In the author's words this historic volume was written to show, as briefly and compactly as possible, that the faith of all past ages in respect to the Pentateuch has not been mistaken.The author, said colleague John D. Davis shortly after Green's death, did more than any one man of hi s time to rally and steady and inspirit the church under the shock of a sudden and mighty assault on the trustworthiness of Scripture.Green shows that the Pentateuch is the basis or foundation of the entire Old Testament; that it has one theme, which is treated with orderly arrangement and upon a carefully considered plan suggestive of a single author; that its author was Moses; that the various forms of opposition to Mosaic authorship are in error; and that the hypotheses concerning the composite nature of the Pentateuch are baseless. He concludes by defending the genuineness of the Pentateuch's laws against the development hypothesis and by showing this hypothesis to be radically unbiblical.

William Henry Green (1825-1900) was professor of biblical and oriental literature at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1851 until his death. The author of numerous books and articles, he published 'The Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch' in 1895.