When the three divisions were united, the ecclesiastical respect which had gathered round the law and the prophets from ancient times began to be transferred to the _c’tubim_. A belief in their sanctity increased apace in the 1st century before the Christian era, so that _sacredness_ and _canonicity_ were almost identical. The doubts of individuals, it is true, were still expressed respecting certain books of the _c’tubim_, but they had no perceptible effect upon the current opinion. The sanctity attaching to the last division as well as the others did not permit the total displacement of any part. The passage in Josephus already quoted shows the state of the canon about A.D. 100. According to it, he considered it to have been closed at the time of Artaxerxes Longimanus, whom he identifies with the Ahasuerus of Esther, 464-424 B.C. The books were divine, so that none dared to add to, subtract from, or alter them. To him the canon was something belonging to the venerable past, and inviolable. In other words, all the books were peculiarly sacred. Although we call scarcely think this to be his private opinion merely, it is probably expressed in exaggerated terms, and hardly tallies with his use of the third Esdras in preference to the canonical texts.(75) His authority, however, is small. Bloch’s estimate of it is too high. It is utterly improbable that Josephus’s opinion was universally held by the Jews in his day. His division of the books is peculiar: five Mosaic, thirteen historical, four containing religious songs and rules of life. It appears, indeed, that as he had the same twenty-two books we now have, Ruth was still attached to Judges, and Lamentations to Jeremiah; but his credit is not on a par with that of a Jew who adhered to his countrymen in the time of their calamity. He wrote for the Romans. One who believed that Esther was the youngest book in the canon, who looked upon Ecclesiastes as Solomon’s, and Daniel as an exile production, cannot be a competent judge. In his time the historical sense of the book of Daniel was misapprehended; for after the Grecian dynasty had fallen without the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy connected with it, the Roman empire was put into its place. Hence various allusions in _The History of the Jewish Wars_.(76) The passage in the _Antiquities_,(77) about Alexander the Great and the priests in the Temple at Jerusalem is apocryphal. In any case, Josephus does not furnish a genuine list of the canonical books any more than Philo. The Pharisaic view of his time is undoubtedly given, that the canon was then complete and sacred. The decision proceeded from that part of the nation who ruled both over school and people, and regained supremacy after the destruction of the temple; _i.e._, from the Pharisee-sect to which Josephus belonged. It was a conclusion of orthodox Judaism. With true critical instinct, Spinoza says that the canon was the work of the Pharisees.