Prolegomena to the History of Israel

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/

********************************** 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. ***********************************

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/

*********************************** 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. *******************************************

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/

****************************************** 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. **********************************************

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/

****************************** 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.) ***************************************

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/

************************************ 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 ) *************************************

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/

************************************** 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). ****************************************

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

**************************************** 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.). ********************************************

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/

******************************* 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. ****************************************************************

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/

****************************** 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. ************************************

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/

************************************** 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). ****************************************

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

******************************************* 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. ********************************

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/

**************************** 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. *******************************

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/

************************************* 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. ****************************************

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/

************************************ 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. ************************************

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/

************************************ 1. Of the priests at Nob, Abiathar alone escaped the massacre (1Samuel. xxii.); Gad therefore was not one of them. ************************************

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/

************************************** 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. ***************************************

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 ?) ;

***************************************** 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. *****************************************

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/

********************************************* 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. **********************************************

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/

************************************* 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. ***************************************

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/

********************************** 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. *************************************

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/

************************************************ 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?" *************************************************

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/

************************************* 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. *************************************

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/

************************************* 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. ************************************

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/

*********************************** 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. **********************************

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.

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/

******************************************* 1. With regard to sacrifice, Deuteronomy still occupies the same standpoint as JE. *******************************************

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/

********************************* 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. ********************************

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;"

*************************************** 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. ***************************************

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/

*************************************** 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. **************************************

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/

************************************** 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 tbe 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. ************************************

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/

*************************************** 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. *****************************************

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/

**************************************** 1. Malachi, on the other hand, designates the so-called altar of burnt-offering as a table. ****************************************

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/

*********************************************** 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. **********************************************

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/

********************************** 2. Compare the polemical ordinance of Exodus xii. 9 with Deuteronomy xvi. 7. *********************************

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/

*********************************************** 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. *********************************************

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/

************************************* 2. Compare Genesis xviii. 6 with xix.3. *************************************

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);

********************************** 3. It is probable that Jephthah expected a human creature and not an animal to meet him from his house. *********************************

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

**************************************** 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. ****************************************

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 `Olah occurs only in conjunction with Zebahim, and when this is the case the latter are in the majority and are always in the plural, while on the other hand the first is frequently in the singular. /2/

******************************************** 1. Exodus x. 25, xviii. 12, xxiv. 5, xxxii. 6; Joshua viii. 31; Judges xx. 26, xxi. 4; 1Samuel vi. 14 seq., x. 8, xiii. 9-12; 2Samuel vi. 17 seq., xxiv. 23-25, 1Kings iii. 15, viii. 63 seq.; 2Kings v. 17, x. 24, 25. The zeugma in Judges xx. 26, xxi.4 is inconsistent with the older usus loquendi. The proper name for the holocaust appears to be KLYL (Deuteronomy xxxiii. 10; 1Samuel vii.9) not (LH. It is impossible to decide whether the sacrificial due in all sorts of Zebah was the same, but most probably it was not. Probably the Shelamim are a more solemn kind of sacrifice than the simple Zebah. The word 'fat' is used in Genesis iv. 4; Exodus xxiii. 18 in a very general sense. It is not quite clear what is meant by the blessing of the Zebah in 1Samuel ix. 13; perhaps a kind of grace before meat. ********************************************

They supplement each other like two corresponding halves; the `Olah is, as the name implies, properly speaking, nothing more than the part of a great offering that reaches the altar. One might therefore designate as `Olah also that part of a single animal which is consecrated to the Deity; this, however, is never done; neither of the blood nor of the fat [Q+R] is the verb H(LH used, but only of the pieces of the flesh, of which in the case of the minor offering nothing was burnt. But the distinction is merely one of degree; there is none in kind; a small Zebah, enlarged and augmented, becomes an `Olah and Zebahim; out of a certain number of slaughtered animals which are eaten by the sacrificial company, one is devoted to God and wholly given to the flames. For the rest, it must be borne in mind that as a rule it is only great sacrificial feasts that the historical books take occasion to mention, and that consequently the burnt-offering, notwithstanding what has been said, comes before us with greater prominence than can have been the average case in ordinary life. Customarily, It is certain, none but thank-offerings were offered; necessarily so if slaughtering could only be done beside the altar. Where mention is made of a simple offering in the Books of Samuel and Kings, that it is a thank-offering is matter of course. 1Samuel ii. 12 seq. is in this connection also particularly instructive.

From what has been said it results that according to the praxis of the older period a meal was almost always connected with a sacrifice. It was the rule that only blood and fat were laid upon the altar, but the people ate the flesh; only in the case of very great sacrificial feasts was a large animal (one or more) given to Jehovah. Where a sacrifice took place, there was also eating and drinking (Exodus xxxii. 6; Judges ix. 27; 2Samuel xv. 11 seq.; Amos ii. 7); there was no offering without a meal, and no meal without an offering (1Kings i. 9); at no important Bamah was entertainment wholly wanting, such a LESXH as that in which Samuel feasted Saul, or Jeremiah the Rechabites (1Samuel ix. 22; Jeremiah xxxv. 2). To be merry, to eat and drink before Jehovah, is a usual form of speech down to the period of Deuteronomy; even Ezekiel calls the cultus on the high places an eating upon the mountains (1Samuel ix. 13,19 seq ), and in Zechariah the pots in the temple have a special sanctity (Zech. xiv. 20). By means of the meal in presence of Jehovah is established a covenant fellowship on the one hand between Him and the guests, and on the other hand between the guests themselves reciprocally, which is essential for the idea of sacrifice and gives their name to the Shelamim (compare Exodus xviii. 12, xxiv. 11). In ordinary slaughterings this notion is not strongly present, but in solemn sacrifices it was in full vigour. It is God who invites, for the house is His; His also is the gift, which must be brought to Him entire by the offerer before the altar, and the greater portion of which He gives up to His guests only affer that. Thus in a certain sense they eat at God's table, and must accordingly propare or sanctify themselves for it. /1/

*************************************** 1. In order to appear before Jehovah the guest adorns himself with clothes and ornaments (Exodus iii. 22, xi. 2 seq.; Hosea ii. 15 [A.V. 13]; Ezekiel xvi. 13; compare Koran, Sur. xx. 61), sanctifies himself (Numbers xi. 18) and is sanctified (1Samuel xvi. 5; Exodus xix. 10, 14). The sacrificial meal is regarded as Kodesh (hallowed) for not only the priests, but all the sanctified persons eat Kodesh (1Samuel xxi. 5 seq. On what is meant by sanctification light is thrown by 1Samuel xxi. 5; 2Samuel xi. 2. Compare L) LPNW XNP YB) ( Job xiii. 16; Leviticus vii. 20; Matthew xxii. 11-13). Jehovah invites the armies of the nations to His sacrifice, for which He delivers over to them some other nation, and calls the Medes, to whom He gives Babylon over, His sanctified ones, that is, His guests (Zephaniah i. 7 seq.; Jeremiah xlvi. 10; Ezekiel xxxix 17; Isaiah xiii. 3). ****************************************

Even on occasions that, to our way of thinking, seem highly unsuitable, the meal is nevertheless not wanting (Judges xx. 26, xxi. 4; 1Sam xiii. 9-12). That perfect propriety was not always observed might be taken for granted, and is proved by Isaiah xxviii. 8 even with regard to the temple of Jerusalem; "all tables are full of vomit, there is no room." Hence also Eli's suspicion regarding Hannah was a natural one, and by no means so startling as it appears.

How different from this picture is that suggested by the Priestly Code! Here one no longer remarks that a meal accompanies every sacrifice; eating before Jehovah, which even in Deuteronomy is just the expression for sacrificing, nowhere occurs, or at all events is no act of divine worship. Slaying and sacrificing are no longer coincident, the thank-offering of which the breast and right shoulder are to be consecrated is something different from the old simple Zebah. But, precisely for this reason, it has lost its former broad significance. The mizbeah, that is, the place where the zebahim are to be offered, has been transformed into a mizbah ha-'olah. The burnt-offering has become quite independent and comes everywhere into the foreground, the sacrifices which are unconnected with a meal altogether predominate,-so much that, as is well known, Theophrastus could declare there were no others among the Jews, who in this way were differentiated from all other nations. /1/ Where formerly a

**************************************** 1. Porphyry, De Abstin. ii.26. Compare Joseph., Contra Apion, ii. 13: )OUTOI )EUXONTAI UEIN (EKATOMBAS TOIS QEOIS KAI XRWNTAI TOIS (IEREIOIS PROS )EUWXIAN. ******************************************

thank-offering which was eaten before Jehovah, and which might with greater clearness be called a sacrificial meal, was prescribed, the Priestly Code, as we shall afterwards see, has made out of it simple dues to the priests, as, for example, in the case of the first-born and of firstlings. Only in this point it still bears involuntary testimony to the old custom by applying the names Todah, Neder, and Nedabah, of which the last two in particular must necessarily have a quite general meaning (Leviticus xxii. 18; Ezekiel xlvi. 12), exclusively to the thank-offering, while Milluim and paschal sacrifice are merely subordinate varieties of it.

II.II.4. What the thank-offering has lost, the sin and trespass offering have gained; the voluntary private offering which the sacrificer ate in a joyful company at the holy place has given way before the compulsory, of which he obtains no share, and from which the character of the sacred meal has been altogether taken away. The burnt-offering, it is true, still continues to be a meal, if only a one-sided one, of which God alone partakes; but in the case of the sin-offering everything is kept far out of sight which could recall a meal, as, for example, the accompaniments of meal and wine, oil and salt; of the flesh no portion reaches the altar, it all goes as a fine to the priest. Now, of this kind of sacrifice, which has an enormous importance in the Priestly Code, not a single trace occurs in the rest of the Old Testament before Ezekiel, neither in the Jehovist and Deuteronomist, nor in the historical and prophetical books. /1/

********************************************** 1. How great is the difference in Deuteronomy xxi. 1-9; how very remote the sacrificial idea! *********************************************

`Olah and Zebah comprehend all animal sacrifices, `Olah and Minhah, or Zebah and Minhah, all sacrifices whatsoever; nowhere is a special kind of sacrifice for atonement met with (1Samuel iii. 14). Hos. iv. 8 does indeed say: "They eat the sin of my people, and they are greedy for its guilts," but the interpretation which will have it that the priests are here reproached with in the first instance themselves inducing the people to falsification of the sacred dues, in order to make these up again with the produce of the sin and trespass offerings, is either too subtle or too dull. /2/

**************************************** 2. The sin and guilt are the sacrificial worship generally as carried on by the people (viii. 11; Amos iv. 4); in the entire section the prophet is preparing the way for the here sharply accentuated reproach against the priests that they neglect the Torah and encourage the popular propensity to superstitious and impure religious service. Besides, where is there any reproach at all, according to the Pentateuch, in the first section of iv. 8? And the second speaks of (WNM, not of )#MM. *******************************************

It would be less unreasonable to co-ordinate with the similarly named sin and trespass offering of the Pentateuch the five golden mice, and the five golden emerods with which the Philistines send back the ark, and which in 1Samuel vi. 3, 4, 8 are designated asham, or, still better, the sin and trespass monies which, according to 2Kings xii. 17 [A.V. 16], fell to the share of the Jerusalem priests. Only the fact is that even in the second passage the asham and hattath are no sacrifices, but, more exactly to render the original meaning of the words, mere fines, and in fact money fines. On the other hand, the hattath referred to in Micah vi. 7 has nothing to do with a due of the priests, but simply denotes the guilt which eventually another takes upon himself. Even in Isaiah liii. 10, a passage which is certainly late, asham must not be taken in the technical sense of the ritual legislation, but simply (as in Micah) in the sense of guilt, borne by the innocent for the guilty. For the explanation of this prophetic passage Gramberg has rightly had recourse to the narrative of 2Samuel xi. 1-14. "Upon Saul and upon his house lies blood-guiltiness, for having slain the Gibeonites" is announced to David as the cause of a three years' famine. When asked how it can be taken away, the Gibeonites answer, "It is not a matter of silver and gold to us with respect to Saul and his house; let seven men of his family be delivered to us that we may hang them up unto the Lord in Gibeah of Saul upon the mountain of the Lord." This was done; all the seven were hanged.

A*sham and hattath as offerings occur for the first time in Ezekiel, and appear, not long before his day to have come into the place of the earlier pecuniary fines (2Kings xii. 17 [16]), which perhaps already also admitted of being paid in kind; probably in the seventh century, which seems to have been very open to the mystery of atonement and bloodshedding, and very fertile in the introduction of new religious usages. /1/

********************************************* 1. Consider for example the prevalence of child sacrifice precisely at this time, the introduction of incense, the new fashions which King Manasseh brought in, and of which certainly much survived that suited the temper of the period, and admitted of being conjoined with the worship of Jehovah, or even seemed to enhance its dignity and solemnity. **********************************************

The sin and trespass offerings of the Pentateuch still bear traces of their origin in fines and penalties; they are not gifts to God, they are not even symbolical, they are simply mulcts payable to the priests, partly of fixed commutation value (Leviticus v. 15). Apart from the mechanical burning of the fat they have in common with the sacrifice only the shedding of blood, originally a secondary matter, which has here become the chief thing. This circumstance is an additional proof of our thesis. The ritual of the simple offering has three acts: (1.) the presentation of the living animal before Jehovah, and the laying on of hands as a token of manumission on the part of the offerer; (2.) the slaughtering and the sprinkling of the blood on the altar; (3.) the real or seeming gift of the sacrificial portions to the Deity, and the meal of the human guests. In the case of the burnt-offering the meal in the third act disappears, and the slaughtering in the second comes into prominence as significant and sacred, inasmuch as (what is always expressly stated) it must take place in the presence of Jehovah, at the north side of the altar. In the case of the sin and trespass offering the third act is dropped entirely, and accordingly the whole significance of the rite attaches to the slaughtering, which of course also takes place before the altar, and to the sprinkling of the blood, which has become peculiarly developed here. It is obvious how the metamorphosis of the gift and the meal into a bloody atonement advances and reaches its acme in this last sacrificial act.

