CHAPTER I. THE PLACE OF WORSHIP.

P R O L E G O M E N A

to the

HISTORY OF ISRAEL.

WITH A REPRINT OF THE ARTICLE "ISRAEL"

FROM THE "ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA."

by

JULIUS WELLHAUSEN,

PROFESSOR OF ORIENTAL LANGUAGES IN THE UNIVERSITY OF

MARBURG.

TRANSLATED FR0M THE GERMAN, UNDER THE AUTHOR'S SUPERVISION,

by

J. SUTHERLAND BLACK, M.A.,

and

ALLAN MENZIES, B.D.

with a preface by

PROF. W. ROBERTSON SMITH.

P R E F A C E.

The work which forms the greater part of the present volume first

appeared in 1878 under the title "History of Israel. By J.

Wellhausen. In two volumes. Volume I." The book produced a great

impression throughout Europe, and its main thesis, that "the Mosaic

history is not the starting-point for the history of ancient

Israel, but for the history of Judaism," was felt to be so

powerfully maintained that many of the leading Hebrew teachers of

Germany who had till then stood aloof from the so-called "Grafian

hypothesis"--the doctrine, that is, that the Levitical Law and

connected parts of the Pentateuch were not written till after the

fall of the kingdom of Judah, and that the Pentateuch in its

present compass was not publicly accepted as authoritative till

the reformation of Ezra--declared themselves convinced by

Wellhausen's arguments. Before 1878 the Grafian hypothesis was

neglected or treated as a paradox in most German universities,

although some individual scholars of great name were known to have

reached by independent inquiry similar views to those for which

Graf was the recognised sponsor, and although in Holland the

writings of Professor Kuenen, who has been aptly termed Graf's

goel, had shown in an admirable and conclusive manner that the

objections usually taken to Graf's arguments did not touch the

substance of the thesis for which he contended.

Since 1878, partly through the growing influence of Kuenen, but

mainly through the impression produced by Wellhausen's book, all

this has been changed. Almost every younger scholar of mark is on

the side of Vatke and Reuss, Lagarde and Graf, Kuenen and

Wellhausen, and the renewed interest in Old Testament study which

is making itself felt throughout all the schools of Europe must be

traced almost entirely to the stimulus derived from a new view of

the history of the Law which sets all Old Testament problems in a

new light.

Our author, who since 1878 had been largely engaged in the study

of other parts of Semitic antiquity, has not yet given to the world

his promised second volume. But the first volume was a complete

book in itself; the plan was to reserve the whole narrative of the

history of Israel for vol.ii., so that vol.i. was entirely

occupied in laying the critical foundations on which alone a real

history of the Hebrew nation could be built. Accordingly, the

second edition of the History, vol.i., appeared in 1883 (Berlin,

Reimer), under the new title of "Prolegomena to the History of

Israel." In this form it is professedly, as it really was before,

a complete and self-contained work; and this is the form of which

a translation, carefully revised by the author, is now offered to

the public.

All English readers interested in the Old Testament will certainly

be grateful to the translators and publishers for a volume which in

its German garb has already produced so profound an impression on

the scholarship of Europe; and even in this country the author's

name is too well known to make it necessary to introduce him at

length to a new public. But the title of the book has a somewhat

unfamiliar sound to English ears, and may be apt to suggest a

series of dry and learned dissertations meant only for Hebrew

scholars. It is worth while therefore to point out in a few words

that this would be quite a false impression; that the matters with

which Professor Wellhausen deals are such as no intelligent student

of the Old Testament can afford to neglect; and that the present

volume gives the English reader, for the first time, an

opportunity to form his own judgment on questions which are within

the scope of any one who reads the English Bible carefully and is

able to think clearly, and without prejudice, about its contents.

The history of Israel is part of the history of the faith by

which we live, the New Testament cannot be rightly understood

without understanding the Old, and the main reason why so many

parts of the Old Testament are practically a sealed book even to

thoughtful people is simply that they have not the historical key

to the interpretation of that wonderful literature.

The Old Testament does not furnish a history of Israel, though it

supplies the materials from which such a history can be

constructed. For example, the narrative of Kings gives but the

merest outline of the events that preceded the fall of Samaria; to

understand the inner history of thc time we must fill up this

outline with the aid of the prophets Amos and Hosea. But the more

the Old Testament has been studied, the more plain has it become

that for many parts of the history something more is needed than

merely to read each part of the narrative books in connection with

the other books that illustrate the same period. The Historical

Books and the Pentateuch are themselves very composite structures,

in which old narratives occur imbedded in later compilations, and

groups of old laws are overlaid by ordinances of comparatively

recent date. Now, to take one point only, but that the most

important, it must plainly make a vast difference to our whole

view of the providential course of Israel's history if it appear

that instead of the whole Pentateuchal law having been given to

Israel before the tribes crossed the Jordan, that law really grew

up little by little from its Mosaic germ, and did not attain its

present form till the Israelites were the captives or the subjects

of a foreign power. This is what the new school of Pentateuch

criticism undertakes to prove, and it does so in a way that should

interest every one. For in the course of the argument it appears

that the plain natural sense of the old history has constantly

been distorted by the false presuppositions with which we have

been accustomed to approach it--that having a false idea of the

legal and religious culture of the Hebrews when they first entered

Canaan, we continually miss the point of the most interesting

parts of the subsequent story, and above all fail to understand the

great work accomplished by the prophets in destroying Old Israel

and preparing the way first for Judaism and then for the Gospel.

These surely are inquiries which no conscientious student of the

Bible can afford to ignore.

The process of disentangling the twisted skein of tradition is

necessarily a very delicate and complicated one, and involves

certain operations for which special scholarship is indispensable.

Historical criticism is a comparatively modern science, and in its

application to this, as to other histories, it has made many false

and uncertain steps. But in this, as in other sciences, when the

truth has been reached it can generally be presented in a

comparatively simple form, and the main positions can be justified

even to the general reader by methods much less complicated, and

much more lucid, than those originally followed by the

investigators themselves. The modern view as to the age of the

Pentateuchal law, which is the key to the right understanding of

the History of Israel, has been reached by a mass of

investigations and discussions of which no satisfactory general

account has ever been laid before the English reader. Indeed, even

on the Continent, where the subject has been much more studied than

among us, Professor Wellhausen's book was the first complete and

sustained argument which took up the question in all its

historical bearings.

More recently Professor Kuenen of Leyden, whose discussions of

the more complicated questions of Pentateuch analysis are perhaps

the finest things that modern criticism can show, has brought out

the second edition of the first volume of his Onderzoek, and when

this appears in English, as it is soon to do, our Hebrew students

will have in their hands an admirable manual of what I may call

the anatomy of the Pentateuch, in which they can follow from

chapter to chapter the process by which the Pentateuch grew to its

present form. But for the mass of Bible-readers such detailed

analysis will always be too difficult. What every one can

understand and ought to try to master, is the broad historical

aspect of the matter. And this the present volume sets forth in a

way that must be full of interest to every one who has tasted the

intense pleasure of following institutions and ideas in their

growth, and who has faith enough to see the hand of God as clearly

in a long providential development as in a sudden miracle.

The reader will find that every part of the "Prolegomena" is

instinct with historical interest, and contributes something to a

vivid realisation of what Old Israel really was, and why it has

so great a part in the history of spiritual faith. In the first

essay of the Prolegomena a complete picture is given of the

history of the ordinances of worship in Israel, and the

sacrifices, the feasts, the priesthood, are all set in a fresh

light. The second essay, the history of what the Israelites

themselves believed and recorded about their past, will perhaps to

some readers seem less inviting, and may perhaps best be read

after perusal of the article, reprinted from the "Encyclopaedia

Britannica", which stands at the close of the volume and affords a

general view of the course of the history of Israel, as our author

constructs it on the basis of the researches in his Prolegomena.

The essay on Israel and Judaism with which the Prolegomena close,

may in like manner be profitably compared with sect. II of the

appended sketch--a section which is not taken directly from the

"Encyclopaedia", but translated from the German edition of the

article "Israel", where the subject is expanded by the author.

Here the reader will learn how close are the bonds that connect

the critical study of the Old Testament with the deepest and

unchanging problems of living faith.

W. ROBERTSON SMITH.

TRANSLATORS' NOTE.

Pages 237 [chapter IV . 3] to 425 [end] of the "Prolegomena" and

section II of "Israel" are translated by Mr. Menzies; for the rest of

the volume Mr. Black is responsible. Both desire to express their

indebtedness to Professor Robertson Smith for many valuable

suggestions made as the sheets were passing through the press.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PROLEGOMENA.

INTRODUCTION--

1. Is the Law the starting-point for the history of ancient

Israel or for that of Judaism ? The latter possibility

is not precluded a priori by the history of the Canon. Reasons

for considering it. De Wette, George, Vatke, Reuss, Graf

2. The three strata of the Pentateuch: Deuteronomy, Priestly

Code, Jehovist

3. The question is as to the Priestly Code and its historical

position. Method of the investigation

A. HISTORY OF WORSHIP.

CHAPTER I. THE PLACE OF WORSHIP--

I.I.1. The historical and prophetical books show no trace in Hebrew

antiquity of a sanctuary of exclusive legitimacy

I.I.2. Polemic of the prophets against the sanctuaries.

Fall of Samaria. Reformation of Josiah

I.I.3. Influence of the Babylonian exile

I.II.1. The Jehovist (JE) sanctions a multiplicity of altars

I.II.2. Deuteronomy (D) demands local unity of worship

I.II.3. The Priestly Code (RQ) presupposes that unity, and transfers

it, by means of the Tabernacle, to primitive times

I.III.1. The tabernacle, as a central sanctuary and dwelling

for the ark, can nowhere be found in the historical tradition

I.III.2. Noldeke's view untenable

CHAPTER II. SACRIFICE--

II.I.1. The ritual is according to RQ the main subject of the Mosaic

legislation, according to JE it is pre-Mosaic usage;

in RQ the point is How, according to JE and D To Whom,

it is offered

II.I.2. The historical books agree with JE; the prophets down to

Ezekiel contradict RQ

II.II.1. Material innovations in RQ. Preliminary remarks on the

notion, contents, mode of offering, and propitiatory effects of

sacrifice.

II.II.2. Material and ideal refinement of the offerings in RQ

II.II.3. The sacrificial meal gives way to holocausts

II.II.4. Development of the trespass-offering.

II.III.1. The centralisation of worship at Jerusalem destroyed

the connection of sacrifice with the natural occasions of life,

so that it lost its original character

CHAPTER III. THE SACRED FEASTS--

III.I.1. In JE and D there is a rotation of three festivals. Easter

and Pentecost mark the beginning and the end of the corn-harvest,

and the autumn feast the vintage and the bringing home the corn

from the threshing-floor. With the feast of unleavened bread

(Massoth) is conjoined, especially in D, the feast of the

sacrifice of the male firstborn of cattle (Pesah).

III.I.2. The feasts based on the offering of firstlings of the field and

of the herd. Significance of the land and of agriculture for religion

III.II.1. In the historical and prophetical books, the autumn feast

only is distinctly attested, and it is the most important in JE

and D also: of the others there are only faint traces .

III.II.2. But the nature of the festivals is the same as in JE and D

III.III.1. In RQ the feasts have lost their reference to harvest

and the first fruits; and this essentially changes their

nature

III.III.2. The metamorphosis was due to the centralisation of worship,

and may he traced down through Deuteronomy and Ezekiel to RQ,

III.III.3. To the three festivals RQ adds the great day of atonement,

which arose out of the fast-days of the exile

III.IV.1. The Sabbath, which is connected with the new moon, was

originally a lunar festival

Exaggeration of the Sabbath rest in the Priestly Code

III.IV.2. Sabbatical year, and year of Jubilee

CHAP. IV. THE PRIESTS AND THE LEVITES--

IV.I.1. According to Ezek. xliv., only the Levites of Jerusalem,

the sons of Zadok, are to continue priests in the new

Jerusalem; the other Levites are to be degraded to their servants

and denuded of their priestly rights. According to RQ

the Levites never possessed the priestly right, but only

the sons of Aaron

IV.I.2. These answer to the sons of Zadok

IV.II.1. In the earliest period of the history of Israel there is no

distinction between clergy and laity. Every one may

slaughter and sacrifice; there are professional priests only at the

great sanctuaries. Priestly families at Sihiloh and Dan.

No setting apart of what is holy

IV.II.2. Royal temples of the kings; priests at them as royal officials

IV.II.3. Importance of the North-Israelite priesthood in the time of the

kings

IV.II.4. The family of Zadok at Jerusalem

IV.III.1. In the oldest part of JE there are no priests; no Aaron

by the side of Moses

IV.III.2. In D the Levites are priests. They occur in that character,

not to speak of Judges xviii. seq., only in the literature

of the exile. Their descent from Moses or Aaron. The spiritual

and the secular tribe of Levi. Difficulty of bringing them together

IV.III.3. Consolidation of the spiritual tribe in RQ; separation of

priests and Levites. Further development of the clergy after the

exile. The high priest as head of the theocracy

CHAPTER V. THE ENDOWMENT OF THE CLERGY--

V.I.1. The sacrificial dues raised in RQ

V.I.2. The firstlings were turned into contributions to the priests,

and doubled in amount

V.II.1. Levitical towns

V.II.2. The historical situation underlying the priestly pretensions

in RQ

B. HISTORY OF TRADITION.

CHAPTER VI. CHRONICLES--

VI.I.1. David becomes Saul's successor without any exertion, all

Israel being already on his side, namely, the priests and Levites

Distortion of the original story of the bringing of the ark

to Jerusalem. Omission of unedifying incidents in David's life

VI.I.2. Preparation for the building of the temple. Delight of the

narrator in numbers and names. Inconsistency with 1Kings i, ii.

Picture of David in Chronicles

VI.I.3. Solomon's sacrifice at the tabernacle at Gibeah. Building

of the temple. Retouching of the original narrative

VI.II.1. Estimate of the relation between Judah and Israel; the

Israelites do not belong to the temple, nor, consequently,

to the theocracy

VI.II.2. Levitical idealising of Judah. View taken of those acts of

rulers in the temple-worship which the books of Kings condemn or

approve. Inconsistencies with the narrative of the sources;

importation of priests and Levites.

VI.II.3. Divine pragmatism of the sacred history, and its results

VI.II.4. The books of Kings obviously present throughout

VI.III.1. The genealogical registers of I Chron.i-ix The ten tribes

VI.III.2. Judah and Levi

VI.III.3. Chronicles had no other sources for the period before the exile

than the historical books preserved to us in the Canon.

The diversity of historical view is due to the influence of the law,

especially the Priestly Code. The Midrash

CHAPTER VII. JUDGES, SAMUEL, AND KINGS--

VII.I.1. The formula on which the book of Judges is constructed

in point of chronology and of religion

VII.I.2. Its relation to the stem of the tradition. Judg. xix.-xxi.

VI.II.3. Occasional additions to the original narratives

VII.I.4. Difference of religious attitude in the latter

VII.II.1. Chronological and religious formulas in the books of Samuel

VII.II.2. The stories of the rise of the monarchy and the elevation

of Saul entirely recast

VII.II.3. Saul's relation to Samuel

VII.II.4. The narrative of David's youth

The view taken of Samuel may be regarded as a measure of the growth

of the tradition Saul and David

VII.III.1. The last religious chronological revision of the books of

Kings. Similar in kind to that of Judges and Samuel

Its standpoint Judaean and Deuteronomistic

VII.III.2. Its relation to the materials received from tradition

VII.III.3. Differences of sentiment in the sources

VII.III.4. In Chronicles the history of ancient Israel is recast

in accordance with the ideas of the Priestly Code; in the

older historical books it is judged according to the standard of

Deuteronomy

CHAPTER VIII. THE NARRATIVE OF THE HEXATEUCH--

VIII.I.1. Genesis i. and Genesis ii. iii.

