To the Jew, however, the Scriptures are possessed of an interest beyond the religious and literary. They are the record of his achievements in the past when his foot rested firm and steady on native soil, of a long history full of vicissitudes from the time when the invaders battled against the kings of Canaan to the days when the last visionary steeled the nation's endurance in its struggle with the heathen. They are the charter of Jewish nobility, linking those of the present to the wanderer from Ur of the Chaldees. As a finished product the Hebrew Scriptures came after the period of national independence. When canon-making was in its last stage, Jerusalem was a heap of ruins. The canon was the supreme effort of Judæa--throttled by the legions of Rome--withdrawing to its inner defences. The sword was sheathed and deliverance was looked for from the clouds. The Scriptures were to teach the Jew conduct and prayer, and the chidings of the prophets were listened to in a penitential mood, but also joyfully because of the consolations to which they led. The canon-makers had an eye to the steadying of a vanquished people against the enemy without and the foe within. For there arose teachers who proclaimed that the mission of the Jew was fulfilled: free from the fetters of a narrow nationalism, of a religion bound up with the soil, he was now ready to merge his individuality with the large world when once it accepted that measure of his teaching suited to a wider humanity. The temple that was made with hands was destroyed, and another made without hands was building where men might worship in spirit and truth. The dream was fascinating, the danger of absorption was acute, because it was dressed up with the trappings of an ideal to which many believed the Scriptures themselves pointed. There was a much larger range of writings in Palestine and a still larger in Egypt. The list included historical works carrying on the story of the people's fortunes beyond Alexander the Great; novelistic tales like that of the heroic Judith luring the enemy of her people to destruction, or that exquisite tale of Jewish family life as exemplified by the pious Israelite captive Tobit; books like the wise sayings of Jesus, son of Sirach, the Wisdom of Solomon, or the Psalms of Solomon, all modelled after patterns in the canon; midrashic expositions of the law, like the Little Genesis; apocalyptic visions going by the name of Enoch and the Twelve Patriarchs and Moses and Isaiah and Esdras, whose prototype may be sought in the canonical Daniel. Over and above the three parts which the Synagogue accepted there were a fourth and fifth; but by an act of exclusion the canon was concentrated upon the three and the others were cast overboard. The canon was the creation of the Pharisaic doctors, who drew a line at a point of their own choosing, and decreed that writings "from that time onward" did not defile the hands. _The Making of the Canon by the Pharisees_