Deut. i. 1,5. He alleges that as Moses was approaching the Jordan from the west, the phrase in his mouth should designate the western side of the river, and not the eastern; hence Moses did not write it. The sufficient reply is found in his quotation from Bleek containing the objection,—" that the above formula was a standing designation for the country east of the Jordan, which might be used in this sense without regard to the position of the writer. So it is often employed in later times." It is like Transalpine and Cisalpine Gaul. So Gesenius. Bleek, however, would abate the force of the admission by saying that most probably the phrase first formed itself among the Hebrews after the settlement in Canaan. But the land was occupied, its modes of speech settled, and this great landmark there before the time of Abraham. Something more than a conjecture or supposed probability, therefore, is necessary to give any weight to the objection.1

The attempts to find evidence that the Pentateuch was composed in Palestine, certainly make a very feeble show.

(vi.) It is further asserted that certain "legendary and traditional elements" of the narrative, "involving insuperable difficulties and inconsistencies," show that Moses could not have been the author of it. Here we meet, mainly in the form of quotation from Professor Norton,2 the statements, which Dr. Colenso has repeated at third hand, concerning the mustering and marching of two millions of people, “in a single night," and the difficulties of life in the wilderness.

But Dr. Davidson's closing remarks on this head are

1 A fuller statement of the case would add that the phrase is sometimes used from a writer's position and that the same writer (especially Joshua) fluctuates. In Joshua its prevailing usage is as a geographical term, east of the Jordan (i. 14, 15; ix. 10; xiv. 3; xvii. 5) in the first of which cases he appends "castward," as if to define the true meaning of the phrase. In three instances he uses it from his point of view to designate the western side (v. 1; xii. 7; xxii. 7), but avoids misapprehension in each case by adding, westward; so that the settled geographical meaning, when used without explanation in Joshua, is, from the outset, east of Jordan.

2 Davidson's Introduction, Vol. I. p. 100.

deeply significant, as showing his fundamental objection to any record of the supernatural. "Indeed, it is only necessary to examine the history, as it lies before us, to find in it a mythological, traditional, and exaggerated element, forbidding the literal acceptation of the whole. The character of Pharaoh under the circumstances detailed; the ten miraculous plagues, which spared the Israelites while they fell upon the Egyptians; the dogmatic mode in which it is narrated how Moses and Aaron presented themselves before Pharaoh; and the crowd of extraordinary interpositions of Jehovah on behalf of the people as they journeyed through the wilderness, show the influence of the later traditions on the narrative in dressing it out with fabulous traits. The laws of nature are unchangeable. God does not directly and suddenly interfere with them on behalf of his creatures; neither does he so palpably or constantly intermeddle with men's little concerns. The entire history is cast in the mould of a postMosaic age, unconscious of critical consistency, and investing ancestral times with undue importance."

Here we have, perhaps, the gist of the whole difficulty. Evidence can weigh little with one who determines that "the laws of nature are unchangeable," and that "God does not directly and suddenly interfere with them on behalf of his creatures." The remark cuts wide and deep; it sweeps alike the time of Moses and of Christ.

(To be continued.)

ARTICLE III.

THE AUTHOR OF THE APOCALYPSE.

BY PROF. R. D. C. ROBBINS, MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE.

(Continued from No. 82, page 347.)

II. INTERNAL ARGUMENT.

1. Proof that John the Apostle was the Author of the Apocalypse from Declarations in the Book itself.

The author of the book repeatedly indicates that his name is John (i. 1, 4, 9; xxii. 8).

This has been adduced as an objection to the authorship of John the evangelist, since he nowhere gives his name in the Gospel and Epistles. But there was in then no occasion to name himself specifically. The authors of neither of the Gospels deem it necessary to make themselves conspicuous. But if a vision is seen or a revelation made, the one to whom the revelation is made or by whom the vision is seen is naturally designated. So it was with the Hebrew prophets : "The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz"; "the word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw"; "the word that came unto Jeremiah from the Lord"; "a vision appeared unto me, even unto me, Daniel"; and so times almost without number, in the different prophets. Here the designation is, "to his servant John," merely indicating his relation to the Saviour in his exaltation, just as in the Gospel he calls himself, in relation to his intercourse with the Saviour on earth, "the disciple whom Jesus loved," the one "who leaned on Jesus's bosom." The immediate designation in the first verse is, as Hengstenberg well says, not of John as apostle, but as prophet, and yet "we are conducted indirectly to the apostleship, since revelations of such high importance as those contained here were not given beyond the limits of the apostleship, and could not have been given, without shaking the foundation of the apostolic dignity."

