The books of Chronicles

by W. A. L. Elmslie

Until recent times the study of the historical records of Israel and of other nations of antiquity has suffered from insufficient recognition of the principles and procedure of ancient historians. It is obvious that a great contrast exists between any modern historical work and those books of the Old Testament which relate the fortunes of Israel; and unless there is a clear perception of the main facts to which this contrast is due, the nature and value of the Books of Chronicles cannot readily be understood and certainly will not be properly appreciated. It is desirable therefore to deal with this matter at the outset, before proceeding to consider the special characteristics of Chronicles.

(1) Standpoint. According to the modern point of view, a perfect history would seem to be a complete and impartial statement of events. This ideal is unattainable, for even the fullest account must fall far short of the richness of actual life. Moreover, it is imperative that the trivial be distinguished from the important, and the facts be presented according to their relative values. A historian is therefore necessary to arrange the material so that the events are seen in their proper relationship. Thereby, however, a subjective element is introduced into our histories. Life is so complex that two men considering the same facts may reach very different conclusions concerning them. We cannot wholly escape this danger, but we do claim that the historian shall consciously seek to present the truth and nothing but the truth. He must not deliberately suppress or distort facts to favour (say) the Protestant or the Roman Catholic view of the Reformation. A modern historian may be convinced that sin leads to disaster, but he must not therefore write that a certain wicked monarch perished dethroned and in misery, if he knows that he died peacefully in his royal bed. If he wishes to enforce the doctrine that “the wages of sin is death,” either he may turn to history and select incidents which support that view, or he may invent characters and weave them into a tale which points his moral, or he may discuss the belief generally; but he ought not to publish as serious history a work in which, irrespective of facts, every wicked king is punished or involves his land in ruin. We should count such a work an illegitimate use of historical material, unless the author gave some clear indication of its real nature. We draw a sharp distinction between history and fiction, and in the serious historian we demand fidelity to the truth as he sees it.

This modern standpoint is in reality the outcome of that more scientific habit of mind which insists above all things on accurate observation of phenomena and on the subordination of theory to fact. But the duty of scientific thinking has not so very long been recognised by the human mind, and in former days many things were legitimate and natural which would not be so now. The moment we make allowance for our mental environment, we can conceive that there might be other ideas than our own as to what constitutes the use and abuse of historical records. To us the facts are primary, and the lessons they seem to teach must be accepted, whether they suit our wishes or not. But an ancient writer was not dominated by that maxim. Supposing he desired to teach that “Virtue is rewarded,” he might consider that an excellent way of enforcing his theory was not only to use the narratives of the past, but to mould and modify them as best suited his object. History might be made the tool of his conviction, and the tool be shaped to assist his purpose. If it is hard for us to realise that such a procedure was legitimate for him, that is simply due to the difficulty we have in being anything except the children of our own age.

The earliest historical records of Israel were not attempts to write a continuous history of the people, but popular tales and songs commemorating such deeds of the people or its heroes as had made a profound impression on the popular imagination. An excellent example is the famous Song of Deborah in Judges v. Records of this type were long transmitted orally, but eventually were gathered together into written collections, such as the Book of Jashar, referred to by the canonical writers (see Joshua x. 13, 2 Samuel i. 18). As national history lengthened out and State records accumulated in connection with palace and temple, the idea would finally arise of combining these with the popular memories so as to form a connected historical narrative. But the motive which prompted the formation of such accounts was not scientific interest nor even perhaps curiosity to ascertain the exact course of events, but the desire to interest, to instruct, and above all to edify contemporary thought and life. Broadly, we may distinguish two types of ancient historical writing; first, the descriptive narrative in which events were recorded on account of their intense human interest, and, secondly, the didactic, where the older descriptive tales and any other available material were selected, related, and built into a unity in such fashion as might best serve to bring out the religious, moral, or political lessons which they seem to teach or which the writer was anxious to impress upon his generation. The books of Samuel–Kings and of Chronicles both belong to the didactic type[¹]. Thus, they contain many stories (e.g. the details of Jehu’s revolution in Kings) which teach no special lesson but are recorded for their intrinsic interest; and also much annalistic record of fact. But this material has been welded together by a writer or writers who were supremely interested in the religious condition of their people, who believed that the character and purpose of God were manifest in the vicissitudes of their national history, and who desired to make the ethical and spiritual import of that history clear to their fellow-men. Hence in their present form their works are not scientific records but rather what may be termed “history with a motive.” For instance, the space given to the tales about Elisha the prophet compared with the brief allusion to Omri King of Israel is entirely disproportionate to their respective values in the political sphere. The books of Samuel and Kings are practical and powerful appeals to history in the interests of religious faith. The same is true of Chronicles, and to an even greater degree, because Chronicles belongs to a later period than Samuel–Kings (see [§ 3]), when the religious convictions of Israel were felt with extraordinary intensity, and could be expressed in accordance with certain precise theological beliefs.

