The Temple in Kings versus Chronicles

This is the first of two week 5 discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Understanding the Bible as a Progressive Christian through Pathways Theological Education.

Outline the major differences between the story of the building of the Jerusalem Temple as told in 1 Kings and 1-2 Chronicles. Infer the reasons for those differences based on your reading of Guenther.

There were 3 major differences between these two stories that immediately stood out to me. 

 Chronicles contains more of a focus on David's role in planning and conceiving the temple, while Kings moves the focus to Solomon carrying out the plan. Both include Solomon's words of blessing and prayer at the temple dedication, although Chronicles includes more detail.

 God appears in dramatic and miraculous ways in the Chronicles account, both during the dedication ("a cloud filled the Lord’s temple. The priests were unable to carry out their duties on account of the cloud because the Lord’s glory filled God’s temple" (2 Chronicles 5:13b-14 NRSV, this is also 1 Kings 8:10-11) and "As soon as Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the entirely burned offering and the sacrifices, while the Lord’s glory filled the temple. 2 The priests were unable to enter the Lord’s temple because the Lord’s glory had filled the Lord’s temple. " (2 Chronicles 7:1-2)) and later in a detailed vision to Solomon while dreaming. (A short summary of a similar vision appears at a different point in Kings.) 

Another difference that made an impression on me was who did the manual labor. Both versions report that conscripted workers were used. However, in Kings they appear to have been chosen equitably from the entire population. In Chronicles, they were mostly or only immigrants depending on how you interpret the description. While this seems minor, I think there is an important difference between "we labored with our own hands to create this, each taking on their fair share" and "we forced others to make this for us, at little real sacrifice on our part." I think you could argue that working on a community project such as the temple could be a path to respect from and inclusion in the greater community, but we don't see any evidence of that happening.

A more obvious, but in my opinion likely minor difference is that Kings includes more detail about the amazing craftsmanship of the items in the temple and attributes the work to specific craftspeople, while Chronicles attributes the making to Solomon, while at the same time being clear that it was made at his direction. (As an aside, I think this is an important possibility to remember when we see authorship of Biblical texts attributed to David and Solomon, like the temple fittings they may have been commissioned.) I think both authors were trying to give an accurate picture of both the scope of work involved and help their readers form a mental portrait of the glory, beauty and craftsmanship of the temple and that the differences have more to do with the authors' respective writing styles than any intended difference in message.

Gunther posits that the reason for the differences between these two accounts is that they are "historical interpretations" by two different authors, with two different viewpoints and goals. He believes that Kings is part of a longer story (Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) by a single author, the Deuteronomist. "The Deuteronomist traces the story of the people under the terms of the Sinaitic covenant, emphasizing Israel’s obligation to observe all the commandments, to reverence the LORD alone and to worship him only at the central, authorized shrine." Before going on to Gunther's view of the author of Chronicles, I want to point out that the inherent respect for a "central, authorized shrine" would be higher for one that was built by the community and thus belonged to "all of us." This may explain why the Deuteronomist described the conscription process as random and egalitarian.

Getting to the author of Chronicles, Gunther believes "the Chronicler is concerned to demonstrate the continuity of God’s redemptive activity from creation to the time of the restoration following the Babylonian exile."  This continuity of activity explains why God's activities in Chronicles are more obvious and dramatic than in Kings. The Chronicler holds up David as the ideal king and ruler and is equally complementary of his son and heir Solomon. (Gunther also mentions that the Chronicler is more concerned with kings being right with God (or not) at the end of their life and values repentance, it would be hard to hold David as an ideal without doing so.) Valuing David so highly explains why the Chronicler's story of the temple starts with David making the plans and handing them over to Solomon. This combined with his strong approval for Solomon explains why he speaks of Solomon as the doer of tasks that Solomon merely commissioned - if Solomon "made the pilar" (or whatever) when actually he commissioned it; David "made the temple" by setting his son up to build it. This may also explain his pointing out the fact that immigrants did the manual labor - if it wasn't "us", it was Solomon and by extension David. If it was "us" (randomly chosen people of Israel), then "we" deserve some of the glory. 

