Sunday, March 18, 2018

Chronicles

When you read I & II Chronicles the scriptural literary format is very similar to the Book of Mormon.  Eventhough no autobiographical writer is speaking like "I, Nephi".  The scholars who produced the Chronicle books produce similiarities- like David inquiring of the Lord (Nephi), and David leading out against the Phillistines in war (Captain Moroni, Moroni, Helaman). Or even the idea of casting of lots is identified.

I Chronicles 14: 8-17; 24:31.

Wikpedia suggests the following themes  through these books:

The message which the authors wished to give to his audience was this:
  1. God is active in history, and especially the history of Israel. The faithfulness or sins of individual kings are immediately rewarded or punished by God. (This is in contrast to the theology of the Books of Kings, where the faithlessness of kings was punished on later generations through the Babylonian exile).[11]
  2. God calls Israel to a special relationship. The call begins with the genealogies (chapters 1–9 of 1 Chronicles), gradually narrowing the focus from all mankind to a single family, the Israelites, the descendants of Jacob. "True" Israel is those who continue to worship Yahweh at the Temple in Jerusalem, with the result that the history of the historical kingdom of Israel is almost completely ignored.[12]
  3. God chose David and his dynasty as the agents of his will. According to the author of Chronicles, the three great events of David's reign were his bringing the ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, his founding of an eternal royal dynasty, and his preparations for the construction of the Temple.[12]
  4. God chose the Temple in Jerusalem as the place where he should be worshiped. More time and space are spent on the construction of the Temple and its rituals of worship than on any other subject. By stressing the central role of the Temple in pre-exilic Judah, the author also stresses the importance of the newly-rebuilt Persian-era Second Temple to his own readers.
  5. God remains active in Israel. The past is used to legitimise the author's present: this is seen most clearly in the detailed attention he gives to the Temple built by Solomon, but also in the genealogy and lineages, which connect his own generation to the distant past and thus make the claim that the present is a continuation of that past.[13]

4 comments:

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  2. JOINING THE TWO STICKS.
    These two sticks, on which the names of Judah and Joseph(Book of Mormon, Bible)and his son were written, thus represent, literally, these two tribes of Israel; or, in a more general way, Judah and Israel. But, spiritually, they represent the celestial and spiritual principles, the love-principle and the truth-principle, or love and wisdom, or goodness and truth. Love flows into a man's will, or heart, and fills him with a perception of goodness. But truth flows into a man's understanding, or intellect,and gives him a recognition of truth. The fulness of the gospel.

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