Objections have been made to the general style of the proof on which Graf’s hypothesis is based.  It is said to be an illicit argument ex silentio to conclude from the fact that the priestly legislation is latent in Ezekiel, where it should be in operation, unknown where it should be known, that in his time it had not yet come into existence.  But what would the objectors have?  Do they expect to find positive statements of the non-existence of what had not yet come into being?  Is it more rational, to deduce ex silentio, as they do, a positive proof that it did exist?-to say, that as there are no traces of the hierocracy in the times of the judges and the kings it must have originated in the most remote antiquity, with Moses?  The problem would in this case still be the same, namely, to explain how it is that with and after the exile the hierocracy begins to come into practical activity.  What the opponents of Graf’s hypothesis call its argument ex silentio_, is nothing more or less than the universally valid method of historical investigation.

The protest against the argument ex silentio takes another form.  It is pointed out that laws are in many cases theories, and that it is no disproof of the existence of a theory that it has not got itself carried out into practice.  Deuteronomy was really nothing more than a theory during the pre-exile period, but who would argue from this that it was not there at all?  Though laws are not kept, this does not prove they are not there,—­provided, that is to say, that there is sufficient proof of their existence on other grounds.  But these other proofs of the existence of the Priestly Code are not to be found—­not a trace of them.  It is, moreover, rarely the case with laws that they are theory and nothing more:  the possibility that a thing may be mere theory is not to be asserted generally, but only in particular cases.  And even where law is undoubtedly theory, the fact does not prevent us from fixing its position in history.  Even legislative fancy always proceeds upon some definite presupposition or other; and these presuppositions, rather than the laws themselves, must guide the steps of historical criticism. 1

******************************************* 1.  Cf. I.III.2. ad fin., IV.III.3., V.II.1., VII.II.2..  This is the reason why the strata of the tradition require to be compared as carefully as those of the law. ******************************************

An argument which is the very opposite of this is also urged.  The fact is insisted on that the laws of the Priestly Code are actually attested everywhere in the practice of the historical period; that there were always sacrifices and festivals, priests and purifications, and everything of the kind in early Israel.  These statements must, though this seems scarcely possible, proceed on the assumption that on Graf’s hypothesis the whole cultus was invented all at once by the Priestly Code, and only introduced