is plain; the Priestly Code became law for Judaism.  In sacrifice, ITS demands were those which were regarded; but in order to fulfil all righteousness the precept of Deuteronomy was also maintained, this being applied—­against the obvious meaning and certainly only as a result of later scrupulosity of the scribes—­not to sacrifices but to ordinary secular slaughterings, from which also accordingly the priests received a portion, the cheeks (according to Jerome on Malachi ii. 3), including the tongue, the precept being thus harmonistically doubled. 1 At an earlier

******************************************** 1.  Philo, De praem. sacerd., sec. 3.  Josephus, Ant., iii. 9. 2; iv. 4, 4. ********************************************

date the priests at Jerusalem received money from those who employed them (Deuteronomy xviii. 8), but for this had the obligation of maintaining the temple; from this one can discern that the money was properly speaking paid to the sanctuary, and was only conditionally delivered to its servitors.  When they failed to observe the condition, King Jehoash took the money also from them (2Kings xii. 7 seq.).

The meal-offerings are in the Priestly Code a subordinate matter, and the share that falls to the priests is here trifling compared with what they receive of the other sacrifices.  The meal, of which only a handful is sprinkled upon the altar, the baked bread, and the minha altogether are theirs entirely, so also the sin and trespass offerings so frequently demanded, of which God receives only the blood and the fat and the offerer nothing at all (Ezekiel xliv. 29); of the burnt-offering at least the skin falls to their lot, These perquisites, however, none of them in their definite form demonstrably old, and some of them demonstrably the reverse, may be presumed to have had their analogues in the earlier period, so that they cannot be regarded absolutely as augmentation of the priestly income.  In Josiah’s time the mac,c,oth were among the principal means of support of the priests (2Kings xxiii. 9); doubtless they came for the most part from the minha.  Instead of sin and trespass offerings, which are still unknown to Deuteronomy, there were formerly sin and trespass dues in the form of money payments to the priests,—­payments which cannot, however, have been so regular (2Kings xii. 17).  It is as if money payments were in the eye of the law too profane; for atonement there must be shedding of blood.  That the skin of the holocaust, which cannot well be consumed on the altar, should fall to the priest is so natural an arrangement, that one will hardly be disposed to regard it as new, although Ezekiel is silent about a due which was not quite worthless (xliv. 28-31).