Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/536

 510 PENTATEUCH ence 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, Tositi like that of the Roman pontiff ; his sons minister under f hig his superintendence (Num. iii. 4) ; he himself is the only P riest priest with full rights ; as such he wears the Urim and Thummim, 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 (Deut. 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, &quot; the anointed priest &quot;) ; 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 Saci sacred dues. In the Priestly Code the priests receive all duei