The Hebrew feasts...

Front matter

— ©ijjtgrtg^t Jfo*

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

/ 1885

Preface

The new departure in Old Testament Criticism represented by Reuss, Wellhausen and Kuenen rests upon the conception that the religious institutions of Israel, as these are exhibited in the Pentateuch, are not the product of one mind or of one age, but are the growth of successive ages ; that the laws in which they are enacted, and which have been commonly attributed to Moses, are really composite, and are divisible into distinct strata, w r hich are referable to widely separated periods, and that the growth of these institutions can be traced in the laws which ordain them from their primitive simplicity to those more complicated forms v/hich they ultimately assume. And it is further claimed that this result, which is reached by an analysis of the laws, is verified by the statements of the history, provided the history itself is first subjected to proper critical treatment, and its earlier and later elements are correctly discriminated. Wellhausen's " Prolegomena to the History of Israel/' which has recently been issued in an English dress, is a most elaborate attempt to establish his revolutionary ideas by appeals to the legislation and the history in regard to the Place of Worship, the Sacrifices, the Sacred Feasts, and the Priesthood, The purpose of these lectures, delivered

PREFACE.

at Newton Theological Institution at the request of its honored Faculty, and now published at their instance, is to test this critical hypothesis by an examination of the Hebrew Feasts. Two reasons led to the selection of this point for more particular discussion. First, the Feasts are alleged to be one of its main props, and to afford the clearest proof that the various Pentateuchal laws belong to different eras and represent distinct stages in the religious life of the people. And secondly, while the critical views respecting the Sanctuary, the Sacrifices, and the Priesthood have been vigorously and successfully assailed, proportionate prominence has not been given by the opponents of the hypothesis to the matter of the Feasts.

I take this opportunity to return my acknowledgments to the generous friend of sacred learning who made provision for these lectures, and to the Faculty of the institution, who honored me by the appointment to deliver them, and whose kindly courtesies made my brief stay in Newton most delightful.

W. Henry Green.

Princeton, N. J., August 8, 1885.

Contents

I. THE WELLHAUSEN HYPOTHESIS IN GENERAL.

Page ii.

Its originators, n ; the previous Literary Analysis, its grounds and results, 12 ; its fallacies and defects, 14 ; the new method and its proposed test, 16 ; the three Codes, 17 ; their characteristics and the periods to which they are assigned, 18 ; variance with Scriptural statements, 27 ; causes of its popularity, 28 ; the Codes do not belong to distinct periods, 30 ; their differences otherwise accounted for, 33 ; alleged correspondence with separate periods unfounded, 34 ; other falsities and fallacies, 38 ; not a mere question of order, but one of vital consequence, 40.

I. The Wellhausen Hypothesis In General

THE HEBREW FEASTS.

I.

THE WELLHAUSEN HYPOTHESIS IN GENERAL.

IT was in 1866 (just nineteen years ago) that Karl Heinrich Graf published his now famous treatise on the " Historical Books of the Old Testament. From this properly dates the hypothesis of the post-exilic origin of the Pentateuch, which has of late attracted so much attention, as further elaborated by Kuenen, Kayser, and others, and especially by Julius Wellhausen, who is now the acknowledged leader of the school. A like view had been propounded by Vatke in his " Religion of the Old Testament/' and by George in his " Older Jewish Feasts" in 1835 ; and it is also claimed by Prof. Reuss, of Strassburg, that he had broached the same in his lectures since 1833; but at that time it gained no adherents, and was universally regarded as extravagant and paradoxical.

