King Hezekiah was a man of action.  From 715 to 687 BCE he ruled the Kingdom of Judah and carried out multiple religious and political reforms.  Forms of religious practice other than the sanctioned worship at the Temple of Jerusalem were eliminated.  The places of worship of Yahweh outside of the Temple were destroyed, all in the aim of centralizing the state around the city of Jerusalem.  Religion and state were on, and centralizing the religion would centralize the state.

   This centralization meant that if you wanted to eat lamb, no longer could you sacrifice your sheep at the local sanctuary.  You had to bring the sheep to the priest at the Temple altar in Jerusalem.  Now only one place was the sanctioned location where priests could conduct their sacrifices and receive their tithes.  More importantly, King Hezekiah established divisions of the priests and the Levites.  Only those who are descended from Aaron can be priests, all other Levites are second class clergy.

   To support such religious reforms, the Aaronid priesthood united behind King Hezekiah and wrote the P text.  It is unsure if this text was written by one person or a group of people, but it is know that this person must have been an Aaronid priest.  This P text focused on supporting King Hezekiah in his reforms.  It was Pro-Aaron, Anti-Moses.  Although still the national hero that lead the Hebrews out of Egypt, the writer(s) of P attempt to show him as less than Aaron.

   Throughout the text, the insults to Moses are minor.  Aaron is literally his older brother, something that placed Aaron above Moses.  It is the P version of Water from the Rock that shows Moses hitting the rock as disobedient.  Moses is punished by not living to bring his people into the promised land, and Aaron suffers the same fate for playing no part in the disobedient act.  The Veil of Moses, that Moses is too ugly after speaking to God on Sinai, may not be an insult to Moses, but is not a compliment either.

   P also introduced the Aaronid covenant in Numbers.  In the Heresy of Peor, ends with Aaron's grandson Phinehas as the hero.  God rewards him with an eternal covenant of priesthood, saying "Here I am giving him my covenant of peace.  And he and his seed after him will have it, a covenant of eternal priesthood, because he was jealous of his God and made atonement for the children of Israel."  Here P produces the evidence for the superiority of Aaronid priests over all other Levites.

   In this history, P's task is clear.  The text starts with the Hebrews in Egypt, he does not bother to re-write parts of J's Genesis.  Almost half of Exodus, half of Numbers and almost all of Leviticus are written by P.  There are other changes.  P does not mention the Tabernacle, it is never mentioned at all in the entire Bible.  Centralization at Jerusalem is important because of the Ark and the Temple of Solomon.  P does not bother with the Ten Commandments, he has written so many other laws he does not see why he must condense them down into Ten.  Besides, the Ten Commandments of J states clearly in the 4th Commandment that sacrifices must be made.  And in the P texts, those instructions are expanded to show that they must be made by an Aaronid priest in Jerusalem.

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