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Books of Chronicles
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Chronicles are two books of the Bible in which, after a huge shout-out to the author's dead homies, some stuff happens to some people (presumably Jewish people, because this is the Old Testament), but also whomever the Jews were hating on at the time. They get into a war with them, then some of them die, and then some of them beget some others. And in the end all hell has broken loose because someone else won. The Greek translators of the Septuagint, who couldn't take the full tedium of the single-volume Jewish version, divided it into 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles.[1]
Rather disproving any divine authorship, the Old Testament is hellishly repetitive, and Chronicles begins by rehashing the entire Bible-story-so-far all the way back to Adam. Hence it is widely suspected that it was written (anywhere from the 5th to 2nd century BCE[2]) by someone who sat down with the earlier parts of the Bible and rewrote them all; some experts think the author might have had other sources, others say no, he really did just copy it all out.[1][note 1] He did however make some changes as he was rewriting it: 2 Chronicles is basically the Books of Kings with all references to the northern kingdom of Israel removed, amongst other modifications.[3] Chronicles ends its chronicle with the events of around 540 BCE when Cyrus the Great ended the Israelites' exile in Babylon; this is also the endpoint of the Jewish Tanakh.[1] And after that all was roses for the Jews.
God gets a cameo kicking King David's ass for ordering a census, because accurate enumeration of citizens is an abomination unto the LORD. Seriously, he nearly destroys Jerusalem. Apparently God forgot that back in 2 Samuel he was the one who told David to do it:[note 2]
“”And again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah
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| —2 Samuel 24:1 |
So Chronicles represents God's attempt to cover up this rash error. Now the story is:
| —1 Chronicles 21:1 |
Yeah, that's the ticket.
See also[edit]
Notes[edit]
References[edit]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 See the Wikipedia article on Books of Chronicles.
- ↑ 1 and 2 Chronicles, Oxford Bibliographies
- ↑ See the Wikipedia article on Books of Kings.