marked off in the three principal codes of the Pentateuch. In JE, for example, a plurality of altars, it is said, is freely permitted. In D, however, which represents the point of view of king Josiah, who struck "the first heavy blow" against this practice, unity of worship is everywhere insisted on. While in PC such unity of worship is presupposed as a thing of the past, and by means of the fiction of the tabernacle referred to the very earliest times. This is the theory. And as to the question how it fits the legislation, Wellhausen, it is noticeable, instead of coming directly to the point, devotes a dozen pages to a summary of the teachings of the historical books on the subject. It is wholly characteristic, it may be said, of his usual method. By giving to exceptions which he there finds the force of established rules, misapprehending and misapplying some plain statements of fact, and wholly setting aside the testimony of the author of the Books of Kings, with whom he acknowledges himself to be in open conflict, this critic is able to affirm that this was "the actual course of the centralization of the cultus; one can distinguish these three stages." And it is only after such. a manipulation of the history, in which Wellhausen is able to find, previous to the building of Solomon's temple, no trace of a central sanctuary, that he makes his appeal to the Pentateuchal legislation.

What, now, is the bearing of this legislation on the subject before us? Does it, in itself considered, justify or encourage

1 Geschichte, i. p. 29. It can only be regarded, for example, as a serious misapprehension of facts when (Geschichte, i. p. 18) in citing instances of extemporized places of worship he refers to the conduct of Saul as recorded in 1 Sam. xiv. 33-36 (Hebrew text as throughout) as an instructive one of the kind. There is not the slightest indication in the text that the stone on which the people slew the captured cattle was regarded by Saul as an altar; or that the writer of the book referred to it in the words which this critic puts into his mouth, "That is the first altar which Saul had built to God." Of the author of the Books of Kings Wellbausen says (ibid. pp 20, 21): "Aber diese Betrach tungsweise des Bedeutungs des Königthums für die Geschichte des Cultus ist nicht die des Verfassers der Königsbücher. ..... Diese Auffassung nun ist ungeschichtlich und überträgt die Bedeutung, die der Tempel kurz vor dem Exil in Juda erlangt hat, in die Zeit und in die Absicht seiner Gründung."

the hypothesis of an extended process of development from the custom of many contemporaneous altars to the one sanctuary? After a reasonably careful examination one is forced to reply with a decided negative. He will find, on the contrary, each one of the codes not only implying unity of worship, but even requiring it; and that no part of the legislation of the Pentateuch gives the least color to any other practice. Such a scholar as Delitzsch cannot have overlooked essential facts, and this is the conclusion also to which he has come "In truth, the Deuteronomic demand for unity of the cultus is no novelty, but a demand of the whole Torah in all its constituent parts." 1

The position taken by our critics, indeed, may be successfully assailed, and with almost equal force, from two quarters. It is not true that JE permits a contemporaneous plurality of altars; it is not true that PC presupposes unity of worship as something already established in the history of Israel. If the several codes, as here divided and adjusted, represent a growth at all in this matter, which we do not believe, it is in D, and not in PC, that we find the climax. In nearly a score of instances, within half that number of chapters, attention is called to the topic, and a special emphasis is given by a repetition of the same peculiar form of words (Deut. xii. 5, et passim). And what could be more fitting in a document professedly looking backward on more than a generation of transgression and lawlessness covering in part this very ground (Deut. xii. 8), and looking forward to an immediate transition from a life in camp to the conquest and occupation of the promised land?

While as concerns PC, so far is it from presupposing, as is affirmed, a central place of worship as something long established, it makes scarcely any allusion to a place of worship in this particular aspect of the matter; and as it relates to the holy land, with which it is supposed this code had alone to do, it wholly ignores the subject. Even in its law concerning the Passover, where, if anywhere, it might

1 Zeitschrift für kirchliche Wissenschaft, etc., 1880, p. 562.

have been expected that this point would be emphasized, it is given no observable prominence. The tabernacle itself, about which all this form of the legislation may be said to gather, has for its direct object in no sense the furnishing of a central point for sacrifice. Its first object, rather, as its name (b) imports, was to provide a place for God to meet his people. It is true that also in this part of the Mosaic laws all are expected, under penalty of the loss of citizenship, to bring their sacrifices to this "tent of meeting " (Lev. xvii. 8, 9).1 As long, indeed, as the wilderness life continued, this was the only natural and warrantable course for a people who, instead of the many gods of the nations, had one Lord (Deut. vi. 4). But iteration and emphasis on this point was left for a sufficient reason, as we have seen, to Deuteronomy. Whatever culminating point there may be, it will be found there.

But does not the tabernacle, on the possible hypothesis that in its fundamental conception it is a product of the postexilic period, whether one regard it as a tent of meeting or a place for sacrifice (i.e. as a sanctuary from the divine or the human side), if it be transferred by its fabricators to the Mosaic age, in the nature of the case presuppose on their part a centralization of the cultus in their own time? By no The most that it could show, supposing it to represent centralization of worship, would be that they wished to have it understood that this was the form of worship which prevailed in the far past. And we can have no logical claim

means.

