* According to Stade and others, the figure of Aaron is utterly unknown to the older stratum of J.
might have retained their tribal and household gods without seeing in this any repudiation of the claims of Jahweh. But, while it is not impossible that a syncretism of this kind still continued to pre- vail for a considerable time, it must always have appeared to the chosen representatives of Jahwism as a culpable abuse.
2. As to religious festivals, the only one that can be taken into account for the Mosaic period is the Passover (see above, p. 621°f.). The other principal festivals, in the form in which we make their acquaintance in OT tradition, point by their agrarian character to a Canaanite origin.
3. As in the cultus of the Mosaic age, so also in the social life of Israel the controlling factor was not a body of definite prescriptions, but the power of custom—custom, it is true, upon which from the first an ever-increasing influence was exerted by the religious uniqueness of Jahwism. When any shameful act was condemned by the formula ‘It is not wont so to be done’ (Gn 34’, 28 131%), there was assuredly in the background the thought “because it is unworthy of Israel and their God, because it is an abomination in the sight of Jahweh which He will not let go unpunished.’ Here again the possibility must be recognized that Moses him- self, in the course of his long-continued judicial activity (cf., on this point, the very instructive narrative of Ex 18 [K}), especially at Kadesh or ‘En-mishpat, laid the foundation of many usages both in civil and criminal law, nay, that not a few of the enactments afterwards codified in the Book of the Covenant go back directly to him. But in this matter, again, we are without any precise knowledge of details.
4. There is one question, however, which we cannot pass by in silence. If none of the rest of the en contents of the Pentateuch can be with certainty traced back to Moses, must not at least some form of the Decalogue be attributed to him —having regard to the strength and the unanimity of the tradition which require this assumption ?
Now, the ‘unanimity’ of the tradition must be left out of the question so long as it is still dis- puted whether in addition to the two Elohistic [E] or, according to others, Deuteronomistic recensions of the Decalogue in Ex 20 and Dt 5, we have not a Jahwistic one in Ex 341*°6.* The greater anti- quity of the latter appears to be supported by the fact that it contains almost exclusively cere- monial, not yet ethical enactments; these last, it is alleged, could not have originated in ¢his form except as a deposit of the Prophetic current of ideas. But this Jahwistic Decalogue is perhaps nothing more than an appearance. If the Jahwist had essentially the same Decalogue as the Elohist, the redactor could not possibly, after it had been eiven in Ex 20, have introduced it once more in Ex 34, and so he filled up the consequent gap with ceremonial prescriptions which can be recognized at the first glance as parallels to the laws of the Book of the Covenant. Hence the question still remains whether some form of the Decalogue may not be traced back to Moses.
That this form was extremely brief and concise
* This, as is well known, was already maintained by Goethe in his essay ‘ Das Zweitatelgesetz’ (1773), and is held at present by the majority of critics. Regarding the Decalogue of Ex 20 and Dt 5, the view has come to prevail, thanks to Kuenen, Stade, Cornill, etc., that it belonged to the Judwan recension of the Elohist [E2]; so also Staerk (Das Deuteronomium, Leipzig, 1894), who maintains, further, that the Decalogue of E1 is dis- persed throughout the so-called Book of the Covenant. On the other hand, according to Meisner (Der Dekalog, Halle, 1893) and Baentsch (‘Exodus u. Leviticus’ in Nowack’s Hdkom., Gottingen, 1900), the present form of the Decalogue emanates from the Deuteronomic pen (D), and was only subsequently transferred from Deuteronomy to Ex20. Likewise Marti (Gesch. der israel. Religion 4, p. 174) holds that the Decalogue was ‘in any case drawn up in the 7th cent., perhaps in the circles influenced by Isaiah.’
634 RELIGION OF ISRAEL
RELIGION OF ISRAEL
SSS
may be at once assumed. ‘This conclusion is favoured even by the very striking difference in extent between the two tables of the Law: the first (namely the five Commandments, according to the method of reckoning adopted by the Reformed Churches, down to and including that of respect to parents) containing 146 words, the second only 26. Accordingly, the whole of the reasons assigned for obedience in the first five Commandments may be pronounced later additions. In this way two very considerable difficulties are removed in a very simple fashion, These are (1) the great difference in regard to the motives urged for obedience to the Sabbath-command, and (2) the Deuteronomistic colouring which, as we have seen, has led many to ascribe the whole to the 7th century. For this colouring does not affect the brief enunciations, but, above all, the motives assigned.
But it may still be asked, Does not so fully- developed an ethical system underlie even the Com- mandments themselves that one must hesitate to give the Decalogue its place at the head of the whole development? We should allow full weight to this objection if the standpoint of the Ten Com- mandments were beyond doubt and exclusively an ethical one. That this is the case, appears self- evident to «ws who from our infancy are taught and accustomed to apply a purely ethical standard, and to discover in the Commandments a guide to true piety and morality. But itis not difficult to show that originally it was not the question of morals but of regard to rights that occupied the foreground.* Add the Commandments may readily be subsumed under the prohibition: ‘ Thou shalt not do violence to (1) what belongs to God (His sole right to worship, His superiority to any earthly form, His name, His day [as the type of all His other ‘holy ordinances’], His representatives) ; (2) what belongs to thy neighbour (his life [as his most precious possession], his wife [as next in preciousness], his goods and chattels, his honour).’ It is only in the last of the Commandments that another point of view makes its appearance, namely, in the prohibition to touch even in thought the property of one’s neighbour. Thus the climax is reached of the ascending scale which presents itself in the arrangement of the Commandments of the second table—in the advance from sins of act to sins of word, and finally to sins of thought. The correctness of the view which emphasizes the non-ethical aspect of the Decalogue is specially evi- dent in connexion with the prohibition of adultery. The object is not to keep the youth or the married man from immorality in general, as our catechisms are wont to explain the matter,t but to ward off attack from one of the most important of a neigh- bour’s rights of property. It is only in this sense that the notion of adultery is known to the ancient Hebrew mind; while, on the other hand, no limits are placed upon a married man’s sexual intercourse with female slaves. In like manner, the seduction or violation of a virgin was plainly regarded in the earliest times more as a damage to one’s rights (notably, for instance, in the way of lowering the selling price of a daughter) than as a moral transgression.