8. _Arrangement of the Canon Ascribed to Ezra:_ "Among the achievements ascribed to Ezra is the collection, editing, and arrangement of the whole Jewish Scriptures in one canon, under the threefold division of the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa. In performing this work, he is assumed to have added those passages which can not have been written by the authors whose names the books bear; such as the allusion to kings of Israel in Gen. xxxvi: 31; the account of the death and burial of Moses in the last chapter of Deuteronomy; and the many references to the state of 'things at this day.' * * * * * But the main question is, whether the present canon of the Old Testament was, in substance, the work of Ezra. It must be remembered that such a work involved much more than the collection into one volume of books already existing in a separate form; it included the selection from the whole number of those which bore, and were to bear forever, the stamp of divine authority: for no one imagines that the Scriptures of the Old Testament form a complete collection of the ancient Hebrew literature. That such a work, having such authority, had been completed before the Christian era, is clear from the allusions to the Holy Scriptures in the New Testament; and it was most probably accomplished during the Persian domination, which ended B. C. 323. There is every reason for its having been performed at as early a period as possible. Ezra's care to make the people well acquainted with the word of God is as conspicuous as his own knowledge of it. No man could be more qualified, as no time could be more fit, for a work which was most needful to establish the people in their faith. That the work must have been performed by an inspired man, is an axiom lying at the foundation of the whole question, unless we believe, on the one hand, that the Church is endowed in every age with power to decide what Scriptures are canonical, or unless, on the other hand, we give up a canon, in the proper sense of the word, and reduce the authority of Scripture to that which literary criticism can establish for its separate books. On this ground, none but Ezra can be the author of the canon; for no one has ever thought of ascribing the work to Nehemiah, the civil governor and man of action; and the only claim made for Malachi is the addition of his own prophecy to the canon already framed by Ezra, and even this supposition we have seen to be unnecessary, as Ezra may have been the survivor. The attempt to ascribe the work to some unknown inspired person later than Malachi is an example of the _argumentum ab ignorantia_, which has no weight against the evidence of what is known." (Dr. Smith's Old Testament History, pp. 645-646.)