The Law is never weary of again and again repeating its injunction of local unity of worship.  In doing so, it is in conscious opposition to “the things that we do here this day,” and throughout has a polemical and reforming attitude towards existing usage.  It is rightly therefore assigned by historical criticism to the period of the attacks made on the Bamoth by the reforming party at Jerusalem.  As the Book of the Covenant, and the whole Jehovistic writing in genera], reflects the first pre-prophetic period in the history of the cultus, so Deuteronomy is the legal expression of the second period of struggle and transition.  The historical order is all the more certain because the literary dependence of Deuteronomy on the Jehovistic laws and narratives can be demonstrated independently, and is an admitted fact.  From this the step is easy to the belief that the work whose discovery gave occasion to King Josiah to destroy the local sanctuaries was this very Book of Deuteronomy, which originally must have had an independent existence, and a shorter form than at present.  This alone, at least, of all the books of the Pentateuch, gives so imperious an expression to the restriction of the sacrificial worship to the one chosen place; here only does the demand make itself so felt in its aggressive novelty and dominate the whole tendency of the law-maker.  The old material which he makes use of is invariably shaped with a view to this, and on all hands he follows the rule out to its logical consequences.  To make its fulfilment possible, he changes former arrangements, permitting what had been forbidden, and prohibiting what had been allowed; in almost every case this motive lies at the foundation of all his other innovations.  This is seen, for example, when he permits slaying without sacrificing, and that too anywhere; when, in order not to abolish the right of asylum (Exodus xxi.13, 14; 1Kings ii. 28) along with the altars, he appoints special cities of refuge for the innocent who are pursued by the avenger of blood; when he provides for the priests of the suppressed sanctuaries, recommending the provincials to take them along with them on their sacrificial pilgrimages, and giving them the right to officiate in the temple at Jerusalem just like the hereditarily permanent clergy there.  In other respects also the dominance of the same point of view is seen:  for example, it is chiefly from regard to it that the old ordinances and customs relating to the religious dues and the festivals are set forth in the form which they must henceforth assume.  A law so living, which stands at every point in immediate contact with reality, which is at war with traditionary custom, and which proceeds with constant reference to the demands of practical life, is no mere velleity, no mere cobweb of an idle brain, but has as certainly arisen out of historical occasions as it is designed to operate powerfully on the course of the subsequent history.  A judgment pronounced in accordance with the facts can therefore assign to it an historical place only within that movement of reformation which was brought to a victorious issue by King Josiah.