to their subject were current. On the contrary, they made use of all such available material, good or bad. And it is quite incredible that historical interest in Jerusalem regarding the old days of the Kingdom was confined to the compilation of Kings until suddenly the Chronicler produced this startlingly different account. There is very strong probability that the version given in Chronicles has a long chain of antecedents behind it. For consider, further, the general situation. The vicissitudes of time and fortune had caused great changes in the population of Jerusalem, but none that made absolutely impossible the continuance of traditions not represented or only partially represented by the narratives crystallised in Kings. Thus “we may safely assume that the overthrow of Edom (2 Chronicles xxv. 5‒13) and the leprosy of Uzziah (2 Chronicles xxvi. 16‒23) were once told more fully than in the brief verses of 2 Kings xiv. 7, xv. 5. We may surely allow links between the impression left upon tradition by these events and the stories that have been preserved by Chronicles” (S. A. Cook, in the _Journal of Theological Studies_, xii. 470). It is now generally recognised that the depopulation of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. was not nearly so complete as was once thought, and considerable continuity of tradition may have been maintained. Moreover, the influx of South Judean families in the exilic and post-exilic times must have meant an extension of popular tales concerning Judean affairs. It is therefore significant that the South Judean “strain” is a marked feature in the Chronicler’s history. Again, it is practically certain that Levitical predecessors of the Chronicler felt somewhat the same interest as he displays in the origins of their order and institutions. Are we to suppose that they made no attempts to gratify their curiosity, or to find historical grounds for their claims? Surely they would seize with interest on any and all current traditions, and would be constantly collating them with the well-known version in Kings, adding whatever they could to the total, and no doubt tending to retell the whole――at least the popular and edifying portions of the narrative――in terms more agreeable to the ideas and practices of their own time. We cannot suppose that the Chronicler was the first and only Levite who attempted to satisfy the obvious need (§ 6) for an orthodox ecclesiastical version of Judean history. Features of the genealogies, and in particular the Levitical _data_, suggest the existence of statistical records, if of nothing more. One further small but interesting point deserves mention. In 1 Chronicles iv. 9, vii. 23, xii. 18 there are sayings which cannot possibly originate with the Chronicler, for they are written in an archaic style utterly foreign to his manner of speech. Of these xii. 18 is poetical in form, while the other two are sentences of a type made familiar to us by early passages in Genesis. These