[This is from: Pentateuch & Haftarahs, reformatting and highlights added. Those who are clueless about certain ‘research’ conclusions that have been passed off as ‘reliable’ and ‘true’, debunking the historicity and authenticity of the books composing the Torah will find these “additional notes” surprising. Those who are familiar with a hypothesis claiming that these first five books could be attributed to later authors or different authors, designating ‘P’ for ‘Pristley’, ‘E’ for ‘Elohist’, ‘Y’ or ‘J’ for Yahwist, etc. —- will find these notes illuminating, for the research done here debunks that hypothesis as well as other similar theories.–Admin1. ]
A. THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS
Its Antiquity and Mosaic Authorship
Both the antiquity and the Mosaic authorship of the Book of Leviticus are denied by Bible Critics.
- They declare Leviticus to be part of that section of the Pentateuch which they call the ‘Priestly code’ and usually designate by the letter P.
- This ‘Priestly code,’ or P, is supposed to include, besides Leviticus, some portions of Genesis and Exodus (especially the chapters on the Tabernacle) and twenty-eight chapters of Numbers.
- They maintain that while some portions of P may be earlier than others, they were all edited, or written, by Ezra and his School and made an integral part of the Law of Moses in the year 444 before the Christian era, or very shortly thereafter.
It must be clearly understood that this idea of a ‘Priestly code’ and of its late origin is nothing more than pure hypothesis, and there is not a shred of evidence to show that it ever constituted a separate work.
In fact, the whole Documentary theory as propounded by Julius Wellhausen and his followers—i.e. that the Pentateuch consists of separate ‘documents’ of different date and authorship—rests on unproved assumptions.
It is easy to make any theory look plausible, if the facts are selected or trimmed judiciously; and Bible Critics are most judicious both in selecting the facts and in trimming them to suit their purpose. When the facts are against their theory, the facts are altered or pronounced to be a later gloss in the passage in which they occur, or the Critics declare the whole passage to be sheer forgery. Irreconcilable differences between the ‘documents’ are created, leading to a complete reversal of Israel’s story. And the principal support for such a topsy-turvy presentation of Bible history and religion is the alleged existence of these irreconcilable differences between the ‘documents’. It is all reasoning in a vicious circle.
- Outstanding scholars, like Prof. Sayce, have from the first pronounced the Documentary theory of the Pentateuch to be a ‘baseless fabric of subjective imagination’.
- Others have come to share his view, realizing more and more the insuperable objections to the theory of the late origin of the Levitical legislation.
- The whole Critical theory is to-day being questioned on fundamental issue.
- Nevertheless, the popularizers of theological literature ignore altogether the existence of any other opinion than that of the Critics, and they continue to write as if the lateness of Leviticus were indeed one of the ‘finalities of scholarship’.
- That nothing could be further from the truth will be plain to any student who will take the trouble to consult the following books:—
- J. Robertson, The Early Religion of Israel (William Blackwood)—the first critical investigation of the Wellhausen hypothesis in English;
- James Orr, The Problem of the Old Testament (James Nisbet)—gives a comprehensive survey of the weaknesses of the Critical position;
- W. L. Baxter, Sanctuary and Sacrifice (Eyre and Spottiswoode)—demolishes the foundation pillars of Wellhausen’s structure;
- H. M. Wiener, Essays in Pentateuchal Critism (Elliot Stock)—is a lawyer’s examination of the Critical claims; and
- D. Hoffmann, Die Wichtigsten Instanzen gegen die Graf-Wellhausensche Hypothese (Poppelauer, Berlin)—written over a generation ago, but still unanswered because unanswerable.
THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE AGAINST THE CRITICAL THEORY
Leviticus merely continues the story of the departure from Egypt and of the Children of Israel in the Wilderness.
The few incidents in Leviticus, as well as its legislation, point to a sojourn in the Desert of the Sinai Peninsula prior to the occupation of Canaan. A verse such as ‘After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do; and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do’ (XVIII, 3), is in itself decisive in favour of the Mosaic date.
In many passages of the Book, the going forth from Egypt, and the manifestation of God’s protecting power in the release, are spoken of as events of recent occurrence, fresh in the memory of those who had experienced the Divine mercy.
