Channels, Spring 2019

Channels • 2019 • Volume 3 • Number 2 Page 11 books within a collection affects the meaning. The reader is aware of material that has come before and reads the current material in light of that information. When reading any other book, the reader may find a title, a table of contents, chapter titles, and subheadings as aids to understanding the book. This is the idea of the paratext, as explained by Gerard Genette: The literary work consists, exhaustively or essentially, of a text, that is to say (a very minimal definition) in a more or less lengthy sequence of verbal utterances more or less containing meaning. But this text rarely appears in its naked state, without the reinforcement and accompaniment of a certain number of productions, themselves verbal or not, like an author's name, a title, a preface, illustrations. One does not always know if one should consider that they belong to the text or not, but in any case they surround it and prolong it, precisely in order to present it. 61 “Mere” contextuality includes all these elements but does not recognize them as intended by the author of the book. “Meant” contextuality looks at the features of the text as an intentional organization of the material that aids the author’s message. The fact that contextuality as a phenomenon is unavoidable is crucial to this part of the discussion, and the reader should evaluate the material based on the location of that material. Edmon Gallagher, in his article, “The End of the Bible?”, 62 concedes that the message of Chronicles would give warrant to its placement at the end of the Hebrew Bible but claims that the internal and external evidence is not conclusive. Gallagher does not believe external evidence can place Chronicles at the end of the Hebrew Bible before the rabbinic period. 63 He works through the external evidence that places Chronicles at the end and finds that it is inconclusive, as this study has also shown. However, this study disagrees with Gallagher’s conclusion. He argues that because both the internal and external evidence are inconclusive on their own, this position is not the best possible explanation (as seen above). Gallagher sees “mere” contextuality as a better way of explaining the theological implications that come with the location of Chronicles. He believes that the book’s placement was not designed. Gregory Goswell holds a very similar position to Gallagher, adding that the existence of other orders within different faith communities is simply a record of their theological ideas: 64 The book of Chronicles is found in more than one position in ancient canons of Scripture (Hebrew and Greek). The different canonical placements reflect post-authorial evaluations of the book and its contents. Each position has its rationale and potentially contributes to the understanding of readers. There is nothing to indicate that any one position is the earliest or best. In particular, there is no proof that the Chronicler composed his work to sum up and conclude the OT canon… The positioning of a canonical book relative to other books is by no means value-neutral and reflects a construal of the book by ancient readers. In other words, it preserves evidence of the early history of interpretation of the book. The alternate placements of the book of Chronicles reveal that the compilers of these canons viewed its theological and historical meanings in different ways. 65 61 Genette Gérard "Introduction to the Paratext." New Literary History no. 2 (1991): 26 . 62 Edmon L. Gallagher. "The End of the Bible? The position of Chronicles in the Canon." Tyndale Bulletin 65 (2014), 181-199. 63 Ibid. 64 Gregory Goswell. "Putting the Book of Chronicles in its Place." Journal Of The Evangelical Theological Society 60, no. 2: (2015) 283. 65 Ibid.