Professor Moore starts out by saying that the author of Judges in its completed form wrote in the sixth century, B. C., "which," he says, "was separated from the times of the judges by as many centuries as lie between us and the Crusades;" that is, from seven to nine hundred years. He affirms, with the German rationalists generally, that the song of Deborah is "the only contemporary monument of Israelite history before the kingdom;" and he represents it as being somewhat fragmentary (Preface 1, 2; pp. 171-173). He thinks that the author made use of an older Book of judges, containing accounts of many Israelite heroes; and he ascribes this older book to the seventh century, or about the time of Manasseh (20, 24). Not contented with the analysis of the "Hexateuch" made out by his predecessors in the critical field, he claims to find the writers, J and E, with a redactor following them, in the Book of Judges also, and thus he makes a Heptateuch. As a matter of course, he thinks that there is very little real history in the book. He calls the accounts of the different judges, "folk-stories;" and if any of our readers does not know right certainly what these are, let him think of Uncle Remus and Bro. Rabbit. He says, in connection with this conception of the book, that the author's "motive and aim are not historical, but religious" (p. 16). This is a [112] thought very common with this class of critics. They have an idea that if a man writes history for the purpose of inculcating religious sentiments, he is by no means bound to tell the truth. He may twist and warp and invent ad libitum, and it is all right. If one of these critics should chance to hear a modern "revival sermon," made up, as most of them are, of touching and exciting stories of conversions and death-bed scenes, he would think that no one of the stories was true; that some of them may have had some slight foundation in fact, but that the preacher, having a religious, and not a historical, motive, was at full liberty to lie, if he could only by that means bring sinners to repentance. I am afraid that the supposition might in some instances be correct; but one thing is certain--if the sinners in the audience thought so, instead of repenting they would go away cursing the preacher. In modern times, then, if a speaker or writer has a religious aim in reciting history, he must tell the truth, or he will miss his aim; but the critics think that in ancient times he need not tell the truth when his aim is a religious one. Yet every one of these religious writers lived under a law which said, Thou shalt not lie.

[SEBC 112-113]