'Hengstenberg's Commentary, I. 1, xviii. 20, and Vol. II. 391.

The fact that no other designation is given with the name John, both in verse first and fourth, is a strong argument in favor of the apostolic authorship. There may have been others in the region who had the same name with the apostle; but there certainly was no one who was generally known. That "shadow of a man," called John the presbyter or elder, is plainly cast from the designation of "elder," given by John to himself in his second and third epistles, and deepened and endued with life by the wrong interpretation of a passage of Papias by Eusebius,' and an obscure tradition hunted up by Dionysius to give some consistency to his denial of apostolical authority to the Revelation. It is little less than absurd to suppose that a man who should be chosen as a depository of such revelations as are given in the Apocalypse, or was capable of composing a work so elevated and unique in its character, and who intended to be known and to speak with authority, should leave no trace of his existence which subsequent ages could with the minutest examination lay hold of. We can see no alternative, from the manner in which the name "John " is employed, between supposing John the evangelist to be the author, and some impostor who wished to give the sanction of the apostle to his own work.

It was, as Hengstenberg says, directly in the region of the seven churches," that the apostle John had a diocese," and "he seems to be writing as to his seven churches," beginning with Ephesus, where, according to tradition," he had his seat." 2 Thus Neander says: "All the ancient traditions, which may be traced back to his [John's] immediate disciples, agree in stating that Lesser Asia was the scene of his labors to the end of the first century, and Ephesus its central point.” 3 How, then, could another in honesty designate himself as John, simply, when he must have been aware that he would be confounded with the well-known John, the apostle? If

1 See Hengstenberg's Commentary, Vol. II. 403 sq.

* Comm., Vol. II. 390, 391.

3 Planting and Training of the Christian Church, Bk. V., where many particulars illustrating his influence there are given.

we should find a classical work prefaced by "I, Cicero, thus write," we should not doubt whether the words of the great Roman orator, or those of his brother Quintus, or his son Marcus,1 were intended to be designated. In the case before us, there must be a far greater difference between the apostle and any other John of the time, than between Cicero and his brother or son; so that some more specific designation would unavoidably be necessary to prevent confusion.

Verse ninth of ch. i. also points directly to the apostle as author: "I John, who also am your brother and companion in tribulation ..... was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ." The incidental information here that the author of the Apocalypse was in banishment to Patmos on account of persecution for his faithfulness in his Christian labors, applies most naturally to the apostle. "According to a widely spread ancient tradition, the apostle John was banished to the island of Patmos, in the Aegean sea, by one of the emperors who was hostile to the Christians, but which of them is not ascertained." And again, Neander says: "Certainly we cannot refuse to believe the unanimous tradition of the Asiatic churches in the second century, that the apostle John, as a teacher of these churches had to suffer on account of the faith; for which reason he is distinguished as a martyr in the epistle..... of Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus." The circumstance that the church at Ephesus was first addressed, too, is most natural when we consider the relation of John to it, as the centre of his circle of influence. And the whole superscription of these epistles, and indeed their contents, indicate so plainly definite knowledge of the peculiarities and circumstances of each, and confidence in the writer's per

1 Thus Twells, in Vindic. Apoc., says: "So that Cicero did this or that, or declared so and so to his readers, it is manifest who would be meant. We should at once understand that it was the oration of that well-known Cicero, and not Quintus Cicero his brother, or Marcus his son."

2 Neander's Planting and Training, Bk. V. See also Tertull. Praescript., c. 36; Clemens, c. 42; Orig. I. xvI. in Matt. § 6; Irenacus, V. 30.