The Question of Fraud.

1. The facts set forth in the two preceding sections necessarily raise the question whether, if Deuteronomy was written in the seventh century, the author was guilty of a fraud. Eminent scholars who can not be charged with speaking through ignorant prejudice, have unhesitatingly affirmed that he was. Thus, Edersheim, speaking of this and other deceptions said to be found in the Old Testament, says:  

If, In short, what has gained for the history of Israel pre-eminently the designation of sacred is mostly due to what a later period has "painted over the original picture": then there is, in plain language, only one word to designate all this. That word is fraud (Warburton Lectures, 219, 220).  

Principal Cave, speaking of this evolution theory, says:  

It requires the acceptance of the view that the ascription of Deuteronomy to Moses by Deuteronomy itself, is a literary expedient; it requires, in short, belief in the complicity of the holy men of old in a series of pious frauds in authorship extending from the days of Moses to those of Ezra (Insp. of O. T., 299).  

J. J. Lias says:  

Whether we apply the strong term "forgery" to It or not, there can be little doubt on the part of any high-minded man in any age, that if it was composed in the reigns of Manasseh or Josiah, its method was most dishonest (Principles of Biblical Criticism, 112).  

Robert Sinker says:  

Was it [Deuteronomy] really a discovery of something which had been hidden presumably since the death of Hezekiah, and now, in the providence of God, had been brought to light once more? Or, on the other hand, was it a fraud?—there is no other word to use if the first hypothesis is not true (Lex M., 462).  

Stanley Leathes, speaking' of the author of the book, says:  

If he were a priest, his work would somewhat resemble the modern historical novel, but it could manifestly lay claim to no authority, either in respect to its historical statements, its legal precepts, or its gloomy forebodings; but if it was the work of a prophet, then not only does he come with no credentials, because unknown, but the very fact of his speaking in the name of Moses as no one else•does, entirely nullifies his authority, because he comes with a lie in his right hand and offers it to us as the gift of God (Lex M., 444).  

We close these citations, which might be extended much further, with the following from Principal' Douglas:  

Did Jehovah, the God of truth, make use of deceit and forgery, iv what professed to be his word by Moses? I believe that forgery is an ugly word, and that the critics dislike its use in this connection. 1 should be glad to gratify them if I found a pleasant word to express my meaning (ib., 60).  

2. The Charge of Fraud Admitted. When Principal Douglas, as quoted above, says that the word "forgery" in this connection is disliked by the critics, he means English critics like Driver, Ryle, Robertson Smith, and others. It is scarcely true of the originators of this criticism, from whom these English scholars have accepted it. The former not only do not deny the charge of fraud, but they claim that this is the true representation of the case, Kuenen says:  

It is thus certain that an author of the seventh century, B. C, has made Moses himself proclaim that which, in his opinion, it was expedient In the interest of the Mosaic party to announce and introduce. At a time when notions about literary property were yet in their infancy, an act of this kind was not regarded as at all unlawful. Men used to perpetrate such fictions as these without any qualms of conscience (Religion of Israel, ii. 19).  

According to this, the author was of the "Mosaic party" as opposed to the party of the "high places," and he perpetrated his fiction to gain a party advantage. This was a fraudulent element. in the deception. Again, Kuenen says:  

Deuteronomy was not written for the mere sake of writing, but to change the whole condition of the kingdom. The author and his party can not have made the execution of their programme depend upon a lucky accident. If Hilkiah found the book in the temple, it was put there by the adherents of the Mosaic tendency. Or else Hilkiah himself was of their number, and in that case he pretended that he had found the book of the law. This provision for the delivery of their programme to the king was of a piece with the composition of the programme itself. It is true this deception is much more unjustifiable still than the introduction of Moses as speaking. But we must reflect here, also, that the ideas of those days were not as ours, but considerably less strict. Now or never the Mosaic party had to gain their end (ib.).  

