* Two narratives are interwoven in ch. 17. According to one there is a young Levite (1133) residing in Micah’s neighbourhood, whom Micah treats as a son, consecrates and makes his priest (vy.7, 1b. 12a), The other narrative tells how a Levite (Ὁ ΝΠ) from Bethlehem comes, in the course of his wanderings, to Micah’s house, and is hired by him as his priest (νν. 8:10. 12b. 13),
+ Wellhausen, Jsr. u. Jiid. Geschichte2191n. Korah (Korah) seems to have been originally a clan of Judah, 1 Ch 2%,
3} The same motive, to avoid connecting the priest of Dan with Moses, instigated the Jewish correction of Moses into
Manasseh in 1880, Perhaps this is the reason why LXX B omits the words here
Micah’s Levite, who had been kidnapped by the Danites, became the founder of a line of priests who ministered at the chief sanctuary of Dan until the exile of the ten tribes in 722, or of the N. tribes in 734 (2 K 15”). Jonathan’s priesthood was therefore hereditary,” and, what is more, his descent is traced back through Gershom to Moses. It is probable that we have here a clue to the obscure problem, How did the Levi of Gn 34 and 49 become the Levi of the sanctuary? Most likely the answer is, Through the influence and position of Moses. Moses was the founder of Israel’s religion, the chief minister of the sanctuary ; and Moses was a Levite. His own clan supported and followed him (Ex 3226: E). The sacred lore of the priesthood, the traditions of public worship, the usages of the oracle, were preserved in his family and handed down to his descendants. Thus we find the Mosaic families of Gershom and of the Mushites (probably from Mosheh, Moses) mentioned in the genealogies of P, Nu 3174-21-88 2657-1 Ch 61-17-18, The priesthood, however, was not confined to the family or tribe of Moses; but the prestige of his name, the importance of his position in the history of the national religion, induced those priests, who did not necessarily belong to his race, to call them- selves Levites, and to justify the title by some kind of genealogical fiction, or by the common Semitic practice of regarding membership of a guild or order as equivalent to sonship.t In this way there grew up a priestly tribe ot Levi which looked upon Moses as the founder of their order and the ancestor of their race.t The formation of such a tribe was rendered all the easier because there had existed an ancient tribe of Levi, which, although it was broken up in the early days of the oceupa- tion of Canaan, nevertheless produced one famous son who became the ancestor of a new Levi with a changed character. When the change began it is impossible to say; it must have come about by degrees. Those who maintain that the Levite of the early period of the Judges (Jg 17. 18) could belong to ‘the family of Judah’ and at the same time claim to be a grandson of Moses (1889), do not appear to allow ποτα time for the official sense οἱ Levite and the artificial connexion with Moses to have established themselves.
A different account of what may be called the conversion of Levi from the barbarous tribe to the priestly caste is given by van Hoonacker in his work, La Sacerdoce Lévitique, 1899, 304-311. His view may be mentioned as representative of those which differ from the account given above. He takes Gn 34 as referring to an incident of the first immigration of the Hebrew clans into Canaan. Gn 49 is also assigned to a pre-Mosaic date, chietly on the ground that it is unlikely that the tribe to which Moses belonged would be spoken of in the terms of vv.5? so soon after his death, if the Bless- ing of Jacob be assigned to the period of the Judges. In the early days of the settlement in Canaan after the Exodus, the tribe of Levi pos- sessed not only the prestige of its connexion with Moses, but the prerogatives of the priesthood which it owed to him. Not much later, in the period of the Judges, we find Levites popularly regarded as priests: the interval is not lony enough for the change in the character of the
* Similar establishments of hereditary priests are mentioned at Shiloh (Eli) and at Nob (Ahimelech), 1 S 18" 91, The priest- hood of Shiloh was traced k to the family of Moses (1S 2° though this is a post-Dt. passage) through Phinehas, son Eleazar, son of Aaron (Nu 2515 P, 1S 28%, Jos 9455 E), Well
hausen regards Eleazar as= Eliezer, son of Moses (Ex 189), and so makes the priesthood of Shiloh directly Mosaic, Proleg.® 144 t In the oldest documents the descent is traced back to Moses rather than to Aaron. Moses, not Aaron, is the chief minister of the sanctuary in Ex 8871 E. The designation of Levites as ‘sons of Aaron’ belongs to P. t See Benzinger, Ueb. Archdol, 416 7
102 LEVIATHAN
LEVITICUS
tribe to have taken place. Accordingly, van Hoonacker believes that the ‘conversion’ of Levi occurred during the sojourn of Israel in Egypt, and supposes that Levi developed not only a capacity for assimilating the culture and civiliza- tion of Egypt,* but a special zeal for the national teligion. In this way the Levites naturally rallied round Moses in his great religious enterprise, and because of their superior culture became recognized as the spiritual organ of the community. Against the view of van Hoonacker it may be said that the evidence is no more in favour of the conver- sion of Levi having taken place in Egypt than in the period which followed the struggle for Canaan; while the historical and geographical conditions implied in the Blessing of Jacob are not those of the pre-Mosaic but the post-Mosaic age.