Prolegomena to the History of Israel Part 28

The tables of the law, it appears, are silently presupposed without being mentioned beforehand, it being of course a.s.sumed that the readers would know all about them from the old tradition.

The outside of the ark, however, is furnished in the most extravagant style, and with a splendour which other descriptions of the chest of acacia-wood are far from suggesting. The ark in the Priestly Code differs indeed in every way from the appearance of it in 1Kings vii. 23 seq. We are reminded of the Haggada by the covering which Moses has to put before his face, which is s.h.i.+ning with the reflection of the glory of Jehovah (Exodus x.x.xiv. 29-35), and by the making of the brazen laver of the looking-gla.s.ses of the women who serve the temple (Exodus x.x.xviii. 8, cf. Numbers xvii. 1, 9); these traits do not, it is true, belong to the original contents of the Priestly Code, but they belong to its circle.

From Sinai the old tradition takes us by this and that station, mentioned by name, without delay to Kadesh. Here the chief part of the forty years' sojourn in the wilderness is spent; this, as we said before, is the true scene of all the stories that are told about Moses. The Priestly Code takes us in this period, as in the legend of the patriarchs, not to definite places, but up and down in the wilderness of Sinai, in the wilderness of Paran, in the wilderness of Sin. Kadesh is with evident intention thrust as far as possible into the background--no doubt on account of the high sanct.i.ty the place originally had as the encampment for many years of the Israelites under Moses.

The spies are sent out according to the Jehovist from Kadesh, according to the Priestly Code from the wilderness of Paran.

In the former authority they penetrate to Hebron, whence they bring back with them fine grapes, but they find that the land where these grow is not to be conquered. In the latter they proceed without any difficulty throughout the whole of Palestine to Lebanon, but have nothing to bring back with them, and advise against attacking the land because they have not found it particularly desirable, as if its advantages had been accessible to faith alone and not to be discovered by unbelieving eyes, as was actually the case in the time of Haggai and Zechariah, and at the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. To the genuine Israelite of old, however, the goodness of his beloved land was not a mere point of faith which he could ever have doubted. In the former source, as we judge from Deuteronomy i. 23, only the number of the spies was given; in the latter all the twelve are named. In the former Caleb is the only good spy, in the latter Caleb and Joshua. At first probably neither the one nor the other belonged to this story; but Caleb easily came to be named as an exception, because he actually conquered the district from Kadesh to Hebron, which the spies had declared it impossible to take, and which the Israelites, alarmed by their account, had not ventured to attack.

Joshua, again, was added from the consideration that, according to the principle enunciated by the Jehovist in Numbers xiv. 23, 24, he must have shared the merit of Caleb, because he partook of the same exceptional reward with him.

In the Jehovist Moses alone instructs the spies and receives their report on their return; in the Priestly Code Moses and Aaron do so. In the oldest source of the Jehovist (J) Aaron has not yet made his appearance; in the Priestly Code Moses must not do any public act without him. /1/

1. In the same way, in the former source Joshua always acts alone; in the latter, he always has the priest Eleazar at his side.

Compare notes [in IV.III.2.]

Moses is still the moving spirit here as well as there, but Aaron is the representative of the theocracy, and pains are taken to secure that he shall never be absent where the representatives of the theocracy are brought face to face with the community. The desire to introduce the leader of the hierocracy, and with its leader the hierocracy itself, into the Mosaic history, has borne the most remarkable fruits in the so-called story of the rebellion of the company of Korah. According to the Jehovistic tradition the rebellion proceeds from the Reubenites, Dathan, and Abiram, prominent members of the firstborn tribe of Israel, and is directed against MOSES AS LEADER AND JUDGE OF THE PEOPLE. According to the version of the main-stock of the Priestly Code (Q), the author of the agitation is Korah, a prince of the tribe of Judah, and he rebels not only against Moses, but against MOSES AND AARON AS REPRESENTING THE PRIESTHOOD. In a later addition, which, to judge from its style, belongs likewise to the Priestly Code, but not to its original contents, the Levite Korah appears at the head of a revolt of the Levites against AARON AS HIGH PRIEST, and demands the equalisation of the lower with the higher clergy. Starting from the Jehovistic version, the historical basis of which is dimly discerned to be the fall of Reuben from its old place at the head of the brother-tribes, we have no difficulty in seeing how the second version arose out of it. The people of the congregation, i.e., of the church, having once come on the scene, the spiritual heads, Moses and Aaron, take the place of the popular leader Moses, and the jealousy of the secular grandees is now directed against the cla.s.s of hereditary priests, instead of against the extraordinary influence on the community of a heaven-sent hero. All these changes are the natural outcome of the importation of the hierocracy into Mosaic times. From the second version we can go further and understand the origin of the third. In the earlier version the princes of the tribe of Reuben were forced to give way to a prince of the tribe of Judah. In the progress of time Korah the prince of the tribe of Judah is replaced by the eponymous head of a post-exilic Levitical family, of the same name. The contest between clergy and aristocracy is here transformed into a domestic strife between the higher and the inferior clergy, which was no doubt raging in the time of the narrator. Thus the three versions are developed, the origin and collocation of which appears from every other point of view to be an insoluble enigma. The one arises out of the other in the direct line of descent: the metamorphoses took place under the influence of great historical changes which are well known to us; and in the light of Jewish history from Josiah downwards they are by no means unintelligible. /1/