Kuenen says much more of the same sort, hut this is enough to show that one of the chief originators of the so-called critical theory deliberately pronounces it a fraud perpetrated for party advantage. His remark that men used to perpetrate such fictions without any qualms of conscience, is undoubtedly true of a certain class of men, and it is equally true of a similar class at the present day. Witness the forged letter which came so near defeating the election of James A. Garfield to the Presidency of our republic. To lie and cheat for party advantage is in these days called "practical politics." It seems, if you believe Kuenen, that they had "practical politics" among the Jews in the days of Josiah, and that Deuteronomy is one of its products.  

Wellhausen quotes Reuss, the eminent French critic, as saying that "Deuteronomy is the book that the priests pretended to find at the temple in the time of King Josiah" (Prolegomena, p. 4); and Wellhausen himself says, "In all circles where appreciation of scientific results can be looked for at all, it is recognized that it was composed in the same age in which it was discovered." Putting the two together, we have the assertion that the priests "pretended" to find it, knowing that it had not been lost, and that it had been recently written. They then practiced an imposition on the king and the people.  

Prof. T. K. Cheyne, not a German rationalist, but an English clergyman and a professor in Oxford University, calls attention to the assured fact that the king was the only person who was "vehemently moved" by the reading of the book, while, as he asserts, Hilkiah, Shaphan and Huldah were imperturbable, and adds: "The easiest supposition is that these three persons had agreed together, unknown to the king, on their course of action." According to this, the whole of the procedure on the part of these persons described in the Book of Kings, was a preconcerted affair, and, strange to say, this English clergyman suggests that "to the priests and prophets who loved spiritual religion God had revealed that now was the time to take a bold step forward, and accomplish the work which the noblest servants of Jehovah had so long desired" (Founders of O. T. Criticism, 267, 208). With respect to this last remark, it is not surprising that Dr. Robert Skinner exclaims: "It has been reserved for an Anglican clergyman to make the Deity himself an instigator of the fraud, call it by what pleasant euphemism we will" (Lex. M., 464).  

We now see that the parties at the two extremes of this controversy—those who oppose the new theory, and those who have originated and developed it—are agreed in regarding the book as a fraud perpetrated by the joint action of its composers and its pretended discoverers.  

3. The Charge Denied. Some other scholars, chiefly our British and American critics, have undertaken to strike a golden mean, and, while admitting that the use of the name of Moses was a fiction, to deny that a fraud was perpetrated. Professor Driver has made the most elaborate and ingenious argument on this point, and we shall follow in the main his presentation of the case. It is found in his Introduction, pages 89-93. He begins the discussion by the following statement of the issue:  

If it be true that Deuteronomy Is the composition of another than Moses, in what light are we to regard it? In particular, does this view of Its origin detract from its value and authority as a part of the Old Testament Canon? The objection is commonly made, that, if this be the origin of the book, it is a "forgery;" the author, it is said, has sought to shelter himself under a great name, and to secure by fiction recognition or authority for a number of laws devised by himself (89).  

Strange to say, his first argument in reply to this objection is, that Deuteronomy does not claim to be written by Moses: whenever the author speaks himself, he purports to give a description in the third person of what Moses did or said. It is sufficient, in answer to this, to refer the reader to what we have set forth in the first division of this section. But we add that Driver's defense of this allegation, given in a foot note, is as remarkable as the allegation itself. He says: "Undoubtedly the third person may have been used by Moses; but it is unreasonable to assert that he must have used it, or to contend that passages in which it occurs could only have been written by him." The last two clauses miss their mark. No one has ever so asserted or contended, and the admission in the first clause, that Moses may have used the third person, empties the argument based on this usage of all the force which he imagines it to possess.  

