Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels
Encyclopedia
Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels (Prolegomena to the History of Israel) is a book by German biblical scholar Julius Wellhausen
(1844-1918) which formulated the documentary hypothesis
(a theory regarding the origins of the Torah
or Pentateuch, the first five books of the bible
). The book was extremely influential and is often compared for its impact in its field with Charles Darwin
's On the Origin of Species.
Geschichte Israels ("History of Israel") appeared in 1878, and was republished in 1882 as Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels. The official English translation by J. Sutherland Black and Allan Menzies, with a Preface by William Robertson Smith
, appeared in 1885, and the fifth German edition appeared in 1899. The Prolegomena was originally intended as the first part of a two-volume work on the history of Israel, meaning the Jewish people, but the second volume never appeared and by the time of the English edition it was already regarded as a self-contained work.
The subject of the Prolegomena is the origins of the Pentateuch. It reviews all the major advances of the preceding century by Johann Gottfried Eichhorn
, Wilhelm de Wette, Karl Heinrich Graf
and others, and puts forward the author's view, which is that the Priestly source
was the last of the four sources, written during the Babylonian exile c.550 BC. The implication to be drawn from this was that the Mosaic Law
contained in Leviticus
, which is largely by the Priestly author, as well as the substantial amounts of material from the Priestly source to be found in Genesis, Exodus and the Book of Numbers
, did not exist in the age of Joshua
, Samuel
, David
and Solomon
.
that the Law
is later than the Prophets, i.e., that the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (the torah, or "law", as they are known to the Jewish tradition, and which immediately precede the history of Israel making up the series from Joshua to Kings - the "prophets", so called because they were thought to have been written by the prophet Samuel and others - were in fact written after those books). He then sets out some commonly agreed ground:
Wellhausen proposes to fix the dates of each of the sources, but especially of the Priestly source, "by reference to an independent standard, namely, the inner development of the history of Israel so far as that is known to us by trustworthy testimonies, from independent sources."
, c.620 BC), when a single place of worship was demanded by both priesthood and king; and the Priestly law-code does not demand, but presupposes, centralised worship. In the same way the other elements of ancient Israelite religion - sacrifice, sacred feasts, the position of the priests and Levites, and the "endowment of the clergy" (tithes due to the priests and Levites) - have a radically different form in the Yahwist/Elohist to that in the Priestly source, with Deuteronomy occupying an intermediate position. The Priestly source consistently attempts to disguise what are in fact innovations with a veneer of antiquity, inventing, for example, a fictional Tabernacle
not mentioned anywhere in the oldest sources, to justify its insistence on centralised worship in Jerusalem. "What is brought forward in Deuteronomy as an innovation is assumed in the Priestly Code to be an ancient custom dating as far back as to Noah."
and his successors were responsible for the codification and systematisation of worship, and Ezra
for the introduction of the Priestly code
(i.e., the laws contained in Leviticus); and it was this creation of a written Torah which marked the break between the ancient history of Israel and the later history of Judaism.
Julius Wellhausen
Julius Wellhausen , was a German biblical scholar and orientalist, noted particularly for his contribution to scholarly understanding of the origin of the Pentateuch/Torah ....
(1844-1918) which formulated the documentary hypothesis
Documentary hypothesis
The documentary hypothesis , holds that the Pentateuch was derived from originally independent, parallel and complete narratives, which were subsequently combined into the current form by a series of redactors...
(a theory regarding the origins of the Torah
Torah
Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...
or Pentateuch, the first five books of the bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
). The book was extremely influential and is often compared for its impact in its field with Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
's On the Origin of Species.
Geschichte Israels ("History of Israel") appeared in 1878, and was republished in 1882 as Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels. The official English translation by J. Sutherland Black and Allan Menzies, with a Preface by William Robertson Smith
William Robertson Smith
William Robertson Smith was a Scottish orientalist, Old Testament scholar, professor of divinity, and minister of the Free Church of Scotland. He was an editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica and contributor to the Encyclopaedia Biblica...
, appeared in 1885, and the fifth German edition appeared in 1899. The Prolegomena was originally intended as the first part of a two-volume work on the history of Israel, meaning the Jewish people, but the second volume never appeared and by the time of the English edition it was already regarded as a self-contained work.
Background
(All references are to the Project Gutenberg e-text of Wellhausen's "Prolegomena")The subject of the Prolegomena is the origins of the Pentateuch. It reviews all the major advances of the preceding century by Johann Gottfried Eichhorn
Johann Gottfried Eichhorn
Johann Gottfried Eichhorn was a German Protestant theologian of Enlightenment and early orientalist.-Education and early career:...
