The central theme and objective of Pg is the institution of the Israelitish theocracy, whose symbol is the Tabernacle, erected, after its heavenly antitype, by Moses at Mount Sinai. For this event the whole previous history of mankind is a preparation. The Mosaic dispensation is the last of four world-ages: from the Creation to the Flood, from Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to Moses, and from Moses onwards. Each period is inaugurated by a divine revelation, and the last two by the disclosure of a new name of God: El Shaddai to Abraham (171), and Yahwe to Moses (Ex. 63). Each period, also, is marked by the institution of some permanent element of the theocratic constitution, the Levitical system being conceived as a pyramid rising in four stages: the Sabbath (22f.); permission of the slaughter of animals, coupled with a restriction on the use of the blood (91ff.); circumcision (17); and, lastly, the fully developed Mosaic ritual. Not till the last stage is reached is sacrificial worship of the Deity authorised. Accordingly neither altars nor sacrifices are ever mentioned in the pre-Mosaic history; and even the distinction between clean and unclean animals is supposed to be unknown at the time of the Flood. It is particularly noteworthy that the profane, as distinct from the sacrificial, slaughter of animals, which even the Deuteronomic law treats as an innovation, is here carried back to the covenant with Noah.
Beneath this imposing historical scheme, with its ruling idea of a progressive unfolding of God's will to men, we discover a theory of religion which, more than anything else, expresses the spirit of the Priestly school to which the author of Pg belonged. The exclusive emphasis on the formal or institutional aspect of religion, which is the natural proclivity of a sacerdotal caste, appears in Pg in a very pronounced fashion. Religion is resolved into a series of positive enactments on the part of God, and observance of these on the part of man. The old cult-legends (p. xii f.), which traced the origin of existing ritual usages to historic incidents in the lives of the fathers, are swept away; and every practice to which a religious value is attached is referred to a direct