VIII.I.2. Genesis iv.-xi.

VIII.I.3. The primitive world-history in JE and in Q

VIII.II.1. The history of the patriarchs in JE

VIII.II.2. The history of the patriarchs in Q

VIII.II.3. Periods, numbers, covenants, sacrifices in the patriarchal

age in Q

VIII.III.1. The Mosaic history in JE and in Q

VII.III.2. Comparison of the various narratives

VII.III.3. Conclusion .

C. ISRAEL AND JUDAISM.

CHAPTER IX. CONCLUSION OF THE CRITICISM OF THE LAW--

IX.I.1. The veto of critical analysis

IX.I.2. The historical presuppositions of Deuteronomy

IX.I.3. The Deuteronomistic revision does not extend over the Priestly

Code

IX.II.1. The final revision of the Hexateuch proceeds from the

Priestly Code, as we see from Leviticus xvii. seq.

IX.II.2. Examination of Leviticus xxvi.

IX.II.3. R cannnot be separated from RQ

IX.III<.1.> The language of the Priestly Code

<IX.III.2. ?>

CHAPTER X. THE ORAL AND THE WRITTEN TORAH--

X.I.1. No written law in ancient Israel. The Decalogue

X.I.2. The Torah of Jehovah in the mouth of priests and prophets

X.I.3. View of revelation in Jeremiah, Zechariah, and the writer

of Isa. xl.-lxvi.

X.II.1. Deuteronomy was the first law in our sense of the word.

It obtains authority during the exile. End of prophecy

X.II.2. The reforming legislation supplemented by that of the

restoration. The usages of worship codified and systematised by

Ezekiel and his successors. The Priestly Code--its introduction

by Ezra

X.II.3. The Torah the basis of the Canon. Extension of the notion

originally attached to the Torah to the other books

CHAPTER XI. THE THEOCRACY AS IDEA AND AS INSTITUTION--

XI.I.1. Freshness and naturalness of early Israelite history

XI.I.2. Rise of the state. Relation of Religion and of the Deity

to the life of state and nation.

XI.I.3. The Messianic theocracy of the older prophets is built

up on the foundations afforded by the actual community

of their time

XI.I.4. The idea of the covenant

XI.II.1. Foundation of the theocratic constitution under the foreign

domination

XI.II.2. The law and the prophets.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

I S R A E L.

1. The beginnings of the nation

2. The settlement in Palestine

3. The foundation of the kingdom, and the first three kings

4. From Jeroboam I. to Jeroboam II.

5. God, the world, and the life of men in Old Israel

6. The fall of Samaria

7. The deliverance of Judah

8. The prophetic reformation

9. Jeremiah and the destruction of Jerusalem

10. The captivity and the restoration

11. Judaism and Christianity

12. The Hellenistic period

13. The Hasmonaeans

14. Herod and the Romans

15. The Rabbins

16. The Jewish Dispersion

INTRODUCTION.

In the following pages it is proposed to discuss the place in history

of the "law of Moses;" more precisely, the question to be considered

is whether that law is the starting-point for the history of ancient

Israel, or not rather for that of Judaism, ie., of the religious

communion which survived the destruction of the nation by the

Assyrians and Chaldaeans.

I. It is an opinion very extensively held that the great mass of

the books of the Old Testament not only relate to the pre-exilic

period, but date from it. According to this view, they are

remnants of the literature of ancient Israel which the Jews rescued

as a heritage from the past, and on which they continued to

subsist in the decay of independent intellectual life. In

dogmatic theology Judaism is a mere empty chasm over which one

springs from the Old Testament to the New; and even where this

estimate is modified, the belief still prevails in a general way

that the Judaism which received the books of Scripture into the

canon had, as a rule, nothing to do with their production. But the

exceptions to this principle which are conceded as regards the

second and third divisions of the Hebrew canon cannot be called so

very slight. Of the Hagiograpba, by far the larger portion is

demonstrably post-exilic, and no part demonstrably older than

the exile. Daniel comes as far down as the Maccabaean wars, and

Esther is perhaps even later. Of the prophetical literature a very

appreciable fraction is later than the fall of the Hebrew kingdom;

and the associated historical books (the "earlier prophets" of the

Hebrew canon) date, in the form in which we now possess them, from

a period subsequent to the death of Jeconiah, who must have

survived the year 560 B.C. for some time. Making all allowance

for the older sources utilised, and to a large extent transcribed

word for word, in Judges, Samuel, and Kings, we find that apart

from the Pentateuch the preexilic portion of the Old Testament

amounts in bulk to little more than the half of the entire volume.

All the rest belongs to the later period, and it includes not

merely the feeble after-growths of a failing vegetation, but also

productions of the vigour and originality of Isa. xl.lxvi. and

Ps.Ixxiii.

We come then to the Law. Here, as for most parts of the Old

Testament, we have no express information as to the author and date

of composition, and to get even approximately at the truth we are

shut up to the use of such data as can be derived from an analysis

of the contents, taken in conjunction with what we may happen to

know from other sources as to the course of Israel's history. But

the habit has been to assume that the historical period to be

considered in this connection ends with the Babylonian exile as

certainly as it begins with the exodus from Egypt. At first sight

this assumption seems to be justified by the history of the

canon; it was the Law that first became canonical through the

influence of Ezra and Nehemiah; the Prophets became so

considerably later, and the Hagiographa last of all. Now it is

not unnatural, from the chronological order in which these writings

were received into the canon, to proceed to an inference as to

their approximate relative age, and so not only to place the

Prophets before the Hagiographa, but also the five books of Moses

before the Prophets. If the Prophets are for the most part older

than the exile, how much more so the Law! But however trustworthy

such a mode of comparison may be when applied to the middle as

contrasted with the latest portion of the canon, it is not at all

to be relied on when the first part is contrasted with the other

two. The very idea of canonicity was originally associated with

the Torah, and was only afterwards extended to the other books,

which slowly and by a gradual process acquired a certain measure

of the validity given to the Torah by a single public and formal

act, through which it was introduced at once as the Magna Charta of

the Jewish communion (Nehemiah viii.-x.) In their case the canonical--

that is, legal--character was not intrinsic, but was only

subsequently acquired; there must therefore have been some

interval, and there may have been a very long one, between the

date of their origin and that of their receiving public sanction.

To the Law, on the other hand, the canonical character is much more

essential, and serious difficulties beset the assumption that the

Law of Moses came into existence at a period long before the exile,

aml did not attain the force of law until many centuries

afterwards, and in totally different circumstances from those

under which it had arisen. At least the fact that a collection

claiming public recognition as an ecclesiastical book should have

attained such recognition earlier than other writings which make no

such claim is no proof of superior antiquity.

We cannot, then, peremptorily refuse to regard it as possible

that what was the law of Judaism may also have been its product;

and there are urgent reasons for taking the suggestion into very

careful consideration. It may not be out of place here to refer

to personal experience. In my early student days I was attracted

by the stories of Saul and David, Ahab and Elijah; the discourses

of Amos and Isaiah laid strong hold on me, and I read myself well

into the prophetic and historical books of the Old Testament.

Thanks to such aids as were accessible to me, I even considered

that I understood them tolerably, but at the same time was troubled

with a bad conscience, as if I were beginning with the roof instead

of the foundation; for I had no thorough acquaintance with the

Law, of which I was accustomed to be told that it was the basis and

postulate of the whole literature. At last I took courage and made

my way through Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and even through

Knobel's Commentary to these books. But it was in vain that I

looked for the light which was to be shed from this source on the

historical and prophetical books. On the contrary, my enjoyment

of the latter was marred by the Law; it did not bring them any

nearer me, but intruded itself uneasily, like a ghost that makes a

noise indeed, but is not visible and really effects nothing. Even

where there were points of contact between it and them, differences

also made themselves felt, and I found it impossible to give a

candid decision in favour of the priority of the Law. Dimly I

began to perceive that throughout there was between them all the

difference that separates two wholly distinct worlds. Yet, so far

from attaining clear conceptions, I only fell into deeper

confusion, which was worse confounded by the explanations of Ewald

in the second volume of history of Israel. At last, in the course

of a casual visit in Gottingen in the summer of 1867, I learned

through Ritschl that Karl Heinrich Graf placed the law later than

the Prophets, and, almost without knowing his reasons for the

hypothesis, I was prepared to accept it; I readily acknowledged

to myself thc possibility of understanding Hebrew antiquity

without the book of the Torah.

The hypothesis usually associated with Graf's name is really not

his, but-that of his teacher, Eduard Reuss. It would be still

more correct to call it after Leopold Gcorge and Wiihelm Vatke,

who, independent alike of Reuss and of each other, were the first

to give it literary currency. All three, again, are disciples of

Martin Lebrecht de Wette, the epochmaking pioneer of historical

criticism in this field./1/

-- Footnote

1. M. W. L. de Wette, Beitraege zur Einleitung in das A. T.

(Bd. I. Kritischer Versuch ueber die Glaubwuerdigkeit der Buecher

der Chronik; Bd. II. Kritik der Mosaischen Geschichte, Halle, 1806-07);

J. F. L. George, Die alterer Juedischen Feste mit einer Kritik der

Gesetzgebung des Pentateuch (Berlin, 1835; preface dated 12th

October); W. Vatke, Die biblische Theologie wissenschaftlich

dargestellt (Berlin, 1835; preface dated 18th October;

publication did not get beyond first part of the first volume);

K. H. Graf, Die geschichtlicher Buecher des Alten Testaments

(Leipsic, 1866). That Graf as well as J. Orth (Nouv. Rev. de

Theol., iii. 84 sqq., iv. 350 sqq., Paris, 1859-60) owed the

impulse to his critical labours to his Strassburg master was not

unknown; but how great must have been the share of Reuss in the

hypothesis of Graf has only been revealed in 1879, by the

publication of certain theses which he had formulated as early as

1833, but had hesitated to lay in print before the general

theological public. These are as follows:-- "1. L'element

historique du Pentateuque peut et doit etre examine a part et ne

pas etre confondu avec l'element legal. 2. L'un et l'autre ont pu

exister sans redaction ecrite. La mention, chez d'anciens

ecrivains, de certaines traditions patriarcales ou mosaiques, ne

prouve pas l'existence du Pentateuque, et une nation peut avoir un

droit coutumier sans code ecrit. Les traditions nationales des

Israelites remontent plus haut que les lois du Pentateuque et la

redaction des premieres est anterieure a celle des secondes.

4. L'interet principal de l'historien doit porter sur la date des

lois, parce que sur ce terrain il a plus de chance d'arriver a des

resultats certains. II faut en consequence proceder a

l'interrogatoire des temoins. 5. L'histoire racontee, dans les

livres des Juges et de Samuel, et meme en partie celle comprise

dans les livres des Rois, est en contradiction avec des lois dites

mosaiques; donc celles-ci etaient inconnues a l'epoque de la

redaction de ces livres, a plus forte raison elles n'ont pas existe

dans les temps qui y vent decrits. 6. Les prophetes du 8e et du

7e siecle ne savent rien du code mosaique. 7. Jeremie est le

premier prophete qui connaisse une loi ecrite et ses citations

rapportent au Deuteronome. 8. Le Deuteronome (iv.45-xxviii.68)

est le livre que les pretres pretendaient avoir trouve dans le

temple du temps du roi Josias. Ce code est la partie la plus

ancienne de la legislation (redigee) comprise dans le Pentateuque.

9. L'histoire des Israelites, en tant qu'il s'agit du

developpement national determine par des lois ecrites, se divisera

en deux periodes, avant et apres Josias. 10. Ezechiel est

anterieur a la redaction du code rituel et des lois qui ont

definitivement organise la hierarchie. 11. Le livre du Josue

n'est pas, tant s'en faut, la partie la plus recente de l'ouvrage

entier. 12. Le redacteur du Pentateuque se distingue clairement

de l'ancien prophete Moyse." --L'Histoire Sainte et la Loi, Paris,

1879, pp. 23, 24.

-- Footnote

He indeed did not himself succeed in reaching a sure position,

but he was the first clearly to perceive and point out how

disconnected are the alleged starting-point of Israel's history

and that history itself. The religious community set up on so

broad a basis in the wilderness, with its sacred centre and uniform

organisation, disappears and leaves no trace as soon as Israel

settles in a land of its own, and becomes, in any proper sense, a

nation. The period of the Judges presents itself to us as a

confused chaos, out of which order and coherence are gradually

evolved under the pressure of external circumstances, but perfectly

naturally and without the faintest reminiscence of a sacred

unifying constitution that had formerly existed. Hebrew antiquity

shows absolutely no tendencies towards a hierocracy; power is

wielded solely by the heads of families and of tribes, and by

the kings, who exercise control over religious worship also, and

appoint and depose its priests. The influence possessed by the

latter is purely moral; the Torah of God is not a document in

their hands which guarantees their own position, but merely an

instruction for others in their mouths; like the word of the

prophets, it has divine authority but not political sanction, and

has validity only in so far as it is voluntarily accepted. And

as for the literature which has come down to us from the period of

the Kings, it would puzzle the very best intentions to beat up so

many as two or three unambiguous allusions to the Law, and these

cannot be held to prove anything when one considers, by way of

contrast, what Homer was to the Greeks.

To complete the marvel, in post-exile Judaism the Mosaism which

until then had been only latent suddenly emerges into prominence

everywhere. We now find the Book regarded as the foundation of all

higher life, and the Jews, to borrow the phrase of the Koran, are

"the people of the Book;" we have the sanctuary with its priests

and Levites occupying the central position, and the people as a

congregation encamped around it; the cultus, with its

burnt-offerings and sin-offerings, its purifications and its

abstinences, its feasts and Sabbaths, strictly observed as

prescribed by the Law, is now the principal business of life.

When we take the community of the second temple and compare it

with the ancient people of Israel, we are at once able to realise

how far removed was thc latter from so-called Mosaism. The Jews

themselves were thoroughly conscious of the distance. The

revision of the books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, undertaken

towards the end of the Babylonian exile, a revision much more

thorough than is commonly assumed, condemns as heretical the whole

age of the Kings. At a later date, as the past became more

invested with a certain nimbus of sanctity, men preferred to clothe

it with the characters of legitimacy rather than sit in judgment

upon it. The Book of Chronicles shows in what manner it was

necessary to deal with the history of bygone times when it was

assumed that the Mosaic hierocracy was their fundamental

institution.

2. The foregoing remarks are designed merely to make it plain that

the problem we have set before us is not an imaginary one, but actual

and urgent. They are intended to introduce it; but to solve it is by

no means so easy. The question what is the historical place of the

Law does not even admit of being put in these simple terms. For the

Law, If by that word we understand the entire Pentateuch, is no

literary unity, and no simple historical quantity./1/

-- Footnote

1. Compare the article "Pentateuch" in the Ninth edition

of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. xviii.

-- Footnote

Since the days of Peyrerius and Spinoza, criticism has acknowledged

the complex character of that remarkable literary production,

and from Jean Astruc onwards has laboured, not without success,

at disentangling its original elements. At present there are

a number of results that can be regarded as settled. The following

are some of them. The five Books of Moses and the Book of Joshua

constitute one whole, the conquest of the Promised Land rather than

the death of Moses forming the true conclusion of the patriarchal

history, the exodus, and the wandering in the wilderness.

