Chapter VIII: The Narrative of the Hexateuch (3)

"And Jacob and his sons came to Egypt to Joseph; and Pharaoh the king of Egypt heard it. And Pharaoh said to Jacob, How many are the days of the years of thy life? And Jacob said to Pharaoh, The days of the years of my sojourning are a hundred and thirty years; few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers, in the days of their sojourning. And Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best part of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded (xlvii. 5b, 6, LXX, xlvii. 7-11). And they settled there, and grew and multiplied exceedingly. And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years, and the whole age of Jacob was 7 years and 140 years (xlvii. 27b, 28)....And Jacob said unto Joseph, El Shaddai appeared unto me at Luz, in the land of Canaan, and blessed me, and said unto me, Behold, I will make thee fruitful and multiply thee, and I will make of thee a multitude of peoples; and will give this land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession. And now thy two sons which were born unto thee in Egypt, before I came unto thee in Egypt, are mine; Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine, as Reuben and Simeon. And the issue which thou begettest after them shall be thine, and shall be called after the name of their brethren in their inheritance. And when I came from Padan, Rachel died to me in the land of Canaan, in the way, when there was but a little way to come into Ephrath, and I buried her there, in the way to Ephrath; the same is Bethlehem (xlviii. 3-7, and v. 7, cf. xlix. 31)...[and his other sons also] he blessed; and he charged them, and said unto them, I am to be gathered unto my people, bury me with my fathers in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which field Abraham bought from Ephron the Hittite, for a hereditary burying-place-there they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife, there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and there I buried Leah--the possession of the field and of the cave that is therein from the children of Heth. And Jacob made an end of commanding his sons, and he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his fellow-tribesmen (xlix. 28b-33). And his sons carried him into the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which Abraham had bought for a hereditary burying-place from Ephron the Hittite, over against Mamre (l. 12, 13). And these are the names of the children of Israel which came into Egypt, with Jacob they came, every one with his house; Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulon, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher. And all the souls that came out of Jacob's loins were seventy souls; and Joseph was in Egypt. And the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly, and the land was filled with them, and the Egyptians made the children of Israel their servants with rigour, in all their work which they wrought by them with rigour, and they made their lives bitter with hard bondage (Exodus i. 1-7, 13, 14). And the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage; and they cried, and their cry because of the bondage came up unto God, and God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, and God took notice (ii. 23-25). And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am Jehovah. I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by the name of El Shaddai; but by my name Jehovah was I not known unto them; and I made a covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers. And I have heard the groaning of the children of Israel, that the Egyptians keep them in bondage, and I have remembered my covenant" (vi. 2 seq.).

That is the whole of it. As a rule nothing more is aimed at than to give the mere links and articulations of the narrative. It is as if Q were the scarlet thread on which the pearls of JE are hung. In place of the somewhat loose connections of the Jehovist, the narrative of the Priestly Code shows a firmly jointed literary form; one remarkable feature of which is to be seen in the regular titles which stand at the head of the various sections. Each section begins with the words )LH TWLDWT (_hae sunt generationes_), from which Genesis derives its name. /l/

-- Footnote 1 *)AUTH (H BIBLOS GENESEWS ii. 4 LXX. Hence Ewald's name for the Priestly Code, which is very appropriate for Genesis, or perhaps generally for the book of the four covenants--the Book of Origins. -- Footnote

In the rest of the historical literature of the Old Testament nothing like this as yet appears. It is also characteristic that whenever the title occurs, introducing a new, section, the contents of the preceding section are first of all briefly recapitulated so as to show the place of the link upon the chain.

The Priestly Code enters as little as possible on the contents of the various narratives. The predicates are stripped off, so far as they admit of such treatment, and the subjects duly entered in a catalogue with connecting text. In this way the history almost shrinks to the compass of a genealogy with explanations-- the genealogy at least forms the principal contents of the history, and here appears in such proportions and such systematic fashion as nowhere else. This has been regarded as a proof that Q belongs to an older stage of development of Hebrew historiography than JE. There can be no doubt, it is said, /1/ that the oldest Hebrew,

-- Footnote I Riehm, "die s.g. Grundschrift des Pentateuchs" in Studien und Kritiken, 1872, p. 296. -- Footnote

or indeed Oriental, history began with the historical notices and traditions inserted in the tribal or family catalogues. Yet we know positively that in the Books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, there are no genealogical statistics at all, while Chronicles, and what belongs to Chronicles, is full of them. We know also that songs such as those in Josh. x. 12, 13; Jud. v.; 2Samuel i. 19 seq., iii. 33 seq. are the oldest historical monuments, and that a number of them are found in JE and not a single one in Q. Herder's theory of the development of history out of genealogy will not apply here, /2/ but indeed what we have

-- Footnote 2 Nor in the case of the Arabs, as has been well shown by Sprenger against Caussin de Perceval (Essai, preface, p. ix.). -- Footnote

to do with here is not history proper at all, but folklore.

