THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
teacher. He has the good sense to follow Lucian's Septuagint in I Chron. iv. 22 rather than the Jewish fiction of the Targiun. But when, contrary to his custom, he translated in the same verse the proper names Jokim, Kozeba, Joash, and Saraf, his action can be explained only as due to the influence of his Hebrew teacher.
When one tries, with the help of the versions, to solve the many riddles found in the Masoretic text, the latter proves to be a descendant of an older type which has come to its present condition through omissions or additions, misreadings or scribal errors, corrections or interpretations. But even this older type is not the text written by the author. It bears like marks of change, but for want of older witnesses it is less frequently possible to bring proof of the fact. For example, I Chron. i. 1 1-16, 17''-23 according to the Septuagint are very likely additions; similarly I Chron. i. 4-10, 30-34', 35-54; I Chron. ii. 3* are transferred from Genesis; I Chron. xi. 10-41'' from II Sam. xxiii. (cf. A. Klostermann, Geschichte Israels, Munich, 1896, p. 157). Against such designed augmentation exists another kind due to scribal errors, as when, owing to the identity of I Chron. viii. 28'' and ix. 34'', the copyist repeats viii. 29-38 in ix.
35-44. It is natural that to such
5. The additions correspond omissions, as Text when a scribe having copied out of the wrong column, noticing his mistake, skips as much of the right as he copied from the wrong. For it is certain I Chron. x. 1 is the continuation of a story which had begun a new book, the beginning of which was lost and thus the story became uninteUigible. How much confusion may be created by the omission of a single word may be seen in I Chron. iv. 7-10, where the student is at a loss what to make of Koz (verse 8) and Ja'bez (verse 9) until he adds with the Targum wekoz at the end of verse 7 Similarly the Lucianic codices still retain in I Chron. ix. 18 the two words -which were lost in the Hebrew. In these cases the claim of antiquity is with the versions. In other cases the right reading exists alongside of the wrong one, as when in I Chron. vii. 5 one copyist wrote a meaningless word, and another put the correct reading in the margin, whence it found its way again into the text, where both stand to-day. These few examples suffice to show that the original text of Chronicles was written in a more careless orthography than that of the books generally used in the community. For that reason it was misunderstood and misinterpreted by punctuators and translators. In very early times it had already undergone correction and variation, had been extended by interpretations and quotations of parallel passages, and had lost its original form through additions and omissions. The consequence is that it, more than any other Biblical book, needs a thorough revision before it may be used as a witness or its claims denied.
V. Contents and Purpose: To understand these, use must be made of Ezra-Nehemiah, which constitutes the second half of Chronicles. Examination of Ezra i. 1-3" (=11 Chron. xxxvi. 22-23) proves the unity of Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah. For
the meaning of the repetition is (cf. Nestle, TSK, 1879, p. 517) that the author thereby indicates that the story of Chronicles is continued in Ezra- Nehemiah. Just as Ezra-Neh. falls into three sections (cf. A. Klostermann, Geschichte Israels, Munich, 1896, pp. 215-216) so with Chronicles, as follows: (1) I Chron. i.-ix., the Book of Genealogies, gives the place of Israel in the Adamic family of nations, a tabular ramification of its tribes, mostly of Judah and the Davidic family, of the Benjamites of Saul's family and of Jerusalem, of Levi and Aaron, and of a few families of Josephites. (2) The second section, I Chron. x.-II Chron. v., ends (as the Syriac correctly surmises) not with the death of David (I Chron. xxix.) but with the dedication of Solomon's temple. It describes how David became Israel's sole king, how he prepared the way for the temple, selected its site in Jerusalem, and collected the means for its construction; how the personnel of its service was organized and how Solomon became the divine means for the accomplishment of David's purpose. (3) The third section, II Chron. vi. to the end, narrates the history of the temple till its destruction, tells of good days and evil, of pious and godless kings, of faithful and neglected temple-service, of obedience and disobedience of prophetic teaching, and ends with the edict of Cyrus. It was evidently the purpose of the historian to bring before the little, politically dependent congregation of the insignificant second temple, which had been built by self-sacrificing religious zeal in obedience to the prophetic word, the ideal of ancient Israel as the adopted congregation of the living God, revealing in its history both a stimulus and a warning.
VI. The Author and His Sources: The Tabnud says {Baba Bathra i. 14-15), "Ezra wrote his book (Ezra-Nehemiah) and the genealogies in Chronicles." Modern critics conclude from doubtful indications that the author wrote in the beginning of the Greek period and, from his full description of cult and clergy, that he was a priest or a Levite. Certain it is that he wrote at a time when the memorabilia of Ezra and Nehemiah were consulted for the understanding of their time. Of high importance are the questions, what the author accomplished, and how he obtained and handled his material. From the second half of his work (Ezra-Nehemiah), where he contents himself (cf. A. Klostermann, Geschichte Israels, pp. 216-217) with giving extracts from, the autobiographies of Ezra and Nehemiah and from other official documents, the student may conclude that he used a similar method elsewhere. For I Chron. i.-ix. there was a multitude of genealogies valued the more highly the more the Dispersion and the little colony at home attempted to figure as the continuation of classic Israel. From the Lucian Codex (I Chron. V. 17) one receives the impression that the genealogies existed in the Book of Kings; so in I Chron. ix. 1, according to the Syriac. The same is true of the other two sections. The author knew the Book of Isaiah (II Chron. xxxii. 32), in which at this time stood already chapters xxxvi. and xxxix., also Samuel and Kings (II Chron. xx. 34, xxiv. 7, 23, XXV. 26, etc.), and the hymns of David and