"
With the help of these other accounts, among which there is a
considerable group of uniform character (1Kings xx. xxii. 2Kings
iii. vi. 24-xii. 20. ix. 1-x. 27) favourably distinguished
from the rest, we are placed in a position to criticise the history
of Elijah, and to reach a result which is very instructive for
the history of the tradition, namely that the influence of the
mighty prophet on his age has after all been appraised much too
highly. His reputation could not be what it is but for the wide
diffusion of Baal worship in Israel: and this is not a little
exaggerated. Anything like a suppression of the national religion
at the time of Elijah is quite out of the question, and there is
no truth in the statement that the prophets of Jehovah were entirely
extirpated at the time and Elijah alone left surviving. The
prophetic guilds at Bethel, Jericho, and Gilgal continued without
any interruption. In the Syrian wars prophets of Jehovah stand by
the side of Ahab; before his last campaign there are four hundred
of them collected in his capital, one of them at least long known
to the king as a prophet of evil, but left alive before and left
alive now, though he persisted in his disagreeable practices.
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