EVIDENCE FROM CONFLICT WITH PREVIOUS LEGISLATION.

It is held by those who advocate the late date of Deuteronomy, that the previously existing law contained in the book JE, which was really given by Moses, if Moses gave any law at all, permitted the people to erect altars wherever they chose, and that the law in Deuteronomy was intended to abolish that privilege. Sacrifice in the high places had been perfectly legitimate under this law, but it was now to be abolished by force of this newly discovered "book of the law." By Robertson Smith the position is stated in the following words:

The central difference between the Deuteronomic code, on which Josiah acted, and the code of the First Legislation, lies in the principle that the temple at Jerusalem is the only legitimate sanctuary. The legislator in Deuteronomy expressly puts forth this ordinance as an innovation: "Ye shall not do, as we do here this day, every man whatever is right in his own eyes"-Deut. xii. 8 (O. T., p.253).

A little reflection will show that this position, though put forward as if it were unquestionable, can not be maintained. In the first place, if such were the facts in the case, the friends and supporters of the high places, who are admitted to have been exceedingly reluctant to give them up, could and would have successfully answered: ‘We are not doing whatsoever is right in our own eyes; but that which Jehovah our God gave us permission to do by the hand of Moses. This new law, therefore, pretending to come from the same Moses, a law which no Israelite has ever heard of before, is false and spurious. We will have none of it.’ They could have said, ‘We have the old Mosaic law written in our sacred books; it is a part of the book of the covenant given by God to our fathers; and it is also written with indelible letters in our ancestral customs; and we shall not be deceived into the belief that this hitherto unknown book, with its innovation, has also been our law from the beginning.’ What answer could Josiah, or any of his officers sent out to tear down the altars on the high places, have made to this? They would have been as dumb as the stones of the altars which they destroyed.

In the second place, the supposed writer of Deuteronomy could not, without barefaced folly, have put the words of this restrictive law into the mouth of Moses. He would have had Moses legislating against a further continuance of worship which as yet had no existence in Israel; for it certainly had no existence among them while Moses was still alive. When, then, Hilkiah's book was presented to the first man of sense on his high place, he would have responded: "Do you think I am a fool, to give up my chosen place of worshiping the God of our fathers in compliance with a book pretending that Moses forbade our fathers to continue in the practice, when, as a matter of fact, our fathers had never engaged in it?" The pretense would strike them very much as if some unscrupulous politician should now publish a copy of Washington's farewell address with a warning in it against the adoption of the Austrian secret ballot in our elections. Such are the absurdities, unperceived by themselves, in which critics become involved when they permit their zeal in support of a theory to run away with their better reason.

If it should be asked, in response to the preceding, what practice was it that Moses had reference to when he said, "Ye shall not do as we do here this day," the answer is, first he certainly did not mean what the men of Josiah's day, seven hundred years later, would be doing, but something that men were doing in his own day. Second, when Moses spoke the people addressed had only a few weeks before been guilty of wandering off with the women of Moab and engaging with them in the worship of Baal-peor (Sum. xxv.); and this piece of self-will in worship, which had cost the lives of twenty-four thousand men, was fresh in their memories. Thus we see that if the law was given by Moses, all that is said about it agrees with the facts in the case; and if it was not, everything is thrown into confusion and absurdity.

Professor Driver's statement of the position is not stronger than that of Professor Smith. Here it is:

The law of Deuteronomy thus marks an epoch in the history of Israelitish religion; it springs from an age when the old law (Ex. xx. 24), sanctioning an indefinite number of local sanctuaries, had been proved to be incompatible with purity of worship; it marks the final, the most systematic effort made by the prophets to free the public worship of Jehovah from heathen accretions (Corn. Deut., 138).

This is a more cautious statement than that of Robertson Smith, but it is not less objectionable. It represents a law given by divine wisdom for Driver recognizes the divine origin of the old book of the covenant, as proving to be "incompatible with purity of worship." This is an absurdity. It also represents the king and the people as promptly abandoning a form of worship that was lawful, the law for which had been given by God through Moses, and to which the masses of the people had become devotedly attached, on the demand of a new law, pretending to come from Moses, but which had really never been heard of before. No people in the history of the world was ever thus deluded. The incredibility of such a deception is increased when we add that never afterward was any question raised in Israel as to the Mosaic origin of this new law. If the hypothesis is accepted, it reverses the notable saying of President Lincoln, that "you can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people part of the time, but you can not fool all the people all the time."

Both of these scholars, in common with all the critics of their class, assume, as if it were an undisputed fact, that the first legislation permitted a multiplicity of altars to be erected, and sacrifice to be offered on them wherever it suited the good pleasure of the worshipers; and for this reason they claim that worship on the high places, "on every high hill and under every green tree" was legitimate until the publication of the law in Deuteronomy, which limited all sacrifices to the single altar in Jerusalem. The question whether this assumption is true or not can be settled only by an appeal to the terms of the law itself. We quote it in full:

“And Jehovah said unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Ye yourselves have seen that I have talked with you from heaven. Ye shall not make other gods with me; gods of silver or gods of gold, ye shall not make unto you. An altar shalt thou make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, thy peace offerings, thy sheep and thine oxen: in every place where I record my name I will come unto thee and I will bless thee. And if thou make an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stones: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon" (Ex. xx. 22-26)

