s are altogether historical, and are chiefly
confined to the lives and actions of the Jewish kings, who in general
were a parcel of rascals: but these are matters with which we have no
more concern than we have with the Roman emperors, or Homer's account of
the Trojan war. Besides which, as those books are anonymous, and as we
know nothing of the writer, or of his character, it is impossible for
us to know what degree of credit to give to the matters related therein.
Like all other ancient histories, they appear to be a jumble of fable
and of fact, and of probable and of improbable things, but which
distance of time and place, and change of circumstances in the world,
have rendered obsolete and uninteresting.

The chief use I shall make of those books will be that of comparing
them with each other, and with other parts of the Bible, to show the
confusion, contradiction, and cruelty in this pretended word of God.

The first book of Kings begins with the reign of Solomon, which,
according to the Bible chronology, was B.C. 1015; and the second
book ends B.C. 588, being a little after the reign of Zedekiah, whom
Nebuchadnezzar, after taking Jerusalem and conquering the Jews, carried
captive to Babylon. The two books include a space of 427 years.

The two books of Chronicles are an history of the same times, and in
general of the same persons, by another author; for it would be absurd
to suppose that the same author wrote the history twice over. The first
book of Chronicles (after giving the genealogy from Adam to Saul, which
takes up the first nine chapters) begins with the reign of David; and
the last book ends, as in the last book of Kings, soon, after the reign
of Zedekiah, about B.C. 588. The last two verses of the last chapter
bring the history 52 years more forward, that is, to 536. But these
verses do not belong to the book, as I shall show when I come to speak
of the book of Ezra.

The two books of Kings, besides the history of Saul, David, and Solomon,
who reigned over all Israel, contain an abstract of the lives of
seventeen kings, and one queen, who are stiled kings of Judah; and
of nineteen, who are stiled kings of Israel; for the Jewish nation,
immediately on the death of Solomon, split into two parties, who chose
separate kings, and who carried on most rancorous wars against each
other.

These two books are little more than a history of assassinations,
treachery, and wars. The cruelties that the Jews had