From Gods to God: The Dynamics of Iron Age Cosmologies (Forschungen Zum Alten Testament) 9783161499029, 9783161511042, 3161499026

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Forschungen zum Alten Testament Edited by Bernd Janowski (Tübingen) · Mark S. Smith (New York) Hermann Spieckermann (Göttingen)

63

Baruch Halpern

From Gods to God The Dynamics of Iron Age Cosmologies

Edited by

Matthew J. Adams

Mohr Siebeck

Baruch Halpern, born 1954; 1978 PhD; 1976-1992 Lecturer through Professor of Humanities, York University; since 1992 Professor at Pennsylvania State University; currently Chaiken Family Chair of Jewish Studies, Professor of Ancient History, Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, and Religious Studies; (Life) Fellow, Institute of the Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University; member of Graduate Faculty, Near, Middle Eastern and Jewish Studies, University of Toronto.

e-ISBN PDF 978-3-16-151104-2 ISBN 978-3-16-149902-9 ISSN 0940-4155 (Forschungen zum Alten Testament) Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. © 2009 by Mohr Siebeck Tübingen, Germany. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was printed by Gulde-Druck in Tübingen on non-aging paper and bound by Buchbinderei Spinner in Ottersweier. Printed in Germany.

To Frank Moore Cross, Jr.

Why, if ‘tis dancing you would be, There’s brisker pipes than poetry. Say, for what were hop-yards meant, Or why was Burton built on Trent? Oh many a peer of England brews Livelier liquor than the Muse, And malt does more than Milton can To justify God’s ways to man. … There was a king reigned in the East: There, when kings will sit to feast, They get their fill before they think With poisoned meat and poisoned drink. He gathered all that sprang to birth From the many-venomed earth; First a little, thence to more, He sampled all her killing store; And easy, smiling, seasoned sound, Sate the king when healths went round. They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch him eat; They poured strychnine in his cup And shook to see him drink it up: They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt: Them it was their poison hurt. – I tell the tale that I heard told. Mithridates, he died old. A Shropshire Lad A. E. Houseman

Preface The present volume reproduces a series of studies conducted by Baruch Halpern between 1981 and 2007 on social upheaval and cultural change in the early era of widespread literacy, the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. They comprise a body of work that contributes to the study of historiography in ancient Israel (and beyond) during Karl Jaspers’ Axial Age (see “Introduction”). Specifically, this book is about the rejection of tradition, and the chapters have been arranged thematically around this topos. Part I: The Rejection of Tradition explores some of the social and political aspects of the evolution of monotheism and its inherent repudiation of the past. The opening chapter, “‘Brisker Pipes than Poetry,’” laid the groundwork for the studies that follow. In Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition, the premise of the rejection of tradition in the Axial Age is brought to bear on the historiography of the period, specifically on the composition of the biblical texts. Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion: Revolution and Reformation, contains only the monolith “Jerusalem and the Lineages;” my personal favorite and sound good sense I think it. As an historical synthesis of men and tribes and nations in the 8th and 7th centuries, it is the realization of the earlier studies and a demonstration of the explanatory power of B’s historiographical model. It is the centerpiece of and the raison d’être for this volume. Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies contains two studies that go beyond monotheism and composition to explore other avenues of the rejection of tradition in the Axial world, specifically through the power of divination for a new international elite. Several studies could not be included here, but should certainly be considered part of the Halpernian canon represented by this volume: “The Centralization Formula in Deuteronomy (1981);” “‘The Excremental Vision’ The Priests of Doom in Isaiah 28 (1987);” “A Historiographic Commentary on Ezra 1–6: Achronological Narrative and Dual Chronology in Israelite Historiography (1990);” “Sybil, or the Two Nations? Archaism, Kinship, Alienation and the Elite Redefinition of Traditional Culture in Judah in the 8th–7th Centuries B.C.E. (1996);” “The New Name of Isaiah 62:4: Jeremiah’s Reception in the Restoration and the Politics of ‘Third Isaiah’ (1998);” “Assyrian and Presocratic Astronomies and the Location of

VIII Preface  the Book of Job (2002);” “Ezra’s Reform and Bilateral Citizenship in Athens and the Mediterranean World (2004);” “Fallacies Intentional and Canonical: Metalogical Confusion about the Authority of Canonical Texts (2006).” These, of course, should stand alongside his monograph-length works, The Constitution of the Monarchy in Israel (1981), Emergence of Israel in Canaan (1983), The First Historians (1988), David’s Secret Demons (2000), and the much anticipated A History of Israel in Her Land. We would like to offer our thanks to the following publishers, editors, and coauthors for permission to reprint here: The Regents of the University of California and the University of California Press for “Sacred History and Ideology: Chronicles’ Thematic Structure – Indications of an Earlier Source;” The Harvard Theological Review for “The Resourceful Israelite Historian: The Song of Deborah and Israelite Historiography;” the Harvard Semitic Museum and Scholars Press for “Doctrine by Misadventure. Between the Israelite Source and the Biblical Historian;” Jacob Neusner, Baruch Levine, Ernest Frerichs and Fortress Press for “‘Brisker Pipes than Poetry’: The Development of Israelite Monotheism;” Continuum International Publishing for “Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE: Kinship and the Rise of Individual Moral Liability;” Grateful acknowledgement is made to the Hebrew Union College Annual and David S. Vanderhooft for agreeing to the reprint of “The Editions of Kings in the 7th-6th Centuries BCE;” Freiburger Universitätsverlag and Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht for “The Baal (and the Asherah) in Seventh-Century Judah: Yhwh’s Retainers Retired;” Koninklijke Brill N.V. for “Why Manasseh is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile: The Evolution of a Biblical Tradition;” The Society of Biblical Literature for “YHWH the Revolutionary: Reflections on the Rhetoric of Redistribution in the Social Context of Dawning Monotheism;” Joseph Aviram and the Israel Exploration Society for “The Assyrian Astronomy of Genesis 1 and the Birth of Milesian Philosophy;” Eisenbrauns, William G. Dever, Seymour Gitin, and the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research for “Late Israelite Astronomies and the Early Greeks;” the Israel Exploration Society and the W. F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research for “The False Torah of Jeremiah 8 in the Context of Seventh Century BCE Pseudepigraphy: The First Documented Rejection of Tradition.” The editor would like to thank the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and the Educational and Cultural Affairs division of the U.S. Department of State for support during the compilation of this volume.

Matthew J. Adams Jerusalem, 2 November 2008

Contents Preface .............................................................................................. Abbreviations ....................................................................................

VII XI

Introduction ......................................................................................

1

Part I: The Rejection of Tradition ............................................

11

1. “Brisker Pipes than Poetry”: The Development of Israelite Monotheism ................................. 2. The Baal (and the Asherah) in Seventh-Century Judah: Yhwh’s Retainers Retired ........................................................... 3. Yhwh the Revolutionary: Reflections on the Rhetoric of Redistribution in the Social Context of Dawning Monotheism ..................................... 4. The False Torah of Jeremiah 8 in the Context of Seventh Century BCE Pseudepigraphy: The First Documented Rejection of Tradition .............................

132

Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition .............

143

5. The Resourceful Israelite Historian: The Song of Deborah and Israelite Historiography ..................... 6. Doctrine by Misadventure: Between the Israelite Source and the Biblical Historian .............. 7. Sacred History and Ideology: Chronicles’ Thematic Structure: Indications of an Earlier Source .................................................. 8. The Editions of Kings in the 7th-6th Centuries BCE ..................... 9. Why Manasseh is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile: The Evolution of a Biblical Tradition ..........................................

13 57

98

145 167 202 228 297

X 

Contents

Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion: Revolution and Reformation ......................................................

337

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE: Kinship and the Rise of Individual Moral Liability .....................

339

Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies ......................................................................................... 425 11. The Assyrian Astronomy of Genesis 1 and the Birth of Milesian Philosophy ...................................................... 12. Late Israelite Astronomies and the Early Greeks ........................

427 443

Cumulative Bibliography .................................................................. Source Index ..................................................................................... Author Index ..................................................................................... Selected Subjects Index ....................................................................

481 509 542 548

Abbreviations AASOR AB ABC ABD ABL ABRL AcOr ADAJ ADD AfO AJA AnBib ANET AnOr AO AOS AOAT ArOr ASOR ATANT AUSS BA BAR BASOR BASORSup BBB BEATAJ Bib BibOr BIWA BJRL BJS BN BWANT

Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research Anchor Bible Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles. Texts from Cuneiform Sources, A. K. Grayson (Locust Valley, N.Y.: J. J. Augustin, 1975). Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. D. N. Freedman Assyrian and Babylonian Letters Belonging to the Kouyunjik Collections of the British Museum Anchor Bible Reference Library Acta orientalia Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan Assyrian Deeds and Documents, C. H W. Johns (4 vols.; Cambridge, 1898– 1923). Archiv für Orientforschung American Journal of Archaeology Analecta biblica Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, ed. J. B. Pritchard (3rd edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). Analecta orientalia Der Alte Orient American Oriental Series Alter Orient und Altes Testament Archiv Orientální American Schools of Oriental Research Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments Andrews University Seminary Studies Biblical Archaeologist Biblical Archaeology Review Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research: Supplement Series Bonner biblische Beiträge Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des antiken Judentums Biblica Biblica et orientalia Beiträge zum Inscriftenwerk Assurbanipals, R. Borger (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996). Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester Brown Judaic Studies Biblische Notizen Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament

XII 

Abbreviations

BZAW

Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

CAD

The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (Chicago, 1956–)

CBOTS CBQ CH ConBOT CRAI CRRAI CTA

Catholic Biblical Quarterly Church History Coniectanea biblica, Old Testament Comptes rendus de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres Comptes rendus des rencontres assyriologiques internationale Corpus des tablettes en cuneiforms alphabétiques découvertes à Ras Shamra-Ugarit de 1929 à 1939, ed. A. Herdner (Mission de Ras Shamra, 10. Paris, 1963).

DK

Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, H. Diels (10th ed.; W. Krantz, ed.; Berlin: Weidmann, 1961).

EA

El-Amarna tablets. Die el-Amarna-Tafeln, J. A. Knudtzon (Leipzig, 1908– 1915 [reprint, Aalen, 1964]. El-Amarna Tablets, 359-379, A. F. Rainey (2nd revised ed. Kevelaer, 1978). The Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, ed. M Avi-Yonah (5 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Massada, 1975).

EAEHL

FAT FRLANT

Forschungen zum Alten Testament Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments

HAR HAT HB Hesperia HS HSM HSS HTR HUCA HUCM

Hebrew Annual Review Handbuch zum Alten Testament Hebrew Bible Hesperia: Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens Hebrew Studies Harvard Semitic Monographs Harvard Semitic Studies Harvard Theological Review Hebrew Union College Annual Monographs of the Hebrew Union College

ICC IEJ IES

International Critical Commentary Israel Exploration Journal Israel Exploration Society

JAOS JBL JCS JHNES JJS JNES JQR JR

Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Cuneiform Studies Johns Hopkins Near Eastern Studies Journal of Jewish Studies Journal of Near Eastern Studies Jewish Quarterly Review Journal of Religion

Abbreviations

XIII

 JSem JSOT JSOTSup JSQ JSS JTS

Journal of Semitics Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series Jewish Studies Quarterly Journal of Semitic Studies Journal of Theological Studies

KAI

KanaanƗische und AramƗische Inschriften, eds. H. Donner and W. Röllig (3 vols;. 3rd ed; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1971). The Keilschrifttexte Tiglat-Pilesers III, P. Rost (Leipzig: Eduard Pfeiffer, 1893). Die keilalphabetischen Texte aus Ugarit, eds. M. Dietrich, O. Loretz, and J. Sanmartín (AOAT 24/1; Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1976).

KTP KTU

LXX

Septuagint

MDOG MT

Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft Masoretic Text

NEA NEAEHL

Near Eastern Archaeology New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, ed. E. Stern (4 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Massada, 1993).

OBO OIP OLA Or OTL OTS

Orbis Biblieus et Orientalis Oriental Institute Publication Orientalia lovaniensia analecta Orientalia Old Testament Library Oudtestamentische Studiën

PEQ

Palestine Exploration Quarterly

Qad

Qadmoniyot

R RB RE RIMA

Die Vorsokratiker, J. Mansfeld (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1983). Review Biblique Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Assyrian Periods

SAA SAAS SBL SBLDS SBLMS SBLSBS SBLTT SBLSS SBT Sem SHANE

State Archives of Assyria State Archives of Assyria Studies Society of Biblical Literature Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series Society of Biblical Literature Sources for Biblical Study Society of Biblical Literature Texts and Translations Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series Studies in Biblical Theology Semitica Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East

XIV 

Abbreviations

SJOT SR SSN SWBA

Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament Studies in Religion Studia semitica neerlandica Social World of Biblical Antiquity

TA Tarbiz Them TLZ TRu TynBul

Tel Aviv Tarbiz Themilios Theologische Literaturzeitung Theologische Rundschau Tyndale Bulletin

UF UUA

Ugarit-Forschungen Uppsala Universitetsårskrift

VT VTSup VTSup

Vetus Testamentum Supplements to Vetus Testamentum Vetus Testamentum Supplements

WMANT WO

Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament Die Welt des Orient

ZABR ZAW ZDPV

Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins

Introduction It is, Francis Parkman famously observed, in the nature of great events to obscure great events. In his brilliant narrative history, Montcalm and Wolfe, he furnishes a series of examples. For these, some modern cases may stand in. The lessons and consequences of the High Age of Imperialism, not least smoldering conflicts in peripheries and rapid industrial diffusion leading to the First World War, were lost in the exuberance that followed. This in turn disappeared in the miasma of inflation and depression, social madness and peripheral conflicts in the 1930’s. The rise of fascism and communism, and the mobilization of military and dictatorial societies were forgotten when these next wars culminated in the truly Great War, which ended with a division of the world as the Powers then knew it into two spheres of influence. And so on, as intrusive technologies and Big Brother attitudes combined with bloated educational systems bursting with mediocrity – a step up, overall, from what preceded – to make a mockery of privacy even in societies that once modeled themselves on ideals of tolerance and open discourse. Probably, to be fair, the models themselves existed only briefly, very locally, and mainly in theory: there is always room for more committeemen. Still, one can move forward from the death of an old world to the birth of a new in history at every turn: in the United States, Johnson and social justice to Nixon and social control to Carter’s timid return to isolation, to Reagan’s new internationalism, and then Bushes, Clintons and whatever is coming next. Schoolmarm democracy, fingerwagging freedom, the death of the antihero in real life. Just call it California: it’s not Chinatown anymore, Jake. I bet that dwarf director would serve a good 3 months for slitting your nose these days, 24 if he did it while intoxicated, and 48 for cultivating the image of being a nasty pervert. The rise of safety nazis, as PJ O’Rourke once called them. The decline of Japan, the fall of Russia, the rise of China and India and Brazil. Horse to buckboard to train to car to airplane to – well, pick it, the FAA, airlines like United, 9/11. Over and over, though, people have formed communities, lived in families, and gotten along without too much in the way of government or taxes by relying on reciprocity, kinship and the reality of a somewhat dull community in which all the members know one another fairly well. They be-

2 Introduction  come set in their ways, in the last 10,000 years or so mainly agrarian (Neolithic, to use the technical term), and they ratify the course of their lifetimes by means of a transmitted body of practice which we call tradition. Some of this is probably inherited; a great deal of it is sociobiologically adaptive under most circumstances, all of it the stuff of nostalgia. While those great events are obscuring older ones, people are bemoaning the shift from sailing ships to steamers, from trains to trucks, or the constant dumbing down of education and entertainment (reflecting entropy in the transmission of some information when conjoined with the addition of other information), or the Designated Hitter or the change from Bessie Smith to Tom Waits. Many of these changes, especially the challenges to tradition, come from new contacts or the influence of new technologies or even goods. Lynn White, Jr. dwelt on the influence of the stirrup, for example, in making medieval mounted shock warfare dominant, and thus paving the way to European feudalism; the heavy plough is of course a favorite, as are the discovery (or, really, exploitation) of the New World for silver, gold and furs, and, ultimately, hinterland, the use of gunpowder, the whole Social History of the Machine Gun and Guns, Germs and Steel nexus. But over and over, germs and machine guns aside, one sees the rise of canonized traditions, written traditions, scribal curricula as those nostalgia-genic traditional societies grow wealthier and more ambitious, chiefly through trade and partly through technology, and always, of course, through greed – the distilled essence of counter-entropy that leads from Gordon Gecko to Gecko Insurers, and to the explosion of life in one or another form. Canons, such as the Bible – but its predecessors and congeners include a great variety of literatures and, in my imaginings, at least, of articulated sounds and musical scales among some animals – do not exist in and of themselves. They always come in the company of canon elites, which is to say, the guardians of the tradition. The guardians in wealthier societies and times are schooled in the canon, and assert its, and through its their own, authority. In the West, of course, the Catholic Church comes directly to mind. Before it there were Stoics or philosophers, before them Rabbis, before them Magi and the scribal classes of Mesopotamia and Egypt and China and India. The Academy is such an elite today – its canon, except in certain humanistic areas, is that of Enlightenment Rationalism, our common Western religion. Like all elites, however, canon elites, even in China, evolve. And occasionally they generate wholesale revolt on the part of new elites – like the new middle classes of 16th-century England who became the wellspring of the Reformation there. (Poor judgment on Henry’s part?) Or the Buddhists of India and China. Sometimes this occurs through fracture within the ca-

Introduction 3  non elite, as in the case of the European Reformation. The cause is often contact, and especially trade. That is to say, an explosion of the canon, an access of foreign or new materials, creates among elements of the elite – because of dissatisfaction ranging from the purely intellectual to the nakedly ambitious – a revolt against, a rejection of, tradition. There follows from the rejection of tradition a culture war; some modeled the heyday of political correctness in the American academy, now entrenched but weakening (which referent is the subject of that qualifier?), as such a culture war. It was a Reformation and counter-Reformation. The Reformation tends to run along certain lines in Western history, as in India and China. For, along with the rejection of tradition one experiences a wholesale rejection of the imagery, the iconography, of the tradition. The iconography is depleted of its meaning, and exposed as empty symbol, as idolatry in the Reformationist’s vocabulary. (Your icon is of course my idol.) And so one has the very natural sequence of a renaissance, which is an explosion of the canon, or of access to it (the Gutenberg Revolution) or of alleged expertise in it (the Academy in the West), which must be followed, for practical as well as political reasons by a Reformation of the canon – a new limitation of its scope so that the canon experts have common ground on which to argue and assert authority. They fight, of course, over the form of the canon, its content, even its function. But they Reform it. In the course of the Reformation, the critique that seems most common is the baselessness of tradition as compared with the (true, and thus archaized and reformed) canon. The symbols associated with tradition are bagatelles, distractions. Reality is interior, not a mere epiphenomenon. The world, or God, is One as well as many. But as this alternative way of analyzing reality takes hold, it introduces a nasty and dangerous principle, which is that in defense of the Reformation one may turn reason and evidence on the tradition. And eventually, almost inevitably, reason then turns on the Reformation to produce an Enlightenment. In its most advanced form, Reason then turns on itself, and discovers, as it does in the work of Kurt Gödel and Wittgenstein for example, its own inherent limitations, its own arbitrariness. And here we have a pattern that we can trace back through modern philosophy, helped along by physics, and art and architecture, to the European reformation and beyond. So far as I know, the first explicit articulation of the essential critiques, and certainly the one that survives most fully, stems from the so-called Axial Age, which Karl Jaspers defined as the time “when thinking became the object of itself.” It begins explicitly in the eighth century BCE. This Reformation is the earliest one in which we can document the operation of a Sprachkritik, a philosophical assault on the relationship be-

4 Introduction  tween symbols and the things they symbolize. Details will be found in some of the studies that follow. The phenomena characterizing the reformation, the rejection of tradition, include a vast array of activities and developments. In the Near East and Greece, and probably a bit later in India and China, we have evidence for the consolidation or systematization of formerly divergent local traditions, for example. In Mesopotamia, this takes the form in part of the collection of anterior literature, but also of the systematic compilation of various kinds of omens, in a kind of sleepwalking, to appropriate Arthur Koestler’s term, in the direction of what we would recognize as science. There was an ongoing search for, and in some quarters, particularly in Israel, an ongoing assertion of, a predictable and fundamentally unified causal principle. Reality was determined, even overdetermined, and not too complex, if studied properly, for predictability. Even if the search for signs of this consistency sometimes stemmed from traditional arts, such as liver reading, the relation of which to ourselves is a trifle opaque, the belief persisted and actuated further searching that causation, divine in character, was written into nature: the stars themselves, for example, were divine inscriptions of fate, or at least of intention, into the heavens. This view was attended by a number of renaissance-like phenomena: long-distance exploration and trade, principally but not exclusively Phoenician, brought new resources to mature manufacturing markets; trade increased in both volume and intensity, and together with it the relative size of surpluses, whatever their distribution within a particular environment. All this was accompanied by exchanges of intellectual and technical resources, including things like foundational cultural epics, theogonies and theologies, and forms of literature leading from royal display inscriptions and their accompanying art to narrative history transcending the rule of individual kings – to law, in fact, that transcended royal power, as it had never done when royal power was first introduced. Industry became focused in localities to a degree never earlier witnessed – the oil production facilities of Tel Miqne (Ekron) in the seventh century are an obvious example, as are the emplacement of such facilities and techniques in smaller concentrations elsewhere; but one thinks, too, of the huge allocation of resources to beehives a century or more earlier at Tel Rehov, or the concentration of Assyrian mudbrick manufacture at a point probably in Lebanon for much of the West in the later eighth century. There developed, in other words, a truly international set of specializations out of which was supported an urban and urbane elite culture, which, defensively, was always claiming the better to represent old verities, lost identities. This international elite culture, whatever its local manifestations, in reality rejected local tradition. New discoveries, newly-shared knowledge, the reproduci-

Introduction 5  bility of technological achievements, reinforced the belief that man could accumulate enough knowledge to predict the future. Again, some of this evidence is reviewed below, and reference will be made to some of the material omitted. But it is no coincidence that founders’ names recur among kings especially of the eighth-seventh centuries in western Asia – names like Jeroboam, Hiram, Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon – and names with archaic resonance, such as Manasseh (and Sargon), crop up as well. In Philistia, too, we see a resurgence, certainly at Miqne, of archaism in names (King Achaios), Nor is it surprising to see the Egyptians returning to Old Kingdom models for iconographic features, the Babylonians trying to resurrect priestly positions long in disuse (and temples), the Persians trying to rebuild communities, and almost everyone, so far as we can tell and a critical consideration of Thucydides and Herodotus discloses, reaching back either pseudepigraphically or in legend to the Late Bronze Age for their roots. From the list, we should not exclude the Etruscans, Sardinians and Sicilians, as well as the Philistines and their cult of curated Late Bronze items: all seem to have had, and rediscovered or reemphasized, ties with the People of the Sea, and probably with the Trojan War. Countervalent currents, all of them, as Ionians cut themselves off from Lydians, Athenians from Spartans and others, Jerusalemites under Ezra and Nehemiah equally from former connubial partnerships (much along the lines of Pericles’s citizenship reform). The point is that the mixing of cultures and the development of regional canons – helped at least in some degree by Persian ratification of them at a later date – led to a dissolution of identity and to attempts to resurrect or “reform” it. One was a Greek, not a Milesian or an Ionian or a Dorian or a Spartan. One was a Judahite, or a (returned) exile, not a Jerusalemite or an Eshtemoan. The larger identities were formed under the sponsorship of elites overlapping, at one with and yet competing with those fostering a truly international culture – welcoming travelers such as Herodotus to Egyptian temples, affording access to high culture in the way that the Romans, French, Britons and, only a bit later, the Russians and Americans, would do to dependent peoples, or to elites they hoped to recruit to their spheres of influence for trade and politics. Monotheism was the Internet of antiquity from the seventh century through the early Christian centuries. Elites made their peace with it differently – in China, it was fine to be a Taoist after 5 PM, so long as one turned up Confucian in the morning. Identity was, however, their bread and butter issue, when they were at home rather than wining and dining one another in Etruscan funerary banquets, or Greek, or Roman, or Phoenician or Israelite. A few studies should probably be appended to those that follow: one is a treatment of canon elites, “Fallacies Intentional and Canonical,” pub-

6 Introduction  lished in From Babel to Babylon, the Festschrift for the late Brian Peckham, a fine man and brilliant student of religion. It makes the link from canonization being the canonization of an elite, and its liberation from strict construction in favor of midrash, and, of course, New Criticism, “post-modernism” and dictatorialism in the absence of any grounded moral, as distinct from social, authority – it’s a history of the Academy, in drag. Another is an article devoted to “liberation theology” based on “revolutionary” passages in the Bible – all of which are state-sponsored and carry the king’s imprimatur: like the professoriate, revolutionary rhetoricians are for the most part the paid steam-valves of the state, and especially the king’s weapons against the “high corn,” the entrenched elites it would be convenient to budge. University presidents who appeal to the importance of undergraduate education without ever meaning a word of it are pretty much in this class – it’s easy to judge them by budgetary allocations rather than by the persiflage of bureaucratic activity. But rhetoric, applied to canon or to social norms in a cynical way, always conceals what is in fact at issue, namely graft and power, however real or sincere one’s ideological commitment. The study, “Yhwh, the Revolutionary” exposes one aspect of the rhetoric as just that: it is not uncommon that revolution leads from a mere purge to a Terror, a Pol Pot, a Lenin and Stalin, a Robespierre, and these are always quickly followed, for reasons Weber detailed without dealing with 20th-century lunacies, by grey men, and now women, who refrain from killing one another but make do with graft on a sufficient scale, ideologues who have learned the advantages of corruption – this is, after all, the pattern in American politics, and will certainly follow an Obama election, for example, just the same as it will any further majority regimens of Republicans in Congress in the next decade. It is a fact, for example, that after Kaganovich disposed of Stalin, and put Beria into an impossible position, Khrushchev presided over a cultural change, not noted in any popular press because the New York Times and its various dependencies publish only what the State Dept. tell them to, and State is about as dependable as the Farmer’s Almanac, as these things go – well, not quite that dependable, to be fair. The change was that leaders could be retired, set aside, without being killed. Enemies could be imprisoned, but rehabilitated rather than killed. The system was cruel, and gave as always too much power to men with limited intelligence – to the hired thugs of the state. But Khrushchev broke the cycle of Terror, and replaced it with one of Pensions, and that, in the end, led to Gorbachev, Yeltsin, for all their flaws, and the counterreformationist, Putin, who, even in a position of ruthlessly disdainful power, shrinks from reintroducing true terror back to the kulaks’ terroir (and then we could speak of French farmers, of course…).

Introduction

7

 The change from Terror to the representation of Terror to the threat of Terror to Pensions is one that permeates many of the societies under discussion here, and throughout the ancient Mediterranean (the shift from history to journalism occurs somewhere around 500 BCE). And one may document this with the rise of signed articles in the West. When Buddy Shenker first went to work for Time Magazine in Europe after World War II, managing their major bureau, in Paris (probably fun until the ‘70’s), for example, he forwent by-lines because the issue was not what he himself got credit for, but what he and his colleagues did: there was a corporatist sense of mission at work. Later, he moved to the New York Times, because he wanted that sacred by-line. Somewhere in the eighth century, we start to get real by-lines, not just the names of copyists and “scribes,” which we do get earlier, and which mean more than they say, of course – but go prove that to a skeptical philologist whose background is in grammar, or a dogmatically sclerotic theologian, whose background is in systematics or philosophy. Those earlier hints of by-lines, that said, are evidence of a shift in an earlier age of intensive international exchange, albeit one more restricted to the palace. For this reason, and because of the nexus to canon, a few of the chapters below deal with issues of composition and its metamorphosis into something resembling historical writing in Israel. Although I am an adherent to the school of thought that attributes an elite history of Israel to Hezekiah’s time – changed and expanded in that of Josiah – four of the studies document elements of that transition. The earliest of these is not included, “The Centralization Formula in Deuteronomy” (in Vetus Testamentum 31 [1981]), not least because of ongoing discussion of the matter of whether the reform really does have a Hezekiah background and some extraordinary analysis by Norbert Lohfink. However, my “Sacred History and Ideology” does make the argument on the basis of the structure of Chronicles versus Kings for a Hezekian (or, pre-Josianic) long historical source document for DtrH or, H(Dtr)jos. I do not believe that this case has been addressed as a serious component of the argument. More traditional in its structure, although differing from others, including Helga Weippert to whom this area of study rightly should be traced, is David Vanderhooft’s and my “Editions of Kings,” which may not seal the case watertight (Graeme Auld’s and Brian Peckham’s alternatives are live options), but makes it strongly. In other works, such as David’s Secret Demons, I have addressed language evidence for dating such materials to the pre-exilic period en passant, sticking as much as possible to fields having little to do with evolving semantics, such as orthography, morphology and geographies (this last also in Emergence of Israel in Canaan). But it was also, in my view, important to include studies that addressed literalization – “Re-

8 Introduction  sourceful Israelite Historian” and especially “Doctrine by Misadventure,” the latter heavily inspired, on a different plane, by Weber, with prosaic literalism replacing poetry and bureaucratization charisma (charisma leads to poetry/epic/art and then that’s actually a part of the routinization…). This material hangs beautifully together with larger cultural issues, such as the evolution of science and systematic natural philosophy. I have tried to explore the issue of regional variation in discourse on these issues in “Biblical versus Greek Historiography: a comparison,” in E. Blum, W. Johnstone and Markschies, Das Alte Testament – Ein Geschichtsbuch (von Rad centenary; Altes Testament und Moderne, 10; Muenster: LIT, 2005), with a view to social embedment. But all this was accompanied by individualization – not just the naming of texts for authors, and not just the pseudepigraphic attribution of texts, but also the very idea that an employee of the king (earlier, god) might stand, in the tradition of Shamshi-Ilu, as an important and independent figure in his own right. In a way, the comparison is to the role of individuals within the divine council, something early in many cultures, and then lost in some to the totalization of the pantheon. When individuation occurs – a subject below – there is a reason for it. Worse yet, like forms of iconoclasm, and especially the destruction of others’ icons, it has an earlier history. The earliest individuation we know of, outside of the biological realm purely, registers in the form of burial, a wonderfully symbolic and freighted behavior, around 3000 or so BCE in Crete. There are earlier individual interments, of course, particularly ones that we interpret as royal. But the generalization of the royal principle is something special, and takes place in Egypt rather early as well, albeit for officials. That is, someone, somewhere in EB I-II, discovered that there should be a different interment for Uncle Joe than we had previously had. Maybe, Uncle Joe expected something after death that previously was promised to a whole group, or even a lineage. But you can be sure that people hired by government officials (that is, people who take your money claiming to do good for you) have moved some corpse – not your favorite for the job, but why expect them to care? – into hallowed ground, which is to say, outside your house or even the midden for your household, and maybe even outside town altogether. There, he might do better duty for your lineage, or even for the populations dependent on its success. The idea of a decollectivized afterlife – and even the group burials we encounter are chiefly those of the wealthy – can only reflect mimicry, or democratization, of royal ideals, and in particular the idea that personal identity remains important after death, probably in the form of immortalization. It is not out of the question that some examples imply a possibility of resurrection; but the presence of grave goods and indeed of funerary of-

Introduction 9  ferings or even meals (at interment or annually) generally indicates that the afterlife was invisible and immediate, and usually identified, if our myths hold any water, with a subterranean world – not entirely unlike Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar. Every man a hero in the brave new underworld. The shifts in elite status – its restriction or extension – are a part of political as well as social life. The idea that a tyrant should “cut down the tall grain” was not exactly new when it was given. States in tribal environments, as Lucy Mair documented for post-colonial Africa, need to trample down the leaders of kin groups in order to assert their own authority; the same holds for other threats to that authority, whether stemming from ideology, wealth, marriage or business alliances, whatever. At the same time, the shifts probably have sociobiological significance – expanding the overall genetic reservoir of elites as these emerge and then for the most part stabilize and maintain internal connubial boundaries based on status and wealth. There are other mechanisms at work, such as polygamy (and adultery). A relevant treatment of bilateral citizenship appears in the Festschrift for Donald B. Redford, dealing with the reforms of Ezra and Pericles. But the genetic element is also mirrored in an ideational and general intellectual sense, certainly in the introduction of new points of view for discussion or consideration: changes to class structure are adaptive precisely because they change the breeding patterns modeled on old, often sclerotic, relations of production and of exchange. This volume addresses a moment of cultural change in which literacy clearly plays a role throughout the Mediterranean ecumene. The claims lodged for its importance in Goody and Watt are both hellenocentric and exaggerated, given the existence of literate classes almost three millennia earlier elsewhere. However, for the first time, in this era, our sources no longer exhibit the sort of reticence about individual contributions, or about individual moral liability, that older materials maintain silence about. What is more, they expose activities and beliefs having to do with the afterlife, with science, with philosophy and with symbols for which earlier materials afford only hints. If it remains the case that cave paintings, and henna body markings, represent our earliest evidence about human symbolic behavior, it is only in the Axial period that sources become explicit about the death of poetry, the rise of prose and literalism, the Sprachkritik of a Karl Kraus, that become the basis of Western civilization. To this root, we can trace the sprouts of modernity. And in examining it closely, we can see the possibilities and problems of a transition from traditional, tribal and Paleolithic or Neolithic to modern societies. It is not too much to suggest that one can understand life in Russia or China or Vietnam or Eastern Europe today better if one understands the history of ideas and politics described in the following pages. It is certain

10 Introduction  that one can understand religion and religious development in non-Western and in Western cultures most effectively on this basis. There are implications for policy, for nation-building, and for the registration of ethnicity in politics, in all this material. Though the study is both historical and anthropological, as well as literary, the lessons for transitions from primitive police states to modern states can profitably be applied not just in recentlyfreed or developing countries, but even in backward enclaves and institutions where technological change is sometimes unthinkingly equated with sociological progress.

Part I The Rejection of Tradition

1. “Brisker Pipes than Poetry”: The Development of Israelite Monotheism*' The dominant paradigms for the introduction of monotheism into Israel were all misguided when this study first appeared. One was the simple one of Abrahamic or, in scholarly worlds, Mosaic, revolution. That was the idea that a leader, inspired with the unity of God, suddenly imposed the vision on an unprepared traditional culture, fortunately for the most part under his control, whether by dint of descent and piety (Abraham) or by dint of dependence for leadership (Moses); but in any case, the converted were overwhelmed by the person, the content, the evidence of divine intervention in the lives and in the mental lives of a whole community. In this view, Israelite monotheism was less a revolution than a revelation followed by believers, however materialist a spin one places on it. This was a group, of whatever size, all drinking the Kool-aid at once. Beyond all question, for his exploration of its corollaries and implications, the ablest defender of this orthodoxy was Yehezkel Kaufmann. The second model for Israelite monotheistic norms involved the existence of a movement, or party, of indeterminate antiquity, possibly tracing its roots to Moses, possibly later. This party insisted from the outset that Israelites worship no other god than Yhwh. The most able advocates of this position were Morton Smith and, a decade later, Bernhard Lang. But the “Yhwh-Alone” party really consisted of the classical prophets, a few figures such as Moses, Elijah and Elisha in narrative, and, as a result, the later prophets and the book of Deuteronomy. How the Yhwh-alone party took the reins of government, in the period especially of Josiah’s reform, remained for the most part a matter of persuasion rather than one of demonstration. In this case, it was persecution and persistence, as much as revelation or its appearance that led to the group’s success. And still, while the thesis is hardly incompatible with that represented in the following pages, it is at the same time essentially irrelevant to it, and indeed involves a timeliness and conservative view of the history of the religion that again, and perhaps even more closely than the first, approximates the overall outline of the Biblical account. The third approach differed from the first two in several respects, not least in denying the existence of monotheism at least until the exilic period (586–538 BCE) in Israel. In one incarnation, the Jews invented a monotheism with a top god precisely because they were themselves powerless. In another, the Exile incubated a change in elites and privileged that element whose emphasis fell on God’s universality and thus singularity. In

 *

Originally published in J. Neusner, B. A. Levine, and E. S. Frerichs (eds.), Judaic Perspectives on Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) 77–115. ' This study was supported by the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem (a branch of the American Schools of Oriental Research).

14 

Part I: The Rejection of Tradition

either case, the scholarly vision mirrored those who found the beginnings of almost all things Israelite – monotheism, law, national history-writing, prescribed ritual and ritual specialization, prophecy, literacy, myth, well, the list is endless – to the Exile or the Return (or denied one or both ever occurred). In this view, somewhat weakened today by archaeological and comparative evidence, had it not been for the exile, the Bible would have been a mere pamphlet. In this essay, written originally in 1982, the emphasis was on treating the evolution of Israelite monotheism, in its various forms, as just that, evolutionary. The assumption was that Israelite history had been written from a Jerusalemocentric perspective, and that Israelite culture as a whole was traditionally similar to the cultures of the peoples in the vicinity, insofar as we knew them, and to the cultures of traditional societies in general. So far as I was aware, the work had no ideological purpose but this: to remove the normative strictures imposed by the historiography on our reconstructions, particularly in the Albright School, without embracing what I still believe were the too radical continental reactions that completely unchained themselves from it. While my ken at the time of writing did not include archaeological indices processed in any sophisticated way, and thus remained exclusively textual, the essay was an attempt of an intellectual historian, in the instance of religion and culture, to make sense of the texts’ biases without reacting too negatively to them. I admit, however, that at the time and sometimes since, the intolerance of monotheism, carried to a political and ideological extreme, did have me rooting for the traditionalists. The result was a programmatic argument, an essay, rather than a full-scale study – a somewhat impressionistic exposition of a view that, whatever its debt to de Wette, Wellhausen and Kaufmann and their many interlocutors, was historically synthetic and stood, so far as it could, aside from the prejudices of its sources. I trust that this approach, which resonates with that of Mark Smith, Saul Olyan, Rainer Albertz, Eckhard Otto, and others since, is still of interest to the general reader. I should add that the essay was originally written for a volume edited by Jack Neusner, Baruch Levine (with whom I am often confused) and Ernie Frerichs, Judaic Perspectives on Ancient Israel. The volume was intended to be a Festschrift for Robert Gordis, and in the letter soliciting contributions, Jack wrote something to the effect that Gordis had been a pioneer in bringing Jews into the critical study of scripture “in his day.” Reading between the lines, that was probably what led to a later communication informing the volume contributors that Gordis – I paraphrase – preferred a Festschrift more closely focused on his own circle. Being young, and excited about the essay, I accepted Jack’s promise that “we will poll the contributors” and decide to whom the Festschrift would be dedicated – Gordis, I think, was the only scholar I ever knew of (never met) who had the sense to turn down a Festschrift! In the end, the volume honored H. L. Ginsberg, which I did not know until I received my copy; but I still refer to it as the “Festschrift for the Unknown Scholar,” and, as such, it remains one of the best of the genre.

Introduction In any academic discipline there are issues that are noticeably central and others that are noticeably peripheral for the mainstream of active scholars. In biblical studies the center of interest is and has always been the history of Israelite religion. Histories of Israel in the nineteenth century amounted most frequently to discussions of cultic and theological development, and

1. “Brisker Pipes than Poetry” 15  we should elicit no substantial remonstration by observing that the single most influential work in modern biblical criticism has been Julius Wellhausen’s Prolegomena to the History of Israel (1878), a work dedicated to the history of the cult. Today, a glance at the professional journals or at classroom textbooks will establish that the history of Israelite religion remains the central node of scholarly and lay interest. Among the questions relating to Israel’s religious odyssey, that of the origin of monotheism is intellectually and theologically primary. It is, however, a complex matter. To date, the most comprehensive and convincing attempt to deal with it remains that of Yehezkel Kaufmann. Still, Kaufmann’s work, formulated in conscious response to that of Wellhausen, has not enjoyed widespread acceptance. Clearly, any reevaluation of the entire question must inevitably involve the coordination of intellectual with political and social history. Only in the context of an analysis of international and domestic discussions can the whole course of the crystallization of monotheistic theologies be understood. Kaufmann’s work, while cognizant of these complications, concentrated primarily in intellectual history. It is the point of this present study, as a prolegomenon to a fulldress history of the idea, to address and reassess Kaufmann’s and his contemporaries’ notions of the development of monotheism in Israel. Our emphasis here falls on the history of ideas; the sociopolitical provenience, dissemination, and socialization of the ideas that were developed remain to be treated. I hope to undertake that task in a subsequent work.

I Pitched to a group of undergraduates, the question “What is monotheism?” almost invariably elicits the answer “belief in one God,” or “the belief that only one God exists.” Christians, Jews, Muslims – the respondent will testify that since these embrace the Bible they are the identifiable monotheists. The Bible is the root of Western culture, and the Bible admits of no equivocation on this point; there is only one God. Westerners, it need hardly be said, pride themselves on their monotheism. They cherish derogatory but quaint ideas about polytheists (who worship idols and other fetishes; practice sympathetic magic; see gods, almost paranoiacally, in every tree and under every bed; and sacrifice virgins to volcanoes). Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that the student who first furnished the definition of monotheism squirms skeptically on learning that Psalm 82 depicts Yhwh judging the gods in their assembly, that Psalm 29 enjoins the gods to praise Yhwh, and that according to Deuteronomy 32 and much other biblical thought, each people had been allot-

16 Part I: The Rejection of Tradition  ted its own god as Israel had been allotted Yhwh (32:8–9;1 cf., for example, Mic 4:5). The Israelites, insists the student, could not be polytheists – they had received the revelation at Sinai! Even hearing that Israel considered Yhwh the chief god does not mitigate this first flush of indignation. After all, the pagan Greeks and Romans had chiefs of the gods. Could it not be that those notorious Israelites had simply backslid into paganism? Or – and here is the inspiration – are not those other gods really angels? A sigh of comfort regained; once more the ancient Israelite has been rescued from the heresy of not being us. But let us press this hypothetical student of ours further, employing that petty, sadistic process of embarrassment that is called the Socratic method. “How do we, now, differ from pagans?” “We only have one God.” “Do Catholics believe in saints, Jews and Muslims in angels, Protestants in devils?” “That is different,” comes the response! “Do angels not live forever, enjoy supernatural powers, exist in a dimension different from that inhabited by mortals?” “Still different!” And should we press the point that angels and devils, being divine, may be called gods, that the difference between monotheism and polytheism in the student’s mind is the difference between God and god – between two ways of spelling the same word – we shall meet with the no longer smug but nevertheless obstinate assurance that modern Christianity or Judaism or Islam is somehow being kicked unfairly in the knee. There is only one God; no other gods need apply. This fictitious interchange has of course less to do with Israelite monotheism than with the definition of monotheism and with the peculiar semantic restriction the word “god” has undergone in Western parlance. Still, it does illustrate the obstacles that intrude into investigations of biblical religion. Concepts aside, the terms themselves are loaded, and without being altogether clear. To be monotheist is good; but is one a monotheist if one believes, as scholars have long recognized Israel did, that the gods meet in a heavenly council which is counterpart to the pantheons of contiguous non-monotheistic cultures?2 Does calling the old gods “angels” alter  1

Read with LXX, When the Most High propertied the nations, When he parceled out the sons of man, He established the territories of the peoples, According to the number of the sons of god (benƝ’Ɲl) But Yhwh’s portion is his people, Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. Professor F.M. Cross informs me that a Qumran fragment confirms the reading “sons of god,” though its text has bny h’lhym, not bny ‘l. 2 See lately E. T. Mullen, The Assembly of the Gods (HSM 24; Chico, Ca: Scholars Press, 1980), with bibliography.

