In point of fact any other difference whatever between Jewish practice and the Law might better have been adduced against the thesis of Graf,—­for example, the absence of Urim and Thummim (Nehemiah vii. 65), or of the forty-eight Levitical cities, the church of the returned exiles instead of that of the twelve tribes of Israel, the second temple instead of the tabernacle, Ezra instead of Moses, the sons of Zadok instead of the sons of Aaron, the absence of the other marks of Mosaicity.  For the position of the Levites is the Achilles heel of the Priestly Code.  If the Levites at a later date were still further lowered beneath the priests, and put into a worse position in favour of these, this nevertheless presupposes the distinction between the two; let it first then be shown that the distinction is known to the genuine Old Testament, and that, in particular, it is introduced by Ezekiel not as a new thing, but as of immemorial antiquity.  Or is the primary fact that the separation between priests and Levites was set up only in the Priestly Code and in Judaism, and that its genesis can be traced with confidence from the time of Josiah downwards, a fact of less importance than the secondary one that the distinction extended itself somewhat further still in the subsequent development of Judaism ?

B.  HISTORY OF TRADITION.
_________________

PLEON (HMISU PANTOS—­ Hesiod Op. 40

CHAPTER VI.  CHRONICLES

Under the influence of the spirit of each successive age, traditions originally derived from one source were very variously apprehended and shaped; one way in the ninth and eighth centuries, another way in the seventh and sixth, and yet another in the fifth and fourth.  Now, the strata of the tradition show the same arrangement as do those of the legislation.  And here it makes no difference whether the tradition be legendary or historical, whether it relates to pre-historic or to historic times; the change in the prevailing ideas shows itself equally in either case.  To show the truth of this in the case of the Hexateuch is of course our primary object, but we make our commencement rather with the properly historical books.  For on various grounds we are here able with greater certainty to assert:  Such was the aspect of history at this period and such at that; such were the influences that had the ascendancy at one time, and such those which prevailed at another.

We begin the inquiry where the matter is clearest—­namely, with the Book of Chronicles.  Chronicles, which properly speaking forms but a single book along with Ezra and Nehemiah, is a second history running parallel with the Books of Samuel and Kings, and we are here in the favourable position of starting with the objects of comparison distinctly defined, instead of having as usual to begin by a critical separation of sources of various age combined in one document.  And,