Chapter 1 - INTRODUCTION

Summary

This is a collection of twelve studies, ten of which were published in the last fifteen years in a variety of journals, Festschriften and other works. Chapters 3 and 10 are published here for the first time, and Chapter 9 was co-authored by Antje Labahan and me. These studies are published together, because their cumulative weight leads, among others, to a new understanding of the Book of Chronicles, its balanced and nuanced theology – for the present purposes, there is no difference between ‘theology’ and ‘ideology’, historiographical approach and of the way in which the book serves to reshape the social memory of its intended and primary rereaderships, in accordance with its own multiple viewpoints and the knowledge of the past held by its community. (Ancient readerships in ancient Israel were rereaderships; the latter term will be used occasionally to stress that the relevant books were not read, but mainly reread, time and again.)

The book is organized around four parts: (a) Introductory Essays, (b) Chronicles and the Rereading and Writing of a Didactic, Socializing History, (c) Chronicles and Theology as Communicated and Recreated through the Rereading of a Historiographical, Literary Writing and (d) Chronicles and Literature: Literary Characterizations that Convey Theological Worldviews and Shape Stories about the Past. The first part includes this chapter as well as one in which several of the positions elaborated in this volume are brought forward and summarized.