From a literary point of view, accordingly, it is more accurate

to speak of the Hexateuch than of the Pentateuch. Out of this whole,

the Book of Deuteronomy, as essentially an independent law-book,

admits of being separated most easily. Of what remains,

the parts most easily distinguished belong to the so-called

"main stock" ("Grundschrift"), formerly also called the Elohistic

document, on account of the use it makes of the divine name Elohim

up to the time of Moses, and designated by Ewald, with reference

to the regularly recurring superscriptions in Genesis, as the Book of

Origins. It is distinguished by its liking for number, and

measure, and formula generally, by its stiff pedantic style, by

its constant use of certain phrases and turns of expression which

do not occur elsewhere in the older Hebrew; its characteristics

are more strongly marked than those of any of the others, and

make it accordingly the easiest to recognise with certainty. Its

basis is the Book of Leviticus and thc allied portions of the

adjoining books,-- Exodus xxv.-xl., with the exception of chaps.

xxxii.-xxxiv., and Num.i.-x., xv.-xix., xxv.-xxxvi., with trifling

exceptions. It thus contains legislation chiefly, and, in point of

fact, relates substantially to the worship of the tabernacle and

cognate matters. It is historical only in form; the history

serves merely as a framework on which to arrange thc legislative

material, or as a mask to disguise it. For the most part, the

thread of the narrative is extremely thin, and often serves

merely to carry out the chronology, which is kept up without a

hiatus from the Creation to the Exodus; it becomes fuller only on

the occasions in which other interests come into play, as, for

example, in Genesis, with regard to the three preludes to the

Mosaic covenant which are connected with the names of Adam, Noah,

and Abraham respectively. When this fundamental document is also

separated out as well as Deuteronomy, there remains the Jehovistic

history-book, which, in contrast with the two others, is

essentially of a narrative character, and sets forth with full

sympathy and enjoyment the materials handed down by tradition.

The story of the patriarchs, which belongs to this document almost

entirely, is what best marks its character; that story is not

here dealt with merely as a summary introduction to something of

greater importance which is to follow, but as a subject of primary

importance, deserving the fullest treatment possible. Legislative

elements have been taken into it only at one point, where they

fit into the historical connection, namely, when the giving of the

Law at Sinai is spoken of (Exodusxx.-xxiii., xxxiv.)

Scholars long rested satisfied with this twofold division of the

non-Deuteronomic Hexateuch, until Hupfeld demonstrated in certain

parts of Genesis, which until then had been assigned partly to the

"main stock" and partly to the Jehovist, the existence of a third

continuous source, the work of the so-called younger Elohist. The

choice of this name was due to the circumstance that in this

document also Elohim is the ordinary name of the Deity, as it is

in the "main stock" up to Exodus vi.; the epithet "younger,"

however, is better left out, as it involves an unproved assumption,

and besides, is no longer required for distinction's sake, now that

the "main stock" is no longer referred to under so unsuitable a

name as that of Elohist. Hupfeld further assumed that all the

three sources continued to exist separately until some one at a

later date brought them together simultaneously into a single

whole. But this is a view that cannot be maintained: not merely

is the Elohist in his matter and in his manner of looking at things

most closely akin to the Jehovist; his document has come down to

us as Noldeke was thc first to perceive, only in extracts embodied

in the Jehovist narrative./1/

-- Footnote

Hermann Hupfeld, Die Quellen der Genesis u. die Art ihrer Zusammersetzung,

Berlin, 1853; Theodor Noldeke, Die s. g. Grundschrift des Pentateuch,

in Untersuchungen zur Kritik des Alten Testaments, Kiel, 1869.

-- Footnote

Thus, notwithstanding Hupfeld's discovery, the old division

into two great sections continues to hold good, and there is every

reason for adhering to this primary distinction as the basis of

further historical research, in spite of the fact, which is coming

to be more and more clearly perceived, that not only the

Jehovistic document, but the "main stock" as well, are complex

products, and that alongside of them occur hybrid or posthumous

elements which do not admit of being simply referred to either the

one or the other formation. /2/

-- Footnote

2. J. Wellhausen, Die Composition des Hexateuchs, in Jahrb. f.

Deutsche Theologie, 1876, pp. 392-450, 531-602; 1877, pp. 407-479.

I do not insist on all the details, but, as regards the way in which

the literary process which resulted in the formation of the Pentateuch

is to be looked at in general, I believe I had indicated the proper

line of investigation. Hitherto the only important corrections

I have received have been those of Kuenen in his Contributions

to the Criticism of the Pentateuch and Joshua, published in the Leyden

Theologisch Tijdschrift; but these are altogether welcome,

inasmuch as they only free my own fundamental view from some

relics of the old leaven of a mechanical separation of sources

which had continued to adhere to it. For what Kuenen points out

is, that certain elements assigned by me to the Elohist are not

fragments of a once independent whole, but interpolated and

parasitic additions. What effect this demonstration may have on

the judgment we form of the Elohist himself is as yet uncertain.

In the following pages the Jehovistic history-book is denoted by

the symbol JE, its Jehovistic part by J, and the Elohistic by E;

the "main stock" pure and simple, which is distinguished by its

systematising history and is seen unalloyed in Genesis, is called

the Book of the Four Covenants and is symbolised by Q; for the

"main stock" as a whole (as modified by an editorial process) the

title of Priestly Code and the symbol RQ (Q and Revisers) are

employed.

-- Footnote

Now the Law, whose historical position we have to determine,

is the so-called "main stack," which, both by its contents

and by its origin, is entitled to be called the Priestly

Code, and will accordingly be so designated. The Priestly Code

preponderates over the rest of the legislation in force, as well as

in bulk; in all matters of primary importance it is the normal

and final authority. It was according to the mode furnished by it

that the Jews under Ezra ordered their sacred community, and upon it

are formed our conceptions of the Mosaic theocracy, with the

tabernacle at its centre, the high priest at its head, the priests

and Levites as its organs, the legitimate cultus as its regular

function. It is precisely this Law, so called par exceIlence,

that creates the difficulties out of which our problem rises, and

it is only in connection with it that the great difference of

opinion exists as to date. With regard to the Jehovistic document,

all are happily agreed that, substantially at all events, in

language, horizon, and other features, it dates from the golden age

of Hebrew literature, to which the finest parts of Judges, Samuel,

and Kings, and the oldest extant prophetical writings also

belong,--the period of the kings and prophets which preceded the

dissolution of the two Israelite kingdoms by the Assyrians.

About the origin of Deuteronomy there is still less dispute; in

all circles where appreciation of scientific results can be looked

for at all, it is recognised that it was composed in the same age

as that in which it was discovered, and that it was made the rule

of Josiah's reformation, which took place about a generation before

the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans. It is only in

the case of the Priestly Code that opinions differ widely; for it

tries hard to imitate the costume of the Mosaic period, and, with

whatever success, to disguise its own. This is not nearly so much

the case with Deuteronomy, which, in fact, allows the real

situation (that of the period during which, Samaria having been

destroyed, only the kingdom of Judah continued to subsist) to

reveal itself very plainly through that which is assumed (xii.8,

xix.8). And the Jehovist does not even pretend to being a Mosaic

law of any kind; it aims at being a simple book of history; the

distance between the present and the past spoken of is not

concealed in the very least. It is here that all the marks are

found which attracted the attention of Abenezra and afterwards of

Spinoza, such as Gen. xii. 6 ("And the Canaanite was then in the

land"), Gen.xxxvi.31 ("These are the kings who reigned in Edom

before the children of Israel had a king"), Num. xii.6, 7, Deut.

xxxiv.10 ("There arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto

Moses"). The Priestly Code, on the other hand, guards itself

against all reference to later times and settled life in Canaan,

which both in the Jehovistic Book of the Covenant (Exodus

xxi.-xxiii.) and in Deuteronomy are the express basis of the

legislation: it keeps itself carefully and strictly within the

limits of the situation in the wilderness, for which in all

seriousness it seeks to give the law. It has actually been

successful, with its movable tabernacle, its wandering camp, and

other archaic details, in so concealing the true date of its

composition that its many serious inconsistencies with what we

know, from other sources, of Hebrew antiquity previous to the

exile, are only taken as proving that it lies far beyond all known

history, and on account of its enormous antiquity can hardly be

brought into any connection with it. It is the Priestly Code,

then, that presents us with our problem.

3. The instinct was a sound one which led criticism for the time

being to turn aside from the historical problem which had

originally presented itself to De Wette, and afterwards had been

more distinctly apprehended by George and Vatke, in order, in the

first instance, to come to some sort of clear understanding as to

the composition of the Pentateuch. But a mistake was committed

when it was supposed that by a separation of the sources (in which

operation attention was quite properly directed chiefly to

Genesis) that great historical question had been incidentally

answered. The fact was, that it had been merely put to sleep, and

Graf has the credit of having, after a considerable interval,

awakened it again. In doing so, indeed, he in turn laboured under

the disadvantage of not knowing what success had been achieved in

separating the sources, and thereby he became involved in a

desperate and utterly untenable assumption. This assumption,

however, had no necessary connection with his own hypothesis, and

at once fell to the ground when the level to which Hupfeld brought

the criticism of the text had been reached. Graf originally

followed the older view, espoused by Tuch in particular, that in

Genesis the Priestly Code, with its so obtrusively bare skeleton,

is the "main stock," and that it is the Jehovist who supplements,

and is therefore of course the later. But since, on the other

hand, he regarded the ritual legislature of the middle books as

much more recent than the work of the Jehovist, he was compelled to

tear it asunder as best he could from its introduction in Genesis,

and to separate the two halves of the Priestly Code by half a

millennium. But Hupfeld had long before made it quite clear that

the Jehovist is no mere supplementer, but the author of a perfectly

independent work, and that the passages, such as Gen. xx.-xxii.,

usually cited as examples of the way in which the Jehovist worked

over the "main stock," really proceed from quite another

source,--the Elohist. Thus the stumbling-block of Graf had already

been taken out of the way, and his path had been made clear by an

unlooked-for ally. Following Kuenen's suggestion, he did not

hesitate to take the helping-hand extended to him; he gave up his

violent division of the Priestly Code, and then had no difficulty

in deducing from the results which he had obtained with respect to

the main legal portion similar consequences with regard to the

narrative part in Genesis. /1/

-- Footnote

1. K. H. Graf, Die s. g. Grundschrift des Pentateucks, in Merx's

Archiv (1869), pp. 466-477. As early as 1866 he had already expressed

himself in a letter to Kuenen November 12) as follows:-- "Vous me

faites pressentir une solution de cette enigme...c'est que les

parties elohistiques de la Genese seraient posterieures aux parties

jehovistiques." Compare Kuenen, Theol. Tijdschrift (1870), p.412.

Graf had also in this respect followed Reuss, who (ut supra,

p. 24) says of himself: "Le cote faible de ma critique a ete que,

a l'egard de tout ce qui ne rentrait pas dans les points enumeres

ci-dessus, je restais dans l'orniere tracee par mes devanciers,

admettant sans plus ample examen que le Pentateuque etait

l'ouvrage de l'HISTORIEN elohiste, complete par l'HISTORIEN

jehoviste, et ne me rendant pas compte de la maniere dont l'element

legal, dont je m'etais occupe exclusivement, serait venu se

joindre a l'element historique.

-- Footnote

The foundations were now laid; it is Kuenen who has since done most

for the further development of the hypothesis./2/

-- Footnote

2. A. Kuenen, Die Godsdienst van Israel, Haarlem, 1869-70 (Eng. transl.

Religion of Israel, 1874-5), and De priesterlijke Bestanddeelen

van Pentateuch en Josua, in Theol. Tijdschr.(1870), pp. 391-426.

-- Footnote

The defenders of the prevailing opinion maintained their ground as well

as they could, but from long possession had got somewhat settled

on their lees. They raised against the assailants a series of

objections, all of which, however, laboured more or less under the

disadvantage that they rested upon the foundation which had

already been shattered. Passages were quoted from Amos and Hosea

as implying an acquaintance with the Priestly Code, but they were

not such as could make any impression on those who were already

persuaded that the latter was the more recent. Again it was

asserted, and almost with violence, that the Priestly Code could

not be later than Deuteronomy, and that the Deuteronomist actually

had it before him. But the evidences of this proved extremely

problematical, while, on the other hand, the dependence of

Deuteronomy, as a whole, on the Jehovist came out with the utmost

clearness. Appeal was made to the latest redaction of the entire

Hexateuch, a redaction which was assumed to be Deuteronomistic;

but this yielded the result that the deuteronomistic redaction

could nowhere be traced in any of the parts belonging to the

Priestly Code. Even the history of the language itself was

forced to render service against Graf: it had already been too

much the custom to deal with that as if it were soft wax. To say

all in a word, the arguments which were brought into play as a

rule derived all their force from a moral conviction that the

ritual legislation must be old, and could not possibly have been

committed to writing for the first time within the period of

Judaism; that it was not operative before then, that it did not

even admit of being carried into effect in the conditions that

prevailed previous to the exile, could not shake the conviction--

all the firmer because it did not rest on argument--that at least

it existed previously.

The firemen never came near the spot where the conflagration

raged; for it is only within the region of religious antiquities

and dominant religious ideas,--the region which Vatke in his

Biblische Theologie had occupied in its full breadth, and where the

real battle first kindled--that the controversy can be brought to a

definite issue. In making the following attempt in this direction,

I start from the comparison of the three constituents of the

Pentateuch,--the Priestly Code, Deuteronomy, and the work of the

Jehovist. The contents of the first two are, of course,

legislation, as we have seen; those of the third are narrative;

but, as the Decalogue (Exodus xx.), the Law of the two Tables

(Exodus xxxiv.), and the Book of the Covenant (Exodus xxi.-xxiii.)

show, the legislative element is not wholly absent from the

Jehovist, and much less is the historical absent from the Priestly

Code or Deuteronomy. Further, each writer's legal standpoint is

mirrored in his account of the history, and conversely; thus there

is no lack either of indirect or of direct points of comparison.

Now it is admitted that the three constituent elements are

separated from each other by wide intervals; the question then

arises, In what order? Deuteronomy stands in a relation of

comparative nearness both to the Jehovist and to the Priestly

Code; the distance between the last two is by far the

greatest,--so great that on this ground alone Ewald as early as

the year 183I (Stud. u. Krit., p. 604) declared it impossible

that the one could have been written to supplement the other.

Combining this observation with the undisputed priority of the

Jehovist over Deuteronomy, it will follow that the Priestly Code

stands last in the series. But such a consideration, although, so

far as I know, proceeding upon admitted data, has no value as long

as it confines itself to such mere generalities. It is necessary

to trace the succession of the three elements in detail, and at

once to test and to fix each by reference to an independent

standard, namely, the inner development of the history of Israel

so far as that is known to us by trustworthy testimonies, from

independent sources.

The literary and historical investigation on which we thus enter

is both wide and difficult. It falls into three parts. In the

first, which lays the foundations, the data relating to sacred

archaeology are brought together and arranged in such a way as to

show that in the Pentateuch the elements follow upon one another

and from one another precisely as the steps of the development

demonstrably do in the history. Almost involuntarily this

argument has taken the shape of a sort of history of the

ordinances of worship. Rude and colourless that history must be

confessed to be,--a fault due to the materials, which hardly allow

us to do more than mark the contrast between pre-exilic and

post-exilic, and, in a secondary measure, that between

Deuteronomic and pre-Deuteronomic. At the same time there is this

advantage arising out of the breadth of the periods treated: they

cannot fail to distinguish themselves from each other in a tangible

manner; it must be possible in the case of historical, and even of

legal works, to recognise whether they were written before or

after the exile. The second part, in many respects dependent on

the first, traces the influence of the successively prevailing

ideas and tendencies upon the shaping of historical tradition, and

follows the various phases in which that was conceived and set

forth. It contains, so to speak, a history of tradition. The

third part sums up the critical results of the preceding two, with

some further determining considerations, and concludes with a more

general survey.

