Royal Speeches Research Articles

A Speechless Monarch: Early China’s Battle for Intellectual Authority

Abstract Although the earliest political text from early China, namely the Canon of Documents, comprises speeches attributed to ancient kings, for most of the Eastern Zhou period (770–255 BCE) monarchs remained conspicuously silent. This article surveys the instances of the rulers’ speeches in major historical collections and a sample of philosophical texts from the Warring States period. I demonstrate that the rulers’ voice in these texts is overwhelmingly confined to short questions, approval of proposed policies, or other insignificant uttering. I argue that this silence was deliberately built into the texts by their composers, so as to preserve the intellectual authority in the hands of the educated elite. It was only with the imperial unification of 221 BCE and the dramatic change in the balance of power between the emperors and the intellectuals that the royal speech regained its prominence and political importance.

Transformation of Religious Education System in Postcolonial Morocco

This article examines the changes in the Islamic education system in the Kingdom of Morocco during the period of independent development. The primary objective of the study is to explore the unique Moroccan experience of integrating two distinct educational systems: Islamic and secular. The Moroccan practice may serve as a valuable example in light of the pressing issues of countering Islamist radicalism and extremism. The paper discusses the historical context, the reasons for governmental and societal attention to this topic, and the key stages in the transformation of the religious education system. An analysis of the prospects for Islamic education in contemporary Moroccan society is also provided. The research draws on official documents from the Moroccan Ministry of Education, national legislation, and royal speeches addressing this issue. It is demonstrated that throughout the second half of the 20th century and into the early decades of the 21st century, Moroccan authorities viewed the Islamic education system as a primary tool for influencing the political sphere, a key institution for shaping national culture, and a means to strengthen loyalty to the state. It is asserted that reforms in the Islamic education system in Morocco have enabled it to become more modern and relevant while simultaneously preserving the cultural traditions and uniqueness of the country.

THE DISCOURSE OF TOLERANCE AND INTERFAITH COEXISTENCE IN THE KINGDOM OF MOROCCO

In this research, focused on coexistence and tolerance between religions in the Kingdom of Morocco, a linguistic and semantic definition was given to the meaning of tolerance. This research also confirms that tolerance means mutual respect and not compromise or leniency, and illustrates that Islam and Quran called for tolerance. In fact, in this research we have shed the light on the fact that Islam was the first to call for coexistence and tolerance. We have illustrated as well the efforts extended by the Kingdom of Morocco in calling for tolerance, and we have referred therein to the His Majesty the King, Mohammed VI’s speech, especially the speech His Majesty gave during the Pope Francis Visit to the Kingdom of Morocco in March 2019. In this research we have focused on the content of the Royal speech and the strong meanings it contains regarding the importance of dialogue, coexistence and tolerance between religions, all within a context of a comprehensive humane brotherhood

Oman Royal Speeches Corpus: Compilation and Analysis

For many years, researchers have directed their attention primarily toward developing written corpora, with the consequence that spoken corpora have consistently remained rare compared to written ones. The laborious transcription and annotation tasks make creating and maintaining spoken corpora a challenging endeavor. This project aims to build a transcribed corpus of Oman Royal Speeches and make it available online through a custom-made concordance tool. The study also aims to test the corpus for fundamental corpus-based lexical, stylistic, and discourse-analytical implementations. Compiling the Oman Royal Speeches Corpus is meant to fill a gap by contributing to the development of Arabic spoken language corpora and make available a research tool that can facilitate corpus-based research, uses, and applications in various areas of investigation. The corpus-building process underwent a five-stage process, including data capture, data processing, concordance tool development, testing and evaluation, and online deployment. With 98,511 tokens, the resultant corpus represents a searchable archive of Royal Speeches with a built-in online concordance tool that allows multiple search types and Keyword-in-Context query result display. The corpus has been tested for various corpus-analytic uses and has been found to provide significant findings in these areas. Thus, it has the potential to function as a reliable and authentic record and source of information for researchers and specialists in various fields, as well as a research tool allowing for various applications and analyses in language-related topics.