This ritual seems to betray its novelty even within the Priestly Code itself by a certain vacillation. In the older corpus of law (Leviticus xvii.-xxvi.) which has been taken into that document, all sacrifices are still embraced under one or other of the two heads ZBX and (LH (xvii. 8, xxii. 18, 21); there are no others. The asham indeed occurs in xix. 21 seq., but, as is recognised, only in a later addition; on the other hand,it is not demanded /1/ in xxii.14,

************************************ 1. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the asham here, in the case of property unlawfully held, is simply the impost of a fifth part of the value, and not the sacrifice of a ram, which in Leviticus v. is required in addition. In Numbers v. also, precisely this fifth part is called asham. *************************************

where it must have been according to Leviticus v. and Numbers v. And even apart from Leviticus xvii.-xxvi there is on this point no sort of agreement between the kernel of the Priestly Code and the later additions, or "novels," so to speak. For one thing, there is a difference as to the ritual of the most solemn sin-offering between Exodus xxix., Leviticus ix. on the one hand, and Leviticus iv. on the other; and what is still more serious, the trespass-offering never occurs in the primary but only in the secondary passages, Leviticus iv.-vii., xiv.; Numbers v.7, 8, vi. 1, xviii. 9. In the latter, moreover, the distinction between asham and hattath is not very clear, but only the intention to make it, perhaps because in the old praxis there actually was a distinction between KSP XT)WT and KSP )#M, and in Ezekiel between X+)T and )#M. /2/

*************************************** 2. The three sections, Leviticus iv. 1-35 (hattath), v.1-13 (hattath-asham), and v. 14-26 (asham), are essentially not co-ordinate parts of one whole, but independent pieces proceeding from the same school. For v. 1-13 is no continuation of or appendix to iv. 27-35, but a quite independent treatment of the same material, with important differences of form. The place of the systematic generality of chap. iv. is here taken by the definite individual case, and what is analogous to it; the ritual is given with less minuteness, and the hierarchical subordination of ranks has no influence on the classification of offences. In this section also asham and hattath occur interchangeably as synonymous. In the third section a ram as an asham is prescribed (v. 17-19) for the very case in which in the first a he-goat or a she-goat is required as hattath (iv. 22, 27). The third section has indeed in form greater similarity to the second, but cannot be regarded as its true completion, for this simple reason, that the latter does not distiguish between hattath and asham. If Leviticus v. 13-16, 20-26 be followed simply without regard being had to vers. 17-19, the asham comes in only in the case of voluntary restitution of property illegally come by or detained, more particularly of the sacred dues. The goods must be restored to their owner augmented by a fifth part of their value; and as an asham there must be added a ram, which falls to the sanctuary. In Num v. 5-10 the state of the case is indeed the same, but the language employed is different, for in this passage it is the restored property that is called asham, and the ram is called )YL HKPRYM. Comp. Leviticus xxii. 14. ****************************************

II.III.

The turning-point in the history of the sacrificial system was the reformation of Josiah; what we find in the Priestly Code is the matured result of that event. It is precisely in the distinctions that are characteristic of the sacrificial law as compared with the ancient sacrificial praxis that we have evidence of the fact that, if not all exactly occasioned by the centralisation of the worship, they were almost all somehow at least connected with that change.

In the early days, worship arose out of the midst of ordinary life, and was in most intimate and manifold connection with it. A sacrifice was a meal, a fact showing how remote was the idea of antithesis between spiritual earnestness and secular joyousness. A meal unites a definite circle of guests, and in this way the sacrifice brought into connection the members of the family, the associates of the corporation, the soldiers of the army, and, generally speaking, the constituents of any permanent or temporary society. It is earthly relationships that receive their consecration thereby, and in correspondence are the natural festal occasions presented by the vicissitudes of life. Year after year the return of vintage, corn-harvest, and sheep-shearing brought together the members of the household to eat and to drink in the presence of Jehovah; and besides these there were less regularly recurring events which were celebrated in one circle after another. There was no warlike expedition which was not inaugurated in this fashion, no agreement that was not thus ratified, no important undertaking of any kind was gone about without a sacrifice! /1/

****************************************** 1. Sacrifice is used as a pretext in 1Samuel xvi. 1 seq.; 1Kings i. 9 seq. Compare Proverbs vii. 14. *****************************************

When an honoured guest arrives, there is slaughtered for him a calf, not without an offering of the blood and fat to the Deity. The occasion arising out of daily life is thus inseparable from the holy action, and is what gives it meaning and character; an end corresponding to the situation always underlies it. Hence also prayer must not be wanting. The verb H(TYR, to "burn" (fat and minha), means simply to "pray," and conversely BQ# )T YHWH, "to seek Jehovah," in point of fact not unfrequently means to "sacrifice." The gift serves to reinforce the question or the request, and to express thankfulness; and the prayer is its interpretation. This of course is rather incidentally indicated than expressly said (Hos. v. 6; Isaiah i. 15; Jeremiah xiv. 12; 1Kings viii. 27 seq.; Proverbs xv. 8); we have a specimen of a grace for the offering of the festival gift only in Deuteronomy xxvi. 3 seq.; a blessing is pronounced when the slaughtering takes place (1Samuel ix. 13). The prayer of course is simply the expression of the feeling of the occasion, with which accordingly it varies in manifold ways. Arising out of the exigencies and directed to the objects of daily life, the sacrifices reflect in themselves a correspondingly rich variety. Our wedding, baptismal, and funeral feasts on the one hand, and our banquets for all sorts of occasions on the other, might still be adduced as the most obvious comparison, were it not that here too the divorce between sacred and secular destroys it. Religious worship was a natural thing in Hebrew antiquity; it was the blossom of life, the heights and depths of which it was its business to transfigure and glorify.

The law which abolished all sacrificial seats, with a single exception, severed this connection. Deuteronomy indeed does not contemplate such a result. Here, in marked opposition to what we find in the Priestly Code, to eat and be merry before Jehovah is the standing phrase for sacrificing; the idea is that in concentrating all the worship towards Jerusalem, all that is effected is a mere change of place, the essence of the thing remaining unaltered. This, however, was a mistake. To celebrate the vintage festival among one's native hills, and to celebrate it at Jerusalem, were two very different things; it was not a matter of indifference whether one could seize on the spot any occasion that casually offered itself for a sacrificial meal, or whether it was necessary that one should first enter upon a journey. And it was not the same thing to appear by oneself at home before Jehovah and to lose oneself in a large congregation at the common seat of worship. Human life has its root in local environment, and so also had the ancient cultus; in being transplanted from its natural soil it was deprived of its natural nourishment. A separation between it and the daily life was inevitable, and Deuteronomy itself paved the way for this result by permitting profane slaughtering. A man lived in Hebron, but sacrificed in Jerusalem; life and worship fell apart. The consequences which lie dormant in the Deuteronomic law are fully developed in the Priestly Code.

This is the reason why the sacrifice combined with a meal, formerly by far the chief, now falls completely into the background. One could eat flesh at home, but in Jerusalem one's business was to do worship. Accordingly, those sacrifices were preferred in which the religious character came to the front with the utmost possible purity and without any admixture of natural elements, sacrifices of which God received everything and man nothing,-burnt-offerings, sin-offerings, and trespass-offerings.

If formerly the sacrifice had taken its complexion from the quality of the occasion which led to it, it now had essentially but one uniform purpose-to be a medium of worship. The warm pulse of life no longer throbbed in it to animate it; it was no longer the blossom and the fruit of every branch of life; it had its own meaning all to itself. It symbolised worship, and that was enough. The soul was fled; the shell remained, upon the shaping out of which every energy was now concentrated. A manifoldness of rites took the place of individualising occasions; technique was the main thing, and strict fidelity to rubric.

Once cultus was spontaneous, now it is a thing of statute. The satisfaction which it affords is, properly speaking, something which lies outside of itself and consists in the moral satisfaction arising out of the conscientiousness with which the ritual precepts, once for all enjoined by God on His people, are fulfilled. The freewill offering is not indeed forbidden, but value in the strict sense is attached only to those which have been prescribed, and which accordingly preponderate everywhere. And even in the case of the freewill offering, everything must strictly and accurately comply with the restrictions of the ordinance; if any one in the fulness of his heart had offered in a zebah shelamim more pieces of flesh than the ritual enjoined, it would have been the worse for him.

Of old the sacrifice combined with a meal had established a special relation between the Deity and a definite society of guests; the natural sacrificial society was the family or the clan (1Samuel i. 1seq., xvi. 1 seq., xx. 6). Now the smaller sacred fellowships get lost, the varied groups of social life disappear in the neutral shadow of the universal congregation or church [(DH, QHL]. The notion of this last is foreign to Hebrew antiquity, but runs through the Priestly Code from beginning to end. Like the worship itself, its subject also became abstract, a spiritual entity which could be kept together by no other means except worship. As now the participation of the "congregation of the children of Israel" in the sacrifice was of necessity always mainly ideal, the consequence was that the sacred action came to be regarded as essentially perfect by virtue of its own efficacy in being performed by the priest, even though no one was present. Hence later the necessity for a special sacrificial deputation, the anshe ma'amad. The connection of all this with the Judaising tendency to remove God to a distance from man, it may be added, is clear. /1/

************************************* 1. It is not asserted that the cultus before the Iaw (of which the darker sides are known from Amos and Hosea) was better than the legal, but merely that it was more original; the standard of judgment being, not the moral element, but merely the idea, the primary meaning of worship. Nor is it disputed further that the belief in the dependence of sacrifices and other sacred acts upon a laboriously strict compliance with traditional and prescriptive rites occurs in the case of certain peoples, even in the remotest antiquity. But with the Israelites, judging by the testimony of the historical and prophetical books, this was not on the whole the case any more than with the ancient Greeks; there were no Brahmans or Magians in either case. Moreover, it must be carefully noted that not even in the Priestly Code do we yet find the same childish appreciation of the cultus as occurs in such a work as the Rigveda, and that the strict rules are not prescribed and maintained with any such notion in view as that by their observance alone can the taste of the Deity be pleased; the idea of God is here even strikingly remote from the anthropomorphic, and the whole cultus is nothing more than an exercise in piety which has simply been enjoined so once for all without any one being in any way the better for it. ******************************************

Two details still deserve special prominence here. In the Priestly Code the most important sacrifice is the burnt-offering; that is to say, in point of fact, the tamid, the holocaustum juge, consisting of two yearling lambs which are daily consumed upon the "altar of burnt-offering," one in the morning, another in the evening. The custom of daily offering a fixed sacrifice at a definite time existed indeed, in a simpler form, /2/

**************************************** 2. See Kuenen, Godsdietzst van Israel, ii. 271. According to 2Kings xvi. 15, an (LH in the morning and a MNXH in the evening were daily offered in the temple of Jerusalem, in the time of Ahaz. Ezekiel also (xlvi. 13-15) speaks only of the morning (LH. Compare also Ezra ix. 4; Nehemiah x. 33. In the Priestly Code the evening minhah has risen to the dignity of a second `olah; but at the same time survives in the daily minhah of the high priest, and is now offered in the morning also (Leviticus vi. 12-16). The daily minhah appears to be older than the daily `olah. For while it was a natural thing to prepare a meal regularly for the Deity, the expense of a daily `olah was too great for an ordinary place of worship, and, besides, it was not in accordance with the custom of men to eat flesh every day. The offering of the daily minhah is already employed in 1Kings xviii. 29, 36, as a mark of time to denote the afternoon, and this use is continued down to the latest period, while the tamid, ie., the `olah, is never so utilised. The oddest custom of all, however, was doubtless not the daily minhah, but the offering of the shewbread, which served the same purpose, but was not laid out fresh every day. *****************************************

even in the pre-exilian period, but alongside of it at that time, the freewill private offerings had a much more important place, and bulked much more largely. In the law the tamid is in point of fact the fundamental element of the worship, for even the sacrifices of Sabbaths and feast days consist only of its numerical increase (compare Numbers xxviii., xxix.). Still later, when it is said in the Book of Daniel that the tamid was done away, this is equivalent to saying that the worship was abolished (viii. 11-13, xi. 31, xii. 11). But now the dominant position of the daily, Sabbath day, and festival tamid means that the sacrificial worship had assumed a perfectly firm shape, which was independent of every special motive and of all spontaneity; and further (what is closely connected with this), that it took place for the sake of the congregation,-the "congregation" in the technical sense attached to that word in the Law. Hence the necessity for the general temple-tax, the prototype of which is found in the poll-tax of half a shekel for the service of the tabernacle in Exodus xxx. 11 seq. Prior to the exile, the regular sacrifice was paid for by the Kings of Judah, and in Ezekiel the monarch still continues to defray the expenses not only of the Sabbath day and festival sacrifices (xiv. 17 seq.), but also of the tamid (xlvi. 13-15). /1/

************************************* 1. Compare LXX*. The Massoretic text has corrected the third person (referring to the princes) into the second, making it an address to the priests, which, however, is quite impossible in Ezekiel. *************************************

It is also a mark of the date that, according to Exodus xxx., the expenses of the temple worship are met directly out of the poll-tax levied from the community, which can only be explained by the fact that at that time there had ceased to be any sovereign. So completely was the sacrifice the affair of the community in Judaism that the voluntary qorban of the individual became metamorphosed into a money payment as a contribution to the cost of the public worship (Mark vii., xii. 42 seq; Matthew xxvii. 6).