1. “Brisker Pipes than Poetry” 17  affairs? Can the monotheist direct prayer or sacrifice to other gods or angels and still remain a monotheist? More than has been supposed, these definitional questions have affected the course of scholarly discussion. Israel produced monotheism, it is universally agreed, no later than the time of Deutero-Isaiah (ca. 540–520 BCE), who exudes it. But as to earlier Israel, opinions vary widely. The most common view has been that early Israel was henotheistic or occasionally even monolatrous, but not monotheistic. In its extreme and most common manifestation, this position is buttressed by citations of biblical texts recognizing the activity of gods other than Yhwh (as Judg 11:24). Thus, T. H. Robinson could write in his commentary to Amos “Amos approached near to monotheism, but did not actually reach it, for in his eyes there are, apart from Yhwh, other gods, standing, it is true, on an inferior level to him (5, 26).”3 However, more moderate scholars have understood that the rigid boundary erected by Robinson is too stark, that while the religion of prophets such as Amos may not quite turn on denying the existence even of the subsidiary deities, it was not for this reason to be classified as polytheistic.4 Indeed even scholars such as J. Wellhausen, a staunch proponent of the view that early Israel was merely henotheistic, if that, exhibit a telling terminological flexibility.5 Wellhausen writes the following: “Moab, Ammon, and Edom, Israel’s nearest kinsfolk and neighbors, were monotheists in precisely the same sense in which Israel itself was.”6 That is to say, these neighboring peoples devoted themselves primarily to the worship of a single “high god.” The issue of the relationship of Israel’s religion to her neighbors’ religions has proved generally valuable in clarifying this school of thought’s views. As early as 1913, J. Hehn differentiated three types of monotheism to be found in ancient Mesopotamia.7 Hehn’s work formed the basis for considerable historical theological discussion which culminated in G. Widengren’s 1936 treatment of Israel’s religion as a sort of “affective monotheism,” the most pronounced of the varieties of quasi monotheism (the others were “solar” and “national,” the latter being the variety to which

 3

T. H. Robinson, Amos (HAT; Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1938). H. Ringgren, Israelite Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966) 99–100. 5 See J. Wellhausen, Israelitische und Judische Geschichte (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1894) 2–3, 73–77. 6 J. Wellhausen, “Israel,” in Encyclopedia Britannica (1883), reprinted in J. Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel (New York: Meridian Books, 1957) 440 (a reprint of the Edinburgh, A. & C Black, edition of 1885). 7 J. Hehn, Die biblische und die babylonische Gottesidee (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1913) 96–99. 4

18 Part I: The Rejection of Tradition  Wellhausen had consigned Israel and her neighbors).8 Affective monotheism consisted of preferring a single god, but not through dogma, rather as an expression of devotion. Other gods could simultaneously be recognized, but sole supremacy was ascribed to the god who was the object of adulation. Widengren singled out Nabonidus as an example (though he was certainly exceptional, and in any event contemporary with Deutero-Isaiah). However, like Hehn and his predecessor B. Baentsch, he also noted a tendency for the chief god to absorb the powers of lesser colleagues – a tendency marked already in the Babylonian epic of creation, the Enuma Elish, which dates from the second millennium BCE. 9 In the Babylonian epic, Marduk is awarded the names and powers that make him the equivalent of the pantheon incarnate (note 7.140; 4.4, 6; 6.122ff.). Widengren construed this as evidence that Babylonian religion had “strong monotheistic tendencies” despite its unconvincing, flattering nature. And the prestige of Asshur in Assyrian culture seems, if anything, to have been even greater than that of Marduk at Babylon.10 Thus, in Mesopotamia, the high god attracts to him- or herself the power of the pantheon as a whole. To this phenomenon, V. Nikiprowetzky has compared the use of theos in Greece as a means of expressing the outcome of the combined interventions and deliberations of the several gods, and thus as a son of monotheism-by-default.11 But this more impersonal concept is more profitably compared to the still less personal Chinese T’ien. Furthermore, Hehn noted that the trend toward a greater central god in Mesopotamia had not there issued in the full-scale elimination of the other gods.12 All the scholars so far enumerated thus concur that early Israel was somehow not quite monotheistic, despite its concentration on Yhwh as the special deity of the people and the supreme causal force in the cosmos. On the other hand, Israel’s neighbors were not fully polytheistic, for their cults centered about particular high gods. Monotheism developed only late in Israel, during the exile (586–538 BCE), and even then, these scholars maintain, isolated groups continued to worship gods other than Yhwh. Indeed, they suggest that the Jewish colony at Elephantine still patronized  8

G. Widengren, The Accadian and Hebrew Psalms of Lamentation as Religious Documents: A Comparative Study (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1936) 54–55, 70–72. More recently, note G. Ahlström, Psalm 89, Eine Liturgie aus dem Ritual des leidenden Königs (Lund: Gleerup, 1959) 62. 9 B. Baentsch, Altorientalischer und israelitischer Monotheismus (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1906) esp. 33–34; Hehn, Die biblische und die babylonische Gottesidee, 56ff. 10 Widengren, Accadian and Hebrew Psalms, 57–70. 11 V. Nikiprowetzky, “Ethical Monotheism,” in Wisdom, Revelation and Doubt: Perspectives on the First Millennium B.C.E., Daedalus 104 (1975) 69–89. 12 Hehn, Die biblische und die babylonische Gottesidee, 64.

1. “Brisker Pipes than Poetry” 19  divinities called ‘nt-Bethel and ‘šm-Bethel at the end of the fifth century.13 Monotheism, then, developed only late, and was generalized later still. There is a second school of thought on the subject of Israel’s monotheism. It is portrayed as the “Mosaic revolution” school, for its proponents maintain that Israel was from the outset fundamentally monotheistic.14 This school’s ablest advocate has been Yehezkel Kaufmann. Kaufmann observed that it is possible for monotheists to believe in the puissance of more than a single god. Indeed, he said: Even the worship of other supernatural beings ... cannot be considered in necessary contradiction to monotheism. ... The One is not necessarily “jealous” in a cultic sense. There is room in monotheism for the worship of lower divine beings – with the understanding that they belong to the suite of the One. Thus Christianity knows the worship of saints and intercessors, as does Islam. ... Israelite monotheism tended toward cultic exclusivism and was crystallized in this form in the Bible. But during the pre-exilic period Israel was still moving from the basic monotheistic idea to its extreme cultic consequence.15

Kaufmann denied that pre-exilic Israel recognized the independent activity of gods other than Yhwh (his “angels”). But the heart of his quarrel with scholars who deny Israel’s monotheism still lies in his approach to the question of what monotheism is. Scholars such as Robinson, Wellhausen, and Widengren defined the term much as did the undergraduate with whose ideas this paper began. They took it literally to imply the nonexistence of gods other than Yhwh.16 Kaufmann allowed the common use of  13

See A. E. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923) 22. For a convincing effort to establish that the canard is misguided, see U. Cassuto, Biblical and Oriental Studies (2 vols.; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1973–75) 2.240–49. Even if Cassuto is in error, the case would be one of the hypostatization of minor characteristics of the deity at worst. Cf. the speculation of W. Th. in der Smitten, “Vordeuteronomischer Jahwismus in Elephantine?” BibOr 28 (1971) 173–74. 14 So, for example, G. E. Mendenhall, The Tenth Generation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1973) 19–31 and passim. Mendenhall’s ahistorical concept of paganism and his contrast of it with non-pagan religion is fundamentally more extreme than Kaufmann’s. One might include also the more moderate work of N. K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1979). Other scholars who argue that Israel regressed from revelation, such as R. Kittel (Geschichte des Volkes Israel [2d ed.; Gotha, 1912] vol. 1, unavailable to me; idem, A History of the Hebrews [London: Williams & Norgate, 1895]), and E. Sellin (Alttestamentlische Religion im Rahmen der andern altorientalischen [Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1908] 47ff.) represent the early counterparts of these more modem scholars. 15 Y. Kaufmann, tôledôt hƗ-’emûnâ hay-yiĞrƗ’Ɲlît (4 vols.; Tel Aviv: Bialik-Dvir, 1937–56) 3:666. The translation is from M. Greenberg’s English-language abridgment, The Religion of Israel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960) 137. Subsequent citations are taken from the same volume. 16 This is clearly recognized and formulated by one scholar of this persuasion, B. Balscheit (Alter und Aufkommen des Monotheismus in der israelitischen Religion [Berlin: 

20 Part I: The Rejection of Tradition  the term to determine its meaning, and in this respect must be allowed the point. It would be irrational to deny that pre-exilic Israel was monotheistic on grounds that would imply traditional Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were not monotheistic. Kaufmann’s alternative is in the end rather complex, and to summarize it here is to do him an injustice. His criteria to distinguish monotheism from polytheism include attitudes toward angelology/demonology, theogony, cosmogony, magic, and so forth. In each case, his concern is that the attitude in Israel toward this or that aspect of religion should be consonant with the philosophical implications of theoretical monotheism. Those familiar with Kaufmann’s work widely recognize that this approach is more sophisticated than the one adopted by his predecessors. To some extent, this is imputable to Kaufmann’s very conservative picture of the history of religion (for example, he insists on an early date for the Priestly Code, and his stance is vindicated only by recent appreciation of the weakness inherent in Wellhausen’s religio-historical typology). 17 Kaufmann sought the “mark of monotheism” in “the idea of a god who is the source of all being, not subject to a cosmic order, and not emergent from a pre-existent realm; a god free of the limitations of magic and mythology.”18 Although this description may be controversial in its individual components, it does have the virtue of representing fairly some of the characteristic properties of Western monotheisms. It manages not to exclude monotheism on the basis of their Manichaean or multidivinity proclivities. In light of this fact, it seems reasonable to break the question of Israel’s development of monotheism into segments. It is legitimate to inquire into the origin of the doctrinal, philosophical monotheism Robinson and his colleagues interested themselves in, and which we may characterize as radical monotheism. But this is not to say that one should avert one’s gaze from the signs of monotheism to which Kaufmann drew attention. It is important to establish when and in what measure the notion prevailed that  Reimer, 1938]). Balscheit denies that monotheism can evolve or exist without the express repudiation of other gods’ existence. He therefore discovers monotheism just where Robinson et al. do. He has in fact only made their narrow criterion explicit. 17 Latterly, see M. Haran, Temples and Temple Service in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978) and M. Weinfeld, Getting to the Roots of Wellhausen’s Understanding of the Law of Israel on the 100th Anniversary of the Prolegomena (Report 14/79; Jerusalem: Hebrew University, Institute for Advanced Studies, 1979). To argue P is late because it assumes centralization, as Wellhausen did, is identical to arguing the United States of America’s Bill of Rights must be late because it assumes the manumission of the slaves. It can be done, but the argument bases itself heavily on a conjecture as to what lay between the lines of a document whose overt intentions still defy our psychologizing. 18 Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, 29; tôledôt hƗ-’emûnâ hay-yiĞrƗ’Ɲlît, 2:316.

1. “Brisker Pipes than Poetry” 21  Yhwh was the god who indisputably mastered the cosmos – this, after all, is the premise from which Kaufmann’s specific criteria ultimately flow. We should be helped in our research if we could discover also when the principle of monolatry took hold. Here, we will base our conclusion both on the terms that Kaufmann lays down on the basis of modern monotheism (allowing sacrifice to lesser deities in the chief god’s “suite”), and on the concept of radical monolatry (allowing sacrifice directly to Yhwh only). Finally, our interest should center on the relationships among such varieties of practice and theory, not on their static existence or their appearance ex machina or through untimely and unexplained revelation.

II There is, as one might expect from the foregoing survey, a considerable body of evidence to indicate that early Israel believed in the existence and even the puissance of deities other than Yhwh. Along with numerous allusions in early poetry to Yhwh’s council of gods, testimonies that Israel at large understood this council to be Yhwh’s medium for administering the cosmos have generated a substantial scholarly literature on the subject (e.g., Pss 29:1; 82:1; Deut 33:2–319 and 1 Kgs 22:19–22; Job 1–2; 33:23; Isa 6:1–10).20 The multiplicity of early Israel’s gods has rarely been called seriously into question. Moreover, not all the evidence implies that all the gods were universally regarded as mere extensions of Yhwh’s will. Kaufmann sees Yhwh’s battles with such figures as Rahab and Leviathan as isolated vestiges of Israel’s Canaanite cultural heritage, but such liturgical specimens as Pss 74:12–17 and 89:10–15 illustrate how closely bound to cosmogonic myth these battles remained in the Israelite consciousness.21 Thus, to the primordial era, at least one strain of thought comprised struggles for the mastery of the cosmos. These struggles were not necessarily on the order of those depicted in Babylonian (Enuma Elish) or Canaanite myth, but they were nevertheless comparable in type. 22 The reports of  19

Read, Yhwh came from Sinai and dawned from Seir upon them, He shone forth from Mt. Pa’ran; There came with him myriads of holy ones; At his right hand marched (‘šrw) the gods, Even the pure ones of the peoples. See further, P. D. Miller, The Divine Warrior in Early Israel (HSM 5; Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1973) 75–81. 20 See above, n. 2. 21 Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, 62; tôledôt hƗ-’emûnâ hay-yiĞrƗ’Ɲlît, 2.423–25. 22 CTA, MRS 10:2; 4; 6; 3; 5 (Ba’l-Yamm, Ba’l-Mot).

22 Part I: The Rejection of Tradition  these battles do not, of course, imply the existence of a Yahwistic theogony. Still, taken together with the rhetorical comparison of Yhwh with the other gods (Exod 15:11; Ps 89:7), the texts testify that challenges to Yhwh’s mastery were, if foredoomed to fail, at least conceivable. This is consonant with the implications in such texts as 1 Kings 22:19–22 and Isaiah 6:8 that the heavenly beings actually exerted independent powers of thought (the coup of the Morning Star in Isa 14:13 may have similar implications). Genesis 6:1–4, that mystifying text which describes the descent of the gods and their miscegenation with primordial women, confirms that in the Israel of the Yahwist (J), independent thought was very much the case among heavenly beings.23 Of course, this is only to be expected in a tradition that ascribes disobedience to primordial humans ensconced like an angel in Yhwh’s presence (Gen 2–4; see also Ezek 28:11–18 and Ps 82). Additional evidence is provided by the study of sacrifices. On the cultic level, all varieties of sacrifice were countenanced in early Israel. Human sacrifice (a proper Yahwistic rite) 24 and other forms of worship later deemed heretical obtained, and there was also sacrifice to gods other than Yhwh. terƗpîm, or icons of household gods, figure in a number of texts (e.g., Judg 17:5; 18:14–20; 1 Sam 15:23; 19:13, 16; Hos 3:4; Ezek 21:26; 2 Kgs 23:24; Gen 31:19–35), and these, or icons of more important deities, may be represented in the variety of figurines that periodically come to light from excavations in Israelite levels.25 While the much-debated pithoi  23 It is generally accepted that J is to be assigned to the tenth century and, despite the recent challenge, for example, of J. van Seters (Abraham in Tradition and in History [New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1975]) or of H. H. Schmid (Der sogenannte jahwist: Beobachtungen und Fragen zur Pentateuchforschung [Zurich: Theologischer, 1976]), this seems to me to be one of the more durable products of nineteenth-century literary criticism. See, recently, W. H. Schmidt, “A Theologian of the Solomonic Era? A Plea for the Yahwist,” in T. Ishida (ed.), Studies in the Period of David and Solomon and Other Essays (Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 1982) 55–74. 24 Note Isa 22:1, 5; 30:33; Jer 2:23a (cf. 2:2); 7:31–32; 19:6, 11–14; 31:40; 32:35; Ezek 39:11 (cf. Jer 19:6); Ps 23:4; 2 Kgs 23:10; Deut 14:1–2; Lev 18:21; 19:27–28; 20:2–5. The mulk (occasionally mistranslated as Molech) is described in the Deuteronomistic History as “passing through fire.” 25 See, for example, G. Ahlström, “An Israelite God Figurine from Hazor,” OrSuec 19/20 (1970) 54–62; idem, “An Israelite God Figurine Once More,” VT 25 (1975) 106–9; W. F. Albright, Archaeology and the Religion of Israel (3rd ed.; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1935) 114–15; idem, The Archaeology of Palestine (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1960) 104–7. Note also P. Lapp, “The 1968 Excavations at Tell Ta’annek,” BASOR 195 (1969) 4–44; idem, “The 1963 Excavation at Ta’annek,” BASOR 173 (1964) 26–32; M. Tadmor, “Female Cult Figurines in Late Canaan and Early Israel: Archaeological Evidence,” in T. Ishida (ed.), Studies in the Period of David and Solomon, 139–73. Egyptian-influenced figures, some of them much at home in the Israelite iconographic tradition, are found in J. W. Crowfoot and G. M. Crowfoot, Early Ivories from Samaria (Samaria-Sebaste: Reports of the work of the Joint Expedition in 1931–

1. “Brisker Pipes than Poetry” 23  unearthed at Kuntillet ‫ޏ‬Ajrud may depict Yhwh in the company of a consort, such figurines were generally understood to represent the gods who served Yhwh.26 On the basis of these finds, too, it seems most judicious to understand the cult of the “queen of heaven” not as an imported, debased Mesopotamian cult,27 but as a hoary folk practice interrupted by the Josia-

 1933 and of the British Expedition in 1935, no. 2; London: Palestine Exploration Fund, 1938) 1:1–3; 2:1, 2; 3:1–2b; 4:1, 2, 3 = 14:2, 157; 5:1–3; 6; 7 = 14:4; 11:1, 2–5; 12; 13:2; 14:1 (see p. 18). Cf. F. W. James, The Iron Age at Beth-Shean (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Museum, 1966) figs. 101:2; 107:1–2, 4–5, 7–8, 10; 109:5 (cf. 111:1–6 and 112:2–3, 5–7); 112:6; 113:9, 10; 115:1–6,7; 116:2, 1, 5, 3, 4, 6, 7; 117:7, and in Iron II Lahav obj. 645 (photos 680a, b). Other varied figurines, including pillars, occur in O. Tufnell, Lachish III. The Iron Age (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1953) 27:1–7, 8; 28;10, 11, 13, 14; 19:17, 18, 19–22; 30:23, 24, 26; 28:15, 16; 34:12–14, 18–29; 35:30–35 (Tufnell [p. 205] suggests Libyan provenience here); 36:48–51, also Egyptian. Latterly, see T. Holland, “A Study of Palestinian Iron Age Baked Clay Figurines, with Special Reference to Jerusalem: Cave 1,” Levant 9 (1977) 121–55, and L. E. Stager, “The Archaeology of the East Slope of Jerusalem and the Terraces of the Kidron,” JNES 41 (1982) 111–21, esp. 119–20, on the nature of Kenyon’s “shrine.” Further, Y. Aharoni, Excavations at Ramat Rahel. Seasons 1961 and 1962 (Rome: Instituto di Studi del Vicino Oriente, 1964) pls. 35–36; Y. Yadin, et al., Hazor II. An Account of the Second Season of Excavations, 1956 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1960) pls. 76; 31:7, 8; 103:1–6; cf. idem, Hazor I (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1958) 41–42. 26 However one disposes of the problem of the illustrations on the pithoi, hypostatization remains a fact. See most recently P. Beck, “The Drawings from ণorvat Teiman (Kuntillet ‘Ajrud),” TA 9 (1982) 3–68, for the argument that the inscription succeeds the illustrations and that the illustrations themselves stem from several hands. This hardly invalidates the notion that the Asherah is Yhwh’s concubine; rather, it complicates the situation so as to demand increasing historical-theological sophistication from the critic. In all events, on the finds at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, see A. Lemaire, “Les inscriptions de Khirbet el Qôm et l’Ashérah de Yhwh,” RB 84 (1977) 595–608; Z. Meshel, Kuntillet ‘Ajrud. A Religious Centre from the Time of the Judaean Monarchy (Israel Museum Catalogue 175; Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1978); M. Gilula, “To Yahweh Shomron and his Asherah,” Shnaton 3 (1978/79) 129–37; J. Naveh, “Graffiti and Dedications,” BASOR 235 (1979) 27–30; Z. Meshel, “Did Yahweh Have a Consort?” BAR 5:2 (3–4, 1979) 24–34; A. Angerstorfer, “Ašerah als “Consort of Jahwe’ oder Aširtah?” BN 17 (1982) 7–16; S. Mittmann, “Die Grabinschrift des Singers Uriahu,” ZDPV 97 (1981) 139–52 (cf. W. Dever, “Iron Age Epigraphic Material from the Area of Khirbet el-Kom,” HUCA 40/41 [1969/70] 139–204); J. A. Emerton, “New Light on Israelite Religion: The Implications of the Inscriptions from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud,” ZAW 94 (1982) 2–20; W. Dever, “Recent Archaeological Confirmation of the Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel,” Hebrew Studies 23 (1982), unavailable to me. Note further M. Tadmor, “Female Figurines in Late Bronze Age Canaan,” Qad 15 (1982) 2–10. How one resolves the problem of the suffix on the term ‘šrh/t at Kuntillet ‫ޏ‬Ajrud is not crucial. See below for a suggestion. 27 Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, 144; tôledôt hƗ-’emûnâ hay-yiĞrƗ’Ɲlît, 674 (see 662). This treatment ignores the importance of cults specialized to sex in an Israel whose late cult (not early, with an Asherah in the temple to Hezekiah’s time) was unrelentingly masculine. In addition, it is difficult to determine on the basis of our largely post-Josianic

24 Part I: The Rejection of Tradition  nic reform (Jer 44:1ff.) and construed by its practitioners as a Yahwistic cult (hence 44:16, 26 with Yhwh). The appearance of Yhwh’s consort at Kuntillet ‫ޏ‬Ajrud, or of a hypostatized sacred precinct, complements other evidence of sacrifice to subordinate members of the pantheon. The suppression of supposedly heterodox regalia by Hezekiah and Josiah is perhaps most suggestive. The former is said to have smashed an Asherah, a cultic pillar, and, notably, the bronze snake reputed to have been made by Moses at which the people had for some time offered incense (2 Kgs 18:4). Josiah’s purge included altars built centuries earlier by Solomon and dedicated to Chemosh and other foreign gods (2 Kgs 23:13); reportedly, he removed sacra of “Baal and Asherah and all the host of heaven” from Yhwh’s temple (2 Kgs 23:4). While the narrator’s stratagem of blaming the Babylonian Exile on Manasseh (2 Kgs 21:12–15) makes it appear as though these icons’ presence resulted from that king’s debauchery, G. Ahlström is undoubtedly right to regard it instead as a reflection of the traditional religion of Judah which perhaps followed on a hiatus in the official cult under Hezekiah (2 Chr 29– 31). 28 The old, traditional homage to subsidiary members of Yhwh’s assembly was carried on even in Jerusalem, and, to judge from the evidence, even after Hezekiah’s otherwise far-reaching reform. But the strongest indications that non-Yahwistic cult practices existed lie in traces of the ancestral cult, particularly in the pre-monarchic period. Certainly, it is simplest to explain the recollection of the “minor judges” burials (Judg 8:30, 32; 10:1–5; 12:7–15) on the supposition that these served as shrines and oracles. And Rachel’s tomb, at the least, must have represented just such a shrine (Gen 35:19f.; 1 Sam 10:2; Jer 31:15). Still it is clear that necromancy thrived in Israel. Indeed, A. Haldar concluded from Isa 29:4 that the prophet announced an oracle from the underworld in procession at the Jerusalem temple.29 But 1 Sam 28, the story of Saul’s encounter with the witch of En-Dor, and Deut 18:8ff., which assails all forms of divination other than prophecy, suggest that the practice was not condoned in the temple cult. Yet at the same time, even those who advocated its suppression did not deny its efficacy, and indeed, in the popular religion, necromancy was never eradicated, but flourished from time to time

 sources just when the cult of the Queen of Heaven ceased to enjoy the overt sanction of the state authorities. 28 G. Ahlström, Royal Administration and National Religion in Ancient Palestine (SHANE; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982). 29 A. Haldar, Associations of Cult Prophets among the Ancient Semites (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1945) 128–29.

1. “Brisker Pipes than Poetry” 25  (see Isa 2:6–8; 3:2; Mic 3:6–11; 5:11; Isa 8:19; 19:3).30 The persistence of funerary societies through the era of the monarchy shows that this assessment reflected popular sentiment (as Amos 6:1–6; Jer 16:5). And as M. Pope’s commentary on the Song of Songs illustrates, the cult of the dead was one to which virtually every pre-exilic Israelite, especially the upper class, was exposed. 31 Even in this case, to what extent such sacrifice represented an assertion of independence from Yhwh is not altogether clear. The strongest testimony remains that which suggests Israel’s gods were understood to lie within Yhwh’s “suite.” Thus the Israelite onomasticon both inside the Bible and without contains names compounded only with the name of Yhwh and with epithets attached to Yhwh (including bҵl, a term meaning “lord,” and not to be reified as the name of a god).32 The same condition characterizes Israel’s “closest kinsfolk and neighbors,” as Wellhausen anticipated. Ammon, Moab, and Edom each adhered to a single national god. In contrast to names stemming from city-states, each of their onomastics contains names compounded only with the name of the national god or with some soubriquet denominating the national god (such as ҴƝl or baҵl). 33 While inscriptional materials from the Transjordanian states are scanty, and the Deir Alla texts reflect the presence of a pantheon,34 the Mesha stele is unambiguous. Mesha attributes to his national  See Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, 87–89; tôledôt hƗ-’emûnâ hay-yiĞrƗ’Ɲlît, 3.485ff. 31 M. Pope, Song of Songs (AB 7C; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1973). See on Ugarit, idem, “A Divine Banquet at Ugarit,” in J. M. Efird (ed.), The Use of the Old Testament in the New and Other Essays, Studies in Honor of William Franklin (Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1972) 170–203; C. E. L’Heureux, Rank among the Canaanite Gods: El, Ba’al and the Repha’im (HSM 19; Missoula, Mo: Scholars Press, 1979) 201– 23. It is the warrior aristocracy that engaged in ancestral worship, as elsewhere – hence its proscription in Israel. This is why the rp’um at Ugarit appear to be both chariot warriors and the principals of the underworld, as Isa 14:9. Note that the term Ҵelǀhîm, meaning “God, god or pantheon” means “spirit” in 1 Sam 28:13, as in so many other cultures. On the suppression of the cult of the dead under Saul, note the archaeological evidence for the discontinuation of funereal figurines during the United Monarchy in Tadmor, “Female Cult Figurines,” esp. 170–73. 32 Names compounded with baҵal include those of Saul’s and David’s sons. It is commonly supposed that this reflects the fact that polemic against “Baal” had not yet become necessary, but in fact, like Marduk, Asshur, Haddu, Melqart and, no doubt, others (e.g., the pharaoh in the Amarna letters), Yhwh himself was a god called baҵal. The polemic directed against the term baҵal, no more to be Yhwh’s epithet (Hosea 2:18), is concerned with the worship not of Baal but of baals. See below. 33 See F. M. Cross, “The Epic Traditions of Early Israel,” in R. E. Friedman (ed.), The Poet and the Historian (HSS; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1983) 36–37. 34 See recently P. K. McCarter, Jr., “The Balaam Texts from Deir ‘AllƗ: The First Combination,” BASOR 239 (1980) 49–60; cf. S. A. Kaufman, “The Aramaic Texts from  30

26 Part I: The Rejection of Tradition  god Chemosh both defeat and victory (lines 5–6). The inscription mentions Yhwh as Israel’s god (lines 17f.); the only other divinity mentioned is the enigmatic “Ashtar-Chemosh,” the recipient of a human sacrifice. At worst, he constitutes an underling or hypostatization of the national god, conceivably syncretized with the Canaanite Athtar.35 This distribution of evidence reflects Israel’s place among the “Hebrew” successor-states to the Egyptian empire in Asia, all of which crystallized at the close of the Bronze Age along the major trade routes from Mesopotamia to Egypt.36 These states appear uniformly to have devoted themselves to the worship of the national god. When Jephthah recognizes Chemosh’s activity in Judg 11:24, he does so during international negotiation, which is by nature ecumenical. Deuteronomy 32:8–9 too merely reflects shared understanding that while every people has its god, our god is the supreme god.37 While no biblical text identifies polytheistic Egypt or Greece with a single god, and while even Marduk at Babylon seems to be understood in Israel to have been more an emblematic than a national god, it is worth noting that these texts presume henotheism to have been the normal form of religion. On the Mediterranean littoral, adherence to the cult of a single high god seems to have been taken early as the natural way of things.38 This henotheism was early understood to be monolatrous. The Covenant Code, a text commonly dated to the pre-monarchic era, enjoins sacrifice to gods other than Yhwh (Exod 22:19). Whether this was meant to exclude sacrifice to Yhwh’s retinue or held widespread force in Israel cannot now be determined, but that it was consistent with general opinion is now plain from the fact that Israel devised a theology in which it was in a treaty rela Deir ‘AllƗ,” BASOR 239 (1980) 71–74; H. Weippert and M. Weippert, “Die ‘Bileam’Inschrift von Tell Deir ‘AllƗ,” ZDPV 98 (1982) 77–103; J. A. Hackett, The Balaam Text from Deir ‘AllƗ (HSM 31; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1984), and idem, “The Dialect of the Plaster Text from Tell Deir ‘AllƗ,” Or 53 (1984) 57–65. 35 KAI, no. 181. Cf. Zeus-Amun. Note, though, that Athtar (“the terrible”) is a comical figure at Ugarit. 36 See B. Halpern, The Emergence of Israel in Canaan (SBLMS 29; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1983) 89–91, 101–2. 37 See G. Ahlström, Aspects of Syncretism in Israelite Religion (Lund: Gleerup, 1963) 73–74. Any other reconstruction of the understanding of Moab, for example, would be naive in terms of motivation to worship and inconsistent with the epigraphic and onomastic evidence. Mesha, for example, assumes that Chemosh fully controls fate. Any AshtarChemosh would thus have to be thought of as Chemosh’s underling. It is critical to recognize that this system of thought is completely inimical to syncretism. 38 The case of Philistia is clouded by lack of evidence. But note 1 Sam 5:1–5. Tyre is identified with the baҵal in 1 Kgs 17ff., possibly Melqart, but here an unidentified subsidiary deity (which is how baҵal comes to be used in Israel). Perhaps the Tyrian theology involved devotion to an active delegate of El called baҵal (= Lord, or the lord) of Tyre.

1. “Brisker Pipes than Poetry” 27  tionship with Yhwh. Such suzerainty pacts characteristically included clauses demanding of the vassal exclusive fealty to the overlord (see Exod 22:19).39 How early the covenant form was introduced as a means of expressing Israel’s relation to Yhwh is uncertain, but we get a clue from Hosean analogy which takes Israel as an adulteress on the basis of a contractual relationship. 40 Israel’s monarchy was also contractually based, with Yhwh a party to the pact.41 Already, at twelfth-century Shechem, Israel had organized itself around a god who called himself “El of the Covenant” (cf. Judg 2:46) or “the lord of the covenant” (baҵal berît, Judg 9:4).42 The likelihood is that the covenantal relationship with Yhwh was a notion that early pervaded the nation’s thought. Furthermore, the characteristic name of Yhwh and the understanding of his cosmic role present signal indications of monolatrous henotheism – effectively of monotheism. Yhwh’s name means “he causes to be/happen.”43 In its most primitive longer form, it is coupled with sebƗ’ôt, “armies” (so, “he causes the [heavenly] armies [i.e., the gods, of whom the stars are the counterparts, Judg 5:20]44 to be” [1 Sam 4:4; 2 Sam 6:2]).45 And the Yahwist, writing in the tenth century, introduces Yhwh in his narrative history by the fuller, probably explanatory name, yhwh ‘lhym, “he causes the gods/pantheon to be” (not the appositive, “Yhwh, God,” which would require a definite article before the second member). If exegetical of the older cultic name, this represents Yhwh as the patriarch of all the gods, as the universal progenitor.

 39

See K. Baltzer, Das Bundesformular (2nd ed.; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1963); idem, The Coveant Formulary (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971). 40 Some scholars, following in Wellhausen’s footsteps (Prolegomena, 418–19), assign the covenant to a late era. See recently L. Perlitt, Bundestheologie im Alten Testament (WMANT 36; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1969). Cf. D. J. McCarthy, Treaty and Covenant (2nd ed.; AnBib 21A; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1978) 22–23. 41 See T. N. D. Mettinger, King and Messiah. The Sacral and Civil Legitimation of the Israelite Kings (CBOTS 8; Lund: Gleerup, 1976); B. Halpern, Constitution of the Monarchy in Israel (HSM 25; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1981). 42 The scholarly assumption that this chapter treats a Canaanite Shechem is baseless. See B. Halpern, Emergence of Israel in Canaan, 28 and n. 35. 43 See, for example, F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973) 60–75; W. H. Brownlee, “The Ineffable Name of God,” BASOR 226 (1977) 39–46. Cf. S. Mowinckel. “The Name of the God of Moses,” HUCA 32 (1961) 121–33. 44 On the stars as counterparts of the gods, see the use of ‫܈‬eba’ haš-šamƗyîm to mean the gods in 2 Kgs 23:4 and elsewhere, but the stars and planets in Gen 2:1, Deut 4, and Deutero-Isaiah. Further, B. Halpern, “The Ritual Background of Zechariah’s Temple Song,” CBQ 40 (1978) 167–90, esp. 174ff. and Enuma Elish 5:1–2. 45 See Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 69–70, on the antiquity of this form.

28 

Part I: The Rejection of Tradition

Kaufmann identified the absence of theogony in Israel and the battlefree cosmogony of Gen 2–3 as hallmarks of an early monotheism. 46 One point of comparison was the cosmogonic fight in Enuma Elish in which Marduk rescued his peers and elders from their mother, the salt-water dragon Tiamat, who sought to avenge on them the death of their father. But it is worth noting the Canaanite evidence not, as Kaufmann did, in the fragments of Sakkunyaton, but in the tablets from Ugarit.47 On the basis of an analogy to the Enuma Elish, some scholars have supposed that the cycle of battles between Baal (Haddu) and Yamm (“Sea”) at Ugarit was in fact cosmogonic. 48 Haddu’s acquisition of a palace is in type a cosmogonic act.49 But there is not the faintest hint that the cycle involves creation at Ugarit; indeed, El is repeatedly called “the creator/progenitor of all creatures/progeny,” 50 and “father of man,” 51 and the gods, as in Israel, are called “sons of El.” Too, references to villages in the Haddu-Yamm cycle suggest that the conflict is situated after the creation of the world.52 This is what one would expect, given that El is so much in control of the cosmos that he alone dispenses permits for palace construction while his “sons,” Haddu, Yamm, and Mot, administer the regions of land/sky, sea, and underworld under his supervision.53 Thus, theogony and cosmogonic theomacy may already be absent at Ugarit. While Marduk, the storm-god, defeats Sea and creates from his enemy the cosmos, and Yhwh, the patriarchal, tent-dwelling, and eternal deity fashions the world peacefully around his paradisiacal garden, Ugarit’s pantheon includes both the storm-god’s fight with Sea and the “patriarchal”-type cosmogony. It may represent a sort of middle between the extremes of the Babylonian theogony-cosmogony and the Israelite Genesis.54 This is not to deny the presence of the themes of  Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, 24–31; tôledôt hƗ-’emûnâ hay-yiĞrƗ’Ɲlît, 303ff. See O. Eissfeldt, Sanchunjaton von Berut und Ilumilku von Ugarit (Halle: Niemeyer, 1952); L. R. Clapham, on Sakkunyaton in “Sanchuniathon: The First Two Cycles” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1969). 48 As O. Keel, The Symbolism of the Biblical World (2nd ed.; New York: Seabury Press, 1979) 52; Mullen, The Assembly of the Gods, 46, 54, but also 76. 49 On the temple and the cosmos, see M. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harper & Row, 1961) 36–47; B. Halpern, “Zechariah’s Temple Song,” for later Israel; J. D. Levenson, “The Temple and the World,” JR (1984) 275–98. 50 As CTA 4.2:11; 3:32; 6.3:5, 11; 17.1:25. 51 CTA 14.1:43; 3:136, 151; 5:259; 6:278, 297. Cf. “Fathers of Years” in CTA 1.3:24; 2.35; 3.5:16; 4.4:24; 5.6:2; 6.1:36; 17.649. 52 CTA 4.7:8, 10. 53 See A. S. Kapelrud, Baal in the Ras Shamra Texts (Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gad, 1952) 110ff. So latterly Mullen, The Assembly of the Gods, 22ff. 54 Note that in Israel, man (ҴƗdƗm) is named for the soil (ҴadƗmƗ) from which he is formed (with divine breath), while in the Enuma Elish, man is formed from soil (and the blood of the evil god, Kingu) and called LULLU (LÚ.LUx’, Sumerian for “man” being 46 47

1. “Brisker Pipes than Poetry” 29  cosmogonic conflict in Israel, for myths need not be mutually exclusive even when in mutual contradiction. As noted above, Yhwh’s defeat of primordial menaces is frequently mentioned. By the same token, the themes of cosmogonic conflict were present in Canaan, and, in Sakkunyaton, those of theogony. However, with antecedents in Ugarit’s El that can be dated to the fourteenth century, the Yahwist in the tenth century BCE understood Yhwh to have created both cosmos and gods. Yhwh, “he causes,” is his ultimate cause, a prime mover – what Kant would regard as the inevitable product of the use of reason. Early Israel was far from homogeneous, and it would be foolish to assume that the Yahwist’s latent theology was widely shared. And, if we stretch things, we could add that, in addition to the general references to the cult of the ancestors noted above, Deut 33:27 could be taken to portray Yhwh as “oppressing the gods of old.” The context is difficult; still the LXX does reflect the same Vorlage, so a vestige of theogonic thought may be present.55 But even if one embraces speculation based on such pale traces, 56 the broader picture of Yhwh as chief and as national god remains. This Yhwh is universal in his power, just as Ugarit’s El, Babylon’s Marduk or Asshur’s Asshur. Thus, the notion that universalism developed late in Israel as a product of radical monotheism ignores the implications of Yhwh’s name, of the primordial history in J, and of the liturgical language of most of the Near East in the millennium before J.57 Further, the argument that Yhwh’s universal exaltation, so central to Trito-Isaiah, is late,58 neglects the universalism inherent in nearly every account of temple construction extant from Mesopotamia.59 And even within the latest incarnations of this motif, as M. Weinfeld has observed, a particularist program

 LÚ) The same sort of pun on “man” and “soil” as in Israel may thus be the referent in the designation of Ugarit’s El’s abode as Mt. ll (Lullu?). El’s mount would then be that out of which man was formed, an element not present in Enuma Elish, but developed in Israel. There may be traces of mediation here. Cf. lulllû, “abundance,” and ‘dn. 55 One might translate along the lines “There is none like the god of Jeshurun, who rides the heavens in your behalf, and in his exaltation the clouds, who suppresses the gods of old, and, below, the arms of the underworld.” On ‘wlm as underworld, see A. M. Cooper, “Ps. 24:7–10: Mythology and Exegesis,” JBL 102 (1983) 37–60. See also Ps 68:20–24, followed by the procession in vv. 25ff., perhaps adducible in Cooper’s behalf. For the relationship between Yhwh and Sheol, see G. A. Danell, Psalm 139 (UUA; Uppsala: Lundequistska; Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1951) 26–31. 56 See Cooper, ““Ps. 24:7–10: Mythology and Exegesis.” 57 See Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, 128, 221, and passim. 58 As Widengren, Accadian and Hebrew Psalms, 78–79. 59 Starting at least as early as Gudea, Cyl. A (as 8:7–18; 12:1–11). See A. Petitjean, Les Oracles du Proto-Zacharie (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1969) 137–42, with the citation from Merodach-Baladan II. Note especially W. W. Baudissin, “Zur Geschichte des Monotheisrnus bei semitischen Volkern,” DLZ 35 (1914) 5–13.

30 Part I: The Rejection of Tradition  for the exaltation of Zion and Israel remains.60 Again, Amos’s renowned question, “Are you not Cushites to me, children of Israel? ... Did I not bring Israel up from Egypt and Philistia from Caphtor and Aram from Qir?” (Amos 9:7), has generated no end of assertions that Amos was a “universalist,” and perhaps the first universalist. 61 But this claim ignores Amos’s equally famous plaint, “You alone have I known of all the families of the earth; that is why I visit on you all your sins” (3:2). The point is, Israel remains specially sacred to Yhwh no matter how universal his scope of power or his recognition. Second Kings 5:17, which is coupled with the recognition of Yhwh as the only active god, demonstrates this. Na’aman still does better to appropriate the soil of Israel for his worship. Here is evidence of special sanctity, not of limitation or an exclusive or reified “particularism.” And this is exactly the implication of the J primeval history when coupled with the call of Abraham. However, this Yhwh is from the first a just and gracious god. Indeed, Israel’s early psalmody is replete with testimony to the fact (Pss 24, 29, 82, for example). Such a bias does not surprise us in a culture that conceived of its relationship with its god as covenantal. (The gods of Canaan and Mesopotamia were similarly understood by their votaries to dispense justice.) So there is little evidence of the “whimsical” or “amoral” polytheism in Western Asia of which the Greek philosophers accused the Greeks; the gods are just – they are ethical.62 Even Israel’s later aniconism, a true hallmark of radical monotheism, has a discernible antecedent in the early period. The J “decalogue” contains an ordinance prohibiting the manufacture of molten images of gods. Like the later (Jerusalem priestly) interdiction against all pictorial or plastic representation (Exod 20:4, after v. 3), the ordinance is tied to the commandment of exclusive devotion (Exod 34:14–17). 63 The pre-monarchic legislation of Exod 20:19–23 begins with an injunction against manufacturing (precious?) metal images of gods. Provided one accepts that the

 60

M. Weinfeld, “The Universalistic and the Particularistic Tendency in the Restoration Era,” Tarbiz 33 (1964) 1–15; cf. Danell, Psalm 139, 31. 61 So Nikiprowetzky, “Ethical Monotheism,” 69–89; A. S. Kapelrud, Central Ideas in Amos (1956; reprinted, Oslo: Universitetsforlag, 1961) 23–28, 33–47. 62 See Widengren, Accadian and Hebrew Psalms, 50–54, 139–70. Codex Hammurabi is also clear on this point (especially the Prologue). At Ugarit, Haddu also seems to be a moralist (CTA 4.3:17–22). 63 On the ascription of Exod 20:1–17 to P (though the “Decalogue” itself may be somewhat older), see esp. T. N. D. Mettinger, “The Veto on Images and the Aniconic God in Ancient Israel,” in H. Biezais (ed.), Religious Symbols and their Functions (SIDA 10; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1979) 15–29.

