Wednesday Bible Study: Unstuck in Time

One norm of story telling that doesn ' t interest the Chronicler is chronological order. First he told us about the return from Babylon, then he abruptly jumped back centuries to the death of Saul, without any warning. Now he jumps back in time again to the period when David was a pretender to the throne and hiding out with a guerilla band. Modern story tellers may certainly use flashbacks but they also have some way of helping us keep track. If you didn ' t already know the story, you would be hopelessly confused by now.While Chapter 12 is not inconsistent with Samuel, unlike previous material it evidently has a different source. It uses different language and provides a lot of different detail, specifically the names of all of David ' s captains and lieutenants. It mentions his stint as a mercenary for the Philistines only in passing, whereas Samuel devotes some attention to it. It is conceivable that the source is the lost Chronicles of the Kings of Israel, which the Deuteronomist history refers to several times as containing additional detail, but who knows? You might want to argue that the existence of more than one source supports the likelihood that this contains historical truth, but I ' m not convinced of that. Folk tales generally metastasize, and this certainly spent a while as oral tradition before it was written down. As for why the Chronicler thinks we need this in addition to Samuel, I can only say that he has a weird obsession with lists of names.12 ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs