PENTATEUCH AND JOSHUA. The name Penta-teuch, already found in Tertullian and Origen, corresponds to the Jewish rTYinn Win HK'on (the five-fifths of the Torah, or Law) ; the several books were named by the Jews from their initial words, though at least Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy had also titles corresponding to those we use, viz., D^rD min, CllpSn _11 (A^/.teo-c/jt-KujSei/i, Origen, in Eus., H. E., vi. 25), and min !WD. The Pentateuch, together with Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, with which it is usually united in Greek MSS., makes up the Octateuch ; the Pentateuch and Joshua together have recently been named the Hexateuch. The date of the division of the Torah into five books cannot be made out ; it is probably older than the Septuagint translation. Tradì- Moses is already taken for the author of the Pentateuch tional in 2 Chronicles xxv. 4, xxxv. 12 sq. ; only the last eight author- verses 0f Deuteronomy are, according to the rabbins, not lp- from his pen. From the synagogue belief in the Mosaic authorship passed to the church, and is still widely pre-valent among Christians. At an early date, indeed, doubts suggested themselves as to the correctness of this view, but it was not till the 17th century that these became so strong that they could not be suppressed.1 It was ob-served that Moses does not speak of himself in the first person, but that some other writer speaks of him in the third,—a writer, too, who lived long after. The expression of Gen. xii. 6, "the Canaanite was then in the land," is spoken to readers who had long forgotten that a different nation from Israel had once occupied the Holy Land ; the words of Gen. xxxvi. 31, " these are the kings that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel," have no prophetic aspect ; they point to an author who wrote under the Hebrew monarchy. Again, the " book of the wars of Jehovah " (Num. xxi. 14) cannot possibly be cited by Moses himself, as it contains a record of his own deeds; and, when Deut. xxxiv. 10 (comp. Num. xii.) says that "there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses," the writer is necessarily one who looked back to Moses through a long series of later prophets.

At the same time attention was drawn to a variety of contradictions, inequalities, transpositions, and repetitions of events in the Pentateuch, such as excluded the idea that the whole came from a single pen. Thus Peyrerius re-marked that Gen. xx. and xxvi. stand in an impossible chronological context ; and on the incongruity of Gen. i. and ii., which he pressed very strongly, he rested his hypo-thesis of the Preadamites. Such observations could not but grievously shake the persuasion that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, while at the same time they directed criticism to a less negative task—viz., the analysis of the Pentateuch. For this, indeed, the 17th century did not effect anything considerable, but at least two conclusions came out with sufficient clearness. The first of these was the self-contained character of Deuteronomy, which in these days there was a disposition to regard as the oldest book of the Pentateuch, and that with the best claims to authenticity. And in the second place the Pentateuchal laws and the Pentateuchal history were sharply distin-guished ; the chief difficulties were felt to lie in the narrative, and there seemed to be less reason for question-ing the Mosaic authorship of the laws.

Spinoza's bold conjecture that in their present form not only the Pentateuch but also the other historical books of the Old Testament were composed by Ezra ran far ahead of the laborious investigation of details necessary to solve the previous question of the composition of the Pentateuch. Jean Astruc has the merit of opening the true path of Astrm this investigation. He recognized in Genesis two main sources, between which he divided the whole materials of the book, with some fewT exceptions, and these sources he distinguished by the mark that the one used for God the name Elohim (Gen. i., v.; comp. Exod. vi. 3) and the other, the name Jehovah (Gen. ii.-iv.). Astruc's hypothesis, fortified by the observation of other linguistic differences which regularly corresponded with the variation in the names of God, was introduced into Germany by Eichhorn's Einleitung in d. A.T., and proved there the fruitful and just point of departure for all further inquiry. At first, indeed, it was with but uncertain steps that critics advanced from the analysis of Genesis to that of the other books, where the simple criterion of the alternation of the divine names was no longer available. In the hands of the Scotsman Geddes and the German Vater the Pentateuch resolved itself into an agglomeration of longer and shorter fragments, Frag-between which no threads of continuous connexion could mentary be traced 8 (" Fragmentary Hypothesis "). The fragment- ^^jj ary hypothesis was mainly supported by arguments drawn from the middle books of the Pentateuch, and as limited to these it long found wide support. Even De Wette De started from it in his investigations; but this was really Wette. an inconsistency, for his fundamental idea was to show throughout all parts of the Pentateuch traces of certain common tendencies, and even of one deliberate plan; nor was he far from recognizing the close relation between the Elohist of Genesis and the legislation of the middle books.

De Wette's chief concern, however, was not with the literary but with the historical criticism of the Pentateuch, and in the latter he made an epoch. In his Diss. Critica of 1805 (Opusc. Theol., pp. 149-168) he placed the composi-tion of Deuteronomy in the time of King Josiah (arguing from a comparison of 2 Kings xxii., xxiii., with Deut. xii.), and pronounced it to be the most recent stratum of the Pentateuch, not, as had previously been supposed, the oldest. In his Critical Enquiry into the Credibility of the Boohs of Chronicles (Halle, 1806) he showed that the laws of Moses are unknown to the post-Mosaic history; this he did by instituting a close comparison of Samuel and Kings with the Chronicles, from which it appeared that the variations of the latter are not to be explained by the use of other sources, but solely by the desire of the Jewish scribes to shape the history in conformity with the law, and to give the law that place in history which, to their surprise, had not been conceded to it by the older historical books. Finally, in his Criticism of the Mosaic History (Halle, 1807) De Wette attacked the method then preva-lent in Germany of eliminating all miracles and prophecies from the Bible by explaining them away, and then ration-alizing what remained into a dry prosaic pragmatism. De Wette refuses to find any history in the Pentateuch; all is legend and poetry. The Pentateuch is not an authority for the history of the time it deals with, but only for the time in which it was written; it is, he says, the conditions of this much later time which the author idealizes and throws back into the past, whether in the form of narrative or of law.
De Wette's brilliant debut, which made his reputation for the rest of his life, exercised a powerful influence on his contemporaries. For several decennia all who were open to critical ideas at all stood under his influence. Gramberg, Leo, and Von Bohlen wrote under this influence; Gesenius in Halle, the greatest Hebraist then living, taught under it; nay, Vatke and George were guided by De Wette's ideas and started from the ground that he had conquered, although they advanced beyond him to a much more definite and better established position, and were also diametrically opposed to him in one most important point, of which we shall have more to say presently. Positive But meantime a reaction was rising which sought to literary (Jirect; criticism towards positive rather than negative re-' suits. The chief representatives of this positive criticism, which now took up a distinct attitude of opposition to the negative criticism of De Wette, were Bleek, Ewald, and Movers. By giving up certain parts of the Pentateuch, especially Deuteronomy, they thought themselves able to vindicate certain other parts as beyond doubt genuinely Mosaic, just in the same way as they threw over the Davidic authorship of certain psalms in order to strengthen the claim of others to bear his name. The procedure by which particular ancient hymns or laws were sifted out from the Psalter or the Pentateuch had some resemblance to the decretum ahsolutum of theology; but up to a certain point the reaction was in the right. The youthful De Wette and his followers had really gone too far in applying the same measure to all parts of the Pentateuch, and had been satisfied with a very inadequate insight into its composi-tion and the relation of its parts. Historical criticism had hurried on too fast, and literary criticism had now to overtake it. De Wette himself felt the necessity for this, and from the year 1817 onwards—the year of the first edi-tion of his Einleitung—he took an active and useful part in the solution of the problems of Pentateuchal analysis. The fragmentary hypothesis was now superseded; the con-nexion of the Elohist of Genesis with the legislation of the middle books was clearly recognized; and the book of Joshua was included as the conclusion of the Pentateuch. The closely-knit connexion and regular structure of the narrative of the Elohist impressed the critics; it seemed to supply the skeleton which had been clothed with flesh and blood by the Jehovist, in whose contributions there was no such obvious conformity to a plan. From all this it was naturally concluded that the Elohist had written the Grundschrift or primary narrative, which lay before the Jehovist and was supplemented by him (" Supplementary Hypothesis").