The second point is this: Just as the special purposes and occasions of sacrifice fall out of sight, there comes into increasing prominence the one uniform and universal occasion-that of sin; and one uniform and universal purpose-that of propitiation. In the Priestly Code the peculiar mystery in the case of all animal sacrifices is atonement by blood; this appears in its purest development in the case of the sin and trespass offerings, which are offered as well for individuals as for the congregation and for its head. In a certain sense the great day of atonement is the culmination of the whole religious and sacrificial service, to which, amid all diversities of ritual, continuously underlying reference to sin is common throughout. Of this feature the ancient sacrifices present few traces. It was indeed sought at a very early period to influence the doubtful or threatening mood of Deity, and make His countenance gracious by means of rich gifts, but the gift had, as was natural then, the character of a tentative effort only (Micah vi. 6). There was no such thought as that a definite guilt must and could be taken away by means of a prescribed offering. When the law discriminates between such sins as are covered by an offering and such sins as relentlessly are visited with wrath, it makes a distinction very remote from the antique; to Hebrew antiquity the wrath of God was something quite incalculable, its causes were never known, much less was it possible to enumerate beforehand those sins which kindled it and those which did not. /1/

********************************** 1. When the wrath is regulated by the conditions of the "covenant," the original notion (which scorns the thought of adjustment) is completely changed. What gave the thing its mysterious awfulness was precisely this: that in no way was it possible to guard against it, and that nothing could avail to counteract it. Under the pressure of Jehovah's wrath not only was sacrifice abandoned, but even the mention of His name was shunned so as to avoid attracting His attention (Hos iii. 4, ix. 4; Amos vi. 10). ***********************************

An underlying reference of sacrifice to sin, speaking generally, was entirely absent. The ancient offerings were wholly of a joyous nature,-a merrymaking before Jehovah with music and song, timbrels, flutes, and stringed instruments (Hos. ix. 1 seq.; Amos v. 23, viii. 3; Isa xxx. 3). No greater contrast could be conceived than the monotonous seriousness of the so-called Mosaic worship.

NOMOS PAREISHLQEN (INA PLEONASH| TO PARAPTWMA

["But law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied".

Romans 5:20 NRSV)]

In this way the spiritualisation of the worship is seen in the Priestly Code as advancing pari passu with its centralisation. It receives, so to speak, an abstract religious character; it separates itself in the first instance from daily life, and then absorbs the latter by becoming, strictly speaking, its proper business. The consequences for the future were momentous. The Mosaic "congregation" is the mother of the Christian church; the Jews were the creators of that idea.

We may compare the cultus in the olden time to the green tree which grows up out of the soil as it will and can; later it becomes the regularly shapen timber, ever more artificially shaped with square and compass. Obviously there is a close connection between the qualitative antithesis we have just been expounding and the formal one of law and custom from which we set out. Between "naturaliter ea quae legis sunt facere" ["do instinctively what the law requires" Romans 2:14 NRSV] and "secundum legem agere" there is indeed a more than external difference. If at the end of our first section we found improbable precisely in this region the independent co-existence of ancient praxis and Mosaic law, the improbability becomes still greater from the fact that the latter is filled with a quite different spirit, which can be apprehended only as Spirit of the age (Zeitgeist). It is not from the atmosphere of the old kingdom, but from that of the church of the second temple, that the Priestly Code draws its breath. It is in accordance with this that the sacrificial ordinances as regards their positive contents are no less completely ignored by antiquity than they are scrupulously followed by the post-exilian time.

The feasts, strictly speaking, belong to the preceding chapter, for originally they were simply regularly recurring occasions for sacrifice. The results of the investigation there made accordingly repeat themselves here, but with such clearness and precision as make it worth while to give the subject a separate consideration. In the first place and chiefly, the history of the solar festivals, that of those festivals which follow the seasons of the year, claims our attention.

III.I.1 In the Jehovistic and Deuteronomistic parts of the Pentateuch there predominates a rotation of three great festivals, which alone receive the proper designation of hag: "Three times in the year shalt thou keep festival unto me, three times in the year shall all thy men appear before the Lord Jehovah, the God of Israel" (Exodus xxiii. 14, 17, xxxiv. 23; Deuteronomy xvi. 16). "The feast of unleavened bread (maccoth) shalt thou keep; seven days shalt thou eat maccoth as I commanded thee, in the time appointed of the month Abib, for in it thou camest out from Egypt; and none shall appear before me empty; and the feast of harvest (qasir), the first-fruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field; and the feast of ingathering (asiph), in the end of the year, when thou gatherest in thy labours out of the field." So runs the command in the Book of the Covenant (Exodus xxiii. 15, 16). The Law of the Two Tables (Exodus xxxiv. 18 seq.) is similar: "The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out of Egypt. All that openeth the womb is mine; every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male. The firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou redeem. And none shall appear before me empty. Six days shalt thou work; but on the seventh day shalt thou rest: even in ploughing time and in harvest shalt thou rest. And the feast of weeks (shabuoth) shalt thou observe, the feasts of the first-fruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering (asiph) at the change of the year." Minuter, on the other hand, and of a somewhat different character, are the precepts laid down in Deuteronomy xvi.: "Take heed to the month Abib, and keep the passover unto Jehovah thy God, for in the month Abib did Jehovah thy God bring thee forth out of Egypt by night. Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy God, of the flock or of the herd, in the place which Jehovah shall choose for the habitation of His name. Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it; seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread (maccoth) therewith, the bread of affliction, for thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in anxious haste, that all the days of thy life thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt. There shall no leavened bread be seen with thee in all thy border seven days, and of the flesh which thou didst sacrifice on the first day, in the evening, nothing shall remain all night until the morning. Thou mayest not sacrifice the passover within any of thy gates which the Lord thy God giveth thee, but at the place which Jehovah thy God shall choose for the habitation of His name, there shalt thou sacrifice the passover, in the evening, at the going down of the sun, at the time of thy coming forth out of Egypt. And thou shalt boil and eat it in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose, and in the morning shalt thou return to thy home. Six days shalt thou eat maccoth, and on the seventh day shall be the closing feast to Jehovah thy God; thou shalt do no work therein" (ver. 1-8). "Seven weeks thenceforward shalt thou number unto thee; from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn shalt thou begin to number seven weeks, and then thou shalt keep the feast of weeks (shabuoth) to Jehovah thy God, with a tribute of freewill offerings in thy hand, which thou shalt give, according as the Lord thy God hath blessed thee. And thou shalt rejoice before Jehovah thy God, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy man-servant, and thy maid-senant, and the Levite that is within thy gates, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow that are among you in the place which Jehovah thy God shall choose for the habitation of His name. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt, and thou shalt observe and do these statutes" (ver. 9-12). "The feast of tabernacles (sukkoth) thou shalt observe seven days after thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine; and thou shalt rejoice in thy feast,-thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy man-servant, and thy maid-servant, and the Levite, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow that are within thy gates. Seven days shalt thou keep a solemn feast unto Jehovah thy God in the place which Jehovah shall choose, because Jehovah thy God cloth bless thee in all thine increase, and in all the works of thy hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice. Three times in a year shall all thy men appear before Jehovah thy God in the place which He shall choose: in the feast of unleavened bread, of weeks, and of tabernacles (hag ha-maccoth,- shabuoth,-sukkoth), and they shall not appear before me empty; every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of Jehovah thy God, which He hath given thee" (ver. 13-17). As regards the essential nature of the two last-named feasts, these passages are at one. The sukkoth of Deuteronomy and the asiph of the Jehovistic legislation do not coincide in time merely, but are in fact one and the same feast, the autumnal ingathering of the wine and of the oil from the vat and press, and of the corn from the threshing-floor. The name asiph refers immediately to the vintage and olive-gathering, to which the word sukkoth seems also to relate, being most easily explained from the custom of the whole household, old and young, going out to the vineyard in time of harvest, and there camping out in the open air under the improvised shelter of booths made with branches (Isaiah i. 8). Qacir and shabuoth in like manner are only different names for the same reality, namely, for the feast of the corn-reaping, or, more strictly, the wheat-reaping, which takes place in the beginning of summer. Thus both festivals have a purely natural occasion. On the other hand, the spring festival, which always opens the series, has a historical motive assigned to it, the exodus-most expressly in Deuteronomy-being given as the event on which it rests. The cycle nevertheless seems to presuppose and to require the original homogeneity of all its members. Now the twofold ritual of the pesah and the maccoth points to a twofold character of the feast. The hag, properly so named, is called not hag ha-pesah, /1/ but hag ha-maccoth,

******************************** 1. The original form of the expression of Exodus xxxiv. 25 has been preserved in Exodus xxiii. 18 (XGGY not XG HPSX). In Deuteronomy, although PSX is more prominent, it is called XG HMCWT in xvi. 16. ********************************

and it is only the latter that is co-ordinated with the other two haggim; the name pesah indeed does not occur at all until Deuteronomy, although in the law of the two tables the sacrifice of the first-born seems to be brought into connection with the feast of unleavened bread. It follows that only the maccoth can be taken into account for purposes of comparison with qasir and asiph. As to the proper significance of maccoth, the Jehovistic legislation does not find it needful to instruct its contemporaries, but it is incidentally disclosed in Deuteronomy. There the festival of harvest is brought into a definite relation in point of time with that of maccoth; it is to be celebrated seven weeks later. This is no new ordinance, but one that rests upon old custom, for the name, "feast of weeks," occurs in a passage so early as Exodus xxxiv. (comp Jeremiah v. 24). Now "seven weeks after Easter " (Deuteronomy xvi. 9) is further explained with greater elaborateness as meaning seven weeks after the putting of the sickle to the corn. Thus the festival of maccoth is equivalent to that of the putting of the sickle to the corn, and thereby light is thrown on its fixed relation to Pentecost. Pentecost celebrates the close of the reaping, which commences with barley harvest, and ends with that of wheat; Easter its beginning in the "month of corn ears;" and between the two extends the duration of harvest time, computed at seven weeks. The whole of this tempus classicum is a great festal season rounded off by the two festivals. We gain further light from Leviticus xxiii. 9-22. /1/

****************************************** 1. Against this there is of course possible the objection that the passage at present forms part of the Priestly Code. But the collection of laws embraced in Leviticus xvii.-xxvi, it is well known, has merely been redacted and incorporated by the author of the Priestly Code, and originally was an independent corpus marking the transition from Deuteronomy to the Priestly Code, sometimes approximating more to the one, and at other times to the other, and the use of Leviticus xxiii. 9-22 in this connection is completely justified by the consideration that only in this way do the rites it describes find meaning and vitality. *******************************************

The Easter point is here, as in Deuteronomy, fixed as being the beginning of harvest, but is still more definitely determined as the day after the first Sabbath falling within harvest time, and Pentecost follows the same reckoning. And the special Easter ritual consists in the offering of a barley sheaf; before this it is not lawful to taste of the new crop; and the corresponding Pentecostal rite is the offering of ordinary wheaten loaves. The corn harvest begins with barley and ends with wheat; at the beginning the first-fruits are presented in their crude state as a sheaf, just as men in like manner partake of the new growth in the form of parched ears (Leviticus xxiii. 14; Josh. v. 11); at the end they are prepared in the form of common bread. Thus the maccoth now begin to be intelligible. As has been already said (see p. 69), they are not, strictly speaking, duly prepared loaves, but the bread that is hurriedly baked to meet a pressing emergency (1Sam. xxviii. 24); thus they are quite correctly associated with the haste of the exodus, and described as bread of affliction. At first people do not take time in a leisurely way to leaven, knead, and bake the year's new bread, but a hasty cake is prepared in the ashes; this is what is meant by maccoth. They are contrasted with the Pentecostal loaves precisely as are the sheaf and the parched ears, which last, according to Josh. v. 11, may be eaten in their stead, and without a doubt they were originally not the Easter food of men merely, but also of the Deity, so that the sheaf comes under the category of the later spiritual refinements of sacrificial material. Easter then is the opening, as Pentecost is the closing festivity, or (what means the same thing) `acereth, /1/ of the seven

******************************************* 1. Haneberg, Alterhuemer, 2d edit., p. 656. In Deuteronomy Pentecost as `acereth lasts for only one day, while Easter and the feast of tabernacles each ]ast a week. *******************************************

weeks' "joy of harvest," and the spring festival no longer puzzles us by the place it holds in the cycle of the three yearly festivities. But what is the state of the case as regards the pesah? The meaning of the name is not clear; as we have seen, the word first occurs in Deuteronomy, and there also the time of the celebration is restricted to the evening and night of the first day of maccoth, from sunset until the following morning. In point of fact, the pesah points back to the sacrifice of the firstlings (Exodus xxxiv. 18 seq., xiii. 12 seq.; Deuteronomy xv. 19 seq., xvi. 1 seq.), and it is principally upon this that the historical character of the whole festivity hinges. It is because Jehovah smote the first-born of Egypt and spared those of Israel that the latter thenceforward are held sacred to Him. Such is the representation given not merely in the Priestly Code but also in Exodus xiii. 11 seq. But in neither of its sources does the Jehovistic tradition know anything of this. "Let my people go, that they may keep a feast unto me in the wilderness with sacrifices and cattle and sheep: "this from the first is the demand made upon Pharaoh, and it is in order to be suitably adorned for this purpose, contemplated by them from the first, that the departing Israelites borrow festal robes and ornaments from the Egyptians. Because Pharaoh refuses to allow the Hebrews to offer to their God the firstlings of cattle that are His due, Jebovah seizes from him the first-born of men. Thus the exodus is not the occasion of the festival, but the festival the occasion, if only a pretended one, of the exodus. If this relationship is inverted in Exodus xiii, it is because that passage is not one of the sources of the Jehovistic tradition, but is part of the redaction, and in fact (as is plain from other reasons with regard to the entire section xiii. 1-16) of a Deuteronomic redaction. From this it follows that the elaboration of the historical motive of the passover is not earlier than Deuteronomy, although perhaps a certain inclination to that way of explaining it appears before then, just as in the case of the maccoth (Exodus xii. 34). What has led to it is evidently the coincidence of the spring festival with the exodus, already accepted by the older tradition, the relation of cause and effect having become inverted in course of time. The only view sanctioned by the nature of the case is that the Israelite custom of offering the firstlings gave rise to the narrative of the slaying of the first-born of Egypt; unless the custom be pre-supposed the story is inexplicable, and the peculiar selection of its victims by the plague is left without a motive. The sacrifice of the first-born, of the male first-born, that is to say-for the females were reared as with us-does not require an historical explanation, but can be accounted for very simply: it is the expression of thankfulness to the Deity for fruitful flocks and herds. If claim is also laid to the human first-born, this is merely a later generalisation which after all resolves itself merely into a substitution of an animal offering and an extension of the original sacrifice. In Exodus xx. 28, 29 and xxxiv. 19 this consequence does not yet seem to be deduced or even to be suspected as possible; it first appears in xxxiv. 20 and presents itself most distinctly in the latest passage (xiii. 12), for there P+R RXM is contrasted with P+R #GR, and for the first the expression H(BYR, a technical one in the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel for child sacrifice, is used. The view of some scholars (most of them mere casual visitors in the field of Old Testament research) that the slaying of the first-born male children was originally precisely the main feature of the passover, hardly deserves refutation. Like the other festivals, this also, apart from the view taken of it in the Priestly Code, has a thoroughly joyous character (Exodus x. 9); Deuteronomy xvi. 7; comp. Isaiah xxx. 29). There are some historical instances indeed of the surrender of an only child or of the dearest one, but always as a voluntary and quite exceptional act; the contrary is not proved by Hosea xiii. 2. /1/ The offering of

