But once the temple was in
ruins, the cultus at an end, its PERSONNEL out of employment, it is
easy to understand how the sacred praxis should have become a
matter of theory and writing, so that it might not altogether
perish, and how an exiled priest should have begun to paint the
picture of it as he carried it in his memory, and to publish it as
a programme for the future restoration of the theocracy. Nor is
there any difficulty if arrangements, which as long as they
were actually in force were simply regarded as natural, were seen
after their abolition in a transfiguring light, and from the study
devoted to them gained artificially a still higher value. These
historical conditions supplied by the exile sufffice to make clear
the transition from Jeremiah to Ezekiel, and the genesis of Ezekiel
xl.-xlviii. The co-operation of the Priestly Code is here not
merely unnecessary, it would be absolutely disconcerting.
Ezekiel's departure from the ritual of the Pentateuch cannot be
explained as intentional alterations of the original; they are
too casual and insignificant. The prophet, moreover, has the
rights of authorship as regards the end of his book as well as for
the rest of it; he has also his right to his picture of the future
as the earlier prophets had to theirs.
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