, Wilhelm de Wette, Karl Heinrich Graf
Karl Heinrich Graf
Karl Heinrich Graf was a German Old Testament scholar and orientalist. He was born at Mulhausen in Alsace and died in Meissen in Saxony....
and others, and puts forward the author's view, which is that the Priestly source
Priestly source
The Priestly Source is one of the sources of the Torah/Pentateuch in the bible. Primarily a product of the post-Exilic period when Judah was a province of the Persian empire , P was written to show that even when all seemed lost, God remained present with Israel...
was the last of the four sources, written during the Babylonian exile c.550 BC. The implication to be drawn from this was that the Mosaic Law
613 mitzvot
The 613 commandments is a numbering of the statements and principles of law, ethics, and spiritual practice contained in the Torah or Five Books of Moses...
contained in Leviticus
Leviticus
The Book of Leviticus is the third book of the Hebrew Bible, and the third of five books of the Torah ....
, which is largely by the Priestly author, as well as the substantial amounts of material from the Priestly source to be found in Genesis, Exodus and the Book of Numbers
Book of Numbers
The Book of Numbers is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible, and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch....
, did not exist in the age of Joshua
Joshua
Joshua , is a minor figure in the Torah, being one of the spies for Israel and in few passages as Moses's assistant. He turns to be the central character in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Joshua...
, Samuel
Samuel
Samuel is a leader of ancient Israel in the Books of Samuel in the Hebrew Bible. He is also known as a prophet and is mentioned in the Qur'an....
, David
David
David was the second king of the united Kingdom of Israel according to the Hebrew Bible and, according to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, an ancestor of Jesus Christ through both Saint Joseph and Mary...
and Solomon
Solomon
Solomon , according to the Book of Kings and the Book of Chronicles, a King of Israel and according to the Talmud one of the 48 prophets, is identified as the son of David, also called Jedidiah in 2 Samuel 12:25, and is described as the third king of the United Monarchy, and the final king before...
.
Chapter summary
The book consists of an author's Introduction and three major sections. Its argument is that the ancient Israelites did not practice a religion recognisable as Judaism: the earliest religion of the Israelites, as depicted in the Yahwist and Elohist sources, was polytheistic and family-based; the middle layer, the Deuteronomist, shows a clear impulse to the centralisation of worship under the control of a dominant priesthood with royal support; and only in the final, post-Exilic layer, the Priestly source, when the royal authority has vanished and the priesthood has assumed sole authority over the community, is there evidence of the religion which the world knows as Judaism.Introduction
Wellhausen announces his intention to demonstrate the hypothesis of Karl Heinrich GrafKarl Heinrich Graf
Karl Heinrich Graf was a German Old Testament scholar and orientalist. He was born at Mulhausen in Alsace and died in Meissen in Saxony....
that the Law
Torah
Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...
is later than the Prophets, i.e., that the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (the torah, or "law", as they are known to the Jewish tradition, and which immediately precede the history of Israel making up the series from Joshua to Kings - the "prophets", so called because they were thought to have been written by the prophet Samuel and others - were in fact written after those books). He then sets out some commonly agreed ground:
- 1. The Pentateuch plus the book of JoshuaBook of JoshuaThe Book of Joshua is the sixth book in the Hebrew Bible and of the Old Testament. Its 24 chapters tell of the entry of the Israelites into Canaan, their conquest and division of the land under the leadership of Joshua, and of serving God in the land....
make up a literary unit of six books, or HexateuchHexateuchThe Hexateuch is the first six books of the Hebrew Bible . Some scholars propose that Joshua represents part of the northern Yahwist source , detached from JE document by the Deuteronomist and incorporated into the Deuteronomic history, with the books of Judges, Kings, and Samuel.Reasons...
, tracing the history of the Israelites from the Patriarchal agePatriarchal AgeThe Patriarchal Age is the era of the three biblical Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, according to the narratives of Genesis 12-50. ....
to the conquest of CanaanCanaanCanaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...
; and - 2. this hexateuch draws on three sources, the combined Yahwist/ElohistElohistThe Elohist is one of four sources of the Torah described by the Documentary Hypothesis. Its name comes from the term it uses for God: Elohim; it is characterised by, among other things, an abstract view of God, using "Horeb" instead of "Sinai" for the mountain where Moses received the laws of...
, which consists largely of narratives and dates from the period prior to the destruction of the kingdom of Israel (c.722 BC); the DeuteronomistDeuteronomistThe Deuteronomist, or simply D, is one of the sources underlying the Hebrew bible . It is found in the book of Deuteronomy, in the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings and also in the book of Jeremiah...
