Prolegomena to the History of Israel Part 2

and had a pa.s.sage right round it at half its height, that is here described as the only true one. On the other hand, it is obvious that a multiplicity of altars is not merely regarded as permissible, but a.s.sumed as a matter of course. For no stress at all is laid upon having always the same sacrificial seat, whether fixed or to be moved about from place to place; earth and unhewn stones /2/ of the field

2. The plural "stones" is perhaps worthy of note. There were also sacrificial places consisting of one great stone (1Samuel xiv.33, vi.14, 15; 2Samuel xx.8; Judges vi.20, xiii.19, 20; 1Kings i.9); to the same category also doubtless belongs originally the thres.h.i.+ng-floor of Araunah, 2Samuel xxiv.21; compare Ezra iii.3, [ (L MKWNTW ]. But inasmuch as such single sacred stones easily came into a mythological relation to the Deity, offence was taken at them, as appears from Judges vi.22-24, where the rock altar, the stone under the oak which was conceived of as the seat of the theophany, upon which Gideon offers, and out of which the flame issues (vi.19-21), is corrected into an altar upon the rock. The macceboth are distinguished from the altar in Exodus xxiv.4, yet elsewhere clearly put on the same plane with it (Gen. x.x.xiii.20), and everywhere more or less identified with the Deity (Gen. xxviii.).

can be found everywhere, and such an altar falls to pieces just as readily as it is built. A choice of two kinds of material is also given, which surely implies that the lawgiver thought of more than one altar; and not at the place, but at every place where He causes His name to be honoured will Jehovah come to His wors.h.i.+ppers and bless them. Thus the law now under consideration is in harmony with the custom and usage of the first historical period, has its root therein, and gives sanction to it. Certainly the liberty to sacrifice everywhere seems to be somewhat restricted by the added clause, "in every place where I cause my name to be honoured."

But this means nothing more than that the spots where intercourse between earth and heaven took place were not willingly regarded as arbitrarily chosen, but, on the contrary, were considered as having been somehow or other selected by the Deity Himself for His service.

In perfect correspondence with the Jehovistic law is the Jehovistic narrative of the Pentateuch, as, in particular, the story of the patriarchs in J and E very clearly shows. At every place where they take up their abode or make a pa.s.sing stay, the fathers of the nation, according to this authority, erect altars, set up memorial stones, plant trees, dig wells. This does not take place at indifferent and casual localities, but at Shechem and Bethel in Ephraim, at Hebron and Beersheba in Judah, at Mizpah, Mahanaim, and Penuel in Gilead; nowhere but at famous and immemorially holy places of wors.h.i.+p. It is on this that the interest of such notifications depends; they are no mere antiquarian facts, but full of the most living significance for the present of the narrator. The altar built by Abraham at Shechem is the altar on which sacrifice still continues to be made, and bears "even unto this day" the name which the patriarch gave it. On the spot where at Hebron he first entertained Jehovah, there down to the present day the table has continued to be spread; even as Isaac himself did, so do his sons still swear Amosos viii.14; Hos.

iv.15) by the sacred well of Beersheba, which he digged, and sacrifice there upon the altar which he built, under the tamarisk which he planted. The stone which Jacob consecrated at Bethel the generation of the living continues to anoint, paying the t.i.thes which of old he vowed to the house of G.o.d there. This also is the reason why the sacred localities are so well known to the narrator, and are punctually and accurately recorded notwithstanding the four hundred years of the Egyptian sojourn, which otherwise would have made their identification a matter of some little difficulty. The altar which Abraham built at Bethel stands upon the hill to the east of the town, between Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; others are determined by means of a tree or a well, as that of Shechem or Beersheba. /1/

1. The correct explanation of this is found in Ewald, Gesch. d. V.

lsraels, i. 436 seq. (3d edit.). A. Bernstein (Ursprung der Sagen von Abrabam, etc., Berlin, 1871) drags in politics in a repulsive way.

"He does not indeed actually enter Shechem and Bethel-- these are places hostile to Judah--but in a genuine spirit of Jewish demonstration he builds altars in their vicinity and calls on the name of Jehovah" (p. 22). Rather, he builds the altars precisely on the places where, as can be shown, they afterwards stood, and that was not inside the towns. In Gen. xviii. also the oak of Mamre is employed to fix not Abraham's residence, but the place of Jehovah's appearing.

