But Anathoth (for
example) was not on that account a priestly city in the sense of
Joshua xxi.; Jeremiah had his holding there as a citizen and not
as a priest, and he shared not with the priests but with the
people (xxxvii. 12). As a tribe Levi was distinguished from the
other tribes precisely by holding no land, and its members
joined themselves to the settled citizens and peasants, for the
most part as dependent inmates (Deuteronomy x. 9, xviii. 1).
Even after the exile, indeed, matters were not different in this
respect. "Ab excidio templi prioris sublatum est Levitis jus
suburbiorum," says R. Nachman (B. Sotah, 48b), and he is
borne out by the silence of Nehemiah x. The execution of the law
was probably postponed to the days of the Messiah; it was not in
truth within the power of man, and cannot be seriously demanded
in the Priestiy Code itself, which contemplates a purely ideal
Israel, with ideal boundaries, and leaves the sober reality so
far out of sight that on archaeological grounds it never once so
much as mentions Jerusalem, the historical capital of the priests.
The circumstance that these towns lay _in partibus infiidelium_
seems to make them unavailable as a means of fixing the antiquity
of the Priestly Code.
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