Author: Edwin Cone Bissell

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-20

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 9781331857273

Excerpt from The Pentateuch, Its Origin and Structure: An Examination of Recent Theories While pursuing Old Testament studies in the University at Leipsic, some years since, the writer became warmly interested in the subject of Pentateuch criticism, especially in connection with the more private societies (Gesellschaften) of Delitzsch and Guthe, where it was made the chief topic of discussion. Having once entered upon it, he found the questions it raised of too grave a nature to be relinquished without a serious effort at settlement. In fact, in view of the startling conclusions reached by an eminently respectable portion of German scholarship, he felt bound to give reasons, at least to himself, for his faith in an Old Testament revelation. He has accordingly had before him, for the most part, the criticism in its German form. For his readers this method of treatment will have the advantage, that, while the works of such representative writers as Graf and Wellhausen are no less easily comprehensible in their leading principles and terms, they fully include, and are the evident source of, the most that has been said on that side of the question in England and America. A little more than one half of the present book has already appeared in print: the papers numbered i., iii., v., vii., viii., in the Bibliotheca Sacra during the years 1882-84; and iv. in the Journal of the Society for Biblical Literature and Exegesis for July - December, 1884. All such papers, however, have been carefully revised, and to some of them considerable additions been made. A work of this kind, if it is to be faithfully done, requires the conscientious study of problems of the utmost intricacy and perplexity. The cursory reader, it is likely, will turn rapidly over the papers numbered iii. - vi., dealing mostly with the origin and inner relationship of Pentateuch laws. But to the more thoughtful reader and the student who is aware that, for a score of years, it has been in this thicket of the Hebrew legislation that some of the keenest intellects of the age have wrestled mightily over great biblical questions, they will have a peculiar attraction. Every law of the Pentateuch, aside from a few in Exodus having no important bearing on the subject in hand, has been brought under review in these four papers and conveniently tabulated. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.