Social Memory, Scribalism, and the Book of Chronicles

This dissertation conducts an inquiry into the ways in which the biblical book Chronicles could interact with social memory. It first considers the state of social memory theory in biblical studies and identifies a need for further theoretical and methodological refinement. Then, it relates recent social memory theory to biblical texts through the nexus of scribalism and scribal practices. By taking a diachronic approach, this theoretical framework bypasses some problems that arise for other deployments of memory theory in biblical studies.The dissertation then explores Chronicles by taking up three case studies, one on the genealogies (1 Chr 1–9), another on Solomon’s accession (1 Chr 28–2 Chr 1:1), and a third on the reign of Joash (2 Chr 24). Each case explores a different kind of relationship between Chronicles and its sources. Given Chronicles as a material scribal product, each case study considers how it might have interacted with social memory and, especially, its inherent potential to shape social memory, even if we cannot ascertain whether this potential was ever fully realized. The first case study argues that Chronicles’ engagement with social memory is highly varied and that it might have allowed for an extension of ethnic or political identity. The second case study argues that Chronicles made possible a kind of social “forgetting,” and it draws a close comparison between the writing process and instances of damnatio memoriae. The third case study argues that, even though the writer of Chronicles sometimes followed source texts closely, Chronicles could be read in an environment in which the sources it cites and the stories they told were unknown to the reader. The conclusion positions this jointly theoretical and textual project with respect to the field and to themes in research on Chronicles, and it calls for a renewed narrative reading of Chronicles