The period which follows is one of great obscurity and the records which are actually dated from this time are scanty. Literary criticism however throws great light on this period because it believes that it is from the Exile that we are to date many institutions and writings that have been referred to a previous age. This may seem at first sight a desperate device, since so little is known of the actual conditions; and yet unfettered investigation can arrive at no other conclusion, the exilic stamp being often unmistakable and even showing itself in geographical outlook (1 Kings iv. 24). If we take the Bible as it stands, it presents us with the story of an early legislation given by Moses, neglected however by the entire people, including the Reformers and Prophets, until it suddenly appears after the Exile as the acknowledged code for the regulation of religion and common life. It would be quite possible to conceive that the shock of the Exile drove the Jews to examine the details of the neglected covenant of Jehovah and to restore the authority of the Law of Moses. Such however is impossible, not only from that fact that there is no mention of the Law of Moses in the records that can be dated between the Conquest of Canaan and the Exile, but that in this period we can discern customs and ideas _gradually_ growing up that find their full and final embodiment in the Pentateuch as we now possess it. From the lawless condition of the Judges and the early monarchy, we advance to the teaching of the Prophets. It is Isaiah who contributes the ideas which lie at the basis of the Deuteronomic Code, and the time of Josiah is the first to show the influence of that code. Ezekiel is the first to show any trace of the ideas which we find embodied in Leviticus, but these, as we shall see, have to be explained as anticipations of, rather than as an acquaintance with, the finished Levitical Code.