although the narratives of the Pentateuch and many of its laws were put
into their present form long after the time of Moses. The composite
character of all this old literature has been demonstrated. The fact
that its materials were collected from several sources, by a process
extending through many centuries, and that the work of redaction was not
completed until the people returned from the exile about five centuries
before Christ, and almost a thousand years after the death of Moses, are
facts now as well established as any other results of scholarly
research.

Nevertheless, we have maintained that the Israelites possessed, when
they entered Canaan, a considerable body of legislation framed under the
eye of Moses and bearing his name. Throughout the Book of Joshua this
legislation is frequently referred to. If the Book of Joshua was, as we
have assumed, originally connected with the first five books,
constituting what is now called the Hexateuch, if these six books were
put into their present form by the same writers, we should expect that
the Mosaic legislation would be clearly traced through all these books.

But when we go forward in this history we come at once upon a remarkable
fact. The Book of Judges, the Book of Ruth, and the two books of Samuel
cover a period of Jewish history estimated in our common chronology at
more than four hundred years, and in these four books there is no
mention whatever of that Mosaic legislation which constituted, as we
have supposed, the germ of the Pentateuch. The name of Moses is
mentioned only six times in these four books; twice in the early
chapters of the Judges in connection with the settlement of the kindred
of his wife in Canaan; once in a reference to an order given by Moses
that Hebron should be given to Caleb; twice in a single passage in I
Samuel xii., where Moses and Aaron are referred to as leaders of the