This opinion, shared alike by Jews and Christians, is simply a tradition. There is no conclusive evidence that Ezra founded the canon of the Old Testament. Nehemiah could not have completed it, because a part of the books were written after his time. There is no proof that all the books of the Old Testament existed in a collected form before the beginning of the Christian era. There is no proof that even the Law and the Prophets existed in such a form before the Maccabean period. The Rev. Frederick Myers, an able authority on the Bible, makes this candid admission: "By whom the books of the Old Testament were collected into one volume, and by what authority made canonical, we do not know" ("Catholic Thoughts on the Bible," p. 56). Another prevalent belief is that all of the Jewish scriptures were lost during the captivity, and that Ezra was divinely inspired to rewrite them. Irenæus says: "God ... inspired Esdras, the priest of the tribe of Levi, to compose anew all the discourses of the ancient prophets, and to restore to the people the laws given them by Moses" ("Ecclesiastical History," Book V., chap. viii). This is a myth. The books of the Old Testament which were written before the captivity were not lost. Many books, it is true, were written after the captivity, but these books were not reproductions of lost writings. They were original compositions, or compilations of documents which had not been lost. If Ezra was inspired, as claimed, to rewrite the Hebrew scriptures, he did not complete his task, for the books that were really lost have never been restored, and the Old Testament is but a part of the Hebrew scriptures that once existed. St. Chrysostom says: "The Jews having been at some time careless, and at others profane, they suffered some of the sacred books to be lost through their carelessness, and have burnt and destroyed others." The list of books given in the preceding chapter, under the head of "Lost Books cited by writers of the Bible," would nearly all be deemed canonical were they extant. Referring to these books, the Rev. Dr. Campbell, in his "Introduction to Matthew," says: "The Book of the Wars of the Lord, the Book of Jasher, the Book of Nathan the Prophet, the Book of Gad the Seer, and several others, are referred to in the Old Testament, manifestly as of equal authority with the book which refers to them, and as fuller in point of information. Yet these are to all appearances irrecoverably lost." God's revelation in its entirety, then, no longer exists. The ten Hebrew tribes which formed the kingdom of Israel, and whose remnants were afterwards called Samaritans, accepted only the first six books of the Old Testament. The other Jews generally accepted the Pentateuch and the Prophets, and, in a less degree, the Hagiographa as canonical. Some of them also attached more or less importance to the Apocryphal books. The Christian Canon.