The way had been prepared for the new hypothesis by the literary analysis which had previously been undertaken of the Pentateuch. This took its rise from the suggestion that the remarkable alternation of divine names in successive sections in the book of Genesis is referable to distinct writers, each of whom was characterized by the constant or predominant use of one favorite term for God. It was hence assumed that Genesis was originally compiled from two or more independent treatises, into which it might again by the application of critical rules be freshly decomposed. And the same process was further carried with more or less success through the entire Pentateuch and even beyond it. This hypothesis was supposed to find abundant confirmation in the alleged fact that when the treatises now blended in the Pentateuch were properly sundered, they were found to bear all the marks of separate authorship, each being in a measure complete in itself, each having its own peculiar diction and style, its plan and purpose, its range of ideas and conception of the history and of the various actors in it, and betraying more or less distinctly the circumstances and the tendencies under which it was composed. The microscopic comparisons which were instituted between these newly discovered treatises, brought to light the most astounding and pervading divergences between them, discrepant accounts of the same transaction, variant representations of the life and manners and particularly of the religious usages of the same periods and the same men, so that it was plain that they had severally followed quite diverse traditions. The final Redactor, to whom the Pentateuch owes its present form, had evidently sought to harmonize his conflicting sources and to cover up their disagreements ; but the critical process by removing his late additions

THE WELLHAUSEN HYPOTHESIS.

left these original treatises in bald and sharp antagonism and revealed the underlying discordance in what seems to the ordinary reader a continuous and consistent narrative.

Conclusions were hence drawn unfavorable to the truthfulness and accuracy of one or other of these primary sources and perhaps of both ; until the Pentateuch, from being a homogeneous record of events and institutions accredited by the authority and inspiration of Moses, was reduced to a compilation, by no one knows w r ho, of legends gathered from diverse and contradictory sources originating no one knows how. The extent to which this destructive process was carried, varied with the taste or fancy of the critic. In general the work of demolition was carried on with an unsparing hand. And such of the divisive critics as were most disposed to reverence the Pentateuch and to defend its sacredness and its truth found the ground slipping away beneath their feet in spite of their utmost endeavors. The hypothesis proved even to the soundest and best of its adherents a steep incline down which they inevitably slid, destitute of any firm support, to lower and still lower views of this portion at least of God's inspired word.

The several ages of the various documents, from w 7 hich it was held that the Pentateuch had been made up, were eagerly discussed. Conjectures ranged ad libittun through the centuries without reaching any clear or well-sustained result. But amid all diversities on other points it was generally agreed that Deuteronomy was the capping stone of the Pentateuchal

THE WELLHAUSEN HYPOTHESIS.

edifice and that it must have been added at or before the time when " the book of the law " was found in the temple in the reign of Josiah.

Such in brief was the state of things in the critical world, when the new hypothesis of Reuss, Graf and Wellhausen appeared upon the scene. Symptoms of weariness and discontent had begun to manifest themselves at the dreary monotony of a literary criticism with its infinitesimal and subtle distinctions, which assumed to settle all questions of style and authorship by the mechanical application of the rule and the compass, which paraded its long drawn out lists of words and phrases the use of any one of which infallibly determined the author not merely of paragraphs or sections, but of single sentences, clauses and even words, which may thus be torn out of their connection and assigned to some foreign context and in a sense quite different from that which they must bear, where they actually appear. The arbitrary character of the whole proceeding was apparent ; and no less that the assumed diversities of style were largely fictitious. That the poetic words should belong to that document to which the poetic passages were regularly assigned ; that given words and phrases should not appear in passages in which there is no occasion for their employment ; that different expressions should be used in relation to the same thing in different connections where the shade of thought to be conveyed is varied ; that classes of words which are akin in thought or usage should be regularly found in combination ; that a partition conducted on the assumption that certain words and phrases characterize one

THE WELLHAUSEN HYPOTHESIS.

writer and accordingly all sections, paragraphs or sentences in which they appear must be assigned to him, while those containing certain other words and phrases must, with like regularity, be assigned to the other writer, should result in precisely the division which the critic has undertaken to make ; — -all this surely is not surprising, and requires no such extraordinary hypothesis to account for it, as the critics would have us suppose. For with all the appearance of painstaking and scientific caution and rigorous accuracy with which their reasoning is conducted, the imposing accumulation of details adduced in support of diversity of authorship is to a great extent entirely irrelevant, and of no force whatever for the purpose for which it is urged. The indefinite multiplication of airy nothings does not amount to anything substantial after all. We may be excused if we hesitate to commit ourselves without reserve to the guidance of those whose arguments are so often unreliable, or to confide implicitly in the strength and durability of a structure built so largely of hay and stubble.

