Excerpt from The Books of the Prophets in Their Historical Succession, Vol. 3 Bible to the common people; they took It out of the priests' hands, who had abused it for their own gain (mic. 311, Jer. 613, Zeph. 34, etc.) With this treasure in possession the Judaeans went into exile, and the book proved their safeguard; it was the sanctuary of Jehovah to them (as the Rabbis afterwards called the Bible), taking the place of temple and of city and keeping alive the sacred memories of the home land and the grand hope of Israel. The Scripture, first in narrower and afterwards in wider compass, furnished in its lessons the incentive and subject-matter for the little gather ings formed wherever a Jewish colony Was settled, by which the Dispersion have maintained their faith and worship in alien lands to this hour. Scripture and the Synagogue are correlative institutions, the latter in truth the child of the former. With the idea once started and the nucleus supplied, Scripture soon grew to larger proportions. Much of its material was already to hand. The Exile, as we hope to show in the last volume of this work, was a great occasion for sifting and compiling Israelite sacred literature. Deuteronomy admirably combines t/ie prep/zetie with tile priestly spirit. It is true, therefore, to the character of Moses, who was priestly legislator and inspired prophet in one person. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.