ic barriers to modern
thought, see his Essays, recently published. For Pfeiffer, see Zoeckler,
Theologie und Naturwissenschaft, vol. i, pp. 688, 689. For St. Jerome's
indifference as to the Mosaic authorship, see the first of the excellent
Sketches of the Pentateuch Criticism, by the Rev. S. J. Curtiss, in the
Bibliotheca Sacra for January, 1884. For Huet, see also Curtiss, ibid.

About the middle of the twelfth century came, so far as the world now
knows, the first gainsayer of this general theory. Then it was that Aben
Ezra, the greatest biblical scholar of the Middle Ages, ventured
very discreetly to call attention to certain points in the Pentateuch
incompatible with the belief that the whole of it had been written by
Moses and handed down in its original form. His opinion was based upon
the well-known texts which have turned all really eminent biblical
scholars in the nineteenth century from the old view by showing the
Mosaic authorship of the five books in their present form to be clearly
disproved by the books themselves; and, among these texts, accounts
of Moses' own death and burial, as well as statements based on names,
events, and conditions which only came into being ages after the time of
Moses.

But Aben Ezra had evidently no aspirations for martyrdom; he fathered
the idea upon a rabbi of a previous generation, and, having veiled his
statement in an enigma, added the caution, "Let him who understands hold
his tongue."(473)

(473) For the texts referred to by Aben Ezra as incompatible with the
Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, see Meyer, Geschichte der Exegese,
vol. i, pp. 85-88; and for a pithy short account, Moore's introduction
to The Genesis of Genesis, by B. W. Bacon, Hartford, 1893, p. 23; also
Curtiss, as above. For a full exhibition of the absolute incompatibility
of these texts with the Mosaic authorship, etc., see The Higher
Criticism of the Pentateuch, by C. A. Briggs, D. D., New York, 1893,
especially chap. iv; also Robertson Smith, art. Bible, in Encycl. Brit.

For about four centuries the learned world followed the prudent rabbi's
advice, and then two noted scholars, one of them a Protestant, the other
a Catholic, revived his idea. The first of these, Carlstadt, insisted
that the authorship of the Pentateuch was unknown and unknowable; the
other, Andreas Maes, expressed his opinion in terms which would not now
offend the most orthodox, that the Pentateuch had been edited by Ez