part played by their great heads in history did not suffer in the telling, and it is probable that some part at least of the extant history of the Israelite kingdom passed through the hands of men whose interest lay in the pre-eminence of their seers and their beneficent deeds on behalf of these small communities. This interest and the popular tone of the history may be combined with the fact that the literature does not take us into the midst of that world of activity in which the events unfolded themselves. Although the records preserve complete silence upon the period now under review, it is necessary to free oneself from the narrow outlook of the later Judaean compilers. It is a gratuitous assumption that the history of (north) Israel ceased with the fall of Samaria or that Judah then took over Israelite literature and inherited the old Israelite spirit: the question of the preservation of earlier writings is of historical importance. It is true that the situation in Israel or Samaria continues obscure, but a careful study of literary productions, evidently not earlier than the 7th century B.C., reveals a particular loftiness of conception and a tendency which finds its parallels in Hosea and approximates the peculiar characteristics of the Deuteronomic school of thought. But the history which the Judaean writers have handed down is influenced by the later hostility between Judah and Samaria. The traditional bond between the north and south which nothing could efface (cf. Jos. _Ant._, xi. 8, 6) has been carried back to the earliest ages; yet the present period, after the age of rival kingdoms, Judah and Israel, and before the foundation of Judaism, is that in which the historical background for the inclusion of Judah among the "sons" of Israel is equally suitable (§§ 5, 20, end). The circumstances favoured a closer alliance between the people of Palestine, and a greater prominence of the old holy places (Hebron, Bethel, Shechem, &c.), of which the ruined Jerusalem would not be one, and the existing condition of Judah and Israel from internal and non-political points of view--not their condition in the pre-monarchical ages--is the more crucial problem in biblical history.[35]