Discursive Strategies Utilized in King Abdullah II's Speeches during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Addressing the Nation

While several researchers have investigated the linguistic features of Presidential and Royal speeches, there is a gap in the literature regarding discursive strategies used in the speeches of Presidents and Monarchs during crises. The study aims at identifying the main discursive strategies used by His Majesty King Abdullah II in addressing Jordanians during COVID-19. Therefore, the study adopted the Positive Discourse Analysis approach (PDA) to investigate the usage of discursive strategies in three speeches of King Abdullah II during COVID-19. The study revealed that the King used nomination, prediction, argumentation, perspectivization and intensification, and mitigation strategies in appeasing Jordanians and conveying his directives to the government regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

Beyond the Sharia State: Public Celebrations and Everyday State-Making in the Malay Islamic Monarchy of Brunei Darussalam

AbstractThis article describes post-colonial state-making in the absolute monarchy of Brunei. After detailing the Sultan’s powers, contextualizing the monarchy’s stability, and introducing its state ideology, Melayu Islam Beraja (“MIB”), the article addresses formal laws, such as Brunei’s Constitution and a new Islamic penal code, which are symbolically significant for the MIB state’s (self-)legitimation but have little immediate relevance to many Bruneians’ lives. The article, therefore, shifts its focus to normative spheres that receive much less scholarly attention but, arguably, should—namely state-rituals like the Sultan’s three-week-long birthday celebrations. These, and other non-legal spheres, including, also, royal speeches, contain normative aspects that reflect and impact key developments in the MIB state. Grounded in the Royal Birthday’s and Islamic penal code’s analysis, the final part problematizes stereotypes of Brunei being a “sharia state” vis-à-vis its multidirectional normative messages and ability to hybridize broad cultural influences for the ruling system’s benefit.

Using Hallidayan systemic functional linguistic approach to analyse the linguistic gyration of royal speeches in Ghana

This paper investigates the relationship that exists in the linguistic gyration of the annual speeches delivered by Otumfo Osei Tutu and Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panyin, who are both paramount Ghanaian royal chiefs of the Ashanti Kingdom and the Akyem Abuakwa Kingdom respectively. Although these prominent chiefs have delivered several speeches on several times and occasions and at different places and settings, this study paid particular attention to and selected only speeches that they delivered in academic environments, specifically, in universities in Ghana. These annual speeches used for the study were therefore those that were delivered at the University of Professional Studies and University of Education, Winneba campuses respectively. The analysis of the data was done based on the Hallidayan's Systemic Functional Linguistic approach. The analysis reveals the incorporation of the ideology and power in the language of the royal speeches of the two paramount chiefs in Ghana and its influence on the university administrations and communities. Subsequently, the modality meta-function showed that the chiefs selected modal verbs to affirm and fulfill the tasks given them. From the data, it is evident that the traditional rulers can use language to communicate their strength, capabilities on the political administration and education spheres on the university communities.

THE BEGINNING OF CULTURAL MEMORY PRODUCTION IN CHINA AND THE MEMORY POLICY OF THE ZHOU ROYAL HOUSE DURING THE WESTERN ZHOU PERIOD

AbstractThis article explores how the memory of the conquest of Shang and the rise of the first Zhou kings was transmitted during the early centuries of the Zhou dynasty, specifically as it was reflected in inscriptions on excavated bronze vessels and bells from the Western Zhou period (ca. mid-eleventh to early eighth century b.c.e.). Approaching these inscribed objects and their texts from the perspective of the theories of social memory and cultural memory reveals that commemorating the foundational past of the dynasty became part of an intentional policy of the Zhou royal house as early as the first half of the tenth century b.c.e. It demonstrates that by the mid-tenth century b.c.e., a stable narrative emphasizing Kings Wen 文 and Wu 武 as the founding fathers of the Zhou dynasty was established at the expense of King Cheng 成, whose role was gradually downplayed following the general logic of lineage organization, according to which the commemoration of the earliest common ancestors serves as the foundation of corporate integrity in a network of patrilineally related families. It shows that most of the men who included such commemorations in inscriptions indeed belonged to the royal patrilineal network, wherein they occupied the highest positions. It further exemplifies that the royal house cultivated the memory of the first kings using various media, including rituals, utensils, royal speeches, and inscriptions. From the analysis of such inscriptions, we can infer that that the foundational memory of the Zhou dynasty was usually reactivated in the context of political negotiations, some of which included addressing lineage outsiders. Finally, it shows that both the royal house and other metropolitan lineages modified the foundational narrative according to their current needs. This article thus contributes both to tracing the roots of the early Chinese historiographic tradition and to understanding memory production in a society as an ongoing process of negotiations and adaptations.

