The naïve impression that each period of history was handled by some more or less contemporary authority is not confirmed by a criticism which confines itself strictly to the literary evidence. An interest in the past is not necessarily confined to any one age, and the critical view that the biblical history has been compiled from relatively late standpoints finds support in the still later treatment of the events--in Chronicles as contrasted with Samuel--Kings or in Jubilees as contrasted with Genesis.[62] It is instructive to observe in Egypt the form which old traditions have taken in Manetho (Maspero, _Rec. de travaux_, xxvii., 1905, l. 22 seq.); cf. also the late story of Rameses II. and the Hittites (J. H. Breasted, _Anc. Rec. of Egypt_, iii. 189 seq.); while in Babylonia one may note the didactic treatment, after the age of Cyrus, of the events of the time of Khammurabi (A. H. Sayce, _Proc. Soc. Biblical Archaeol._, 1907, pp. 13 sqq.). The links which unite the traditional heroes with Babylonia (e.g. Abraham, Ezra), Mesopotamia (e.g. Jacob), Egypt (e.g. Joseph, Jeroboam), Midian (e.g. Moses, Jethro), &c., like the intimate relationship between Israel and surrounding lands, have a significance in the light of recent research. Israel can no longer be isolated from the politics, culture, folk-lore, thought and religion of western Asia and Egypt. Biblical, or rather Palestinian, thought has been brought into the world of ancient Oriental life, and this life, in spite of the various forms in which it has from time to time been shaped, still rules in the East. This has far-reaching consequences for the traditional attitude to Israelite history and religion. Research is seriously complicated by the growing stores of material, which unfortunately are often utilized without attention to the principles of the various departments of knowledge or aspects of study. The complexity of modern knowledge and the interrelation of its different branches are often insufficiently realized, and that by writers who differ widely in the application of such material as they use to their particular views of the manifold problems of the Old Testament. It has been easy to confuse the study of the Old Testament in its relation to modern religious needs with the technical scientific study of the much edited remains of the literature of a small part of the ancient East. If there was once a tendency to isolate the Old Testament and ignore comparative research, it is now sometimes found possible to exaggerate its general agreement with Oriental history, life and thought. Difficulties have been found in the supernatural or marvellous stories which would be taken as a matter of course by contemporary readers, and efforts are often made to recover historical facts or to adapt the records to modern theology without sufficient attention to the