1 Kittel (Theologische Studien aus Würtemberg, pp. 41, 42), has pointed out the fact that this very passage is evidence against the position that in PC unity of worship is altogether presupposed; and he cites Wellhausen himself as say ing (Geschichte, i. p. 389): "Die örtliche Einheit des Gottesdienstes wird hier noch gefordet, nicht vorausgesetzt." It is true that he considers the passage as one that found its way into PC through revision; but this postpones the difficulty without solving it. Why should a reviser, working in the spirit of the document he is revising, have put in such an inharmonious sentiment? Kittel has also adduced the rebellion of Korah (Num. xvi. 8-11) as further evidence, from whatever point of view it may be regarded, that PC is far enough from having to do simply with matters of worship already brought to a conclusion (1. c. p. 39).

even to that inference. As I have already intimated in a previous article (p. 29), on the supposition of a pure invention one has nothing substantial to build upon. "Ex nihilo nihil fit." These facile inventors may have had a dozen reasons for their course unknown to us. It is only by showing from wholly independent and reliable sources what motives must have influenced them, that we have any right to speak with assurance of such motives.

But how is it with JE? There is but a single passage in its code on which much reliance is placed to show its position in this matter (Ex. xx. 24), and it reads as follows: "An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt-offerings and thy peace-offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen: in every place (pb) 1 where I record my

13 with the article undoubtedly conveys the idea of totality, but as far as the real sense here is concerned it makes no difference whether this phrase be rendered, with Dillmann (Com., ad loc.), Bunsen's Bibelwerk, and Wellhausen (Geschichte, i. p. 30), "in every place," or with our common English version, "in all places." The meaning doubtless is "in that place, wherever it be," where God should cause his name to be remembered, there he would receive and own the offerings of his people. There is a similar collocation of words at Gen. xx. 13. The really important part of the verse, as I have said above, lies in

אזביר It is of interest that the Targums give אשר אזכיר את שמי the words

here the sense of T, i.e. they apparently identify the place with the tabernacle (cf. Ex. xxiv. 16; xxv. 8; xxix. 46; Num. ix. 17; Deut. xii. 11, et passim). The Samaritan Pentateuch, on the other hand, read, though probably as a correction, for spa-ba, pipa, making the matter still more definite. The objection of Wellhausen to the view that the tabernacle is referred to is, that the altar here described is not the altar of the tabernacle. Nor is the tabernacle yet in existence, it may be replied; but when it came into existence it came under this law and included this altar. The objections which Dillmann (ibid) brings against this view, while acknowledging it to be the ordinary one, are far from convincing. The most important of them, that since Jehovah was understood to dwell in the tabernacle, he could not properly be spoken of as coming to it, is sufficiently answered by a passage which he himself cites (2 Sam. rii 6 f.), where God is represented as saying: "I have not dwelt in a house, .... even unto this day, but have walked in a tent and in a tabernacle." And in the following verse the places are spoken of in which he had walked with Israel Hence the meaning in our passage of the "every place" where he should cause his name to be remembered is such places as he should come to not apart from, but in connection with the tabernacle. One's confidence in the view that our passage at least refers to one central, well-known altar, and not to many contempor ineous ones will not be weakened by the fact that it is firmly

name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee." And it may safely be submitted to any one, without discussion, whether this passage, taken by itself, encourages sacrificing at many altars at one and the same time, or gives to every Israelite discretionary powers to offer his sacrifices when and where he will? The vital point of the verse, which has been much obscured by making an issue on the phrase "in every place" is contained in the words "where I shall cause my name to be remembered." This expression, while not positively excluding the possibility that there might be more than one authorized place of worship at the same time, can by no means be cited as giving legislative authority for the establishment of a multitude of contemporaneous altars. Such a thought must be first read into the verse, in order to be deduced from it. And it cannot be denied that it might with at least equal justice, in harmony with the common and traditional view, be understood as implying that in the lapse of time the place of worship would be often changed, but that the presence and blessing of God would make any place sacred for this purpose.

That this is, in fact, the real meaning of the words may be amply proved, from a variety of considerations. And, first, it would be remarkable, if a plurality of altars was meant, that the singular number is used, and that we do not find. here, or anywhere else in this document, the expression "altars of God," although the author is familiar enough with the many altars of the heathen (Ex. xxxiv. 13). And this usage corresponds to the fundamental conception of the Old Testament religion as everywhere strongly monotheistic, as over against a radical tendency in another direction. Then, according to Wellhausen, JE represents a period of Israelitish history so early that the idea of centralizing the worship had not yet found its way into the cultus; and this opinion he held, among many others, by such able Semitic scholars as Hoffmann (Magazin für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums, 1879, pp. 17, 18), Franz Delitzsch (1. c. pp. 562, 563), Strack (in Herzog's Encyk. s. v. "Pentateuch"), Bredenkampf (Gesetz u. Propheten, pp. 129-139), and Riehm (Gesetzgebung Mosis im Lande Moab, p 25 f.).