(C) The late date of Chronicles is finally put beyond all doubt by the linguistic peculiarities of the book. Excluding, of course, the passages drawn from earlier Scriptures, the Hebrew of Chronicles is of such a character that it is impossible to assign anything but a late post-exilic date for its composition. In every aspect of language――grammar and syntax and vocabulary――the diction exhibits the unmistakable characteristics of late Hebrew. It lies beyond the scope of the present volume to give details of the Hebrew, and reference may be made to the edition of Chronicles by Curtis and Madsen (_International Critical Commentary_), pp. 27 ff., where a list of 136 such peculiarities is given. The _style_ of Chronicles is disappointing. The Chronicler had some praiseworthy qualities as a narrator: he displays force and imagination in the treatment of the material, he knew how to add a graphic touch, and he was able to revise a story thoroughly while preserving its internal coherence (e.g. 1 Chronicles xxi.). But he had not the gift of choice language. In so late a work we could not hope to find the strength and purity which characterised Hebrew prose of the “golden age.” It must, however, be confessed that, judged even by the standard of its own age, the Hebrew of Chronicles is clumsy and displeasing in many ways. * * * * * From this cumulative evidence we infer that the Chronicler was certainly a post-exilic writer later than the period of Ezra‒Nehemiah and in all probability not earlier than about 300‒250 B.C. This is a valuable and definite conclusion, but it is important to observe that it does not fully answer the problem of the date of the _present form_ of Chronicles. It remains to ask whether the text as it has reached us (the Masoretic Hebrew) is precisely the text which left the Chronicler’s hands, and, if not, what changes have been introduced. It is safe to say that the Hebrew text has been almost unchanged since about 150 A.D., but between that date and the time of the Chronicler is a long and sometimes stormy period. The subject, though in many ways important, is too intricate to be discussed here at length: a few remarks must suffice. (1) Like all other books of the Old Testament, Chronicles has suffered from the usual accidents of scribal errors in the course of transmission; but the changes due to this cause, being unintentional, are as a rule unimportant and can often be detected and corrected (see § 10, _Text_). (2) More serious are alterations made by revisers or scribes who were anxious to bring the narrative of Chronicles into conformity with that of Samuel and Kings. In the last two chapters of 2 Chronicles the Hebrew text can be compared with an _old_ Greek Version (1 Esdras――see § 10, _Greek Versions_), and the comparison indicates that changes of text (see notes on 2 Chronicles xxxv. 8, 15) and a harmonisation of Chronicles with Kings (see note on 2 Chronicles xxxvi.