the question of priority becomes relatively unimportant.

P is even more obviously the result of a long process marked by
repeated additions and refinements. Numbers xviii. 7, e.g., implies
that ordinary priests might pass within the vail, whereas in
Leviticus xvi. this is possible only to the high priest, and even to
him only once a year. Exodus xxix. 7 represents only the high priest
as anointed, Exodus xxviii. 41 the other priests as well. The
section in Exodus xxx. 1-10 on the altar of incense must be later
than the list in xxvi. 31-37, where it is not mentioned. The age,
too, at which the Levites might enter upon their service appears to
have been repeatedly changed; in Numbers iv. 3 it is put at thirty
years, in viii. 24 at twenty-five (and i Chron. xxiii. 24 at
twenty). All this only shows the unceasing attention that was paid
by the priests to the problem of worship; and the length of the
period over which this attention was spread may be inferred from the
fact that, even in the third century B.C., as we know from the
Septuagint, the Hebrew text of Exodus xxxv.-xl. was not absolutely
fixed.

We may conceive the composition of the Pentateuch to have passed
through approximately the following stages. Earliest of all and
fundamental to all come the ancient traditions and the ancient
poetry, such as the book of the wars of Jehovah, and the book of
Jashar. Upon this basis, during the monarchy men of prophetic spirit
in both kingdoms--not improbably at the sanctuaries--wrote the
history of the Hebrew people. These documents, J and E, were
subsequently combined into a single history (JE), possibly in the
seventh century, though how long, if at all, J and E continued to
enjoy an independent existence we have no means of knowing. During