To Ezra and his coadjutors, the men of the Great Synagogue, the Jews
ascribe the _completion of the canon_ of the Old Testament. Their
traditions concerning him are embellished with extravagant fictions; yet
we cannot reasonably deny that they are underlaid by a basis of truth.
All the scriptural notices of Ezra attest both his zeal and his ability
as "a scribe of the words of the commandments of the Lord, and of his
statutes to Israel," a man who "had prepared his heart to seek the law
of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and
judgments." Ezra 7:10, 11. The work in which he and his associates were
engaged was the reestablishment of the Theocracy on its old foundation,
the law of Moses, with the ordinances pertaining to the
sanctuary-service afterwards added by David; and that too in the vivid
consciousness of the fact that disobedience to the divine law had
brought upon the nation the calamities of the captivity. In such
circumstances their first solicitude must have been that the people
might have the inspired oracles given to their fathers, and be
thoroughly instructed in them. The work, therefore, which Jewish
tradition ascribes to Ezra and the men of the Great Synagogue was
altogether appropriate to their situation, nor do we know of any man or
body of men afterwards so well qualified for its performance, or upon
whom it would so naturally have devolved.

That they arranged the inspired volume in substantially its present
form, we have no good reason for doubting. But we should not, perhaps,
be warranted in saying that they brought the canon of the Old Testament
absolutely and formally to a close. Josephus (against Apion 1. 8)
affirms that no book belongs to the sacred writings of his nation "which
are justly believed to be divine," that had its origin after the reign
of Artaxerxes, Xerxes' son (Artaxerxes Longimanus, under whom Ezra led
forth his colony, Ezra, chap. 7); and that on the ground that from this
time onward "the exact succession of the prophets" was wanting. This
declaration of the Jewish historian is in all essential respects worthy
of full credence. We cannot, however, affirm with confidence that all
the later historical books were put by Ezra and his contemporaries into
the exact form in which we now have them. The book of Nehemiah, for
example, contains some genealogical notices (chap. 12:11, 22) which,
according to any fair interpretation, are of a later date. We are at
liber