The books of the Old Testament differ widely in matter and form--history and story; legislation, civil and ritual, moral and ceremonial; prophecy and apocalypse; lyric, didactic, and dramatic poetry. The literary quality of the best in all these kinds is very high. The Song of Deborah (Judg. 5), notwithstanding the imperfect state of the text, is one of the greatest of triumphal odes; parts of Job attain the height of the sublime; some of the Psalms are worthy of a foremost place among religious lyrics; many oracles of the prophets are as noteworthy for the perfection of the expression as for the elevation of the thought; the laws are often formulated with admirable precision; in the art of narration the older historians are unsurpassed in ancient literature. These qualities appear even more conspicuous in comparison with the remains of Egyptian or of Babylonian and Assyrian writings. It is only among the Greeks that we find anything to match the finest productions of the Hebrew genius. It need hardly be said that the Old Testament is not all on this high level of excellence--what literature is? But, taken as a whole, the level is surprisingly high, and even in the decadence classical models are sometimes imitated with no small degree of success. CHAPTER III THE PENTATEUCH The Old Testament begins with a comprehensive historical work, reaching from the creation of the world to the fall of the kingdom of Judah (586 B.C.), which in the Hebrew Bible is divided into nine books (Genesis-Kings). The Jews made a greater division at the end of the fifth book (Deuteronomy) and treated the first five books (the Pentateuch) as a unit, with a character and name of its own, the Law. The names of the several books in our Bibles are derived from the Greek version, and indicate in a general way the subject of the book, or, more exactly, the subject with which it begins: Genesis, the creation of the world; Exodus, the escape from Egypt; Leviticus, the priests' book; Numbers, the census of the tribes; Deuteronomy, the second legislation, or the recapitulation of the law. The three middle books of the Pentateuch (Exodus-Numbers) are more closely connected with one another than with the preceding and following books (Genesis, Deuteronomy); in fact, they form a whole which is only for convenience in handling divided into parts. In these books narrative and legislation are somewhat unequally represented. Exod. 1-19 is almost all narrative, as are also c. 24, and cc. 32-34; the story is picked up again in Num. 10, what lies between is wholly legislative; in Num. 10-27, 28-36, narrative and laws alternate, the latter predominating. It is evident that from the author's point of view the narrative was primarily a historical setting for the Mosaic legislation.