It is true that with the Jehovist also the genealogy underlies the narrative as its skeleton. It is the natural chain to link the different stories together, and even at a time when the latter were still separate and only circulated orally, the genealogy was not unknown to the people. When stories were told of Isaac and Ishmael, and Lot and Esau, every one knew at once who these personages were, and how they were related to Israel and to one another. But this was merely the presupposition of the narratives, known as a matter of course to the hearers; the interesting element in them consisted in those traits which the Priestly Code omits. Stories of this kind compel attention because they set forth the peculiarities of different peoples as historically and really related to each other, not according to an empty embryological relation. It is the temper displayed by different races, not the stem of their relationship, that makes the point of the stories; their charm and their very life depend on their being transparent and reflecting the historic attitude of the time which gave them birth. The clearer the traces they display of love and hatred, jealousy of rivals and joy in their fall, the nearer are we to the forces which originated the tradition about early times. In the Priestly Code all those stories are absent in which there is anything morally objectionable,-- those for example in which the cowardice of the patriarchs endangers the honour of their wives, those of Sarah's cruel jealousy of Hagar, and of the unlovely contention of Leah and Rachel for husband and children, of the incest of Lot's daughters, of the violation of Dinah. All hatred, and strife, and deceit in the patriarchal family disappear: Lot and Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, agree to separate: of the tricks of Laban and Jacob to each other, of the treachery of Simeon and Levi to Shechem, of the enmity Joseph's brethren bore to him, there is not a word in the Priestly Code. It is not merely that "psychological decorations," as they have been called, are left out; the very heart of the business has been cut out. That Moab and Ammon, Ishmael and Edom, were Hebrew peoples, all more nearly or more distantly related to the Israelites, that the Aramaeans too were closely connected with the Hebrews by blood and by marriage, that this tribe lives in one district contiguous to Palestine, that in another--this is what the Priestly Code has to tell. Dry ethnographical and geographical facts like these are presented in a genealogical form; all we learn of the patriarchs is their marriages and births and how they separated to the various dwelling-places of their descendants. And folklore could not possibly be directed to such facts as these at a period when these relations were all matters of fact and familiar to every child. The Priestly Code, moreover, strips the legends of the patriarchs of their local as well as their historical colour; they are kept at a distance from all the places of the sacredness of which the Jehovist makes them the founders. /1/

-- Footnote 1. Hupteld gives a curious turn to this, saying that in the Priestly Code Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have much more permanent settlements. But it is this work that insists so often on the fact that the patriarchs were pilgrims and had nowhere a fixed residence: it only says that Abraham dwelt in the land of Canaan, and names no particular place even as the scene of the theophany in chapter xvii. It is only when the question of burying Sarah and Abraham arises that there is a change. Something must be done, and the field of Machpelah near Hebron is acquired (no doubt JE reported this, but the account of it in that source is lost) as a possession of the patriarchal family, where it now settles more permanently. That Isaac and Jacob continue to dwell at the grave of Abraham is a statement of which the significance is negative rather than positive, and on the other hand the patriarchal journeys up and down in JE are not designed to represent them as wandering nomads, but serve to bring them in contact with all the sacred places with which they had special associations, -- Footnote

No historical geography is needed in order to understand the narrative of the Priestly Code in Genesis: but that is only to say that it stands quite away from the soil out of which oral tradition arises. It deals in no etymology, no proverbs nor songs, no miracles, theophanies nor dreams, and is destitute of all that many-coloured poetic charm which adorns the Jehovistic narratives. But this proves not its original simplicity but its neglect of the springs from which legend arises, and of its most essential elements. /1/ What remains is anything but historical objectivity: it is the formula and nothing more.

-- Footnote 1. Riehm (op. cit. p. 302 seq.) thinks it is made out that the religious tradition of remote antiquity is distinguished by its "modest simplicity", and by a "style suited to its exalted subject." Only in the course of time was it adorned with all sorts of miraculous and mysterious elements, and that by the "fancy of the people," which, however, does not so easily gain entrance into serious literature(!) He appeals to the fact that the conception of angels, though certainly long developed with the people, occurs in the earlier prophets only in isolated instances, and in the later prophets, as Ezekiel, Zechariah, Daniel, more frequently. It is difficult to sift out what is true and what is false in this confused argument. In the Priestly Code there are, it is true, no angels, but on the other hand we have Azazel and Seirim (2Chronicles xi. 15; Isaiah xiii. 21, xxxiv. 14, comp. supra), for where the gods are not, the ghosts have sway. In one of the two main sources of the Jehovist (J), we find chiefly the Mal'ak Jahve (message of Jehovah); that is Jehovah Himself in so far as He appears and manifests Himself, whether in a natural phenomenon or in human form. Different are the B'ne Elohim, beings of divine substance: they perhaps are indicated in the 1st plural in the mouth of Jehovah (Genesis iii. 22, xi. 7). Both of these are doubtless very old. In the other principal source (E) a mixture appears to have taken place: the heavenly hosts are not only the children and companions of Deity, but also its messengers, conductors of the communication between heaven and earth (:xviii. 12); here we have the Mal'akim beside God and in the plural. This view also is not exactly a late one, as we see from the vision of Micaiah (t Kings xxii. 19). What does Riehm mean by high antiquity? A period from which no monuments are preserved to us? Why does he limit his attention to the prophetic literature? He concedes that the idea of angels was early present "in the fancy of the people," and he should have been equal to the further concession that those who wrote down the FOLKLORE occupied a somewhat different position to POPULAR BELIEF from that of the prophetic preachers of repentance. Not even the historical books admit of being measured by the same standard in this matter as the pre-historic tradition. And which is the more original--that the angels use a ladder as in Genesis, or that they have wings as in Isaiah? And finally as for the reference to Ezekiel (?), Zechariah, and Daniel, the difference appears to me to be tolerably plain between a systematic angelology which operates always with numbers and names and the childlike belief in angels. The former removes God to a distance, the latter brings Him near. -- Footnote