- Israel is contemplated as living in tents, and the conditions of life which are presupposed are those of a camp (see on Lev. XVIII, 3).
- The Sanctuary is depicted as a temporary structure of a portable nature, such as would be required while the people were wandering in the Wilderness.
- Leviticus assumes the people to be within reach of the religious centre, and in a position to attend the Sanctuary during the pilgrimage Festivals:The ritual of Azazel on the Day of Atonement is patently archaic, and had to be modified to meet the conditions of later times.
- in Ezra’s time, this was impossible, as the bulk of the people was in Babylon, and another portion drifted back to Egypt.
- The priests are always denoted as ‘Aaron and his sons.’Similarly, the story of the blasphemer in Leviticus (XXIV, 10-12) is inexplicable on the Critical theory. A son of an Israelitish woman blasphemes, he is put in ward, but no one knows what punishment is to be meted out for that offence. Compare with this the story of Naboth and his judicial murder for alleged blasphemy in 1 Kings XXI, which chapter the Critics declare to be centuries older than Leviticus. When Jezebel, by means of perjured witnesses, convicts Naboth of that grave offence, there is not the slightest doubt in the mind of the judges and the people—as little as in Jezebel’s own mind—what his punishment is to be. Now, if we were to admit that the narrative of the blasphemer was indeed written, or even ‘edited’, for the benefit of the post-Exilic community, it is reasonable to assume that in those days there would be doubt as to the penalty for blasphemy?
- Their initial consecration to the priestly office is described (Lev. VIII), to which ceremony ‘all the congregation’ was summoned (ibid. v. 3).
- This is meaningless on the supposition of the late origin of the Book.
- Furthermore, P. exalts the High Priest.
- In Ezra’s age, the High Priests were not worthy of honour, and seem to have been among those that attempted to thwart the work of religious reformation.
- The evidence of the language of Leviticus precludes a late date of composition.
- Reihn, Delitzsch, Dillmann, and Hoffmann have demonstrated that it cannot truthfully be said to show traces of Exilic or post-Exilic times.
- The technical terms of the sacrificial regulations point to hoary antiquity, and are linguistically derived from ancient Arabic and Minaean (Hommel).
- There is in Leviticus an entire absence of neo-Babylonian or Persian loan-words that would reflect the age of the Exile.
- Of course, the language, vocabulary, and style differ considerably from that of the historical parts of the Pentateuch. But this is due to the nature of the subjects treated in Leviticus:e.g., sacrifices, leprosy, land laws, as against stories of family life, national history, and moral admonition in the other books.
- One hundred years ago, Macaulay drafted the Penal Code for India. In that work, his whole manner of writing—vocabulary, sentence-formation, and style—is different from that used by him in his History, Essays, Speeches, or Ballads. Yet, would anyone question Macaulay’s authorship of the Indian Code, or would anyone advance the hypothesis of the existence of five separate Macaulays—one each for the History, Essays, Speeches, Ballads, and Code—and living centuries apart form one another?
- Bible Critics point to the Tochacha, the Admonition in Lev. XXVI, as proof that at any rate that chapter must have been written at a late date, because the punishments foreshadowed in that chapter (v. 14-45) were clearly realized in the time of the Babylonian Exile.
- Those who do not eliminate the Divine from history or from human life regard the Tochacha as belonging to that unique mass of Bible predictions that have been fulfilled to the letter, and that are wholly inexplicable except on the Providential view of human history.
- But even quite part from the predictive element in prophecy, there is no reason to doubt the Mosaic authorship of this chapter.
- Hoffmann has drawn attention to a parallel of the Tochacha in the far older code of Hammurabi. One thousand years before Moses, that code concludes with the promise of blessings of the god Shamash for obedience to his law, and with a detailed account of the calamities that would overtake those who are faithless to them. Leviticus XXVI is thus merely another instance of the principle, which the Jewish exegetes of the Middle Ages translated to mean—Scripture chooses those forms of literary expression that would be most effective with the hearers to whom they are addressed.
- One more striking circumstance.
- The Ten Commandments are given on Mt. Sinai,
- and the promulgation of the other laws takes place in the Wilderness and the plains of Moab.