Ilupfeld. This view remained dominant till Hupfeld in 1853 pub-lished his investigations on The Sources of Genesis and the Method of their Composition. Hupfeld denied that the Jehovist followed the context of the Elohistic narrative, merely supplementing it by additions of his own. He pointed out that such Elohistic passages in Genesis as clearly have undergone a Jehovistic redaction (e.g., chaps, xx., xxi., xxii.) belong to a different Elohist from the author of Gen. i. Thus he distinguished three independent sources in Genesis, and he assumed further, somewhat inconse-quently, that no one of them had anything to do with the others till a fourth and later writer wove them all together into a single whole. This assumption was corrected by Kö'Ideke. Nöldeke, who showed that the second Elohist is preserved only in extracts embodied in the Jehovistic book, that the Jehovist and second Elohist form one whole and the Grundschrift another, and that thus, in spite of Hupfeld's discovery, the Pentateuch (Deuteronomy being excluded) was still to be regarded as made up of two great layers. Nöldeke had also the honour of having been the first to trace in detail how the Elohistic Grundschrift runs through thewhole Hexateuch, and of having described with masterly hand the peculiar and inflexible type of its ideas and language. In this task he was aided by the commentary of Knobel, whose industry furnished very valuable materials for men of judgment to work upon.

Thus the investigation into the composition of the Penta-teuch had reached a point of rest and a provisional con-clusion. The results may be thus summarized. The five books of Moses with Joshua form one whole; and it is not the death of Moses but the conquest of the promised land which forms the true close of the history of the patriarchal age, the exodus, and the wanderings in the wilderness; it is therefore more correct to speak of the Hexateuch than of The the Pentateuch. From this whole it is most easy to detach Hexa-the book of Deuteronomy, and accordingly its independenceteu™-was very early recognized. Of the other elements, that which has the most marked individuality is the work of the Elohist, which we shall in the sequel call the Priestly The Code. This too, like Deuteronomy, is a law-book, but it Priestly has an historical setting. Its main stock is Leviticus, with Cocle' the cognate parts of the adjacent books, Exod. xxv.-xl. (except chaps, xxxii.-xxxiv.) and Num. i.-x., xv.-xix., xxv.-xxxvi. (with some inconsiderable exceptions). This law-book does not, like Deuteronomy, embrace precepts for civil life, but is confined to affairs of worship, and mainly to the esoteric aspect of public worship, that is, to such points as belonged to the function of the priests as distinguished from the worshipping people. The legal contents of the Code are supported on a scaffolding of history, which, however, belongs to the literary form rather than to the substance of the work. It is only where some point of legal interest is involved that the narrative acquires any fulness, as it does in the book of Genesis in connexion with the three preparatory stages of the Mosaic covenant attached to the names of Adam, Noah, and Abraham. Generally speaking, the historical thread is very thin, and often (Gen. v., xi.) it becomes a mere genealogical line, on which is hung a continuous chronology carried on from the creation to the exodus. The Priestly Code is charac-terized by a marked predilection for numbers and measures, for arrangement (titles to sections) and formality of scheme, by the poverty and inflexibility of its language, by standing repetitions of certain expressions and phrases such as are not elsewhere found in old Hebrew. Thus its distinguish-ing marks are very pronounced, and can always be recog-nized without difficulty. If now Deuteronomy and the Priestly Code are successively subtracted from our present Pentateuch the Jehovistic history-book remains, distin-Jeho-guished from both the others by the fact that it is essentially vistic narrative and not law, and by the pleasure it takes inlx,ok bringing out details of the historical tradition, so that individual points of the story receive full justice and are not sacrificed to the interests of the general plan. The patriarchal history belongs almost entirely to this docu-ment, and forms the most characteristic part of it; here that history forms no mere epitomized introduction to more important matter, as in the Priestly Code, but is treated in all fulness as a subject of .first-rate importance. Legis-lative elements are incorporated in the Jehovistic narrative only at one point, where they naturally fall into the his-torical context, viz., in connexion with the law-giving on Sinai (Exod. xx.-xxiii., xxxiv.).

These, then, are the three main component parts of the Hexateuch—Deuteronomy, the Priestly Code, and the Jehovist. But the Jehovist has woven together in his history-book two sources, one of which uses Elohim (Hupfeld's younger Elohist), while the other says Iahwe, as does the Jehovist himself. So, too, the Priestly Code is not a perfectly incomposite structure; it has one main stock marked by a very definite historical arrange-ment and preserved with little admixture in the book of Genesis; but on the one hand some older elements have been incorporated in this stock, while on the other hand there have been engrafted on it quite a number of later novellx, which in point of form are not absolutely homo-geneous with the main body of the Code, but in point of substance are quite similar to it, reflecting the same tendencies and ideas and using the same expressions and mannerisms, so that the whole may be regarded as an historical unity though not strictly as a literary one.

The very name of Deuteronomy shows that from the earliest times it has been regarded as at least possessing a relative inde-pendence ; the only difficulty is to determine where this section of the Pentateuch begins and ends. In recent times opinion has in-clined more and more to the judgment of Hobbes and Vater, that the original Deuteronomy must be limited to the laws in chaps, xii.-xxvi. Separa- The reasons that compel us to distinguish the Priestly Code from tion of the Jehovist, and the relation that subsists between these two Priestly elements, may be exemplified and illustrated by the first nine Code chapters of Genesis. We begin by comparing Gen. i. 1 to ii. 4a from with Gen. ii. 4b to iii. 24. The history of the first man in paradise Jehovist. has nothing to do with the preceding record of the creation of the ' world in six days, which is neither referred to nor presupposed. " In the day that Jehovah made the earth there was as yet no plant of the field upon the earth, and no herb grew in the field ; for Jehovah had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. And Jehovah formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." It might be supposed that the picture drawn in chap. i. is here briefly referred to in order to add a particular feature which had not been fully brought out there. But there is no situation in chap. i. which this scene fits. There man is made last of all, but here first of all, before vegetation, and according to ii. 19 sq. also before the beasts. There man and woman are created together, here at first the man is alone. There vegetation and wet stand opposed, the plants spring up as soon as there is dry land ; here the condition of vegetation is the moistening of the dry land—it must first rain ; the earth, therefore, was originally not water but a parched desert,—the same conception as in the book of Job, where the sea bursts forth from the womb of the hard earth. The conceptions of the two narratives are different all through, as appears equally in what follows. "Jehovah planted a garden eastwards in Eden, at the place wdiere the four chief rivers of the world are parted from a common source. Here among other goodly trees grew the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. In this garden Jehovah set the man, to dress it and to keep it, to eat of all the fruits save only that of the tree of knowledge." In chap. i. man receives from the first as his portion the wdiole great earth as he now occupies it, and his task is a purely natural one ; "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it." But in chap. ii. the first man is placed in a mysterious garden of God, with a very limited sphere, where all is supernatural and marvellous. To speak generally, the ideas of God and man in chap. i. are rational and enlightened, but bare and prosaic ; in chaps, ii.-iii. they are childlike and primitive, but full of meaning. The point of the contrast is mainly this: in Gen. ii., iii., man is in fact forbidden to lift the veil of things and know the world, represented by the tree of knowledge ; in Gen. i. this is his primary task, to rule over all the earth, for sovereignty and knowledge come to the same thing. There nature is to man altogether a marvel; here it is a mere thing, an object for him. There it is robbery for man to seek to be as God ; hero God from the first created man in His own image, after His likeness, and appointed him His vicegerent on earth. With these incongruities in the substance and spirit of the two sections we must take also the differences of form and language observable alike in the whole manner of the narrative—wdiich in Gen. i. is con-fined by a precise and formal scheme, while in Gen ii., iii., it has a free poetic movement—and in individual expressions. Thus Gen. i. has Elohim, Gen. ii., iii., Jehovah; Gen. i. has the technical word K"0, "create," while the other narrative uses the ordinary words TWV, "make," *)X,J "form;" and so forth.

The contrast between the two records appears in a somewhat different way when we go on to compare Gen. v. with Gen. iv. 17 sq. The elements of the genealogy of ten members in the Priestly Code and that of seven members in the Jehovist correspond, save that the former adds Noah after Lamech, and that at the beginning Adam-Cain is doubled and becomes Adam-Seth-Enosh-Cainan. Adam and Enosh both mean " man," so that the latter scries is equi-valent to Adam-Seth-Adam-Cainan ; in other words Enosh-Cainau is the beginning of a series corresponding to that in chap, iv., and Adam-Seth is a parallel and variation. Linguistically chap. v. is distinguished from chap. iv. by the use of T^>in in place of "l^ .

