P.C.Piazzo

Plasson.

Now it is to be observed that there is absolutely no question of the writer's good faith; he does not carry his idealizing tendency to the point of overlooking the sins by which the divine purpose, either for the people or for Moses himself, was thwarted or abrogated 1. But in historical details, especially those which relate to chronology, the priestly writer is evidently more concerned with ideal conceptions than with actual facts. His work is interwoven with the older writing, which represents a different tradition, in such a way as to make the total result unique: a kind of blending of fact with theory, of actual institutions with an imaginative conception of their original form and ideal significance.

It may assist us to form a clearer notion of the idealizing process under consideration if we endeavour to depict to ourselves the motive and purpose of the priestly compilers of the Pentateuch, and the method of procedure which they appear to have adopted. The facts are probably somewhat as follows. At a late stage in Israel's history, apparently during the exile in Babylon, when the process of national development seemed to be arrested, and an age of enforced inactivity and reflection succeeded a period of tumult and disaster, an unknown priestly writer, or possibly a school of writers, took in hand the task of framing a compendious and concrete picture of the early history of the Hebrew people. They were guided, no doubt, by the light of that divine purpose for Israel which the oracles of prophecy and the teachings of calamity had at length brought home to the national conscience. To a devout Jew placed in these circumstances the lessons of history would appear unmistakeable. It was plain that from the first Jehovah had formed Israel to be a holy community, bound together by sacred institutions of divine appointment and by the presence of God Himself dwelling in the national sanctuary. The authors of the priestly code evidently entered on their

1 See Exod. xvi. 2; Lev. x. 1; Num. xx. 12, 24; xxvii. 13 foll. &c.

task filled with precise legal conceptions of what an ideally holy community should be, and accordingly their theory of Israel's history is entirely religious. 'To the community is assigned a purely religious end: political aims are ignored, for the people lives for God's sake and not for its own1.'

On the whole it cannot, I think, be fairly disputed that Prof. Robertson Smith's general description of the writing in question is correct. 'It is only in form,' he says, 'an historical document; in substance it is a body of laws and precedents having the value of law, strung on a thread of history so meagre that it often consists of nothing more than a chronological scheme and a sequence of bare names.' From the fact that 'the supposed Mosaic ordinances and the narratives that go with them are,' practically and at least in their developed form, 'unknown to the history and the prophets before Ezra. . . to the Deuteronomic writers. and... to the non-priestly parts of the Pentateuch,. it follows with certainty that the priestly recasting of the origins of Israel is not history (save in so far as it merely summarizes and reproduces the old traditions in the other parts of the Hexateuch) but Haggada, i. e. that it uses old names and old stories, not for the purpose of conveying historical facts, but solely for purposes of legal and ethical instruction 2.'

Such is the theoretical point of view from which the priestly narrative of Israel's early history and sacred ordinances is compiled. The object of the writers is not to supersede the work of the prophetic narrators, but to supply a counterpart to it. Long before the exile a fusion of the two main historical documents of the Pentateuch (the Jehovistic and the Elohistic 3) had in all probability taken place; the combined narra

1 See Montefiore, Hibbert Lectures, No. vi. p. 319. This lecture gives an admirable account of the influence under which P was compiled. 2 O. T. in J. C. p. 420.

3 For a good account of the different documents see Dillmann, Comm. on Genesis, pp. ix-xiv. Observe, Dillmann uses for P, E, J, the symbols A, B, C.

tives had been revised from the Deuteronomic standpoint, and had already, as it seems, been united with the book of Deuteronomy 1. At the close of the exile, writers of the priestly school completed what had been already begun, combining the materials already extant, and piecing them together in a framework which in form is historical, but is really little more than a continuous exposition of the legal and religious ordinances of Israel, tracing them for the most part to Moses himself.