This, if we may believe the record in Exodus, is the law of sacrifice delivered at the foot of Mt. Sinai (cf. 18-21). Does it authorize a multitude of altars at as many different places? or one altar at a time? The word "altar" is in the singular number, and the people are addressed as one individual: "An altar of earth shalt thou make unto me." Evidently the one people were to make the one altar; and it is impossible that the multiplicity of simultaneous altars in use at the alleged date of Deuteronomy would have been justified by this law. But the altar was to be made of earth or of stone, and consequently it could not be moved. If, then, after the first one was built under this law, another should be needed at another place, it would have to be erected as was the first. This brings us to the question of place, and to the second provision of the law: "In every place where I record my name I will come unto thee and bless thee." Though not expressed, it is here implied that in these places the aforesaid altar would be erected. But Israel as a people could be in only one place at a time, and consequently the places contemplated are consecutive and not simultaneous places of worship. With this the subsequent history of Israel perfectly agrees. The altar of wooden boards covered with brass which Moses constructed before leaving Mt. Sinai (Ex. xxvii. 1-8), instead of being in conflict with this law, as has been alleged, was strictly in conformity with it. An altar of earth, if used more than once, would be constantly crumbling, and one of unhewn stones would be constantly falling. Neither would be at all suitable for continued use. Consequently, as Mr. Ferguson has conclusively shown in Smith's Bible Dictionary, the structure made by Moses, which was nothing but a hollow box without top or bottom, was only a case within which the real altar was made, and which held it, whether made of earth or of rough stones, in proper shape, while it gave the structure a smooth exterior. By itself it was not an altar at all; for it provided no place on which the fire could be built and the victims burned. If the fire had been built inside of it, as has been supposed, it would have charred the wood through the thin plates of brass, and ruined the structure. But when the case was placed on a level piece of ground, and filled with earth, or with stones, the law was complied with, and the altar was held in proper shape for any length of time. When the place of encampment was changed, the priests, by means of the strong wooden bars passed through rings on the outside of the case, lifted the latter away from the enclosed earth or stones, and left the altar to crumble. This one altar at a time, frequently renewed, yet always the same in exterior appearance and form, was the altar of Israel, according to the history, throughout the desert wanderings, throughout the period of Joshua and the judges, and on to the erection of Solomon's temple. It is only by impeaching the sacred records that this can be denied. And if this is the truth respecting the first legislation about the altar and the place of worship, the only difference between this law and that in Deuteronomy is that in the latter the exclusiveness of the law is made more emphatic.

Another evidence of the perfect unity of these two laws is found in the words used in common respecting the place of worship. In Exodus the words are, "In every place where I record my name I will come unto thee, and will bless thee." In Deuteronomy, "But unto the place which Jehovah your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put his name there, even unto his habitation shall ye seek, and thither thou shalt come." The latter contains no verbal quotation from the former, but it is evidently intended to explain it. Where the former has, "In every place where I record my name," the latter has, "Unto the place which Jehovah your God shall choose" -- choosing a place for his worship, explains the expression, "record my name." The only difference is that in the older law it is implied that he might record his name in more than one place, whereas in the latter he is to choose one place. And this agrees with the history; for when they came into Canaan God first recorded his name at Shiloh, where the tabernacle with the ark of the covenant in it was located by Joshua, and remained till after the capture of the ark by the Philistines (Josh. xviii. 1; I. Sam. iv. 11-v. 1). Afterwards Jerusalem was chosen, and this is the one sanctuary to which, according to all classes of critics, the words of Deuteronomy have reference.

Prof. William Henry Green has spoken so well on the alleged discrepancy between these two laws, that I here quote him in full:

There is no such difference as is pretended between the book of the covenant and the other Mosaic codes in respect to the place of legitimate sacrifice. It is not true that the former sanctioned a multiplicity of altars, and that this was the recognized practice of pious worshipers of Jehovah until the reign of Josiah, and that he instituted a new departure from all previous law and custom by restricting sacrifice to one central altar in compliance with a book of the law then for the first time promulgated. The unity of the altar was the law of Israel's life from the beginning. Even in the days of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, no such thing was known as separate rival sanctuaries for the worship of Jehovah, co-existing in various parts of the land. They built altars and offered sacrifice in whatever part of the land they might be, and particularly in places where Jehovah appeared to them. But the patriarchal family was a unit, and while they worshiped in different places, successively in the course of their migrations, they nevertheless worshiped in but one place at a time. They did not offer sacrifice contemporaneously on different altars. So with Israel in their marches through the wilderness. They set up their altar wherever they encamped, at various places successively, but not in more than one place at the same time. This is the state of things which is recognized and made legitimate in the book of the covenant. In Ex. xx. 24 the Israelites are authorized to erect an altar, not wherever they may please, but "in all places where God records his name." The critics interpret this as a direct sanction given to various sanctuaries in different parts of Palestine. There is no foundation whatever for such an interpretation. There is not a word here nor anywhere in Scripture from which the legitimacy of the multitudinous sanctuaries of a later time can be inferred. An altar is lawful, and sacrifice upon it acceptable, and God will there meet with his people and bless them, only where he records his name; not where men may utter his name, whether by invocation or proclamation, but where God reveals or manifests himself (H. C. of P., 147, 148).