We shall have occasion to allude frequently to the dates assigned to the books of the Old Testament by rationalistic critics; and for the convenience of our readers we give here a brief statement of them. We shall follow the scheme laid down in Driver's Introduction, both because the author is universally acknowledged as a fair representative of the more conservative class of these critics, and because his work is likely to be the accepted standard work on the topics which it treats, at least among American critics.

      We shall speak first of the Hexateuch. This term will be recognized by our readers as the technical designation of the first six books of the Bible. According to the scheme in question, the earliest of these six books [6] is Deuteronomy. It was this book alone, and not the whole "book of the law," which Hilkiah the priest found in the temple in the reign of Josiah (2 Kings 22:8). It was written only a short time previous, not earlier than the reign of Manasseh (p. 82). This puts its composition in the first half of the seventh century before Christ, and a little more than seven hundred years after the death of Moses. So then the earliest of the books usually ascribed to Moses did not come into existence until more than seven centuries after his death.

      The other five books of the Hexateuch did not appear as we now have them until after the Babylonian captivity. In the eighth century, B. C., there existed "two narratives of the patriarchal and Mosaic ages, independent, yet largely resembling each other," written by unknown authors, one of whom habitually used Jehovah as the name of God, and is therefore usually designated by the letter J, while the other preferred the title Elohim, and is designated by the letter E. A third unknown writer in the eighth century composed a new narrative of the same events by combining certain parts of these two into one. This composite narrative is styled for brevity's sake JE. During the captivity the laws now found in the Pentateuch, together with the genealogical tables, were composed in the interest of the priesthood, and this document is known by critics as P. After the return from the Babylonian captivity, a fifth writer combined P with JE, making, some additions of his own, and thus came into existence our present Hexateuch.

      The most radical critics deny to Moses the authorship of any part of these books; the less radical think it probable that he wrote the Decalogue; while the more conservative, among whom is Professor Driver, admit [7] the probability that he wrote chapters 20 to 23 of Exodus, called the "Book of the Covenant."

[SEBC 6-8]