Book of Chronicles

“ Truly it might seem that the fortunes of that strange people had been designed for a special lesson, not to them only, but to the whole human race; and the general outlines of that lesson have never been more clearly and forcibly indicated than in the Book of Kings.
[Pg 46]
CHAPTER V. HISTORY WITH A PURPOSE.
"History, as distinguished from chronicles or annals, must always contain a theory whether confessed by the writer or not. ”

“ But all criticism of the books of Chronicles is superficial which fails to see that the writer is inspired by a splendid faith in God and a grand determination to maintain the religious attitude as the one ultimate key to life’s meaning. ”

“ Are you fond of it?”
“I like Revelations, and the book of Daniel, and Genesis and Samuel, and a little bit of Exodus, and some parts of Kings and Chronicles, and Job and Jonah.”
“And the Psalms? I hope you like them?” ”

“ Thus it is probable that some features of the narratives in Chronicles may originate with the Chronicler: that is only what we should expect from a man able to plan and carry through a work so clearly intentioned and on such a large scale as Chronicles‒Ezra‒Nehemiah. ”

“ The religious significance of the past is dominant, and the past is idealized from a later standpoint; and whether the narratives in Chronicles are expressly styled Midrash or not, they are the fruit of an age which sought to inculcate explicitly those lessons which, it conceived, were implied in the events of the past. ”

“ Chronicles were written when the science of true history had yet no existence; a chronicle then in reality is but a part of history. Every fact dispersed in its insulated state refuses all combination; cause and effect lie remote and obscured from each other; disguised by their ostensible pretexts, the true motives of actions in the great actors of the drama of history cannot be found in the chronological chronicler. The real value of his diligence consists in copiousness and discrimination; qualities rather adverse to each other. ”

“ The Book of the Dead, in fact, is no book, but collections of pamphlets, so to speak, of very different dates. "Plan or unity cannot be expected," and glosses only some four thousand years old have become imbedded in really ancient texts. ”

“ This was a specimen of a kind of writing in which the Middle Ages abounded—namely, chronicles, which gradually superseded the monkish legends, and for a time eclipsed the classics themselves; a kind of writing hovering between history and fiction, embracing the widest sweep, written in a barbarous style, and swarming with falsehoods; but exciting, interesting, and often instructive, and tending to kindle curiosity, and create in the minds of their readers a love for literature. ”

“ The Chronicle form is the foundation of the structure of historical literature. We are no longer content to study history now in one or two admirable specimens of mature perfection, but rather we seek to know history as a subject. All who have this aim must study Chronicles, and nowhere can this kind of documentary record be found in a form preferable to that of the Saxon Chronicles. ”

“ They are not bare records of fact, like the Chronicles; imagination enters into their scope; non-human, miraculous incidents are allowable; their content is not a matter for faith or factual record; they may be called historical fiction, which, broadly taken, corresponded to actual events, and typified the national strivings and ideals. ”

“ The chronicles of the time deserve to be studied with patient attention by anyone who wishes to know the prose writers of the century and the character of the men of that time and their outlook on life. It is usually considered that chroniclers are rather tiresome old fogies who talk much and say very little, who accept all sorts of legends on insufficient authority and who like to fill up their pages with wonderful things regardless of their truth. ”

“ And further it reveals the deepest aspect of the Chronicler’s attitude to life. It is the living heart of the whole history as he tells it. We are impatient of the mechanical and grandiose elements in his work, because the taste for such exaggeration has passed away and the necessity for laying stress on the ritual of religion has little relevance for our times. ”

“ Any one, who has been bewildered by the chronological snarl of the ancient chronicles, will not be surprised at meeting occasionally with such inconsistencies in a writer who is obliged to take them as his guides. ”

“ When Fate turns the leaves of the book of universal history, she enters, upon the page devoted thereto, the record of the birth of each nation in its chronological order, and under this record appears the scarlet entry to confront the future historian and arrest his unwilling attention; the only entry which time and even oblivion can never efface. ”

“ But by far the greater number of these ancient headstones were marked with texts of scripture, and however mirth might be provoked by sentiment or phrase from other sources, the simple dignity of the book of books always brought back seriousness and reminded on what word the hearts of men had leaned, through the long generations, to endure the old, old sorrow of death. ”

“ I say history, in the modern sense of the word, that is, not barely a chronicle of events and record of current traditions or venerable myths, but a narrative based upon evidence which has been critically sifted, and in which the narrator endeavors to trace, amid the tangled occurrences of human life, the thread of natural causation which connects them with the needs and the passions of men. The chronicler is more or less of a gossip, the historian more or less of a man of science. ”

“ There are few things more curious for an observer, than to see how old chronicles make us acquainted with the personages whose actions they give an account of. They never omit in their pictures, either the colour of the hair, or the stature, or the countenance of the princes and heroes ”

“ Decorous chronicles and biographies and monographs and eulogies exist, bound in leather and stamped in gold, each lauding its own hero: chronicles written in really beautiful language, and high-minded and noble, out of which the heroes come unstained. ”

“ And the records of the past, whether appearing to us, from a literary point of view, as mere chronicles or as true histories, become history again whenever they are apprehended by a new mind as an answer to a present problem, partaking of the activity of the mind that thinks them anew. ”

“ Upon the return of the remnant from Babylon all opposition to the theocracy has ceased; to the prophets have succeeded the 'scribes,' or interpreters of the written law, and The Chronicles is the ecclesiastical history, not of a Hebrew nation, but of a Jewish church.
From History we must, in literary analysis, distinguish Story: the one is founded on the sense of record and scientific explanation of events, the other appeals to the imagination and the emotions. The Story literature of most peoples is 'fiction,' in the sense that its matter is invented solely for literary purposes. ”

