The first attempt in this direction was made in the reign of Josiah, and it had only a partial success, as we find the nation "doing evil in the sight of the Lord," that is, relapsing into the old idolatrous practices, in the reigns of his three next successors, Jehoiachin, Jehoiachim, and Zedechiah. But the crowning calamity of the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and the seventy years' exile, seems to have crushed out the old aristocratic and national party, and converted all the leading minds among the Jews of the Captivity, including the priests, to the prophetical view that the essence of the question was the religious one, and that the only hope for the future lay in repentance for sins and drawing closer to the worship of Jehovah and the Covenant between him and his chosen people. Prophets disappear from this period because priests, scribes, and rulers had adopted their views, and there was no longer room for itinerant and unofficial missionaries. Under such circumstances the religion, after the return from the Exile, crystallized rapidly into definite forms. Creeds, rituals, and sacred books were multiplied down to the third century B.C. or later, when the canon was closed with the Books of Chronicles and Daniel and the later Psalms, and the era began of commentaries on the text of a Koran or Bible, every word of which was held to be infallibly inspired. The different crystals in solution have now united into one large crystal of fixed form, and henceforward we are in the full age of Talmudism and Pharisaism.