Scholarship and Debate

Scholars have produced numerous explanations for the tensions between the genealogies of Neh 11 and 1 Chr 9. Knoppers observes that some scholars suspect that the lists derive from a common source, while others conclude that Neh 11 is dependent upon 1 Chr 9 or vice versa (Knoppers, “Sources,” 141–42). Knoppers himself concludes that the texts bear only an indirect relationship to one another (“Sources,” 167). Sparks, on the other hand, argues that the two are parallel lists (Neh 11:3–19 and 1 Chr 9:2–17, 34), and may be entirely independent of one another. In his opinion, whatever resemblances that the two lists bear to one another are due to a “common form of reporting” and not to an interrelationship of the text (Sparks, Genealogies, 338).

To further complicate matters, it is difficult to determine what the term “son” means in these lists. Sparks notes that sometimes the term refers to a biological descendant and other times to the “successor in an office.” He observes that this may be the case with Sallu, the descendant of Meshullam (Sparks, Genealogies, 344).

These texts are significant for another scholarly approach, however. Knoppers observes that the disparity between the two lists provides evidence that different editors were responsible for the two passages (Knoppers, “Sources,” 168), and this is helpful for understanding the broader relationship between the two books.