Few of the deviations of the religious version from the natural one are not transparent; one of these few is the removal of the scene to this side of the Jordan. Most of them are at once recognisable as due to the process of glorification, illumination, and religious inflation, by which the body of the tradition is etherealised and the story lifted up into the region of the air. For example, the company of Gideon at the main action, the attack on the hostile camp, consists of 300 men in chap. vii. as well as in chap viii.; but in chap. vii., to draw out the significance of the small number, they are treated as the last residuum of what was at first quite a considerable army; and this gives rise to a long story. We may also remark that chap. vi. begins with the relation in which the judge stood to the sanctuary of his native town, while chap. viii. closes with this. In the one case he discovers by a theophany, like the patriarchs in Genesis, the sacredness of the altar-stone under the oak; in the other he sets up, in far more realistic fashion, the plated image (ephod) he has made of the golden ornaments of the Midianite kings. History has to take account principally, if not exclusively, of the natural version, which is dry in tone and lets things speak for themselves, not overlaying the simple story with the significance of its consequences. The relation, however, is somewhat different from that which we found existing between Judges iv. and v. Chapter vi. seq. is not based directly on chap. viii., but was probably formed from independent oral material Though the local colour is lively, the historical reminiscences are extremely vague, and there has been a much freer growth of legend than in Jud. iv., producing pictures of greater art and more naivete. But in the field of miracle poetry is manifestly earlier than prose.