Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/534

508 PENTATEUCH Date of Priestly Code. " 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.; Dent, 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. On the other hand, the date of the Priestly Code is disputed. Till pretty recently it was commonly regarded 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 Grundachrift, 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 Avas 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 " Yermittelungstheologen " (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 Pieuss, although this scholar had fallen at the same time upon quite similar ideas, which he did not venture to publish. 1 1 The following propositions were formulated by Reuss in 1833 (or, Reuss. as he elsewhere gives the date, in 1834), though they were not published till 1879. 1. L elumeut historique du Pentatenque pent et doit etre examine a part et ne pas etre confondu avec 1 element legal. 2. L un et 1 autre out pu exister sans redaction ecrite. La mention, diez d anciens ecrivains, de certaines traditions patriarcales ou mosaiques, ne prouve pas 1 existenee du Pentateuque, et une nation pent avoir un droit coutumier sans code ecrit. Les traditions nationales de.s Israelites remontent plus liaut que les lois du Pentateuque et la redac tion des premieres est anterieure a celle des secondes. 4. L iliteret principal de 1 historien doit porter sur la date des lois, parce que sur ce terrain il a plus de chance d avriver a des resultats certains. Jl faut en consequence proceder a I interrogatoire des temoins. 5. L his- toire 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 ; done celles-ci etaient inconnues a 1 epoque de la redaction de ces livres, a plus forte raison elles n ont pas existe dans les temps qui y sont di crits. 6. Les prophetes du 8 e et du 7" siecle ne saveut rien du code mosaique. 7. Jeremie est le pn-mier prophete qui connaisse une loi ecrite et ses citations rapportent au Deuti -ronome. 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 aneienne de la legislation (rudigi -e) comprise dans le Pentateuque. 9. L histoire des Israelites,