Prolegomena to the History of Israel
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Title: Prolegomena to the History of Israel
Author: Julius Wellhausen
Release date: December 1, 2003 [eBook #4732]
Most recently updated: December 25, 2023
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PROLEGOMENA TO THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL ***
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.
CHAPTER II. SACRIFICE.
With the Hebrews, as with the whole ancient world, sacrifice
constituted the main part of worship. The question is whether
their worship did not also in this most important respect pass
through a history the stages of which are reflected in the
Pentateuch. From the results already reached this must be
regarded at the outset as probable, but the sources of information
accessible to us seem hardly sufficient to enable us actually to
follow the process, or even so much as definitely to fix its two
termini.
II.I.1. The Priestly Code alone occupies itself much with the
subject; it gives a minute classification of the various kinds of
offerings, and a description of the procedure to be followed in the
case of each. In this way it furnishes also the normative scheme
for modern accounts of the matter, into which all the other casual
notices of the Old Testament on the subject must be made to fit as
best they can. This point accordingly presents us with an
important feature by which the character of the book can be
determined. In it the sacrificial ritual is a constituent, and
indeed a very essential element, of the Mosaic legislation: that
ritual is not represented as ancient use handed down to the
Israelites by living practice from ancestral times: it was Moses
who gave them the theory of it--a very elaborate one too--and
he himself received his instruction from God (Exodus xxv. seq.;
Leviticus i. seq.). An altogether disproportionate emphasis is
accordingly laid upon the technique of sacrifice corresponding to
the theory, alike upon the when, the where, and the by whom, and
also in a very special manner upon the how. It is from these that
the sacrifice obtains its specific value; one could almost suppose
that even if it were offered to another God, it would by means of
the legitimate rite alone be at once made essentially Jehovistic.
The cultus of Israel is essentially distinguished from all others
by its form, the distinctive and constitutive mark of the holy
community. With it the theocracy begins and it with the
theocracy; the latter is nothing more than the institution for the
purpose of carrying on the cultus after the manner ordained by
God. For this reason also the ritual, which appears to concern the
priests only, finds its place in a law-book intended for the whole
community; in order to participate in the life of the theocracy,
all must of course, have clear knowledge of its essential nature,
and in this the theory of sacrifice holds a first place.
The Jehovistic portion of the Pentateuch also knows of no other
kind of divine worship besides the sacrificial, and does not attach
to it less importance than the Priestly Code. But we do not find
many traces of the view that the sacrificial system of Israel is
distinguished from all others by a special form revealed to Moses,
which makes it the [sic] alone legitimate. Sacrifice is
sacrifice: when offered to Baal, it is heathenish; when offered
to Jehovah, it is Israelite. In the Book of the Covenant and in
both Decalogues it is enjoined before everything to serve no other
God besides Jehovah, but also at the proper season to offer
firstlings and gifts to Him. Negative determinations, for the most
part directed against one heathenish peculiarity or another, occur
but there are no positive ordinances relating to the ritual. How
one is to set about offering sacrifice is taken for granted as
already known, and nowhere figures as an affair for the
legislation, which, on the contrary, occupies itself with quite
other things. What the Book of the Covenant and the Decalogue
leave still perhaps doubtful becomes abundantly clear from the
Jehovistic narrative. The narrative has much more to say about
sacrifice than the incorporated law books, and this may be
regarded as characteristic; in the Priestly Code it is quite the
other way. But what is specially important is that, according to
the Jehovistic history, the praxis of sacrifice, and that too of
the regular and God-pleasing sort, extends far beyond the Mosaic
legislation, and, strictly speaking, is as old as the world
itself. A sacrificial feast which the Hebrews wish to celebrate in
the wilderness is the occasion of the Exodus; Moses already
builds an altar at Rephidim (Exodus xvii.), and, still before the
ratification of the covenant on Sinai, a solemn meal in the
presence of Jehovah is set on foot on occasion of Jethro's visit
(Exodus xviii.). But the custom is much older still; it was
known and practiced by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Noah, the
father of all mankind, built the first altar after the Flood, and
long before him Cain and Abel sacrificed in the same way as was
usual in Palestine thousands of years afterwards. Balaam the
Aramaean understands just as well as any Israelite how to offer
sacrifices to Jehovah that do not fail of their effect. All this
brings out, with as much clearness as could be desired, that
sacrifice is a very ancient and quite universal mode of honouring
the Deity, and that Israelite sacrifice is distinguished not by
the manner in which, but by the being to whom, it is offered, in
being offered to the God of Israel. According to this
representation of the matter, Moses left the procedure in
sacrifice, as he left the procedure in prayer, to be regulated by
the traditional praxis; if there was any definite origination of
the cultus of Israel, the patriarchs must be thought of, but even
they were not the discoverers of the ritual; they were merely
the founders of those holy places at which the Israelites
dedicated gifts to Jehovah, a usage which was common to the whole
world. The contrast with the Priestly Code is extremely
striking, for it is well known that the latter work makes mention
of no sacrificial act prior to the time of Moses, neither in
Genesis nor in Exodus, although from the time of Noah slaughtering
is permitted. The offering of a sacrifice of sheep and oxen as the
occasion of the exodus is omitted, and in place of the sacrifice of
the firstlings we have the paschal lamb, which is slaughtered and
eaten without altar, without priest, and not in the presence of
Jehovah. /1/
-- Footnote
1. With regard to sacrifice, Deuteronomy still occupies the same
standpoint as JE.
