Prolegomena to the History of Israel

by Julius Wellhausen

With the tithe of the fruit of the soil the first fruits are at bottom identical; the latter were reduced to definite measure later and through the influence of the former. This is no doubt the reason why in the Jehovistic legislation tithe and first fruits are not both demanded, but only a gift of the first and best of corn, wine, and oil, left to the free discretion of the offerer, which is conjoined with the firstling of cattle and sheep (Exodus xxii. 28 [29]. xxiii. 19, xxxiv. 26). In a precisely similar way the TITHE of the field stands conjoined with the firstlings of cattle in Deuteronomy (xiv. 22, 23, xv. 19 seq.). But also the reshith, usually translated first-fruits, occurs in Deuteronomy,—as a payment of corn, wine, oil, and wool to the priests (xviii. 4); a small portion, a basketful, thereof is brought before the altar and dedicated with a significant liturgy (xxvi. 1 seq.). It appears that it is taken from the tithe, as might be inferred from xxvi. 12 seq. taken as the continuation of vers. 1-11; in one passage, xxvi. 2, the more general usus loquendi reappears, according to which the reshith means the entire consecrated fruit, which as a whole is consumed by the offerers before Jehovah, and of which the priests receive only a portion. But in the Priestly Code not only is the entire tithe demanded as a due of the clergy, the reshith also is demanded in addition (Numbers xviii. 12), and it is further multiplied, inasmuch as it is demanded from the kneading-trough as well as from the threshing-floor: in every leavening the halla belongs to Jehovah (xv. 20). Nor is this all; to the reshith (xviii. 12) are added the bikkurim also (xviii. 13), as something distinct. The distinction does not occur elsewhere (Exodus xxxiv. 26); prepared fruits alone are invariably spoken of, the yield of the threshing-floor and the wine-press, of which first produce—"the fulness and the overflow "—was to be consecrated. The FAT of oil, wine, and corn is the main thing in Numbers xviii. also, and is called reshith (ver 12) or terumah (ver. 27); but the bikkurim (ver. 13) seem to be a separate thing, and, if this be really the case, must mean those raw fruits which have ripened earliest. Judaism, here once more moulding itself essentially in accordance with the tenor of the Priestly Code, actually drew this distinction; from the publication of the Law through Ezra the community pledged itself to bring up yearly the bikkurim to the house of Jehovah, and to deliver the reshith into the temple cells (Nehemiah x. 36 [35]). The former was a religious solemnity, associated with processions, and the use of the ritual in Deuteronomy xxvi.; the latter was rather a simple tax paid from natural products,—a distinction which perhaps is connected with the different expressions they shall bring (Numbers xviii. 13) and they shall give (xviii. 12). The LXX keeps )APARXH and PRWTOGENNHMATA strictly apart, as also do Philo (De praem. sacerd. 1, 2) and Josephus (Ant., iv. 4, 8, 22).

V.I.3. The amount which at last is required to be given is enormous. What originally were alternatives are thrown together, what originally was left free and undetermined becomes precisely measured and prescribed. The priests receive all the sin and trespass offerings, the greater share of the vegetable offerings, the hides of the burnt offerings, the shoulder and breast of meat offerings. Over and above are the firstlings, to which are added the tithes and first-fruits in a duplicate form, in short, all kodashim, which originally were demanded merely as ordinary meat offerings (Deuteronomy xii. 26 = ver. 6, 7, and so on), and were consumed at holy places and by consecrated guests indeed, but not by the priest. And, notwithstanding all this, the clergy are not even asked (as in Ezekiel is the prince, who there receives the dues, xlv. 13 seq.) to defray the cost of public worship; for this there is a poll-tax, which is not indeed enjoined in the body of the Priestly Code, but which from the time of Nehemiah x. 33 [32] was paid at the rate of a third of a shekel, till a novel of the law (Exodus xxx. 15) raised it to half a shekel.

V.II.

V.II.1. To the endowment of the clergy in the Priestly Code belong finally the forty-eight cities assigned by Joshua in accordance with the appointment of Moses (Numbers xxxv.; Josh. xxi.). The tribes gave them up freely; the smaller giving few and the larger more (Numbers xxxv. 8). The Aaronidae and the three families of the Levites cast lots about them in four divisions; the sons of Aaron get thirteen cities in Judah, the Levites ten in Ephraim-Manasseh, thirteen in Galilee, and twelve in the territory eastward of Jordan. It is not merely the right to inhabit, but, in spite of all apologetic rationalism, the right of absolute possession that they receive (Josh. xxi. 12), inclusive of a portion of land two thousand ells square (square in the strictly literal sense; Numbers xxxv. 5), which serves as public common.

