6.  The two books of Samuel (which originally constituted one whole) bring down the history of the Theocracy from the birth of Samuel to the close of David’s reign—­a period of about a century and a half.  The author, therefore, can have been, upon any supposition, only in part contemporary with the events which he records.  Yet if we examine the biographical sketches of Saul, Samuel, and David contained in these books, the conviction forces itself upon us that they must have been written by contemporaries.  Their freshness, minute accuracy of detail, and graphic vividness of style mark them as coming from eye-witnesses, or from writers who had received their accounts from eye-witnesses.  Who were authors of these original documents we cannot determine.  It is certain that Samuel was one of them. 1 Chron. 29:29.  Who composed the books, again, is a question that we are unable to answer.  It was probably a prophet living not very long after the separation of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.  From the days of Samuel and onward there was a flourishing school of the prophets at hand which could furnish, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, both the writers of the original materials and the author of the books in their present form.

The attempt has been made to set aside the evidence that the writer of the books of Samuel made use of earlier documents, from the example of such men as Swift and Defoe, who composed works of fiction with all the simplicity and circumstantial detail of those who write authentic history as eye-witnesses.  But, unless the design be to class the books of Samuel with “Gulliver’s Travels” and “Robinson Crusoe,” the argument is wholly irrelevant.  With Swift and Defoe simplicity and minuteness of detail were a matter of conscious effort—­a work of art, for which they naturally chose the region of fiction; and here they, and other men of genius, have been eminently successful.  Shakespeare has portrayed ideal scenes in the life of Julius Caesar with more vividness and circumstantiality than any authentic historian of Caesar’s age.  But real history, written simply in the interest of truth, never has the graphic character, artless simplicity, and circumstantiality of detail which belong to these inimitable narratives, unless the writer be either an eye-witness, or draw his materials from eye-witnesses.

7.  We come next to the books of Kings and Chronicles, the writers of which confessedly employed previously existing materials.  In the two books of Kings (which, like the two of Samuel and of Chronicles, originally constituted one work) reference is made to the following sources:  For the reign of Solomon, “the book of the acts of Solomon” (1 Kings 11:41); for the kingdom of Judah after the revolt of the twelve tribes from Rehoboam to Jehoiakim, “the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah;” for the kingdom of Israel, “the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel.”  In the books of