He does not forget that in addition to what is said about writing "this law," the author asserts that Moses delivered orally its chief contents before they were written; and he aims to set this aside by the following assertions:  

The true author is thus the writer who introduces Moses in the third person; and the discourses which he is represented as having spoken, fall in consequence into the same category as the speeches in the historical books, some of which largely, and other entirely, are the compositions of the compilers and are placed by them in the mouths of historical characters. This freedom in ascribing speeches to historical personages is characteristic, more or less, of ancient historians generally; and it certainly was followed by Hebrew historians (90).  

If what is here said of Hebrew historians is true, it by no means follows that a man who had not the slightest pretense of authority to make laws, could without fraud write laws and put them into the mouth of an ancient lawgiver; and especially, as in the case of the law regarding altars, could abolish the law which it is conceded that God gave through Moses, and. in the name of Moses, enact a different one—one which, according to our critics themselves, was intended to work a complete revolution in the divinely appointed ritual of the nation. Professor Driver very innocently overlooks this obvious distinction.  

But what is the evidence that Hebrew historians did compose speeches and put them in the mouths of historical personages. "The proof lies," says Professor Driver, "in the great similarity of style which those speeches constantly exhibit to the parts of the narrative which are evidently the work of the compiler himself." This is an old argument of the enemies of the Bible. It has been employed to discredit not only Old Testament books, but those of the New Testament likewise, especially the Book of Acts and the Gospel of John. The most that can be said in its favor is, that in reporting actual speeches the historians have in some instances expressed the speaker's idea in somewhat different words; but to charge them with putting speeches into the mouths of 'men which they never uttered at all, is to charge them with the same fraud which is charged upon the author of Deuteronomy, and of which he was certainly guilty if he was not Mo6es. Driver further says:  

It is an altogether false view of the laws in Deuteronomy to treat them as the author's inventions. . . . On the whole, the laws of Deuteronomy are unquestionably derived from pre-existent usage; and the object of the author is to insist upon their importance, and to supply motives for their observance. The new element in Deuteronomy is not the laws, but their parenetic setting (91).  

This is certainly true of many of these laws, especially of those which are mere repetitions in different words of those contained in Exodus and Numbers; but the most distinctive law in the whole book, and one which abrogated local sanctuaries, if we believe Driver himself and all the scholars of his school, is confessedly new, and not only was it new, but it formally abolished the law of sacrifices which God himself gave to Israel in the beginning. It required the destruction of all the altars on high places which had been up to that time places of worship approved by the law of God. And this is done, not, as we have just said, by any one clothed with authority, but by an irresponsible writer whose very name never beenme public. And this was not tho only new law which this unauthorized author enacted, as we have seen in the section preceding this. This excuse for the hypothetical D is too thin a veil to cover his fraud. This is the way the matter would stand if the fraud had stopped with the mere writing of ihe book; but the worst part of it is that the author and others entered into a conspiracy to deceive the king, without which the attempted revolution would not have been effected, and the book would have fallen still-born.  

Again our critic says:  

Deuteronomy may be described as the prophetic re-formulation, and adaptation to new needs, of an older legislation (91)  

How can it be thus described, when it contains new laws never before known in Israel; when, as Driver himself persistently argues, it contradicts many of the provisions of the older legislation, provisions enacted by divine authority; and when those who contrived it had distinctly in view the abrogation of some of the older laws? When writing as an apologist for the book, he seems to totally forget what he wrote as its critic.  

