The aim of this thesis is to evaluate an almost two-century old view of current Old Testament
scholarship on the interrelationship between the books of Samuel-Kings and the books of Chronicles
(Chr), which claims that the author of Chronicles (the Chr) based his work on the former corpus in
more or less the existing form. The evaluation is preceded by a preliminary investigation into the
grounds upon which that view has been accepted to show that it is based mainly on the relative
dating of the history of religion as depicted in the two historiographical works and the supposed
relative historical values of the two works, neither of which guarantees Chr's dependence on SamuelKings. It is astonishing to find that the received view is not based on detailed textual and literary
comparison of the two works in general, the parallel texts in particular. Thus, instead of attacking the
historical conclusions which are derived from the text, an investigation is offered of whether or not
the prevailing view is also supported by detailed textual and literary study of some three chapters of
parallel texts (1 Chr 10-12 and their counterparts in the books of Samuel).In the first chapter the textual and literary connections of the two versions of Saul's final battle
(1 Sam 31 and 1 Chr 10) with their narrative contexts are explored to show that whereas the Samuel
pluses and variants are mainly connected with accounts in which David's innocence in the demise of
Saul and his house is defended, the Chr variants are mainly connected with stories before David's
estrangement from Saul. In the second chapter the two versions of David's capture of Jerusalem (2
Sam 5.1-10 and 1 Chr 11.1-9) are submitted to similar scrutiny to show that the enigmatic extra
references to "the blind and the lame" in the Samuel version are connected with a tendentious
account of the story of the house of Eli ("the blind") and with the narrative of David's showing royal
hospitality to Mephibosheth ("the lame"). Then the two versions of the list of David's mighty men
(2 Sam 23.8-37 and 1 Chr 11.10-12.40) are studied in the third chapter to show that there are
connections between the Succession Narrative and Samuel's list and that the account of David's
seeking refuge under Achish in 1 Samuel has been split into two and also that Samuel's account of
David's stay with Achish is more apologetic than Chr's account. Since the Samuel pluses and variants
have links with stories in which blood guilt of David or his throne is involved, a thematic study of
these materials—i.e. most of the History of David's Rise plus the Succession Narrative—is offered in
the fourth and the fifth chapters to show that they form a thematically rather unified narrative and
that they were probably from the same author. Since it is practically impossible for the Chr to
remove very large text blocks from Samuel-Kings together with their subtle cross-references at the
same time, the fact that none of these cross-references remains in Chr forces us to draw the inevitable
conclusion that all those materials alluded to by these cross-references were originally absent from the
Chr's Vorlag
