ii. TheTauernacleofthe Prie.stly Writers. — The literary sources. — These are almost exclu- sively from the hand of the authors of the great priestly document of the Pentateuch. This docu- ment, as has long been recognized, is not the product of a single pen, or even of a single period.
The results which recent criticism has achieved in disen- tangling and exhibiting the various strata of the composite literary- work denoted by the convenient s^Tuboi P, and the grounds on which these results are based, must be sought else where, as, e.g., — to name only a few accessible in English, — Kuenen, Uexateueh, 72 ff.. Driver, LOT' 4UfI.,the moreelabor- ate tables of the Oxford Uexateueh, i. 255, 261, ii. 13S, and th» art. Exodus in vol. i. p. 808 fl., with the table, p. 810i>. Refer- ence may also l>e made here to the present writer's forthcoming commentary on Kxodut in the Intemat. Critical Series.
TABERNACLE
TABEKNACLE
655
The sections of the Pentateuch dealing with the subject of this art. are the followiu<; : —
(1) Ex 25-29, a fairly homogeneous section (but cf. Oxf. Bex. ii. 120) of the main or ground-stock of P (hence the symbol P«), containing minute directions for the construction of the furniture and fabric of the sanctuary (25-27), followed by instruc- tions relative to the priestly garments (2S) and the consecration of Aaron and liis sons (29).
(2) Ex 30. 31, a set of instructions supplementary to the foregoinj'. For their secondary character (hence the s3'mbol P*) see the authorities cited above and § viii. (c) below.
(3) Ex 35-40, also a fairly homogeneous block of narrative, rei)roduced in the main verbatim from 25-31 'w-ith the simple substitution of past tenses for future,' but in a systematic order which em- bodies the contents of 30. 31 in their proper places in the older narrative 25 11". (.see authorities as above). It is therefore younger than either of the.se sections, hence also r*. The critical problem is here complicated by the striking divergence of the LXX in form and matter from the MT, to some points of vhieli attention will be called in the .sequel.
(4) Nu S-''"- 4*"- T'"' contain various references to the tabernacle and its furniture, which also belong to the secondary strata of 1' (see NuMBEl'.s, vol. lii. p. 508). To these sources have to be added the description of the temple of Solomon in 1 K 611'. and the sketch of Ezekiel's temple (Ezk 40 ii'.), which disclose some remarkable analogies to the tabernacle. The references to the latter in the Bk.s. of Chronicles are of value, as showing how completely the later Heb. literature is dominated by the conceptions of the Priestly Code. Outside the Canon of tlie OT, the most important sources are the .sections of Jo.seplius' Antiquities which deal with the tabernacle (III. vi.), I'hilo's Do Vita Moysis (ed. Mangey, vol. ii. p. 145 11'., Bohn's tr. iii. 88 ir. ), and the 3rd cent, treatise, containing a systematic presentation of the views of the Jewisii authorities, ps'o.T n;'?m Nn"i3 (ed. Flesch, Die J'araijlhft von der Uerstellunr] dcr StiftshUtte ; ICng. tr. by Barclay, The Talmud, 334 if.). The Kpintle to the Hebrews, finally, sui)plies us with the lirst Christian interpretation of the taber- nacle (§ xiii. ).
iii. The Nomenclature of the Tabernacle.* — (a) In our oldest sources the sacred tent receives, as wo have seen, the special designation (1) nyiD V.hn ■Ohel mffcd(K\ .33', Nu 11"' 12\ Dt 31", all most probably from E). This designation is also found uliout 130 times in the priestly sections of the He.\ateuch.
The verb ly p'Jl) from which nVD l8 derived sif^niilea 'to appoint a time or ))Iace of meeting,' in the Niphal 'to meet by appointment ' (of too in V\ Hence nyiD Shn — as the name ia understood by P, at leotit — Hiurnifles * the tent of meeting ' (bo R\') or 'tent of trj-st' {OTJC 24(i), the spot which J ' ha« appointed to meet or hold tryst with Moses and with Israel. As this meeting is mainly for the pur]>ose of speaking with them (Ex 2»<a 33", Nu 78» et<^), of declaring His will to them, the expression 'tent of meeting' is practically equivalent to 'tent of revelation' (Driver, Dcitt. 839, following Ewald's 'OfTen- barungszelt'). It has lately been suggested that behind this liet a more primitive meaning. From the fact that one of ths functions of the Babylonian priesthood was to determine the proper time {iid&nu, from the same root as m/i'id) for an undertaking, Zimmem ha« suggested that the exprcs.'iion S.iK Ijno may originally have denot^'d ' the tent where the proper flme for an undertaking was determined,' in other words, • tent of the oracle ' (OraApir^/(). See Zinunern, Ud'rinie zur Kenntnijt d. tab. lUliijian, p. bS n. 2 (cf. Haupt, JUL, llKXJ, p. i2). Still another view of F's use of the term lyiD Iios recently been suggested (Jleinhold, IHt Lad* Jahvet, 1000, p. St.). P, according to Molnhold, Intends to give to the older term i7r,k tji\D) of E the aame significance as his own nnyn "j.nK 'tent of
• Cf. the miggestlve note on the various designations of the talwmacle with the inferences therefrom In 0^. Ufx. 11. 120 ; also Klostemmnn in the A'eiu kircMicht ZtiUch. 1UU7, 238 fl. ; n estcott, Uebrtm, 234 tt.