************************************* 1.  It is not asserted that the cultus before the Iaw (of which the darker sides are known from Amos and Hosea) was better than the legal, but merely that it was more original; the standard of judgment being, not the moral element, but merely the idea, the primary meaning of worship.  Nor is it disputed further that the belief in the dependence of sacrifices and other sacred acts upon a laboriously strict compliance with traditional and prescriptive rites occurs in the case of certain peoples, even in the remotest antiquity.  But with the Israelites, judging by the testimony of the historical and prophetical books, this was not on the whole the case any more than with the ancient Greeks; there were no Brahmans or Magians in either case.  Moreover, it must be carefully noted that not even in the Priestly Code do we yet find the same childish appreciation of the cultus as occurs in such a work as the Rigveda, and that the strict rules are not prescribed and maintained with any such notion in view as that by their observance alone can the taste of the Deity be pleased; the idea of God is here even strikingly remote from the anthropomorphic, and the whole cultus is nothing more than an exercise in piety which has simply been enjoined so once for all without any one being in any way the better for it. ******************************************

Two details still deserve special prominence here.  In the Priestly Code the most important sacrifice is the burnt-offering; that is to say, in point of fact, the tamid, the holocaustum juge, consisting of two yearling lambs which are daily consumed upon the “altar of burnt-offering,” one in the morning, another in the evening.  The custom of daily offering a fixed sacrifice at a definite time existed indeed, in a simpler form, 2

**************************************** 2.  See Kuenen, Godsdietzst van Israel, ii. 271.  According to 2Kings xvi. 15, an (LH in the morning and a MNXH in the evening were daily offered in the temple of Jerusalem, in the time of Ahaz.  Ezekiel also (xlvi. 13-15) speaks only of the morning (LH.  Compare also Ezra ix. 4; Nehemiah x. 33.  In the Priestly Code the evening minhah has risen to the dignity of a second _`olah_; but at the same time survives in the daily minhah of the high priest, and is now offered in the morning also (Leviticus vi. 12-16).  The daily minhah appears to be older than the daily _`olah_.  For while it was a natural thing to prepare a meal regularly for the Deity, the expense of a daily `olah was too great for an ordinary place of worship, and, besides, it was not in accordance with the custom of men to eat flesh every day.  The offering of the daily minhah is already employed in 1Kings xviii. 29, 36, as a mark of time to denote the afternoon, and this use is continued down to the latest period, while the tamid, ie., the `olah, is never so utilised.  The oddest custom of all, however, was doubtless not the daily minhah, but the offering of the shewbread, which served the same purpose, but was not laid out fresh every day. *****************************************