1 The details of the demonstration will be found in the Jahrbb.

fuer Deutsche Theologie, 1776, p. 572 seq., 1877, p. 454, note, and in the Leyden Theol. Tijdschrift, 1878, p. 139 seq.

We come to the migration of the Israelites to the land east of the Jordan. According to the Jehovist the neighbouring tribes place obstacles in their way, and the land in which they desire to settle has to be conquered with the sword. The Priestly Code tells us as little of all this as in an earlier instance of the war with Amalek; from all it says we should imagine that the Israelites went straight to their mark and met with no difficulty in the region in question; the land is ownerless, and the possession of it is granted by Moses and Eleazar to the two tribes Reuben and Gad (Numbers x.x.xii.). But that war may not be completely wanting under Moses, we have afterwards the war with the Midianites, on which we have already commented (Numbers x.x.xi.). There is not much story about it, only numbers and directions; and in verse 27 there is a suspicion of 1Samuel x.x.x. 24, as if that pa.s.sage were the groundwork of the whole. The pa.s.sage is extremely interesting as showing us the views taken of war by the Jews of the later time who had grown quite unaccustomed to it. The occasion of the war also is noticeable; it is undertaken not for the acquisition of territory, nor with any other practical object, but only to take vengeance on the Midianites for having seduced some of the Israelites to uncleanness.

The elders of Midian, so the story goes, went to the soothsayer Balaam to ask his advice as to what should be done against the Israelite invaders. He suggested a means by which the edge of the invasion might be broken; the Midianites should give their daughters to the Israelites for wives, and so deprive the holy people of their strength, the secret of which lay in their isolation from other peoples. The Midianites took Balaam's advice and succeeded in entangling many of the Israelites with the charms of their women; in consequence of which Jehovah visited the faithless people with a severe plague. The narrative of the Priestly Code up to this point has to be pieced together from Numbers x.x.xi. 8, 16 and Joshua xiii. 22, and from what is implied in the sequel of it; at this point the portion of it begins which is preserved to us (Numbers xxv. 6 seq.), and we are told how the plague was ultimately stayed. A certain man coolly brings a Midianitish woman into the camp before the very eyes of Moses and the weeping children of Israel: then the young hereditary priest Phinehas takes a spear, transfixes the G.o.dless pair, and by this zeal averts the anger of Jehovah. This narrative is based on the Jehovistic one, which is also preserved to us only in part (Numbers xxv. 1-5), about the backsliding of Israel in the camp of s.h.i.+ttim to the service of Baal-Peor, to which they were seduced by the daughters of Moab. In the Priestly Code the idolatry has quite disappeared, all but some unconscious reminiscences, and no sin is alleged but that of wh.o.r.edom, which in the original story merely led up to the main offence. This is done manifestly with the idea that marriage with foreign women is in itself a falling away from Jehovah, a breach of the covenant. This change was extremely suitable to the circ.u.mstances of exilic and post-exilic Judaism, for in these later days there was no immediate danger of gross idolatry, but it took a good deal of trouble to prevent heathenism from making its way into the midst of the people under the friendly form of mixed marriages. The version of tbe Priestly Code, however, mixes up with the Baal-Peor story of the Jehovist the figure of Balaam, which is also borrowed from the Jehovist but entirely transformed in the process. In the form under which he appears in the early history he transgresses all the ideas of the Priestly Code. An Aramaean seer, who is hired for money and makes all sorts of heathen preparations to prophesy, but who yet is not an impostor, but a true prophet as much as any in Israel, who even stands in the most intimate relations with Jehovah, though cheris.h.i.+ng the intention of cursing Jehovah's people--that is too much for exclusive Judaism. The correction is effected by the simple device of connecting Balaam with the following section, and making him the intellectual instigator of the devilry of the Midianitish women; and in this new form which he a.s.sumes in the Priestly Code he lives on in the Haggada. The reason for changing the Moabites into Midianites is not made clear; but the fact is undoubted that the Midianites never lived in that part of the world.

