Finally, since the Chronicler was retelling the past in terms of the present, we know that these beliefs of his were not rules applied in theory to history and ignored in present practice. They were the convictions by which his own soul lived. No one can afford to despise a man who was prepared to walk by the light of such a faith amid the difficulties and the perils which surrounded the enfeebled Jerusalem of that age. As Curtis says, "it was under the tutelage of men like the Chronicler that the Maccabees were nourished and the heroic age of Judaism began." We must not allow any distaste for legalism in religion to blind us to the virtues of the post-exilic Jews. The very rigidity of the ritual and the doctrine was essential to the preservation of the nobler elements in the faith. In the memorable words of Wellhausen (Prolegomena, pp. 497 f.), "At a time when all nationalities, and at the same time all bonds of religion and national customs were beginning to be broken up in the seeming cosmos and real chaos of the Graeco-Roman Empire, the Jews stood out like a rock in the midst of the ocean. When the natural conditions of independent nationality all failed them, they nevertheless artificially maintained it with an energy truly marvellous, and thereby preserved for themselves, and at the same time for the whole world, an eternal good." Chronicles may justly claim to have played a part in that extraordinary triumph.
§ 9. Name and Position in the Canon
Name. The Hebrew title is Dibhrē Hayyāmīm, literally The Acts (or Sayings) of the Days. In the Greek Version (the Septuagint) Chronicles was regarded as supplementary to Samuel and Kings, and so received the title "[Books of] the Omitted Acts" (παραλειπομένων) or "the Omitted Acts of the Kings (or Reigns) of Judah." This name, moreover, passed into the Latin Vulgate, "(Libri) Paralipomenōn." The title Chronicles seems to be due to a remark made by St Jerome, who, in commenting on the Hebrew title, wrote that the book might more appropriately be styled the "Chronicle of the whole
