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Chapter 11 - A GATEWAY TO THE CHRONICLER'S TEACHING: THE ACCOUNT OF THE REIGN OF AHAZ IN 2 CHRONICLES 28.1–27

from Part III - CHRONICLES AND THEOLOGY AS COMMUNICATED AND RECREATED THROUGH THE REREADING OF A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL, LITERARY WRITING

Ehud Ben Zvi
Affiliation:
University of Alberta, Canada
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Summary

1. Introduction and Methodological Considerations

The point is that we must see the Chronicler not as a poor historian or as a good historian, but as an interpreter. He handles the older traditions; he incorporates newer material in them; he rearranges, comments, elaborates, sermonizes – all with the purpose of bringing home to his readers (or perhaps his hearers, for the style is very strongly homiletic), the meaning for themselves of what is being related and expounded…he invites a particular kind of understanding, the pointing of a particular moral or theological insight (emphasis mine).

It is generally agreed that the primary aim of the Chronicler was to instruct the historical community, that is, the community/ies for which the Book of Chronicles was composed. The instruction that 1–2 Chronicles brought home to its community concerned central theological issues, such as the meaning of human history, YHWH's requirements of human beings, individual responsibility and divine retribution, legitimate and illegitimate political power, or inclusion and exclusion in Israel.

The Chronicler does not claim to present a personal point of view on these issues, but to provide the community with YHWH's point of view on them. True, the Chronicler never claimed to have received an oral or visual divine ‘revelation’ (i.e., God never ‘spoke’ to him/her, literally), but his/her implicit claim is that there is a way to understand God's principles: to study the past, that is, to study ‘history’ as seen by the Chronicler.

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Publisher: Acumen Publishing
Print publication year: 2006

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