considering first (A) the direct historical value of Chronicles, i.e. its worth as a history of Judah; and secondly (B) its indirect historical value as a work of the period to which we have assigned its composition, 300—250 B.C. Under (A) our discussion may conveniently be divided into a consideration of: (I) those parts which reproduce or are apparently based on Samuel-Kings; (II) the material wholly or apparently independent of canonical Scripture.
A.
Direct Value.
(I) If the Chronicler's version of the history was to gain acceptance at all, it was necessary to make the older well-known histories the basis of his work. And indeed he himself no doubt conceived his version not as contradictory of the older narratives but only as a more careful account of the history of Judah, paying adequate attention to the religious affairs in which he was specially interested. Hence, wherever the text of Samuel and Kings was suitable for his purpose he reproduced it exactly[1]: an example is 2 Chr. xviii. 3—34 = 1 Kin. xviii. 4—35. The historical value of passages which are merely transcriptions must be discussed not here but in their original setting: obviously their value is that which they possess there—neither more nor less. We proceed therefore to consider the
- ↑ It must not be assumed that where the text of Chron. and Sam.-Kings now coincides, it has done so always. That conclusion is only generally true. Sometimes, it seems, the original text of Chron. was altered to conform more closely with Kings, and vice versa the present text of Kings is sometimes the result of assimilation to Chron. Unfortunately the evidence of the extant Greek versions (§ 10) is quite insufficient to tell us how far the present text of Chron. has been modified by this assimilating tendency, except in the last two chapters of 2 Chron. where the evidence of the Greek is peculiarly full. It is clear, however, that some by no means unimportant changes have taken place in the course of transmission: see § 10, and the remarks on p. xxii.
