visible kings. Just as this
tendency to secular kingship becomes strong, there comes into prominence
an order of 'prophets': the word signifies 'interpreters,' and the
prophets are accepted as the interpreters of Jehovah's will to Israel.
Under such rule as that of David, the man after God's own heart, the
work of the prophets may fall into the background; but where, as usually
happened, the secular government tends to ungodliness, the order of
prophets stands forth as an organised opposition. On lines like these
the historic narrative of the Bible pursues its course; and with the
thread of narrative are interwoven legal and statistical documents which
give it support. The History Series of the Modern Reader's Bible
presents the sacred narrative divided according to its logical
divisions. Genesis is occupied with the formation of the chosen nation,
from the first beginnings of things to the development of the
descendants of Abraham as a patriarchal family. The Exodus narrates the
migration of the fully formed nation to the land of promise; this is the
period of constitutional development, and in this part of the history
we find massed together the whole of the constitutional lore of Israel.
The group of books constituting The Judges volume represents a period of
transition: the 'judges' of Israel correspond to the 'heroes' of other
peoples, and amid a succession of these judges the incidents of Israel's
history reveal the efforts of the people of Jehovah towards a secular
government. The Kings takes up the history of the nation from the
establishment of the dynasty of David, and covers the struggle between
the prophetic and the secular parties until the time of the fall and
captivity. Upon the return of the remnant from Babylon all opposition to
the theocracy has ceased; to the prophets have succeeded the 'scribes,'
or interpreters of the written law, and The Chronicles is the
ecclesiastical history, not of a Hebrew nation, but of a Jewish church.

From History we must, in literary analysis, distinguish Story: the one
is founded on the sense of record and scientific explanation of events,
the other appeals to the imagination and the emotions. The Story
literature of most peoples is 'fiction,' in the sense that its matter is
invented solely for literary purposes. The stories of the Bible are part
of the sacred history, differing only in the mode in which the matter is
presented; and a long series of these stories is scat