Prolegomena to the History of Israel Part 1

Prolegomena to the History of Israel.

by Julius Wellhausen.

P R E F A C E.

The work which forms the greater part of the present volume first appeared in 1878 under the t.i.tle "History of Israel. By J.

Wellhausen. In two volumes. Volume I." The book produced a great impression throughout Europe, and its main thesis, that "the Mosaic history is not the starting-point for the history of ancient Israel, but for the history of Judaism," was felt to be so powerfully maintained that many of the leading Hebrew teachers of Germany who had till then stood aloof from the so-called "Grafian hypothesis"--the doctrine, that is, that the Levitical Law and connected parts of the Pentateuch were not written till after the fall of the kingdom of Judah, and that the Pentateuch in its present compa.s.s was not publicly accepted as authoritative till the reformation of Ezra--declared themselves convinced by Wellhausen's arguments. Before 1878 the Grafian hypothesis was neglected or treated as a paradox in most German universities, although some individual scholars of great name were known to have reached by independent inquiry similar views to those for which Graf was the recognised sponsor, and although in Holland the writings of Professor Kuenen, who has been aptly termed Graf's goel, had shown in an admirable and conclusive manner that the objections usually taken to Graf's arguments did not touch the substance of the thesis for which he contended.

Since 1878, partly through the growing influence of Kuenen, but mainly through the impression produced by Wellhausen's book, all this has been changed. Almost every younger scholar of mark is on the side of Vatke and Reuss, Lagarde and Graf, Kuenen and Wellhausen, and the renewed interest in Old Testament study which is making itself felt throughout all the schools of Europe must be traced almost entirely to the stimulus derived from a new view of the history of the Law which sets all Old Testament problems in a new light.

Our author, who since 1878 had been largely engaged in the study of other parts of Semitic antiquity, has not yet given to the world his promised second volume. But the first volume was a complete book in itself; the plan was to reserve the whole narrative of the history of Israel for vol.ii., so that vol.i. was entirely occupied in laying the critical foundations on which alone a real history of the Hebrew nation could be built. Accordingly, the second edition of the History, vol.i., appeared in 1883 (Berlin, Reimer), under the new t.i.tle of "Prolegomena to the History of Israel." In this form it is professedly, as it really was before, a complete and self-contained work; and this is the form of which a translation, carefully revised by the author, is now offered to the public.

All English readers interested in the Old Testament will certainly be grateful to the translators and publishers for a volume which in its German garb has already produced so profound an impression on the scholarship of Europe; and even in this country the author's name is too well known to make it necessary to introduce him at length to a new public. But the t.i.tle of the book has a somewhat unfamiliar sound to English ears, and may be apt to suggest a series of dry and learned dissertations meant only for Hebrew scholars. It is worth while therefore to point out in a few words that this would be quite a false impression; that the matters with which Professor Wellhausen deals are such as no intelligent student of the Old Testament can afford to neglect; and that the present volume gives the English reader, for the first time, an opportunity to form his own judgment on questions which are within the scope of any one who reads the English Bible carefully and is able to think clearly, and without prejudice, about its contents.

The history of Israel is part of the history of the faith by which we live, the New Testament cannot be rightly understood without understanding the Old, and the main reason why so many parts of the Old Testament are practically a sealed book even to thoughtful people is simply that they have not the historical key to the interpretation of that wonderful literature.

The Old Testament does not furnish a history of Israel, though it supplies the materials from which such a history can be constructed. For example, the narrative of Kings gives but the merest outline of the events that preceded the fall of Samaria; to understand the inner history of thc time we must fill up this outline with the aid of the prophets Amos and Hosea. But the more the Old Testament has been studied, the more plain has it become that for many parts of the history something more is needed than merely to read each part of the narrative books in connection with the other books that ill.u.s.trate the same period. The Historical Books and the Pentateuch are themselves very composite structures, in which old narratives occur imbedded in later compilations, and groups of old laws are overlaid by ordinances of comparatively recent date. Now, to take one point only, but that the most important, it must plainly make a vast difference to our whole view of the providential course of Israel's history if it appear that instead of the whole Pentateuchal law having been given to Israel before the tribes crossed the Jordan, that law really grew up little by little from its Mosaic germ, and did not attain its present form till the Israelites were the captives or the subjects of a foreign power. This is what the new school of Pentateuch criticism undertakes to prove, and it does so in a way that should interest every one. For in the course of the argument it appears that the plain natural sense of the old history has constantly been distorted by the false presuppositions with which we have been accustomed to approach it--that having a false idea of the legal and religious culture of the Hebrews when they first entered Canaan, we continually miss the point of the most interesting parts of the subsequent story, and above all fail to understand the great work accomplished by the prophets in destroying Old Israel and preparing the way first for Judaism and then for the Gospel.