In Gen. i.-v. we find the two narratives lying side by side in continuous pieces and without intermixture ; in Gen. vi.-ix., on the other hand, we have a kind of mosaic, in which elements taken from each are interwoven to form a single narrative. The narrative of the Priestly Code is preserved entire in vi. 9-22, vii. 11, 13-16 (except the last clause of ver. 16), 19-22, 24, viii. 1-5 (with one small exception), 13, 14, ix. 1-17. The Jehovistic narrative, on the other hand, is curtailed to prevent repetition ; it would not have done to relate twice over the building of the ark and the divine command to do so, or to give the ordinance of the rainbow once after viii. 22, and then again in ix. 9 sq. The hand that fused the two sources together into one continuous account is very plainly recognized in vii. 8, 9, as compared on the one side with vi. 19, 20, and on the other with vii. 2,

The justice of Hupfeld's observation, that besides the first Elohist (our Priestly Code) there is a second author wdio uses the same name of God, can be best proved from Gen. xx.-xxii., where this second Elohist appears for the first time. According to the Priestly Code Ishmael was fourteen years old at the birth of Isaac, and thus would be seventeen when some three years later Isaac was weaned. But how does this accord wdth xxi. 9 sq., wdiere Ishmael appears not as a lad of seventeen but as a child at play (pfli'D, ver. 9), who is laid on his mother's shoulder (ver. 14), and when thrown down by her in her despair (ver. 15) is quite unable to help himself ? Similar inconsistencies appear if we attempt to place chap, xx. in the context of the Priestly Code ; it was already observed by Peyrerius that it is "non vero simile, regem Gerane voluisse Saram vetulam cui desierant fieri muliebria." We come, then, to ask wdiat is the relation between this second Elohistic writing, from which the greater part of Gen. xx.-xxii. is derived, and the Jehovistic history. In their matter, their points of view, and also in language— apart from the names of God—the two are on the whole similar, as may be seen by comparing chap. xx. with chap, xxvi., or chap. xxi. with chap. xvi. Moreover, the Elohistic history is preserved to us in a Jehovistic setting, as can be plainly discerned, partly by certain slight changes (xxi. 33, xxii. 11-14), partly by larger additions (xx. 18, xxi. 1, 326, xxii. 15-18). But we cannot suppose that it was the principal narrator of the Jehovistic history—the author of the main mass of chaps, xii, xiii., xvi., xviii., xix., xxiv., xxvi.—who incor-porated chaps, xx.-xxii. in his own book. For how can we imagine anything so absurd as that, before or after, he should have chosen to tell again in his own words and with full detail and important variations almost all the stories which he borrowed from another work ? Bather must we conclude that the union of the Elohistic work (E) with the main Jehovistic narrative (J) was accomplished by a third hand. This third author is most conveniently designated as the Jehovist, and his work is compendiously cited as JE ; the authors of its two component parts are frequently called for dis-tinction the Jahvist and the Elohist. The editorial hand of the Jehovist can be traced not only in E but in his main source J (the source wdiich uses the name Iahwe) ; compare, for example, Gen. xvi. 8-10 wdth Gen. xxv. 15, 18.

Still more complicated than the work of the Jehovist is the Priestly Code, at least in its main section, the ritual legislation of the middle books. It is conceded on all hands that the collection of laws in Lev. xvii.-xxvi. was originally a small independent code, though it has now been worked into the Priestly Code by the aid of very considerable editorial treatment. It is equally undeniable, though not as universally admitted, that—to take one example— Exod. xxx. and xxxi. cannot be placed in the same line wdth Exod. xxv.-xxix., but form a supplement to the last-named section. No reason can be assigned why the author of Exod. xxv. - xxix., if he intended to mention the golden altar of incense at all, should have failed to include it in the passage wdiere he describes all the other furniture within the tabernacle,—the ark, mercy-seat, golden table, and candlestick ; that the altar of incense is first mentioned in Exod. xxx. 1-10 is only to be understood on the assumption that, chaps, xxx. and xxxi. were added by a later author.

Such are the main lines of the view now most prevalent, as to the composition of the Hexateuch. We come next to consider the date and mutual relations of the several sources. As regards Deuteronomy and the Jehovist there is tolerably complete agreement among critics. Some, indeed, attempt to date Deuteronomy before the time of Date Josiah, in the age of Hezekiah (2 Kings xviii. 4, 22), Deuter or even still earlier; but on the whole the date originally uomy-

assigned by De Wette has held its ground. That the author of Deuteronomy had the Jehovistic work before him is also admitted ; and it is pretty well agreed that the latter is referred, alike by the character of its language and the circle of its ideas and by express references (Gen. xii. 6, xxxvi. 31, xxxiv. 10 ; Num. xxii. sq.; Deut. xxxiv. 10), to the golden age of Hebrew literature, the same which has given us the finest parts of the books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, and the oldest extant prophetical writings,—the age of the kings and prophets, before the dissolution of the sister states of Israel and Judah. Date of On the other hand, the date of the Priestly Code is Priestly disputed. Till pretty recently it was commonly regarded Code' as the oldest part of the Hexateuch. The fact that it is mainly legal seemed to give it the priority over the history of the Jehovist; for Moses was a lawgiver, not a narrator. Again, the priestly legislation has reference to worship, and regulates all points of ritual with great exactness; and by the rule that the earliest forms of religion lay most weight on ceremonies of worship and all matters of form, this fact seemed to mark the Priestly Code as older than Deuteronomy, where affairs of ritual wor-ship are less prominent than precepts of ethical conduct. Once more, the demands made by Deuteronomy for the maintenance of the priesthood and ritual service are much less heavy than the corresponding demands of the Priestly Code; and here again it was natural enough to argue that practical difficulties had led to the abolition or modifica-tion of the heavier burdens. And these conclusions were confirmed by the prevalent impression that the final redaction of the Pentateuch, and still more of the book of Joshua, was Deuteronomic, and that the same Deuteronomic redaction could be traced also in the other historical books. But even more weight than was laid on these really plausible arguments was held to attach to another point which seemed not merely to prove the priority of the Priestly Code but to indicate that it was at least partly of Mosaic origin. Alike in the Jehovistic Book of the Covenant and in Deuteronomy the legislation is expressly constructed on the supposition of a nation no longer nomadic but settled in the land of Canaan. The Priestly Code, on the contrary, is throughout directed to Israel as it lived encamped during the wilderness wanderings, and never makes anticipatory reference to later conditions. So also in Genesis the Priestly Code strictly observes the difference between the patriarchal age and later times, and is careful not to transfer Mosaic institutions to the times of the Hebrew forefathers. This air of antiquity, combined with a corresponding severe simplicity in the style and form, and a cast of language which differs profoundly from classical Hebrew, and was conjectured to be of an older mould, was the principal feature relied on as evidence that the Priestly Code deserved the title of the Grundschrift, the original and fundamental part of the Hexateuch.