As with the legend of the beginnings of things, so with the legend of the patriarchs: what is essential and original is the individual element in the several stories; the connection is a secondary matter, and only introduced on the stories being collected and reduced to writing. But in the Priestly Code the individuality of the several stories is simply destroyed: to such an extent is the connection dwelt on. What meaning is there in the statement that Jacob was all at once called Israel, i.e., Fight-God (xxxv. 10), if no mention is made of his wrestling with El, which was the occasion of his change of name? Have we anything like the true history of Joseph in the Priestly Code? Can we regard it as the original history, when the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is dismissed in a subordinate clause, as is done in xix. 29 ? The remarkable admission has been made, /1/ that it is plain from the summary

-- Footnote 1. Riehm, op.. cit. p. 292. -- Footnote

manner of reporting of the Priestly Code, that the author could have told his story at much greater length, had it been consistent with the plan of his work to do so, and that this certainly points to sources where greater detail was used. The more detailed source, however, which is thus taken for granted, need by no means, it is said, have been a written one, and least of all the Jehovistic narrative before us; on the contrary, we are told, the state of the case is best satisfied by the assumption that the author held a more detailed narrative to be unnecessary, because the oral tradition, living in the mouth of the people, was quite able to fill in the colours in his outlines and to convert his chronistic notices into living pictures. But this is merely an attempt to elude the necessity for exactly comparing the Priestly Code and the Jehovist. The question is, which of the two writings stands nearest to the starting-point? Is it the one which attaches most importance to elements which are foreign to the nature of oral tradition altogether and only added in literary composition? It would be a curious thing if the writing down of the tradition began with writing down what the legend did not contain. What is set before us in the Priestly Code is the quintessence not of the oral tradition, but of the tradition when already written down. And the written account of the primitive history which it employs is the Jehovistic narrative. The order in which the popular legends are there placed here becomes the very kernel of the narrative. There the plan was hidden behind the execution, but here it comes forward not indeed essentially changed, but sharp and accentuated, as the principal feature of the whole.

VIII.II.3. The Jehovist still lives in the spirit of the legend, but the Priestly Code is strange to that spirit, and does violence to the legend, by treating it from its own point of view, which is quite different from the old one. Moral and religious culture is further advanced; and hence the removal of real or apparent offences against morality and of notions which are too childish, or superstitious, or even mythical. If the Godhead appears, it must not be patent to the senses, at least it must not be seen in visible form. Jehovah speaks with Jacob, but not in a dream from the heavenly ladder; He reveals Himself to Moses, but not in the burning bush; the notion of revelation is retained, but the subsidiary incidents which must be added to make a concrete of the abstract, are stripped off. It is a matter of indifference under what forms or through what media a man receives revelation, if only the fact stands sure; in other words, revelation is no longer a living reality of the present, but a dead dogma for the past. The progress of culture in the Priestly Code is most of all evident in the learned historical treatment with which the legend is overlaid. First of all there is the chronology, which we encountered even in the legend of the origins of mankind, and which is naturally continued in the patriarchal legend. Here indeed we see with special plainness how foreign learned calculation is to the poetical materials; in some instances the facts lead to quite a different view from that of the numbers. Following the numbers of the Priestly Code we may, with the Rabbis, regard Shem and Eber as the venerable heads of the Jewish school in which the child Jacob learned his letters and the Torah. Then Jacob's sojourn in Mesopotamia lasts about eighty years, and all this time Isaac is Iying on his death-bed; after being long dead for us, he suddenly appears again, but only to die. And hand in hand with the chronology there goes the general predilection of the Priestly Code for numbers and names, which displays itself even in Genesis, though not nearly so marked there as in the later books of the Pentateuch. Oral folklore can very well contain round numbers, such as the twelve sons and the seventy souls of the family of Jacob, the twelve wells and the seventy palm trees at Elim, the seventy elders and the twelve spies; but a chronological system, whole lists of exact and considerable numbers, bare catalogues of personal names, none of them having any significance, dates and measurements such as those in the account of the flood in the Priestly Code, require writing even to originate, not to speak of transmitting them. These art-products of pedantry toke the place of the living poetic detail of the Jehovist narrative; the element of episode has to give way to the seriousness of dry history.