- How came they to be attributed to lands outside the Holy Land, territories that had no sacred associations for the men of Ezra’s age, or for that matter even for the heroes of the Patriarchal age? Surely such a strange, ‘inconvenient,’ unnatural tradition is not likely to have been invented, but is based on fact. And if so, the events associated with that tradition could only have taken place in Mosaic times.
IMPROBABILITY OF THE CRITICAL THEORY
It is evident that if the Critical account of the origin and promulgation of the so-called Priestly code is accepted, it is necessary to attribute deliberate fraud to Ezra. The Critics do not feel this moral difficulty, because the avowed object of many of the Critics has for a long time been to ‘deprive Israel of its halo’, and to degrade its saints and heroes. But even those who do not recoil from attributing fraud to the sacred writers should weigh the sheer improbability of the introduction of a new code in the manner put forward by the Critical theory.
‘It is utterly out of the question, that a body of laws, never before heard of, could be imposed upon the people as though they had been given by Moses centuries before; and that they could have been accepted and obeyed by them, notwithstanding the fact that these laws imposed new and serious burdens, set aside established usages to which the people were devotedly attached, and conflicted with the interests of powerful classes of the people’ (W. H. Green).
Thus, on the theory of the Critics, tithes of corn, oil, and cattle for the support of the Levitical order had never before been heard of; yet the people submit to the new burdens without dissent.
- The Book of Nehemiah shows that there was a strongly disaffected party and a religiously faithless party in Jerusalem; yet no one raises as doubt.
- The Book of Deuteronomy was in the hands of at least the priests; yet even the hostile members of that body do not attempt to ward off the alleged new legislation by appealing to Deuteronomy XIII, 1, ‘All this word which I command you, that shall ye observe to do; thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.’
- Even the Samaritans—then the bitterest enemies of Ezra and the Jews—are supposed to receive ‘Ezra’s Torah’ as the undoubted work of Moses, and seem to keep on changing and enlarging it, as the followers of Ezra—on the assumption of the Critics—keep on making new additions to it for at least a century after his death!
The improbability of Ezra attempting to pass off his work as the work of Moses, or of his succeeding in such a hypothetical attempt, will be considerably increased, when we realize the lack of agreement between the ‘Priestly code’ and the conditions that confronted Ezra and his generation.
- P brings many things that could have been only of archeological interest. Its largest section deals with the portable Sanctuary in the Wilderness; but in Ezra’s time, the Tabernacle, the Ark, the Urim and Thummim had long ceased to exist.
- The tithe-laws as given in P are intended for a large body of Levites and a small number of priests, in the proportion of ten Levites to one priest.
- But the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell us that in the community under Ezra’s spiritual guidance there were, on the contrary, twelve priests to one Levite! And yet Ezra is alleged by the Critics to have spent fourteen years, from 458-444, in the adaptation of the older legal enactments to the conditions of the community in Palestine (Oxford Hexateuch, I, 137).
Even more strange, on the theory of the Critics, is the absence of all reference in the ‘Priestly code’ to the burning religious problems of the returned exiles, such as intermarriage. Ezra is crushed by grief and despair when he realizes the extent of the evil in the new community.
‘And when I heard this thing, I rent my garments and my mantle, and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down … I fell upon my knees and spread out my hands unto the Lord my God.’
He then set about the work of reformation; he called upon the nobles and people to put away their strange wives. They answer with a loud voice, ‘As thou hast said, so must we do’; and they enter upon the covenant, so fateful for the future of Israel and of monotheism. But to all this matter of intermarriage, which was of vital concern to Ezra and his School, there is not the slightest reference in the very legislation which, we are asked to believe, was produced for the salvaging of the community from the mortal danger of absorption among the heathens. No less than two chapters in the ‘Priestly code’ (Lev. XVIII and xx) are devoted to the subject of prohibited marriages; but not a word to the question which shook the post-Exilic community to its foundations. Surely an unaccountable omission—if the Critics are right.
