Christology – Christology

Christology

See Person of Christ.

CHRONICLES, I. AND II.— 1 . Position in Canon.— It is quite clear from linguistic and other considerations that Chron.-Ezr.-Neh. originally formed one book. As the first part of this large work dealt with a period which was already covered by Samuel and Kings, it was omitted, to begin with, in the formation of the Canon; while the latter part of the book, dealing with the ecclesiastical life of Jerusalem after the Exile, was granted a place. Only as the liturgical and ritual interest became more and more strong was it seen that Chron. contained matter of special importance from that point of view. Hence the book was included in the Canon after Ezr. and Neb., which had originally formed its second and concluding portion. In the English Bible, which follows the LXX, the original order has been restored, but Chron. is the last book in the Hebrew canon. Its Hebrew name is Dibhre HayyUmim, i.e. ‘the Annals.’ The LXX entitled it the Paraieipomena, or ‘things left out,’ a reference to the fact that Chron. contains much not found in the earlier narratives of Samuel and Kings. Our word ‘Chronicles’ is the Anglicized form of Chronicon, the name given to the book by Jerome in translating Dibhre Hayyamim.

2. Aim. — The key to the understanding and estimation of Chron. lies in a clear grasp of its aim. It is not history, as we understand the term, but history rewritten from a late standpoint, with the intention of carrying back into a remote past the origin of customs which the writer considered to be vital tor true faith. He is concerned with the history of Judah, and that history interests him only in so far as it has special reference to the worship and institutions of the second Temple. This determines his choice of matter, and the treatment of such facts as he selects. The Northern Kingdom, politically so much more important than the kingdom of Judah, hardly comes within his range of view, and is referred to only when the narrative absolutely necessitates it.

3. Contents. — With this clue the contents of the book are easily grouped.

(i) 1 Oh 1-9, Adam to the death of Saul. These chapters are filled mainly with genealogical tables, but even in these the ecclesiastical interest is supreme. Judah and Levi have the greatest space given to them (23-42» 6).

(ii) 1 Ch 10-29, from the death of Saul to the accession of Solomon.

(iii) 2 Ch 1-9, the reign of Solomon.

(iv) 2 Ch 10-36, from the division of the kingdom down to the fall of Jerusalem, and the restoration edict of Cyrus.

The material is most carefully chosen, with the object of bringing out the importance of Judah, the greatness of the line of David, the religious value of Jerusalem, and the position of the Levites. A comparison of the narrative in Chron. with the earlier narratives of Samuel and Kings will do more than anything else to convince the reader of the pragmatism of the Chronicler.

(a) Omissions in Chronicles. — The whole career of Samuel; the reign of Saul, except its close; the struggle David had to establish himself on the throne; the story of Uriah and Bathsheba; the story of Amnon and Tamar; Absalom’s rebellion and David’s flight; the characteristically Oriental intrigues attending Solomon’s accession; his alliances with foreign women and his idolatries in later life; his struggle against disaffection and rebellion; practically the entire history of the Northern Kingdom; — all these sections are omitted, with the view of suppressing what might be held to be discreditable to the religious heroes.

(6) The additions to the narrative show how the Chronicler’s thoughts ran. He gives, as we should have expected, full statistical lists (1 Chronicles 12) ; he describes at length matters that have to do with the gradual elevation of the sanctuary at Jerusalem (1 Chronicles 13. 15. 16); he details the ordering of the Temple ministry and the genealogies of its members (1 Ch 22-29). There is a large class of additions connected with ritual, and especially with musical matters, a fact which has led to the suggestion that the writer was perhaps one of the musicians (2 Chronicles 6:12, 13 7 13:8–12 IT’- ‘20:19, 21). He so handles historical events as to make them bear out his particular theory of the working of Providence. To love God is to be blessed ; to sin against God is immediately to feel the pressure of His hand ; the religious meaning of particular events is pointed out to the wrong-doers by prophets of the Lord (1 Chronicles 10:13, 14. 2 Chronicles 12:2 13:3–21 15:1–15 16:7–12 20:37 21:10, 16–19). In 2 Ch 8:11 the removal of the daughter of Pharaoh, whom Solomon had married, from the city of David to the house that he had built for her, is said to have been occasioned by the house of David having become too holy because of the coming of the ark. The compiler of Kings assigns no such reason for the removal to the new house (1 Kings 3:1 7:8 9:24). It was a stumbling-block to the later writer that so bad a king as Manasseh should have enjoyed so long a reign, and so he is described as latterly a penitent, although Kings has no thought of any such change (cf. 2 Chronicles 33:11–19 with 2 Kings 21 and Jer 15:4).