The assumptions I make will find an ever-recurring justification

in the course of the investigation; the two principal are, that

the work of the Jehovist, so far as the nucleus of it is concerned,

belongs to the course of the Assyrian period, and that Deuteronomy

belongs to its close. Moreover, however strongly I am convinced

that the latter is to be dated in accordance with 2Kings xxii., I

do not, like Graf, so use this position as to make it the fulcrum

for my lever. Deuteronomy is the starting-point, not in the

sense that without it it would be impossible to accomplish

anything, but only because, when its position has been

historically ascertained, we cannot decline to go on, but must

demand that the position of the Priestly Code should also be fixed

by reference to history. My inquiry proceeds on a broader basis

than that of Graf, and comes nearer to that of Vatke, from whom

indeed I gratefully acknowledge myself to have learnt best and

most.

A. HISTORY OF THE ORDINANCES OF WORSHIP.

" Legem non habentes natura faciunt legis opera."--Romans ii.

[ "(When Gentiles) who do not have the law, do instinctively

what the law requires...." Romans 2:14 NRSV ]

CHAPTER I. THE PLACE OF WORSHIP.

As we learn from the New Testament, the Jews and the Samaritans in

the days of Jesus were not agreed on the question which was the

proper place of worship, but that there could be only one was

taken to be as certain as the unity of God Himself. The Jews

maintained that place to be the temple at Jerusalem, and when it

was destroyed they ceased to sacrifice. But this oneness of the

sanctuary in Israel was not originally recognised either in fact

or in law; it was a slow growth of time. With the help of the Old

Testament we are still quite able to trace the process. In doing

so, it is possible to distinguish several stages of development.

We shall accordingly proceed to inquire whether the three

constituent parts of the Pentateuch give tokens of any

relationship to one or other of these; whether and how they fall

in with the course of the historical development which we are able

to follow by the aid of the historical and prophetic books from

the period of the Judges onwards.

I.I.1. For the earliest period of the history of Israel, all

that precedes the building of the temple, not a trace can be found

of any sanctuary of exclusive legitimacy. In the Books of Judges

and Samuel hardly a place is mentioned at which we have not at

least casual mention of an altar and of sacrifice. In great

measure this multiplicity of sanctuaries was part of the heritage

taken over from the Canaanites by the Hebrews; as they

appropriated the towns and the culture generally of the previous

inhabitants, so also did they take possession of their sacred

piaces. The system of high places (Bamoth), with all the

apparatus thereto belonging, is certainly Canaanite originally

(Deut. xii.2, 30; Num. xxxiii.52; Exodus xxxiv.12 seq.), but

afterwards is of quite general occurrence among the Hebrews. At

Shechem and Gibeon the transition takes place almost in the full

light of history; some other old-Israelite places of worship,

certain of which are afterwards represented as Levitical towns,

betray their origin by their names at least, e.g., Bethshemesh or

Ir Heres (Sun-town), and Ashtaroth Karnaim (the two-horned

Astarte). In the popular recollection, also, the memory of the

fact that many of the most prominent sacrificial seats were

already in existence at the date of the immigration continues to

survive. Shechem, Bethel, Beersheba, figure in Genesis as

instituted by the patriarchs; other equally important holy

sites, not so. The reason for the distinction can only lie in a

consciousness of the more recent origin of the latter; those of

the one class had been found by the people when they came, those

of the other category they had themselves established. For of

course, if the Hebrews did not hesitate to appropriate to

themselves the old holy places of the country, neither did they

feel any difficulty in instituting new ones. In Gilgal and

Shiloh, in the fixed camps where, in the first instance, they had

found a permanent foothold in Palestine proper, there forthwith

arose important centres of worship; so likewise in other places of

political importance, even in such as only temporarily come into

prominence, as Ophrah, Ramah, and Nob near Gibeah. And, apart from

the greater cities with their more or less regular religious

service, it is perfectly permissible to erect an altar extempore,

and offer sacrifice wherever an occasion presents itself. When,

after the battle of Michmash, the people, tired and hungry, fell

upon the cattle they had taken, and began to devour the flesh with

the blood (that is, without pouring out the blood on the altar),

Saul caused a great stone to be erected, and ordered that every

man should slaughter his ox or his sheep there. This was the

first altar which Saul erected to Jehovah, adds the narrator,

certainly not as a reproach, nor even to signalise his conduct as

anything surprising or exceptional. The instance is all the more

instructive, because it shows how the prohibition to eat flesh

without rendering the blood back to God at a time when the people

did not live crowded together within a quite limited area

necessarily presupposed liberty to sacrifice anywhere--or to

slaughter anywhere; for originally the two words are absolutely

synonymous.

It need not be said that the sacrificial seats (even when the

improvised ones are left out of account) were not all alike in the

regard in which they were held, or in the frequency with which

they were resorted to. Besides purely local ones, there were

others to which pilgrimages were made from far and near. Towards

the close of the period of the judges, Shiloh appears to have

acquired an importance that perhaps extended even beyond the limits

of the tribe of Joseph. By a later age the temple there was even

regarded as the prototype of the temple of Solomon, that is, as the

one legitimate place of worship to which Jehovah had made a grant

of all the burnt-offerings of the children of Israel (Jer. vii.12;

1Samuel ii. 27-36). But, in point-of fact, if a prosperous man of

Ephraim or Benjamin made a pilgrimage to the joyful festival at

Shiloh at the turn of the year, the reason for his doing so was not

that he could have had no opportunity at his home in Ramah or

Gibeah for eating and drinking before the Lord. Any strict

centralisation is for that period inconceivable, alike in the

religious as in every other sphere. This is seen even in the

circumstance that the destruction of the temple of Shiloh, the

priesthood of which we find officiating at Nob a little later, did

not exercise the smallest modifying influence upon the character

and position of the cultus; Shiloh disappears quietly from the

scene, and is not mentioned again until we learn from Jeremiah that

at least from the time when Solomon's temple was founded its temple

lay in ruins.

For the period during which the temple of Jerusalem was not yet in

existence, even the latest redaction of the historical books (which

perhaps does not everywhere proceed from the same hand, but all

dates from the same period--that of the Babylonian exile--and has

its origin in the same spirit) leaves untouched the multiplicity

of altars and of holy places. No king after Solomon is left

uncensured for having tolerated the high places, but Samuel is

permitted in his proper person to preside over a sacrificial feast

at the Bamah of his native town, and Solomon at the beginning of

his reign to institute a similar one at the great Bamah of Gibeon,

without being blamed. The offensive name is again and again

employed in the most innocent manner in 1Samuel ix., x., and the

later editors allow it to pass unchallenged. The principle which

guides this apparently unequal distribution of censure becomes

clear from 1Kings iii. 2: "The people sacrificed upon the high

places, for as yet no house to the name of Jehovah had been

built." Not until the house had been built to the name of

Jehovah--such is the idea--did the law come into force which

forbade having other places of worship besides./1/

-- Footnote

1. Compare 1Kings viii. 16. According to Deut. xii.10 seq.,

the local unity of worship becomes law from the time when

the Israelites have found rest (menuha). Comparing 2Samuel vii.11

and 1Kings v. 18 (A.V., v.4), we find that "menuha" first came in

with David and Solomon. The period of the judges must at that time

have been regarded as much shorter than appears in the present chronology.

-- Footnote

From the building of the temple of Solomon, which is also treated

as a leading epoch in chronology, a new period in the history of worship

is accordingly dated,--and to a certain extent with justice.

The monarchy in Israel owed its origin to the need which, under severe

external pressure, had come to be felt for bringing together

into the oneness of a people and a kingdom the hitherto

very loosely connected tribes and families of the Hebrews;

it had an avowedly centralising tendency, which very naturally

laid hold of the cultus as an appropriate means for the attainment

of the political end. Gideon even, the first who came near

a regal position, erected a costly sanctuary in his city, Ophrah.

David caused the ark of Jehovah to be fetched into his fortress

on Mount Sion, and attached value to the circumstance

of having for its priest the representative of the old family

which had formerly kept it at Shiloh. Solomon's temple also was

designed to increase the attractiveness of the city of his

residence. It is indubitable that in this way political

centralisation gave an impulse to a greater centralisation of

worship also, and the tendency towards the latter continued to

operate after the separation of the two kingdoms,--in Israel not

quite in the same manner as in Judah. Royal priests, great

national temples, festal gatherings of the whole people, sacrifices

on an enormous scale, these were the traits by which the cultus,

previously (as it would seem) very simple, now showed the impress

of a new time. One other fact is significant: the domestic feasts

and sacrifices of single families, which in David's time must still

have been general, gradually declined and lost their importance as

social circles widened and life became more public.

But this way of regarding the influence of the monarchy upon the

history of the worship is not that of the author of the Books of

Kings. He views the temple of Solomon as a work undertaken

exclusively in the interests of pure worship, and as differing

entirely in origin from the sacred buildings of the kings of

Israel, with which accordingly it is not compared, but contrasted

as the genuine is contrasted with the spurious. It is in its

nature unique, and from the outset had the design of setting aside

all other holy places,--a religious design independent of and

unconnected with politics. The view, however, is unhistorical; it

carries back to the original date of the temple, and imports into

the purpose of its foundation the significance which it had

acquired in Judah shortly before the exile. In reality the

temple was not at the outset all that it afterwards became. Its

influence was due to its own weight, and not to a monopoly

conferred by Solomon. We nowhere learn that that king, like a

forerunner of Josiah, in order to favour his new sanctuary sought

to abolish all the others; there is not the faintest historical

trace of any such sudden and violent interference with the

previously existing arrangements of worship. Never once did

Solomon's successors, confined though they were to the little

territory of Judah, and therefore in a position in which the

experiment might perhaps have been practicable, make the attempt

(which certainly would have been in their interest) to concentrate

all public worship within their own temple, though in other

directions we find them exercising a very arbitrary control over

affairs of religion. The high places were not removed; this is

what is regularly told us in the case of them all. For Israel

properly so called, Jerusalem was at no time, properly speaking,

the place which Jehovah had chosen; least of all was it so after

the division of the kingdom.

The Ephraimites flocked in troops through the entire length of the

southern kingdom as pilgrims to Beersheba, and, in common with the

men of Judah, to Gilgal on the frontier. Jerusalem they left

unvisited. In their own land they served Jehovah at Bethel and

Dan, at Shechem and Samaria, at Penuel and Mizpah, and at many

other places. Every town had its Bamah, in the earlier times

generally on an open site at the top of the hill on the slopes of

which the houses were. Elijah, that great zealot for purity of

worship, was so far from being offended by the high places and the

multiplicity of altars to Jehovah that their destruction brought

bitterness to his soul as the height of wickedness, and with his

own hand he rebuilt the altar that had fallen into ruins on Mount

Carmel. And that the improvised offering on extraordinary

occasions had also not fallen into disuse is shown by the case of

Elisha, who, when his call came as he was following the plough,

hewed his oxen to pieces on the spot and sacrificed. In this

respect matters after the building of Solomon's temple continued to

be just as they had been before. If people and judges or kings

alike, priests and prophets, men like Samuel and Elijah, sacrificed

without hesitation whenever occasion and opportunity presented

themselves, it is manifest that during the whole of that period

nobody had the faintest suspicion that such conduct was heretical

and forbidden. If a theophany made known to Joshua the sanctity

of Gilgal, gave occasion to Gideon and Manoah to rear altars at

their homes, drew the attention of David to the threshing-floor of

Araunah, Jehovah Himself was regarded as the proper founder of all

these sanctuaries,--and this not merely at the period of the

Judges, but more indubitably still at that of the narrator of

these legends. He rewarded Solomon's first sacrifice on the great

Bamah at Gibeon with a gracious revelation, and cannot, therefore,

have been displeased by it. After all this, it is absurd to speak

of any want of legality in what was then the ordinary practice;

throughout the whole of the earlier period of the history of

Israel, the restriction of worship to a single selected place was

unknown to any one even as a pious desire. Men believed themselves

indeed to be nearer God at Bethel or at Jerusalem than at any

indifferent place, but of such gates of heaven there were several;

and after all, the ruling idea was that which finds its

most distinct expression in 2Kings v.17,--that Palestine as a whole

was Jehovah's house, His ground and territory. Not outside of

Jerusalem, but outside of Canaan had one to sojourn far from His

presence, under the dominion and (cujus regio ejus religio) in the

service of strange gods. The sanctity of the land did not depend

on that of the temple; the reverse was the case. /1/

-- Footnote

1. Gen. iv.14, 16: when Cain is driven out of the land (Canaan),

he is driven from the presence of Jehovah (Jonah i.3, 10).

Gen. xlvi.4: Jacob is not to hesitate about going down into Egypt,

for Jehovah will, by a special act of grace, change His dwelling-place

along with him. Exodus xv.17: "Thou broughtest thy people to the mountain

of thine inheritance, to the place which thou hadst prepared for

thyself to dwell in," the explanation which follows, "to the

sanctuary which thy hand had established," is out of place, for

the mountain of the inheritance can only be the mountainous land

of Palestine. 1Samuel xxvi.19: David, driven by Saul into foreign

parts, is thereby violently sundered from his family share in

the inheritance of Jehovah, and compelled to serve other gods.

Hos. viii.1: one like an eagle comes against the house of

Jehovah, i.e., the Assyrian comes against Jehovah's land. Hos.

ix.15: "I will drive them out of mine house," i.e., the Israelites

out of their land. Most distinct is the language of Hos. ix.3-5:

"They shall not continue to dwell in Jehovah's land; Ephraim must

back to Egypt, and must eat that which is unclean in Assyria. They

shall not any more offer wine-offerings to Jehovah, or set forth

offerings [read with Kuenen Y(RKW for Y(RBW ] before Him; their

bread is as the bread of mourners; whosoever eats of it is

polluted, for their bread shall be only for the staying of hunger,

and shall not be brought into the house of Jehovah. What indeed

will ye do in the time of the solemn assembly and in the day of

the feast of Jehovah? "Compare Jer. xvi.13; Ezek. iv.13; Mal.

ii.11; 2Kings xvii.25 seq. It is also possible that the "great

indignation" of 2Kings iii.27 is regarded less as Jehovah's than as

that of Chemosh, in whose land the army of Israel is at the time.

-- Footnote

I.I.2. A change in this respect first begins to be prepared at that

important epoch of the religious history of Israel which is marked

by the fall of Samaria and the rise of the prophets connected

therewith. Amos and Hosea presuppose a condition of matters just

such as has been described: everywhere--in the towns, on the

mountains, under green trees--a multitude of sanctuaries and

altars, at which Jehovah is served in good faith, not with the

purpose of provoking Him, but in order to gain His favour. The

language held by these men was one hitherto unheard of when they

declared that Gilgal, and Bethel, and Beersheba, Jehovah's

favourite seats, were an abomination to Him; that the gifts and

offerings with which He was honoured there kindled His wrath

instead of appeasing it; that Israel was destined to be buried

under the ruins of His temples, where protection and refuge were

sought (Amos ix.). What did they mean ? It would be to

misunderstand the prophets to suppose that they took offence at

the holy places-- which Amos still calls Bamoth (vii.9), and that

too not in scorn, but with the deepest pathos--in and by

themselves, on account of their being more than one, or not being

the right ones. Their zeal is directed, not against the places,

but against the cultus there carried on, and, in fact not merely

against its false character as containing all manner of abuses, but

almost more against itself, against the false value attached to it.

