Jewish tradition has embodied in the arrangement of its Scriptures, and especially in the ascription of the Pentateuch as a whole to the age and authorship of Moses. The verdict from this comparison between the Prophets and the Law is, that the five Books of Moses either did not exist in their present form at the time of the Prophets, or, if they did, remained entirely unknown to them. The historical value of the Prophets is therefore to be rated very high, not only because of their transparent sincerity, but also because the historical data which can be secured from them are given indirectly, and are valuable for the same reason as the remarks of a contemporary diarist. They are unaware that they are writing history, and are consequently free from the almost unescapable tendency of the historian to make the facts fit into preconceived theories. Modern criticism, therefore, does rightly in making the Prophets of paramount importance for the understanding of the Old Testament, and when the Prophets are thus made the test, much in the history that was either completely hidden or difficult to understand, becomes visible and clear, and the progress of Israel's religion is displayed in all its grandeur and movement. We can now turn to examine the extent of the sources from which we may draw, in order to estimate the religious opinions and influence of the Prophets, and to examine the peculiar character of the literature for which they are responsible. First in importance stand the Books of the Prophets proper. In the ancient division of the Hebrew Bible into, (1) The Law, (2) The Prophets, (3) The Hagiographa, or the holy writings, "The Prophets" included, beside our Books of the Prophets, such historical Books as Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. Significantly enough, however, Daniel is not grouped with the Prophets, but with the Hagiographa, either because it was not classed as prophecy, or more probably because the Canon of "The Prophets" had been closed by the time it was written.