In both cases, the contents of Solomon's speeches and letters, the reply from the King of Tyre (particularly in Chronicles), and God's word in the vision are used to further the viewpoints of the authors. This doesn't necessarily make either source more or less accurate, these are at best summaries of what was said and naturally, what is important to the summarizer is going to make a summary. God's vision to Solomon is particularly illustrative of this. In Kings, the description of the vision is very short and basically a summary of the Deuteronomist's viewpoint. "The Lord’s word came to Solomon, Regarding this temple that you are building: If you follow my laws, enact my regulations, and keep all my commands faithfully, then I will fulfill for you my promise that I made to your father David. I will live among the Israelites. I won’t abandon my people Israel."(1 Kings 6:11-13 NRSV) However, the Chronicler ends the story of the temple with a much more detailed dream vision.  It is the end of this vision that I want to highlight, 2 Chronicles 7 19-22 NRSV:

But if any of you ever turn away from and abandon the regulations and commands that I have given you, and go to serve other gods and worship them,  then I will uproot you from my land that I gave you, and I will reject this temple that I made holy for my name. I will make it a joke, insulted by everyone.  Everyone who passes by this temple—so lofty now—will be shocked and will wonder, Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and temple? The answer will come, Because they abandoned the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who brought them out of Egypt. They embraced other gods, worshipping and serving them. This is why God brought all this disaster on them.

Remember that the Chronicler is writing after the temple has been destroyed and trying to show that God is still actively working for the audience's redemption. By setting a reason why God would allow the temple to be destroyed in the story of the temple's creation, the Chronicler is able to set up even the destruction of the temple as God being present.

Finally, I want to say that I find it interesting that Christians have issues with "inconsistencies" between the histories in Kings versus Chronicles (and I have seen this myself), when we have 4 Gospels with similar parallels and differences that we usually manage to ignore.

Guenther, Allen R. “Kings and Chronicles: Interpreting Historical Interpretation.”  Direction Journal, vol. 11, no. 2, Apr. 1982, pp. 4–15, https://directionjournal.org/11/2/kings-and-chronicles-interpreting.html.

(Are There) Passages to Know By Heart

This is the second of two week 1 discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Understanding the Bible as a Progressive Christian through Pathways Theological Education

Discuss the “Fifteen Passages to Know by Heart.” [This is in a publication called The Bible and The United Church of Christ.] In your response, indicate whether or not you agree with the importance of knowing Scripture by heart and list the passages you would suggest for a similar list to “know by heart” or to “be familiar with.”

 I think the most important line in Caldwell's article is not any of the specific verses, but rather his description of what he means by knowing a passage by heart - "The point isn’t just to be able to rattle them off; the point is to know them so intimately that they’re written on your heart." I strongly disagree with just learning verses in a vacuum, and I have my doubts about memorizing them at all. A lot of verses are only truly meaningful in the larger context or are extremely misleading without it. Among my favorite verses are the pairing of "beat their swords  into plowshares" (Isaiah 2:4 / Micah 4:3) and "beat your plowshares into swords" (Joel 3:10), in large part because I think part of the point of them is to remind us how important context is. (Although I absolutely want to live in a world where we all can, metaphorically, beat swords into plowshares and live in peace.) I think that learning verses by rote makes it easier to weaponize them. That isn't to say that the practice is bad, but when you only know a few verses, it is easy to put too much emphasis on them and not the rest of the story they are a part of. (Lists like [some number] Bible verses about [topic XYZ] need to be approached with similar caution.) For one of my classes, we watched some taped lectures from an evangelical school, Gordon College. One of those lectures talked about the problems of transmission of the Bible and the fact that we know there have been some transmission errors because manuscripts differ. One of the students in the original class saw this as a challenge to his belief in Biblical inerrancy, but wasn't able to verbalize how or even his belief in inerrancy beyond simply repeating "The Lord's word is flawless" (Psalm 18:30) over and over. In his case, having learned a (partial) verse to support and defend his belief was actually keeping him from being able to ask questions and gain clarification on a topic, he knew the verse but he hadn't brought it into his heart.

In my Bible study group recently, we were discussing how growing up queer in America, even if you are in an affirming church yourself (or even a UUA church where the Bible is merely one among several potential "sources of meaning"), there is this constant pressure to discuss and defend against the "gotcha" verses and how that interferes in having a full relationship with the Bible. And I notice this same thing in Christian Universalism, people spend so much time focusing on the hell versus salvation texts that they lose track of what the Bible as a whole has to teach us. As Robin A. Parry says "every theological system has its problem texts"(The Evangelical Universalist, p 154), and it's important that we don't just focus on (or in this case memorize) the texts that promote or defend our beliefs or, alternatively, call out beliefs we disagree with. (No one wants to define our own theology as reactionary, but sometimes we do define ourselves by who or what we are not.)