******************************************* 1. "They make them molten images of their silver, idols according to their fancy. To them they speak, men doing sacrifice kiss calves!" The prophet would hardly blame human sacrifices only thus incidentally, more in ridicule than in high moral indignation; he would bring it to prominence the horrible and revolting character of the action much more than its absurdity. Thus ZBXY )DM means most probably, "offerers belonging to the human race." At the same time, even if the expression did mean "sacrificers of men," it would prove nothing regarding regular sacrifices of children. ********************************************

human first-born was certainly no regular or commanded exaction in ancient times; there are no traces of so enormous a blood tax, but, on the contrary, many of a great preference for eldest sons. It was not until shortly before the exile that the burning of children was introduced on a grand scale along with many other innovations, and supported by a strict interpretation of the command regarding firstlings (Jeremiah vii. 31, xix. 5; Ezekiel xx. 26). In harmony with this is the fact that the law of Exodus xiii. 3-16 comes from the hand of the latest redactor of the Jehovistic history.

III.I.2. "Abel was a shepherd and Cain was a husbandman. And in process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord; and Abel also brought an offering of the firstlings of his sheep." It is out of the simplest, most natural, and most wide-spread offerings, those of the first-fruits of the flock, herd, and field, the occasions for which recur regularly with the seasons of the year, that the annual festivals took their rise. The passover corresponds with the firstlings of Abel the shepherd, the other three with the fruits presented by Cain the husbandman; apart from this difference, in essence and foundation they are all precisely alike. Their connection with the aparchai of the

*[first-fruits; firstlings for sacrifice or offering]*

yearly seasons is indeed assumed rather than expressly stated in the Jehovistic and Deuteronomistic legislation. Yet in Exodus xxiii. 17-19, xxxiv. 23-26 we read: "Three times in the year shall all thy men appear before the Lord Jehovah; thou shalt not mingle the blood of my sacrifice with leaven, neither shall the fat of my sacrifice remain until the morning. The best of the first-fruits of thy land shalt thou bring into the house of Jehovah thy God; thou shalt not seethe the kid in the milk of its mother." It is forbidden to appear before Jehovah empty, hence the connection between the first general sentence and the details which follow it. Of these, the first seems to relate to the passover; doubtless indeed it holds good of all animal sacrifices, but in point of fact these are offered in preponderating numbers at the great festival after the herds and flocks have produced their young. The remaining sentences relate to the feasts of harvest and ingathering, whose connection with the fruits of the field is otherwise clear. As for Deuteronomy, there also it is required on the one hand that the dues from the flock and herd and field shall be personally offered at Jerusalem, and made the occasion of joyous sacrificial feasts; on the other hand, that three appearances in the year shall be made at Jerusalem, at Easter, at Pentecost, and at the feast of tabernacles, and not with empty hands. These requirements can only be explained on the assumption that the material of the feasts was that furnished by the dues. Clearly in Deuteronomy all three coincide; sacrifices, dues, feasts; other sacrifices than those occasioned by the dues can hardly be thought of for the purpose of holding a joyous festival before Jehovah; the dues are, properly speaking, simply those sacrifices prescribed by popular custom, and therefore fixed and festal, of which alone the law has occasion to treat. /1/

***************************************** 1. Deuteronomy xii. 6 seq., 11 seq., xiv. 23-26, xvi. 7, 11, 14. In the section xiv. 22-xvi. 17, dues and feasts are taken together. In the first half (xiv. 22-xv. 18) there is a progression from those acts which are repeated within the course of a year to those which occur every three years, and finally to those which occur every seven; in the second half (xv. 19-xvi. 17) recurrence is again made to the principal, that is, the seasonal dues, first to the firstlings and the passover feast, and afterwards to the two others, in connection with which the tithes of the fruits are offered. ****************************************

It results from the very nature of the case that the people come together to offer thanks for Jehovah's blessing, but no special emphasis is laid upon this. In the Jehovistic legislation (Exodus xxiii., xxxiv.) the terms have not yet come to be fixed, so that it is hardly possible to speak of a "dies festus" in the strict sense; festal seasons rather than festal days are what we have. Easter is celebrated in the month Abib, when the corn is in the ear (Exodus ix. 31, 32), Pentecost when the wheat is cut, the autumn festival when the vintage has been completed,-rather vague and shifting determinations. Deuteronomy advances a step towards fixing the terms and intervals more accurately, a circumstance very intimately connected with the centralisation of the worship in Jerusalem. Even here, however, we do not meet with one general festive offering on the part of the community, but only with isolated private offerings by individuals.

In correspondence with this the amount of the gifts is left with considerable vagueness to the good-will of the offerers. Only the firstlings are definitely demanded. The redemption allowed in Deuteronomy by means of money which buys a substitute in Jerusalem has no proper meaning for the earlier time; yet even then the offerer may in individual instances have availed himself of liberty of exchange, all the more because even then his gift, as a sacrificial meal, was essentially a benefit to himself (Exodus xxiii. 18; Genesis iv. 4, WMXBLHN). For the first-fruits of the field Exodus prescribes no measure at all, Deuteromony demands the tithe of corn, wine, and oil, which, however, is not to be understood with mathematical strictness, inasmuch as it is used at sacrificial meals, is not made over to a second party, and thus does not require to be accounted for. The tithe, as appears from Deuteronomy xxvi., is offered in autumn, that is, at the feast of tabernacles; this is the proper autumn festival of thanksgiving, not only for the wine harvest, but also for that of the threshing-floor (xvi. 13); it demands seven days, which must all be spent in Jerusalem, while in the case of maccoth only one need be spent there. It is self-evident that there is no restriction to the use of vegetable gifts merely, but sacrifices of flesh are also assumed-purchased perhaps with the proceeds of the sale of the tithe. In this way the special character of the feasts, and their connection with the first-fruits peculiar to them, could easily disappear, a thing which seems actually to have occurred in Deuteronomy, and perhaps even earlier. It is not to be wondered at that much should seem unclear to us which must have been obvious to contemporaries; in Deuteronomy, moreover, almost everything is left to standing custom, and only the one main point insisted on, that the religious worship, and thus also the festivals, must be celebrated only in Jerusalem. Leaving out of account the passover, which originally had an independent standing, and only afterwards through its connection with maccoth was taken into the regular cycle of the haggim, it cannot be doubted, generally speaking and on the whole, that not only in the Jehovistic but also in the Deuteronomic legislation the festivals rest upon agriculture, the basis at once of life and of religion. The soil, the fruitful soil, is the object of religion; it takes the place alike of heaven and of hell. Jehovah gives the land and its produce; He receives the best of what it yields as an expression of thankfulness, the tithes in recognition of His seigniorial right. The relation between Himself and His people first arose from His having given them the land in fee; it continues to be maintained, inasmuch as good weather and fertility come from Him. It is in Deuteronomy that one detects the first very perceptible traces of a historical dress being given to the religion and the worship, but this process is still confined within modest limits. The historical event to which recurrence is always made is the bringing up of Israel out of Egypt, and this is significant in so far as the bringing up out of Egypt coincides with the leading into Canaan, that is, with the giving of the land, so that the historical motive again resolves itself into the natural. In this way it can be said that not merely the Easter festival but all festivals are dependent upon the introduction of Israel into Canaan, and this is what we actually find very clearly in the prayer (Deuteronomy xxvi.) with which at the feast of tabernacles the share of the festal gifts falling to the priest is offered to the Deity. A basket containing fruits is laid upon the altar, and the following words are spoken: "A wandering Aramaean was my father, and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, a few men strong, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians evil-entreated them and oppressed them, and laid upon them hard bondage. Then called we upon ]ehovah the God of our fathers, and He heard our voice and looked on our affliction and our labour and our oppression. And Jehovah brought us forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs and with wonders, and brought us unto this place, and gave us this land, a land where milk and honey flow!. And now, behold, I have brought the best of the fruits of the land, which thou, O Lord, hast given me." Observe here how the act of salvation whereby Israel was founded issues in the gift of a fruitful land.

III.II. With this account of the Jehovistic-Deuteronomistic legislation harmonises the pre-exilic practice so far as that can be traced or is borne witness to in the historical and prophetical books. Ancient festivals in Israel must have had the pastoral life as their basis; only the passover therefore can be regarded as belonging, to the number of these. /1/ It is

********************************************* 1. The ancient Arabs also observed the sacrifice of the firstlings as a solemnity in the sacred month Rajab, which originally fell in spring (comp. Ewald, Ztschr. f.d. Kunde des Morgenlandes, 1840, p. 419; Robertson Smith, Prophets, p. 383 sq). A festivity mentioned among the earliest, and that for pastoral Judah, is the sheep-shearing (1Samuel xxv. 2 seq.; Genesis xxxviii. 12); but it does not appear to have ever developed into a regular and independent festival. Aparchai of wool and flax are mentioned in Hosea (ii. 7, 11 [A.V. 5, 9]) as of wool alone in Deuteronomy (xviii. 4). *********************************************

with perfect accuracy accordingly that precisely the passover is postulated as having been the occasion of the exodus, as being a sacrificial feast that has to be celebrated in the wilderness and has nothing to do with agriculture or harvest. But it is curious to notice how little prominence is afterwards given to this festival, which from the nature of the case is the oldest of all. It cannot have been known at all to the Book of the Covenant, for there (Exodus xxii. 29, 30) the command is to leave the firstling seven days with its dam and on the eighth day to give it to Jehovah. Probably through the predominance gained by agriculture and the feasts founded on it the passover fell into disuse in many parts of Israel, and kept its ground only in districts where the pastoral and wilderness life still retained its importance. This would also explain why the passover first comes clearly into light when Judah alone survives after the fall of Samaria. In 2Kings xxiii. 21 seq. we are told that in the eighteenth year of King Josiah the passover was held according to the precept of the law (Deut xvi.), and that for the first time,-never until then from the days of the Judges had it been so observed. If in this passage the novelty of the institution is so strongly insisted on, the reference is less to the essence of the thing than to the manner of celebration as enjoined in Deuteronomy. Agriculture was learned by the Hebrews from the Canaanites in whose land they settled, and in commingling with whom they, during the period of the Judges, made the transition to a sedentary life. Before the metamorphosis of shepherds into peasants was effected, they could not possibly have had feasts which related to agriculture. It would have been very strange if they had not taken them also over from the Canaanites. The latter owed the land and its fruits to Baal, and for this they paid him the due tribute; the Israelites stood in the same relation to Jehovah. Materially and in itself, the act was neither heathenish nor Israelite; its character either way was determined by its destination. There was, therefore, nothing against a transference of the feasts from Baal to Jehovah; on the contrary, the transference was a profession of faith that the land and its produce, and thus all that lay at the foundations of the national existence, were due not to the heathen deity but to the God of Israel. The earliest testimony is that which we have to the existence of the vintage festival in autumn,-in the first instance as a custom of the Canaanite population of Shechem. In the old and instructive story of Abimelech the son of Jerubbaal we are told (Judges ix. 27) of the citizens of Shechem that "they went out into the fields, and gathered their vineyards, and trode the grapes, and celebrated hillulim, and went into the house of their god, and ate and drank, and cursed Abimelech." But this festival must also have taken root among the Israelites at a tolerably early period. According to Judges xxi. 19 seq. there was observed yearly at Shiloh in the vineyards a feast to Jehovah, at which the maidens went out to dance. Even if the narrative of Judges xix. seq. be as a whole untrustworthy as history, this does not apply to the casual trait just mentioned, especially as it is confirmed by 1Samuel i. In this last-cited passage a feast at Shiloh is also spoken of, as occurring at the end of the year, that is, in autumn at the time of the asiph, /1/ and as being an attraction to pilgrims

********************************************* 1. LTQPT HYMYM (i.e., at the new year) 1Samuel i. 20; Exodus xxxiv. 22. In this sense is also to be understood MYMYM YMYMH Judges xxi. 19, 1Samuel i. 3. Comp. Zechariah xiv. 16. **********************************************

from the neighbourhood. Obviously the feast does not occur in all places at once, but at certain definite places (in Ephraim) which then influence the surrounding district. The thing is connected with the origin of larger sanctuaries towards the end of the period of the Judges, or, more properly speaking, with their being taken over from the previous inhabitants; thus, for example, on Shechem becoming an Israelite town the hillulim were no more abolished than was the sanctuary itself. Over and above this the erection of great royal temples must have exerted an important influence. Alike at Jerusalem and at Bethel "the feast" was celebrated from the days of Solomon and Jeroboam just as previously at Shechem and Shiloh, in the former place in September, in the latter perhaps somewhat later. /2/

******************************************** 2. 1Kings xii. 32 is, it must be owned, far from trustworthy. 1Kings viii. 2 is difficult to harmonise with vi. 38, if the interpretation of Bul and Ethanim is correct. ********************************************

This was at that period the sole actual panegyris. [national festivall The feasts at the beginning of summer may indeed also have been observed at this early period (Isa ix. 2), but in smaller local circles. This distinction is still discernible in Deuteronomy, for although in that book the feast of tabernacles is not theoretically higher than the others, in point of fact it alone is observed from beginning to end at the central sanctuary, while Easter, on the other hand, is for the most part kept at home, being only during the first day observed at Jerusalem; moreover, the smaller demand is much more emphatically insisted on than the larger, so that the first seems to have been an innovation, the latter to have had the sanction of older custom. Amos and Hosea, presupposing as they do a splendid cultus and great sanctuaries, doubtless also knew of a variety of festivals, but they have no occasion to mention any one by name. More definite notices occur in Isaiah. The threatening that within a year's time the Assyrians will be in the land is thus (xxix. 1) given: "Add ye year to year, let the feasts come round, yet I will distress Jerusalem," and at the close of the same discourse the prophet expresses himself as follows (xxxii. 9 seq.): "Rise up, ye women that are at ease; hear my voice, ye careless daughters; give ear unto my speech. Days upon a year shall ye be troubled, ye careless women; for the vintage shall fail, the ingathering shall not come. Ye shall smite upon the breasts, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine." When the two passages are taken together we gather that Isaiah, following the universal custom of the prophets in coming forward at great popular gatherings, is here speaking at the time of the autumn festival, in which the women also took an active part (Judges xxi. 19 seq.). But this autumn festival, the joyous and natural character of which is unmistakably revealed, takes place with him at the change of the year, as may be inferred from a comparison between the YNQPW of xxix. I, and the TQPT of Exodus xxxiv. 22, 1Samuel i. 20, and closes a cycle of festivals here for the first time indicated.