In the Book of Numbers the narrative sections, which are in the style and colour of the Priestly Code, have more and more the character of mere additions and editorial supplements to a connection which was already there and had a different origin.

The independent main stock of the Priestly Code, the Book of the Four Covenants, or the Book of Origins (Q), more and more gives way to later additions, and ceases altogether, it appears, at the death of Moses. It is at least nowhere to be traced in the first half of the Book of Joshua, and so we cannot reckon as part of it those extensive sections of the second half, belonging to the Priestly Code, which treat of the division of the land. Without a preceding history of the conquest these sections are quite in the air; they cannot be taken as telling a continuous story of their own, but presuppose the Jehovistic-Deuteronomic work. In spite of distaste to war and to records of war (1Chronicles xxii.

8, xxviii. 3), an independent work like the Book of the Four Covenants could not possibly have pa.s.sed over the wars of Joshua in silence.

A comparison of the different accounts of the entry of the Israelite tribes into the occupation of the conquered land may close this discussion. The Priestly Code, agreeing in this with the Deuteronomistic revision, represents the whole of Canaan as having been made a _tabula rasa_, and then, masterless and denuded of population, submitted to the lot. First the tribe of Judah receives its lot, then Mana.s.seh and Ephraim, then the two tribes which attached themselves to Ephraim and Judah, Benjamin and Simeon, and lastly the five northern tribes, Zebulon, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali, Dan.

"These are the inheritances which Eleazar the priest, and Joshua ben Nun, and the heads of the tribes of the children of Israel divided for an inheritance by lot in s.h.i.+loh before Jehovah at the door of the tabernacle."

According to the Jehovist, Judah and Joseph appear to have had their territory allocated to them at Gilgal (xiv. 6), and not by lot, and to have entered into occupation of it from there. A good while afterwards the land remaining over is divided by lot among the seven small tribes still unprovided for, from s.h.i.+loh, or perhaps originally from Shechem (xviii. 2-10). Joshua alone casts the lot and gives instructions; Eleazar the priest does not act with him. Even here the general principle of the Priestly Code, which knows no differences among the tribes, is somewhat limited; but it is much more decidedly contradicted by the important chapter, Judges i.

The chapter is, in fact, not a continuation of the Book of Joshua at all, but a parallel to it, which, while it presupposes the conquest of the east-Jordan lands, does not speak of the west-Jordan lands as conquered, but tells the story of the conquest, and that in a manner somewhat differing from the other source. From Gilgal, where the "Angel of Jehovah" first set up his tent, the tribes march out one by one to conquer their "lot"

by fighting; first Judah, then Joseph. We hear only of these two, and with regard to Joseph we only hear of the very beginning of the conquest of his land. There is no mention of Joshua; nor would his figure as commander-general of Israel suit the view here given of the situation; though it would very well admit of him as leader of his tribe. The incompleteness of the conquest is acknowledged unreservedly; the Canaanites lived on quietly in the cities of the plain, and not till the period of the monarchy, when Israel had grown strong, were they subdued and made tributary.

This chapter, as well as the main stem of the Book of Judges, corresponds to the Jehovistic stratum of the tradition, to which also pa.s.sages in Joshua, of an identical or similar import, may be added without hesitation. The Angel of Jehovah is enough to tell us this. The difference which exists between it and the Jehovistic main version in the Book of Joshua is to be explained for the most part by the fact that the latter is of Ephraimite origin, and in consequence ascribes the conquest of the whole land to the hero of Ephraim or of Joseph, while Judges i. leans more to the tribe of Judah. Moreover, we find in the Book of Joshua itself the remnant of a version (ix. 4-7, 12-14) in which, just as in Judges i., the actors are the "men of Israel," who "ask counsel of the mouth of Jehovah," while elsewhere Joshua alone has anything to say, being the successor of Moses, and drawing his decisions from no source but the authority of his own spirit. And finally, we have to consider Exodus xxiii., 20 seq., where also there is a correspondence with Judges i., in the fact that not Joshua but the Angel of Jehovah (Judges v. 23) is the leader of Israel, and that the promised land is not conquered all at once but gradually, in the process of time.

