Isaac...and Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebecca to wife, the
daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Padan Aram, the sister to Laban
the Syrian....And Isaac was 60 years old when Esau and Jacob
were born (xxv. 19, 20, 26c). And Esau was 40 years old when he
took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and
Bashemath, the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and they were a
grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah. And Rebekah said to
Isaac, I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth;
if Jacob also take such wives of the daughters of Heth, of the
daughters of the land, what good shall my life do to me? Then
Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and charged him, saying, Thou
shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan; arise, go to
Padan-Aram to the house of Bethuel thy mother's father, and take
thee a wife from thence of the daughters of Laban thy mother's
brother. And El Shaddai will bless thee, and make thee fruitful
and multiply thee, and give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee
and to thy seed with thee, that thou mayest inherit the land
wherein thou art a stranger, which God gave unto Abraham. And
Isaac sent away Jacob, and he went to Padan-Aram unto Laban ben
Bethuel, the Syrian, the brother of Rebecca, Jacob and Esau's
mother. And Esau saw that Isaac blessed Jacob, and sent him to
Padan-Aram to take him a wife from thence, and that as he blessed
him, he gave him a charge, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of
the daughters of Canaan. Now Jacob hearkened to his father, and
went to Padan-Aram. But Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan
pleased not Isaac his father; then went Esau unto Ishmael, and
took unto the wives which he had Mahalath the sister of Nebaioth
to be his wife (xxvi. 34 seq., xxvii. 46, xxviii. 1-9). And
Laban gave unto his daughter Leah Zilpah his maid for her
handmaid. And he gave him Rachel his daughter to wife. And Laban
gave to Rachel his daughter Bilhah his handmaid to be her maid
(xxix.24, 28b, 29). And the sons of Jacob were twelve. The sons
of Leah: Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, Simeon, Judah, Issachar,
Zebulun. The sons of Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin. The sons of
Bilhah, Rachel's handmaid: Dan and Naphtali. The sons of Zilpah,
Leah's handmaid: Gad and Asher; these are the sons of Jacob,
which were born to him in Padan-Aram (xxxv. 23-26)....[and Jacob
took] all his goods which he had gotten, the gear of his property
which he had gotten in Padan-Aram, to go home to Isaac his father
in the land of Canaan (xxx). 18). And God appeared unto Jacob
when he was coming home from Padan-Aram, and blessed him; and God
said unto him, Thy name is Jacob; thy name shall not be called any
more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name. And God said unto him;
I am El Shaddai; be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company
of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins;
and the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee will I give it,
and to thy seed after thee will I give the land. And God went up
from him in the place where He talked with him. And Jacob called
the name of the place where God spake with him Bethel (xxxv. 9-13,
15). And they departed from Bethel; and when there was but a little
way to come unto Ephrath, Rachel died, and was buried there in the
way to Ephrath; the same is Bethlehem (xxxv. 16a, 19, cf. xlviii.
7, xlix. 3I). And Jacob came unto Isaac his father unto Mamre,
unto Kirjath-Arba, which is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac dwelt
as strangers. And the days of Isaac were a hundred and eighty
years. And Isaac gave up the ghost, and died, and was gathered
unto his people, being old and full of days; and his sons Esau
and Jacob buried him" (xxxv. 27-29.) Then follow the generations
of Esau in chapter xxxvi. /1/
-- Footnote
1. Only part of this chapter, however, belongs to the Priestly
Code.
-- Footnote
"And Esau took his wives, and his sons, and his daughters, and all
the souls of his house, and his cattle, and all his beasts, and all
his substance, which he had got in the land of Canaan, and went
into the land of Seir from the face of his brother Jacob. For their
riches were more than that they might dwell together, and the land
of their sojourn could not bear them because of their cattle. And
Esau dwelt in Mount Seir; Esau is Edom. And Jacob dwelt in the land
of the sojourn of his father, in the land of Canaan (xxxvi. 6-8,
xxxvii. 1).
These are the Toledoth of Jacob...(xxxxvii. 2). And they took their
cattle, and their goods, which they had gotten in the land of Canaan,
and came into Egypt, Jacob and all his seed with him, his sons,
and his sons' sons, and all his seed, brought he with him
into Egypt" (xlvi. 6, 7).
Then follows the enumeration of the seventy souls of which his seed
was then composed.
"And Jacob and his sons came to Egypt to Joseph; and Pharaoh the king
of Egypt heard it. And Pharaoh said to Jacob, How many are the days
of the years of thy life? And Jacob said to Pharaoh, The days
of the years of my sojourning are a hundred and thirty years; few and
evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained
unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers, in the days of
their sojourning. And Joseph placed his father and his brethren,
and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best part of
the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded (xlvii.
5b, 6, LXX, xlvii. 7-11). And they settled there, and grew and
multiplied exceedingly. And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt
seventeen years, and the whole age of Jacob was 7 years and 140
years (xlvii. 27b, 28)....And Jacob said unto Joseph, El Shaddai
appeared unto me at Luz, in the land of Canaan, and blessed me,
and said unto me, Behold, I will make thee fruitful and multiply
thee, and I will make of thee a multitude of peoples; and will give
this land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession.
And now thy two sons which were born unto thee in Egypt, before I
came unto thee in Egypt, are mine; Ephraim and Manasseh shall be
mine, as Reuben and Simeon. And the issue which thou begettest
after them shall be thine, and shall be called after the name of
their brethren in their inheritance. And when I came from Padan,
Rachel died to me in the land of Canaan, in the way, when there
was but a little way to come into Ephrath, and I buried her
there, in the way to Ephrath; the same is Bethlehem (xlviii.
3-7, and v. 7, cf. xlix. 31)...[and his other sons also] he
blessed; and he charged them, and said unto them, I am to be
gathered unto my people, bury me with my fathers in the cave of
the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of
Canaan, which field Abraham bought from Ephron the Hittite, for a
hereditary burying-place-there they buried Abraham and Sarah his
wife, there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and there I
buried Leah--the possession of the field and of the cave that is
therein from the children of Heth. And Jacob made an end of
commanding his sons, and he gathered up his feet into the bed,
and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his fellow-tribesmen
(xlix. 28b-33). And his sons carried him into the land of Canaan,
and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which Abraham
had bought for a hereditary burying-place from Ephron the Hittite,
over against Mamre (l. 12, 13). And these are the names of the
children of Israel which came into Egypt, with Jacob they came,
every one with his house; Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar,
Zebulon, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher. And all the souls
that came out of Jacob's loins were seventy souls; and Joseph was
in Egypt. And the children of Israel were fruitful and increased
abundantly, and the land was filled with them, and the Egyptians
made the children of Israel their servants with rigour, in all
their work which they wrought by them with rigour, and they
made their lives bitter with hard bondage (Exodus i. 1-7, 13,
14). And the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage;
and they cried, and their cry because of the bondage came up
unto God, and God heard their groaning, and God remembered His
covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, and God took
notice (ii. 23-25). And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him,
I am Jehovah. I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob
by the name of El Shaddai; but by my name Jehovah was I not
known unto them; and I made a covenant with them to give them the
land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were
strangers. And I have heard the groaning of the children of
Israel, that the Egyptians keep them in bondage, and I have
remembered my covenant" (vi. 2 seq.).
That is the whole of it. As a rule nothing more is aimed at than
to give the mere links and articulations of the narrative. It is
as if Q were the scarlet thread on which the pearls of JE are
hung. In place of the somewhat loose connections of the Jehovist,
the narrative of the Priestly Code shows a firmly jointed
literary form; one remarkable feature of which is to be seen in
the regular titles which stand at the head of the various
sections. Each section begins with the words )LH TWLDWT (_hae sunt
generationes_), from which Genesis derives its name. /l/
-- Footnote
1 *)AUTH (H BIBLOS GENESEWS ii. 4 LXX. Hence Ewald's name for the
Priestly Code, which is very appropriate for Genesis, or perhaps
generally for the book of the four covenants--the Book of Origins.
-- Footnote
In the rest of the historical literature of the Old Testament nothing
like this as yet appears. It is also characteristic that whenever
the title occurs, introducing a new, section, the contents of the
preceding section are first of all briefly recapitulated so as to
show the place of the link upon the chain.
The Priestly Code enters as little as possible on the contents of
the various narratives. The predicates are stripped off, so far
as they admit of such treatment, and the subjects duly entered
in a catalogue with connecting text. In this way the history
almost shrinks to the compass of a genealogy with explanations--
the genealogy at least forms the principal contents of the history,
and here appears in such proportions and such systematic fashion
as nowhere else. This has been regarded as a proof that Q belongs
to an older stage of development of Hebrew historiography than JE.
There can be no doubt, it is said, /1/ that the oldest Hebrew,
-- Footnote
I Riehm, "die s.g. Grundschrift des Pentateuchs" in Studien und
Kritiken, 1872, p. 296.
-- Footnote
or indeed Oriental, history began with the historical notices
and traditions inserted in the tribal or family catalogues.
Yet we know positively that in the Books of Judges, Samuel,
and Kings, there are no genealogical statistics at all, while
Chronicles, and what belongs to Chronicles, is full of them.
We know also that songs such as those in Josh. x. 12, 13; Jud. v.;
2Samuel i. 19 seq., iii. 33 seq. are the oldest historical
monuments, and that a number of them are found in JE and not
a single one in Q. Herder's theory of the development of history
out of genealogy will not apply here, /2/ but indeed what we have
-- Footnote
2 Nor in the case of the Arabs, as has been well shown by Sprenger
against Caussin de Perceval (Essai, preface, p. ix.).