These surely are inquiries which no conscientious student of the Bible can afford to ignore.

The process of disentangling the twisted skein of tradition is necessarily a very delicate and complicated one, and involves certain operations for which special scholarship is indispensable.

Historical criticism is a comparatively modern science, and in its application to this, as to other histories, it has made many false and uncertain steps. But in this, as in other sciences, when the truth has been reached it can generally be presented in a comparatively simple form, and the main positions can be justified even to the general reader by methods much less complicated, and much more lucid, than those originally followed by the investigators themselves. The modern view as to the age of the Pentateuchal law, which is the key to the right understanding of the History of Israel, has been reached by a ma.s.s of investigations and discussions of which no satisfactory general account has ever been laid before the English reader. Indeed, even on the Continent, where the subject has been much more studied than among us, Professor Wellhausen's book was the first complete and sustained argument which took up the question in all its historical bearings.

More recently Professor Kuenen of Leyden, whose discussions of the more complicated questions of Pentateuch a.n.a.lysis are perhaps the finest things that modern criticism can show, has brought out the second edition of the first volume of his Onderzoek, and when this appears in English, as it is soon to do, our Hebrew students will have in their hands an admirable manual of what I may call the anatomy of the Pentateuch, in which they can follow from chapter to chapter the process by which the Pentateuch grew to its present form. But for the ma.s.s of Bible-readers such detailed a.n.a.lysis will always be too difficult. What every one can understand and ought to try to master, is the broad historical aspect of the matter. And this the present volume sets forth in a way that must be full of interest to every one who has tasted the intense pleasure of following inst.i.tutions and ideas in their growth, and who has faith enough to see the hand of G.o.d as clearly in a long providential development as in a sudden miracle.

The reader will find that every part of the "Prolegomena" is instinct with historical interest, and contributes something to a vivid realisation of what Old Israel really was, and why it has so great a part in the history of spiritual faith. In the first essay of the Prolegomena a complete picture is given of the history of the ordinances of worship in Israel, and the sacrifices, the feasts, the priesthood, are all set in a fresh light. The second essay, the history of what the Israelites themselves believed and recorded about their past, will perhaps to some readers seem less inviting, and may perhaps best be read after perusal of the article, reprinted from the "Encyclopaedia Britannica", which stands at the close of the volume and affords a general view of the course of the history of Israel, as our author constructs it on the basis of the researches in his Prolegomena.

The essay on Israel and Judaism with which the Prolegomena close, may in like manner be profitably compared with sect. II of the appended sketch--a section which is not taken directly from the "Encyclopaedia", but translated from the German edition of the article "Israel", where the subject is expanded by the author.

Here the reader will learn how close are the bonds that connect the critical study of the Old Testament with the deepest and unchanging problems of living faith.

W. ROBERTSON SMITH.

INTRODUCTION.

In the following pages it is proposed to discuss the place in history of the "law of Moses;" more precisely, the question to be considered is whether that law is the starting-point for the history of ancient Israel, or not rather for that of Judaism, ie., of the religious communion which survived the destruction of the nation by the a.s.syrians and Chaldaeans.

I. It is an opinion very extensively held that the great ma.s.s of the books of the Old Testament not only relate to the pre-exilic period, but date from it. According to this view, they are remnants of the literature of ancient Israel which the Jews rescued as a heritage from the past, and on which they continued to subsist in the decay of independent intellectual life. In dogmatic theology Judaism is a mere empty chasm over which one springs from the Old Testament to the New; and even where this estimate is modified, the belief still prevails in a general way that the Judaism which received the books of Scripture into the canon had, as a rule, nothing to do with their production. But the exceptions to this principle which are conceded as regards the second and third divisions of the Hebrew canon cannot be called so very slight. Of the Hagiograpba, by far the larger portion is demonstrably post-exilic, and no part demonstrably older than the exile. Daniel comes as far down as the Maccabaean wars, and Esther is perhaps even later. Of the prophetical literature a very appreciable fraction is later than the fall of the Hebrew kingdom; and the a.s.sociated historical books (the "earlier prophets" of the Hebrew canon) date, in the form in which we now possess them, from a period subsequent to the death of Jeconiah, who must have survived the year 560 B.C. for some time. Making all allowance for the older sources utilised, and to a large extent transcribed word for word, in Judges, Samuel, and Kings, we find that apart from the Pentateuch the preexilic portion of the Old Testament amounts in bulk to little more than the half of the entire volume.

