Chronicles tells the same history as Samuel and Kings — and tells it differently.

Selectively. With emphasis placed on some events and silence kept over others. David and Bathsheba appear in Samuel with devastating moral specificity. Chronicles never mentions the episode at all. Manasseh’s fifty-five years of systematic apostasy, which 2 Kings treats as the primary cause of Judah’s destruction, appears in Chronicles with an extraordinary addition: Manasseh is taken captive to Babylon, repents in prison, and is restored to his throne. Samuel and Kings preserve no trace of this tradition.

Modern readers who encounter Chronicles after Samuel and Kings feel the discrepancies immediately.

The question that historical consciousness makes inevitable: Which version is right?