My Experience with Higher Criticism 10 7 circumstances. If the non-fulfillment of these laws proved their non-existence, then the Book of the Covenant and Deut eronomy were not in existence in the time of Jehoiakim, for idolatry was then rampant. By its arbitrary methods, Modern Criticism does whole sale violence to the record of the discovery of the Law Book as recorded in 2 Kings 22:8-20. It denies any real discov ery, distinctly implies fraud upon the part of the writers, assumes a far too easy deception of the king, the prophetess, the king’s counsellors, Jeremiah and the people. It implies a marvelous success in perpetrating this forged document on the people. The writers did evil that good might come, and God seems to have been behind it all and endorsed it. Such a trans action is utterly incredible. “The people would not hear Moses and the prophet, yet they were easily persuaded by a forged Mosaic document.” The critics disagree among them selves regarding the authorship of the Book of Deuteronomy. Some maintain it was by the priestly class and some by the prophetic class, but there are insuperable objections to each. They have failed to show why there were so many laws incor porated in it which absolutely contradict a later date and why the Mosaic dress succeeded so well although contradictory to some of the genuinely Mosaic laws. According to the critics also, Ezra perpetrated a tremen dous fraud when he palmed off his completed Code as of Mosaic origin. That the people should accept it as genuinely Mosaic, although it increased their burdens and contradicted many laws previously known as Mosaic, is incredible. That such a people at such a time and under such circumstances could be so easily imposed upon and deceived, and that such a man as Ezra could perform such a colossal fraud and have it all succeed so well, seems inconceivable except by a person whose moral consciousness is dulled or benumbed by some philosophical theory. According to the critics, the authors of Deuteronomy and the Levitical Code not only produced such
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