All the rest belongs to the later period, and it includes not merely the feeble after-growths of a failing vegetation, but also productions of the vigour and originality of Isa. xl.lxvi. and Ps.Ixxiii.

We come then to the Law. Here, as for most parts of the Old Testament, we have no express information as to the author and date of composition, and to get even approximately at the truth we are shut up to the use of such data as can be derived from an a.n.a.lysis of the contents, taken in conjunction with what we may happen to know from other sources as to the course of Israel's history. But the habit has been to a.s.sume that the historical period to be considered in this connection ends with the Babylonian exile as certainly as it begins with the exodus from Egypt. At first sight this a.s.sumption seems to be justified by the history of the canon; it was the Law that first became canonical through the influence of Ezra and Nehemiah; the Prophets became so considerably later, and the Hagiographa last of all. Now it is not unnatural, from the chronological order in which these writings were received into the canon, to proceed to an inference as to their approximate relative age, and so not only to place the Prophets before the Hagiographa, but also the five books of Moses before the Prophets. If the Prophets are for the most part older than the exile, how much more so the Law! But however trustworthy such a mode of comparison may be when applied to the middle as contrasted with the latest portion of the canon, it is not at all to be relied on when the first part is contrasted with the other two. The very idea of canonicity was originally a.s.sociated with the Torah, and was only afterwards extended to the other books, which slowly and by a gradual process acquired a certain measure of the validity given to the Torah by a single public and formal act, through which it was introduced at once as the Magna Charta of the Jewish communion (Nehemiah viii.-x.) In their case the canonical-- that is, legal--character was not intrinsic, but was only subsequently acquired; there must therefore have been some interval, and there may have been a very long one, between the date of their origin and that of their receiving public sanction.

To the Law, on the other hand, the canonical character is much more essential, and serious difficulties beset the a.s.sumption that the Law of Moses came into existence at a period long before the exile, aml did not attain the force of law until many centuries afterwards, and in totally different circ.u.mstances from those under which it had arisen. At least the fact that a collection claiming public recognition as an ecclesiastical book should have attained such recognition earlier than other writings which make no such claim is no proof of superior antiquity.

We cannot, then, peremptorily refuse to regard it as possible that what was the law of Judaism may also have been its product; and there are urgent reasons for taking the suggestion into very careful consideration. It may not be out of place here to refer to personal experience. In my early student days I was attracted by the stories of Saul and David, Ahab and Elijah; the discourses of Amos and Isaiah laid strong hold on me, and I read myself well into the prophetic and historical books of the Old Testament.

Thanks to such aids as were accessible to me, I even considered that I understood them tolerably, but at the same time was troubled with a bad conscience, as if I were beginning with the roof instead of the foundation; for I had no thorough acquaintance with the Law, of which I was accustomed to be told that it was the basis and postulate of the whole literature. At last I took courage and made my way through Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and even through k.n.o.bel's Commentary to these books. But it was in vain that I looked for the light which was to be shed from this source on the historical and prophetical books. On the contrary, my enjoyment of the latter was marred by the Law; it did not bring them any nearer me, but intruded itself uneasily, like a ghost that makes a noise indeed, but is not visible and really effects nothing. Even where there were points of contact between it and them, differences also made themselves felt, and I found it impossible to give a candid decision in favour of the priority of the Law. Dimly I began to perceive that throughout there was between them all the difference that separates two wholly distinct worlds. Yet, so far from attaining clear conceptions, I only fell into deeper confusion, which was worse confounded by the explanations of Ewald in the second volume of history of Israel. At last, in the course of a casual visit in Gottingen in the summer of 1867, I learned through Ritschl that Karl Heinrich Graf placed the law later than the Prophets, and, almost without knowing his reasons for the hypothesis, I was prepared to accept it; I readily acknowledged to myself thc possibility of understanding Hebrew antiquity without the book of the Torah.

