The latter
is in the midst of movement and conflict: it clearly speaks out
its reforming intention, its opposition to the traditional "what we
do here this day;" the former stands outside of and above the
struggle,--the end has been reached and made a secure possession.
On the basis of the Priestly Code no reformation would ever have
taken place, no Josiah would ever have observed from it that the
actual condition of affairs was perverse and required to be set
right; it proceeds as if everything had been for long in the best
of order. It is only in Deuteronomy, moreover, that one sees to
the root of the matter, and recognises its connection with the
anxiety for a strict monotheism and for the elimination from the
worship of the popular heathenish elements, and thus with a deep
and really worthy aim; in the Priestly Code the reason of the
appointments, in themselves by no means rational, rests upon their
own legitimacy, just as everything that is actual ordinarily seems
natural and in no need of explanation. Nowhere does it become
apparent that the abolition of the Bamoth and Asherim and memorial
stones is the real object contemplated; these institutions are
now almost unknown, and what is really only intelligible as a
negative and polemical ordinance is regarded as full of meaning in
itself.
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