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A Short Primer on Crockett’s “A Harmony of Samuel, Kings & Chronicles”

 

William Day Crockett published his Harmony of Samuel, Kings & Chronicles in the 1800’s; yet it is still considered to be a definitive work today. Every Bible student should have a copy of this when studying from this section of the Old Testament. It is incredibly enlightening.

 

Because of the visual nature of Crockett’s book, none of eSword’s tools can completely replicate what Crockett did.Here are the three biggest drawbacks in converting Crockett’s book to eSword modules.

 

First, Crockett subdivided many of his verses; and he only included any portion of a verse once. eSword cannot show portions of verses, so all of Crockett's verse divisions (example: 1Ki 9:24b) have been removed (example: 1Ki 9:24). The result of this is that some of these verses are now listed twice (or more) in the harmony.

 

Secondly, Crockett would occasionally list verses non-consecutively (example: 1Kings 4:21,24,20,25). The eSword Scripture Tooltip Tool will not automate this type of listing, so these verse references have been arranged to be consecutive instead (example: 1Ki 4:20-21, 24-25). These minor deviations from the original are a necessity based on eSword’s content rules. It does not hinder the flow of Crockett's thought in any substantial manner.

 

Finally - and most importantly - the eSword .harx tool only allows for one layer of outline - we’ll call them “lines.” Each line includes one simple paragraph of text (no “hard returns”) and up to 4 harmonized Scriptures. Example:

 

Line 7 - Bk1. Pt. II. 7. (2) Three Accounts of the Descendants of Caleb.

1Chron 2:18-20; 1Chron 2:42-49; 1Chron 2:50-55.

 

or

 

Line 8 - Bk1. Pt. II. 7. (3) The Family of David.

1Chron 1:3-9.

 

e-Sword’s harmony feature nicely displays up to four columns of Scripture text for a rather pleasant experience in comparing each individual pericope, but the eSword experience nearly obliterates any big picture thinking. Here is how the user would see those two entries in Crockett’s printed “Harmony....”

 

----------------------------------------

 

BOOK FIRST.

 

UNTIL THE FOUNDING OF THE MONARCHY.

 

PART I.

 

GENEALOGICAL TABLES, WITH BRIEF HISTORICAL STATEMENTS.

 

I. Genealogies of the Patriarchs.

 

1. The Genealogy from Adam to Noah. 1Chron 1:1-4.

2. The Descendants of Noah’s Sons. 1Chron 1:5-23.

...

...

...

 

II. Genealogies of the Tribes of Israel.

 

7. The Tribe of Judah.

(1) General Genealogies of the Tribe.

   1Chron 2:3-17, 21-41. 1Chronicles 4:1-23.

(2) Three Accounts of the Descendants of Caleb.

  1Chron 2:18-20. 1Chron 2:42-49. 1Chron 2:20-55.

(3) The Family of David.

       1Chron 3:1-9.

...

...

...

 

----------------------------------------

 

As you can now see, Crockett included a ton of material simply in the structure of his outline that is not reproducible in eSword’s .harx format. And in the history of the Divided Kingdom years of Israel’s history, the structure of Crockett’s outline is even more helpful! (To see the Google .pdf document, you can click right here.

 

So if you’ll take a second look at the lines of info in the Crockett.harx file, you may begin to see an attempt to reproduce Crockett’s outline in the simplified .harx format.

 

The lines of the .harx files always include all of the information. Each first point of the outline includes all of the information. Here’s an Example:

 

Line 1 - BOOK FIRST. Until the Founding of the Monarchy. Part I. GENEALOGICAL TABLES, WITH BRIEF HISTORICAL STATEMENTS. I. Genealogies of the Patriarchs. 1. The Genealogy from Adam to Noah.

1Ch_1:1-4.

 

But note how the second line abbreviates duplicated text:

 

Line 2 - Bk1. Pt1. I. 2. The Descendants of Noah's Sons.

1Ch_1:5-23.

 

In the second line, “Bk1” was abbreviated since it had been fully typed out in the line above it, and so was “Pt1” and “I.” The new information from Crockett’s outline is “2. The Descendants of Noah’s Sons.”, so that was fully typed out.

 

At the very end of Crockett’s work, he added an excellent Appendix, adding in material outside of Samuel, Kings & Chronicles (Genesis, Psalms, Isaiah, etc.). The Scripture texts from the Appendix is below each entry. Here is what Line 1 ultimately looks like in the .harx file:

 

Line 1 - BOOK FIRST. Until the Founding of the Monarchy. Part I. GENEALOGICAL TABLES, WITH BRIEF HISTORICAL STATEMENTS. I. Genealogies of the Patriarchs. 1. The Genealogy from Adam to Noah.

1Ch_1:1-4.

Gen_5:1-32; Luk_3:36-38.

 

While not perfect, it was the simplest/best way to both 1) preserve Crockett’s excellent outline of information while 2) formatting it into eSword’s .harx format.

 

I hope the end user will find the material helpful.

 

I have also released a “companion” module to this Crockett.harx file. It is a Crockett.topx file (in Topic format) that does a much better job of preserving  Crockett’s outline, but not nearly as nice when comparing each individual pericope. In short: the .harx format is excellent for detailed study, while the .topx format will be much better for big picture thinking.

 

The Crockett.topx companion module is available here for downloading (scroll down to the “History” section).