at once to the completed product.  But in actual experience the reformation was doubtless accomplished step by step.  At first we have in Hosea and Isaiah the polemic directed against molten and graven images, then in Jeremiah that against wood and stone, i.e., against Macceboth and Asherim; the movement originated with the prophets, and the chief, or rather the only, weight is to be attached to their authentic testimony. *************************************

Hezekiah only made a feeble and wholly ineffectual attempt in this direction, and by no means “carried out the unification in Judah with tolerable thoroughness.”  At the same time, one might concede even this last point, and yet not give any ground for the theory at which Noldeke wishes to arrive.

For his assumption is that the effort after unity had its old and original seat precisely in the priestly circles of Jerusalem.  If the Priestly Code is older than Deuteronomy, then of course the prophetic agitation for reform of worship in which Deuteronomy had its origin must have been only the repetition of an older priestly movement in the same direction.  But of the latter we hear not a single word, while we can follow the course of the former fairly well from its beginnings in thought down to its issue in a practical result.  It was Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah who introduced the movement against the old popular worship of the high places; in doing so they are not in the least actuated by a deep-rooted preference for the temple of Jerusalem, but by ethical motives, which manifest themselves in them for the first time in history, and which we can see springing up in them before our very eyes:  their utterances, though historically occasioned by the sanctuaries of northern Israel, are quite general, and are directed against the cultus as a whole.  Of the influence of a point of view even remotely akin to the priestly position that worship in this or that special place is of more value than anywhere else, and on that account alone deserves to be preserved, no trace is to be found in them; their polemic is a purely prophetic one, i.e., individual, “theopneust” in the sense that it is independent of all traditional and preconceived human opinions.  But the subsequent development is dependent upon this absolutely original commencement, and has its issue, not in the Priestly Code, but in Deuteronomy, a book that, with all reasonable regard for the priests (though not more for those of Jerusalem than for the others), still does not belie its prophetic origin, and above all things is absolutely free from all and every hierocratic tendency.  And finally, it was Deuteronomy that brought about the historical result of Josiah’s reformation.  Thus the whole historical movement now under our consideration, so far as it was effective and thereby has come to our knowledge, is in its origin and essence prophetic, even if latterly it may have been aided by priestly influences; and it not merely can, but must be understood