It is also a mark of historical pedantry that the mixing up of the period of the patriarchs with a later period is avoided as anachronistic. In the Jehovist the present everywhere shines through, he in no way conceals his own age; we are told that Babylon is the great world-city, that the Assyrian Empire is in existence, with the cities of Niniveh and Calah and Resen; that the Canaanites had once dwelt in Palestine, but had long been absorbed in the Israelites. The writer of the Priestly Code is very careful not to do anything like this. /1/ He brushes up the

-- Footnote 1. Hence also archaisms such as Kirjath-Arba, Luz, Ephrath. Compare the antiquarian lore in Deuteronomy i.-iv. and in Genesis xiv. -- Footnote

legend and makes history of it according to the rules of art; he kills it as legend, and deprives it of all real value, such as it possesses, not indeed for the history of primitive times, but for that of the age of the kings.

The history of the first men and of the patriarchs is divided by the Priestly Code into three periods, each of them opened by a covenant. The covenant with Adam (Genesis i. 28-ii. 4) is the simplest; it is not called a covenant, but it is the basis of the second covenant with Noah (ix. 1-17), which modifies it in important particulars, and brings it nearer to the present age. The covenant with Abraham (Genesis xvii.), which alone is ratified with the succeeding patriarchs, does not apply to the whole of mankind, but only to Abraham's seed, and especially to Israel. The first sign of the covenant is the Sabbath (Genesis ii. 3; comp. Exodus xxxi. 12 seq.; Ezekiel xx. 12, 20), the second the rainbow (Genesis ix. 12), the third circumcision (xvii. 10). The first parent of mankind is enjoined to use a purely vegetable diet, the father of mankind after the, flood receives permission to slaughter animals; but he is expressly ordered not to eat flesh in the blood, and besides, to shed the blood of no man. What is said to Noah remains good for Abraham; but to the latter God promises that his posterity by Sarah shall possess the land of Canaan, and this is further assured by the purchase of the cave of Machpelah for a family burying-place, the purchase being executed according to all the forms of law, with prolonged negotiations. Further, God reveals Himself to Abraham as El Shaddai, and under this name He also manifests Himself to Isaac (xxviii. 3) and Jacob (xxxv. 11), repeating to them the promise of the possession of the land. It is pointed out with emphasis that God was not known to the pre-Mosaic time under His Israelite name, that He revealed Himself to the patriarchs only as El Shaddai, and as Jehovah first to Moses (Exod. vi. 2, 3). With a similar intention, which is not far to seek, the time of the patriarchs is kept free of the other Mosaic forms of worship; hence we have here no sacrifices nor altars, no distinction of clean and unclean beasts, nor anything of the kind. Now till within a short time ago, there was a great inclination (no one will be found at this date to acknowledge that he felt it) to admire the sobriety and faithfulness of the Priestly Code, as shown in this observance of the different religious stages. But in fact we can only admire these advantages in it, if we believe that the religion was at first naturalistic, that then all at once it became a good deal more positive, and then quite positive in the year 1500 B.C. How can we regard it as showing historical faithfulness, that the patriarchs were allowed to slaughter, but not to sacrifice, and that first the Sabbath was introduced, then the rainbow, then circumcision, and at last sacrifice, under Moses? It is natural that Jacob at Bethel should give tithes of all that he possesses, unnatural that the eponymous hero should not in worship above all things have left a good example to his posterity. What is it but a theory, that the name Jehovah was first revealed to Moses, and through him to the Israelites, and that it was quite unknown before?--a theory which certainly cannot be upheld, for Moses could have done nothing more irrational than to introduce a new name for the God of their fathers, to whom he directed his people,--and yet a theory which, from the correlation between Jehovah the God of Israel and Israel the people of Jehovah, readily suggests itself, and is not altogether peculiar to the author of the Priestly Code. /1/. He had a pattern which suggested

-- Footnote 1. Exodus vi. 2, 3 (Q) = iii. 13, 14 (JE). The burning bush shows the theophany in the Jehovist to be the earlier. In the Priestly Code it almost loses the character of a theophany entirely. But this is also quite clear on a comparison of Exodus vii. 1 (Q) and iv. 16 (JE). The phrase vii. 1, " Behold, I make thee a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet," is a degradation of the corresponding passage, iv. 16 "Aaron shall be to thee for a mouth, and thou shalt be to him for a god." For if Aaron is the prophet or the mouth of Moses, then in the original and only appropriate way of thinking of the matter, Moses is a god for Aaron, not for Pharaoh. By the way is there anything in the similarity between Sene and Sinai? -- Footnote

certain lines, and these he traces strongly and with a system; and he even goes so far as to avoid the name of Jehovah even in his own narrative of the pre-Mosaic period. Even when speaking in his own person, he says Elohim, not Jehovah, down to Exodus vi.

