Evidence from Style.

In the early stage of destructive criticism its advocates depended chiefly on peculiarities of style for determining the relative ages of documents, and for distinguishing one writer from another in composite documents. For the latter purpose it is still almost their only reliance. But this method, called literary criticism, has been abandoned to a large extent in discussing such questions as the authorship and date of Deuteronomy. Its relegation to an inferior place is the result of the many glaring exposures of its unreliability which have been published by conservative scholars. These exposures have recorded a decisive victory of conservatism, which may be taken as a token of the victory yet to be won in the whole field of controversy. Professor Driver, in his Introduction, shows the effect upon himself of this victory, by minimizing the argument from this source. Ho devotes but little more than four pages to the subject, and nearly three of these are taken up with the quotation of forty-one phrases characteristic of Deuteronomy. It is not claimed, in reference to any of the forty-one, that Moses could not have used it. Of many it is asserted that they were adopted from the pro-existing document JE; but this is only to acknowledge that they were adopted from what we now read in the Book of Exodus, and it conforms with the Biblical representation that this book was written before Deuteronomy. Of the author of Deuteronomy he says:  

His power as an orator is shown in the long and stately periods with which his work abounds: at the same time, the parenthetic treatment which his subject often demands, always maintains its freshness, and is never monotonous or prolix. In his command of a chaste and persuasive eloquence, he stands unique among the writers of the Old Testament (102).  

What orator among all that graced the history of Israel is more likely to have deserved this encomium than Moses, whose training in all the learning of the Egyptians, and whose practice through forty years in the wilderness with people whom he was almost daily addressing, gave him pre-eminent opportunities to acquire unique oratorical powers? It is not too much to say that Driver abandons the argument from style as respects the authorship of Deuteronomy.(1)  

This completes our review of the evidences on which those critics who deny the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy depend for their conclusion. If not exhaustive of these, numerically considered, it is exhaustive, we modestly think, of their force as a whole. The refutation will derive additional force from the positive evidence for the Mosaic authorship which we shall next present.  

1. The reader who is curious to trace the arguments and illustrations by which this citadel of the earlier critics has been stormed, is referred to the following works: Bdershelm's History and Prophecy in Reference to the Messiah, 261-263; Stanley Leathes' Witness of the Old Testament to Christ, 282 ff.; Green's Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch, 113-118; Bartlett's Veracity of the Hexateuch, 300-302; The Higher Critics Criticised, by H. L. Hastings and R. P. Stebbins, lxii., lxiii.; 152-172.