IS THE SO-CALLED " PRIESTLY CODE " OP POST-EXILIC DATE ? 66 



are, and which are not, post-exihc, his methods cannot possibly 

 lead to any satisfactory result. 



So much for the " scientific criticism" of which we have heard 

 so much of late. It not only establishes nothing, but it makes 

 all attempts to establish anything impossible. It makes a great 

 show of learning and ingenuity, but the learning is beside the 

 point, and the ingenuity is w^asted. For true inductive pro- 

 cesses we must have ascertained fads on wdiich to rely ; the 

 destructive criticism, now in vogue in the field of Scripture, first 

 destroys all the facts, and presents us with undemonstrated 

 propositions in their stead. 



Before I proceed to deal w^ith the phenomena of the Priestly 

 Code as evidence of its date, I must explain what is meant by 

 the " Priestly Code." The phrase is an invention on the part of 

 the modern critic ; we critics of the older school contend that 

 there is no such thing, but that what has been so called is an 

 integral part of the Law of Moses. When separated, by a process 

 highly ingenious but altogether inadmissible, it consists of a series 

 of extracts from the Five Books of Moses, based on the principles 

 indicated above. Sometimes it consists of chapters, or portions 

 of chapters, forming passages of considerable length, but more 

 often it is made up of scraps of three or four verses, or even 

 sonietimes of half or a third of a verse said to have been intro- 

 duced by a late editor into a compilation of his own from the works 

 of earlier authors. But the wdiole Book of Leviticus forms part 

 of it. It would take up too much time for me to go into details, 

 but these may be found in Dr. Driver's Introduction, or in any 

 other book professing to describe the latest form which criticism 

 of this kind has assumed. I may add that an important 

 discovery has lately been made by Mr. Harold Wiener in 

 connection with this subject to which I will presently refer. 



I shall now proceed to show (1) that the alleged characteristics 

 of the Priestly Code are, scarcely any of them, post-exilic : and 

 (2) that the marked post-exilic Hebrew of Ezra and Nehemiah 

 display characteristics which are as markedly absent from the 

 Priestly Code. 



(1) Some introductory remarks may be needed before we go 

 into detail. The delimitation of the so-called Priestly Code was 

 first made when Wellhausen and Kuenen were contending that 

 Ezekiel was " the father of Judaism," and that Ezra had in his 

 hand the completed Pentateuch when he read it before assembled 

 Israel.* Circumstances have since led their disciples to postdate 



^ Ezra, ix, 3. 



