In class, we talked about how very often the Bible has many tellings of the same story. Usually, these stories are told in different ways to accentuate a different part of the story than previously told. However, in other books of the Bible, some stories are completely left out. For example, the book of Chronicles completely ignores Saul’s kingship and the story of David and Bathsheba. This is intentional as Chronicles is meant to tell of the rebuilding and the return to the promised land. It purposefully leaves out some of the negative things. Chronicles does a very good job of making characters previously mentioned in other books into role models and giving clear messages. I never thought about different books of the Bible in this way. Whenever I considered missing information within stories of the Bible I always assumed that the author of that book did not think that story was important enough to include. However, it makes much more sense that authors of the Bible would repeat stories told in different ways to give off different messages and portray characters in a different light. It is also important to remember that the Bible was not written to be one long narrative, but it was compiled a collection of separate books, so it makes sense that some stories do not contain the same details that others do.
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