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One would imagine that this could not be objected to. But
objections have been raised; the procedure which, when applied to
Deuteronomy, is called historico-critical method, is called, when
applied to the Priestly Code, construction of history. But
history, it is well known, has always to be constructed: the
order, Priestly Code, Jehovist, Deuteronomy, is not a thing
handed down by tradition or prescribed by the nature of the case,
but a hypothesis as yet only a score of years old or thereby, the
reasons for which were somewhat incomprehensible, so that people
have forgotten them and begun to regard the hypothesis as
something objective, partaking of the character of dogma. The
question is whether one constructs well or ill. Count Baudissin
thinks a grave warning necessary of a certain danger, that,
namely, of an exaggerated application of logic: that the laws
follow each other in a certain order logically, he says, does not
prove that they appeared in the same order in history. But it is
not for the sake of logical sequence that we consider the
development which began with the prophets to have issued finally
in the laws of cultus; and those who set out from "sound human
reason" have generally forced the reverse process of this on the
history, in spite of the traces which have come down to us, and
which point the other way.
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