Judaism
is just the right soil for such an artificial growth as the
forty-eight priestly and Levitical cities. It would hardly have
occurred to an author living in the monarchical period, when the
continuity of the older history was still unbroken, to look so
completely away from all the conditions of the then existing
reality; had he done so, he would have produced upon his
contemporaries the impression merely that he had scarcely all his
wits about him. But after the exile had annihilated the ancient
Israel, and violently and completely broken the old connection
with the ancient conditions, there was nothing to hinder from
planting and partitioning the _tabula rasa_ in thought at pleasure,
just as geographers are wont to do with their map as long as the
countries are unknown.
But, of course, no fancy is pure fancy; every imagination has
underlying it some elements of reality by which it can be laid
hold of, even should these only be certain prevailing notions of
a particular period. It is clear, if a proper territory is
assigned to the clergy, that the notion of the clerical tribe which
already had begun to strike root in Deuteronomy has here grown
and gathered strength to such a degree that even the last and
differentiating distinction is abolished which separates the
actual tribes from the Levites, viz.
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