Excerpt from The Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 5: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature The origin of the threefold division of the canon is not, as Oehler supposes, a reflection of the difl'erent stages oi religious development through which the nation passed, as if the foundation were the Law, the ulterior tendency in its objective aspect the Prophets, and its subjective meet the Hagiographa. The books of Chronicles and cm refute this arbitrary conception. The triplicity lies in the manner in which the books were collected. Men who he. Longed to different periods and possessed different degrees of culture worked successively in the formation of the canon. It resulted out of the circumstances in which it Was made, and the subjective ideas of those who made it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.