DR. PETAVEL'S BOOK ON IMMORTALITY.-Mr. Freer writes on our review of this book as follows: "In your issue for the current month I find a somewhat extended notice of Dr. Petavel's book, The Problem of Immortality. That notice contains a very kind appreciation of my work as translator, which I highly value, but it also contains some criticisms of the contents of the book which might give an erroneous impression as to the author's arguments. On these I ask the opportunity of making a few observations. Your critic enumerates four main arguments. Under the first head he says that Conditionalism has its own peculiar difficulties,' but the only difficulty that he goes on to mention is one by no means peculiar to Conditionalism. The existence of evil is a patent fact, to be recognized under every system; the permanence of evil is only a theory, which increases the difficulty of understanding the fact (see pp. 72, 359, 432, 444). Further on it is implied that Dr. Petavel argues that the wicked are to be raised solely that they may suffer excruciating tortures before the inevitable end arrives,' whereas he makes no such assertion, but argues that it cannot be so (see pp. 226, 362-3, 382, 557). Under the second head it is said that Dr. Petavel makes no allowance for the difference between failure to prove and disproof. In that connection, however, failure to prove is all that the author asserts as the result of scientific research. Certain words are put between inverted commas under the third head, from which it would naturally be inferred that Dr. Petavel treats 'extinction' as synonymous with 'death,' whereas he says, on p. 119, that the words life and death have no synonyms. He maintains that death is the cessation or negation of life. In his fourth division your critic accuses the author of inconsistency because, while insisting upon the literal meaning of the words life and death, he yet admits the use of metaphor and hyperbole in Scripture. But these are not inconsistent, especially considering the great variety in the books of Scripture, and Dr. Petavel lays down a definite rule by which the two kinds of use are to be distinguished. That rule should have been the object of criticism rather than the author's recognition of the two uses of words. If Dr. Petavel insists upon the ontological aspect of the salvation wrought by Christ, that does not by any means exclude its moral aspect, as salvation from sin. It is a mistake to suppose that Dr. Petavel claims the Didache as Conditionalist on account of its silence. That claim is based upon its positive teaching, so that there is no absurdity' in the claim (see p. 232). At the close of his interesting article your critic asserts that God may have conferred upon his intelligent creation indefectible immortality,' and claims that, therefore, Dr. Petavel has not proved his case. But the main question dealt with in the book is, not whether God might have done so, but whether Scripture teaches that God has actually done so. Not possibility, but actuality is the subject of inquiry."

BIBLICAL THOUGHT.

CHRONICLES.
No. II.

BY REV. A. C. JENNINGS, M.A.

BEFORE proceeding further with our review of the Chronicles, it will be well to tabulate as precisely as possible the sources which the author appears to have had at his command. In so doing, it will be necessary to accept as sufficiently proven the results of much exhaustive analysis which the reader will find presented in extenso in Commentaries and Introductions. My object will be first to indicate what authorities the Chronicler may with good reason be supposed to have before him for the period intervening between Solomon and the Captivity (2 Chron. x.-xxxvi.). I hope in a concluding paper to treat of the Chronicler's presentation of the reigns of David and Solomon, and the peculiar problems connected therewith.

1. There can be little doubt that the Chronicler (whether he used the same sources as the writer of our Kings or not) used our Kings itself. This is sufficiently shown in his repetition of the verdicts passed on the various sovereigns by the earlier writer. The idiosyncrasies of this writer are often reproduced with a fidelity which is not affected by the difference in religious standpoint. Thus of Amaziah both historians record that he avenged himself on his father's murderers, but in doing so spared their children in deference to the Mosaic precept, which by both is cited at length. Uzziah's goodness is gauged in both by his father's merits, "according to all that his father Amaziah did." On the other hand, Ahaz's misdeeds are by both estimated by the standard of David, not by that of his immediate progenitor. "He did not that which was right in the sight of the LORD his God, like David his father." "David his father" is also the standard of both historians in the favourable verdict on Hezekiah. But perhaps the most convincing case is that of Manasseh. To the account of this sovereign's profanations is attached by both historians a citation of God's selection of the temple site, in terms which are not to be found in the earlier narrative of 2 Sam. vii., the language in both being adapted to the view that Manasseh's misdeeds were the direct cause of the Captivity. "The house of God, of which God had said to David and to Solomon his son, In this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen before all the tribes of Israel, will I put my name for ever. Neither will I any more remove the foot of Israel from out of the land which I have appointed for your fathers; so that they will take heed to do all that I have commanded them, according to the whole law and the statutes and the ordinances by the hand of Moses " (2 Chron. xxxiii. 7, 8, from 2 Kings xxi. 7, 8, with some variations). I note that this latter condition is nowhere expressed in the earlier account of the Divine promise to

1 The preservation of the phrase is the more telling, if we remember how the Amaziah of the Chronicler deviated from the standard of "right."-Cf. 2 Chron. xxv. 14-16.

