The reverse of this is what is usually held.  In Deuteronomy, it is considered, there occur clear references to the period of the kings; but the Priestly Code, with its historical presuppositions, does not fit in with any situation belonging to that time, and is therefore older.  When the cultus rests upon the temple of Solomon as its foundation, as in Ezekiel, then every one recognises the later date; but when it is based upon the tabernacle, the case is regarded as quite different.  The great antiquity of the priestly legislation is proved by relegating it to an historical sphere, created by itself out of its own legal premisses, but which is nowhere to be found within, and therefore must have preceded actual history.  Thus (so to speak) it holds itself up in the air by its own waistband.

I.III.1.  It may, however, seem as if hitherto it had only been asserted that the tabernacle rests on an historical fiction.  In truth it is proved; but yet it may be well to add some things which have indeed been said long before now, but never as yet properly laid to heart.  The subject of discussion, be it premised, is the tabernacle of the Priestly Code; for some kind of tent for the ark there may well have been:  in fact, tents were in Palestine the earliest dwellings of idols (Hos. ix.6), and only afterwards gave place to fixed houses; and even the Jehovistic tradition (although not J) knows of a sacred tent 1

************************************* 1.  It is never, however, employed for legislative purposes, but is simply a shelter for the ark; it stands without the camp, as the oldest sanctuaries were wont to do outside the cities.  It is kept by Joshua as aedituus, who sleeps in it, as did Samuel the aedituus for Eli. ****************************************

in connection with the Mosaic camp, and outside it, just as the older high places generally had open sites without the city.  The question before us has reference exclusively to the particular tent which, according to Exodus xxv. seq., was erected at the command of God as the basis of the theocracy, the pre-Solomonic central sanctuary, which also in outward details was the prototype of the temple.  At the outset its very possibility is doubtful.  Very strange is the contrast between this splendid structure, on which the costliest material is lavished and wrought in the most advanced style of Oriental art, and the soil on which it rises, in the wilderness amongst the native Hebrew nomad tribes, who are represented as having got it ready offhand, and without external help.  The incompatibility has long been noticed, and gave rise to doubts as early as the time of Voltaire.  These may, however, be left to themselves; suffice it that Hebrew tradition, even from the time of the judges and the first kings, for which the Mosaic tabernacle was strictly speaking intended, knows nothing at all about it.