2. The preceding survey, it must be admitted, scarcely seems fully to establish the alleged agreement between the Jehovistic law and the older praxis. Names are nowhere to be found, and in point of fact it is only the autumn festival that is well attested, and this, it would appear, as the only festival, as THE feast. And doubtless it was also the oldest and most important of the harvest festivals, as it never ceased to be the concluding solemnity of the year. What has been prosperously brought to close is what people celebrate most rightly; the conclusion of the ingathering, both of the threshing and of the vintage, is the most appropriate of all occasions for a great joint festival,-for this additional reason, that the term is fixed, not, as in the case of the joy of reaping, by nature alone, but is in man's hands and can be regulated by him. Yet even under the older monarchy the previous festivals must also have already existed as well (Isaiah xxix. 1). The peculiarity of the feast of tabernacles would then reduce itself to this, that it was the only general festival at Jerusalem and Bethel; local celebrations "at all threshing floors "-i.e., on all high places-are not thereby excluded (Host ix. 1). But the Jehovistic legislation makes no distinction of local and central, for it ignores the great temples throughout. /1/ Possibly,

************************************** 1. Exodus xx. 24-26 looks almost like a protest against the arrangements of the temple of Solomon,-especially ver. 26. **************************************

also, it to some extent systematises the hitherto somewhat vaguer custom; the transition from the aparchai to a feast was perhaps in practice still somewhat incomplete. In the paucity of positive data one is justified, however, in speaking of a substantial agreement, inasmuch as in the two cases the idea of the festivals is the same. Very instructive in this respect are two sections of Hosea (chaps. ii. and ix.), which on this account deserve to be fully gone into. In the first of these Israel is figured as a woman who receives her maintenance from her husband, that is, from the Deity; this is the basis of the covenant relationship. But she falls into error as to the giver of her meat and drink and clothing, supposing them to come from the idols, and not from Jehovah. "She hath said, I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink. Doth she then not know that it is I (Jehovah) who have given her the corn and the wine and the oil, and silver in abundance, and gold-out of which she maketh false gods? Therefore will I take back again my corn in its time, and my wine in its season, and I will take away my wool and my flax that should cover her nakedness; and now will I discover her shame before the eyes of her lovers, and none shall deliver her out of my hand. And I will bring all her mirth to an end, her festival days, her new moons and her sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts. And I will destroy her vines and her fig-trees whereof she saith, 'They are my hire, that my lovers have given me,' and I will make them a wilderness, and the beasts of the field shall eat them. Thus will I visit upon her the days of the false gods, wherein she burnt fat offerings to them and decked herself with her rings and her jewels, and went after her lovers and forget me, saith the Lord. Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness, and there I will assign her her vineyards: then shall she be docile as in her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt. Thereafter I betroth thee unto me anew for ever, in righteousness and in judgment, in loving kindness and in mercies. In that day, saith the Lord, will I answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth, and the earth shall answer the corn and the wine and the oil, and these shall answer Jezreel" (ii. 7-24 [5-22]). The blessing of the land is here the end of religion, and that quite generally,-alike of the false heathenish and of the true Israelitish. /1/

********************************************* 1. Comp. Zech. xiv. 16 seq. All that are left of the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship Jehovah of hosts and to keep the feast of tabernacles. And whoso of the families of the earth shall not come up unto Jerusalem to worship Jehovah of hosts, UPON THEM SHALL BE NO RAIN,. But for the Egyptians-who on account of the Nile are independent of rain-another punishment is threatened if they do not come to keep the feast of tabernacles. **********************************************

It has for its basis no historical acts of salvation, but nature simply, which, however, is regarded only as God's domain and as man's field of labour, and is in no manner itself deified. The land is Jehovah's house (viii. 1, ix. 15), wherein He lodges and entertains the nation; in the land and through the land it is that Israel first becomes the people of Jehovah, just as a marriage is constituted by the wife's reception into the house of the husband, and her maintenance there. And as divorce consists in the wife's dismissal from the house, so is Jehovah's relation to His people dissolved by His making the land into a wilderness, or as in the last resort by His actually driving them forth into the wilderness; He restores it again by "sowing the nation into the land" anew, causing the heavens to give rain and the earth to bear, and thereby bringing into honour the name of "God sown" for Israel (ii. 25 [23]). In accordance with this' worship consists simply of the thanksgiving due for the gifts of the soil, the vassalage payable to the superior who has given the land and its fruits. It ipso facto ceases when the corn and wine cease; in the wilderness it cannot be thought of, for if God bestows nothing then man cannot rejoice, and religious worship is simply rejoicing over blessings bestowed. It has, therefore, invariably and throughout the character given in the Jehovistic legislation to the feasts, in which also, according to Hosea's description, it culminates and is brought to a focus. For the days of the false gods, on which people adorned themselves and sacrificed, are just the feasts, and in fact the feasts of Jehovah, whom however the people worshipped by images, which the prophet regards as absolutely heathenish.

Equally instructive is the second passage (ix. 1-6). "Rejoice not too loudly, O Israel, like the heathen, that thou hast gone a whoring from thy God, and lovest the harlot's hire upon every threshing-floor. The floor and the wine-press shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail them. They shall not dwell in Jehovah's land; Ephraim must return to Egypt, and eat what is unclean in Assyria. Then shall they no more pour out wine to Jehovah, or set in order sacrifices to Him; like bread of mourners is their bread, /1/ all that eat thereof become unclean, for

************************************** 1. For Y(RBW (ix. 4) read Y(RKW, and LXMM for LXM. See Kuenen, National Religions and Universal Religions (1882), p. 312 seq. **************************************

their bread shall only be for their hunger, it shall not come into the house of the Lord. What will ye do in the day of festival and in the day of the feast of the Lord? For lo, after they have gone away from among the ruins, Egypt shall keep hold of them, Memphis shall bury them; their pleasant things of silver shall nettles possess, the thornbush shall be in their tents." It need not surprise us that here again the prophet places the worship which in intention is obviously meant for Jehovah on the same footing with the heathen worship which actually has little to distinguish it externally therefrom, being constrained to regard the "pleasant things of silver" in the tents in the high places not as symbols of Jehovah, but as idols, and their worship as whoredom. Enough that once more we have a clear view of the character of the popular worship in Israel at that period. Threshing-floor and wine-press, corn and wine, are its motives,-vociferous joy, merry shoutings, its expression. All the pleasure of life is concentrated in the house of Jehovah at the joyous banquets held to celebrate the coming of the gifts of His mild beneficence; no more dreadful thought than that a man must eat his bread like unclean food, like bread of mourners, without having offered the aparchai at the festival. /2/ It is this

*********************************************** 2. Times of mourning are, so to speak, times of interdict, during which intercourse between God and man is suspended. Further, nothing at all was ever eaten except that of which God had in the first instance received His share;-not only no flesh but also no vegetable food, for the "first-fruits" of corn and wine represented the produce of the year and sanctified the whole. All else was unclean. Comp. Ezekiel iv. 13. **********************************************

thought which gives its sting to the threatened exile; for sacrifice and feast are dependent upon the land, which is the nursing-mother and the settled home of the nation, the foundation of its existence and of its worship.

The complete harmony of this with the essential character of the worship and of the festivals in the Book of the Covenant, in the law of the Two Tables, and in Deuteronomy, is clear in itself, but becomes still more evident by a comparison with the Priestly Code, to which we now proceed.

III.III.

In the Priestly Code the festal cycle is dealt with in two separate passages (Leviticus xxiii; Numbers xxviii., xxix.), of which the first contains a fragment (xxiii. 9-22, and partly also xxiii. 39-44) not quite homogeneous with the kernel of the document. In both these accounts also the three great feasts occur, but with considerable alteration of their essential character.

III.III.1. The festal celebration, properly so called, is exhausted by a prescribed joint offering. There are offered (I.) during Easter week and also on the day of Pentecost, besides the tamid, two bullocks, one ram, seven lambs as a burnt-offering, and one he-goat as a sin-offering daily; (2.) at the feast of tabernacles, from the first to the seventh day two rams, fourteen lambs, and, in descending series, from thirteen to seven bullocks; on the eighth day one bullock, one ram, seven lambs as a burnt offering, besides one he-goat daily as a sin-offering. Additional voluntary offerings on the part of individuals are not excluded, but are treated as of secondary importance. Elsewhere, alike in the older practice (1Samuel i. 4 seq.) and in the law (Exodus xxiii. 18) it is precisely the festal offering that is a sacrificial meal, that is to say, a private sacrifice. In Deuteronomy it has been possible to find anything surprising in the joyous meals only because people are wont to know their Old Testament merely through the perspective of the Priestly Code; at most the only peculiar thing in that book is a certain humane application of the festal offering, the offerer being required to invite to it the poor and landless of his acquaintance. But this is a development which harmonises much more with the old idea of an offering as a communion between God and man than does the other self-sufficing general churchly sacrifice. The passover alone continues in the Priestly Code also to be a sacrificial meal, and participation therein to be restricted to the family or a limited society. But this last remnant of the old custom shows itself here as a peculiar exception; the festival in the house instead of "before Jehovah " has also something ambiguous about it, and turns the sacrifice into an entirely profane act of slaughtering almost-until we come to the rite of expiation, which is characteristically retained (Exodus xii. 7; comp. Ezekiel xiv. 19).

Of a piece with this is the circumstance that the "first-fruits" of the season have come to be separated from the festivals still more than had been previously the case. While in Deuteronomy they are still offered at the three great sacrificial meals in the presence of Jehovah, in the Priestly Code they have altogether ceased to be offerings at all, and thus also of course have ceased to be festal offerings, being merely dues payable to the priests (by whom they are in part collected) and not in any case brought before the altar. Thus the feasts entirely lose their peculiar characteristics, the occasions by which they are inspired and distinguished; by the monotonous sameness of the unvarying burnt-offering and sin-offering of the community as a whole they are all put on the same even level, deprived of their natural spontaneity, and degraded into mere "exercises of religion." Only some very slight traces continue to bear witness to, we might rather say, to betray, what was the point from which the development started, namely, the rites of the barley sheaf, the loaves of bread, and the booths (Leviticus xxiii.). But these are mere rites, petrified remains of the old custom; the actual first-fruits belonging to the owners of the soil are collected by the priests, the shadow of them is retained at the festival in the form of the sheaf offered by the whole community-a piece of symbolism which has now become quite separated from its connection and is no longer understood. And since the giving of thanks for the fruits of the field has ceased to have any substantial place in the feasts, the very shadow of connection between the two also begins to disappear, for the rites of Leviticus xxiii. are taken over from an older legislation, and for the most part are passed over in silence in Numbers xxviii., xxix. Here, again, the passover has followed a path of its own. Even at an earlier period, substitution of other cattle and sheep was permitted. But now in the Priestly Code the firstlings are strictly demanded indeed, but merely as dues, not as sacrifices; the passover, always a yearling lamb or kid, has neither in fact nor in time anything to do with them, but occupies a separate position alongside. But as it is represented to have been instituted in order that the Hebrew first born may be spared in the destruction of those of the Egyptians, this connection betrays the fact that the yearling lambs are after all only a substitute for the firstlings of all animals fit for sacrifice, but in comparison with the cattle and sheep of the Jehovistic tradition and Deuteronomy a secondary substitute, and one for the uniformity of which there is no motive; and we see further that if the firstlings are now over and above assigned to the priests this is equivalent to a reduplication, which has been made possible first by a complete obscuration, and afterwards by an artificial revival of the original custom.

