Page:Biblical Libraries (Richardson).djvu/147

This page has been validated.

SAUL TO THE CAPTIVITY

works by various authors; the registers of Jehu, prophecies of the seers, and the prayer of Manasseh, as well as the registers of the kings themselves. If this work is identical, as is likely, with the Book of the kings of Judah and Israel, it contained also the vision of Isaiah. Moreover all the "words," "words of days," "records of words of days" contained documents by various hands. In either event the "words" or documents mean, like the term books (biblia) and perhaps parchments (membrana), a collection of books or documents either in the sense of archive or library of separate documents, or else in the sense of a chartulary, or printed "Archives of the State Department."

These collected documents in register form constituted apparently a continuous series until the time when the Book of Chronicles was written and were extant at that time; the "words" of Samuel,

[113]