This
conclusion, derived from the contents themselves, is supported by
an important positive datum, namely, the citation in 2Chronicles
xxiv. 27 of the Midrash [A.V. "Story"] of the Book of Kings, and
in xiii. 22 of the Midrash of the prophet Iddo. Ewald is undoubtedly
right when he recognises here the true title of the writing elsewhere
named simply the Book of Kings. Of course the commentators assert
that the word Midrash, which occurs in the Bible only in these two
passages, there means something quite different from what it means
everywhere else; but the natural sense suits admirably well and
in Chronicles we find ourselves fully within the period of the
scribes. Midrash is the consequence of the conservation of all
the relics of antiquity, a wholly peculiar artificial reawakening
of dry bones, especially by literary means, as is shown by
the preference for lists of names and numbers. Like ivy it
overspreads the dead trunk with extraneous life, blending old and
new in a strange combination. It is a high estimate of tradition
that leads to its being thus modernised; but in the process it is
twisted and perverted, and set off with foreign accretions in the
most arbitrary way.
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