The physical impracticability of such an arrangement has been conclusively shown, after Gramberg, by Graf (Merx, Archiv, i. p. 83). The 4 x 12 or the substituted 13+10+13+12 cities, of which in spite of Numbers xxxv. 8 for the most part four belong to each of the twelve tribes, are already sufficient to suggest a suspicion of artificial construction; but the regulation that a rectangular territory of two thousand ells square should be measured off as pasture for the Levites around each city (which at the same time is itself regarded only as a point; Numbers xxxv. 4) might, to speak with Graf, be very well carried out perhaps in a South Russian steppe or in newly founded townships in the western States of America, but not in a mountainous country like Palestine, where territory that can be thus geometrically portioned off does not exist, and where it is by no means left to arbitrary legal enactments to determine what pieces of ground are adapted for pasturage and what for tillage and gardening; there, too, the cities were already in existence, the land was already under cultivation, as the Israelites slowly conquered it in the course of centuries. Besides, from the time of Joshua there is not a historical trace of the existence of the Levitical cities. Quite a number of them were in the days of the judges and down to the early monarchy still in the hands of the Canaanites,— Gibeon, Shechem, Gezer, Taanach; some perhaps may even have so continued permanently. Those on the other hand which passed into the possession of the Israelites at no time belonged to the Levites. Shechem, Hebron, Ramoth, were the capital cities of Ephraim, Judah, and Gilead; and Gibeon, Gezer, Heshbon were in like manner important but by no means ecclesiastical towns. In the Deuteronomic period the Levites were scattered throughout Judah in such a manner that each locality had its own Levites or Levite; nowhere did they live separated from the rest of the world in compact masses together, for they made their living by sacrificing for others, and without a community they could not exercise their calling. Some indeed possessed land and heritage; such were at an earlier period the Silonic family at Gibeath-Phineas, Amaziah at Bethel, and Abiathar at Anathoth, and at a later period Jeremiah, also at Anathoth. But Anathoth (for example) was not on that account a priestly city in the sense of Joshua xxi.; Jeremiah had his holding there as a citizen and not as a priest, and he shared not with the priests but with the people (xxxvii. 12). As a tribe Levi was distinguished from the other tribes precisely by holding no land, and its members joined themselves to the settled citizens and peasants, for the most part as dependent inmates (Deuteronomy x. 9, xviii. 1).

Even after the exile, indeed, matters were not different in this respect. "Ab excidio templi prioris sublatum est Levitis jus suburbiorum," says R. Nachman (B. Sotah, 48b), and he is borne out by the silence of Nehemiah x. The execution of the law was probably postponed to the days of the Messiah; it was not in truth within the power of man, and cannot be seriously demanded in the Priestiy Code itself, which contemplates a purely ideal Israel, with ideal boundaries, and leaves the sober reality so far out of sight that on archaeological grounds it never once so much as mentions Jerusalem, the historical capital of the priests.

The circumstance that these towns lay in partibus infiidelium seems to make them unavailable as a means of fixing the antiquity of the Priestly Code. It is possible with Bleek to explain the transcendence of history as Mosaicity; such a view is not to be argued against. But it is also possible with Noldeke to insist that an invention so bold cannot possibly be imputed to the spirit of the exilic and post-exilic time, which in everything is only anxiously concerned to cleave to what is old and to restore it; and such a contention deserves and admits of refutation. It is not the case that the Jews had any profound respect for their ancient history; rather they condemned the whole earlier development, and allowed only the Mosaic time along with its Davidic reflex to stand; in other words, not history but the ideal. The theocratic ideal was from the exile onwards the centre of all thought and effort, and it annihilated the sense for objective truth, all regard and interest for the actual facts as they had been handed down. It is well known that there never have been more audacious history-makers than the Rabbins. But Chronicles affords evidence sufficient that this evil propensity goes back to a very early time, its root the dominating influence of the Law, being the root of Judaism itself. Judaism is just the right soil for such an artificial growth as the forty-eight priestly and Levitical cities. It would hardly have occurred to an author living in the monarchical period, when the continuity of the older history was still unbroken, to look so completely away from all the conditions of the then existing reality; had he done so, he would have produced upon his contemporaries the impression merely that he had scarcely all his wits about him. But after the exile had annihilated the ancient Israel, and violently and completely broken the old connection with the ancient conditions, there was nothing to hinder from planting and partitioning the tabula rasa in thought at pleasure, just as geographers are wont to do with their map as long as the countries are unknown.