The hypothesis usually a.s.sociated with Graf's name is really not his, but-that of his teacher, Eduard Reuss. It would be still more correct to call it after Leopold Gcorge and Wiihelm Vatke, who, independent alike of Reuss and of each other, were the first to give it literary currency. All three, again, are disciples of Martin Lebrecht de Wette, the epochmaking pioneer of historical criticism in this field./1/

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

(Bd. I. Kritischer Versuch ueber die Glaubwuerdigkeit der Buecher der Chronik; Bd. II. Kritik der Mosaischen Geschichte, Halle, 1806-07); J. F. L. George, Die alterer Juedischen Feste mit einer Kritik der Gesetzgebung des Pentateuch (Berlin, 1835; preface dated 12th October); W. Vatke, Die biblische Theologie wissenschaftlich dargestellt (Berlin, 1835; preface dated 18th October; publication did not get beyond first part of the first volume); K. H. Graf, Die geschichtlicher Buecher des Alten Testaments (Leipsic, 1866). That Graf as well as J. Orth (Nouv. Rev. de Theol., iii. 84 sqq., iv. 350 sqq., Paris, 1859-60) owed the impulse to his critical labours to his Stra.s.sburg master was not unknown; but how great must have been the share of Reuss in the hypothesis of Graf has only been revealed in 1879, by the publication of certain theses which he had formulated as early as 1833, but had hesitated to lay in print before the general theological public. These are as follows:-- "1. L'element historique du Pentateuque peut et doit etre examine a part et ne pas etre confondu avec l'element legal. 2. L'un et l'autre ont pu exister sans redaction ecrite. La mention, chez d'anciens ecrivains, de certaines traditions patriarcales ou mosaiques, ne prouve pas l'existence du Pentateuque, et une nation peut avoir un droit coutumier sans code ecrit. Les traditions nationales des Israelites remontent plus haut que les lois du Pentateuque et la redaction des premieres est anterieure a celle des secondes.

4. L'interet princ.i.p.al de l'historien doit porter sur la date des lois, parce que sur ce terrain il a plus de chance d'arriver a des resultats certains. II faut en consequence proceder a l'interrogatoire des temoins. 5. L'histoire racontee, dans les livres des Juges et de Samuel, et meme en partie celle comprise dans les livres des Rois, est en contradiction avec des lois dites mosaiques; donc celles-ci etaient inconnues a l'epoque de la redaction de ces livres, a plus forte raison elles n'ont pas existe dans les temps qui y vent decrits. 6. Les prophetes du 8e et du 7e siecle ne savent rien du code mosaique. 7. Jeremie est le premier prophete qui connaisse une loi ecrite et ses citations rapportent au Deuteronome. 8. Le Deuteronome (iv.45-xxviii.68) est le livre que les pretres pretendaient avoir trouve dans le temple du temps du roi Josias. Ce code est la partie la plus ancienne de la legislation (redigee) comprise dans le Pentateuque.

9. L'histoire des Israelites, en tant qu'il s'agit du developpement national determine par des lois ecrites, se divisera en deux periodes, avant et apres Josias. 10. Ezechiel est anterieur a la redaction du code rituel et des lois qui ont definitivement organise la hierarchie. 11. Le livre du Josue n'est pas, tant s'en faut, la partie la plus recente de l'ouvrage entier. 12. Le redacteur du Pentateuque se distingue clairement de l'ancien prophete Moyse." --L'Histoire Sainte et la Loi, Paris, 1879, pp. 23, 24.

He indeed did not himself succeed in reaching a sure position, but he was the first clearly to perceive and point out how disconnected are the alleged starting-point of Israel's history and that history itself. The religious community set up on so broad a basis in the wilderness, with its sacred centre and uniform organisation, disappears and leaves no trace as soon as Israel settles in a land of its own, and becomes, in any proper sense, a nation. The period of the Judges presents itself to us as a confused chaos, out of which order and coherence are gradually evolved under the pressure of external circ.u.mstances, but perfectly naturally and without the faintest reminiscence of a sacred unifying const.i.tution that had formerly existed. Hebrew antiquity shows absolutely no tendencies towards a hierocracy; power is wielded solely by the heads of families and of tribes, and by the kings, who exercise control over religious worship also, and appoint and depose its priests. The influence possessed by the latter is purely moral; the Torah of G.o.d is not a doc.u.ment in their hands which guarantees their own position, but merely an instruction for others in their mouths; like the word of the prophets, it has divine authority but not political sanction, and has validity only in so far as it is voluntarily accepted. And as for the literature which has come down to us from the period of the Kings, it would puzzle the very best intentions to beat up so many as two or three unambiguous allusions to the Law, and these cannot be held to prove anything when one considers, by way of contrast, what Homer was to the Greeks.

