ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes the material common to Samuel–Kings and Chronicles as a history of Judah. He suggests that McKenzie's request for closer definition, calling it in more studies the 'Book of Two Houses'. The author argues that the note about the killing of Goliath by Elhanan as one of several large Philistines disposed of by 'David and his servants' is prior to the extended narrative in 1 Sam. Steven McKenzie has made several acute observations about his proposal in Kings without Privilege that Samuel–Kings and Chronicles were largely independent, diverging amplifications of a shared source. McKenzie may overstate matters when he claims that an independent history of Judah 'could not' have begun with the story of Saul's death. McKenzie has himself contributed to a wave of studies which have excluded from their reconstructed Deuteronomistic History substantial blocks of the Former Prophets which earlier scholars had reckoned among its sources.