Such, then, seems to have been the literary process towards which the available evidence distinctly points. Without unduly insisting on the accuracy of details, we may attempt to describe summarily the view which our present knowledge may lead us to form of the Pentateuch in its final shape. The work viewed in its entirety as a single product contains two expositions of Israel's history which stand side by side, separate and distinct in origin, purpose, and internal characteristics, forming together a combination of different elements, of prophetic narrative with priestly torah. It contains history idealized, the actual historic traditions and the ideal goal towards which the history was tending being presented in juxtaposition. In estimating, therefore, the evidential value of the narratives, it is essential to bear constantly in mind the two elements they contain: on the one hand, the ancient traditions of Israel's past, moulded in forms of rare grace, dignity, and simplicity under prophetic influence; on the other, side by side with these, and often interwoven with them, the idealistic and imaginative sketch of the priestly writers, whose chief interest lay not in tracing the actual course of Israel's primaeval history, but in exhibiting the spiritual and theocratic consummation towards which it was advancing from the first.

1 Robertson Smith, O. T. in J. C. p. 425. The history of the ancient 'law of holiness' (Lev. xvii-xxvi) is obscure. It comes to us embedded in P, but the process by which it was taken up, expanded, and accommodated to P's standpoint cannot be traced. The antiquity of many of the injunctions contained in this law, especially in chh. xviii-xx, is undoubted.

Some writers have spoken with undisguised contempt of the authors of the priestly document, but it would be absurd to charge them with wilful desertion or falsification of the historical tradition. Even while they ' reshape the narrative in order to set forth later laws under the conventional form of Mosaic precedent'' they leave the ancient tradition of JE substantially in the form handed down to them. How shallow and unjust are those criticisms of the narrative which ignore its essential character! how futile is the attempt to measure them by the standard of modern historical literature! To treat the priestly narratives as worthless fictions is anachronistic; to treat them as literal and undiluted history is to ignore the distinction between history and Haggadah2. The Haggadistic treatment of history implies a certain amplification of incidents recorded or alluded to in the original narratives, according to the views and necessities of later times. It admits the play of fancy; it manipulates the details of sacred history in such a way as may best serve the purpose of instruction or edification. It was in Judaistic times at least a recognized mode of dealing with the early narratives which probably had passed through a long process of development. Since criticism has discovered so much that illustrates the mind and intention of the different contributors to the Pentateuch, we are bound to study it not only with more intelligence and sympathy, but also with more discrimination than was formerly possible.

The importance of the priestlywriting from a religious point of view is certainly great. The Pentateuchal law played a significant and necessary part in the development of true spiritual religion. It preserved and sheltered some of the loftiest and most beautiful ideals of prophecy e. g. the idea of a holy people dedicated

1 Robertson Smith, O. T. in J. C. p. 387.

2 Ibid. p. 430. Obs. P is essentially a law-book, and cannot be used as an independent source for the actual history of the Mosaic and pre-Mosaic period. Cp. Kittel, op. cit. i. pp. 96 foll.

to God, and of the divine consecration of its natural life; the idea, in a word, of an indwelling presence of God among men. What criticism justly questions is whether, in view of our present knowledge, we have a right to go to the priestly literature for historical information; whether such use of it does not imply an entire misconception of its essential character.

But an element of idealization in the stricter sense is to be found even in the older prophetic narratives. The primitive story describes the ancestors of the Hebrew people with an evident intention to represent them as types of spiritual character. It is true indeed that there is a vivid reality, and faithfulness to human nature in the narratives of Genesis which strengthens our impression of their general truth to fact. These life-like figures-so entirely human both in their weakness and in their strength-cannot be mere creations. of pious fancy. But even in these vigorous delineations of actual men and women we are able to recognize the overruling guidance of Him to whose purposes the narrators unconsciously ministered. The figure of Abraham especially, the friend of God, is to a certain extent idealized. He is represented as a prophet, a saint, a servant of God, a priestly intercessor, a hero of faith, a recipient of splendid promises; his outward prosperity and wealth correspond to his spiritual dignity; it is manifest that he is pourtrayed from the standpoint of men who fully recognize his transcendent importance in the history of religion-an importance which eventually seems to overshadow even that of the great lawgiver of Israel himself. Further, the very fact that in the New Testament Abraham reappears as the most sublime figure in the past history even of all mankind', confirms the impression that we have here a case of legitimate and profitable idealization. Abraham is an historic personage, but he is also a spiritual type: he is the ideal representative of the

1 Cp. Rom. iv; Gal. iii; Jas. ii. 21 foll.; Heb. xi. 8 foll., besides the passages in the gospels, Luke iii. 8; John viii. 33 foll.