Why Did the Chronicler Refuse the Language of Empire?

Why was Chronicles composed entirely in Hebrew in a multilingual Persian-period world where Aramaic had become the principal language of imperial administration? I argue that the Chronicler's linguistic choice was not merely conservative or traditional but formed part of a broader strategy of identity construction. By comparing Chronicles with the Aramaic sections of Ezra–Nehemiah and Daniel, as well as biblical reflections on language in Genesis and Nehemiah, the paper shows that Chronicles deliberately constructs a linguistically unified textual world. Drawing on sociolinguistic theory and spatial approaches to identity, it proposes that Hebrew functions as symbolic space alongside genealogy, temple, Jerusalem, and "All Israel." Rather than resisting the Persian Empire directly, the Chronicler brackets imperial linguistic space in order to recenter communal memory, continuity, and peoplehood within an Israelite framework.

Dr. Eran Gluska is an independent scholar based in Tel Aviv, Israel, whose research focuses on the Book of Chronicles, the history and literature of Ancient Israel, Persian-period Yehud, identity formation, biblical history, and the relationship between literary, historical, geographical, archaeological, and ideological approaches to the Hebrew Bible.

He completed his PhD at Tel Aviv University in 2025 with a dissertation entitled "A Historical and Geopolitical View on Chronicles: Spaces of Identity in the Persian Period." His doctoral research was conducted under the supervision of Prof. Oded Lipschits of Tel Aviv University and Prof. Ehud Ben Zvi of the University of Alberta.

A central strand of Gluska's scholarship concerns the ways in which the Book of Chronicles constructs and negotiates collective identity. His research examines geographical and symbolic spaces, language choice, ethnicity, communal boundaries, genealogy, royal narratives, Jerusalem and temple ideology, and the Chronicler's representation of "All Israel" within the social and political world of Persian-period Yehud.

His recent scholarship also explores the relationship between Hebrew and Aramaic in the Persian imperial context and the ideological significance of the Chronicler's continued use of Hebrew. His work combines historical and literary analysis with questions of identity formation, historical geography, biblical archaeology, collective memory, and the social world of postexilic biblical literature.