In carrying back the theocracy to Moses, Josephus has accordingly been guilty of a glaring anachronism. But those go to the opposite ex- treme who admit that Moses proclaimed Jahweh as the God of Israel, but deny anything beyond this, and cast doubt in particular upon any funda-
mental act of his which could be spoken of as a real founding of the religion of Israel. Every- thing of this kind related in the middle books of the Pentateuch is regarded by them at best as a late theological misunderstanding of some- thing quite different, but most frequently as pure invention in the interests of religious ideas which had not their development till centuries after- wards. Here, again, we shall do well first of all to look at the tradition itself.
2. In all the Pentateuchal sources, without ex- ception, there is a uniform tradition to the effect that the central place amongst the incidents at Sinai is occupied by the concluding of a bérith (nz, commonly rendered ‘covenant’). What this means may be readily learned from a brief ex- amination of the usage of the word bérith. After the thoroughgoing investigations of J. P. Valeton * and R. Kraetzschmar,t there can be no doubt that bérith belongs primarily to the secular vocabulary, and means ‘cutting in pieces,’ namely, of one or more sacrificial victims (cf. Gn 15%, where God, according to the narrative of the Jahwist in v.1, accommodates Himself to this practice; and Jer 3418), that the parties to an agreement might pass between the pieces and invoke upon themselves the fate of the animals in the event of their ae euilty of a breach of their oath. For every bérit consisted partly of an oath which defined the obligation taken upon oneself, partly of a curse invoked on oneself as the penalty of violating this oath.t
The religious is naturally distinguished from the secular use of the word bérith by the fact that God cannot be thought of in the same way as a man who enters into an agreement or covenant with other men, the two parties having exactly the same stand- ing, with their mutual rights and obligations strictly defined. Hence the religious bérith always stands primarily for a Divine order or arrangement§ which takes its rise without the co-operation of man or, to be more precise, of the people of Israel, and yet is unconditionally binding upon the latter. The duties of the people have, it is true, promises— that is, so to speak, a self-pledging of Himself by God—corresponding to them, and thus there exists so far a mutual relationship. But, however the statements contained in the different sources of the Pentateuch may vary in laying stress now upon the Divine promises and now upon the duties resting on men, it is always the will and determina- tion of God that accounts for the origin and the character of the dérith. Hence the usual render- ing of bérith, namely ‘covenant,’ ought to be avoided as incorrect and misleading.
It has already been remarked that a// the sources of the Pentateuch assume that at Sinai a bérith in the sense just described was solemnly enacted by God, and that henceforward it was upon this bérith that the intimate relation between Jahweh, as the God of Israel, and His people was based. According to the Jahwist, the sacramental com-
* *Bedeutung und Stellung des Wortes bérith im Priester- codex’ (ZAT'W xii. 1ff.); ‘in den jahwistischen und deuter- onomistischen Stiicken des Hexateuchs sowie in den verwandten historischen Biichern’ (¢b. 224 ff.); ‘bei den Propheten und in den Ketubim’ (cb. xiii. 245 ff.).
t Die Bundesvorstellung im Alten Testament, Marburg, 1896.
¢ Akin to this are the certainly ancient forms in which a curse is conditionally invoked, namely, by sending round pieces of a corpse (Jg 1929) or of some sacrificial animal (18 117). In every instance these pieces have the significance of an ‘ oath-offering.’ The formula ‘so shall it be done to his cattle’ in the latter passage is in all probability a toning down of an original ‘so shall it be done to him.’ Whether the blood of the animals in question was used for the performance of sacred rites on the occasion of concluding a bérith (as, for instance, among the Arabs it is sprinkled on seven stones), is doubtful; it is expressly wit- nessed to only in Ex 248,
§ The LXX gives proper expression to this condition of things by rendering the Heb. bérith not by cvv4xn (‘agreement,’ ‘covenant’), but by dial4zy (‘ arrangement’).
RELIGION OF ISRAEL
munion was established by sprinkling with blood both the altar and the people, the ‘ book of laws of the covenant’ [this is the meaning here of bérith] being read _ by Moses to the people between these two acts (Ex 244%). In v.° there comes next an account [probably by E] of a meal* partaken of by the representatives of the people before God. This meal can be understood only as a sacrificial one, such as, for instance, we read of again in the case of Jacob and Laban (Gn 31°) after their com- pact at Mount Gilead. So also the Deuteronomist and the Priests’ Code speak very frequently of the ‘bérith which God through Moses gave to the people at Horeb (or Sinai). Even if they do not refer expressly to a covenantal ceremony, they certainly precinmoce what is related in the older sources. t is an established fact for them that there was a solemn proclamation of the Divine will by God to Moses, and through him to the people. _ Is all this now to be set down as fiction—a carry- ing back of much later theological conceptions and terminology to a time for which no real tradition was any longer extant? This is a view to which the present writer cannot assent, having regard to either external or internal evidence.