23. Will Objectors Please Answer a Few Questions?

Will Objectors Please Answer a Few Questions?

Before leaving the matter of the law, it may be well to propose for the consideration of the objectors to the Biblical account of the origin of the laws of Moses a few questions that, it seems to me, require an answer before we can accept their theory of its origin, unsupported as it is by any direct evidence.

First, if Exodus 20-24 and Deuteronomy were written in the period of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, how can we account for the fact that the king is referred to but once (Deuteronomy 16), and that in a passage difficult to read and explain and claiming to be anticipatory? And why should this passage make no reference to the house of David, and place its emphasis on a warning against a return to Egypt?

Second, why should the law never mention Zion, or Jerusalem, as the place where men ought to worship, if these laws were written hundreds of years after the temple had been built?

Third, why should the temple itself receive no consideration, but be set aside for a “mythical” tabernacle whose plan to the minutest particular has been elaborated with so much care? And why, if this plan were devised at Babylon in the fifth century B.C., should it in its form and divisions show more resemblance to an Egyptian than to a Babylonian house of God?