ments treating of the socially equitable and just, close the entire series.1 Accordingly we have here a brief but complete work of law of 55 commandments, each commandment (this is a new feature) divided into two or three lines or members, and thus assuming something of a poetical form. The matter also points to a high antiquity, as it appears to be the earliest amplification of the original Ten Commandments; and if Moses himself in his later years was not its author, some other prophet of the same age must have been. Similarly in Lev. xviii. the forbidden marriages and lusts appear to have been originally treated in four times five such sentences.2 b.) Secondly, we possess in Ex. xxi. 2-xxiii. 19 another work of law, which like that concealed in Lev. xix. is evidently intended to embrace the entire circle of national law, but treats every part with greater detail and precision than is done in the passage of Leviticus (p. 74). It is true the author of this work no longer employs the phrase 'I am Jahve,' and throughout follows a more descriptive method, entering into numerous individual cases, and on this very account less resembling the form of the oracle; but a nearer view discloses that he also endeavoured to divide the entire mass of the commandments into fives and tens, as if the legal form were in his day still influenced by the model of the original Decalogue. And as the description in general is more detailed, the individual commandments could here assume a longer form than in that earlier fragment; but here as there, they necessarily consist of at least two members; only the first or the last of a series might consist of only one. Compared with the passage in Lev. xix., this work, though not wholly uninjured, preserves far more of its original form. What is extant comprises the following elements: 1) Ten Commandments on the rights of the home-born men and maid servants, xxi. 2-11, falling into two perfectly equal divisions. 1 Ver. 32, 34-36; for ver. 33, although now standing in close connection with ver. 34. is seen by its style to belong to the Book of Origins; as also ver. 31, which moreover contains a decision foreign to this series respecting idolatry; see xv. 32, xxii. 8. On the other hand, the two members of ver. 15, beginning with , which form a distinct commandment, were probably originally placed be fore ver. 35. 2 Namely, Lev. xviii; 6-23 as explained in the Alterthümer, p. 226 sq. except that neither ver. 20 on fornication, nor still less ver. 21 on the worship of Moloch, belong originally to this place, but are in their every word characteristic of the Book of Origins; besides these verses only the first member of ver. 23 reminds us of that book. des Alten Bundes, Bd. i. p. 72 sq. 2) Five commandments on murder and its punishment, xxi. 12-16. The single commandment (ver. 17.) on the punishment of those who curse their parents, stands here perfectly detached, and looks as if it were a fragment only of a second much mutilated half, which may have mentioned the crimes which were to be considered as heinous as murder. 1 3) Five laws on bodily injuries not punishable by death, xxi. 18-27; to which five others are added as a continuation, xxi. 28-32. 4) Ten laws on injuries done to property, xxi. 33— xxii. 5 [6]: 2 here the two halves are not sharply distinguished. 5) Ten laws on breach of trust with regard to property or to honour, xxii. 6-16 [7-17]; divided into two very obvious halves. 6) Ten laws in two halves, xxii. 17-30 [18-31].3 7) Ten more, also in two halves, xxiii. 1-9.4 These twenty conjoined describe purely moral conduct, to the breach of which no external punishment can be attached, as is done in all the former laws. The fact that in these two decalogues the same command occurs twice with scarcely any change, in xxii. 20 [21] and xxiii. 9, has but little importance, because the frequent employment of such a series of tens necessitated some freedom in externals. 8) Lastly, ten commandments on festivals and offerings, xxiii. 10-19, in two halves." With these the work might well close: but when we call to mind that with this fulness and variety it was evidently intended to give a comprehensive view of the legislation, while yet many essential points are wanting, and also that in this case it would be very strange to begin with the slaves (xxi. 2.), we are justified in supposing that it has lost some series of tens, which loss may have occurred even as early as its introduction into the work of the First Narrator. Instead of eight times. ten, it may easily have contained originally ten times ten laws: and we actually now und in xx. 23-26 five commandments which look just as if they might be the real commencement of 1 Viz. ver. 18 sq., 22, 23-25, 26 sq., as the sense requires. 2 The Masoretic text has indeed only 9, but the LXX. have in xxii. 4 [5] the missing one see Alterthümer, p. 214. 3 Viz. vv. 21–23, 25, 26, 28 and 29 [2224, 26, 27, 29 and 30] belong together. In the second half, vv. 6-9, where ver. 9 clearly forms a fitting conclusion, if ver. 7 were divided into two commandments, each would be too short; but it rather seems as if here two members had fallen out, since as the verse now stands, its two members do not harmonise very accurately together. The brief ver. 14 may form a fitting close to the first half, if for no other reason at least for this, that its contents are repeated more definitely in ver. 17. Before ver. 10 a declaration on the year of Jubilee may have fallen out, as vv. 10 and 11 must form together only one commandment. this great work. We need be no more surprised at this method of legal exposition in language bound by many of the restraints of verse, than that the ancient Hindus force into verse their endless multitude of laws, of which the Mánava Dharma Çástra (Code of Manu) is only the best known example. c.) Thirdly, if we come down to the Book of Origins, whose principal subject is that of law, we there find the amplification of the laws which had been already begun in the earlier work, so fully carried through, that the fetters of the arrangement by tens could no longer be employed. The once prevalent method of delivering the laws was already so far changed, that all circumstantial explanations of laws were put in an historical dress which referred them to Moses, leaving of the ancient method nothing more than the introduction of the words by Jahve himself. We find however in Lev. vi. and vii., incorporated into the Book of Origins, a passage which was certainly earlier, and proceeded from another author, but yet was not very far removed from the age of that book. This is a summary of the duties and rights of the Priesthood with reference to offerings of all kinds, which as a brief memorandum for the priests the author seems to have brought designedly into this quaint and ingenious form (p. 88 sq.). Apart from the historical introduction which precedes each subdivision, and the historical matter at the final close (vii. 34-38) we here find: 1) Five ordinances on burnt-offerings, vi. 2-6 [9-13], and five others on corn-offerings, vi. 7-11 [14-18]. 