But of course it was not intended to throw dishonour upon the cultus of the present when its inst.i.tution was ascribed to the fathers of the nation. Rather, on the contrary, do these legends glorify the origin of the sanctuaries to which they are attached, and surround them with the nimbus of a venerable consecration. All the more as the altars, as a rule, are not built by the patriarchs according to their own private judgment wheresoever they please; on the contrary, a theophany calls attention to, or at least afterwards confirms, the holiness of the place. Jehovah appears at Shechem to Abraham, who thereupon builds the altar "to Jehovah who had appeared unto him;" he partakes of his hospitality under the oak of Mamre, which is the origin of the sacrificial service there; He shows him the place where he is to make an offering of his son, and here the sanctuary continues to exist. On the first night of Isaac's sleeping on the sacred soil of Beersheba (xxvi.24) he receives a visit from the Numen there residing, and in consequence rears his altar. Surprised by profane glances, Jehovah acts as a destroyer, but Himself spontaneously points out to His favoured ones the places where it is His pleasure to allow Himself to be seen; and where men have seen Him and yet lived, there a sanctuary marks the open way of access to Him. The substance of the revelation is in these cases comparatively indifferent: "I am G.o.d." What is of importance is the theophany in and for itself, its occurrence on that particular place. It must not be regarded as an isolated fact, but rather as the striking commencement of an intercourse [ R)H PNY YHWH ] between G.o.d and man which is destined to be continued at this spot, and also as the first and strongest expression of the sanct.i.ty of the soil. This way of looking at the thing appears most clearly and with incomparable charm in the story of the ladder which Jacob saw at Bethel. "He dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven, and behold the angels of G.o.d ascending and descending on it. And he was afraid and said, How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of G.o.d, and this is the gate of heaven." The ladder stands at the place not at this moment merely, but continually, and, as it were, by nature. Bethel--so Jacob perceives from this--is a place where heaven and earth meet, where the angels ascend and descend, to carry on the communication between earth and heaven ordained by G.o.d at this gate.

All this is only to be understood as a glorification of the relations and arrangements of the cultus as we find them (say) in the first centuries of the divided kingdom. All that seems offensive and heathenish to a later age is here consecrated and countenanced by Jehovah Himself and His favoured ones,-- the high places, the memorial stones (maccceboth), the trees, the wells. /1/

1. But it is only the public cultus and that of certain leading sanctuaries that is thus glorified; on the other hand, the domestic wors.h.i.+p of seraphim, to which the women are specially attached, is already discountenanced (in E) by Jacob. Asherim are not alluded to, molten images are rejected, particularly by E.

Here perhaps a correction of the ancient legend has already taken place in JE.

An essential agreement prevails between the Jehovistic law which sanctions the existing seats of wors.h.i.+p and the Jehovistic narrative; the latter is as regards its nucleus perhaps somewhat older.

Both obviously belong to the pre-prophetic period; a later revision of the narrative in the prophetic sense has not altered the essential character of its fundamental elements. It is inconceivable that Amos or Hosea, or any like-minded person, could go with such sympathising love and believing reverence into narratives which only served to invest with a still brighter nimbus and higher respect the existing religious wors.h.i.+p, carried on by the people on the high places of Isaac as their holiest occupation.

I.II.2. The Jehovistic Book of the Covenant lies indeed at the foundation of Deuteronomy, but in one point they differ materially, and that precisely the one which concerns us here.

As there, so here also, the legislation properly so called begins (Deut. xii.) with an ordinance relating to the service of the altar; but now we have Moses addressing the Israeites in the following terms: "When ye come into the land of Canaan, ye shall utterly destroy all the places of wors.h.i.+p which ye find there, and ye shall not wors.h.i.+p Jehovah your G.o.d after the manner in which the heathen serve theirs. Nay, but only unto the place which the Lord your G.o.d shall choose out of all your tribes for His habitation shall ye seek, and thither shall ye bring your offerings and gifts, and there shall ye eat before Him and rejoice. Here at this day we do every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes, but when ye have found fixed abodes, and rest from your enemies round about, then shall the place which Jehovah shall choose for His habitation in one of your tribes be the one place to which ye shall bring your offerings and gifts. Take heed that ye offer not in every place that ye see; ye may not eat your holy gifts in every town, but only in the place which Jehovah shall choose."

