Tabernacle in the Wilderness 11 that is, the law of worship as recorded especially in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers—did not originate, or at all events did not make its appearance, until somewhere near the close of the Babylonian exile, or about the time when Ezra first appears in Jewish history. By thus removing all that part of the Pentateuch down the centuries, from the time of Moses to the time of Ezra, the critics are able not only to deny the Mosaic authorship of this Pentateuchal literature, but also to construct a scheme of their own by which all the separate “documents” into which they are accustomed to divide the Pentateuch can be put together in a kind of whole; each par ticular document being singled out and designated according to its date, authorship, and other peculiarities, such as the critics suppose belong to it. Moreover, in this way the Penta teuch is all torn to pieces, and instead of its being really a connected, organic whole, such as the orthodox world has always conceived it to be, it is by this peculiar higher-critic method transformed into a mere patch-work, a disjointed affair, having no more divine authority or inspiration con nected with it than any other piece of human literature that has come into being through the law of evolution. Such, however, is exactly what the critics would make of the Pentateuch, and indeed of much else in the Bible, if they could have their way. But now suppose that after all the old Mosaic Tabernacle did really exist, what effect would that have upon the suc cess of the critical hypothesis? It would absolutely frustrate all attempts to carry this hypothesis successfully through. Such would necessarily be the result, because, first of all, if that portion of the Pentateuch which contains the ceremonial or Levitical law is transferred down to Ezra’s time, the old Tabernacle, for the services of which this law was designed, must necessarily come with it. But then, in the second place, a really existing Tabernacle so far down the centuries, or long after the Temple at Jerusalem had been built and was regarded
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