-- Footnote
to do with here is not history proper at all, but folklore.
It is true that with the Jehovist also the genealogy underlies
the narrative as its skeleton. It is the natural chain to link
the different stories together, and even at a time when the
latter were still separate and only circulated orally, the
genealogy was not unknown to the people. When stories were told
of Isaac and Ishmael, and Lot and Esau, every one knew at once
who these personages were, and how they were related to Israel
and to one another. But this was merely the presupposition of
the narratives, known as a matter of course to the hearers;
the interesting element in them consisted in those traits
which the Priestly Code omits. Stories of this kind compel
attention because they set forth the peculiarities of different
peoples as historically and really related to each other, not
according to an empty embryological relation. It is the temper
displayed by different races, not the stem of their relationship,
that makes the point of the stories; their charm and their very
life depend on their being transparent and reflecting the historic
attitude of the time which gave them birth. The clearer the traces
they display of love and hatred, jealousy of rivals and joy in
their fall, the nearer are we to the forces which originated the
tradition about early times. In the Priestly Code all those
stories are absent in which there is anything morally objectionable,--
those for example in which the cowardice of the patriarchs
endangers the honour of their wives, those of Sarah's cruel
jealousy of Hagar, and of the unlovely contention of Leah and
Rachel for husband and children, of the incest of Lot's
daughters, of the violation of Dinah. All hatred, and strife,
and deceit in the patriarchal family disappear: Lot and Abraham,
Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, agree to separate: of the
tricks of Laban and Jacob to each other, of the treachery of
Simeon and Levi to Shechem, of the enmity Joseph's brethren bore
to him, there is not a word in the Priestly Code. It is not
merely that "psychological decorations," as they have been
called, are left out; the very heart of the business has been
cut out. That Moab and Ammon, Ishmael and Edom, were Hebrew
peoples, all more nearly or more distantly related to the
Israelites, that the Aramaeans too were closely connected with
the Hebrews by blood and by marriage, that this tribe lives in
one district contiguous to Palestine, that in another--this is what
the Priestly Code has to tell. Dry ethnographical and
geographical facts like these are presented in a genealogical
form; all we learn of the patriarchs is their marriages and
births and how they separated to the various dwelling-places of
their descendants. And folklore could not possibly be directed
to such facts as these at a period when these relations were all
matters of fact and familiar to every child. The Priestly Code,
moreover, strips the legends of the patriarchs of their local as
well as their historical colour; they are kept at a distance from
all the places of the sacredness of which the Jehovist makes them
the founders. /1/
-- Footnote
1. Hupteld gives a curious turn to this, saying that in the
Priestly Code Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have much more permanent
settlements. But it is this work that insists so often on the
fact that the patriarchs were pilgrims and had nowhere a fixed
residence: it only says that Abraham dwelt in the land of Canaan,
and names no particular place even as the scene of the theophany
in chapter xvii. It is only when the question of burying Sarah
and Abraham arises that there is a change. Something must be
done, and the field of Machpelah near Hebron is acquired (no doubt
JE reported this, but the account of it in that source is lost) as
a possession of the patriarchal family, where it now settles more
permanently. That Isaac and Jacob continue to dwell at the grave
of Abraham is a statement of which the significance is negative
rather than positive, and on the other hand the patriarchal
journeys up and down in JE are not designed to represent them as
wandering nomads, but serve to bring them in contact with all the
sacred places with which they had special associations,
-- Footnote
No historical geography is needed in order to understand the
narrative of the Priestly Code in Genesis: but that is only to
say that it stands quite away from the soil out of which oral
tradition arises. It deals in no etymology, no proverbs nor
songs, no miracles, theophanies nor dreams, and is destitute of
all that many-coloured poetic charm which adorns the Jehovistic
narratives. But this proves not its original simplicity but its
neglect of the springs from which legend arises, and of its most
essential elements. /1/ What remains is anything but historical
objectivity: it is the formula and nothing more.
-- Footnote
1. Riehm (op. cit. p. 302 seq.) thinks it is made out that the
religious tradition of remote antiquity is distinguished by its
"modest simplicity", and by a "style suited to its exalted
subject." Only in the course of time was it adorned with all sorts
of miraculous and mysterious elements, and that by the "fancy of
the people," which, however, does not so easily gain entrance
into serious literature(!) He appeals to the fact that the
conception of angels, though certainly long developed with the
people, occurs in the earlier prophets only in isolated instances,
and in the later prophets, as Ezekiel, Zechariah, Daniel, more
frequently. It is difficult to sift out what is true and what is
false in this confused argument. In the Priestly Code there are,
it is true, no angels, but on the other hand we have Azazel and
Seirim (2Chronicles xi. 15; Isaiah xiii. 21, xxxiv. 14, comp.
supra), for where the gods are not, the ghosts have sway.
In one of the two main sources of the Jehovist (J), we find
chiefly the Mal'ak Jahve (message of Jehovah); that is Jehovah
Himself in so far as He appears and manifests Himself, whether in
a natural phenomenon or in human form. Different are the B'ne
Elohim, beings of divine substance: they perhaps are indicated
in the 1st plural in the mouth of Jehovah (Genesis iii. 22, xi. 7).
Both of these are doubtless very old. In the other principal
source (E) a mixture appears to have taken place: the heavenly
hosts are not only the children and companions of Deity, but also
its messengers, conductors of the communication between heaven and
earth (:xviii. 12); here we have the Mal'akim beside God and in
the plural. This view also is not exactly a late one, as we see
from the vision of Micaiah (t Kings xxii. 19). What does Riehm
mean by high antiquity? A period from which no monuments are
preserved to us? Why does he limit his attention to the
prophetic literature? He concedes that the idea of angels was
early present "in the fancy of the people," and he should have
been equal to the further concession that those who wrote down the
FOLKLORE occupied a somewhat different position to POPULAR BELIEF
from that of the prophetic preachers of repentance. Not even the
historical books admit of being measured by the same standard in
this matter as the pre-historic tradition. And which is the more
original--that the angels use a ladder as in Genesis, or that they
have wings as in Isaiah? And finally as for the reference to
Ezekiel (?), Zechariah, and Daniel, the difference appears to me to
be tolerably plain between a systematic angelology which
operates always with numbers and names and the childlike belief in
angels. The former removes God to a distance, the latter brings Him
near.
-- Footnote
As with the legend of the beginnings of things, so with the legend
of the patriarchs: what is essential and original is the individual
element in the several stories; the connection is a secondary matter,
and only introduced on the stories being collected and reduced to
writing. But in the Priestly Code the individuality of the several
stories is simply destroyed: to such an extent is the connection
dwelt on. What meaning is there in the statement that Jacob was all
at once called Israel, i.e., Fight-God (xxxv. 10), if no mention is
made of his wrestling with El, which was the occasion of his change
of name? Have we anything like the true history of Joseph in the
Priestly Code? Can we regard it as the original history, when
the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is dismissed in a
subordinate clause, as is done in xix. 29 ? The remarkable
admission has been made, /1/ that it is plain from the summary
-- Footnote
1. Riehm, op.. cit. p. 292.
-- Footnote
manner of reporting of the Priestly Code, that the author could
have told his story at much greater length, had it been
consistent with the plan of his work to do so, and that this
certainly points to sources where greater detail was used. The
more detailed source, however, which is thus taken for granted,
need by no means, it is said, have been a written one, and least
of all the Jehovistic narrative before us; on the contrary, we
are told, the state of the case is best satisfied by the
assumption that the author held a more detailed narrative to be
unnecessary, because the oral tradition, living in the mouth of
the people, was quite able to fill in the colours in his outlines
and to convert his chronistic notices into living pictures. But
this is merely an attempt to elude the necessity for exactly
comparing the Priestly Code and the Jehovist. The question is,
which of the two writings stands nearest to the starting-point?
Is it the one which attaches most importance to elements which are
foreign to the nature of oral tradition altogether and only added
in literary composition? It would be a curious thing if the
writing down of the tradition began with writing down what the
legend did not contain. What is set before us in the Priestly
Code is the quintessence not of the oral tradition, but of the
tradition when already written down. And the written account of
the primitive history which it employs is the Jehovistic
narrative. The order in which the popular legends are there placed
here becomes the very kernel of the narrative. There the plan
was hidden behind the execution, but here it comes forward not
indeed essentially changed, but sharp and accentuated, as the
principal feature of the whole.
VIII.II.3. The Jehovist still lives in the spirit of the legend,
but the Priestly Code is strange to that spirit, and does violence
to the legend, by treating it from its own point of view, which is
quite different from the old one. Moral and religious culture is
further advanced; and hence the removal of real or apparent offences
against morality and of notions which are too childish, or superstitious,
or even mythical. If the Godhead appears, it must not be patent
to the senses, at least it must not be seen in visible form.
Jehovah speaks with Jacob, but not in a dream from the heavenly
ladder; He reveals Himself to Moses, but not in the burning bush;
the notion of revelation is retained, but the subsidiary
incidents which must be added to make a concrete of the abstract,
are stripped off. It is a matter of indifference under what forms
or through what media a man receives revelation, if only the fact
stands sure; in other words, revelation is no longer a living
reality of the present, but a dead dogma for the past. The
progress of culture in the Priestly Code is most of all evident
in the learned historical treatment with which the legend is
overlaid. First of all there is the chronology, which we
encountered even in the legend of the origins of mankind, and
which is naturally continued in the patriarchal legend. Here
indeed we see with special plainness how foreign learned
calculation is to the poetical materials; in some instances the
facts lead to quite a different view from that of the numbers.
