THE BOOKS OF THE CHRONICLES ‘OF THE KINGS OF JUDAH’ AND ‘OF THE KINGS OF ISRAEL’: WHAT SORT OF BOOKS WERE THEY?

by

MENAHEM HARAN Jerusalem

For Frank Moore Cross in friendship and respect

I The ‘Book ( sepher) of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah’ is referred to Ž fteen times by our Books of Kings (the Ž rst time in 1 Kgs. xiv 29) and the ‘Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel’ eigh- teen times (the Ž rst reference being 1 Kgs. xiv 19). The ‘Book of the Acts (diºerê, but LXXL ²merÇn = hayyˆmîm l e, i.e. the Chronicles) of Solomon’ (1 Kgs. xi 41) seems to have been a book of the same kind as the Ž rst two, but con Ž ned to the reign of Solomon. The Books of Kings refer to these books in a standard and schematic formula: ‘And the other events of PN’s reign’— sometimes adding some deed of his (e.g. with respect to Jeroboam son of Nebat [1 Kgs. xiv 19], to Asa [1 Kgs. xv 23], to Baasha [1 Kgs. xvi 5], to Zimri [1 Kgs. xvi 20])— ‘are recorded in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel’ (or ‘of the Kings of Judah’). Just what were these ‘chronicles’ and what purpose did they serve? Some scholars say that they were annals, pure and simple, i.e. an oYcial record of the events of the king’s reign. 1 Yet it is evident that

1 Scholars had already reached this conclusion in the 19th century. For our time see, e.g. A. Jepsen, Die Quellen des Königsbuches (Halle [Saale], 1953 [1956]), pp. 54-60; T.N.D. Mettinger, Solomonic State O Ycials (Lund, 1971), pp. 38-40. Mettinger opines that the annals were one chronicle written in two columns (on the model of chronicles in the Akkadian literature). Jepsen classi Ž es the archive-derived material in Kings into ‘a synchronistic chronicle’ (S) and ‘annals’ (A). J.A. Montgomery ( The Books of Kings , ICC [New York, 1951], pp. 43-44) also shares the opinion that the Books of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah and of Israel were o Ycial annals. He believes, however, that

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 1999 Vetus Testamentum XLIX, 2 the books of the chronicles 157 the greater part of the material of the Books of Kings is narrative or literary, and de Ž nitely not annalistic in character. Moreover, from the manner in which reference is made to these two ‘chronicles’, it would seem that access to them was open to anyone who wanted. This has led other scholars to the conclusion that the ‘Books of the Chronicles’ were not annals but books of literature in the form of uno Ycial historical surveys that were based on annal-like records. 2 According to this sug- gestion, there was indeed a link between the Deuteronomistic editors and the royal annals, but an indirect one, mediated through the Books of the ‘Chronicles of the Kings’. What the Deuteronomistic editors took from those ‘Books’ was mainly annalistic items (e.g. the names of the mother of the Judaen Kings) and chronological data, on which skeleton they proceeded to construct the canonical Books of Kings. To Montgomery goes the credit for Ž rst pointing out the distinct annal-like (his word is ‘ archival’) character of the matters mentioned in our Books of Kings with reference to the Books of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel and Judah. These references to ‘the other events in [so-and-so]’s reign’ are occasionally supplemented by annal-like items, such as ‘ the might’ of the king and his achievements (1 Kgs. xv 23; xvi 27; xxii 46; 2 Kgs. xiv 28, etc.), his feats of construction (1 Kgs. xv 23; xxii 39; 2 Kgs. xx 20), his revolt against his predecessor (1 Kgs. xvi 20; 2 Kgs. xv 15), the illnesses of his old age (1 Kgs. xv 23; cf. 2 Kgs. xv 5). Montgomery also puts his Ž nger on statements loosely connected to their context, whose content and wording also suggest annals material (e.g. 1 Kgs. ix 25, ‘and he kept the House in repair’; also 1 Kgs. xxii 49-50; 2 Kgs. i 1; xv 19-20, etc.). A date which belongs to the context and precedes the event to be narrated also indicates, in Montgomery’s opinion, the archival character of the report in ques- tion. Instead of the date there may come expressions such as ‘ then’, the narratives between 1 Kgs. xii and 2 Kgs. xvii were attached to the chronicles in Josiah’s time. 2 The notion that the three afore-mentioned books were not annals was Ž rst expressed in the 19th century but not really in a proper critical manner. See, e.g., G.F. Keil, The Books of Kings (Edinburgh, 1872), pp. 12-4. Keil assumed that the writers of the ‘Chronicles’ were prophets, relying on prophetical compositions, among them the exten- sive corpus of Elijah and Elisha narratives. In our time, critically-based reiterations of this notion have come from, in particular, the following scholars: O. Eissfeldt, Einleitung in das AT (Tübingen, 31964), pp. 64-5; M. Noth, Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien (Tübingen, 1957), pp. 66-7, 72-5; idem, Könige I, BK (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1968), p. 327; S. Mowinckel, ‘Israelite Historiography’, ASTI 2 (1963), pp. 7-8, 12-13, 17-21; J. Van Seters, In Search of History (New Haven, 1983 [1997]), pp. 292-302. Noth laid special emphasis on the chronological data that the Deuteronomistic editor obtained from these chronicles.