It is not impossible that the holy office may have continued in the family of Moses, and it is very likely that the two oldest houses in which it was hereditary, those at Dan and at Shiloh, may have claimed in all seriousness to have been descended from him.  Afterwards, as Deuteronomy xxxiii. 8 seq. informs us, all priests honoured Moses as their father, not as being the head of their clan but as being the founder of their order.  The same took place in Judah, but there the clerical guild ultimately acquired a hereditary character, and the order became a sort of clan. Levite, previously an official name, now became a patronymic at the same time, and all the Levites together formed a blood-kinship, 1

********************************************** 1.  The instance of the Rechabites shows how easily the transition could made. **********************************************

a race which had not received any land of its own indeed, but in compensation had obtained the priesthood for its heritage.  This hereditary clergy was alleged to have existed from the very beginning of the history of Israel, and even then as a numerous body, consisting of many others besides Moses and Aaron.  Such is the representation made by Deuteronomist and subsequent writers, but in Deuteronomy we read chiefly of the Levites in the provincial towns of Judah and of the priests, the Levites in Jerusalem, seldom of Levi as a whole (x. 8 seq., xviii. 1) 2

************************************************ 2.  On Deut xxvii. compare Kuenen, Theol.  Tidjdschr., 1878, p. 297. ***********************************************

That the hereditary character of the priesthood is here antedated and really first arose in the later period of the Kings, has already been shown in the particular instance of the sons of Zadok of Jerusalem, who were at first parvenus and afterwards became the most legitimate of the legitimate.  But it is very remarkable how this artificial construction of a priestly family,—­a construction which has absolutely nothing perplexing in itself—­ was suggested and favoured by the circumstance that in remote antiquity there once actually did exist a veritable tribe of Levi which had already disappeared before the period of the rise of the monarchy.  This tribe belonged to the group of the four oldest sons of Leah,—­Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah,—­who are always enumerated together in this order, and who settled on both sides of the Dead Sea, towards the wilderness.  Singularly no one of them succeeded in holding its own except Judah; all the others became absorbed among the inhabitants of the wilderness or in other branches of their kindred.  The earliest to find this destiny were the two tribes of Simeon and Levi (in Genesis xlix. regarded as one), in consequence of a catastrophe which must have befallen them at some time during the period of the judges.  “Simeon and Levi are brethren, their shepherds’ staves