1. “Brisker Pipes than Poetry” 31  bronze oxen in Solomon’s temple were not meant to be gods,64 and that Jeroboam’s golden “calves” were representations of Yhwh’s steed and not of a god,65 or were at best the symbol of a god, the nearest violation of these ordinances is said to have occurred when Solomon had the cherubim for the inner sanctum of the temple constructed (1 Kgs 6:23–28).66 These gods were made of wood and plated with beaten gold. Certainly, their construction does not violate the J ordinance; indeed arguably it satisfies the term of Exod 20:20 as well. In any event, barring only the illustrated pithos from Kuntillet ‫ޏ‬Ajrud, there is no signal indication that Yhwh himself was depicted in the cult. There is a strong presumption from silence that other than his ark, no representation of him stood in the Jerusalem temple or in Jeroboam’s royal sanctuaries in the north. At least in the state cult, Yhwh was from the first an invisible deity. The only known precedent for this distinction lies in the representation of Aten by the solar disk at Akhetaten, and that remains a representation, of course.67 Again, it should not be disputed that in the popular religion representatives of Yhwh may have played a role. And even in the capital Yhwh may have been portrayed in ritual. Presumably, it was in part through dialogue with the rural cult that the official cult assumed an identity of its own. Still, virtually no major component of Israel’s later monotheism is absent from the cult at the turn of the millennium, with the introduction of the kingship. Had we the evidence, we should probably be in a position to say the same of Moab, Ammon, and Edom. What is absent in these early materials is perhaps philosophically important but practically epicyclical. Early Israelite religion is not self-consciously monotheistic; it defines itself in terms of loyalty to Yhwh, in terms of Yhwh’s incomparability, but not in terms of Yhwh’s transcending uniqueness. It has as yet no developed notion that being monotheistic, as it is (to use the term as it is applied to modern monotheisms), is central to its identity.

 64

1 Kings 7:23–26. On the significance of the sea, see A. J. Wensinck, The Ocean in the Literature of the Western Semites (VNAW 19/2; Amsterdam: J. Müller, 1918). 65 See W. F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1957) 199–200. Cf. H. Motzki, “Ein Beitrag zum Problem des Stierkultes in der Re1igionsgeschichte Israels,” VT 25 (1975) 470–85. 66 Unless one conceives of the cherubim as steeds only, as in the Megiddo ivories (G. Loud, Megiddo II [OIP 62; Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1948]). I would take Isa 6, with seraphim who have the appearance and function of cherubim, to imply that the cherubim are the council of Yhwh. Note recently, W. B. Barrick, “The Straight-Legged Cherubim of Ezekiel’s Inaugural Vision (Ezekiel 1:7a),” CBQ 44 (1982) 543–50. 67 On the disk, see Mendenhall, The Tenth Generation, 33–56; cf. A. J. Wensinck, Tree and Bird as Cosmological Symbols in Western Asia (VNAW; Amsterdam: J. Müller, 1921).

32 

Part I: The Rejection of Tradition

III A. The philosopher Karl Jaspers characterized the period from 800 to 200 BCE as Axial. He attributed to it the dawn of consciousness (“in which thinking is the object of itself”), distinguishing as the three areas in which this transition was made China, India, and the eastern Mediterranean. In the last, he maintained, the earlier empires did not make the transition, which was mediated by the poets and philosophers in Greece and by the prophets (especially Deutero-Isaiah) in Israel.68 It would seem that in the case of the development of radical, self-conscious monotheism in Israel, we thus confront an instance of a widespread phenomenon. Still, it is instructive to trace the mechanics of the process that led Israel from monolatrous henotheism – the unselfconscious monotheism of the early first millennium BCE – to philosophical monotheism by the time of the Babylonian Exile. The fates of Dagan, Qaws, Chemosh, and Milcom, not to mention Asshur and Marduk, suggest that contiguous cultures did not undergo the same development. How did it occur in Israel? Continental scholars have characteristically suggested that Yhwh was successively syncretized, assuming the properties of El Elyon (Gen 14:19– 20; 15:1), El Shadday (Gen 17:1; Exod 6:2–3), El himself, Baal, and so forth.69 But the materials surveyed above make this unlikely. First, Yhwh was a fully articulated high god by the time the monarchy was introduced ca. 1030. Given the rhetoric of incomparability in Exod 15 (probably twelfth century), and Yhwh’s control over the heavenly armies in Judg 5 (certainly twelfth century), it would not be inappropriate to assert Yhwh’s full-scale articulation in the thirteenth/twelfth century BCE.70 Second, the understanding on which was based the idea that Yhwh absorbed local Canaanite gods and various gods of the patriarchs was dealt a severe blow by F. M. Cross’s argument that a variety of epithets need not imply a variety of Els, and that the variety of epithets are just that – epithets. Indeed, far from assimilating the various local ҴƝlîm or even beҵƗlîm, Yhwh was El, in Cross’s view. Perhaps one might say that he was in Israel’s pantheon what  68

K. Jaspers, Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (Zürich: Artemis-Verlag, 1949); idem, The Origin and Goal of History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953). 69 See, e.g., Kapelrud, Central Ideas in Amos, 33–47; A. Alt, “Der Gort der Vater,” Kleine Schrifren zur Geschichte der Volkes Israel (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1953) 1:1–78; Ringgren, Israelite Religion, 19–22, 69, among many others. Cf. Ahlström, Aspects of Syncretism. 70 On the dates of these songs, see D. A. Robertson, Linguistic Evidence in Daring Early Hebrew Poetry (SBLDS 3; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1972); Halpern, Emergence of Israel in Canaan, ch. 2, with bibliography.

1. “Brisker Pipes than Poetry” 33  El was in Ugarit’s.71 We might add that the accretion of storm-theophany language to Yhwh should not be interpreted to imply syncretism with Haddu or, still less, with “Baal.” It signifies only the accretion of language in keeping with the god’s character especially his character as a warrior. Finally, it violates good sense to hypothesize that the xenophobic Israel which produced such extensive polemics against baals and “alien” worship of any variety in the eighth through sixth centuries was a hotbed of syncretism and assimilation in the eighth century or even slightly earlier (see Hosea and Jeremiah). Rather, the vehemence of the prophets and of kings such as Saul should lead us to expect only the rejection of actually alien worship.72 Indeed, this is a promising avenue for research to pursue.

B. The proprietary henotheism present in earliest Israel is, with its tendencies toward monolatry, nationalistic in nature. The tendency toward exclusivism is nationalistic, and nationalism entails movement toward exclusivism. Thus, in cases in which the “high” tradition asserts itself (as the exclusion of representations of Yhwh from the Jerusalem or Bethel establishments), inner-Israelite customs and traditions may themselves become targets for polemic. This is a process through which the development of the self-conscious monotheism of a Deutero-Isaiah would be possible. 1. The redirection of Israel’s xenophobia against native institutions first occurs, as the evidence suggests, with the constitution of the monarchy. At this time non-Levitic, non-prophetic mantics were suppressed, though the kingship unquestionably embraced the broadest spectrum of Yahwistic cults, including a variety of priesthoods (1 Sam 28; Deut 18:5ff.). Some scholars have maintained – on the slimmest grounds, unfortunately – that key figures in the sacral establishment of the early monarchy were actually scions of a Jebusite priesthood.73 This is unlikely even in the time of David, who enfranchised all manner of non-Israelites in his regime, for the same reason that it is unlikely Jeroboam invented the golden-bull iconography. In each instance the state undoubtedly portrayed itself not as a daring innovator but as the mainstay of authentic and untainted tradition. Saul’s assault on the non-Israelite populations of Canaan74 may have reflected fear of Philistine and Ammonite onslaughts, but at the same time it  71

This is sustained by the position of “the baal” and “the Asherah” in texts such as 2 Kgs 23:4. See O. Eissfeldt, “Yahweh and El” JSS 1 (1956) 25–37. 72 Whose xenophobia was first argued by D. Merkur in a paper presented in seminar in 1981. See further Halpern, Emergence of Israel in Canaan, ch. 11. 73 As Haldar, Associations of Cult Prophets among the Ancient Semites, 138–39; H. H. Rowley, “Zadok and Nehushtan,” JBL 58 (1939) 113–41; C. E. Hauer, “Who Was Zadok?” JBL 82 (1963) 89–94. Cf. S. Olyan, “Zadok’s Origins and the Tribal Politics of David,” JBL 101 (1982) 177–93. 74 Halpern, Emergence of Israel in Canaan, ch. 11.

34 Part I: The Rejection of Tradition  embodied Israel’s collective cultic conviction that Yhwh, the chief god, has specially elected Israel (1 Sam 8–14, esp. 10:1; 75 12:12). The suppression not the adoption of foreign cults would have been the order of the day. At this time, priestly franchise in the state sacral establishment seems to have been restricted to a single hereditary guild, the Levites, who were constituted as a “tribe.”76 Whether or not this priesthood included elements of earlier, non-Levitic orders (as it did), its very existence and the legislation of its monopoly over the state cult – indeed, the formation of the state cult itself – created an artificial standard and the potential for the alienation of Israel’s official cultus from the religion of the people.77 Moreover, it is clear that, for whatever reason, necromancy and the ancestral cult were stigmatized as alien and as un-Israelite (Num 23:23; cf. 22:7; much later Isa 2:6–8). It may be that the centripetal cult of the national god was consciously preferred to the centrifugal, familial, and fragmenting cults of the ancestors for reasons of state. (One could almost imagine such concerns underlying the stance of Saul, in 1 Sam 20, for instance.) Conversely, the Chinese emperors with their warrior/priest/bureaucrat elite (aristocracy being the natural ground as in Canaan for the cult of the ancestors) made a virtue of the centrifugal ancestral cult by generalizing ancestors. Alternatively, it may have been Saul’s or Samuel’s intention to suppress the Levite’s competitors on the mantic market (see Deut 18:1–22). Whether or not this was the case, by virtue of its attack on necromancy the early state cult (the forerunner of the establishment that in Josiah’s time proved to be the arbiter of the normative) began the process of identifying elements in the religion of the people of Israel as Israelite and as alien. 2. Leaving aside the issue of necromancy, the state cults of Judah and Israel were not always in sync with the popular religion. Under Saul the presumable erosion of the power of non-Levitic priesthoods already distinguished them. Quite early, it was understood that central government meant conducting censuses, conscripting troops and laborers, and constructing fortifications and state buildings such as the temple (1 Sam 8; 2 Sam 7 and 24; 1 Kgs 6–8). Scholars have long recognized that such innovations, which were supported by the Davidic priesthood, crossed the grain of conservative folk sentiment.78 Moreover, Solomon’s Jerusalem was rife  75

Read with GB (OG). Halpern, Emergence of Israel in Canaan, chs. 7–8, 10; idem, “The Uneasy Compromise: Israel between League and Monarchy,” in B. Halpern and J. D. Levenson (eds.), Traditions in Transformation. Turning-Points in Biblical Faith. Essays Presented to Frank Moore Cross, Jr., on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1981) 59–98. 77 B. Halpern, “The Rise of Abimelek ben-Jerubaal,” HAR 2 (1978) 67–100. 78 Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 219–65; E. von Nordheim, “König und Tempel. Der Hintergrund des Tempelbauverbotes in 2 Samuel vii,” VT 27 (1977) 434–53. 76

1. “Brisker Pipes than Poetry” 35  with shrines. This abundance the Josianic historian responsible for the Books of Kings attributes to the demands of international diplomacy and of Solomon’s wives (1 Kgs 11:1–8), and indeed, it should be noted that after Solomon’s death, when the Judahite monarchy was severely reduced in scope and when the number of the king’s foreign wives was not so legendary, Solomon’s shrines continued to function (2 Kgs 23:13). One may therefore justifiably suppose that the shrines represented only a part of an ecumenical, tolerant state policy toward the components of an imperial population. This is consistent with the exaltation of Yhwh – the one god to whom Solomon dedicated the temple – as chief of the gods including the gods of the Gentiles (see Deut 32:8–9).79 Conversely, the sort of zeal for Yhwh exhibited in Saul’s persecution of visible minorities (note 2 Sam 21:2) and in Solomon’s construction of the temple complex (which required much conscription) may itself have been foreign to the folk religion. One clue to this situation lies in the early tribesmen’s response to taxation. It appalled them, for they not unnaturally took it to amount to tribute (1 Sam 8:11–18; 1 Kgs 12:4; 13:16; Deut 17:14–20). The Israelite revolts against Solomon and at his demise sprang from inequities in his political economy (1 Kgs 11:29–40 and 1 Kgs 12).80 Still, there is reason to believe that in seceding Jeroboam employed nativist rhetoric of the sort attributed to Ahijah of Shiloh in 1 Kgs 11:33. Jeroboam’s election of the bull iconography and his erection of two shrines in Dan and Bethel stood opposed to the Judahite cultic establishment with its single shrine and cherub iconography (1 Kgs 12:25–33). Despite the polemic leveled against Jeroboam in Kings, he must have been trying to appeal to the Mosaic antecedents and nationalist sentiment of the north.81 Part of his denunciation of Solomon must have centered not just on the construction of the massive royal temple (and the demotion of the Shilonite priesthood, which supported a rival pretender at Solomon’s accession, see 1 Kgs 1–2), but also on the erection of shrines to gods of foreign peoples on the arrival of the new gods in town (cf. Deut 32:17). In short, the competition among national gods understood to underlie or embody the competition among nations may in the period of Israel’s domination have engendered a tolerant monolatrous polytheism (cf. 1 Sam 5:15). At the north’s secession in an era of competition for independence,

 79 Cf. Widengren (Accadian and Hebrew Psalms, 78) who suggests that Yhwh only in Solomon’s reign surpassed Jerusalem’s city-god, Salem. This is unrealistic. The appeal of the monarchy was based on Yhwh’s ascendance, and cannot have admitted the superiority of any other god. 80 B. Halpern, “Sectionalism and the Schism,” JBL 93 (1974) 519–32. 81 See S. Talmon, “Divergences in Calendar-Reckoning in Ephraim and Judah,” VT 8 (1958) 46–74; Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 73–75.

36 Part I: The Rejection of Tradition  this may have been succeeded by a return to the sort of exclusivist nationalism that had characterized Israel’s original differentiation as an ethnic state among alien Canaanites. While Solomon may have imported into Jerusalem the pantheon that arose from and was necessary to the administration of his empire, his political foes such as Ahijah seem to have distorted his behavior into an acknowledgment of the claims of the other gods to be Yhwh’s equals (cf. Exod 15:11; Judg 11:24). 82 Thus, by repudiation of Chemosh et al. as foreign, rather than as subordinates in Yhwh’s council assigned by him to the nations, exclusivist sentiment again redefines what is and what is not authentically Israelite. 3. From the time after Solomon, information touching the Judahite monarchy is sparse. Concerning the north, the Books of Kings present considerable narrative, but its reliability is unsure. The sources claim that under the Omrides, whose imperial success in Transjordan and Syria involved them in foreign marital entanglements like those of Solomon, the cult of the Tyrian Baal made missionary inroads into Israel. Kings attributes this success to the patronage of Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, Tyre’s king. It further identifies the revolt under Jehu that brings the Omride dynasty down with the revolutionary program of Elijah and Elisha (1 Kgs 19:15–18; 2 Kgs 9–10). This program, historically nativist in character, stigmatizes the cult of Tyre’s Baal as foreign and conceivably identifies it with devotion to some “baal” known in Israel as Yhwh’s subordinate (see below). A subsequent coup in Judah, parallel to Jehu’s in that it removed the Tyrian-Israelite scion Athaliah from the throne and eradicated the traces of Jehoshaphat’s policy of accommodation with the Omrides (the only unification of Israel and Judah between Solomon and Josiah), is said to have issued in the destruction of some cult paraphernalia, including a temple of “the baal” (2 Kgs 11:18). But this revolt is staged by the Jerusalem temple priesthood and bureaucracy in isolation from the rural population. While echoing the xenophobia of Jehu’s purge, it seems to represent nothing more than a palace coup. Jehu’s coup was bloody, xenophobic (reacting against the tainted Omride foreign alliances, but also against military losses in Transjordan), and monolatrous (Hos 1:4–5; 2:2).83 The report in 1 Kgs 18 on prophetic conflict with the Omrides has it that the issue was monolatry – even mo 82 Nikiprowetzky (“Ethical Monotheism,” 79) suggests that at the Solomonic schism, Yhwh became a supranational god. This may indeed have been a factor in the development of radical monotheism, but not because it contributed to Yhwh’s universalization, on which see above. 83 See Mesha’s claims to have wrested southern and central Transjordan from Ahab (KAI, 181). Note further the reports of continual jockeying with Aram in 1 Kgs 20–2 Kgs 9. Mesha’s xenoohobia is worth marking.

1. “Brisker Pipes than Poetry” 37  notheism. In the tale, Elijah taxes the tolerant Israelite laity with exclusivist logic that derives from a complete misunderstanding of the range of meaning inherent in the word “god.” He says “How long will you straddle the fence? If Yhwh is the god, follow him, and if the baal is, follow him!” (1 Kgs 18:21). And the cry “Yhwh – he is the god,” yhwh hûҴ hƗ’elǀhîm (1 Kgs 18:39), which follows Elijah’s miracle, may reflect Eliiah’s own name, “Yhwh is my god,” and anticipate paronomastically that of the king to come who would suppress the cult of “Baal,” yƝhû’Mal 2:11); 23:20; 27:14, 21, 23, 30, 32; Josh 6:19; Isa 23:18; Jer 2:3; 31: 40; Ezek 45:1; Zech 14:20, 21; Ezra 8:28. “Sacred to the priest(s)”: Lev 23:20; Num 6:20; Ezek 45:4. “Sacred to you” (i.e. Israel): Lev 25:12; Num 18:10. In DtrH, the term, qǀdæš occurs only in Deut 26:13; 33:2; 1 Sam 21:5–7; 1 Kgs 7:51; 8:4, 8, 10 (the latter two reflecting the meaning, “adyton”); 15:15. The pattern of distribution in the Phoenician sphere is not dissimilar: gods are called “sacred”, and the term is restricted to them alone. 41 See also Dever, “Asherah, Consort of Yahweh? New Evidence from Kuntillet ‫ލ‬Ajrud.” For the Miqne inscriptions see S. Gitin, “New Incense Altars from Ekron: Typology, Context and Function,” Eretz Israel 23 (Fs. A. Biran) (1992) *43–49. 42 D. N. Freedman, “Yahweh of Samaria and His Asherah,” BA 50 (1987) 241–249. 43 B. Porten and A. Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt. 2. Contracts (Texts and Studies for Students; Jerusalem: Hebrew University, Department of the History of the Jewish People, 1989) B7.3:3. 44 Smith, The Early History of God, 107, n. 52 cites KTU 2.31.39 (read 2.31.41), ’a‫ܔ‬rty and 1.43.13 ҳnth, neither of them in a transparent context, neither certainly the name of a goddess. He also cites EA 84:33 DA-MU-ia, “my Tammuz” and Ezek 8:14, “the Tammuz”, and suffixes on the Ugaritic ’l’ib. The usage in Ezekiel conforms to other patterns in Hebrew explored here, and for that matter may take Tammuz to represent a common noun rather than a proper name. In the EA reference Rib-Addi is simply erecting a contrast, telling the pharaoh to send emissaries to take whatever belongs to his DA.MU to the pharaoh, but not to suffer the enemy taking what belongs to the pharaoh’s god (+DA.MU): the cultic establishment, not the abstracted divinity, is at issue; the referent is probably the title, ’dn; and, in the contrast, “my god :: your god(s),” it may be that the suffix is – semantically, if not formally – attached to the determinative, “god”, rather than to the name itself. As to ’l’ib, the very strong likelihood that it refers to an ancestral spirit (not, the god of the father, but the father’s ghost – K. van der Toorn, forthcoming) puts a strong dent in the value of the citation: it is common for ancestral spirits to be 

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A preferable alternative, in the light of HB usage, where asherah, as a term for a god, like baal, is always determined, is to conclude that asherah denotes a class of deities (the Asherot or Ashtarot of HB), and that the suffix here stipulates precisely which member of the goddess-class, asherah, is meant. The text is a dedication to Yhwh of Samaria and his asherah, as opposed to any other asherahs/ashtorets, that is, goddesses. The usage of Akk. ištar, ištarƗte is parallel: the term does not denote only Ishtar, nor yet, when plural, the various cultic manifestations of Ishtar (as Ishtar of Nineveh and Ishtar of Arbela), but goddesses generally, just as ilnj, ilƗni denotes gods generally, (including ancestral spirits). 45 Thus, in one text from the time of Esarhaddon, two distinct figures, Ninlil and Ishtar, together announce, aninu dištarƗtu, “we are the goddesses.”46 Given the fact that in Biblical usage, asherah in the singular is not the name of a goddess, but a common noun sometimes denoting a goddess, it is understandable that a possessive suffix might be employed – in place of a definite article – to indicate precisely which goddess is being mentioned. For the same reason, the definite article is attached to the term, baal, to stipulate which of the baals is under discussion. And Yhwh, for example, is distinguished with a possessive suffix when he appears as “my baa1” in Hos 2:18: Yhwh, here, is the baal who presides over the other baals. Yet there is another dynamic at work as well in connection with the noun, baal, and probably with asherah as a term for goddess.  mentioned with possessive suffixes, at least in Akkadian, and apparently also in Ugaritic (“my ancestral spirits”, etc.). 45 In a forthcoming study, K. van der Toorn adduces a text mentioning DINGER a-bi ù d INNIN um-mi (G. Meier, “Die zweiter Tafel der Serie bît mƝseri,” AfO 14 [1941–44] 142: 36–37). As he demonstrates, this must be “the ghost of the father and the ghost of the mother: because there is no evidence that women had personal goddesses divorced from their husbands’ or fathers’ personal gods. A parallel to the locution, also adduced by van der Toorn, is DINGER É and dINNIN É // dIštar bƯtim. 46 K12033 + 82-5-22, 527 I 1’–14’, line 8’: see M. Weippert, “Assyrische Prophetien der Zeit Asarhaddons und Assurbanipals,” in M. Fales (ed.), Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: New Horizons in Literary, Ideological, and Historical Analysis (Orientis Antiqui Collectio, 17; Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 1981) 71–115. It is interesting to speculate on the possible appropriation of a Middle Assyrian term in Israel as well: esirtu in the Middle Assyrian Laws specifically denotes a concubine (pl. esrƗte: G. R. Driver and J. C. Miles, The Assyrian Laws [Oxford: Oxford University, 1935] 41). The term is cognate with Heb. ’sr, Akk. esƝru, with the meaning, “captive”. However, the Assyrian sibilant will have been experienced as /š/ in Israel (see A. Millard, “Assyrian Royal Nantes in Biblical Hebrew,” JSS 21 [1976] 1–14), as it was in some Hittite texts, and the automatic association would have been with asherah. Since Hebrew seems to have borrowed its term for “concubine from some other language family (pilægæš // Gr. ʌȐȜȜĮȟ, Lat. pellex), the possibility of a congeneric assimilation of the Assyrian term with the term asherah should not altogether be ruled out of court.

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71

 In eighth-century and later literature, hab-baҳal, “the baal”, appears alongside the plural, “the baals”, “the gods of the class, baals”. Hosea abjures the use of the term, “my baal” as an epithet of Yhwh, and speaks of dedications made to “the baal” (2:10)”47 in the same breath as promising to wipe the name of the baals, plural, from Israel’s tongue (2:15, 19; 11:2). His complaint about “the days of the baals” seems to be that devotion to them eclipsed the loyalty due Yhwh (2:15). Later, Jeremiah speaks of the baals in the plural: in 2:23, he asks, “How can you say ‘I am not profaned, I have not gone after the baals?’ Look at your way in the Valley”, just after denouncing prophets who prophesy “by the baal” (2:8, singular), then accusing his people of abandoning Yhwh, the (singular) “source of living waters to cut themselves cisterns [plural], broken cisterns that don’t hold the water” (2:13). The cisterns and the baals are identical, and plural, yet the prophets prophesy by the formally singular baal. 2:23 is of special interest in that the prophet presupposes his audience would deny its allegiance to “the baals”: the suggestion is that the term, baals, has an expanded semantic range in Jeremiah’s rhetoric, including (ancestral?) elements that earlier would not have been covered by the same word. Tying this polemic to the iconographic tradition in the cult, Jeremiah refers to those – including people, kings, officials, priests and prophets – “who say to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ and to a stone, ‘You gave birth to me’” (2:27), where one might take the reference to be to a single pair of icons. 48 Yet in the very next line, Jeremiah complains, “Where are your gods, which you made for yourself; let them rise up, they will not save you in your time of evil, for as numerous as your towns were your gods, Judah” (2:28: LXX adds: and as many as were the streets of Jerusalem they sacrificed to the baal). The multiple gods are identical to the cisterns and  47 Against F. I. Andersen and D. N. Freedman, Hosea: A New Translation (AB 24; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), the phrase ҳĞw lbҳl is to be compared to 2 Kgs 23:4, “vessels ҳĞwym to the baal, and to the asherah, and to all the Host of the Heavens”: clearly, these vessels have not been hammered into the form of a baal or an asherah, let alone of all the Host of Heaven. Rather, they have been made for or dedicated to those objects of devotion. As there is absolutely no indication in Hosea 2 of any polemic against iconography, and no identification of the baal(s) with icons until 11:2, it seems most likely that the locution in 2:10 refers to dedications as well. 48 The reference is probably to a stela, as in the Holy of Holies of the Arad shrine – stelae remained an integral part of the cult at least until Josiah’s reform not just on the literary evidence, but on that of the state shrine at Arad as well (see below on the Arad shrine). On the passage in question, and especially its polemical inversion of the meaning of the symbols, see S. M. Olyan, “The Cultic Confessions of Jer 2,27a,” ZAW 99 (1987) 254–59.

72 Part I: The Rejection of Tradition  the baals in Jeremiah’s rhetoric. Yet the references to the baal, and to the tree and stone, in the singular, accompany those in the plural. In 7:9, in the context of a litany of wrongdoing reminiscent of Hos 4:2, Jeremiah introduces this interesting juxtaposition: the cultic offenses are two, “burning incense to the baal, and going after other gods whom you do not know”. Again, the ritual act is oriented to the (singular) baal, the general accusation of apostasy is connected with gods (plural). Some insight into the specific valences of this sort of rhetoric is to be had from Jer 7:18. Here, Yhwh accuses the children of gathering the firewood, the fathers of kindling the fire and the women of preparing the dough to make “cookies” (kawwƗnîm) for the Queen of the Heavens, and “to pour out libations to other gods”. Is it possible that the ritual discussed in Jer 44 is generalized here, and that the accusation of cultic activity for other gods is triggered by devotion to one particular “other” deity? More likely, the cult of the Queen of Heaven involved invoking her (and Yhwh’s) retinue – the Host of Heaven.49 As Jer 9:13 remarks, “They went ... after the baals, whom their fathers had taught them”. The plural other gods, as in 7:18; 2:28, and ch. 44, are admittedly traditional deities (so, too, 11:10; 16:11, 13; contrast 7:9; 19:4). Even more important is Jeremiah’s reiteration of the multiplicity of Judah’s gods: he correlates this to the multiplicity of its “altars to burn incense to ‘the baal’” (11:12–13). Clearly, the “gods to whom they burn incense” are the gods for whom they built “altars to burn incense to ‘the baal;’” again, the ritual act is oriented toward the (singular) baal; again, a multitude of actual gods is at issue. The same relation – of a ritual act – to a normally singular baal obtains in Jer 11:17 (sacrifice); 12:16 (invocation in oaths, cf. Hos 2:19); 19:5 (building altars, burning sons); 23:13 (prophesying by the baal), 27 (speaking in the name of the baal); 32:29 (sacrificing), 35 (building high places and sacrificing children). Yet Jeremiah plainly equates these activities with sacrifice and building high places for, prophesying in the name of and invoking “other gods” or “non-gods” (2:11, devotion to non-gods; 5:7, oaths invoking non-gods; 7:9, incense burning for the baal // going after other gods; cf. 11:10; 13:10; 25:6; 35:15, going after other gods; 16:11, 13 bowing to and serving other gods; 1:16; 19:4; 44:3, 5, 8, 15, burning incense for other gods; 7:18; 19:13; 32:29, pouring out libations for other gods). Particularly, Jeremiah identifies child sacrifice as a rite directed toward “the baal.” In 7:32–8:3 he predicts that

 Propp suggests taking the qΩre of 7:18; 44:17–25, ml’kt, as “retinue” (so LXX to 7, 18). 49

2. The Baal (and the Asherah) in 7th-century Judah

73

 “It will no longer be called ‘the Tophet’ and ‘the Valley of ben-Hinnom’, but the Valley of Killing...”

When punishment is visited upon Jerusalem, “they will bring out the bones of the kings of Judah and the bones of the officials and the bones of the priests and the bones of the prophets and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem from their graves. And they will slaughter them to the sun and to the moon and to all the Host of the Heavens whom they loved and whom they served and whom they went after and whom they sought and whom they bowed down to...”

The beneficiaries of the human sacrifice, from Jeremiah’s perspective, were “the sun and the moon and all the Host of Heaven”. The contrast is to Jer 19:5, 11–13. Here, the prophet declaims, on site, the accusation that in the Valley of ben-Hinnom, the Judahites burned incense to other gods, whom their fathers did not know (19:4, cited above). They “built the high places of the baal to burn their children in fire as burnt offerings to the baal, which I did not command and did not speak and which never entered my mind” (19:5). In his peroration, Jeremiah observes that Yhwh will shatter the people like an unmendable pot. “making this city like the Tophet. And the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be like the profaned Tophet, all the houses where they burned incense on their roofs to the Host of the Heavens and poured out libations to other gods” (19:11– 13).

Against this background, the parallel text (32:29) which speaks of “the houses on the roofs which they burned incense to the baal and poured out libations to other gods” is decisive, prose or not. ‘The rituals of the Valley’ (cf. 2:23, cited above) are dedicated to the baal, to the Host, to other gods. Micah (6:6–7) portrays child sacrifice as the highest order of devotion to Yhwh, as does Gen 22 (where adventitious substitution is legitimated, but where the intention to sacrifice the child is indispensable). Isaiah (30:33) speaks of Yhwh himself preparing a Tophet beside Jerusalem in which to slaughter the Assyrians. Yet Jeremiah identifies the Tophet, in a variety of passages, with the Host (including Sun and Moon), with other gods (plural), and with the baal (singular). He explicitly denies that the rite is oriented toward Yhwh (19:5): evidently, the worshippers claimed that it was, and denied, despite their activities in the Valley (i.e., the Tophet), that they followed the baals (plural, 2:23), as distinct from Yhwh. Jeremiah employs the term, baal, to denote a class of deities, the baals, which includes the Host of Heaven, and which, though subordinate to Yhwh in the traditional theology, are the beneficiaries of child sacrifice (compare Ashtar Kemosh in the Mesha stela; and cf. Deut 4:19 where the astral cult is proscribed in identical language): in Jeremiah’s mind, the “Host” and “the baal” are identical. “The baal” is a collective noun.

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Another constellation of texts buttresses this inference. Jer 3:17 enunciates a standing motif of the book of Jeremiah, and more particularly of chs. 1–25: the Israelites “go each after the šrrwt (imagining?) of his own heart”. This clause occurs again in 7:24, following an accusation of service to the Queen of the Heavens (7:18). It is succeeded by a judgment predicated on the accusation that the Israelites introduced abominations into the temple, “and built the high places of the Tophet in the Valley of benHinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire, which I never commanded, and which never entered my mind” (Jer 7:30–8:3). The same passage, as noted above, links the Tophet to the Host of Heaven. The locution, “went after the imagining of their hearts,” recurs in 9:13. Here, it is explicitly linked to worship of the baals. In 11:8, the same expression, in a generalized accusation of covenant violation, is immediately followed by the specific indictment of Israel for “going after other gods to serve them” (11:10). The same referent for the phrase appears in 13:10 and in 16:11–13. In 18:12; 23:17, where the phrase recurs, there is no further explanation of its meaning. Yet the valence, by now is clear. Going after the imaginings of one’s heart means abandoning Yhwh: what one abandons him for are other gods, baals, the Queen of Heaven and the Host. Jeremiah’s equation of these terms may be a moral one, but the terms “baals”, and “other gods” seem to include the Host, just as service to “the baal” seems to imply going after other gods, the baals, and the Host. Jeremiah’s poetry accounts for 8 of 10 occurrences of “imaginings” in HB. Of the other two, Deut 29:18 (cf. Jer 23:17) refers to “going after the gods of those nations” to which the Israelites had been exposed (v. 17). Ps 81:13 (cf. Jer 7:24) speaks of more general apostasy, but is probably related. “The baal,” in sum, seems to be a collective plural. That this is the case, and that the noun in the singular can embrace a variety of gods, is reflected grammatically in several texts. 2 Kgs 23:5 speaks of those “who burn incense lab-baҳal (to the baal), to the sun and to the moon and to the constellations and to all the Host of Heaven.” Here, hab-baҳal is set into apposition with the succeeding objects of worship: the absence of the conjunction before the first element of the astral list is not inadvertent, anymore than its presence before each element succeeding the first in that list is inadvertent. This text, like Jeremiah, identifies the baal with the Host. Moreover, the baal is a collective noun: to burn incense to the baal is to adore the sun, the moon, the constellations and all the Host. In the same period, and in the same setting, Zephaniah includes priests and worshippers of the Host of Heaven among the “remainder of habbaҳal.” This expression implies a collective plural (1:4–5) – elsewhere “remainder” (š’r) always implies plurality within an overarching unity – the remainder of Israel, or a people (Isa 10:20–22; 11:11, 16; 17:3; 28:5),

2. The Baal (and the Asherah) in 7th-century Judah

75  of the trees of the forest (Isa 10:19), of the silver (2 Chr 24:14), and the like. On rare occasion, it refers to descendants (Isa 14:22), or, rather, to a surviving part of a lineage able to generate descendants, but for the most part this semantic function is fulfilled by the alloform, “remnant” (š’ryt, as Gen 45:7; 2 Kgs 21:14; Amos 1:8; Mic 2:12 > Jer 23:3; Jer 11:23; 39:3; 44:7; 40:15; 50:26).50 One cannot thus take the passage to refer to some relict of the baal, such as his (their) iconography: it is the survival of the baal(s), or of their memory, or the survival of some of the baals, in contradistinction to others, that is in point. In light of the usage, one might choose to argue that the “remainder of the baal” in Zeph 1:4 are those who perpetuate the name of the baal, and thus conclude that it is the plural adherents who are under attack, while “the Baal” is a single god. However, this violates the pattern of usage in that the “remainder of the baal” are, by the very argument, divorced from “the baal” (singular). More important, Zephaniah stipulates what the extirpation of the “rest of the baal” entails: “the name of the kmrym with (that of) the priests, and those who prostrate themselves on the roofs to the Host of the Heavens...” Spieckermann51 identifies the kmrym of Hos 10:5; Zeph 1:4; 2 Kgs 23:4 with the astral priests of KAI 225–226 (see KAI 2.275). That they are integral to the worship of “the baal” here is indisputable. Yet what is it that those who worship “the baal” devote themselves to? The Host of Heaven. Moreover, Zephaniah adds to his list of votaries of “the  50 First Isaiah prefers the nominal form, š’r, which otherwise appears in pre-exilic materials only in Zeph 1:4. The other passages in which the term appears are: Isa 10:19, 20, 21, 22; 11:11, 16; 14:22; 16:14; 17:3; 21:17; 28:5. In none of these, except Isa 14:22, is the reference to anything but the remainder of a people, literally or metaphorically, who have survived disaster. In post-exilic materials, the term appears in Mal 2:15 (the rest of the spirit); Esther 9:12 (in the rest of the states), 16 (the rest of the Jews); Ezra 3:8 (the rest of their brother priests and Levites); 4:3 (the rest of the clan chiefs of Israel), 7 (the rest of his cohorts); Neh 10:29; 11:1 20 (the rest of the people); 1 Chr 11:8 (the rest of the city); 16:41 (the rest of the singers); 2 Chr 9:29 (the rest of the affairs of Solomon); 24:14 (the rest of the silver). None of the post-exilic usage, except conceivably 1 Chr 11:8, remotely implies survival of catastrophe, to which others have succumbed. In fact, the lexeme in postexilic texts where it governs a distributive term (Jews, states, cohorts, etc.) always has the meaning, “other”, as distinct from those who have been named to this point. Conversely, Deutero-Isaiah, Jeremiah, DtrH, Zephaniah, Amos, Micah, Zechariah, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles all prefer š’ryt for the survivors of cataclysm. This form also appears in Isa 14:30; 15:9, and in Isa 37:4 (< 2Kgs 19:4). But its use is consistent across the other sources, although Haggai (alone) seems to deploy it as the post-exilic sources use š’r (1:12, 14; 2:2). It is frequently either affixed to or brought into equivalence with ply‫ܒ‬h (as Ezra 9:14, e.g.). It is always used of a people, with the single exception of 2 Sam 14:7, where the wise woman of Tekoa invokes it to plead for the provision of “name and remnant” (cf. Isa 14:22) for her deceased husband. 51 Spieckermann, Juda unter Assur in der Sargonidenzeit, 83–85.

76 Part I: The Rejection of Tradition  baal” “those who prostrate themselves, 52 who swear to Yhwh and who swear by Milcom”53 (1:5). Is it a coincidence that Milcom, like Ashtoret, is one of the baals to whom Solomon constructed a high place on the Mount of Olives? Rather, like Ashtoret and the Queen of Heaven, Milcom was probably regarded as an important astral underling of Yhwh, corresponding to one of the planets. Under the circumstances, the context in which Jer 7:22 cites Amos 5:25 – both deny the efficacy of sacrifice with an allusion to the absence of a sacrificial cultus during the wilderness era (contra P, and cf., significantly, 2 Sam 7:7) – may be significant. Jeremiah’s citation comes in a segment sandwiched between his accusation about worship of the Queen of the Heavens and his prediction about the Tophet that was dedicated to the Host. The source-text in Amos succeeds a segment in which Yhwh is named, among other things, as the creator of the constellations. More important, it leads directly to a prediction of exile for the Israelites together with their astral images.54 Amos’s reference to “your king” (mlkkm) may even represent a pun on or error for (LXX: Molech) the name of Milkom (mlkm). In that case, the god’s astral connections would be confirmed. Such a reading draws some support from Hosea’s reference to kmrym in connection with the exile of Samaria (10:5), supposing Spieckermann’s identification of these figures as astral priests (above) to be correct. In Zephaniah’s text, the identity of interest among the kmrym, the priests of “the baal” and the rooftop worshippers of the Host is organic: for reformationists of the Josianic period, the Host and the “baal’’ are identical. These and other texts suggest that the baals were included, at least in Josianic theology, among the Host of Heaven. They also indicate that habbaҳal, formally singular, could serve as a collective – not just grammatically, but for a multiplicity of gods such as composed the heavenly Host. Such a collective plural is also witnessed in Mesopotamia: Enuma Elish 6:116 speaks of mankind’s DINGIR (var. i-la-)-ši-na [formally singular] ištaršina [formally singular] – their gods and goddesses – who should bring tribute to Marduk. A text of Esarhaddon’s speaks of messages for the gods and goddesses, našparti DINGIR dištar.55 An inscription of Nabopolassar speaks of him “who in his mind has understood the worship due the

 52

So MT. LXX omits, and this is probably a double reading. MT “their king”, but read with Sinaiticus and the Lucianic recensions, Syriac, V. 54 Latterly, Andersen and Freedman, Hosea. 55 Formally singular – R. Borger, The Inschriften Asarhaddons Königs von Assyrien (AOB, 9. Graz: E. Weidner, 1956) 45 ii 6. 53

2. The Baal (and the Asherah) in 7th-century Judah

77  gods and goddesses” (ša pala‫ ۊ‬DINGIR ù INNIN litmudu ‫܈‬urruššu), where both “gods” and “goddesses” are formally singular.56 The equation of “other gods” with “baals” is not restricted to Jeremiah. Thus, in 1 Sam 7:3, Samuel urges the Israelites to remove the “foreign gods... and the ashtorets... So the Israelites removed the baals and the ashtorets.” In the book of Judges, more particularly, whatever its editorial history,57 a very revealing sequence occurs. Israel has failed to supplant the inhabitants of some of the tracts Joshua conquered. Yhwh therefore decrees his unwillingness to evict these peoples – leaving their gods in place as snares (2:3). The Israelites of the next generation, who had not witnessed the conquest, “did service to the baals.” Specifically, “they went after other gods from the gods of the nations which were around them”. “They did service to the baal [singular] and to the ashtorets” (2:11–13). Who is the baal Israel served? “The baal” represents the baals, the male gods of the nations of Israel’s environs. These are the “other gods” to whom the nation’s cultic attentions relapse even when “judges” arise (2:17, 19): the other gods are the snares intentionally left by Yhwh. Intermarrying with the surrounding nations, the Israelites “did service to their gods” (3:6). After 2:13, “other gods” alone represents a term inclusive of the baals and ashtorets. Arguably, “baals” in 2:11, and, more certainly, “other gods” in 2:12, are also inclusive of the ashtorets. It is not to be assumed, on the basis of 1 Sam 7:3, that the ashtorets are identified by H(Dtr) as indigenous. Judg 3:7, implementing the programmatic cycle of 2:11–19, stipulates that “The Israelites did what was evil in Yhwh’s sight, and forgot Yhwh their god, and served the baals [plural] and the asherahs [plural].” This polytheistic apostasy is thus established as the referent for “The Israelites did what was evil...” at the start of the cycles of succeeding major judges (3:12; 4:1; 6:1; 13:1).58 Two texts are more specific. Judges 8:33 states that on Gideon’s death, the Israelites “whored after the baals, and made Baal Berit into their god.” The particular figure of Baal Berit is drawn from the Abimelek story (Judg 9:4), but the editorial elaboration on that attestation deserves particular attention: service to Baal Berit implies service not just  56 S. L. Langdon, Die neubabylonischen Königsinschriften (VAB 4. Leipsig: Hinrichs, 1912) 60: 17. 57 Halpern, The First Historians, 121–143, 220–228 for a Josianic date, with bibliography. 58 4QJudga omits Judg 6:7–10, which is probably quite late. Nevertheless, in identifying “the gods of the Amorites” as the objects of Israelite apostasy, the author of this text has clearly understood the implications of Judges 1–3 that the baals and ashtorets were in origin Canaanite deities absorbed by Israel. This is also the perspective of Deuteronomy, which like the Former Prophets is interested in tracing both the Host and the high places to the supplanted Canaanites.

