Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: VI. THE SUPPLEMENTARY HYPOTHESIS. This stadium is characterized by the effort to determine the genesis of the various documents constituting the Pentateuch. De Wette is the man who chiefly influences the discussion. Reviewing the previous stadium Merx properly remarks that both the fragmentary and documentary hypotheses —" have this in common that they seek to attain their aim chiefly by the way of Literary Criticism, and neglect or use only as a subsidiary help, the realistic, antiquarian and historical criticism of the contents of the Pentateuch. This element De Wette chiefly brought into the scientific investigation in his Kritik der israelitischen Geschichte, Halle, 1807."—P. Ixxxii. of 2d Aufl. of Tuch's Com. tibcr Genesis, Halle, 1871. At first hovering between the documentary hypothesis of Eichhorn and the fragmentary hypothesis of Geddes, recognizing the features of truth and of error in them both, De Wette at last rises above them and presses for the unity of the Pentateuch in its presentform as the plan of one mind. He first stated that Deuteronomy is an independent part of the Pentateuch, composed in the age of Josiah. He subsequently adopted into his system the improvements suggested by other Biblical scholars who followed in his footsteps, f For an excellent account of the criticism of this stadium see the valuable articles of Prof. F. A. Gast, D.D., on Pentateuch Criticism, in the Apru and July Numbers of the Reformed Quarterly Rrvie1t', 1882; also Nachwort, by Merx in zd Aufl. of Tuch's Genesis, 1871, p. Ixxviii. sq., etc. (bo) In 1824 Bleekij: adopted the view of Geddes and Vater, that the death of Moses was not the proper close of the history begun in Genesis, but that it aimed at the occupation of the Holy Land, and that the Book of Joshua t...