A further difficulty with the literary criticism of the Pentateuch was the absence of any external criterion by which to test the truth and accuracy of its results. Its text was parcelled among the various writers who were said to have had a share in its composition, and confident assertions were made as to the period when these writers lived and the principles by which they were actuated. But there was no trace whatever of their existence apart from the literary phenomena of the Pentateuch itself, upon which all the argumentation of the critics was based. There was no extraneous proof to establish the objective reality of the critics' conclusions or to do away with the suspicion that they may only have been building castles in the air.

The new hypothesis was skilfully framed to supply these deficiencies in its predecessor. In the first place it is based upon a different method ; and secondly, it offers an external test of the correctness of its results. Its method is to trace the growth of laws and institutions. The principle upon which it is based is that of development, which is founded in the nature of man and must have had the same application in Israel as among other nations. The simpler and more natural form must have preceded the more complex and recondite. Different enactments relating to the same subject belong to distinct periods of time and are to be arranged in the order of their advancement from small beginnings to more fully developed forms. The correctness of the result is to be tested by an appeal to history. The successive stages of the institutions of Israel, as these can be traced in the Pentateuchal laws, can be recognized afresh in the course of their history. They are, it is claimed, in precise correspondence with what the historians and the prophets show did actually exist at different periods among the people. The conclusions deduced from the legislation find thus their voucher in the history ; and the date of any given portion of the legislation is determined by its coincidence with the state of things at some known epoch.

The so-called Mosaic law according to Wellhausen

THE WELLHAUSEN HYPOTHESIS.

forms the starting-point for the history of modern Judaism, but not of ancient Israel. It has been invested with undisputed authority since the Babylonish exile ; but the entire history prior to that is not only at variance with its most express and solemn provisions, but is such as to render it evident that it was altogether unknown. There are three clearly ' distinguishable bodies of law in the Pentateuch. The first is in Exodus, ch. 20-24, and is technically called the Book of the Covenant. The second, to which Wellhausen gives the name of the Priest Code, embraces the subsequent portion of Exodus, ch. 25-40, with the exception of three chapters (32-34) relating to the affair of the golden calf, the whole of Leviticus and considerable sections of Numbers, ch. 1-10, 15-19, 25-36. The third is found in the legislative portion of the book of Deuteronomy. These three bodies of law, it is affirmed, are not the product of one legislator or of one age, but took their rise in distinct and widely separated periods.

In the dissection of the Pentateuch, which Wellhausen accepts with some modifications from the literary critics, the Book of the Covenant belongs to what is commonly termed the Jehovist document; so called because it, throughout the book of Genesis, prevailingly speaks of God by his name Jehovah. Wellhausen distinguishes it by the initials JE, to indicate its composite character, as including likewise the sections which, since Hupfeld, have been attributed to the so-called Second Elohist, a writer who uses the term Elohim for God in Genesis, but differs materially in style from the other sections using the same term. This document is of a prevailingly historical character, only inserting this brief code of laws at what the writer considers its proper historical place ; and another still briefer legislative passage in Ex. 34, which seems to be closely related to the Book of the Covenant, but which Wellhausen claims was of a quite independent origin. According to the narrative in which they are found, these laws were given by God to Moses on the summit of Sinai. But the internal evidence is held to be decisive against this. It implies that the people for whom it was drawn up were engaged in agriculture. It speaks, Ex. 22 : 5, 6, of fields and vineyards and standing grain, and prescribes the restitution to be made in case of damage done to either ; ver. 29 requires promptness in offering the best of their fruits and the products of their presses; 23: 10, 11 directs that their fields should be tilled, and the fruits of their vineyards and oliveyards should be gathered for six years, but not in the seventh ; ver. 16 appoints feasts at harvest and at ingathering, Hence it is inferred that these laws could not have been drawn up until Israel was settled in Canaan, and there learned the art of agriculture, the people having been nomads previously.