The Law is never weary of again and again repeating its injunction of local unity of wors.h.i.+p. In doing so, it is in conscious opposition to "the things that we do here this day," and throughout has a polemical and reforming att.i.tude towards existing usage. It is rightly therefore a.s.signed by historical criticism to the period of the attacks made on the Bamoth by the reforming party at Jerusalem. As the Book of the Covenant, and the whole Jehovistic writing in genera], reflects the first pre-prophetic period in the history of the cultus, so Deuteronomy is the legal expression of the second period of struggle and transition. The historical order is all the more certain because the literary dependence of Deuteronomy on the Jehovistic laws and narratives can be demonstrated independently, and is an admitted fact. From this the step is easy to the belief that the work whose discovery gave occasion to King Josiah to destroy the local sanctuaries was this very Book of Deuteronomy, which originally must have had an independent existence, and a shorter form than at present. This alone, at least, of all the books of the Pentateuch, gives so imperious an expression to the restriction of the sacrificial wors.h.i.+p to the one chosen place; here only does the demand make itself so felt in its aggressive novelty and dominate the whole tendency of the law-maker. The old material which he makes use of is invariably shaped with a view to this, and on all hands he follows the rule out to its logical consequences. To make its fulfilment possible, he changes former arrangements, permitting what had been forbidden, and prohibiting what had been allowed; in almost every case this motive lies at the foundation of all his other innovations. This is seen, for example, when he permits slaying without sacrificing, and that too anywhere; when, in order not to abolish the right of asylum (Exodus xxi.13, 14; 1Kings ii.

28) along with the altars, he appoints special cities of refuge for the innocent who are pursued by the avenger of blood; when he provides for the priests of the suppressed sanctuaries, recommending the provincials to take them along with them on their sacrificial pilgrimages, and giving them the right to officiate in the temple at Jerusalem just like the hereditarily permanent clergy there. In other respects also the dominance of the same point of view is seen: for example, it is chiefly from regard to it that the old ordinances and customs relating to the religious dues and the festivals are set forth in the form which they must henceforth a.s.sume. A law so living, which stands at every point in immediate contact with reality, which is at war with traditionary custom, and which proceeds with constant reference to the demands of practical life, is no mere velleity, no mere cobweb of an idle brain, but has as certainly arisen out of historical occasions as it is designed to operate powerfully on the course of the subsequent history. A judgment p.r.o.nounced in accordance with the facts can therefore a.s.sign to it an historical place only within that movement of reformation which was brought to a victorious issue by King Josiah.

I.II.3. It is often supposed that the Priestly Code is somewhat indifferent to the question of the one sanctuary, neither permitting multiplicity of sacrificial centres nor laying stress upon the unity, and that on account of this att.i.tude it must be a.s.signed to an earlier date than Deuteronomy. /1/

1. De Wette, in the fifth place of his Habilitationsschrift ueber das Deuteronomium (Jena, 1805): "De hoc unico cultus sacri loco...

priores libri nihil omnino habent. De sacrificiis tantum unice ante tabernaculum conventus offerendis lex quaedam extat.

Sed in legibus de diebus festis, de primitiis et decimis, tam saepe repet.i.tis, nihil omnino monitum est de loco unico, ubi celebrari et offerri debeant " (Opusc. Theol, p. 163-165).

Such an idea is, to say the least, in the highest degree superficial.

The a.s.sumption that wors.h.i.+p is restricted to one single centre runs everywhere throughout the entire doc.u.ment. To appeal specially, in proof of the restriction, to Leviticus xvii. or Josh xxii., is to indicate a complete failure to apprehend the whole tenor of Exodus xxv.-Leviticus ix. Before so much as a single regulation having reference to the matter of wors.h.i.+p can be given (such is the meaning of the large section referred to), the one rightful place wherein to engage in it must be specified. The tabernacle is not narrative merely, but, like all the narratives in that book, law as well; it expresses the legal unity of the wors.h.i.+p as an historical fact, which, from the very beginning, ever since the exodus, has held good in Israel. One G.o.d one sanctuary, that is the idea. With the ordinances of the tabernacle, which form the sum of the divine revelation on Sinai, the theocracy was founded; where the one is, there is the other. The description of it, therefore, stands at the head of the Priestly Code, just as that of the temple stands at the head of the legislation in Ezekiel. It is the basis and indispensable foundation, without which all else would merely float in the air: first must the seat of the Divine Presence on earth be given before the sacred community can come into life and the cultus into force. Is it supposes that the tabernacle tolerates other sanctuaries besides itself? Why then the encampment of the twelve tribes around it, which has no military, but a purely religious significance, and derives its whole meaning from its sacred centre? Whence this concentration of all Israel into one great congregation [ QHL, (DH ], without its like anywhere else in the Old Testament? On the contrary, there is no other place besides this at which G.o.d dwells and suffers Himself to be seen; no place but this alone where man can draw near to Him and seek His face with offerings and gifts. This view is the axiom that underlies the whole ritual legislation of the middle part of the Pentateuch. It is indicated with special clearness by the LPNY (HL MW(D (before the tabernacle), introduced at every turn in the ordinances for sacrifice.

