Prolegomena to the History of Israel

by Julius Wellhausen

Of old the sacrifice combined with a meal had established a special relation between the Deity and a definite society of guests; the natural sacrificial society was the family or the clan (1Samuel i. 1seq., xvi. 1 seq., xx. 6). Now the smaller sacred fellowships get lost, the varied groups of social life disappear in the neutral shadow of the universal congregation or church [(DH, QHL]. The notion of this last is foreign to Hebrew antiquity, but runs through the Priestly Code from beginning to end. Like the worship itself, its subject also became abstract, a spiritual entity which could be kept together by no other means except worship. As now the participation of the "congregation of the children of Israel" in the sacrifice was of necessity always mainly ideal, the consequence was that the sacred action came to be regarded as essentially perfect by virtue of its own efficacy in being performed by the priest, even though no one was present. Hence later the necessity for a special sacrificial deputation, the anshe ma'amad. The connection of all this with the Judaising tendency to remove God to a distance from man, it may be added, is clear. /1/

— Footnote 1. It is not asserted that the cultus before the Iaw (of which the darker sides are known from Amos and Hosea) was better than the legal, but merely that it was more original; the standard of judgment being, not the moral element, but merely the idea, the primary meaning of worship. Nor is it disputed further that the belief in the dependence of sacrifices and other sacred acts upon a laboriously strict compliance with traditional and prescriptive rites occurs in the case of certain peoples, even in the remotest antiquity. But with the Israelites, judging by the testimony of the historical and prophetical books, this was not on the whole the case any more than with the ancient Greeks; there were no Brahmans or Magians in either case. Moreover, it must be carefully noted that not even in the Priestly Code do we yet find the same childish appreciation of the cultus as occurs in such a work as the Rigveda, and that the strict rules are not prescribed and maintained with any such notion in view as that by their observance alone can the taste of the Deity be pleased; the idea of God is here even strikingly remote from the anthropomorphic, and the whole cultus is nothing more than an exercise in piety which has simply been enjoined so once for all without any one being in any way the better for it. — Footnote

Two details still deserve special prominence here. In the Priestly Code the most important sacrifice is the burnt-offering; that is to say, in point of fact, the tamid, the holocaustum juge, consisting of two yearling lambs which are daily consumed upon the "altar of burnt-offering," one in the morning, another in the evening. The custom of daily offering a fixed sacrifice at a definite time existed indeed, in a simpler form, /2/

— Footnote 2. See Kuenen, Godsdietzst van Israel, ii. 271. According to 2Kings xvi. 15, an (LH in the morning and a MNXH in the evening were daily offered in the temple of Jerusalem, in the time of Ahaz. Ezekiel also (xlvi. 13-15) speaks only of the morning (LH. Compare also Ezra ix. 4; Nehemiah x. 33. In the Priestly Code the evening minhah has risen to the dignity of a second `olah; but at the same time survives in the daily minhah of the high priest, and is now offered in the morning also (Leviticus vi. 12-16). The daily minhah appears to be older than the daily `olah. For while it was a natural thing to prepare a meal regularly for the Deity, the expense of a daily `olah was too great for an ordinary place of worship, and, besides, it was not in accordance with the custom of men to eat flesh every day. The offering of the daily minhah is already employed in 1Kings xviii. 29, 36, as a mark of time to denote the afternoon, and this use is continued down to the latest period, while the tamid, ie., the `olah, is never so utilised. The oddest custom of all, however, was doubtless not the daily minhah, but the offering of the shewbread, which served the same purpose, but was not laid out fresh every day. — Footnote

Even in the pre-exilian period, but alongside of it at that time, the freewill private offerings had a much more important place, and bulked much more largely. In the law the tamid is in point of fact the fundamental element of the worship, for even the sacrifices of Sabbaths and feast days consist only of its numerical increase (compare Numbers xxviii., xxix.). Still later, when it is said in the Book of Daniel that the tamid was done away, this is equivalent to saying that the worship was abolished (viii. 11-13, xi. 31, xii. 11). But now the dominant position of the daily, Sabbath day, and festival tamid means that the sacrificial worship had assumed a perfectly firm shape, which was independent of every special motive and of all spontaneity; and further (what is closely connected with this), that it took place for the sake of the congregation,—the "congregation" in the technical sense attached to that word in the Law. Hence the necessity for the general temple-tax, the prototype of which is found in the poll-tax of half a shekel for the service of the tabernacle in Exodus xxx. 11 seq. Prior to the exile, the regular sacrifice was paid for by the Kings of Judah, and in Ezekiel the monarch still continues to defray the expenses not only of the Sabbath day and festival sacrifices (xiv. 17 seq.), but also of the tamid (xlvi. 13-15). /1/

— Footnote 1. Compare LXX*. The Massoretic text has corrected the third person (referring to the princes) into the second, making it an address to the priests, which, however, is quite impossible in Ezekiel. — Footnote

It is also a mark of the date that, according to Exodus xxx., the expenses of the temple worship are met directly out of the poll-tax levied from the community, which can only be explained by the fact that at that time there had ceased to be any sovereign. So completely was the sacrifice the affair of the community in Judaism that the voluntary qorban of the individual became metamorphosed into a money payment as a contribution to the cost of the public worship (Mark vii., xii. 42 seq; Matthew xxvii. 6).

The second point is this: Just as the special purposes and occasions of sacrifice fall out of sight, there comes into increasing prominence the one uniform and universal occasion—that of sin; and one uniform and universal purpose—that of propitiation. In the Priestly Code the peculiar mystery in the case of all animal sacrifices is atonement by blood; this appears in its purest development in the case of the sin and trespass offerings, which are offered as well for individuals as for the congregation and for its head. In a certain sense the great day of atonement is the culmination of the whole religious and sacrificial service, to which, amid all diversities of ritual, continuously underlying reference to sin is common throughout. Of this feature the ancient sacrifices present few traces. It was indeed sought at a very early period to influence the doubtful or threatening mood of Deity, and make His countenance gracious by means of rich gifts, but the gift had, as was natural then, the character of a tentative effort only (Micah vi. 6). There was no such thought as that a definite guilt must and could be taken away by means of a prescribed offering. When the law discriminates between such sins as are covered by an offering and such sins as relentlessly are visited with wrath, it makes a distinction very remote from the antique; to Hebrew antiquity the wrath of God was something quite incalculable, its causes were never known, much less was it possible to enumerate beforehand those sins which kindled it and those which did not. /1/

— Footnote 1. When the wrath is regulated by the conditions of the "covenant," the original notion (which scorns the thought of adjustment) is completely changed. What gave the thing its mysterious awfulness was precisely this: that in no way was it possible to guard against it, and that nothing could avail to counteract it. Under the pressure of Jehovah's wrath not only was sacrifice abandoned, but even the mention of His name was shunned so as to avoid attracting His attention (Hos iii. 4, ix. 4; Amos vi. 10). — Footnote

An underlying reference of sacrifice to sin, speaking generally, was entirely absent. The ancient offerings were wholly of a joyous nature,—a merrymaking before Jehovah with music and song, timbrels, flutes, and stringed instruments (Hos. ix. 1 seq.; Amos v. 23, viii. 3; Isa xxx. 3). No greater contrast could be conceived than the monotonous seriousness of the so-called Mosaic worship.