There is, furthermore, no provision in P for the singers, porters, Nethinim, and Levites of Ezra’s day. ‘The musical services of the Temple are as much beyond its line of vision as the worship of the Synagogue.’ In view of the minute way in which Leviticus regulated worship for the Mosaic generation, it is conceivable that, if Leviticus were a product of Ezra’s age, there would be in it nothing directly bearing on the manner of contemporary worship?
THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE
A favourite argument against the early date of Leviticus is the so-called argument from silence. It is somewhat as follows:
Throughout the period of the Judges and Kings, we find that the precepts of the Book of Leviticus were violated; hence, they could not then have existed. Furthermore, it is alleged that there is no explicit reference to them in the historical books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings—another supposed proof that they could not have been known.
As to the first consideration, even cases of flagrant violation do not disprove the existence of the law as laid down in Leviticus. Neither a Jewish law, nor any other law, necessarily presupposes universal compliance with its terms. All historical experience is against it.
It is unnecessary to point to modern laws of incontestable and universally acknowledged existence that are accompanied by open and organized violation. And the same is true of ancient laws, even of those believed to have Divine sanction.
Take the prohibition of image-worship in the Ten Commandments.
Canon Charles has aptly pointed out that for fifteen centuries the whole of Christendom disregarded it, and half of the Christian Church is still disregarding it.
If violation of a law were proof of its non-existence, then the Second Commandment has to this day not yet given!
In fact, the Critics themselves note that the existence and the disregard of a law-book may very well go together.
Deuteronomy became known—they hold—in the year 620, during the reign of King Josiah. It was observed during his lifetime; but immediately after his death, it was totally disregarded.
The attitude of the Critics is therefore as follows:—non-observance of the Law in the ages after Moses is proof absolute that no such Law was ever promulgated in the days of Moses; but non-observance of the Law after the death of Josiah does not prove the non-existence of the Law in Josiah’s time. In other words, ‘witnesses are reliable when they testify in favour of the Critics; but their veracity is promptly impeached, if their testimony is on the other side’ (Baxter).
As of for the second consideration,
viz, the silence of the Historical books, that is an even feebler support for the Critical position.
A few examples will illustrate its feebleness. Thus, none of the Prophets speaks of the Ten Commandments, and there are exceeding few references to Sabbath, New Moon, or circumcision outside the Pentateuch; and yet no responsible historian doubts the existence of these institutions in ancient Israel.
As for the Day of Atonement, the first clear and unmistakable mention of it after the Pentateuch is in Roman times by Josephus! Furthermore, all Critics admit that the Passover and the Feast of Weeks existed in Israel since the earliest days. The Feast of Weeks, however, is nowhere named in the Historical books of the Bible; and Passover only twice, and then only in connection with exceptional conditions. An examination of the passages in which Passover is alluded to (Josh. V and II Kings XXIII) shows conclusively that, but for these exceptional conditions, viz. that the Festival had for a long time fallen into neglect, there would have been no record of its celebration. Would, in that case, the silence of the Bible have been valid evidence that Passover was unknown until after the Exile?
Similarly, wherever that Sabbath is referred to outside the Pentateuch, it is nearly always in passages where the Israelites are rebuked for desecrating the holy day. Had the Sabbath been duly observed by the Israelites, none of the Prophets would have had occasion to mention it. The fact, then, that the Day of Atonement is never alluded to in the Historical books is really evidence in favour of its regular observance.
Critics dwell on the fact that the Day of Atonement is not mentioned in 1 Kings VIII, 65, which describes the celebration of the dedication of Solomon’s Temple. That celebration lasted a fortnight, during which period the tenth of the seventh month occurred, and there is no record that the festivities were suspended for that day. But neither is there in that chapter any indication that the popular rejoicings were moderated on the Sabbath day. Are we to argue that the Sabbath was unknown? We have here but another instance that, in regard to the feasts and fasts, Scripture does not record what is usual and normal, but only what is unusual and abnormal.