Following the numbers of the Priestly Code we may, with the
Rabbis, regard Shem and Eber as the venerable heads of the Jewish
school in which the child Jacob learned his letters and the Torah.
Then Jacob's sojourn in Mesopotamia lasts about eighty years, and
all this time Isaac is Iying on his death-bed; after being long
dead for us, he suddenly appears again, but only to die. And
hand in hand with the chronology there goes the general
predilection of the Priestly Code for numbers and names, which
displays itself even in Genesis, though not nearly so marked
there as in the later books of the Pentateuch. Oral folklore can
very well contain round numbers, such as the twelve sons and the
seventy souls of the family of Jacob, the twelve wells and the
seventy palm trees at Elim, the seventy elders and the twelve
spies; but a chronological system, whole lists of exact and
considerable numbers, bare catalogues of personal names, none of
them having any significance, dates and measurements such as
those in the account of the flood in the Priestly Code, require
writing even to originate, not to speak of transmitting them.
These art-products of pedantry toke the place of the living
poetic detail of the Jehovist narrative; the element of episode
has to give way to the seriousness of dry history.
It is also a mark of historical pedantry that the mixing up of
the period of the patriarchs with a later period is avoided as
anachronistic. In the Jehovist the present everywhere shines
through, he in no way conceals his own age; we are told that
Babylon is the great world-city, that the Assyrian Empire is in
existence, with the cities of Niniveh and Calah and Resen; that
the Canaanites had once dwelt in Palestine, but had long been
absorbed in the Israelites. The writer of the Priestly Code is
very careful not to do anything like this. /1/ He brushes up the
-- Footnote
1. Hence also archaisms such as Kirjath-Arba, Luz, Ephrath.
Compare the antiquarian lore in Deuteronomy i.-iv. and in
Genesis xiv.
-- Footnote
legend and makes history of it according to the rules of art; he
kills it as legend, and deprives it of all real value, such as it
possesses, not indeed for the history of primitive times, but for
that of the age of the kings.
The history of the first men and of the patriarchs is divided by
the Priestly Code into three periods, each of them opened by a
covenant. The covenant with Adam (Genesis i. 28-ii. 4) is the
simplest; it is not called a covenant, but it is the basis of the
second covenant with Noah (ix. 1-17), which modifies it in
important particulars, and brings it nearer to the present age.
The covenant with Abraham (Genesis xvii.), which alone is ratified
with the succeeding patriarchs, does not apply to the whole of
mankind, but only to Abraham's seed, and especially to Israel.
The first sign of the covenant is the Sabbath (Genesis ii. 3;
comp. Exodus xxxi. 12 seq.; Ezekiel xx. 12, 20), the second
the rainbow (Genesis ix. 12), the third circumcision (xvii. 10).
The first parent of mankind is enjoined to use a purely vegetable
diet, the father of mankind after the, flood receives permission
to slaughter animals; but he is expressly ordered not to eat
flesh in the blood, and besides, to shed the blood of no man.
What is said to Noah remains good for Abraham; but to the latter
God promises that his posterity by Sarah shall possess the land
of Canaan, and this is further assured by the purchase of the
cave of Machpelah for a family burying-place, the purchase being
executed according to all the forms of law, with prolonged
negotiations. Further, God reveals Himself to Abraham as El
Shaddai, and under this name He also manifests Himself to Isaac
(xxviii. 3) and Jacob (xxxv. 11), repeating to them the promise
of the possession of the land. It is pointed out with emphasis
that God was not known to the pre-Mosaic time under His Israelite
name, that He revealed Himself to the patriarchs only as El
Shaddai, and as Jehovah first to Moses (Exod. vi. 2, 3). With
a similar intention, which is not far to seek, the time of the
patriarchs is kept free of the other Mosaic forms of worship;
hence we have here no sacrifices nor altars, no distinction of
clean and unclean beasts, nor anything of the kind. Now till
within a short time ago, there was a great inclination (no one
will be found at this date to acknowledge that he felt it) to
admire the sobriety and faithfulness of the Priestly Code, as
shown in this observance of the different religious stages.
But in fact we can only admire these advantages in it, if we
believe that the religion was at first naturalistic, that then
all at once it became a good deal more positive, and then quite
positive in the year 1500 B.C. How can we regard it as showing
historical faithfulness, that the patriarchs were allowed to
slaughter, but not to sacrifice, and that first the Sabbath was
introduced, then the rainbow, then circumcision, and at last
sacrifice, under Moses? It is natural that Jacob at Bethel should
give tithes of all that he possesses, unnatural that the eponymous
hero should not in worship above all things have left a good example
to his posterity. What is it but a theory, that the name Jehovah
was first revealed to Moses, and through him to the Israelites,
and that it was quite unknown before?--a theory which certainly
cannot be upheld, for Moses could have done nothing more irrational
than to introduce a new name for the God of their fathers, to whom
he directed his people,--and yet a theory which, from the correlation
between Jehovah the God of Israel and Israel the people of Jehovah,
readily suggests itself, and is not altogether peculiar to the
author of the Priestly Code. /1/. He had a pattern which suggested
-- Footnote
1. Exodus vi. 2, 3 (Q) = iii. 13, 14 (JE). The burning bush shows
the theophany in the Jehovist to be the earlier. In the Priestly
Code it almost loses the character of a theophany entirely. But
this is also quite clear on a comparison of Exodus vii. 1 (Q) and
iv. 16 (JE). The phrase vii. 1, " Behold, I make thee a god to
Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet," is a
degradation of the corresponding passage, iv. 16 "Aaron shall be
to thee for a mouth, and thou shalt be to him for a god." For if
Aaron is the prophet or the mouth of Moses, then in the original
and only appropriate way of thinking of the matter, Moses is a
god for Aaron, not for Pharaoh. By the way is there anything in
the similarity between Sene and Sinai?
-- Footnote
certain lines, and these he traces strongly and with a system;
and he even goes so far as to avoid the name of Jehovah even in
his own narrative of the pre-Mosaic period. Even when speaking
in his own person, he says Elohim, not Jehovah, down to Exodus vi.
The three periods and the three corresponding covenants of the
early age are preliminaries to the fourth period and the fourth
covenant. The narrator everywhere has an eye to the Mosaic law,
and the thought of it determined the plan which comes so prominently
into view in his representation of the origins of human history.
The great features of this plan are the great official transactions
of Jehovah with the patriarchs. In these we have not a narrative
but only speeches and negotiations; the preliminary laws are given
in them, which, as they advance step by step, prepare the way
for the great Law, namely, the Mosaic. The law of worship has
taken the place of the legend of worship. In the legend the
sacred usages and customs arise, as it were, spontaneously, in
connection with any occasion, placed in the early sacred time,
which may serve to account for them. Jehovah does not make it
statutory that the sinew of the thigh may not be eaten; but He
wrestles with Israel, and injures the sinew of his thigh during
the wrestling, and for this reason the children of Israel do not
eat thereof. In the following story it is explained how it came
about that the Israelites circumcise young boys (Exodus iv. 25
seq.). As Moses was returning from Midian to Goshen, he spent a
night on the road, and Jehovah fell upon him with the intention of
killing him. His wife, Zipporah, however, took a flint and cut
off the foreskin of her son, and touched Moses L:RAGLFYW with it,
saying, Thou art a blood-bridegroom to me. Then Jehovah let him
go. Thus Zipporah circumcises her son instead of her husband,
makes the latter symbolically a blood-bridegroom, and thereby
delivers him from the wrath of Jehovah to which he is exposed,
because he is not a blood-bridegroom, ie., because he has not
submitted to circumcision before his marriage. In other words,
the circumcision of male infants is here explained as a milder
substitute for the original circumcision of young men before
marriage. /1/ Compare with this the style in which in Genesis xvii
-- Footnote
1. That this is in fact the original custom is clear from the word
XTN, which signifies both circumcision and bridegroom (or in
Arabic, son-in-law). This explains the meaning of XTN DMYM in
Exodus iv. 25. The original usage is still in force with some
Arab tribes. In Genesis xxxiv. Shechem has to submit to
circumcision before marriage.
-- Footnote
the Priestly Code institutes the circumcision of male children on
the eighth day after birth. This institution completely throws
into the shade and spoils the story out of which it arose, namely,
the promise of the birth of Isaac as a reward to Abraham of the
hospitality he showed Jehovah at Hebron. But there is more than
a difference in form, there is a material contradiction between
the Jehovistic legend and the priestly law. The law purifies the
legend, that is to say, denies all its main features and motives.
As we saw in the first chapter there is a conscious polemic at work
in the representation in the Priestly Code that Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob erect no altars, and practice no religious rites, and
that they have no connection with the sacred places with which
in JE they are inseparably associated. The popular religious
book preserved to us in the Jehovistic Genesis, not corrected
to any great extent, though certainly to some extent, tells how
the ancestors and representatives of Israel founded the old popular
worship at the principal sites at which it was kept up. The law
of the legitimate cultus of Jerusalem, as it lies before us in the
Priestly Code, reforms and destroys the old popular worship on
the basis of Mosaic, i.e., prophetical ideas. The tabernacle
does not harmonize with the sanctuaries of Hebron, Beersheba,
Shechem, Kadesh, Mahanaim, Lahai-Roi, Bethel; the patriarchs live
at Hebron only because they are to be buried there, not to
entertain the Deity under the oak of Mamre and to build an altar
there. The heretical mac,c,ebas, trees and wells, disappear, and
with them the objectionable customs: that God should have
summoned Abraham to offer up to Him his only son is an idea the
Priestly Code could not possibly entertain. The whole material
of the legend is subordinated to legislative designs: the
modifying influence of the law on the narrative is everywhere
apparent.
