sized, is the statutory character of religion in the Priestly Code, as contrasted with its more spon- taneous character in the earlier codes. In the earlier codes religious observances arise largely out of the circumstances and incidents of daily life. Sacrifices are the spontaneous outcome of the religious feeling of the worshipper ; the feasts are oceasions of religious observance fixed by the annually recurring seasons of harvest and vintage ; the Sabbath is an institution designed expressly for humanitarian ends. In P this is all different: the observances are systematized ; their original signi- ficance is obliterated; they are to be regarded simply because J” has enjoined them ; the Sabbath is made not for man, but for God, and the slightest infringement of its sanctity is to be visited with death (Ex 31°, Nu 1535. A system of ceremonial observances of this kind manifestly lies in great danger of being abused: except in persons of more than ordinary ΠΡΟΣ Vitality, it tends to stifle and sterilize real spiritual life. Among the later Jews (as allusions in the NT and the Mishna show) it led actually to these consequences, and a religion of excessive formalism was the result. The fundamental conception of the priestly legislation, that of a people ever serving God in holiness and purity, is, in the abstract, a great one; but the means adopted for its realization, viz. a routine of external observances, are not those which, in the long-run, can succeed. The routine degenerates inevitably into externality and formalism. There is also another point to be observed. In the ideas of holiness and purity, ritual and moral distinctions were confused. Exactly the same penalty is im- posed for infringements of ritual (Ex 30%: 8, Ly 17* * 14 198) as for grave moral offences (Ly 18”). Death is the penalty, alike for murder (Nu 35%) and for Sabbath-breaking (Ex 3115 353). Purifica- tion from sin is prescribed after purely physical defilement, as through contact with a corpse, and even for a house which has been affected by leprosy (Ly 1459. 52, Nu 1913. 18.19. 20 the Heb. in these pas- sages for cleanse, purify is properly to ‘free from sin’]). A sin-offering is also sometimes enjoined for merely ceremonial uncleanness (e.g. Ly 5*:8, Nu 6°"). Mr. Montefiore comments on the in- difference to bloodshed, combined with zeal for ritual purity, displayed by the singular—and, we may be sure, ideal — narrative of the war with Midian in Nu 31 (vv.17-1% 2%). The principle of ceremonial cleanness and uncleanness, it may be noticed, was the point on which our Lord broke most decisively with the Mosaic law (ef. p. 755). " The priestly legislation, however, Armen it bulks largely in the Pentateuch, never, it must be remembered, formed the sole rule of life for the Israelite. The codes of JE and Dt were not abrogated by it; the warm moral and spiritual teaching of Dt possessed exactly the same authority as the ceremonial of P; and the teaching of Dt was supported by the indirect, but by no means indistinct, testimony of the non-legislative parts of the Pentateuch. The prophets, moreover, re- mained the eloquent and moving exponents of spiritual religion, and of the paramount claims of the moral law above all ritual observances. The corrective for the ceremonialism of P was thus close at hand, in writings acknowledged by the Jews themselves as authoritative. The Jews were never exclusively under the rule of the ceremonial system of P. On its ceremonial side, the ‘law’ was undoubtedly liable to be misapplied, and to lead to formalism ; but even its ceremonial institu- * On the sense in which our Lord came to ‘fulfil’ the law (Mt 517),—i.e. in so far as it was imperfect, to complete it, especially by disengaging from its limited and temporary forms, and placing in their just light, the ethical and religious truths
of which it was the expression,—see also Kirkpatrick, Divine Library of the OT, 134 ff.
LAW (IN OLD TESTAMENT)
tions were the expression of profound religious ideas, and furnished an outlet for varied and genuine religious feelings; while, treated as a whole, the ‘law,’ as the later Psalmists abund- antly attest, provided an atmosphere in which a religious spirit—for something, of course, in such matters, depends yee the temper of the wor- shipper—could breathe freely, and draw in spiritual refreshment. The ceremonial legislation never had a separate existence of its own; and the Jewish ‘law,’ if it is to be judged properly, must be judged as a whole, and not with exclusive reference to one of its parts.
In the earlier codes the broader duties of humanity, justice, and morality are chiefly and sufliciently insisted on. They were adapted _to create a righteous and God-fearing nation. The Israelite who obeyed loyally the precepts of Dt could not deviate widely from the paths of truth and right. As time advanced, a ceremonial system was gradually developed, and this, though the earlier provisions just referred to were not abro-
ated, became ultimately the more formal and
istinctive expression of Israel’s faith. And this system played an important function in the re- ligious education of mankind. ‘It enforced and deepened the sense of sin. It declared the need of restoration and forgiveness. It expressed in the form of institutions the great principles which regulate man’s converse with God. It emphasized the significance of sacrifice under its different aspects, as eucharistic, dedicatory, propitiatory.* It taught more and more distinctly that an atoning rite must precede the Sore of the worshipper by God. It thus established the principles which in the fulness of time were to receive their supreme and final application in the sacrifice of Christ. In all its stages, the Mosaic law held before the eyes of Israel an ideal of duty to be observed, of laws to be obeyed, of principles to be maintaineil; it taught them that human nature needed to le re- strained ; it impressed upon them the necessity of discipline. And in the post-exilic age, when the disintegrating influences of Hellenism might have operated disastrously upon the nation, the insti- tutions of the law bound together the majority of its members in a religious society, strong enough to resist the forces which threatened to dissolve it,’+ and able to guard efficiently the spiritual treasures with which it had been intrusted. Through the ordinances of the law, imperfect in themselves though they might be, God thus trained and dis- ciplined His people, till it should be ripe to cast off the yoke of external ordinances, and be ruled by principles operative from within (Jer 31") rather than by commands imposed from without. And this is the sense in which St. Paul speaks of the law as a παιδαγωγὸς els Χριστόν (Gal 3%). The παιδαγωγός was the ‘tutor’ (RV), or superior slave, intrusted with the moral education of a child; and the law was similarly an agency for discip- line, or moral training, holding the nation in a moral constraint (ἐφρουρούμεθα, v.*) till it was fit for the freedom of mature age, to be secured by Christ. And the means by which the law acted in this capacity was partly by quickening and discip- lining man’s moral sense, partly by bringing to light transgression, and so awakening the sense of sin and the need of forgiveness, which in view of man’s moral weakness it could not itself provide.