This also explains Nehemiah VIII. That chapter describes the unusual events in the seventh month of the year 444, among them the observance of the Feast of Tabernacles on the 15th, ‘for since the days of Joshua the son of Nun unto that day had not the children of Israel done so’ ( v. 17). It is silent in regard to the Day of Atonement, because evidently there had been no interruption in its observance, as it is quite unlikely that the priests ever allowed their supreme function in the Temple service on that day to fall into abeyance. The fast described in Nehemiah IX was not a substitute for the Day of Atonement. It was a special fast for special evils. It was a day of prayer and contrition, on which the people confessed the ‘iniquities of their fathers’ as well as their own. There is not the slightest analogy to the Day of Atonement. It was a fast supplementary to it, called forth by the uniqueness of the circumstances.
What we can deduce from the Biblical data is that past history is repeating itself at the present time.
Just as many modern Jews who neglect the Sabbath and Festivals adhere to Yom Kippur, so in the periods of religious decadence in the past, the Israelites seem to have hallowed the Day of Atonement while ignoring the other Festivals.
‘EVOLUTION’ IN SACRIFICE
‘Those who advocate revolutionary ideas, either in government, in scholarship, or in religion, must show good cause and their arguments must possess overwhelming force. The proof must be clear, strong, and conclusive, without a shadow of suspicion in its reality or its sufficiency.’ None can gainsay the reasonableness of this demand, put forward by an impartial judge of the Critical views, nor the lamentable failure of those views to meet this reasonable demand. ‘But,’ it is said, ‘these new views are in line with the principle of Evolution.
In ritual, as in every thing else, the more developed must be later than the less developed, out of which, on the principle of Evolution, it has gradually grown. As the Priestly code (Leviticus and Numbers) shows the most ramified sacrificial enactments, it must be the latest of all the documents of the Pentateuch.’ We are even told that there is a clear evolution from the simple to the complex in sacrifice, a straight line of development from the Prophetic document (JE) to Deuteronomy (D), from Deuteronomy (D) to Ezekiel, and from Ezekiel to the Priestly Code (P).
If there ever was an instance when the saying was true that ‘theories are vast soap-bubbles with which the grown-up children of Learning amuse themselves, while the ignorant public stand gazing on and dignify these vagaries by the name of Science’, that instance is Evolution in sacrifice.
- In the first place, the straight line of evolution—JE, D, Ezekiel, and P—turns out to be anything but straight.
It is now generally admitted by the Critics that the ‘Priestly code’—or at any rate its most important constituent, the Holiness chapters—is far from being the latest of the series.
Instead of being the culmination of the chain, it is the source of Ezekiel. Ezekiel is saturated with the phraseology of Leviticus XVII-XXVI, and he takes for granted an acquaintance therewith on the part of his Babylonian hearers. But Leviticus is not only older than Ezekiel’s half-ideal and half-allegorical vision of the constitution of the New Jerusalem, it is older than Deuteronomy; for the law of leprosy in Lev. XIII is the basis of Deuteronomy XXIV, 8, and Deuteronomy XII presupposes Lev. XVII.
- In the second place, the whole idea of evolution does not apply to a field of human history like the institution of sacrifice. In the realm of language, for example, it is not true to say that, on the one hand, the more simple the language, the more primitive it is; nor, on the other hand, the more complex it is, the later is its appearance in the life of any ethnic group. Thus, Anglo-Saxon, with its five cases and eight declensions of the noun, is immeasurably more complicated than its direct lineal descendant, modern English; even as Latin is far more complex than Italian. The same holds true in the development of ritual laws. Besides, the statement that Leviticus must be the latest sacrificial legislation, because its ritual laws are the most elaborate, is quite against the evidence of primitive cultures. ‘It does not appear that very simple systems of law and observance do belong to very primitive societies, but rather the contrary’ (Rawlingson).
The case of ‘evolution’ in Biblical sacrifice is furthermore based by its advocates on a series of dogmatic assumptions which are not only not borne out by the facts, but are in direct contradiction to the facts. Among those unwarranted assumptions are the following:
- that in ancient Israel every slaughter for food was an act of sacrificial worship;
- that originally there was unlimited freedom of altar-building;
- that early sacrifices were all joyful feasts, with a total absence of any underlying reference to sin;
- and that sin-and-guilt-offerings are late inventions, the fruit of the ‘monotonous seriousness’ of the so-called Priestly code.
Hoffmann, Wiener, and especially Baxter in his masterly Sanctuary and Sacrifice, have subjected these assumptions to an annihilating examination and shown their utter falsity.