Judges i. presents certain anachronisms, and is partly made up of anecdotes, but these should not prevent us from acknowledging that the general view given in this chapter of the process of the conquest, is, when judged by what we know of the subsequent period of Israel, incomparably more historical than that in the Book of Joshua, where the whole thing is done at once with systematic thoroughness, the whole land being first denuded of its inhabitants, and then divided by lot among the different tribes.

The latter view may have come about partly from a literal interpretation of "lot" (Judges xviii. 1), an expression which properly applies to the farm of a family but is here used for the territory of a tribe. It was also favoured no doubt by the tendency to compress a long development into its first great act; and as this tendency is carried out with the greatest thoroughness in the Priestly Code, that doc.u.ment stands furthest from the origin of the tradition. /1/ The same conclusion is led up

1. In the Deuteronomistic revision (Joshua xxi, 43-45) there is still a trace of hesitation, a certain difficulty in parting with the old view altogether (Deuteronomy vii. 22; Judg. iii. 1, 2); and besides the motives for the change are much plainer here: the Canaanites are extirpated to guard against the infection of the new settlers with their idolatary.

to by the circ.u.mstance that the tribe of Joseph is never mentioned, one of the two tribes, Ephraim and Mana.s.seh, being always spoken of instead, and that these two tribes are almost put out of sight by Judah. And yet Joshua, the leader of Ephraim, is leader here also of all Israel, having been preserved from the old original tradition, which was Ephraimitic.

It involves no contradiction that, in comparing the versions of the tradition, we should decline the historical standard in the case of the legend of the origins of mankind and of the legend of the patriarchs, while we employ it to a certain extent for the epic period of Moses and Joshua. The epic tradition certainly contains elements which cannot be explained on any other hypothesis than that there are historical facts underlying them; its source is in the period it deals with, while the patriarchal legend has no connection whatever with the times of the patriarchs. /1/ This justifies the difference of treatment.

1. Some isolated statements there are here also to which the historical standard may be applied. We may call it a more accurate representation that Hebron was inhabited in the time of Abraham by the, Canaanites and Perizzites, than that the Hitt.i.tes dwelt there at that time. The latter, according to 2Samuel xxiv. 6 (Bleek, Einleitung, 4th edition, pp. 228, 597), dwelt in Coele-Syria, and according to 2Kings vii. 6, in the neihbourhood of the Aramaeans of Damascus. The statement that the Israelites received from Pharaoh because they were shepherds the pasture-land of Goshen on the north-east frontier of Egypt and there dwelt by themselves, is to be preferred to the statement that they were settled among the Egyptians in the best part of the land, **********************************************

Our last result is still the same: whether tried by the standard of poetry or by that of history, the Priestly Code stands both in value and in time far below the Jehovist.

VIII.III.3. In rough strokes I have sought to place before the reader's view the contrast between the beginning and the end of the tradition of the Hexateuch. It would not be impossible to trace the inner development of the tradition in the intermediate stages between the two extremities. To do this we should have to make use of the more delicate results of the process of source-sifting, and to call to our aid the hints, not numerous indeed, but important, which are to be found in Deuteronomy and in the historical and prophetical books, especially Hosea. It would appear that legend from its very nature causes those who deal with it to strike out variations, that it cannot be represented objectively at all. Even at the first act of reducing it to writing the discolouring influences are at work, without any violence being done to the meaning which dwells in the matter.

We can trace first of all the influence on the tradition of that specific prophetism which we are able to follow from Amos onwards.

This is least traceable in the old main source of the Jehovist, in J; and yet it is remarkable that the Asheras never occur in the wors.h.i.+p of the patriarchs. The second Jehovistic source, E, breathes the air of the prophets much more markedly, and shows a more advanced and thorough-going religiosity. Significant in this view are the introduction of Abraham as a Nabi, Jacob's burying the teraphim, the view taken of the macceba at Shechem (Jos. xxiv.

27), and above all the story of the golden calf. The Deity appears less primitive than in J, and does not approach men in bodily form, but calls to them from heaven, or appears to them in dreams. The religious element has become more refined, but at the same time more energetic, and has laid hold even of elements heterogeneous to itself, producing on occasion such strange mixtures as that in Genesis x.x.xi. 10-13. Then the law comes in and leavens the Jehovistic narrative, first the Deuteronomic (in Genesis even, and then quite strongly in Exodus and Joshua), while last of all, in the Priestly Code, under the influence of the legislation of the post-exile restoration, there is brought about a complete metamorphosis of the old tradition. The law is the key to the understanding even of the narrative of the Priestly Code.

