The Retelling of Chronicles in Jewish Tradition and Literature. A Historical Journey

Transcription

1 The Retelling of Chronicles in Jewish Tradition and Literature. A Historical Journey Ralph W. Klein Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, November 22, 2010, Atlanta, GA A review of Isaac Kalimi, The Retelling of Chronicles in Jewish Tradition and Literature. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, In the program for this session, there is a typo under the sub title of my presentation. What Isaac Kalimi called A Historical Journey has become A Historical Journal. This accidental misnomer does quite well in summing up what Isaac Kalimi has done in this journal. For he has provided daily notes to himself and to all the scholarly community on how the book of Chronicles has been read, or not read, in Jewish circles. The house that Kalimi has built for us in this book is indeed wonderful and great, as he hopes in the Preface, citing Solomon s words in 2 Chr 2:8. In fact, I know no other person who could have accomplished it. The challenge begins with the great number of languages that form the primary data for this research. Professor Kalimi resembles in many ways Lancelot Andrewes, one of the fifty translators of the King James Version of the Bible, whose 400 th anniversary we will celebrate next year. It was said about Andrewes, as it could be said about Isaac, that he knew so many languages that had he been present at the tower of Babel he could have served as interpreter general. But the skills necessary for this task require much more than languages. These skills begin with deep acquaintance with Chronicles itself, as Kalimi has demonstrated in a series of creative and insightful monographs and articles. This task also 1

2 acquires deep knowledge of Jewish literature over a twenty century span, ranging in genre from the New Testament to the Zohar. While Kalimi has fully justified his conclusions, namely, that Chronicles has commanded respect historically in Jewish culture, that Chronicles was never completely abandoned by the Jewish people, and that all kinds of Jews have studied, used, translated, and interpreted Chronicles to some extent, in one way or another. But those last two phrases are telling to some extent, in one way or another. That is, Chronicles is often not the featured focus of the individuals and groups he has here surveyed, meaning that he has had to search far and wide, often in literature with quite inadequate indexes, and with many blind alleys. So among the many unequalled skills one must have to write this book is Sitzfleisch, which my Oxford Duden dictionary defines as staying power or being able to stick to it. I number myself among those who do not know much of this literature. Oh, I do know the LXX, beginning with my dissertation on 1 Esdras, the Targum to Chronicles, the New Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and to a degree David Kimchi and Pseudo Rashi. But there is so much in this book that is brand new to me, which may say something about the era of specialization in which we live, about other responsibilities that have claimed my professional and personal attention, and perhaps also something about my Sitzfleisch. Let me begin my critique of this book with one additional note on the New Testament and the Book of Chronicles. Protestants conclude their recital of the Lord s Prayer with the words: For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. Generally, Roman Catholics do not recite this conclusion. The reason is because it does not occur in any early Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, in the Vulgate, in the Douay 2

3 version of the seventeenth century, or even the current New American Bible, used by twentyfirst century Catholics. But it did appear in Erasmus edition of the Greek New Testament in 1516, in Tyndale s translation, and in the King James Version. It does not appear in Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, the Western text of the New Testament, and the Old Latin. An abbreviated form of this conclusion to the Lord s Prayer appears in the Didache 8:3, a difficult to date Christian document, perhaps coming from the end of the first or beginning of the second century of the Common Era and reading: For Thine is the power and the glory for ever." But the ultimate source of this conclusion to the Lord s Prayer is surely 1 Chr 29:11, where David prays: To you Lord belong greatness, and power, and honor, and splendor, and majesty, indeed, all things in heaven and earth; yours is the kingdom, Lord, and you are exalted as head over all. Bruce Metzger suggests that this conclusion to the Lord s Prayer was composed in order to adapt the Lord s Prayer for liturgical use in the early church. So, at least for Protestants, the clearest tie to Chronicles in the New Testament is the conclusion of the Lord s prayer. I would invite a conversation with Professor Kalimi dealing with the canon on p. 22: He writes: Furthermore, in the first quarter of the 4 th century B.C.E. the Chronicler considered Samuel Kings to be noncanonical books because he freely altered them and used them as raw material It is generally agreed that the Pentateuch was considered canonical by the end of the fifth century B.C.E. and the Chronicler s frequent citing of the Torah of Moses or the Book of Moses would seem to be in agreement with that line of thinking. It is also usually agreed that the prophets, including Samuel Kings, were considered canonical by the end of the third century or at least by the time of the deuterocanonical book of Sirach. But sometime before that final closing, perhaps long before that final closing, Samuel Kings had become authoritative 3

