There are sixteen of them outside the Pentateuch: 1° Joshua2. The Judges, 3. Ruth4° the Samuel's first book, 5° the Samuel's second book6° the First Book of Kings7. The Second Book of Kings, 8. and 9. The two Books of Chronicles, 10. Ezra, 11. Nehemiah, 12. Tobit, 13. Judith, 14. Esther15th and 16th are the two books of Maccabees (also called the Book of the Martyrs of Israel). These are separated from the others in the Latin canon by all the poetic and prophetic writings; they have been left in their chronological order, and they thus serve as a conclusion to the Old Testament.
These books are rightly called "historical"; for, although the Pentateuch recounts the establishment, first distant, then immediate, of the theocracy or kingdom of God on earth, they set forth its successive developments through the thousand vicissitudes of the life of the Hebrew people: it is history proper that they contain in an almost exclusive manner.
We have seen that, in the Hebrew Bible, six of these books (Joshua(Judges, 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings) are grouped under a special title: nebî'im Ri'sônim «"Previous prophets (as opposed to nebî'im 'aharônim, later prophets, or properly speaking”; that six others of them (Ruth, Esther(Ezra, Nehemiah, 1 and 2 of Chronicles) belong to the category known as ketubim, or the Hagiographers; while the other four (Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 of the Maccabees) are totally lacking, and for this reason they are called deuterocanonical.
“Former Prophets”: a fine name, which suits them all perfectly. Indeed, the Jews did not give it to several of these writings merely because, according to tradition, they had prophets as authors, nor because they describe here and there, in ample detail, the ministry of some great prophets (Samuel, Nathan, Gad, Elijah, Elisha, etc., in the books of Kings); but above all because they relate the history of the people of the Covenant and of the kingdom of God under the Old Testament, in the light of the divine plan for the salvation of mankind; because they describe the fulfillment of divine revelations through the historical journey of Israel; because they show how the Almighty God, King of Israel, was constantly faithful to the gracious covenant first made with the patriarchs, then at Sinai; how he drew his people ever closer, despite culpable resistance, to the purpose for which he had chosen them; how, in the end, he thereby prepared the salvation of the whole world. Which is to say more simply: prophetic books as well as historical ones, because they have in mind, sometimes in a direct and immediate way (it is in these books that we will find, to cite only two examples, on the one hand David, to whose lineage the Messiah will be clearly linked (2 Samuel 7:12 ff.); on the other hand, three of Christ's ancestors: Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba (cf Josh. 2, 1 et seq.; Ruth(4:21-22; 2 Samuel 12:24), sometimes in a typical and figurative way, the Messiah, redeemer of Israel and all humankind. It is therefore everywhere the story of the Christianity nascent.
This is precisely why these books do not constitute a complete, regular series of annals of Jewish history; after providing lengthy information on a particular person, on a particular period (the book of Ruth(for example, consists of only one episode), they quickly gloss over a whole set of facts, and it turns out, by virtue of divine inspiration, that the points the writers insist on are those that were most important to the messianic kingdom.
In terms of subject matter, the historical books of the Old Testament can be divided into two groups, depending on whether they recount: 1) the successive advances, then the rapid decline of the Jewish theocracy in Palestine, culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar; 2) how God deigned to mend the half-broken thread of the Covenant and reconstitute the original theocracy on initially very modest foundations, but ones that grew daily in strength and even glory. The "Former Prophets" belong to the first group and the Chronicles ; in the second, the other eight books.
While reading Joshua, we witness the conquest of the Promised Land and the establishment, in a sense, of the physical kingdom of God; in the time of the Judges, the twelve tribes, through serious difficulties, gradually strengthen theocratic life within themselves; book of RuthThe royal race is prepared; the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles show us the theocratic reign reaching its zenith of glory and power under David and Solomon, but then going, from fall to fall, to ruin, despite some periods of outward and moral recovery; the dominant idea of the writings which bear the names of Ezra, Nehemiah, Tobit, Judith and Esther, is that God has not totally abandoned his people and that he reserves a brilliant future for them; and this future begins to occur in the time of the Maccabees, either in brilliant feats of arms, or in the moral regeneration of Israel, while awaiting even more beautiful days, those of the Messiah.
The chronological period covered by these various writings ranges from the conquest of the Holy Land to the rule of Simon Maccabeus, that is, the early years of the 13th century. Others place the death of Moses as late as the end of the 19th century BC (135 BC).
The shape The style of all these books is naturally very varied, according to the eras and the authors: usually very simple, sometimes brief and laconic, sometimes abundant and diffuse; repetitions are quite frequent; transitions are lacking, and the very reason for the events is not indicated.
Saint Augustine he had already pointed out that the method of sacred historians is almost always impersonal. «They recount… purely and simply the facts, without… judging them. They observe that God’s people are happy when they are faithful to the law, unhappy when they transgress it; this, so to speak, is their philosophy of history; but, apart from this indication of the role of Providence, they are mere narrators… This way of writing history… is very important to note, because it provides the solution to many objections raised against the Holy Scriptures. It has been claimed that they approve of the guilty actions they report, because they do not censure them. Nothing could be further from the truth: they neither approve nor disapprove of the events they recount; it is up to the theologian and the critic to judge them according to their nature and consequences. Cf. St. Augustine, Quaest. In Heptat., 7, 49).
