The first codices which contain the entire Hebrew Old
Testament (codex Aleppensis and codex Leningradensis, to be dated,
respectively, in the 10th and early 11th century A.D.) introduce Chronicles as
the first and not as the last book of the Hagiographa. According to Beckwith,
this is linked to the liturgical interest which developed later in connection with
the compilation of the megillot. Though this may be true, it still does not
explain the transposition of Chronicles if in the common Talmudic order this
book had for centuries occupied a pronounced and purposeful place at the end of
the canon. The Tiberian-masoretic tradition, for that matter, is continued in
numerous Sephardic manuscripts. The work called Kitab al-Khilaf by Michael ben
Uzziel, which probably stems from the 12th century, defends this masoretic
order as correct by explicitly stating that the Babylonian Jews changed the
order. (H. G. L. Peels, “The Blood from Abel to Zechariah (Matthew 23,35; Luke
11,50f.) and the Canon of the Old Testament,” Zeitschrift für die
alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 113, no. 4 [2001], 592-93)
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