VII.III.4.  Let us conclude by summing up the results to which we have been led by our eclectic pilgrimage through the historical books.  What in the common view appears to be the specific character of Israelite history, and has chiefly led to its being called sacred history, rests for the most part on a later re-painting of the original picture.  The discolouring influences begin early.  I do not reckon among these the entrance of mythical elements, such as are not wanting even in the first beginnings to which we can trace the course of the tradition, nor the inevitable local colour, which is quite a different thing from tendency.  I think only of that uniform stamp impressed on the tradition by men who regarded history exclusively from the point of view of their own principles.  Here we observe first a religious influence, which in the Books of Samuel and Kings turns out to be the prophetical one.  The view appears to me erroneous that it is to the prophets that the Hebrew people owe their history as a whole.  The song, Judges v., though perhaps the oldest historical monument in the Old Testament, cannot be cited in support of that view, for even if it were actually composed by Deborah, the seer stands in no connection with the prophets.  Least of all can the colleges of the B’ne Nebiim at Gilgal and other places be regarded as nurseries of historic tradition:  the products which are to be traced to these circles betray a somewhat narrow field of vision (2Kings ii., iv. 1-6, 23).  The prophets did not form the tradition at first, but came after, shedding upon it their peculiar light.  Their interest in history was not so great that they felt it necessary to write it down; they only infused their own spirit into it subsequently.

But the systematic recoining of the tradition was only effected when a firmer stamp had become available than the free ideas of the prophets, the will of God having been formulated in writing.  When this point was reached, no one could fail to see the discrepancy between the ideal commencement, which was now sought to be restored as it stood in the book, and the succeeding development.  The old books of the people, which spoke in the most innocent way of the most objectionable practices and institutions, had to be thoroughly remodelled according to the Mosaic form, in order to make them valuable, digestible, and edifying, for the new generation.  A continuous revision of them was made, not only in the Chronicles, at the beginning of the Greek domination, but, as we have seen in this chapter, even in the Babylonian exile.  The style of the latter revision differed from that of the former.  In Chronicles the past is remodelled on the basis of the law:  transgressions take place now and then, but as exceptions from the rule.  In the Books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, the fact of the radical difference of the old practice from the law is not disputed.  In these works also the past is in some cases remodelled on the basis