Finally, we are told that "there is nothing in Deuteronomy implying an interested or dishonest motive on the part of the post-Mosaic author: and this being so, its moral and spiritual greatness remains unimpaired; its inspired authority is in no respect less than that of any other part of the Old Testament Scriptures which happens to be anonymous" (ib.). In making this statement, our critic again forgets that on the critical hypothesis one leading purpose of the party to which D and his colaborers belonged, was to gain a victory over the priests and worshipers at the high places, whose ritual had been from the days of Moses divinely authorized, and to concentrate all offerings and tithes at the temple in Jerusalem. Was this not an interested motive? Did it not secure a party triumph to the so-called Mosaic party? And did it not turn into the treasury of the Jerusalem priests a revenue of which the priests of the high places were by the same act deprived? And this, too, an income to which the latter priests were by the ancient law of God clearly entitled? Suppose that a conspiracy made up among the Dissenters in England, who conscientiously believe that the good of the English people would be promoted by the disestablishment of the Anglican Church, should succeed in writing and palming off upon king and Parliament a series of discourses professedly delivered by the apostle Paul, and recently found in an Egyptian sepulchre, condemning in most unmistakable terms the existence of a state church; would the Anglican clergy, on giving up their rich estates and endowments, agree that the authors of that book had no "interested or dishonest motive"? I think not. Professor Driver is now, I believe, a canon in that church. The case being altered would alter the case.  

It is very strange, in view of what our critic says of Deuteronomy in this very defense of its author, to hear him finally speak of the "inspiration" of its author, and to claim that this is no less than that of any other Old Testament writer. It would be interesting to see from his pen a definition of inspiration. We hear a great deal in this country about a prohibition that does not prohibit. We read a great deal more in the writings of "modern scientific critics" about an inspiration that did not inspire.  

The allusion in the last citation from Driver, to the "moral and spiritual greatness" of Deuteronomy, implies a merited eulogy on this book. In these respects it stands high above all other writings in the Old Testament, unless they be some of the Psalms. It is the especial merit of Andrew Harper to exalt this element of the book as does no other writer of my acquaintance. This characteristic lifts the author of the book as high as heaven above the resort to trickery and deception hi order to win a cause against an opposing party. An author In the days of Josiah whose soul was filled with such sentiments, and capable of expressing them as he does, could not possibly have descended to the composition of this book as we have it, and to its publication under the circumstances described in the Book of Kings. This alone is sufficient proof that the book came as it professes to have come, from the heart and brain of Moses, as that heart and brain were fired and guided by the Spirit of God.  

Prof. C. A. Briggs, in arguing the question of fraud, follows close on the track of Driver; but he makes one admission which is worthy of note. Answering the argument that the author of Kings and the prophet Jeremiah would not have joined hands to deceive the people, even with the pious end in view of serving Jehovah and saving the nation, he says:  

This is valid as against a new code, but not as against a new codification of an ancient code (H. C. of H., 87).  

So far, then, as the book did contain a new code, our argument is admitted to be valid; and it is also admitted by all the critics that the distinctive feature of Deuteronomy, that feature which led to Josiah's religious revolution, was new. They insist that it had never before been heard of. Professor Briggs, then, should admit that on his own showing a fraud was committed in which neither the author of Kings nor the prophet Jeremiah could have joined hands. But they did join hands in enforcing the law of Deuteronomy, and this is proof enough that the book did not originate as these critics have affirmed.  

We close this discussion by noticing a single sentence in Andrew Harper's argument on the same question. He says:  

If we take into account the character of Deuteronomy as only an extension and adaptation of the book of the covenant set in a framework of affectionate exhortation, and that all men then believed that the book of the covenant was Mosaic, we can see better how such action might be considered legitimate (Com., 30).  

Here this writer, like Driver and Briggs, forgets for the moment that, according to the critical hypothesis which they all advocate, Deuteronomy was not a mere "expansion and adaptation of the book of the covenant;" for it contained provisions contradictory of some in the book of the covenant, and it sought to abrogate the law in that book authorizing a plurality of altars, and to substitute a law in direct opposition to it. Furthermore, as it is here admitted that "all men then believed the book of the covenant was Mosaic," it follows that all men would have been compelled to see in this new book an attempt to abolish in the name of Moses a law which Moses had given, and to do this after Moses had been dead for seven centuries.  

The reader has now before him in full the attempt which the intermediary critics have made, in opposition to the fathers of their system on the one hand, and to the antagonists of it on the other, to explain away the fraud involved in their theory of the origin of this book. If fraud was not perpetrated, the book was written by Moses as it claims to have been.