Harkhuf’s Autobiographical Inscriptions. A Study in Old Kingdom Monumental Rhetoric

Harkhuf’s facade, inscribed with diverse types of texts, is a unitary composition. Inscriptional layout on that facade is highly complex and contributes directly to the rhetoric of the texts as inscriptions. The facade inscribes royal agency at the place, in the far south, that is farthest away from the Memphite center. Patterns of motion, out of the Valley and back to the Residence, are emphasized spatially on the wall. Along with an episodic narrative mode in the event autobiography, inscribed royal speech set Harkhuf and his monument as examples for posterity. As other facades subsequently inscribed at Qubbet el-Hawa demonstrate, this example was emulated indeed. Part I. Texts, genres, forms The architrave: offering formulae, ideal autobiography and other ritual texts Right and left sides of facade: expanded titulary and event autobiography The outer right of the facade: the royal letter Part II. The inscribed facade Verbal rhetoric: the facade as a unitary inscription Inscriptional layout on the facade The inscription as an event Harkhuf’s reception and emulation in inscribed facades at Qubbet al-Hawa

Harkhuf’s Autobiographical Inscriptions. A study in Old Kingdom Monumental Rhetoric

Summary Harkhuf’s facade, inscribed with diverse types of texts, is a unitary composition. Inscriptional layout on that facade is highly complex and contributes directly to the rhetoric of the texts as inscriptions. The facade inscribes royal agency at the place, in the far south, that is farthest away from the Memphite center. Patterns of motion, out of the Valley and back to the Residence, are emphasized spatially on the wall. Along with an episodic narrative mode in the event autobiography, inscribed royal speech set Harkhuf and his monument as examples for posterity. As other facades subsequently inscribed at Qubbet el-Hawa demonstrate, this example was emulated indeed. Part I. Texts, genres, forms The architrave: offering formulae, ideal autobiography and other ritual texts Right and left sides of facade: expanded titulary and event autobiography The outer right of the facade: the royal letter Part II. The inscribed facade Verbal rhetoric: the facade as a unitary inscription Inscriptional layout on the facade The inscription as an event Harkhuf’s reception and emulation in inscribed facades at Qubbet al-Hawa

Royal Interventions in the Public Discourse on Immigration: Rhetorical Topoi on Immigration in the New Year’s Speeches of the Scandinavian Monarchs

This paper explores how the Scandinavian monarchs work through the issue of immigration in their New Year’s speeches during the years 1972–2017. Exploring immigration debate through the royal speeches provides new understanding of the issue, because the opinions of the monarch are supposed to be apolitical. Royal rhetoric is expected to embrace the whole nation, and not evoke debate. Thus, the New Year’s speeches, offer a unique insight into how identity and immigration are worked through and negotiated nationally. Comparing Denmark, Norway and Sweden is particularly revealing, because these countries share dominant traits and circumstances such as religion, institutional and political systems, common history, party dominance, size and more. In spite of this, they differ significantly in the way they deal with citizenship regulation and the way they debate immigration. Exploring how the royal speeches use different topoi and constitute nationhood and immigrants, provide an understanding for the values and moral foundations that the differences in rhetoric and regulation is built on. The study reveals that the speeches of the Danish Queen constitute Denmark as a rooted nation, the Norwegian King constitutes Norway as a rights nation, and the Swedish King constitute Sweden as an immigrant nation.

