Prolegomena to the History of Israel

by Julius Wellhausen

XI.II.

XI.II.1. The tabernacle of David fell at last, and no king was born to set it up again. The state suffered not a crisis, but destruction. And the result was that such of the religious hopes of the people as they still held fast, were no longer limited to existing political conditions, but now took a freer flight, became tinged with enthusiasm, and cast off all restrictions. In former times there was always an enemy threatening in the background, a danger really approaching, to give rise to the expectation of a great conflagration, the materials for which had long been collected in the nation itself: but after the exile fancy dealt in general coalitions of God knows what peoples against the New Jerusalem, vaticinations for which there was no ground whatever in reality. /1/

— Footnote 1 Ezekiel xxxviii. xxxix.; Isaiah lxvi. 18-24; Joel iv.; Zechariah xii. xiv. In Isaiah v. 26, on the other hand, we must, of course, read GWY, for GWYM, the singular instead of the plural. — Footnote

In earlier times the national state as it had existed under David was the goal of all wishes. Now a universal world empire was erected in imagination, which was to lift up its head at Jerusalem over the ruins of the heathen powers. Prophecy was no longer tied to history, nor supported by it.

But the extravagant hopes now built on Jehovah were balanced on the other side by sober and realisable aims which the course of history presented. Those who waited for the consolation of Israel were then confronted from the nature of their situation with practical tasks. The old prophets were satisfied with expressing their ideas, with criticising existing evils; as to practical points they had nothing to say, the leadership of the people was in other hands. But the old community being now gone and its heads having fallen with it, the godly both had the power and felt the obligation to place themselves at the head of the Israel now to be anew created, after which they had long been striving, and their faith in which was still unshaken. In former times the nation had not been so seriously threatened as that its continued existence, notwithstanding the dangerous crises it might have to pass through, should ever cease to be regarded as natural, as a thing of course. But now this was by no means a thing of course, the danger was a pressing one that the Jewish exiles, like the Samaritan exiles before them, would be absorbed by the heathens among whom they dwelt. In that case the Messianic hopes also would have lost their point of application, for, however true it was that the realising of them was Jehovah's concern, the men must still be there to whom they were to be fulfilled. Thus everything depended on getting the sacred remnant safe across this danger, and giving it so solid an organisation that it might survive the storms and keep alive the expectation of the promise.

But in the eyes of those whose words had weight in the restoration the old community, as it had existed formerly, was not in good repute. They could not but allow Jehovah's sentence of condemnation to be just which He had spoken by the mouth of His servants and through the voice of history. The utterances of the prophets, that fortresses and horses and men of war, that kings and princes, cannot help, were called to mind and turned into practical principles: the sole rule of Jehovah was to be carried out in earnest. Circumstances favoured the design, and this was the great point. As matters then were, the reconstitution of an actual state was not to be thought of, the foreign rule would not admit of it (Ezra iv. 19 seq.). What plan was to be taken, what materials to be used for such a building as the times allowed? The prophetic ideas would not serve as building stones; they were not sufficiently practical. Then appeared the importance of institutions, of traditional forms, for the conservation even of the spiritual side of the religion.

The Jewish royal temple had early overshadowed the other sanctuaries, and in the course of the seventh century they were extinct or verging on extinction. Under the shelter of the monarchy the priests of Jerusalem had grown great and had at last attained, as against their professional brethren elsewhere, a position of exclusive legitimacy. The weaker the state grew, the deeper it sank from the fall of Josiah onwards, the higher became the prestige of the temple in the eyes of the people, and the greater and the more independent grew the power of its numerous priesthood; how much more do we feel it in Jeremiah's time than in that of Isaiah! This advance of the priesthood indicates unmistakably the rise into prominence of the cultus in the seventh century, a rise rather helped than hindered by the long reign of Manasseh, evil as is the reputation of that reign. It shows itself not only in the introduction of more luxurious materials, incense, for example, but even more in the importance given to great and striking services, e.g., the sacrifice of children, and the expiatory offering. Even after the abolition of the horrid atrocities of Manasseh's time, the bloody earnestness remained behind with which the performance of divine service was gone about.