-- Footnote
The belief that the cultus goes back to pre-Mosaic usage is
unquestionably more natural than the belief that it is the main
element of the Sinaitic legislation; the thought would be a
strange one that God should suddenly have revealed, or Moses
discovered and introduced, the proper sacrificial ritual. At the
same time this does not necessitate the conclusion that the
Priestly Code is later than the Jehovist. Nor does this follow
from the very elaborately-developed technique of the agenda, for
elaborate ritual may have existed in the great sanctuaries at a
very early period,--though that, indeed, would not prove it to be
genuinely Mosaic. On the other hand, it is certainly a
consideration deserving of great weight that the representation of
the exclusive legitimacy of so definite a sacrificial ritual,
treated in the Priestly Code as the only possible one in Israel,
is one which can have arisen only as a consequence of the
centralisation of the cultus at Jerusalem. Yet by urging this the
decision of the question at present before us would only be
referred back to the result already arrived at in the preceding
chapter, and it is much to be desired that it should be solved
independently, so as not to throw too much weight upon a single
support.
II.I.2. In this case also the elements of a decision can only be
obtained from the historical documents dating from the pre-exilic
time,--the Books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings on the one hand, and
the writings of the prophets on the other. As regards those of the
first class, they represent the cultus and sacrifice on all
occasions as occupying a large place in the life of the nation and
of the individual. But, although it would be wrong to say that
absolutely no weight is attached to the RITE, it is certainly not
the fact that the main stress is laid upon it; the antithesis is
not between RITE and NON-RITE, but between sacrifice TO JEHOVAH and
sacrifice TO STRANGE GODS, the reverse of what we find in the
Priestly Code. Alongside of splendid sacrifices, such as those of
the kings, presumably offered in accordance with all the rules of
priestly skill, there occur others also of the simplest and most
primitive type, as, for example, those of Saul (1Samuel xiv.35) and
Elisha (1Kings xix.2I); both kinds are proper if only they be
dedicated to the proper deity. Apart from the exilian redaction of
the Book of Kings, which reckons the cultus outside of Jerusalem as
heretical, it is nowhere represented that a sacrifice could be
dedicated to the God of Israel, and yet be illegitimate. Naaman
(2Kings v. 17), it is to be supposed, followed his native Syrian
ritual, but this does not in the least impair the acceptability of
his offering. For reasons easily explained, it is seldom that an
occasion arises to describe the ritual, but when such a description
is given it is only with violence that it can be forced into
accordance with the formula of the law. Most striking of all is
the procedure of Gideon in Judges vi.19-21, in which it is manifest
that the procedure still usual at Ophrah in the time of the
narrator is also set forth. Gideon boils a he-goat and bakes in
the ashes cakes of unleavened bread, places upon the bread the
flesh in a basket and the broth in a pot, and then the meal thus
prepared is burnt in the altar flame. It is possible that
instances may have also occurred in which the rule of the
Pentateuch is followed, but the important point is that the
distinction between legitimate and heretical is altogether wanting.
When the Book of Chronicles is compared the difference is at once
perceived.
The impression derived from the historical books is confirmed by
the prophets. It is true that in their polemic against confounding
worship with religion they reveal the fact that in their day the
cultus was carried on with the utmost zeal and splendour, and was
held in the highest estimation. But this estimation does not rest
upon the opinion that the cultus, as regards its matter, goes back
to Moses or to Jehovah Himself, gives to the theocracy its
distinctive character, and even constitutes the supernatural
priesthood of Israel among the nations, but simply upon the belief
that Jehovah must be honoured by His dependents, just as other
gods are by their subjects, by means of offerings and gifts as
being the natural and (like prayer) universally current
expressions of religious homage. The larger the quantity, and the
finer the quality, so much the better; but that the merit arising
from the presentation depends upon strict observance of etiquette
regarded as Jehovah's law is not suggested. Thus it is that the
prophets are able to ask whether then Jehovah has commanded His
people to tax their energies with such exertions? the fact
presupposed being that no such command exists, and that no one
knows anything at all about a ritual Torah. Amos, the leader of
the chorus, says (iv.4 seq.),
"Come to Bethel to sin, to Gilgal to sin yet more, and bring your
sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days, for so ye
like, ye children of Israel."
In passing sentence of rejection upon the value of the cultus he
is in opposition to the faith of his time; but if the opinion had
been a current one that precisely the cultus was what Jehovah had
instituted in Israel, he would not have been able to say, "For so
ye like." "Ye," not Jehovah; it is an idle and arbitrary worship.
He expresses himself still more clearly in v.21 seq.
"I hate, I despise your feasts, and I smell not on your holy days;
though ye offer me burnt-offerings and your gifts, I will not accept
them; neither do I regard your thank-offerings of fatted calves.
Away from me with the noise of thy songs, the melody of thy viols
I will not hear; but let judgment roll on like waters, and
righteousness like a mighty stream. Did ye offer unto me
sacrifices and gifts in the wilderness the forty years, O house
of Israel?"
In asking this last question Amos has not the slightest fear
of raising any controversy; on the contrary, he is following
the generally received belief. His polemic is directed against
the praxis of his contemporaries, but here he rests it upon a
theoretical foundation in which they are at one with him,--on
this, namely, that the sacrificial worship is not of Mosaic origin.
