The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua Critically Examined

by John William Colenso

This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.

152 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 2013

About the author

John William Colenso (1814–1883) was a British mathematician, theologian, Biblical scholar and social activist, who was the first Church of England Bishop of Natal. He was the father of Frances E. Colenso

Reviews

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

First the cons: The quality of the transcription was horrible, with at least a dozen errors per page. The first 25% of the book contains the author's explanations for writing it and numerous disclaimers that in spite of the truth of what he found, he still retains a kind of belief. That part was very repetitive.

The pros: The author examines the historicity of the Pentateuch and Joshua with great practicality. He concentrates on the numbers of the people and animals that came out of Egypt during Exodus, giving detailed reasons for his conclusions. He then covers the sacrificial system, again concentrating on the numbers of animals and people involved and the practical concerns. Near the end, he examines the numbers of Israelites involved in the conquest of Canaan. All of these he compares to his modern reality.

"One has great faith in the mere inertia of religious belief."- John William Colenso.