CHRONICLES, I. AND II.

they were In themselves, but as they appeared to one whose vision was influenced by his theological viewpoint. Other facts have been suppressed when they interfered with the conveying of the impression that David and Solomon were almost immaculate kings. To a past age were attributed the customs and ceremonial of the days in which the writer lived. The Priests' Code was supposed to have been recognized and observed by David even before the Temple was built. Again and again an anachronism has been committed that the Levites might have the place of honour in the record. Some special features of this method of writing history are:

(a) Exaggerated numbers. — Every one has felt difHculty with regard to these numbers. Palestine to-day is by no means thinly populated, but the total number of its inhabitants is only about 600,000. At its greatest prosperity the number may have reached 2i millions. But we read (2 Ch 13'- ") that Abijah with 400,000 men fought against Jeroboam with 800,000, and killed 500,000 of them. Asa (2 Ch 148) takes the field against Zerah the Ethiopian, who has 1,000,000 men, with 300,000 men of Judah, and 280,000 of Benjamin, the smallest of the tribes, which had previously been practi-cally wiped out by the slaying of 25,000 men (Jg 20"). When the numbers can be checked by the parallel passages in the older narrative, the tendency of the Chronicler to exaggerate is manifest. 1 Ch 18* 19" make David capture 7000 horsemen and slay 7000 chariotmen, while 2 S 8' 10" give 700 of each. Accord-ing to 1 Ch 2126, David pays 600 shekels of gold tor Oman's threshing-floor, while according to 2 S 24" he gives only SO shekels of silver. David gathers together for the building of the Temple, according to 1 Ch 22", 100,000 talents of gold and 1,000,000 talents of silver; but, according to 1 K 10", the whole revenue in gold of the kingdom, in the much richer days of Solomon, was only 666 talents of gold.

(6) Anachronisms creep in to show that the writer was carrying back to that earlier day the customs and names of his own time. 1 Ch 26" states that one of the gates of the Temple — the first Temple — was called Parbar. There is here the double mistake of supposing that the Temple existed in David's time, and that one of the gates of the first Temple had a Persian name. 1 Ch 29' speaks of the coin 'daric' or 'dram' as being current in the time of David. This coin was Persian, and was current in Palestine only after the Captivity.

(c) The speeches put into the mouths of the personages have not been taken from any ancient document, but bear on every line the characteristics of the very peculiar Hebrew style of the Chronicler.

6. Date. — 1 Ch 3"-2' appears to give six generations of the descendants of Zerubbabel, and would thus bring the book down to about e.g. 350. The precise rendering of the passage is, however, a little uncertain. Evidence as to date is clearer from Neh., which, as we have seen, was originally part of Chronicles. Neh 12" speaks of Jaddua, who was, as we know from Josephus, a contemporary of Alexander the Great (b.c. 333). Neh 12« mentions the reign of Darius the Persian, i.e. Darius iir., who reigned b.c. 336-332. Chron. must therefore be dated about b.c. 300.

6. Sources. — Chron. contains several additions to the narrative of Samuel and Kings — additions that have not been inserted because of any special ecclesiastical interest (2 Ch 119-i2. n. ss 149.1s 20. 25=-i°- " 26»-'s 28*-"). Does the Chronicler then preserve any fresh and original tradition, or does he merely work up older material? Apart from Samuel and Kings, his main authority was a work cited under a variety of different titles, 'the Book of the Kings of Israel and Judah' (2 Ch 27' 35" 36«), 'the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel' (2 Ch 16" 252« 28™). This book must have contained genealogical tables (1 Ch 9'), as well as other particulars not mentioned in any book that has come down to us (2 Ch 27' 33"). Another source is the

CHRONOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

' Midrash of the Book of Kings' (2 Ch 24"). A midrash was an exposition of the religious lessons that could be drawn from a historical work; Chron. itself is an excel-lent instance of a midrash, and this earlier midrash may have been the writer's model. He frequently refers to writings quoted under the name of prophets: 1 Ch 29*9 (Samuel, Nathan, and Gad), 2 Ch 9'' (Nathan, Abijah, and Iddo), 12" (Shemaiah and Iddo), IZ'' (Iddo), 26^ (Isaiah). As he never cites at the same time the 'Book of the Kings of Israel and Judah,' it is probable that these passages, connected with the various prophets, were only excerpts from that book. From the extracts that Chron. preserves of this book it is probable that it was post-exiUc, unless indeed the Chronicler in using it has thoroughly transformed its style and diction into his own.

Chron., then, so far from being a fresh source for the period of which it treats, is a midrash of Jewish order. The history is treated in a particular religious interest, the customs and ritual of the later age are carried back into the earlier. The book is evi-dence not of the condition of things under the monarchy, but of the religious belief and ceremonial observances of a time when national life had ceased, and when the people's interest was confined to the worship of the Temple.

R. Bhuce Tayloe.

CHR0N0L0G70F THE OLD TESTAUENT.— The importance of a fixed era by which to date events was not discovered by the Hebrews until after their national existence came to an end. All the endeavours to fix such an era which we find in our OT— hke the dating of the building of Solomon's Temple 480 years from the Exodus (1 K 6') — belong to the post-exiUc period. During the existence of the monarchy all that was thought necessary was to date by the years of the reigning king. If we had a complete series of public documents for all the reigns, this would answer very well for historical purposes. But what has actually come down to us is at best only a fragmentary series of notices based in part on official records.

Numerical statements there are in plenty In the Bible, and among them all those in the Books of Kings most deserve attention as the basis tor a scientific chronology. At first sight their accuracy seems to be guaranteed, because they check each other for the time covered by the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Not only does the author give us the length of the reigns in the two lines, but he has taken pains to work out a series of synchronisms, that is, he dates the accession of each king by the regnal year of his contemporary monarch in the other kingdom. But comparison of these figures with each other shows that they cannot all be accurate. For example, we learn that Jehoshaphat of Judah came to the throne in the fourth year of Ahab of Israel; also that Ahab reigned 22 years. Yet we are told that Ahaziah, who followed Ahab after his death, came to the throne in the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat, and in addition that Ahaziah's brother Jehoram, who could be crowned only after the two years' reign assigned to the latter, succeeded in the eighteenth of Jehoshaphat (1 K 22«- ", 2 K 3>).

Tills example makes us give up the synchronisms and turn our attention to the length of reigns, where we have reason to suppose that the figures are drawn from earlier documents. The history gives a convenient point of diviapn at the accession of Jehu in Israel and of Athaliah in Judah, for these two came to the throne in the same year. The two series of lengths of reigns ought to give the same sum for the period. But they do not. In one line we find 95 years and in the other 98.

It is possible that the discrepancy here is due to the mode of reckoning. The reigns are given as so many years without regard to fractions, yet it will be manifest that few if any reigns are an exact number of years with no months or days. Where the method of dating by regnal years is in vogue, the fractions may be treated in

132