Page:03.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.B.vol.3.LaterProphets.djvu/48

extracts from them contained in our canonical books of Kings, coincide with the extracts from the books of the kings of Israel and Judah contained in our Chronicle where they narrate the same events, either verbally, or at least in so far that the identity of the sources from which they have been derived cannot but be recognised. The only difference is, that the author of the Chronicle had the two writings which the author of the book of Kings quotes as two separate works, before him as one work, narrating the history of both kingdoms in a single composition. For he cites the book of the Kings of Israel even for the history of those kings of Judah who, like Jotham and Hezekiah, had nothing to do with the kingdom of Israel (i.e., the ten tribes), and even after the kingdom of the ten tribes had been already destroyed, for the reigns of Manasseh, Josiah, and Jehoiakim. But we are entirely without any means of answering with certainty the question, in how far the merging of the annals of the two kingdoms into one book of the kings of Israel was accompanied by remoulding and revision. The reasons which Bertheau, in his commentary on Chronicles, p. 41ff., brings forward, after the example of Thenius and Ewald, for thinking that it underwent so thorough a revision as to become a different book, are without force. The difference in the title is not sufficient, since it is quite plain, from the different names under which the chronicler quotes the work which is used by him, that he did not give much attention to literal accuracy. The character of the parallel places in our books of Kings and the Chronicle, as Bertheau himself admits, forms no decisive criterion for an accurate determination of the relation of the chronicler to his original documents, which is now in question, since neither the author of the books of Samuel and Kings nor the author of the Chronicle intended to copy with verbal exactness: they all, on the contrary, treated the historical material which they had before them with a certain freedom, and wrought it up in their own writings in accordance with their various aims.
It is questionable if the work quoted for the reign of Joash, המּלכים ספר מדרשׁ (No. 7), is identical with the book of the kings of Israel and Judah, or whether it be not a commentary on it, or perhaps a revision of that book, or of a section of the history of the kings for purposes of edification. The narrative in the Chronicle of the chief events in the reign of Joash, his accession, with the fall of Athaliah, and the repairing of the temple (2