“ It may be definitely asserted therefore that for all the passages which are common to Chronicles and other canonical works the Chronicler was indebted solely to the text of the canonical books as it appeared in his time.
As for the divergences, real and apparent, between Chronicles and other canonical Scriptures, it is now recognised that, whilst they are properly a subject for historical investigation, they do not involve a religious problem. The old “religious” difficulty is answered by a deeper comprehension of the nature of Inspiration. ”

“ There exist, also, valuable prose chronicles which are believed to contain the substance of others of a very early date, and which furnish an authentic contemporary history of the country in the language of the people from the fifth century. ”

“ But as the legendary chroniclers are more occupied with extolling the merits of their favourites, than with establishing their place in the page of history, it becomes a well-nigh impossible task for the modern investigator to trace out and fix the times and seasons of all those who, either in fact or in fiction, have borne the name, or even to distinguish with certainty how many there have been, still less, what are the peculiar deeds and attributes of each. ”

“ The true distinction between history and chronicle is not, therefore, a literary or material one, but a distinction between forms of spiritual activity: history is the living consciousness, and, therefore, an act of thought or knowledge; chronicle is the dead record, which we preserve by a mere act of will, because we know that some day the dead record itself may come back to life, transform itself again, under an impulse rooted not in the past but in the present, into a living thought. ”

“ The present chronicle is an attempt to give an answer, inevitably a very tentative one, to this formidable question; the writer, feeling that, as in all these matters, where the elusiveness of human nature plays so prominent a part, there is more hope of approaching the truth, indirectly, and by means of the imaginative mirror of art, than directly, and by means of rational theorizing. ”

“ In all ages, among all nations, where written records have been wanting, tradition has supplied the blank, and, generation after generation, the story of the past has been transmitted from father to son, and celebrated in the song of the wandering bard, till, at length, history has seized the shadowy phantom, and given it a place and a name on her enduring scroll. This is the fountain head of all ancient history. True, it is often so blended with the fabulous inventions of poetry, that it is not always easy to sift out the truth from the fiction. ”

“ Here he wrote the legends of some of the saints, and here he prepared his valuable compendium of universal history. He calls it a Chronicon, and condensed into its records the story of the world from A.D. 1 to the year 1054, the date of his own death. It is very brief through the first portion of its account of “the Six Ages.” Then its statements are fuller. When it reaches contemporaneous events it becomes exceedingly important to the historical student, for it is in the nature of a chronicle. Here also the man’s own personality occasionally appears. ”

“ The historical narratives, the figures of prophecy, the parables of the Saviour, are all images rising from the world and the temporal state of mankind; and thus, like the clouds, they have their origin from the earth. Within this outward body of image and narrative are contained the treasures of wisdom and knowledge; it is the grand source from which truth must be drawn. And the glory of God shines through the whole, imparting to every natural form the splendor of divinity. ”

“ The fulfilment of the word of prophecy in history is a fascinating story. To the Lord, the future is an open book, even as the present. The word is spoken, telling of the event to come; it is written on the parchment scroll by the prophet's pen. Time passes; centuries come and go. Then, when the hour of the prophecy arrives, lo, there appears the fulfilment. ”

“ The chronicle conveys the emotion of heroic adventure, and is picturesquely written.”—London Daily News.
“It has literary merits all its own, of a deliberate and rather deep order.... In point of execution ‘The Chronicles of Count Antonio’ is the best work that Mr. Hope has yet done. The design is clearer, the workmanship more elaborate, the style more colored.... The incidents are most ingenious, they are told quietly, but with great cunning, and the Quixotic sentiment which pervades it all is exceedingly pleasant.”—Westminster Gazette. ”

“ All our knowledge of certain historical periods, and notably of the whole medieval period, rests on certain connected chronicles written by people who are some of them nameless and all of them dead, who cannot in any case be cross-examined and cannot in some cases be corroborated. ”

“ The first we call chronicles, the second lives, and the third narrations or relations. Of these, although the first be the most complete and absolute kind of history, and hath most estimation and glory, yet the second excelleth it in profit and use, and the third in verity and sincerity. For history of times representeth the magnitude of actions, and the public faces and deportments of persons, and passeth over in silence the smaller passages and motions of men and matters. ”

“ A Book of the Dead was essential to the well-being of the departed, once he came into the presence of the gods, and the living would go to the scribe and acquire the finest copy of the Book that lay within their means. ”

“ The history of many a nine days' wonder may be gathered from the Chroniques: we can mark the first effect of occurrences startling at the time, some of which are now wholly forgotten, while others have become historical; we witness the appearance of new divinities who have since found their pedestals, niches or obscure corners. ”

“ As we reflect, we anxiously look around us for some tradition—some time-stained chronicle—some age-worn record—even the faintest and most unsatisfactory legend, upon which to repose our credulity, and relieve the inquiring solicitude of the mind. ”

“ I do not, however, wish that it may be styled a Chronicle,—for that would be unbecoming in me, for I have solely written it for an amusement and recreation to readers, praying them humbly to excuse and supply my ignorance by correcting whatever passage shall be found badly written. ”

“ To these men the rediscovery of ancient literature came like a revelation, disclosing to their wondering eyes a splendid vision of the antique world, such as the cloistered student of the Middle Ages never dreamed of under the gloomy shadow of the minster and within the sound of its solemn bells. ”

“ The Middle Ages served their purpose: but why extend them to the confusion of modern chronology? We have seen God, as no generation before has seen Him. Let us then live, and not die, until the grave be digged, and the night overshadow us at last. ”