4th, Jerome applied it to the books in the Septuagint which are absent from the Hebrew canon, _i.e._, to the books which were _read_ in the church, the _ecclesiastical_ ones(29) occupying a rank next to the canonical. In doing so he had respect to the corresponding Hebrew epithet. This was a misuse of the word _apocryphal_, which had a prejudicial effect on the character of the books in after-times.(30) The word, which he did not employ in an injurious sense, was adopted from him by Protestants after the Reformation, who gave it perhaps a sharper distinction than he intended, so as to imply a contrast somewhat disparaging to writings which were publicly read in many churches and put beside the canonical ones by distinguished fathers. The Lutherans have adhered to Jerome’s meaning longer than the Reformed; but the decree of the Council of Trent had some effect on both. The contrast between the canonical and apocryphal writings was carried to its utmost length by the Westminster divines, who asserted that the former are inspired, the latter not. CHAPTER II. THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON FROM ITS BEGINNING TO ITS CLOSE. The first important part of the Old Testament put together as a whole was the Pentateuch, or rather, the five books of Moses and Joshua. This was preceded by smaller documents, which one or more redactors embodied in it. The earliest things committed to writing were probably _the ten words_ proceeding from Moses himself, afterwards enlarged into the ten commandments which exist at present in two recensions (Exod. xx., Deut. v.) It is true that we have the oldest form of the decalogue from the Jehovist not the Elohist; but that is no valid objection against the antiquity of the nucleus, out of which it arose. It is also probable that several legal and ceremonial enactments belong, if not to Moses himself, at least to his time; as also the Elohistic list of stations in Numbers xxxiii. To the same time belongs the song of Miriam in Exodus xv., probably consisting of a few lines at first, and subsequently enlarged; with a triumphal ode over the fall of Heshbon (Numbers xxi. 27-30). The little poetical piece in Numbers xxi. 17, 18, afterwards misunderstood and so taken literally, is post-Mosaic.