Additional information
by Henry Cowles (Author)
My reasons for treating the Pentateuch topically rather than textually will be obvious. Criticism on the original text is rarely needed. There is seldom the least occasion to aid the reader in following the line of thought or the course of argument. The demand here is rather for the discussion and due presentation of the great themes of the book. My plan has therefore aimed to meet this demand, discussing these themes critically so far as seemed necessary either because of their intrinsic nature or because of popular objections or misconceptions; and always practically so far forth as to show the important moral bearings of these themes as revelations of God to man. It has been, however, my purpose to explain all the difficult, doubtful, or controversial passages. ... from the Preface.
Author Biography
Henry Cowles (1803 - 1881) was an American theological scholar. He graduated from Yale College in 1826. After two years of study in the Yale Divinity School, he was ordained, with a view to home-missionary work, at Hartford, Conn., July 1, 1828.
He went to Ohio, and after laboring about two years in Ashtabula and Sandusky, took charge of the Congregational Church in Austinburg, where he remained until the fall of 1835, when he became Professor of Latin and Greek in Oberlin College. In 1838 he was transferred to the chair of Ecclesiastical History, and in 1840 to that of Hebrew, in the Theological Department, in which he continued until 1848, at that time he became the editor of the Oberlin Evangelist, which he conducted until 1863. For the rest of his life he remained in Oberlin, engaged in literary labor. During the fourteen years from 1867 he published sixteen volumes of Commentaries, covering the whole Scriptures, and devoted the profits arising from them to the missionary cause.
