An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 69: The Bumper Book of Hillbilly Names (1 Chronicles 1-5)

1 Chronicles 1-5
The Bumper Book of Hillbilly Names.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

1 Chronicles 1

“And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be mighty upon the earth”

My understanding of Chronicles is that it is a companion piece to Kings, going over the same ground in a different fashion. Possibly it is the “book of chronicles of the kings of Judah” mentioned throughout Kings, it’ll be interesting to see if it fills in the gaps.

This chapter is little more than a list of names, a genealogy from Adam, through Noah, Abraham and ending with the dukes of Edom. There’s really not a lot to comment on here, although I went back to Genesis 5 to compare the lineage from Adam to Noah – it’s the same, but spelling is different. Enos becomes Enosh, Cainan becomes Kenan and Enoch becomes Henoch between Genesis and Chronicles.

1 Chronicles 2

“And the sons of Carmi; Achar, the troubler of Israel, who transgressed in the thing accursed.”

I want to know more about Achar – what was it that he did to transgress? This chapter is another long list of begetting. It starts with the twelve sons of Jacob/Israel, but most of the rest are unfamiliar, and although it starts with the line of Judah is seems to skip to a different line, and to my (dodgy) memory it’s not one we’ve followed before. It also ends with a list of tribes that haven’t, to my knowledge, have not featured before; Zorites, Shumathites, Tirathites and so on.

1 Chronicles 3

“Now these were the sons of David, which were born unto him in Hebron; the firstborn Amnon, of Ahinoam the Jezreelitess; the second Daniel, of Abigail the Carmelitess:”

More lineage, this time from David, through Solomon and down through the kings from Kings to Josiah and his family. There was a David mentioned in last chapter, albeit with less fanfare than I would have expected, which is perhaps where the link between the two chapters lies.

1 Chronicles 4

“The sons of Shelah the son of Judah were, Er the father of Lecah, and Laadah the father of Mareshah, and the families of the house of them that wrought fine linen, of the house of Ashbea,”

More lineages (the chapter even uses the word “genealogy”), and divisions of tribes. This covers Judah, and a bit of the tribes of Simeon, and is slightly more detailed that previously as some tribes and people even get a little bit of detail, like the sons of Shelah and their linen production given above. Otherwise it strikes me that these chapters would be a good resource to mine if you were naming a clan of hillbillies.

1 Chronicles 5

“And the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, and the spirit of Tilgathpilneser king of Assyria, and he carried them away, even the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh, and brought them unto Halah, and Habor, and Hara, and to the river Gozan, unto this day.”

Okay, so I think I’m getting the measure of how this book is going to go for a while, as this chapter looks at the tribe of Reuben, and also touches on the Gadites and half of Manasseh, whom as I recall were the tribes that settled on the near side of the Jordan before crossing into the promised land, and it covers their lineages and some history from the Exodus down to the point when they get carried away by the Assyrians, after some fighting with the Hagarites. There’s a bit more expansion on history here beyond a list of names begetting other names, but not a great deal of detail. My guess is that the other tribes will get the same treatment in future chapters.