80 



THE KEY. CHANGELLOE J. J. LIAS, M.A., ON 



Deuteronomy, the Code assigns nothing else for the Levites to do'. 

 The book of Chronicles represents the completed Law in action 

 according to the Wellhausen school, but if we compare its state- 

 ments about the Levites with the rules of P, we find that, according 

 to the latter, many of the duties assigned by the Chronicler to the 

 Levites would have been visited with death by the author of P ! 



If we take the Priestly Code alone, the priesthood is represented 

 as being very simply constituted — one man, the High Priest, and 

 his sons. If we turn to the first book of Samuel, to the account of 

 Eli, we find that the High Priest has patronage and emoluments at 

 his disposal : — "Put me, I pray thee, into one of the priest's offices 

 that I may eat a piece of bread." There is no organization 

 corresponding to this state of things in P. Further, Leviticus refers 

 to a primitive time when men slew their own sacrifices. Later on, 

 under the kings, when the people were more civilized, this duty was 

 delegated to others, and Ezekiel complains that heathen were 

 employed to kill the sacrifices. Throughout P, the congregation is 

 evidently within a stone's throw of the Sanctuary. Thus in 

 Leviticus xvii it is assumed that animals can be brought to the door 

 of the Sanctuary for sacrifice, and in P if any man is ill or cere- 

 monially unclean in the first month of the year, he is to keep the 

 Passover in the second month. How would such provisions fit a 

 period when there was a large diaspora in Babylon and Egypt ? So 

 with the provisions for leprosy. How was it possible for a man in 

 Babylon in post-exilic days to bring a garment suspected of leprosy 

 to Jerusalem, for the priests to examine it 1 A very striking case is 

 that of the daughters of Zelophehad. This must have been a case 

 of common occurrence, when a peasant died and left no m^ale heir ; 

 it could not have been left to be regulated many centuries later by 

 a forger. The inheritance of Zelophehad was confirmed to his 

 daughters, but it was objected by the other members of the tribe, 

 that if these married out of the tribe, the inheritance would pass 

 away from the tribe ; so it was enacted that they must marry with- 

 in their own tribe. How could this law have been laid down after 

 the exile when the tribes had ceased to have a separate existence ? 



Professor Eerdmans has dealt with Leviticus lately in " Das 

 Buch Leviticus " [1912], and however far we may be from accepting 

 his construction the study contains a great deal of very valuable 

 material. 