The common idea was that just as Moab showed itself to be the

people of Chemosh because it brought to Chemosh its offerings and

gifts, so Israel proved itself Jehovah's people by dedicating its

worship to Him, and was such all the more surely as its worship

was zealous and splendid; in times of danger and need, when His

help was peculiarly required, the zeal of the worshippers was

doubled and trebled. It is against this that the prophets raise

their protest while they demand quite other performances as a

living manifestation of the relation of Israel to Jehovah. This

was the reason of their so great hostility to the cultus, and the

source of their antipathy to the great sanctuaries, where

superstitious zeal outdid itself; it was this that provoked their

wrath against the multiplicity of the altars which flourished so

luxuriantly on the soil of a false confidence. That the holy

places should be abolished, but the cultus itself remain as before

the main concern of religion, only limited to a single locality

was by no means their wish; but at the same time, in point of

fact, it came about as an incidental result of their teaching that

the high place in Jerusalem ultimately abolished all the other

Bamoth. External circumstances, it must be added, contributed most

essentially towards the result.

As long as the northern kingdom stood, it was there that the main

current of lsraelite life manifested itself; a glance into the

Books of Kings or into that of Amos is enough to make this clear.

In Jerusalem, indeed, the days of David and of Solomon remained

unforgotten; yearning memories went back to them, and great

pretensions were based upon them, but with these the actual state

of matters only faintly corresponded. When Samaria fell, Israel

shrivelled up to the narrow dimensions of Judah, which alone

survived as the people of Jehovah. Thereby the field was left

clear for Jerusalem. The royal city had always had a weighty

preponderance over the little kingdom, and within it, again, the

town had yielded in importance to the temple. From the few

narratives we have relating to Judah one almost gathers an

impression as if it had no other concern besides those of the

temple; the kings in particular appear to have regarded the

charge of their palace sanctuary as the chief of all their

cares./1/

-- Footnote

1. Nearly all the Judaean narratives in the Books of Kings relate

to the temple and the measures taken by the ruling princes with

reference to this their sanctuary.

-- Footnote

In this way the increased importance of Judah after the fall of Samaria

accrued in the first instance to the benefit of the capital

and its sanctuary, especially as what Judah gained by the fall

of her rival was not so much political strength as an increase

of religious self-consciousness. If the great house of God

upon Mount Zion had always overtopped the other shrines in Judah,

it now stood without any equal in all Israel. But it was the prophets

who led the way in determining the inferences to be drawn from the change

in the face of things. Hitherto they had principally had their eyes

upon the northern kingdom, its threatened collapse, and the

wickedness of its inhabitants, and thus had poured out their wrath

more particularly upon the places of worship there. Judah they

judged more favourably, both on personal and on substantial

grounds, and they hoped for its preservation, not concealing their

sympathies for Jerusalem (Amos i.2). Under the impression produced

by their discourses accordingly, the fall of Samaria was

interpreted as a judgment of God against the sinful kingdom and in

favour of the fallen house of David, and the destruction of the

sanctuaries of Israel was accepted as an unmistakable declaration

on Jehovah's part against His older seats on behalf of His

favourite dwelling on Zion. Finally, the fact that twenty years

afterwards Jerusalem made her triumphant escape from the danger

which had proved fatal to her haughty rival, that at the critical

moment the Assyrians under Sennacherib were suddenly constrained

to withdraw from her, raised to the highest pitch the veneration

in which the temple was held. In this connection special emphasis

is usually laid-- and with justice--upon the prophetical activity

of Isaiah, whose confidence in the firm foundation of Zion

continued unmoved, even when the rock began to shake in an alarming

way. Only it must not be forgotten that the significance of

Jerusalem to Isaiah did not arise from the temple of Solomon, but

from the fact that it was the city of David and the focus of his

kingdom, the central point, not of the cultus, but of the

sovereignty of Jehovah over His people. The holy mount was to

him the entire city as a political unity, with its citizens,

councillors, and judges (xi.9); his faith in the sure foundation

on which Zion rested was nothing more than a faith in the living

presence of Jehovah in the camp of Israel. But the contemporaries

of the prophet interpreted otherwise his words and the events which

had occurred. In their view Jehovah dwelt on Zion because His

house was there; it was the temple that had been shown by history

to be His true seat, and its inviolability was accordingly the

pledge of the indestructibility of the nation. This belief was

quite general in Jeremiah's time, as is seen in the extremely

vivid picture of the seventh chapter of his book; but even as

early as the time of Micah, in the first third of the seventh

century, the temple must have been reckoned a house of God of an

altogether peculiar order, so as to make it a paradox to put it on

a level with the Bamoth of Judah, and a thing unheard of to believe

in its destruction.

At the same time, notwithstanding the high and universal reverence

in which the temple was held, the other sanctuaries still

continued, in the first instance, to subsist alongside of it.

King Hezekiah indeed is said to have even then made an attempt

to abolish them, but the attempt, having passed away without leaving

any trace, is of a doubtful nature. It is certain that the

prophet Isaiah did not labour for the removal of the Bamoth. In

one of his latest discourses his anticipation for that time of

righteousness and the fear of God which is to dawn after the

Assyrian crisis is: "Then shall ye defile the silver covering of

your graven images and the golden plating of your molten images--ye

shall cast them away as a thing polluted; Begone! shall ye say

unto them" (xxx.22). If he thus hopes for a purification from

superstitious accretions of the places where Jehovah is worshipped,

it is clear that he is not thinking of their total abolition. Not

until about a century after the destruction of Samaria did men

venture to draw the practical conclusion from the belief in the

unique character of the temple at Jerusalem. That this was not

done from a mere desire to be logical, but with a view to further

reforms, need not be said. With the tone of repudiation in which

the earlier prophets, in the zeal of their opposition, had

occasionally spoken of practices of worship at large, there was

nothing to be achieved; the thing to be aimed at was not

abolition, but reformation, and the end it was believed would be

helped by concentration of all ritual in the capital. Prophets

and priests appear to have made common cause in the prosecution of

the work. It was the high priest Hilkiah who in the first instance

called attention to the discovered book which was to be made the

basis of action; the prophetess Huldah confirmed its divine

contents; the priests and prophets were a prominent element in the

assembly at which the new law was promulgated and sworn to. Now

an intimate fellowship between these two leading classes appears to

be characteristic of the whole course of the religious movement in

Judah, and to have been necessarily connected with the lines on

which that movement advanced; /1/

-- Footnote

1. While Hosea, the man of northern Israel, frequently assails

the clergy of his home, and lays upon them the chief share of the

blame for the depraved and blinded condition of the people, Isaiah

even in his fiercest declamation against the superstitious worship

of the multitude, has not a word to say against the priests, with

whose chief, Uriah, on the contrary, he stands in a relation of

great intimacy. But it is from the Book of Jeremiah, the best

mirror of the contemporary relations in Judah, that the close

connection between priests and prophets can be gathered most

particularly. To a certain extent they shared the possession of

the sanctuary between them. (Compare Lam. ii.20.)

-- Footnote

we shall be justified therefore in assuming that the display

of harmony between them on this occasion was not got up merely

for the purposes of scenic effect, but that the change

in the national cultus now proposed was really the common suggestion

of prophets and priests. In point of fact, such a change was equally

in accordance with the interests of the temple and with those

of the prophetic party of reform. To the last named the restriction

of the sacrificial worship must have in itself seemed an advantage;

to it in later times the complete abolition of sacrifice was mainly due,

and something of the later effect doubtless lay in the original

intention. Then, too, the Jehovah of Hebron was only too easily

regarded as distinct from the Jehovah of Bethshemesh or of Bethel,

and so a strictly monarchical conception of God naturally led to

the conclusion that the place of His dwelling and of His worship

could also only be one. All writers of the Chaldaean period

associate monotheism in the closest way with unity of worship

(Jer. ii.28, xi.13). And the choice of the locality could

present no difficulty; the central point of the kingdom had of

necessity also to become the central point of the worship. Even

Jerusalem and the house of Jehovah there might need some cleansing,

but it was clearly entitled to a preference over the obscure

local altars. It was the seat of all higher culture, Iying under

the prophets' eyes, much more readily accessible to light and

air, reform and control. It is also possible, moreover, that the

Canaanite origin of most of the Bamoth, which is not unknown, for

example, to Deuteronomy, may have helped to discredit them, while,

on the other hand, the founding of Jerusalem belonged to the

proudest memories of Israelite history, and the Ark, which had been

the origin of the temple there, had a certain right to be

considered the one genuine Mosaic sanctuary. /1/

-- Footnote

1. Luther in his address to the princes of Germany counsels

in the twentieth place that the field chapels and churches be destroyed,

as devices of the devil used by him to strengthen covetousness,

to set up a false and spurious faith, to weaken parochial churches,

to increase taverns and fornication, to squander money and labour

to no purpose, and merely to lead the poor people about by the nose.

(Niemeyer's Reprint, p. 54 )

-- Footnote

In the eighteenth year of Josiah, 601 B.C., the first heavy blow fell

upon the local sacrificial places. How vigorously the king set to

work, how new were the measures taken, and how deeply they cut,

can be learned from the narrative of 2Kings xxiii. Yet what a

vitality did the green trees upon the high mountains still

continue to show! Even now they were but polled, not uprooted.

After Josiah's death we again see Bamoth appearing on all hands,

not merely in the country, but even in the capital itself.

Jeremiah has to lament that there are as many altars as towns in

Judah. All that had been attained by the reforming party was

that they could now appeal to a written law that had been solemnly

sworn to by the whole people, standing ever an immovable witness

to the rights of God. But to bring it again into force and to

carry it out was no easy matter, and would certainly have been

impossible to the unaided efforts of the prophets--a Jeremiah or an

Ezekiel.

I.3 Had the people of Judah remained in peaceful possession of their

land, the reformation of Josiah would hardly have penetrated to

the masses; the threads uniting the present with the past were too

strong. To induce the people to regard as idolatrous and heretical

centres of iniquity the Bamoth, with which from ancestral times

the holiest memories were associated, and some of which, like

Hebron and Beersheba, had been set up by Abraham and Isaac in

person, required a complete breaking-off of the natural tradition

of life, a total severance of all connection with inherited

conditions. This was accomplished by means of the Babylonian

exile, which violently tore the nation away from its native soil,

and kept it apart for half a century,--a breach of historical

continuity than which it is almost impossible to conceive a

greater. The new generation had no natural, but only an

artificial relation to the times of old; the firmly rooted

growths of the old soil, regarded as thorns by the pious, were

extirpated, and the freshly ploughed fallows ready for a new

sowing. It is, of course, far from being the case that the whole

people at that time underwent a general conversion in the sense of

the prophets. Perhaps the majority totally gave up the past, but

just on that account became lost among the heathen, and never

subsequently came into notice. Only the pious ones, who with

trembling followed Jehovah's word, were left as a remnant; they

alone had the strength to maintain the Jewish individuality amid

the medley of nationalities into which they had been thrown.

From the exile there returned, not the nation, but a religious

sect,--those, namely, who had given themselves up body and soul to

the reformation ideas. It is no wonder that to these people, who,

besides, on their return, all settled in the immediate

neighbourhood of Jerusalem, the thought never once occurred of

restoring the local cults. It cost them no struggle to allow the

destroyed Bamoth to continue Iying in ruins; the principle had

become part of their very being, that the one God had also but one

place of worship, and thenceforward for all time coming this was

regarded as a thing of course.

I.II

Such was the actual historical course of the centralisation of

the cultus, and such the three stadia which can be distinguished.

The question now presents itself, whether it is possible to detect

a correspondence between the phases of the actual course of events

and those of the legislation relating to this subject. All three

portions of the legislation contain ordinances on the subject of

sacrificial places and offerings. It may be taken for granted

that in some way or other these have their roots in history, and

do not merely hang in the air, quite away from or above the solid

ground of actuality.

I.II.1. The main Jehovistic law, the so-called Book of the Covenant,

contains (Exodus xx.24-26) the following ordinance: "An altar of

earth shalt thou make unto me, and thereon shalt thou sacrifice thy

burnt offerings and thy peace-offerings, thy sheep and thine

oxen; in place where I cause my name to be honoured will I come

unto and will bless thee. Or if thou wilt make me an altar of

stones, thou shalt not build it of hewn stones, for if thou hast

lifted up thy tool upon it thou hast polluted it. And thou shalt

not go up to mine altar by steps, that thy nakedness be not

discovered before it." Unquestionably it is not the altar of the

tabernacle, which was made of wood and plated over with brass, nor

that of Solomon's temple, which on its eastern side had a flight of

steps, /1/

-- Footnote

1. The altar of the second temple had no steps, but a sloping ascent

to it, as also, according to the belief of the Jews, had that of the

tabernacle. The reason, moreover, for which in Exodus xx.26 steps

are forbidden, disappears when the priests are provided with

breeches (Exodus xxviii.42).

-- Footnote

and had a passage right round it at half its height, that is here

described as the only true one. On the other hand, it is obvious

that a multiplicity of altars is not merely regarded as permissible,

but assumed as a matter of course. For no stress at all is laid

upon having always the same sacrificial seat, whether fixed or to be

moved about from place to place; earth and unhewn stones /2/ of the field

-- Footnote

2. The plural "stones" is perhaps worthy of note. There were also

sacrificial places consisting of one great stone (1Samuel xiv.33,

vi.14, 15; 2Samuel xx.8; Judges vi.20, xiii.19, 20; 1Kings i.9); to the same

category also doubtless belongs originally the threshing-floor of

Araunah, 2Samuel xxiv.21; compare Ezra iii.3, [ (L MKWNTW ]. But

inasmuch as such single sacred stones easily came into a

mythological relation to the Deity, offence was taken at them, as

appears from Judges vi.22-24, where the rock altar, the stone under

the oak which was conceived of as the seat of the theophany, upon

which Gideon offers, and out of which the flame issues (vi.19-21),

is corrected into an altar upon the rock. The macceboth are

distinguished from the altar in Exodus xxiv.4, yet elsewhere

clearly put on the same plane with it (Gen. xxxiii.20), and

everywhere more or less identified with the Deity (Gen. xxviii.).

-- Footnote

can be found everywhere, and such an altar falls to pieces just as

readily as it is built. A choice of two kinds of material is also

given, which surely implies that the lawgiver thought of more than

one altar; and not at the place, but at every place where He causes

His name to be honoured will Jehovah come to His worshippers and

bless them. Thus the law now under consideration is in harmony

with the custom and usage of the first historical period, has its

root therein, and gives sanction to it. Certainly the liberty to

sacrifice everywhere seems to be somewhat restricted by the added

clause, "in every place where I cause my name to be honoured."

But this means nothing more than that the spots where intercourse

between earth and heaven took place were not willingly regarded

as arbitrarily chosen, but, on the contrary, were considered as

having been somehow or other selected by the Deity Himself for

His service.

In perfect correspondence with the Jehovistic law is the

Jehovistic narrative of the Pentateuch, as, in particular, the

story of the patriarchs in J and E very clearly shows. At every

place where they take up their abode or make a passing stay, the

fathers of the nation, according to this authority, erect altars,

set up memorial stones, plant trees, dig wells. This does not take

place at indifferent and casual localities, but at Shechem and

Bethel in Ephraim, at Hebron and Beersheba in Judah, at Mizpah,

Mahanaim, and Penuel in Gilead; nowhere but at famous and

immemorially holy places of worship. It is on this that the

interest of such notifications depends; they are no mere

antiquarian facts, but full of the most living significance for the

present of the narrator. The altar built by Abraham at Shechem is

the altar on which sacrifice still continues to be made, and bears

"even unto this day" the name which the patriarch gave it. On the

spot where at Hebron he first entertained Jehovah, there down to

the present day the table has continued to be spread; even as

Isaac himself did, so do his sons still swear Amosos viii.14; Hos.

iv.15) by the sacred well of Beersheba, which he digged, and

sacrifice there upon the altar which he built, under the tamarisk

which he planted. The stone which Jacob consecrated at Bethel the

generation of the living continues to anoint, paying the tithes

which of old he vowed to the house of God there. This also is the

reason why the sacred localities are so well known to the

narrator, and are punctually and accurately recorded

notwithstanding the four hundred years of the Egyptian sojourn,

which otherwise would have made their identification a matter of

some little difficulty. The altar which Abraham built at Bethel

stands upon the hill to the east of the town, between Bethel on the

west and Ai on the east; others are determined by means of a tree

or a well, as that of Shechem or Beersheba. /1/

-- Footnote

1. The correct explanation of this is found in Ewald, Gesch. d. V.

lsraels, i. 436 seq. (3d edit.). A. Bernstein (Ursprung der Sagen

von Abrabam, etc., Berlin, 1871) drags in politics in a repulsive way.

