But in the Books of Haggai and Zechariah Dr. Kosters finds much more formidable witnesses for his thesis that there was no Return of exiles from Babylon before the building of the Temple under Darius. These books nowhere speak of a Return under Cyrus, nor do they call the community who built the Temple by the names of Gôlah or B’ne ha-Gôlah, _Captivity_ or _Sons of the Captivity_, which are given after the Return of Ezra’s bands; but they simply name them _this people_[578] or _remnant of the people_,[579] _people of the land_,[580] _Judah_ or _House of Judah_,[581] names perfectly suitable to Jews who had never left the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. Even if we except from this list the phrase _the remnant of the people_, as intended by Haggai and Zechariah in the numerical sense of _the rest_ or _all the others_,[582] we have still to deal with the other titles, with the absence from them of any symptom descriptive of return from exile, and with the whole silence of our two prophets concerning such a return. These are very striking phenomena, and they undoubtedly afford considerable evidence for Dr. Kosters’ thesis.[583] But it cannot escape notice that the evidence they afford is mainly negative, and this raises two questions: (1) Can the phenomena in Haggai and Zechariah be accounted for? and (2) whether accounted for or not, can they be held to prevail against the mass of positive evidence in favour of a Return under Cyrus? An explanation of the absence of all allusion in Haggai and Zechariah to the Return is certainly possible.