on the
belief that they were written by Moses, who had spoken face to face with
God.

So that if Moses did not write those books, their sacredness is a myth.
Now, on page 42, Dr. Gladden says:

1. The Pentateuch could never have been written by any one
man, inspired or otherwise.

2. It is a composite work, in which many hands have been
engaged. The production of it extends over many centuries.

3. It contains writings which are as old as the time of Moses,
and some that are much older. It is impossible to tell how
much of it came from the hand of Moses; but there are
considerable portions of it which, although they may have
been somewhat modified by later editors, are substantially
as he left them.

On page 45 Dr. Gladden, again speaking of the Pentateuch, says:

But the story of Genesis goes back to a remote antiquity. The
last event related in that book occurred four hundred years
before Moses was born; it was as distant from him as the
discovery of America by Columbus is from us; and other portions
of the narrative, such as the stories of the Flood and the
Creation, stretch back into the shadows of the age which
precedes history. Neither Moses nor any one living in his
day could have given us these reports from his own knowledge.
Whoever wrote this must have obtained his materials in one of
three ways:

1. They might have been given to him by divine revelation
from God.

2. He might have gathered them up from oral tradition, from
stories, folklore, transmitted from mouth to mouth, and
so preserved from generation to generation.

3. He might have found them in written documents existing at
the time of his writing.

As many of the laws and incidents in the books of Moses were known to
the Chaldeans, the "direct revelation of God" theory is not plausible.
On this point Dr. Gladden's opinion supports mine. He says, on page 61:

That such is the fact with respect to the structure of these
ancient writings is now beyond question. And our theory of
inspiration must be adjusted to this fact. Evidently neither
the theory of verbal inspiration, nor the theory of plenary
inspiration, can be made to fit the facts, which a careful study
of the writings themselves brings before us. These writings are
not ins