That they arranged the inspired volume in substantially its present form, we have no good reason for doubting.  But we should not, perhaps, be warranted in saying that they brought the canon of the Old Testament absolutely and formally to a close.  Josephus (against Apion 1. 8) affirms that no book belongs to the sacred writings of his nation “which are justly believed to be divine,” that had its origin after the reign of Artaxerxes, Xerxes’ son (Artaxerxes Longimanus, under whom Ezra led forth his colony, Ezra, chap. 7); and that on the ground that from this time onward “the exact succession of the prophets” was wanting.  This declaration of the Jewish historian is in all essential respects worthy of full credence.  We cannot, however, affirm with confidence that all the later historical books were put by Ezra and his contemporaries into the exact form in which we now have them.  The book of Nehemiah, for example, contains some genealogical notices (chap. 12:11, 22) which, according to any fair interpretation, are of a later date.  We are at liberty to suppose that these were afterwards added officially and in good faith, as matters of public interest; or, as some think, that the book itself is an arrangement by a later hand of writings left by Nehemiah, perhaps also by Ezra; so that while its contents belong, in every essential respect, to them, it received its present form after their death.  Respecting the question when the canon of the Old Testament received its finishing stroke, a question which the wisdom of God has left in obscurity, we must speak with diffidence.  We know with certainty that our present Hebrew canon is identical with that collection of sacred writings to which our Saviour and his apostles constantly appealed as invested throughout with divine authority, and this is a firm basis for our faith.

The attempt has been made, but without success, to show that a portion of the Psalms belongs to the Maccabean age.  The words of the Psalmist (Psa. 74:8) rendered in our version:  “They have burned up all the synagogues of God in the land,” have no reference to the synagogues of a later age, as is now generally admitted.  The Hebrew word denotes places of assembly, and was never applied by the later Jews to their synagogues.  The Psalmist wrote, moreover, in immediate connection with the burning of the temple—­“they have cast fire into thy sanctuary, they have defiled by casting down the dwelling-place of thy name to the ground”—­and this fixes the date of the Psalm to the Chaldean invasion (2 Kings 25:9); for the temple was not burned, but only profaned, in the days of the Maccabees.  By “the assemblies of God,” we are probably to understand the ancient sacred places, such as Ramah, Bethel, and Gilgal, where the people were accustomed to meet, though in a somewhat irregular way, for the worship of God.  But whether this interpretation be correct or not, the words have no reference to the buildings of a later age called synagogues.