78 Part I: The Rejection of Tradition  to one figure, but to many, to the baals generally. The editor’s choice of the plural term here is a device to avoid the collective singular, and thus ambiguity in his formulation. Conversely, “the baal” with the altar in Judg 6:25–32 is understood to be a single figure (esp. 6:31–32). Even more elaborate is the indictment in Judg 10:6–16. There, the Israelite relapse explicitly involves service to “the baals and the ashtorets and the gods of Aram59 and the gods of Sidon and the gods of Moab and the gods of the children of Ammon and the gods of the Philistines” (10:6). From the formulation, one might expect that the baals and ashtorets were to be divorced, as the gods of aboriginal Canaanites, from the gods of the Iron-Age successor-nations – the Arameans, Phoenicians, Transjordanian Hebrews and Philistines. Yet the continuation belies such an inference: the Israelites confess, “We served the baals” (10:10), a text quoted at 1 Sam 12:10 as, “We served the baals and the ashtorets”. The term “baals” here includes the various gods mentioned in Judg 10:6, as “the baals and the ashtorets” in 1 Sam 12:10 does. Yhwh’s rebuttal then mentions “other gods” (10:13), so the Israelites remove “the foreign gods” (10:16). The “baal/baals” in Josianic usage, and the ashtorets, are all other gods, foreign gods, including the Host (17:3). The Host and the baal were in large measure congruent. For the Host and the baal, a typical cult practice was to burn incense on rooftops – Jer 19:13 (cf. 8:2–3); 32:29 – where various cultic activities took place (1 Sam 9:25–26, the designation of Saul; 2 Sam 16:2 after 11:2, Absalom entering David’s harem on the spot where David had spotted Bathsheba; Isa 22:1, 13, sacrificial feasting in the face of Sennacherib’s destruction of the countryside: Neh 8:16, tabernacles on the roofs: Isa 15:3; Jer 48:38, Moabite mourning on rooftops [and in streets and piazzas]; Judg 16:27, Philistines watching Samson inside the temple from the temple roof; cf. Josh 2:6, Rahab’s roof with pšty hҳ‫ ܈‬spread out; Prov 21:9; 25:24). This is also identified as the locus of proskynesis to the Host in Zeph 1:5. It follows that Ahaz’s “upper chamber” with the altars built by “the kings of Judah” was an astral installation on the rooftop outside of an interior upper chamber, possibly a throne room or a wing of the clerestory of the temple:60 as in the case of Solomon’s high places on the Mount of Olives, the cult of the Host survived Hezekiah’s measures unimpaired. The cultic activity attested for the Host is the same as that attested for the baals, chiefly burning incense and child sacrifice (Jeremiah, above, and Ps  59 LXXa omits “and the gods of Aram,” which is most likely a haplography by homoioarcton. That said, however, this is precisely the sort of list which is subject to scribal expansion over generations of transmission, and not all the present elements may belong to the first edition of DtrH. 60 Halpern, The First Historians, 43–54.

2. The Baal (and the Asherah) in 7th-century Judah

79  106:28, 38, zb‫ۊ‬w lҳ‫܈‬by knҳn) . Again, Spieckermann’s 61 identification of the kmrym of Hos 10:5; Zeph 1:4; 2 Kgs 23:4 as priests of astral cults is central: it was “to burn incense on the high places in the towns of Judah and on the outskirts of Jerusalem” that “the kings of Judah” had appointed the kmrym – who led those “who burned incense to the baal: to the sun and to the moon and to the constellations and to all the Host of the Heavens.” The collocation is not accidental, but essential. The suppression of Ahaz’s upper chamber with the altars built by the kings of Judah (starting, one presumes, at least with Ahaz himself: contrast “the altar which Manasseh made” in the same verse), the suppression of the astral priests appointed by the kings of Judah – including in the vicinity of Jerusalem, where Solomon’s high places continued in use – the devotion of the kings of Judah to the Queen of Heaven and to the Host/baal(s) are all of a piece. The restriction of the cult to incense offerings is of particular interest. Exod 22:19, zb‫ ۊ‬l’lhym Ҵ‫ۊ‬rm blty lyhwh lbdw, already proscribes animal sacrifice for any god but Yhwh. This rule may have been honored traditionally, though sometimes, no doubt, as with child sacrifice, in the breach as much as in the observance (contrast Hos 11:2, but note the MT vocalization, in D). By the same lights, no Catholic or traditional Jew or Muslim would imagine that a prohibition on sacrifice to any but the chief god precluded the dedication of candles, or like rites, to Mary, angels, saints or ancestors. Attention lavished on the high god’s retainers, after all, was a mere corollary of the worship of the high god. The noun, zb‫ۊ‬, “sacrifice, sacrificial feast (involving meat)” is applied to “the baal” only in 2 Kgs 10:19, 24 in the Primary History, where Jehu announces such a feast as a trap. In 2 Kgs 5:17, Na’aman declares that he will devote neither burnt offering nor meat sacrifice to other gods, but only to Yhwh: notably, he makes no such declaration in connection with other forms of offering, such as incense. As to the verb, zb‫ۊ‬, 1 Kgs 11:8 mentions sacrifice (D) by Solomon’s foreign wives, along with incense burning, to their respective gods – it seems natural that these foreigners should in fact seek to dedicate meat sacrifices to their respective high gods (including Ashtoret). On the same principle, Judg 16:23 mentions a Philistine sacrifice (LXX with cognate accusative) to Dagon, Num 22:40 a sacrifice (LXX) by Balaq, king of Moab. 1 Kgs 12:32 claims that Jeroboam sacrificed (D) to his calves. Exodus 32:8 describes sacrifices (LXX, burnt and whole offerings in v. 6) to the golden calf, and Deut 32:17, sacrifices (LXX) to šƝ‫ڴ‬îm – to be understood, in light of the Deir Alla plaster, as the subordinate gods of which Yhwh in P, El Shadday, is the chief (cf. Ps 106:37 [LXX] – child sacrifice to šƝ‫ڴ‬îm). This material is plainly polemi 61

Spieckermann, Juda unter Assur in der Sargonidenzeit, 83–85.

80 Part I: The Rejection of Tradition  cal, and does not represent the subjective experience of the alleged votaries. Exodus 34:15 warns against sacrifice (LXX) to the gods of the Canaanites, Lev 17:7 against sacrifice (LXX) in the field to demons (?; Ğҳrym; cf. the possible pun in Deut 32:17, Ğҳrwm), Exod 22:19, as noted, against sacrifice (LXX) to any other god but Yhwh. Otherwise, in the Primary History, there is no reference to sacrifice to alien deities (but in the postexilic context, 2 Chr 33:22, Amon sacrificed [D] to “icons”, pΩsîlim, a term inserted in the parallel Hos 11:2 [D]; 2 Chr 28:23, where Ahaz “sacrificed” [G] to the god[s] of Damascus, saying “Let me ‘sacrifice’ [D] to the gods of Aram” – those who were smiting him, in the hope of placation according to Chronicles – in the latter case, Chronicles deduces the act of meat sacrifice from the importation of an altar on a Damascene model). Notably, the D stem of zb‫ ۊ‬is attached to sacrifice not just to foreign gods, but to Yhwh, presumably, on the high places: 1 Kgs. 3:2, 3; 22:44; 2 Kgs 12:4; 14:4; 15:4, 35; 16:4 // 2 Chr 28:4 (also Hos 4:13–14; 12:12 at Gilgal; probably 13:2, at Adam, en route to Bethel from the Jordan, where the context condemns the calf iconography; contrast 2 Chr 33:17, LXX, in Chronicles’s non-synoptic section after the rehabilitation of Manasseh; Ezek 20:28, LXX); and, at the place of the ark rather than in the temple – 1 Kgs 8:5 // 2 Chr 5:6. The only place where the D-stem is used of sacrifice that earns an author’s unreserved approbation is in 2 Chr 30:22, where, however, it is the Levites, rather than the Aaronides, who conduct the ritual. All this suggests that the D form is applied to irregular activities, and, to judge from participial forms in which the orthography indicates the conjugation, in this matter the Massora merely follows the lead of the consonantal text. In Isa 57:7, as in Ps 106:28, 38, the noun, zb‫ ۊ‬pertains to the funerary cult (at the highland bench-tomb) in connection with child sacrifice (57: 5– 6; also 65:3–4, with “sacrifice on rooftops, burn incense on bricks [?]”). Ezek 16:16–21; 20:28–31 likewise places child sacrifice on the high places, in connection with metal icons, but with no necessary connection to the funerary cult (Ps 106:37 connects it to šƝ‫ڴ‬îm). 1 Kgs 13:2 predicts, and 2 Kgs 23:20 relates the sacrifice of priests of the high place by Josiah, but this to Yhwh, in the way of a ban. 2 Chronicles 34:4 relates that Josiah’s men “tore down the altars of the baals and chopped down the ‫ۊ‬mnym which were above them and broke up the ҴašƝrîm and the icons (pΩsîlîm) and the plating (of the icons – massƝkô‫)ܔ‬,” where the altars of the baals and the ‫ۊ‬mnym that were above them occupy the place of the “high places” in v. 3. In other words, as in Ezek 16:16–21, where it is described at some length (cf. 20:28–31, and further below), the main specific activity connected with the baals, and with the Host of Heaven, other than child sacrifice, is incense burning, not meat sacrifice.

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81

 The cultic situation at Tell Miqne/Ekron IB, ending in the mid to late seventh century contributes substantially to our understanding of this circumstance. In connection with a huge boom in olive oil production – to 1.1 million liters/year, minimum, commanding at least 50,000 dunams of groves, and more probably over 100,00062 – there is a sudden explosion of incense altars. These are found both in the middle room of the processing workshops (where the pressed oil was presumably finished, possibly by the addition of aromatics) and in the elite area. The incense altars are of a type previously found in Israel and Judah, not Philistia, and may well indicate the socialization of Israelite folk religion at Ekron in the seventh century in both the elite and the industrial and perhaps in the domestic zones63 This would not be inconsistent with the occurrence of the Phoenician-type name, ‫ۊ‬mlk, (A)himelek (cf. [A]hiram), in an unpublished ostracon on the site (but written in Aramaic script!). Indeed, a deportation of Phoenicians (or of Israelites originating near Phoenicia) to Ekron in the seventh century might explain how the author of Kings came to identify Ashtoret particularly with Sidonians. However, if the incense altars found on the steps of the adyton of the Arad sanctuary are seventh century, 64 and thus absent from earlier levels in Judah, the influence at Ekron is probably strictly Israelite, as Gitin has suggested.65 As to gods at Ekron, an inscription uncovered in 1990 reads “sacred (i.e., dedicated) to ‫ۊ‬q..š (‫ۊ‬-q-w ?-r/d-š), a divine name or epithet possibly from a dialect related to that of the patronymics (?) found in the ostraca from Tel Jemme.66 This would tend to sustain Kempinski’s view67 that the Jemme names are traditional ones of Philistine social groups: conceivably, the Ekron inscription even reflects a cult of a deified ancestor or cult founder. Asherah, however, appears in several inscriptions at Ekron (in 62

D. Eitam and A. Shomroni, “Research of the Oil-industry During the Iron Age at Tel Miqne,” in M. Heltzer and D. Eitam (eds.), Olive Oil in Antiquity. Israel and Neighbouring Countries (Haifa: University of Haifa, Israel Oil Industry Museum and Dagon Museum, 1987) 48–49; S. Gitin, “Tell Miqne-Ekron: A Type-Site for the Inner Coastal Plain in the Iron Age II Period,” AASOR 49 (1989): 23–58; idem. “Incense Altars from Ekron, Israel and Judah: Context and Typology,” Eretz Israel 20 (1989) 52*–67*. 63 Gitin, “Tell Miqne-Ekron.” 64 D. Ussishkin, “The Date of the Judaean Shrine at Arad,” IEJ 38 (1988) 142–57. 65 Gitin, “Tell Miqne-Ekron.” But the preservation of final -t on ’šrt suggests Phoenician influence on the local dialect. Contrast KAI 266. 66 J. Naveh, “Writing and Scripts in the Seventh-Century BCE, Philistia: The New Evidence from Tell Jemmeh,” IEJ 35 (1985) 9–21. See S. Gitin, “New Incense Altars from Ekron,” for a link to the 7th-century King of Ekron, Ikausu. 67 A. Kempinski, “Some Philistine Names from the Kingdom of Gaza,” IEJ 37 (1987) 20–24.

82 Part I: The Rejection of Tradition  cluding twice, “sacred to Asherah”) in the elite area, where further incense altars were uncovered in stratum IB. Iconographically, Asherah was associated with trees;68 it may be that as Asherah gives suck to the gods, she is naturally associated with the production of liquids. If she was the primary object of the incense offerings (or first fruits of the presses) in the industrial zone, we would have at Ekron the first reflex of the theology against which Israel’s reformationist literature is railing. Since the burning of incense is regularly associated in Israelite (reformationist) literature with homage to gods inferior to Yhwh called baals and asherot/ashtarot, the generic names for Israelite gods and goddesses,69 the connection seems a likely one. In any case, the situation at Philistine Ekron in the seventh century establishes the basis for later associations of Demeter with the Philistine coast. Yhwh’s asherah, similarly, is the principal candidate for the goddess called the Queen of Heaven in Jeremiah 44. This goddess is identified as the traditional recipient of incense, libations and fragrant cakes or cookies, shaped in her form (presumably the triangle, later the symbol of Tannit), in the female cult (44:15–19; 7:18). Yhwh’s epithet in the Elephantine papyri, mr’ šmy’ (also, ’lh šmy’), is not unrelated to this issue: that the Lord of the Heavens’ consort should be the Queen of the Heavens seems most likely. The apparent association of an asherah with incense, and probably oilbased cakes, at Ekron considerably strengthens the case. At the same time, the erection of a high place outside Jerusalem for “Ashtoret the god(dess) of the Sidonians” – and the fact that this is the only proper name for a goddess (the scantily attested Anat aside) preserved in HB, suggests that this was the personal name of Yhwh’s asherah: the latter term, as noted, was a common noun in the singular, yet the standard seventh-century plural for “goddesses” was apparently “Ashtorets”. Olyan has made a persuasive case, independent of these considerations, for the identity of the Queen of Heaven with Ashtoret70 – the “cookies,” for example, used in her cult are denominated by a term cognate to  68

Usually palms – see R. Hestrin, “The Lachish Ewer and the ‘Asherah,” IEJ 37 (1987) 222–223. Gitin (“New Incense Altars from Ekron”) links leaf-decorated chalices at Ekron and elsewhere to the same motif. See also D. Ussishkin, The Conquest of Lachish by Sennacherib (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Institute of Archaeology, 1982) 77.4–5 register 2. 69 Styled foreign in Josianic literature, but see B. Halpern, “‘Brisker Pipes than Poetry:’ The Development of Israelite Monotheism,” in J.A. Neusner, B.A. Levine and E.S. Frerichs (eds.), Judaic Perspectives on Ancient Israel (Fs. H.L. Ginsberg; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) 77–115. 70 Olyan, “Some Observations Concerning the Identity of the Queen of Heaven,” against which Hestrin “The Lachish Ewer and the ‘Asherah.’”

2. The Baal (and the Asherah) in 7th-century Judah

83  kamƗnu, the cakes used in Ishtar’s cult;71 Ishtar’s name is cognate with that of Ashtoret. It may be added, the association of cakes – of a sort excluded from the cult of Yhwh in Lev 2:11 – with the cult of Ashtoret is assured by an epigraph from Kition 72 (KAI 37.A:10). First millennium inscriptions mentioning Ashtoret confirm her stature among Phoenicians across the Mediterranean. And there is no doubt that she is sometimes referred to as a heavenly deity, although it is by no means clear that the epithet “queen” attaches to her (as KAI 37.A:7, 10) in contradistinction to the other major goddesses. Thus, it may well be that Ashtoret as Queen of Heaven is identical with the asherah of the chief god, even that Ashtoret was somehow identified with Asherah proper: a Phoenician shrine in seventh–sixth-century Egypt was dedicated to twin goddesses, and a similar shrine in eleventh–tenthcentury Tel Qasile may reflect the early establishment of such a cult in Philistia;73 in Carthage, there is evidence of a temple devoted in common to Astarte and Tannit of Lebanon (most likely, Asherah74). The temple of the Queen of Heaven referred to in Hermopolis Letter 4.175 would presumably have been dedicated to the single figure that emerged from such a union: the goddess, Tannit-Astarte, of the Sareptah ivory plaque, furnishes such a figure, in Phoenicia already in the seventh century, and possibly associated with a wooden icon.76 Peckham has explored the parallels between the cult of the Queen and Heaven and that of Astarte at Kition (KAI 37), including the mourning rite of cutting one’s hair, possibly in connection with a dying god and child sacrifice.77 The incense central to the cults of  71

M. Held, “Studies in Biblical Lexicography in the Light at Akkadian,” Eretz Israel 16 (1982) 76–85. 72 Peckham, “Phoenicia and the Religion of Israel: The Epigraphic Evidence,” 96–97, n. 79. 73 See A. Mazar, “Between Judah and Philistia: Timnah (Tel Batash) in the Iron Age II,” Eretz Israel 18 (1985) 300–24. 74 Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 30, 31–43; S. Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel (SBLM 34: Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988) 53–61. 75 Olyan “Some Observations Concerning the Identity of the Queen of Heaven;” J. T. Milik, “Les papyrus araméens d’Hermoupolis et les cultes syro-phéniciens en Egypte perse,” Bib 48 (1967) 556–564. 76 Pritchard, “Recovering Sarepta,” 104–108; see Peckham, “Phoenicia and the Religion of Israel: The Epigraphic Evidence,” 80. 77 Peckham, “Phoenicia and the Religion of Israel: The Epigraphic Evidence,” 84–87: the association of Astarte with the dying god, Eshmun, may well be related to child sacrifice, as Peckham; N. Robertson, “The Ritual Background of the Dying God in Cyprus and Syro-Palestine,” HTR 75 (1982) 329. Given the parallel to Gen 22, the tradition of Kronos sacrificing his only son as part of the Phoenician cult looks to be related to the thriving business of infant sacrifice in Phoenician culture. The mourning ritual connected with Astarte in KAI 37 and elsewhere, and the tradition of “raising the god” (mqm ’lm), 

84 Part I: The Rejection of Tradition  the asherah apparently at Ekron,78 to the Queen of Heaven in Judah and to the worship of Ashtoret and Yhwh’s asherah, as well as to the cult of the baals and the Host suggests that these cults stood on a level, and reinforces the possibility of their identity in eighth–seventh-century Judah. In this case, the Queen of Heaven is Ashtoret, identified with but not necessarily compounded with, Asherah. Incense, used liberally in the cult of Yhwh, appears as an offering to other gods in a number of texts. q‫ܒ‬r (“burn incense”) without explicit mention of a meat sacrifice, however, need not imply the absence of the latter. This verb often refers to the practice of burning the fat for the god. In fact, Ahaz in 2 Kgs 16:13 is said 10 have “burned his burnt offering and his meal offering as incense” (wyq‫ܒ‬r ’t ҳltw w’t mn‫ۊ‬tw).79 The nouns, qΩ‫ܒ‬ǀret, qΩ‫ܒ‬ôrâ, and qî‫ܒ‬ôr refer to the substances employed as incense, to the odors thereby produced (also “pleasing odors”), and to the fumes respectively. In the last case, no implication of vegetarianism is present, and this is probably true in the other cases as well. The instances in HB are as follows: In Kings: 1 Kgs 12:33; 13:1: Jeroboam standing by the altar to burn incense (C), allegedly to his calf – the referent may be burnt fat; 2 Kgs 17:11: the Israelites on high places, to standing stones and asherim, worshipping gillûlîm forbidden by Yhwh, identified as Amorite gods, or as icons; 18:4: Israelites, to Nehushtan, the bronze serpent; 22:17 // 2 Chr 34:5: in Huldah’s prophecy to “other gods” (but on “their manufacture / the deeds of their hands” cf. Jer 1:16 // “other gods”); 23:5: Josiah “cashiered the kmrym [astral priests] whom the kings of Judah appointed to [with O-LXX] burn incense on the high places in the towns of Judah and in the environs of Jerusalem and those who burned incense to ‘the baal’: to the sun and to the moon and to the constellations and to all the Host of Heaven”; cf. 23:4, “implements donated to ‘the baal’ and ‘the asherah’ and to all the Host of Heaven”; 23:8: “the high places where the priests burned incense from Geba to Beersheba.” In Jeremiah: 11:12–13: “So the towns of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem will go forth, and cry out to the gods to whom they burn incense. But these will never deliver them in their

 identified as Astarte’s bridegroom in KAI 44:2, in Phoenician epigraphs (cf. the Ekron epigraph, lmqm, in the seventh century, where other indications of Phoenician influence are present), suggest the importance of the cycle through the underworld in this cult. 78 Gitin “New Incense Altars from Ekron.” 79 Note the reflexive in 2 Chr 28:3, which reflects Jeremiah’s position on the baals and the Host in the Valley of ben-Hinnom. It should be noted, too, that q‫ܒ‬r, C, outside of P and Chronicles, seems chiefly to pertain to the burning of the fat. It can have the same valence within P, as at Exod 30:20; Lev 4:26, 8:21, 28; 9:13–20; 16:25; Num 18:17, for example, but this is far from being its only implication.

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85

 time of evil fate. For as the number of your towns were your gods, Judah, and as the number of Jerusalem’s streets you made altars to ‘Shame’, altars to burn incense to ‘the baal’ (collective plural);” 44:21–23: “is this not the incense-burning which you burned in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, you and your fathers and your kings and your officials and the people of the land, and Yhwh remembered and it entered his mind... and your land became desolate, and a waste, and a curse for want of residents as on this day, because you burned incense and sinned against Yhwh...”; 19:13: “all the houses where they burned incense on their rooftops to all the Host of Heaven and poured out libations to other gods”; 32:29: “and the houses where they burned incense on their rooftops to ‘the baal’ (collective plural) and poured out libations to other gods”;

44:3, 5, 8, 15, 17–19, 21, 23, 25: Jerusalem fell because of Judahites angered Yhwh by burning incense “to other gods, whom they didn’t know, they, you, and your fathers,” so none of the Judahites in Egypt will return to Judah (a key to the theology of the return). As noted above, the popular response to Jeremiah’s oracle is rejection: “We will nevertheless do everything which issued from (y)our mouth, burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out libations to her, as we have done – we, and our fathers, our kings and our officials, in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem – when we were sated with bread and it was well with us, and we saw no evil. It is only since we ceased to burn incense to the Queen of Heaven, and pour out libations to her, that we have lacked everything, and have been finished off by the sword and by famine...” (Jer 44:17–18).

The devotions fulfill their vows (ndrynw ’šr ndrnw lq‫ܒ‬r lmlkt hšmym, v. 25): “After robbing, murdering and committing adultery and uttering false oaths and burning incense to ‘the baal’ and going after other gods whom you don’t know, you come and stand before me in this house...?” (Jer 7:9);

11:17: to ‘the baal’; 18:5: lšw’, in Jeremiah’s usage either “vainly” or “to a vain thing”; 1:16: “they burned incense to other gods, and prostrated themselves to their own manufacture;” 19:4–5: in the Valley of ben-Hinnom, “they left me and alienated this place and burned incense in it to other gods whom they didn’t know – they and their fathers and the kings of Judah – and filled this place with the blood of innocents, and built the high places of ‘the baal’ to burn their sons in fire as burnt offerings to ‘the baal’, which I did not command, nor did I say, nor did it enter my mind.”

Here, in the background to the destruction of the rooftops in 19:13; 32:29, where “the baal” is collective, for the Host – the combination of burning incense at the Tophet in the Valley of ben-Hinnom with child sacrifice is also projected onto Ahaz in 2 Chr 28:3, based on 2 Kgs 16:3, where in-

86 Part I: The Rejection of Tradition  cense does not appear; 48:35: by Moabites who build high places and burn incense to their god. In Ezekiel: Ezek 8:11: to gillûlîm, possibly representations of animals/cherubim inscribed into a wall; 16:18: to male precious metal icons; effectively 23:41: to gillûlîm, v. 37, recipients of child sacrifice, presumably congruent with Jeremiah’s ‘baal’ and possibly even the active Host. Note also these occurrences in Chronicles: 2 Chr 25:14: Amaziah bowed and burned incense before captured Edomite icons; 28:24–25: Ahaz multiplied altars all over Jerusalem and Judah to burn incense to other gods; 30:14: Hezekiah removed the altars and the mq‫ܒ‬rwt, possibly incense altars in the context. Aside from the previous texts, incense burning is described as the principal Yhwhistic rite on the high places in 2 Kgs 23:8, and, in the past, Isa 65:7 on the mountains and hills (but Isa 65:3 with sacrifice on roof tops, incense on bricks[?]; cf. 66:3). Even 1 Kgs 13:2 predicts a sacrifice on the Bethel altar of “the priests of the high places who burn incense upon you”, rather than those who sacrifice meat. Hos 4:13 speaks of sacrifice and incense burning on the hills, where the prostitutes and sacred prostitutes practice. But the object of the sacrifice forecast in 1 Kgs 13:2 is in fact Yhwh, and the same may be true in the case of the meat sacrifices mocked by Hosea. Hos 2:15 speaks of “the days of the baals, when she [Israel] burned incense to them”. And Hos 11:2 states, “They called to them, thus they went from my presence. They sacrificed to the baals, and burned incense to the carved icons.” In context, this might refer to almost any incident of apostasy in the tradition, or to all of them. However, it likely reflects contemporary practice. Hosea’s main complaint is that attention to the baals entailed forgetfulness about Yhwh as king, the one who really – behind the scenes – promoted welfare. That is, the baals are real enough, but Yhwh is the director of their actions. Incense burning with sacrifice occurs in 1 Kgs 3:3, where the activity (vv. 2–4) is surely Yhwhistic; 11:8, where it is not; 22:44; 2 Kgs 12:4; 14:4; 15:4, 35: 16:4 // 2 Chr 28:4; but here, though it is on the high places, the assumption is the worship is of Yhwh, or at least of Yhwh along with other deities.80 Overall, incense burning appears to be the ritual characteristic of the baals-cult, and is related to infant sacrifice by Jeremiah and Chronicles. In some contexts, mention of incense burning alone can stand in for a larger sacrificial complex, as, in connection with Yhwh, in 2 Chr 32:12 (where an Assyrian official equates Yhwh, in the Chronicler’s rhetoric, with a lesser god by suggesting that centralization involved restriction of incense burn 80

See Halpern, The First Historians, 220–228.

2. The Baal (and the Asherah) in 7th-century Judah

87  ing to the temple in Jerusalem). However, this is not the case with regard to Yhwh in Kings, nor is it transparently the case in Jeremiah, Hosea or Ezekiel. Thus, the incense burning to ‘the baal’, identified by Jeremiah, Kings and Zephaniah with the Host of Heaven, and with the Queen of Heaven in Jer 7:18; 44, and probably with the asherah at Ekron, represent part of the same cultural matrix. Nevertheless, the literary evidence implies a cultural transition. Hosea, from the mid-eighth century, mentions meat sacrifices to the baals, and other eighth-century sources, such as E, have similar implications (1 Kgs 12 and Exod 32 are mutually referential, the former perhaps part of the first edition of DtrH). When one sacrificed, in the distributed clan sacrificial cult of the traditional social organization of Israel, one typically invited Yhwh’s subordinates, along with Yhwh, to the repast. The seventh– sixth-centuries, however, including Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Josianic stratum of the books of Kings, basically do not describe Israelite meat sacrifices to the baals. One nexus for the transition may have been – with the increasing availability of spices in the period as documented at Miqne and in the resettlement pattern of the seventh century81 – a changing semantic weighting of the term, q‫ܒ‬r. In Judah, at least, a transition from meat to incense and meal offerings for deities subordinate to Yhwh may well have been one outcropping of Hezekiah’s reforms. Interestingly, a large altar went out of use at Beersheba in this reform, before the destruction of Beersheba II. At Arad, Aharoni 82 held that the main, earth-and-fieldstone altar for burnt offerings went out of use after stratum VIII, as a result of Hezekiah’s reform (and remained out of use until Josiah ruined the sanctuary): he reports an intact floor of stratum VII, with an oven, on the spot where the altar stood, with the altar’s last phase belonging to stratum VIII. Aharoni held that, probably in the same phase, two “incense altars”83 were buried in the steps of the holy of holies, and two stelae plastered over inside the holy of holies.84

 81 See Gitin, “New Incense Altars from Ekron;” B. Halpern, “Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century B.C.E.: Kinship and the Rise of Individual Moral Liability,” in B. Halpern and D.W. Hobson (eds.), Law and Ideology in Monarchic Israel (JSOTSup 124; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991) 11–107. 82 Y. Aharoni, “Arad: Its Inscriptions and Temple,” BA 31 (1968) 26–27. 83 See generally Gitin, “Tell Miqne-Ekron,” 52–67, esp. n. 4 where an association with “meal offerings” is suggested. 84 The removal of the incense altars was originally attributed to stratum IX, but it is now clear that the sanctuary cannot have been built before stratum IX, sometime in the 8th century – Ussishkin, “The Date of the Judaean Shrine at Arad.”

88 

Part I: The Rejection of Tradition

Aharoni also reported that Josiah subsequently buried the holy of holies under a casemate wall.85 But this wall has proven to derive from the Hellenistic period, not the seventh century.86 Nevertheless, there may be signs of Josiah’s reform in some Iron-Age partition walls above the holy of holies,87 which would imply that the temple was in disuse. Ussishkin,88 however, has shown that the incense altars may have been discarded only at the final destruction of the shrine in stratum VI. This in turn implies that only the covering over of the large, courtyard altar, and the plastering over of the pillars inside the holy of holies could possibly antedate Josiah; it seems unlikely that the latter will have occurred without the discarding of the incense altars. In short, it now seems most likely that the incense altars and the pillars survived Hezekiah’s reform, and it is even possible that they survived Josiah’s. Should the two small incense altars be correlated to the two stelae, and associated with oblations to male and female classes of intermediate divinities – the baals and ashtorets – chiefly served through the burning of incense, according to our contemporary texts? The huge altar of burntoffering would then pertain to Yhwh, the main object of meat sacrifices. It may be that the larger stela in fact represents the presence of Yhwh himself, and that the smaller represents that of the baals: the ashtorets seem to have had poles or trees as their icons, rather than stones. In any event, Hezekiah certainly left the temple standing as a functional structure, and probably even built it. This is consonant with the general character of Hezekiah’s reform: it was his strategy to abandon the countryside to the Assyrians, and concentrate the rural population inside fortresses to protract the campaign in the hope of Egyptian or other intervention (the Egyptian intervention did, as it happens, prove decisive). As a corollary to this strategy, state shrines had to be renewed in the fortresses, and the population and priesthoods had to be registered.89 It is improbable, however, that Hezekiah left the priesthoods at Arad intact or enrolled additional rural priests there, as part of his centralization of the population to state fortresses, without some provision for cultic activity. Yet it is incontrovertible that cultic activity at Arad – inside the fortress itself, which was closely linked to Jerusalem – survived Hezekiah’s period. It follows that at least  85

Further Z. Herzog, M. Aharoni, A. F. Rainey, and S. Moshkovitz, “The Israelite Fortress at Arad,” BASOR 254 (1984) 1–34. 86 A. Mazar and E. Netzer, “On the Israelite Fortress at Arad,” BASOR 263 (1986) 87– 91; cf. Z. Herzog, “The Stratigraphy of Israelite Arad: A Rejoinder,” BASOR 267 (1987) 77–79. 87 Mazar and Netzer, “On the Israelite Fortress at Arad.” 88 Ussishkin, “The Date of the Judaean Shrine at Arad.” 89 See Halpern, “Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century B.C.E.,” for the reconstruction of the reform in its strategic valence.

2. The Baal (and the Asherah) in 7th-century Judah

89  incense burning, and possibly even animal sacrifice, continued at least until Josiah’s day. Some of the ambiguities in the interpretation of the data will be clarified with the final publication of the site, which Herzog promises. 90 For the interim, it seems most conservative to suggest that any marked reform of the temple at Arad be associated with Josiah, or the Babylonians. However, if a floor of stratum VII did indeed overlie the altar, it is a sign that sometime between 725 and about 610 the cult at Arad shifted away from meat offerings toward meal and incense offerings, as a residue of Hezekiah’s reform. A parallel development later occurs at the Elephantine Temple, which before its destruction conducted meat and meal (and incense) offerings, but which after its reconstruction was licensed from Jerusalem to conduct the latter only.91 Whatever remained of the “solar temple” at Lachish, too, at its apparent end-use in 701, divulged incense burners and an “incense altar” but no large meat altar.92 The Elephantine situation, at least, reflects  90

Herzog, “The Stratigraphy of Israelite Arad: A Rejoinder,” 77–79. B. Porten and A. Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt. I. Letters (Texts and Studies for Students; Jerusalem: Hebrew University, Department of the History of the Jewish People, 1986) A4.7:21, 25–26, 27–28; A4.8:20–21, 24–25, 26– 27; A4.9:9–11. The actual history of the Yeb temple controversy is probably a bit more intricate than is usually indicated. Having failed, during the troubles of 410, to extract any sign of support from Jerusalem itself (or the high priest Yohanan) – very likely because of opposition to the existence of any functioning temple outside of Jerusalem – Yedaniah in 407 turned instead to the governor of Samaria and to Bagoas, who was the person responsible for the governance of the province of Yehud (Porten and Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt. I, A4.7:1). Yet the response to this inquiry came from Bagoas and Delaiah, son of Sanballat, then the governor of Samaria (Porten and Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt. I, A4.9, but also attested in the Wadi Daliyeh papyri). Josephus’s tradition (Ant. IX.7.1–2) of Bagoses who came into conflict with a high priest, John (Yohanan), and with Jerusalem generally, in conjunction with a governor of Samaria, Sanballat, presumably telescopes the Elephantine contretemps with the recognition of a subsequent Sanballat by Alexander. The conclusion to be drawn is that the Jerusalem establishment rejected Elephantine’s bona fides, and was perhaps more sympathetic to the rebel, Vidranga, than not. Yet the Judaeans of Yeb found willing ears in Samaria and in the “general” (Josephus identifies him as an officer serving Artaxerxes, but Josephus is not altogether reliable on the identities of Persian kings at moments when their activities intersect with history – a great deal of his information concerning the Achaemenids derives from reconstruction, and, in this case, the book of Esther interferes). The conflict between Bagoses and Jerusalem is reflected in that between Yeb and Jerusalem. Both the Samarian establishment and the antiJerusalemite general/governor had an interest in subsidizing the temple at Yeb. 92 Y. Aharoni, Lachish V. The Sanctuary and Residency (Tel Aviv: Tel-Aviv University Press, 1975) 26–32. Further J. S. Holladay, “Religion in Israel and Judah under the Monarchy: An Explicitly Archaeological Approach,” in P.D. Miller, P.D. Hanson, and S. D. McBride, Ancient Israelite Religion. Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) 254. For possible cultic elements (bronze censors) in the  91

90 Part I: The Rejection of Tradition  fundamentally the notion of reform presented in Deuteronomy (and this in turn reflects seventh-century state practice): Deut 12 regulates all sorts of behaviors, but the explicit injunction is against meat sacrifice (12:13–14) outside the “chosen” (i.e., central) place. There is an injunction on enjoying meal offerings for first fruits and vows at home, too (12:17–18). But the central issue is that of meat sacrifices, for which reason the question of profane slaughter is treated at great length (12:15–16, 21–25: 15:22–23). Implicitly, the injunction distinguishes meat sacrifice – for any meat derived from domestic herds – from other forms of nourishment whose preparation did not necessarily involve cultic activity. There is no explicit injunction against the oblique devotion of such foodstuffs to subordinate gods in one’s pantheon. This is illicit, surely. But it falls into a different category from that into which meat offerings fall. Indeed, on bringing the tithe of the third year to the gate for the indigent to enjoy, the law code lays an obligation on the Israelite pilgrim to declare, “before Yhwh,” that he gave none of it to the ancestors. Again, not surprisingly, there is no such interdict on the rest of the agricultural produce of the land. What is interesting in the late seventh century is that even incense burning – and meal-offerings in Jer 44 – to subordinate gods in the pantheon now attract opposition from Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Deuteronomy, Kings and Zephaniah. Thus, Jeremiah, as noted, identifies the Host of Heaven as baals, as does Zephaniah and 2 Kgs 23:4–5. Early texts (Judg 5:20) and texts coming from certain traditions into Kings (1 Kgs 22:19 // 1 Chr 18:18) 93 and the Deuteronomistic History even reflect favorably on the “Host” (Josh 5:14–15, with Joshua prostrating himself to the captain of the “Host”; 10:10–13, substantively parallel to Judg 5:20 in that the heavenly bodies conspire with the Israelites against the Canaanites). Other positive or neutral references to the Host occur both in pre-exilic and in post-exilic materials. In Isa 13:1–6, the Host are Yhwh’s army, just as in Judg 5:20. In Isa 14:13, ascendancy among the “stars of El” is the mark of the master of the heavens. Ps 148:3 portrays the sun, moon and stars, among the Host, praising Yhwh – in topos connected with the “sons of gods” in Ps 29:1–2. In Job 38:7, the stars, understood to represent the sons of Yhwh, cheer Yhwh’s foundation of the universe. It is not irrelevant that Israel is compared in number or otherwise to the stars (as Gen 15:5; 22:17; 26:4; 37:9; Exod 32:13; Num 24:17), a metaphor that reflects positively on the Host of stars (residual in Jer 33:22). The title, Yhwh of  Lachish reliefs, see Ussishkin, The Conquest of Lachish by Sennacherib, 77.4–5 register 2. In light of these, and of the historical data, it seems likely that the level III “high place” posited by Aharoni was in fact a going concern. 93 On the redactional history of which see Halpern and Vanderhooft, “The Editions of Kings in the 8th–7th Centuries B.C.E.”

2. The Baal (and the Asherah) in 7th-century Judah

91  Hosts,94 also reflects positively on the Host of Heaven in sources that construe that body to consist of animate beings under Yhwh’s control (as above, and including J, E, most of Samuel, Amos [3:13; 6:14; 9:5]; Hosea [12:6, interpreting Exod 3:15, after 12:4–5]; proto-Isaiah, Mic [4:4], Nahum, Habakkuk, parts of Psalms, etc.; probably Zechariah). Unsurprisingly, in light of all this, Sargon’s report of the sack of Samaria includes a reference to “the gods on whom they relied.”95 The references to astral deities connected with Samarian exile, noted above, find confirmation in this report. However, in some texts, the “Host” or the “Host of Heaven” is a demythologized cliché. P, for example, identifies Israel as the “Hosts” of Yhwh of Hosts. In Exod 7:4, Yhwh vows to withdraw “my Hosts, my people, the children of Israel from the land of Egypt”. In Exod 12:17, Yhwh commemorates the day on which “I withdrew your Hosts from the land of Egypt”. And, in Exod 12:41 (similarly, Ps 103:21), “all the Hosts of Yhwh withdrew from the land of Egypt” (cf. also 12:51). The identification of Israel as the Host is the logical corollary of earlier promises (JE) that Israel will be as numerous as the stars: the stars now become, instead of the counterparts of the gods, those of the Israelites, Yhwh’s adopted children. As to the stars themselves, identified as the Host, these reach the cusp of inanimacy in P at Gen 21, where the heavenly Host is depersonalized, along with the other aspects of nature. In Isa 40:26; 45:12; Ps 33:6, where the creation of the stars (Host) is witness to Yhwh’s puissance, no personality or function is attributed to the host. In some texts, actual hostility against the Host is present: in Isa 24:21; 34:2–4, violence visited on the Host reflects violence against mundane foes with whom the Host is identified (more metaphorically, Dan 8:10).96 Not all texts share this hostility. Zech 4:10b identifies the seven branches of an oil lamp (inscribed on the lintel of the Second Temple, but received as a vision in 4:2) as “the eyes of Yhwh, they scout out all the earth”. The “eyes” and the lamps figure the seven planets. Similarly, the “‘eyes” filling the backs of Ezekiel’s fiery beasts or the wheels beneath them (1:18; 10:12) must represent the Host, again as Yhwh’s scouts. It may be that the concept of “wheels within wheels” (Ezek 1:16), intended to afford mobility in all directions to the chariot of Yhwh (which is itself modeled on the basin stands of Solomon’s  94 Possibly, “he summons Hosts into being,” parallel to Yhwh Elohim: Halpern, “‘Brisker Pipes than Poetry,’” 85; but cf. T. N. D. Mettinger, In Search of God. The Meaning and Message of the Everlasting Names (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) 30– 32; and the Carian Zeus Stratios in Herodotus 5.120. 95 G. J. Gadd, “Inscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrud,” Iraq 16 (1954) 179.iv.32. 96 Contrast Ps 82, where the judgment on the Host comes in a context that assumes the benevolent functioning of that body.

92 Part I: The Rejection of Tradition  temple, removed by Ahaz), reflects the “Egyptian” astronomy on which Heracleitus’ system was allegedly based – with Mercury and Venus circling the sun, a wheel within the wheel of the sun’s circling the earth. Still, even where the stars or planets are Yhwh’s eyes, they lack individuality, are mere organs of his senses. The background of this alienation of the Host from Yhwh and from Israel – its depersonalization, its rejection, can be summarized in a word: the Host is Foreign, in Josianic theory. In Deut 4:19–20 (cf. Jer 10:2), the Host is explicitly identified as that body of manifestations which Yhwh had assigned to the “nations”, not Israel. In the traditional cosmology, the Host is at least potentially identical with those subordinate deities responsible for administering foreign nations. Thus, Deut 32:8–9 affirm (with LXX) that Yhwh determined the territories of the nations “according to the numbers of the sons of El,” choosing as his own portion Israel. Each “son of El” administers a single territory, but Israel is under direct rule. The model for such a conception is of course the phenomenon of vassalship, or the appointment of governors within an empire – a model familiar in Canaan from the time of the first Egyptian conquests there, through Solomon, and down to the British Mandate. Micah 4:4–5 affirms the same theology: “for all the nations go each in the name of its god, and we will go in the name of Yhwh [Sebaoth: 4:4] our god forever and aye.” Even inside DtrH, traces of a similar attitude survive: in Judg 11:24, Jephthah pleads with the Ammonites: “Should you not take possession of whatever (territory) Chemosh, your god, supplants for you, and what Yhwh, our god, supplants from before us, of that, we should take possession?” The underlying notion is that Yhwh and Chemosh (usually identified with Moab) each administer separate territories – though admittedly, this is a case of international diplomacy in which such a tolerant assumption is most circumspect (which may be why the tradition survives). Nevertheless, reference to Moab as “the people of Chemosh” (Num 21:29), as to Israel as “the people of Yhwh”, as much as concedes the legitimacy of Moabite devotion to Chemosh. This, after all, was nothing more than an expression of their national identity, their common kinship. The traditional Israelite conception, in sum, is that Yhwh Sebaoth is the god, and direct administrator, of Israel: in the natural order, arranged by Yhwh, each nation is assigned a divine master, subordinate to Yhwh – one of his sons, which is to say, an officer of his Host. The cults of the foreign nations, therefore, are dedicated to the subordinates (to whom Israelites also turn – interestingly, Micah and Isaiah both refer positively or neutrally to human sacrifice). In the circumstances, the god of a foreign nation might be regarded as its master – its baal – just as Yhwh is Israel’s baal

2. The Baal (and the Asherah) in 7th-century Judah

93  (Hos 2:18; cf. Jer 3:14; 31:32). Probably, it is in just such a connection that Isaiah speaks of “the baals of the nations” destroying Moab (Isa 16:8, omitted in Jer 18:31–32): these are the gods to whom Moab will no longer be able to pray when it enters the sanctuaries on its high places (Isa 16:12; cf. Jer 48:35). Indeed, it is tempting to speculate that traditions of a council of seventy elders or sons of a judge or king, headed by Moses and Aaron (in E) or by the judge or king and queen, like the image of seventy sons of Asherah (and El) at Ugarit, reflect ideas of a natural cosmology in which seventy(-two) Great Gods (fifty in Babylonia, and in Zech 1:2–3) administer all the nations.97 Yet, on this theory, the Host stood in an ambivalent position. On the one hand, the Host is construed as Yhwh’s court (1 Kgs 22:19), as the “sons of gods” (Ps 29:2), as “gods, sons of Elyon” (Ps 82:6). Yet at the same time, the great gods were those of foreign nations. As a consequence, attention to the great gods, the baals, to the Host, can be construed as foreign worship. It is no coincidence that Hosea rails on against both the baals and foreign alliances: symbolically, embracing a foreign patron can be modeled as an equivalent to exalting a subordinate in Yhwh’s pantheon. And thus, starting with Hosea in the mid-eighth century, xenophobia, a driving force the following century in Judah, was enlisted to alienate the pantheon from its controller, Yhwh. One symptom that this process was the decisive one is the characteristic equation of astral worship in Deut 17:3 with that of “other gods”, the cardinal sin of alien worship. In 2 Kgs 17:16, the context of worship of the Host is worship of ‘the baal’ and ‘the asherah’ and child sacrifice. accusations against the Israelites (not Judah) concretized in accounts of ‘baal’worship and the erection of an ‘asherah’ under the Omrides. All this material attests to the “otherness” of these classically “other gods”, “gods of the foreigner”, in this literature. In 2 Kgs 21:3, 5, Manasseh is accused of building altars for ‘the baal’ and ‘the ‘asherah’, an activity resulting in the building of altars for all the Host of Heaven in the temple courts (destroyed  97 Such a tradition is present in the Talmud, and is understood in passages there referring to Michael as “the great official”, as TB Men 110a and the like. The implication is (and other passages naming Gabriel, for example, likewise imply) that there are other “officials” of the Host. The tradition of seventy(-two) great gods thus presumes that for each planet, there are ten members of the officialdom (as captains of hundreds versus captains of tens), plus two leaders (Yhwh and his asherah?). The tradition of fifty great gods presupposes seven members of the officialdom for each of the planets (plus Marduk, or, in Zech 4:2–3, Yhwh) It is worth noting that the apologetic emendation of Deut 32:9, “El” to “Israel” reflects an equation of Israel with the stars, and of the starts with the administration of human nations, a sort of combination of the P notion that Israel was Yhwh’s host, with the notion, shared by P, that the Host of Heaven were the stars and the view of Deut 32:8–9 itself, that the Host administered the nations.