So closely was the cultus of Jerusalem interwoven with the consciousness of the Jewish people, and so strongly had the priesthood established their order, that after the collapse of the kingdom the elements still survived here for the new formation of a "congregation" answering to the circumstances and needs of the time. Around the ruined sanctuary the community once more lifted up its head (1Kings viii.; Haggai i. seq.; Zechariah i. seq.). The usages and ordinances were, though everywhere changes in detail, yet not created afresh. Whatever creating there was lay in this, that these usages were bound together in a system and made the instruments of restoring an organisation of "the remnant."

Ezekiel first pointed out the way which was suited for the time. He is the connecting link between the prophets and the law. He claims to be a prophet, and starts from prophetic ideas: but they are not his own ideas, they are those of his predecessors which he turns into dogmas. He is by nature a priest, and his peculiar merit is that he enclosed the soul of prophecy in the body of a community which was not political, but founded on the temple and the cultus. The chapters xl.-xlviii. are the most important in his book, and have been called by J. Orth, not incorrectly, the key of the Old Testament.

Thus arose that artificial product, the sacred constitution of Judaism. In the Priestly Code we have the picture of it in detail. /1/

— Footnote 1. It is not the case that the hierocracy is based on the Priestly Code: that code was only introduced after the hierocracy was already in existence, but helped, no doubt, to consolidate and legalise it. The written law afterwards undermined the rule of the priests; and the scriptures played into the hands of the scribes and Pharisees. (Compare the case of the Parsees and Sabians, and <the reference given here,.. namely "p.157, note" is in error. There is no note on p. 157 and I do not know what is being referred to ..>.) — Footnote

The distinction, drawn with such pains between the Mosaic theocracy and the post-exilic hierocracy, is too fine. Theocracy as a constitution is hierocracy. If Moses founded such a constitution, he did it prophetically, with a view to circumstances which only arose a thousand years after his day, <V.II.1.; VII.II.4.>. Old Israel had not shrunk to a religious congregation, public life was not quite absorbed in the service of the sanctuary; the high priest and the dwelling of Jehovah were not the centre round which all revolved <p.170 is not correct; >. These great changes were wrought by the destruction of the political existence first of Samaria, then of Judah. In this way the people became "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation," as we read in a Deuteronomistic passage, Exodus xix. 6. If the divine rule was formerly a belief supporting the natural ordinances of human society, it was now set forth in visible form as a divine state, in an artificial sphere peculiar to itself and transcending the ordinary life of the people. The idea had formerly informed and possessed the natural body, but now, in order that it might be thoroughly realised, it was to have spiritual body of its own. There arose a material, external antithesis of a sacred and profane; men's minds came to be full of this, and it was their great endeavour to draw the line as sharply as possible and to repress the natural sphere more and more. Holiness is the ruling idea in Ezekiel, in Leviticus xvii.-xxvi., and in the Priestly Code. The notion is a somewhat empty one, expressing rather what a thing is not than what it is; at first it meant the same as divine, but now it is used mainly in the sense of spiritual, priestly, as if the divine could be distinguished from the worldly, the natural, by outward visible marks of that kind.

The Mosaic theocracy, the residuum of a ruined state, is itself not a state at all, but an unpolitical artificial product created in spite of unfavourable circumstances by the impulse of an ever-memorable energy: and foreign rule is its necessary counterpart. In its nature it is intimately allied to the old Catholic church, which was in fact its child. As a matter of taste it may be objectionable to speak of the Jewish church, but as a matter of history it is not inaccurate, and the name is perhaps preferable to that of theocracy, which shelters such confusion of ideas.