It is further claimed that these laws imply and sanction numerous sanctuaries in different parts of the land: that the direction, 20:24, 25, to erect an altar of earth or stone wherever God should record his name can not refer to the brazen altar at the tabernacle or temple, and can not be limited to one single spot; and that the same thing is implied 21 : 13, 14 in God's altar being a refuge for the unintentional

THE WELLHAUSEN HYPOTHESIS.

manslayer, since one place of refuge would be manifestly insufficient for the whole land ; as well as 22 : 30 in their giving the firstlings of their cattle to God on the eighth day, since the owner of flocks and herds could not journey to a distant sanctuary every time that a first-born lamb or calf reached its eighth day. These regulations, it is said, correspond with the state of things exhibited in the books of Judges and Samuel, and in the early part of the history of the kings. Samuel and others offered sacrifice in various parts of the land without censure and apparently without any knowledge of the existence of a law restricting sacrifice to the altar at the tabernacle.

And with this agree, it is said, the historical portions of this same Jehovist document, which record the offerings made by the patriarchs at various places, at Bethel, Beersheba and elsewhere. These are not narratives of actual fact, but stories designed to give an ancestral and even divine sanction to the sanctuaries of later days. Among the sacred spots resorted to in different parts of the land, some had been sanctuaries before the Israelites occupied Canaan, the people continuing to venerate the places which had been hallowed by the former inhabitants, only substituting the worship of Jehovah for that of Baal ; other sanctuaries had been founded by the Israelites themselves since the conquest. The distinction between the more ancient and the more recent sanctuaries survived in popular remembrance, and stories of ancestral worship or of remarkable events in the lives of the patriarchs readily grew up in connection with the former.

THE WELLHAUSEN HYPOTHESIS.

The prophets from the days of Hosea discountenanced the abuses and idolatrous forms which were sanctioned or tolerated at these local sanctuaries. Hence they could not have been the authors of narratives designed to exalt and add lustre to such sanctuaries. These narratives and the Jehovist document, which contains them, must belong to a time when the sacred places thus linked with the patriarchs were universally reverenced, and before the better disposed began to regard them with suspicion or to denounce them as sources of corruption. The Book of the Covenant, which is incorporated in this document, must therefore antedate the period of the prophets.

The first of the Pentateuchal codes, then, the Book of the Covenant, took its rise some time after the occupation of the land of Canaan, and before the time of Hosea, Amos and Isaiah. The Deuteronomic laws, while adopting and repeating with some modifications almost everything contained in the code already spoken of, in one point present a striking contrast with it. They insist with the utmost strenuousness that all the old Canaanitish sanctuaries must be destroyed and that all sacrifices must be brought to one sole altar at the place which the Lord should choose ; and that the people must not continue to do " after all the things that we do here this day, every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes," Deut. 12:1-8. This, it is claimed, gives evidence that these laws constitute a new departure, an attempt to reform the existing state of things by abolishing the local sanctuaries, to which the people had freely

THE WELLHAUSEN HYPOTHESIS.

resorted before, and confining the worship of God henceforth to a single sanctuary*

Now just such an attempt to centralize worship was made in the reign of Josiah. By the most active and resolute measures he put an end to the sanctuaries outside of Jerusalem, and required all worship to be strictly limited to the temple there. And he did so in confessed obedience to a book of the law then recently discovered in the temple. This book was the Deuteronomic law, and this event fixes both the time when and the circumstances under which that law originated. It was the product of the prophetic party, aided by the priests, in opposition to the hitherto prevailing popular religion. The best men of the nation had become convinced that worship could only be regulated and kept pure by being centralized. The local sanctuaries tended to foster debased and corrupting forms of worship. All attempts to purify them had proved unavailing. Hosea and Amos unsparingly denounced them, not thereby meaning to disapprove of multiplicity of sanctuaries in itself considered, but of the abuses which had gained lodgment in them. Solomon had built the temple at Jerusalem, not with any view of making it the sole place of sacrifice, much less under the constraint of any statute, requiring that there should be only one sanctuary, but to add splendor to the royal residence by rearing a magnificent sanctuary there. The worship in high places was not abolished under Solomon nor his immediate successors. The recorded attempt by Hezekiah to destroy them Wellhausen discredits, thinking it much more probable that he

