Reference: Hexateuch
Hastings
The first five books of the OT were known in Jewish circles as 'the five-fifths of the Law.' Christian scholars as early as Tertullian and Origen adopted the name Pentateuch, corresponding to their Jewish title, as a convenient designation of these books. 'The Law' was regarded as a unique and authoritative exposition of all individual and social conduct within Israel: a wide gulf seemed to divide it from the Book of Joshua, which inaugurated the series of historical books known as 'the Latter Prophets.' As a matter of fact, this division is wholly artificial. The five books of the Law are primarily intended to present the reader not with a codification of the legal system, but with some account of the antiquities and origins of Israel, as regards their religious worship, their political position, and their social arrangements. From this standpoint, nothing could be more arbitrary than to treat the Book of Joshua as the beginning of an entirely new series: 'its contents, and, still more, its literary structure, show that it is intimately connected with the Pentateuch, and describes the final stage in the history of the Origines of the Hebrew nation' (Driver, LOT [Note: OT Introd. to the Literature of the Old Testament.] 103). Critics have accordingly invented the name Hexateuch to emphasize this unity; and the name has now become universally accepted as an appropriate description of the first six volumes of the OT. In this article we propose to consider (I.) the composition, (II.) the criticism, and (III.) the characteristics of the Hexateuch.
I. Composition of the Hexateuch.
See Verses Found in Dictionary
These are the generations of the heaven and the earth when they were made. In the day when the Lord God made earth and heaven there were no plants of the field on the earth, and no grass had come up: for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to do work on the land. read more. But a mist went up from the earth, watering all the face of the land. And the Lord God made man from the dust of the earth, breathing into him the breath of life: and man became a living soul. And the Lord God made a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had made. And out of the earth the Lord made every tree to come, delighting the eye and good for food; and in the middle of the garden, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden giving water to the garden; and from there it was parted and became four streams. The name of the first is Pishon, which goes round about all the land of Havilah where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: this river goes round all the land of Cush. And the name of the third river is Tigris, which goes to the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to do work in it and take care of it. And the Lord God gave the man orders, saying, You may freely take of the fruit of every tree of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you may not take; for on the day when you take of it, death will certainly come to you. And the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be by himself: I will make one like himself as a help to him And from the earth the Lord God made every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and took them to the man to see what names he would give them: and whatever name he gave to any living thing, that was its name. And the man gave names to all cattle and to the birds of the air and to every beast of the field; but Adam had no one like himself as a help. And the Lord God sent a deep sleep on the man, and took one of the bones from his side while he was sleeping, joining up the flesh again in its place: And the bone which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman, and took her to the man. And the man said, This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh: let her name be Woman because she was taken out of Man. For this cause will a man go away from his father and his mother and be joined to his wife; and they will be one flesh. And the man and his wife were without clothing, and they had no sense of shame.
But with you I will make an agreement; and you will come into the ark, you and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with you. And you will take with you into the ark two of every sort of living thing, and keep them safe with you; they will be male and female.
And you will take with you into the ark two of every sort of living thing, and keep them safe with you; they will be male and female. Two of every sort of bird and cattle and of every sort of living thing which goes on the earth will you take with you to keep them from destruction. read more. And make a store of every sort of food for yourself and them. And all these things Noah did; as God said, so he did.
Of every clean beast you will take seven males and seven females, and of the beasts which are not clean, two, the male and his female; And of the birds of the air, seven males and seven females, so that their seed may still be living on the face of the earth.
They went with Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh in which is the breath of life.
And Abram went through the land till he came to Shechem, to the holy tree of Moreh. At that time, the Canaanites were still living in the land.
And these are the kings who were ruling in the land of Edom before there was any king over the children of Israel.
And a man saw him wandering in the country, and said to him, What are you looking for? And he said, I am looking for my brothers; please give me word of where they are keeping their flock. read more. And the man said, They have gone away from here, for they said in my hearing, Let us go to Dothan. So Joseph went after them and came up with them at Dothan. But they saw him when he was a long way off, and before he came near them they made a secret design against him to put him to death; Saying to one another, See, here comes this dreamer. Let us now put him to death and put his body into one of these holes, and we will say, An evil beast has put him to death: then we will see what becomes of his dreams.
And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, Pharaoh's heart is unchanged; he will not let the people go.
All these wonders Moses and Aaron did before Pharaoh: but the Lord made Pharaoh's heart hard, and he did not let the children of Israel go out of his land.
And the Lord said to Moses, Make a record of this in a book, so that it may be kept in memory, and say it again in the ears of Joshua: that all memory of Amalek is to be completely uprooted from the earth.
Then Moses put down in writing all the words of the Lord, and he got up early in the morning and made an altar at the foot of the mountain, with twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel.
And he took the book of the agreement, reading it in the hearing of the people: and they said, Everything which the Lord has said we will do, and we will keep his laws.
Now the man Moses was more gentle than any other man on earth.
When you have come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, and have taken it for a heritage and are living in it, if it is your desire to have a king over you, like the other nations round about you;
Now after writing all the words of this law in a book till the record of them was complete,
There has never been another prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord had knowledge of face to face;
And Joshua put these words on record, writing them in the book of the law of God; and he took a great stone, and put it up there under the oak-tree which was in the holy place of the Lord.