Lastly, if ii.4 be genuine, it teaches the same lesson. By the
Law of Jehovah which the people of Judah have despised it is
impossible that Amos can have understood anything in the remotest
degree resembling a ritual legislation. Are we to take it then
that he formed his own special private notion of the Torah? How in
that case would it have been possible for him to make himself
understood by the people, or to exercise influence over them? Of
all unlikely suppositions, at all events it is the least likely
that the herdsman of Tekoah, under the influence of prophetic
tradition (which in fact he so earnestly disclaims), should have
taken the Torah for something quite different from what it actually
was.
Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah are in agreement with Amos. The first
mentioned complains bitterly (iv.6 seq.) that the priests
cultivate the system of sacrifices instead of the Torah. The
Torah, committed by Jehovah to their order, lays it on them as
their vocation to diffuse the knowledge of God in Israel,--the
knowledge that He seeks truthfulness and love, justice and
considerateness, and no gifts; but they, on the contrary, in a
spirit of base self-seeking, foster the tendency of the nation
towards cultus, in their superstitions over-estimate of which lies
their sin and their ruin.
"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; ye yourselves
(ye priests!) reject knowledge, and I too will reject you
that ye shall not be priests unto me; seeing ye have forgotten
the law of your God, so will I also forget you. The more they are,
the more they sin against me; their glory they barter for shame.
They eat the sin of my people, and they set their heart on their
iniquity."
From this we see how idle it is to believe that the prophets
opposed "the Law;" they defend the priestly Torah, which, however,
has nothing to do with cultus, but only with justice and morality.
In another passage (viii.11 seq.) we read,
"Ephraim has built for himself many altars, to sin; the altars
are there for him, to sin. How many soever my instructions
(torothai) may be, they are counted those of a stranger."
This text has had the unmerited misfortune of having been forced
to do service as a proof that Hosea knew of copious writings
similar in contents to our Pentateuch. All that can be drawn
from the contrast "instead of following my instructions they offer
sacrifice" (for that is the meaning of the passage) is that the prophet
had never once dreamed of the possibility of cultus being made
the subject of Jehovah's directions. In Isaiah's discourses
the well-known passage of the first chapter belongs to this connection:
"To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?
saith the Lord. I am weary with the burnt-offerings of rams
and the fat of fed beasts, and I delight not in the blood of bullocks
and of lambs and of he-goats. When ye come to look upon my face,
who hath required this at your hands?--to trample my courts!"
This expression has long been a source of trouble, and certainly
the prophet could not possibly have uttered it if the sacrificial
worship had, according to any tradition whatever, passed for being
specifically Mosaic. Isaiah uses the word Torah to denote not
the priestly but the prophetical instruction (i.10, ii.3, v.24,
viii.16, 20, xxx.9); as both have a common source and Jehovah is
the proper instructor (xxx.20), this is easily explicable, and is
moreover full of instruction as regards the idea involved;
the contents of the Priestly Code fit badly in with the Torah of i.10.
Lastly, Micah's answer to the people's question, how a return of
the favour of an angry God is to be secured, is of conspicuous
significance (vi.6 seq.):
"Shall I come before Him with burnt-offerings with calves of a year old?
Is the Lord pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of
rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,
the fruit of my body as atonement for my soul?--It hath been
told thee, O man, what is good, and what Jehovah requireth of thee.
Nay, it is to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly
before thy God."
Although the blunt statement of the contrast between cultus
and religion is peculiarly prophetic, Micah can still take
his stand upon this, "It hath been told thee, O man, what Jehovah
requires." It is no new matter, but a thing well known,
that sacrifices are not what the Torah of the Lord contains.
That we have not inferred too much from these utterances of the
older prophets is clear from the way in which they are taken up
and carried on by Jeremiah, who lived shortly before the
Babylonian exile. Just as in vi.19 seq. he opposes the Torah to
the cultus, so in vii.11 seq. he thus expresses himself:
"Add your burnt-offerings to your sacrifices, and eat flesh!
For I said nought unto your fathers, and commanded them nought,
in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning
burnt-offerings or sacrifices. But this thing commanded I them:
hearken to my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my
people, and walk ye in the way that I shall always teach you, that
it may be well with you."
The view indeed, that the prophets (who, from the connection,
are the ever-living voice to which Israel is to hearken) are
the proper soul of the theocracy, the organ by which Jehovah
influences and rules it, has no claim to immemorial antiquity.
But no stress lies upon the positive element here;
enough that at all events Jeremiah is unacquainted with the Mosaic
legislation as it is contained in the Priestly Code. His ignoring
of it is not intentional, for he is far from hating the cultus
(xvii.26). But, as priest and prophet, staying continually in
the temple at Jerusalem, he must have known it, if it had existed
and actually been codified. The fact is one which it is difficult
to get over.
Thus the historical witnesses, particularly the prophets, decide
the matter in favour of the Jehovistic tradition. According to the
universal opinion of the pre-exilic period, the cultus is indeed of
very old and (to the people) very sacred usage, but not a Mosaic
institution; the ritual is not the main thing in it, and is in no
sense the subject with which the Torah deals. /1/
-- Footnote
1. That the priests were not mere teachers of law and morals,
but also gave ritual instruction (e.g, regarding cleanness
and uncleanness), is of course not denied by this. All that is
asserted is that in pre-exilian antiquity the priests' own praxis
(at the altar) never constituted the contents of the Torah,
but that their Torah always consisted of instructions to the laity.