Principles of Sufficiency Economy and Sustainable Development

The concerns regarding the direction of national development of Thailand and the problems caused, both directly and indirectly, by the process of national development led by H. M. Late Thai King Bhumibol Aduljadej to begin speaking about sufficiency economy. His Majesty’s first remarks on SE came out during a speech before the students of Kasetsart University on July 18, 1974. On December 4, 1974, on the occasion of His Majesty’s birthday anniversary the King’s royal speech emphasized step-by-step development on the basis of self-reliance, having enough to live and to eat, moderation, reasonableness, and self-immunity. Also, H. M. the King’s royal statement significantly raised consciousness of Thai people to be prudent, to realize steps of development which are academically correct, and to adhere to morals for every conduct of life. These all are known as “Sufficiency Economy (SE)”. The King’s thoughts regarding SE kept reappearing in his speeches and lectures with clear explanation of socio-economic and political contexts. However, the academics and economists had differing views regarding the sufficiency economy being part of mainstream economics and its significance amidst globalization and fast-pace economic development.

Law-making in Jordan: Family Law Reform and the Supreme Justice Department

Using Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice as a theoretical framework, I establish links between the structure of the Jordanian legal system, processes of reforming family law between 2001 and 2010, and the development of the content of family law. The dāʾirat qāḍī al-quḍāt, the Supreme Justice Department (SJD), is a state institution that enjoys considerable autonomy in overseeing the sharīʿa courts that apply Islamic family law. As the Jordanian king chose not to participate in the reform process, the SJD came to dominate the reform process, which concluded with the issuing of the 2010 family law. Its control over the reform process allowed it to influence the content of the law. This article is based on semi-structured interviews as well as written sources such as Jordanian family laws, procedural laws, minutes of parliamentary debates, royal speeches, and relevant statistics.

Competing Notions of Judicialization in Thailand

This article examines the politics of judicialization in Thailand between 2006 and 2014, looking at the ways in which the judiciary became regularly embroiled in politics during this extremely contentious period. It takes as its starting point important royal speeches of 2006, and the interpretation of those speeches offered by the prominent academic and social critic Thirayudh Boonmee. Several key judicial decisions which had lasting political consequences are closely examined, including the 2006 election annulment, the 2007 banning of Thai Rak Thai, the removal of pro-Thaksin Shinawatra prime ministers Samak Sundaravej and Yingluck Shinawatra in 2008 and 2014, Thaksin’s conviction on corruption-related charges in 2008 and the judicial seizure of his assets in 2010. Some of the questions posed in this paper are as follows: Does judicialization inevitably mean conservative attempts to curtail the power of politicians and undermine electoral politics? Are judges working on behalf of Thai society, or in alignment with certain vested interests? Could greater judicial activism serve progressive social and political causes in the Thai context? The paper argues that Thailand’s “judicialization” is a complex phenomenon: judgements made by different courts, in different cases and at different times need to be scrutinized on their individual merits.

On Shu 書 (Documents) and the origin of the Shang shu 尚書 (Ancient Documents) in light of recently discovered bamboo slip manuscripts

AbstractIn light of the recent discovery of Warring States period bamboo slips, now in the collection of Tsinghua University, inscribed with texts described as shu, “documents” or “similar to shu”, this article explores the question of “what were shu?” It suggests that shu can be understood as a literary form apart from the history of the Confucian classic, the Shang shu 尚書 (Ancient Documents) or Shu jing 書經 (Book of Documents) and the Yi Zhou shu 逸周書. Formal characteristics include: shu were – or pretended to be – contemporaneous records; and shu include formal speeches by model kings and ministers from ancient times. Many shu include the expression wang ruo yue 王若曰, which is also found in bronze inscriptions, where it indicates that a royal speech was read aloud by an official. Thus, the literary form originated with the practice of composing speeches in writing before they were read out in formal ceremonies, with a bamboo slip copy presented to the officials addressed. Later shu were fictional compositions, written in the style of these ancient documents.

