Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 42:166 (Apr 1885)
Article: Sketches Of Pentateuch Criticism
Author: Samuel Ives Curtiss

BSac 42:166 (April 1885) p. 291

Sketches Of Pentateuch Criticism

Rev. Samuel Ives Curtiss

3: Defenders of the Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch

The effect of the attacks upon the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, whether on the part of destructive1 or constructive2 critics, was to bring defenders of that authorship to the front. Such was their learning and influence that they made the traditional view dominant until nearly the end of the eighteenth century. The three representatives that we shall choose are from France, Holland, and Germany.

1. Huet (b. 1630; d. 1721)

Peter Daniel Huet,3 born at Caen, may be considered a type of the highest culture of the French nation during the reign of Louis XIV., concerning whom we have

BSac 42:166 (April 1885) p. 292

spoken in a preceding article.4 No man of his age, or, perhaps, of any other, had such a reputation for learning, or possessed so many distinguished acquaintances.

Although he died a bishop, he did not enter the service of the Roman Catholic Church as a priest until he was forty-six years of age.5 Before he formally laid aside the vanities of the world he was scholar, gallant,6 and courtier.

His advantages were of a high order. He came of a good family.7 Though left an orphan at an early age, he enjoyed an excellent education, and possessed ample means by inheritance, and subsequently through the patronage of the crown.8 For an entire decade he was associated with Bossuet as the tutor of the dauphin.9 While still a boy in years he came under the personal influence and stimulus of Bochart, the great Protestant geographer,10 and was thus led to see his defects in the sacred languages. From this time forward he pursued them with quenchless ardor, spending at least two hours a day in the study of the Bible in the original, and reading the Old Testament in Hebrew through twenty-four times11 during thirty years. In company with Bochart he visited the gifted but eccentric queen of Sweden, Chris-

BSac 42:166 (April 1885) p. 293

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