THE WELLHAUSEN HYPOTHESIS.

simply sought to destroy the images and idolatrous symbols which were found in them ; inasmuch as Isaiah, who had the largest influence with the king, did not oppose the high places as such, but only the idolatry which was practiced there, and he regarded Jerusalem as sacred not because it contained the temple, but because it was the centre and seat of Jehovah's empire.

While, however, the centralization of worship had never yet been attempted nor so much as thought of, there were influences at work which tended in that direction. The temple at the capital was naturally superior in splendor and celebrity to the sanctuaries in rural districts and provincial towns. The overthrow and exile of the ten tribes, amongst whom high places principally abounded, came to be regarded as a divine declaration against them, while the signal protection accorded to Jerusalem and the disastrous overthrow of Sennacherib gave new 6clat to its temple as a specially favored divine abode. The prophetic denunciations of the high places, though really directed against the corruptions which had crept in there and the perverted notions of the merit of ritual performances, further lessened their prestige and influence. The comparative purity of the worship maintained at Jerusalem, though this was not free, so Wellhausen thinks, from idolatrous taint, and the fact that it was more directly subject to a supervision which could exclude abuses that were liable to spring up in remoter or more obscure places, strengthened the attachment of the pious to the temple and led them to look with disfavor upon all other sane-

THE WELLHAUSEN.HYPO THESIS.

tuaries. While finally the inconsiderable size of the kingdom of Judah, which now alone survived, made the closing of the local sanctuaries possible as never before. Under these circumstances the restriction of worship to the temple at Jerusalem was resolved upon as a necessary reform and the only method by which idolatry could be effectually and permanently suppressed. Accordingly with this view the Deuteronomic Code was prepared, and a hearty support given by both priests and prophets to its enforcement by Josiah.

The centralization of worship, which was thus the great need of that period, is the characteristic feature of Deuteronomy, which explains all its deviations from the antecedent Book of the Covenant. Thus, while the early usage had been that every animal slain for food must first be offered in sacrifice at some sanctuary easily accessible, Deuteronomy recognizes the fact that under the new order of things it would be impossible to make a pilgrimage to the one central sanctuary at Jerusalem, on every such occasion. Hence formal permission is granted, Deut. 12 : 15, 21, to slay animals for food in all their gates, i. e. y at their homes in any part of the land. By closing the local sanctuaries those who had ministered in them would be deprived of their occupation and means of livelihood ; hence the frequent injunctions in Deuteronomy to befriend the Levites as a needy class, 12 : 19, etc., and the explicit direction, 18 : 6-8, that Levites coming up from any part of the land to Jerusalem should have the same right to minister there as those connected with the temple.

THE WELLHA US EN H YPO THESIS.

Under the old law of the Book of the Covenant, Ex. 22 : 30, the firstlings of their cattle were offered to God on the eighth day: this was practicable when there were sanctuaries in every neighborhood. But in abolishing these, Deuteronomy makes provision for the change in this respect by ordaining, 15 : 19, 20, that all firstlings should be offered year by year at the sanctuary, and permission was given, 14:23-26, to convert them into money at their homes with which to purchase an equivalent when they arrive at Jerusalem.

While for reasons such as have been recited, the law of Deuteronomy is assigned to the period of the struggle for centralization of worship, which culminated under Josiah, the Levitical law is attributed to a still later date, when that struggle had been successfully terminated. Instead of the urgent demand to abolish other sanctuaries and restrict worship to one only, which is found in Deuteronomy, the Priest Code everywhere takes the unity of the altar and of the sanctuary for granted, as a settled principle of the worship of Jehovah, and one which was universally acknowledged.