The attitude of Judaism to the old legend is on the whole negative,
but it added some new elements. While the patriarchs are not
allowed to sacrifice, only to slaughter, they have, on the other
hand, the Sabbath /1/ and circumcision. In this they are like
-- Footnote
I The Sabbath is not a Mosaic institution according to the Priestly
Code. But it is presupposed in Exodus xvi., and according to Genesis
ii. 3, it was in force from the beginning of the world. With the
old Israelites the Sabbath was much less important in relation to
worship than the festivals: in Judaism the opposite was the case.
-- Footnote
the Jews in Babylon, who were deprived of the national cultus, and
replaced it with these two symbols of religious membership and
union, which were independent of the temple of Jerusalem. In the
exile, after the cessation of the service of the altar, the Sabbath
and circumcision attained that significance as symbols--in the
genuine old meaning of the Greek word--as practical symbols of
Judaism, which they retain to the present day. The emphasis is
noteworthy with which the Priestly Code always insists on the
fact that the patriarchs sojourned in a strange land, that they
were _Gerim_. If we also consider that Abraham is said to have
migrated into Palestine from Ur, from Chaldaea, it is hardly possible
to reject the idea that the circumstances of the exile had some
influence in moulding the priestly form of the patriarchal
legend. In spite of all the efforts of the historian, and all the
archaic appearance of his work, it may in that case still be the
fact that the surroundings of the narrator found positive
expression in his description of the patriarchal times.
VIII.III.
<VIII.III.1.> In the Jehovistic history-book Genesis is a most
important part, and occupies at least a half of the whole work:
in the Priestly Code, Genesis quite disappears in comparison with
the later books. Only with the Mosaic legislation does this work
arrive at its own ground, and it at once stifles the narrative
under a mass of legislative matter. Here also there is a thin
historical thread running parallel to the Jehovist, but we constantly
lose sight of it from the repeated interruptions made by extensive
ritual laws and statistical statements.
"These last four books of Moses have been made quite unreadable by
a most melancholy, most incomprehensible, revision. The course of
the history is everywhere interrupted by the insertion of
innumerable laws, with regard to the greater part of which it is
impossible to see any reason for their being inserted where they
are." The dislocation of the narrative by these monstrous growths
of legislative matter is not, as Goethe thinks, to be imputed to
the editor; it is the work of the unedited Priestly Code itself,
and is certainly intolerable; nor can it be original; the
literary form of the work at once shows this. It is still
possible to trace how the legal matter forces its way into the
narrative, and once there spreads itself and takes up more and
more room. In the Jehovist, one form of the tradition may still
be discerned, according to which the Israelites on crossing the
Red Sea at once proceeded towards Kadesh, without making the detour
to Sinai. We only get to Sinai in Exodus xix., but in Exodus
xvii. we are already at Massah and Meribah, ie., on the ground
of Kadesh. That is the scene of the story of Moses striking water
out of the rock with his staff: there the fight with the Amalekites
took place--they lived there and not at Sinai--there also the visit
of Jethro, which requires a locality at some distance from his home
(at Sinai), a place where the people had not merely a temporary
encampment, but their permanent seat of justice. /1/
-- Footnote
1. Kadesh is also called Meribah, the seat of justice, or Meribath
Kadesh, the seat of justice at the holy spring. Meribah is in
its meaning the same as Midian.
-- Footnote
Hence the narratives which are told before the arrival at Sinai are
repeated after the departure from it, because the locality is the
same before and after, namely, the wilderness of Kadesh, the true
scene of the Mosaic history. The institution of judges and elders
concludes the narrative before the great Sinai section, and begins
the narrative after it (Ex. xviii., Numbers xi ). The story of
the manna and the quails occurs not only in Exodus xvi., but also
in Numbers xi; and the rocky spring called forth by Moses at
Massah and Meribah is both in Exodus xvii. and Numbers xx. In
other words, the Israelites arrived at Kadesh, the original object
of their wanderings, not after the digression to Sinai but
immediately after the Exodus, and they spent there the forty
years of their residence in the wilderness. Kadesh is also the
original scene of the legislation. "There He made them statute and
judgment, and there He proved them," we read in a poetical
fragment, before the Sinai section (Exodus xv. 25), which is now
placed in the narrative of the healing of the waters at Marah, but
stands there quite isolated and without bearing on its context.
The curious conjunction of judgment and trial points unmistakably
to Massah and Meribah (ie., judgment and trial-place), that is, to
Kadesh, as the place spoken of. But the legislation at the seat of
judgment at Kadesh is not represented as a single act in which
Moses promulgates to the Israelites once for all a complete and
comprehensive body of laws; it goes on for forty years, and
consists in the dispensation of justice at the sanctuary, which he
begins and the priests and judges carry on after him according to
the pattern he set. This is the idea in the extremely
instructive narrative in Exodus xviii., of which Kadesh is the
scene. And in this way the Torah has its place in the historical
narrative, not in virtue of its matter as the contents of a code,
but from its form as constituting the professional activity of
Moses. It is in the history not as a result, as the sum of the
laws and usages binding on Israel, but as a process; it is shown
how it originated, how the foundation was laid for the living
institution of that Torah which still exists and is in force in
Israel.
The true and original significance of Sinai is quite independent
of the legislation. It was the seat of the Deity, the sacred
mountain, doubtless not only for the Israelites, but generally
for all the Hebrew and Cainite (Kenite) tribes of the surrounding
region. The priesthood of Moses and his successors was derived
from the priesthood there: there Jehovah appeared to him in the
burning bush when he was keeping the sheep of the priest of Midian,
from there He sent him to Egypt. There, to the Israelites, Jehovah
still dwelt long after they had settled in Palestine; in the song
of Deborah He is summoned to come from Sinai to succour His
oppressed people and to place Himself at the head of His
warriors. According to the view of the poet of Deuteronomy xxxiii.
the Israelites did not go to Jehovah to Sinai, but the converse;
He came to them from Sinai to Kadesh: "Jehovah came from Sinai
and shone from Seir unto them; He lightened from Mount Paran and
came to Meribath Kadesh." /1/
-- Footnote
1. We do not know where Sinai was situated, and the Bible is
scarcely at one on the subject. Only dilettanti care much for
controversy on the matter. The Midian of Exodus ii. tells us
most: it is probably Madian on the Arabic shore of the Ked sea.
In our passage Sinai seems to be S.E. of Edom; the way from
Sinai to Kadesh is by Seir and Paran.
-- Footnote
But it is not difficult to see how it came to be thought more seemly
that the Israelites should undertake the journey to Jehovah. This
was at first put in the form that they appeared there before the
face of Jehovah to worship Him and offer Him a sacrifice (Exodus
iii. 12), and at their departure they received the ark instead
of Jehovah Himself, who continued to dwell on Sinai (Exodus
xxxiii.); for the ark represents Jehovah, that constitutes its
significance, and not the tables of the law, which were not in it
at first. It was a further step to make Sinai the scene of the
solemn inauguration of the historical relation between Jehovah and
Israel. This was done under the poetic impulse to represent the
constituting of the people of Jehovah as a dramatic act on an
exalted stage. What in the older tradition was a process which
went on quietly and slowly, occupied completely the whole period
of Moses, and was at the beginning just such as it still continued
to be, was now, for the sake of solemnity and vividness,
compressed into a striking scene of inauguration. If this were
done, the covenant between Jehovah and Israel must receive a
positive (as well as a negative) character, that is to say,
Jehovah Himself must announce to the people the basis and the
conditions of it. Thus the necessity arose to communicate in
this place the contents of the fundamental laws, and so the matter
of the legislation made its way into the historical narrative.
But that it did not belong originally to this place we see from
the confusion which obtains even in the Jehovistic Sinai section
(Exodus xix.-xxiv., xxxii.-xxxiv.). The small bodies of laws
which are here communicated may in themselves be old enough,
but they are forced into the narrative. It is only of what is
relatively the most recent corpus, the Decalogue (in E), that
this cannot be asserted.
As the Jehovistic work was originally a pure history-book, so
Deuteronomy, when it was first discovered, was a pure law-book.
/1/
-- Footnote
1. Chapters xii.-xxvii. The two historical introductions, chapter
i.-iv. and chapter v.-xi. were added later, as well as the
appendices, chapter xxviii. seq.
-- Footnote
These two works, the historical and legal, were at first quite
independent of each other; only afterwards were they conjoined,
perhaps that the new law might share in the popularity of the old
people's book, and at the same time infuse into it its own spirit.
