CHRONICLES, BOOKS OF, two Old Testament books of the Bible. The name is derived from Chronicon, first suggested by Jerome as a rendering of the title which they bear in the He brew Canon, viz. Events of the Times. (r Chron. xxviii. 24 ; Esth. X. 2, etc.) The Greek translators divided the long book into two, and adopted the title HapaXairoµeva, Things omitted (scil. in the other historical books).
The book of Chronicles begins with Adam and ends abruptly in the middle of Cyrus's decree of restoration, which reappears complete at the beginning of Ezra. A closer examination of those parts of Ezra and Nehemiah which are not extracted from earlier documents or origiral memoirs leads to the conclusion that Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah was orig inally one work, displaying throughout the peculiarities of language and thought of a single editor, who, however, cannot be Ezra himself as tradition states. The style of the language, and also the position of the book in the Jewish Canon, stamp the book as one of the latest in the Old Testament. In r Chron. xxix. 7, which refers to the time of David, a sum of money is reckoned by darics, which certainly implies that the author wrote after this Persian coin had been long current in Judaea. In r Chron. iii. 19 sqq. the descendants of Zerubbabel seem to be reckoned to six generations (the Septuagint reads it so as to give as many as r r generations), and this agrees with the suggestion that Hat tush (v. 22), who belongs to the fourth generation from Zerub babel, was a contemporary of Ezra (Ezra viii. 2) . With this it accords that in Nehemiah five generations of high priests are enumerated from Joshua (xii., io seq.), and that the last name is that of Jaddua, who, according to Josephus, was a contem porary of Alexander the Great (333 B.c.). A date some time after 332 B.C. is now accepted by most modern critics. See EZRA
