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From heathen, let us turn to Jewish, testimony. Dr. Watson quotes the following from a confession of faith, drawn up for the Jews, in the eleventh century, by Maimonides. Out of only thirteen articles of which it consists, two of them have respect to Moses; one affirming the authenticity, the other the genuineness, of the books. The doctrine and prophecy of Moses is true.The law that we have was given by Moses. This has been the faith of the Jews throughout all times of their existence, whether in prosperity or adversity, whether in the country of Judea or in the land of the stranger, whether in ancient times or in the present day. The same author proceeds to show what powerful internal evidence for the genuineness and authenticity of the scriptures is derived from the frequent references made by later writers to those who were more ancient. For instance: In the last chapter of the book of Joshua iteis related, that Joshua' assembled all the tribes of Israel to Sechem; and there, in the presence of the elders and principal men of Israel, he recapitulated, in a short speech, all that God had done for their nation, from the calling of Abraham to that time, when they were settled in the land which God had promised to their forefathers. In finishing his speech, he said to them- Choose you this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served, that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And the people answered and said, God forbid that we should forsake the

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Lord to serve other gods. And Joshua said, ye are witnesses against yourselves that ye havé chosen you the Lord to serve him. And they said, we are witnesses. So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and set them a statute and an ordinance in Sechem, and Joshua wrote these words in the book of the Law of God. Here is a proof of two things first, that there was then, a few years after the death of Moses, existing a book called The Book of the Law of God; the same, without doubt, which Moses had written, and committed to the custody of the Levites, that it might be kept in the ark of the covenant of the Lord, that it might be a witness against them: secondly, that Joshua wrote a part, at least, of his own transactions in that very book, as an addition to it. It is not a proof that he wrote all his own transactions in any book; but it is submitted to the judgment of every candid man, whether this proof of his having recorded a very material transaction, does not make it probable that he recorded other material transactions; that he wrote the chief part of the book of Joshua; and that such things as happened after his death, have been inserted in it by others, in order to render the history more complete.'

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The genuineness of the book of Joshua, and its priority in time to the first book of Kings, are proved by a quotation occurring in 1st Kings, xvi. 34. In Ahab's days did Hiel the Bethelite build Jericho: he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his first-born, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Segub, according to the word

of the Lord, which he spake by Joshua the son of -Núna

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In like manner are the genuineness and authenticity of, at least, the first book of Samuel established, by a reference made to it in the Chronicles; thus, 1st Chron. xix. 29. Now the acts of David the king, first and last, behold they are written in the book of Samuel the seer.' In fact, in the later books of the Jewish scriptures, there is a general and frequently recurring quo tation from, and reference to, those which are more ancient; which proves to us, both their real antiquity, and the great estimation in which they were held; and, at the same time, precludes all suspicion of any collusion on the part of designing men, to impose upon the world a series of forged annals, of false miracles, and of pretended prophecies, as the history of the word, and of the providential works, of God...

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I shall close this part of our evidence with a brief account of the manner in which the books of the ancient scriptures were collected and preserved, together with a few remarks tending to show that they have descended to us uncorrupted.

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The first canon or catalogue of the sacred books was made by the Jews; though the original author of it cannot be satisfactorily ascertained. It appears however certain, both from tradition and internal evidence, that the five books of Moses, called the Pentateuch, were collected into one body within a short time after his death; since Deuteronomy, which is, as it were, the abridgment and recapitulation of the other four, was laid

in the tabernacle near the ark, according to the order which he gave to the Levites. Hence it appears, that the first canon of the sacred writings consisted only of the five books of Moses. Samuel is supposed to have added to this catalogue, such books as appeared between the time of Moses and his own day, and to have been the author of a part of the first book which bears his name. The remaining part of the first book of Samuel, together with the second book," is supposed to have been the work of Nathan and Gad. "That Ezra' and Nehemiah, who lived in the time of the Babylonish captivity, and until the re-establishment of the nation in the country of Judea, collected such remains of the prophetical and other writings as were extant in their day. And that Malachi, the last of the prophets, who lived some time after the rebuilding of the temple and city, completed the canon of the ancient scriptures. This event happened about four hundred years before the birth of Christ; and there cannot be any reasonable doubt, that we have the books of the Jewish scriptures in the same state in which they were collected and left by this prophet.

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Dr. Priestley, in remarking upon this subject, The canon of the Old Testament could not have been corrupted materially after the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity, on account of the sect of the Samaritans, which took its' rise about that time. For this people professed the same regard to the sacred books with the Jews! themselves, and were always at variance with them about the interpretation of the scriptures.

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The Samaritan copy of the Pentateuch is now in our hands, and excepting some numbers, in which the different copies and translations of all ancient writings are peculiarly subject to vary, and single text, in which mount Gerizim and mount Ebal are interchanged, it is the very same with the Jewish copy. Not long after this, the books of the Old Testament, beginning with the Pentateuch, were translated into Greek, and dispersed by means of the Jews, into almost every part of the known world.

There is not the least probability that any change, worth any mens' attempting to make, or in the least affecting any principal point of the Jewish religion, was made during their captivity; which, however, was not long, reckoning from the time of the destruction of the city by Nebuchadnezzar, but that many of those who returned from it, had a perfect remembrance of the temple of Solomon, which had been burned in the siege by Nebuchadnezzar; for they wept when they saw how much the new temple was inferior to it; and can it be supposed but that some of these people would have taken the alarm, and a schism have been occasioned, if any material change had been attempted to be made in the constitution of the law, or the contents of the sacred books.

'Least of all, can it be supposed that Ezra would, at that particular time, have introduced the injunction on which he laid so much stress, about putting away all their strange wives. In his cir➡ cumstances, this measure must have appeared exceedingly hazardous, considering how many †

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