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cation of the blood to keep it fit for the service. What is certain is that the death of the victim is nowhere treated as a punishment, and there is no intimation that the victim takes the place of the guilty man.

The idea of purification reaches its climax in the ritual of the great day which we call the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16). The underlying thought is that the sanctity of the dwelling may have been impaired by the uncleanness to which the people were so liable. This sanctity is so great that no one must enter the inner chamber except the high priest, and he can enter only on this one day in the year. On this occasion he must take special precautions, offering a sin-offering and a burnt offering for himself and then putting on vestments kept for this occasion. The bells on the skirt of his robe notify the divinity of his approach, lest, coming unannounced, he provoke the divine anger. In entering the Presence he is to carry a censer with burning incense so that the cloud will prevent his looking directly at the object of his reverence, for this would be fatal. After purifying himself and his household by this first sin-offering he is to cast lots on two goats, one of which is thus assigned to Yahweh and the other to Azazel. The one for Yahweh is a sin-offering for the people. This one is slain and the blood is brought into the inner sanctuary and sprinkled both on the cover of the ark and all about this most sacred room in order to cleanse it from the impurities of the children of Israel. In the same way the high priest is to "unsin" the altar by sprinkling the blood upon it (16: 15-18).

The account makes plain the purpose of the sin-offering. The sanctuary in the course of the year may have been defiled by some of those unwitting sins to which every man is liable; therefore there must be a special purification reaching even within the veil. This is effected by sprinkling the blood of this sin-offering in the most sacred place and also upon the altar. The further ceremony is without parallel in Hebrew religion, unless the bird set free at the cleansing of the leper be an exception. It consists in loading the

other goat (scapegoat, we call it traditionally) with the sins or rather with the impurities of the people and sending it thus laden into the wilderness. According to Hebrew tradition, though this is not directly asserted in our text, the goat was taken to the edge of a precipice and thrown down from it. Since the goat is distinctly said to be for Azazel, and since in postbiblical documents Azazel is known to be one of the demons, it seems clear that we have here one of the ancient sacrifices to these uncanny beings elsewhere so sternly repressed. The rite is a cathartic one, like many which we meet in other religions. In these rites sin or disease or impurity is transferred to an object, animate or inanimate, and then thrown away or driven out of the community.

The use of two goats in this ceremony shows plainly enough the twofold aspect of the idea of purification: the removal of uncleanness and the communication of sanctity. This double-faced idea underlies the whole Levitical system. The rite of circumcision is both removal of impurity and consecration to the divinity. Its importance is indicated by the penalty of death or excommunication imposed for neglect of the rite. The Sabbath is a sacred day, and any profanation of it is punished in the same way (Ex. 35: 1-3). This is brought out by an anecdote in which Yahweh himself decrees the death of a man for the comparatively trifling act of gathering sticks on that day (Num. 15: 32–36). The blasphemer of the sacred name is punished in the same way, and it is apparent from the anecdote which enforces this lesson that it is wrong to mingle the sacred Jewish blood with that of gentiles, for the offender in this case was son of an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father (Lev. 24: 10-23). The rite of cleansing the leper, which is curiously parallel to the consecration of the priest, shows this twofold aspect. It takes pains to remove the taboo of the disease, and at the same time it dedicates the convalescent to the service of Yahweh. The mechanical nature of the idea of defilement is attested by the treatment of a house infected with mould

or mildew. It is pronounced leprous and submitted to the judgment of the priest just like the human leper.

Other enactments of this literature might be adduced, but these are sufficient to show the motive of the authors. The very punctiliousness of their demands shows the earnestness of their conviction. To them Israel was no longer a nation among the nations; it was a church whose first, and one might say whose only, duty was to keep itself unspotted from the world. While the temple stood and the rites were duly performed, and while the Jews kept themselves free from demonic influences, all would be well. Not only the prosperity of the scattered Jewish communities but the wellbeing of the world at large depended on the observance of the Law. The danger of formalism which resulted from this emphasis of the opus operatum is obvious. The authors of the code would reply to our objection: "Formalism or no formalism, we are bound to obey the divine ordinances, and this is, in fact, our life." Men of a more sophisticated age may easily underestimate the amount of serious religious purpose which finds satisfaction in the strict observance of such a ritualistic system.

It is easy to misunderstand also the zeal of the authors for the prerogatives of the priesthood. If the service of the temple was to be worthily performed the ministers of the sanctuary must have an adequate support. It was not altogether because the priestly writers were themselves priests (we do not know that they were) that they made such extravagant demands for tithes and contributions. If the prosperity of the race depends on the hierarchy, it is a small thing for the laymen to provide an adequate support for its members. Deuteronomy has shown us that in the early period the members of the priestly caste were reckoned among the poor of the land, dependent upon the charity of the faithful. Ezekiel sanctioned the exclusion of all laymen from the sanctuary, and at the same time provided that all the offices should be in the hands of consecrated persons. The Priestcode assumes that Ezekiel's arrangement was in

effect from the Mosaic age, and takes care that the whole priestly clan shall be duly supported. First of all, fortyeight cities, including the most important places in the country, are set apart for the tribe of Levi-something quite contradictory to the declarations of earlier authors (some of them priestly even), according to which Levi was not to receive any territory (Num. 18: 21-24). Then they are to have a tithe of the gross produce of the land. Of this the priests are to have a tithe. Considerable portions of the offerings also go to the priests, and this is doubtless in accordance with ancient usage. The subject is of subordinate interest to the student of religion, illustrating as it does only the tendency of a hierarchy to claim more and more for itself in the way of emoluments and in the way of dignity. The climax was reached in the Greek period, when the high priest became the civil as well as the ecclesiastical head of the community, and when the titles of king and high priest were given to the same person.

The separatism, the scrupulosity, and the externalism of the Pharisees developed from the ideas embodied in the Priestcode. Fortunately for the history of religion, the Priestcode was only one part of the literature of Israel in this period. Within the rigid frame provided by the Law there was room for a more spiritual and vital piety than that of the ritualists. The best evidence is found in the documents which we have still to study.

CHAPTER XIII

THE DOGMATIC BIAS

We have seen how thoroughly Ezekiel taught his people to misunderstand their own history. We have seen also how members of the Deuteronomic school rewrote the earlier narrative to make it teach Deuteronomic lessons. The priestly writers could not do otherwise than carry on this process. The greatest treasure of Israel was its literature. But the lesson taught by this literature must be made plainer if it was to edify a generation dominated by priestly ideals. These ideals were thoroughly theocratic; the wilderness period was a time of gracious obedience, because Yahweh directly controlled his people by the mouth of Moses. The record of Israel's later history was a record of defection, partly because the monarchy was a human institution, not divinely ordained and not divinely guided. Hence the view of the later strata of the books of Samuel, according to which the demand for a king was a proof of the depravity of the people, and a rejection of Yahweh himself. In this same strand of the narrative Samuel is presented as the theocratic ruler, a second Moses, who has only to pray to Yahweh in order to secure a miraculous deliverance from the Philistines (I Sam. 7:3-14). That this is not history needs no demonstration.

It is not always easy to distinguish between the Deuteronomic redaction and that of the priestly writers. In fact, the point of view of the two schools was so similar that it was easy for the later to expand the text of the earlier. The prayer of Solomon, for example, is Deuteronomic in tone, but it has evidently been retouched by a hand which

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