I.II.2. The Jehovistic Book of the Covenant lies indeed at the foundation of Deuteronomy, but in one point they differ materially, and that precisely the one which concerns us here. As there, so here also, the legislation properly so called begins (Deut. xii.) with an ordinance relating to the service of the altar; but now we have Moses addressing the Israeites in the following terms: "When ye come into the land of Canaan, ye shall utterly destroy all the places of worship which ye find there, and ye shall not worship Jehovah your God after the manner in which the heathen serve theirs. Nay, but only unto the place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes for His habitation shall ye seek, and thither shall ye bring your offerings and gifts, and there shall ye eat before Him and rejoice. Here at this day we do every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes, but when ye have found fixed abodes, and rest from your enemies round about, then shall the place which Jehovah shall choose for His habitation in one of your tribes be the one place to which ye shall bring your offerings and gifts. Take heed that ye offer not in every place that ye see; ye may not eat your holy gifts in every town, but only in the place which Jehovah shall choose."
The Law is never weary of again and again repeating its injunction of local unity of worship. In doing so, it is in conscious opposition to "the things that we do here this day," and throughout has a polemical and reforming attitude towards existing usage. It is rightly therefore assigned by historical criticism to the period of the attacks made on the Bamoth by the reforming party at Jerusalem. As the Book of the Covenant, and the whole Jehovistic writing in genera], reflects the first pre-prophetic period in the history of the cultus, so Deuteronomy is the legal expression of the second period of struggle and transition. The historical order is all the more certain because the literary dependence of Deuteronomy on the Jehovistic laws and narratives can be demonstrated independently, and is an admitted fact. From this the step is easy to the belief that the work whose discovery gave occasion to King Josiah to destroy the local sanctuaries was this very Book of Deuteronomy, which originally must have had an independent existence, and a shorter form than at present. This alone, at least, of all the books of the Pentateuch, gives so imperious an expression to the restriction of the sacrificial worship to the one chosen place; here only does the demand make itself so felt in its aggressive novelty and dominate the whole tendency of the law-maker. The old material which he makes use of is invariably shaped with a view to this, and on all hands he follows the rule out to its logical consequences. To make its fulfilment possible, he changes former arrangements, permitting what had been forbidden, and prohibiting what had been allowed; in almost every case this motive lies at the foundation of all his other innovations. This is seen, for example, when he permits slaying without sacrificing, and that too anywhere; when, in order not to abolish the right of asylum (Exodus xxi.13, 14; 1Kings ii. 28) along with the altars, he appoints special cities of refuge for the innocent who are pursued by the avenger of blood; when he provides for the priests of the suppressed sanctuaries, recommending the provincials to take them along with them on their sacrificial pilgrimages, and giving them the right to officiate in the temple at Jerusalem just like the hereditarily permanent clergy there. In other respects also the dominance of the same point of view is seen: for example, it is chiefly from regard to it that the old ordinances and customs relating to the religious dues and the festivals are set forth in the form which they must henceforth assume. A law so living, which stands at every point in immediate contact with reality, which is at war with traditionary custom, and which proceeds with constant reference to the demands of practical life, is no mere velleity, no mere cobweb of an idle brain, but has as certainly arisen out of historical occasions as it is designed to operate powerfully on the course of the subsequent history. A judgment pronounced in accordance with the facts can therefore assign to it an historical place only within that movement of reformation which was brought to a victorious issue by King Josiah.
I.II.3. It is often supposed that the Priestly Code is somewhat indifferent to the question of the one sanctuary, neither permitting multiplicity of sacrificial centres nor laying stress upon the unity, and that on account of this attitude it must be assigned to an earlier date than Deuteronomy. /1/
— Footnote 1. De Wette, in the fifth place of his Habilitationsschrift ueber das Deuteronomium (Jena, 1805): "De hoc unico cultus sacri loco… priores libri nihil omnino habent. De sacrificiis tantum unice ante tabernaculum conventus offerendis lex quaedam extat. Sed in legibus de diebus festis, de primitiis et decimis, tam saepe repetitis, nihil omnino monitum est de loco unico, ubi celebrari et offerri debeant " (Opusc. Theol, p. 163-165). — Footnote
Such an idea is, to say the least, in the highest degree superficial. The assumption that worship is restricted to one single centre runs everywhere throughout the entire document. To appeal specially, in proof of the restriction, to Leviticus xvii. or Josh xxii., is to indicate a complete failure to apprehend the whole tenor of Exodus xxv.-Leviticus ix. Before so much as a single regulation having reference to the matter of worship can be given (such is the meaning of the large section referred to), the one rightful place wherein to engage in it must be specified. The tabernacle is not narrative merely, but, like all the narratives in that book, law as well; it expresses the legal unity of the worship as an historical fact, which, from the very beginning, ever since the exodus, has held good in Israel. One God one sanctuary, that is the idea. With the ordinances of the tabernacle, which form the sum of the divine revelation on Sinai, the theocracy was founded; where the one is, there is the other. The description of it, therefore, stands at the head of the Priestly Code, just as that of the temple stands at the head of the legislation in Ezekiel. It is the basis and indispensable foundation, without which all else would merely float in the air: first must the seat of the Divine Presence on earth be given before the sacred community can come into life and the cultus into force. Is it supposes that the tabernacle tolerates other sanctuaries besides itself? Why then the encampment of the twelve tribes around it, which has no military, but a purely religious significance, and derives its whole meaning from its sacred centre? Whence this concentration of all Israel into one great congregation [ QHL, (DH ], without its like anywhere else in the Old Testament? On the contrary, there is no other place besides this at which God dwells and suffers Himself to be seen; no place but this alone where man can draw near to Him and seek His face with offerings and gifts. This view is the axiom that underlies the whole ritual legislation of the middle part of the Pentateuch. It is indicated with special clearness by the LPNY (HL MW(D (before the tabernacle), introduced at every turn in the ordinances for sacrifice.