To complete the marvel, in post-exile Judaism the Mosaism which until then had been only latent suddenly emerges into prominence everywhere. We now find the Book regarded as the foundation of all higher life, and the Jews, to borrow the phrase of the Koran, are "the people of the Book;" we have the sanctuary with its priests and Levites occupying the central position, and the people as a congregation encamped around it; the cultus, with its burnt-offerings and sin-offerings, its purifications and its abstinences, its feasts and Sabbaths, strictly observed as prescribed by the Law, is now the princ.i.p.al business of life.

When we take the community of the second temple and compare it with the ancient people of Israel, we are at once able to realise how far removed was thc latter from so-called Mosaism. The Jews themselves were thoroughly conscious of the distance. The revision of the books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, undertaken towards the end of the Babylonian exile, a revision much more thorough than is commonly a.s.sumed, condemns as heretical the whole age of the Kings. At a later date, as the past became more invested with a certain nimbus of sanct.i.ty, men preferred to clothe it with the characters of legitimacy rather than sit in judgment upon it. The Book of Chronicles shows in what manner it was necessary to deal with the history of bygone times when it was a.s.sumed that the Mosaic hierocracy was their fundamental inst.i.tution.

2. The foregoing remarks are designed merely to make it plain that the problem we have set before us is not an imaginary one, but actual and urgent. They are intended to introduce it; but to solve it is by no means so easy. The question what is the historical place of the Law does not even admit of being put in these simple terms. For the Law, If by that word we understand the entire Pentateuch, is no literary unity, and no simple historical quant.i.ty./1/

1. Compare the article "Pentateuch" in the Ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. xviii.

Since the days of Peyrerius and Spinoza, criticism has acknowledged the complex character of that remarkable literary production, and from Jean Astruc onwards has laboured, not without success, at disentangling its original elements. At present there are a number of results that can be regarded as settled. The following are some of them. The five Books of Moses and the Book of Joshua const.i.tute one whole, the conquest of the Promised Land rather than the death of Moses forming the true conclusion of the patriarchal history, the exodus, and the wandering in the wilderness.

From a literary point of view, accordingly, it is more accurate to speak of the Hexateuch than of the Pentateuch. Out of this whole, the Book of Deuteronomy, as essentially an independent law-book, admits of being separated most easily. Of what remains, the parts most easily distinguished belong to the so-called "main stock" ("Grundschrift"), formerly also called the Elohistic doc.u.ment, on account of the use it makes of the divine name Elohim up to the time of Moses, and designated by Ewald, with reference to the regularly recurring superscriptions in Genesis, as the Book of Origins. It is distinguished by its liking for number, and measure, and formula generally, by its stiff pedantic style, by its constant use of certain phrases and turns of expression which do not occur elsewhere in the older Hebrew; its characteristics are more strongly marked than those of any of the others, and make it accordingly the easiest to recognise with certainty. Its basis is the Book of Leviticus and thc allied portions of the adjoining books,-- Exodus xxv.-xl., with the exception of chaps.

x.x.xii.-x.x.xiv., and Num.i.-x., xv.-xix., xxv.-x.x.xvi., with trifling exceptions. It thus contains legislation chiefly, and, in point of fact, relates substantially to the worship of the tabernacle and cognate matters. It is historical only in form; the history serves merely as a framework on which to arrange thc legislative material, or as a mask to disguise it. For the most part, the thread of the narrative is extremely thin, and often serves merely to carry out the chronology, which is kept up without a hiatus from the Creation to the Exodus; it becomes fuller only on the occasions in which other interests come into play, as, for example, in Genesis, with regard to the three preludes to the Mosaic covenant which are connected with the names of Adam, Noah, and Abraham respectively. When this fundamental doc.u.ment is also separated out as well as Deuteronomy, there remains the Jehovistic history-book, which, in contrast with the two others, is essentially of a narrative character, and sets forth with full sympathy and enjoyment the materials handed down by tradition.

The story of the patriarchs, which belongs to this doc.u.ment almost entirely, is what best marks its character; that story is not here dealt with merely as a summary introduction to something of greater importance which is to follow, but as a subject of primary importance, deserving the fullest treatment possible. Legislative elements have been taken into it only at one point, where they fit into the historical connection, namely, when the giving of the Law at Sinai is spoken of (Exodusxx.-xxiii., x.x.xiv.)

