Aaron." How do you meet this difficulty I reply, in the first place, the hypothesis is none the less probable, even if it does imply dishonesty on the part of the priesthood. Are we so ignorant of the spirit that has animated priesthoods in the past as not to know that again and again they have resorted to deception in order to accomplish their ends and maintain their power over the minds of men? Have even all Christian Churches been free from this stain? Nay, are all free now ? Does not the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius take place at Naples once a year still'! .[ fear, therefore, that it is no fatal objection to any hypothesis that it involves duplicity on the part of the priesthood. ! ' . He also believes that tho Eloliistic document of Genesis is duo to the very same writer to whom the priestly code owes its origin, i.e., that Ezra or one of his contemporaries wrote it; that ib is a sorb of narrative introduction to lead up to the ritual; that it is the priestly version of the Creation prefixed to the Jehovist narrative of the same event. We quote: — Just as in two of the Synoptic GospelsMatthew and Luke—later and grosser legends of the Conception and Birth of Jesus of Nazareth have been prefixed by a more recent editor to the more historical parts of tlie original gospels, so here a preface has been written to the Jehovist's account of the Creation, a preface which was not composed until the Jews by their residence in Babylon had become familiar with the Assyriau legend on the same subject. The older commencement of Genesis, as we may call it, was at the fourth verse of the second chapter, and this first chapter of Genesis, which, both from its position and its subject matter, everyone of us from earliest childhood .has regarded as the oldest part of the Bible, is, in fact, now proved to be one of the most recent portions of the Old Testament. Mr. Gammell appears to have himself but a slender stock of scholarship, and rests his theories upon the results attained by others. Students for many years have had these things before them. Apparently the time is now come when they will become matters of popular controversy. What the effect of them will be we do not say. But ib will be greater than any controversy of the last threo generations.

A Selection from Voltaire's Dramas, translated from the French by Goodwin Cox (T. Wagstaff, bookseller and publisher, Timaru). —This is a little volume of about 100 pages, containing translations of some of tno many plays written by Voltaire. At the end is a complete list of Voltaire's dramas, giving some particulars respecting each. In this department, Vol taire was voluminous, having composed forty-six dramas, mostly of a historical character.