I’ve already raised the question of why the Bible includes two versions of the history of Israel. A clue as to why we have different versions can be discovered by looking at the two different accounts of the reign of Solomon, traditionally regarded as one of Israel’s greatest kings.
The books of Kings and Chronicles not only have different versions of the reign of Solomon, they portray Solomon in entirely conflicting ways. In Chronicles Solomon is a man of peace (his name in Hebrew – שְׁלֹמֹה, Shlomoh – actually sounds very similar to the Hebrew word for “peace” – shalom) and was therefore enabled to build the Temple in Jerusalem instead of his father David who was prevented from doing so because he had shed blood (1 Chroncles 28:3). However, in the Kings version, Solomon also shed quite a lot of blood, including murdering his brother Adonijah who was first in line to the throne, and Joab, David’s general and a supporter of Adonijah’s claim to the throne (1 Kings 2:24-34). In fact, the story of Solomon’s accession to the throne in Kings begins with a series of murders ordered by Solomon. Hardly a “man of peace”!
While Chronicles devotes a great deal of space to describing the building of the Temple as one of Solomon’s greatest achievements, picturing him as a godly man, Kings is careful to point out that Solomon spent more time and effort building his own palace (13 years) than he did in building the Temple (7 years) picturing him as self-interested (1 Kings 6:38; 7:1). Kings is almost meticulous in describing how Solomon repeatedly broke the laws in Deuteronomy which set out how a king was to be appointed and reign. Chronicles on the other hand doesn’t have a bad word to say about him, and omits all this negative material found in Kings. Reading the two accounts is almost like reading descriptions of two different kings!
So why is this? How could it be that these two versions of Israel’s history contain such glaringly different views of one of their most famous kings? The answer may be in the Kings account of Solomon’s bloody accession to the throne. While ordering the murders of Adonijah and Joab, Solomon specifically spared Abiathar the priest who had also supported Adonijah’s claim to the throne:
The king [Solomon] said to the priest Abiathar, “Go to Anathoth, to your estate; for you deserve death. But I will not at this time put you to death, because you carried the ark of the Lord GOD before my father David, and because you shared in all the hardships my father endured.” So Solomon banished Abiathar from being priest to the LORD, thus fulfilling the word of the LORD that he had spoken concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh. (1 Kings 2:26-27)
In his place Solomon appointed Zadok as priest (1 Kings 2:35). We don’t hear much about Abiathar after that, or what happened when he got to Anathoth, except we read that centuries later Jeremiah the prophet was “of the priests who were in Anathoth” (Jeremiah 1:1). The most likely explanation for this connection to Anathoth was that Abiathar continued to minister there as a priest and this priestly order continued to the time of Jeremiah. Interestingly, many scholars have noted that Jeremiah’s “writing style” including his use of certain key words and phrases is very similar to the book of Kings and the other books in what we call “the Deuteronomistic History” (Joshua, Judges and Samuel). Some scholars argue that the book of Kings was actually written, or edited, by priests/scribes who belonged to this priestly community set up by Abiathar in Anathoth. Chronicles, on the other hand, was probably written by priests/scribes who descended from Zadok. The Anathoth priests were descended from a supporter of Adonijah, while the Zadokite priests were descended from a supporter of Solomon. Two groups of priests/scribes/scholars with two entirely different perspectives on the reign of Solomon and therefore two different versions of his reigns and opinions as to whether he was a good or bad king. Remarkably, both accounts of Israel’s history were preserved, and both were eventually bound together in the book we call “the Bible”!
מִקְרָא Mikra: Biblical studies 
“While Chronicles devotes a great deal of space to describing the building of the Temple as one of Solomon’s greatest achievements, picturing him as a godly man, Kings is careful to point out that Solomon spent more time and effort building his own palace (13 years) than he did in building the Temple (7 years) picturing him as self-interested (1 Kings 6:38; 7:1).”
Hmm, I concur. It is my estimation that in Kings the whole affair of Solomon’s building a house for the Lord is presented as smokescreen for him exploiting the heavily taxed people of Israel to build his own house, the palace of the king, the temple is a lot smaller and the reference to gilding instead of pure gold ornamentation suggests another deliberate scam. The people of Israel were bamboozled over the palace and the closing comment after the dedication of the temple that they blessed the king and went back to their tents is pure irony when we contrast tents with a palace. Chronicles rewrites the account by adding all efforts made for the palace to those for the temple: it just mentions the palace in passing but suggests all expensive building details are done for the temple. Weird, unless it is an intentional whitewash.
Clasina, I like your take that going “back to their tents is pure irony when we contrast tents with a palace.” You may be interested in the extensive treatment of this phrase in Homan, Michael M., To your tents, O Israel! The Terminology, Function, Form, and Symbolism of Tents in the Hebrew Bble and the Ancient Near East. Leiden: Brill, 2002.
He also deals with the variations in the LXX, which I’m sure will also appeal to you.
Thank you Stephen,
I managed to find the full pdf and will have a good weekend of reading ahead. The author seems to have been a bass player in a punk band, not your run-of-the-mill theologian, so I should be in for a treat then.
Well, though highly informative regarding tents and their symbolism in ancient literature, it turned out less satisfactory regarding variations in LXX Greek, he even made a blatant mistake in regarding the Greek word σκηνὴ for tent when discussing the fate of the 10 concubines in 2Samuel 16:22. He posits that unlike in Hebrew, where he mentions 13 forms, a tent is nearly always rendered with that word σκηνὴ, but he fails to mention another meaning of that word in Greek, namely an acting stage or podium. In the story of the concubines it is safe to take that alternative meaning serious as he “went in to his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel.” The underlying prophecy in 2Samuel 12:11-12 makes that even more clear:
11Thus says the Lord, Behold, I will raise up against thee evil out of thy house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and will give them to thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun. 12For thou didst it secretly, but I will do this thing in the sight of all Israel, and before the sun.
Interestingly the prophecy seems to mention David’s real wives while it is fulfilled with his lesser wives, the concubines. Maybe a bit far-fetched to suggest David intentionally left behind these concubines in order to thwart the prophecy, but I like to think of that possibility not being beyond his slyness.