A silent presence: the English king in parliament in the fourteenth century*

Although it has long been accepted that the medieval English parliament was very much the ‘king's parliament’, little attention has been devoted to the king's presence in the assembly and its significance. Edward II and Edward III allowed parliament to meet without them on several occasions. With the political community reacting against increasingly frequent royal absences by the early thirteen-forties, Edward III and his successors were forced to accept the importance of working personally with parliament. The manner in which the king handled this presence, in particular the use of the royal speech, was indicative of his management of the political community as a whole and the success (or otherwise) of his kingship.

The Long Parliament of Charles II by Annabel Patterson

217 Over the years, I have written at least as many words on Swift’s relations with the Oxford ministry, and his writings on its behalf, especially The Conduct of the Allies, as anyone else has done. I would have been immensely assisted to have had this volume at my disposal. J. A. Downie Goldsmiths, University of London ANNABEL PATTERSON. The Long Parliament of Charles II. New Haven: Yale, 2008. Pp. vii ⫹ 283. $45. It is probably best to read the last chapter of Ms. Patterson’s book first. Here she illuminates the eighteenth-century contexts in which a distinct genre of parliamentary history developed, and she makes a compelling case for the historian and ‘‘country’’ writer James Ralph as a contributor to Richard Chandler’s History and Proceedings of the House of Commons and editor of Anchitell Grey’s Debates of the House of Commons. This chapter demonstrates the clear rewards to be gleaned from an approach that ignores the artificial boundaries between the disciplines of history and English, and combines a close and careful reading of texts with a nuanced understanding of context. The rest of the book shamefully obfuscates those rewards, and may confirm those historians who seek to defend ‘‘their’’ territory from incursions by literary scholars in their erroneous opinions. The problem with the book, thus, is not one of simple methodology. It lies in the assumptions that are made about how the methodology should shape the work. Ms. Patterson is very clear about what she will not do. She will not be like ‘‘Proper historians.’’ They develop ‘‘a chronological narrative’’ and they do so ‘‘by way of effective summary, with the sources, for the sake of efficiency and clarity, relegated to footnote references, which they prefer procedurally curt and sometimes bundled.’’ (Given the number of ‘‘Proper historians’’ she thanks it can only be presumed that this characterization is knowingly parodic, but this does not stop her erecting her own position in contradistinction to it.) Ms. Patterson will instead concentrate more precisely on the sources themselves, and seek ‘‘to hear the voices of those who observed the Long Parliament.’’ Obviously there is nothing wrong with this: it reminds one of the utopian, but nonetheless insightful, adage that you should ‘‘go on reading till you can hear people talking.’’ But putting this method into action leads, for Ms. Patterson, to an oddly parcellated account. The second section of the book comprises three chapters that examine in turn the King’s speeches, memoirs, and what she calls ‘‘scofflaw pamphlets’’ as sources for parliamentary history. Again and again the reader longs for a greater integration of this analysis into a whole history of Charles II’s Long Parliament, which was called in 1661 and eventually dissolved in 1679. Instead , in these early chapters, while there are some occasions on which the sources are brought into contact with one another, the dominant focus on a single type of source puts the reader to a great deal of work for not much gain. At the end of the chapter on the King’s speeches, for example, we are told that ‘‘the story that the royal speeches in sequence and in context tell is entirely consonant with the larger account of the Long Parliament’’ offered at the beginning of the book. This story is 218 one in which ‘‘initial goodwill on the parts of both king and parliament was soon squandered by the Second Dutch War, then briefly rebuilt in 1670 (at least in terms of Supplies granted), then dissipated again with the deeper distrust engendered by the Third Dutch War and fear of the king’s engagements with France.’’ To tell an unsurprising story twice by different means requires serious justification. So what ‘‘peculiar’’ light do the King’s speeches throw on to events? ‘‘The persona Charles developed for himself as an orator was so patently in disharmony with events that mistrust grew even as it was urged against.’’ This is a point that might be well made within a more holistic parliamentary history, with the speeches located effectively within a broader account of events. Here the claim is too thin for the pages it captures . The sense that this book...