A further symptom also proper to be mentioned here is the fixing of harvest festival terms by the days of the month, which is to be found exclusively in the Priestly Code. Easter falls upon the fifteenth, that is, at full moon, of the first, the feast of tabernacles upon the same day of the seventh month; Pentecost, which, strange to say, is left undetermined in Numbers xxviii., falls, according to Leviticus xxiii., seven weeks after Easter. This definite dating points not merely to a fixed and uniform regulation of the cultus, but also to a change in its contents. For it is not a matter of indifference that according to the Jehovistic-Deuteronomic legislation Easter is observed in "the month of corn ears" when the sickle is put to the corn, Pentecost at the end of the wheat harvest, and the feast of tabernacles after the ingathering; as harvest feasts they are from their very nature regulated by the condition of the fruits of the soil. When they cease to be so, when they are made to depend upon the phases of the moon, this means that their connection with their natural occasion is being lost sight of. Doubtless the accurate determination of dates is correlated with the other circumstance that the festivals are no longer kept in an isolated way by people at any place they may choose, but by the whole united nation at a single spot. It is therefore probable that the fixing of the date w as accomplished at first in the case of the autumn festival, which was the first to divest itself of its local character and most readily suffered a transposition of a week or two. It was hardest to change in the case of the maccoth festival; the putting of the sickle to the corn is very inconvenient to shift. But here the passover seems to have exerted an influence. For the passover is indeed an annual feast, but not by the nature of things connected with any particular season of the year; rather was it dependent originally on the phases of the moon. Its character as a pannychis [vigil] (Exodus xii. 42 [LYL #MWRYM]) points in this direction, as also does the analogy of the Arab feasts.

The verification of the alleged denaturalisation of the feasts in the Priestly Code lies in this, that their historical interpretation, for which the way is already paved by the Jehovistic tradition, here attains its full development. For after they have lost their original contents and degenerated into mere prescribed religious forms, there is nothing to prevent the refilling of the empty bottles in any way accordant with the tastes of the period. Now, accordingly, the feast of tabernacles also becomes historical (Leviticus xxiii.), instituted to commemorate the booths under which the people had to shelter themselves during the forty years of wandering in the wilderness. In the case of Easter a new step in advance is made beyond the assignation of its motive to the exodus, which is already found in Deuteronomy and in Exodus xiii. 3 seq. For in the Priestly Code this feast, which precisely on account of its eminently historical character is here regarded as by far the most important of all, is much more than the mere commemoration of a divine act of salvation, it is itself a saving deed. It is not because Jehovah smote the firstborn of Egypt that the passover is afterwards instituted on the contrary, it is instituted beforehand, at the moment of the exodus, in order that the firstborn of Israel may be spared. Thus not merely is a historical motive assigned for the custom; its beginning is itself raised to the dignity of a historical fact upon which the feast rests,-the shadow elsewhere thrown only by another historical event here becomes substantial and casts itself. The state of matters in the case of the unleavened cakes is very similar. Instead of having it as their occasion and object to keep in remembrance the hasty midnight departure in which the travellers were compelled to carry with them their dough unleavened as it was (Exodus xii. 34), in the Priestly Code they also are spoken of as having being enjoined beforehand (xii. 15 seq.), and thus the festival is celebrated in commemoration of itself; in other words, not merely is a historical motive assigned to it, it is itself made a historical fact. For this reason also, the law relating to Easter is removed from all connection with the tabernacle legislation (Exodus xii. 1 seq.), and the difficuity that now in the case of the passover the sanctuary which elsewhere in the Priestly Code is indispensable must be left out of sight is got over by divesting it as much as possible of its sacrificial character. /1/

******************************************* 1. The ignoring of the sanctuary has a reason only in the case of the first passover, and perhaps ought to be regarded as holding good for that only. The distinction between the PSX MCRYM and the PSX HDWRWT is necessary, if only for the reason that the former is a historical fact, the latter a commemorative observance. When it is argued for the originality of the passover ritual in the Priestly Code that it alone fits in with the conditions of the sojourn in Egypt, the position is not to be disputed. *******************************************

In the case of Pentecost alone is there no tendency to historical explanation; that in this instance has been reserved for later Judaism, which from the chronology of the Book of Exodus discerned in the feast a commemoration of the giving of the law at Sinai. But one detects the drift of the later time.

It has been already pointed out, in what has just been said, that as regards this development the centralisation of the cultus was epochmaking. Centralisation is synonymous with generalisation and fixity, and these are the external features by which the festivals of the Priestly Code are distinguished from those which preceded them. In evidence I point to the prescribed sacrifice of the community instead of the spontaneous sacrifice of the individual, to the date fixed for the 15th of the month, to the complete separation between sacrifices and dues, to the reduction of the passover to uniformity; nothing is free or the spontaneous growth of nature, nothing is indefinite and still in process of becoming; all is statutory, sharply defined, distinct. But the centralisation of the cultus had also not a little to do with the inner change which the feasts underwent. At first the gifts of the various seasons of the year are offered by the individual houses as each one finds convenient; afterwards they are combined, and festivals come into existence; last of all, the united offerings of individuals fall into the back ground when compared with the single joint-offering on behalf of the entire community. According as stress is laid upon the common character of the festival and uniformity in its observance, in precisely the same degree does it become separated from the roots from which it sprang, and grow more and more abstract. That it is then very ready to assume a historical meaning may partly also be attributed to the circumstance that history is not, like harvest, a personal experience of individual households, but rather an experience of the nation as a whole. One does not fail to observe, of course, that the festivals-which always to a certain degree have a centralising tendency-have IN THEMSELVES a disposition to become removed from the particular motives of their institution, but in no part of the legislation has this gone so far as in the Priestly Code. While everywhere else they still continue to stand, as we have seen, in a clear relationship to the land and its increase, and are at one and the same time the great days of homage and tribute for the superior and grantor of the soil, here this connection falls entirely out of sight. As in opposition to the Book of the Covenant and Deuteronomy, nay, even to the corpus itself which forms the basis of Leviticus xvii.-xxvi., one can characterise the entire Priestly Code as the wilderness legislation, inasmuch as it abstracts from the natural conditions and motives of the actual life of the people in the land of Canaan and rears the hierocracy on the tabula rasa of the wilderness, the negation of nature, by means of the bald statutes of arbitrary absolutism, so also the festivals, in which the connection of the cultus with agriculture appears most strongly, have as much as possible been turned into wilderness festivals, but most of all the Easter festival, which at the same time has become the most important.

III.III.2. The centralisation of the cultus, the revolutionising influence of which is seen in the Priestly Code, is begun by Deuteronomy. The former rests upon the latter, and draws its as yet unsuspected consequences. This general relation is maintained also in details; in the first place, in the names of the feasts, which are the same in both,-pesah, shabuoth, sukkoth. This is not without its inner significance, for asiph (ingathering) would have placed much greater hindrances in the way of the introduction of a historical interpretation than does sukkoth (booths). So also with the prominence given to the passover, a festival mentioned nowhere previously-a prominence which is much more striking in the Priestly Code than in Deuteronomy. Next, this relation is observed in the duration of the feasts. While Deuteronomy certainly does not fix their date of commencement with the same definiteness, it nevertheless in this respect makes a great advance upon the Jehovistic legislation, inasmuch as it lays down the rule of a week for Easter and Tabernacles, and of a day for Pentecost. The Priestly Code is on the whole in agreement with this, and also with the time determination of the relation of Pentecost to Easter, but its provisions are more fully developed in details. The passover, in the first month, on the evening of the 14th, here also indeed begins the feast, but does not, as in Deuteronomy xvi. 4, 8, count as the first day of Easter week; on the contrary, the latter does not begin until the 15th and closes with the 21st (comp. Leviticus xxiii. 6; Numbers xxviii. 17; Exodus xii. 18). The beginning of the festival week being thus distinctly indicated, there arises in this way not merely an ordinary but also an extra-ordinary feast day more, the day after the passover, on which already, according to the injunctions of Deuteronomy, the pilgrims were required to set out early in the morning on the return journey to their homes. /1/

********************************************* 1. It is impossible to explain away this discrepancy by the circumstance that in the Priestly Code the day is reckoned from the evening; for (1.) this fact has no practical bearing, as the dating reckons at any rate from the morning, and the evening preceding the 15th is always called the 14th of the month (Leviticus xiii. 27, 32); (2.) the first day of the feast in Deuteronomy is just the day on the evening of which the passover is held, and upon it there follow not seven but six days more, whereas in the Priestly Code the celebration extends from the 14th to the 21st of the month (Exodus xii. 18). When the MXRT H#BT: is made to refer, not as in Josh. v. 11 to the 14th, but as in Jewish tradition (LXX on Leviticus xxiii. 11) to the day following the 15th of Nisan, thee 16th of Nisan is added to the 14th and 15th as a special feast day. ***********************************************

Another advance consists in this, that not only the passover, as in Deuteronomy, or the additional first day of the feast besides, but also the seventh (which, according to Deuteronomy xvi. 8, is marked only by rest), must be observed as miqra qodesh in Jerusalem. In other words, such pilgrims as do not live in the immediate neighbourhood are compelled to pass the whole week there, an exaction which enables us to mark the progress made with centralisation, when the much more moderate demands of Deuteronomy are compared. The feast of tabernacles is in the latter law also observed from beginning to end at Jerusalem, but the Priestly Code has contrived to add to it an eighth day as an `acereth to the principal feast, which indeed still appears to be wanting in the older portion of Leviticus xxiii. From all this it is indisputable that the Priestly Code has its nearest relations with Deuteronomy, but goes beyond it in the same direction as that in which Deuteronomy itself goes beyond the Jehovistic legislation. In any case the intermediate place in the series belongs to Deuteronomy, and if we begin that series with the Priestly Code, we must in consistency close it with the Sinaitic Book of the Covenant (Exodus xx. 23 seq.).

After King Josiah had published Deuteronomy and had made it the Book of the Covenant by a solemn engagement of the people (621 B.C.), he commanded them to "keep the passover to Jehovah your God as it is written in this Book;" such a passover had never been observed from the days of the judges, or throughout the entire period of the kings (2Kings xxiii. 21, 22). And when Ezra the scribe introduced the Pentateuch as we now have it as the fundamental law of the church of the second temple (444 B.C.), it was found written in the Torah which Jehovah had commanded by Moses, that the children of Israel were to live in booths during the feast in the seventh month, and further, to use branches of olive and myrtle and palm for this purpose, and that the people went and made to themselves booths accordingly; such a thing had not been done "since the days of Joshua the son of Nun even unto that day " (Nehemiah viii. 14 seq.). That Josiah's passover rests upon Deuteronomy xvi. and not upon Exodus xii. is sufficiently proved by the circumstance that the observance of the festival stands in connection with the new unity of the cultus, and is intended to be an exemplification of it, while the precept of Exodus xii., if literally followed, could only have served to destroy it. We thus find that the two promulgations of the law, so great in their importance and so like one another in their character, both take place at the time of a festival, the one in spring, the other in harvest; and we also discover that the festal observance of the Priestly Code first began to show life and to gain currency about two hundred years later than that of Deuteronomy. This can be proved in yet another way. The author of the Book of Kings knows only of a seven days' duration of the feast of tabernacles (1Kings viii. 66); Solomon dismisses the people on the eighth day. On the other hand, in the parallel passage in Chronicles (2Chronicles vii. 9) the king holds the `acereth on the eighth, and does not dismiss the people until the following day, the twenty-third of the month; that is to say, the Deuteronomic use, which is followed by the older author and by Ezekiel (xiv. 25) who was, roughly speaking, his contemporary, is corrected by the later writer into conformity with that of the Priestly Code in force since the time of Ezra (Nehemiah viii. 18). In later Judaism the inclination to assert most strongly precisely that which is most open to dispute led to the well-known result that the eighth day of the feast was regarded as the most splendid of all (John vii. 37).

On this question also the Book of Ezekiel stands nearest the Priestly Code, ordaining as follows (xiv. 21-25):- "In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, ye shall keep the passover, ye shall eat maccoth seven days; on that day shall the prince offer for himself and for all the people of the land a bullock for a sin-offering, and during the seven days he shall offer a burnt-offering to the Lord, seven bullocks and seven rams daily for the seven days, and a he-goat daily for a sin offering; and he shall offer as a meal-offering an ephah for every bullock and every ram and a hin of oil for the ephah. In the seventh month, on the fifteenth day of the month, in the feast shall he do the like for seven days, according to the sin-offering, according to the burnt-offering, and according to the meal-offering, and according to the oil." Here indeed in details hardly any point is in agreement with the prescriptions of the ritual law of Leviticus xxiii., Numbers xxviii., xxix. Apart from the fact that the day of Pentecost is omitted (it is restored in the Massoretic text by an absurd correction in ver. 11), in the first place there is a discrepancy as to the DURATION of the feasts; both last seven and not eight days, and the passover is taken for the first day of Easter, as in Deuteronomy. Further, the offerings differ, alike by their never-varying number and by their quality; in particular, nothing is said of the passover lamb, but a bullock as a general sin-offering is mentioned instead. From the minha the wine is wanting, but this must be left out of the account, for Ezekiel banishes wine from the service on principle. Lastly, it is not the CONGREGATION that sacrifices, but the prince for himself and for the PEOPLE. But in spite of all differences the general similarity is apparent; one sees that here for the first time we have something which at all points admits of correlation with the Priestly Code, but is quite disparate with the Jehovistic legislation, and half so with that of Deuteronomy. On both hands we find the term fixed according to the day of the month, the strictly prescribed joint burnt-offering and sin-offering, the absence of relation first-fruits and agriculture, the obliteration of natural distinctions so as to make one general churchly festival. But Ezekiel surely could hardly have had any motive for reproducing Leviticus xxiii. and Numbers xxviii. seq., and still less for the introduction of a number of aimless variations as he did so. Let it be observed that in no one detail does he contradict Deuteronomy, while yet he stands so infinitely nearer to the Priestly Code; the relationship is not an arbitrary one, but arises from their place in time. Ezekiel is the forerunner of the priestly legislator in the Pentateuch; his pence and people, to some extent invested with the colouring of the bygone period of the monarchy, are the antecedents of the congregation of the tabernacle and the second temple. Against this supposition there is nothing to be alleged, and it is the rational one, for this reason, that it was not Ezekiel but the Priestly Code that furnished the norm for the praxis of the later period.