(c) Alterations have been made in the narrative with the view of removing what seemed offensive to the later age. Kings distinctly says that Asa and Jehoshaphat did not abolish the high places, although they did what was right in the sight of the Lord (1 Kings 15:14 22:43). Such a conjunction of well-doing with idolatry is incredible to the Chronicler, so he says that the high places were abolished by these kings (2 Chronicles 14:5 17:6). He finds it necessary to change several narratives in the interests of the Levites, who were not assigned so important a place in matters of ritual under the monarchy as in the days when he was writing (cf . 1 Chronicles 13. IS with 2 Samuel 6; 2 Chronicles 5:4 with 1 Kings 8:3). According to the original account (2 Kings 11), Jehoiada was assisted in his rebellion against Athaliah by the foreign bodyguard. In 2 Chronicles 23 the bodyguard is replaced by the Levites. The rule of the second Temple did not allow aliens to approach so near to the sacred things.

Occasionally there is a misunderstanding of the older narrative. 1 Kings 22:48 tells how Jehoshaphat built ‘Tarshish-ships,’ i.e. large sea-going vessels such as were used by the Phoenicians for their trade on the Mediterranean, for the South Arabian gold trade. The Chronicler thinks that ‘Tarshish-ships’ means ‘ships to go to Tarshish’ (2 Chronicles 20:37).

4. Historicity. — It is thus evident that Chron. is not to be considered as history, in the sense in which we now use the word. The events of the time with which the writer deals have been treated in a particular religious interest. Some tacts have been stated not simply as they were In themselves, but as they appeared to one whose vision was influenced by his theological viewpoint. Other facts have been suppressed when they interfered with the conveying of the impression that David and Solomon were almost immaculate kings. Tobit 9 age were attributed the customs and ceremonial of the days in which the writer lived. The Priests’ Code was supposed to have been recognized and observed by David even before the Temple was built. Again and again an anachronism has been committed that the Levites might have the place of honour in the record. Some special features of this method of writing history are:

(a) Exaggerated numbers. — Every one has felt difHculty with regard to these numbers. Palestine to-day is by no means thinly populated, but the total number of its inhabitants is only about 600,000. At its greatest prosperity the number may have reached 2i millions. But we read (2 Chronicles 13:3, 17) that Abijah with 400,000 men fought against Jeroboam with 800,000, and killed 500,000 of them. Asa (2 Chronicles 14:8) takes the field against Zerah the Ethiopian, who has 1,000,000 men, with 300,000 men of Judah, and 280,000 of Benjamin, the smallest of the tribes, which had previously been practically wiped out by the slaying of 25,000 men (Judges 20:46). When the numbers can be checked by the parallel passages in the older narrative, the tendency of the Chronicler to exaggerate is manifest. 1 Chronicles 18:4 19:18 make David capture 7000 horsemen and slay 7000 chariotmen, while 2 Samuel 8:4 10:18 give 700 of each. According to 1 Chronicles 21:25. David pays 600 shekels of gold tor Oman’s threshing-floor, while according to 2 Samuel 24:24 he gives only SO shekels of silver. David gathers together for the building of the Temple, according to 1 Chronicles 22:14. 100,000 talents of gold and 1,000,000 talents of silver; but, according to 1 Kings 10:14. the whole revenue in gold of the kingdom, in the much richer days of Solomon, was only 666 talents of gold.

(6) Anachronisms creep in to show that the writer was carrying back to that earlier day the customs and names of his own time. 1 Chronicles 26:18 states that one of the gates of the Temple — the first Temple — was called Parbar. There is here the double mistake of supposing that the Temple existed in David’s time, and that one of the gates of the first Temple had a Persian name. 1 Chronicles 29:7 speaks of the coin ‘daric’ or ‘dram’ as being current in the time of David. This coin was Persian, and was current in Palestine only after the Captivity.

(c) The speeches put into the mouths of the personages have not been taken from any ancient document, but bear on every line the characteristics of the very peculiar Hebrew style of the Chronicler.

