but at the same time was troubled with a bad conscience, as if I were beginning with the roof instead of the foundation; for I had no thorough acquaintance with the Law, of which I was accustomed to be told that it was the basis and postulate of the whole literature. At last I took courage and made my way through Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and even through Knobel's Commentary to these books. But it was in vain that I looked for the light which was to be shed from this source on the historical and prophetical books. On the contrary, my enjoyment of the latter was marred by the Law; it did not bring them any nearer me, but intruded itself uneasily, like a ghost that makes a noise indeed, but is not visible and really effects nothing. Even where there were points of contact between it and them, differences also made themselves felt, and I found it impossible to give a candid decision in favour of the priority of the Law. Dimly I began to perceive that throughout there was between them all the difference that separates two wholly distinct worlds. Yet, so far from attaining clear conceptions, I only fell into deeper confusion, which was worse confounded by the explanations of Ewald in the second volume of history of Israel. At last, in the course of a casual visit in Gottingen in the summer of 1867, I learned through Ritschl that Karl Heinrich Graf placed the law later than the Prophets, and, almost without knowing his reasons for the hypothesis, I was prepared to accept it; I readily acknowledged to myself thc possibility of understanding Hebrew antiquity without the book of the Torah.

The hypothesis usually associated with Graf's name is really not his, but-that of his teacher, Eduard Reuss. It would be still more correct to call it after Leopold Gcorge and Wiihelm Vatke, who, independent alike of Reuss and of each other, were the first to give it literary currency. All three, again, are disciples of Martin Lebrecht de Wette, the epochmaking pioneer of historical criticism in this field./1/

******************************* 1. M. W. L. de Wette, Beitraege zur Einleitung in das A. T. (Bd. I. Kritischer Versuch ueber die Glaubwuerdigkeit der Buecher der Chronik; Bd. II. Kritik der Mosaischen Geschichte, Halle, 1806-07); J. F. L. George, Die alterer Juedischen Feste mit einer Kritik der Gesetzgebung des Pentateuch (Berlin, 1835; preface dated 12th October); W. Vatke, Die biblische Theologie wissenschaftlich dargestellt (Berlin, 1835; preface dated 18th October; publication did not get beyond first part of the first volume); K. H. Graf, Die geschichtlicher Buecher des Alten Testaments (Leipsic, 1866). That Graf as well as J. Orth (Nouv. Rev. de Theol., iii. 84 sqq., iv. 350 sqq., Paris, 1859-60) owed the impulse to his critical labours to his Strassburg master was not unknown; but how great must have been the share of Reuss in the hypothesis of Graf has only been revealed in 1879, by the publication of certain theses which he had formulated as early as 1833, but had hesitated to lay in print before the general theological public. These are as follows:— "1. L'element historique du Pentateuque peut et doit etre examine a part et ne pas etre confondu avec l'element legal. 2. L'un et l'autre ont pu exister sans redaction ecrite. La mention, chez d'anciens ecrivains, de certaines traditions patriarcales ou mosaiques, ne prouve pas l'existence du Pentateuque, et une nation peut avoir un droit coutumier sans code ecrit. Les traditions nationales des Israelites remontent plus haut que les lois du Pentateuque et la redaction des premieres est anterieure a celle des secondes. 4. L'interet principal de l'historien doit porter sur la date des lois, parce que sur ce terrain il a plus de chance d'arriver a des resultats certains. II faut en consequence proceder a l'interrogatoire des temoins. 5. L'histoire racontee, dans les livres des Juges et de Samuel, et meme en partie celle comprise dans les livres des Rois, est en contradiction avec des lois dites mosaiques; donc celles-ci etaient inconnues a l'epoque de la redaction de ces livres, a plus forte raison elles n'ont pas existe dans les temps qui y vent decrits. 6. Les prophetes du 8e et du 7e siecle ne savent rien du code mosaique. 7. Jeremie est le premier prophete qui connaisse une loi ecrite et ses citations rapportent au Deuteronome. 8. Le Deuteronome (iv.45-xxviii.68) est le livre que les pretres pretendaient avoir trouve dans le temple du temps du roi Josias. Ce code est la partie la plus ancienne de la legislation (redigee) comprise dans le Pentateuque. 9. L'histoire des Israelites, en tant qu'il s'agit du developpement national determine par des lois ecrites, se divisera en deux periodes, avant et apres Josias. 10. Ezechiel est anterieur a la redaction du code rituel et des lois qui ont definitivement organise la hierarchie. 11. Le livre du Josue n'est pas, tant s'en faut, la partie la plus recente de l'ouvrage entier. 12. Le redacteur du Pentateuque se distingue clairement de l'ancien prophete Moyse." —L'Histoire Sainte et la Loi, Paris, 1879, pp. 23, 24.

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He indeed did not himself succeed in reaching a sure position, but he was the first clearly to perceive and point out how disconnected are the alleged starting-point of Israel's history and that history itself. The religious community set up on so broad a basis in the wilderness, with its sacred centre and uniform organisation, disappears and leaves no trace as soon as Israel settles in a land of its own, and becomes, in any proper sense, a nation. The period of the Judges presents itself to us as a confused chaos, out of which order and coherence are gradually evolved under the pressure of external circumstances, but perfectly naturally and without the faintest reminiscence of a sacred unifying constitution that had formerly existed. Hebrew antiquity shows absolutely no tendencies towards a hierocracy; power is wielded solely by the heads of families and of tribes, and by the kings, who exercise control over religious worship also, and appoint and depose its priests. The influence possessed by the latter is purely moral; the Torah of God is not a document in their hands which guarantees their own position, but merely an instruction for others in their mouths; like the word of the prophets, it has divine authority but not political sanction, and has validity only in so far as it is voluntarily accepted. And as for the literature which has come down to us from the period of the Kings, it would puzzle the very best intentions to beat up so many as two or three unambiguous allusions to the Law, and these cannot be held to prove anything when one considers, by way of contrast, what Homer was to the Greeks.

To complete the marvel, in post-exile Judaism the Mosaism which until then had been only latent suddenly emerges into prominence everywhere. We now find the Book regarded as the foundation of all higher life, and the Jews, to borrow the phrase of the Koran, are "the people of the Book;" we have the sanctuary with its priests and Levites occupying the central position, and the people as a congregation encamped around it; the cultus, with its burnt-offerings and sin-offerings, its purifications and its abstinences, its feasts and Sabbaths, strictly observed as prescribed by the Law, is now the principal business of life. When we take the community of the second temple and compare it with the ancient people of Israel, we are at once able to realise how far removed was thc latter from so-called Mosaism. The Jews themselves were thoroughly conscious of the distance. The revision of the books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, undertaken towards the end of the Babylonian exile, a revision much more thorough than is commonly assumed, condemns as heretical the whole age of the Kings. At a later date, as the past became more invested with a certain nimbus of sanctity, men preferred to clothe it with the characters of legitimacy rather than sit in judgment upon it. The Book