What then are we to infer from this as to the historical place of the Priestly Code, if it be judged necessary to a.s.sign it such a place at all? By all the laws of logic it can no more belong to the first period than Deuteronomy does. But is it older or younger than Deuteronomy? In that book the unity of the cultus is COMMANDED, in the Priestly Code it is PRESUPPOSED. Everywhere it is tacitly a.s.sumed as a fundamental postulate, but nowhere does it find actual expression; /1/ it is nothing new, but quite a thing

1. Except in Leviticus xvii.; but the small body of legislation contained in Leviticus xvii-xxvi is the transition from Deuteronomy to the Priestly Code.

of course. What follows from this for the question before us?

To my thinking, this:--that the Priestly Code rests upon the result which is only the aim of Deuteronomy. The latter is in the midst of movement and conflict: it clearly speaks out its reforming intention, its opposition to the traditional "what we do here this day;" the former stands outside of and above the struggle,--the end has been reached and made a secure possession.

On the basis of the Priestly Code no reformation would ever have taken place, no Josiah would ever have observed from it that the actual condition of affairs was perverse and required to be set right; it proceeds as if everything had been for long in the best of order. It is only in Deuteronomy, moreover, that one sees to the root of the matter, and recognises its connection with the anxiety for a strict monotheism and for the elimination from the wors.h.i.+p of the popular heathenish elements, and thus with a deep and really worthy aim; in the Priestly Code the reason of the appointments, in themselves by no means rational, rests upon their own legitimacy, just as everything that is actual ordinarily seems natural and in no need of explanation. Nowhere does it become apparent that the abolition of the Bamoth and Asherim and memorial stones is the real object contemplated; these inst.i.tutions are now almost unknown, and what is really only intelligible as a negative and polemical ordinance is regarded as full of meaning in itself.

The idea as idea is older than the idea as history. In Deuteronomy it appears in its native colours, comes forward with its aggressive challenge to do battle with the actual. One step indeed is taken towards investing it with an historical character, in so far as it is put into the mouth of Moses; but the beginning thus made keeps within modest limits. Moses only lays down the law; for its execution he makes no provision as regards his own time, nor does he demand it for the immediate future. Rather it is represented as not destined to come into force until the people shall have concluded the conquest of the country and secured a settled peace. We have already found reason to surmise that the reference to "menuha" is intended to defer the date when the Law shall come into force to the days of David and Solomon (1Kings viii.16). This is all the more probable inasmuch as there is required for its fulfilment "the place which Jehovah shall choose,"

by which only the capital of Judah can be meant. Deuteronomy, therefore, knows nothing of the principle that what ought to be must actually have been from the beginning. Until the building of Solomon's temple the unity of wors.h.i.+p according to it had, properly speaking, never had any existence; and, moreover, it is easy to read between the lines that even after that date it was more a pious wish than a practical demand. The Priestly Code, on the other hand, is unable to think of religion without the one sanctuary, and cannot for a moment imagine Israel without it, carrying its actual existence back to the very beginning of the theocracy, and, in accordance with this, completely altering the ancient history. The temple, the focus to which the wors.h.i.+p was concentrated, and which in reality was not built until Solomon's time, is by this doc.u.ment regarded as so indispensable, even for the troubled days of the wanderings before the settlement, that it is made portable, and in the form of a tabernacle set up in the very beginning of things. For the truth is, that the tabernacle is the copy, not the prototype, of the temple at Jerusalem. The resemblance of the two is indeed unmistakable, /1/

1. In Wisdom of Solomon ix. 8 the temple is called MIMHMA SKHNHS HAGIAS. Josephus (Antiquities iii. 6,1) says of the tabernacle, (H D'OUDEN METAFEROMENOU NAOU DIEFERE.