94 Part I: The Rejection of Tradition  in 2 Kgs 23:12): Manasseh was worse than the nations Yhwh supplanted from before the Israelites (21:2), presumably insofar as he introduced such abominations into the temple of Yhwh itself. And in 2 Kgs 23:4–5, as noted, the identity of the Host with the baals cannot be gainsaid. The same equation is clear in Jer 8:2; 19:3; Zeph 1:4–5. The late seventh-century revisionist elite view, again, was that any divine subordinate was an alien (contrast the traditionalists of Jeremiah 44). The identification of the baals with the gods of foreigners, other gods, had alienated the Host of Yhwh of Hosts. Was this the case with Hosea in the mid-eighth century? The chances are that the answer is yes. Hosea accuses Israel of abandoning her “husband” (baal), Yhwh, for “lovers” whom she thinks sustain her (2:7) – as noted, the concept of Yhwh as a baal (= husband)98 has inspired the adultery metaphor. But it is Yhwh himself who has furnished her fertility and rare earths, which she dedicates to ‘the baal’ (2:10; cf. 2:15). No longer to be called her ‘baal’ (husband), but her ’îš, her “man”; here, Hosea puns on the affirmation “DN is!”: “there is,” as in the names of Jesse and Eshbaal99 – he represents Yhwh as the living god, 2:1. Yhwh, Hosea avers, will suppress the names of the baals (2:19) and renew his marriage to Israel as a faithful one, without other gods (2:23–3:5). Aside from breaking the social contract (4:1ff.; 7:1; 10:1), Israel have sacrificed on the hills (4:13–14; 10:2, 8; multiplying altars to sin, 8:11), using icons (8:4–6; 10:2, 5; 13:2; after a tradition that Ephraim died for involvement with ‘the baal’, 13:1;  98 Significantly, this usage for “husband” occurs only in the following texts: Gen 20:3 (E); Exod 21:3, 22; Deut 22:22 (phrase of Gen 20:3), 24:4 (note also, however, 21:13; 24:1); 2 Sam 11:26; Hos 2:18; and, in postexilic texts, Joel 1:8; Prov 12:4; 31:11, 23, 28; Esth 1:17, 20. Allowing that the concept, “husband”, presupposes that a female figure is the subject of discourse, nevertheless, the absence of the term from J, P and Ezekiel, and, two specific laws apart, from nearly all of Deuteronomistic literature and from Jeremiah is striking – a virtual adoption of Hosea’s advice (Jeremiah does, however, use the verb – 3:14; 31:32). This distribution, with a few exceptions, basically characterizes the use of baҳal as a designation for “owner” as well, though texts within DtrH do make use of it – in the following constellations: 1) Deut 15:2; 2) Josh 24:11; 3) Judg 9:2, 3, 6, 7, 18, 20 [bis], 23, 24, 25, 26, 46, 47, 51; 4) Judg 19:22–23; 20:5; 5) 1 Sam 28:7; 6: 2 Sam 1:6; 7) 2 Sam 21:12 8) 1 Kgs 17:17; 9) 2 Kgs 1:8. Most of these passages either derive from sources or reflect some other hand than that of H(Dtr). For ’îš, “man”, as husband, see, e.g., Deut 22:23; 25:11; Judg 13:6, 9, 10; 14:15; 19:3; 20:4; 1 Sam 1:8, 22, 23; 2:19; 3:16; 4:19, 21; 25:19; 2 Sam 11:26; 14:5, 7; 2 Kgs 4:1, 9, 14, 22, 26. This term in this semantic capacity is much more widely distributed outside DtrH in pre-exilic and exilic literature than is baҳal, including occurrences in J (as Gen 3:6; 16:3), E (as Gen 29:32, 34; 30:15, 18, 20), P (Lev 21:7; Num 5:13, 19–20, 27, 29; 30:11–15) and Ezekiel (16:32); further, in the plural, arguably Jer 29:6; Ezek 16:45, but more clearly, Jer 44:19. In the postexilic period, however, baҳal alone assumes this meaning. 99 Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 64.

2. The Baal (and the Asherah) in 7th-century Judah

95  14:9), and have sought foreign alliances (7:11–12; 14:4, 9), which will lead to exile in those countries (9:3 [cf. Jer 6:20 on 9:4]; 10:6), a motif connected with serving the baals and icons in 11:2, 5. The alternation in Hosea between foreign alliance and rural cult and ‘baal’ suggests that the intellectual process involved is a denial both of subordinate gods and of foreign entanglements, or, to put it differently, of the equation of what is foreign (and what is unjust) with worship of subordinate deities. In Hosea, the background for the intellectual developments of the late eighth and, later, seventh century are present. Indeed, the identification of the “baals” as gods of foreign nations (and Mic 4:4–5 at the end of the eighth century, probably Isa 16:8), as distinct from as gods subordinate to Yhwh, lies at the base of their rejection. The equation of what is foreign with what is evil is a chief point of the method of the historian who produced DtrH. The likelihood is that this was a tendency inherited from earlier members of the Jerusalem elite, starting at least with Hezekiah.100 The depersonalization of natural phenomena implied in this transition, the depersonalization of the Host, was part and parcel of the implications of increasingly rigorous monotheism. So, too, was the denial of the power of the dead, of the ancestors, who perhaps figure subliminally as connected to the baal in Jeremiah’s metaphor of subterranean “broken cisterns”. 101 But who was the singular Baal with whom Yhwh allegedly came into conflict in Judg 6:31–32; 1 Kgs 18? The traditional candidates all have their attractions. However, just as Yhwh was the baal at the head of all the baals into the eighth century, it seems most likely that the polemicists of the seventh century understood the baals to be representatives, even reflections, of a single, paradigmatic Baal. And the likelihood is that this figure was identified with the Chemosh, and Milcom, of Solomon’s shrine, and with the sun, as the head of all those planets.102 It is difficult, thus, to imagine any candidate more likely to impress itself on the mind of contemporary Jerusalemites than Baal Shamem, “the Lord of the Heavens,” known both through Phoenician and through Aramaic sources, and an appropriate counterpart to the Queen of the Heavens.103  100 Cf. Spieckermann, Juda unter Assur in der Sargonidenzeit, 201–211; M. Noth, The Laws in the Pentateuch and Other Studies (London: SCM Press, 1966) 52–55; Halpern, “‘Brisker Pipes than Poetry.’” 101 Halpern, “‘Brisker Pipes than Poetry;’” idem, “Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century B.C.E.” 102 See J. G. Taylor, Solar Worship in the Bible and Its World (Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University, 1989). 103 Cf. B. Mazar, The Early Biblical Period, 79–81. One wonders what, if any, relationship obtained with the Sibitti, possibly reflected, as Propp observed (in conversation), in such names a Bathsheba and Elizabeth; cf. KAI 222a:II.

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But this is not to say that Baal Shamem was the figure with whom Elijah came into conflict, since Jezebel will presumably have come to Samaria, as Solomon’s wives came to Jerusalem with a full panoply of Phoenician gods to placate: “the baal,” remembered in the tradition as a single figure, was probably virtually indistinguishable from the Israelite pantheon at the time, but with a Tyrian twist. Hosea’s perspective, that the “day of Jezreel,” the bloodbath of Jehu, was to be visited on the Nimshides betrays a divorce of that occasion from the confrontation reconstructed in Kings. Hosea’s complaints about the baal/baals under the Nimshides underscore the same point. Rather, the reconstruction of a Baal other than Yhwh with whom Yhwh came into conflict probably reflects the alienation of the baals, the Host, from Yhwh in the seventh century. Yhwh, on Hosea’s admonition, was no longer the Baal, but rather an ’îš. He was no longer identified with the sun. Into this vacuum some other emblematic baal had to be sucked. And whoever that figure was – Milcom, Chemosh, Baal Shamem, or all of them or some other – his foreign affiliations contributed to the operation of the Josianic polemic, the xenophobic critique of the seventhcentury prophets. The Israelite elite, represented at the end of the Iron Age by Josiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, P and H(Dtr), did not arrive at a doctrine of monotheism by rejecting the gods of other peoples. Rather, it arrived at this pass by rejecting the gods that traditional culture, and earlier elite culture, had inherited from the fathers from the remotest bounds of the collective memory. The Deuteronomistic History as much as admits that such gods, and the cultic appurtenances characteristic of their cults, stemmed from the earliest moments of Israel’s life in Canaan. And the attribution of Deuteronomy to Moses represents an attempt to manufacture a tradition, of alienation from all gods other than Yhwh, that is older than memory itself – older than the memories of “other gods” who were Israelite gods, who were, in the traditional understanding, a part of Yhwh’s heavenly court. Revolutionaries, like Jeremiah and H(Dtr), lack historical perspective. Whether pretending to be reactionaries, restoring humankind to a primitive Garden of Eden, or whether posing as social engineers, murdering, by the guillotine or by some less violent form of attrition the resistant membership of some former governing class, such world-makers theoretically demonize their opponents’ customs, without placing them in a context. This sort of adolescent idealism, unnuanced by an interest in actual observation, invariably breaks down when its adherents achieve power: the result is a terror concentrated on consolidating the power of the Party. Josiah supplied such a terror, an extended attack on the institutions and regalia of traditional culture in Judah and Samaria. Monotheistic purists, in love with the theory of a unified, rather than multifarious, reality, ultimately had to

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97  slay the demons of other divinities than Yhwh. Not ironically, to slay those demons, they had to demonize their own history.

3. Yhwh the Revolutionary: Reflections on the Rhetoric of Redistribution in the Social Context of Dawning Monotheism* Some of the themes of the patriarchal narratives, and the alleged emphasis of some classical prophets (esp. Amos, though Andrew Dearman showed how fallacious that argument was) have been linked with monotheism by theologians. They take the monotheistic order to be revolutionary. Revolutionary it was, and it was midwived with a rhetoric of revolution. But instead of locating this rhetoric in its historical environment, those who have emphasized it tend to create of it an ideology in itself, an Ideal that stood in conflict with that of kingship. In fact, ancient and modern history are replete with examples – one has only to glance at Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire – of royal figures who make common cause with the poor, or those who pass themselves off as such (for anti-poverty activism is as affective as ethnicity in nature). They do so to stymie the ambitions of the wealthy, and particularly of rising middle classes. And this policy is not unsound: the king summons normative values from societies with residual redistributive ethics in order to impoverish those who might almost pose a threat to central rulership. At times, the policy is arguably a social necessity, as in the case of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one of America’s few royal figures in life. But it is in general a tool of tyrants looking to “cut down the high grain.” The tension in Judah between the king and the “high grain” was never so strong as in the reforms of Hezekiah and of Josiah, and then again during the exilic period. The following argument goes to linking the rhetoric of revolution with that of the period in question. Monotheism imposed on a state, however it may be ignored or evaded by the general population, is inherently totalitarian in its tendencies. The rhetoric of revolution, with the seemingly sole exception of the democratic revolution of the United States, is almost always applied to promote totalitarianism, or terror, at least for a period of time. In seventh-century Judah, it would appear, things were no different.

Contemporary Understandings of the Theology of the Hebrew Bible: Problems and Prospects If economics is the dismal science, theology is that of human aspiration. For just that reason, however, even historical theology, as much as systematics, is given to wish fulfillment – manifested, for example, in a prose *

Originally published in A. O. Bellis and J. S. Kaminsky (eds.), Jews, Christians, and the Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures (SBLSS 8; Atlanta: SBL, 2000) 179–212.

3. Yhwh the Revolutionary 99  lytizing zeal for policy rather than analysis. In biblical theology, scholarship vacillates between two poles: appeal to congenial ancient theologies for reinforcement of an ideological commitment to action and rejection of repugnant theologies in our sources. Those succumbing to the former impulse, treated below, wield the Bible’s social authority to advance their agenda. Their counterparts, concerned perhaps with slavery or patriarchy, seek to undermine that authority. Occasionally, it may therefore seem that in theology, as in history, battles are being fought over the dignity of Scripture. More sympathetic readings, concerned to understand the ancients in their own terms, certainly do emerge in the pages of scholarship.1 But these do not attract the attention of a public as readily as studies with more transparent contemporary applications. From the 1960s into the 1990s, a piercing chorus in the theory of Israelite religion has been that of leftist, or seemingly leftist, theologians. The reasons for their warm reception among scholars, who for the most part lean liberal, are not far to seek.2 The work of these scholars could therefore be regarded as the outgrowth of a particular social moment, and it is probably for that reason that it has not been subject to a searching historical critique. On the other hand, the scholarship itself deserves attention for the lessons it has to teach, positive as well as negative. Two major overtures to the theological implications of biblical texts characterize these approaches. The first is that adopted emblematically by George E. Mendenhall in the early 1960s.3 Mendenhall reconstructed premonarchic Israel as an ideal community embodying authentic Mosaic precepts. These included a social “covenant,” the antiquity of which Mendenhall defended at length. Unfortunately, the defense did not include advertence either to the genres of biblical literature or to the attestations of the treaty (“covenant”) genre in the period of the biblical texts. Still, the Mosaic vision was one of egalitarianism, in which all Israelite parties were subject alike to the law. It prescribed ecumenism, in the reception of new

 1

See esp. M. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20 (AB 22; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1986). This essay is dedicated to Moshe Greenberg: ʤʹʮʬ ʤʹʮʬ ʤʹʮʮ. 2 J. M. Sasson, “On Choosing Models for Recreating Israelite Pre-Monarchic History,” JSOT 21 (1981) 3–24. 3 G. E. Mendenhall, “The Hebrew Conquest of Palestine,” BA 25 (1962): 66–87; idem, “Biblical History in Transition,” in G.E. Wright (ed.), The Bible and the Ancient Near East. Essays in Honor of William Foxwell Albright (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965) 27–58; idem, The Tenth Generation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973); idem, “Ancient Israel’s Hyphenated History,” in D.N. Freedman and D.F. Graf (eds.), Palestine in Transition: The Emergence of Ancient Israel (SWBA 2; Sheffield: Almond Press, 1983) 91–103. Mendenhall articulated his program in nuce in “Ancient Oriental and Biblical Law,” BA 17 (1954) 26–46; and idem, “Covenant Forms in Israelite Tradition,” BA 17 (1954) 49–76.

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coreligionists into the community of the faithful. The result, as has long been observed (see n. 2), was an Edenic graft of Protestant religiosity and American constitutionalism. Mendenhall’s Mosaic social blueprint justified the Reformation and, less explicitly, American jingoism. By getting at the alleged prehistory of the Israelite community, Mendenhall extracted from the text’s now-explicit views on ethnicity and social stratification a “pristine” revelation, before those Israelite backsliders mucked it up. He could reject biblical Israelite culture – whatever it represents – yet find in the prehistory of that culture sufficient authority to justify his emotions and religion. In a way, Mendenhall’s prescriptive reconstruction inverts an older scholarly strategy. Finding, thus, that some pentateuchal narratives attributed to Yhwh feelings and actions offensive to later, especially modern, sensibilities, Otto Eissfeldt relegated these to an “L (lay) source,” separated out from and earlier than J (though now incorporated into it). This was yet another way to rusticate from the exegete’s “essential” canon elements unfit for canonization.4 The second sort of overture to the texts is best represented in the work of Walter Brueggemann.5 Brueggemann, the brother-in-law of Patrick D. Miller, Jr., operates in diametric opposition to Mendenhall, despite reaching related conclusions. Instead of invoking the authority of (pre)history to trump that of the Bible, instead, indeed, of stratifying early and degenerate “secondary” text, Brueggemann identifies broad thematic corpora. Sinai, thus, is the conditional covenant restricting the power of the elite to oppress the bulk of Israelites – it is in effect revolutionary. Zion, conversely, is the divine ratification of the elite’s hegemony. This perspective, in its assignments of values within a classically Pauline dichotomy, is antiPauline, a point that seems to have escaped Mendenhall in his embrace of a similar position. It is also the case that it concerns itself only with Israel as a model, not as an antecedent, of modern social organization. Unlike Men 4 See especially D. R. Hillers, “Palmyrene Aramaic Inscriptions and the Bible,” ZAH (1998) 32–49, on the crudity of Yhwh in these materials; for analysis, see O. Eissfeldt, The Old Testament: An Introduction (New York: Harper & Row, 1965) 194–99. I am indebted to Professor Hillers for sharing with me this and other material cited here in advance of its publication. On Mendenhall’s agenda, see B. Halpern, “Sociological Comparativism and the Theological Imagination: The Case of the Conquest,” in M. Fishbane and E. Tov (eds.), “Shaҵarei Talmon” Studies in the Bible, Qumran, and the Ancient Near East Presented to Shemaryahu Talmon (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992) 53–67. 5 W. Brueggemann, In Man We Trust (Richmond: John Knox, 1972); idem, “A Convergence in Recent Old Testament Theologies,” JSOT 18 (1980) 2–18; idem, “Trajectories in Old Testament Literature and the Sociology of Ancient Israel,” JBL 98 (1979) 161–85; idem, “A Shape for Old Testament Theology, 1: Structure Legitimation,” CBQ 47 (1985) 28–46.

3. Yhwh the Revolutionary 101  denhall’s attempts at finding a bejeweled reality behind the veil of the sources, then, Brueggemann’s work concerns itself with finding the reality reflected by the sources; it respects the integrity of the phenomena under discussion in our texts. The reconstruction does not suffer from the defects of triumphalism and ethnic and religious supersession that characterize Mendenhall’s oeuvre. These two paradigms are not incompatible, despite their methodological variance: Norman K. Gottwald effectively combines the two.6 In his work on pre-monarchic Israel, Gottwald defended from a Marxian vantage point the idea that Israel was born out of a peasant rejection of Canaanite stratification. In his work on the prophets, conversely, Gottwald treats monarchic Israel with greater balance than does Mendenhall, arguing the survival of egalitarian ideologies of earlier periods. Without such survivals, of course, no evidence would support Mendenhall’s views; its presence makes nonsense of most of his vilification of the monarchy as an unadulterated oriental despotism, a position that does nothing more than reproduce Wellhausen, himself a pro-Junker Bismarckian, almost a century later. But Gottwald is able to knit together both a programmatic perspective on the historical reconstruction of pristine Israel and a more balanced view of the social complexities of the monarchic era. What all three of these disparate scholars share is both a merit and a defect. The merit is that they take language very seriously. The language of law, implicitly egalitarian (chattels excepted), resonates for them. Prophetic language, too, speaks meaningfully to them, and to others on the Left:7 texts such as Amos, Isaiah, and Micah exhibit a notorious concern for justice, for marginal social elements. Moreover, as Brueggemann is at pains to observe, these and other biblical materials, such as Psalms and DeuteroIsaiah, and, indeed, even the national “epic,” feature motifs compatible with social revolution. Thus several standard morphemes of biblical folklore, the birth of a child to the barren wife (Sarah, Rachel, Hannah, Samson’s mother) and the inheritance of the last-born in place of the first (Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David), overturn the expectations of a traditional society. The image of the razing of the high places and the raising of the low,  6 See N. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh (New York: Orbis Books, 1979); idem, The Hebrew Bible: A Socio-Literary Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985); idem, “The Participation of Free Agrarians in the Introduction of Monarchy to Ancient Israel: An Application of H. A. Landsberger’s Framework for the Analysis of Peasant Movements,” Semeia 37 (1986) 77–106. 7 E.g., M. Chaney, “Ancient Palestinian Peasant Movements and the Formation of Premonarchic Israel” in D.N. Freedman and D.F. Graf (eds.), Palestine in Transition. The Emergence of Ancient Israel (SWBA 2; Sheffield: Almond Press, 1983) 39–90, deducing Widespread eighth-century social stratification from anecdotal, evidence in the early literary prophets.

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a program metaphor in Isa 40–55, of humbling the proud and exalting the humble (common in Psalms especially), indeed, of raising up leaders from shepherds, youths and those who do not know how to speak,8 all represent for these scholars a revolutionary ethic in the religious establishment. To have heard this, to have understood it, to allow the rhetoric to penetrate and speak directly to the modern reader, is a great hermeneutical achievement. So is the synthesis of all these strands into a single fabric with the theology of covenant generally, and of fealty to Yhwh, to the exclusion of secular powers in conflict with the god. And yet, the problems with this view have not been cast up in its face. In some respects, these theologians resemble the Communist Party members of the 1930s to 1950s, and the even more radical members of the academy in the 1960s to 1980s. The comparison is not ideological – Mendenhall rejects leftism, though his positions on Zionism (which he equates with racism) and on Judaism (in his view, a fossil religion, in contrast to Lutheranism) coincide with those of less-principled elements of the Left. Rather, the affinity is in an approach to language. Western Stalinists were sometimes cynical. But far more often, they and their fellow travelers fervently believed the words, the ideas, the slogans, and the clichés of Soviet or other Marxist establishments. In this patois, the witch hunts, the purges, the repression, the deliberate impoverishment, and mass murder, “The Great Terror,” coupled in the Soviet Union with rampant racism, and elsewhere with unrestrained xenophobia, were all minor glitches in a noble resistance, especially to American capitalist imperialist ambition. Now it is one thing to develop a rhetorical strategy, and even possibly to believe the words one uses. It is another altogether to listen to another party’s rhetoric and not to ask first about the use to which it is put, then about the correlation between the language and reality. This is an error we excuse in an electorate, which after all does elect politician after politician on the basis of legislative projects destined never to come to any semblance of genuine fruition. It is why simplistic, half-baked, and often counterproductive solutions to social or ecological problems win widespread support – banning elephant-hunting, for example, instead of converting it into so valuable a resource as to induce careful management by the hunters.9 But it is the error of a historical naif and is thus almost inexplicable in a scholar dealing with his or her specialized field.  8

For motifs in the myth of Israelite leadership, see B. Halpern, Constitution of the Monarchy in Israel (HSM 2S; Chico, Calif: Scholars Press, 1981) 111–48. 9 See “Sustainable Argument,” Economist 343.8022 (June 21, 1997) 83. A perfect example was the death in 1982–1983 of 65 percent of sported owls tagged by environmentalists with transmitters: the extra weight prevented them from catching their normal rodent prey.

3. Yhwh the Revolutionary  Revolutionary Religious Rhetoric and the Powerful Elite

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There is no question that the rhetoric of the passages to which the theologians point carries a high ideological charge. Specifically, the trope on which they focus is that of the reversal of expectations, and especially the reversal of status, motifs that are also invoked to reconstruct a Jesus in revolt against proto-rabbinic Judaism (probably, originally by the gospel writers) especially in Q studies. This is typically the theology of divine election throughout the Bible and is often enough signaled with the introduction of a new, and now fitting, nomenclature.10 The most familiar cases involve the patriarchs: at the receipt of the divine promise of the land and especially of progeny, Abram’s name becomes Abraham; Sarai’s, Sarah; on his wrestling with an angel, Jacob’s name becomes Israel. In the Priestly source, Joshua’s name is changed from Hosea to include the theophoric element, Yhwh. And of course Solomon is (re)named Jedediah by the prophet Nathan. These and like renamings express the transformative power of divine election. Similarly, the Israelite leader is conventionally incapable of saving even himself, let alone a nation, from present threat: Moses, Gideon, Saul, and other figures in the historiography both of Kings and of Chronicles, as well as of Judges (Barak, Jephthah), are portrayed as marginal in social standing, talent, or personal charisma before their divine designation. Joshua must be “magnified” by Yhwh before assuming Moses’ role as leader. David was a mere shepherd, and his father’s youngest, when Yhwh catapulted him into Saul’s court. Even the literary prophets appropriated the motif of a protest of inadequacy at their vocation – in some cases, as that of Isaiah, of impurity; in others, as in the case of Amos, of a lack of professional training; in some, as in the case of Jeremiah, of an inability to withstand aggressive opposition. The same attitude surfaces toward royal election in Jotham’s fable, in Judg 9; the lowly bramble, not the vine or the olive tree, accepts kingship (and similarly the motif underlying Herodotus 2.172, for example, on the kingship of Amasis). Yhwh’s revisionist activity also extends to other realms. He punishes sin and, in the case of repentance or the completion of one’s punishment, purges sin. Thus Hosea applies the theme of renaming also to Israel (and then undoes the names) to signify punishment and rehabilitation; Isaiah renames Judah; Jeremiah and Deutero-Isaiah, Jerusalem, among other things. Indeed, any divine intervention alters the mundane by definition. The transformation is not necessarily revolutionary, as distinct from reactionary. But the justification is always cast in the language of sympathy for  10

For what follows, see B. Halpern, “The New Name of Isaiah 62:4: Jeremiah’s Reception in the Restoration and the Politics of ‘Third Isaiah,’” JBL 117 (1998) 623–43.

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the oppressed and righteous (newly so or not) and stern but deserved chastisement for the evil, portrayed as oppressors. Here is a difficulty occasioned by the theologians. Yhwh’s every intervention can be regarded as revolutionary. But, as a brief consideration will show, the contexts of intervention – the humbling of the mighty, the empowerment of the despised – are those reinforcing and even sanctifying the status quo. In theory, one might exempt the prophetic literature from this verdict. The prophets, after all, are the iconic figures of religious traditions derivative from the Jerusalemite cult – not just in Judaism, but also in Christianity, where Paul and Reformationists follow the Gospels in affirming the predestination of events the prophets predict, and again in Islam and Bahai. All the same, to appeal directly to the text is to finesse the question that must be directed at all our sources before their interrogation for historical information. How did the material survive? Why do we have it? What was the nature of prophecy in its context? Our texts themselves attest prophetic competition in antiquity; prophecy was variegated. Yet the codification of prophecy in writing, then in a canon, should arouse our deepest suspicions about claims as to its revolutionary character. To judge from this diagnostic, the prophets were not unrelenting opponents of the state. On the contrary, they served the central elite, which, after all, preserved, co-opted, and disseminated their written words. The scholarly obsession with unearthing some less statist, or antiestablishment, seed-kernel from beneath the rotting fruit of transmissional editing (usually for programmatic purposes) merely betrays a velleity, namely, that “the” prophets should shine forth as the avatars of moral purity, that is, of our own values and integrity. In reality, there were prophets enough for the establishment to choose its own men and texts, so that relatively little domestication of their ideas and words would be required: as a doctrine of political economy, sustainable use is no modern invention. The idea of “the prophets” as somehow independent, other-worldly, free radicals is a fiction that the ancient establishment intended to perpetrate. It maintained the pretense – or at least did not dispel the ambiguity – that it itself was monolithic and identical with the elements under attack: this made the prophetic critique all the more “daring” and thus effective. A seeming other-worldliness is what made the prophets whose work or words we have politically useful and, indeed, politically canny. As Ghandi makes a great screen saint, so “the” prophets made wonderful icons for Jewish and Christian doctrine and for medieval and Renaissance art. We are, says the canonizer, the prophets. Specifically, our “revolutionary” rhetoric indulges a habit of turning up in contexts expressing the most establishment vantage points. The texts, codified and transmitted by the central elite in Jerusalem, are anything but

3. Yhwh the Revolutionary 105  representative of a social spectrum. On the contrary, they emerge from a royal and perhaps priestly complex with a profound interest in advancing its own regimen of taxation, organization, and ideological justification. Take, for example, the covenant. The idea of law based on a divine covenant may in name be late.11 This changes nothing for the purpose of a synchronic overview. What can be made theologically of the covenant as a whole – namely, the subjection of authorities to Yhwh and the rule of law – does not inhere in its detailed regulation of reality, nor indeed in the specifics of our legal sources. The “stipulations,” thus, of the “covenant” define the way Judahite society was to run: the “covenant” laws are in fact ruling-class implements. And the ordinances derived from some combination of elite strata, probably divided by party.12 The state, after all, enforced the legislation of the “covenant.” A possible exception is the juridical oversight of overarching “ethical” principles, such as “honor your father and mother” in the classic Decalogue (Exod 20; Deut 5). Such injunctions were typically actuated in more specific legislation (e.g., Exod 21:17; Deut 21:18–21), whatever the temporal relation between the formulations. Moreover, where they were not, the “covenant,” or rather the stipulation, was not a mechanism of concretized answerability but merely the displacement of that answerability into another dimension. In other words, where the penalty for abrogation of a provision is Yhwh’s curse, the situation is little different than in the case of the displacement of recompense into the afterlife of the individual from the corporation of one’s descendants; the latter had the merit of making cultural sense. Further, each provision’s content was determined by those who deposited it in writing, namely, the elite. Why, after all, does the applied theology, so to speak, of Israelite law make enforcement of norms a collective responsibility, their neglect a collective liability? This imposition of terror – of Yhwh’s curse – on the population at large was an ideological mechanism for enlisting them in policing compliance. The texts presenting the covenant, in sum, actually represent a means to inculcate the status quo, except when the elite chose to revolutionize this

 11 But see recently the important study of N. Lohfink, “Bund als Vertrag im Deuteronomium,” ZAW 107 (1995) 215–39. For covenantal models already in the Song of Deborah, see the author’s “Center and Sentry,” in I. Finkelstein, D. Ussishkin, and B. Halpern (eds.), Megiddo III (Tel Aviv: Institute of Archaeology, 2000). 12 Mendenhall’s evasive strategy is to assign the “covenant” to the pre-monarchic era. See further F. Crüsemann, The Torah (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1996) 109–200, against which E. Otto, “Die Tora in Israels Rechtsgeschichte,” TLZ 118 (1993) 903–10. Even were this reversion to the antique notion of an “amphictyonic ideal” correct, the expedient would not imply either a vulgar or a revolutionary origin for the material: laws are not enforced by the powerless.

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(as in the case of Deuteronomy).13 This much we should perhaps have deduced simply from the fact that no covenant in the Bible can be contracted either without the consent of the parties to it (as the Sinai covenant, to which Israel must formally subscribe) or without the political leadership. One need hardly add that the laws’ ubiquitous concern with protecting immoveable and chattel property bespeaks an alliance with moneyed classes. In sum, to make the covenant, as an idea, the implement of revolution, one must empty it of its specific (“secondary”?) content and regard it merely as a theory of social contract. Likewise, the liturgical materials that contain the tropes identified by theologians as revolutionary need to be considered first in their context before one can know how seriously, or indeed how at all, to take their words. The psalms, thus, are the deposit of ritual in the Jerusalem temple. This structure was situated in the palace compound of the Davidic dynasty and its priesthoods were appointed by and served at the pleasure of the kings, as indicated by the expulsion of Abiathar (1 Kgs 2:26–27) and even the incomplete enfranchisement of hinterland Levitical priests under Josiah (2 Kgs 23:8–9). To the extent that the temple liturgy indicted the king, therefore, it also delegitimated the priesthood; to the extent that it affirmed the king’s divine right, it conferred legitimacy on the specialists who molded and preserved it. In the circumstances, it is not at all surprising that most of the psalms mentioning the human king do so favorably (as Ps 45): the king is the recipient of a promise of dynasty from Yhwh (Pss 89; 132), is even the god’s son (as Pss 2; 89). The liturgy had many ideological connections but was both commissioned and controlled by the royal house. In the simplest terms, the implication is that any “revolutionary” language in Psalms is conventional in nature. Its function, rather than overt meaning, was conditioned by a performative context. That is, the message of the psalms is not to be grasped in the exegesis of an isolated exemplar but in an understanding of the ritual and ideological contexts in which the psalm was rendered, actualized, realized.14 Some details deserve consideration. First, the Mesopotamian New Year involved a ritual humiliation of the king: the kingship was theoretically in abeyance before the latter could resume his station. Likewise, the court officials divested themselves of and then assumed their insignia. This is not materially different from the treatment of the chief god in this festival; at the outset of the New Year, chaos threatens, and Marduk (later, in Assyria,  13 On the dating of the (original) Deuteronomic code, see recently E. Otto, “Treueid und Gesetz: Die Ursprünge des Deuteronomiums im Horizont neuassyrischen Vertragsrechts,” ZABR 2 (1996) 1–52. 14 See esp. S. Mowinckel, The Psalms in Israel’s Worship (New York: Abingdon, 1967).

3. Yhwh the Revolutionary 107  Asshur) must be found and in some versions of the ritual even rescued in order to restore the cosmos.15 Thus, the New Year’s ritual, in one of the most hierarchical and authoritarian societies in the ancient Near East, involves a “revolutionary” reversal of status. Jerusalemite employment of the same motifs need have no more anti-royal content than the Mesopotamian. Like the protest of inadequacy during a call narrative, the ritual reversal of status has a distinct theological function. Specifically, it avers that it is Yhwh (or, in Mesopotamia, the high gods) who exalts the humble. Without Yhwh’s imprimatur, the king and officials would be unworthy and impotent in the face of insecurity. But this very affirmation carries the implication, obvious to the ancient observer, that Yhwh has elected those who are in power. It is not, the text tells us, by their own accomplishment or might that they have succeeded, but through divine favor. This is a motif with a long history in the Near East, appearing not just in typical royal inscriptions and in the Sargon myth, but also in the “confession” to the pharaoh of AbdiHepa, sometime around 1360 BCE: Neither my father nor my mother set me over (Jerusalem), but the strong arm of the king (set me over my father’s house).16

Though the seigniorial estate of Jerusalem was hereditary, it was only by the overlord’s confirmation that the local ruler served. The point is that no inherent quality makes a leader or a prophet. Only election can do so. And here the conventions of the text fall into a logical place, in contexts in which king or country might be portrayed as suffering, desperate. These plights might perhaps be real; but much more often, they must have been conventional, dramatic, real emotionally, real relatively – in relation to imagined earlier prosperity and peace – but not urgent politically. One could argue that subjectively the votaries experienced the repetition of despair occasioned by earlier events. Regardless, in the course of the ritual, the participants longed to escape morbidity. Only when the worshipers are in extremis and sufficiently chastened to humble, humiliate, and deprive themselves by fasting, pleading, mutilation, and the immolation of loved ones, can Yhwh act on their behalf: any amelioration at all, ritual or real, is a function of a need, and the more pressing the need, the more radical the intervention, the greater the glory of Yhwh. The reversal of status is a necessary precursor to Yhwh’s demonstration of power. The  15 See the ritual text in ANET 331–34. See F. Thureau-Dangin, Rituels accadiens (Osbarück: Otto Zeller, 1975) 127–54; cf. 86–111; K. F. Müller, Das assyrische Ritual I. Texte zum assyrischen Königsritual (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1937) 4–58. 16 J. A. Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna-Tafeln (Vorderasiatische Bibliothek; Aalen: Otto Zeller, 1964) 286:9–13; 287:25–28; 288:13–15.

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demonstration overturns the standing both of those on whose behalf and of those against whom Yhwh takes action. In all this, nothing implies an ethic of revolution, a program for revolutionizing society. Instead, the claim is that the social order itself represents such a revolution, over against the chaos, or the oppression, that preceded. We are, the rhetoric proclaims, a community of the liberated, the saved. A more Pauline or Diocletianic perspective on the social order can hardly be imagined. To what do we owe this far-from-perfunctory genuflection in the direction of social justice and redistribution? For that is what psalmodic and prophetic rhetoric proclaims. The state is the agency of redistribution, the guarantor of justice – not just in Israel, of course, but across the Near East – and is the defender of the helpless. And this is the role the state assumes in our poetic and prose rhetoric (as Nathan’s parable); it is the agency policing predation by the wealthy on the insolvent. The state poses, that is to say, as the party restraining the enfranchised citizenry, not just from exploiting but from illegally, immorally, undeservedly subjugating and enslaving marginal social elements. The fact that this – to modern eyes, laughable – imposture of compassion stretches back to the dawn of civilization suggests that its roots are deep, probably already manifest in band behavior earlier still. The instinct of caring for the helpless, after all, is sociobiologically programmed from infancy; it can be parsed as a strategy for the preservation of one’s gene pool. But the attitude was no doubt extended by the rise in the Early Bronze I–II of debt-enforcement mechanisms newly equated with the earlier use of force. In Israel, before the rise of the state,17 there are no indications of administration, taxation, or social hierarchy external to the kinship structure. The introduction of state expropriation of wealth, including time and labor, in the Iron Age (IIA) also explains why the prophetic rhetoric, and the folklore motifs of status reversal, are as they are. These project a message, a subtext, that reality, life, the world, and therefore Yhwh is revolutionary, redistributionist. Yhwh in this sense is identical with the state. So, too, is the human king: unworthy of honor, he is magnified by Yhwh’s designation, the ethic of redistribution incarnate. The bramble in Jotham’s fable, thus, undertakes governance from a sense of obligation that is not shared by the olive or vine, both of which are productive and thus  17 The existence of pre-state Israel, while disputed, is attested in the identification of the southern stale with David (Tel Dan, Mesha), the northern with Omri (Mesha and neoAssyrian sources), plus Shalmaneser’s identification of Ahab as “the Israelite”; not until annexation is the state identified with the capital alone. The Merenptah Stela, early biblical poetry and historiography, and the archaeological record reliably document the prestate era. See, latterly, B. Halpern, “How Golden is the Marshaltown, How Holy the Scripture” JQR 87 (1997) 1–16.

3. Yhwh the Revolutionary 109  wealthy and uninterested in restricting their own class’s latitude. No false consciousness here! The true elite, says the fable, the elite engaged in primary production, spurns power as an encumbrance. It takes little talent for Realpolitik to read between these lines: for shirking the distractions of responsibility, the producers must pay for state consumption. With this chord, the repeated advertence to ultimogeniture and to Yhwh’s fertilitizing the barren in our folklore rings in harmony. Here are two motifs that are widely distributed (not just in Israel) and that have engendered variants such as the resurrection of the son of the Shunammitess in Kings (2 Kgs 4:8–37: she was barren, then fertilized, then bereaved and refertilized, so to speak) or the rejection of David’s firstborn by Bathsheba ultimately in favor of Solomon. They also relate to the legitimation narratives of such characters as Moses, but also Sargon and several other Mesopotamian kings, plus the whole postexilic temple community.18 And in no case ever does the language of reversal have future reference. In every case, it is historical or present in character, antedating the achievement of the present state of the universe. Shemaryahu Talmon has therefore suggested that the folklore served as a “steam valve” for the state.19 These topoi represent outlets for a standing fear of failure, or disgruntlement, mitigating stigmas potentially attaching to abnormal or misprised status and thus relieving social tension. Like revolutionary Israelite rhetoric about leadership – the leader as one raised from impotence by the god – this affirmation of the transformed qualities of society represents the appropriation in the state cult (Psalms) and culture of schemes of legitimation based on social justice rather than on social order. It is from the classes of the unproductive (Jotham’s fable), from the marginal (David, Saul, Gideon), and the expelled (Moses, Jephthah, Levi) that the leadership classes of this day have arisen.

 18

See, latterly, B. Halpern. “A Historiographic Commentary on Ezra 1–6: Achronological Narrative and Dual Chronology in Israelite Historiography,” in W.H. Propp, B. Halpern, and D.N. Freedman (eds.), The Hebrew Bible and its Interpreters (Biblical and Judaic Studies from the University of California, San Diego; Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 1990) 81–142, arguing that Samarian rejection of the temple’s rebuilding is modeled on Nabonidus’s explanations for the delay in the construction of Sin’s Haran sanctuary. Note likewise Ps 118:22, “the stone the builders had rejected has become the cornerstone; it is from Yhwh that this comes.” On the Sargon myth, see, latterly, J. G. Westenholz, Legends of the Kings of Akkade: The Texts (Mesopotamian Civilizations 7; Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 1997) 38:1–40:13. 19 S. Talmon, “Harand Midbar. An Antithetical Pair of Biblical Motifs,” in M. Mindlin, M.J. Geller, and J.E. Wansbrough (eds.), Figurative Language in the Ancient Near East (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1987) 124; idem, “Literary Motifs and Speculative Thought in the Hebrew Bible,” Hebrew University Studies in Literature and the Arts 16 (1988) 150–68.

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Though interpreted as evidence of a revolutionary biblical ethic sanctioning the “liberation” of the “oppressed,” this same language is deployed in ritual in cultures anterior to and later in contact with Israel. Its function, as in Israel, is never a call to revolution; rather, it either affirms the divine election of the king and thus the state or recalls a community of landed citizenry to shared ethical norms. In either case it relieves the contradictions of the relations of production and preserves, rather than subverts, the existing social order. Notably, the language is absent from pre-monarchic Israelite texts, from the very period to which Mendenhall appeals: its introduction, under the monarchy, reassures the citizenry that the existing order is already revolutionary, redistributive. Again, this is no surprise. It is, after all, the courtly version of the folklore that has made its way into our canon, not some tract of class consciousness. And it is precisely the state that needed to assert its preservation of such continuity with the culture of a kinship-based hinterland. The folklore motifs and the prophetic insistence on social justice (one thinks of Isa 10:1–4, for example, or Mic 2:1–2) are two sides of a single coin.20 The latter had the desired effect not only on the ancients, but also on modern interpreters, who focus on, rather than pierce, the veil of rhetoric. To quote Roscoe Conklin, “Reform is the final refuge of a scoundrel.” Prophetic Critique as a Social-Control Mechanism How was the prophetic appeal to social norms useful? It is no coincidence that prophetic literature was codified in the late eighth century, probably under Hezekiah, just when the kings of Judah needed most urgently to beat down centers of resistance in the countryside. 21 The literary prophets do indeed criticize the state, but they serve the state’s interests in doing so; in fact, their criticism is directed primarily at powers, such as those charged with local jurisdiction, who operated with the support, but also under the constraints of, central authority. This is why the prophets’ words (or those of their epigones) survive at all. And this very survival, whatever amendments one imagines were introduced by later transmitters, is inextricably  20 For some passages in Amos, Micah, and Isaiah, see J. A. Dearman, Property Rights in the Eighth Century Prophets (SBLDS 106; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988); for the seventh century, M. Sulzberger, The Status of Labor in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Dropsie College, 1923), which, despite outdated assumptions, reflects a model methodological and philological scruple. 21 D. N. Freedman, “Headings in the Books of the Eighth-Century Prophets,” AUSS 25 (1987) 9–26; B. Halpern. “Sybil, or the Two Nations? Archaism, Kinship, Alienation and the Elite Redefinition of Traditional Culture in Judah in the 8th–7th Centuries B.C.E.,” in S. Cooper and G.M. Schwartz (eds.), The Study of the Ancient Near East in the 21st Century (Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 1996) 311–12, 334–5, n. 115.

