Individual duplications, variations and differences are capable of ingenious explanation, but scholars, in the progress of their patient studies, found that the number of these disagreements is very great. They occur throughout the first five books of the Bible, and also in the sixth.

The presence of similar disagreements in the New Testament is accounted for by the fact of differences of authorship. Thus there are various statements as to the order of the temptations of Jesus (Mt. 4; Lk. 4), as to the time of the casting out of the traders from the temple (Mt. 21; Jn. 2), as to the day of the Last Supper (Mt. 26:17; Jn. 13:1). Four different biographers, each assembling his materials from different sources, would naturally differ in such details as these. Might not the duplications and variations of the Pentateuch have a like origin?

As for the fact that in the Pentateuch the writings of the several authors,-if there were several,-are combined in a single narrative, it was remembered that a like combination had once been made of the writings of the four evangelists. About the year 150 a Christian missionary named Tatian made a book called Diatessaron. The word means "Through Four," and the book was a Life of Christ made by bringing the four gospels into a single narrative. Tatian began with the prologue to St. John's Gospel, proceeded with the accounts of the infancy in St. Matthew and St. Luke, and then selected now from one gospel, now from another, arranging the materials in order, according to his judgment; sometimes omitting, sometimes retain

ing, parallel passages. It seemed possible that the Diatessaron might take the place of the four gospels; Matthew, Mark, Luke and John being eventually forgotten. It was read in place of them in many churches. It was gradually disused, however, and now survives only in translation. The resolving of it back into its original materials is one of the problems of scholars. They can determine what passages came from Mark and what from Luke, and what passages are pieced together out of fragments of all four.

It was discovered that the Pentateuch is also a Diatessaron, made by combining four source-materials which were once as independent as the gospels. To these materials were given the distinguishing letters, J, E, D, and P.

II

In the year 621 B. C., in the reign of King Josiah, the temple at Jerusalem was cleaned, and repaired, and put in order. This was made necessary by the fact that there had been a pagan king upon the throne of Judah, and during his long reign the temple was profaned and neglected. In the course of this restoration there came to light a remarkable book. The account of the discovery is in the twenty-second chapter of the Second Book of Kings.

Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe:"I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord." And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it. And Shaphan the scribe came to the king, and brought the king word again, and said: "Thy servants

have gathered the money that was found in the house, and have delivered it into the hand of them that do the work, that have the oversight of the house of the Lord." And Shaphan the scribe shewed the king, saying:-"Hilkiah the priest hath delivered me a book." And Shaphan read it before the king. And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes. And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Achbor, the son of Michaiah, and Shaphan the scribe, and Asahiah a servant of the king's, saying:-"Go ye, enquire of the Lord for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that is found: for great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against me, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book, to do according unto all that which is written concerning us."

And they brought the king word again. And the king sent, and they gathered unto him all the elders of Judah and of Jerusalem. And the king went up into the house of the Lord, and all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the priests, and the prophets, and all the people, both small and great: and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant which was found in the house of the Lord. And the king stood by a pillar, and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people stood to the covenant.

The reformation which was thus undertaken by the king reveals the contents of the book. He destroyed a multitude of idols; he took away "the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun," and burned the chariots of the sun with fire; he broke down the idolatrous altars; he defiled the shrines of Ashtoreth, the

god of Sidon, and of Chemosh, the god of Moab, and of Milcom, the god of Ammon, and Topheth where men had made their sons and daughters pass through the fire to Molech, and all the sanctuaries of Baal; he desecrated all the "high places," and took away all their priests; and he put away the familiar spirits, and the wizards, and all the abominations, "that he might perform the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the Lord."

The characteristic act of this reformation was the centralization of worship in Jerusalem. The "high places" were associated with all the long history of Hebrew religion. They were shrines like Bethel, where the patriarchs had met God. Some of them had been holy places long before the days of the patriarchs,— holy wells and holy hills of primitive religion. Some of them had inherited local traditions and customs of that old paganism, as the saints of the Middle Ages inherited in their shrines the legends of the exiled gods. They were refuges of superstition. The abolition of these sanctuaries was a revolution as radical as would be involved to-day in the burning of all the country churches, and the forbidding of public worship in any place except a cathedral in the chief city. It was accounted necessary, however, to secure and maintain the purity of religion. It was made possible by the requirement of it in the book.

If this book is still in existence, it is the book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy contains the commandments which Josiah obeyed. It is, indeed, in the form

of addresses made by Moses to the people of Israel before their entrance into the land of Canaan. But so are the dialogues of Plato in the form of questions and answers made by Socrates. We may be content to say that the maker of the book of Deuteronomy knew very well what Moses would have said had he been confronted with the evils of that time, and that the value of what he made him say rests not on its connection with the actual utterances of Moses but on its accordance with good reason and righteousness. When the king and the people obeyed the book, they obeyed what they recognized as the very will of God.

Thus we distinguish one of the source-materials out of which the Pentateuch was made. It is the whole, or a great part, of Deuteronomy. It was composed in the seventh century before Christ. Its letter in the Pentateuchal alphabet is D.

III

In the year 444 B. C., Ezra the scribe, coming from Babylon to Jerusalem, brought with him a book, which he read aloud in an assembly of the people. An account of this proceeding appears in the eighth chapter of Nehemiah.

And all the people gathered themselves together as one man into the street that was before the Water Gate; and they spake unto Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded to Israel. And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation both of men and women, and all that could hear with understanding, upon the first day of the seventh month. And he read therein before the street that was before the