that Hitzig, when he annotated Ezekiel viii., could have read those passages Ezekiel xliii. 7 seq., xliv. 6 seq, from which it is most unambiguously clear that the later exclusion of the laity from the sanctuary was quite unknown in the pre-exilic period.  The extent of the Chronicler’s knowledge about the pre-exilic priesthood is revealed most clearly in the list of the twenty-two high priests in 1Chronicles v. 29-41 (vi. 3-15).  From the ninth to the eighteenth the series runs—­Amariah, Ahitub, Zadok, Ahimaaz, Azariah, Johanan, Azariah, Amariah, Ahitub, Zadok.  As for the first five, Azariah was not the son, but the brother of Ahimaaz, and the latter apparently not a priest (1Kings iv. 2); but Ahitub, the alleged father of Zadok, was, on the contrary, the grandfather of Zadok’s rival, Abiathar, of the family of Eli (1Samuel xiv. 3, xxii. 20); the whole of the old and famous line—­Eli, Phinehas, Ahitub; Ahimelech, Abiathar—­which held the priesthood of the ark from thc time of the judges down into the days of David, is passed over in absolute silence, and the line of Zadok, by which it was not superseded until Solomon (1Kings ii. 35), is represented as having held the leadership of the priesthood since Moses.  As for the last four in the above-cited list, they simply repeat the earlier.  In the Book of Kings, Azariah II., Amariah, Ahitub, Zadok, do not occur, but, on the contrary, other contemporary high priests, Jehoiada and Urijah, omitted from the enumeration in Chronicles.  At the same time this enumeration cannot be asserted to be defective; for, according to Jewish chronology, the ancient history is divided into two periods, each of 480 years, the one extending from the exodus to the building of the temple, the other from that epoch down to the establishment of the second theocracy.  Now, 480 years are twelve generations of forty years, and in 1Chronicles v. there are twelve high priests reckoned to the period during which there was no temple (ver. 36b to come after ver. 35a), and thence eleven down to the exile; that is to say, twelve generations, when the exile is included.  The historical value of the genealogy in 1Chronicles v. 26-41 is thus inevitably condemned.  But if Chronicles knew nothing about the priestly princes of the olden time, its statements about ordinary priests are obviously little to be relied on.

VI.III.3.  To speak of a tradition handed down from pre-exilic times as being found in Chronicles, either in 1Chronicles i.-ix. or in 1Chronicles x.-2Chronicles xxxvi., is thus manifestly out of the question.  As early as 1806 this had been conclusively shown by the youthful De Wette (then twenty-six years of age).  But since that date many a theological Sisyphus has toiled to roll the stone again wholly or half-way up the hill—­Movers especially, in genius it might seem the superior of the sober Protestant critic—­with peculiar results.  This scholar mixed up the inquiry into the historical value of those statements in Chronicles which we are