The distinction is easily intelligible to those who choose
to understand it.
-- Footnote
In other words, no trace can be found of acquaintance
with the Priestly Code, but, on the other hand, very clear
indications of ignorance of its contents.
II.I.3. In this matter the transition from the pre-exilic to the
post-exilic period is effected, not by Deuteronomy, but by
Ezekiel the priest in prophet's mantle, who was one of the first to
be carried into exile. He stands in striking contrast with his
elder contemporary Jeremiah. In the picture of Israel's future
which he drew in B.C. 573 (chaps. xl.-xlviii.), in which
fantastic hopes are indeed built upon Jehovah, but no impossible
demand made of man, the temple and cultus hold a central place.
Whence this sudden change? Perhaps because now the Priestly Code
has suddenly awakened to life after its long trance, and become
the inspiration of Ezekiel? The explanation is certainly not to
be sought in any such occurrence, but simply in the historical
circumstances. So long as the sacrificial worship remained in
actual use, it was zealously carried on, but people did not
concern themselves with it theoretically, and had not the least
occasion for reducing it to a code. But once the temple was in
ruins, the cultus at an end, its PERSONNEL out of employment, it is
easy to understand how the sacred praxis should have become a
matter of theory and writing, so that it might not altogether
perish, and how an exiled priest should have begun to paint the
picture of it as he carried it in his memory, and to publish it as
a programme for the future restoration of the theocracy. Nor is
there any difficulty if arrangements, which as long as they
were actually in force were simply regarded as natural, were seen
after their abolition in a transfiguring light, and from the study
devoted to them gained artificially a still higher value. These
historical conditions supplied by the exile sufffice to make clear
the transition from Jeremiah to Ezekiel, and the genesis of Ezekiel
xl.-xlviii. The co-operation of the Priestly Code is here not
merely unnecessary, it would be absolutely disconcerting.
Ezekiel's departure from the ritual of the Pentateuch cannot be
explained as intentional alterations of the original; they are
too casual and insignificant. The prophet, moreover, has the
rights of authorship as regards the end of his book as well as for
the rest of it; he has also his right to his picture of the future
as the earlier prophets had to theirs. And finally, let its due
weight be given to the simple fact that an exiled priest saw
occasion to draft such a sketch of the temple worship. What need
would there have been for it, if the realised picture,
corresponding completely to his views, had actually existed, and,
being already written in a book, wholly obviated any danger lest
the cultus should become extinct through the mere fact of its
temporary cessation?
Here again a way of escape is open by assuming a lifeless
existence of the law down to Ezra's time. But if this is done it
is unallowable to date that existence, not from Moses, but from
some other intermediate point in the history of Israel. Moreover,
the assumption of a codification either as preceding all praxis,
or as alongside and independent of it, is precisely in the case of
sacrificial ritual one of enormous difficulty, for it is obvious
that such a codification can only be the final result of an old
and highly developed use, and not the invention of an idle brain.
This consideration also makes retreat into the theory of an
illegal praxis impossible, and renders the legitimacy of the
actually subsisting indisputable.
II.II.
At all times, then, the sacrificial worship of Israel existed, and
had great importance attached to it, but in the earlier period it
rested upon custom, inherited from the fathers, in the post-exilian
on the law of Jehovah, given through Moses. At first it was naive,
and what was chiefly considered was the quantity and quality of
the gifts; afterwards it became legal,--the scrupulous fulfilment
of the law, that is, of the prescribed ritual, was what was looked
to before everything. Was there then, apart from this, strictly
speaking, no material difference? To answer this question our
researches must be carried further afield, after some preliminary
observations have been made in order to fix our position.
II.II.1. In the Pentateuch the sacrificial ritual is indeed copiously
described, but nowhere in the Old Testament is its significance
formally explained; this is treated as on the whole self-evident
and familiar to every one. The general notion of a sacrifice is
in the Priestly Code that of _qorban_, in the rest of the Old
Testament that of _minha_, /1/ ie., "gift;"
-- Footnote
1. Genesis iv. 3-5, Numbers xvi. 15; 1Samuel ii. 17, 29, xxvi. 19;
Isaiah i. 13; Malachi i. 10-13, ii. 12, 13, iii. 3, 4.
In the Priestly Code _minha_ is exclusively a terminus technicus
for the meal-offering. The general name in the LXX and in the
New Testament is DWRON (Matthew v. 23-24, viii. 4, xv. 5,
xxiii. 18, 19). Compare Spencer, "De ratione et origine
sacrificiorum" (De Legibus Hebraeorum ritualibus, iii.2), by far
the best thing that has ever been written on the subject.
-- Footnote
the corresponding verbs are _haqrib_ and _haggish_, i.e., "to bring
near." Both nouns and both verbs are used originally for the offering
of a present to the king (or the nobles) to do him homage, to make him
gracious, to support a petition (Judges iii. 17 seq.; 1Samuel x. 27;
1Kings v. 1 [A.V. iv.21]), and from this are employed with reference
to the highest King (Malachi i.8).
DWRA QEOUS PEIQAI, DWR' )AIDOIOUS BASILHAS
The gift must not be unseasonably or awkwardly thrust upon the
recipient, not when the king's anger is at white heat, and not by
one the sight of whom he hates.
