Chronicles and Exodus. An Analogy and its Application (JSOTS 275)

Written by William Johnstone Reviewed By Brian Kelly

This book consists mainly of interrelated essays which originally appeared in a variety of journals and collections from about 1980. The essays have been lightly edited, and follow a lengthy introductory chapter outlining the author’s concern and method. The background to the study is the far-reaching changes in the past generation in Pentateuchal studies, owing to dissatisfaction with both the traditional form of the Documentary Hypothesis and Noth’s theory of a Tetrateuch and Deuteronomistic History prefaced by Deuteronomy.

The analogy in question is the relation of the post-exilic Book of Chronicles to the exilic Books of Samuel and Kings. Just as Chronicles incorporates large parts of Samuel-Kings into its own composition, so too, the author argues, the present form of Exodus is a post-exilic Priestly redaction based on an exilic Deuteronomistic version still embedded within it. The earlier redaction may be recovered through comparison with the reminiscences of the exodus preserved in Deuteronomy and by subtraction of the Deuteronomistic material.

The relation of Chronicles to Samuel-Kings can of course be readily gauged by a synoptic comparison of these two works, from which the Chronicler’s redactional moves are plain. Johnstone’s great contribution here is to offer a sustained interpretation of Chronicles as a theological (even ‘midrashic’) essay which evaluates the Davidic monarchy in terms of the ‘Levitical doctrine of guilt and atonement’. Chronicles is a ‘holiness’ redaction of Israel’s history, whereas the earlier Deuteronomistic History understands that history in terms of the Sinaitic covenant. This argument is worked out in Johnstone’s recent two-volume commentary (1997), and the essays collected here, especially chapters 2–6 on the relation of Chronicles to the Pentateuch, provide a very valuable complement to that work.

The next section of this collection (chs 7–12) applies the Chronicles analogy to Exodus. These essays explore the relation of parallel passages in Exodus and Deuteronomy which describe the giving of the Law, the Decalogue, the Passover, ‘signs and wonders’, and Israel’s progress through the wilderness. In each case, closely worked textual and thematic arguments are used in a cumulative case for the author’s double redactional theory, which he commends over more complicated rival explanations as the most economic account.

Johnstone sees the same theological shift between his reconstructed first form of Exodus and its final form as he sees between Samuel-Kings and Chronicles: a ‘D-writer’ using the category ‘covenant’ was followed by the ‘P-writer’ using the category ‘holiness’. In the last part of the book (‘The View Beyond’) these categories are connected with the Pauline doctrines of justification and sanctification. Both Exodus and Chronicles in their final form are seen as eschatological works in which Israel, though technically back in the land, is theologically still ‘in exile’ and is therefore admonished over how it should live in anticipation of God’s final consummation.

This is a challenging book which requires a great deal of attention and linguistic competence to follow the author’s detailed literary arguments, as well as the extended interaction with other scholars. Undergraduates would not naturally turn to this work, although they could profit from the essays on Chronicles as a supplement to the author’s commentary. Scholars who take a more conservative view of the nature and dating of Deuteronomy and P would certainly differ with the methods and conclusions here. While Johnstone properly insists on the role of Israel’s institutions and liturgy in the formulation of its foundational traditions of origins, this comes at the cost of treating the exodus as a process historicised by the cult rather than an event, with Moses himself no longer a figure of history. Biblical theology needs a stronger foundation than this.


Brian Kelly

Canterbury