At last I took courage and made
my way through Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and even through
Knobel's Commentary to these books. But it was in vain that I
looked for the light which was to be shed from this source on the
historical and prophetical books. On the contrary, my enjoyment
of the latter was marred by the Law; it did not bring them any
nearer me, but intruded itself uneasily, like a ghost that makes a
noise indeed, but is not visible and really effects nothing. Even
where there were points of contact between it and them, differences
also made themselves felt, and I found it impossible to give a
candid decision in favour of the priority of the Law. Dimly I
began to perceive that throughout there was between them all the
difference that separates two wholly distinct worlds. Yet, so far
from attaining clear conceptions, I only fell into deeper
confusion, which was worse confounded by the explanations of Ewald
in the second volume of history of Israel. At last, in the course
of a casual visit in Gottingen in the summer of 1867, I learned
through Ritschl that Karl Heinrich Graf placed the law later than
the Prophets, and, almost without knowing his reasons for the
hypothesis, I was prepared to accept it; I readily acknowledged
to myself thc possibility of understanding Hebrew antiquity
without the book of the Torah.
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