but it is not said in 1Kings vi. that Solomon made use of the old pattern and ordered his Tyrian workmen to follow it. The posteriority of the Mosaic structure comes into clearer light from the two following considerations brought forward by Graf (p. 60 seq.). In the first place, in the description of the tabernacle mention is repeatedly made of its south, north, and west side, without any preceding rubric as to a definite and constantly uniform orientation; the latter is tacitly taken for granted, being borrowed from that of the temple, which was a fixed building, and did not change its site. In the second place, the brazen altar is, strictly speaking, described as an altar of wood merely plated with brass,—for a fireplace of very large size, upon which a strong fire continually burns, a perfectly absurd construction, which is only to be accounted for by the wish to make the brazen altar which Solomon cast (1Kings xvi. 14) transportable, by changing its interior into wood. The main point, however, is this, that the tabernacle of the Priestly Code in its essential meaning is not a mere provisional shelter for the ark on the march, but the sole legitimate sanctuary for the community of the twelve tribes prior to the days of Solomon, and so in fact a projection of the later temple. How modest, one might almost say how awkwardly bashful, is the Deuteronomic reference to the future place which Jehovah is to choose when compared with this calm matter-of-fact assumption that the necessary centre of unity of worship was given from the first! In the one case we have, so to speak, only the idea as it exists in the mind of the lawgiver, but making no claim to be realised till a much later date; in the other, the Mosaic idea has acquired also a Mosaic embodiment, with which it entered the world at the very first.
By the same simple historical method which carries the central sanctuary back into the period before Solomon does the Priestly author abolish the other places of worship. His forty-eight Levitical cities are for the most part demonstrably a metamorphosis of the old Bamoth to meet the exigencies of the time. The altar which the tribes eastward of Jordan build (Josh. xxii.) is erected with no intention that it should be used, but merely in commemoration of something. Even the pre-Mosaic period is rendered orthodox in the same fashion. The patriarchs, having no tabernacle, have no worship at all; according to the Priestly Code they build no altars, bring no offerings, and scrupulously abstain from everything by which they might in any way encroach on the privilege of the one true sanctuary. This manner of shaping the patriarchal history is only the extreme consequence of the effort to carry out with uniformity in history the semper ubique et ab omnibus of the legal unity of worship.
Thus in Deuteronomy the institution is only in its birth-throes, and has still to struggle for the victory against the praxis of the present, but in the Priestly Code claims immemorial legitimacy and strives to bring the past into conformity with itself, obviously because it already dominates the present; the carrying back of the new into the olden time always takes place at a later date than the ushering into existence of the new itself. Deuteronomy has its position in the very midst of the historical crisis, and still stands in a close relation with the older period of worship, the conditions of which it can contest, but is unable to ignore, and still less to deny. But, on the other hand, the Priestly Code is hindered by no survival to present times of the older usage from projecting an image of antiquity such as it must have been; unhampered by visible relics or living tradition of an older state, it can idealise the past to its heart's content. Its place, then, is after Deuteronomy, and in the third post-exilian period of the history of the cultus, in which, on the one hand, the unity of the sanctuary was an established fact, contested by no one and impugned by nothing, and in which, on the other hand, the natural connection between the present and the past had been so severed by the exile that there was no obstacle to prevent an artificial and ideal repristination of the latter.
I.III.
The reverse of this is what is usually held. In Deuteronomy, it is considered, there occur clear references to the period of the kings; but the Priestly Code, with its historical presuppositions, does not fit in with any situation belonging to that time, and is therefore older. When the cultus rests upon the temple of Solomon as its foundation, as in Ezekiel, then every one recognises the later date; but when it is based upon the tabernacle, the case is regarded as quite different. The great antiquity of the priestly legislation is proved by relegating it to an historical sphere, created by itself out of its own legal premisses, but which is nowhere to be found within, and therefore must have preceded actual history. Thus (so to speak) it holds itself up in the air by its own waistband.
I.III.1. It may, however, seem as if hitherto it had only been asserted that the tabernacle rests on an historical fiction. In truth it is proved; but yet it may be well to add some things which have indeed been said long before now, but never as yet properly laid to heart. The subject of discussion, be it premised, is the tabernacle of the Priestly Code; for some kind of tent for the ark there may well have been: in fact, tents were in Palestine the earliest dwellings of idols (Hos. ix.6), and only afterwards gave place to fixed houses; and even the Jehovistic tradition (although not J) knows of a sacred tent /1/
— Footnote 1. It is never, however, employed for legislative purposes, but is simply a shelter for the ark; it stands without the camp, as the oldest sanctuaries were wont to do outside the cities. It is kept by Joshua as aedituus, who sleeps in it, as did Samuel the aedituus for Eli. — Footnote
in connection with the Mosaic camp, and outside it, just as the older high places generally had open sites without the city. The question before us has reference exclusively to the particular tent which, according to Exodus xxv. seq., was erected at the command of God as the basis of the theocracy, the pre-Solomonic central sanctuary, which also in outward details was the prototype of the temple. At the outset its very possibility is doubtful. Very strange is the contrast between this splendid structure, on which the costliest material is lavished and wrought in the most advanced style of Oriental art, and the soil on which it rises, in the wilderness amongst the native Hebrew nomad tribes, who are represented as having got it ready offhand, and without external help. The incompatibility has long been noticed, and gave rise to doubts as early as the time of Voltaire. These may, however, be left to themselves; suffice it that Hebrew tradition, even from the time of the judges and the first kings, for which the Mosaic tabernacle was strictly speaking intended, knows nothing at all about it.
It appears a bold thing to say so when one sees how much many a modern author who knows how to make a skilful use of the Book of Chronicles has to tell about the tabernacle. For in 2 Chron. i.3 seq. we are told that Solomon celebrated his accession to the throne with a great sacrificial feast at Gibeon, because the tabernacle and the brazen altar of Moses were there. In like manner in 1Chron. xxi.29 it is said that David offered sacrifice indeed on the threshing-floor of Araunah, but that Jehovah's dwelling-place and the legitimate altar were at that time at Gibeon; and further (xvi. 39), that Zadok, the legitimate high priest, officiated there. From these data the Rabbins first, and in recent times Keil and Movers especially, have constructed a systematic history of the tabernacle down to the building of the temple. Under David and Solomon, as long as the ark was on Mount Zion, the tabernacle was at Gibeon, as is also shown by the fact that (2Samuel xxi.6, 9) offerings were sacrificed to Jehovah there. Before that it was at Nob, where ephod and shewbread (1Samuel xxi.) are mentioned, and still earlier, from Joshua's time onward, it was at Shiloh. But these were only its permanent sites, apart from which it was temporarily set up now here, now there, saving by its rapidity of movement—one might almost say ubiquity—the unity of the cultus, notwithstanding the variety and great distances of the places at which that cultus was celebrated. In every case in which a manifestation of Jehovah and an offering to Him are spoken of, the tabernacle must be tacitly understood. /1/
— Footnote 1. Josh. xxiv. 24, 33 (LXX): after the death of Joshua and Eleazar, LABONTES (OI )UIOI )ISRAHL THN KIBWTON TOU QEOU PERIFEROSAN )EN )EAUTOIS. After J. Buxtorf and Sal. van Til (Ugol., Thes. viii.), this theory has been, worked out specially by Movers. See, on the other hand, De Wette, Beitraege, p. 108 seq., and Vatke, ut supra, p. 316, note. — Footnote