Wiener lists
four Fundamental Improbabilities of the Critical Case. 3 The first, he says, is the moral and
psychological incredibility. Two great frauds were perpetrated, in each case by
men of the loftiest ethical principles. Deuteronomy was deliberately written in
the form of Mosaic speeches by some person or persons who knew that their work
was not Mosaic. Can it be believed that men who denounced adding aught to the
law of God, of prophesying falsely in the name of God, were guilty of the very
thing they condemned in perpetrating these gigantic frauds for the purpose of
deceiving? The second he calls the Historical Improbability, the
improbability that these frauds could have been successfully perpetrated. He
thinks that Huldah and Jeremiah were better judges of the authenticity of the
scrolls which were found in the temple during Josiah’s reign than are the
modern critics. “Thirdly,” he says, “the entire perversion of the true meaning
of the laws in post-exilic times makes the critical theory incredible.” And his
fourth reason is the Testimony of Tradition, that the Jews, the
Samaritans, and the Christians alike have always held to the Mosaic authorship
of the Pentateuch. He states: “The national consciousness of a people, the
convergent belief of Christendom for 18 centuries are not lightly to be put
aside. And what is pitted against them? Theories that vary with each fresh
exponent, and that take their start from textual corruption, develop through a
confusion between an altar and a house, and end in misdating narratives and
laws by 8 or 10 centuries!”
3 Harold
M. Wiener, lbid., IV, p.
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