of the God of Israel, to offer burnt-offerings on it, as prescribed in the
law of Moses the man of God. And they set up the altar in its place; for
fear, because of the peoples dwelling in the land, had come upon them,
but they plucked up courage and offered burnt-offerings to Jehovah, even
burnt-offerings morning and evening. And they kept the feast of booths as
it is prescribed, and offered the fixed number of daily burnt-offerings
according to the direction for each day; but the foundation of the temple
of Jehovah was not yet laid.

I. The Transformation of the Jews into a Literary People. The
destruction of Jerusalem transformed the Jewish peasants of Palestine into
a literary race. Before the final destruction of Jerusalem they had lived
together in a small territory where communication was easy and the need of
written records but slight. The exile separated friends and members of the
same families, and scattered them broadcast throughout the then known
world. The only means of communicating with each other in most cases was
by writing, and this necessity inevitably developed the literary art. The
exiles in Babylonia and Egypt were also in close contact with the two most
active literary peoples of the ancient world. In countries where almost
every public or private act was recorded in written form, and where the
literature of the past was carefully preserved and widely transcribed, it
was inevitable that the Jews should be powerfully influenced by these
examples. Furthermore, the teachers of the race, prophets and priests
alike, prevented by the destruction of the temple from employing their
former oral and symbolic methods of instruction, resorted, as did the
priest Ezekiel, to the pen. Thus the religious thought and devotion of the
race began to find expression in its literature.

The incentives to collect the earlier writings of the priests and prophets
were also exceedingly strong, for the experiences and institutions of