The Biography of the Bible

first divided into two in the Septuagint translation), with the exception of the final chapters of the latter added during the Exile. Thus, when they had finished, they left behind them a consecutive history of the Jews from the creation down to their own period, a history which was also a grandiose philosophy of history into which the book of Deuteronomy was neatly fitted in its assumed chronological position.

Well it was that the Deuteronomists wrought so feverishly, for their time was short. The eighty-odd Deuteronomic laws established a series of ideals most of which are ideal still today, but they did not long remain in force as actual laws. The death of King Josiah at the battle of Megiddo in 608 B.C. was followed by another melancholy period of reaction, during which the reforms were successively abandoned. The weak and vacillating Jewish monarchs drifted from one unwise political intrigue to another, and their veering course ended in the total destruction of their kingdom by Nebuchadnezzar (more properly, Nebuchadrezzar) of Babylon in the year 586 B.C.

During this period of gloom Judah never lacked a Prophet. Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah turned their eyes abroad or to the distant future,

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