"He does not indeed actually enter Shechem and Bethel-- these are places

hostile to Judah--but in a genuine spirit of Jewish demonstration

he builds altars in their vicinity and calls on the name of

Jehovah" (p. 22). Rather, he builds the altars precisely on the

places where, as can be shown, they afterwards stood, and that was

not inside the towns. In Gen. xviii. also the oak of Mamre is

employed to fix not Abraham's residence, but the place of Jehovah's

appearing.

-- Footnote

But of course it was not intended to throw dishonour upon the

cultus of the present when its institution was ascribed to the

fathers of the nation. Rather, on the contrary, do these legends

glorify the origin of the sanctuaries to which they are attached,

and surround them with the nimbus of a venerable consecration. All

the more as the altars, as a rule, are not built by the patriarchs

according to their own private judgment wheresoever they please;

on the contrary, a theophany calls attention to, or at least

afterwards confirms, the holiness of the place. Jehovah appears at

Shechem to Abraham, who thereupon builds the altar "to Jehovah who

had appeared unto him;" he partakes of his hospitality under the

oak of Mamre, which is the origin of the sacrificial service there;

He shows him the place where he is to make an offering of his son,

and here the sanctuary continues to exist. On the first night of

Isaac's sleeping on the sacred soil of Beersheba (xxvi.24) he

receives a visit from the Numen there residing, and in consequence

rears his altar. Surprised by profane glances, Jehovah acts as a

destroyer, but Himself spontaneously points out to His favoured

ones the places where it is His pleasure to allow Himself to be

seen; and where men have seen Him and yet lived, there a sanctuary

marks the open way of access to Him. The substance of the

revelation is in these cases comparatively indifferent: "I am

God." What is of importance is the theophany in and for itself,

its occurrence on that particular place. It must not be regarded

as an isolated fact, but rather as the striking commencement of an

intercourse [ R)H PNY YHWH ] between God and man which is destined

to be continued at this spot, and also as the first and strongest

expression of the sanctity of the soil. This way of looking at

the thing appears most clearly and with incomparable charm in the

story of the ladder which Jacob saw at Bethel. "He dreamed, and

behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to

heaven, and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on

it. And he was afraid and said, How dreadful is this place! This

is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of

heaven." The ladder stands at the place not at this moment merely,

but continually, and, as it were, by nature. Bethel--so Jacob

perceives from this--is a place where heaven and earth meet, where

the angels ascend and descend, to carry on the communication

between earth and heaven ordained by God at this gate.

All this is only to be understood as a glorification of the

relations and arrangements of the cultus as we find them (say) in

the first centuries of the divided kingdom. All that seems

offensive and heathenish to a later age is here consecrated and

countenanced by Jehovah Himself and His favoured ones,-- the high

places, the memorial stones (maccceboth), the trees, the wells. /1/

-- Footnote

1. But it is only the public cultus and that of certain leading

sanctuaries that is thus glorified; on the other hand, the domestic

worship of seraphim, to which the women are specially attached,

is already discountenanced (in E) by Jacob. Asherim are not

alluded to, molten images are rejected, particularly by E.

Here perhaps a correction of the ancient legend has already

taken place in JE.

-- Footnote

An essential agreement prevails between the Jehovistic law

which sanctions the existing seats of worship and the Jehovistic

narrative; the latter is as regards its nucleus perhaps somewhat older.

Both obviously belong to the pre-prophetic period; a later revision

of the narrative in the prophetic sense has not altered the essential

character of its fundamental elements. It is inconceivable that

Amos or Hosea, or any like-minded person, could go with such

sympathising love and believing reverence into narratives which only

served to invest with a still brighter nimbus and higher respect

the existing religious worship, carried on by the people

on the high places of Isaac as their holiest occupation.

I.II.2. The Jehovistic Book of the Covenant lies indeed at the

foundation of Deuteronomy, but in one point they differ

materially, and that precisely the one which concerns us here.

As there, so here also, the legislation properly so called begins

(Deut. xii.) with an ordinance relating to the service of the

altar; but now we have Moses addressing the Israeites in the

following terms: "When ye come into the land of Canaan, ye shall

utterly destroy all the places of worship which ye find there,

and ye shall not worship Jehovah your God after the manner in which

the heathen serve theirs. Nay, but only unto the place which the

Lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes for His

habitation shall ye seek, and thither shall ye bring your offerings

and gifts, and there shall ye eat before Him and rejoice. Here at

this day we do every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes, but

when ye have found fixed abodes, and rest from your enemies round

about, then shall the place which Jehovah shall choose for His

habitation in one of your tribes be the one place to which ye shall

bring your offerings and gifts. Take heed that ye offer not in

every place that ye see; ye may not eat your holy gifts in

every town, but only in the place which Jehovah shall choose."

The Law is never weary of again and again repeating its

injunction of local unity of worship. In doing so, it is in

conscious opposition to "the things that we do here this day," and

throughout has a polemical and reforming attitude towards existing

usage. It is rightly therefore assigned by historical criticism

to the period of the attacks made on the Bamoth by the reforming

party at Jerusalem. As the Book of the Covenant, and the whole

Jehovistic writing in genera], reflects the first pre-prophetic

period in the history of the cultus, so Deuteronomy is the legal

expression of the second period of struggle and transition. The

historical order is all the more certain because the literary

dependence of Deuteronomy on the Jehovistic laws and narratives

can be demonstrated independently, and is an admitted fact. From

this the step is easy to the belief that the work whose discovery

gave occasion to King Josiah to destroy the local sanctuaries was

this very Book of Deuteronomy, which originally must have had an

independent existence, and a shorter form than at present. This

alone, at least, of all the books of the Pentateuch, gives so

imperious an expression to the restriction of the sacrificial

worship to the one chosen place; here only does the demand make

itself so felt in its aggressive novelty and dominate the whole

tendency of the law-maker. The old material which he makes use

of is invariably shaped with a view to this, and on all hands he

follows the rule out to its logical consequences. To make its

fulfilment possible, he changes former arrangements, permitting

what had been forbidden, and prohibiting what had been allowed;

in almost every case this motive lies at the foundation of all his

other innovations. This is seen, for example, when he permits

slaying without sacrificing, and that too anywhere; when, in order

not to abolish the right of asylum (Exodus xxi.13, 14; 1Kings ii.

28) along with the altars, he appoints special cities of refuge for

the innocent who are pursued by the avenger of blood; when he

provides for the priests of the suppressed sanctuaries,

recommending the provincials to take them along with them on their

sacrificial pilgrimages, and giving them the right to officiate in

the temple at Jerusalem just like the hereditarily permanent

clergy there. In other respects also the dominance of the same

point of view is seen: for example, it is chiefly from regard to

it that the old ordinances and customs relating to the religious

dues and the festivals are set forth in the form which they must

henceforth assume. A law so living, which stands at every point

in immediate contact with reality, which is at war with

traditionary custom, and which proceeds with constant reference to

the demands of practical life, is no mere velleity, no mere cobweb

of an idle brain, but has as certainly arisen out of historical

occasions as it is designed to operate powerfully on the course of

the subsequent history. A judgment pronounced in accordance with

the facts can therefore assign to it an historical place only

within that movement of reformation which was brought to a

victorious issue by King Josiah.

I.II.3. It is often supposed that the Priestly Code is somewhat

indifferent to the question of the one sanctuary, neither

permitting multiplicity of sacrificial centres nor laying stress

upon the unity, and that on account of this attitude it must be

assigned to an earlier date than Deuteronomy. /1/

-- Footnote

1. De Wette, in the fifth place of his Habilitationsschrift ueber

das Deuteronomium (Jena, 1805): "De hoc unico cultus sacri loco...

priores libri nihil omnino habent. De sacrificiis tantum unice

ante tabernaculum conventus offerendis lex quaedam extat.

Sed in legibus de diebus festis, de primitiis et decimis,

tam saepe repetitis, nihil omnino monitum est de loco unico,

ubi celebrari et offerri debeant " (Opusc. Theol, p. 163-165).

-- Footnote

Such an idea is, to say the least, in the highest degree superficial.

The assumption that worship is restricted to one single centre

runs everywhere throughout the entire document. To appeal specially,

in proof of the restriction, to Leviticus xvii. or Josh xxii., is

to indicate a complete failure to apprehend the whole tenor

of Exodus xxv.-Leviticus ix. Before so much as a single regulation

having reference to the matter of worship can be given (such is

the meaning of the large section referred to), the one rightful place

wherein to engage in it must be specified. The tabernacle is

not narrative merely, but, like all the narratives in that book,

law as well; it expresses the legal unity of the worship as

an historical fact, which, from the very beginning, ever since

the exodus, has held good in Israel. One God one sanctuary,

that is the idea. With the ordinances of the tabernacle, which form

the sum of the divine revelation on Sinai, the theocracy was founded;

where the one is, there is the other. The description of it, therefore,

stands at the head of the Priestly Code, just as that of the temple

stands at the head of the legislation in Ezekiel. It is the basis

and indispensable foundation, without which all else would merely

float in the air: first must the seat of the Divine Presence on

earth be given before the sacred community can come into life and

the cultus into force. Is it supposes that the tabernacle

tolerates other sanctuaries besides itself? Why then the

encampment of the twelve tribes around it, which has no military,

but a purely religious significance, and derives its whole meaning

from its sacred centre? Whence this concentration of all Israel

into one great congregation [ QHL, (DH ], without its like anywhere

else in the Old Testament? On the contrary, there is no other

place besides this at which God dwells and suffers Himself to be

seen; no place but this alone where man can draw near to Him and

seek His face with offerings and gifts. This view is the axiom

that underlies the whole ritual legislation of the middle part of

the Pentateuch. It is indicated with special clearness by the

LPNY (HL MW(D (before the tabernacle), introduced at every turn

in the ordinances for sacrifice.

What then are we to infer from this as to the historical place of

the Priestly Code, if it be judged necessary to assign it such a

place at all? By all the laws of logic it can no more belong to

the first period than Deuteronomy does. But is it older or

younger than Deuteronomy? In that book the unity of the cultus is

COMMANDED, in the Priestly Code it is PRESUPPOSED. Everywhere it

is tacitly assumed as a fundamental postulate, but nowhere does it

find actual expression; /1/ it is nothing new, but quite a thing

-- Footnote

1. Except in Leviticus xvii.; but the small body of legislation

contained in Leviticus xvii-xxvi is the transition from Deuteronomy

to the Priestly Code.

-- Footnote

of course. What follows from this for the question before us?

To my thinking, this:--that the Priestly Code rests

upon the result which is only the aim of Deuteronomy. The latter

is in the midst of movement and conflict: it clearly speaks out

its reforming intention, its opposition to the traditional "what we

do here this day;" the former stands outside of and above the

struggle,--the end has been reached and made a secure possession.

On the basis of the Priestly Code no reformation would ever have

taken place, no Josiah would ever have observed from it that the

actual condition of affairs was perverse and required to be set

right; it proceeds as if everything had been for long in the best

of order. It is only in Deuteronomy, moreover, that one sees to

the root of the matter, and recognises its connection with the

anxiety for a strict monotheism and for the elimination from the

worship of the popular heathenish elements, and thus with a deep

and really worthy aim; in the Priestly Code the reason of the

appointments, in themselves by no means rational, rests upon their

own legitimacy, just as everything that is actual ordinarily seems

natural and in no need of explanation. Nowhere does it become

apparent that the abolition of the Bamoth and Asherim and memorial

stones is the real object contemplated; these institutions are

now almost unknown, and what is really only intelligible as a

negative and polemical ordinance is regarded as full of meaning in

itself.

The idea as idea is older than the idea as history. In

Deuteronomy it appears in its native colours, comes forward with

its aggressive challenge to do battle with the actual. One step

indeed is taken towards investing it with an historical character,

in so far as it is put into the mouth of Moses; but the beginning

thus made keeps within modest limits. Moses only lays down the

law; for its execution he makes no provision as regards his own

time, nor does he demand it for the immediate future. Rather it is

represented as not destined to come into force until the people

shall have concluded the conquest of the country and secured a

settled peace. We have already found reason to surmise that the

reference to "menuha" is intended to defer the date when the Law

shall come into force to the days of David and Solomon (1Kings

viii.16). This is all the more probable inasmuch as there is

required for its fulfilment "the place which Jehovah shall choose,"

by which only the capital of Judah can be meant. Deuteronomy,

therefore, knows nothing of the principle that what ought to be

must actually have been from the beginning. Until the building of

Solomon's temple the unity of worship according to it had,

properly speaking, never had any existence; and, moreover, it is

easy to read between the lines that even after that date it was

more a pious wish than a practical demand. The Priestly Code, on

the other hand, is unable to think of religion without the one

sanctuary, and cannot for a moment imagine Israel without it,

carrying its actual existence back to the very beginning of the

theocracy, and, in accordance with this, completely altering the

ancient history. The temple, the focus to which the worship was

concentrated, and which in reality was not built until Solomon's

time, is by this document regarded as so indispensable, even for

the troubled days of the wanderings before the settlement, that it

is made portable, and in the form of a tabernacle set up in the

very beginning of things. For the truth is, that the tabernacle

is the copy, not the prototype, of the temple at Jerusalem. The

resemblance of the two is indeed unmistakable, /1/

-- Footnote

1. In Wisdom of Solomon ix. 8 the temple is called MIMHMA SKHNHS

HAGIAS. Josephus (Antiquities iii. 6,1) says of the tabernacle,

(H D'OUDEN METAFEROMENOU NAOU DIEFERE.

-- Footnote

but it is not said in 1Kings vi. that Solomon made use of the old

pattern and ordered his Tyrian workmen to follow it. The posteriority

of the Mosaic structure comes into clearer light from the two following

considerations brought forward by Graf (p. 60 seq.). In the first

place, in the description of the tabernacle mention is repeatedly

made of its south, north, and west side, without any preceding rubric

as to a definite and constantly uniform orientation; the latter is

tacitly taken for granted, being borrowed from that of the temple,

which was a fixed building, and did not change its site. In the

second place, the brazen altar is, strictly speaking, described as

an altar of wood merely plated with brass,--for a fireplace of

very large size, upon which a strong fire continually burns, a

perfectly absurd construction, which is only to be accounted for

by the wish to make the brazen altar which Solomon cast (1Kings

xvi. 14) transportable, by changing its interior into wood. The

main point, however, is this, that the tabernacle of the Priestly

Code in its essential meaning is not a mere provisional shelter for

the ark on the march, but the sole legitimate sanctuary for the

community of the twelve tribes prior to the days of Solomon, and

so in fact a projection of the later temple. How modest, one might

almost say how awkwardly bashful, is the Deuteronomic reference

to the future place which Jehovah is to choose when compared with

this calm matter-of-fact assumption that the necessary centre of

unity of worship was given from the first! In the one case we

have, so to speak, only the idea as it exists in the mind of the

lawgiver, but making no claim to be realised till a much later

date; in the other, the Mosaic idea has acquired also a Mosaic

embodiment, with which it entered the world at the very first.

