Page:The Books of Chronicles (1916).djvu/21

Rh (3) The same style and diction are found in both works (excepting of course in such sentences and passages as are transcribed from older sources). Characteristic phrases are the following:

These are merely a few instances out of very many which might be given. This similarity of style and language is far more striking in the Hebrew (cp. § 3, C, and for full particulars the long list in Curtis, Chronicles, pp. 27 ff.).

When fully stated, the evidence indicated under (2) and (3) above is of a convincing character, and the conclusion that Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah were at one time a single work should be unhesitatingly adopted.

§ 3.

(1) Date and Unity. The scope of our inquiry in this section requires to be defined with some care. In dealing with any work which is chiefly a compilation of older material, it is necessary clearly to distinguish between the dates of the various sources which can be recognised or surmised and the dates of the writer or writers who have effected the compilation. When we examine the structure of Chronicles its composite nature is at once evident. Many long and important passages have been taken, with or without adaptation, directly from the existing books of Scripture. The date of all such passages, of course, falls to be considered in the commentaries on Samuel