The prevailing idea, therefore, emphasised by the Prophet, is that of derivation from ancestors other than those of heathen nations. The details of the Patriarchal history are devoid of interest for him, and personages without the character of ancestors still more so. Consequently even Moses remains in the background. Not even Hosea gives his name, though he says, ‘By a prophet Jahveh brought Israel up from Egypt, and by a prophet he was preserved’ (XII. 14 [13]). Only in very few passages, in one early prophet, Micah (VI. 4),[706] and one of the later period, the Babylonian Isaiah (LXIII. 11 _sq._), is the deliverance from Egypt mentioned coupled with the name of Moses. To the Exodus itself frequent reference is made, and the story of it does admirable service to the view of the theocratical vocation of the nation. But it is not till after the Captivity that the Legislator himself is brought into the foreground, in consequence of the compromise between Jahveism and the formal legality of the priesthood (Mal. III. 22 [IV. 4]).[706] Whatever of the truly mythical still lived in the memory of the people received from Jahveism a complete monotheistic transformation. Jahveh is made the conqueror of the Dragon of the Storm and of the Monsters of Darkness (see p. 27). Notice the numerous questions in the theodicy in the Book of Job, which Jahveh puts in opposition to the explanation of physical phenomena given by mythology: ‘Hath the rain a father, or who begot the drops of dew? Out of whose womb came the ice, and the hoar-frost of the sky, who bore it?’ (Job XXXVIII. 28 _sq._). Such are the questions asked by the Jahveistic monotheist. Removed to this new sphere, all the myths are at once beset with denials; the monotheist’s whole interpretation of nature and idea of causality lead to One only—to Jahveh; at this stage the myth is utterly overthrown. But the fact that a nation which in its primeval age formed myths, at a late period of its existence witnessed the growth of the direct negation of mythical ideas in its midst, is no reason for treating the former existence of myths as questionable.[707]