CONSIDERATIONS

RESPECTING THE

GENUINENESS

OF THE PENTATEUCH,

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO A PAMPHLET ENTITLED

"THE CONNEXION BETWEEN

GEOLOGY AND THE PENTATEUCH:

BY THOMAS COOPER, M. D. "

NOTE BY THE EDITOR.

THE following Essay was occasioned by a pamphlet written by Dr. Cooper, and addressed to Prof. Silliman of Yale college. Mr. Means's reply was first published in the columns of the "Southern Christian Herald," and then in a more permanent form at Columbia, in 1834.

The controversy respecting the composition of the Pentateuch, although it had never before been waged in this country, is by no means of recent origin. Aben-Ezra, the celebrated Jewish critic of the 12th century, had pointed out certain passages as written by a later hand than Moses, but without thinking in the least to impugn the authority of the Pentateuch as the genuine production of that Jewish Lawgiver, nor indeed of any portion of it as a writing of inspiration.

Spinoza, a learned but skeptical Jew, in his Tractat. Theol. Polit. Hamburg, 1670, was the first who contended against the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch. He maintained that it was composed by Ezra ; and the same opinion was expressed by Anthony Van Dale, in his dissertation De Origine et Progressu Idololatriæ Amstelod. 1696. Isaac Peyrere, 1655, author of the theory of the Præadamites, believed that the Pentateuch was compiled from journals left by Moses, and from documents existing before him. That "the Book of the Wars of the Lord" was the first compilation, and furnished the foundation of the book of