Chapter 68

What importance the written letter, the book of the law, possessed for the Jews, we all know from the New Testament. Of ancient Israel, again, it is said in the introductory poem of Goethe's West-Oestlicher Divan, that the word was so important there, because it was a spoken word. The contrast which Goethe evidently perceived is really characteristic, and deserves some further attention.

X.I.

X.I.1. Even if it be the case that Deuteronomy and the Priestly Code were only reduced to writing at a late period, still there remains the Jehovistic legislation (Exodus xx.-xxiii. xxxiv.) which might be regarded as the document which formed the starting-point of the religious history of Israel. And this position is in fact generally claimed for it; yet not for the whole of it, since it is commonly recognised that the Sinaitic Book of the Covenant (Exodus xx.-xxiii. 19) was given to a people who were settled and thoroughly accustomed to agriculture, and who, moreover, had passed somewhat beyond the earliest stage in the use of money. /1/

-- Footnote 1. Exodus xxi. 35: compare xxi. 33 with Judges ix. 4 -- Footnote

The Decalogue alone is commonly maintained to be in the strictest sense Mosaic. This is principally on account of the statement that it was written down on the two stone tables of the sacred ark. Yet of Deuteronomy also we read, both that it was written on twelve stones and that it was deposited in the sacred ark (Deuteronomy xxxi. 26). We cannot therefore place implicit reliance on such statements. What is attested in this way of the Decalogue seems to find confirmation in 1Kings viii. 9. But the authority of this statement is greatly weakened by the fact that it occurs in a passage which has undergone the Deuteronomistic revision, and has been, in addition to this, subjected to interpolation. The more weight must we therefore allow to the circumstance, which makes for a different conclusion, that the name "The Ark of the Covenant" (i.e., the box of the law) /1/ is peculiar to the later writers,

-- Footnote 1. Compare 1Kings viii. 21, "the ark wherein is the covenant of Jehovah," and viii 9, "there was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone, which Moses put there at Horeb, the tables of the covenant which Jehovah had made with the children of Israel." The Deuteronomistic expression "tables of the covenant", alternates in the Priestly Code with that of "tables of testimony"; i e., likewise of the law. For H(DWT, "the testimony," 2Kings xi. 12, read HC(DWT, "the bracelets," according to 2Samuel i. 10. -- Footnote

and, when it occurs in older narratives, is proved by its sporadic appearance, as well as by a comparison of the Septuagint with the Massoretic text, to be a correction. In early times the ark was not a mere casket for the law; the "the ark of Jehovah" was of itself important, as we see clearly enough from 1Samuel iv.-vi. Like the twelve maccebas which surrounded the altar on the holy hill of Shechem, and which only later assumed the character of monuments of the law, so the ark of the covenant no doubt arose by a change of meaning out of the old idol. If there were stones in it at all, they probably served some other purpose than that of writing materials, otherwise they would not have been hidden as a mystery in the darkness of the sanctuary; they must have been exposed to public view. Add to this that the tradition is not agreed as to the tenor of the ten words said to have been inserted on the two tables; two decalogues being preserved to us, Exodus xx. and Exodus xxxiv., which are quite different from each other. It results from this that there was no real or certain knowledge as to what stood on the tables, and further that if there were such stones in the ark--and probably there were--there was nothing written on them. This is not the place to decide which of the two versions is prior to the other; the negative result we have obtained is sufficient for our present purpose.

X.I.2. Ancient Israel was certainly not without God-given bases for the ordering of human life; only they were not fixed in writing. Usage and tradition were looked on to a large extent as the institution of the Deity. Thus, for example, the ways and rules of agriculture. Jehovah had instructed the husbandman and taught him the right way. He it was whose authority gave to the unwritten laws of custom their binding power. "It is never so done in Israel," "that is folly in Israel," and similar expressions of insulted public conscience are of frequent occurrence, and show the power of custom: the fear of God acts as a motive for respecting it. "Surely there is no fear of God in this place, and they will slay me for my wife's sake," so Abraham says to himself in Gerar. "How shall I do such great wrong and sin against God?" says Joseph to the woman in Egypt. "The people of Sodom were wicked and sinned grievously against Jehovah," we read in Genesis xiii. 13. Similarly Deuteronomy