It made it the easier to do this, that, as we have just seen, a
piece of law had already been taken up into the Jehovistic
history-book. To the Decalogue, at the beginning of the period of
the forty years, was now added Deuteronomy at the close of that
period. The situation--of which the law itself knows nothing--is
very well chosen, not only because Moses is entitled when making
his testament to anticipate the future and make a law for the time
to come, but also because, the law being placed at the close of
his life, the thread of the narrative is not further interrupted,
the law being simply inserted between the Pentateuch and the Book
of Joshua. This combination of Deuteronomy with the Jehovist was
the beginning of the combination of narrative and law; and the
fact that this precedent was before the author of the Priestly
Code explains how, though his concern was with the Torah alone,
he yet went to work from the very outset and comprised in his work
the history of the creation, as if it also belonged to the Torah.
This manner of setting forth the Torah in the form of a history
book is not in the least involved in the nature of the case; on
the contrary, it introduces the greatest amount of awkwardness.
How it came about can only be explained in the way above
described; an antecedent process of the same nature in literary
history led the way and made the suggestion. /2/
-- Footnote
2. That the author of the Priestly Code had before him the
combination of the Sinai legislation of the Jehovist and
Deuteronomy is shown further by the circumstance that he has both
a legislation at Mount Sinai and a legislation in the Arboth Moah,
and in addition to these one in the wilderness of Sinai.
-- Footnote
As from the literary point of view, so also from the historical,
the Moses of the Jehovist appears more original than the Moses of
the Priestly Code. To prove this is, it is true, the aim of the
entire present work: yet it will not on that account be thought
out of place if we take advantage of this convenient opportunity
for a brief sketch and criticism of the conflicting historical views
of Moses and his work in the two main sources of the Pentateuch.
According to the Priestly Code Moses is a religious founder and
legislator, as we are accustomed to think of him. He receives and
promulgates the Torah, /1/ perhaps not as a book--though, when we
-- Footnote
1. The law might accordingly be called Moses, as with the Ethiopians
the Psalter is called David,
-- Footnote
come to think of it, we can hardly represent the transaction to
ourselves in any other way--but certainly fixed and finished as
an elaborate and minutely organised system, which comprises the
sacred constitution of the congregation for all time to come.
The whole significance of Moses consists in the office of messenger
which he holds as mediator of the law; what else he does is of no
importance. That the law is given once for all is the great event
of the time, not that the people of Israel begins to appear on the
stage of the world. The people is there for the sake of the law,
not the law for the sake of the people. With the Jehovist, on the
contrary, Moses' work consists in this, that he delivers his
people from the Egyptians and cares for it in every way in the
wilderness. In the prelude scene from his youth, when he smites
the Egyptian and seeks to adjust the dispute of his brethren
(Exodus ii. 11 seq.), his whole history is prefigured. His care
for the Israelites embraces both catering for their sustenance,
and making and preserving peace and order among them (Numbers xi.).
The Torah is but a part of his activity, and proceeds from his
more general office as the guardian of the young people, who has,
as it were, to teach the fledgling to fly (Numbers xi. xii.).
According to Exodus xviii. his Torah is nothing but a giving of
counsel, a finding the way out of complications and difficulties
which had actually arisen. Individuals bring their different
cases before him; he pronounces judgment or gives advice, and in
so doing teaches the people the way they should go. Thus he is
the beginner of the teaching of Jehovah which lives on after him
in priest and prophet. Here all is life and movement: as Jehovah
Himself, so the man of God, is working in a medium which is alive;
is working practically, by no means theoretically, in history,
not in literature. His work and activity may be told in a
narrative, but the contents of it are more than a system, and are
not to be reduced to a compendium; it is not done and finished off,
it is the beginning of a series of infinite activities. In the
Priestly Code the work of Moses lies before us clearly defined
and rounded off; one living a thousand years after knows it as
well as one who saw it with his eyes. It is detached from its
originator and from his age: lifeless itself, it has driven the
life out of Moses and out of the people, nay, out of the very
Deity. This precipitate of history, appearing as law at the
beginning of the history, stifles and kills the history itself.
Which of the two views is the more historical, we can accordingly
be at no loss to decide. It may be added that in the older Hebrew
literature the founding of the nation and not the giving of the
law is regarded as the theocratic creative act of Jehovah. The
very notion of the law is absent: only covenants are spoken of,
in which the representatives of the people undertake solemn
obligations to do or leave undone something which is described
in general terms.
Another point of difference must be mentioned here, though indeed
it is a matter which has been before us more than once already.
That which is in the Priestly Code the subject-matter of the
Torah of Moses, namely, the institution of the cultus, the
Jehovist traces to the practice of the patriarchs--one more result
of the difference between law and legend. The Moses of the
Priestly Code conflicts not only with the future, but with the
past; he comes into collision with history on every side. That
view is manifestly the only natural one according to which the
worship is not specifically Israelite, not a thing instituted by
Moses in obedience to a sudden command of the Deity, but an
ancestral tradition. But at the time when the Priestly Code was
drawn up the worship was certainly the one thing that made Israel
Israel. In it the church, the one congregation of worship, takes
the place of the people even in the Mosaic age--sorely against
history, but characteristically for the author's point of view.
Now even such authorities as Bleek, Hupfeld, and Knobel have been
misled by the appearance of historical reality which the Priestly
Code creates by its learned art here as well as in the history
of the patriarchs. They have regarded the multiplicity of
numbers and names, the minute technical descriptions, the strict
keeping up of the scenery of camp-life, as so many signs of
authentic objectivity. Noldeke made an end of this critical
position once for all, but Colenso is properly entitled to the
credit of having first torn the web asunder. /1/
-- Footnote
1. See Kuenen in the Theol. Tijdschrift, 1870, p. 393-401.
-- Footnote
The boldness with which numbers and names are stated, and the
preciseness of the details about indifferent matters of furniture,
do not prove them to be reliable: they are not drawn from
contemporary records, but are the fruit solely of late Jewish
fancy, a fancy which, it is well known, does not design nor
sketch, but counts and constructs, and produces nothing more than
barren plans. Without repeating the description of the tabernacle
in Exodus xxv. word for word, it is difficult to give an idea how
circumstantial it is; we must go to the source to satisfy
ourselves what the narrator can do in this line. One would imagine
that he was giving specifications to measurers for estimates, or
that he was writing for carpet-makers and upholsterers; but they
could not proceed upon his information, for the incredibly matter-
of-fact statements are fancy all the same, as was shown in chapter
i. The description of the tabernacle is supplemented in the Book
of Numbers by that of the camp; the former being the centre, this
is the circle drawn about it, and consists of an outer ring, the
twelve secular tribes, a middle ring, the Levites, and an innermost
one, the sons of Aaron: a mathematical demonstration of the
theocracy in the wilderness. The two first chapters contain the
census of the twelve tribes, and their allocation in four quarters,
nothing but names and numbers. To this first census chapter xxxiv.
adds another at the close of the forty years, in which the various
detailed figures are different, but the total is about the same.
This total, 600,000 warriors, comes from the older tradition, but
is proved to be quite worthless by the fact that in a really
authentic document the levy of Israel in the time of Deborah is
stated to be 40,000 strong. Still, the Priestly Code is entitled
to the credit of having made the total a little less round, and of
having broken it up into artificial component parts. The muster of
the people is followed in Numbers iii. iv. by the dedication of
the tribe of Levi to the sanctuary, in compensation for the
firstborn males of the Israelites who up to that time had not been
sacrificed nor yet redeemed. There are 22,273 firstborn males to
be provided for, and there are 22,000 male Levites above a month
old. The 273 extra firstborn males are specially redeemed at five
shekels a head. What accuracy! But what of the fact that a people
of at least two millions has only 22,273 firstborn males, or say
50,000 firstborn of both sexes? This gives an average of forty
children to every woman, for the firstborn in the sense of the law
is that which first opens the womb. The continuation of Numbers iii.
iv. is in chapter viii. As the Levites are an offering of firstlings
to the sanctuary on the part of the people, which, however, is not
to be sacrificed but made over to the priests, the characteristic
rite of this sort of sacred due has to be gone through with them,
namely, an act imitating that of throwing into the flame of the altar
(Aristeas 31,1. 5). To think of Moses and Aaron heaving the 22,000
men! Not less striking as an example of this kind of fiction is the
story of Numbers xxxi. Twelve thousand Israelites, a thousand from
each tribe, take the field against Midian, extirpate without any
fighting--at least nothing is anywhere said of this important
point--the whole people, slay all the men and a part of the women,
take captive the unmarried girls, and suffer themselves no loss
whatever. The latter point is asserted very definitely.
"The captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds came to
Moses, and said to him, Thy servants have taken the sum of the men
of war which are under our charge, and there lacketh not one of us."
Of the immeasurable booty of men and cattle Jehovah assigns half
to those who took the field and took part in the battle, the other
half to the congregation; and the former are to give the 500th
part to the priests, the latter the 50th part to the Levites. The
execution of this order is especially reported as follows:
"The booty which the men of war had taken was 675,000 sheep, 72,000
beeves, 61,000 asses, and 32,000 women that had not lain by man.
And the half which was the portion of them that went out to war
was 337,500 sheep, and Jehovah's tribute of the sheep was 675;
36,000 beeves, tribute to Jehovah 72; 30,500 asses, tribute to
Jehovah 61; 16,000 persons, tribute to Jehovah 32. And Moses
gave the tribute to Jehovah to Eleazar the priest. But the other
half, which Moses divided to the children of Israel, the half due
to the congregation, was 337,500 sheep, 36,000 beeves, 30,500 asses,
16,000 persons, and of the children of Israel's half Moses took one
of fifty and gave them to the Levites."
