Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/539

 PENTATEUCH 513 tives, 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 book 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. u -o- The middle position which the legal part of Deuteronomy ID holds between the Jehovist and the Priestly Code is also 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 ie if he was not the author of the Torah. But Moses may tl(1 - have been the founder of the Torah though the Penta- teuchal legislation was codified almost a thousand years )r _ 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 redaction prafian extends to the Priestly Code (Josh. xx.). The way out of thesis, 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 &quot;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.&quot; 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 &quot; remnant &quot; of Israel. This was the origin of the sacred constitution of Judaism. Religion XVIII. 65