What then are we to infer from this as to the historical place of the Priestly Code, if it be judged necessary to assign it such a place at all? By all the laws of logic it can no more belong to the first period than Deuteronomy does. But is it older or younger than Deuteronomy? In that book the unity of the cultus is COMMANDED, in the Priestly Code it is PRESUPPOSED. Everywhere it is tacitly assumed as a fundamental postulate, but nowhere does it find actual expression; /1/ it is nothing new, but quite a thing
— Footnote 1. Except in Leviticus xvii.; but the small body of legislation contained in Leviticus xvii-xxvi is the transition from Deuteronomy to the Priestly Code. — Footnote
of course. What follows from this for the question before us? To my thinking, this:—that the Priestly Code rests upon the result which is only the aim of Deuteronomy. The latter is in the midst of movement and conflict: it clearly speaks out its reforming intention, its opposition to the traditional "what we do here this day;" the former stands outside of and above the struggle,—the end has been reached and made a secure possession. On the basis of the Priestly Code no reformation would ever have taken place, no Josiah would ever have observed from it that the actual condition of affairs was perverse and required to be set right; it proceeds as if everything had been for long in the best of order. It is only in Deuteronomy, moreover, that one sees to the root of the matter, and recognises its connection with the anxiety for a strict monotheism and for the elimination from the worship of the popular heathenish elements, and thus with a deep and really worthy aim; in the Priestly Code the reason of the appointments, in themselves by no means rational, rests upon their own legitimacy, just as everything that is actual ordinarily seems natural and in no need of explanation. Nowhere does it become apparent that the abolition of the Bamoth and Asherim and memorial stones is the real object contemplated; these institutions are now almost unknown, and what is really only intelligible as a negative and polemical ordinance is regarded as full of meaning in itself.
The idea as idea is older than the idea as history. In Deuteronomy it appears in its native colours, comes forward with its aggressive challenge to do battle with the actual. One step indeed is taken towards investing it with an historical character, in so far as it is put into the mouth of Moses; but the beginning thus made keeps within modest limits. Moses only lays down the law; for its execution he makes no provision as regards his own time, nor does he demand it for the immediate future. Rather it is represented as not destined to come into force until the people shall have concluded the conquest of the country and secured a settled peace. We have already found reason to surmise that the reference to "menuha" is intended to defer the date when the Law shall come into force to the days of David and Solomon (1Kings viii.16). This is all the more probable inasmuch as there is required for its fulfilment "the place which Jehovah shall choose," by which only the capital of Judah can be meant. Deuteronomy, therefore, knows nothing of the principle that what ought to be must actually have been from the beginning. Until the building of Solomon's temple the unity of worship according to it had, properly speaking, never had any existence; and, moreover, it is easy to read between the lines that even after that date it was more a pious wish than a practical demand. The Priestly Code, on the other hand, is unable to think of religion without the one sanctuary, and cannot for a moment imagine Israel without it, carrying its actual existence back to the very beginning of the theocracy, and, in accordance with this, completely altering the ancient history. The temple, the focus to which the worship was concentrated, and which in reality was not built until Solomon's time, is by this document regarded as so indispensable, even for the troubled days of the wanderings before the settlement, that it is made portable, and in the form of a tabernacle set up in the very beginning of things. For the truth is, that the tabernacle is the copy, not the prototype, of the temple at Jerusalem. The resemblance of the two is indeed unmistakable, /1/
— Footnote
1. In Wisdom of Solomon ix. 8 the temple is called MIMHMA SKHNHS
HAGIAS. Josephus (Antiquities iii. 6,1) says of the tabernacle,
(H D'OUDEN METAFEROMENOU NAOU DIEFERE.
— Footnote