3. Yhwh the Revolutionary 111  bound up with the circumstance that characters such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel clearly enjoyed the patronage of at least one party at the court. One can even make this argument in the case of Amos, the most trenchant, plangent bulwark of the “poor.” Amos’s connection to the Judahite establishment is not just transparent but is also inferred by the Israelite establishment in one of the book’s narratives: “Hie yourself to the land of Judah, and eat bread there, and there prophesy,” says the priest Amaziah (see Amos 7:12–17). Amos is to join Judahite festivals and earn his living among his sponsors. The sense of the literary prophets’ social addresses is simple: the poor, the widow, and the orphan must be protected against landowners’ abuses. The same ethic as that reflected in law or legal homily on the unfortunate is present here. But who assumes the role of protector? The only possible agent is the state. The calls for social justice are in other words invocations to the state to act as it should, on the norms it traditionally articulates, namely, as the restraint on legalized bullying by the propertied. These wield local power, especially in economic affairs, against their inferiors, but are by their nature the only genuine potential threat to state impositions.22 Here, the state is again identified with the humble, the lowly, the poor; it becomes, in effect, the poor in its own eyes, much like the Jerusalem Church in primitive Christianity, or the Communist Party in Lenin’s dictum that the Party is the workers, and must – of all the workers – be the best and first preserved. The prophets, so called, are of course revered in the Western religious traditions and even function as theoretical role models for their exegetical heirs. So a deconstruction of their social role is not emotionally congenial. All the same, nothing in the nature of prophecy insulated it either against the temptations of expediency, particularly payment and patronage, or against political co-option either in advance or after the delivery of an oracle. In their textual manifestations, the literary prophets act principally in the service of the state; they advance an agenda of restricting the centers of wealth, on the theory that this serves the interest of the indigent; it is easier to enlist sympathy for the latter (and encourage the socialization of a false consciousness) than it is to justify the state’s appropriation of resources by any other strategy. Notably, 1 Sam 8 represents the introduction of kingship as a means for the creation of a professional soldiery and thus for the primitive accumulation of capital through conquest. In the lan-

 22 Against Dearman’s view (Property Rights in the Eighth Century Prophets) that the prophets attack state officials. No one in Israel or Judah held power (as distinct from influence) without state acknowledgment – as was the case in the localities of the Ottoman Empire. But it is an error to identify local powers with the central hierarchy directed from the capital.

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guage, if not the mentality, of the Near Easterner, plundering others is indistinguishable from the defense of capital accumulation from conquest. This trope represents all of Israelite society as “poor” or “oppressed,” in need of succor. It deflects to the external sphere, as do the books of Judges and 1 Samuel generally, the accusations of exploitation reserved for domestic elements in the prophetic literature (and in Nathan’s parable concerning Uriah, and in the Naboth story, and, indeed, in the tax revolt of 1 Kgs 12). Conversely, foreign conquerors in the prophetic literature are typically portrayed as being Yhwh’s implements of retribution, up to a point (at which they themselves incur the onus of retribution). “Oppression” or “grievance” as a category of discourse is a stock-in-trade of Near Eastern culture, and the party speaking or writing is always in his or her own view aggrieved. Like the “revolutionary” morphemes of the folklore, the literary prophets, then, are in Talmon’s sense steam valves for the state (not unlike the professoriate!). They facilitate royal inroads on the landed, particularly on countryside corporations, the clan sections.23 That the court should incline to such a policy is neither surprising nor unique, any more than is the philosopher’s Machiavellian advice to the Sicilian tyrant: “Cut down the high grain.” Of course, the state could attach domestic wealth only from the landed citizenry, and evasion of the state’s claims was no doubt rampant. Hence the portrayal of the Solomonic schism (1 Kgs 12) and of Samuel’s public diatribe against kingship (1 Sam 8) as a concern with taxation; hence also the curbs on the royal prerogative of personal aggrandizement in the “Law of the King” (Deut 17: 14–20; cf. 1 Sam 10:25) and in the tonic of the Uriah and Naboth stories. Such “abuse” is the flip side of the prophetic rhetoric, which urges the nurturing of the needy against such characters but, both narratives imply, within the bounds of justice. So the true value of the prophetic texts is to justify the state’s hinterland agenda: squashing the resistance of the clans; taxing those with means, or anything one might label means; imposing a universal standard of top-down justice and conflict resolution on a much more varied and distributed population. Bluntly put, the literary prophets are codified because they supply a Morton’s Fork for feasting at the court. A word on the “Law of the King” (Deut 17:14–20) is apposite here. Many commentators have argued that this cannot reflect a courtly milieu because its demands are impractical. Gösta W. Ahlström, for example, projects the law into the postexilic era on the grounds that its utopian cha 23

See B. Halpern, “Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 8th–7th Centuries BCE: Kinship and the Rise of Individual Moral Liability,” in B. Halpern and D.W. Hobson (eds.), Law and Ideology in Monarchic Israel (JSOTSup 124; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991) 11–107; idem, “Sybil, or the Two Nations?”

3. Yhwh the Revolutionary 113  racter would make it unworkable in the Iron Age.24 This is hardly an argument to any date at all; the impossible is impossible at all times. But the law accomplishes an ideological task: the king does not accrue wealth, concentration of which is evil in Israel’s zero-sum universe – public property is theft. Thus, the king can pour resources into the cult, can collect and redistribute them. But the proclamation exculpates the court of extracting from society at large any surplus for its own luxury. This is now a late Judahite law; it prohibits the assembly of a large chariot force, something not seen in Judah in the late eighth and seventh centuries, but places no limitation on fortress garrisons or professional infantry. Furthermore, the injunction against multiplying foreign wives, rather than taking them, reads, as many have noted, as a reference to the indictment of Solomon in 1 Kgs 11 (esp. vv. 1–3), a passage that can be traced without much question to Josiah’s repudiation of Solomonic policy in the Deuteronomistic History (the Josianic portions of which, such as Judg 1–2, are also concerned with local intermarriages). So the law fits the Josianic milieu characterizing both Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History and like them invokes social justice in order to veil the realities of power politics. The king, who is the state, is identified in every respect with the poor, the humble, the oppressed. The power elite’s surface rhetoric favors redistribution. And perhaps this is even sincere, although to what degree is disputable. “No man’s wife or property is safe,” the apothegm dictates, “when Congress is in session.” Again, the “revolutionary” claims of the text are those of the state, and the effect, whatever the intention, is conveniently to camouflage the inefficiencies of redistribution as fairness and natural sympathy for the unfortunate. Like applied Marxism, this is nothing more than the platform of an oligarchy immune from the custody of its constituencies.25 Overall, the question as to the nature of Israelite society and ideologies is not to be answered on the basis of what our texts say. Rather, the issue must be how and in what contexts they functioned and especially how they promoted “false consciousness.” That said, there is even less question once the sociology of the preservation of our texts is taken into account, as well as that aspect of the texts that represents their surface expression (the overturning of order or expectation being always in the past): the valence is consistently to the service of the state. Far from being revolutionary, the texts are bulwarks of the existing power structure.

 24 G. W. Ahlström. The History of Ancient Palestine (JSOTSup 146; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993) 43. 25 See especially R. Yaron, “Social Problems and Policies in the Ancient Near East,” in B. Halpern and D.W. Hobson (eds.), Law, Politics and Society in the Ancient Mediterranean World (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993) 19–41.

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Yhwh’s Identity in Essentialist and Functional Views The conservative function of ancient redistributionist rhetoric is predictable. It dovetails neatly with the theories offered in Israel as to the innermost, essentialist nature of the state high god, Yhwh. The following considerations address the issue of stasis in our textual theologies – again, against old-style liberation theology’s attempt to conscript Yhwh in the service of its own ends. Simultaneously, they layout an intellectual contribution of Israelite religion to Western tradition. Robert Ingersoll, the agnostic Yankee answer to the European poetcourtier tradition, once paid a visit to the celebrated “Bible”-pusher, Henry Ward Beecher – so the story goes. He particularly admired Beecher’s globe, depicting the constellations and planets. “Why, Henry,” Ingersoll exclaimed, “that’s just the sort of thing I’ve been looking for. Who made it?” Ward Beecher replied, “No one, Robert. It just happened.” The contrast to this anecdote comes from Julian Huxley. To adapt it to the preceding account, Beecher’s counterpart taxes Ingersoll’s: “A philosopher is like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there.” “That may be so,” replies the Ingersoll equivalent, “but a theologian would have found it.” These two vignettes illustrate the polarity of theological discourse. Beecher appeals to the principle of Aquino-Maimonidean faith in an ultimate prime mover – it’s not “turtles all the way down” after all. The Ingersoll position denies faith altogether, affirming that theologians, like the House Ethics Committee, study something that does not exist. The modern mind conceives of the two approaches as diametric opposites. Oddly, at a philosophical level, the elite religion of ancient Israel, at least in late monarchic apologetic, spans the yawning chasm. This is not to say that biblical, let alone Israelite, religion is somehow unified in any sense at all. The Bible, famously, is an anthology, theological as well as literary, no doubt produced by negotiations as complex as those at Nicaea, and a great deal more complex than those of the “Jesus Seminar” at the Westar Institute, with its caucuses over the authenticity of sayings in the canonical Gospels. The myth of a canonizing conclave at Yavneh in the vicinity of 100 CE is probably exaggerated, if not altogether incorrect.26 All the same, the iterative winnowing process was stiff; this is a selection of texts and doctrines that suited successive generations of Judah’s elite. The result, for the purpose of understanding the religions of Israel, is at best a set of fossils, from which reconstruction of the great  26

J. Lightstone, “The Formation of the Biblical Canon in Judaism of Late Antiquity: Prolegomenon to a General Reassessment,” SR 8 (1979) 135–42.

3. Yhwh the Revolutionary 115  beasts themselves must begin, but to which the reconstruction must not be limited. Discussions of monotheism, after all, tend to blur the distinction between theology and religion. Non-Western religion is a matter of behavior, of assimilation into a culture. Theology, by contrast, superimposes on custom cohesive philosophical speculation, although this can be compartmentalized within an individual myth or other rhetorical product. Under the circumstances, despite frequent quests after the “unique” characteristics of Israelite and, more often, biblical religion, one of the few durable achievements of critical scholarship has been the recognition that the Israelite pantheon, even among the elite, early contained various gods. Exodus 15, one of the oldest lyrics in the Hebrew Bible, marks off one of its stanzas with the question, “Who is like you among the gods, Yhwh?” (15:11). Psalm 29 begins, “Ascribe to Yhwh, O sons of gods ...,” addressing an assembly of gods among whom Yhwh “takes his place” in Ps 82:1 to render judgment. Traditionally, scholars have taken a theological and prescriptive approach to the issue of Israelite and Near Eastern monotheism. From this perspective, monotheism is the conviction that only one god exists; no others need apply. But this conviction is absent from broadly socialized Near Eastern cultures, including that of Israel. Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Hittite, Greek, and Ugaritic and Canaanite myths all present developed pantheons. All share myths in which the divine succession, usually involving a generational shift just as among humans, entails war among the gods. In Mesopotamia, the creation of the universe results from this conflict. And the focus in Mesopotamia, Hatti, and Canaan is on the defeat of the sea-god by the storm-god, who then administers the cosmos (the motif, ill-adapted to conditions in Egypt, is transformed there). In all these cultures, the common thread is the succession of a patriarchal high god’s royal son, that is, the birth of monarchy among the gods. These pantheons, thus, all have a high god, under whose benign administration the other gods – of rain or pestilence or astral bodies – act, though often independently. The high god, in the Near East, is the god of the state. Probably in some cases, the state pantheon subsumed local high gods of towns or regions in the empire. Thus, different states may share essentially identical pantheons but identify different figures as the high god: in Babylon, for example, the high god from the mid-second millennium forward was Marduk; the Assyrian high god was Asshur. Sennacherib, Assyria’s king at the end of the eighth century, actually rewrote the Babylonian creation epic to accord Marduk’s role in it to Asshur. Yet the supporting cast of “great gods,” and most of the minor deities, were identical in the two realms.

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With Canaan, Mesopotamia, and, less formally, Greece (kingship having waned there), Israel shared the notion of a divine council presiding over human affairs.27 Job 1–2 predicate the idea, as do 1 Kgs 22:19–22 and Isa 6. Indeed, the claims of Judges and Kings, reinforced by the rhetorical hyperbole of Jeremiah, make it clear that “other gods” were never regarded as heterodox before the cult reforms especially of the late seventh century.28 And excavation has yielded votive figurines in sufficient quantity to dispel any question about the limitation of such practice to isolated circles: every expanded family in monarchic Israel had at least one such female icon in its housing compound.29 The worship of subsidiary deities in Israel, deities in Yhwh’s “suite” to use Yehezkel Kaufmann’s locution, was a going commercial concern. Some have argued that Yhwh so dominated the subordinate gods of the Israelite pantheon as effectively to be omnipotent and alone. 30 As many scholars have observed, however, a similar view emerges from the Babylonian creation epic, the Enuma Elish, in which the attributes of the entire pantheon are ascribed to the chief god, Marduk. The date of the text is disputed, but the prologue to the Code of Hammurabi (seventeenth century BCE) presupposes such a myth. In the same texts, Marduk is installed as king over all the (surviving) gods. Not unrelated is the fact that Mesopotamian literature is replete with pleas to gods and goddesses, such as Ishtar of Arbela, Ishtar of Nineveh, or Shamash, or Adad (Hadad, Haddu); in such prayers, the god under address is the only active divinity, so that, at a  27

So H. L. Ginsberg, The Writings of Ugarit (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Bialik, 1936); further, O. Eissfeldt, “El and Yahweh,” JSS 1 (1956) 25–37; esp. F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973) 112–44 with extensive bibliography. 28 Judg 2:11–19; 3:7, 12; 4:1; 6:1; 10:6, etc; 1 Kgs 11:1–8; 2 Kgs 23:13; 1 Kgs 17–19; 2 Kgs 8:18, 27; 16:3–4; 21:3–7; Jer 11:13; 2:8; 7:1 – 8:3; 14:15; 23:13; 27:15. In Jeremiah, any heterodox activity is the worship of “other gods” or “baal.” For the indigenous origins of these gods, see B. Halpern, “Jerusalem and the Lineages;” idem, “Sybil, or the Two Nations?” idem, “‘Brisker Pipes Than Poetry:’ The Development of Israelite Monotheism,” in J. Neusner, B. Levine, and E. Frerichs (eds.), Judaic Perspectives on Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983) 77–115; idem, “The Baal (and the Asherah) in Seventh-Century Judah: Yhwh’s Retainers Retired,” in R. Barthelmus, T. Krüger, and H. Utzschneider Konsequente Traditionsgeschichte. Festschrift für Klaus Baltzer (OBO 126; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1993) 115–54. 29 See especially J. S. Holladay, “Religion in Israel and Judah under the Monarchy: An Explicitly Archaeological Approach,” in P.D. Miller, Jr., P.D. Hanson, and S.D. McBride (eds.), Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987) 275–80. 30 Paradigmatically, Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel: From Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile (New York: Schocken Books, 1960).

3. Yhwh the Revolutionary 117  local level, devotion is exclusive. The state myth did not reflect the subjective experience of a worshiper during his or her devotions. Scholars used to refer to this phenomenon as “affective henotheism,” devotion to one god without denial of others’ potency. This principle, as readers of Freud and Velikovsky know, was supposedly elevated to state policy in Egypt under the fourteenth-century pharaoh, Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten). Akhenaten channeled resources into the cull of the solar disk (Aten) at the expense of other temple establishments. He supposedly propagated the heresy that the solar disk (Aten) was prepollent among all deities and without human representation. This is no doubt a caricature of Akhenaten’s own position,31 but even if it represents the polemic of Akhenaten’s posthumous opponents, it indicates that the limitation of devotion to a single being was conceived of as a possibility in the Egypt of the time. A later attempt to install a god atop a state pantheon – under Nabonidus, king of Babylon at the end of its resurgence (556–538 BCE) – exhibits similar characteristics, with many divine statues concentrated in the capital, possibly to ensure countryside resistance to the Persian invaders. 32 Possible Judahite influence on Nabonidus has not been explored, nor his policies’ relation to the philosophical monotheism of Second Isaiah. Nevertheless, his reform, like Akhenaten’s, proved abortive. Precisely these failures, however, show that the line between monotheism and polytheism should not be too precisely drawn. Akhenaten and Nabonidus focused the cult on their own gods. But the “monotheistic” traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are no different. All these traditions admit the existence of subordinate immortals, saints, angels, even demons, and, in the case of traditional Christianity, the devil, an eternal evil principle almost equipollent with the high god. Monotheism, in short, as the modern monotheist imagines it, was neither original to nor practiced in the historical Israel of the Bible. These limitations on the exceptional character of Israel have long been acknowledged. George Ernest Wright was one of the most successful respondents to them, stressing instead the distinctiveness of Israel’s religion as a “historical” one. In Wright’s scheme, Yhwh’s claim to allegiance derived primarily from actions that humans might have witnessed. In this sense, Yhwh was a real god, unlike the mythic agents of Mesopotamia and Canaan.33

 31

D. B. Redford, Akhenaten, the Heretic King (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). 32 For a slightly different view, P.-A. Beaulieu, “An Episode in the Fall of Babylon to the Persians,” JNES 54 (1993) 241–61. 33 See G. E. Wright, God Who Acts: Biblical Theology As Recital (London: SCM Press, 1952).

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Wright’s attempt to salvage Israel’s god from comparison to contemporary congeners was rejected, especially by the Assyriological community, which stressed that Mesopotamian gods, too, intervened in history.34 Even at Ugarit, El and Haddu direct human affairs in the Keret epic. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine that any people, “pagan” or not, would worship gods unable to manipulate mundane reality; one does not worship impotence. This is why traditional language about “fertility gods” or “cults” is often misleading; there is no such thing as a sterility cult. Like the idea of a “wisdom tradition,” the existence of which would be news to ancient authors writing in the “stupidity tradition,” the nomenclature is sufficiently absorbent and flexible to induce slovenly thinking. The same is true of facile characterizations of monotheisms and polytheisms. More diachronic approaches to the literature have also been common. In a bellwether study, Albrecht Alt distinguished the “god(s) of the fathers” from Yhwh. The patriarchal deities (the god of Abraham, the fear of Isaac, the stallion of Jacob), according to E and P, were identified with Yhwh only in Moses’ time. Alt, assuming the antiquity of this tradition, identified the patriarchal gods with prehistoric nomadic groups. 35 His approach, like that which fell into disuse in the nineteenth century of reading ancient myths to extract their coded but – to the individual exegete – all too transparent historical content, had widespread influence. The resulting damage to the reconstruction of early Israelite history has been little short of disastrous.36 Frank Cross sophisticated Alt’s analysis into a systematic reconstruction of the history of Israelite religion. Cross argued that Alt’s patron deities were, like the gods (he maintained) in Amorite personal names, originally active in the personal lives of their client-votaries. But neither Amorite nor later Arabic deities were the anonymous lares posited by Alt; they were, rather, major gods, named by epithets. The epithets underscored the personal relationship with the gods’ clients, and the onomastica of Moab, Ammon, and Edom, which seem to name only one, national god, suggest that the ethnic dynamic there was the same as Israel’s. Cross contrasted the personal aspect of the patriarchal god with that of the creator. Canaanite El, Babylonian Marduk, and Yhwh, like Zeus (and Haddu in Canaan), presided over or participated in epic primordial battles against primal powers. This, Cross suggested, is the godhead of pure myth, of eternity. The patriarchal gods, however, were placed in historical time.  34

As J. J. M. Roberts, “Myth Versus History,” CBQ 38 (1976) 1–13. A. Alt, Der Gott der Vater (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1929). 36 See, for example, R. de Vaux, The Early History of Israel (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978) 161–287 and passim for use of late traditions about prehistory as though they were reliable. 35

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 Cross thus characterized Israelite religion as a synthesis of the personal with the cosmic aspects of the god, in which the client relationship of the patriarch to the god metamorphosed into a client relationship between the nation and the god. In his reconstruction, the synthesis also transformed Yhwh’s nature; the cosmic god was now one who acted in history. Like the patriarchal deities, the new god acted in full view of humanity, but on such a grand scale as to dwarf the common embellishments of legend. And, while the patriarchal god might influence or even decide events, his power was circumscribed by the puissance of other divinities. The nowpersonalized cosmic god intervened with finality. Formerly mythic, the cosmic god was in Israel defined primarily by his behavior on earth, in the way he shaped history.37 Even were this overture correct, Israel’s religion would not stand out from her neighbors’ – which, after all, is why one distinguishes Western monotheism from other religions. As noted above, Israel did not spurn gods different from Yhwh, though we can only surmise, not know, that the worshiper did not apprehend those gods as Yhwh’s competitors. Likewise, in Homeric epic Athena and other gods act in both the cosmic and mundane spheres, which are in ancient thought closely related. And while El and Baal never wreak the sort of natural havoc that Yhwh is – in Cross’s treatment – thought to specialize in, they do act as personal gods to a king while nevertheless retaining their full-blown cosmic significance. Yhwh is neither the only, nor even the first, god to have bridged the gap between myth and legend. In fact, the gods of the patriarchs are “personal” because the patriarchs impersonate the nation. So almost none of the criteria mooted as distinctive features of Israelite religion passes a rigorous scrutiny. 38 Even the covenant is not so unusual as essentialism might suggest. True, the idea of a contract with a god (with or without the term) pertains in the main to royalty in Mesopotamia, and in the case of one Sumerian king is explicit. But the covenant is merely metaphoric for a reciprocal relation with the deity; 39 this reciprocity is present all over the ancient world. Offending Poseidon leads to Odysseus’s loss of self. Neglecting Marduk leads to a shambles in Babylon. Propitiating the gods brings reward. These ideas are  37

Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 3–75. See P. Machinist, “The Question of Distinctiveness in Ancient Israel: An Essay,” in M. Cogan and I. Eph‫ޏ‬al (eds.), Ah, Assyria…: Studies in Assyrian History and Ancient Near Eastern Historiography Presented to Hayim Tadmor (ScrHier 33; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1991) 196–212. Machinist concludes that Israel’s claims of distinctiveness arose from identity formation. The persistence of that concern suggests the operation of other processes as well. 39 So Lohfink, “Bund als Vertrag im Deuteronomium.” 38

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so common as to be obvious, whatever the metaphor for them. Gods and priests must be appeased. Whether one calls the relationship contractual is a semantic, not substantive, quibble. Yet despite these strictures, Israel’s religion can be said to have had distinctive elements and especially combinations of elements. These are encoded in the definition of Yhwh’s nature. Here the contrasts are not Alt and Wright, but nuances in the chiaroscuro of unsystematic theology. Specifically, Israel’s “historical” god, the earth-shaker, is far from unique in that respect. What makes him unique is the degree to which his “historical” nature has led his worshipers away from the genre of myth in their conceptualization of the cult, in their strategies for the socialization of religious ideologies, and, indeed, in their whole definition of cyclic time. Signal in this respect is the character of Israel’s festivals. It is an unshaken scholarly tenet that the major holy days, Passover (Pesach), Booths (Sukkot) and Weeks (Shevuot), originated as agricultural celebrations. They coincided with holidays on the Canaanite calendar, assumed to be purely agricultural and mythic. 40 Yet to varying degrees, Israel reduced them to re-creations of national history. Thus, the Canaanite autumn harvest festival probably involved rehearsal of Haddu’s triumph over Mot, “Death,” a myth sometimes regarded as “Baal’s resurrection.”41 In Israel, traces of this background remained.42 Over time, however, the reinterpretation took hold that the celebration commemorated Israel’s wanderings after the exodus in “booths.” Sukkot’s divorce from agriculture was slow. The same is true of Shevuot, though as a wheat festival it was less festive, less well appointed. Even in modern times, neither has shed the trappings of the harvest feast. Pesach, however, seems to have been different. Although the corresponding spring New Year’s festival in Babylon commemorated Marduk’s victory over the Salt-Sea, Tiamat, Israel’s Passover attached from early on to the nation’s rescue from Egypt (as Exod 15). Israel’s “historical” experience replaced what in Mesopotamia, and probably Canaan, was a cosmogonic myth. This transition was eased by the calendrical location of Passover – the festival of the green wheat poking up from the clods, long in advance of the harvest. To be sure, its focus was agrarian (pastoralism  40

Classically, J. Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel (Cleveland: Meridian, 1957) 83–120. For linkage to the ancestors, see A. M. Cooper and B. Goldstein, “The Festivals of Israel and Judah and the Literary History of the Pentateuch,” JAOS 110 (1990) 19–31; idem, “Exodus and Matsot in History and Tradition,” Maarav 8 (1992) 15–37; idem, “The Cult of the Dead and the Theme of Entry into the Land,” Biblical Interpretation 1 (1993). 41 CTA 23:8–11, with 2; 4; 6; KTU 1.23; 2; 4; 6. 42 Mowinckel, Psalms, 1:106–92; Der achtundsechzigste Psalm (Oslo: Jacob Dybwab, 1953).

3. Yhwh the Revolutionary 121  aside), but it never celebrated the enjoyment of produce – it was a festival of expectation – and that is also its character in its historical transmogrification, of liberation from Egypt before possession of the land. It exalted the end of oppression, by winter and by Egypt. This made it so dominant in religious consciousness that P had to shift the calendar to place the New Year in the seventh month and link a separate New Year’s festival to Sukkot: for P, possession is the object of celebration (Josh 5), and this may be more authentic, as a theology, than the mock-revolutionism of the JED tradition (while the focus on the consumed but still apotropaic lamb is also atavistic). Pesach is not the only festival in which history replaced myth as a program. No Near Eastern religion had a festival like Purim, for example, commemorating an alleged escape from genocide, or like Hanukkah, traced to the rededication of the temple during the revolt against the Seleucids. Over time, history so supplanted myth that Judaism absorbed new ritual principally as historical moments (the Fast of Gedaliah, the 9th of Av); the trend toward “historicization” of the cult went further in Israel than elsewhere. Sacralized reminiscences – and, the assumption of mythic function makes history mythic in character, as in the division of the Reed Sea43 – so came to predominate in Israel’s consciousness over the timeless myths that the very “cyclical” holy days of the agricultural year took on the raiment of Israel’s past. The relation of the spring New Year’s festival to liberation from “bondage” in Egypt is the emblem of this impulse. But the impulse rears its head in other arenas of Israelite religion as well. The cultic calendar was never wholly divorced from myth. Though the Decalogue of Deut 5:6–21 links the Sabbath to Egyptian corvée, that of P (Exod 20) associates it with the creation. Already Isaiah, around 700, compared the contemporary prospect of Israel’s return from Assyria both to the exodus from Egypt and to the defeat of the sea-monster, Leviathan (Isa 11:11–16; cf. CTA 5:1:1–3). The typological equation of the exodus with Yhwh’s cosmogonic victory over chaos (cf. Job 40:6–32) suggests the likelihood of connections in the cult. Writing 170 years later, the author of Isa 40–55 embellishes the same equation in connection with the Judahites’ return from Babylon. For him, the primordial salvation from sea, the exodus, and the contemporary restoration all cohere (as Isa 51:9–11; also 44:24–28; 52:7–12; cf. 63:1–14; 42:5–16). His reveries invoke a mythic heritage to comment on historical cult myths. So First Isaiah testifies to the historicization of cult myths in Israel by equating the primordial defeat of sea with the cosmogonic exodus as models for an anticipated return from Assyria. Second Isaiah shows how  43

For the development of this historical myth, see Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 122–44.

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deeply historical consciousness has supplanted myth in the elite religion. One characterizes the historical by allusion to the mythic. The historical experience is real, programmatic, the overt referent. Myth furnishes a metaphorical language with which to describe it; the event casts no light on the myth, but the myth provides insight into the event. The use of history as cult myth is not unique. Islam celebrates the Prophet’s mundane achievements. Moreover, historical or not, a myth is a myth. From no religious viewpoint can one differentiate Jesus’ resurrection as a program for Easter from Israel’s exodus as a program for Pesach. Israelite religion is, however, further imbued with history. It is peculiarly historical in its approach to prophecy. Prophecy, speaking for the god, is one of the few ways to divine divine intent (other than technical divination or necromancy by non-specialists) in the religion. Its moorings, like those of other mantic arts, are supernal. In seventh-century Judah, a simple rule was developed, or promulgated, for determining whether one should trust a prophecy: Should you say in your heart, “How can I know the oracle that Yhwh has not spoken?1t What the prophet says in the name of Yhwh – and that oracle does not come to be nor come to pass – that is the oracle that Yhwh did not speak. (Deut 18:21–22)

Bismarck could not have designed a more pragmatic text. The prophecy that is realized, by definition, is correct. That belied by events is uninspired. (The logic is that of a Boolean truth table.) Many exegetes differentiate true from false prophets; the text affords no such ground. The distinction is between a prophecy and a prophet. Thus, though inspired, Ahab’s prophets (1 Kgs 22:19–23) deliver false oracles. They are misled by the inferior medium of aural, rather than visual, revelation; the story lionizes Micaiah more like Ezekiel than like Jeremiah in the typology of word versus vision prophecy. Again, Micah’s prophecy of Jerusalem’s destruction need not be realized, certainly not right off (Jer 26). It was forestalled by repentance, to be brought on by renewed sin. Yet Jeremiah’s appendix on applied prophecy (chs. 26–29) makes much of the timeliness of a prediction’s materialization. One might even suspect that this, and not sedition, was the basis for the indictment of Jer 26. The narrative, which contextualizes Jer 7, is dated to 609, after all, and might be redated arguably as late as 598, a decade before the temple’s destruction. Does it explain Jeremiah’s ambivalence toward Zedekiah, his “Yhwh our vindication”? The prophecy’s accomplishment comes much later and yet is implicitly viewed by our narrator as Jeremiah’s own vindication, despite his erring in matters such as the treatment of Jehoiakim’s corpse. Prophecy is deucedly flexible. Prophecy exposes Yhwh’s will; one can identify true prophecy, however, only through events, after the fact. As inconvenient as this is for the au-

3. Yhwh the Revolutionary 123  dience of competing prophets, the test is tangible. As in the case of the Pesach myth, the Israelite elite here makes history the ultimate referee, the last court of appeal. This perspective also actuates the polemic and its historical documentation in the Deuteronomistic History (DtrH), which extends the tradition of the historical explanation for suffering found earlier in 2 Samuel, in the treatment of the sin of Sargon, and in Mesopotamian Chronicles (as P) to indict a culture as ancient as human memory.

The Name Yhwh and History The apotheosis of history, as a program for festivals, as a measure of revelation, finds another reflex in the most direct definitions the biblical materials offer of the god. This god has an unusually bewildering variety of names, -'!+, “the pantheon”; +, “god”; '< +, probably “the god of the mountain”; 0#'+3 +, “the most high god”; and so forth. But all the evidence, oblique and direct, concurs on one proper name par excellence. That name is !#!'. Scholars sometimes claim to identify evidence of this name outside Israel. Thirteenth-century Egyptian topographic lists mention a “land of the pastoralists of yhwA,” somewhere in the eastern Sinai. More dubious have been attempts to find reference to Yhwh in Amorite names of the early second millennium or at Ebla in the later third millennium BCE.44 Today’s evidence for extra-Israelite familiarity with the name is spotty.45 Still, sentiment is asymptotic to a consensus on the name’s meaning. As early as 1909, when Paul Haupt, W. F. Albright’s teacher, published “Der Name Jahweh” in the Orientalische Literaturzeitung, critics have translated, “He causes to be.” Haupt derived !#!' as a causative (Hiphil) from Hebrew '#!, “to be.” Several writers apply the rendition to Exod 3:14, !'! !'! : yĞrd > Ğryd by scribal correction). But the mechanism is terribly speculative. 27 GA drops the -m of MT gbwrym, but otherwise reflects MT. GB reads “to him (lw)” for MT “to me (ly),” possibly preferable (v. 23c–d). 28 GB reads šršm as piel and renders “uprooted them,” with initial mny as “from me.” GA reads, “the people of Ephraim avenged themselves of them” (?) and moves Amaleq, emended to “valley” (ҳmq < ‘mlj), into the next stich. Read lectio difficilior, MT. Cf. Judg 12:15 for Amaleq in Mt. Ephraim; note further Judg 3:26–27 for a Seir in the same region. 29 GA’s emendation from “Amaleq” to “valley,” along with that from ’‫ۊ‬ryk to ’‫ۊ‬yk, is probably the translator’s own. Hos 5:8 attests the text’s early form. I find the only unforced explanation of it is as an apostrophe to Ephraim, after whom Benjamin is to rally, and among whom the Benjaminite contingents at the muster are stationed. 30 See also n. 36. The term has to do with inscription, sometimes of laws, and with law-giving generally. But apart from carving (as 1 Kgs 6:35; Ezek 8:10; 23:14; Isa 22:16; Job 13:27), it denotes command (esp. Isa 33:22; also Gen 49:10; Deut 33:21; Ps 60:9; 108:9; note the wedding of carving and authority in Num 21:18). 31 This is a difficult line. GA introduces a fresh version of vs 13b. GB reads MT spr twice, as “scribe” and “lead(er)” (?Ğr). GA reads only “lead(er)” and omits Ğry from 5:15a. In 14d mškym bšb‫ ܒ‬and šb‫ ܒ‬are unparalleled. Cf. Amos 15, 8 twmk šb‫ ;ܒ‬Isa 14:5; Ezek 19:11 šb‫ ܒ‬mwšlym. m‫ۊ‬qq as “inscriber” might be parallel with spr, with implications of  authority for the latter. But one cannot equate MT spr and Akk. šapƗru (“command”)

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18 19

Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition The officers of Issachar [?were/came down] with [or: to] Deborah,32 So (with/to) Baraq, dispatched to [?from] the valley33 at his command;34 In divisions [?] (was/came down) Reuben35 with great resolution.36 Do you not dwell among the hearths 37 Listening to the bleating of the flocks? To your divisions, Reuben, with great proofs of heart!38 Gilead (who) abides across the Jordan, And Dan – does he not live at ease? Asher (who) dwells on the shore of the seas, And abides upon its inlets [?], Zebulun [?is] a people who taunted death,39 And Naphtali, on the heights of the field. The kings came; they fought. Then the kings of Canaan fought, At Taanach, by Megiddo’s waters.40 They did not take a bit of spoil.

 on the basis of standard phonetic transformations (as M. Tsevat, “Some Biblical Notes,” HUCA 24 [1952/53] 107). Cf. Richter, Traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen, 78. 32 Read MT, GB against GA; see Boling, Judges, 112. This stich may still be governed by “they came down” (v. 14c): “And the officers... (came down)...”. Similar flexibility obtains below. 33 Is “in force” a possibility? Cf. Akk. emnjqu. 34 Omit “And Issachar” with GAB (dittography). There is no ground for inserting Naphtali in its place, either. On brglyw, cf. Exod 11:8; Judg 8:5; 2 Sam 15:16–18; 1 Kgs. 20:10; lrgl in Gen 30:30; 33:14; Deut 11:6; 1 Sam 25:42; Hab 3:5; 2 Kgs 3:9. 35 “They came down” (v. 14c) may still be operative in this stich. Alternately, this may be an apostrophe: “To your divisions...”. Or, one may read, “In Reuben’s divisions was great resolution.” 36 Or, “inscribings of heart.” GA has caught the sense; AV misses the positive nuance. Cf. Isa 10:1ff. ‫ۊ‬qqy lb is a deliberate allusion to v. 9, lby l‫ۊ‬qqy yĞr’l, which tends to confirm that the nuance is positive. 37 On lm(h), “not,” see above. Alternatively, “Why do you tarry?” as an exhortation. This is possible in that v. 16b–c breaks the sequence of stichs potentially governing “they came down” for the first time (including 14b). If v. 16a is apostrophic, this seems the best recourse. But if v. 16a and 16d are a sort of epanalepsis governing “they came down,” 16b–c may be paratactic. Verses 17–18 would then also govern “they came down.” 38 The expression is positive here. Cf. Jer 17:10; Prov 25:3, perhaps; note also 1 Sam 20:12. It doesn’t imply internalization. See Deut 20:1ff. On the syntax, see above, 5:15c–d, and n. 35. 39 Lit., “taunted itself (/its life) to die.” 40 Since this is a victory in the field, not at siege (vv. 18, 21–22, 28–30), the chronology of Megiddo and Taanach has no bearing on the date. Cf. Mayes, Israel in the Period of the Judges, 94–97; Y. Aharoni, “New Aspects of the Israelite Occupation in the North” in J.A. Sanders (ed.), Near Eastern Archaeology in the Twentieth Century: Essays in Honor of Nelson Glueck (Garden City: Doubleday, 1970) 254–67.

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III. Treatments of the Problem The preceding rendition does not go far to diminish the tension between SongDeb and Judges 4. Rather, it magnifies the discrepancy. The song claims that ten tribes took part in the battle. The prose states that only Zebulun and Naphtali took part (Judg 4:6, 10). Some critics stand by the song’s testimony; others maintain that the prose alone stands up to historical scrutiny.41 However, the only real attempt to piece together all the elements of the puzzle has been that of A. Weiser. Weiser argued that the poem represents a liturgy of the “covenant renewal festival” (probably a form-critical chimera). Thus, the litany in vv. 14–15b enumerates those who appeared at the sanctuary gates (to which v. 11b refers) to celebrate the festival. 5:15c–17 chides those absent from the celebration. And (if one reads “Naphtali” for MT Issachar in 5:15b [see n. 34]) this accounts for the repetition of the names Zebulun and Naphtali (vv. 14d, 15b, 18): v. 18 refers to those who took part not in the festival but in the fighting. Weiser claims thus to explain both the gentle rebukes issued to Reuben, Gilead, Dan and Asher – they have only avoided a festival, after all – and the liturgical character of SongDeb’s start and finish.42 He relegates the curse of Meroz to the status of an intra-tribal problem. Weiser’s study has its attractive points. Nevertheless, quite apart from other objections that have been leveled against it,43 its conclusions are belied by the martial language of vv. 11d, 12–13, 14b, 15b–c, and by the absence of any marked transition between vv. 17 and 18. Moreover, without more direct testimony that the action in vv. 11ff. is cultic (cf. the clarity of Ps 68:25–30), Weiser’s reinterpretation appears to be too radical. On balance, Weiser has really only read with the prose, bringing the more malleable poetry into line with it: were there no Judges 4 to raise the question of  41

E.g., for the song, de Vaux, Early History of Israel, 729–30; Mayes, Israel in the Period of the Judges, 84–100; for the prose, M. Noth, The History of Israel (2nd ed.; New York: Harper, 1960) 150–51. 42 Weiser, “Das Debora-Lied,” 67–97. 43 The most important have been Richter’s (Traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen, 33–88). The argument on Judges 4 there requires detailed rebuttal, only some of which can be undertaken in passing below. Generally, except in excising Judg 4:1–3, 4b; 5:31 and perhaps 45, Richter skates on thin ice throughout. On the prose, cf. D. F. Murray, “Narrative Structure and Technique in the Deborah-Baraq Story (Judges IV 4–22),” in J. A. Emerton, ed., Studies in the Historical Books of the Old Testament (SVT 30; Leiden: Brill, 1979) 153–89. The argument to the growth of SongDeb hangs on the reification of form-critical categories (cult song, victory ode) and oppositions, and their imposition on the Israelite poet. Cf. P.C. Craigie, “The Song of Deborah and the Epic of TukultiNinurta,” JBL 88 (1969) 253–65. Most important, Richter fails to account fully for the divergent details in the chapters, a lacuna this study will try to fill.

154 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  which tribes participated, it seems doubtful that Weiser would have proposed such a reading of SongDeb. Weiser’s reading is a breakthrough in the sense that it comes to grips with the differences between Judges 4 and SongDeb, but it is necessary to treat the problem more systematically: Why the conflation with Joshua 11 in Judges 4? Why all the other, more minor, points of disagreement (e.g., Baraq in Issachar in 5:15; in Qedesh in 4:5, 9–10)? Why the more substantial incongruity in the descriptions of Sisera’s death? Because this last question has inspired some independent work,44 and because its relevance escaped Weiser, it is appropriate to take it as a starting point. Judg 4:17–22 stands without doubt among the most lurid texts in the Hebrew Bible. Here, as the squeamish are aware, Jael entices the fugitive Sisera into her tent and covers him. When he asks for water, she brings him milk. Sisera slumbers. As he sleeps, Jael takes hammer in hand and pounds a tent-peg through his skull, into the ground. It is insufficient to remark the absurdity of this account, which has Jael steadying the spike on Sisera’s skull, and, taking careful aim – not to crush her thumb – smashing the hammer down. A glance at the poetic parallel, however, does clarify matters, accounting in particular for the seemingly superfluous “peg” of the prose: 24

25

26

27

Let Jael be [or: Jael is], of women, most blessed, The woman of the Qenite community45 Of women in tents,46 let her be [she is] most blessed. Water he asked; Milk she provided; In a lordly krater47 she proffered ghee. She sent her hand to the peg, Her right hand to the workers’ smiter. She smote Sisera; she smashed his head; She splintered, she pierced his nape.48 At her feet, he kneeled, he fell, stretched out.49

 44 Esp. Boling, Judges, 98. Cf. Richter, Traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen, 62: Richter affirms the antiquity of 4:17a, 18–22 and denies that there is any connection between them and the poetic parallel. 45 Cf. Hos 6:9, and below. 46 The sense is “of the women of the tent.” The substantive and prepositional adjectival phrase has the semantic sense of a construct, a common feature in the more antique poetry of the HB. Cf., perhaps, Judg 5:2a, 7c, 8d, 9b 15a; esp. 2 Sam 1:21 hry bglbҳ; Ps 68:5. 47 Or perhaps a bowl with heroic scenes painted on it. 48 On rqtw, see Boling, Judges, 98; cf. rqq, “expectorate.” Etymologically, yrq(rq), “yellow, green,” probably belongs to the same constellation. Apart from Judg 4:21–22; 5:26, the term occurs only in Cant 4:3; 6:7. The prose writer has taken it from the poem.

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 At her feet, he kneeled, he fell. Where he kneeled, there he fell, slain.