But, in point of fact, it was none of these arguments which really gave rise to the doctrine of the priority of the Priestly Code ; that doctrine had its veritable source in the supplementary hypothesis described above. After the supplementary hypothesis was given up, the infer-ences originally drawn from it continued to hold their ground; though it was made out that the Jehovist did not presuppose the existence of the Priestly Code, critics still assumed without question that the latter was the older work of the two. Critical analysis made steady pro-gress, but the work of synthesis did not hold even pace with it; this part of the problem was treated rather slightly, and merely by the way. Indeed, the true scope of the problem was not realized ; it was not seen that most im-portant historical questions were involved as well as ques-tions merely literary, and that to assign the true order of the different strata of the Pentateuch was equivalent to a reconstruction of the history of Israel. As regards the narrative matter it was forgotten that, after the Jehovistic, Deuteronomic, and priestly versions of the history had been felicitously disentangled from one another, it was necessary to examine the mutual relations of the three, to consider them as marking so many stages of an historical tradition, which had passed through its successive phases under the action of living causes, and the growth of which could and must be traced and historically explained. Still greater faults of omission characterized the critical treatment of the legal parts of the Pentateuch. Bleek, the oracle in all such matters of the German school of " Vermittelungstheologen " (the theologians who tried to mediate between orthodoxy and criticism alike in doctrine and in history), never looked beyond the historical frame-work of the priestly laws, altogether shutting his eyes to their substance. He never thought of instituting an exact comparison between them and the Deuteronomic law, still less of examining their relation to the historical and pro-phetical books, with which, in truth, as appears from his Introduction, he had only a superficial acquaintance. Ewald, on the other hand, whose views as to the Priestly Code were cognate to those of Bleek, undoubtedly had an intimate acquaintance with Hebrew antiquity, and under-stood the prophets as no one else did. But he too neglected the task of a careful comparison between the different strata of the Pentateuchal legislation and the equally neces-sary task of determining how the several laws agreed with or differed from such definite data for the history of religion as could be collected from the historical and prophetical books. He had therefore no fixed measure to apply to the criticism of the laws, though his conception of the history suffered little, and his conception of prophecy still less, from the fact that in shaping them he left the law practically out of sight, or only called it in from time to time in an irregular and rather unnatural way.

Meanwhile, two Hegelian writers, starting from the original position of De Wette, and moving on lines apart from the beaten track of criticism, had actually effected the solution of the most important problem in the whole sphere of Old Testament study. Vatke and George have the honour of being the first by whom the question of the historical sequence of the several stages of the law was attacked on a sound method, with full mastery over the available evidence, and with a clear insight into the far-reaching scope of the problem. But their works made no permanent impression, and were neglected even by Reuss, although this scholar had fallen at the same time upon quite similar ideas, which he did not venture to publish.

The new ideas lay dormant for thirty years, when they K. H. were revived through a pupil of Reuss, K. H. Graf. He ^rai- too was deemed at first to offer an easy victory to the weapons of " critical analysis," which found many vulner-able points in the original statement of his views. For, while Graf placed the legislation of the middle books very late, holding it to have been framed after the great captivity, he at first still held fast to the doctrine of the great antiquity of the so-called Elohist of Genesis (in the sense which that term bore before Hupfeld's discovery), thus violently rend-ing the Priestly Code in twain, and separating its members by an interval of half a millennium. This he was compelled to do, because, for Genesis at least, he still adhered to the supplementary hypothesis, according to which the Jehovist worked on the basis laid by the (priestly) Elohist. Here, however, he was tying himself by bonds which had been already loosed by Hupfeld ; and, as literary criticism actu-ally stood, it could show no reason for holding that the Jehovist was necessarily later than the Elohist. In the end, therefore, literary criticism offered itself as Graf's auxiliary. Following a hint of Kuenen's, he embraced the proffered alliance, gave up the violent attempt to divide the Priestly Code, and proceeded without further obstacle to extend to the historical part of that code as found in Genesis those conclusions which he had already established for its main or legislative part. Graf himself did not live to see the victory of his cause. His Goel, to speak with the ancient Hebrews, was Professor A. Kuenen of Leyden, who has had the chief share in the task of developing and enforcing the hypothesis of Graf.1

The characteristic feature in the hypothesis of Graf is
that the Priestly Code is placed later than Deuteronomy,
so that the order is no longer Priestly Code, Jehovist,
Deuteronomy, but Jehovist, Deuteronomy, Priestly Code.
The method of inquiry has been already indicated ; the
three strata of the Pentateuch are compared with one
another, and at the same time the investigator seeks to
place them in their proper relation to the successive phases
of Hebrew history as these are known to us from other
and undisputed evidence. The process may be shortened
if it be taken as agreed that the date of Deuteronomy is
known from 2 Kings xxii. ; for this gives us at starting a
fixed point, to which the less certain points can be referred.
The method can be applied alike to the historical and legal
parts of the three strata of the Hexateuch. For the
Jehovist has legislative matter in Exod. xx.-xxiii., xxxiv.,
and Deuteronomy and the Priestly Code embrace historical
matters ; moreover, we always find that the legal stand-
point of each author influences his presentation of the
history, and vice versa. The most important point, how-
ever, is the comparison of the laws, especially of the laws
about worship, with corresponding statements in the his-
torical and prophetical books.
Histori- The turning-point in the history of worship in Israel is
eal. the centralization of the cultus in Jerusalem by Josiah
peno s /g gjj,gg xxii., xxiii.). Till then there were in Judah, as
ana laws \ » , i , <_ ' _ n _ • rv
ofwor- there had been before in bamaria, a multitude of local
ship. ; ' '

en tant qu'il s'agit du développement national déterminé par des lois écrites, se divisera en deux périodes, avant et après Josias. 10. Ézéchiel est antérieur à la rédaction du code rituel et des lois qui ont définitivement organisé la hiérarchie. 11. Le livre de Josué n'est pas, tant s'en faut, la partie la plus récente de l'ouvrage entier. 12. Le rédacteur du Pentateuque se distingue clairement de l'ancien prophète Moyse. (L'histoire sainte et la loi, Paris, 1879, pp. 23, 24.)

1 K. H. Graf, Die geschichtlichen Bûcher des A. T., Leipsic, 1866 ; essays by Graf, in Merx's Archiv, i. 225 sq., 466 sq. ; A. Kuenen, "De priesterlijke Bestanddeelen van Pentateuch en Jozua," in T/ieol. Tijdschri/t, 1870, p. 391 sq., and De Godsdienst van Israel, 2 vols., Haarlem, 1869-70. See also J. Wellhausen, Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels, 2d ed., Berlin, 1883 (Eng. tr., Edinburgh, A. & C. Black, 1885) ; the first edition appeared in 1878 as Geschichte Israels, vol. i.

sanctuaries, the legitimacy of which no one dreamt of dis-puting. If Hezekiah made an attempt to abolish these local shrines, as we are told in 2 Kings xviii. 4, 22, it is yet plain that this attempt was not very serious, as it had been quite forgotten less than a hundred years later. Josiah's reforms were the first that went deep enough to leave a mark on history. Not, indeed, that the high places fell at one blow; they rose again after the king's death, and the attachment to them finally disappeared only when the Babylonian exile tore the nation from its ancestral soil and forcibly interrupted its traditional customs. The returning exiles were thoroughly imbued with the ideas of Josiah's reform, and had no thought of worshipping except in Jerusalem; it cost them no sacrifice of their feelings to leave the ruined high places unbuilt. From this date all Jews understood as a matter of course that the one God had only one sanctuary. Thus we have three distinct historical periods,—(1) the period before Josiah, (2) the transition period introduced by Josiah's reforms, and (3) the period after the exile. Can we trace a correspondence between these three historical phases and the laws as to worship 1

