But the history of Samuel is not contained in the book of Judges. We have to look for it in a new book which records the foundation of the Israelitish kingdom. The books of Samuel take their name from that of the prophet which appears on their first page. They begin, however, with the conjunction ‘And,’ and thus presuppose an earlier volume. They are, in fact, merely the continuation of the book of Judges. Whether or not the same compiler has worked at the two books we cannot tell; that is a question which must be left to the philological critics who have long since settled his character and date, and determined exactly the limits of his work. There is one fact, however, connected with the compilation of the book of Judges which the historian cannot but notice. The narratives embodied in it differ from one another in tone and character. The religious point of view of the stories of Jephthah or Micah is wholly different from that of the stories of Barak or Jerubbaal. Between the account of the overthrow of the Canaanites on the Kishon and the stories narrated of Samson, there is the contrast between written history and folklore. Each narrative preserves its own individuality, its own point of view, its own reflection of the age and locality to which it belongs. Here and there, indeed, the pen of the historian who has collected and combined these fragments of the past history of Israel can be clearly traced. The speeches sometimes remind us of those in Thucydides, and exhibit the colouring of a later age. The framework of the narrative, moreover, is the writer’s own; in fact, he shows himself to be more than a compiler; he is a historian as well. But with all this, the narratives he has collected differ as much in character and tone as they do in the events they record. What more convincing proof can we have of the faithfulness with which he has reproduced his materials? In most cases they have not even passed through the assimilating medium of his own mind; instead of using his privilege as a historian he has given them to us unchanged and unmodified. And yet in many cases they must have shocked both his religious and his patriotic sense. Whatever else he may have been, the author of the book of Judges possessed a historical restraint and honesty which is rare even among the modern writers of Europe. He has given us the older records of his country just as he found them.