I. Genuineness of the Old Testament.

1. External Evidence. The Jews, to whom these books were intrusted, have been in all ages unanimous in their testimony that the Pentateuch was the work of Moses; the Psalms, of David, and those whose names are affixed to them; Proverbs, of Solomon; and that others were written by those whose names they bear; and, with equal unanimity, testify to those books being genuine whose writers' names are lost. They are accredited by successive generations, till we come to the mention of them in the Prologue to Ecclesiasticus, the treatise of Josephus against Apion, and the

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INTEGRITY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES.

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writings of the New Testament. They are also constantly quoted by one another as authentic and genuine; and the Pentateuch, Psalms, and Prophets, as well as the historical books, are so quoted by our Lord Himself. They are all declared to be genuine by successive councils of the Christian Church.

2. Internal Evidence. (a) The Nationality of the writers. They all (with the probable exceptions of Job and the author of Esther) profess to be Jews of Palestine, a people peculiarly separated from the rest of mankind by religion, by unique customs, and by physical position. These peculiarities are implicitly maintained throughout the whole books, which shew no evidence of contact with the literature of any other countries, except those in which the writers profess to have been in temporary exile.

(b) The Language in which they are written is that of Palestine, and ceased to be a living language soon after the Babylonish Captivity; none of these writings, therefore, can be much later than that event. The difference between those which profess to be early, and the later ones, is precisely the same as that which marks literary progress in other languages, while foreign words are mingled with the native tongue, where the writers come into familiar intercourse with other nations (e.g. Egyptian words in the Book of Exodus; Chaldee, in Daniel, &c.).

(c) Circumstantiality. The records contain histories, frequent genealogies, and biographies, all of which are capable of more or less verification from other records, but no material discrepancy has been proved.

(d) The Undesigned Coincidences (see Blunt's work on this subject, and Paley's Horæ Paulinæ) are numerous. Then, again, the physical allusions belong exclusively to Palestine, whose geographical and geological conformation is unparalleled, while the flora and fauna, as gathered from the work itself, have been proved by modern explorers to correspond exactly with the phenomena of that country (see Tables of "Trees, Plants, &c.," p. 112).