The three periods and the three corresponding covenants of the early age are preliminaries to the fourth period and the fourth covenant. The narrator everywhere has an eye to the Mosaic law, and the thought of it determined the plan which comes so prominently into view in his representation of the origins of human history. The great features of this plan are the great official transactions of Jehovah with the patriarchs. In these we have not a narrative but only speeches and negotiations; the preliminary laws are given in them, which, as they advance step by step, prepare the way for the great Law, namely, the Mosaic. The law of worship has taken the place of the legend of worship. In the legend the sacred usages and customs arise, as it were, spontaneously, in connection with any occasion, placed in the early sacred time, which may serve to account for them. Jehovah does not make it statutory that the sinew of the thigh may not be eaten; but He wrestles with Israel, and injures the sinew of his thigh during the wrestling, and for this reason the children of Israel do not eat thereof. In the following story it is explained how it came about that the Israelites circumcise young boys (Exodus iv. 25 seq.). As Moses was returning from Midian to Goshen, he spent a night on the road, and Jehovah fell upon him with the intention of killing him. His wife, Zipporah, however, took a flint and cut off the foreskin of her son, and touched Moses L:RAGLFYW with it, saying, Thou art a blood-bridegroom to me. Then Jehovah let him go. Thus Zipporah circumcises her son instead of her husband, makes the latter symbolically a blood-bridegroom, and thereby delivers him from the wrath of Jehovah to which he is exposed, because he is not a blood-bridegroom, ie., because he has not submitted to circumcision before his marriage. In other words, the circumcision of male infants is here explained as a milder substitute for the original circumcision of young men before marriage. /1/ Compare with this the style in which in Genesis xvii

-- Footnote 1. That this is in fact the original custom is clear from the word XTN, which signifies both circumcision and bridegroom (or in Arabic, son-in-law). This explains the meaning of XTN DMYM in Exodus iv. 25. The original usage is still in force with some Arab tribes. In Genesis xxxiv. Shechem has to submit to circumcision before marriage. -- Footnote

the Priestly Code institutes the circumcision of male children on the eighth day after birth. This institution completely throws into the shade and spoils the story out of which it arose, namely, the promise of the birth of Isaac as a reward to Abraham of the hospitality he showed Jehovah at Hebron. But there is more than a difference in form, there is a material contradiction between the Jehovistic legend and the priestly law. The law purifies the legend, that is to say, denies all its main features and motives. As we saw in the first chapter there is a conscious polemic at work in the representation in the Priestly Code that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob erect no altars, and practice no religious rites, and that they have no connection with the sacred places with which in JE they are inseparably associated. The popular religious book preserved to us in the Jehovistic Genesis, not corrected to any great extent, though certainly to some extent, tells how the ancestors and representatives of Israel founded the old popular worship at the principal sites at which it was kept up. The law of the legitimate cultus of Jerusalem, as it lies before us in the Priestly Code, reforms and destroys the old popular worship on the basis of Mosaic, i.e., prophetical ideas. The tabernacle does not harmonize with the sanctuaries of Hebron, Beersheba, Shechem, Kadesh, Mahanaim, Lahai-Roi, Bethel; the patriarchs live at Hebron only because they are to be buried there, not to entertain the Deity under the oak of Mamre and to build an altar there. The heretical mac,c,ebas, trees and wells, disappear, and with them the objectionable customs: that God should have summoned Abraham to offer up to Him his only son is an idea the Priestly Code could not possibly entertain. The whole material of the legend is subordinated to legislative designs: the modifying influence of the law on the narrative is everywhere apparent.

The attitude of Judaism to the old legend is on the whole negative, but it added some new elements. While the patriarchs are not allowed to sacrifice, only to slaughter, they have, on the other hand, the Sabbath /1/ and circumcision. In this they are like

-- Footnote I The Sabbath is not a Mosaic institution according to the Priestly Code. But it is presupposed in Exodus xvi., and according to Genesis ii. 3, it was in force from the beginning of the world. With the old Israelites the Sabbath was much less important in relation to worship than the festivals: in Judaism the opposite was the case. -- Footnote

the Jews in Babylon, who were deprived of the national cultus, and replaced it with these two symbols of religious membership and union, which were independent of the temple of Jerusalem. In the exile, after the cessation of the service of the altar, the Sabbath and circumcision attained that significance as symbols--in the genuine old meaning of the Greek word--as practical symbols of Judaism, which they retain to the present day. The emphasis is noteworthy with which the Priestly Code always insists on the fact that the patriarchs sojourned in a strange land, that they were _Gerim_. If we also consider that Abraham is said to have migrated into Palestine from Ur, from Chaldaea, it is hardly possible to reject the idea that the circumstances of the exile had some influence in moulding the priestly form of the patriarchal legend. In spite of all the efforts of the historian, and all the archaic appearance of his work, it may in that case still be the fact that the surroundings of the narrator found positive expression in his description of the patriarchal times.

VIII.III.

<VIII.III.1.> In the Jehovistic history-book Genesis is a most important part, and occupies at least a half of the whole work: in the Priestly Code, Genesis quite disappears in comparison with the later books. Only with the Mosaic legislation does this work arrive at its own ground, and it at once stifles the narrative under a mass of legislative matter. Here also there is a thin historical thread running parallel to the Jehovist, but we constantly lose sight of it from the repeated interruptions made by extensive ritual laws and statistical statements.

