[197]
Yet the writer of the Pentateuch must not be reproached for his errors
as much as those who would attribute to him infallible accuracy. He had
no idea that he was writing truth. "But," says the Bishop, "there is not
the slightest reason to suppose that the first writer of the story in
the Pentateuch ever professed to be recording _infallible truth_, or
even _actual, historical truth_. He wrote certainly a narrative. But
what indications are there that he published it at large, even to the
people of his own time, as a record of _matter-of-fact, veracious
history_? Why may not Samuel, like any other Head of an Institution,
have composed this narrative for the instruction and improvement of his
pupils, from which it would gradually find its way, no doubt, more or
less freely, among the people at large, without ever pretending that it
was any other than an historical _experiment_,--an attempt to give them
some account of the early annals of their tribes? In _later_ days, it is
true, this ancient work of Samuel's came to be regarded as infallibly
Divine.
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