Origins The last events recorded in Chronicles take place in the reign of
Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who conquered Babylon in 539 BC; this sets the earliest possible date for this passage of the book. Chronicles appears to be largely the work of a single individual. The writer was probably male, probably a
Levite (temple priest), and probably from Jerusalem. He was well-read, a skilled editor, and a sophisticated theologian. He aimed to use the narratives in the Torah and former prophets to convey religious messages to his peers, the literary and political elite of Jerusalem in the time of the
Achaemenid Empire. Jewish and Christian tradition identified this author as the 5th-century BC figure
Ezra, who gives his name to the
Book of Ezra; Ezra is also believed by the
Talmudic sages to have written both his own book (i. e.,
Ezra–Nehemiah) and Chronicles up to his own time, the latter having been finished by
Nehemiah. One of the most striking, although inconclusive, features of Chronicles is that its closing sentence is repeated as the opening of Ezra–Nehemiah. In antiquity, such repeated verses, like the "catch-lines" used by modern printers, often appeared at the end of a scroll to facilitate the reader's passing on to the correct second book-scroll after completing the first. This scribal device was employed in works that exceeded the scope of a single scroll and had to be continued on another scroll. The latter half of the 20th century, amid growing skepticism in academia regarding history in the Biblical tradition, saw a reappraisal of the authorship question. Though there is a general lack of corroborating evidence, many now regard it as improbable that the author of Chronicles was also the author of the narrative portions of Ezra–Nehemiah. These critics suggest that
Chronicles was probably composed between 400 and 250 BC, with the period 350–300 BC the most likely. This timeframe is achieved by estimates made based on genealogies appearing in the Greek
Septuagint. This theory bases its premise on the latest person mentioned in Chronicles, Anani. Anani is an eighth-generation descendant of King
Jehoiachin according to the
Masoretic Text. This has persuaded many supporters of the Septuagint's reading to place Anani's likely date of birth a century later than what had been largely accepted for two millennia.
Sources Much of the content of Chronicles is a repetition of material from other books of the Bible, from
Genesis to
Kings, and so the usual scholarly view is that these books, or an early version of them, provided the author with the bulk of his material. It is, however, possible that the situation was rather more complex, and that books such as Genesis and
Samuel should be regarded as contemporary with Chronicles, drawing on much of the same material, rather than a source for it. Despite much discussion of this issue, no agreement has been reached. It is also likely that Chronicles preserved ancient heterodox traditions regarding the history of Israel and Judah.
Genre The translators who created the Greek version of the Jewish Bible (the
Septuagint) called this book
Paralipomenon, "Things Left Out", indicating that they thought of it as a supplement to another work, probably Genesis–Kings, but the idea seems inappropriate, since much of Genesis–Kings has been copied almost without change. Some modern scholars proposed that Chronicles is a
midrash, or traditional Jewish commentary, on Genesis–Kings, but again this is not entirely accurate since the author or authors do not comment on the older books so much as use them to create a new work. Recent suggestions have been that it was intended as a clarification of the history in Genesis–Kings, or a replacement or alternative for it. ==Themes==