(5:25–27)

This is a straightforward murder. Sisera requested a drink. Directly she had served it, and as he drank, Jael crept up behind and, with the proverbial blunt instrument, bludgeoned him to death. The differences between the accounts of this event in Judges 4 and SongDeb are quite as marked as those between the chapters concerning the issue of tribal participation in the battle. In this instance, however, a clear and economical explanation for the divergence presents itself. As R. Boling has noted,50 the historian of Judges 4 has misconstrued the parallelism of the poetry in SongDeb. Thus, the couplet, “Water he asked; milk she provided,” read as poetry, carries no implication of a specific request or of a specific libation. It means, “Sisera requested and received a drink.” But in 4:19, the prose historian takes the verse literally. This is an example of the process which is more concretely illustrated by the mechanics of the murder in the two chapters. The bizarre killing in 4:21 is actually (perhaps only) explicable on the supposition that the historian misunderstood 5:26a, b to refer to two different hands and to two different implements. Probably, the author of ch. 4 did not recognize the fact that one could strike a blow with a yƗtƝd “(tent-)peg” (see Exod 27:19 bis; 35:18; 38:20, 31; Num 3:37; 4:32; Isa 22:23, 25; 33:20; 54:2; Ezek 15:3; Ezra 9:8; even Judg 16:14 bis; cf. only Deut 23:9; Zech 10:4). A “peg” called for a hammer to propel it – and the historian found the hammer in 5:26b. Moreover, the prose narrator must have fastened on 5:26, ‫ۊ‬lph (she “pierced,” or broke through), as evidence that a spike had been driven in (4:21, with the same object – rqh, “nape”). But once Jael was saddled with two implements – once the parallelism had been taken literally – it was necessary to put Sisera under cover on the ground (4:18c, 19b) in order to explain how Jael could have accomplished the killing. After all, Sisera could not have stood still and aware, as in SongDeb, while Jael placed her tent-peg against his skull and reared back with the hammer. Physical reality and dramatic verisimilitude demanded that Sisera be lying down (4:18c, 19b, 21g). This led only to the difficulty that Sisera could not fall after the blow as he does in 5:27, a minor problem at worst, in comparison with the others. The direct, if somewhat refracted dependence of the prose upon the poetry is indicated. This proposal makes it possible to penetrate the prose account more fully. Given that Sisera could not fall in Judges 4 as in SongDeb, how was the prose author to take 5:27? The answer comes in 4:21g. The triple verbal  49 Cf. GA, omitting v. 27b krҳ npl and attaching škb to that stich. Cf. škb ҳm ҳbwt and the parallel šdwd of v. 27c. 50 Boling, Judges, 98.

156 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  sequence in 5:27a (krҳ npl škb) now refers to much earlier action, despite the fact that this means taking 5:27a out of its narrative sequence. The narrator in Judges 4 provides his own triple verbal sequence (whw’ nrdm wyҳp wymt) – in a position corresponding to that of 5:27 and therefore also out of place in his narrative – which in effect states that 5:27a describes Sisera’s falling asleep previously. The prose account of the murder follows logically from an interpretation of the poem involving a minor misprision of 5:26. Indeed, the verbal parallels between 4:21 and 5:26 are striking. And the Rube-Goldberg murder of 4:18–21 almost cries for some such source as the poetic to explain it. The hypothesis that the prose depends on SongDeb provides an encompassing resolution of the dissonance in the two murder accounts. The same hypothesis (positing the same sort of literal interpretation) accounts economically for the discrepancy between Judges 4 and SongDeb in the matter of tribal participation. 5:13–18 appears to affirm the presence in battle of Rachel and Issachar, though in reality all the tribes’ involvement is reported. Literally, however, the verses make slightly different claims. They state only that the tribes appeared at the “gates.” Thus, “the people of Yhwh came down to the gates” (5:11d) and “came down with warriors” (v. 13); Ephraim, Benjamin, and Machir “came down,” as did Zebulun and Issachar (vv. 14–15). Moreover, once the posited original force of MT lmh was lost, or given that the original apostrophic exhortations were no longer understood, vv. 15c–17 lay open to the interpretation that has since become traditional. In short, v. 18 contains the only explicit notice that any Israelite tribes took the field (see the translation above). Again misconstruing his evidence, therefore, the historian in Judg 4:6, 11 has reified the reference: Weiser, in attempting to harmonize Judges 4 with SongDeb has succeeded not in interpreting the poem, but in reconstructing the way in which the prose historian interpreted the poem! As in the case of Sisera’s assassination, the prose account seems to depend on the poetic, and as in the case of Sisera’s assassination, incongruities arose from the reification of poetic language: the poem ties Baraq and Deborah to Issachar (5: 15). In the prose reconstruction, however, Issachar did not join the fray. Baraq, as musterer and war-leader, therefore needed to be tied to a participating tribe – the result is his location in Qedesh of Naphtali.51 Deborah, as an oracle (hence “woman of torches” [= wife of Lapidoth]?), did not need to be affiliated with the tribes involved. But the author of the prose found it convenient to locate her at “the palm of Deborah” (Judg 4:5), a site in Benjamin with which it was natural to associate her.  51 Judg 46. The suggestion is that of my student, K. Nelson. On Baraq as Issacharite, see already J. Wellhausen, Israelitische und judäische Geschichte (Berlin: Reimer, 1894) 20. For the selection of Qedesh as Baraq’s base, see below, n. 53.

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 The instance of Deborah’s location brings to light another hermeneutical trait of the prose account: supplement by association. Again, the cases reinforce the conclusion that Judges 4 depends on SongDeb. For example, beyond noting that Hazor and Jabin were early northern powers,52 critics have yet to elaborate an explanation for Jabin’s role in Judges 4. SongDeb does not mention the king or his city. Neither plays a part – other than serving to identify Sisera – in Judges 4. Both appear in an alternate, conflicting tradition in connection with Joshua’s conquest of the north (Josh 11). Why do they crop up in Judges 4? Judges 5:19 relates that “the kings of Canaan” confronted Baraq. The only surviving literary traditions of such a coalition are those of Josh 9:1– 2; 11:1–10. The first of these leads nowhere. But Josh 11:1–10 describes a northern battle between Israel and the kings of Canaan (11:1–3) led by Hazor (11:10). Moreover, vv. 18–19 of SongDeb mention a battle first, ҳal merômê ĞƗdeh (“on the heights of the field”) and then, “by the waters of Megiddo” (ҳl mê megiddô). Josh 11:7 reads as though it were a conflation of the two, locating its confrontation (ҳl mê mƝrôm, “by the waters of ‘the height.’” 53 The conflation of details from the two great premonarchic northern engagements in Israel’s memory is in this light more easily penetrable. The author of Judges 4 asked, “Who was this fellow Sisera?” in Judg 5:20; the answer shaped itself from 5:19: he was the leader of the armies of the “kings of Canaan.” Jabin of Hazor was the only “king (of the kings) of Canaan” (Josh 11:10) known to later Israel. What was Sisera’s relation to Jabin? Together with (possibly unconscious) associations between the sites of Joshua’s and Baraq’s victories, the data indicated that Sisera was Jabin’s general (and, interestingly, not himself a king).54  52 For the history, see A. Malamat, “Hazor, ‘The Head of All Those Kingdoms,’” JBL 79 (1960) 12–19; idem, “The Period of the Judges,” in B. Mazar (ed.), Judges (WHJP, 3; Rutgers: Rutgers University Press, 1971) 135–40, esp. 136, which presents the best formulation of the problem here addressed to date. 53 The term ĞƗrîd also occurs in Josh 11:8. Though it is common enough in such bearings, it may be that the association with Judg 5:13 (already corrupted) had a further influence on the author of Judges 4. On 5:13, see above. Note further that Qedesh is closely associated with Hazor in Josh 19:36–37; 2 Kgs 15:29, and in Judah (!), in Josh 15:23: herein may lie the reason for Baraq’s location in the prose. The evidence suggests to me that Joshua 11 has been shaped partly by Judges 5 and the traditions about Baraq’s victory; subsequently both SongDeb and Joshua 11 shaped Judges 4. 54 Richter (Traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen, 33–88) removes a Tabor-Hazor source; but he does not establish that this is secondary to the work of the initial prose author. On his argument against there having been a political entity called Canaan, cf. Freedman, Pottery, Poetry, and Prophecy, 143, 147 n. 49, 128; 1 Sam 12:9; Ps 83:9; EA 30:l; 109:44–46. There were “kings of Canaan” (Judg 5:19), and occasionally one king who dominated them. Note that the identification of Sisera makes argument to the inaccuracy of Gideon’s identification with Jerubbaal more difficult. The historian here, at 

158 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  Here, the author, or conceivably a later editor, supplies supplementary historical detail by association and deduction. It is worth noting that he does so most probably to contextualize the story chronologically and politically, and to identify a major figure in it. The association is purely functional in nature. It is further worth noting that in this and in every instance the prose author based his association on the information in the poetic source; at least, the evidence is consistently consonant with such a thesis. A hypothesis of inverse dependence (the song on the prose) or of wholly “independent” traditions does not produce anything resembling a clear-cut historical sequence: the prose murder can be traced from the poetic, but not vice versa; the prose version of which tribes fought could not have inspired the poetic account; and, the prose identification of Sisera has not influenced the poetry.55 The historian in Judges 4 worked with SongDeb as his primary material. Two further possible instances of this dependence also present themselves. It is reasonable to presume that Judg 5:15b employs the expression brglyw, literally “at/on his feet,” to mean “under his command” (see n. 34). The same term appears in Judg 4:10, 15, 17. In the latter two occurrences, the meaning is plain: Sisera descended from his chariot and fled on foot (brglyw) (4:15)

and, Sisera fled on foot (brglyw) to the tent of Jael . . . . (4:17)

Less clear is the meaning of 4:10: Baraq mustered Zebulun and Naphtali at Qedesh, and ten brigades of men ascended brglyw (under his command, or, on foot), and Deborah ascended with him.

A priori, the contrast between the brigades’ and Deborah’s relationship to Baraq suggests that the expression has here the same sense as in Judg 5:15. However, the two other readings (4:15, 17) suggest the likelihood of the alternate possibility: that, again in the company of modern scholars (this time AV), the historian responsible for Judges 4 has misinterpreted the poet’s words. The use of the term ’‫ۊ‬ryw to define Baraq’s leadership in  least, does not equate Sisera with Jabin, but instead assumes that the presence of two different names implies the existence of two different people. We must presume that the author who identified Gideon with Jerubbaal, therefore, had good reason to do so rather than treat them as two distinct, but related, individuals. 55 The scene about Sisera’s mother (5:28–30) is irrelevant to the prose plot-line and is therefore omitted. Otherwise, see below. The song could not have been based on the prose data; but the prose can have been based on the song. In view of this circumstance, it is also less economical (and less realistic) to seek the origin of the differences in “independent” traditions.

5. The Resourceful Israelite Historian 159  4:14 tends to corroborate the hint. And since he displays an awareness that Israelite pursuers could overtake fugitive adversaries only if the latter were unmounted (4:15, 17 with vv. 13, 15a, 3b [but contrast 5:22, where the flight is a mounted one]), it is probable that the author in 4:10 means to draw a contrast between Israel’s infantry and Canaan’s chariotry. At any event, the appearance of brglyw in this specific connection confirms the dependence of Judges 4 on Judges 5. Of greater historical interest is the description of Jael in Judges 4–5. Both call her ’št ‫ۊ‬br hqyny: either “the wife of Heber the Qenite” or “the woman of the Qenite community/band. 56 In Judg 5:24 either rendition could apply. In Judges 4 (17a, 21), vv. 11 and 17b leave no doubt. Jael is “the wife of Heber the Qenite,” a fact that has programmed all subsequent views about her. The author of Judges 4 has fleshed out and perhaps even created a character etiolate in or absent from SongDeb. It is probable that the prose author has elaborated because of interpretation, not tradition: “Heber’s” treaty with Hazor (4:17) is a detail supplied to answer the question “why did Sisera flee to Jael’s (and in the narrative, Jael’s, not “Heber’s”) tent?” (4:17). The process here resembles that which produced Jabin’s and Hazor’s involvement. Even “Heber’s” location at Elon Bezaanannim is of some importance if this was in the vicinity of Hazor (4:11 locates it near Qedesh, though this is problematic).57 Possibly, the name suggested itself because of “Deborah’s palm” and 5:19d (b‫܈‬ҳ). If so, the suggestion was certainly an unconscious one. But again, the probabilities lie on the side of Judges 4’s dependence on SongDeb. There is a great deal of material in SongDeb that does not surface in Judges 4 – the consummate scene concerning Sisera’s mother comes immediately to mind. But this is neither particularly significant nor an argument against the hypothesis presented here. Conversely, and more important, there is virtually nothing structural in Judges 4 that does not stem directly from SongDeb or from questions and assumptions arising from SongDeb. Nothing structural stands out as being wholly independent of known texts. Baraq’s vocation, for example, conforms to the archetype of

 56

See above, n. 45, and note, e.g., the name Hebron, “the one of the ‫ۊ‬brl-bond(ed community)” for Qiryath Arba, “the city of four,” and the use of the same term to describe the Second Commonwealth. Possibly, Qen, Caleb, and other southern groups used the term in self-description. See esp. A. Malamat, “Mari and the Bible,” JAOS 82 (1962) 144–46. 57 Baraq is from Qedesh (4:6). Deborah and Baraq and then the muster go to Qedesh (4:9–10), though they mean to be at Tabor (4:7, 10b, 12–14). And Sisera flees to Qedesh (4:17 with 4:11). Qedesh may have been leveled through by scribal error. Cf. Ishbaal in 2 Sam 4.

160 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  the Israelite call narrative (4:6–9). 58 The battle report in 4:10ff, is quite blasé, as Richter has already observed. And the account of Sisera’s murder, so far as can be seen, depends entirely on Judg 5:24–27. The last two cases are particularly instructive. In the former, the author of Judges 4 produces a banal interpretation (4:15) of the possibly confusing account in Judg 5:19–22 (cf. the more adventurous Exod 14:24–25); in the latter, he complicates the rather straightforward scene presented in SongDeb. Still, neither instance gainsays the dependence of the prose on the song. In matters of detail, Judges 4 does depart a bit farther from the song. The characterization of Deborah, for example, as ’št lpydwt, “the wife/woman of Lapidoth” or “the woman of torches,” is without a basis in the poem. The muster at Tabor (assuming the ad hoc character of the headcounts of Israel and Canaan – but note rkb brzl only in Judg 4:3, 13 and Josh 17:16, 18; Judg 1:19) may be a second case, though this element may be tied to the role of the Qishon (4:12; 5:21). Sisera’s location at Haroshet Goyim is another example (the name, though, may be spurious). But even taken together at face value, these departures hardly mitigate the evidence that Judges 4 depends on SongDeb. Jabin’s and Hazor’s roles and Deborah’s palm indicate further how extensively the prose historian cast about for related traditions with which to interpret and to present his text.59 This analysis of Judges 4–5 carries implications beyond the dependence of the former on the latter chapter. Judges 4 does not exhibit a striking internal elaboration, a living growth of its own. It sticks close to the poetic evidence. In addition, the author of Judges 4 was not attuned either to the nature or to the culture of his source. This may seem surprising. But in fact the two preceding observations are related. The prose historian, to judge especially from the evidence concerning Sisera’s murder, tended to interpret his sources in the simplest and most reverent way possible. He was not unique in this regard among the authors of the Hebrew Bible – that can be taken on faith, and corroborated from the canons of modern historiography. Second, the historian evinces the tendency to attach to his narrative external, traditional materials whose association with the event described is superficial. His interest here lies in the provision of detail, over against  58

For Baraq’s call and the issue of his “glory,” see my The Constitution of the Monarchy in Israel (HSM 25; Chico, CA: Scholars, 1981) 118–22. 59 Obviously, I am telescoping traditional interpretations and those of the historian responsible for Judges 4. In a sense, therefore, my “historian” is a fiction, a composite of traditional and individual understanding. The point remains, though, that the text under analysis reflects a process of historical reconstruction. While most of it very probably belongs to the author of the chapter, what doesn’t falls into much the same category anyway. On Haroshet Goyim, see Y. Aharoni, The Land of the Bible (London: Burns and Oates, 1979) 221.

5. The Resourceful Israelite Historian 161  SongDeb, which is by nature and style impressionistic. In neither this nor the former instance does outright invention play a part. The narrator, if occasionally misguided, adheres faithfully to his sources as he construes them. Indeed, as his attempt to reinterpret 5:27 shows (4:21), the prose author is not only faithful to his sources – he feels in some measure answerable to them. There is an idea of “history” present here in its etymological sense. On the other hand, the historian does feel free, or responsible, to plug the gaps in his source material with conjectural reconstructions. He is willing, for example, to put Sisera on the floor of Jael’s tent in order to provide the opportunity for her to impale him to the ground. He supplies the reason for Sisera’s flight to Jael’s tent in Heber’s treaty with Hazor (4:17); perhaps he needed to address the issue of why an enemy would seek refuge among “friendlies” such as the Qenites. And he produces a dialogue between Sisera and Jael, again to get Sisera to lie down, that clarifies Sisera’s intent: the general is hiding from pursuers. Conversely, Judges 5 mentions neither hiding nor pursuers: there, Sisera seems simply to have paused in his retreat for refreshment; the Canaanite flight is mounted (5:22), in contrast to Judg 4:15–17, where the historian appears to assume that defeat involved rout and flight on foot.60 Similarly, if not an authentic reminiscence of the “league’s” organization, Deborah’s relationship to Baraq has come partly from 5:7, 12. Reading 5:12c (“Arise, Baraq...”), plausibly, as the “song” of Deborah resulting from 5:12a–b (“Wake, wake, Deborah! Wake, wake, speak a song!”), the historian in Judges 4 (especially v. 14, “Deborah said to Baraq, ‘Arise...’”) has placed the prophetess in command of the commander. At least, the dialogue between them is invented out of hand. All of these supplementary details, however trivial, serve a single end. They actualize, they help to convey the reconstruction on which the historian has decided. Again, they are functional, and not at all fancifully creative. These observations open the way to considerable speculation. Why did the historian of Judges 4 include detail x but omit sequence y? Principles of selection, sufficiently eristic even in debate over modern writers’ practices, issue like specters released from some prison limbo. These issues, of  60

5:21 may have summoned to the author’s mind Exodus 15 and the J version of the Reed Sea “event”; see esp. Exod 14:24–25. Note that outside of Judg 4:15; Exod 14:24 (in both of which it takes the enemy’s camp as an object), the verb hmm occurs only 11 times. In Isa 28:28, it affects chariot (or wagon) wheels; and, in the related passages Ps 18:15–17 / 2 Sam 22:15; and Ps 144:6, the verb is juxtaposed to the word “lightning” (brq = Baraq) in the vicinity of the word mrwm (“height[s]”; see above), and in connection with “mighty waters”! Psalm 18 seems to play both on Baraq’s and on Moses’ (ymšny – v. 17) victories by the waters. What the direction of influence is here seems impossible to sort out.

162 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  course, do not bear on the central question – what has shaped the elements preserved in Judges 4 (i.e., interpretation and association). The most concrete conclusions reached above are in this sense most conservative. The author of Judges 4 depended on SongDeb. He interpreted it in his own distinctive way (which as it happens became the programmatic interpretative attitude for subsequent scholarship). Little in his work stands out as being independent of his source. And salient points in his reconstruction are most economically explained by hypothesizing dependence on the song. In sum, Judges 4 seems to present a prime example of an Israelite historian interpreting a source, and having a bad day at it.

IV. Conclusions, Implications For Israel’s historiography, the case of Judges 4–5 is arguably unique but nevertheless instructive. Its most striking lesson is one in the reification of metaphor, the over-literal reading of source texts. The most obvious response to the position here advanced – one that occurs regularly to undergraduates – is: How could an Israelite misconstrue an Israelite source? This is not an objection to the hypothesis: there is a certain alignment of evidence most economically understood on the assumption that the prose historian depended on SongDeb. The instance of Sisera’s murder virtually demands such an assumption, and the other evidence falls without too much pressure into the same pattern. Moreover, the sort of misguided hermeneutic here attributed to the prose author is not unknown from other texts. Matt 21:1–11, for example, wholly misconstrues biblical parallelism, seating Jesus, like a circus performer, on two mounts whose identity in Zech 9:9 is to the initiate patent. Within the Hebrew Bible, the dependence of both J and P in Exodus 14 on the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15) is in language, at least, as heavy as that of Judges 4 on SongDeb. There is no plain misconstruction of the parallelism in Exodus.61 But in contrast to J and Ps 78:53–55, P seems to interpret Exod 15:13–16 as a sixth rehearsal of Yhwh’s victory at the sea (Exod 14:22–  61 The phrase “the chariots of Pharaoh and his host” (15:4) has probably influenced 14:9, 17, 28 (P), wmb‫ۊ‬r šlšyw (15:4) has crept into 14:7 (J) rkb b‫ۊ‬wr... wšlšm. 15:5 (thmt yksymw), 10 (ksmw ym) have influenced P (14:28, wyšbw hmym wyksw...). 15:8a, 10a have influenced 14:21b–c (J); 15:13, nhlt bҳzk may have influenced 14:21b (J), wywlk... ҳzh. Possibly, 15:12 has helped form 14:27–28 and 14:26, 21a, 16 (P sections). hyd hgdwlh in 14:31 (P) probably stems from 15:16b (bgdl zrwҳk). Note that the command that Israel be silent (14:14, J), observed until 15:1 (J, after victory), may derive from 15:16b–c. Other correlations are of course possible. Note 15:9a with 14:9a; 14:8 rmh by association with 15:1 (which uses it in an unusual sense), 2; 15:2 wyhy ly lyšwҳh with 14:13, 30, etc. These examples should suffice for the present.

5. The Resourceful Israelite Historian 163  23, 26, 27a, 28–29), rather than as a celebration of the Conquest. P also misinterprets Exod 15:1, “horse and its rkb (driver),” to imply the presence of “horsemen” rather than charioteers.62 Nor is this problem confined to prose interpretations of poetic texts. The interpretative enterprise among biblical authors is respectably attested with regard to the history of the Davidic covenant.63 N. Gottwald has observed, too, that the author of Judg 2:1–5 accuses Israel of refusing to expel the Canaanites whereas Judg 1:27–33, a text that must have lain before him, says only that Israel “did not” expel the Canaanites, probably implying their inability to do so (see 1:19; cf. 1:27, 35).64 A third explanation crops up in Judg 2:20–3:6, where the Canaanite “remnant” is seen as evidence for the sin-punishment-return-rescue cycle of the Judges 3–12 savior materials. Perhaps the same view underlies the notion that the Egyptian oppression resulted from a similar sort of sin (Judg 2:8–10).65 There is no such implication in the pentateuchal reports; but pre-exilic Israelite doctrines of causality virtually demand the inference.66 As distinct from misinterpretation, reification of metaphor also occurs among interpreters of prose texts. 67 C. H. J. de Geus, for example, has noted in the context of a discussion of connubium in premonarchic Israel that Judg 11:1–3 are peculiar in that if Jephthah had been a whore’s son,

 62

See Exod 14:9b, 17, 18, 23, 26, 28; S. Mowinckel, “Drive and/or Ride in the Old Testament,” VT 12 (1962) 278–99. On P generally, see Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 77–144. 63 See N. Sarna, “Psalm 89: A Study in Inner Biblical Exegesis,” in A. Altmann, ed., Biblical and Other Studies (Studies and Texts 1; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963) 29–46. This is a showcase for the hermeneutical characteristics of biblical authors. 64 The Tribes of Yahweh (New York: Orbis, 1979) 164–65. Cf. P. Kearney, “The Role of the Gibeonites in the Deuteronomic History,” CBQ 35 (1973) 1–19 for the observation that Judg 2:1–5 refers to Joshua 9. This is probably the Josianic editor of the Deuteronomistic History. But it is at variance with the view of Josh 9 and 2 Sam 21. 65 A parallel is being drawn here between Joshua’s and Joseph’s deaths (the latter now P in Gen 50:26) at the same age – they are the first two figures to be buried in the new land (Josh 24:32; cf. Gen 50:25; Exod 13:19; Judg 2:9). Cf. the “rise” of a new “another” king in Exod 1:8, “who didn’t know” Joseph, and Exod 3:13–14; 6:2–3 on Israel’s ignorance of Yhwh in Egypt. 66 See further my The Constitution of the Monarchy, 111–18. 67 When I was eleven or twelve years old, I read in Richard Lupoff’s Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure some statement such as, “I would gladly trade ten copies of The Mucker for one of A Princess of Mars.” Never having seen The Mucker, let alone having read it, I fired off a letter accepting this offer immediately. But Lupoff replied, very indulgently, that he had been writing figuratively and had no real intention to swap. What I did to Lupoff is what Matthew does to Zechariah; and Zechariah’s response to Matthew would have resembled Lupoff’s to me. The same is true of the relationship between Judges 4 and Judges 5.

164 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  no one could have known who his father was.68 De Geus is treating the text too literally, but doing so very much on the heels of the narrator himself. In all likelihood, 11:1–3 is based on the traditions that Jephthah was a Gileadite and that he was a brigand, and therefore landless. It followed that he was a whore’s son, and perhaps that he was expelled from his community. The narrator then personified Gilead as Jephthah’s father; possibly, he was confused by the expression “brothers” (= fellows) in 11:3. Similarly, I have elsewhere maintained that Judg 9:2 and 9:18 probably inspired 9:3, which in turn inspired 8:31: Abimelek has become Gideon’s concubine’s child by a long process of interpretation.69 This is understandable, given that kinship terms, so often used metaphorically, were so open to reification. It is easy to see that a “son of x” (as descendant or member of the community of x) might become in interpretation the direct offspring of a person x. There are other cases in which such a mechanism might account for serious problems. An example is the J and P plagues narratives, with their notorious internal convolutions.70 Noth has argued at length that the tradition of ten plagues was a long time in the brewing, that expansion even within sources has occurred.71 R. E. Friedman’s recent study indicates further how much the P tradition has brought to the narrative movement, including the plagues of lice and boils.72 One explanation for the growth of the tradition – not the only or an exclusive explanation – is the confusion that would arise over the plagues were they rehearsed in poetry. To take an obvious instance, Ps 78:44–51 presents a litany of plagues. In some verses, distinct plagues stand in parallel to one another (as v. 45, flies // frogs). In others, synonyms for a single plague are used in the parallel stichs (as v. 46, locusts//locusts). How could a reader structure the events in his mind? How many plagues would he reconstruct? He would have to resort to guesswork, to interpretation. The reification of such texts may well have contributed to the growth of the plagues tradition. There are a number of texts with regard to which one could raise the same issues, ask the same questions. Without a long disputation over the  68

C. H. J. de Geus The Tribes of Israel: An Investigation into some of the Presuppositions of Martin Noth’s Amphictyony Hypothesis (Studia Semitica Neerlandica 18; Assen: van Gorcum, 1976) 147–48. Note, in view of what succeeds, de Geus’s citation of Judg 8:31. 69 “The Rise of Abimelek ben-Jerubbaal,” HAR 2 (1978) 90, n. 28. 70 As M. Noth, A History of Pentateuchal Traditions (Englewood Cliffs: PrenticeHall, 1972) 65–71, esp. 69 n. 201; cf. B. S. Childs, The Book of Exodus. A Critical, Theological Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974) 130–41. 71 Childs, The Book of Exodus. 72 Friedman, The Exile and the Biblical Narrative, 92–95; see idem, “Sacred History and Theology,” 25 –34.

5. The Resourceful Israelite Historian 165  question of positive controls, however, it will not be profitable to do so. Still, the operative question remains: How could the Israelite, with his cultural and chronological proximity to his sources, mistake so baldly the information in them? The issue is worth addressing. It has been noted previously that a characteristic error of the historian of Judges 4, and of some other Israelite historians, is the reification of language, the literalization of metaphoric or idiomatic usage. In much the same sense, the writers of the canonical gospels, and many of their contemporaries, literalized biblical texts, deprived them of their context in the social and ideological worlds for which they were composed. There is, again, rather a simple explanation for the phenomenon. The sources’ veracity was not at all in question. The historian approached his received texts almost wholly uncritically. To put the point another way, the author of Judges 4 regarded SongDeb as truth, as canon, as sacred text. He tried not to venture beyond the literal level in his interpretation. The same principle applies even to the “gates”-battle problem, where the historian assumes that the tribes at the “gates” were not mustered for war, as those on the battlefield were. The historian’s task, as elsewhere in history, was to recount the events he felt called upon to relate without doing violence to the sense of his source(s) as he construed it (them). His tendency was to construe the source as literally as possible. This circumstance works both to the detriment and to the benefit of the modern scholar. It leads to misinterpretations and distortions of the sort that have been dwelled upon above. In most instances, the source material that lay before the authors of the received text is not extant; only rarely, therefore, have we any control against which to judge the reports before us, or to which to appeal in order to correct the errors in our canon. At the same time, if the historian did in some sense revere his source texts, did not question them, then as in Judges 4 he will have produced first and foremost a faithful account. He will have preserved the sense of the source as best he could, as, indeed, the author of Judges 4 has done. And only within this framework, if at all, will he have addressed his own specific ideological concerns. That is the most one can ask of any historian. It seems to be what the author of Judges 4 has done. From the example of Judges 4–5 alone, and from the highly conjectural adjunctive examples here adduced, one should not generalize too broadly. The hermeneutic involved in creating Judges 4, after all, indicates that this text was composed as a companion-piece for SongDeb. The author’s enterprise was thus unusual, possibly even unparalleled, in the context of the Hebrew Bible. Still, the respect for the source document evinced in Judges 4 must be taken into account in appraisals of other historical texts. This is not to say that the traditions and the sources are reliable, still less that if

166 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  they were, the historian would construe them correctly. Some of the innumerable possible sources of error have been outlined above. The historian is fairly safe in assuming that Sisera’s request for a drink (Judg 5:25) stemmed from thirst (4:19). But in identifying the figures in the text by association with other texts (Sisera as Jabin’s general, for example), by locating Deborah in Mt. Ephraim because of an association with the “palm of Deborah” (4:5; cf. 5:15), he takes greater risks. And he compounds the error of reification by adhering to an obviously clumsy reconstruction once he has made it – the double explanation of Sisera’s oblivion to Jael’s lurking sinister with the lethal tent-peg (4:18–19: he was under a cover of some sort; and 4:21g: and he was asleep) even needs to be expanded (in 4:20 and implicitly in 4:18) to explain why Sisera would be lying down under a garment in Jael’s tent in the first place (here, the historian seizes the opportunity to insinuate that the Canaanite was a coward). The historian’s good faith does not guarantee accurate results. Conversely, much of the material in Judges 4 reflects the work of a clever intellect. The association of Sisera with Jabin is in fact defensible, and may even in some sense be accurate. The interpretation of Judg 5:12c– d as the “song” of Deborah is appealing in the extreme. And whether, as argued above, the historian erred in the matters of Sisera’s murder and tribal participation in the muster, there is no denying that his readings can be justified by appeal to the literal meaning of the source. They have, in fact, set the tone of the discussion for two and a half millennia. Lord Clive concluded the prologue to his defense before the Commons with the remark, “I have one request to make to the House, that, when they come to decide upon my honor, they will not forget their own.” The foregoing materials are not at all an indictment. They treat a historian who applied close, narrow reading, not a little creative association, and a good deal of synthetic ingenuity to recover an epoch long gone. That historian erred, as every historian will. The point is, however, that the modern historian, the modern colleague of the ancient Israelite, must understand how the ancient writers worked, and when and why they erred, in good faith. This study was intended to contribute to that understanding. It will have failed in its purpose, however, if it does not at the same time inspire some sympathetic appreciation of the resourceful Israelite historian.73

 73 This study was supported by funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities administered through the American Schools of Oriental Research and the Albright Institute for Archaeological Research, from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and from the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University.



6. Doctrine by Misadventure: Between the Israelite Source and the Biblical Historian* Frank Cross, among those who had traced the history of the memorialization and memories of the event at the Reed Sea, exerted a heavy influence on my early interests. These interests led not just to the study of incipient monarchy and putative Israelite kinship organization, but also to the evolution of tradition. The particulars of evolution, down to the more minute details, did not excite my imagination. However, the process of it did. Although I was certain, by the time I wrote this piece as a lecture for one of Richard Elliott Friedman’s University of California Conversations in Judaic Studies, that Judges 4 represented an interpretation of Judges 5, rather than an independent source of tradition, Cross had not applied the same logic to the question of the J and P prose versions of Exodus 14 in comparison with the poetic version in Exodus 15. Comparing the two with the poem and with one another, as well as the Song of Deborah with its prose interpretation, one could see the onset of a new cultural phase in Israelite history: in effect, the death of the poetic mode of expression, and the weaning of the culture of literalism, of scientific or at least systematic doctrine. Precision could no longer be found in the old oral materials, or in the poetic ones. It had to be supplied, instead, by careful attention to these, and in part by imagination. Thus, P’s story of the Reed Sea event recapitulates his Creation because it was creation, as was Joshua’s fording the Jordan: these events had necessarily to be homologous. P thus lived in a world less anthropomorphic but more homologous than did J or the author of Exod 15:1–18. Again, Cross’s interest focused on the antiquity of the poetry, which, along with Freedman, he had demonstrated both in form and in morphology, and, to an extent, in orthography. But the crucial moment, the crucial axis in Israelite culture, related to the changes inherent in the transition to monotheism (Chapters 1, 2, and 10). As in the case of Chapter 10, this study focused on a change in Israelite culture. Its discussion was again impressionistic. However, the repetition of the phenomenon of literalization or reification in Israelite texts suggests that this phenomenon deserves careful study, particularly in the context of competition for plausibility, based on close textual analysis of sources and on analysis of landscape, constructions and so on, starting in a period contemporary with the texts that display the property. While such issues persist, as I hope to have shown in my “Historiographic Commentary on Ezra 1–6,” in later eras, which evince an intolerance of the achronological narrative principle regnant in royal historiography of certain types in the Iron Age, they do have a beginning, again, at a time when dissatisfaction with metaphor, including anthropomorphism eventually, when demand for greater precision in reporting, when the expectation of literal accuracy increased – a phenomenon to be associated in some measure at least with the spread of lite-

 *

Originally published in R. E. Friedman (ed.), The Poet and the Historian. Essays in Literary and Historical Biblical Criticism (HSS 26; Chico: Scholars Press, 1983) 41–73.

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racy and probably increased democratization of input especially by pedantic minds, those of schoolteachers and jurists, among the elite. That said, here is a study on which much of the history of the seventh century as I later construed it was based.

(The lengthened shadow of a man Is history, said Emerson Who had not seen the silhouette Of Sweeney straddled in the sun.) T. S. Eliot Of Roman history, great Niebuhr’s shown ‘Tis nine-tenths lying. Faith, I wish ‘twere known, Ere we accept great Niebuhr as a guide, Wherein he blundered and how much he lied. Salder Bupp Ambrose Bierce

I Few of us would admit to being historical determinists. Many of us are, however, in that we are physical determinists.* We know not where, but our arrows fall to earth. And if we knew the nature, dimensions, position, direction, velocity and acceleration of every particle and non-particle in the universe, and all the characteristics of their interactions, we would be able fully to apprehend reality; we would be able to diagnose the past, to understand the present, to predict the future – touch wood. If we could tame the irrational – the scientifically undomesticated – the resultant sealed scientific system would be the eschaton of human understanding. The empirical scientist works toward this positivistic end. He isolates determinants and determinands and generalizes the results. The generality is then hypostatized into a particularity falsely or provisionally supposed to exist independently, in itself. The abstraction, in turn, is applied to other transactions in different contexts. This, in application, is science’s glory. Our automobiles limp along trusting in Internal Combustion. But because they are limited, and isolated from the total context of all physical interactions, scientific theories are really bad approximations, reductions to mathematical formulae of a fuller, less mathematical reality. In short, the true deficiency of the scientific method is the scientist’s inability – and due to

 *

I should like to thank Professors P. Swarney, K. S. Sacks, T. N. D. Mettinger and J. Kaufman for their encouragement and various suggestions relating to this study.

6. Doctrine by Misadventure 169  the burgeoning of scientific disciplines it is a burgeoning inability 1 – to know, quantify and enter into calculation all the factors in the universe in their relation to one another. In a vacuum, force equals mass times acceleration, in theory. But what good is theory in a vacuum when we live concretely in a context? No one whose life was on the line would want the engineer of his vehicle calculating Force as mass times acceleration, at least in our universe. If one lives on the edge of application – if one sails for India across a flat world – precision in the quantification of all impinging factors is of the most central importance. This is plainest in the successive failure of all prescriptive social science to cope with any contemporary problem. When economists, for example, prescribe rational remedies for rational economies, they treat patients that do not exist for badly n1isdiagnosed illnesses. Like his natural scientific counterpart, the economist neglects important factors in areas outside his sphere of competence – factors such as special pleading, gross incompetence and sunspots. A statistician might argue that these factors are irrelevant, or can be accounted for in gross “fudge factor” terms. They are, in fact, as relevant as anything the economist does take into account, given only the interdependence of all particular matter. Thus, in order to grasp reality in generalities, economics and the schematic social sciences reduce reality: This is science as séance, science at its most immoral. Only when the social sciences have become natural sciences, only when people are understood as the intermediaries of photons, quarks and neutrinos – as they really are – will the social scientists be able to quantify and yet particularize this world.2

 1 See G. Steiner, Language and Silence. Essays on Language, Literature and the Inhuman (New York: Athenaeum, 1976) 14–21, 34–35. 2 See N. Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings. Cybernetics and Society (2nd ed.; Garden City: Doubleday, 1956) 10–11 on the effect such considerations have had on physics. Contrast the following remarks of Milton Friedman: “A hypothesis is important if it ‘explains much by little,’ that is, if it abstracts the common and crucial elements from the mass of complex and detailed circumstances surrounding the phenomena to be explained and permits valid predictions on the basis of them alone. To be important, therefore, a hypothesis must be descriptively false in its assumptions; it takes account of and accounts for, none of the many other attendant circumstances, since its very success shows them to be irrelevant to the phenomena to be explained.” (from “The Methodology of Positive Economics,” in Essays in Positive Economics [Chicago: University of Chicago, 1953], reprinted in Readings in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, ed. R. Brodbeck [New York: Macmillan, 1967] 508–527). Friedman rides a lame horse when speaking of “success”; it would improve his case if a single macroeconomic theory could be singled out for this distinction. And if “success” is one’s criterion (as it is Friedman’s), then one should bet on red at roulette: if this play wins, one should keep betting on red; only when the play loses can a shortcoming in the theory be detected. Friedman sells verisimilitude too short here. For example, is election 

170 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  But nothing could be less satisfying than such a set of chemical and physical formulae inter-plexed and iteratively sorted by computer. Once typed in, and with JRSTs and JUMPs to govern them, these can satisfy the compulsion of those who need to know, really Need to Know. But they cannot help people in their daily interactions with other people, in their continual confrontations with supra-particular reality. Ironically, science as a success can mean nothing to the living individual. Only as a failure, as unfinished business, can scientific theory contribute to social skills. It is because we are so far from the scientific nirvana, and because that nirvana would be so meaningless to us as people, that so few of us can be historical determinists.3 Until chemical formulae can capture complex reality, and until some modern-day Edward Fitzgerald or genetic engineer of the quantitative idiom can render chemical formulae useful, humanists are stuck with another mode of apprehension and impartment (Bernard Malamud’s nagging reminders in A New Life indicate how far this medium carries a critical message). Metaphor, as Ernst Cassirer observed, is the essence both of our expression and of our thought.4 Metaphor is to science what mysticism is to pragmatism: gapping our ignorance and inarticulation, it transposes reality not into a schematic bed of Sodom, but into an equally complex, layered and plumbable world. While deterministic theory inevitably reduces and castrates reality, metaphor can capture it whole. Metaphor does not define; it rather conveys an intuitive impression calculated to cut to the generative heart of a question, without excluding or even ignoring the rest. In just this sense, one learns more of language from Joyce, more of humanity from Freud, than B.F. Skinner or Noam Chomsky could hope to teach. No social scientific number cruncher holds a candle to Balzac.  in a year whose last digit is zero really the “common and crucial” element in the deaths in office of American presidents? To make such a claim (as Friedman does) is to err on the side of alchemy (can one get the gold of reductionist insight from the dross of reality?) or mysticism or metaphor while claiming to champion the colors of science. See also S. Freud, The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman (1920), in The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Standard Edition (v. 18; London: Hogarth, 1958) 167–168. Freud denies the predictive value of psychoanalytical method and characterizes it as purely descriptive. This is precisely the point. Social “sciences” are basically categories and terminologies without either experimental or experiential basis. They are valid taxonymically, not empirically, in their present state. 3 cf. R.G. Collingwood, An Autobiography (Oxford: Oxford University, 1970) 115. Collingwood’s view of history as a field contributing to human knowledge of human nature, and as distinct in this respect as “the science of human affairs,” is well founded and most congenial. 4 E. Cassirer, An Essay on Man (New Haven: Yale University, 1944) 109–110.

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171

 But metaphor presents us with the same problem as does reality. Interpreters reduce it, often to one dimension. Successful metaphor must predispose its hearer to reject literal interpretation, to seek behind the words themselves the meaning being expressed. To grasp metaphor, one must inflate it, use it as a medium – and nothing more than a medium – to grasp an underlying, equally profound reality. This, too, is the job of the historian, the potential value of the social sciences, the merit of the Annales approach and the point of archaeology. One must locate the sources against a real context in order to inflate their verbal remains. In biblical studies, we sometimes forget that the historians who produced our sources struggled with the same problems. On rare occasions, scholars produce studies of how historians adjudicated conflicts among their informants. Common wisdom has it that most authors would, like the rabbis selecting the text types that compose the canon, reject one version in favor of another; they did not, as the modern historian must, create a more likely, deduced but unattested reconstruction.5 This is not, strictly speaking, accurate. Some of the succeeding examples will indicate that harmonization, rather than selection, was a dominant method of reconstruction from written sources (it most probably underlies the phenomenon of the Pentateuch’s assembly as well). Harmonization does involve a rudimentary hypothetical-deductive procedure. But the greatest Israelite historian whose work has survived was explicitly conscious of the difficulty of dealing with conflicting testimony. The author of the Davidic biography, a circumstantial character history that makes Suetonius’ Tiberius look like a comic book, takes his reader through David’s development from shepherd to therapon to exiled mercenary to statesman to leader to victor to ruler. He traces the growth of a personal lust, an independence of the law, that results in murder and adultery; he imputes to it David’s Lear-like status, and the tragedy of the old man unable to hold his own either politically or in bed. This historian twice raises the issue of contradictory testimony in his account. In the first instance, after Absalom has murdered his half-brother, Amnon, the report reaches David that “Absalom has smitten all the king’s sons; not one of them is left.” David panics. But Jonadab ben-Shima, the king’s cousin, dismisses the rumor, noting that Absalom had had it in for Amnon, and for Amnon alone, ever since Amnon raped Absalom’s fullsister, Tamar. Shortly thereafter, Jonadab’s deduction is corroborated by the sight of David’s other sons fleeing toward the capital (2 Sam 13:28–  5

This is almost always the response to inquiries on the subject among the scholars of my acquaintance. However, I cannot find any instances in the field literature of a scholar arguing this (or any other) position on the issue. Presumably, my sources’ unanimity derives from some hoary folk tradition.

