tain Ezra, son of Seraiah,
presented himself in 369 B.C., and, as he was a man of some standing,
Artaxerxes not only authorised him to go himself, but to take with him
a whole company of priests and Levites and families formerly attached to
the service of the temple.** The books containing the Law of God and
the history of His people had, since the beginning of the captivity,
undergone alterations which had profoundly modified their text and
changed their spirit.

* Neh. v.

** Neh. xiii. 6: "in the two and thirtieth year of
Artaxerxes, King of Babylon, I went unto the king."

This work of revision, begun under the influence of Ezekiel, and perhaps
by his own followers, had, since his time, been carried on without
interruption, and by mingling the juridical texts with narratives of
the early ages collected from different sources, a lengthy work had been
produced, very similar in composition and wording to the five Books
of Moses and the Book of Joshua as we now possess them.* It was this
version of the Revelation of Jahveh that Ezra brought with him from
Babylon in order to instruct the people of Judah, and the first
impressions received by him at the end of his journey convinced him that
his task would be no light one, for the number of mixed marriages had
been so great as to demoralise not only the common people, but even
the priests and leading nobles as well. Nevertheless, at a general
assembly** of the people he succeeded in persuading them to consent to
the repudiation of alien wives.

* This is the priestly revision presupposed by recent
critics; here again, in order to keep within the prescribed
limits of space, I have been compelled to omit much that I
should have liked to add in regard to the nature of this
work and the spirit in which it was carried out.

** Ezra, vii.-xi., where the dates given do not form part of
the work as written by Ezra, but have been introduced later
by the editor of the book as it now stands.

But this preliminary success would have led to nothing unless he
could secure formal recognition of the rigorous code of which he had
constituted himself the champion, and protracted negotiations were
necessary before he could claim a victory on this point as well as
on the other. At length, about 367 B.C., more than a year after his
arrival, he gained his point, and the covenant between Jahveh and His
people was sealed with ceremoni