for pursuing his own agenda as he engages a variety of earlier biblical In other traditions.” words, the Chronicler effectively created a new work, even though he might have used or edited previous material. Thus, the assumption of unity has become the current majority opinion. It is worth noting that this trend has not only been led by the ascendancy of literary analysis, but has also caused the advancement of literary analysis on Chronicles. These literary approaches to find the mark of one major compositional hand negotiating “tend different traditions or perspectives into a greater whole.” The discussion on the unity of Chronicles is closely related to the authorship, date, and setting of the narrative. To begin with, the unity of the book indicates a single author who has organized various materials to become a coherently unified book, yet who is never identified in the writings. What is revealed suggests that the author was closely associated with the Temple and its service, for the provision of extensive detail about the Temple is easily noticeable. As to the authorship of Chronicles, most scholars today attribute it to a figure they name It is presumed that this Chronicler has formulated the book ‘the Chronicler’. of Chronicles as it appears in the Masoretic text we have today. In terms of the Chronicler, a belief that the figure may have been a scribal school rather than an individual author has grown. According to Raymond F. Person, there were two scribal schools after the return of the exile. The one is the Deuteronomistic scribal school, which came back with Zerubbabel, and the Chronistic scribal school, which returned with Ezra-Nehemiah and wrote the Book of Chronicles. The present research also follows this view. Given that scribal traditions played an important role in the transmission of the Hebrew Scriptures, it is more likely that the Chronicler was not a specific individual but the collective voice of a group of scribes who were knowledgeable about the customs, law and worldview of Israel.
for pursuing his own agenda as he engages a variety of earlier biblical traditions.” In other words, the Chronicler effectively created a new work, even though he might have used or edited previous material. Thus, the assumption of unity has become the current majority opinion. It is worth noting that this trend has not only been led by the ascendancy of literary analysis, but has also caused the advancement of literary analysis on Chronicles. These literary approaches “tend to find the mark of one major compositional hand negotiating different traditions or perspectives into a greater whole.” The discussion on the unity of Chronicles is closely related to the authorship, date, and setting of the narrative. To begin with, the unity of the book indicates a single author who has organized various materials to become a coherently unified book, yet who is never identified in the writings. What is revealed suggests that the author was closely associated with the Temple and its service, for the provision of extensive detail about the Temple is easily noticeable. As to the authorship of Chronicles, most scholars today attribute it to a figure they name ‘the Chronicler’. It is presumed that this Chronicler has formulated the book of Chronicles as it appears in the Masoretic text we have today. In terms of the Chronicler, a belief that the figure may have been a scribal school rather than an individual author has grown. According to Raymond F. Person, there were two scribal schools after the return of the exile. The one is the Deuteronomistic scribal school, which came back with Zerubbabel, and the Chronistic scribal school, which returned with Ezra-Nehemiah and wrote the Book of Chronicles. The present research also follows this view. Given that scribal traditions played an important role in the transmission of the Hebrew Scriptures, it is more likely that the Chronicler was not a specific individual but the collective voice of a group of scribes who were knowledgeable about the customs, law and worldview of Israel.