Scholars long rested satisfied with this twofold division of the non-Deuteronomic Hexateuch, until Hupfeld demonstrated in certain parts of Genesis, which until then had been a.s.signed partly to the "main stock" and partly to the Jehovist, the existence of a third continuous source, the work of the so-called younger Elohist. The choice of this name was due to the circ.u.mstance that in this doc.u.ment also Elohim is the ordinary name of the Deity, as it is in the "main stock" up to Exodus vi.; the epithet "younger,"

however, is better left out, as it involves an unproved a.s.sumption, and besides, is no longer required for distinction's sake, now that the "main stock" is no longer referred to under so unsuitable a name as that of Elohist. Hupfeld further a.s.sumed that all the three sources continued to exist separately until some one at a later date brought them together simultaneously into a single whole. But this is a view that cannot be maintained: not merely is the Elohist in his matter and in his manner of looking at things most closely akin to the Jehovist; his doc.u.ment has come down to us as Noldeke was thc first to perceive, only in extracts embodied in the Jehovist narrative./1/

Hermann Hupfeld, Die Quellen der Genesis u. die Art ihrer Zusammersetzung, Berlin, 1853; Theodor Noldeke, Die s. g. Grundschrift des Pentateuch, in Untersuchungen zur Kritik des Alten Testaments, Kiel, 1869.

Thus, notwithstanding Hupfeld's discovery, the old division into two great sections continues to hold good, and there is every reason for adhering to this primary distinction as the basis of further historical research, in spite of the fact, which is coming to be more and more clearly perceived, that not only the Jehovistic doc.u.ment, but the "main stock" as well, are complex products, and that alongside of them occur hybrid or posthumous elements which do not admit of being simply referred to either the one or the other formation. /2/

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

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

I do not insist on all the details, but, as regards the way in which the literary process which resulted in the formation of the Pentateuch is to be looked at in general, I believe I had indicated the proper line of investigation. Hitherto the only important corrections I have received have been those of Kuenen in his Contributions to the Criticism of the Pentateuch and Joshua, published in the Leyden Theologisch Tijdschrift; but these are altogether welcome, inasmuch as they only free my own fundamental view from some relics of the old leaven of a mechanical separation of sources which had continued to adhere to it. For what Kuenen points out is, that certain elements a.s.signed by me to the Elohist are not fragments of a once independent whole, but interpolated and parasitic additions. What effect this demonstration may have on the judgment we form of the Elohist himself is as yet uncertain.

In the following pages the Jehovistic history-book is denoted by the symbol JE, its Jehovistic part by J, and the Elohistic by E; the "main stock" pure and simple, which is distinguished by its systematising history and is seen unalloyed in Genesis, is called the Book of the Four Covenants and is symbolised by Q; for the "main stock" as a whole (as modified by an editorial process) the t.i.tle of Priestly Code and the symbol RQ (Q and Revisers) are employed.

Now the Law, whose historical position we have to determine, is the so-called "main stack," which, both by its contents and by its origin, is ent.i.tled to be called the Priestly Code, and will accordingly be so designated. The Priestly Code preponderates over the rest of the legislation in force, as well as in bulk; in all matters of primary importance it is the normal and final authority. It was according to the mode furnished by it that the Jews under Ezra ordered their sacred community, and upon it are formed our conceptions of the Mosaic theocracy, with the tabernacle at its centre, the high priest at its head, the priests and Levites as its organs, the legitimate cultus as its regular function. It is precisely this Law, so called par exceIlence, that creates the difficulties out of which our problem rises, and it is only in connection with it that the great difference of opinion exists as to date. With regard to the Jehovistic doc.u.ment, all are happily agreed that, substantially at all events, in language, horizon, and other features, it dates from the golden age of Hebrew literature, to which the finest parts of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, and the oldest extant prophetical writings also belong,--the period of the kings and prophets which preceded the dissolution of the two Israelite kingdoms by the a.s.syrians.

