This monograph contributes to a better understanding of the Book of Chronicles. The past forty years have seen a complete transformation in the study of the Book of Chronicles. The former domination of Chronicles by parallel texts in the Books of Samuel and Kings made way for studying the historical, sociological, literary, theological, and ideological aspects of Chronicles in their own right. This book/document is now increasingly recognized as being of major interest to the Second Temple Period. Reading the book of Chronicles, it appears that the Chronicler is constantly transforming Israel's tradition(s) into a new theological and ideological system. In this study, attention is, therefore, paid both to specific texts, such as 1 Chronicles 17; 21; 2 Chronicles 20; 26, and to particular central themes, such as the special function of Jerusalem, and the peculiar way of how the Chronicler presents prophets, war narratives, and genealogies.

This monograph contributes to a better understanding of the Book of Chronicles. The past forty years have seen a complete transformation in the study of the Book of Chronicles. The former domination of Chronicles by parallel texts in the Books of Samuel and Kings made way for studying the historical, sociological, literary, theological, and ideological aspects of Chronicles in their own right. This book/document is now increasingly recognized as being of major interest to the Second Temple Period. Reading the book of Chronicles, it appears that the Chronicler is constantly transforming Israel's tradition(s) into a new theological and ideological system. In this study, attention is, therefore, paid both to specific texts, such as 1 Chronicles 17; 21; 2 Chronicles 20; 26, and to particular central themes, such as the special function of Jerusalem, and the peculiar way of how the Chronicler presents prophets, war narratives, and genealogies.

Leslie C. Allen introduces students to the 1 & 2 Chronicles in the Old Testament, incorporating insights from over two decades of previous scholarship while grounding his analysis in earlier key works. “A Message for Yehud” sums up what has been judged to be a fundamental motivation underlying the whole book, a conviction that the obligation to “seek the Lord” in the light of the Torah and prophetic texts must be laid on the hearts of the community of Yehud in the fourth century BCE. To this end, using Samuel-Kings as a basis, Chronicles reviewed pre-exilic royal history for positive and negative clues as to how the generation for which it was written might achieve this spiritual ideal. In the book, Allen shows how this program was communicated all through the book by literary and rhetorical means.

David Janzen argues that the Book of Chronicles is a document with a political message as well as a theological one and moreover, that the book's politics explain its theology. The author of Chronicles was part of a 4th century B.C.E. group within the post-exilic Judean community that hoped to see the Davidides restored to power, and he or she composed this work to promote a restoration of this house to the position of a client monarchy within the Persian Empire. Once this is understood as the political motivation for the work's composition, the reasons behind the Chronicler's particular alterations to source material and emphasis of certain issues becomes clear. The doctrine of immediate retribution, the role of 'all Israel' at important junctures in Judah's past, the promotion of Levitical status and authority, the virtual joint reign of David and Solomon, and the decision to begin the narrative with Saul's death can all be explained as ways in which the Chronicler tries to assure the 4th century assembly that a change in local government to Davidic client rule would benefit them. It is not necessary to argue that Chronicles is either pro-Davidic or pro-Levitical; it is both, and the attention Chronicles pays to the Levites is done in the service of winning over a group within the temple personnel to the pro-Davidic cause, just as many of its other features were designed to appeal to other interest groups within the assembly.

This groundbreaking book breaks with established canons and resists some of the stereotypes of feminist biblical studies. It features a wide range of contributors who showcase new methodological and theoretical movements such as feminist materialisms, intersectionality, postidentitarian 'nomadic' politics, gender archaeology, and lived religion, and theories of the human and the posthuman. The Bible and Feminism: Remapping the Field engages a range of social and political issues, including migration and xenophobia, divorce and family law, abortion, 'pinkwashing', the neoliberal university, the second amendment, AIDS and sexual trafficking, and the politics of 'the veil'. Foundational figures in feminist biblical studies work alongside new voices and contributors from a multitude of disciplines in conversations with the Bible that go well beyond the expected canon-within-the-canon assumed to be of interest to feminist biblical scholars. Moving beyond the limits of a text-orientated model of reading, this collection looks at how biblical texts were actualized in the lives of religious revolutionaries, such as Joanna Southcott or Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. It charts the politics of the Pauline veil in the self-understanding of Europe and reads the 'genealogical halls' in the book of Chronicles alongside acts of commemoration and forgetting in 9/11 and Tiananmen Square.

Substantial insights into various identity discourses reflected in the biblical prayers This collection of essays from an international group of scholars focuses on how biblical prayers of the Persian and early Hellenistic periods shaped identity, evoked a sense of belonging to specific groups, and added emotional significance to this affiliation. Contributors draw examples from different biblical texts, including Genesis, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, Psalms, Jonah, and Daniel. Features Thorough study of prayers that play a key role for a biblical book’s (re)construction of the people’s history and identity An examination of ways biblical figures are remodeled by their prayers by introducing other, sometimes even contradictory, discourses on identity An exploration of different ways in which psalms from postexilic times shaped, reflected, and modified identity discourses