All the distinctive peculiarities of the work are connected with the influence of the law: everywhere we hear the voice of theory, rule, judgment. What was said above of the cultus may be repeated word for word of the legend: in the early time it may be likened to the green tree which grows out of the ground as it will and can; at a later time it is dry wood that is cut and made to a pattern with compa.s.s and square. It is an extraordinary objection to this when it is said that the post-exile period had no genius for productions such as the tabernacle or the chronology.

It certainly was not an original age, but the matter was all there in writing, and did not require to be invented. What great genius was needed to transform the temple into a portable tent? What sort of creative power is that which brings forth nothing but numbers and names? In connection with such an age there can be no question at least of youthful freshness. With infinitely greater justice may it be maintained that such theoretical modelling and adaptation of the legend as is practiced in the Priestly Code, could only gain an entrance when the legend had died away from the memory and the heart of the people, and was dead at the root.

The history of the pre-historic and the epic tradition thus pa.s.sed through the same stages as that of the historic; and in this parallel the Priestly Code answers both as a whole, and in every detail, to the Chronicles. The connecting link between old and new, between Israel and Judaism, is everywhere Deuteronomy.

The Antar-romance says of itself, that it had attained an age of 670 years, 400 years of which it had spent in the age of ignorance (i.e. old Arabic heathenism), and the other 270 in Islam. The historical books of the Bible might say something similar, if they were personified, and their life considered to begin with the reduction to writing of the oldest kernel of the tradition and to close with the last great revision. The time of ignorance would extend to the appearance of "the book," which, it is true, did not in the Old Testament come down from heaven all at once like the Koran, but came into existence during a longer period, and pa.s.sed through various phases.

C. ISRAEL AND JUDAISM.

"The Law came in between."--VATKE, p. 183.

CHAPTER IX. CONCLUSION OF THE CRITICISM OF THE LAW.

Objections have been made to the general style of the proof on which Graf's hypothesis is based. It is said to be an illicit argument _ex silentio_ to conclude from the fact that the priestly legislation is latent in Ezekiel, where it should be in operation, unknown where it should be known, that in his time it had not yet come into existence. But what would the objectors have? Do they expect to find positive statements of the non-existence of what had not yet come into being? Is it more rational, to deduce _ex silentio_, as they do, a positive proof that it did exist?-_to say, that as there are no traces of the hierocracy in the times of the judges and the kings it must have originated in the most remote antiquity, with Moses? The problem would in this case still be the same, namely, to explain how it is that with and after the exile the hierocracy begins to come into practical activity.

What the opponents of Graf's hypothesis call its argument _ex silentio_, is nothing more or less than the universally valid method of historical investigation.

The protest against the argument _ex silentio_ takes another form.

It is pointed out that laws are in many cases theories, and that it is no disproof of the existence of a theory that it has not got itself carried out into practice. Deuteronomy was really nothing more than a theory during the pre-exile period, but who would argue from this that it was not there at all? Though laws are not kept, this does not prove they are not there,--provided, that is to say, that there is sufficient proof of their existence on other grounds. But these other proofs of the existence of the Priestly Code are not to be found--not a trace of them. It is, moreover, rarely the case with laws that they are theory and nothing more: the possibility that a thing may be mere theory is not to be a.s.serted generally, but only in particular cases.

And even where law is undoubtedly theory, the fact does not prevent us from fixing its position in history. Even legislative fancy always proceeds upon some definite presupposition or other; and these presuppositions, rather than the laws themselves, must guide the steps of historical criticism. /1/

1. Cf. . This is the reason why the strata of the tradition require to be compared as carefully as those of the law.

An argument which is the very opposite of this is also urged.

The fact is insisted on that the laws of the Priestly Code are actually attested everywhere in the practice of the historical period; that there were always sacrifices and festivals, priests and purifications, and everything of the kind in early Israel.

These statements must, though this seems scarcely possible, proceed on the a.s.sumption that on Graf's hypothesis the whole cultus was invented all at once by the Priestly Code, and only introduced after the exile. But the defenders of Graf's hypothesis do not go so far as to believe that the Israelite cultus entered the world of a sudden,--as little by Ezekiel or by Ezra as by Moses,--else why should they be accused of Darwinism by Zoeckler and Delitzsch? They merely consider that the works of the law were done before the law, that there is a difference between traditional usage and formulated law, and that even where this difference appears to be only in form it yet has a material basis, being connected with the centralisation of the wors.h.i.+p and the hierocracy which that centralisation called into existence.

Here also the important point is not the matter, but the spirit which is behind it, and may everywhere be recognised as the spirit of the age at one period or another. /2/