King Pedro IV of Aragon, royal propaganda and the tradition of royal speechwriting

In the medieval Crown of Aragon it was customary for the corts to begin with a proposicio or opening speech made by the king. These Aragonese royal speeches were not merely confined to a brief summary of the political situation or a series of points to be considered but were elaborately constructed political sermons, in which affairs of state were portrayed in terms of Christian morality and nationalist pride, with the aid of exempla drawn from the Bible and other religious and classical works. An example is the speech made by Pedro IV ‘the Ceremonious’ of Aragon against the rebellion of the Judge of Arborea in Sardinia. A copy of this speech survives written in the king's own hand which raises the interesting question of whether the kings of Aragon were themselves responsible for the ideas expressed in these speeches and for composing them or whether their efforts were confined to reading out propaganda which was primarily the creation of royal officials.

The Representation of Speech in Biblical Hebrew Narrative: A Linguistic Analysis (review)

Book Reviews 153 The Representation ofSpeech in Biblical Hebrew Narrative: A Linguistic Analysis, by Cynthia Miller. Harvard Semitic Museum Monographs 55. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996. 466 pp. $44.95. While the field ofbiblical studies boasts many philologists, there are few linguistically trained biblicists or hebraists. Cynthia Miller is one of these few, and she is proving herself to be among the best of her generation. She has given us a book in which she combines her double-disciplinary knowledge to good advantage. Since linguistic analysis rarely makes easy reading, and this volume is no exception, I will attempt to simplify, at the risk of oversimplifying, Miller's accomplishment. Scholars ofbiblical narrative have noted the importance ofdialogue and other types of speech, and there have been some excellent studies of some aspects of speech in narrative. Miller has provided the most thorough linguistic analysis ofspeech in biblical narrative to date. Calling on grammar and pragmatics, she analyzes the syntax of a particular utterance, the context of that utterance in the conversation, and the broader context of the conversation in the narrative in which it is embedded. After surveying previous literature and presenting the central defmitions with which she will work, Miller analyzes the varieties of indirect speech. These varieties range from the possible recovery of the original locution (reported in indirect speech) to a general sense ofthe gist ofthe speech, to the mere report that speech occurred. The next chapter examines the varieties of direct speech, including the syntactic features of direct quotative frames. Chapter 5 discusses ways in which the forms of direct speech function in conversation and narrative. Chapter 6 deals with discourse-pragmatic functions of the three types ofdirect quotative frames (whether the use of a word other than .,Y.:lN? to introduce speech has significance). Miller uses extensive examples from throughout the Bible, and in the course ofher analysis she helps us realize that the representation ofspeech in narrative is much more complex than we thought. She has categorized many of these complexities according to linguistic models, in grammatical categories. She does not do a form-critical analysis; that is, she does not divide up types ofspeech according to social function (although she does mention royal speech). Future studies might investigate whether certain types of speech correlate with certain linguistic patterns of representation, for example, prose prayer (see M. Greenberg, Biblical Prose Prayer [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983]). Instead ofpresenting a selection of Miller's examples and her analysis of them, it would seem more useful for me to present a single passage-and it happens to be one that Miller does not discuss-that contains a number of complex representations of speech in narrative. The passage is Esther 3:2-4. 154 SHOFAR Summer 1999 Vol. 17,No.4 And all the king's servants at the king's gate were bowing and prostrating themselves to Haman for thus ordered the king concerning him, but Mordecai would not bow and would not prostrate himself. The king's servants at the king's gate said to Mordecai, "Why do you disobey the order of the king?" And when they spoke to him day after day and he did not heed them, they told Haman, to see ifMordecai's words would stand, for he had told them that he was a Jew. Miller's study has shown me just how complex the representation of speech in this passage is. Note, fIrst, that we do not have the actual words of the royal order to bow to Haman, only the fact that there was such an order. The wording of the order is not important; it is the existence ofthe order that the story wants to convey. When Mordecai refuses to bow, he is transgressing a royal order. Direct speech appears in the servants' question to Mordecai, for the precise phrasing oftheir speech has an impact on the narrative. They do not say, "Why do you not bow before Haman?" but rather "Why do you disobey the order of the King?" Their question emphasizes that the issue is obedience to the royal command. Moreover, their question is not a request for information, but an attempt to get Mordecai...