With respect to the matter of it, the idea of a sacrifice is in
itself indifferent, if the thing offered only have value of some
sort, and is the property of the offerer. Under _qorban_ and _minha_
is included also that which the Greeks called _anathema_. The sacred
dues which at a later date fall to the priest were without doubt
originally ordinary offerings, and amongst these are found even
wool and flax (Deut. xviii. 4; Hos. ii. 7, 11 [A.V. 5, 9] ).
But it is quite in harmony with the naivete of antiquity that as
to man so also to God that which is eatable is by preference
offered; in this there was the additional advantage, that what God
had caused to grow was thus rendered back to Him. In doing this,
the regular form observed is that a meal is prepared in honour of
the Deity, of which man partakes as God's guest. Offering without
any qualifying expression always means a meat or drink offering.
On this account the altar is called a table, on this account also
salt goes along with flesh, oil with meal and bread, and wine with
both; and thus also are we to explain why the flesh, according to
rule, is put upon the altar in pieces and (in the earlier period)
boiled, the corn ground or baked. Hence also the name "bread of
Jehovah" for the offering (Leviticus xxi.22). It is of course true
that "in his offering the enlightened Hebrew saw no banquet to
Jehovah:" but we hardly think of taking the enlightened Protestant
as a standard for the original character of Protestantism.
The manner in which the portions pertaining to God are conveyed to
Him varies. The most primitive is the simple "setting in order"
[ (RK, struere] and "pouring out" [#pk, fundere) in the case of the
shewbread and drink offerings; to this a simple eating and
drinking would correspond. But the most usual is burning, or, as
the Hebrews express it, "making a savour" (HQ+YR), to which
corresponds the more delicate form of enjoyment, that of smelling.
Originally, however, it is God Himself who consumes what the flame
consumes. In any case the burning is a means of conveying the
offering, not, as one might perhaps be disposed to infer from the
"sweet savour" (RYX HNYXX Genesis viii.21), a means of preparing it.
For in ancient times the Hebrews did not roast the flesh, but
boiled it; in what is demonstrably the oldest ritual (Judges
vi. 19), the sacrifice also is delivered to the altar flame boiled;
and, moreover, not the flesh only but also the bread and the meal
are burnt.
As regards the distinction between bloodless and bloody
offerings, the latter, it is well known, are preferred in the Old
Testament, but, strictly speaking, the former also have the same
value and the same efficacy. The incense-offering is represented
as a means of propitiation (Leviticus xvi., Numbers xvii. 12
[A.V. xvi. 47] ), so also are the ten thousands of rivers of oil
figuring between the thousands of rams and the human sacrifice in
Micah vi. That the cereal offering is never anything but an
accompaniment of the animal sacrifice is a rule which does not hold,
either in the case of the shewbread or in that of the high priest's
daily minxa (Leviticus vi. 13 [A.V. 20]; Nehemiahx.35). Only the
drink-offering has no independent position, and was not in any way
the importance it had among the Greeks.
When a sacrifice is killed, the offering consists not of the blood
but of the eatable portions of the flesh. Only these can be
designated as the "bread of Jehovah," and, moreover, only the
eatable domestic animals can be presented. At the same time,
however, it is true that in the case of the bloody offerings a new
motive ultimately came to be associated with the original idea of
the gift. The life of which the blood was regarded as the
substance (2Samuel xxiii.17) had for the ancient Semites something
mysterious and divine about it; they felt a certain religious
scruple about destroying it. With them flesh was an uncommon
luxury, and they ate it with quite different feelings from those
with which they partook of fruits or of milk. Thus the act of
killing was not so indifferent or merely preparatory a step as
for example the cleansing and preparing of corn; on the contrary,
the pouring out of blood was ventured upon only in such a way as
to give it back to the Deity, the source of life. In this way, not
by any means every meal indeed, but every slaughtering, came to
be a sacrifice. What was primarily aimed at in it was a mere
restoration of His own to the Deity, but there readily resulted a
combination with the idea of sacrifice, whereby the latter was
itself modified in a peculiar manner. The atoning efficacy of the
gift began to be ascribed mainly to the blood and to the
vicarious value of the life taken away. The outpouring and
sprinkling of blood was in all sacrifices a rite of conspicuous
importance, and even the act of slaughtering in the case of some,
and these the most valued, a holy act.
II.II.2. The features presented by the various literary sources
harmonise with the foregoing sketch. But the Priestly Code
exhibits some peculiarities by which it is distinguished from the
pre-exilian remains in matters sacrificial.
In the first place, it is characterised in the case of bloodless
offerings by a certain refinement of the material. Thus in the
meal-offerings it will have SLT (simila) not QMX (far). In the
whole pre-exilian literature the former is mentioned only three
times altogether, but never in connection with sacrifice, where,
on the contrary, the ordinary meal is used (Judges vi. 19; 1Samuel
i. 24). That this is no mere accident appears on the one hand from
the fact that in the later literature, from Ezekiel onwards, QMX as
sacrificial meal entirely disappears, and SLT invariably take its
place; on the other hand, from this that the LXX (or the Hebrew
text from which that version was taken) is offended by the
illegality of the material in 1Samuel i. 24, and alters the reading
so as to bring it to conformity with the Law. /1/
-- Footnote
1. Ezekiel xvi. 13, 19, xlvi. 14; I Chronicles ix. 29, xxiii. 22;
Ecclus. xxxv.2, xxxviii. 11, xxxix. 32; Isaiah i. 13 (LXX); lxvi. 3 (LXX).