As to sacrifice and slaughter being absolutely synonymous terms, Wiener refers to Exod. XXI, 37 (‘If a man steal an ox, or a sheep, and kill it’), and he asks, Does the Legislator contemplate the sacrifice of stolen animals and of places made holy as the result? To ask the question is to reveal the utter absurdity of the Critical contention on this point.
To proceed to the next assumption of the Critics. The statement that there was unrestricted altar-building, and consequent multiplicity of sanctuaries, in ancient Israel rest, upon a mistranslation of Exodus XX, 21; it does not mean ‘in every place’, but ‘in whatever place’ (Graetz). That is, in whatever place God would designate for worship—Shiloh, Gibeon, Jerusalem—an altar might be erected, and sacrificial worship would there be considered legitimate. Such permission of successive places of worship, till the building of the Central Sanctuary inJerusalem, is something quite different from a recognition of simultaneous sanctuaries in different places.
The charge that the strict regulations concerning the sacrificial cult killed all the spontaneous joy which characterized ancient Israelite worship, implies a partiality on the part of the Critics for the lawless license, foul sensuality, and unrestrained un-restrained jollity of the heathen merry-makings—half-sacrifices, half-picnics—that were not infrequent in times of national apostasy.
For nothing is further form the truth than to say that the Torah did, or does, kill joy. One commandment alone—that concerning Tabernacles, and found in the so-called Priestly code—would be sufficient to refute this.
‘And ye shall take you on the first day the fruit of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook,and ye shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days’ (Lev. XXIII, 40).
The very men whom the Critics would turn into the makers of the ‘Priestly code’ soothe the people when weeping over their sins on that historic New Year’s Day (Nehemiah VIII) with the words:
‘This day is holy unto the LORD your God; mourn not, nor weep. Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto him for whom nothing is prepared; for the joy of the LORD is your strength.’
Even more astounding is the statement, in effect, that the sense of sin was unknown in Israel before the days of Ezra! It is sufficient to point to the agonized cry in Micah VI, 6 and 7—
‘Wherewith shall I come before the LORD …
Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,
The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’
Surely, if the semi-heathen worshipper of whom Micah speaks felt such a sense of guilt, the loyal Israelite did not have to wait for Ezra to invent sin-and-guilt-offerings to ease his soul. And were not penitential psalms written in Babylon some two thousand years before Ezra’s date? So far from sin-and-guilt- offerings being of quite late date, they are distinctly mentioned in pre-Exilic times (e.g. II Kings XII, 17); and, for that matter, are never mentioned in any post-Exilic Prophet.
There is no truth whatsoever in the statements that P assigns ‘an enormous importance’ to the sin offering, or that peace offerings were in post-Exilic times practically banished. In the most exhaustive sacrificial catalogue in the ‘Priestly Code’ (Numbers VII), the other sacrifices outnumber sin offerings in the proportion of seventeen to one!
Probably the strangest argument of all for the lateness of P is, that Ezekiel and his circle wrote down from memory the pre-existent Temple usage; for ‘so long as the cult lasted, no sacrificial code was needed’. This is contrary both to reason and historical analogy.
- It is contrary to reason to maintain ‘that the laws of sacrificial worship were first written down, or even invented, during the Exile in Babylon, where there was no longer any sacrificial worship’ (Dillmann).
- It is also contrary to historical analogy. Written regulations for the existing sacrificial cult existed in Egypt, Babylonia, and Phoenicia.
One concluding consideration.
The Critics themselves tell us that sacrifice was of old the natural and universal expression of religious homage; that religion without sacrificial cult was unthinkable throughout antiquity; and they admit that ‘heathen sacrificial worship was a constant menance to morals and monotheism’ (Wellhausen).
If, therefore, there was any Divine choice of Israel at all, is it not of all things the most natural that Israel’s manner of Divine Service should be freed from everything foul, cruel, immoral, and idolatrous? (Baxter).
But for such regulation at the hand of Moses, banishing everything debasing either to morals or monotheism from what is admitted by all to have been the universal expression of religious homage, his mission would assuredly have failed, and his work would have disappeared.