Reading the Bible as a Postexilic Biblical Author Read: The Chronicler's Reading of Biblical Sources

Millions of Christians read the Bible not only to know what happened in ancient biblical times but also to find God's message to them. Consequently, the Bible is the best-selling book of all time. However, scholars have observed that over the past two hundred years, biblical interpretation in the West has traditionally focused mainly on studying what the text meant. For Western biblical scholars, the study of what the Bible means to readers today falls within the realm of theological studies rather than biblical studies. In contrast, Asian biblical interpretation is holistic, studying both what the text meant and what it means. Interestingly, this book demonstrates that long before any modern biblical reading approaches emerged, the Chronicler, as demonstrated in the book of Chronicles, read his biblical sources to actualize the messages of those biblical materials in ways relevant to his postexilic audience. The Chronicler's reading is similar to Asian biblical readings. This book proposes a reading approach that synthesizes the strengths of the Chronicler's reading and two modern biblical reading approaches employed by Asians to achieve the dual aim of biblical interpretation and make biblical reading meaningful and applicable to modern readers.