For, as the festival system of the Priestly Code absolutely refuses to accommodate itself to the manner of the older worship as we are made acquainted with it in Hos. ii., ix. and elsewhere, in the same degree does it furnish in every respect the standard for the praxis of post-exilian Judaism, and, therefore, also for our ideas thence derived. No one in reading the New Testament dreams of any other manner of keeping the passover than that of Exodus xii., or of any other offering than the paschal lamb there prescribed. One might perhaps hazard the conjecture that if in the wilderness legislation of the Code there is no trace of agriculture being regarded as the basis of life, which it still is in Deuteronomy and even in the kernel of Leviticus xvii.-xxvi., this also is a proof that the Code belongs to a very recent rather than to a very early period, when agriculture was no longer rather than not yet. With the Babylonian captivity the Jews lost their fixed seats, and so became a trading people.

III.III.3. No notice has as yet been taken of one phenomenon which distinguishes the Priestly Code, namely, that in it the tripartite cycle of the feasts is extended and interrupted. In the chronologically arranged enumeration of Leviticus xxiii. and Numbers xxviii., xxix., two other feast days are interpolated between Pentecost and Tabernacles: new year on the first, and the great day of atonement on the tenth of the seventh month. One perceives to what an extent the three originally connected harvest feasts have lost their distinctive character, when it is observed that these two heterogeneous days make their appearance in the midst of them;-the yom kippur in the same series with the old haggim, i.e., dances, which were occasions of pure pleasure and joy, not to be named in the same day with fasts and mournings. The following points demand notice in detail.

In the period of the kings the change of the year occurred in autumn. The autumn festival marked the close of the year and of the festal cycle (Exodus xxiii. 16, xxxiv. 22; 1Samuel i. 21, 21; Isaiah xxix. 1, xxxii. 10). Deuteronomy was discovered in the eighteenth year of Josiah, and in the very same year Easter was observed in accordance with the prescriptions of that law-which could not have been unless the year had begun in autumn. Now the ECCLESIASTICAL festival of new year in the Priestly Code is also autumnal. /1/ The yom teruah (Leviticus xxiii 24, 2;;

******************************************** 1. In this way Tabernacles comes not before but after new year; this probably is connected with the more definite dating (on the fifteenth day of the month), but is quite contrary to the old custom and the meaning of the feast. *******************************************

Numbers xxix. 1 seq.) falls on the first new moon of autumn, and it follows from a tradition confirmed by Leviticus xxv. 9, 10, that this day was celebrated as new year [R)# H#NH). But it is always spoken of as the first of the seventh month. That is to say, the civil new year has been separated from the ecclesiastical and been transferred to spring; the ecclesiastical can only be regarded as a relic surviving from an earlier period, and betrays strikingly the priority of the division of the year that prevailed in the time of the older monarchy. It appears to have first begun to give way under the influence of the Babylonians, who observed the spring era. /1/ For the designation of the

*************************************************** 1. In Exodus xii. 2 this change of era is formally commanded by Moses: "This month (the passover month) shall be the beginning of months unto you, it shall be to you the first of the months of the year." According to George Smith, the Assyrian year commenced at the vernal equinox; the Assyrian use depends on the Babylonian (Assyrian Eponym Canon, p. 19). ***************************************************

months by numbers instead of by the old Hebrew names, Abib, Zif, Bul, Ethanim and the like,-a style which arises together with the use of the spring era,-does not yet occur in Deuteronomy (xvi.1), but apart from the Priestly Code, and the last redactor of the Pentateuch (Deuteronomy i. 3) is found for the first time in writers of the period of the exile. It is first found in Jeremiah, but only in those portions of his book which were not committed to writing by him, or at least have been edited by a later hand; /2/

**************************************************** 2. Kuenen, Hist.-Krit. Onderzoek (1863), ii. pp. 197, 214. ****************************************************

then in Ezekiel and the author of the Book of Kings, who explains the names he found in his source by giving the numbers (1Kings vi. 37, 38, viii. 2); next in Haggai and Zechariah; and lastly in Chronicles, though here already the Babylonio-Syrian names of the months, which at first were not used in Hebrew, have begun to find their way in (Nehemiah i. 1, ii. 1; Zech. i. 7). The Syrian names are always given along with the numbers in the Book of Esther, and are used to the exclusion of all others in that of Maccabees. It would be absurd to attempt to explain this demonstrable change which took place in the calendar after the exile as a mere incidental effect of the Priestly Code, hitherto in a state of suspended animation, rather than by reference to general causes arising from the circumstances of the time, under whose influence the Priestly Code itself also stood, and which then had for their result a complete change in the greater accuracy and more general applicability of the methods by which time was reckoned. A similar phenomenon presents itself in connection with the metric system. The "shekel of the sanctuary," often mentioned in the Priestly Code, and there only, cannot possibly have borne this name until the most natural objects of the old Israelite regime had begun to appear surrounded by a legendary nimbus, because themselves no longer in actual existence. Over against it we have the "king's weight" mentioned in a gloss in 2Samuel xiv. 26, the king being none other than the great king of Babylon. It is an interesting circumstance that the "shekel of the sanctuary "spoken of in the Priestly Code is still the ordinary shekel in Ezekiel; compare Exodus xxx. 13 with Ezekiel xliv. 12.

During the exile the observance of the ecclesiastical new year seems to have taken place not on the first but on the tenth of the seventh month (Leviticus xxv. 9; Ezekiel xl. 1), and there is nothing to be wondered at in this, after once it had come to be separated from the actual beginning of the year. /1/ This fact alone

*********************************************** 1. The tenth of the month is to be taken in Ezekiel as strictly new year's day; for the designation R)# H#NH occurs in no other meaning than this, and moreover it is by no mere accident that the prophet has his vision of the new Jerusalem precisely at the new year. But according to Leviticus xxv. 9 it is the seventh month that is meant, on the tenth day of which the trumpets are blown at the commencement of the year of jubilee. ************************************************

would suffice to bring into a clear light the late origin of the great day of atonement in Leviticus xvi., which at a subsequent period was observed on this date; for although as a ceremonial of general purification that day occurs appropriately enough at the change of the year, the joyful sound of the new year trumpets ill befits its quiet solemnity, the YWM TRW(H in the Priestly Code being in fact fixed for the first of the seventh month. Notwithstanding its conspicuous importance, there is nothing known of the great day of atonement either in the Jehovistic and Deuteronomic portions of the Pentateuch or in the historical and prophetical books. It first begins to show itself in embryo during the exile. Ezekiel (xiv. 18-20) appoints two great expiations at the beginning of the two halves of the year; for in xiv. 20 the LXX must be accepted, which reads B#B(Y BXD#, "in the seventh month at new moon." The second of these, in autumn, is similar to that of the Priestly Code, only that it falls on the first and new year on the tenth, while in the latter, on the contrary, new year is observed on the first and the atonement on the tenth; the ritual is also much simpler. Zechariah towards the end of the sixth century looks back upon two regular fast days, in the fifth and the seventh month, as having been in observance for seventy years, that is, from the beginning of the exile (vii. 5), and to these he adds (viii. 19) two others in the fourth and in the tenth. They refer, according to the very probable explanation of C. B. Michaelis, to the historical days of calamity which preceded the exile. On the ninth day of the fourth month Jerusalem was taken (Jeremiah xxxix. 2); on the seventh of the fifth the city and the temple were burnt (2Kings xxv. 8); in the seventh month Gedaliah was murdered, and all that remained of the Jewish state annihilated (Jeremiah xli.); in the tenth the siege of the city by Nebuchadnezzar was begun (2Kings xxv. 1). Zechariah also still knows nothing of the great day of atonement in Leviticus xvi., but only mentions among others the fast of the seventh month as having subsisted for seventy years. Even in 444 B.C., the year of the publication of the Pentateuch by Ezra, the great day of atonement has not yet come into force. Ezra begins the reading of the law in the beginning of the seventh month, and afterwards the feast of tabernacles is observed on the fifteenth; of an atoning solemnity on the tenth of the month not a word is said in the circumstantial narrative, which, moreover, is one specially interested in the liturgical element, but it is made up for on the twenty-fourth (Nehemiah viii., ix.). This testimonium e silentio is enough; down to that date the great day of the Priestly Code (now introduced for the first time) had not existed. /1/ The term is

************************************************ 1. "If Leviticus xvi. belongs to the original of the Priestly Code, and the entire Pentateuch was published by Ezra in the year 444, and yet the day was not then celebrated, then it has ipso facto been conceded that it is possible that there can be laws which yet are not carried into effect." So writes Dillmann in his introduction to Leviticus xvi. (1880, p. 525); every one will grant him that the law, before it could attain public currency, must have been previously written and promulgated. ***********************************************

partly fixed, following Ezekiel, by reference to the old new year's day (Leviticus xxv. 9); partly, following Zechariah, by reference to the fast of Gedaliah, which indeed was still observed later as a separate solemnity.

Even before the exile general fast days doubtless occurred, but they were specially appointed, and always arose out of extraordinary occasions, when some sin was brought home to the public conscience, or when the divine anger threatened, especially in connection with calamities affecting the produce of the soil (1Kings xxi. 9, 12; Jeremiah xiv. 12, xxxvi. 6, 9; Joel i. 14, ii. 12, 15). In the exile they began to be a regular custom (Isaiah lviii.), doubtless in the first instance in remembrance of the dies atri that had been experienced, but also in a certain measure as a surrogate, suited to the circumstances, for the joyous popular gatherings of Easter, Pentecost, and Tabernacles which were possible only in the Holy Land. /l/

************************************** 1. After the second destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, the system of fasts received such an impulse that it was necessary to draw up a list of the days on which fasting was forbidden. *************************************

At last they came into a position of co-ordination with the feasts, and became a stated and very important element of the ordinary worship. In the Priestly Code, the great fast in the tenth of the seventh month is the holiest day of all the year. Nothing could illustrate more clearly the contrast between the new cultus and the old; fixing its regard at all points on sin and its atonement, it reaches its culmination in a great atoning solemnity. It is as if the temper of the exile had carried itself into the time of liberation also, at least during the opening centuries; as if men had felt themselves not as in an earlier age only momentarily and in special circumstances, but unceasingly, under the leaden pressure of sin and wrath. It is hardly necessary to add here expressly that also in regard to the day of atonement as a day sacred above all others the Priestly Code became authoritative for the post-exilian period. "Ritual and sacrifice have through the misfortunes of the times disappeared, but this has retained all its old sacredness; unless a man has wholly cut himself adrift from Judaism he keeps this day, however indifferent he may be to all its other usages and feasts."

III.IV. [.1?]

A word, lastly, on the lunar feasts, that is, new moon and Sabbath. That the two are connected cannot be gathered from the Pentateuch, but something of the sort is implied in Amos viii. 5, and 2Kings iv. 22, 23. In Amos the corn-dealers, impatient of every interruption of their trade, exclaim, "When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn; and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat?" In the other passage the husband of the woman of Shunem, when she begs him for an ass and a servant that she may go to the prophet Elisha, asks why it is that she proposes such a journey now, for "it is neither new moon nor Sabbath;" it is not Sunday, as we might say. Probably the Sabbath was originally regulated by the phases of the moon, and thus occurred on the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first (and twenty-eighth) day of the month, the new moon being reckoned as the first; at least no other explanation can be discovered. /2/ For that the week should

************************************ 2 George Smith, Assyrian Eponymn Canon, pp. 19, 20. "Among the Assyrians the first twenty-eight days of every month were divided into four weeks of seven days each, the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eight days respectively being Sabbaths; and there was a general prohibition of work on these days." See further Hyde, Hist. Rel. Vet. Pers., p. 239. Among the Syrians $bbh means the week, just as among the Arabs sanba and sanbata (Pl. sanabit), dim. suneibita) mean a period of time (Lagarde, Ps. Hieronymi; p. 158), and in fact, according to the lexicographers, a comparatively long one. But in the sole case cited by the Tag al 'Arus, it means rather a short interval. "What is youth? It is the beginning of a sanbata," meaning something like the Sunday of a week. According to this it would appear as if the sabbath had been originally the week itself, and only afterwards became the weekly festival day. The identity of the Syriac word (ta sabbata) in the New Testament) with the Hebrew is guaranteed by the twofold Arabic form. ***************************************

be conditioned by the seven planets seems very barely credible. It was not until after people had got their seven days that they began to call them after the seven planets; /1/

********************************************** 1. The peculiar order in which the names of the planets are used to designate the days of the week makes this very clear; see Ideler, Handb. d. Chron. i. 178 seq., ii 77 seq. ******************************************

the number seven is the only bond of connection between them. Doubtless the week is older than the names of its days.

Lunar feasts, we may safely say, are in every case older than annual or harvest feasts; and certainly they are so in the case of the Hebrews. In the pre-historic period the new moon must have been observed with such preference that an ancient name for it, which is no longer found in Biblical Hebrew, even furnished the root of the general word for a festive occasion, which is used for the vintage feast in a passage so early as Judges ix. 27. /2/

***************************************** 2. Sprenger (Leben Moh. iii. 527) and Lagarde have rightly correlated the Hebrew hallel with the Arabic ahalla (to call out, labbaika, see, for example Abulf. i. p. 180). But there is no uncertainty as to the derivation of ahalla from hilal (new moon) *****************************************

But it is established by historical testimonies besides that the new moon festival anciently stood, at least, on a level with that of the Sabbath. Compare 1Samuel xx. 5, 6; ~2Kings iv. 23; Annos viii. 5; Isa i. 13; Hos. ii. 13 (A.V. 11). In the Jehovistic and Deuteronomic legislation, however, it is completely ignored, and if it comes into somewhat greater prominence in that of Ezekiel and the Priestly Code (but without being for a moment to be compared with the Sabbath), this perhaps has to do with the circumstance that in the latter the great festivals are regulated by the new moon, and that therefore it is important that this should be observed. It may have been with a deliberate intention that the new moon festival was thrust aside on account of all sorts of heathenish superstition which readily associated themselves with it; but, on the other hand, it is possible that the undersigned preponderance gained by the Sabbath may have ultimately given it independence, and led to the reckoning of time by regular intervals of seven days without regard to new moon, with which now it came into collision, instead of, as formerly, being supported by it.

