But, this self-deception
accomplished, it is easy further to carry back the hierocratic
churchly constitution to the time of Moses, because it excludes
the kingship, and then either to assert that it was kept secret
throughout the entire period of the judges and the monarchy,
or to use the fiction as a lever by which to dislocate the whole
of the traditional history.
To any one who knows anything about history it is not necessary
to prove that the so-called Mosaic theocracy, which nowhere suits
the circumstances of the earlier periods, and of which the prophets,
even in their most ideal delineations of the Israelite state as it
ought to be, have not the faintest shadow of an idea, is, so to
speak, a perfect fit for post-exilian Judaism, and had its
actuality only there. Foreign rulers had then relieved the Jews
of all concern about secular affairs; they had it in their
power, and were indeed compelled to give themselves wholly up to
sacred things, in which they were left completely unhampered.
Thus the temple became the sole centre of life, and the prince of
the temple the head of the spiritual commonwealth, to which also
the control of political affairs, so far as these were still left
to the nation, naturally fell there being no other head! /1/
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