but people did not concern themselves with it theoretically, and had not the least occasion for reducing it to a code.  But once the temple was in ruins, the cultus at an end, its PERSONNEL out of employment, it is easy to understand how the sacred praxis should have become a matter of theory and writing, so that it might not altogether perish, and how an exiled priest should have begun to paint the picture of it as he carried it in his memory, and to publish it as a programme for the future restoration of the theocracy.  Nor is there any difficulty if arrangements, which as long as they were actually in force were simply regarded as natural, were seen after their abolition in a transfiguring light, and from the study devoted to them gained artificially a still higher value.  These historical conditions supplied by the exile sufffice to make clear the transition from Jeremiah to Ezekiel, and the genesis of Ezekiel xl.-xlviii.  The co-operation of the Priestly Code is here not merely unnecessary, it would be absolutely disconcerting.  Ezekiel’s departure from the ritual of the Pentateuch cannot be explained as intentional alterations of the original; they are too casual and insignificant.  The prophet, moreover, has the rights of authorship as regards the end of his book as well as for the rest of it; he has also his right to his picture of the future as the earlier prophets had to theirs.  And finally, let its due weight be given to the simple fact that an exiled priest saw occasion to draft such a sketch of the temple worship.  What need would there have been for it, if the realised picture, corresponding completely to his views, had actually existed, and, being already written in a book, wholly obviated any danger lest the cultus should become extinct through the mere fact of its temporary cessation?

Here again a way of escape is open by assuming a lifeless existence of the law down to Ezra’s time.  But if this is done it is unallowable to date that existence, not from Moses, but from some other intermediate point in the history of Israel.  Moreover, the assumption of a codification either as preceding all praxis, or as alongside and independent of it, is precisely in the case of sacrificial ritual one of enormous difficulty, for it is obvious that such a codification can only be the final result of an old and highly developed use, and not the invention of an idle brain.  This consideration also makes retreat into the theory of an illegal praxis impossible, and renders the legitimacy of the actually subsisting indisputable.

II.II.

At all times, then, the sacrificial worship of Israel existed, and had great importance attached to it, but in the earlier period it rested upon custom, inherited from the fathers, in the post-exilian on the law of Jehovah, given through Moses.  At first it was naive, and what was chiefly considered was the quantity and quality of the gifts; afterwards it became legal,—­the scrupulous fulfilment of the law, that is, of the prescribed ritual, was what was looked to before everything.  Was there then, apart from this, strictly speaking, no material difference?  To answer this question our researches must be carried further afield, after some preliminary observations have been made in order to fix our position.