As a lunar festival doubtless the Sabbath also went back to a very remote antiquity. But with the Israelites the day acquired an altogether peculiar significance whereby it was distinguished from all other feast days; it became the day of rest par excellence. Originally the rest is only a consequence of the feast, e.g. that of the harvest festival after the period of severe labour; the new moons also were marked in this way (Amos viii. 5; 2Kings iv. 23). In the case of the Sabbath also, rest is, properly speaking, only the consequence of the fact that the day is the festal and sacrificial day of the week (Isaiah i. 13; Ezekiel xlvi. 1 seq.), on which the shewbread was laid out; but here, doubtless on account of the regularity with which it every eighth day interrupted the round of everyday work, this gradually became the essential attribute. In the end even its name came to be interpreted as if derived from the verb "to rest." But as a day of rest it cannot be so very primitive in its origin; in this attribute it presupposes agriculture and a tolerably hard-pressed working-day life. With this it agrees that an intensification of the rest of the Sabbath among the Israelites admits of being traced in the course of the history. The highest development, amounting even to a change of quality, is seen in the Priestly Code.

According to 2Kings iv. 22, 23, one has on Sabbath time for occupations that are not of an everyday kind; servant and ass can be taken on a journey which is longer than that "of a Sabbath day." In Hos. ii. 13 (11) we read, "I make an end of all your joy, your feasts, your new moons and your Sabbaths," that is to say, the last-named share with the first the happy joyousness which is impossible in the exile which Jehovah threatens. With the Jehovist and the Deuteronomist the Sabbath, which, it is true, is already extended in Amos viii. 5 to commerce, is an institution specially for agriculture; it is the day of refreshment for the people and the cattle, and is accordingly employed for social ends in the same way as the sacrificial meal is (Exodus xx. 10, xxiii. 12, xxxiv. 21; Deuteronomy v. 13, 14). Although the moral turn given to the observance is genuinely Israelitic and not original, yet the rest even here still continues to be a feast, a satisfaction for the labouring classes; for what is enjoined as a duty-upon the Israelite rulers, that is, to whom the legislation is directed-is less that they should rest than that they should give rest. In the Priestly Code, on the contrary, the rest of the Sabbath has nothing at all of the nature of the joyous breathing-time from the load of life which a festival affords, but is a thing for itself, which separates the Sabbath not only from the week days, but also from the festival days, and approaches an ascetic exercise much more nearly than a restful refreshment. It is taken in a perfectly abstract manner, not as rest from ordinary work, but as rest absolutely. On the holy day it is not lawful to leave the camp to gather sticks or manna (Exod. xvi.; Numbers xv.), not even to kindle a fire or cook a meal (Exodus xxxv. 3); this rest is in fact a sacrifice of abstinence from all occupation, for which preparation must already begin on the preceding day (Exodus xvi.). Of the Sabbath of the Priestly Code in fact it could not be said that it was made for man (Mark ii. 27); rather is it a statute that presents itself with all the rigour of a law of nature, having its reason with itself, and being observed even by the Creator. The original narrative of the Creation, according to which God finished His work on the seventh day, and therefore sanctified it, is amended so as to be made to say that He finished in six days and rested on the seventh. /1/

************************************** 1 The contradiction is indubitable when in Genesis ii. 2 it is said in the first place that on the seventh day God ended the work which He had made; and then that He rested on the seventh day from His work. Obviously the second clause is an authentic interpretation added from very intelligible motives. ***************************************

Tendencies to such an exaggeration of the Sabbath rest as would make it absolute are found from the Chaldaean period. While Isaiah, regarding the Sabbath purely as a sacrificial day, says, "Bring no more vain oblations; it is an abominable incense unto me; new moon and Sabbath, the temple assembly--I cannot endure iniquity and solemn meeting," Jeremiah, on the other hand, is the first of the prophets who stands up for a stricter sanctification of the seventh day, treating it, however, merely as a day of rest: "Bear no burden on the Sabbath day, neither bring in by the gates of Jerusalem nor carry forth a burden out of your houses, neither do ye any work" (xvii. 21, 22). He adds that this precept had indeed been given to the fathers, but hitherto has not been kept; thus, what was traditional appears to have been only the abstinence from field work and perhaps also from professional pursuits. In this respect the attitude of Jeremiah is that which is taken also by his exilian followers, not merely by Ezekiel (xx. 16, xxii. 263 but also by the Great Unknown (Isaiah lvi. 2, lviii. 13), who does not otherwise manifest any express partiality for cultus. While according to Hos. ii. 13, and even Lam. ii. 6, the Sabbath, as well as the rest of the acts of divine worship, must cease outside of the Holy Land, it in fact gained in importance to an extraordinary degree during the exile, having severed itself completely, not merely from agriculture, but in particular also from the sacrificial system, and gained entire independence as a holy solemnity of rest. Accordingly, it became along with circumcision the symbol that bound together the Jewish diaspora; thus already in the Priestly Code the two institutions are the general distinguishing marks of religion [)WT Genesis xvii. 10, 11; Exodus xxxi. 13] which also continue to subsist under circumstances where as in the exile the conditions of the Mosaic worship are not present (Genesis ii. 3, xvii. 12, 13). The trouble which in the meantime the organisers of the church of the second temple had in forcing into effect the new and strict regulations is clear from Nehemiah xiii. 15 seq. But they were ultimately successful. The solemnisation of the Sabbath in Judaism continued to develop logically on the basis of the priestly legislation, but always approximating with increasing nearness to the idea; of absolute rest, so that for the straitest sect of the Pharisees the business of preparing for the sacred day absorbed the whole week, and half man's life, so to speak, existed for it alone. "From Sunday onwards think of the Sabbath," says Shammai. Two details are worthy of special prominence; the distinction between yom tob and shabbath, comparable to that drawn by the Puritans between Sundays and feast days, and the discussion as to whether the Sabbath was broken by divine worship; both bring into recognition that tendency of the Priestly Code in which the later custom separates itself from its original roots.

III.IV.2. Connected with the Sabbath is the sabbatical year. In the Book of the Covenant it is commanded that a Hebrew who has been bought as a slave must after six years of service be liberated on the seventh unless he himself wishes to remain (Exodus xxi. 2-6). By the same authority it is ordained in another passage that the land and fruit-gardens are to be wrought and their produce gathered for six years, but on the seventh the produce is to be surrendered (#M+), that the poor of the people may eat, and what they leave the beasts of the field may at (xxiii. 10, 11). Here there is no word of a sabbatical year. The liberation of the Hebrew slave takes place six years after his purchase, that is, the term is a relative one. In like manner, in the other ordinance there is nothing to indicate an absolute seventh year; and besides, it is not a Sabbath or fallow time for the land that is contemplated, but a surrender of the harvest.

The first of these commands is repeated in Deuteronomy without material alteration, and to a certain extent word for word (xv. 12-18). The other has at least an analogue in Deuteronomy xv. 1-6: "At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a release (surrender, s*m+h), and this is the manner of it; no creditor that lendeth aught shall exact it of his neighbour or of his brother, because Jehovah's release has been proclaimed; of a foreigner thou mayst exact it again, but that which is of thine with thy brother, thy hand shall release." That this precept is parallel with Exodus xxiii. 10, 11, is shown by the word #m+h~; but this has a different meaning put upon it which plainly is introduced as new. Here it is not landed property that is being dealt with, but money, and what has to be surrendered is not the interest of the debt merely (comparable to the fruit of the soil), but the capital itself; the last clause admits of no other construction, however unsuitable the regulation may be. A step towards the sabbatical year is discernible in it, in so far as the seventh year term is not a different one for each individual debt according to the date when it was incurred (in which case it might have been simply a period of prescription), but is a uniform and common term publicly fixed: it is absolute, not relative. But it does not embrace the whole seventh year, it does not come in at the end of six years as in Exodus, but at the end of seven; the surrender of the harvest demands the whole year, the remission of debts, comparatively speaking, only a moment.

The sabbatical year is peculiar to the Priestly Code, or, to speak more correctly, to that collection of laws incorporated and edited by it, which lies at the basis of Leviticus xvii.-xxvi. In Leviticus xxv. 1-7 we read: "When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a Sabbath to Jehovah. Six years shalt thou sow thy field and prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; but in the seventh year shall the land keep a Sabbath of rest unto Jehovah: thy field shalt thou not sow, thy vineyard shalt thou not prune; that which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest shalt thou not reap, neither shalt thou gather the grapes of thy vine undressed; the land shall have a year of rest, and the Sabbath of the land shall be food for you; for thee, and for thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy cattle, and for all the beasts that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be food." The expressions make it impossible to doubt that Exodus xxiii. 10, 11 lies at the foundation of this law; but out of this as a basis it is something different that has been framed. The seventh year, which is there a relative one, has here become fixed,-not varying for the various properties, but common for the whole land, a sabbatical year after the manner of the Sabbath day. This amounts to a serious increase in the difficulty of the matter, for it is not one and the same thing to have the abstinence from harvest spread over seven years and to have it concentrated into one out of every seven. In like manner a heightening of the demand is also seen in the circumstance that not merely harvesting but also sowing and dressing are forbidden. In the original commandment this was not the case; all that was provided for was that in the seventh year the harvest should not fall to the lot of the proprietor of the soil, but should be publici juris,-a relic perhaps of communistic agriculture. Through a mere misunderstanding of the verbal suffix in Exodus xxiii. 11, as has been conjectured by Hupfeld, a surrender of the fruit of the land has been construed into a surrender of tbe land itself-a general fallow year (Leviticus xxv. 4). The misunderstanding, however, is not accidental, but highly characteristic. In Exodus xxiii. the arrangement is made for man; it is a limitation, for the common good, of private rights of property in land,-in fact, for the benefit of the landless, who in the seventh year are to have the usufruct of the soil; in Leviticus xxv. the arrangement is for the sake of the land,-that it may rest, if not on the seventh day, at least on the seventh year, and for the sake of the Sabbath- that it may extend its supremacy over nature also. Of course this presupposes the extreme degree of Sabbath observance by absolute rest, and becomes comprehensible only when viewed as an outgrowth from that. For the rest, a universal fallow season is possible only under circumstances in which a people are to a considerable extent independent of the products of their own agriculture; prior to the exile even the idea of such a thing could hardly have occurred.

In the Priestly Code the year of jubilee is further added to supplement in turn the sabbatical year (Leviticus xxv. 8 seq.). As the latter is framed to correspond with the seventh day, so the former corresponds with the fiftieth, i.e., with Pentecost, as is easily perceived from the parallelism of Leviticus xxv. 8 with Leviticus xxiii. 15. Asthe fiftieth day after the seven Sabbath days is celebrated as a closing festival of the forty-nine days' period, so is the fiftieth year after the seven sabbatic years as rounding off the larger interval; the seven Sabbaths falling on harvest time, which are usually reckoned specially (Luke vi. 1 ), have, in the circumstance of their interrupting harvest work, a particular resemblance to the sabbatic years which interrupt agriculture altogether. Jubilee is thus an artificial institution superimposed upon the years of fallow regarded as harvest Sabbaths after the analogy of Pentecost. Both its functions appear originally to have belonged also to the Sabbath year and to be deduced from the two corresponding regulations in Deuteronomy relating to the seventh year, so that thus Exod xxiii. would be the basis of Leviticus xxv. 1-7 and Deuteronomy xv. that of xxv. 8 seq. The emancipation of the Hebrew slave originally had to take place on the seventh year after the purchase, afterwards (it would seem) on the seventh vear absolutely; for practical reasons it was transferred from that to the fiftieth. Analogous also, doubtless, is the growth of the other element in the jubilee-the return of mortgaged property to its hereditary owner-out of the remission of debts enjoined in Deuteronomy xv. for the end of the seventh year; for the two hang very closely together, as Leviticus xxv. 23 seq. shows.

As for the evidence for these various arrangements, those of the Book of the Covenant are presupposed alike by Deuteronomy and by the Priestly Code. It seems to have been due to the prompting of Deuteronomy that towards the end of the reign of Zedekiah the emancipation of the Hebrew slaves was seriously gone about; the expressions in Jeremiah xxxiv. 14 point to Deuteronomy xv. 12, and not to Exodus xxi. 2. The injunction not having had practical effect previously, it was in this instance carried through by all parties at the same date: this was of course inevitable when it was introduced as an extraordinary innovation; perhaps it is in connexion with this that a fixed seventh year grew out of a relative one. The sabbatical year, according to the legislator's own declaration, was never observed throughout the whole pre-exilic period; for, according to Leviticus xxvi. 34, 35, the desolation of the land during the exile is to be a compensation made for the previously neglected fallow years: "Then shall the land pay its Sabbaths as long as it lieth desolate; when ye are in your enemies' land then shall the land rest and pay its Sabbaths; all the days that it lieth desolate shall it rest, which it rested not in your Sabbaths when ye dwelt upon it." The verse is quoted in 2Chronicles xxxvi. 21 as the language of Jeremiah,- a correct and unprejudiced indication of its exilic origin. But as the author of Leviticus xxvi. was also the writer of Leviticus xxv. 1-7, that is to say, the framer of the law of the sabbatic year, the recent date of the latter regulation also follows at once. The year of jubilee, certainly derived from the Sabbath year, is of still later origin. Jeremiah (xxxiv. 14) has not the faintest idea that the emancipation of the slaves must according to "law" take place in the fiftieth year. The name drwr, borne by the jubilee in Leviticus xxv. 10, is applied by him to the seventh year; and this is decisive also for Ezekiel xlvi. 17: the gift of land bestowed by the prince on one of his servants remains in his possession only until the seventh year.