"These last four books of Moses have been made quite unreadable by a most melancholy, most incomprehensible, revision. The course of the history is everywhere interrupted by the insertion of innumerable laws, with regard to the greater part of which it is impossible to see any reason for their being inserted where they are." The dislocation of the narrative by these monstrous growths of legislative matter is not, as Goethe thinks, to be imputed to the editor; it is the work of the unedited Priestly Code itself, and is certainly intolerable; nor can it be original; the literary form of the work at once shows this. It is still possible to trace how the legal matter forces its way into the narrative, and once there spreads itself and takes up more and more room. In the Jehovist, one form of the tradition may still be discerned, according to which the Israelites on crossing the Red Sea at once proceeded towards Kadesh, without making the detour to Sinai. We only get to Sinai in Exodus xix., but in Exodus xvii. we are already at Massah and Meribah, ie., on the ground of Kadesh. That is the scene of the story of Moses striking water out of the rock with his staff: there the fight with the Amalekites took place--they lived there and not at Sinai--there also the visit of Jethro, which requires a locality at some distance from his home (at Sinai), a place where the people had not merely a temporary encampment, but their permanent seat of justice. /1/

-- Footnote 1. Kadesh is also called Meribah, the seat of justice, or Meribath Kadesh, the seat of justice at the holy spring. Meribah is in its meaning the same as Midian. -- Footnote

Hence the narratives which are told before the arrival at Sinai are repeated after the departure from it, because the locality is the same before and after, namely, the wilderness of Kadesh, the true scene of the Mosaic history. The institution of judges and elders concludes the narrative before the great Sinai section, and begins the narrative after it (Ex. xviii., Numbers xi ). The story of the manna and the quails occurs not only in Exodus xvi., but also in Numbers xi; and the rocky spring called forth by Moses at Massah and Meribah is both in Exodus xvii. and Numbers xx. In other words, the Israelites arrived at Kadesh, the original object of their wanderings, not after the digression to Sinai but immediately after the Exodus, and they spent there the forty years of their residence in the wilderness. Kadesh is also the original scene of the legislation. "There He made them statute and judgment, and there He proved them," we read in a poetical fragment, before the Sinai section (Exodus xv. 25), which is now placed in the narrative of the healing of the waters at Marah, but stands there quite isolated and without bearing on its context. The curious conjunction of judgment and trial points unmistakably to Massah and Meribah (ie., judgment and trial-place), that is, to Kadesh, as the place spoken of. But the legislation at the seat of judgment at Kadesh is not represented as a single act in which Moses promulgates to the Israelites once for all a complete and comprehensive body of laws; it goes on for forty years, and consists in the dispensation of justice at the sanctuary, which he begins and the priests and judges carry on after him according to the pattern he set. This is the idea in the extremely instructive narrative in Exodus xviii., of which Kadesh is the scene. And in this way the Torah has its place in the historical narrative, not in virtue of its matter as the contents of a code, but from its form as constituting the professional activity of Moses. It is in the history not as a result, as the sum of the laws and usages binding on Israel, but as a process; it is shown how it originated, how the foundation was laid for the living institution of that Torah which still exists and is in force in Israel.

The true and original significance of Sinai is quite independent of the legislation. It was the seat of the Deity, the sacred mountain, doubtless not only for the Israelites, but generally for all the Hebrew and Cainite (Kenite) tribes of the surrounding region. The priesthood of Moses and his successors was derived from the priesthood there: there Jehovah appeared to him in the burning bush when he was keeping the sheep of the priest of Midian, from there He sent him to Egypt. There, to the Israelites, Jehovah still dwelt long after they had settled in Palestine; in the song of Deborah He is summoned to come from Sinai to succour His oppressed people and to place Himself at the head of His warriors. According to the view of the poet of Deuteronomy xxxiii. the Israelites did not go to Jehovah to Sinai, but the converse; He came to them from Sinai to Kadesh: "Jehovah came from Sinai and shone from Seir unto them; He lightened from Mount Paran and came to Meribath Kadesh." /1/

-- Footnote 1. We do not know where Sinai was situated, and the Bible is scarcely at one on the subject. Only dilettanti care much for controversy on the matter. The Midian of Exodus ii. tells us most: it is probably Madian on the Arabic shore of the Ked sea. In our passage Sinai seems to be S.E. of Edom; the way from Sinai to Kadesh is by Seir and Paran. -- Footnote