1. The principal law-book embodied by the Jehovist, the First
so-called Book of the Covenant, takes it for granted in Exod. period,
xx. 24-26 that altars are many, not one. Here there is no
idea of attaching value to the retention of a single place for the altar; earth and rough stones are to be found everywhere, and an altar of these materials falls into ruins as easily as it is built. Again, a choice of materials is given, presumably for the construction of different altars, and Jehovah proposes to come to His worshippers and bless them, not in the place where he causes His name to be cele-brated, but at every such place. The Jehovistic law there-fore agrees with the customary usage of the earlier period of Hebrew history; and so too does the Jehovistic story, according to which the patriarchs wherever they reside erect altars, set up cippi (macceboth), plant trees, and dig wells. The places of which these acts of the patriarchs are related are not fortuitous, they are the same places as were afterwards famous shrines. This is why the narrator speaks of them ; his interest in the sites is not antiquarian, but corresponds to the practical importance they held in the worship of his own day. The altar which Abraham built at Shechem is the same on which sacrifices still con-tinued to be offered; Jacob's anointed stone at Bethel was still anointed, and tithes were still offered at it in fulfil-ment of vows, in the writer's own generation. The things which a later generation deemed offensive and heathenish —high places, maggeboth, sacred trees, and wells—all appear here as consecrated by patriarchal precedent, and the narra-tive can only be understood as a picture of what daily took place in the first century or thereabout after the division of the kingdoms, thrown back into the past and clothed with ancient authority.
2. The Deuteronomic legislation begins (Deut. xii.), Second
just like the Book of the Covenant, with a law for the period,
place of worship. But now there is a complete change;
Jehovah is to be worshipped only in Jerusalem and no-
where else. The new law-book is never weary of repeating
this command and developing its consequences in every direction. All this is directed against current usage, against "what we are accustomed to do at this day"; the law is polemical and aims at reformation. This law therefore belongs to the second period of the history, the time when the party of reform in Jerusalem was attack-ing the high places. When we read, then, that King Josiah was moved to destroy the local sanctuaries by the discovery of a law-book, this book, assuming it to be preserved in the Pentateuch, can be none other than the legislative part of I Deuteronomy, which must once have had a separate existence in a shorter form than the present book of Deutero-nomy ; this, too, is the inference to which we are led by the citations and references in Kings and Jeremiah. Third 3. In the Priestly Code all worship depends on the period, tabernacle, and would fall to nothing apart from it. The tabernacle is simply a means of putting the law of unity of worship in an historical form ; it is the only legitimate sanctuary; there is no other spot where God dwells and shows Himself, no other where man can approach God and seek His face with sacrifice and gifts. But, while Deutero-nomy demands, the Priestly Code presupposes, the limitation of worship to one sanctuary. This principle is tacitly assumed as the basis of everything else, but is never asserted in so many words; the principle, it appears, is now no novelty, but can be taken for granted. Hence we conclude that the Priestly Code builds on the realization of the object aimed at in Deuteronomy, and therefore belongs to the time after the exile, when this object had been fully secured. An institution which in its origin must necessarily have had a negative significance as an instrument in the hands of polemical reformers is here taken to have been from the first the only intelligible and legitimate form of worship. It is so taken because established customs always appear to be natural and to need no reason for their existence.

Priest- The abolition of the local shrines in favour of Jerusalem hood. necessarily involved the deposition of the provincial priest-hood in favour of the sons of Zadok in the temple of Solomon. The law of Deuteronomy tries to avoid this consequence by conceding the privilege of offering sacrifices at Jerusalem to the Levites from other places; Levites in Deuteronomy is the general name for priests whose right to officiate is hereditary. But this privilege was never realized, no doubt because the sons of Zadok opposed it. The latter, therefore, were now the only real priests, and the priests of the high places lost their office with the destruc-tion of their altars ; for the loss of their sacrificial dues they received a sort of eleemosynary compensation from their aristocratic brethren (2 Kings xxiii. 9). The displacing of the provincial priests, though practically almost inevitable, went against the law of Deuteronomy; but an argument to justify it was supplied by Ezekiel (Ezek. xliv.). The other Levites, he says, forfeited their priesthood by abusing it in the service of the high places ; and for this they shall be degraded to be mere servants of the Levites of Jerusalem, who have not been guilty of the offence of doing sacrifice in provincial shrines, and thus alone deserve to remain priests. If we start from Deuteronomy, where all Levites have equal priestly rights, this argument and ordinance are plain enough, but it is utterly impossible to understand them if the Priestly Code is taken as already existing. Ezekiel views the priesthood as originally the right of all Levites, while by the Priestly Code a Levite who claims this right is guilty of baseless and wicked presumption, such as once cost the lives of all the company of Korah. And the position of the Levites which Ezekiel qualifies as a punishment and a degradation appears to the Code as the natural, position, which their ancestors from father to son had held from the first. The distinction between priest and Levite, which Ezekiel introduces expressly as an innovation, and which elsewhere in the Old Testament is known only to the author of Chronicles, is, according to the Code, a Mosaic institution fixed and settled from the beginning. Ezekiel's ideas and aims are entirely in the same direction as the Priestly Code, and yet he plainly does not know the Code itself. This can only mean that in his day it did not exist, and that his ordinances formed one of the steps that prepared the way for it.

The Priestly Code gives us an hierocracy fully developed, such as existed after the exile. Aaron stands above his sons as the sons of Aaron stand above the Levites. He has not only the highest place, but a place quite unique, Position like that of the Roman pontiff; his sons minister underof high his superintendence (Num. iii. 4); he himself is the only Pnest-priest with full rights; as such he wears the Urim and Thmnmim, and the golden ephod; and none but he can enter the holy of holies and offer incense there. Before the exile there were, of course, differences of rank among the priests, but the chief priest was only primus inter pares; even Ezekiel knows no high priest in the sense of the Priestly Code. The Urim and Thummim were the insignia of the Levites in general (Dout. xxxiii. 8), and the linen ephod was worn by them all, while the golden ephod was not a garment but a gold-plated image such as the greater sanctuaries used to possess (Judges viii. 27 ; Isa. xxx. 22). Moreover, up to the exile the temple at Jerusalem was the king's chapel, and the priests were his servants; even Ezekiel, who in most points aims at secur-ing the independence of the priests, gives the prince a weighty part in matters of worship, for it is he who receives the dues of the people, and in return defrays the sacrificial service. In the Priestly Code, on the other hand, the dues are paid direct to the sanctuary, the ritual service has full autonomy, and it has its own head, who holds his place by divine right. Nay, the high priest represents more than the church's independence of the state; he exercises sovereignty over Israel. Though sceptre and sword are lacking to him, his spiritual dignity as high priest makes him the head of the theocracy. He alone is the responsible representative of the commonwealth ; the names of the twelve tribes are written on his shoulders and his breast. Offence of his inculpates the whole people and demands the same expiation as a national sin, while the sin-offerings prescribed for the princes mark them out as mere private persons compared with him. His death makes an epoch; the fugitive manslayer is amnestied, not on the death of the king, but on the death of the high priest. On his investiture he receives a kingly unction (whence his name, "the anointed priest"); he wears the diadem and tiara of a monarch, and is clad in royal purple, the most unpriestly dress possible. When now we find that the head of the national worship is as such, and merely as such—for no political powers accompany the high priesthood—also the head of the nation, this can only mean that the nation is one which has been deprived of its civil autonomy, that it no longer enjoys political existence, but survives merely as a church. In truth the Priestly Code never contemplates Israel as a nation, but only as a religious community, the whole life of which is summed up in the service of the sanctuary. The com-munity is that of the second temple, the Jewish hierocracy under that foreign dominion which alone made such an hierocracy possible. The pattern of the so-called Mosaic theocracy, which does not suit the conditions of any earlier age, and of which Hebrew prophecy knows nothing, even in its ideal descriptions of the commonwealth of Israel as it ought to be, fits post-exilic Judaism to a nicety, and was never an actual thing till then. After the exile the Jews were deprived by their foreign rulers of all the functions of public political life; they were thus able, and thus indeed compelled, to devote their whole energies to sacred things, in which full freedom was left them. So the temple became the one centre of national life, and the prince of the temple head of the spiritual common-wealth, while, at the same time, the administration of the few political affairs which were still left to the Jews them-selves fell into his hands as a matter of course, because the nation had no other chief.

The material basis of the hierarchy was supplied by the Sacred sacred dues. In the Priestly Code the priests receive alldues.

sin-offerings and guilt-offerings, the greater part of the cereal accompaniments of sacrifices, the skin of the burnt-offering, the breast and shoulder of thank-offerings. Further, they receive the male firstlings and the tithe of cattle, as also the firstfruits and tithes of the fruits of the land. Yet with all this they are not even obliged to support at their own cost the stated services and offerings of the temple, which are provided for by a poll-tax. The poll-tax is not ordained in the main body of the Code, but such a tax, of the amount of one-third of a shekel, began to be paid in the time of Nehemiah (Neh. x. 32), and in a novel of the law (Exod. xxx. 15) it is demanded at the higher rate of half a shekel per head. That these exorbitant taxes were paid to or claimed by the priests in the wilderness, or during the anarchy of the period of the judges, is inconceivable. Nor in the period of the kingship is it conceivable that the priests laid claim to contributions much in excess of what the king himself received from his subjects ; certainly no such claim would have been supported by the royal author-ity. In 1 Sam. viii. 15 the tithes appear as paid to the king, and are viewed as an oppressive exaction, yet they form but a single element in the multiplicity of dues which the priests claim under the Priestly Code. But, above all, the fundamental principles of the system of priestly dues in the Code are absolutely irreconcilable with the fact that as long as Solomon's temple stood the king had the power to dispose of its revenues as he pleased. The sacred taxes are the financial expression of the hierocratic system ; they accord with the condition of the Jews after the exile, and under the second temple they were actually paid accord-ing to the Code, or with only minor departures from its provisions.