2) Five ordinances on the offerings at consecration, vi. 13-16 [20-23], and five others on sin-offerings, vi. 18-23 [25-30]. 3) Ten ordinances on trespass-offerings, vii. 1-10. 4) Ten on thank-offerings, vii. 11–21. 5) Again twice five directions respecting the portions of the animal sacrifices allowed to be eaten, vii. 23-27, 29-33.1 Here So accurate a grouping as this cannot be accidental. are 5 × 10=50 directions, whence we perceive that the old sacred form of legislation was still well known at that time. But even the Fourth Narrator set forth the original Decalogue suitably renewed for later times.2 In Psalm xv., of considerable antiquity, the duties of the pious are still distributed into ten poetical sentences.3 Now that we are thus enabled by clear indications to trace In this computation it is taken for granted that vi. 13 [20], forms two ordinances, and that vii. 11 and 12 form only one. 2 Ex. xxxiv. 12-26; the ten being as follows: First five, ver. 12-16, 17, 18, 1920a, 20b; Second five, 21, 22, 23-24, 25, 26. 3 Ps. xv. 2-5b; into these ten members are the 3 of the older song, Ps. xxiv. 4, expanded. the history of the wording (form) of the various commandments, we distinctly perceive what a remarkable influence the original Decalogue must have exercised, to call into existence solely by its own example an entire and influential branch of literature.i B. VICISSITUDES AND FINAL VICTORY UNDER MOSES. 1. The Elevation and the Relapses of the Age. When we once more turn our attention to the true nature of the guidance of the people by Moses, and the new order and constitution of their life which was then established, taking a connected view of the whole, we cannot but feel that everything which in the long series of following centuries was great and glorious, whether in intellectual truth, or in the order and aims of life, was, at all events in its germ and its primary impulse, derived from the mysterious elevation of the Mosaic age. As by the wing-stroke of a mighty spirit, a new power was in that distant age set in motion in the world, whose pulsations vibrated through the whole of antiquity, and which, instead of becoming weaker with the roll of centuries, reached out still further and shook the ground more and more powerfully, until it finally culminated in Christianity and in Islam; attaining then a position which suddenly converted it into a vastly more powerful movement. Not that these few but eternal principles of true religion and of a life ruled by it had sprung up entirely pure and unmixed. On the contrary we have seen how in entering the world and time these principles were by time and the world modified and narrowed. At one time with excess of youthful boldness they attempted things that they could not permanently sustain; at another, through too great zeal in the prosecution of the new, they put aside the old which ought rather to have been adopted in a purified form; and on other occasions they were too weak to oppose the reentrance of earlier corruptions. Thus were developed a number of obstacles This is a sufficient answer to a question which was first publicly brought forward by Ernst Bertheau in a treatise entitled Die sieben Gruppen Mosaischer Gesetze in den drei mittlern Büchern des Pentateuchs' (Gottingen, 1840). I reviewed this work in detail in the Göttinger Gelehrte Anzeigen, for 1841, p. 65-73, in an article which was broken off in August 1840, after the examination of Ex. xxi.xxiii. I intended there to prove at length, what I have here briefly shown to be my opinion, namely that the conjecture in that work was not without foundation, but ought to be more rigidly defined and reduced within narrower limits, and that thus that work possesses a peculiar merit of its own. and corruptions equal to that of the original good principles, which not less than the latter entered into the history and determined its form. These evil principles, however, only so restrained the living and imperishable germ once planted, that, developing to the full its hidden power, it pressed up with even greater force, and conquered every restraint, until it finally shot swiftly upwards into full maturity. But the nation which in that primeval time had once had the high courage to embrace the truths and principles of living without which no true religion can exist, had in that very act too nearly identified its entire life, its well-being and its happiness with the prosecution of the aim of true religion, ever again entirely to fall away from it; already it had seen so much of the pure light, and tasted so fully of the higher blessedness which lay enclosed therein, and so clearly seen the prosecution of this object to be its special divine mission in contrast to other nations, that it could never lose the noble pride and unwearied pertinacity with which it prosecuted that aim. Therefore every obstacle which it encountered, and every false path into which it was led, threw it back at last all the more forcibly upon the straight path to the attainment of this aim; all the divergent efforts of its life gradually converged into the single aim of attaining the perfection of true religion; until finally in the extreme strain of the effort to attain this object it lost its own independent life. That which alone is great and of value for the world in this nation, lies in the fact that as a whole, or as a nation in the strictest sense of the word, it entered actively and willingly into the highest demands of religion, and strove after that ultimate object with entire selfsacrifice; while among other nations, more especially the Hindus, individuals endeavoured to discover the truths of religion, and some few to realise them in their lives, but there was never formed a true Community bound together by pure religion. But since religion is far more powerful for the entire nation. and for the world than for the individual, it follows that it was only by means of the true Community that it could attain its highest form. The ultimate source, then, from which all this sprang, is assuredly the sublime age of Moses. But upon a closer consideration we cannot look upon that age as if it had always constituted a pure untroubled glory around Moses. Far from it; where the lists are opened to so much spiritual freedom as was here conferred by the fundamental laws of the community, there dangers from within are to be apprehended-violent |