4 in early Judaism and achieved quasi canonical status. But were Samuel Kings noncanonical, as Kalimi claims, because the Chronicler freely altered them and used them as raw material. (There is even a slight ambiguity in that expression. The Chronicler, of course, did not alter Samuel Kings, but he altered citations from them as he included them in his new writing). But insofar as the Chronicler altered citations from Samuel Kings as he included them in his new writing, or insofar as he used materials from Samuel Kings as raw material, does that really denigrate their authority or canonical status. One might cite such documents as the Genesis Apocryphon, the Assumption of Moses, the Life of Adam and Eve, Jubilees or the Temple Scroll as indicating precisely the opposite conclusion, namely, the high esteem in which the Pentateuch was held as well as the need to interpret it for a new situation. Could not one argue that the Chronicler by incorporating large portions of Samuel Kings was conceding their authority even if he felt compelled to give a different interpretation to many of the events they described? Let me continue the conversation on the canon. On p. 25 Professor Kalimi argues that Chronicles was not accepted into the collection of the prophets because of its relatively late composition. If Professor Kalimi is right that Chronicles was composed in the first part of the fourth century, as I think he is, that allows almost two centuries before the prophetic canon was closed. 1 In the next paragraph he makes the far more telling point that the later Sages did not ascribe prophetic authorship to Chronicles, crediting the authorship of Chronicles rather to Ezra and Nehemiah. It seems to me that non prophetic authorship rather than date of composition is what excluded Chronicles from the second stage prophetic canon. 1 When did people at the beginning of the 3 rd century think that Chronicles had been written? 4

5 Kalimi insists, quite rightly in my opinion, that the canonicity of Chronicles was not questioned by the rabbis even if it was considered disputed and doubtful in the Ethiopian, Syrian and Egyptian churches. What we don t know of course was when Chronicles began to be considered Scriptural or quasi canonical. Was that from the moment its ink dried, or did it take decades or even centuries for it to obtain that status. While the Chronicler s advocacy for the Jerusalem temple would seemingly be unanimously welcomed among those who made decisions about the canon, his advocacy for the specific role of the Levites might not have been so self evidently well received. Part of the problem is our ignorance about who the Chronicler had in mind as his principal audience. Chronicles clearly made the final cut in the canon, but when and how did it emerge into the field of candidates for that status?. I am intrigued by the virtual absence of Chronicles from the biblical manuscripts at Qumran. Professor Kalimi suggests two reasons for this. First, the Qumran community did not tolerate intermarriage, and the Chronicler had a relatively liberal attitude on this issue. More convincing to me is the second reason that Professor Kalimi offers, namely the strong bias in Chronicles toward Jerusalem and its temple, including I would add, its clergy and its sacrificial systems. Advocacy for the Jerusalem temple may have seemed counter cultural at Qumran. This focus on the Jerusalem temple may have something to do with the relative silence of the New Testament toward Chronicles. Especially after 70 C.E. early Christians may have found this advocacy for the temple beside the point. I know very little of how Chronicles was interpreted in the history of Christianity before the Reformation, 2 but I would expect that those items that 2 In the 55 volume American edition of Luther s works, the Reformer refers to Chronicles twice. In his commentary on Gen 22:2 (4:101) he refers to Moriah, which he derives from the Hebrew root meaning fear. Luther notes the use of Moriah in 2 Chr 3:1 and criticizes Jerome for his translation of the word in Gen 22:2 as vision. (in terram 5