In the Priestly Code slt occurs more than forty times.
-- Footnote
So also a striking preference is shown for incense. With every
meal-offering incense is offered upon the altar; in the inner sanctuary
a special mixture of spices is employed, the accurately given recipe
for which is not to be followed for private purposes. The offering
of incense is the privilege of the higher priesthood; in the
ritual of the great Day of Atonement, the sole one in which Aaron
must discharge the duties in person, it occupies a conspicuous
place. It has an altogether dangerous sanctity; Aaron's own sons
died for not having made use of the proper fire. It is the cause
of death and destruction to the Levites of Korah's company who are
not entitled to use it, while immediately afterwards, in the hands
of the legitimate high priest, it becomes the means of appeasing
the anger of Jehovah, and of staying the plague. Now of this
offering, thus invested with such a halo of sanctity, the older
literature of the Jewish Canon, down to Jeremiah and Zephaniah,
knows absolutely nothing. The verb Q++R there used invariably
and exclusively of the BURNING of fat or meal, and thereby making
to God a sweet-smelling savour; it is never used to denote the
OFFERING OF INCENSE, and the substantive Q+RT as a sacrificial
term has the quite general signification of that which is burnt on
the altar. /2/
-- Footnote
2. The verb is used in _piel_ by the older writers, in _hiphil_
by the Priestly Code (Chronicles), and promiscuously in both forms
during the transition period by the author of the Books of Kings.
This is the case, at least, where the forms can with certainty be
distinguished, namely, in the perfect, imperative, and infinitive;
the distinction between YQ+R and YQ+YR, MQ+R and MQ+YR rests,
as is well known, upon no secure tradition. Compare, for example,
_qatter jaqtirun_, 1Samuel ii. 16; the transcribers and punctuators
under the influence of the Pentateuch preferred the hiphil. In the
Priestly Code (Chronicles) HQ+YR has both meanings alongside of
each other, but when used without a qualifying phrase it generally
means incensing, and when consuming a sacrifice is intended HMZBXH
is usually added, "on the altar," that is, the place on which the
incense-offering strictly so called was NOT offered. The substantive
Q+RT in the sense of "an offering of incense" in which
it occurs exclusively and very frequently in the Priestly
Code, is first found in Ezekiel (viii. 11, xvi. 18, xxiii. 41) and
often afterwards in Chronicles, but in the rest of the Old
Testament only in Proverbs xxvii. 9, but there in a profane sense.
Elsewhere never, not even in passages so late as 1Samuel ii.28; Psalms
lxvi. 15, cxli. 2. In authors of a certainly pre-exilian date the
word occurs only twice, both times in a perfectly general sense.
Isaiah i. 13: "Bring me no more oblations; it is an abominable
incense to me." Deuteronomy xxxiii. 10: "The Levites shall put incense
(i.e.,the fat of thank-offerings) before thee, and whole
burnt-offerings upon thine altar." The name LBNT (frankincense)
first occurs in Jeremiah (vi. 20, xvii. 26, xli. 5); elsewhere only
in the Priestly Code (nine times), in Isaiah xl.-lxvi. (three
times), in Chronicles and Nehemiah (three times), and in Canticles
(three times). Compare Zephaniah iii. 10; 1Kings ix. 25.
-- Footnote
In enumerations where the prophets exhaust everything pertaining to
sacred gifts and liturgic performances, in which, for the sake
of lengthening the catalogue, they do not shrink from repetitions even,
there is not any mention of incense-offerings, neither in Amos
(iv. 4 seq., v. 21 seq.) nor in Isaiah (i. 11 seq.) nor in Micah
(vi. 6 seq.). Shall we suppose that they all of them forget this
subject by mere accident, or that they conspired to ignore it?
If it had really existed, and been of so great consequence, surely
one of them at least would not have failed to speak of it.
The Jehovistic section of the Hexateuch is equally silent, so also
the historical books, except Chronicles, and so the rest of the prophets,
down to Jeremiah, who (vi.20) selects incense as the example of a rare
and far-fetched offering: "To what purpose cometh there to me incense
from Sheba, and the precious cane from a far country?"
Thenceforward it is mentioned in Ezekiel, in Isaiah (xl.-lxvi.),
in Nehemiah, and in Chronicles; the references are continuous. The
introduction of incense is a natural result of increased luxury;
one is tempted to conjecture that its use must have first crept
into the Jehovah worship as an innovation from a more
luxuriously-developed foreign cultus. But the importance which it
has attained in the ritual legislation of the Pentateuch is
manifest above all from this, that it has led to the invention of a
peculiar new and highly sacred piece of furniture, namely, the
golden altar in the inner tabernacle, which is unknown to history,
and which is foreign even to the kernel of the Priestly Code
itself.
