ment, and the unanimity attained
with reference to the most significant questions, is one of the marvels
of the life of learning of our age.

In the Jewish tradition it had been assumed that the Mosaic law was
written down in the wilderness. Then, in the times of the Judges and of
the Kings, the historical books took shape, with David's Psalms and the
wise words of Solomon. At the end of the period of the Kings we have the
prophetic literature and finally Ezra and Nehemiah. De Wette had
disputed this order, but Wellhausen in his _Prolegomena zur Geshichte
Israels_, 1883, may be said to have proved that this view was no longer
tenable. Men ask, could the law, or even any greater part of it, have
been given to nomads in the wilderness? Do not all parts of it assume a
settled state of society and an agricultural life? Do the historical
books from Judges to the II. Kings know anything about the law? Are the
practices of worship which they imply consonant with the supposition
that the law was in force? How is it that that law appears both under
Josiah and again under Ezra, as something new, thus far unknown, and yet
as ruling the religious life of the people from that day forth? It seems
impossible to escape the conclusion that only after Josiah's
reformation, more completely after the restoration under Ezra, did the
religion of the law exist. The centralisation of worship at one point,
such as the book of Deuteronomy demands, seems to have been the thing
achieved by the reform under Josiah. The establishment of the priestly
hierarchy such as the code ordains was the issue of the religious
revolution wrought in Ezra's time. To put it differently, the so-called
_Book of the Covenant, the nucleus of the law-giving_, itself implies
the multiplicity of the places of worship. Deuteronomy demands the
centralisation of the worship as something which is yet to take place.
The priestly Code declares that the limitation of worship to one place
was a fact already in the time of the journeys of Israel in the
wilderness. It is assumed that the Hebrews in the time of Moses shared
the almost universal worship of the stars. Moses may indeed have
concluded a covenant between his people and Jahve, their God, hallowing
the judicial and moral life of the people, bringing these into relation
to the divine will. Jahve was a holy God whose will was to guide the
people coming up out of the degradation of nature-worship. That part of
the people held