Excerpt from The Messages of the Prophetic and Priestly Historians: The Writings of the Historians of the Old Testament, Arranged So as to Distinguish Their Principal Sources, and Freely Rendered in Paraphrase One of the greatest difficulties that besets, for the gen eral reader, the scientific study of the Old Testament is the absence of any easily accessible criterion to distinguish the original sources from the later redactional material. By typographical devices an attempt is here made to over come this difficulty, the original sources being always printed in plain type, and the redactional matter in italics, capitals, small or bold-faced type, as the case may be.1 Many of the difficulties will thus be found to vanish of themselves. All that is printed in plain type may be used as a basis for the study of the history, and I have sought, where possible, to make it read continuously. Brackets are used to indicate that the passage enclosed has no direct authority in the original text, but is supplied on high warrant for the sake of the connection. The poetry and the legislation interspersed throughout the historical books have been, with hardly any exceptions, omitted, as they are to be dealt with in other volumes of this series. 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.