1, 2 Chronicles (review)

Hebrew Studies 38 (1997) 180 Reviews ter really "the supreme truth and guardian of human freedom" and the only thing which unifies culture (p. 149)? Another section of the book is perplexing. On page 132, Craig quotes Martin Luther's comment that he wished Esther and Second Maccabees did not exist at all because they "judaize too greatly and have much pagan impropriety ." Then Craig goes on to write, "His sentiment still finds expression today among both Jewish and Christian commentators." To what sentiment does he refer? Anti-semitism? The wish that these books did not fonn part of the canon? He does not say, but follows with quotations from Bernhard Anderson and Claude Montefiore which are apparently intended to support his assertion. The fonner was published in 1950 while the latter was published in 1899. Hardly "today." Craig is to be commended for the pioneering task of bringing Bakhtin and his important work to the reading of the Bible, and his insights into specific texts, especially those which concern the book's many reversals, are well worth reading. Tighter editing would have made this good book much better. David COller St. John's University Collegeville, MN 56321 1,2 CHRONICLES. By J. A. Thompson. The New American Commentary . Pp. 411. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1994. Cloth. This volume can only be evaluated in the context of the series in which it stands. The New American Commentary is subtitled "An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture." It is aimed at a popular, evangelical Christian audience. According to the editors' preface, all authors in the series "affinn the divine inspiration, inerrancy, complete truthfulness, and full authority of the Bible" (p. 7). Moreover, the perspective of the series is "unapologetically confessional and rooted in the evangelical tradition" (p. 7). The editors list two concerns which comprise the unique contribution of the NAC: its emphasis on the theological unity of each biblical book and of scripture as a whole as well as its conviction that the Bible belongs primarily to the church, so that each work in the series strives to provide practical, applicable exposition for a church setting. The Hebrew Studies 38 (1997) 181 Reviews NAC series uses the New International Version of the Bible, probably the most popular version in evangelical circles, as the basis for its commentary. Finally, the editors' preface explains that issues in contemporary scholarship and technical matters of grammar and syntax are generally relegated to footnotes, the text of the commentary being devoted to exposition. A 25-page introduction covers such topics as the name and place of Chronicles in the canon, textual witnesses, the Chronicler's sources, literary forms attested in the book, authorship, date, historical situation, theological themes and vocabulary, and an outline of the book's contents. Thompson treats Chronicles as a distinct work from Ezra-Nehemiah. He is vague about the date of the book, saying that it could have been written any time in the period 539-180 B.C.E., although he does hint at a preference for the fourth century. About half of the introduction is devoted to the list and discussion of the major theological themes of Chronicles, including "all Israel," the temple and worship, kingship, retribution and repentance, the popular response, messianism, and the repetition of historical patterns. The exposition that follows is well-organized, generally well-written, and easy to follow. It is ironic that this "American" commentary is written by an Australian scholar, particularly since there are a number of evangelical scholars in North America who have focused on Chronicles as their primary area of interest and expertise. One wonders whether this strategy was designed to put some distance between the work's audience and its author after the editors despaired of finding a qualified scholar who would be as conservative as they and their audience. The distance may account for the omission from the bibliography of certain works that might have altered or enhanced the author's treatment (e.g., R. Duke, The Persuasive Appeal of the Chronicler: A Rhetorical Analysis [1990] and M. Throntveit, When Kings Speak: Royal Speech and Royal Prayer in Chronicles [1987]). Thompson's conservatism is evinced primarily in his frequent...