" Canonization also discouraged the writing of history. It did not kill the Jewish passion completely. There were some tremendous flare-ups to come–the Books of the Maccabees, the work of Josephus, for example. But the great dynamic was running down, and when the canon was finally sanctified early in the Christian era, Jewish history, one of the glories of antiquity, would cease for a millennium and a half. "

― Paul Johnson , A History of the Jews