Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy.
§ 123. The fifth Booh of Moses is called 
by the Hebrews from its first words. The Greeks call it 
, as if to say “the repeated Law,” because, as Irenaeus says (bk. 4, c. 1, p. 223): “In it there is a recapitulation of the entire Law. Consequently, it contains an epitome of the former books.” The fact that the rabbinic scholars call it 
, “the repeated reading,” agrees with this name, for it is nothing else but, as they write, “the recollection of prior matters that are written in the other books.” It has thirty-four chapters and contains the history of the final two months of the fortieth year after the exodus. It can be divided into doctrinal matters involving moral, ceremonial, and forensic laws; historical matters; and prophetic matters. Philo, De mundo, thinks that Moses himself gave these five books their Greek names. It is, however, more likely that the Septuagint translators thought up these Greek titles.
§ 124. These are the five Books of Moses, or the books written by Moses, and they are included under the number five. Thus the Hebrews call them 
; the Greeks, 
. The Talmudists and Cabalists, from the fact that “light” is mentioned five times in the beginning of Genesis 1, think that those five books were signified because they were like lights and thus may be safely trusted. (See Weidner, preface to Loc. fid. Christ., p. 8.) Nevertheless we must note that Joshua added the final chapter of Deuteronomy after the death of Moses, as we gather from Josh. 24:26.
** Some claim that Ezra did this. Josephus asserts that, when Moses was about to die, he wrote his death in the sacred volumes because he was afraid that the Jews would declare that God had taken him up because of his excellent virtues. The Hebrews divide the entire Pentateuch into fifty-two divisions or titles: Genesis into eleven; Exodus into eleven; and Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy into ten each. They also mark these divisions with their first words, calling the first 
[Gen. 1:1]; the second, 
[Gen. 6:8]; the third, 
[Gen. 12:1]; and so on to the last. All the pesukim—that is, verses—into which the Jews divide the entire Pentateuch number 5,830. **
Both the Israelite and Christian churches have always considered these five Books of Moses as canonical. Nevertheless they did not for that reason exclude the rest of the books from the canon, something that the Sadducees (so named from Zadok) once did, who accepted nothing as Scripture except the Books of Moses. As a result of this, Christ proves against them the resurrection of the dead, which they were denying, from Moses (Matt. 22:32). The Samaritans, or Samarites, conspired with the Sadducees in this error, from which the Sadducees also went to the temple of the Samaritans built on Mount Gerizim.
On the other hand, Ptolemy18 (after whom the Ptolemites were named) divided the Law of Moses into three parts and, in fact, made the author of one the creator of the world; of the second, Moses; and of the third, the elders of the synagogue. By “creator of the world” he did not understand the true God but some middle divinity between God and the devil. Therefore he was rejecting the entire Law (Epiphanius, Haeres. 33). The Antitactae19 said that it was a law of the second God; therefore they thought it was piety to resist the Law by living wickedly. Simon Magus taught that it was a law of a sinister power.