6. Date. — 1 Chronicles 3:17–24 appears to give six generations of the descendants of Zerubbabel, and would thus bring the book down to about e.g. 350. The precise rendering of the passage is, however, a little uncertain. Evidence as to date is clearer from Neh., which, as we have seen, was originally part of Chronicles. Nehemiah 12:11 speaks of Jaddua, who was, as we know from Josephus, a contemporary of Alexander the Great (b.c. 333). Nehemiah 12 mentions the reign of Darius the Persian, i.e. Darius iir., who reigned b.c. 336-332. Chron. must therefore be dated about b.c. 300.

6. Sources. — Chron. contains several additions to the narrative of Samuel and Kings — additions that have not been inserted because of any special ecclesiastical interest (2 Chronicles 11 14:9–15 20. 25:6–10, 13 26 28). Does the Chronicler then preserve any fresh and original tradition, or does he merely work up older material? Apart from Samuel and Kings, his main authority was a work cited under a variety of different titles, ‘the Book of the Kings of Israel and Judah’ (2 Chronicles 27:7 35 36:8). ‘the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel’ (2 Chronicles 16:11 25:26 28:26). This book must have contained genealogical tables (1 Chronicles 9:1). as well as other particulars not mentioned in any book that has come down to us (2 Chronicles 27:7 33:18). Another source is the ‘Midrash of the Book of Kings’ (2 Chronicles 24:27). A midrash was an exposition of the religious lessons that could be drawn from a historical work; Chron. itself is an excellent instance of a midrash, and this earlier midrash may have been the writer’s model. He frequently refers to writings quoted under the name of prophets: 1 Chronicles 29:29 (Samuel, Nathan, and Gad), 2 Chronicles 9:29 (Nathan, Abijah, and Iddo), 12:15 (Shemaiah and Iddo), IZ’‘(Iddo), 26:22 (Isaiah). As he never cites at the same time the’ Book of the Kings of Israel and Judah,’ it is probable that these passages, connected with the various prophets, were only excerpts from that book. From the extracts that Chron. preserves of this book it is probable that it was post-exilic, unless indeed the Chronicler in using it has thoroughly transformed its style and diction into his own.

Chron., then, so far from being a fresh source for the period of which it treats, is a midrash of Jewish order. The history is treated in a particular religious interest, the customs and ritual of the later age are carried back into the earlier. The book is evidence not of the condition of things under the monarchy, but of the religious belief and ceremonial observances of a time when national life had ceased, and when the people’s interest was confined to the worship of the Temple.

R. Bhuce Tayloe.

CHR0N0L0G70F THE OLD TESTAUENT.— The importance of a fixed era by which to date events was not discovered by the Hebrews until after their national existence came to an end. All the endeavours to fix such an era which we find in our OT— hke the dating of the building of Solomon’s Temple 480 years from the Exodus (1 Kings 6:1) — belong to the post-exilic period. During the existence of the monarchy all that was thought necessary was to date by the years of the reigning king. If we had a complete series of public documents for all the reigns, this would answer very well for historical purposes. But what has actually come down to us is at best only a fragmentary series of notices based in part on official records.

Numerical statements there are in plenty In the Bible, and among them all those in the Books of Kings most deserve attention as the basis tor a scientific chronology. At first sight their accuracy seems to be guaranteed, because they check each other for the time covered by the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Not only does the author give us the length of the reigns in the two lines, but he has taken pains to work out a series of synchronisms, that is, he dates the accession of each king by the regnal year of his contemporary monarch in the other kingdom. But comparison of these figures with each other shows that they cannot all be accurate. For example, we learn that Jehoshaphat of Judah came to the throne in the fourth year of Ahab of Israel; also that Ahab reigned 22 years. Yet we are told that Ahaziah, who followed Ahab after his death, came to the throne in the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat, and in addition that Ahaziah’s brother Jehoram, who could be crowned only after the two years’ reign assigned to the latter, succeeded in the eighteenth of Jehoshaphat (1 Kings 22:41, 51. 2 Kings 3:1).

Tills example makes us give up the synchronisms and turn our attention to the length of reigns, where we have reason to suppose that the figures are drawn from earlier documents. The history gives a convenient point of diviapn at the accession of Jehu in Israel and of Athaliah in Judah, for these two came to the throne in the same year. The two series of lengths of reigns ought to give the same sum for the period. But they do not. In one line we find 95 years and in the other 98.