But, of course, no fancy is pure fancy; every imagination has underlying it some elements of reality by which it can be laid hold of, even should these only be certain prevailing notions of a particular period. It is clear, if a proper territory is assigned to the clergy, that the notion of the clerical tribe which already had begun to strike root in Deuteronomy has here grown and gathered strength to such a degree that even the last and differentiating distinction is abolished which separates the actual tribes from the Levites, viz. communal independence and the degree of concentration which expresses itself in separate settlements. For when we read, notwithstanding, in the Priestly Code that Aaron and Levi are to have no lot nor inheritance in Israel (Numbers xviii. 20, 23), this is merely a form of speech taken over from Deuteronomy and at the same time an involuntary concession to fact; what would the forty-eight cities have been, had they actually existed, if not a lot, a territorial possession, and that too a comparatively large one? The general basis which serves as starting-point for the historical fiction being thus far recognisable, we are able also to gain a closer view of its concrete material. The priestly and Levitical cities stand in close connection with the so-called cities of refuge. These are also appointed in Deuteronomy (xix.), although not enumerated by name (for Deuteronomy iv. 41-43 cannot be regarded as genuine). Originally the altars were asylums (Exodus xxi. 14; 1Kings ii. 28), some in a higher degree than others (Exodus xxi. 13). In order not to abolish the asylums also along with the altars, the Deuteronomic legislator desired that certain holy places should continue as places of refuge, primarily three for Judah, to which, when the territory of the kingdom extended, three others were to be afterwards added. The Priestly Code adopts the arrangement, and specifies three definite cities on this side and three on the other side of Jordan (Numbers xxxv.; Joshua xx.), four of which are demonstrably famous old seats of worship,—all the three western ones, and Ramoth, that is, Mizpah, of the eastern ones (Genesis xxxi.; Judges xi. 11). But as all these asylums are at the same time priestly and Levitical cities, it is an obvious conjecture that these also in like manner arose out of old sanctuaries. We need not suppose that there is more in this than an echo of the general recollection that there were once in Israel many holy places and residences of priesthoods; it is by no means necessary to assert that each of the towns enumerated in Joshua xxi. had actually been an ancient sanctuary. In many cases, however, this also admits of being shown, /1/ although some of the

— Footnote 1. In the cases of Hebron, Gibeon, Shechem, Ramoth, Mahanaim and Tabor (Host v. 1) by historical data; in those of Bethshemesh, Ashtaroth, Kadesh,, perhaps also Rimmon, by the names. Not even here can one venture to credit the Priestly Code with consistent fidelity to history. As for Hosea v. 1, 2, the original meaning seems to be: "A snare have ye become for Mizpah, and an outspread net upon Tabor, and the pit-fall of Shittim (#XT H#+YM) have they made deep." Shittim as a camping-place under Moses and Joshua must certainly have been a sanctuary, just like Kadesh, Gilgal, and Shiloh; the prophet names these seats at which in his opinion the worship was especially seductive and soul-destroying; his reproach is levelled at the priests most famous (or according to the later view, infamous) high places, such as Bethel, Dan, Gilgal, and Beersheba are omitted, probably of set purpose. — Footnote

The immediate starting-point, however, for this territorial donation to the Levites is perhaps to be sought in Ezekiel, in the picture of the future Israel which he draws at the close of his book. He concerns himself there in a thorough-going manner about the demarcation of the national and tribal boundaries, and in doing so sets quite freely to work, taking, so to speak, the yard measure in his hand. Leaving the land eastward of Jordan wholly to the Saracens, he divides the western portion into thirteen parallel transverse sections; in the middle of the thirteenth (the rest of which is assigned to the prince), lying between Judah and Benjamin, the twelve tribes give up a square with a base line of 25,000 ells as a sacred offering to Jehovah. This square is divided into three parallelograms, 25,000 ells long, running east and west; the southernmost of these, 5000 ells broad, includes the capital with its territory; the middle one, 10,000 ells broad, contains the temple and the priestly territory; the northernmost, also 10,000 ells broad, has the inheritance and the cities of the Levites. /1/