after the exile.  But the defenders of Graf’s hypothesis do not go so far as to believe that the Israelite cultus entered the world of a sudden,—­as little by Ezekiel or by Ezra as by Moses,—­else why should they be accused of Darwinism by Zoeckler and Delitzsch?  They merely consider that the works of the law were done before the law, that there is a difference between traditional usage and formulated law, and that even where this difference appears to be only in form it yet has a material basis, being connected with the centralisation of the worship and the hierocracy which that centralisation called into existence.  Here also the important point is not the matter, but the spirit which is behind it, and may everywhere be recognised as the spirit of the age at one period or another. 2

****************************************** 2.  Comp. II.III., III.III.1. ******************************************

All these objections, meanwhile, labour under the same defect, namely, that they leave out of view that which is the real point at issue.  The point is not to prove that the Mosaic law was not in force in the period before the exile.  There are in the Pentateuch three strata of law and three strata of tradition, and the problem is to place them in their true historical order.  So far as the Jehovist and Deuteronomy are concerned, the problem has found a solution which may be said to be accepted universally, and all that remains is to apply to the Priestly Code also the procedure by which the succession and the date of these two works has been determined—­that procedure consisting in the comparison of them with the ascertained facts of Israelite history. 3

************************************** 3.  The method is stated in the introduction:  and special pains are taken to bring it out distinctly in the first chapter, that about the place of worship. *****************************************

One would imagine that this could not be objected to.  But objections have been raised; the procedure which, when applied to Deuteronomy, is called historico-critical method, is called, when applied to the Priestly Code, construction of history.  But history, it is well known, has always to be constructed:  the order, Priestly Code, Jehovist, Deuteronomy, is not a thing handed down by tradition or prescribed by the nature of the case, but a hypothesis as yet only a score of years old or thereby, the reasons for which were somewhat incomprehensible, so that people have forgotten them and begun to regard the hypothesis as something objective, partaking of the character of dogma.  The question is whether one constructs well or ill.  Count Baudissin thinks a grave warning necessary of a certain danger, that, namely, of an exaggerated application of logic:  that the laws follow each other in a certain order logically, he says, does not prove that they appeared in the same order in history.  But it is not for the sake of logical sequence that we consider the development which began with the prophets to have issued finally in the laws of cultus; and those who set out from “sound human reason” have generally forced the reverse process of this on the history, in spite of the traces which have come down to us, and which point the other way. 1