The calculation of the contribution to Jehovah was quite
easy for Moses, as the 500th part of the half is equivalent to
the 1000th part of the whole; he had only to leave off the
thousands from the first totals. In conclusion, the captains
brought offerings to Jehovah of golden dishes, chains, bracelets,
rings, and earrings, altogether 16,750 shekels weight, as
atonement for their souls
"But that was only the gold which the captains had taken as booty,
for the men of war had taken spoil, every man for himself."
We may perhaps be allowed to speculate as to the relation between
these 16,750 shekels which in this passage the captains alone offer
to the tabernacle OF THE GOLD ORNAMENTS OF THE MIDIANITES, and the
1700 shekels which in Judges viii. the whole people dedicate OF THE
GOLD ORNAMENTS OF THE MIDIANITES to set up an image in Ophra.
It is less easy to account on the theory of pure fiction for the
numerous names sometimes arranged together like a catalogue than
for reported circumstances and numbers. There can certainly be
no doubt that the forty places which are mentioned in the list of
encampments in the wanderings, really existed in the region the
Israelites are reported to have traversed. But he who is
satisfied with this as evidence that we have before us here a
historical document of primitive antiquity, will never be
disturbed by criticism. Was it such a difficult matter to find
out forty definite stations in the wilderness for the forty
years of the wanderings? Even if the elements of the composition
are not fictitious, that is far from proving the composition
itself to be authentic. And in the case of lists of the names of
persons, the elements are often of an extremely doubtful nature;
and here it is well to keep in view the principle of Vatke (op.
cit. p. 675) that no confidence is to be placed in subjects devoid
of predicates, and that persons are not to be taken for real who
have nothing to do. The dozens of names in Numbers i. vii. x.
are almost all made to the same pattern, and have no similarity
whatever to the names genuinely old. The fact that the name of
Jehovah does not enter into their composition only shows that the
composer was not forgetful of his religio-historical theory.
By its taste for barren names and numbers and technical
descriptions, the Priestly Code comes to stand on the same line
with the Chronicles and the other literature of Judaism which
labours at an artificial revival of the old tradition [VI.I.2
VI.III.2., VI.III.3. ad fin.]. Of a piece with this tendency is
an indescribable pedantry, belonging to the very being of the
author of the Priestly Code. He has a very passion for classifying
and drawing plans; if he has once dissected a genus into different
species, we get all the species named to us one by one every
time he has occasion to mention the genus. The subsuming use of
the prepositions Lamed and Beth is characteristic of him. He
selects a long-drawn expression wherever he can; he does not weary
of repeating for the hundredth time what is a matter of course
(Numbers viii.), he hates pronouns and all abbreviating substitutes.
What is interesting is passed over, what is of no importance is
described with minuteness, his exhaustive clearness is such as
with its numerous details to confuse our apprehension of what is
in itself perfectly clear. This is what used to be described
in the phraseology of historical criticism as epic breadth. /1/
-- Footnote
1. Riehm, p. 292. "The style is quiet, simple, free from all
rhetorical and poetical ornament, and the expression in speaking
of similar objects has an epic uniformity. Impressive as many
pieces are, just from their unassuming simplicity and
objectivity, there is nowhere any apparent effort to produce
effect or to raise the interest of the reader by the resources of
literary art." For an opposite opinion compare Lichtenberg,
Werke, ii. 162.
-- Footnote
VIII.III.2. Having thus attempted to describe the general contrast
of the Priestly Code and the Jehovist in the Mosaic period, it
remains for us to compare the several stories in the two works.
The Exodus from Egypt is everywhere regarded as the commencement
of Israelite history. In the Priestly Code it is made the epoch
of an era (Exodus xii. 2), which is afterwards dated from, not only
in years but even in months and days. It is unquestionable that
this precise style of dating only came into use among the Hebrews
at a very late period. *We find in the historical books only one
statement of the month in which an event took place (1Kings vi.
38), and in that case the day is not given. To the prophetic
writers dates were of some importance, and the growth of the
practice may to some extent be traced with them. Amos first came
forward "two years before the earthquake." /2/
-- Footnote
2. Agh. xv. 11, 17: when al-Walid b. al-Mughira was dead, the
Arabs dated after his death to the year of the elephant, which
thereafter was made an epoch. According to others they reckoned
nine years after the death of Hisham b. al-Mughira, to the time
when they built the Caaba, and then they dated from the building
of the Caaba. Comp. the 'Am al Ramada and the 'Am al Ru'af.
-- Footnote
The most precise date in Isaiah is "the year in which king Uzziah
died." Numbers of years are first found in Jeremiah, "the thirteenth
year of king Josiah," and a few more instances. All at once there was
a change: Haggai and Zechariah, prophets who grew up in the Babylonian
exile, always give dates, not only the year and month, but the day of
the month as well. In the Priestly Code this precise reckoning,
which the Jews obviously learned from the Chaldeans, is in use
from the age of Moses onwards.
In the Jehovist the ostensible occasion of the Exodus is a festival
which the children of Israel desire to hold in honour of their God
in the wilderness. In the Priestly Code this occasion
disappears; there can be no pre-Mosaic festivals. But with this
the reason falls away for which Jehovah kills the firstborn of the
Egyptians, He does it because the king of Egypt is keeping from Him
the firstborn of the Israelites, which ought to be offered to Him
at the festival; for the celebration in question is the sacrificial
festival of the first-fruits of cattle in spring. In the older
tradition the festival is the first thing; it explains the circumstances
of the Exodus and the time of year at which it took place: in the
later one the relation is reversed--the killing of the firstborn of
the Egyptians leads to the sacrifice of the firstborn of Israel,
the Exodus in spring is followed by the festival in spring as its
consequence. The Priestly Code follows this younger tradition,
and deviates from the original account still more widely in the
view it gives of the passover. It obliterates completely the
connection between the passover and the sacrifice of the
firstborn, and represents it not as a giving of thanks to Jehovah
for having slain the firstborn of Egypt, but as instituted at the
moment of the Exodus to induce Jehovah to spare the firstborn of
Israel. How all this is to be understood and judged of we have
discussed more at large in the chapter on the festivals (III.I.1.,
III.III.1.).
As to the accounts given in the two sources of the crossing of the
Red Sea, all we can say is that that of the Jehovist (J) is the
more complicated. According to him the sea is dried up by a
strong wind, and the Egyptians succeed at first in crossing it,
and encounter the Hebrews on the eastern shore during he night.
"But in the morning watch Jehovah turned, in the pillar of fire
and of the cloud, against the host of the Egyptian, and overthrew
the host of the Egyptian, and hindered the wheels of his chariot
and caused him to drive heavily. Then the Egyptian said: I will
flee before Israel, for Jehovah fighteth for them against Egypt.
But the sea turned back towards morning to its ordinary level,
and the Egyptians fled against it, and Jehovah shook them into
the midst of the sea" (Exodus xiv. 24, 25, 27).
According to the Priestly Code /1/ the waves meet over the pursuers,
-- Footnote
1. And the younger tradition generally: also according to the
song Exodus xv., which apart from the beginning, which is old,
is a psalm in the manner of the Psalms and has no similarity
with the historical songs, Judges v., 2Samuel i., Numbers xxi.
-- Footnote
before they reach the further shore; the idea is much simpler,
but poorer in incidental features.
The miracle of the manna (Exodus xvi.) is taken advantage of
in the Priestly Code as a very suitable occasion for urging on
the people a strict sanctification of the Sabbath: none falls
on the seventh day, but what is gathered on the sixth keeps two
days, while at other times it requires to be eaten quite fresh.
This pursuit of a legal object destroys the story and obscures
its original meaning, as no one can help seeing. Nor is it any
sign of originality, rather of senility, that in the Priestly Code
the manna is not eaten raw, but boiled and baked.
At Mount Sinai Moses receives, according to the Priestly Code,
the revelation of--the model of the tabernacle, and he follows
the pattern thus presented to him in the construction, down below,
of the real tabernacle. All further revelation takes place, even
in Moses' time, as far as possible in the tabernacle (Exodus xxv.
22). Even Sinai must not stand any longer than necessary by the
side of the one legitimate seat of Deity. /1/
-- Footnote
1. Compare, however, Jahrbb.fur Deutsche Theologie, 1877, p. 453,
note 1.
-- Footnote
The tables of the law, it appears, are silently presupposed
without being mentioned beforehand, it being of course assumed
that the readers would know all about them from the old tradition.
The outside of the ark, however, is furnished in the most extravagant
style, and with a splendour which other descriptions of the chest
of acacia-wood are far from suggesting. The ark in the Priestly Code
differs indeed in every way from the appearance of it in 1Kings
vii. 23 seq. We are reminded of the Haggada by the covering which
Moses has to put before his face, which is shining with the reflection
of the glory of Jehovah (Exodus xxxiv. 29-35), and by the making of
the brazen laver of the looking-glasses of the women who serve the
temple (Exodus xxxviii. 8, cf. Numbers xvii. 1, 9); these traits
do not, it is true, belong to the original contents of the Priestly
Code, but they belong to its circle.
From Sinai the old tradition takes us by this and that station,
mentioned by name, without delay to Kadesh. Here the chief part
of the forty years' sojourn in the wilderness is spent; this,
as we said before, is the true scene of all the stories that are
told about Moses. The Priestly Code takes us in this period, as
in the legend of the patriarchs, not to definite places, but up and
down in the wilderness of Sinai, in the wilderness of Paran, in
the wilderness of Sin. Kadesh is with evident intention thrust as
far as possible into the background--no doubt on account of the
high sanctity the place originally had as the encampment for
many years of the Israelites under Moses.
