Excerpt from Methodist Quarterly Review, 1884, Vol. 66 The fragment-hypothesis soon became unsatisfactory to some of its ablest advocates. It was mainly held by extreme ration al'ists, who treated the Mosaic narratives as altogether mythical 1. Or legendary. But the unity of the Pentateuch was too appar ent, and the evidences of plan and purpose running through the whole were too many for the most arbitrary critics to set aside. One of Ewald's earliest publications contributed largely to establishing the unity of the Book of Genesis.* The wav forwhat is commonlv known as-the Hypothesis of Supple plements' Was prepared by such writers as Bertholdt, Herbst, and Volney, men not readily classed with any special school. 'but who maintained that the Pentateuch was in great part the work of Moses-but much revised and supplemented by later handsfl According to Bertholdt, the work was brought to its present form sometime between the beginning of Saul's and the end of Solomon's reignt According to Herbst, the final redaction was probably made, after Ezra's time, by the college of Eldersi Volney allowed less to Moses, and supposed that the Pentateuch in its present form was the product of the com bined labors of Hilkiah, Shaphan, Achbor, (2 Kings x'xii, 8 1 and other scribes and prophets of the age of J osiah. De Wette made use of all the suggestions of his predecessors, and in his earlier publications on this subject adopted in the 'n the Hypothesis of Fragments. Many single fragments of the Pentateuch could not, in his opinion, have originated ear lie'r than the times of David. The different narratives were written independently of one another, and afterward put together by different collectors. The compilation of Leviticus was probably by another hand, and certainly later than that of Exodus. Numbers was a supplement to the earlier collections. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.