that commanded in the Mosaic law, and an examination of the relation between them. This discussion is embarrassed by the difficulty of finding any historical data which will be universally accepted. If we might assume that any of the older historical books of the Old Testament were as trustworthy as ordinary ancient histories making no claim to inspiration, or that the books of most of the prophets were not pious frauds, the task would be greatly simplified. As it is, I shall endeavor to conduct the examination on the basis of such obvious facts as would be admitted by the authors of what seem to the writer such strange romances as Kuenen's "Religion of Israel" and "Prophets and Prophecy in Israel."*

The first point to which attention may be called is the landed property of the priests and Levites. According to the Mosaic law, they had no inheritance of land like the other tribes, but merely scattered cities for residence; and were to depend for support, partly upon their portion of the sacrifices, and chiefly upon the tithes of the people. While the payment of these tithes was commanded, there was absolutely no provision for enforcing their payment. This rested entirely upon moral obligation, and the condition of the whole Levitical tribe was thus dependent upon the conscientiousness of the Israelites. When the sense of religious obligation was strong, they would be well provided for; when it was weak, they would be in want. And this is exactly what appears from the general course of the history, as well as from such special narratives as are universally admitted to be of great antiquity. (See Judg. xvii. 7–18, &c.) Now, after the exile, at a time when there can be no question in regard to the facts, we find the priests and Levites similarly unprovided with landed property. The Mosaic law, the condition of things before the exile and after, agree together; but Ezekiel represents a totally different state of things. He assigns two strips of territory, one to the priests and the other to the Levites, each of nearly the same size as the allotment to any of the tribes (xlviii. 9–14). This very small tribe would thus have had almost twice as much land as any other; and such a provision would obviously have profoundly modified the whole. state and relations of the priestly order and of the subordinate Levites. In this point, therefore, we find that if any process of development was going on in the ecclesiastical system of Israel, it was such as to

*Substantially the same views, especially in relation to Ezekiel, are taken by Graf (Die Geschichtl. Bücher des alten Test.), Smend (Der Prophet Ezechiel), and others, with sundry variations in detail; but as Kuenen is the author most widely known, and presents his theories in the most favorable point of view, the references of this paper will be confined to his works.

leave the final result just what it had been before, while the system of Ezekiel, which, on that supposition, should be a middle term between the two, is entirely foreign to both of them.

There are other noteworthy points involved in the same provision. According to Deut. xix. 2-9 three cities, and conditionally another three, and according to Num. xxxv. 9-15 the whole six, were to be selected from the cities of the Levites and appointed as cities of refuge in case of unintentional manslaughter. The same provision is alluded to in Ex. xxi. 13, 14, and it plainly forms an essential feature of the whole Mosaic law in regard to manslaughter and murder. After the conquest, according to Josh. xxi. this command was executed and the cities were distributed as widely as possible in different parts of the land, three of them on either side of the Jordan, the eastern side being considered as an extension of the land not included in the original promise and therefore bringing into force the conditional requirement of Deuteronomy. * But by the arrangement of Ezekiel, the Levites were not to have cities scattered through the land, and their central territory could not afford the necessary ease of access from the distant parts. There is here therefore an essential difference in regard to the whole law in reference to manslaughter and murder, and it is plain that the Mosaic law in this point could not have been devised from Ezekiel.

But besides this obvious inference, it is in the highest degree improbable that this provision of the Mosaic law could have originated after the captivity, when it would have been entirely unsuited to the political condition of the people. Still more, it is inconceivable that the record of the execution of this law by Joshua could have been invented after the time of Ezekiel; for neither in his vision is any such selection of cities indicated, nor in the actual territorial arrangement of the restoration was there any opportunity therefor. Yet the same account which records the selection (incidentally mentioned in connection with each city as it is reached in the list) clearly recognizes the distinction between the priests and the Levites (Josh. xxi.) This distinction then must have been older than Ezekiel.

In quite another point Ezekiel's assignment of territory, taken in connection with Numbers and Joshua, has an important bearing upon the antiquity of the distinction between priests and Levites. According to the Mosaic law the priests were a higher order ecclesiastically

*

Deuteronomy was indeed written after the conquest of the transJordanic territory; but it was immediately after, and when this territory was yet hardly considered as the home of the tribes. Some writers prefer to consider the number of six cities as fixed and the three conditional, which in their view were never set apart, as making nine.

than the Levites and in accordance with this position, were provided with a more ample income; for being much less than a tenth of the tribe, the priests received a tenth of the income of all the other Levites (Num. xviii. 25-28). Both these facts are in entire accordance with the relations of the priests and Levites in post-exilic times; but they are at variance with those relations as set forth in Joshua, if that be post-exilic, and also with Ezekiel considered as a preparatory stage of the legislation of the Pentateuch. Of course, the whole body of the Levites must have been originally many times more numerous than the members of the single family of Aaron, and if Joshua xxi. be very ancient we need not be surprised that the 48 Levitical cities provided for in Numbers (xxxv. 1-7) should have been given, 13 to the priests and 35 to the other Levites (Josh. xxi.); for this gave to the priests individually a much larger proportion than to the Levites. The same thing is true of the provision made by Ezekiel. The equal strips of land given to the priests collectively and to the Levites collectively, gave much more to the former individually. But all this would have been entirely untrue after the exile. In the census of the returning exiles, given in both Ezra and Nehemiah, the number of priests is set down as 4289 (Ezra ii. 36-38; Neh. vii. 39-42), while that of the Levites-even including the Nethinim-is 733, or but little more than one-sixth of that number (Ez. ii. 40-58; in Neh. vii, 43-60 the number is 752).* It may indeed be argued that Ezekiel has no regard to the actual numbers of the two bodies, but writing at an early stage of the process of separation between the priests and the Levites, intends to put them upon a precise equality; and that only at a later period was the pecuniary provision for the Levites made inferior to that of the priests. If this be so, then Joshua xxi. must be postexilic; for in its whole arrangement it clearly recognizes the distinction and the superiority of the priests. Yet this gives 35 cities to the very few Levites and only 13 to the comparatively numerous priests

