*************************************** 1. )OUKOUN )APEIROI MEN (AI KATA MEROS TWN )ETHWN KAI TWN NOMWN PARA TOIS )APASIN )ANTHRWPOS DIAFORAI. )OI MEN GAR MONARXIAIS, (OI DE TAIS )OLIGWN DUNASTEIAIS, )ALLOI DE TOIS PLHTHESIN )EPETREPYAN THN ‘ECOUSIAN TWN POLITEUMATWN. (O D’ (HMETEROS NOMOQETHS )EIS MEN TOUTWN OUD’ (OTIOUN )APEIDEN, (WS D’ )AN TIS )EIPOI BIASAMENOS TON LOGON QEOKRATIAN )APEDEICE TO POLITEUMA, QEW| THN )ARXHN KAI TO KRATOS )ANAQEIS (contra Apion ii. 17). (” There are innumerable differences in the particular customs and laws that are among mankind; some have intrusted the power of their states to monarchies, some to oligarchies, and some to democracies:  but our legislator had no regard to any of these forms, but he ordered our governmernt to be what I may call by a strained expression a theocracy, attributing the power and the authority to God.”  Compare also, on this whole chapter, Die Pharisaer und die Sadducaer, Greifswald, 1874. *****************************************

and when this writer speaks of the Mosaic constitution, he has before his eyes, it is well known, the sacred community of his own day as it existed down to the year 70 A.D.  In ancient Israel the theocracy never existed in fact as a form of constitution.  The rule of Jehovah is here an ideal representation; only after the exile was it attempted to realise it in the shape of a Rule of the Holy with outward means.  It is perhaps the principal merit of Vatke’s Biblical Theology to have traced through the centuries the rise of the theocracy and the metamorphosis of the idea to an institution.

XI.I.

XI.I.1.  The upholders of the prevailing view do not assert that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, but they maintain all the more firmly that he organised the congregation of the tabernacle in the wilderness after the fashion described in the Priestly Code.  They seem to think that Moses had no importance further than this; as if it were an act of no moment to cast into the field of time a seed which the action and reaction thence arising bring an immeasurable time after to maturity (Mark iv. 26 seq.).  In fact Moses is the originator of the Mosaic constitution in about the same way as Peter is the founder of the Roman hierarchy.  Of the sacred organisation supposed to have existed from the earliest times, there is no trace in the time of the judges and the kings.  It is thought to have been a sort of pedagogic strait-waistcoat, to subdue the ungovernable obstinacy of the Hebrews and to guard them from evil influences from without.  But even should it be conceded that a constitution could come into existence in ancient times which was so utterly out of relation to the peculiar life and temper of the people, the history of the ancient Israelites shows us nothing so distinctly as the uncommon freshness and naturalness of their impulses.  The persons who appear always act from the constraining impulse of their nature, the