Prolegomena to the History of IsraelWellhausen, Julius
Religion
Prolegomena to the History of Israel
Wellhausen, Julius
Bible. Old Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Jews -- History -- To 70 A.D.; Judaism -- History -- To 70 A.D.
sanctuary, and cannot for a moment imagine Israel without it,
carrying its actual existence back to the very beginning of the
theocracy, and, in accordance with this, completely altering the
ancient history. The temple, the focus to which the worship was
concentrated, and which in reality was not built until Solomon's
time, is by this document regarded as so indispensable, even for
the troubled days of the wanderings before the settlement, that it
is made portable, and in the form of a tabernacle set up in the
very beginning of things. For the truth is, that the tabernacle
is the copy, not the prototype, of the temple at Jerusalem. The
resemblance of the two is indeed unmistakable, /1/
-- Footnote
1. In Wisdom of Solomon ix. 8 the temple is called MIMHMA SKHNHS
HAGIAS. Josephus (Antiquities iii. 6,1) says of the tabernacle,
(H D'OUDEN METAFEROMENOU NAOU DIEFERE.
-- Footnote
but it is not said in 1Kings vi. that Solomon made use of the old
pattern and ordered his Tyrian workmen to follow it. The posteriority
of the Mosaic structure comes into clearer light from the two following
considerations brought forward by Graf (p. 60 seq.). In the first
place, in the description of the tabernacle mention is repeatedly
made of its south, north, and west side, without any preceding rubric
as to a definite and constantly uniform orientation; the latter is
tacitly taken for granted, being borrowed from that of the temple,
which was a fixed building, and did not change its site. In the
second place, the brazen altar is, strictly speaking, described as
an altar of wood merely plated with brass,--for a fireplace of
very large size, upon which a strong fire continually burns, a
perfectly absurd construction, which is only to be accounted for
by the wish to make the brazen altar which Solomon cast (1Kings
xvi. 14) transportable, by changing its interior into wood. The
main point, however, is this, that the tabernacle of the Priestly
Code in its essential meaning is not a mere provisional shelter for
the ark on the march, but the sole legitimate sanctuary for the
community of the twelve tribes prior to the days of Solomon, and
so in fact a projection of the later temple. How modest, one might
almost say how awkwardly bashful, is the Deuteronomic reference
to the future place which Jehovah is to choose when compared with
this calm matter-of-fact assumption that the necessary centre of
unity of worship was given from the first! In the one case we
have, so to speak, only the idea as it exists in the mind of the
lawgiver, but making no claim to be realised till a much later
date; in the other, the Mosaic idea has acquired also a Mosaic
embodiment, with which it entered the world at the very first.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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