XI.II.2. The Mosaic theocracy appears to show an immense retrogression. The law of Jehovah should denote what is characteristic of His people over against the heathen. But this certainly did not consist in the cultus of Israel: it would be vain labour to seek in this and that slight variation between the Hebrew and the Greek ritual a difference of principle between them. The cultus is the heathen element in the Israelite religion— the word heathen not being understood, of course, in an ignoble or unworthy sense. If the Priestly Code makes the cultus the principal thing, that appears to amount to a systematic decline into the heathenism which the prophets incessantly combated and yet were unable to eradicate. It will be readily acknowledged that at the constitution of the new Jerusalem the prophetic impulses were deflected by a previously existing natural tendency of the mass on which they had to operate. Yet in every part of the legal worship we see the most decided traces of their influence. We have seen to what a large extent that worship is everywhere marked by a centralising tendency. This tendency is not connected in the Priestly Code with opposition to improper or foreign worship; yet it must be interpreted as a polemical measure; and if it be regarded as an axiom necessary in the Priestly Code from the nature of the case, that is only saving that the demands of the prophets had prevailed most completely in a field where they had the greatest obstacles to contend with. Exclusive monolatry is by no means innate in the cultus; it can only be deduced from considerations which are foreign to the nature of the cultus: it is the antitype of strict monotheism. The prohibition of images, too, in the worship of the Deity, is not expressly insisted on, as in Deuteronomy, but is a provision which is taken for granted; so little is this position in danger of question that even doubtful and repugnant elements are embodied in the worship and assimilated by it without hesitation. The golden ephod, denounced by Isaiah, has become an insignificant decoration of the high-priest: talismans, forbidden even by Ezekiel, are allowed (Numbers xv. 37-41), but the object of them is "that ye may look upon them and remember all the commandments of Jehovah, and do them, and that ye follow not after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye used to go a whoring." The gross idolatry, with which the expression znh is always connected in other passages, is by this time out of the question: the heart itself with its lawless motions is the strange God, whose service is forbidden.

We may go further and say that by the cultus-legislation the cultus is estranged from its own nature, and overthrown in its own sphere. That is most unmistakably the case with regard to the festivals. They have lost their reference to harvest and cattle, and have become historical commemorations: they deny their birth from nature, and celebrate the institution of supernatural religion and the gracious acts of Jehovah therewith connected. The broadly human, the indigenous element falls away, they receive a statutory character and a significance limited to Israel. They no longer draw down the Deity into human life on all important occasions, to take part in its joys and its necessities: they are not HUMAN ATTEMPTS with such naive means as are at command to please the Deity and render Him favourable. They are removed from the natural sphere, and made DIVINE MEANS OF GRACE, which Jehovah has instituted in Israel as sacraments of the theocracy. The worshipper no longer thinks that in his gift he is doing God a pleasure, providing Him with an enjoyment: what pleases Him and is effectual is only the strict observance of the rite. The sacrifices must be offered exactly according to prescription: at the right place, at the right time, by the right individuals, in the right way. They are not based on the inner value of what is done, on the impulse arising out of fresh occasions, but on the positive command of a will outside the worshipper, which is not explained, and which prescribes every particular. The bond between cultus and sensuality is severed: no danger can arise of an admixture of impure immoral elements, a danger which was always present in Hebrew antiquity. Worship no longer springs from an inner impulse, it has come to be an exercise of religiosity. It has no natural significance; its significance is transcendental, incomparable, not to be defined; the chief effect of it, which is always produced with certainty, is atonement. For after the exile the consciousness of sin, called forth by the rejection of the people from the face of Jehovah, was to a certain extent permanent: even when the hard service of Israel was accomplished and the wrath really blown over, it would not disappear.

If then the value of the sacred offerings lay not in themselves but in obedience to the commandments of God, the centre of gravity of the cultus was removed from that exercise itself and transferred to another field, that of morality. The consequence was that sacrifices and gifts gave way to ascetic exerctses, which were more strictly and more simply connected with morality. Precepts given originally in reference to the consecration of the priests for their religious functions were extended to the laity: the observance of these laws of physical cleanliness was of much more radical importance in Judaism than the great public cultus, and led by the straightest road towards the theocratic ideal of holiness and of universal priesthood. The whole of life was compressed into a certain holy path; there was always a divine command to be fulfilled, and by thinking of it a man kept himself from following after the desires and lusts of his own heart. On the other hand this private cultus, which constantly required attention, kept alive and active the individual sense of sin.

The great pathologist of Judaism is quite right: in the Mosaic theocracy the cultus became a pedagogic instrument of discipline. It is estranged from the heart; its revival was due to old custom, it would never have blossomed again of itself. It no longer has its roots in childlike impulse, it is a dead work, in spite of all the importance attached to it, nay, just because of the anxious conscientiousness with which it was gone about. At the restoration of Judaism the old usages were patched together in a new system, which, however, only served as the form to preserve something that was nobler in its nature, but could not have been saved otherwise than in a narrow shell that stoutly resisted all foreign influences. That heathenism in Israel against which the prophets vainly protested was inwardly overcome by the law on its own ground; and the cultus, after nature had been killed in it, became the shield of supernaturalistic monotheism.

The end of the Prolegomena