Take heed that ye offer not in
every place that ye see; ye may not eat your holy gifts in
every town, but only in the place which Jehovah shall choose."
The Law is never weary of again and again repeating its
injunction of local unity of worship. In doing so, it is in
conscious opposition to "the things that we do here this day," and
throughout has a polemical and reforming attitude towards existing
usage. It is rightly therefore assigned by historical criticism
to the period of the attacks made on the Bamoth by the reforming
party at Jerusalem. As the Book of the Covenant, and the whole
Jehovistic writing in genera], reflects the first pre-prophetic
period in the history of the cultus, so Deuteronomy is the legal
expression of the second period of struggle and transition. The
historical order is all the more certain because the literary
dependence of Deuteronomy on the Jehovistic laws and narratives
can be demonstrated independently, and is an admitted fact. From
this the step is easy to the belief that the work whose discovery
gave occasion to King Josiah to destroy the local sanctuaries was
this very Book of Deuteronomy, which originally must have had an
independent existence, and a shorter form than at present.
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