Note 128 — Chapter II · THE COMPOSITION OF THE PENTATEUCH

The theory of Jean Astruc, the French Protestant physician, was set forth in his Conjectures sur la Genèse published anonymously at Paris in 1753. In this he assumes that Moses wrote the book of Genesis in four parallel columns like a Harmony of the Gospels which were afterwards mixed together by the ignorance of copyists. Astruc intended his work to be an answer to those who, like Spinoza, asserted that Genesis was written without order or plan. It is interesting to note that Dr. Briggs in his able defence of the ‘critical’ hypothesis (The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch, pp. 138-141) quotes with approval Professor Moore’s appeal to Tatian’s Diatessaron—a mere ‘patchwork’ of the Gospels—in support of the literary analysis of the Pentateuch.