The spies are sent out according to the Jehovist from Kadesh,
according to the Priestly Code from the wilderness of Paran.
In the former authority they penetrate to Hebron, whence they
bring back with them fine grapes, but they find that the land
where these grow is not to be conquered. In the latter they
proceed without any difficulty throughout the whole of Palestine
to Lebanon, but have nothing to bring back with them, and advise
against attacking the land because they have not found it
particularly desirable, as if its advantages had been accessible
to faith alone and not to be discovered by unbelieving eyes, as
was actually the case in the time of Haggai and Zechariah, and at
the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. To the genuine Israelite of old,
however, the goodness of his beloved land was not a mere point of
faith which he could ever have doubted. In the former source, as
we judge from Deuteronomy i. 23, only the number of the spies was
given; in the latter all the twelve are named. In the former
Caleb is the only good spy, in the latter Caleb and Joshua. At
first probably neither the one nor the other belonged to this
story; but Caleb easily came to be named as an exception,
because he actually conquered the district from Kadesh to Hebron,
which the spies had declared it impossible to take, and which the
Israelites, alarmed by their account, had not ventured to attack.
Joshua, again, was added from the consideration that, according to
the principle enunciated by the Jehovist in Numbers xiv. 23, 24,
he must have shared the merit of Caleb, because he partook of the
same exceptional reward with him.
In the Jehovist Moses alone instructs the spies and receives their
report on their return; in the Priestly Code Moses and Aaron do
so. In the oldest source of the Jehovist (J) Aaron has not yet
made his appearance; in the Priestly Code Moses must not do any
public act without him. /1/
-- Footnote
1. In the same way, in the former source Joshua always acts alone;
in the latter, he always has the priest Eleazar at his side.
Compare notes [in IV.III.2.]
-- Footnote
Moses is still the moving spirit here as well as there, but Aaron
is the representative of the theocracy, and pains are taken to
secure that he shall never be absent where the representatives of
the theocracy are brought face to face with the community. The
desire to introduce the leader of the hierocracy, and with its
leader the hierocracy itself, into the Mosaic history, has borne
the most remarkable fruits in the so-called story of the rebellion
of the company of Korah. According to the Jehovistic tradition
the rebellion proceeds from the Reubenites, Dathan, and Abiram,
prominent members of the firstborn tribe of Israel, and is directed
against MOSES AS LEADER AND JUDGE OF THE PEOPLE. According to the
version of the main-stock of the Priestly Code (Q), the author of
the agitation is Korah, a prince of the tribe of Judah, and he rebels
not only against Moses, but against MOSES AND AARON AS REPRESENTING
THE PRIESTHOOD. In a later addition, which, to judge from its style,
belongs likewise to the Priestly Code, but not to its original
contents, the Levite Korah appears at the head of a revolt of the
Levites against AARON AS HIGH PRIEST, and demands the equalisation
of the lower with the higher clergy. Starting from the Jehovistic
version, the historical basis of which is dimly discerned to be the
fall of Reuben from its old place at the head of the brother-tribes,
we have no difficulty in seeing how the second version arose out of
it. The people of the congregation, i.e., of the church, having once
come on the scene, the spiritual heads, Moses and Aaron, take the
place of the popular leader Moses, and the jealousy of the secular
grandees is now directed against the class of hereditary priests,
instead of against the extraordinary influence on the community of
a heaven-sent hero. All these changes are the natural outcome of
the importation of the hierocracy into Mosaic times. From the
second version we can go further and understand the origin of the
third. In the earlier version the princes of the tribe of Reuben
were forced to give way to a prince of the tribe of Judah. In
the progress of time Korah the prince of the tribe of Judah is
replaced by the eponymous head of a post-exilic Levitical family,
of the same name. The contest between clergy and aristocracy is
here transformed into a domestic strife between the higher and the
inferior clergy, which was no doubt raging in the time of the
narrator. Thus the three versions are developed, the origin and
collocation of which appears from every other point of view to be
an insoluble enigma. The one arises out of the other in the
direct line of descent: the metamorphoses took place under the
influence of great historical changes which are well known to us;
and in the light of Jewish history from Josiah downwards they
are by no means unintelligible. /1/
-- Footnote
1 The details of the demonstration will be found in the Jahrbb.
fuer Deutsche Theologie, 1776, p. 572 seq., 1877, p. 454, note,
and in the Leyden Theol. Tijdschrift, 1878, p. 139 seq.
-- Footnote
We come to the migration of the Israelites to the land east of the
Jordan. According to the Jehovist the neighbouring tribes place
obstacles in their way, and the land in which they desire to
settle has to be conquered with the sword. The Priestly Code tells
us as little of all this as in an earlier instance of the war with
Amalek; from all it says we should imagine that the Israelites went
straight to their mark and met with no difficulty in the region
in question; the land is ownerless, and the possession of it is
granted by Moses and Eleazar to the two tribes Reuben and Gad
(Numbers xxxii.). But that war may not be completely wanting
under Moses, we have afterwards the war with the Midianites, on
which we have already commented (Numbers xxxi.). There is not much
story about it, only numbers and directions; and in verse 27
there is a suspicion of 1Samuel xxx. 24, as if that passage were
the groundwork of the whole. The passage is extremely
interesting as showing us the views taken of war by the Jews of
the later time who had grown quite unaccustomed to it. The
occasion of the war also is noticeable; it is undertaken not for
the acquisition of territory, nor with any other practical
object, but only to take vengeance on the Midianites for having
seduced some of the Israelites to uncleanness.
The elders of Midian, so the story goes, went to the soothsayer
Balaam to ask his advice as to what should be done against the
Israelite invaders. He suggested a means by which the edge of
the invasion might be broken; the Midianites should give their
daughters to the Israelites for wives, and so deprive the holy
people of their strength, the secret of which lay in their
isolation from other peoples. The Midianites took Balaam's advice
and succeeded in entangling many of the Israelites with the
charms of their women; in consequence of which Jehovah visited
the faithless people with a severe plague. The narrative of the
Priestly Code up to this point has to be pieced together from Numbers
xxxi. 8, 16 and Joshua xiii. 22, and from what is implied in the
sequel of it; at this point the portion of it begins which is
preserved to us (Numbers xxv. 6 seq.), and we are told how the
plague was ultimately stayed. A certain man coolly brings a
Midianitish woman into the camp before the very eyes of Moses and
the weeping children of Israel: then the young hereditary priest
Phinehas takes a spear, transfixes the godless pair, and by this
zeal averts the anger of Jehovah. This narrative is based on the
Jehovistic one, which is also preserved to us only in part (Numbers
xxv. 1-5), about the backsliding of Israel in the camp of Shittim
to the service of Baal-Peor, to which they were seduced by the
daughters of Moab. In the Priestly Code the idolatry has quite
disappeared, all but some unconscious reminiscences, and no
sin is alleged but that of whoredom, which in the original story
merely led up to the main offence. This is done manifestly with
the idea that marriage with foreign women is in itself a falling
away from Jehovah, a breach of the covenant. This change was
extremely suitable to the circumstances of exilic and post-exilic
Judaism, for in these later days there was no immediate danger of
gross idolatry, but it took a good deal of trouble to prevent
heathenism from making its way into the midst of the people under
the friendly form of mixed marriages. The version of the
Priestly Code, however, mixes up with the Baal-Peor story of the
Jehovist the figure of Balaam, which is also borrowed from the
Jehovist but entirely transformed in the process. In the form
under which he appears in the early history he transgresses all
the ideas of the Priestly Code. An Aramaean seer, who is hired
for money and makes all sorts of heathen preparations to
prophesy, but who yet is not an impostor, but a true prophet as
much as any in Israel, who even stands in the most intimate
relations with Jehovah, though cherishing the intention of cursing
Jehovah's people--that is too much for exclusive Judaism. The
correction is effected by the simple device of connecting Balaam
with the following section, and making him the intellectual
instigator of the devilry of the Midianitish women; and in this
new form which he assumes in the Priestly Code he lives on in the
Haggada. The reason for changing the Moabites into Midianites
is not made clear; but the fact is undoubted that the Midianites
never lived in that part of the world.
In the Book of Numbers the narrative sections, which are in the
style and colour of the Priestly Code, have more and more the
character of mere additions and editorial supplements to a
connection which was already there and had a different origin.
The independent main stock of the Priestly Code, the Book of the
Four Covenants, or the Book of Origins (Q), more and more gives way
to later additions, and ceases altogether, it appears, at the
death of Moses. It is at least nowhere to be traced in the first
half of the Book of Joshua, and so we cannot reckon as part of it
those extensive sections of the second half, belonging to the
Priestly Code, which treat of the division of the land. Without a
preceding history of the conquest these sections are quite in the
air; they cannot be taken as telling a continuous story of
their own, but presuppose the Jehovistic-Deuteronomic work. In
spite of distaste to war and to records of war (1Chronicles xxii.
8, xxviii. 3), an independent work like the Book of the Four Covenants
could not possibly have passed over the wars of Joshua in silence.
A comparison of the different accounts of the entry of the
Israelite tribes into the occupation of the conquered land may
close this discussion. The Priestly Code, agreeing in this with
the Deuteronomistic revision, represents the whole of Canaan as
having been made a _tabula rasa_, and then, masterless and denuded
of population, submitted to the lot. First the tribe of Judah
receives its lot, then Manasseh and Ephraim, then the two tribes
which attached themselves to Ephraim and Judah, Benjamin and
Simeon, and lastly the five northern tribes, Zebulon, Issachar,
Asher, Naphtali, Dan.