, responsible for the book of DeuteronomyDeuteronomyThe Book of Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible, and of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch...
and dating from the reign of JosiahJosiahJosiah or Yoshiyahu or Joshua was a king of Judah who instituted major reforms. Josiah is credited by most historians with having established or compiled important Jewish scriptures during the Deuteronomic reform that occurred during his rule.Josiah became king of Judah at the age of eight, after...
(c. 620 BC); and the Priestly sourcePriestly sourceThe Priestly Source is one of the sources of the Torah/Pentateuch in the bible. Primarily a product of the post-Exilic period when Judah was a province of the Persian empire , P was written to show that even when all seemed lost, God remained present with Israel...
, made up largely of the law-code of LeviticusLeviticusThe Book of Leviticus is the third book of the Hebrew Bible, and the third of five books of the Torah ....
but with connections to all the other books except Deuteronomy.
Wellhausen proposes to fix the dates of each of the sources, but especially of the Priestly source, "by reference to an independent standard, namely, the inner development of the history of Israel so far as that is known to us by trustworthy testimonies, from independent sources."
History of Worship
Each of the sources - Yahwist/Elohist, Deuteronomist and Priestly - reflects a different stage in evolution of religious practice in ancient Israel. Thus, to take one of the five, the Yahwist/Elohist "sanctions a multiplicity of altars", allowing sacrifice at any place; the Deuteronomist records the moment in history (i.e., the reform of JosiahJosiah
Josiah or Yoshiyahu or Joshua was a king of Judah who instituted major reforms. Josiah is credited by most historians with having established or compiled important Jewish scriptures during the Deuteronomic reform that occurred during his rule.Josiah became king of Judah at the age of eight, after...
, c.620 BC), when a single place of worship was demanded by both priesthood and king; and the Priestly law-code does not demand, but presupposes, centralised worship. In the same way the other elements of ancient Israelite religion - sacrifice, sacred feasts, the position of the priests and Levites, and the "endowment of the clergy" (tithes due to the priests and Levites) - have a radically different form in the Yahwist/Elohist to that in the Priestly source, with Deuteronomy occupying an intermediate position. The Priestly source consistently attempts to disguise what are in fact innovations with a veneer of antiquity, inventing, for example, a fictional Tabernacle
Tabernacle
The Tabernacle , according to the Hebrew Torah/Old Testament, was the portable dwelling place for the divine presence from the time of the Exodus from Egypt through the conquering of the land of Canaan. Built to specifications revealed by God to Moses at Mount Sinai, it accompanied the Israelites...
not mentioned anywhere in the oldest sources, to justify its insistence on centralised worship in Jerusalem. "What is brought forward in Deuteronomy as an innovation is assumed in the Priestly Code to be an ancient custom dating as far back as to Noah."
History of Tradition
The history of the traditions of Israel, like the history of worship, shows a steady progression from the epic and prophetic age of the Yahwist and the Elohist, to the law-bound world of the Priestly source, with Deuteronomy acting as the bridge. "In Chronicles the past is remodelled on the basis of the Law: transgressions take place now and then, but as exceptions from the rule. In the Books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, the fact of the radical difference of the old practice from the Law is not disputed [but] is simply condemned. In the Chronicles the pattern according to which the history of ancient Israel is represented is the Pentateuch, i.e. the Priestly Code. ...[I]n the older historical books, the revision does not proceed upon the basis of the Priestly Code, which indeed is completely unknown to them, but on the basis of Deuteronomy. Thus in the question of the order of sequence of the two great bodies of laws, the history of the tradition leads us to the same conclusion as the history of the cultus."Israel and Judaism
In his concluding section Wellhausen restates his argument that the Priestly source is the last to appear, post-dating the Deuteronomist. He summarises also his further conclusions: There was no written Law in ancient Israel, the Torah being held as an oral tradition by priests and prophets; Deuteronomy was the first Law, and gained currency only during the Babylonian exile, when the prophetic tradition ceased; EzekielEzekiel
Ezekiel , "God will strengthen" , is the central protagonist of the Book of Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible. In Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Ezekiel is acknowledged as a Hebrew prophet...
and his successors were responsible for the codification and systematisation of worship, and Ezra
Ezra
Ezra , also called Ezra the Scribe and Ezra the Priest in the Book of Ezra. According to the Hebrew Bible he returned from the Babylonian exile and reintroduced the Torah in Jerusalem...
for the introduction of the Priestly code
Priestly Code
The Priestly Code is the name given, by academia, to the body of laws expressed in the Torah which do not form part of the Holiness Code, the Covenant Code, the Ritual Decalogue, or the Ethical Decalogue. The Priestly Code constitutes the majority of Leviticus, as well as some of the laws...
(i.e., the laws contained in Leviticus); and it was this creation of a written Torah which marked the break between the ancient history of Israel and the later history of Judaism.