Note 47 — Chapter XXVI

Thus Dillmann writes: "That the law (of the jubilee) in its principal features was already issued by Moses does not admit of demonstration to him who wills not to believe it; but that it cannot have been in the first instance the invention of a post-exilian scribe is certain. Only in the simpler communal relations of the more ancient time could a law of such an ideal character have seemed practicable; after the exile, all the presuppositions involved in its promulgation are wanting" ("Die Bücher Exodus und Leviticus," 2 Aufl., p. 608).