David, but really originates in the Kings account of Solomon's vision (1 Kings ix.), and that even there there is no mention of the "law of Moses." The writer of 2 Kings xxi. 7, 8, in fact, freely blends 2 Sam. vii, and 1 Kings ix.; and his deviations from the letter of the record are reproduced almost word for word by the Chronicler. It would be easy to multiply such proofs of the Chronicler's dependence on the Kings of our Old Testament Canon. The natural inference is that all those lengthy sections which give the same story as the Book of Kings are borrowed directly from that work, and this conclusion is accepted by most modern critics. The reason why I emphasize it here is because of the anomalous character of the Chronicler's references to his sources. While without doubt we may say he not only follows Kings in point of date, but literally has Kings before his eyes, he nowhere cites that book as his authority. And to increase the student's perplexities, he does repeatedly cite "a Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel" (or "Israel and Judah," or "Israel" only) which had matter in it not to be found in our canonical Kings. So far as the nomenclature is concerned, no modern critic appears to offer any satisfactory explanation of this paradox. Is it possible to suppose that our 66 Kings" bore some other name than that which now heads it in our Hebrew Bibles, for the 200 or 230 years which the destructive criticism of to-day sets between Kings and Chronicles, and that it then quietly usurped the nomenclature of the older, perhaps less readable, national record? Have we a witness to this different nomenclature in the title " kingdoms (Barider) which is attached to this book in the Septuagint, and which was its designation in the Christian Church till Jerome's time? Or is the explanation that our Kings" was but a recent redaction of the standard historical work, and was only now making its way to general acceptance as the national record of the monarchy? The latter view affects materially the question of our author's date, for the "Kings" writer is generally admitted to have lived in the early days of the Exile. May it not be that Chronicles is, as people used to think, not such a very late successor of this national historian-that its nucleus dates, in fact, from the early days of the Return, and not from the Persian period? It is well, in the face of much confident assertion, to remind the student again that there is no proof that the references to late times are not due to a compiler who brought the book up to his own date. Nor with our limited literary material can we say with certainty that the peculiar diction of the Chronicler marks the fourth, rather than the fifth, or even the sixth century B.C.

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2. As I stated above, the Chronicler does cite a book of Kings by name, and it may be assumed that this is not the canonical work familiar to us. The grounds of this assumption need not detain the reader's attention long,

1 "Third" and "fourth" "of the kingdoms "; the books of Samuel being the "first" and "second "of the kingdoms." But the Latin usage was to denominate the books of Kings "tertius et quartus Regum liber." Jerome's verdict determined future custom. Meliusque multo est Malachim id est Regum quam Mamelachoth, id est Regnorum dicere.”— Prol. Gal.

for here, at least, there seems no possibility of reasonable doubt. It is certain that the Chronicler had in the Kings he cites by name the "genealogies" of Israel (1 Chron. vi.-ix. 1), the "wars" of King Jotham (2 Chron. xxvii.), Manasseh's "prayer unto his God" (2 Chron. xxxiii. 18), and the "abominations" which Jehoiakim did (2 Chron. xxxvi. 8). It is equally certain that these citations do not land us in our canonical "Kings." On this point critics are agreed. These things are not in that book now; neither can they have dropped out of it. The subsidiary argument is really hardly necessary that the Chronicler sometimes refers to his Kings for the "rest" of the acts of a sovereign under treatment, when as a fact he has exhausted all that is related in our canonical Kings. Henceforth, therefore, I may, for convenience, speak of this important source of information as the lost" Book of Kings, and so distinguish it from the canonical Kings. The question now arises, Can we identify this lost book with the professed source of our canonical "Kings"? Can we accept Eichhorn's theory that the authority which in our Kings is styled the "Chronicles of the Kings of Judah" reappears in the Chronicler under the loose designations "Book of the Kings of Israel and Judah," or "of Judah and Israel," or, in the case of Jehoshaphat and Manasseh, "Israel" only? This theory is a plausible one, and may well surmount Canon Driver's objection that the "authorities in the Book of Kings were two distinct works, in which the history of each. kingdom was treated separately." For it is not contended that the work cited by the Chronicler contained the records of the northern monarchy too. It is true that he styles his authority by the name "Israel" as well as "Judah," but that is just the style which he claims for the Davidic dynasty itself. It is, in fact, one of this writer's peculiar traits to appropriate this title Israel for the subjects of the legitimate line of monarchs (e.g., in 2 Chron. xii. 1, xxi. 4. xxiii. 2), and he in one passage distinguishes "Israel and Judah" from "Ephraim and Manasseh," where the southern is to be differentiated from the northern kingdom (2 Chron. xxx. 1). Jehoshaphat is styled "king of Israel" (2 Chron. xxi. 2). When the old Davidic title is thus jealously claimed for the legitimate dynasty we need not wonder that the historian gives to the ancient state annals the title Book of the Kings of "Israel" as well as of "Judah.”