But it is not difficult to see how it came to be thought more seemly that the Israelites should undertake the journey to Jehovah. This was at first put in the form that they appeared there before the face of Jehovah to worship Him and offer Him a sacrifice (Exodus iii. 12), and at their departure they received the ark instead of Jehovah Himself, who continued to dwell on Sinai (Exodus xxxiii.); for the ark represents Jehovah, that constitutes its significance, and not the tables of the law, which were not in it at first. It was a further step to make Sinai the scene of the solemn inauguration of the historical relation between Jehovah and Israel. This was done under the poetic impulse to represent the constituting of the people of Jehovah as a dramatic act on an exalted stage. What in the older tradition was a process which went on quietly and slowly, occupied completely the whole period of Moses, and was at the beginning just such as it still continued to be, was now, for the sake of solemnity and vividness, compressed into a striking scene of inauguration. If this were done, the covenant between Jehovah and Israel must receive a positive (as well as a negative) character, that is to say, Jehovah Himself must announce to the people the basis and the conditions of it. Thus the necessity arose to communicate in this place the contents of the fundamental laws, and so the matter of the legislation made its way into the historical narrative. But that it did not belong originally to this place we see from the confusion which obtains even in the Jehovistic Sinai section (Exodus xix.-xxiv., xxxii.-xxxiv.). The small bodies of laws which are here communicated may in themselves be old enough, but they are forced into the narrative. It is only of what is relatively the most recent corpus, the Decalogue (in E), that this cannot be asserted.

As the Jehovistic work was originally a pure history-book, so Deuteronomy, when it was first discovered, was a pure law-book. /1/

-- Footnote 1. Chapters xii.-xxvii. The two historical introductions, chapter i.-iv. and chapter v.-xi. were added later, as well as the appendices, chapter xxviii. seq. -- Footnote

These two works, the historical and legal, were at first quite independent of each other; only afterwards were they conjoined, perhaps that the new law might share in the popularity of the old people's book, and at the same time infuse into it its own spirit. It made it the easier to do this, that, as we have just seen, a piece of law had already been taken up into the Jehovistic history-book. To the Decalogue, at the beginning of the period of the forty years, was now added Deuteronomy at the close of that period. The situation--of which the law itself knows nothing--is very well chosen, not only because Moses is entitled when making his testament to anticipate the future and make a law for the time to come, but also because, the law being placed at the close of his life, the thread of the narrative is not further interrupted, the law being simply inserted between the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua. This combination of Deuteronomy with the Jehovist was the beginning of the combination of narrative and law; and the fact that this precedent was before the author of the Priestly Code explains how, though his concern was with the Torah alone, he yet went to work from the very outset and comprised in his work the history of the creation, as if it also belonged to the Torah. This manner of setting forth the Torah in the form of a history book is not in the least involved in the nature of the case; on the contrary, it introduces the greatest amount of awkwardness. How it came about can only be explained in the way above described; an antecedent process of the same nature in literary history led the way and made the suggestion. /2/

-- Footnote 2. That the author of the Priestly Code had before him the combination of the Sinai legislation of the Jehovist and Deuteronomy is shown further by the circumstance that he has both a legislation at Mount Sinai and a legislation in the Arboth Moah, and in addition to these one in the wilderness of Sinai. -- Footnote

As from the literary point of view, so also from the historical, the Moses of the Jehovist appears more original than the Moses of the Priestly Code. To prove this is, it is true, the aim of the entire present work: yet it will not on that account be thought out of place if we take advantage of this convenient opportunity for a brief sketch and criticism of the conflicting historical views of Moses and his work in the two main sources of the Pentateuch. According to the Priestly Code Moses is a religious founder and legislator, as we are accustomed to think of him. He receives and promulgates the Torah, /1/ perhaps not as a book--though, when we

-- Footnote 1. The law might accordingly be called Moses, as with the Ethiopians the Psalter is called David, -- Footnote

come to think of it, we can hardly represent the transaction to ourselves in any other way--but certainly fixed and finished as an elaborate and minutely organised system, which comprises the sacred constitution of the congregation for all time to come. The whole significance of Moses consists in the office of messenger which he holds as mediator of the law; what else he does is of no importance. That the law is given once for all is the great event of the time, not that the people of Israel begins to appear on the stage of the world. The people is there for the sake of the law, not the law for the sake of the people. With the Jehovist, on the contrary, Moses' work consists in this, that he delivers his people from the Egyptians and cares for it in every way in the wilderness. In the prelude scene from his youth, when he smites the Egyptian and seeks to adjust the dispute of his brethren (Exodus ii. 11 seq.), his whole history is prefigured. His care for the Israelites embraces both catering for their sustenance, and making and preserving peace and order among them (Numbers xi.). The Torah is but a part of his activity, and proceeds from his more general office as the guardian of the young people, who has, as it were, to teach the fledgling to fly (Numbers xi. xii.). According to Exodus xviii. his Torah is nothing but a giving of counsel, a finding the way out of complications and difficulties which had actually arisen. Individuals bring their different cases before him; he pronounces judgment or gives advice, and in so doing teaches the people the way they should go. Thus he is the beginner of the teaching of Jehovah which lives on after him in priest and prophet. Here all is life and movement: as Jehovah Himself, so the man of God, is working in a medium which is alive; is working practically, by no means theoretically, in history, not in literature. His work and activity may be told in a narrative, but the contents of it are more than a system, and are not to be reduced to a compendium; it is not done and finished off, it is the beginning of a series of infinite activities. In the Priestly Code the work of Moses lies before us clearly defined and rounded off; one living a thousand years after knows it as well as one who saw it with his eyes. It is detached from its originator and from his age: lifeless itself, it has driven the life out of Moses and out of the people, nay, out of the very Deity. This precipitate of history, appearing as law at the beginning of the history, stifles and kills the history itself. Which of the two views is the more historical, we can accordingly be at no loss to decide. It may be added that in the older Hebrew literature the founding of the nation and not the giving of the law is regarded as the theocratic creative act of Jehovah. The very notion of the law is absent: only covenants are spoken of, in which the representatives of the people undertake solemn obligations to do or leave undone something which is described in general terms.

