The historical value of the Prophets is therefore to be rated very high, not only because of their transparent sincerity, but also because the historical data which can be secured from them are given indirectly, and are valuable for the same reason as the remarks of a contemporary diarist. They are unaware that they are writing history, and are consequently free from the almost unescapable tendency of the historian to make the facts fit into preconceived theories. Modern criticism, therefore, does rightly in making the Prophets of paramount importance for the understanding of the Old Testament, and when the Prophets are thus made the test, much in the history that was either completely hidden or difficult to understand, becomes visible and clear, and the progress of Israel's religion is displayed in all its grandeur and movement.
We can now turn to examine the extent of the sources from which we may draw, in order to estimate the religious opinions and influence of the Prophets, and to examine the peculiar character of the literature for which they are responsible.
First in importance stand the Books of the Prophets proper. In the ancient division of the Hebrew Bible into, (1) The Law, (2) The Prophets, (3) The Hagiographa, or the holy writings, "The Prophets" included, beside our Books of the Prophets, such historical Books as Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. Significantly enough, however, Daniel is not grouped with the Prophets, but with the Hagiographa, either because it was not classed as prophecy, or more probably because the Canon of "The Prophets" had been closed by the time it was written.
Therefore, in addition to the writings ascribed to the Prophets, there is a literature which has been influenced by their teaching, and this is found largely in those historical Books which have thus been rightly included in the Prophetical division of the Hebrew Bible. That is to say, however, that Books dealing with history prior to the rise of the Prophets, show traces of an influence that can only have emerged later. It is here that criticism seems to the ordinary reader to enter very debatable ground, although among critical students of the Bible the question is no longer an open one. They claim that the peculiar conditions under which Hebrew history was compiled allow us to discern, and to separate with ease, this later prophetical editing, whereas in other literatures such would be impossible. History was compiled among the Jews largely from pre-existing documents, much as it is everywhere, with the difference that in the Old Testament the records have been simply pieced together with whatever corrections and reductions were rendered necessary, while the conceptions of the later times, when this re-editing was accomplished, are often simply superimposed; this method has been ridiculed as an invention of the critical mind, but it is simply an indisputable if tiresome fact which has to be taken into account in any serious study of the literature. The narratives of the documents that have been named "J" and "E" bear the marks of having been combined under the influence of prophetical teaching, since this teaching, it is to be noted, is recognisably incompatible with other parts of the stories which have been left untouched.