The Chronicler: What Kind of Historian Was He Anyway? -- By: Eugene H. Merrill

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 165:660 (Oct 2008)
Article: The Chronicler: What Kind of Historian Was He Anyway?
Author: Eugene H. Merrill


The Chronicler:
What Kind of Historian Was He Anyway?

Eugene H. Merrill

Eugene H. Merrill is Distinguished Professor of Old Testament Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.

Introduction to Chronicles

The term “chronicler” is a conventional and convenient way of referring to the author(s) and/or redactor(s) of the (now) two books of Chronicles, a composition deriving its name from Jerome’s Latin description chronikon totius divinae historiae, a “chronicle of the whole of sacred history.” The Hebrew title דִּבְרֵי־הַיָּמִים (lit., “words concerning the days”; cf. 1 Chron. 27:24) captures this same concept. Both phrases connote the idea that Chronicles is a work of self-conscious historiography. However, the title Paraleipomena (“things left out”) in the Septuagint suggests that Chronicles simply adds material that is absent from various sources, particularly from Samuel and Kings.1 According to this assessment it has value only as it supplies this additional information.2 One purpose of this article is to put to rest this erroneous notion and to make the case that Chronicles is a deliberately conceived and independent rendition of Israel’s and Judah’s first

millennium B.C. history, notwithstanding its use of prior texts and traditions.

Authorship and Dating of the Book

Ancient Jewish tradition attributed the genealogies of 1 Chronicles (chaps. 1–9) to Ezra and the rest of the two Chronicles books to Nehemiah (Baba Bathra 14b–15a). This places the writing in the later decades of the fifth century B.C. However, later hands likely made further additions to the text, though admittedly the evidence is sparse.3 Perhaps the best example is the genealogy of David (1 Chron. 3), which ends with Anani, the eighth (or as much as eleventh) generation from King Jehoiachin (v. 24). Reckoning twenty-five years per generation and commencing at Jehoiachin’s birth in 615 (2 Kings 24:8), Anani could well have lived into the later years of the fourth century, perhaps as late as 325.4 On the other hand the so-called “deuteronomistic history,” the putative redaction of Joshua–2 Kings (...

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