About the origin of Deuteronomy there is still less dispute; in all circles where appreciation of scientific results can be looked for at all, it is recognised that it was composed in the same age as that in which it was discovered, and that it was made the rule of Josiah's reformation, which took place about a generation before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans. It is only in the case of the Priestly Code that opinions differ widely; for it tries hard to imitate the costume of the Mosaic period, and, with whatever success, to disguise its own. This is not nearly so much the case with Deuteronomy, which, in fact, allows the real situation (that of the period during which, Samaria having been destroyed, only the kingdom of Judah continued to subsist) to reveal itself very plainly through that which is a.s.sumed (xii.8, xix.8). And the Jehovist does not even pretend to being a Mosaic law of any kind; it aims at being a simple book of history; the distance between the present and the past spoken of is not concealed in the very least. It is here that all the marks are found which attracted the attention of Abenezra and afterwards of Spinoza, such as Gen. xii. 6 ("And the Canaanite was then in the land"), Gen.x.x.xvi.31 ("These are the kings who reigned in Edom before the children of Israel had a king"), Num. xii.6, 7, Deut.

x.x.xiv.10 ("There arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses"). The Priestly Code, on the other hand, guards itself against all reference to later times and settled life in Canaan, which both in the Jehovistic Book of the Covenant (Exodus xxi.-xxiii.) and in Deuteronomy are the express basis of the legislation: it keeps itself carefully and strictly within the limits of the situation in the wilderness, for which in all seriousness it seeks to give the law. It has actually been successful, with its movable tabernacle, its wandering camp, and other archaic details, in so concealing the true date of its composition that its many serious inconsistencies with what we know, from other sources, of Hebrew antiquity previous to the exile, are only taken as proving that it lies far beyond all known history, and on account of its enormous antiquity can hardly be brought into any connection with it. It is the Priestly Code, then, that presents us with our problem.

3. The instinct was a sound one which led criticism for the time being to turn aside from the historical problem which had originally presented itself to De Wette, and afterwards had been more distinctly apprehended by George and Vatke, in order, in the first instance, to come to some sort of clear understanding as to the composition of the Pentateuch. But a mistake was committed when it was supposed that by a separation of the sources (in which operation attention was quite properly directed chiefly to Genesis) that great historical question had been incidentally answered. The fact was, that it had been merely put to sleep, and Graf has the credit of having, after a considerable interval, awakened it again. In doing so, indeed, he in turn laboured under the disadvantage of not knowing what success had been achieved in separating the sources, and thereby he became involved in a desperate and utterly untenable a.s.sumption. This a.s.sumption, however, had no necessary connection with his own hypothesis, and at once fell to the ground when the level to which Hupfeld brought the criticism of the text had been reached. Graf originally followed the older view, espoused by Tuch in particular, that in Genesis the Priestly Code, with its so obtrusively bare skeleton, is the "main stock," and that it is the Jehovist who supplements, and is therefore of course the later. But since, on the other hand, he regarded the ritual legislature of the middle books as much more recent than the work of the Jehovist, he was compelled to tear it asunder as best he could from its introduction in Genesis, and to separate the two halves of the Priestly Code by half a millennium. But Hupfeld had long before made it quite clear that the Jehovist is no mere supplementer, but the author of a perfectly independent work, and that the pa.s.sages, such as Gen. xx.-xxii., usually cited as examples of the way in which the Jehovist worked over the "main stock," really proceed from quite another source,--the Elohist. Thus the stumbling-block of Graf had already been taken out of the way, and his path had been made clear by an unlooked-for ally. Following Kuenen's suggestion, he did not hesitate to take the helping-hand extended to him; he gave up his violent division of the Priestly Code, and then had no difficulty in deducing from the results which he had obtained with respect to the main legal portion similar consequences with regard to the narrative part in Genesis. /1/

1. K. H. Graf, Die s. g. Grundschrift des Pentateucks, in Merx's Archiv (1869), pp. 466-477. As early as 1866 he had already expressed himself in a letter to Kuenen November 12) as follows:-- "Vous me faites pressentir une solution de cette enigme...c'est que les parties elohistiques de la Genese seraient posterieures aux parties jehovistiques." Compare Kuenen, Theol. Tijdschrift (1870), p.412.

Graf had also in this respect followed Reuss, who (ut supra, p. 24) says of himself: "Le cote faible de ma critique a ete que, a l'egard de tout ce qui ne rentrait pas dans les points enumeres ci-dessus, je restais dans l'orniere tracee par mes devanciers, admettant sans plus ample examen que le Pentateuque etait l'ouvrage de l'HISTORIEN elohiste, complete par l'HISTORIEN jehoviste, et ne me rendant pas compte de la maniere dont l'element legal, dont je m'etais occupe exclusivement, serait venu se joindre a l'element historique.