X.II.3.  Ezra and Nehemiah, and the eighty-five men of the great assembly (Nehemiah viii. seq.), who are named as signatories of the covenant, are regarded by later tradition as the founders of the canon.  And not without reason:  only King Josiah has a still stronger claim to this place of honour.  The introduction of the law, first Deuteronomy, and then the whole Pentateuch, was in fact the decisive step, by which the written took the place of the spoken word, and the people of the word became a “people of the book.”  To THE BOOK were added in course of time THE BOOKS; the former was formally and solemnly introduced in two successive acts, the latter acquired imperceptibly a similar public authority for the Jewish church.  The notion of the canon proceeds entirely from that of the written Torah; the prophets and the hagiographa are also called Torah by the Jews, though not Torah of Moses.

The origin of the canon thus lies, thanks to the two narratives 2Kings xxii. xxiii., Nehemiah viii.-x. in the full light of history; but the traditional science of Biblical introduction has no clear or satisfactory account to give of it.  Josiah, the ordinary notion is, introduced the law, but not the canon; Ezra, on the other hand, the canon and not the law.  An analogy drawn from the secondary part of the canon, the prophets and hagiographa, is applied without consideration to the primary part, the Torah of Moses.  The historical and prophetical books were, in part at least, a long time in existence before they became canonical, and the same, it is thought, might be the case with the law.  But the case of the law is essentially different.  The law claims to have public authority, to be a book of the community; the difference between law and canon, does not exist.  Hence it is easy to understand that the Torah, though as a literary product later than the historical and prophetical books, is yet as law older than these writings, which have originally and in their nature no legal character, but only acquired such a character in a sort of metaphorical way, through their association with the law itself.

When it is recognised that THE CANON is what distinguishes Judaism from ancient Israel, it is recognised at the same time that what distinguishes Judaism from ancient Israel is THE WRITTEN TORAH.  The water which in old times rose from a spring, the Epigoni stored up in cisterns.

CHAPTER XI.  THE THEOCRACY AS IDEA AND AS INSTITUTION.

Writers of the present day play with the expressions “theocracy,” and “theocratic” without making it clear to themselves what these words mean and how far they are entitled to use them.  But we know that the word theokratia was only coined by Josephus; 1