The Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch 15 verse it is said that Moses goes out to meet his father-in-law and that they exchange greetings and then come into the tent. But how could Jethro speak to Moses before they had had a meeting? The critics say that this confusion arises from the bungling patchwork of an editor who put two discordant accounts together without attempting to cover up the discrep ancy. But scientific textual criticism completely removes the difficulty. The Septuagint, the old Syriac version, and a copy of the Samaritan Pentateuch, instead of “I thy father-in- law jethro am come”, read, “And one said unto Moses, be hold thy father-in-law Jethro” comes. Here the corruption of a single letter in the Hebrew gives us “behold” in place of “I ”. When this is observed the objection disappears entirely. Again, in Gen. 39:20-22 Joseph is said to have been put into the prison “where the king’s prisoners were bound. . . . And the keeper of the prison” promoted him. But in chapter 40:2-4,7 it is said that he was “in ward of the house of the captain o f the guard . . . and the captain of the guard” pro moted Joseph. But this discrepancy disappears as soon as an effort is made to determine the original text. In Hebrew, “keeper of the prison” and “captain of the guard” both begin with the same word and in the passages where the “cap tain of the guard” causes trouble by its appearance, the Sep- luagint either omitted the phrase or read “keeper of the prison,” in one case being supported also by the Vulgate. In many other instances also, attention to the original text removes the difficulties which have been manufactured from apparent discrepancies in the narrative. (b) Delusions of Literary Analysis. But even on the assumption of the practical inerrancy of the Massoretic text the arguments against the Mosaic author ship of the Pentateuch drawn from the literary analysis are seen to be the result of misdirected scholarship, and to be ut terly fallacious. The long lists of words adduced as charac-
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker