34. The Chronicler Need Not Have Copied From Kings

The Chronicler Need Not Have Copied From Kings

Again, in their criticism of Chronicles, the critics proceed on the presumption that, in the portions that are parallel to Kings, the author has merely copied from Kings, and that he has no further sources of reliable information. The author of Chronicles himself states that he had a number of such sources. Can the critics give any good reason to show that he did not have these sources? Why, since the Chronicles of the kings of Israel were not destroyed by Sargon when Samaria was overthrown, and Hosea, Amos, the so-called Jehovist and Elohistic parts of the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy, and other works of the Hebrews were not destroyed at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, should we suppose that the records of the kings of Israel and Judah were not in existence when the writers of Kings and Chronicles composed their works? And why, since so many hundreds of works of the ancient Greeks, such as those mentioned by Pliny, have since utterly disappeared, are we to suppose that the Jews of Ezra’s time did not also possess many works that have long since been obliterated? The Aramaic recension of the Behistun Inscription of Darius Hystaspis and the Aramaic work of Ahikar were buried at Elephantine for twenty-three hundred years, but have now been unearthed and show that the Aramaic-speaking Jews of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. had produced some literary documents at least in addition to the Aramaic portions of Ezra and Daniel. How many more of such works may have been possessed by them both in Hebrew and Aramaic we cannot say, but the probability is that they were numerous. We cannot see that there is sufficient reason for doubting the claim of the Chronicler to have had access to sources extending from the time of David down to his own time. He says that he did have such sources. How can the critics know that he did not?

One of the most unjustifiable of the assaults upon the Old Testament Scriptures lies in the assumption that the larger part of the great poetical and legal productions and some of the finest prophecies were produced during the period of her political and linguistic decay, which followed the year 500 B.C. The only time after the end of the captivity at which we might naturally have expected a recrudescence of such literary activity was the period from 200 B.C. to the time of Pompey. And here in fact are to be placed the apocryphal and pseudepigraphical works of Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom, First Maccabees, Jubilees, parts of Enoch, and many other works of greater or less value. The only one of these that has been preserved in Hebrew is Ecclesiasticus; and its Hebrew has no word that is certainly Greek, and not one of Persian origin that is not found in the Old Testament.

Many traces of Persian influence are visible in Chronicles, Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah. When, however, we come to the Hebrew of the Psalms, of which so many are placed by the critics in this period, of Ecclesiastes, and of the Hebrew part of Daniel, we find that the language differs markedly from Ecclesiasticus both in vocabulary and forms. The use of the conjunction “and” with the perfect, which is said to be a mark of the lateness of Ecclesiastes, is not found in Ecclesiasticus. Ecclesiastes is devoid of any words that are certainly Babylonian, Persian, or Aramaic. The so-called Maccabean Psalms have no Persian or Greek words and few if any that are certainly Babylonian; and only a few that are even alleged to have Aramaic vocables or forms. The period between 500 and 164 B.C. was one in which the Israelites were subservient to the government of Persia and the Greeks. The only reliable information from this time about a revival of national feeling and semi-independence among the Jews is that to be found in Ezra-Nehemiah and a few hints in Ecclesiasticus and Tobit. And the only literary works in Hebrew that were certainly written during this period of decay are the books of Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles. As we would expect, they are all characterized by Persian, Babylonian, and Aramaic words, and Ezra is nearly half composed in Aramaic.