"The great majority of the writers of the Old Testament had no other source of information about the past history of Israel than simple _tradition_. Indeed, it could not have been otherwise, for in primitive times no one used to record anything in writing, and the only way of preserving a knowledge of the past was to hand it down by word of mouth. The father told the son what his elders had told him, and the son handed it on to the next generation. "Not only did the historian of Israel draw from tradition with perfect freedom, and write down without hesitation anything they heard and what was current in the mouths of the people, _but they did not shrink from modifying their representation of the past in any way that they thought would be good and useful_. It is difficult for us to look at things from this point of view, because our ideas of historical good faith are so utterly different. When we write history, we know that we ought to be guided solely by a desire to represent facts exactly as they really happened. All that we are concerned with is _reality_; we want to make the old times live again, and we take all possible pains not to remodel the past from the point of view of to-day. All we want to know is what happened, and how men lived, thought, and worked in those days. The Israelites had a very different notion of the nature of historical composition. When a prophet or a priest related something about bygone times, his object was not to convey knowledge about those times; on the contrary, he used history merely as a vehicle for the conveyance of instruction and exhortation. Not only did he confine his narrative to such matters as he thought would serve his purpose but he never hesitated to modify what he knew of the past, _and he did not think twice about touching it up from his own imagination, simply that it might be more conducive to the end he had in view and chime in better with his opinions. All the past became colored through and through with the tinge of his own mind._ Our own notions of honor and good faith would never permit all this; but we must not measure ancient writers by our own standard; they considered that they were acting quite within their rights and in strict accordance with duty and conscience."[97:4] It will be noticed that, in our investigations on the authority of the Pentateuch, we have followed, principally, Dr. Knappert's ideas as set forth in "The Religion of Israel." This we have done because we could not go into an extended investigation, and because his words are very expressive, and just to the point. To those who may think that his ideas are not the same as those entertained by other Biblical scholars of the present day, we subjoin, in a note below, a list of works to which they are referred.[98:1]