By the same simple historical method which carries the central

sanctuary back into the period before Solomon does the Priestly

author abolish the other places of worship. His forty-eight

Levitical cities are for the most part demonstrably a

metamorphosis of the old Bamoth to meet the exigencies of the time.

The altar which the tribes eastward of Jordan build (Josh. xxii.)

is erected with no intention that it should be used, but merely in

commemoration of something. Even the pre-Mosaic period is rendered

orthodox in the same fashion. The patriarchs, having no

tabernacle, have no worship at all; according to the Priestly

Code they build no altars, bring no offerings, and scrupulously

abstain from everything by which they might in any way encroach

on the privilege of the one true sanctuary. This manner of shaping

the patriarchal history is only the extreme consequence of the

effort to carry out with uniformity in history the semper

ubique et ab omnibus of the legal unity of worship.

Thus in Deuteronomy the institution is only in its birth-throes,

and has still to struggle for the victory against the praxis of

the present, but in the Priestly Code claims immemorial legitimacy

and strives to bring the past into conformity with itself,

obviously because it already dominates the present; the carrying

back of the new into the olden time always takes place at a later

date than the ushering into existence of the new itself.

Deuteronomy has its position in the very midst of the historical

crisis, and still stands in a close relation with the older period

of worship, the conditions of which it can contest, but is unable

to ignore, and still less to deny. But, on the other hand, the

Priestly Code is hindered by no survival to present times of the

older usage from projecting an image of antiquity such as it must

have been; unhampered by visible relics or living tradition of an

older state, it can idealise the past to its heart's content. Its

place, then, is after Deuteronomy, and in the third post-exilian

period of the history of the cultus, in which, on the one hand,

the unity of the sanctuary was an established fact, contested by

no one and impugned by nothing, and in which, on the other hand,

the natural connection between the present and the past had been so

severed by the exile that there was no obstacle to prevent an

artificial and ideal repristination of the latter.

I.III.

The reverse of this is what is usually held. In Deuteronomy, it

is considered, there occur clear references to the period of the

kings; but the Priestly Code, with its historical

presuppositions, does not fit in with any situation belonging to

that time, and is therefore older. When the cultus rests upon the

temple of Solomon as its foundation, as in Ezekiel, then every one

recognises the later date; but when it is based upon the

tabernacle, the case is regarded as quite different. The great

antiquity of the priestly legislation is proved by relegating it

to an historical sphere, created by itself out of its own legal

premisses, but which is nowhere to be found within, and therefore

must have preceded actual history. Thus (so to speak) it holds

itself up in the air by its own waistband.

I.III.1. It may, however, seem as if hitherto it had only been

asserted that the tabernacle rests on an historical fiction.

In truth it is proved; but yet it may be well to add some things

which have indeed been said long before now, but never as yet

properly laid to heart. The subject of discussion, be it

premised, is the tabernacle of the Priestly Code; for some kind

of tent for the ark there may well have been: in fact, tents were

in Palestine the earliest dwellings of idols (Hos. ix.6), and only

afterwards gave place to fixed houses; and even the Jehovistic

tradition (although not J) knows of a sacred tent /1/

-- Footnote

1. It is never, however, employed for legislative purposes,

but is simply a shelter for the ark; it stands without the camp,

as the oldest sanctuaries were wont to do outside the cities.

It is kept by Joshua as aedituus, who sleeps in it, as did Samuel

the aedituus for Eli.

-- Footnote

in connection with the Mosaic camp, and outside it, just as the older

high places generally had open sites without the city. The question

before us has reference exclusively to the particular tent which,

according to Exodus xxv. seq., was erected at the command of God

as the basis of the theocracy, the pre-Solomonic central sanctuary,

which also in outward details was the prototype of the temple.

At the outset its very possibility is doubtful. Very strange is the

contrast between this splendid structure, on which the costliest

material is lavished and wrought in the most advanced style of

Oriental art, and the soil on which it rises, in the wilderness

amongst the native Hebrew nomad tribes, who are represented as

having got it ready offhand, and without external help. The

incompatibility has long been noticed, and gave rise to doubts as

early as the time of Voltaire. These may, however, be left to

themselves; suffice it that Hebrew tradition, even from the time

of the judges and the first kings, for which the Mosaic tabernacle

was strictly speaking intended, knows nothing at all about it.

It appears a bold thing to say so when one sees how much many a

modern author who knows how to make a skilful use of the Book of

Chronicles has to tell about the tabernacle. For in 2 Chron. i.3

seq. we are told that Solomon celebrated his accession to the

throne with a great sacrificial feast at Gibeon, because the

tabernacle and the brazen altar of Moses were there. In like

manner in 1Chron. xxi.29 it is said that David offered sacrifice

indeed on the threshing-floor of Araunah, but that Jehovah's

dwelling-place and the legitimate altar were at that time at

Gibeon; and further (xvi. 39), that Zadok, the legitimate high

priest, officiated there. From these data the Rabbins first, and

in recent times Keil and Movers especially, have constructed a

systematic history of the tabernacle down to the building of the

temple. Under David and Solomon, as long as the ark was on Mount

Zion, the tabernacle was at Gibeon, as is also shown by the fact

that (2Samuel xxi.6, 9) offerings were sacrificed to Jehovah there.

Before that it was at Nob, where ephod and shewbread (1Samuel xxi.)

are mentioned, and still earlier, from Joshua's time onward, it was

at Shiloh. But these were only its permanent sites, apart from

which it was temporarily set up now here, now there, saving by

its rapidity of movement--one might almost say ubiquity--the

unity of the cultus, notwithstanding the variety and great

distances of the places at which that cultus was celebrated. In

every case in which a manifestation of Jehovah and an offering to

Him are spoken of, the tabernacle must be tacitly understood. /1/

-- Footnote

1. Josh. xxiv. 24, 33 (LXX): after the death of Joshua and Eleazar,

LABONTES (OI )UIOI )ISRAHL THN KIBWTON TOU QEOU PERIFEROSAN

)EN )EAUTOIS. After J. Buxtorf and Sal. van Til (Ugol., Thes. viii.),

this theory has been, worked out specially by Movers. See, on the other

hand, De Wette, Beitraege, p. 108 seq., and Vatke, ut supra, p. 316, note.

-- Footnote

The dogmatic character of this way of making history, and the absurd

consequences to which it leads, need not in the meantime be insisted on;

what is of greatest importance is that the point from which it starts

is in the last degree insecure; for the statement of Chronicles that

Solomon offered the offering of his accession upon the altar of

the tabernacle at Gibeon is in contradiction with that of the older

parallel narrative of 1Kings iii.1-4. The latter not only is

silent about the Mosaic tabernacle, which is alleged to have stood

at Gibeon, but expressly says that Solomon offered upon a high

place (as such), and excuses him for this on the plea that at that

time no house to the name of Jehovah had as yet been built. That

the Chronicler draws from this narrative is certain on general

grounds, and is shown particularly by this, that he designates

the tabernacle at Gibeon by the name of Bamah--a contradictio in

adjecto which is only to be explained by the desire to give an

authentic interpretation of "the great Bamah at Gibeon" in 1Kings

iii. Here, as elsewhere, he brings the history into agreement

with the Law: the young and pious Solomon can have offered his

sacrifice only at the legal place which therefore must be that

high place at Gibeon. Along with 2 Chron. i.3 seq. also fall the

two other statements (1Chron. xvi.39, xxi.29 both of which are

dependent on that leading passage, as is clear revealed by the

recurring phrase "the Bamah of Gibeon." The tabernacle does not

elsewhere occur in Chronicles; it has not yet brought its

consequences with it, and not yet permeated the historical view of

the author. He would certainly have experienced some embarrassment

at the question whether it had previously stood at Nob, for he

lays stress upon the connection between the legitimate sanctuary

and the legitimate Zadok-Eleazar priestly family, which it is

indeed possible to assume for Shiloh, but not for Nob. /1/

-- Footnote

1. Of the priests at Nob, Abiathar alone escaped the massacre

(1Samuel. xxii.); Gad therefore was not one of them.

-- Footnote

The fact that Chronicles represents the Israelite history in accordance

with the Priestly Code has had the effect of causing its view

of the history to be involuntarily taken as fundamental, but ought much

rather to have caused it to be left altogether out of account where

the object to ascertain what was the real and genuine tradition.

The Books of Judges and Samuel make mention indeed of many sanctuaries,

but never among them of the tabernacle, the most important of all.

For the single passage where the name Ohel Moed occurs (1Samuel

ii.22 is badly attested, and from its contents open to suspicion. /2/

-- Footnote

2. The passage does not occur in the LXX, and everywhere else in

1Samueli-iii the sanctuary of Shiloh is called hekal, that is to say,

certainly not a tent.

-- Footnote

Of the existence of the ark of Jehovah there certainly are distinct traces

towards the end of the period of the judges (compare 1Samuel iv.-vi.)

But is the ark a guarantee of the existence of the tabernacle?

On the contrary its whole history down to the period of its being deposited

in the temple of Solomon is a proof that it was regarded as quite

independent of any tent specially consecrated for its reception.

But this abolishes the notion of the Mosaic tabernacle; for

according to the law, the two things belong necessarily to each

other; the one cannot exist without the other; both are of

equally great importance. The tabernacle must everywhere

accompany the symbol of its presence; the darkness of the holy

of holies is at the same time the life-element of the ark; only

under compulsion of necessity, and even then not except under the

covering of the curtains, does it leave its lodging during a

march, only to return to it again as soon as the new halting-place

is reached. But according to 1Samuel iv. seq., on the other hand,

it is only the ark that goes to the campaign; it alone falls into

the hands of the Philistines. Even in chap. v., where the symbol

of Jehovah is placed in the temple of Dagon at Ashdod, not a word

is said of the tabernacle or of the altar which is necessarily

connected with it; and chap. vi. is equally silent, although

here the enemy plainly gives back the whole of his sacred spoil.

It is assumed that the housing of the ark was left behind at

Shiloh. Very likely; but that was not the Mosaic tabernacle, the

inseparable companion of the ark. In fact, the narrator speaks of

a permanent house at Shiloh with doors and doorposts; that

possibly may be an anachronism /1/ (yet why ?) ;

-- Footnote

1. Compare similar passages in Josh. vi.19, 24, ix.27, where the very

anachronism shows that the idea of the tabernacle was unknown

to the narrator. That, moreover. a permanent house did actually exist

then at Shiloh follows from the circumstance that Jeremiah (vii. 12)

speaks of its ruins. For he could not regard any other than a

pre-Solomonic sanctuary as preceding that of Jerusalem; and

besides, there is not the faintest trace of a more important temple

having arisen at Shiloh within the period of the kings.

-- Footnote

but so much at least may be inferred from it that he had not any idea

of the tabernacle, which, however, would have had to go with the ark

to the field. If on this one occasion only an illegal exception

to the Law was made, why in that case was not the ark, at least after

its surrender, again restored to the lodging from which, strictly

speaking, it ought never to have been separated at all? Instead of

this it is brought to Bethshemesh, where it causes disaster,

because the people show curiosity about it. Thence it comes to

Kirjathjearim, where it stays for many years in the house of a

private person. From here David causes it to be brought to

Jerusalem,-- one naturally supposes, if one thinks in the lines of

the view given in the Pentateuch and in Chronicles, in order that

it may be at last restored to the tabernacle, to be simultaneously

brought to Jerusalem. But no thought of this, however obvious it

may seem, occurs to the king. In the first instance, his

intention is to have the ark beside himself in the citadel; but he

is terrified out of this, and, at a loss where else to put it, he

at last places it in the house of one of his principal people,

Obed-Edom of Gath. Had he known anything about the tabernacle, had

he had any suspicion that it was standing empty at Gibeon, in the

immediate neighbourhood, he would have been relieved of all

difficulty. But inasmuch as the ark brings blessing to the house

of Obed-Edom,--the ark, be it remembered, in the house of a soldier

and a Philistine, yet bringing down, not wrath, but blessing,--/1/

-- Footnote

1. The Chronicle has good reason for making him a Levite. But Gath

without any qualifying epithet, and particularly in connection with David,

is the Philistine Gath, and Obed-Edom belongs to the bodyquard, which

consisted chiefly of foreigners and Philistines. His name,

moreover, is hardly Israelite.

-- Footnote

the king is thereby encouraged to persevere after all with his original

proposal, and establish it upon his citadel. And this he does in a tent

he had caused to be made for it (2Samuel vi.17), which tent of David

in Zion continued to be its lodging until the temple was built.

Some mention of the tabernacle, had it existed, would have been

inevitable when the temple took its place. That it did not serve

as the model of the temple has already been said; but it might

have been expected at least that in the account of the building of

the new sanctuary some word might have escaped about the

whereabouts of the old. And this expectation seems to be realised

in 1Kings viii.4, which says that when the temple was finished

there were brought into it, besides the ark, the Ohel Moed and all

the sacred vessels that were therein. Interpreters hesitate as to

whether they ought to understand by the Ohel Moed the tent of the

ark upon Zion, to which alone reference has been made in the

preceding narrative (1Kings i.39, ii.28-30), or whether it is the

Mosaic tent, which, according to Chronicles, was standing at

Gibeon, but of which the Book of Kings tells nothing, and also

knows nothing (iii.2-4). It is probable that the author of viii.4

mixed up both together; but we have to face the following

alternative. Either the statement belongs to the original context

of the narrative in which it occurs, and in that case the Ohel Moed

can only be the tent on Mount Zion, or the Ohel Moed of 1Kings

viii.4 is the Mosaic tabernacle which was removed from Gibeon into

Solomon's temple, and in that case the allegation has no

connection with its context, and does not hang together with the

premisses which that furnishes; in other words, it is the

interpolation of a later hand. The former alternative, though

possible, is improbable, for the name Ohel Moed occurs absolutely

nowhere in the Books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings (apart from the

interpolation in 1Samuel ii.22b), and particularly it is not used

to denote David's tent upon Mount Zion; and, moreover, that tent

had received too little of the consecration of antiquity, and

according to 2Samuel vii. was too insignificant and provisional to

be thought worthy of preservation in the temple. But if the Ohel

Moed is here (what it everywhere else is) the tabernacle, as is

indicated also by the sacred vessels, then the verse is, as has

been said, an interpolation. The motive for such a thing is easily

understood; the same difficulty as that with which we set out

must have made it natural for any Jew who started from the ideas

of the Pentateuch to look for the tabernacle here, and, if he did

not find it, to introduce it. Yet even the interpolation does not

remove the difficulties. Where is the Mosaic altar of

burnt-offering? It was quite as important and holy as the

tabernacle itself; even in Chronicles it is invariably mentioned

expressly in connection with it, and did not deserve to be

permitted to go to ruin at Gibeon, which, from another point of

view, would also have been extremely dangerous to the unity of

the sacrificial worship. Further, if the sacred vessels were

transferred from the tabernacle to the temple, why then was it

that Solomon, according to 1Kings vii., cast a completely new

set? /1/

-- Footnote

1. The brazen altar cast by Solomon (1Kings viii.64;

2Kings xvi.14, 15) is not now found in the inventory of the temple

furniture in 1Kings vii.; but originally it cannot have been

absent, for it is the most important article. It has therefore

been struck out in order to avoid collision with the brazen altar

of Moses. The deletion is the negative counterpart to the

interpolation of the tabernacle in 1Kings viii.4.

-- Footnote

The old ones were costly enough, in part even costlier than the new, and,

moreover, had been consecrated by long use. It is clear that

in Solomon's time neither tabernacle, nor holy vessels, nor brazen altar

of Moses had any existence.