It is possible that the discrepancy here is due to the mode of reckoning. The reigns are given as so many years without regard to fractions, yet it will be manifest that few if any reigns are an exact number of years with no months or days. Where the method of dating by regnal years is in vogue, the fractions may be treated in two waya. If a king dies in the tenth year of his reign, for example, the calendar year may continue to be called his tenth; and the next calendar year will be the first of his successor. But it will also be possible to begin at once to date by the first year of the new king, making the next calendar year his second. In this latter case the public records will show more years (judging by the dates) than there actually are, by one in each reign. According to this method, the number of years from Rehoboam to Athaliah would be 90, which cannot be far from correct. The next period, however, — from Athaliah to Hezekiah, and from Jehu to the fall of Samaria, — gives us greater difficulty. Here we find the sum of years in one line to be greater than in the other by more than twenty. The various hypotheses which have been advanced to overcome this discrepancy do not concern us in the present article. All that we need to note is that the figures of the Hebrew text do not give us a sure basis for a chronology.

If this is true in what we have reason to suppose is the most reliable of the OT dates, the case is even worse when we examine the earlier period of the history. No doubt the authors of the Pentateuchal narratives thought themselves able to give the length of time which had elapsed from the creation of the world. There is no other way to interpret their language. In the genealogy of the sons of Adam, for example (Genesis 5), we read how Adam was 130 years old when he begat Seth, Seth 105 years old when he begat Enosh, and so on down to the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in which the Flood came. The summing up of the figures gives us 1656 years from the Creation to the Flood.

The unhistorical character of the numbers in this table is now generally conceded. The conclusions of natural science concerning the duration of man upon the earth are enough to invalidate the calculation. But this gives additional Interest to the inquiry as to what the authors had in mind. It has been pointed out that if to the sum we have just obtained we add the years from the Flood to the E-xodus of Israel from Egypt, we get 2666, that is, two-thirds of 4000. Now the interest that the writer had in this calculation was probably due to the theory which he had formed or which had come down to Mm by tradition, that the length of time from the Creation to the coming of the Messiah would be 4000 years.

Four thousand is 100 generations of 40 years each. Any one who is familiar with the OT figures will recall how common it is to find 40 years as a round number. The 40 years of the wilderness wandering, 40 years of peace in the time of several of the Judges, 40 years each for David and Solomon, are sufficiently marked. Then we recall the 480 years from the Exodus to the building of the Temple — 12 generations of 40 years each. It is probable also that a similar term was counted from the building of the Temple to its rebuilding under Darius or to the end of the Exile, while it is not without significance that the duration of the Northern Kingdom was calculated to be 240 years.

All this shows that these late Biblical writers were dominated by a theory. It must be noticed also that more than one theory had an influence. The Greek translators, working in the second century before Christ, had a Hebrew text which differed considerably from ours in this matter of numbers. They reckoned nearly 600 years more from the Creation to the Flood than the sum in our Bible, while from the Flood to the Call of Abraham they make nearly 800 more. The copy of the Pentateuch which circulated among the Samaritans has a still different system. The question which of these systems is the earliest is still unsettled. It may be said to have only an academic interest, since we know that no one of them gives us authentic data for the antiquity of the world.

Fortunately our appreciation of the Bible does not depend upon the accuracy of its dates. In general the picture it gives of the sequence of events from the time of the Judges down to the Fall of Jerusalem is correct. Of late years we have received welcome light on the dates of certain Biblical events from the Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions. These empires had made great advances in astronomy, and consequently in the regulation of the calendar. While they did not date from a fixed era, they had a reckoning of time which secured accuracy tor their historical records. Each calendar year was named for an official whom we call an epanym, and records were kept showing the series of eponyms with brief notes of the events in each one’s year. These lists have come down to us in fragmentary form, but we are able by them to correct some of the dates of our Hebrew history. The accuracy of the Babylonian system has been tested by its records of eclipses as far back as the year B.C. 763.

More than a hundred systems of Biblical Chronology have been invented or reckoned out — another testimony to the uncertain nature of the Biblical data. The received system, which has found a place in the margin of our reference Bibles, is well known to be that of the learned Archbishop Ussher. By the Babylonian canon we are now able to correct its figures. These are for the early period too high. Thus for David, Ussher gives us the date 1056. But reckoning back from the earliest Assyrian allusion to Israel, this should be about 1010. The amount of error is less as we come down to later times, and disappears at the Fall of Samaria. From David down to the capture of Babylon by Cyrus, therefore, we are able to give approximately correct dates for our history. Before the time of David there must be some uncertainty, which up to the present time has not been much mitigated by the Egyptian inscriptions. From the time of the rebuilding of the Temple under Darius we are also in uncertainty, though this period does not bulk largely in the received OT.

H. P. Smith.