but it is not said in 1Kings vi. that Solomon made use of the old pattern and ordered his Tyrian workmen to follow it. The posteriority of the Mosaic structure comes into clearer light from the two following considerations brought forward by Graf (p. 60 seq.). In the first place, in the description of the tabernacle mention is repeatedly made of its south, north, and west side, without any preceding rubric as to a definite and constantly uniform orientation; the latter is tacitly taken for granted, being borrowed from that of the temple, which was a fixed building, and did not change its site. In the second place, the brazen altar is, strictly speaking, described as an altar of wood merely plated with bra.s.s,--for a fireplace of very large size, upon which a strong fire continually burns, a perfectly absurd construction, which is only to be accounted for by the wish to make the brazen altar which Solomon cast (1Kings xvi. 14) transportable, by changing its interior into wood. The main point, however, is this, that the tabernacle of the Priestly Code in its essential meaning is not a mere provisional shelter for the ark on the march, but the sole legitimate sanctuary for the community of the twelve tribes prior to the days of Solomon, and so in fact a projection of the later temple. How modest, one might almost say how awkwardly bashful, is the Deuteronomic reference to the future place which Jehovah is to choose when compared with this calm matter-of-fact a.s.sumption that the necessary centre of unity of wors.h.i.+p was given from the first! In the one case we have, so to speak, only the idea as it exists in the mind of the lawgiver, but making no claim to be realised till a much later date; in the other, the Mosaic idea has acquired also a Mosaic embodiment, with which it entered the world at the very first.

By the same simple historical method which carries the central sanctuary back into the period before Solomon does the Priestly author abolish the other places of wors.h.i.+p. His forty-eight Levitical cities are for the most part demonstrably a metamorphosis of the old Bamoth to meet the exigencies of the time.

The altar which the tribes eastward of Jordan build (Josh. xxii.) is erected with no intention that it should be used, but merely in commemoration of something. Even the pre-Mosaic period is rendered orthodox in the same fas.h.i.+on. The patriarchs, having no tabernacle, have no wors.h.i.+p at all; according to the Priestly Code they build no altars, bring no offerings, and scrupulously abstain from everything by which they might in any way encroach on the privilege of the one true sanctuary. This manner of shaping the patriarchal history is only the extreme consequence of the effort to carry out with uniformity in history the semper ubique et ab omnibus of the legal unity of wors.h.i.+p.

Thus in Deuteronomy the inst.i.tution is only in its birth-throes, and has still to struggle for the victory against the praxis of the present, but in the Priestly Code claims immemorial legitimacy and strives to bring the past into conformity with itself, obviously because it already dominates the present; the carrying back of the new into the olden time always takes place at a later date than the ushering into existence of the new itself.

Deuteronomy has its position in the very midst of the historical crisis, and still stands in a close relation with the older period of wors.h.i.+p, the conditions of which it can contest, but is unable to ignore, and still less to deny. But, on the other hand, the Priestly Code is hindered by no survival to present times of the older usage from projecting an image of antiquity such as it must have been; unhampered by visible relics or living tradition of an older state, it can idealise the past to its heart's content. Its place, then, is after Deuteronomy, and in the third post-exilian period of the history of the cultus, in which, on the one hand, the unity of the sanctuary was an established fact, contested by no one and impugned by nothing, and in which, on the other hand, the natural connection between the present and the past had been so severed by the exile that there was no obstacle to prevent an artificial and ideal repristination of the latter.

I.III.

The reverse of this is what is usually held. In Deuteronomy, it is considered, there occur clear references to the period of the kings; but the Priestly Code, with its historical presuppositions, does not fit in with any situation belonging to that time, and is therefore older. When the cultus rests upon the temple of Solomon as its foundation, as in Ezekiel, then every one recognises the later date; but when it is based upon the tabernacle, the case is regarded as quite different. The great antiquity of the priestly legislation is proved by relegating it to an historical sphere, created by itself out of its own legal premisses, but which is nowhere to be found within, and therefore must have preceded actual history. Thus (so to speak) it holds itself up in the air by its own waistband.

I.III.1. It may, however, seem as if hitherto it had only been a.s.serted that the tabernacle rests on an historical fiction.

In truth it is proved; but yet it may be well to add some things which have indeed been said long before now, but never as yet properly laid to heart. The subject of discussion, be it premised, is the tabernacle of the Priestly Code; for some kind of tent for the ark there may well have been: in fact, tents were in Palestine the earliest dwellings of idols (Hos. ix.6), and only afterwards gave place to fixed houses; and even the Jehovistic tradition (although not J) knows of a sacred tent /1/

1. It is never, however, employed for legislative purposes, but is simply a shelter for the ark; it stands without the camp, as the oldest sanctuaries were wont to do outside the cities.

