The Outlook, in its notice of my work on Deuteronomy, said:

      In this volume Professor McGarvey utters the protest of the conservatives in the church of the Disciples against the generally [419] accepted belief of scholars that Deuteronomy was not the work of Moses himself, but of the Mosaic school, one may say of prophets in the seventh century B. C.

      I wish that some one who knows that writer would ask him the names of some of that Mosaic school of prophets in the seventh century B. C. Isaiah died about the beginning of that century, and Jeremiah prophesied in the last twenty years of it. It is admitted that neither of these took part in the composition of Deuteronomy. What other prophet lived between these two? Will The Outlook name him with chapter and verse, or give us the verse in which, without the names, it is said that there was a single one, much less a school, of them? True, there was no lack of prophets such as they were; for Jeremiah says: "The prophets prophesy lies in my name; I sent them not, neither have I commanded them; they prophesy unto you a lying vision, and divination, and a thing of nought, and the deceit of their own heart" (14:14). And again: "A wonderful and horrible thing has come to pass in the land; the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?" (5:30, 31). How fond these crooked critics are of finding prophets and authors of books in periods perfectly barren of such persons. Unknown authors are their delight. They are thoroughgoing agnostics in regard to the authorship of Biblical books. Which one of the known authors have they not persecuted?

[SEBC 419-420]