There are two extreme views on the date of the Book of Proverbs, between which are the theories of the mass of moderate critics. The one is that represented by Keil in his Introduction and Bishop Ellicott’s Commentary, that the whole book except chaps. xxx., xxxi., and perhaps the heading i. 1-6, is in substance of Solomonic origin;[233] the other is that of Vatke and Reuss (the precursors of Kuenen and Wellhausen) that our proverbs as a collection come from the post-Exile period. Much need not be said on the first of these extreme views. It has been pointed out already that the ethical and religious character even of the earliest proverbial collection stands far removed from that of the historical Solomon. It is indeed a pure hypothesis that any Solomonic element survives in the Book of Proverbs. I doubt not that many bright and witty _sayings_ of Solomon came into circulation, and some of them might conceivably have been gathered up and included in the anthologies. But have we any adequate means of deciding which these are? It would appear from 1 Kings iv. 33 that the wisdom of the historical Solomon expressed itself in _spoken_ fables or moralisations about animals and trees. A few, a very few, of the proverbs in our book may perhaps satisfy the test thus obtained, and be plausibly represented as a Solomonic element. But why Solomon should be singled out as the author, it would tax one’s ingenuity to say, and the judgment of Hitzig (in such matters a conservative critic) must be maintained that the survival of Solomonic proverbs is no more than a possibility.[234] The other extreme view requires some little explanation. Vatke does not deny that Solomon composed proverbs, but only that his proverbs can have resembled those in the canonical book. Putting aside some sayings of earlier date Vatke holds that the stamp of the post-Exile period (and more particularly of the fifth century) is as marked in the Book of Proverbs as it is, according to him, in that of Job; in short, that both works imply, equally with the still later Ecclesiastes, a long and earnest struggle between the principles represented respectively by the higher prophets and by the priests. The result of this struggle has become to the authors of these books an objective truth which it is henceforth their business to realise as true subjectively.[235] The existence of a free-minded school of thought in the post-Exile period is very plausibly defended both by Vatke and by Kuenen,[236] and if our only choice lay between the extreme alternatives mentioned above, we should be shut up to the acceptance of the latter.