More Exilic Stuff (For Wellhausen)

I'm continuing my way through Julius Wellhausen's Prolegomena. In today's reading, Wellhausen argues that the exile influenced the priestly author on issues such as festivals and the Sabbath.

For example, the priest interpreted the Feast of Tabernacles in light of Israel's sojourn in the wilderness, a historical event. Prior to this, the festival was viewed primarily as agricultural, as we can see in Deuteronomy. But the agriculture of the land of Israel did not matter to the Israelites when they were in exile, and so the priest embraced a historical interpretation of the festivals. The priest also invented Yom Kippur, which does not appear outside of the Pentateuch, but "first begins to show itself in embryo during the exile" (page 110), in the Book of Ezekiel, an exilic book (Ezekiel 45:18-20). This was when the Israelites felt especially guilty.

The Sabbath, according to Wellhausen, was for some time in pre-exilic Israel a new moon festival, for Amos 8:5 appears to parallel the new moon with the Sabbath day; but it became a weekly day of rest. There was no law that limited an Israelite's travel to a "Sabbath day's journey" on the Sabbath, however, for II Kings 4:22-23 implies that a woman could travel farther than that if it were the Sabbath. Hosea 2 indicates that there was a view that the Sabbath could not be observed outside of the land of Israel. The priest, however, in an attempt to protect Israel from assimilation in exile, highlighted the Sabbath and made it stricter.

On the historical interpretation of festivals, Wellhausen acknowledges that Deuteronomy, which was pre-exilic, already associated the Passover with the Exodus (Deuteronomy 16:1-2), as did the pre-exilic Jehovist, but the priest took that a step farther: he made the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread into historical facts within the narrative. As Wellhausen says on page 102:

"It is not because Jehovah smote the firstborn of Egypt that the passover is afterwards instituted; on the contrary, it is instituted beforehand, at the moment of the exodus, in order that the firstborn of Israel may be spared. Thus not only is a historical motive applied for the custom; its beginning is itself raised to the dignity of a historical fact upon which the feast rests,---the shadow elsewhere thrown only by another historical event becomes substantial and casts itself. The state of matters in the case of the unleavened cakes is very similar. Instead of having it as the occasion and object to keep in remembrance the hasty midnight departure in which the travellers were compelled to carry with them their dough unleavened as it was (Exod. xii.34), in the Priestly Code they are also spoken of as having been enjoined beforehand (xii.15 seq.), and thus the festival is celebrating in commemoration of itself; in other words, not only is a historical motive attached to it, it is itself made a historical fact."

According to Wellhausen, the priest sought to make the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread more important by suggesting that they were more than a commemoration of historical events. Rather, for the priest, they were commanded by God before those events even took place.

Wellhausen also talks about the history of the Israelite clergy. He points out that there are times in the Hebrew Bible when the cultic rules are rather lax. Gentiles could serve in a capacity in the cult. Israelite kings wore ephods, offered sacrifices, and blessed the people. Samuel could serve in the Tabernacle, even though he wasn't part of a priestly family (until the Chronicler made him such). The Levites gained prominence at some point, and the Deuteronomists viewed all Levites as equal. When the Levites were brought to Jerusalem as a result of Josiah's reform in the seventh century B.C.E., however, they were subordinated to the Zadokites, who were the Jerusalem priests. In exile and post-exile, the Zadokites continued to claim authority by saying that the line of Aaron was special, and the stories in the Pentateuch about Korah were designed to put down levitical contenders against the Aaronic line. For Wellhausen, the laws that prioritize Aaron did not exist prior to the exile, for, when Ezekiel attempts to single out the Zadokites as the legitimate officiants at the altar, he does not refer to specific laws. For Wellhausen, that is because they did not exist yet, and would come about later than the exilic writing of Ezekiel.