— Footnote 2 Goettinger Gel. Anzeigen, 1870, p. 1557 seq. Kuenen, Religion of Israel, vol. ii. chapter viii. — Footnote
It is obvious that Nehemiah viii.-x. is a close parallel to 2Kings xxii. xxiii., especially to xxiii. 1-3. There we read that Josiah caused all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem to come together, and went up with the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, with the priests and the prophets and all the people, high and low, to the house of Jehovah; where he read to the assemblage all the words of the Book of the Law, and bound himself with all the people before Jehovah to keep all the words of the book. Just as it is in evidence that Deuteronomy became known in the year 621, and that it was unknown up to that date, so it is in evidence that the remaining Torah of the Pentateuch—for there is no doubt that the law of Ezra was the whole Pentateuch—became known in the year 444 and was unknown till then. This shows in the first place, and puts it beyond question, that Deuteronomy is the first, and the priestly Torah the second, stage of the legislation. But in the second place, as we are accustomed to infer the date of the composition of Deuteronomy from its publication and introduction by Josiah, so we must infer the date of the composition of the Priestly Code from its publication and introduction by Ezra and Nehemiah. It would require very strong internal evidence to destroy the probability, thus based on a most positive statement of facts, that the codification of the ritual only took place in the post-exile period. We have already seen of what nature the internal evidence is which is brought forward with this view. /1/
— Footnote 1. It is not, however, necessary, and it can scarcely be correct, to make Ezra more than the editor, the real and principal editor, of the Hexateuch: and in particular he is not likely to have been the author of Q. Nor on the other hand is it meant to deny that many new features may have been added and alterations made after Ezra. A body of customs is a subject which can scarcely be treated quite exhaustively. There are no directions about the nervus ischiadicus <**sciatic nerve??**>, about the priests having their feet bare, about shutting up before Jehovah (1Samuel xxi cf. Jeremiah xxxvi. 5), or about the stoning of adulterers. — Footnote
X.II.3. Ezra and Nehemiah, and the eighty-five men of the great assembly (Nehemiah viii. seq.), who are named as signatories of the covenant, are regarded by later tradition as the founders of the canon. And not without reason: only King Josiah has a still stronger claim to this place of honour. The introduction of the law, first Deuteronomy, and then the whole Pentateuch, was in fact the decisive step, by which the written took the place of the spoken word, and the people of the word became a "people of the book." To THE BOOK were added in course of time THE BOOKS; the former was formally and solemnly introduced in two successive acts, the latter acquired imperceptibly a similar public authority for the Jewish church. The notion of the canon proceeds entirely from that of the written Torah; the prophets and the hagiographa are also called Torah by the Jews, though not Torah of Moses.
The origin of the canon thus lies, thanks to the two narratives 2Kings xxii. xxiii., Nehemiah viii.-x. in the full light of history; but the traditional science of Biblical introduction has no clear or satisfactory account to give of it. Josiah, the ordinary notion is, introduced the law, but not the canon; Ezra, on the other hand, the canon and not the law. An analogy drawn from the secondary part of the canon, the prophets and hagiographa, is applied without consideration to the primary part, the Torah of Moses. The historical and prophetical books were, in part at least, a long time in existence before they became canonical, and the same, it is thought, might be the case with the law. But the case of the law is essentially different. The law claims to have public authority, to be a book of the community; the difference between law and canon, does not exist. Hence it is easy to understand that the Torah, though as a literary product later than the historical and prophetical books, is yet as law older than these writings, which have originally and in their nature no legal character, but only acquired such a character in a sort of metaphorical way, through their association with the law itself.
When it is recognised that THE CANON is what distinguishes Judaism from ancient Israel, it is recognised at the same time that what distinguishes Judaism from ancient Israel is THE WRITTEN TORAH. The water which in old times rose from a spring, the Epigoni stored up in cisterns.
CHAPTER XI. THE THEOCRACY AS IDEA AND AS INSTITUTION.
Writers of the present day play with the expressions "theocracy," and "theocratic" without making it clear to themselves what these words mean and how far they are entitled to use them. But we know that the word theokratia was only coined by Josephus; /1/
— Footnote 1. )OUKOUN )APEIROI MEN (AI KATA MEROS TWN )ETHWN KAI TWN NOMWN PARA TOIS )APASIN )ANTHRWPOS DIAFORAI. )OI MEN GAR MONARXIAIS, (OI DE TAIS )OLIGWN DUNASTEIAIS, )ALLOI DE TOIS PLHTHESIN )EPETREPYAN THN 'ECOUSIAN TWN POLITEUMATWN. (O D' (HMETEROS NOMOQETHS )EIS MEN TOUTWN OUD' (OTIOUN )APEIDEN, (WS D' )AN TIS )EIPOI BIASAMENOS TON LOGON QEOKRATIAN )APEDEICE TO POLITEUMA, QEW| THN )ARXHN KAI TO KRATOS )ANAQEIS (contra Apion ii. 17). (" There are innumerable differences in the particular customs and laws that are among mankind; some have intrusted the power of their states to monarchies, some to oligarchies, and some to democracies: but our legislator had no regard to any of these forms, but he ordered our governmernt to be what I may call by a strained expression a theocracy, attributing the power and the authority to God." Compare also, on this whole chapter, Die Pharisaer und die Sadducaer, Greifswald, 1874. — Footnote
and when this writer speaks of the Mosaic constitution, he has before his eyes, it is well known, the sacred community of his own day as it existed down to the year 70 A.D. In ancient Israel the theocracy never existed in fact as a form of constitution. The rule of Jehovah is here an ideal representation; only after the exile was it attempted to realise it in the shape of a Rule of the Holy with outward means. It is perhaps the principal merit of Vatke's Biblical Theology to have traced through the centuries the rise of the theocracy and the metamorphosis of the idea to an institution.