"These are the inheritances which Eleazar the priest, and Joshua
ben Nun, and the heads of the tribes of the children of Israel
divided for an inheritance by lot in Shiloh before Jehovah at
the door of the tabernacle."
According to the Jehovist, Judah and Joseph appear to have had
their territory allocated to them at Gilgal (xiv. 6), and not by
lot, and to have entered into occupation of it from there. A good
while afterwards the land remaining over is divided by lot among
the seven small tribes still unprovided for, from Shiloh, or
perhaps originally from Shechem (xviii. 2-10). Joshua alone
casts the lot and gives instructions; Eleazar the priest does not
act with him. Even here the general principle of the Priestly
Code, which knows no differences among the tribes, is somewhat
limited; but it is much more decidedly contradicted by
the important chapter, Judges i.
The chapter is, in fact, not a continuation of the Book of Joshua
at all, but a parallel to it, which, while it presupposes the
conquest of the east-Jordan lands, does not speak of the
west-Jordan lands as conquered, but tells the story of the
conquest, and that in a manner somewhat differing from the other
source. From Gilgal, where the "Angel of Jehovah" first set up
his tent, the tribes march out one by one to conquer their "lot"
by fighting; first Judah, then Joseph. We hear only of these two,
and with regard to Joseph we only hear of the very beginning of
the conquest of his land. There is no mention of Joshua; nor
would his figure as commander-general of Israel suit the view here
given of the situation; though it would very well admit of him as
leader of his tribe. The incompleteness of the conquest is
acknowledged unreservedly; the Canaanites lived on quietly in the
cities of the plain, and not till the period of the monarchy,
when Israel had grown strong, were they subdued and made tributary.
This chapter, as well as the main stem of the Book of Judges,
corresponds to the Jehovistic stratum of the tradition, to which
also passages in Joshua, of an identical or similar import, may
be added without hesitation. The Angel of Jehovah is enough to tell
us this. The difference which exists between it and the
Jehovistic main version in the Book of Joshua is to be explained
for the most part by the fact that the latter is of Ephraimite origin,
and in consequence ascribes the conquest of the whole land to the
hero of Ephraim or of Joseph, while Judges i. leans more to the tribe
of Judah. Moreover, we find in the Book of Joshua itself the remnant
of a version (ix. 4-7, 12-14) in which, just as in Judges i., the
actors are the "men of Israel," who "ask counsel of the mouth of
Jehovah," while elsewhere Joshua alone has anything to say, being
the successor of Moses, and drawing his decisions from no source
but the authority of his own spirit. And finally, we have to consider
Exodus xxiii., 20 seq., where also there is a correspondence with
Judges i., in the fact that not Joshua but the Angel of Jehovah
(Judges v. 23) is the leader of Israel, and that the promised land
is not conquered all at once but gradually, in the process of time.
Judges i. presents certain anachronisms, and is partly made up of
anecdotes, but these should not prevent us from acknowledging that
the general view given in this chapter of the process of the
conquest, is, when judged by what we know of the subsequent
period of Israel, incomparably more historical than that in the
Book of Joshua, where the whole thing is done at once with
systematic thoroughness, the whole land being first denuded of its
inhabitants, and then divided by lot among the different tribes.
The latter view may have come about partly from a literal
interpretation of "lot" (Judges xviii. 1), an expression which
properly applies to the farm of a family but is here used for the
territory of a tribe. It was also favoured no doubt by the
tendency to compress a long development into its first great act;
and as this tendency is carried out with the greatest
thoroughness in the Priestly Code, that document stands furthest
from the origin of the tradition. /1/ The same conclusion is led up
-- Footnote
1. In the Deuteronomistic revision (Joshua xxi, 43-45) there is
still a trace of hesitation, a certain difficulty in parting with
the old view altogether (Deuteronomy vii. 22; Judg. iii. 1, 2);
and besides the motives for the change are much plainer here:
the Canaanites are extirpated to guard against the infection of the
new settlers with their idolatary.
-- Footnote
to by the circumstance that the tribe of Joseph is never mentioned,
one of the two tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh, being always spoken of
instead, and that these two tribes are almost put out of sight by
Judah. And yet Joshua, the leader of Ephraim, is leader here also
of all Israel, having been preserved from the old original tradition,
which was Ephraimitic.
It involves no contradiction that, in comparing the versions of the
tradition, we should decline the historical standard in the case
of the legend of the origins of mankind and of the legend of the
patriarchs, while we employ it to a certain extent for the epic
period of Moses and Joshua. The epic tradition certainly
contains elements which cannot be explained on any other
hypothesis than that there are historical facts underlying them;
its source is in the period it deals with, while the patriarchal
legend has no connection whatever with the times of the
patriarchs. /1/ This justifies the difference of treatment.
-- Footnote
1. Some isolated statements there are here also to which the
historical standard may be applied. We may call it a more
accurate representation that Hebron was inhabited in the time of
Abraham by the, Canaanites and Perizzites, than that the Hittites
dwelt there at that time. The latter, according to 2Samuel
xxiv. 6 (Bleek, Einleitung, 4th edition, pp. 228, 597), dwelt in
Coele-Syria, and according to 2Kings vii. 6, in the neihbourhood
of the Aramaeans of Damascus. The statement that the Israelites
received from Pharaoh because they were shepherds the pasture-land
of Goshen on the north-east frontier of Egypt and there dwelt by
themselves, is to be preferred to the statement that they were
settled among the Egyptians in the best part of the land,
-- Footnote
Our last result is still the same: whether tried by the standard of
poetry or by that of history, the Priestly Code stands both in
value and in time far below the Jehovist.
VIII.III.3. In rough strokes I have sought to place before the
reader's view the contrast between the beginning and the end of
the tradition of the Hexateuch. It would not be impossible to trace
the inner development of the tradition in the intermediate stages
between the two extremities. To do this we should have to make
use of the more delicate results of the process of source-sifting,
and to call to our aid the hints, not numerous indeed, but
important, which are to be found in Deuteronomy and in the
historical and prophetical books, especially Hosea. It would
appear that legend from its very nature causes those who deal with
it to strike out variations, that it cannot be represented
objectively at all. Even at the first act of reducing it to
writing the discolouring influences are at work, without any
violence being done to the meaning which dwells in the matter.
We can trace first of all the influence on the tradition of that
specific prophetism which we are able to follow from Amos onwards.
This is least traceable in the old main source of the Jehovist,
in J; and yet it is remarkable that the Asheras never occur in
the worship of the patriarchs. The second Jehovistic source, E,
breathes the air of the prophets much more markedly, and shows a
more advanced and thorough-going religiosity. Significant in this
view are the introduction of Abraham as a Nabi, Jacob's burying the
teraphim, the view taken of the macceba at Shechem (Jos. xxiv.
27), and above all the story of the golden calf. The Deity
appears less primitive than in J, and does not approach men in
bodily form, but calls to them from heaven, or appears to them in
dreams. The religious element has become more refined, but at the
same time more energetic, and has laid hold even of elements
heterogeneous to itself, producing on occasion such strange
mixtures as that in Genesis xxxi. 10-13. Then the law comes in
and leavens the Jehovistic narrative, first the Deuteronomic (in
Genesis even, and then quite strongly in Exodus and Joshua), while
last of all, in the Priestly Code, under the influence of the
legislation of the post-exile restoration, there is brought about
a complete metamorphosis of the old tradition. The law is the key
to the understanding even of the narrative of the Priestly Code.
All the distinctive peculiarities of the work are connected with
the influence of the law: everywhere we hear the voice of theory,
rule, judgment. What was said above of the cultus may be
repeated word for word of the legend: in the early time it may
be likened to the green tree which grows out of the ground as it
will and can; at a later time it is dry wood that is cut and made
to a pattern with compass and square. It is an extraordinary
objection to this when it is said that the post-exile period had
no genius for productions such as the tabernacle or the chronology.
It certainly was not an original age, but the matter was all there
in writing, and did not require to be invented. What great genius
was needed to transform the temple into a portable tent? What sort
of creative power is that which brings forth nothing but numbers
and names? In connection with such an age there can be no question
at least of youthful freshness. With infinitely greater justice
may it be maintained that such theoretical modelling and adaptation
of the legend as is practiced in the Priestly Code, could only gain
an entrance when the legend had died away from the memory and
the heart of the people, and was dead at the root.
The history of the pre-historic and the epic tradition thus passed
through the same stages as that of the historic; and in this
parallel the Priestly Code answers both as a whole, and in every
detail, to the Chronicles. The connecting link between old and
new, between Israel and Judaism, is everywhere Deuteronomy.
The Antar-romance says of itself, that it had attained an age of
670 years, 400 years of which it had spent in the age of ignorance
(i.e. old Arabic heathenism), and the other 270 in Islam. The
historical books of the Bible might say something similar, if
they were personified, and their life considered to begin with
the reduction to writing of the oldest kernel of the tradition and
to close with the last great revision. The time of ignorance
would extend to the appearance of "the book," which, it is true,
did not in the Old Testament come down from heaven all at once
like the Koran, but came into existence during a longer period,
and passed through various phases.
C. ISRAEL AND JUDAISM.
"The Law came in between."--VATKE, p. 183.