It is almost self-evident that to the national enthusiasm of the Prophets the political difference between the Northern and the Southern Hebrews scarcely exists. The Prophets extended their influence over the North as well as over the South; and Hosea especially addresses his exhortation to both kingdoms, mentioning Judah in the first division of his verses constructed in parallelism, and Ephraim in the second. The Prophets even announce the reunion of the two sections of the Hebrew state.[704] The Northern kingdom was naturally much farther removed from the religious ideas of the Prophets than the Southern. The hierarchy of Jerusalem, which grew out of a sort of theocratic system, might at least exhibit some appreciation of the preaching of Jahveism; some trace of monotheistic Elohism still existed there, but was quite foreign to the North. The persecution of the Prophets was accordingly much more violent and indiscriminate in the Ephraimite country than in the South, where however it was not absent. The story of the Prophet Elijah (Êlîyâhû ‘My God is Jahveh’), as given in the Book of Kings, is intended to depict the furious persecution of the preachers of Jahveh. Elijah is a typical Jahveist, placed by the prophetical writer who conceived him at a time before true Prophetism was in existence among the Hebrews. As the Prophet painted the character of the ‘Servant of Jahveh’ (ʿebhed Yahve) for the future, as a type of human perfection, so Elijah serves for a similar type in the past. The representatives of Jahveism succeeded in making the person of Elijah so popular as to attract to himself various remnants of ancient myths, as we saw in a previous chapter. But at bottom Elijah is nothing but a type of the persecutions to which Jahveism was exposed in the Northern kingdom on the part of the rulers and priests. The prophetical historians, fond as they are of painting historical personages of the Hebrew nation in colours borrowed from the ideal of Jahveism, are also no less addicted to drawing up descriptions of lives which are typical of Prophetism. Such a life is that of the prophet Samuel, who is regarded as founder of the Schools of the Prophets, and consequently of Prophetism itself. The portraiture of his character, as opponent of an untheocratic monarchy, of the king who showed himself deficient in national feeling by sparing the Amalekite chief, and of a corrupt priesthood, is only a program of Hebrew Prophetism, clothed in a biographical dress and expressing the Prophets’ sentiments in speeches. When the inevitable catastrophe came, and the Northern kingdom fell first, and the subsequent overthrow of the Southern kingdom put an end to all Hebrew independence, the Jahveists, the most earnest representatives of the idea of Hebrew nationality, accompanied the people into captivity. Then first began the time when the Jahveistic ideas bloomed most freely and were taken up with greatest enthusiasm.