Another point of difference must be mentioned here, though indeed it is a matter which has been before us more than once already. That which is in the Priestly Code the subject-matter of the Torah of Moses, namely, the institution of the cultus, the Jehovist traces to the practice of the patriarchs--one more result of the difference between law and legend. The Moses of the Priestly Code conflicts not only with the future, but with the past; he comes into collision with history on every side. That view is manifestly the only natural one according to which the worship is not specifically Israelite, not a thing instituted by Moses in obedience to a sudden command of the Deity, but an ancestral tradition. But at the time when the Priestly Code was drawn up the worship was certainly the one thing that made Israel Israel. In it the church, the one congregation of worship, takes the place of the people even in the Mosaic age--sorely against history, but characteristically for the author's point of view.

Now even such authorities as Bleek, Hupfeld, and Knobel have been misled by the appearance of historical reality which the Priestly Code creates by its learned art here as well as in the history of the patriarchs. They have regarded the multiplicity of numbers and names, the minute technical descriptions, the strict keeping up of the scenery of camp-life, as so many signs of authentic objectivity. Noldeke made an end of this critical position once for all, but Colenso is properly entitled to the credit of having first torn the web asunder. /1/

-- Footnote 1. See Kuenen in the Theol. Tijdschrift, 1870, p. 393-401. -- Footnote

The boldness with which numbers and names are stated, and the preciseness of the details about indifferent matters of furniture, do not prove them to be reliable: they are not drawn from contemporary records, but are the fruit solely of late Jewish fancy, a fancy which, it is well known, does not design nor sketch, but counts and constructs, and produces nothing more than barren plans. Without repeating the description of the tabernacle in Exodus xxv. word for word, it is difficult to give an idea how circumstantial it is; we must go to the source to satisfy ourselves what the narrator can do in this line. One would imagine that he was giving specifications to measurers for estimates, or that he was writing for carpet-makers and upholsterers; but they could not proceed upon his information, for the incredibly matter- of-fact statements are fancy all the same, as was shown in chapter i. The description of the tabernacle is supplemented in the Book of Numbers by that of the camp; the former being the centre, this is the circle drawn about it, and consists of an outer ring, the twelve secular tribes, a middle ring, the Levites, and an innermost one, the sons of Aaron: a mathematical demonstration of the theocracy in the wilderness. The two first chapters contain the census of the twelve tribes, and their allocation in four quarters, nothing but names and numbers. To this first census chapter xxxiv. adds another at the close of the forty years, in which the various detailed figures are different, but the total is about the same. This total, 600,000 warriors, comes from the older tradition, but is proved to be quite worthless by the fact that in a really authentic document the levy of Israel in the time of Deborah is stated to be 40,000 strong. Still, the Priestly Code is entitled to the credit of having made the total a little less round, and of having broken it up into artificial component parts. The muster of the people is followed in Numbers iii. iv. by the dedication of the tribe of Levi to the sanctuary, in compensation for the firstborn males of the Israelites who up to that time had not been sacrificed nor yet redeemed. There are 22,273 firstborn males to be provided for, and there are 22,000 male Levites above a month old. The 273 extra firstborn males are specially redeemed at five shekels a head. What accuracy! But what of the fact that a people of at least two millions has only 22,273 firstborn males, or say 50,000 firstborn of both sexes? This gives an average of forty children to every woman, for the firstborn in the sense of the law is that which first opens the womb. The continuation of Numbers iii. iv. is in chapter viii. As the Levites are an offering of firstlings to the sanctuary on the part of the people, which, however, is not to be sacrificed but made over to the priests, the characteristic rite of this sort of sacred due has to be gone through with them, namely, an act imitating that of throwing into the flame of the altar (Aristeas 31,1. 5). To think of Moses and Aaron heaving the 22,000 men! Not less striking as an example of this kind of fiction is the story of Numbers xxxi. Twelve thousand Israelites, a thousand from each tribe, take the field against Midian, extirpate without any fighting--at least nothing is anywhere said of this important point--the whole people, slay all the men and a part of the women, take captive the unmarried girls, and suffer themselves no loss whatever. The latter point is asserted very definitely.

"The captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds came to Moses, and said to him, Thy servants have taken the sum of the men of war which are under our charge, and there lacketh not one of us."

Of the immeasurable booty of men and cattle Jehovah assigns half to those who took the field and took part in the battle, the other half to the congregation; and the former are to give the 500th part to the priests, the latter the 50th part to the Levites. The execution of this order is especially reported as follows: