What then are we to infer from this as to the historical place of the Priestly Code, if it be judged necessary to assign it such a place at all?  By all the laws of logic it can no more belong to the first period than Deuteronomy does.  But is it older or younger than Deuteronomy?  In that book the unity of the cultus is commanded, in the Priestly Code it is presupposed. Everywhere it is tacitly assumed as a fundamental postulate, but nowhere does it find actual expression; 1 it is nothing new, but quite a thing

******************************************* 1.  Except in Leviticus xvii.; but the small body of legislation contained in Leviticus xvii-xxvi is the transition from Deuteronomy to the Priestly Code. ********************************

of course.  What follows from this for the question before us?  To my thinking, this:—­that the Priestly Code rests upon the result which is only the aim of Deuteronomy.  The latter is in the midst of movement and conflict:  it clearly speaks out its reforming intention, its opposition to the traditional “what we do here this day;” the former stands outside of and above the struggle,—­the end has been reached and made a secure possession.  On the basis of the Priestly Code no reformation would ever have taken place, no Josiah would ever have observed from it that the actual condition of affairs was perverse and required to be set right; it proceeds as if everything had been for long in the best of order.  It is only in Deuteronomy, moreover, that one sees to the root of the matter, and recognises its connection with the anxiety for a strict monotheism and for the elimination from the worship of the popular heathenish elements, and thus with a deep and really worthy aim; in the Priestly Code the reason of the appointments, in themselves by no means rational, rests upon their own legitimacy, just as everything that is actual ordinarily seems natural and in no need of explanation.  Nowhere does it become apparent that the abolition of the Bamoth and Asherim and memorial stones is the real object contemplated; these institutions are now almost unknown, and what is really only intelligible as a negative and polemical ordinance is regarded as full of meaning in itself.

The idea as idea is older than the idea as history.  In Deuteronomy it appears in its native colours, comes forward with its aggressive challenge to do battle with the actual.  One step indeed is taken towards investing it with an historical character, in so far as it is put into the mouth of Moses; but the beginning thus made keeps within modest limits.  Moses only lays down the law; for its execution he makes no provision as regards his own time, nor does he demand it for the immediate future.  Rather it is represented as not destined to come into force until the people shall have concluded the conquest of the country and secured a settled peace.  We have already found reason to surmise that the reference