We expect to find the altar of incense in Exodus xxv.-xxix., but
find it instead as an appendix at the beginning of Exodus xxx. Why
not until now? why thus separated from the other furnishings of
the inner sanctuary? and not only so, but even after the
ordinances relating to the adornment of the priests, and the
inauguration of the divine service? The reason why the author of
chaps. xxv.-xxix. is thus silent about the altar of incense in
the passage in which the furniture of the tabernacle, consisting of
ark, table, and candlestick, is described, is, that he does not
know of it. There is no other possibility; for he cannot have
forgotten it. /1/
-- Footnote
1. There is a peculiar perversity in meeting the objection by
alleging other singularities in the ordinance as for example, that
the vessels of the tabernacle are appointed (chap. xxv.) before
the tabernacle itself (chap. xxvi.). This last is no
eccentricity; the order in commanding is first the end, and then
the means; but in obeying, the order is reversed. In like manner,
it is not at all surprising if subsidiary implements, such as
benches for slaughtering. or basins for washing, which have no
importance for the cultus, properly so called, should be either
passed over altogether, or merely brought in as an appendix. The
case is not at all parallel with the omission of the most important
utensil of the sanctuary from the very passage to which it
necessarily belongs.
-- Footnote
And the phenomenon is repeated; the altar of incense occurs only
in certain portions of the Priestly Code, and is absent from
others where it could not possibly have been omitted, had it been
known. The rite of the most solemn atoning sacrifice takes place
in Leviticus iv. indeed on the golden altar, but in Exodus xxix.,
Leviticus viii., ix., without its use. A still more striking
circumstance is, that in passages where the holiest incense-offering
itself is spoken of, no trace can be discovered of the corresponding
altar. This is particularly the case in Leviticus xvi. To burn incense
in the sanctuary, Aaron takes a censer, fills it with coals from the
altar of burnt-offering (ver. 12, 18-20), and lays the incense
upon them in the adytum. Similarly in Leviticus x., Numbers xvi.,
xvii., incense is offered on censers, of which each priest
possesses one. The coals are taken from the altar of
burnt-offering (Numbers xvii. 11; [A.V. xvi. 46]), which is plated
with the censers of the Korahite Levites (xvii. 3, 4; [A.V.
xvi. 38, 39]); whoever takes fire from any other source, incurs
the penalty of death (Leviticus x. 1 seq.). The altar of incense is
everywhere unknown here; the altar of burnt-offering is the only
altar, and, moreover, is always called simply 'the altar', as for
example, even in Exodus xxvii., where it would have been specially
necessary to add the qualifying expression. Only in certain
later portions of the Priestly Code does the name altar of
burnt-offering occur, viz, in those passages which do recognise the
altar of incense. In this connection the command of Exodus xxvii.
as compared with the execution in Exodus xxxviii. is
characteristic.
The golden altar in the sanctuary is originally simply the
golden table; the variation of the expression has led to a
doubling of the thing. Ezekiel does not distinguish between the
table and the altar in the temple, but uses either expression
indifferently. For he says (xii.21 seq. ): "Before the adytum
stood what looked like an altar of wood, three cubits in height,
two cubits in length and breadth, and it had projecting corners,
and its frame and its walls were of wood; this is the table which
is before the Lord." In like manner he designates the service of
the priests in the inner sanctuary as table-service (xliv.16);
table is the name, altar the function. /1/
-- Footnote
1. Malachi, on the other hand, designates the so-called altar
of burnt-offering as a table.
-- Footnote
In 1Kings vii. 48, it is true that the golden altar and the golden
table are mentioned together. It seems strange, however, that in
this case the concluding summary mentions one piece of furniture
more-- and that piece one of so great importance--than the preceding
detailed description; for in the latter only the preparation of the
golden altar is spoken of, and nothing is said of the golden table
(vi. 20-22). As matters stand, nothing is less improbable than that
some later transcriber should have interpolated the golden table
in vii. 48, regarding it, in accordance with the Pentateuch, as
distinct from the golden altar, and therefore considering its
absence as an omission. From other considerations also, it is
clear that the text of the whole chapter is in many ways corrupt
and interpolated.
It is not to be wondered at if in the post-exilian temple there
existed both a golden altar and a golden table. We learn from
1Maccabees i. 21 seq., iv. 49, that both were carried off by
Antiochus Epiphanes, and renewed at the Feast of the Dedication.
But it causes no small surprise to find that at the destruction
of Jerusalem the Romans found and carried off table and candlestick
only. What can have become, in the meantime, of the golden altar
of incense? And it is further worth remarking that in the LXX the
passage Exodus xxxvii.25-29 is absent; that is to say, the altar
of incense is indeed commanded, but there is no word of its
execution. In these circumstances, finally, the vacillating
statement as to its position in Exodus xxx. 6, and the supposed
mistake of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, are important
and intelligible. Compare also 2Maccabees ii.5, where only the table,
but not the altar, is hidden by Jeremiah.
So much for the offering of incense and its altar. We may in
like manner venture to regard it as a kind of refinement, though
rather a refinement of idea, that the flesh of the sacrifice in the
Priestly Code is no longer boiled, but consigned to the altar
flames in its raw condition. Such was not the ancient custom, as
is seen, not only from the case of Gideon already cited (Judges
vi.), but also from the procedure at Shiloh, described in 1Samuel
ii., where the sons of Eli will not wait until the flesh of the
sacrifice has been boiled, and the altar pieces burnt, but demand
their share raw for roasting. The meal which the Deity shares
with men is prepared in the same way as for men. This naive
conception gave way before advancing culture, and that at a
comparatively early date. It is possible that another cause may
also have co-operated towards this result. The old method of
preparing flesh in general use among the people, at a later period
also, was by boiling. The word B#L (to seethe in water) occurs
with extreme frequency; CLH (to roast), on the other hand, only
in Exodus xii. 8, and Isaiah xliv. 16, 19. All sacrificial flesh
(B#LH) was boiled, and there was no other kind. /1/
-- Footnote
1. Accordingly one must understand (#H also of boiling (Judges vi. 19).
Compare the boiling-houses of the temple still found in Ezekiel
xlvi. 20-24. In I Sam. i. 9 pronounce _beshela_ instead of _beshilo_,
and delete W)XRY #TH.