Before the exile the sacred gifts were not paid to the priests at all but to Jehovah; they had no resemblance to taxes, and their religious meaning, which in the later system is hardly recognizable, was quite plainly marked. They were in fact identical with the great public festal offerings which the offerers consumed in solemn sacrificial meals before Jehovah, that is, at the sanctuary. The change of these offerings into a kind of tax was connected with an entire transformation of the old character of Israel's worship, which resulted from its centralization at Jerusalem. In the old days the public worship of the nation consisted essentially in the celebration of the yearly Religious feasts; that this was so can be plainly seen from the pro-feasts, pbets,—from Amos, but especially from Hosea. And accord-ingly the laws of worship are confined to this one point in the Jehovist, and even in Deuteronomy. After the exile the festal observances became much less important than the tdmid, the regular daily and weekly offerings and services; and so we find it in the Priestly Code. But, apart from this, the feasts underwent a qualitative change, a sort of de-generation, which claims our special attention. Originally they were thanksgiving feasts in acknowledgment of Jehovah's goodness in the seasons of the year. The ex-j)ression of thanks lay in the presentation of the firstlings and firstfruits, and these constituted the festal offerings. The chief feast, at the close of the old Hebrew year, was the autumn feast of ingathering (Feast of Tabernacles),—a thanksgiving for the whole produce of the winepress and the corn-flour, but especially for the vintage and the olive harvest. Then, at the beginning of the summer half-year, came the feast of unleavened bread (Ma^goth, Easter), which in turn was followed by the harvest feast (Pente-cost). Between the two last there was a definite interval of seven weeks ; hence the name " Feast of Weeks " (Exod. xxxiv.). In Deut. xvi. 9 the seven weeks are explained as " seven weeks from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn." The Easter feast, therefore, is the commencement of the corn harvest, and this throws light on its fixed relation to Pentecost. The one is the end of the harvest, the other its commencement in Abib (the month of " corn-ears"); between them lie the " determined weeks of harvest" (Jer. v. 24). The whole of this tempus elaumm is one great time of gladness (Isa. ix. 3), bounded by the two feasts. According to Lev. xxiii. 9-22 the dis-tinguishing ceremony at Easter is the presentation of a sheaf of barley, before which no one is allowed to taste the new corn; the corresponding rule at Pentecost is the pre-sentation of leavened wheaten bread. The barley of course is the first and the wheat the last grain ripe; at the be-ginning of harvest the firstfruits are presented in the sheaf, and men also partake of the new growth in the shape of parched ears of corn (Lev. xxiii. 14 ; Josh. v. 11); at the end of harvest the firstfruits take the form of ordinary bread. We now see the meaning of the "unleavened bread." Unleavened cakes are quickly prepared, and were used when bread had to be furnished suddenly (1 Sam. xxviii. 24); here it is the new meal of the year which is hastily baked into a sort of bannock without waiting for the tedious process of leavening. The unleavened bread contrasts with the Pentecostal cake in the same way as the barley sheaf and the parched ears do, and so, as we see from Josh. v. 11, parched corn maybe eaten instead of unleavened bread,—a point worthy of notice.





Thus the three feasts are all originally thanksgivings The for the fruits of the ground, and in all of them the offering Passover, of firstfruits is the characteristic feature. Quite similarly the Passover, which was celebrated at the same season as the Easter feast of unleavened bread, is also a thanks-giving feast; but here the offerings are not taken from the fruits of the ground but from the male firstlings of the cattle (sheep and oxen). The Jehovistic tradition in Exodus still exhibits this original character of the Pass-over with perfect clearness. Jehovah demands that His people shall go forth and celebrate His feast in the wilder-ness with sacrifices of sheep and oxen; and, because Pharaoh refuses to allow the Hebrews to serve their God by offer-ing the firstlings of cattle that are His due, He takes from the king the firstborn of his subjects. The feast, therefore, is older than the exodus, and the former is the occasion of the latter, not vice versa. In the Priestly Code the true significance of the feasts appears only dimly in particular details of ritual; their general character is entirely changed. They no longer rest on the seasons and the fruits of the season, and indeed have no basis in the nature of things. They are simply statutory ordinances resting on a positive divine command, which at most was issued in commemoration of some historical event. Their relation to the firstfruits and firstlings is quite gone; indeed these offerings have no longer any place in acts of worship, being transformed into a mere tax, which is holy only in name. This degeneration of the old feasts is carried furthest in the case of the Passover. An historical reason is assigned to the Passover as early as Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic redaction of the Jehovist, but in these writings the real character of the feast remains so far unchanged that it is still celebrated by the sacrifice of the firstlings of oxen and of sheep. But in the Priestly Code the paschal sacrifice has quite lost its old character, and consists of a yearling sheep or goat, while the firstlings have no more connexion with the Passover, but are a mere due to the priests without any properly religious character. The other feasts have also.lost their individuality by being divorced from the firstfruits and celebrated instead by stated sacrifices, which are merely the tdmid on a larger scale, and have no individuality of meaning. All this is a consequence of the centralizing process which took the observances of worship away from their natural soil, spiritualized them, and gave them a stereotyped reference to Jehovah's relation with Israel as a whole, and to the sacred history. This centralization, indeed, was not the work of the Priestly Code but of the prophets; but in the Code we find all its consequences fully developed, while even in Deuteronomy the process is still quite in an early stage. Jewish practice after the exile is guided by the Priestly Code, not in every detail, but quite unquestionably in its main features. In the time of Christ no one thought of any other kind of Passover than that prescribed in the Code; the paschal lamb had obliterated all recollection of the sacrifice of the firstlings.

The conclusions which we have reached by comparing the successive strata of the laws are confirmed by a com-parison of the several stages of the historical tradition embodied in the Pentateuch. The several threads of nar-rative which run side by side in the Pentateuch are so distinct in point of form that critics were long disposed to assume that in point of substance also they are independ-ent narratives, without mutual relation. This, however, is highly improbable on general considerations, and is seen to be quite impossible when regard is paid to the close correspondence of the several sources in regard to the arrangement of the historical matter they contain. It is because the arrangement is so similar in all the narratives that it was possible to weave them together into one book; and besides this we find a close agreement in many notable points of detail. Here too analysis does not exhaust the task of the critic; a subsequent synthesis is required. When he has separated out the individual documents the critic has still to examine their mutual relations, to com-prehend them as phases in a living process, and in this way to trace the gradual development of the Hebrew historical tradition. In the present article, however, we cannot say anything of the way in which the Deuteronomist views the Hebrew history, nor shall we attempt to char-acterize the differences between the two sources of the Jehovist, but limit ourselves to a general comparison be-tween the Jehovistic narrative and that of the Priestly Code.