*Kuenen (Relig. of Isr. Vol. II. p. 203, 204) and his school undertake to explain this disparity of numbers by the supposition that the Levites were "degraded priests" of which he thinks he finds evidence in Ezek. xliv. 10-16. For the present point this is quite immaterial; all that is here required is admitted by him-the fact of the great disparity in numbers. But the supposition itself is quite gratuitous, and rests upon two unfounded assumptions: (1) that the Levites" in ver. 10 cannot be used zaror for the priests-a point to be spoken of elsewhere; and (2) that the "sons of Zadok ver. 15, is synonymous with "sons of Aaron," which is not true. The simple and natural explanation of the passage in Ezekiel is that the prophet means to degrade the priests who have been guilty of idolatry. (See Curtiss' The Levitical Priests p. 74-77.)

"

in other words is self-contradictory. In this respect the bearing of Ezekiel is plain; it makes the Mosaic law and the history of Joshua consistent if they were ancient, but inconsistent and self-contradictory if Ezekiel's vision was a stage in the late differentiation of the priests from the Levites.

We are now prepared to go a step further. It is agreed on all sides that Ezekiel recognizes a distinction between the priests and the Levites. To an ordinary reader of his book it appears that he makes this recognition incidentally and as a matter of course, as of an old, familiar, and established distinction. He nowhere states that there shall be such a distinction, nor gives any grounds upon which it shall rest, nor describes who shall be included in the one body and who in the other, except that he confines the priests to "the sons of Zadok” (xl. 46; xliii. 19; xliv. 15; xlviii. 11), of which more will be said presently. Certainly this does not look, upon the face of it, like the original institution of this distinction. But Kuenen (Relig. of Isr. vol. 2 p. 116) asserts that at the time of Josiah's reformation, "all the Levites, without exception, were considered qualified to serve as priests of Jahweh," and that "Ezekiel is the first to desire other rules for the future," and that the priestly laws of the Pentateuch, of which he had no knowledge, were subsequent. Again he says (ib. p. 153) "Ezekiel, in uttering his wishes as to the future, made a beginning of committal to writing of the priestly tradition. The priests in Babylonia went on in his footsteps. A first essay in priestly legislation-remains of which have been preserved to us in Lev. xviii-xxvi.

was followed by others, until at last a complete system arose, contained in an historical frame. Possessed of this system, the priestly exiles, and among them Ezra in particular, could consider themselves entitled and called upon to come forward as teachers in Judea, and to put in practice the ordinances which hitherto had been exclusively of theoretical interest to them."* These passages are cited from Kuenen simply to bring distinctly before the mind the theory which has recently gained acceptance with an intelligent school of critics; it is the bearing upon this of the vision of Ezekiel which we are to consider. The question to be asked is whether the more careful examination of this vision bears out the prima facie impression produced by it, or confirms the somewhat elaborate theory of Kuenen.

There can be no manner of doubt that in Ezekiel's time there already existed two classes of persons known respectively as "priests"

*He admits that the distinction is recognized in 1 Kings viii. 4, but says "this is merely in consequence of a clerical error." Relig. Isr.

vol. II. p. 301.)

and as "Levites." Whatever may have been the ground of the distinction, and whether or not all were equally entitled to offer sacrifices, Ezekiel certainly recognizes the two classes as existing, since he could not otherwise have used the terms without defining them. The Levites, of course, may be considered already well known as the descendants of the tribe of Levi; but why not the priests in a similar way? How could he have used the term in distinction from the Levites, if no such distinction had been hitherto known?

But further: Ezekiel assigns to the priests the functions of offering the sacrifices and of eating the sin offering, while to the Levites he gives the duty of "ministering in the sanctuary." Of course the mere expression "minister" (xliv. 11) might, if it stood alone, be understood of any sort of service; but the whole context shows it is meant of a service inferior to the priests, and the existence here of the same distinctions as those of the Mosaic law has been so universally recognized as to lead some scholars to argue that the provisions of this law must have been derived from this prophet. It is found however, that precisely the same distinction appears, and precisely the same duties are assigned respectively to the priests and to the Levites in the ages before Ezekiel. There is no occasion to speak of the functions of the priests since there is no dispute about them; in regard to the Levites, I will refer only to a single passage already cited by Kuenen (ubi sup. p. 304) as pre-exilic, and of especial interest because it is taken from Deuteronomy (xviii. 1-8), and is partly in the same words as those used by Ezekiel. At first sight it appears to join the two classes together, but on closer examination is found to make a clear distinction between them. "The priests the Levites, all the tribe of Levi, shall have no part nor inheritance with Israel; they shall eat the offerings of the Lord made by fire, and his inheritance" (vs. 1). This statement has been thought to show that the whole tribe was here treated as a unit, with no distinction between its members. If it stood alone it might be so regarded; but the lawgiver immediately goes on to speak separately of the two parts of the tribe: "And this shall be the priests' due from the people, from them that offer a sacrifice," specifying the parts of the victim and also the first fruits; "for the Lord thy God hath chosen him out of all thy tribes to stand to minister in the name of the Lord, him and his sons forever." So far about the priests. Then follows, "And if a Levite come from any of thy gates out of all Israel, where he sojourned, and come with all the desire of his mind unto the place which the Lord shall choose, then he shall minister in the name of the Lord his God, as all his brethren the Levites do, which stand before the Lord. They shall