-- Footnote
But among persons of the upper class roasting must also have come
into use at an early period. "Give flesh to roast for the priest;
for he will not take sodden flesh of thee, but raw," says the
servant of the sons of Eli in 1Samuel ii. 15. The fact that in the
interval the custom of boiling had gone generally somewhat out of
fashion may accordingly have also contributed to bring about the
abandonment of the old usage of offering the sacrificial portions
boiled. In any case this is the explanation of the circumstance
that the paschal lamb, which originally was boiled like all other
offerings, could, according to the express appointment of the
Priestly Code, be eaten roasted only. /2/
-- Footnote
2. Compare the polemical ordinance of Exodus xii. 9 with Deuteronomy
xvi. 7.
-- Footnote
The phenomenon that in the Law meal is by preference offered raw,
while in the earlier period, even as an adjunct of the burnt-offering,
it was presented baked, belongs to the same category. The latter
is the case in Judges vi. 19 at least, and the statement of 1Samuel
i. 24 is also to be understood in the same sense; the sacrificer
brings meal along with him in order to bake it into _maccah_ on the spot
(Ezekiel xlvi. 20). But he may bring along with him common, that is
leavened, cakes also (1Samuel x. 3), which seem originally by no
means to have been considered unfit to be offered as in Leviticus
ii. 11. For under this law of Leviticus ii. even the presentation of
the shewbread would be inexplicable, and moreover it is certain
that at first the loaves of the feast of weeks were offerings,
properly so called, and not merely dues to the priests.
According, to Amos iv. 5, leavened bread was made use of precisely
at a particularly solemn sacrifice, and a reminiscence of this
usage has been preserved even in Leviticus vii. 13, although of course
without any practical weight being attached to it. /1/
-- Footnote
1. The loaves are passed over in silence in Leviticus vii. 29 seq.,
although it is in this very place that the matter of presenting
on the part of the offerer is most fully described. And when it
is said (vii. 12),
"If he offer it for a thanksgiving (Todah), then he shall offer
with it unleavened cakes mingled with oil, and unleavened wafers
anointed with oil and fine flour (LXX), mingled with oil ;"
vii. 13, "[With] leavened cakes shall he offer as a gift with the
thank-offering of the Todah,"
the suspicion very readily occurs that verse 12 is an authentic
interpretation prefixed, to obviate beforehand the difficulty
presented by verse 13, and that similarly the first (l in verse 13
is also a later correction, which does not harmonise well by any
means with the second. Verse 13 connects itself better with
verse 11 than with verse 12.--Exod xxxiv. 25.
-- Footnote
Moreover, massah also means, properly speaking, only the bread
that is prepared in haste and in the most primitive manner for
immediate use, and originally implies no contrast with leaven, but
simply with the more artificial and tedious manners of producing
ordinary bread /2/
-- Footnote
2. Compare Genesis xviii. 6 with xix.3.
-- Footnote
In the Priestly Code the materials are finer, but they are as
much as possible left in their raw condition; both are steps
in advance.
II.II.3. There is another and much more important difference in the
case of the animal sacrifice. Of this the older practice knows
only two kinds apart from extraordinary varieties, which may be
left out of account. These two are the burnt-offering (`Olah) and
the thank-offering (Shelem, Zebah, Zebah Shelamim). In the case of
the first the whole animal is offered on the altar; in the other
God receives, besides the blood, only an honorary portion, while
the rest of the flesh is eaten by the sacrificial guests. Now it
is worth noticing how seldom the burnt-offering occurs alone. It
is necessarily so in the case of human sacrifice (Genesis xxii. 2
seq.; Judges xi. 31; /1/ 2Kings iii. 27; Jeremiah xix.5);
-- Footnote
3. It is probable that Jephthah expected a human creature and not an
animal to meet him from his house.
-- Footnote
otherwise it is not usual (Genesis viii. 20; Numbers xxiii. 1 seq.;
Judges vi. 20, 26, xiii. 16, 23; 1Samuel vii. 9 seq.; 1Kings
iii. 4, xviii. 34,38); /1/ moreover, all the examples
-- Footnote
1. In the above list of passages no notice is taken of the
_sacrificium juge_ of 2Kings xvi.15. The statement in 1Kings iii. 4
is perhaps to be taken along with iii. 15, but does not become at
all more credible on that account. Of course it is understood that
only those passages are cited here in which mention is made of
offerings actually made, and not merely general statements about
one or more kinds of offering. The latter could very well fix
attention upon the `Olah alone without thereby throwing any light
upon the question as to the actual practice.
-- Footnote
just cited are extraordinary or mythical in their character, a
circumstance that may not affect the evidence of the existence of
the custom in itself, but is important as regards the statistics of
its frequency. As a rule, the `Ola
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