Books of Chronicles in the context of "Sacred histories"

The history of ancient Israel and Judah spans from the early appearance of the Israelites in Canaan's hill country during the late second millennium BCE, to the establishment and subsequent downfall of the two Israelite kingdoms in the mid-first millennium BCE. This history unfolds within the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. The earliest documented mention of "Israel" as a people appears on the Merneptah Stele, an ancient Egyptian inscription dating back to around 1208 BCE. Archaeological evidence suggests that ancient Israelite culture evolved from the pre-existing Canaanite civilization. During the Iron Age II period, two Israelite kingdoms emerged, covering much of Canaan: the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south.

According to the Hebrew Bible, a "United Monarchy" consisting of Israel and Judah existed as early as the 11th century BCE, under the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon; the great kingdom later was separated into two smaller kingdoms: Israel, containing the cities of Shechem and Samaria, in the north, and Judah, containing Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple, in the south. The historicity of the United Monarchy is debated—as there are no archaeological remains of it that are accepted as consensus—but historians and archaeologists agree that Israel and Judah existed as separate kingdoms by c. 900 BCE and c. 850 BCE, respectively. The kingdoms' history is known in greater detail than that of other kingdoms in the Levant, primarily due to the selective narratives in the Books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, which were included in the Bible.

The Ketuvim (/kətuːˈviːm, kəˈtuːvɪm/; Biblical Hebrew: כְּתוּבִים‎, romanized: Kǝṯuḇim, lit. 'Writings') is the third and final section of the Hebrew Bible, after the Torah ("instruction") and the Nevi'im "Prophets". In English translations of the Hebrew Bible, this section is usually titled "Writings" or "Hagiographa".

In the Ketuvim, 1–2 Chronicles form one book as do Ezra and Nehemiah which form a single unit entitled Ezra–Nehemiah. (In citations by chapter and verse, however, the Hebrew equivalents of "Nehemiah", "I Chronicles" and "II Chronicles" are used, as the system of chapter division was imported from Christian usage.) Collectively, eleven books are included in the Ketuvim.

Rehoboam (/ˌriːəˈboʊ.əm/; Hebrew: רְחַבְעָם‎, Rəḥaḇʿām, transl. "an enlarged people"; Greek: Ροβοάμ, Roboam; Latin: Roboam) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the first king of the Kingdom of Judah after the Northern and Southern kingdoms were divided. He was a son of and the successor to Solomon and a grandson of David.

In the account of I Kings and II Chronicles, Rehoboam saw his rule limited to only the Kingdom of Judah in the south following a rebellion by the ten northern tribes of Israel in 932/931 BCE, which led to the formation of the independent Kingdom of Israel under the rule of Jeroboam in the north.

Nimrod is a biblical figure mentioned in the Book of Genesis and the Books of Chronicles. The son of Cush and thus the great-grandson of Noah, Nimrod was described as a king in the land of Shinar (Lower Mesopotamia). The Bible states that he was "a mighty hunter before the Lord [and] ... began to be mighty in the earth". Nimrod became a symbol of defiance against God.

Biblical and non-biblical traditions identify Nimrod as the ruler associated with the Tower of Babel; Jewish, Christian, and Islamic accounts variously portray him as a tyrant who led its builders, turned people from God, and opposed Abraham, even attempting unsuccessfully to kill him by fire. Over time, legends identified him with other figures like Amraphel, Ninus, or Zoroaster, and credited him with innovations such as wearing the first crown and introducing idolatry.

The Codex Amiatinus, also known as the Jarrow Codex, is considered the best-preserved manuscript of the Latin Vulgate version of the Christian Bible. It was produced around 700 in the northeast of England, at the Benedictine Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey in the Kingdom of Northumbria, now South Tyneside. It was one of three giant single-volume Bibles then made at Monkwearmouth–Jarrow, and is the earliest complete one-volume Latin Bible to survive, only the León palimpsest being older. It is the oldest Bible where all the biblical canon present what would be their Vulgate texts. In 716 it was taken to Italy as a gift for Pope Gregory II. It is named after the location in which it was found in modern times, Monte Amiata in Tuscany, at the Abbazia di San Salvatore and is now kept at Florence in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana (Laurentian Library).

Designated by siglum A, it is commonly considered to provide the most reliable surviving representation of Jerome's Vulgate text for the books of the New Testament, and most of the Old Testament. As was standard in all Vulgate Bibles until the ninth century, the Book of Baruch is absent as is the Letter of Jeremiah, the text of the Book of Lamentations following the end of Jeremiah without a break. Ezra–Nehemiah is presented as a single book, the texts of the canonical Book of Ezra and Book of Nehemiah being continuous. Similarly the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles are each presented as a single book.