It is kept by Joshua as aedituus, who sleeps in it, as did Samuel the aedituus for Eli.

in connection with the Mosaic camp, and outside it, just as the older high places generally had open sites without the city. The question before us has reference exclusively to the particular tent which, according to Exodus xxv. seq., was erected at the command of G.o.d as the basis of the theocracy, the pre-Solomonic central sanctuary, which also in outward details was the prototype of the temple.

At the outset its very possibility is doubtful. Very strange is the contrast between this splendid structure, on which the costliest material is lavished and wrought in the most advanced style of Oriental art, and the soil on which it rises, in the wilderness amongst the native Hebrew nomad tribes, who are represented as having got it ready offhand, and without external help. The incompatibility has long been noticed, and gave rise to doubts as early as the time of Voltaire. These may, however, be left to themselves; suffice it that Hebrew tradition, even from the time of the judges and the first kings, for which the Mosaic tabernacle was strictly speaking intended, knows nothing at all about it.

It appears a bold thing to say so when one sees how much many a modern author who knows how to make a skilful use of the Book of Chronicles has to tell about the tabernacle. For in 2 Chron. i.3 seq. we are told that Solomon celebrated his accession to the throne with a great sacrificial feast at Gibeon, because the tabernacle and the brazen altar of Moses were there. In like manner in 1Chron. xxi.29 it is said that David offered sacrifice indeed on the thres.h.i.+ng-floor of Araunah, but that Jehovah's dwelling-place and the legitimate altar were at that time at Gibeon; and further (xvi. 39), that Zadok, the legitimate high priest, officiated there. From these data the Rabbins first, and in recent times Keil and Movers especially, have constructed a systematic history of the tabernacle down to the building of the temple. Under David and Solomon, as long as the ark was on Mount Zion, the tabernacle was at Gibeon, as is also shown by the fact that (2Samuel xxi.6, 9) offerings were sacrificed to Jehovah there.

Before that it was at n.o.b, where ephod and shewbread (1Samuel xxi.) are mentioned, and still earlier, from Joshua's time onward, it was at s.h.i.+loh. But these were only its permanent sites, apart from which it was temporarily set up now here, now there, saving by its rapidity of movement--one might almost say ubiquity--the unity of the cultus, notwithstanding the variety and great distances of the places at which that cultus was celebrated. In every case in which a manifestation of Jehovah and an offering to Him are spoken of, the tabernacle must be tacitly understood. /1/

1. Josh. xxiv. 24, 33 (LXX): after the death of Joshua and Eleazar, LABONTES (OI )UIOI )ISRAHL THN KIBWTON TOU QEOU PERIFEROSAN )EN )EAUTOIS. After J. Buxtorf and Sal. van Til (Ugol., Thes. viii.), this theory has been, worked out specially by Movers. See, on the other hand, De Wette, Beitraege, p. 108 seq., and Vatke, ut supra, p. 316, note.

The dogmatic character of this way of making history, and the absurd consequences to which it leads, need not in the meantime be insisted on; what is of greatest importance is that the point from which it starts is in the last degree insecure; for the statement of Chronicles that Solomon offered the offering of his accession upon the altar of the tabernacle at Gibeon is in contradiction with that of the older parallel narrative of 1Kings iii.1-4. The latter not only is silent about the Mosaic tabernacle, which is alleged to have stood at Gibeon, but expressly says that Solomon offered upon a high place (as such), and excuses him for this on the plea that at that time no house to the name of Jehovah had as yet been built. That the Chronicler draws from this narrative is certain on general grounds, and is shown particularly by this, that he designates the tabernacle at Gibeon by the name of Bamah--a contradictio in adjecto which is only to be explained by the desire to give an authentic interpretation of "the great Bamah at Gibeon" in 1Kings iii. Here, as elsewhere, he brings the history into agreement with the Law: the young and pious Solomon can have offered his sacrifice only at the legal place which therefore must be that high place at Gibeon. Along with 2 Chron. i.3 seq. also fall the two other statements (1Chron. xvi.39, xxi.29 both of which are dependent on that leading pa.s.sage, as is clear revealed by the recurring phrase "the Bamah of Gibeon." The tabernacle does not elsewhere occur in Chronicles; it has not yet brought its consequences with it, and not yet permeated the historical view of the author. He would certainly have experienced some embarra.s.sment at the question whether it had previously stood at n.o.b, for he lays stress upon the connection between the legitimate sanctuary and the legitimate Zadok-Eleazar priestly family, which it is indeed possible to a.s.sume for s.h.i.+loh, but not for n.o.b. /1/