Another concern I have with verse memorization is learning differences. Some people find memorization very easy and others find it difficult to impossible. Some people retain information easily once they have memorized it and others have to constantly review in order to keep it. I have noticed that memorizing things like sentences or examples helps some people understand concepts and for others understanding starts with getting the gist and then implementing the knowledge in some way; requiring exact memorization does not seem to make a huge difference. I suspect that the actual personal value of verse memorization has a lot to do with where you fall in this learning spectrum.

Any verse that someone ends up memorizing because they find it valuable and reference and discuss it  - either with others or in their personal reflections and prayer (ie have taken to heart organically) is a treasure. But I'm not sure the same benefit comes from picking a verse and going over it in whatever manner works for you until you have memorized it. One might be able to imitate the first process and study, discuss and pray with a verse enough times that you do memorize it; but that isn't what we usually think of as verse memorization.

In the 1960's and 1970's editions of the Joy of Cooking, the introduction to the index talks about two kinds of knowledge, what you know and what you can find easily. The internet and the ubiquity of smartphones means that even if your memory of the verse is, as Caldwell puts it 'you just describe it by saying, “You know, it’s the one about…”', you can probably find it in a few seconds, likely in multiple versions and with notes and commentary. While I agree with Caldwell that our personal favorites deserve better than “You know, it’s the one about…”, I'm not sure how many more verses deserve more than that. And speaking of versions, memorization tends to trap us in one translation (unless we both know and memorize in the original language.) That may or may not be a good thing. In 6th grade, I attended an Episcopal school and we had to memorize the Lord's Prayer (I believe the 1962 BCP version), that is still the wording of the Lord's Prayer I think of 40 plus years later. My current minister rotates through different versions of the Lord's Prayer and some of the versions with more modern language really speak to my soul, but my mind still defaults back to what I learned in 6th grade. Had I learned that version by reciting it regularly with my family, the memories attached might outweigh the more archaic wording, but in fact, my family was UU and didn't attend a church that prayed like that and my 6th grade school was a horrible fit for me academically, emotionally and socially, to the point of being a damaging experience. I don't think most memorization experiences will be that extreme, but I do know several people who have read a section of the Bible in a new or unfamiliar translation and had it open their heart in some way and it would be unfortunate if prior memorization interfered with their ability to fully integrate that experience.

I think there are ways to engage seriously with scripture beyond just reading that don't necessarily require memorization or access to education or study helps. For my final project for Freshman calligraphy class (at a secular but private school), I made an artistic copy of the school chapter 1 Corinthians 13. The process of planning and carefully writing it out (and the slow process of doing so) allowed me to internalize this text without memorizing it and encouraged me to think about it. The practice of lectio divina is a more formal way of spending time with a piece of scripture. Putting a chapter or book of the Bible in audio format on repeat while you drive or do chores may have a similar effect.

I've covered which verses not to bring into your heart, but not really which verses I would suggest. Part of that is that because I am cautious and ambivalent about the value of memorizing verses on purpose, I don't have strong opinions on which verses one should pick for this task. As a list of meaningful verses, I mostly like Caldwell's list. As a universalist, I'd probably leave out John 3:16 because I think people get too caught up in the "everyone who believes in him" part, particularly when it is quoted as a stand alone verse. I'd add 1 John 4:8, but that may have as much to do with the fact that it was my grandmother's favorite verse as the verse itself. I prefer Mark 12:29-31 to Deuteronomy 6:4-5, but that is mostly because I have organically used and studied the former enough times that it has settled in my heart, not because I think it is actually the superior statement. Perhaps I spent too much time pondering the "glass darkly" in 1 Corinthians 13, but I think Revelation and the assumption that it (or anything in the Bible) is a specific message about what the next life will bring is problematic, so I would probably  leave out that verse.

There is a list of verses that I have considered memorizing. I am a big fan of the Narrative Lectionary, which is an attempt to cover all the important stories of the bible. My church uses materials from Spirit and Truth publishing that recommend a memory verse (often actually a partial verse) for each Lectionary Reading. No one in my church is memorizing them, or even paying attention to the fact that there are memory verses in the material, but it has occurred to me that if I actually did so for a year, those 30 or so verses might function as reminders for pretty much all the major stories of the Bible and that would be an amazing thing to be able to recall easily.

Thanksgiving Day - Year A

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is the last reading for year A:

• Deuteronomy 8:7-18


• Psalm 65


• 2 Corinthians 9:6-15


• Luke 17:11-19

I was particularly struck by the reminder in the Deuteronomy section about remembering to be greatful in good times, and also by the reminder in Luke to be grateful in general. (Although it also is about being grateful when something good happens.) I think I'm a reasonably grateful person, but gratitude is something I really value in myself and others. I think gratitude just makes life better and I know I could be more grateful.

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