VII.III.3.  In this case also we are able to discern considerable shades and gradations in the sources the reviser had at command.  In the Books of Kings for the first time we meet with a series of short notices which arrest attention, in the surroundings they are in, by their brevity and directness of statement and the terseness of their form, and have the semblance of contemporary records.  In spite of their looseness of arrangement these form the real basis of our connected knowledge of the period; and the religious chronological framework is regularly filled in with them (e.g. 1Kings xiv.-xvi.); their loose connection and neutral tone made it specially easy for later editors to interweave with them additions of their own, as has actually been done to no small extent. 1

***************************************** 1.  The passage discussed above, 1Kings xi. 1 seq., gives a good example of this; we at once pick out the terse )z ybnh wgw’’ from the barren diffuseness surrounding it. ****************************************

These valuable notes commence even with Solomon, though here they are largely mixed with anecdotic chaff.  They are afterwards found principally, almost exclusively, in the series of Judah.  Several precise dates point to something of the nature of annals, 2

**************************************** 2. 5th of Rehoboam (1Kings xiv. 25); 23rd of Jehoash (2Kings xii, 6); 14th of Hezekiah (2Kings xviii. 13); 18th of Josiah (2Kings xxii. 3); 4th and 5th of Solomon (1Kings vi. 37, 38).  These dates occur, it is true, partly in circumstantial Jewish narratives, but these are intimately related to the brief notices spoken of above, and appear to be based on them.  It may be surmised that such definite numbers, existing at one time in much greater abundance, afforded the data for an approximate calculation of the figures on which the systematic chronology is built up.  These single dates at any rate are not themselves parts of the system.  The same is true of the statements of the age of the Jewish kings when they ascended the throne.  These also perhaps go back to the “Annals.”  The )Z is found 1Kings iii. 16, viii. 1, 12, ix. 11, xi. 7, xvi. 21, xxii. 50; 2Kings viii. 22, xii. 18, xiv. 8, xv. 16, xvi. 5. *****************************************

and with these the characteristic then might be thought to be connected, which frequently introduces the short sentences, and as it now stands is generally meaningless.  In what circles these records were made, we can scarcely even surmise.  Could we be certain that the reference to the royal temple of Judah, which is a prevailing feature of them, is due not to selection at a later time but to the interest of the first hands, we should be led to think of the priesthood at Jerusalem.  The loyalist, perfectly official tone would agree very well with this theory, for the sons of Zadok were, down to Josiah’s time, nothing else than