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  • The Retelling of Chronicles in Jewish Tradition and Literature: A Historical Journey
  • Peter J. Haas
The Retelling of Chronicles in Jewish Tradition and Literature: A Historical Journey, by Isaac Kalimi. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009. 395 pp. $59.50.

Isaac Kalimi notes at the very beginning of his book that Chronicles has been largely ignored over the generations. Even though it ends the Jewish biblical canon and so should have the authoritative last word, it has often been seen as little more than an impoverished "retelling" of Samuel and Kings. Its close association with Ezra-Nehemiah has also suggested to many that Chronicles is little more than a late and tendencious rewriting of earlier sources. Although many scholars have long considered these books to be "the most stimulating book of the bible" (Elmslie in "The Interpreter's Bible" III: 341) and "the Bible's best kept secret" (Allen in "The New Interpreter's Bible" III: 299), Chronicles has consistently suffered from neglect. This sorry state has only started to change in recent years, due in no small part to the work of Isaac Kalimi himself, one of the book's premier scholars today. [End Page 168]

In this book, Kalimi intends to treat the books of Chronicles like any other biblical book, with its own particular history of transmission, reception, and interpretation as it travels through Jewish culture. The book before us then is not so much a commentary on Chronicles, although it is that in part, but is rather a kind of "rezeptionsgeschichte." To this end, the book is divided into six grand parts. The first deals with Chronicles in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. This section deals with three issues, namely the use of Chronicles in other biblical books such as Daniel and Qohelet, the placement of Chronicles in the Jewish canon, and the influence of Chronicles in the New Testament. In the latter case, some of the connections are more suggestive, like Matthew's claim that the Jews kill and crucify their prophets being based on 2 Chronicles 36:16 about the mocking of the prophets, and in some cases more direct, as in the genealogies of Jesus.

Parts Two and Three look at references to, or reminiscences of, Chronicles in the literature and art of the Judaisms of Late Antiquity. These parts look at a wide range of materials from the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and Philo to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the art of the ancient synagogues at Dura-Europas and elsewhere. The results of Kalimi's close and informed readings are hardly surprising. Some Hellenistic works, like the history of Eupolemus, do draw on Chronicles, while others, say Philo, ignore the book entirely. Kalimi does try to account for these variations by pointing to the "theology" of the various writers, but does not help clarify whether the choice to use or ignore Chronicles was a result of the writer's orientation, or whether that orientation was itself shaped by a prior attitude toward the books.

Parts Four and Five take us respectively into the Rabbinic material of the Classical period (Talmud, Targum on Chronicles, the liturgy) and of the medieval period (Biblical commentaries, The Zohar, poetry, and disputes). It is in handling of these diverse and sometimes obscure texts that Kalimi's broad background in rabbinics really comes through. In general, he concludes that the rabbinic literature seems most interested in reconciling differences between Chronicles and Samuel-Kings, especially as regards genealogies. The Zohar, the prayerbook, and medieval poetry, as one might expect, largely, although not completely, ignore Chronicles. The great medieval biblical commentators including Saadia Gaon, the "pseudo-Rashi" on Chronicles, Abraham ibn Ezra, David Kimchi, and Isaac Abrabanel do turn their attention to this work as an independent source that is to be dealt with on its own terms. This treatment of Chronicles is also apparent from references in the medieval "dispute" literature. In all, Kalimi has done something of a public service in bringing this vast array of literature under control and adducing their various references, sometimes obvious and sometimes obscure, to Chronicles. This is the only book I know [End Page 169] of that has looked at...

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