Almost involuntarily this
argument has taken the shape of a sort of history of the
ordinances of worship. Rude and colourless that history must be
confessed to be,--a fault due to the materials, which hardly allow
us to do more than mark the contrast between pre-exilic and
post-exilic, and, in a secondary measure, that between
Deuteronomic and pre-Deuteronomic. At the same time there is this
advantage arising out of the breadth of the periods treated: they
cannot fail to distinguish themselves from each other in a tangible
manner; it must be possible in the case of historical, and even of
legal works, to recognise whether they were written before or
after the exile. The second part, in many respects dependent on
the first, traces the influence of the successively prevailing
ideas and tendencies upon the shaping of historical tradition, and
follows the various phases in which that was conceived and set
forth. It contains, so to speak, a history of tradition. The
third part sums up the critical results of the preceding two, with
some further determining considerations, and concludes with a more
general survey.
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