Narra- Bleek and his school viewed it as a great merit of the tives of latter narrative that it strictly observes the difference Jehovist hetWeen various ages, mixes nothing Mosaic with the Priestly patriarchal period, and in the Mosaic history never forgets Code eon- that the scene lies in the wilderness of wandering. They trasted. also took it as a mark of fidelity to authentic sources that the Code contains so many dry lists, such a mass of un-important numbers and names, such exact technical descriptions of details which could have no interest for posterity. Against this view Colenso, in the first part of his Pentateuch and Booh of Joshua critically examined (Lond., 1862), proved that just those parts of the Hexa-teuch which contain the most precise details, and so have the air of authentic documents, are least consistent with the laws of possibility. Colenso, when he wrote, had no thought of the several sources of the Hexateuch, but this only makes it the more remarkable that his criticisms mainly affect the Priestly Code. Noldeke followed Colenso with clearer insight, and determined the character and value of the priestly narrative by tracing all through it an artificial construction and a fictitious character. In fact the supposed marks of historical accuracy and depend-ence on authentic records are quite out of place in such a narrative as that of the Pentateuch, the substance of which is not historical but legendary. This legendary character is always manifest both in the form and in the substance of the narrative of the Jehovist; his stories of the patriarchs and of Moses are just such as might have been gathered from popular tradition. With him the general plan of the history is still quite loose; the individual stories are the important thing, and they have a truly living individuality. They have always a local connexion, and we can still often see what motives lie at the root of them ; but even when we do not understand these legends they lose none of their charm ; for they breathe a sweet poetic fragrance, and in them heaven and earth are magically blended into one. The Priestly Code, on the other hand, dwells as little as possible on the details of the several stories ; the pearls are stripped off in order that the tlrread on which they were strung may be properly seen. Love and hate and all the passions, angels, miracles, and theo-phanies, local and historical allusions, disappear; the old narrative shrivels into a sort of genealogical scheme,—a bare scaffolding to support a pragmatic construction of the connexion and progress of the sacred history. But in legendary narrative connexion is a very secondary matter; indeed it is only brought in when the several legends are collected and written down. When, therefore, the Priestly Code makes the connexion the chief thing, it is clear that it has lost all touch of the original sources and starting-points of the legends. It does not, therefore, draw from oral tradition but from books; its dry excerpts can have no other source than a tradition already fixed in writing. In point of fact it simply draws on the Jehovistic narrative. The order in which that narrative disposed the popular legends is here made the essential thing; the arrange-ment, which in the Jehovist was still quite subordinate to the details, is here brought into the foreground; the old order of events is strictly adhered to, but is so em-phasized as to become the one important thing in the history. It obviously was the intention of the priestly narrator to give by this treatment the historical quint-essence of his materials, freed of all superfluous additions. At the same time, he has used all means to dress up the old naive traditions into a learned history. Sorely against its real character, he forces it into a chronological system, which he carries through without a break from Adam to Joshua. Whenever he can ho patches the story with things that have the air of authoritative documents, great lists of subjects without predicates, of numbers and names which could never have been handed down orally without being put in writing, and introduces a spurious air of learned research in the most unsuitable places. Finally, he rationalizes the history after the standard of his own religious ideas and general culture; above all, he shapes it so that it forms a framework, and at the same time a gradual preparation for the Mosaic law. With the spirit of the legend, in which the Jehovist still lives, he has nothing in common, and so he forces it into conformity with a point of view entirely different from its own.

The greater part of the narratives of the Pentateuch cannot he measured by an historical standard ; but within certain limits that standard can be applied to the epieal age of Moses and Joshua. Thus we can apply historical criticism to the several versions of the way in which the tribes of Israel got possession of the land of Canaan. The priestly narrator represents all Canaan as reduced to a tabula rasa, and then makes the masterless and unpeopled land be divided by lot. The first lot falls to Judah, then come Manasseh and Ephraim, then Benjamin and Simeon, and lastly the five northerly tribes, Zebulon, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali, Dan. '' These are the inheritances wdiich Eleazar the priest and Joshua the son of Nun and the heads of the tribes of Israel apportioned by lot at Shiloh before Jehovah at the door of the tabernacle." According to the Jehovist (Josh. xiv. 6) Judah and Joseph seem to have had their portions assigned to them while the Israelite headquarters were still at Gilgal—but not by lot—and to have gone forth from Gilgal to take possession of them. A good deal later the rest of the land was divided by lot to the remaining tribes at Shiloh, or perhaps, in the original form of the narrative, at Shechem (Josh, xviii. 2-10); Joshua casts the lots and makes the assignments alone, Eleazar is not associated with him. The abso-lute uniformity in the method of the division of the land to all the tribes is in some degree given up in this account; it is still more strongly contradicted by the important chapter, Judges i. Fragments of this chapter are found also in the book of Joshua, and there is no doubt that it belongs to the Jehovistic group of narratives, in common with which it speaks of the Angel of Jehovah. It is in truth not a continuation of but a parallel to the book of Joshua, presupposing the conquest of the lands east of the Jordan, but not of western Canaan. The latter conquest is what it relates, and in a way quite different from the book of Joshua. From Gilgal, where the Angel of Jehovah first set up his camp, the tribes go forth singly each to conquer a land for itself, Judah going first and Joseph following. It is only of the movements of these two tribes that we have a regular narrative, and for Joseph this is limited to the first beginnings of his conquests. There is no men-tion of Joshua; a commander-in-chief of all Israel would indeed be out of place in this record of the conquest, but Joshua might have appeared in it as commander of his own tribe. The incom-pleteness of the conquest is frankly admitted; the Canaanites con-tinued to hold undisturbed the cities of the plain, and it was only in the time of the kingship, when Israel was waxen strong, that they became subject and tributary. From all that we know of the subsequent history there can be no doubt that this account of the conquest is vastly nearer to the facts than that which prevails in the Dook of Joshua, where everything is done with systematic completeness, and the whole land dispeopled and then divided by lot. This latter and less historical view is most consistently carried through in the priestly narrative, which accordingly must be the narrative most remote from the origin of the Hebrew tradition. The same conclusion may be drawn from the fact that the priestly writer never names the tribe of Joseph, but always the two tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, which, moreover, do not receive nearly so much notice as Judah, although Joshua, the leader of Ephraim, is retained in the character of leader of all Israel from an old and originally Ephraitic tradition.

Deutero- The middle position which the legal part of Deuteronomy nomic holds between the Jehovist and the Priestly Code is also tiv"a" characteristic of the Deuteronomic narrative, which is founded throughout on the narrative of the Jehovist, but from time to time shows a certain leaning to the points of view characteristic of the priestly narrator. The order of the several parts of the Hexateuch to which we have been led by all these arguments is confirmed by an examination of the other historical books and the books of Chronicles. The original sources of the books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings stand on the same platform with the Jehovist; the editing they received in the exile presupposes Deuteronomy; and the latest construction of the history as contained in Chronicles rests on the Priestly Code. This is admitted and need not be proved in detail; the conclusion to be drawn is obvious.
We have now indicated the chief lines on which criticism must proceed in determining the order of the sources of the Hexateuch, and the age of the Priestly Code in parti-cular,—though, of course, it has not been possible at all to exhaust the argument. The objections that have been taken to Graf's hypothesis partly rest on misunder-standing. It is asked, for example, what is left for Moses The if he was not the author of the Torah. But Moses may author- have been the founder of the Torah though the Penta-the* °' teuchal legislation was codified almost a thousand years Torah. later; for the Torah was originally not a written law but the oral decisions of the priests at the sanctuary—case-law, in short, by which they decided all manner of questions and controversies that were brought before their tribunal; their Torah was the instruction to others that came from their lips, not at all a written document in their hands guaranteeing their own status, and instructing themselves how to proceed in the sacrificial ritual. Questions of clean and unclean belonged to the Torah, because these were matters on which the laity required to be directed; but, speaking generally, the ritual, so far as it consisted in ceremonies performed by the priests themselves, was no part of the Torah. But, while it was only at a late date that the ritual appeared as Torah as it does in the Priestly Code, its usages and traditions are exceedingly ancient, going back, in fact, to pre-Mosaic and heathenish times. It is absurd to speak as if Graf's hypothesis meant that the whole ritual is the invention of the Priestly Code, first put into practice after the exile ; all that is affirmed by the advocates of that hypothesis is that in earlier times the ritual was not the substructure of an hierocracy, that there was in fact no hierocracy before the exile, but that Jehovah's sovereignty was an ideal thing and not visibly embodied in an organization of the commonwealth under the forms of a specifically spiritual power. The theocracy was the state; the old Israelites regarded their civil con-stitution as a divine miracle. The later Jews assumed the existence of the state as a natural thing that required no explanation, and built the theocracy over it as a special divine institution.