The success of the prophetic party under Josiah was only temporary. The attachment of the people to their ancestral sanctuaries was too strong to be uprooted at once. In succeeding reigns the high places were again restored and things returned very much to the old status. And it is doubtful whether the desired change could have been brought about had the people remained undisturbed in their own land. But the Babylonish exile by removing them

THE WELLHAUSEN HYPOTHESIS.

from Canaan broke up all their old associations and severed them from their holy places until these were forgotten and their spell was broken. After the captivity Israel as a whole did not return, but those only who were most firmly attached to the worship of Jehovah and who were willing to be guided by the prophets. They were not properly a nation, but a religious sect. The small impoverished community which settled at or near Jerusalem had but one sanctuary to which to go. The disposition to worship in high places was completely broken and never reappeared. It was to a public assembly of these returned exiles that Ezra produced the law adapted to this state of things, formally read it, and in a solemn manner engaged them to obey it. This, then, was the origin of the Priest Code, in which the unity of the sanctuary is not, as in Deuteronomy, spoken of as an innovation upon existing usages, but as though it had been established from the beginning and even ordained by Moses in the wilderness, the figment of a Mosaic tabernacle, being simply the reflex of the temple of Solomon transported back to those early times.

As a consequence the whole character of the religion of Israel was completely changed. This was indeed a necessary result of the centralization aimed at in Deuteronomy, though it was a result neither foreseen nor desired by the authors of that law. Religion now became a matter of public ritual, an affair of the priesthood ; from being the spontaneous expression of devout feeling in the varied circumstances of life, it was petrified into a monotonous

26 THE WELLHAUSEN 1/ IPO THESIS.

round of the most minutely prescribed services. The body of the people were remote from the sanctuary and only visited it at special and stated times. The daily worship was conducted by the priests without the participation of the people, whose presence was in nowise essential to its efficacy. Sacrifice had formerly been a joyous tribute of gratitude to God for personal or domestic gifts or blessings, and a chief feature of it was a festive meal partaken of by the offerer and his family or friends. But now the individual and the household were sunk in the mass of the congregation of Israel. What was peculiar to each, gave way to what was common to all. The sacrifice instead of being a specific offering on individual occasion was presented rather on behalf of the whole people, and came to be regarded in the sombre light of an atonement for sin in which all shared. New forms of sacrifice giving special prominence to this idea, the sin-offering and the trespass-offering, which were never heard of till the time of Ezekiel, are prescribed in the Priest Code. And the idea culminated in the annual day of Atonement, which was altogether foreign to the worship of earlier times, and is an innovation later than the time of Ezekiel, and, in fact, even than that of Ezra. The sacred incense, which none but a priest could offer except at the peril of their lives, and the golden altar of incense, of which earlier history knows nothing, are also innovations of the Priest Code, which is quite in the spirit of the later Phariseeism rather than in that of ancient Israel.

The advocates of this hypothesis are at no pains to conceal the fact, which is sufficientlv obvious, that it

THE WELLHAUSEN HYPOTHESIS.

is quite at variance with the statements of the sacred writers. It is expressly declared of the three codes that they originated not in distinct and widely separated periods after the settlement in Canaan, but with Moses himself before Canaan was entered. The Book of the Covenant and the law of Deuteronomy are 'explicitly stated to have been written by Moses, and the Levitical law is said in each of its statutes to have been directly communicated by God to him. And the precise time and occasion, when these several laws were either orally declared or committed to writing, are given with circumstantial detail. All this, however, is set aside as mere fictitious drapery, though it has never been satisfactorily explained how successive codes of law could ever have been accepted and submitted to as genuine and authoritative enactments of Moses, and which had always been in force since his day, — and that, too, by the generation in which they had been concocted and who must have known that they had never been heard of before.