But if there was no tabernacle in the time of the last judges and

first kings, as little was it in existence during the whole of the

previous period. This is seen from 2Samuel vii., a section with

whose historicity we have here nothing to do, but which at all

events reflects the view of a pre-exilian author. It is there told

that David, after he had obtained rest from all his enemies,

contemplated building a worthy home for the ark, and expressed his

determination to the prophet Nathan in the words, "I dwell in a

house of cedar, and the ark of God within curtains." According to

vi.17, he can only mean the tent which he had set up, that is to

say, not the Mosaic tabernacle, which, moreover, according to the

description of Exodus xxv. seq., could not appropriately be

contrasted with a timber erection, still less be regarded as a

mean structure or unworthy of the Deity, for in point of

magnificence it at least competed with the temple of Solomon.

Nathan at first approves of the king's intention, but afterwards

discountenances it, saying that at present God does not wish to

have anything different from that which He has hitherto had. "I

have dwelt in no house since the day that I brought the children

of Israel out of Egypt, but have wandered about under tent and

covering." Nathan also, of course, has not in his eye the Mosaic

tabernacle as the present lodging of the ark, but David's tent upon

Zion. Now he does not say that the ark has formerly been always

in the tabernacle, and that its present harbourage is therefore in

the highest degree unlawful, but, on the contrary, that the present

state of matters is the right one,--that until now the ark has

invariably been housed under an equally simple and unpretentious

roof. As David's tent does not date back to the Exodus, Nathan is

necessarily speaking of changing tents and dwellings; the reading

of the parallel passage in 1Chron. xvii.5, therefore, correctly

interprets the sense. There could be no more fundamental

contradiction to the representation contained in the Pentateuch

than that embodied in these words: the ark has not as its

correlate a single definite sacred tent of state, but is quite

indifferent to the shelter it enjoys--has frequently changed its

abode, but never had any particularly fine one. Such has been

the state of matters since the time of Moses.

Such is the position of affairs as regards the tabernacle; if it

is determined that the age of the Priestly Code is to hang by

these threads, I have no objection. The representation of the

tabernacle arose out of the temple of Solomon as its root, in

dependence on the sacred ark, for which there is early testimony,

and which in the time of David, and also before it, was sheltered

by a tent. From the temple it derives at once its inner character

and its central importance for the cultus as well as its external

form.

I.III.2. A peculiar point of view is taken up by Theodor Noldeke. He

grants the premisses that the tabernacle is a fiction, of which the

object is to give pre-existence to the temple and to the unity of

worship, but he denies the conclusion that in that case the

Priestly Code presuppose; the unity of worship as already

existing in its day, and therefore is late, than Deuteronomy.

In his Untersuchungen zur Kritik des Alten Testaments (p. 127 seq.)

he says:--

"A strong tendency towards unity of worship MUST have arisen as

soon as Solomon's temple was built. Over against the splendid

sanctuary with its imageless worship at the centre of the kingdom

of Judah, the older holy places MUST ever have shrunk farther into

the background, and that not merely in the eyes of the people,

but quite specially also in those of the better classes and of

those whose spiritual advancement was greatest (compare Amos iv.

4,viii.14). If even Hezekiah carried out the unification in Judah

with tolerable thoroughness, the effort after it MUST surely have

been of very early date; for the determination violently to

suppress old sacred usages would not have been easily made, unless

this had been long previously demanded by theory. The priests at

Jerusalem MUST very specially at an early date have arrived at

the conception that their temple with the sacred ark and the great

altar was the one true place of worship, and an author has clothed

this very laudable effort on behalf of the purity of religion in

the form of a law, which certainly in its strictness was quite

impracticable (ILeviticus xvii.4 seq.), and which, therefore, was

modified later by the Deuteronomist with a view to practice."

What MUST have happened is of less consequence to know than what

actually took place. Noldeke relies solely upon the statement of

2Kings xviii.4, 22, that Hezekiah abolished the high places and

altars of Jehovah, and said to Judah and Jerusalem, "Before this

altar shall ye worship in Jerusalem." With reference to that

statement doubts have already been raised above. How startling

was the effect produced at a later date by the similar ordinance

of Josiah! Is it likely then that the other, although the

earlier, should have passed off so quietly and have left so little

mark that the reinforcement of it, after an interval of seventy

or eighty years, is not in the least brought into connection with

it, but in every respect figures as a new first step upon a path

until then absolutely untrodden? Note too how casual is the

allusion to a matter which is elsewhere the chief and most favoured

theme of the Book of Kings! And there is besides all this the

serious difficulty, also already referred to above, that the man

from whom Hezekiah must, from the nature of the case, have received

the impulse to his reformatory movement, the prophet Isaiah, in

one of his latest discourses expressly insists on a cleansing

merely of the local sanctuaries from molten and graven images,

that is to say, does not desire their complete removal. So much at

least is certain that, if the alleged fact at present under

discussion amounts to anything at all /1/

-- Footnote

1. Little importance is to be attached to 2Kings xviii.22.

The narrative of the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem is not a contemporary

one, as appears generally from the entirely indefinite character of

the statements about the sudden withdrawal of the Assyrians and its causes,

and particularly from xix.7, 36, 37. For in this passage the meaning

certainly is that Sennacherib was assassinated soon after the unsuccessful

expedition of 701, but in point of fact he actually reigned until

684 or 681 (Smith, Assyrian Eponym Canon, pp. 90, 170). Thus the

narrator writes not twenty years merely after the event, but so

long after it as to make possible the elision of those twenty

years: probably he is already under the influence of

Deuteronomy. 2Kings xviii.4 is certainly of greater weight than

2Kings xviii.22. But although highly authentic statements have

been preserved to us in the epitome of the Book of Kings, they

have all, nevertheless, been subjected not merely to the

selection, but also to the revision of the Deuteronomic redactor,

and it may very well be that the author thought himself

justified in giving his subject a generalised treatment, according

to which the cleansing (of the temple at Jerusalem in the first

instance) from idols, urged by Isaiah and carried out by

Hezekiah, was changed into an abolition of the Bamoth with their

Macceboth and Asherim. It is well known how indifferent later

writers are to distinctions of time and degree in the heresy of

unlawful worship; they always go at once to the completed

product. But in actual experience the reformation was doubtless

accomplished step by step. At first we have in Hosea and Isaiah

the polemic directed against molten and graven images, then in

Jeremiah that against wood and stone, i.e., against Macceboth and

Asherim; the movement originated with the prophets, and the chief,

or rather the only, weight is to be attached to their authentic

testimony.

-- Footnote

Hezekiah only made a feeble and wholly ineffectual attempt in this

direction, and by no means "carried out the unification in Judah with

tolerable thoroughness." At the same time, one might concede even

this last point, and yet not give any ground for the theory at

which Noldeke wishes to arrive.

For his assumption is that the effort after unity had its old and

original seat precisely in the priestly circles of Jerusalem. If

the Priestly Code is older than Deuteronomy, then of course the

prophetic agitation for reform of worship in which Deuteronomy had

its origin must have been only the repetition of an older

priestly movement in the same direction. But of the latter we

hear not a single word, while we can follow the course of the

former fairly well from its beginnings in thought down to its

issue in a practical result. It was Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah who

introduced the movement against the old popular worship of the high

places; in doing so they are not in the least actuated by a

deep-rooted preference for the temple of Jerusalem, but by ethical

motives, which manifest themselves in them for the first time in

history, and which we can see springing up in them before our very

eyes: their utterances, though historically occasioned by the

sanctuaries of northern Israel, are quite general, and are directed

against the cultus as a whole. Of the influence of a point of view

even remotely akin to the priestly position that worship in this

or that special place is of more value than anywhere else, and on

that account alone deserves to be preserved, no trace is to be

found in them; their polemic is a purely prophetic one, i.e.,

individual, "theopneust" in the sense that it is independent of all

traditional and preconceived human opinions. But the subsequent

development is dependent upon this absolutely original

commencement, and has its issue, not in the Priestly Code, but in

Deuteronomy, a book that, with all reasonable regard for the

priests (though not more for those of Jerusalem than for the

others), still does not belie its prophetic origin, and above all

things is absolutely free from all and every hierocratic

tendency. And finally, it was Deuteronomy that brought about the

historical result of Josiah's reformation. Thus the whole

historical movement now under our consideration, so far as it was

effective and thereby has come to our knowledge, is in its origin

and essence prophetic, even if latterly it may have been aided by

priestly influences; and it not merely can, but must be

understood from itself. Any older or independent contemporary

priestly movement in the same direction remained at least entirely

without result, and so also has left no witnesses to itself.

Perhaps it occurs to us that the priests of Jerusalem must after

all have been the first to catch sight of the goal, the attainment

of which afterwards brought so great advantage to themselves, but

it does not appear that they were so clever beforehand as we are

after the event. At least there are no other grounds for the

hypothesis of a long previously latent tendency towards

centralisation on the part of the Jerusalem priesthood beyond the

presumption that the Priestiy Code must chronologically precede,

not Deuteronomy merely, but also the prophets. For the sake of

this presumption there is constructed a purely abstract (and as

such perfectly irrefragable) possibility that furnishes a door of

escape from the historical probability, which nevertheless it is

impossible to evade.

How absolutely unknown the Priestly Code continued to be even

down to the middle of the exile can be seen from the Books of

Kings, which cannot have received their present shape earlier than

the death of Nebuchadnezzar. The redactor, who cites the

Deuteronomic law and constantly forms his judgment in accordance

with it, considered (as we have learned from 1Kings iii.2) that

the Bamoth were permissible prior to the building of Solomon's

temple; the tabernacle therefore did not exist for him. Jeremiah,

who flourished about a generation earlier, is equally ignorant of

it, but--on account of the ark, though not necessarily in

agreement with traditional opinion--regards the house of God at

Shiloh (whose ruins, it would seem, were at that time still

visible) as the forerunner of the temple of Jerusalem, and in this

he is followed by the anonymous prophecy of 1Samuel ii.27-36, the

comparatively recent date of which appears from the language

(ii.33), and from the circumstance that it anticipates the

following threatening in iii. In all these writers, and still more

in the case of the Deuteronomist himself, who in xii. actually

makes the unity of the cultus dependent on the previous choice of

Jerusalem, it is an exceedingly remarkable thing that, if the

Priestly Code had been then already a long time in existence,

they should have been ignorant of a book so important and so

profound in its practical bearings. In ancient Hebrew literature

such an oversight could not be made so easily as, in similar

circumstances, with the literature of the present day. And how

comes it to pass that in the Book of Chronicles, dating from the

third century, the Priestly Code suddenly ceases to be, to all

outward seeming, dead, but asserts its influence everywhere over

the narrative in only too active and unmistakable a way? To

these difficulties Noldeke is unreasonably indifferent. He seems

to be of the opinion that the post-exilian time would not have

ventured to take in hand so thoroughgoing an alteration, or rather

reconstruction, of tradition as is implied in antedating the temple

of Solomon by means of the tabernacle. /1/

-- Footnote-- Footnote

1. Jahrb. fuer prot. Theol., i. p. 352: "And now let me ask whether

a document of this kind presenting, as it does, a picture of the

history, land distribution, and sacrificial rites of Israel, as a whole,

which in so many particulars departs from the actual truth, can belong

to a time in which Israel clung to what was traditional with such timid

anxiety?"

-- Footnote

But it is, on the contrary, precisely the mark which distinguished

the post-exile writers that they treat in the freest possible manner,

in accordance with their own ideas, the institutions of the bygone

past, with which their time was no longer connected by any living

bond. For what reason does Chronicles stand in the canon at all,

if not in order to teach us this?

But when Noldeke excuses the ignorance with regard to the

tabernacle on the plea that it is a mere creature of the brain, /2/

-- Footnote

1. Unters., p. 130: "It must always be remembered that the author

in his statements, as in his laws, does not depict actual relations,

but in the first instance his own theories and ideals. Hence the

glorification of the tabernacle," &c. &c.

-- Footnote

He for the moment forgets that there underlies this creation the very

real idea of unity of worship, for the sake of which it would

surely have been very welcome, to the Deuteronomist, for example,

even as a mere idea. It is only the embodiment of the tabernacle

that is fancy; the idea of it springs from the ground of history,

and it is by its idea that it is to be apprehended. And when

Noldeke finally urges in this connection as a plea for the

priority of the Priestly Code that, in spite of the limitation of

sacrifice to a single locality, it nevertheless maintains the old

provision that every act of killing must be a sacrifice, while

Deuteronomy, going a step farther, departs from this, here also his

argument breaks down.

For we read in Leviticus xvii., "What man soever there be of the house

of Israel that killeth an ox or sheep or goat in the camp, or out

of the camp, and bringeth it not to the door of the tabernacle, to

offer them as an offering unto the Lord before the tabernacle of

the Lord, blood shall be imputed unto that man: he hath shed

blood, and that man shall be cut off from among his people: to the

end that the children of Israel may bring their sacrifices which

they offer in the open field, even that they may bring them to

the Lord, to the door of the tabernacle, to the priest, and offer

them for peace-offerings unto the Lord....And they shall no more

offer sacrifices unto devils, after whom they have gone a

whoring."

The intention of this prescription is simply and solely

to secure the exclusive legitimation of the one lawful place of

sacrifice; it is only for this, obviously, that the profane

slaughtering outside of Jerusalem, which Deuteronomy had

permitted, is forbidden. Plainly the common man did not quite

understand the newly drawn and previously quite unknown

distinction between the religious and the profane act, and when he

slaughtered at home (as he was entitled to do), he in doing so

still observed, half-unconsciously perhaps, the old sacred

sacrificial ritual. From this arose the danger of a multiplicity

of altars again furtively creeping in, and such a danger is met,

in an utterly impracticable way indeed, in Leviticus xvii. And it is

worth noticing how much this law, which, for the rest, is based

upon the Book of Deuteronomy, has grown in the narrowness of its

legitimistic mode of viewing things. Deuteronomy thoroughly

recognises that offerings, even though offered outside of

Jerusalem, are still offered to Jehovah; for the author of Leviticus

xvii. this is an impossible Idea, and he regards such offerings

simply as made to devils. /1/

-- Footnote

1. With reference to these rural demons, compare my note in

Vakidi's Maghazi (Berlin, 1882), p. 113. It is somewhat similar,

though not quite the same thing, when the Moslems say that the old

Arabs dedicated their worship to the Jinns; and other instances

may be compared in which divinities have been degraded to demons.

-- Footnote

I refuse to believe that any such thing could have been possible

for one who lived before the Deuteronomic reformation, or even

under the old conditions that were in existence immediately

before the exile.

Leviticus xvii., moreover, belongs confessedly to a peculiar little

collection of laws, which has indeed been taken up into the

Priestly Code, but which in many respects disagrees with it, and

particularly in respect of this prohibition of profane

slaughterings. With reference to the Priestly Code as a whole,

Noldeke's assertion is quite off the mark. The code, on the

contrary, already allows slaughter without sacrifice in the

precepts of Noah, which are valid not merely for all the world,

but also for the Jews. Farther on this permission is not

expressly repeated indeed, but it is regarded as a thing of

course. This alone can account for the fact that the

thank-offering is treated so entirely as a subordinate affair and

the sacrificial meal almost ignored, while in Leviticus vii.22-27

rules are even given for procedure in the slaughter of such animals

as are not sacrificed. /2/

-- Footnote

2. That Leviticus vii.22-27 is not a repetition of the old and fuller

regulations about the thank-offering, but an appendix containing

new ones relating to slaughtering, is clear from "the beast of

which men offer an offering unto the Lord" (ver. 25), and "in all

your dwellings" (ver. z6), as well as from the praxis of Judaism.

-- Footnote

Here accordingly is another instance of what we have already so often

observed: what is brought forward in Deuteronomy as an innovation

is assumed in the Priestly Code to be an ancient custom dating

as far back as to Noah. And therefore the latter code is a growth

of the soil that has been prepared by means of the former.