There are, however, some more serious objections taken to the Grafian hypothesis. It is, indeed, simply a mis-statement of facts to say that the language of the Priestly Code forbids us to date it so late as post-exilic times. On the other hand, a real difficulty lies in the fact that, Diffi-while the priestly redaction extends to Deuteronomy (Deut. culties of i. 3), it is also true that the Deuteronomic redactionGrafian extends to the Priestly Code (Josh. xx.). The way out of tifSis this dilemma is to be found by recognizing that the so-called Deuteronomic redaction was not a single and final act, that the characteristic phrases of Deuteronomy became household words to subsequent generations, and were still current and found application centuries after the time of Josiah. Thus, for example, the traces of Deuteronomic redaction in Josh. xx. are still lacking in the Septuagint; the canonical text, we see, was retouched at a very late date indeed. Of the other objections taken to the Grafian hypothesis only one need be mentioned here, viz., that the Persians are not named in the list of nations in Gen. x. This is certainly hard to understand if the passage was written in the Persian period. But the difficulty is not insuperable; the Persians, for example, may have been held to be included in the mention of the Medians, and this also would give the list the archaic air which the priestly writer affects. At any rate, a residue of minute difficulties not yet thoroughly explained cannot outweigh the decisive arguments that support the view that the Priestly Code originated in and after the exile. Kuenen observes with justice that "it is absolutely necessary to start with the plain and unambiguous facts, and to allow them to guide our judgment on questionable points. The study of details is not superfluous in laying down the main lines of the critical construction, but, as soon as our studies have supplied us with some really fixed points, further pro-gress must proceed from them, and we must first gain a general view of the whole field instead of always working away at details, and then coming out with a rounded theory which lacks nothing but a foundation."

Finally, it is a pure petitio principii, and nothing more, to say that the post-exilic age was not equal to the task of producing a work like the Priestly Code. The posi-tion of the Jews after the exile made it imperative on them to reorganize themselves in conformity with the entire change in their situation, and the Priestly Code corresponds to all that we should expect to find in a consti-tution for the Jews after the exile as completely as it fails to correspond with the conditions which a law-book older than the exile would have had to satisfy. After the final destruction of the kingdom by Nebuchadnezzar, they found in the ritual and personnel of the temple at Jerusalem the elements out of which a new commonwealth could be built, in conformity with the circumstances and needs of the time. The community of Judaea raised itself from the dust by holding on to its ruined sanctuary. The old usages and ordinances were reshaped in detail, but as a whole they were not replaced by new creations ; the novelty lay in their being worked into a system and applied as a means to organize the " remnant" of Israel. This was I the origin of the sacred constitution of Judaism. Religion in old Israel had been a faith which gave its support to the natural ordinances of human society; it was now set forth in external and visible form as a special institution, within an artificial sphere peculiar to itself, which rose far above the level of common life. The necessary presup-position of this kind of theocracy is service to a foreign empire, and so the theocracy is essentially the same thing as hierocracy. Its finished picture is drawn in the Priestly Composi- Code, the product of the labours of learned priests during tion and tne exile. When the temple was destroyed and the ritual t^of intermPte<i, the old practices were written down that they Priestly might not be lost. Thus in the exile the ritual became Code. matter of teaching, of Torah ; the first who took this step, a step prescribed by the circumstances of the time, was the priest and prophet Ezekiel. In the last part of his book Ezekiel began the literary record of the customary ritual of the temple; other priests followed in his footsteps (Lev. xvii.-xxvi.); and so there arose during the captivity a school of men who wrote down and systematized what they had formerly practised. When the temple was restored this theocratic zeal still went on and produced further ritual developments, in action and reaction with the actual practice of the new temple ; the final result of the long-continued process was the Priestly Code.

This Code, incorporated in the Pentateuch and forming the normative part of its legislation, became the definitive Mosaic law. As such it was published and put in action in 444 B.C. hy the Babylonian priest and scribe Ezra. Ezra had come to Jerusalem as early as 458, at the head of a considerable body of zealous Jews, with full authority from Artaxerxes Longimanus to reform the community of the second temple in accordance with the law of God in his hand. But Ezra did not introduce this law imme-diately on his arrival; it took him fourteen years to effect his purpose. The external circumstances of the young community, which were exceedingly unfavourable, made it at first undesirable to introduce legislative innovations; perhaps, also, Ezra needed time to correct the product of Babylonian learning by the light of Judsean practice, and wished, moreover, to train assistants for his task. The chief reason of the delay seems, however, to have been that, in spite of the royal favour, he could not get any energetic support from the local representatives of the Persian Government, and without this he could not have given authority to his new law. But in 445 a kindred spirit, Nehemiah b. Hakkeleiah, came to Jerusalem as Persian governor of Judasa. Ezra's opportunity had now arrived, and he was able to introduce the Pentateuch in agreement with the governor. The record of this step is contained in Neh. viii.-x.; it is closely analogous to the narrative of the introduction of the Deuteronomic law under Josiah in 2 Kings xxii. Just as we are told there that Deuteronomy became known in 621 B.C., having been unknown previously, so we are told here that the Torah in the rest of the Pentateuch became known in 444, and was unknown till that date. This shows us, in the first place, that Deuteronomy contains an earlier stage of the law than the priestly Torah. And further, as the date of Deuteronomy can be inferred from the date of its publi-cation and introduction under Josiah, so in like manner the date of the composition of the Priestly Code can be inferred from its publication and enforcement by Ezra and Nehemiah.

The establishment of the right date for the written law is of the highest importance for our understanding of the prophets, and for our whole conception of the history of Israel. See the articles ISRAEL and PROPHET. (J. WE.)



Footnotes

3 Conjectures sur les memoires oriyinaux, dont it paroit que Moyse s'est servipour composer le livre de la Oenf.se (Brussels, 1753). Comp. Joum. des Scavans, October 1767, pp. 291-305.

3 J. S. Vater, Commentar über den Pentateuch, Halle, 1802-1805,

3 Knobel, Die Genesis erklart (Leipsic, 1852), Exodus und Leviticus (1857), iVwmerJ,Deuteron.,und./<WK»(1861) ; Nb'ldeke, Untersuchungen zur Kritik des A.T. (Kiel, 1869).

H. Leo, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte des jüdischen Staats, Berlin, 1828 ; C. P. W. Gramherg, Kritische Geschichte der Religions-ideen des A.T., Berlin, 1829-30; P. v. Bohlen, Die (fenesis, Königs-berg, 1835; W. Vatke, Biblische Theologie, Berlin, 1835 ; J. F. L. George, Die älteren jüdischen Feste, Berlin, 1835.
Bleek, in Rosenmüller's Repertorium, 1822, and in Stud, und Krit., 1831 ; Ewald, Stud. u. Krit., 1831 ; Tuch, Kommentar üb. d.
Genesis, Halle, 1838 ; especially De Wette in the various editions of his Einleitung.

The addition of Elohim, which produces the un-Hebrew form Jehovah Elohim, in Gen. ii., iii., is due to an editor who desired to soften the abrupt transition from the Elohim of the one narrator to the Jehovah of the other.
The addition of Elohim, which produces the un-Hebrew form Jehovah Elohim, in Gen. ii., iii., is due to an editor who desired to soften the abrupt transition from the Elohim of the one narrator to the Jehovah of the other.

The following propositions were formulated by Reuss in 1833 (or, Reuss. as he elsewhere gives the date, in 1834), though they wrere not published till 1879. 1. L'élément historique du Pentateuque peut et doit être examiné à part et ne pas être confondu avec l'élément légal. 2. L'un et l'autre ont pu exister sans rédaction écrite. La mention, chez d'anciens écrivains, de certaines traditions patriarcales ou mosaiques, ne prouve pas l'existence du Pentateuque, et une nation peut avoir un droit coutumier sans code écrit. Les traditions nationales des Israélites remontent plus haut que les lois du Pentateuque et la rédac-tion des premières est antérieure à celle des secondes. 4. L'intérêt principal de l'historien doit porter sur la date des lois, parce que sur ce terrain il a plus de chance d'arriver à des résultats certains. Il faut en conséquence procéder à l'interrogatoire des témoins. 5. L'his-toire racontée dans les livres des Juges et de Samuel, et même en partie celle comprise dans les livres des Rois, est en contradiction avec des lois dites mosaiques ; done celles-ci étaient inconnues à l'époque de la rédaction de ces livres, à plus forte raison elles n'ont pas existé dans les temps qui y sont décrits. 6. Les prophètes du 8e et du 7* siècle ne savent rien du code mosaïque. 7. Jérémie est le premier prophète qui connaisse une loi écrite et ses citations rapportent au Deutéronome. 8. Le Deutcronome (iv. 45-xxviii. 68) est le livre que les prêtres prétendaient avoir trouvé dans le temple, du temps du roi Josias. Ce code est la partie la plus ancienne de la législation (rédigée) comprise dan.3 le Pentateuque. 9. L'histoire des Israélites,