On the other hand, the argument is somewhat overstated in Smith's Biblical Dictionary (s. v. Kings). That the Chronicler uses this reference to the lost Book of Kings again and again where the canonical Kings claims. the authority of the "Chronicles of the Kings of Judah" is true, but not decisive. For, per contra, again and again he refers not to this lost Book of Kings, but to prophetic writings, where the Kings author still maintains his citation of the ancient Chronicles. And it is pure assumption that these prophetic writings were integral parts of the lost "Kings." I should add that our Chronicler's narrative is not a whit more on all fours with that of the canonical "Kings" in the cases of the one type of reference, than in those of the other.

Probably the sober student will incline to the view that the Chronicler's authority may be a later redaction of the ancient "Chronicle of the Kings of Judah," for which the spirit of the Restoration period might well claim the high-sounding title "Kings of Israel and Judah." But the identification will hardly go beyond the bounds of a plausible theory.

3. Are we justified in regarding as a third and distinct source the dibre of the various prophets to which the Chronicler repeatedly alludes, e.g., in the case of Rehoboam "the dibre of Shemaiah the prophet and Iddo the seer"? (2 Chron. xii. 15). Wellhausen and other modern critics refuse to treat these references as taking us outside the book of the kings of Israel and Judah. Together with the "Midrash of the Prophet Iddo" and the "Midrash of the Book of Kings," they are to be regarded as alternative forms of citation from the now lost "Kings," the Chronicler liking to find "anonymous prophets" for the various sections he quotes. We are told to see an analogy in St. Paul's év 'Hλíg tí déyeɩ ǹ ypapý (Rom. xi. 2) for this imaginary practice of finding prophetic authorities for the ancient history. But the analogy disappears when we judge St. Paul's use of ev 'Hλía by our Saviour's use of eπì тоû ẞárov in Mark xii. 26, and refer both to the subject (personal or impersonal) of the particular part of Scripture quoted; "the Elijah section" and "the Bush section " indicating the prominent feature in the perashiyah, or the one most suggestive to a reader's memory. More worthy of attention is the argument from the Chronicler's restricted use of the form of citation in question. If we exclude the case of Manasseh, where some correction of the text is perhaps admissible, the Chronicler, where he depends on his Kings, does not depend on the dibre or Midrash. In fact, where the one authority is quoted we have no mention of the other except by way of mention of incorporation, as in 2 Chron. xx. 34, xxxii. 32.1 This feature affords some ground for the presumption that both dibre and Midrash indicate not independent works, but integral sections of the Book of Kings itself.

I have already said that I cannot accept this inference in the case of the Midrashim. We might account for sections in the national history being quoted as the dibre of the prophets, but what sense can there be in calling an authority, usually cited as the "Book of the Kings," on one solitary occasion "Midrash of the Book of the Kings," or on another "Midrash of the Prophet Iddo"? The Chronicler's nomenclature of authorities is doubtless unsystematic, but not surely to such an extent as to be simply useless. Common sense seems to dictate that the "Midrash of the Book of Kings," to which we are referred in somewhat obscure phraseology for Joash's sons, and the greatness of the burden laid upon him, and the repairing of the house of God," is a source to be distinguished from the "Book of the Kings' itself.

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Similarly the "Midrash of the Prophet Iddo," to which we are

1 In 2 Chron. xxxii. 32, A. V., “in the vision of Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz and in the book of the kings," &c., the and is to be found in the LXX. but not in the present Hebrew text. The R. V. omits it.