[¹] That both Samuel–Kings and Chronicles can be classed as didactic does not imply that they do not differ greatly in character: the former books are “prophetic” and national, relating God’s dealings with the nation as a whole, whilst Chronicles gives an essentially priestly and ecclesiastical view of the history.

(2) Method: the treatment of “sources.” It is of no less importance to realise something of the difference of method between ancient and modern historians, particularly as regards their treatment of “sources.”

For all that lies beyond his personal experience the historian is, of course, dependent on sources, documentary or otherwise. The modern writer recognises the duty of testing and verifying the accuracy of the sources he uses for his narrative, and in producing his own account of affairs he is expected, where desirable, to state the sources upon which he has relied. The ancient historian also made use of sources, but (1) he used them uncritically, with little or no anxiety concerning their accuracy, and (2) it was his custom simply to select from the available material any passages, long or short, even words or phrases, which served his purpose, and to incorporate these in his work, frequently without any indication of the borrowing. Only in certain instances was the source precisely referred to. Moreover (3) the utmost freedom was exercised in dealing with the passages thus chosen. Sometimes they were reproduced word for word; at other times they were partially or wholly transformed to suit the new context. This may seem an unwarrantable procedure to us, but one has only to examine the actual instances of these adaptations or transformations of unnamed sources to perceive that the ancient[¹] writer has acted in perfect good faith, with no suspicion that the manipulation was in any way blameworthy. How indeed could it have been otherwise? The science of literary criticism was unknown, “notions of literary propriety and plagiarism had not been thought of, and writers who advanced no pretensions to originality for themselves were guilty of no imposture when they borrowed without acknowledgement from their predecessors” (Skinner, Kings, p. 7).

[¹] Nor need one go back to antiquity for an instance. Most instructive examples of composite narrative compiled uncritically but quite innocently by mediaeval chroniclers from earlier sources may be found in Chapman’s Introduction to the Pentateuch (in this series), pp. 260 ff. Compare also an illustration from Arabic historical writings given by A. A. Bevan in Cambridge Biblical Essays, pp. 12 ff.

For us there is both gain and loss in these methods of the ancient writers, (a) Loss—because the continual adaptation of old tradition has sometimes produced changes so great that it is difficult or even impossible to discover now what was the actual course of events. By the exercise of care and by the diligent application of the principles of literary research the loss thus occasioned can be greatly diminished, particularly where different accounts of the same period have survived—e.g. in the parallel history of Judah in Samuel–Kings and in Chronicles. Not only do the two versions facilitate the task of recovering the actual history, but each version throws light upon the origin and nature of the other. (b) On the other hand, the practice of incorporating passages of older narratives in the text is a great gain. It is, of course, unfortunate that the writers did not more carefully indicate the various sources they happened to be using; but constantly—thanks to idiosyncrasies of style, language, and thought—we are able to analyse the composite whole into its component parts. From the study of the separate sources thus revealed we gain invaluable information which would have been lost to us had the later writer (or rather, compiler and editor) given his version of the history entirely in his own words.

(3) The absence of the idea of Development. One other feature of the ancient writers, at least of the chroniclers of Israel, is of singular interest, and deserves special attention: it might be described as a feature of their temperament or of their mental environment. The idea of growth has become familiar to us, and we recognise that there has been a process of development in our religious and social institutions. We are content to trace the seeds of the present in the past. But the feeling of antiquity was apparently different. In Israel, at least, there was a tendency to suppose that the cherished system and organisations of the present had sprung into existence, as it were, full-grown at some great moment of the past. For example, by the Chronicler’s time, the whole body of law and ritual embodied in the final form of the Pentateuch had come to be ascribed in its entirety to Moses, whereas historical and literary evidence demonstrates beyond all question that the system of Jewish worship and law was a gradual growth of which the stages can be traced with considerable clearness. Similarly, many features in the organisation of the Temple ministrants—the Priests, Levites, etc.—came into existence only in post-exilic days; but the whole system as it appeared in the Chronicler’s time was believed by him, and doubtless also by his contemporaries, to have originated with King David. Indeed, it is very probable that the ancients felt it so natural and so necessary to justify important customs and institutions by giving them the sanction of an ancient and honourable origin, that occasionally the very ideals of the present were represented as facts of the past. The converse of this tendency was also in force. As the present sought the support of the authority of the past, so the past could only continue to be deemed important provided it conformed to some extent with the beliefs and ideals of the present. Ideas change and expand. Thus it was quite impossible in the Chronicler’s time to represent the age of David and Solomon as great and glorious unless the moderate figures given in Kings were altered to correspond with the ideas of men accustomed to think of the mighty armies of the Persian monarchs or of Alexander the Great. As Kuenen says, “In ancient times, and specifically in Israel, the sense of historic continuity could only be preserved by the constant compliance on the part of the past with the requirements of the present, that is to say by the constant renovation and transformation of the past. This may be called the Law of religious historiography” (The Modern Review, vol. i. [1880], p. 705).