6 seem central to us in this book might seem less significant to Christian readers. The unfortunate role that certain passages from Chronicles played in later oppression of the Jews, such as attempting to assess the Christological significance of Anani in the genealogies, ignores the main contributions of the Chronicler himself. I was intrigued by the role that Chronicles plays in Jewish liturgy and religious ritual (ch. 11) and Kalimi s note, in contrast, that Chronicles and Revelation were excluded in Thomas Cranmer s 16 th century liturgy for morning and evening prayer book despite Cranmer s intent to ensure that the whole Bible was covered in these prayer books. Kalimi also cites the Stuttgarter Familienbibel zur Einfuehring ins Bibellesen (1939) that omits the whole book of Chronicles. The editor of that volume commented: Since most all of the stories in both books of Chronicles are the same as those we have in the books of Kings, we therefore omit them here. I was led to check the Revised Common Lectionary, a joint project of most of the major Protestant denominations in North America that prescribes a triennial rotation of readings from the Old Testament, the Psalms, the NT epistles, and the Gospels from the New Testament. There was an attempt in the creation of this Lectionary to match similar themes from the Old Testament with the Gospel readings appointed for the day, and in its latest revision to try to include more stories dealing with women in the Sunday readings. But sure enough, there are no readings from Chronicles in the three year cycle 3 though there are twenty one readings from Visionis). In 20:264, his commentary on Zech 7:4 6, he refers to the Book of Chronicles and its alleged report that the Babylonians had settled people in Bethel. He should have said Assyrians, of course, and he actually seems to be referring to 2 Kgs 17:33. Clearly Luther knew Chronicles and translated it for the German Bible, but it plays a minuscule role in his thinking. 3 Also omitted are Ezra, Obadiah, and Nahum, and there is only one reading from Esther. 6

7 the books of Samuel and twenty from the books of Kings. Twelve of the twenty readings from Kings deal with the stories of Elijah and Elisha, that of course are not included in Chronicles. A study of a recent standard Lutheran Hymnal attempted to determine the Bible passages that were the basis for the various hymns and came up with four hymns based on Chronicles. The best known is How Great thou Art, based presumably on 1 Chr 29:10 13, which we also identified as the source of the conclusion to the Lord s prayer. Two hymns were devoted to church contributions or stewardship: We give thee but thine own, based on David s words in 1 Chr 29:14: For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you and another As saints of old their first fruits brought, based on the offering of first fruits during the reign of Hezekiah in 2 Chr 31:5 6. A final hymn, O day of rest and gladness, is linked improbably to the summation of David s reign in 1 Chr 29: So there is some use of Chronicles in current Christian hymnody. In attempting to understand why Chronicles became the last book in the Old Testament except for Codex Leningradensis and the Aleppo Codex where it appears first among the Writings Kalimi offers two proposals: a Zionist intention, with the final verses of 2 Chronicles 36 offering a call for a return to the land of Israel and, secondly, a proposal that Chronicles achieved this final position because it offered a summary of the whole Hebrew Bible from Adam to the Persian king Cyrus. In support of the latter proposal he mentions the great Christian exegete Jerome of the fourth/fifth centuries who said the following: All the studying of Scripture is included in this book. Jerome also said that the book of Chronicles is condensed to such an extent and so well abridged I might add despite its 1765 verses and 65 7

8 chapters that whoever claims to know Scriptures without having a knowledge of Chronicles, makes himself a laughingstock. I look forward to the day when a Christian scholar, equipped with the linguistic skills and Sitzfleisch of Isaac Kalimi, will give us a comprehensive journal about the Retelling of Chronicles in Christian Tradition and Literature. 8