CHAPTER II.  SACRIFICE.

With the Hebrews, as with the whole ancient world, sacrifice constituted the main part of worship.  The question is whether their worship did not also in this most important respect pass through a history the stages of which are reflected in the Pentateuch.  From the results already reached this must be regarded at the outset as probable, but the sources of information accessible to us seem hardly sufficient to enable us actually to follow the process, or even so much as definitely to fix its two termini.

II.I.1.  The Priestly Code alone occupies itself much with the subject; it gives a minute classification of the various kinds of offerings, and a description of the procedure to be followed in the case of each.  In this way it furnishes also the normative scheme for modern accounts of the matter, into which all the other casual notices of the Old Testament on the subject must be made to fit as best they can.  This point accordingly presents us with an important feature by which the character of the book can be determined.  In it the sacrificial ritual is a constituent, and indeed a very essential element, of the Mosaic legislation:  that ritual is not represented as ancient use handed down to the Israelites by living practice from ancestral times:  it was Moses who gave them the theory of it—­a very elaborate one too—­and he himself received his instruction from God (Exodus xxv. seq.; Leviticus i. seq.).  An altogether disproportionate emphasis is accordingly laid upon the technique of sacrifice corresponding to the theory, alike upon the when, the where, and the by whom, and also in a very special manner upon the how.  It is from these that the sacrifice obtains its specific value; one could almost suppose that even if it were offered to another God, it would by means of the legitimate rite alone be at once made essentially Jehovistic.  The cultus of Israel is essentially distinguished from all others by its form, the distinctive and constitutive mark of the holy community.  With it the theocracy begins and it with the theocracy; the latter is nothing more than the institution for the purpose of carrying on the cultus after the manner ordained by God.  For this reason also the ritual, which appears to concern the priests only, finds its place in a law-book intended for the whole community; in order to participate in the life of the theocracy, all must of course, have clear knowledge of its essential nature, and in this the theory of sacrifice holds a first place.