172 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  36). Here, special knowledge (Jonadab’s and David’s) leads to a critical stance toward an exaggerated claim. The evidence in currency is tested against the background of the parties involved. The second instance is more complex. A retainer accuses Jonathan’s son, Meribbaal (Mephiboshet), of complicity in Absalom’s revolt. David examines Meribbaal, whose lameness, dishevelment and counteraccusation all stand him in good stead. The historian, thus, implies but does not stand on Meribbaal’s innocence. David then divides the baby of Meribbaal’s estate between the master and the servant (2 Sam 16:1–4; 19:18, 25–31). Here, the testimony of one witness is counterbalanced both by Meribbaal’s denial and by the circumstantial evidence of Meribbaal’s handicap and appearance. The case is inconclusive, and David must seek by his compromise to do the least injustice rather than justice itself. The incident would provide a piquing starting-point for inquiry into Israelite juridical procedures and ideals; its primary value is as testimony to a penetrating historiographic consciousness. To this pair of cases, it would be marvelous to be able to add the famous act of Solomon with regard to the two harlots in 1 Kgs 3:16–27. In this pericope, without special knowledge, and with evidence that seems even more impenetrable than that confronted by David in Meribbaal’s case, Solomon generates his own, compelling critical method. In just the way that Hume insisted the natural scientist must put “nature” to the torture, in just the way that the critical historian must, Solomon racks his sources. He thereby extorts the conclusive circumstantial evidence that eluded his father in other instances. Were this tale the work of the historian in 2 Samuel, that author would have proceeded from a case of judgment based on external knowledge to one of judgment based on criteria internal to the evidence (and generating a result much like harmonization) to one of judgment based on an active, critical stance by which the evidence is put to proof. Unfortunately, the last account probably stems from an author other than that of the first two. These are not the only texts in which Israelite authors address, even if indirectly, the question of evidence (e.g., Deut 18:21–22 and any text involving the certification of divine intent). Yet the Israelite historian’s approach to evidence has rarely, if ever, been addressed. And how the Israelite historian resolved differences between sources has never been studied in any systematic fashion. Scholars have, of course, dealt with the dependence of given texts on other given texts. P, for example, and the authors of Deuteronomy 1–11 are widely supposed to have had J and E before them. Unfortunately, only rarely do we learn from these instances about the mechanics of Israelite historical reconstruction. The issue is clouded by notions of variant traditions, theological reforms, and so forth. Historical-

6. Doctrine by Misadventure 173  ly, the biblical critic has thought most often in terms either of fabrication or of “inner-biblical exegesis.”6 Because we think in terms of editors, not historians – for reasons that have historically been sufficient – even the most basic historiographic questions rarely come into issue. No question could be more basic for understanding the ancient historian’s practices than that of how he approached his sources – not only with what skepticism he regarded them, but how he read or heard them in the first place. Because we must assume the good faith of our informants – these days even Herodotus is less the father of lies than a middleman of them – it is central to examine the nature and the frequency of our ancient colleagues’ misprisions. This is the more true of biblical historiography because of the complex source- and redaction-critical problems, crossreferences and rehearsals that lace the canon. The problem is worth addressing through an impressionistic (and so metaphorical) selection of cases in biblical literature.

II For this purpose, one of the most fertile texts in the Bible is Judges 5, the song of Deborah, and Judges 4, its prose companion-piece. There are a few discrepancies between these chapters. The key one is that Judges 5 has at least six, and probably ten, Israelite tribes in array for the fight against Sisera;7 Judges 4 claims that only Zebulun and Naphtali fought. In biblical studies, this problem has evoked the response it would have among the ancients: some scholars side with the prose, on the Viconian ground that it claims less for Israel (though one may argue that having fewer tribes defeat the same number of Canaanites would actually represent the greater claim for an ancient Israelite); other scholars side with the poem, because it is older (despite Vico’s stricture that antiquity is less a guarantee of accuracy than is good, critical reading). 8 One scholar only – Arthur Weiser – has  6 This term carries varied implications. For a historically important study, see N. Sarna, “Psalm 89: A Study in Inner Biblical Exegesis,” in Biblical and Other Studies, ed. A. Altmann (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1963) 29–46. Note also H. H. Hertzberg, “Die Nachgeschichte alttestamentlicher Texte innerhalb des Alten Testaments” BZAW 66 (1936) 110–121. 7 Judg 5: 11–18. See F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1973) 235, n. 74 for MT lmh in vv. 16, 17 as the asseverative with ma enclitic. Cf. P. D. Miller, The Divine Warrior in Early Israel (HSM 5; Cambridge: Harvard University, 1973) 96. My own view is that it is better to take the word as negative with enclitic. 8 E.g., in favor of the poem, J. Wellhausen, Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1894) 20–22; R. de Vaux, The Early History of Israel (Philadelphia: 

174 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  attempted to harmonize the versions. He suggests that the tribes in Judges 5 are actually at a sanctuary, to the gates of which Judg 5:11 refers, celebrating the victory recorded in 5:18–22.9 Unfortunately, Weiser’s effort violates the plain sense of 5:13–15 at least. In harmonizing, Weiser has tried to make the poetry conform with the less tractable prose. In short, there are three schools of thought on this issue: that the prose is right, that the poem is right, and that both are right. Instructive is the case of the Air Canada airliner which screeched to a dead halt seconds after touching down at Toronto International Airport. Coffee cups, drinks, handluggage, stewardesses – the whole cabin went flying toward the cockpit. When everything had crashed back down, the co-pilot turned to the pilot. “Gosh!” he said, “That’s the shortest runway we’ve ever been on.” “Yeah,” rejoined the pilot, “But look how wide it is!” Perhaps, like the pilot, we would do better to adopt a different line of approach. In his commentary on Judges, R. Boling observes that the prose account of Sisera’s murder Judg 4:18–21) turns on a misprision of its poetic parallel. Judg 5:26 (“She sent her hand to the peg, her right hand to the workers’ club”) describes Yael grabbing a blunt instrument with which to crush the Canaanite; the poem includes one implement, one hand, and a parallel (or repetitive) structure. The prose historian erred by reifying the parallelism. He concluded that Yael had used two implements and both her hands.10 He takes Judg 5:26 literally (see Figure B). The historian’s problem, as I have argued elsewhere (see n. 15), was probably that the term “peg” (yƗtƝd) in standard Hebrew usage nearly always refers to some sort of nail (so in 13 of 15 occurrences in HB).11 Taking it to denote a (tent-)peg, the historian of Judges 4 naturally looked for and found a mallet in the succeeding stich (“the workers’ club” [i.e., the “peg”] ). Though commentators convinced that goat’s milk is a soporific (there is no evidence whatsoever that the ancient Israelite or Canaanite thought so) persistently deny it, the same relationship probably obtains between the poetic and prose versions of Sisera’s drink (again, Figure B). The poem states that Sisera asked for and was given a beverage: the author of the prose has taken the triple parallelism (water//milk//ghee) in Judg 5:27 literally.  Westminster, 1978) 729–730; for the prose, M. Noth, The History of Israel (2nd ed.; New York: Harper, 1960) 150–151. 9 Weiser, “Das Debora-Lied” ZAW 71 (1959) 67–97. 10 Boling, Judges (AB 6A; Garden City: Doubleday, 1975) 98. 11 The other exception is Deut 23:14, where it appears as a staff (throwing-stick?) that could be used for digging (cf. Num 21:18). The meaning probably became specialized when the implement ceased to be a standard part of the Israelite’s battle-kit.

6. Doctrine by Misadventure

175

 The prose historian found some support for his reconstruction of the murder in Judg 5:26, “she splintered, she pierced his spitter (rqh)”:12 the spike penetrated the rqh, and the prose records the fact duly (4:21). The “‘piercing,” after all, confirmed the inference that a hammer and nail were the murder weapons (though the poet meant only that the club broke through to the rqh). But this led to a problem. Why, one may imagine the historian wondering, did Sisera stand still while Yael held a peg to his head and reared back with the cudgel? In the poetic narrative, Yael bludgeons Sisera as he drinks; Sisera falls to his knees and collapses. But with the more complex prose assassination came difficulties in staging to which the historian needed to respond. His initial recourse was indicated both by logic and by physics: Sisera was lying down (to absorb the blow); furthermore, he was under a cover, asleep, and neither saw nor felt Yael lurking sinister with the lethal tent-peg. Yet this solution produced a second problem: why did Judg 5:27 seem to describe Sisera falling if (ex hypothesi) he was already lying down asleep? Only when he comes to this last verse in the Yael sequence (5:27), at the end of his own account (4:21d) does the prose author confront the problem. He interprets the verbal sequence in 5:27 to refer to Sisera’s having collapsed earlier in exhaustion (see Figure B). Boling, who caught the essence of the enigma when dealing with the peg and hammer, actually follows the prose as a guide to the poetry on this point, even though that reading violates the poetic sequence. 13 In the poetry, Sisera collapses not from exhaustion, but from Yael’s blow (cf., incidentally, CTA 2.4:18–30 with šbyn as “our captive,” on which see in turn Judg 5:12). In short, the whole of the prose rendition of the murder can be traced from the single misapprehension in 4:21a–c. Given that one reification of the ode’s metaphor, the rest of the reconstruction follows from successive questions and responses. Alternate explanations (such as independent traditions and common sources) are not to be excluded on a rigorously logical basis. But the fact that the entire murder sequence can be educed from the reification of a metaphor and the problems it entailed is strong argument on grounds both of economy and of realism. Proceeding from his literalization of one couplet (this motivated by a semantic problem and shored up by a nearby verb), the author of Judges 4 misconstrued his source-text wholly.  12

For rqh as “spitter,” cf. rqq, “to expectorate,” yrq, “green, yellow,” yrqrq, “(?greenish) yellow glitter.” Certainly, “temple” is not a translation consonant with the instances in Cant 4:3; 6:7. 13 Boling, Judges, 98. His rejection of MT “he was tired” is in my view unwarranted, therefore. Cf. Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel (Cleveland: Meridian, 1957) 240–241.

176 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  What would be the result were we to apply the same principle to the question of which tribes fought? What if the prose historian read the poetry in the same slavish fashion that produced his idiosyncratic account of Sisera’s killing? The evidence is reasonably clear: Except for Zebulun and Naphtali, the tribes are said to have come only to the gates, or “down with warriors”; though the poet plainly means to say that others did join the muster, at least,14 only verse 18 claims that any tribes risked death. The prose historian reports the involvement only of Zebulun and Naphtali because these are the only tribes whose presence in battle is explicitly mentioned in Judges 5. He read the song of Deborah in much the way that Weiser did. Thus, using the prose as a guide, Weiser uncovered not the thought of the poet, but that of the prose historian in interpreting the poetry. This is of course exactly what one would expect. One other problem in these chapters merits brief attention and further indicates the dependence of the prose on the poetry. Judges 5 identifies Sisera as the leader of the army of the kings of Canaan (vv. 19–20). The prose historian, were he looking for a head of the kings of Canaan, could have found one in Israel’s tradition only in Joshua 11 (esp. v. 10), where Yabin, king of Hazor, appears as the leader of the only other coalition of all Canaanite kings in biblical literature. What is more, Baraq fought, according to Judg 5:18–19, ҵal mê megiddô and ҵal merômê ĞƗdeh. Joshua’s battle with Yabin occurs ҵal mƝrôm, which reads like a conflation of the two (and probably is). How does the prose historian identify Sisera? As the leader of the armies of Yabin, king of Hazor. As in Judg 4: 5 (Deborah’s Palm; cf. Gen 35:8), the historian supplies background data by rather a haphazard form of association. In this instance, however, he may not be so far from the mark. Many of his modern successors have mooted the identity of the two battles he here seems to telescope. Probably, the Joshua pericope had already taken some of its shape from the song of Deborah by the time the prose historian came to it as a reference. Judges 4 presents an instance of an Israelite historian wrestling with a source. The evidence, which considerably exceeds the limited sample presented above, and which I have explored elsewhere,15 indicates that he was almost exclusively dependent on Judges 5 for particulars of the Deborah story. And his intentions were nothing short of the best. But his tendency here and there was to seize on a given problem, on a certain question that cropped up, and to solve it by the most agonizingly literal attention to his  14 This does not necessarily mean that they fought – see Judges 20. Still, the implication is that they appeared on the field for the battle. 15 I have assembled the evidence and the argument in greater depth and detail in “The Resourceful Israelite Historian. The Song of Deborah and Israelite Historiography,” HTR Vol. 76, No. 4. (Oct., 1983) 379–401.

6. Doctrine by Misadventure 177  source-text. He did not invent; he merely reified the text, treated it as though it were some legal deposit intended to be read as it was written. There is one other biblical narrative poem accompanied by a parallel prose account – the song of the sea. Exodus 15 celebrates the casting of the Egyptians into a sea at least four times (vv. 1c, 4–5, 8–10, 12; the disposition of vv. 6–7 is uncertain). Verses 8–10 read: At the wind of your nostrils the waters were heaped up; The currents stood like a nƝd; The depths churned in the heart of the sea. The enemy said, “I will pursue...” You blew with your wind; sea covered them; They plummeted like lead in the mighty waters.

As F. M. Cross has argued, this may reflect a capsizing at sea. The song does not record Israel’s crossing of a sea or any division of waters. In this respect, and in its style, syntax and morphology, it antedates the prose versions.16 And the language of the prose versions indicates their heavy dependence on the poem.17 Still, the prose versions differ considerably from the poem and from each other; and while Cross’s interest was absorbed predominantly by the song, ours now lies with the prose hermeneutic. J, in Exodus 14, camps the Egyptians on the seashore for the night, and the Israelites nearby. Yhwh drives the sea back all night long with an east wind, and, in the morning, lets loose, drenching the Egyptians fleeing toward the sea from their camp.18 How did J arrive at this reconstruction? His Israel, we may take it, fled on foot, with the song’s armored cavalry in pursuit (15:1, 3, 9). He found the waters heaped up in v. 8, along with a wind to heap them; he found the sea covering the Egyptians after a wind-blast in verse 10 (and v. 5); and, since the “earth” swallowed the Egyptians in v. 12, it was a matter of elementary deduction to propose clogged chariot wheels delaying the Egyptians while a sea driven back by the night breeze returned to full  16

Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 121–138. The argument to this point is an extensive one. As a result, I must ask the indulgence of referring the reader to a forthcoming monograph, The Emergence of Israel in Canaan (ch. 1). 18 J in Exod 14:5–7, 8bc, 10bc, 11–14, 19–20, 21bc, 24–25, 27bcd, 30; P in Exod 14:1–4, 8a, 9, 10ad, 15–18, 21ad, 22–23, 26, 27a, 28–29, 31. The division is particularly uncertain in vv. 8–10 (though it is marked in part by the fact that P portrays Israel as encamped at that point, while J has Israel on the march). But any remaining E text (see B. S. Childs, The Book of Exodus. A Critical, Exegetical Commentary [OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974] 218–221 for a reasonable set of suggestions [the grounds, though, for assigning v .7 to E are not so compelling as the other considerations Childs injects into the discussion) is at least well hidden. There is no real call to find E here at all. Simple variants may now be riddling the text. 17

178 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  strength at dawn. In fact, the J reconstruction, physics alone excepted, is of the highest quality; it would be strong were it not for the implication of 15:10 that the wind had immediate effect. J is farfetched but tries hard to do his sources justice. The P reconstruction of the “Reed Sea Event” is the one familiar in every home and the stuff of screen spectaculars. Cross observes that P plays on mythic and ritual divisions of waters.19 For P, the crossing was a new creation, filled no doubt with reverberations of cosmogonic conflict in Near Eastern and Israelite myth (but sanitized in P’s theology). But P, like J, was also a historian. What conditioned the transition from historical lyric in Exodus 15 to mythic narrative in Exodus 14? The interpretation of the term, nƝd, to which Cross points as a possible catalyst for P’s innovations, is not quite enough to explain P’s dissent from J. More likely, the answer lies in a misprision of Exod 15:13–17, the end of the Song of the Sea. After at least four rehearsals of Yhwh’s victory at the sea, the author of Exodus 15 turns to describe Israel’s migration and conquest: You guided in your fidelity the people you redeemed; You conducted them in your might to your holy pasturage. The peoples heard; they shook; Writhing seized the inhabitants of Philistia. Then the commanders of Edom were discomfited. The leaders of Moab – trembling seized them. All the inhabitants of Canaan melted away. There fell upon them dread and fear; At the size of your arm they were dumb as a stone, So that your people crossed over, Yhwh, So that the people you acquired/created crossed over. You brought them and planted them in the mount of your possession, etc.

(vv. 13–17)

Rabbinic commentators and modern agree that the reference is to the conquest. The dispute is whether the “mount of your possession” is Jerusalem. In Ps 78:52–55, the answer is unequivocally negative: He moved his people like sheep, And piloted them like a flock in the steppe. He guided them securely, and they did not fear; And their enemies, the sea covered. He brought them to his holy territory, The mount that his right hand acquired/created. He expelled from before them peoples…,

 19

Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 112–120, 132–144.

6. Doctrine by Misadventure 179  and settled the Israelites in. Shortly after, the poet says, Yhwh set up shop in Shiloh (v. 60). So, in a pre-exilic Jerusalemite text,20 which here repeatedly echoes Exodus 15,21 vv. 13–17 are read as an account of the conquest, with no reference to Jerusalem. But if we assume that P took Exod 15:13–17 mistakenly, but not unnaturally, as a fifth recital – after four clear recitals – of the victory at the Reed Sea, and read, as we might reasonably think he would be inclined to do, the terms “mountain of possession” and “sanctuary of my lord” as references to Sinai; and, in fact, thus attenuated the anachronism of having Moses describing the conquest and foundation not of Jerusalem, but of Shiloh – then the rest of P’s scenario in Exodus 14 follows logically. Having inherited a drying-up of part of the sea from J and misreading Exod 15:16 to imply that Israel crossed the Reed Sea instead of the Jordan, P suddenly needed two heaps, two walls of water, to allow his crossing. He provided them, took 15:12 (“you stretched forth your right hand; earth swallowed them”) and instantiated it in Moses’ acting as Yhwh’s medium (14:27a, 28), and so forth (generalizing Moses’ action for water-work, e.g.). He reasoned further that the sea divided because it was the only alley of escape (14:2–3), exhibiting a sense of drama rarely ascribed to him. P’s reconstruction follows from Exodus 15 and J, literally read, and from a grasp of spectacle, as well as from mythopoeic thought. Ironically, Psalm 78 provides confirmation. The psalmist, who later construes Exod 15:13–17 correctly, twice alludes to these verses (with the verbs n‫ۊ‬h, ҵbr) while rehearsing P’s account of the Reed Sea event in 78:13–14; a third allusion, Ps 78:13b, is the most direct quotation of Exod 15:8b in biblical literature.22 Like Judges 4, which conflates Baraq’s victo-

 20 On Ps 78, see now R. J. Clifford, “In Zion and David a New Beginning: An Interpretation of Psalm 78,” in B. Halpern and J. D. Levenson (eds.), Traditions in Transformation: Turning-Points in Biblical Faith. Essays presented to Frank Moore Cross on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday (Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 1981) 121–141. 21 E.g., the use of n‫ۊ‬h; 78:53b reflects Exod 15:10ab with the direct antecedent “enemy” in 15:9a. Ps 78: 52–53a = 15:13 in content and 78:55 = 15:14–16 in content; note also the use of “territory,” and z with qnh (these are the only instances of the juxtaposition in HB); and gbwl qdšw (78:54) and nwh qdšk (15: 13). See further points of contact in Clifford, “In Zion and David” 134 n. 25. 22 n‫܈‬bw kmw nd nzlym (Exod 15:8b); wy‫܈‬b mym kmw nd (Ps 78:13b). Only here does the verb n‫܈‬b appear with this simile. See further the relatively unusual lexemes thwmwt and nwzlym in Ps 78:15, 16. There, they are applied to the “water from the rock” tradition. Both appear, however, in Exod 15:8, the verse the psalmist has just cited. Presumably, the psalmist has kept them in mind as he moved to the next item on his agenda. This is about as strong an argument for dependence (the verbs are not elsewhere applied to the “water from the rock” stories) as one can imagine. Inverse dependence remains a formal possibility. But since neither thwmwt, which refers to ocean depths or primeval depths most often, nor nwzlym (“flowers, currents”) really exhibits any organic connection with 

180 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  ry with its displacement upward to Joshua, Psalm 78 conflates the sourcetext (Exodus 15) with derivative, and in part incorrect, interpretations of it. It is worth mentioning that the psalm’s account establishes that the P reconstruction was already current in pre-exilic Jerusalem. Isaiah 11:15–16 reflects the same fact (cf. Amos 8:8–9, for J).

III In Exodus 14 and Judges 4, we have looked in on three historians at work. Their constructions seem to have been motivated by a genuine historical concern. Their reconstructions were compelled by their understandings of the evidence and the world. Their interpolations – Sisera, for example, in Judges 4, adds to his request for beverage the words, “for I thirst” – their interpolations into the evidence are not fanciful, not arbitrary, just as the modern historian’s must not be. They also pose problems to themselves: who is Sisera? How did Yael manage that awkward assault with tent-peg and hammer? What does Exodus 15 mean when it refers to Yhwh’s windblasts? How did Israel manage to cross the sea? This is history. But the biblical historians do stumble, as do we, on occasional problems in semantics or literary modality, or on deficiencies in historical imagination. Our awareness of these conditions can serve the modern historical enterprise in various ways. For example, in Judg 9:2, Abimelek pleads that he is the Shechemites’ bone and flesh. This is a statement of candidacy for kingship, most probably in conformity with the “law of the king” in Deut 17:14–20, which crops up three times with respect to David’s campaigns for the throne (2 Sam 5:1–3 // 1 Chr 11:1–3; 1 Chr 12:23–41;and 2 Sam 19:11–13; elsewhere Gen 29:4; cf. Gen 2:22); it is repudiated in the slogan, “We have no part in David nor possession in the son of Jesse” (2 Sam 20:1; 1 Kgs 12:16; 2 Chr 10:16).23 Further, in Judges 9:18, a character derogates Abimelek as “the son of [Jerubbaal’s] maidservant.” This expression is sometimes used figuratively (as Ps 86:16; 116:16). It is entirely possible that the author in Judg 9:3 and in Judg 8:31 has made Abimelek the son of Gideon’s Shechemite concubine because he took these texts literally.24 Similarly, one cannot help but wonder whether Aaron was in early materials regarded as Moses’ brother. The blood-brotherhood of P could  the “water from the rock” notion, it would require either a very fresh interpretation or a formidable disregard for probability to defend that position. 23 See my “The Uneasy Compromise: Israel between League and Monarchy,” in Traditions in Transformation, 82. 24 I first suggested this in “The Rise of Abimelek ben-Jerubbaal” HAR 2 (1978) 90, n. 28.

6. Doctrine by Misadventure 181  easily derive by interpretation from Aaron’s status as a “brother Levite” in J (Exod 4:14). Certainly, it is by metaphorical brotherhood (and theoretical equality at some level) in Israel that the “tribes” become sons of Jacob, or “clans” sons of a tribe; ultimately the ethnic brotherhood of the Israelites (as in Deuteronomy) became the physical brotherhood of the tribal eponyms. Routinely in Israelite prosopography, geographic and political kinship metaphor is reified by interpreters.25 It should be noted that the same applies to names and epithets in transmission: Gual ben-Ebed (“the despised son of a slave,” vocalized with Josephus) and Zabul (“prince, commissioner”) in Judges 9, Shemebed (“his name is lost”), along with others in Gen 14:2, and the corrupt liturgy in 1 Chr 25:4 (from ‫ۊ‬anƗnî forward), which has produced at least five and perhaps as many as nine sons of Heman, are some examples.26 Further reaching are the implications of Israelite reification for tradition-history. Take the city Salem in Genesis 14. AV and the Samaritans misread Gen 33:18 (“Jacob came intact [šlm] to the city of Shechem,” their “Jacob came to Salem, the city of Shechem”) to prove that Shechem is in point. But Ps 76:3 and most other commentators take the town to be Jerusalem. Now, the author of Genesis 14 is an antiquarian, fascinated by names to a degree unequalled except among the compilers of commercial mailing-lists; he understands Salem to be the antique name of whatever town he has in mind, probably Jerusalem (cf. 14:2, 3, 8, 17). But outside of the derivative in Psalm 76, Jerusalem is never elsewhere called Salem. I suspect that this antiquarian made an error: in perusing cuneiform documents, he or one of his sources found the name Jerusalem, ú-ru-sa-li-mu, characteristically prefaced with the logogram uru, “city.” He read this in one text (probably lacking the logogram) not as (uru) urusalimu, “the city, Jerusalem,” but as uru, salimu, “the city, Salem.” There is a graphic problem involved in this reconstruction; but it is far from insuperable. 27 The

 25

For other instances, see “The Resourceful Israelite Historian.” A prime case, explored there, is Jephthah in Judg 11:1–3: Jephthah has assumed a genealogy by virtue of his location and profession. 26 It is possible that the last are real names arranged for mnemonic purposes. Still, the phenomenon is widespread enough in genealogies and tales (Nabal in 1 Samuel 25; Benay in 1 Chr 24:23) that one need not stand on any single instance. 27 See EA 287:46 for URU ú-ru-sa-limki, EA 287:61; 290:15 for KUR ú-ru-sa-limki (“the land/territory/district of [the city of] Jerusalem”). As the Amarna evidence illustrates, scribes sometimes sounded the logograms, so that the historian or one of his sources may have heard ú-ru as URU. cf., for example, Rib-Addi’s A.ŠÀ-ia aššata ša la muta mašil aššim bali erišim (EA 74:17; 75:15; 81:37; 90:42). There are other cases; but the principle remains the same. In the case of the pun in EA 85:19 (yuballit ÌR-šu ù URU-šu), the URU sign may be meant to be sounded as ҵîr, however.

182 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  solution would clarify not just an onomastic question, but also the scholastic character of Genesis 14.28 There are numerous candidates for similar treatment in the history of traditions, some of which will be relatively familiar to the reader. For example, the Davidic covenant tradition has been cited for years as an instance of “inner-biblical exegesis.”29 I have argued that the various lines of thought on this issue exhibited in biblical texts could conceivably derive by interpretation from some such formulation as that of Psalm 132.30 The early formulations of the covenant spawned later partisan reinterpretations, each of which appealed to the earlier texts for proof. Similarly, the development of the centralization legislation in Deuteronomy and the cult of centralization must have based itself on appeals not just to the king’s orders but also to sacred texts (and not a sudden, pious fraud): a whole exegetical movement must have accompanied the innovation, which may itself have been nurtured by just such exegeses.31 These traditions grew by feeding on themselves. But insofar as the exegesis produced developments unforeseen by earlier authors, it represented misinterpretation of the sources. Such major issues have attracted more than their share of attention. The less prominent passages also exhibit these problems and responses. John  28 Note the names in v. 2: brҵ and bršҵ could be construed as “in evil,” the latter perhaps as a playful parallel for the former, which occurs as a real name. šmҴbd is, as noted above, “the name is lost.” šnҴb could be “hated by his father.” Moreover, the detail, particularly geographic, is overwhelming, esp. in its supposedly antique character (but v. 14 Dan, not Laish, is a slip). Note that in vv. 5–6 the Rephaim appear also in Deut 2:11, 20; the Zuzim (if Qimhi is correct, and his instinct is unerring, in identifying them with the Zamzummim) appear in Deut 2:20; the Emim appear in Deut 2:10–11; and the Horites appear in Deut 2:12, 22. Genesis 14 does not depend directly on Deuteronomy 2 (nor does Deuteronomy 2 depend on Genesis 14 – Zuzim and Zamzummim). But both chapters are archaizing. Gen 14:4, 9–11 contain imitation poetry (or poetic prose) in which Kudurlaomer is chief among the foreign kings. But the kings are listed alphabetically in v. 1. In v. 9, the list breaks to place K. first (and so assumes the order c, d, a, b): the alphabetical list is the basis for the order in v. 9. How K. became the chief is unclear. But the names of the kings stem from some list conceivably derived from a selection of cuneiform texts (so Amraphel could conceal gutturals; cf. the loss of gutturals in P’s Genesis 5 parallel to J’s antediluvian list in Genesis 4; there, too, cuneiform mediation could be in point). Finally, miggƝn in v. 20 is probably an interpretation of mƗgƝn in 15:2, where the succeeding stich (“your reward...”) indicates it means “benefactor,” and has been interpreted correctly here. Cf. O. Eissfeldt, The Old Testament: An Introduction (New York: Harper and Row, 1965) 211–212. 29 See Sarna, “Psalm 89” for an original and weighty treatment. 30 Halpern, The Constitution of the Monarchy in Israel (HSM 25; Chico: Scholars, 1981) 47–49. 31 Halpern, “The Centralization Formula in Deuteronomy,” VT 31 (1981) 20–38.

6. Doctrine by Misadventure 183  Holladay long ago observed that the historian in Josh 10:10–14 misconstrued a source-text from the “Book of Yashar.” The poem, situated “in the day when Yhwh gave the Amorites over before the children of Israel,” reports a request for a favorable omen – that the sun should be visible in the east while the moon remained visible in the west – and the granting of that omen (Josh 10:12–13). The prose interprets the poetry not unreasonably to mean that the sun stood still.32 This is a phenomenon quite like that observed above with reference to the song of Deborah and the song of the sea. Less of the narrative in Joshua, however, has been shaped by the poetic source. Minor cases of this sort could be multiplied almost without limit.33 Ordinarily, they would be classified under the rubric of “inner-biblical exegesis.” In fact, they are simply instances of Israelite exegesis, or literary allusion, or reconstruction, or, better, historiography. 34 The ancient historian did not measure his repertoire of sources against the standard of our canon. Thus, “inner-biblical exegesis” is “inner-biblical” only by the accidents of history. There are exceptions, primarily where the exegete in question is conscious of dealing with sacred text, or, one might argue, sacred history. 1 Chr 22:7–9, for example, explain that Yhwh disqualified David from building the temple because David had shed blood and waged wars. This is a stricture on temple-building that does not seem to have occurred to anyone elsewhere in the ancient world, including Israel. But 1 Kgs 5:17–18 recount that Solomon wrote to Hiram of Tyre, “David, my father... was not able to build a house for Yhwh’s, his god’s name because of the war that surrounded him....” This flatly contradicts 2 Sam 7:1b (which in all fairness must be regarded as a late addition to the text; cf. also 1 Chr 17:1); and the notion that human wars could have distracted Yhwh from the fulfillment of his purposes would have rankled with the Chronicler in any case. In consequence, or perhaps simply coincidentally, the author of the passage in Chronicles has simply taken what Kings regarded as a distraction or temporary obstacle and interpreted it to be some sort of profanation, a disqualification. He may also have been influenced by Solomon’s name (1 Chr 22:9) and by Exod 20:25 (reinterpreted in Deut 27:5; Josh 8:31; 1 Kgs 6:7 to be specific to iron), so that the ground for his interpretation was already friable. The excuse of 1 Kings 5 (David hadn’t the time) has assumed a theological reality (war soiled him: it has been reified). In the

 32

J. S. Holladay, “The Day(s) the Moon Stood Still,” JBL 87 (1968) 166–178. See, e.g., Halpern, The Constitution of the Monarchy, 88 on Joshua 3–4; idem, “Rise of Abimelek,” 92–95 and also 96, n. 47; and “The Resourceful Israelite Historian,” for one or two others. 34 Cf. Childs, “Midrash and the Old Testament,” in Understanding the Sacred Text, ed. J. Reumann (Valley Forge: Valley Forge, 1972) 47–59. See below, n. 60. 33

184 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  sense that the author of 1 Chr 22:7–9 took 1 Kgs 5:17–18 as canon, as inviolable truth, this is inner-biblical exegesis. In the sense that other texts unknown to us may also have influenced that author, this is simply Israelite historiography. Another instance will help to clarify the point. In Gen 18:12, J explains Isaac’s name. Sarah laughed; so Isaac is called “he laughed.” In Gen 17:17, P provides an alternate version. Abraham laughed; so Isaac is called “he laughed.” P did not necessarily need to provide his own etymology of Isaac’s name (he does not do so for Israel, Moses, or any other prominent character outside of Genesis 17). But there was a problem in the J account: if Sarah was the one who laughed, Isaac should be called “she laughed (ti‫ۊ܈‬aq).” The result is the P account – the result at least in part of this consideration. This is inner-biblical exegesis insofar as the texts involved are in the canon. But if P was promulgated as a doctrinal and confessional alternative to J,35 it was nothing more than official revision of rejected documents. There are, of course, other instances of misinterpretation in biblical literature. Probably, Ezra 3:11–13 report a cultic act that has now been taken to reflect some social or personal reality. Exod 21:15 (mkh Ҵbyw wҴmw…), 17 (mqll Ҵbyw wҴmw…) may, with the relationship between them not quite clarified, have produced Deut 27:16 (Ҵrwr mqlh Ҵbyw wҴmw) and Exod 20:12 (“honor your father and mother”). None of this is any more surprising than the common misapplication of the English idiom, “the exception that proves the rule.” The essence of the problem remains reification, the semantic depletion of metaphor (or even, in the case of the English example, of verbiage), or the willful or ignorant appeal to texts that do not mean what the interpreter means to have meant. When literature is suddenly authoritative, it becomes a matter of manipulation to read one’s own agenda into it: this is in fact the real test of canonicity (see below, n. 60). Matters are more interesting when the reconstruction is less germane to current dogma, but still affected by an inability to see what one’s sources intend. A case in point, and another broad area of application, is the plagues problem. Scholars have long agreed that the account of the ten plagues has grown in the telling. But this growth differs from that of the Davidic covenant tradition or the centralization legislation in Deuteronomy in that interpreters are unlikely to have had any a priori political interest at stake in the developments that resulted. Why, then, has the litany of plagues expanded? One possibility is this: in any list of the plagues, such as that of Ps 78:44–51, a poet will place discrete plagues in parallel with one another and, at the same time, synonyms for the same plague in parallel with one  35

As R. E. Friedman, The Exile and Biblical Narrative (HSM 22; Chico: Scholars, 1981) 44–119.

6. Doctrine by Misadventure 185  another. In Psalm 78, for example, “flies” appears in parallel to “frogs” while “locusts” appears in parallel to “locusts” (cf. Ps 105:28–36, where plagues are not so lightly mixed). If the hearer did not have a fixed plagues tradition, he might tend to infer the existence of distinct plagues wherever the semantic parallelism was sloppiest. Ritual and iconographic representations of the plagues were no doubt susceptible to the same sort of misinterpretation. Metaphoric expressions of the story have probably led the historians in Exodus to pad their accounts. These cases are for the most part and in varying degrees speculative. They are intended to sketch out some areas in which an awareness of the process of reification might bear on our view of the history of traditions. Some, such as the last instance, are worse than others in that they infer the existence of literature we do not have. This raises an issue of method that can claim our attention as much for its general as for its specific implications: had we only the prose version of the Deborah story, would we be justified in reconstructing the poetic source? Had we only the sun standing still in Gibeon, would it be reasonable to posit a metaphorical text misprised? The reality from which this hypothetical question diverts us provides an unequivocal answer. Yet how many of us would dream, imagining Yael with her mallet and peg, that the tableau arose from a misconstrued parallel couplet? And suppose that the instance were seemingly incontrovertible. Suppose that there were no Zech 9:9 to explain why in Matt 21:1– 10 Jesus rides into Jerusalem on two mounts. How many editors would print the argument to a poetic source? How many readers would believe it? I do not have any profound answers to this problem, although I do subscribe to Norman O. Brown’s notion that a healthy, or “non-morbid” science is characterized by what he calls “erotic exuberance” rather than by (anal) sadism. 36 But when biblical scholars speak of tradition-history and the growth of traditions, they deny the identity of received texts with some posited originals of these texts. This is all to the good: if we ask, what did such and such a passage mean, or what did Isaiah mean in such and such a passage, we are also asking the more particular questions, “How did Isaiah come to mean this?” and “What does it mean that we have this passage preserved for us?” To ask what Isaiah meant is to ask what issues he grappled with, in what context, and what went through his mind when he responded to them.37 The last is incomprehensible except on the basis of all the questions that preceded.

 36

N. O. Brown, Life Against Death. The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (London: Sphere, 1968) 210. 37 See Collingwood, Autobiography, 110–111. This is as clear a refutation of the fads of New Criticism and deconstructionism and the hollow-log-beating of the “intentional

186 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  Biblical studies, like many others, is a profession in which standards are erected and theoretically enforced as though they were as pragmatic as municipal fire-codes, and in which the less rigorous practitioner sometimes evokes the sort of response appropriate to a slum-landlord. In a relatively moderate instance, a prominent archaeologist recently charged in print that William Foxwell Albright made it difficult to understand what he thought because he so often reversed himself.38 The factual charge is accurate; but it necessitates these comments. Albright’s conclusions are not the issue: how he arrived at them is. How we might arrive at the same or at different conclusions is even more central an issue. In other words, to understand the transmitted tradition meaningfully, we must understand some of the history of that tradition – some of the reasoning and other background to the choices made there. This, in the absence of overwhelming evidence, entails speculation, reconstruction, latent or consciously avowed. The historian deals with sources on the basis of unconscious and conscious understandings of circumstances in the past (largely the former). That is to say that he deals in scenarios rather than in compelled reconstructions. History, even if it hopes to be, is not rigorous, in that the understanding that produced the source – the sherd, the text, the town – can rarely, if ever, be recovered on any positivistic basis. Moreover, since that physical determination posited at the start of this treatment is susceptible to approximations (reductions?) of various kinds – psychological, sociological, economic, and so forth – a variety of causes, a variety of “processes” can and often do constitute the historian’s legitimate concern in an attack on his problem. If Albright reversed himself on historical matters – problems of human action and reaction as distinct from questions of physical fact – and was not fatuous about it, he thereby enriched so much more the scholarly discussion. If, in our quest for Isaiah’s meaning and how he came to mean it, we concentrated on Isaiah and not on what this or that scholar thought of Isaiah, we should be a great deal more open not only to two opinions stemming from the same author, but also to controlled speculation, dependent on the contextual realities of the text under analysis. Historians profess to reconstruct the past. But routinely, they claim to restrict themselves to the possibilities allowed by the evidence on the basis of certain regulations. The result is a castrated past, and usually rather a colorless one. One hypothesis, even if it tests the limits of the evidence (and so long as it does not test those of reality), that gets at the historical event itself is worth ten theories that get only at the historical evidence of  fallacy” as one can come by. For another approach, less compelling, see E.D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University, 1978). 38 This is no isolated instance; the fact that the charge reached print is evidence that it is widespread, and at the least did not alarm the editors of the journal.

6. Doctrine by Misadventure 187  that event. The overly literal, overly positivistic paradigm that pervades much of humanistic scholarship would not admit of it; but a proposal, in the absence of Judges 5, that Judges 4 based itself heavily, and occasionally mistakenly, on a poetic source, would by its sweep put most scissorsand-paste historical reconstructions to shame. The deficiency lies not in the evidence, which can only be what it is, but in the paradigms of philological history.39 Our interest should rivet not on the rules of some artificial game, but on the question of what actually occurred. Thus, if we do not test the limits of insufficient or sparse or random evidence, we are not reconstructing history; we are advocating a case, just as in a court of law. It is worthwhile invoking one example of a more creative and more productive process. The “discovery” of the enclitic mem led to an explosion of these markers in biblical literature, at least as it was treated in the field journals. Scholars suddenly penetrated problematic passages, explained away troublesome plural forms, revised standard or long-accepted translations, argued new positions by positing an enclitic here or there, or simply pointed out new mems for the record and for the fun of recording them. The vast majority of these suggestions were doubtless inaccurate. But the exercise was in all quite a healthy one. Possibilities presented themselves; they were and are being adjudicated. New configurations opened up, and were dealt with. The joy of that mem-hunt was Norman O. Brown’s “erotic exuberance.” And there is no reason that the process of sifting for the real enclitics should not engage the same spirit. Those who grumble about a lack of methodological control predominate; but they miss the point, and rather an obvious point. It is productive to raise the possibilities in the hope that new methods will arise for appraising them. It is a healthy development when the historian explores fresh scenarios precisely because that exercise can and sometimes does lead to the development of new methods in research. And the doctrine of falsifiability can generate epicycles, but not paradigmatic advances. Conservatism does not produce progress in method. New approaches to the evidence can. To some readers, this confession will seem nothing short of outright apostasy; to others, it will be motherhood and apple pie. One can extend it, at any rate, one step further. Even when they are speculations, it seems to me that the historian’s explorations of fresh possibilities can be worth-

 39

Most particularly in its refusal to admit inductive inference into argument, whatever its limitations. It is ironic that while physicists have learned to deal not in truth deduced but in probability educed from scenarios (as Wiener, Human Use 15–27), this historical field remains cemented to the dogmatic positivism of the nineteenth century. Note further A. Momigliano, Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (Middletown: Wesleyan, 1977) 99–100, 104–105.

188 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  while. To illustrate, it is necessary to move from passages in which reification may have affected the historical texts to the phenomenon of reification as a whole. Concrete instances will provide a serviceable jumping-off point for the discussion. Most readers will already be familiar with the ensuing, rather classical case of harmonization. Deuteronomy 27, along with its reflexes in Josh 8:30–35; 24, is one of the most celebrated problem-children in all of biblical study. These texts indicate that immediately on crossing the Jordan River from the east, Israel were to erect pillars not on the western shore of that river, but on Mount Ebal, at Shechem. The difficulty arises from the fact that the narratives in Joshua 1–6 bring the Israelites across in the vicinity of Gilgal (or Jericho) and have them encamp there. 40 Without attempting to resolve the tension involved here, it is legitimate to turn to Deut 11:29–30. These verses locate Mount Ebal, and its sister peak, Mount Gerizim, “opposite Gilgal, by the oak(s) of teaching” in the wilderness. The Oak of Teaching (or Moreh) is located elsewhere near Shechem (as Gen 12:6). But the verses otherwise conflate the Joshua 1–6 with the later Deuteronomy and Joshua traditions. Harmonizing, the historian in Deut 11:29–30 has invented an Ebal and Gerizim neighboring Gilgal. A substantially different instance with similar implications crops up in the biography of David. 2 Sam 5:21 reports that David carried off as spoil a set of abandoned Philistine idols – way-yiĞĞƗҴƝm, reads the text. 1 Chr 14:12 relates instead that the gods were burned – way-yiĞĞƗrepû bƗҴƝš. In varying ways, commentators since David Qimhi have argued that, if one assumes that the Chronicler had before him the text of Samuel, then the Chronicler deliberately rejected the obvious construction of that text. He repointed the received letters, wyĞҴm, from way-yiĞĞƗҴƝm (“he bore them off”) to way-yaĞĞîҴƝm (derivative from maĞҴƝt, “signal fire, bonfire,” “he set them alight”).41 Thus he effected a semantic shift. Here, the evidence will stretch just a bit further: the Chronicler reasoned that David had no use for philistine idols. David, after all, was a saint, faultless, an ideal. He scoured his own historiographic conscience and came up with the repointing of the letters in Samuel – of the literal truth. He then advanced another step by changing the text (which is unusual practice for the Chronicler) so that his own readers would not fall prey to thinking David an idolater. In this case, the process of literalization is plainly a conscious one. One might even say that the Chronicler read his source-text and his  40 Cf. Eissfeldt, “Gilgal or Shechem?” in J. Durham and J. R. Porter (eds.), Proclamation and Presence (Fs. Henton-Davies; Richmond: Knox, 1970) 90–101; G. von Rad, Deuteronomy (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966) 86. 41 See M. Cogan, Imperialism and Religion: Assyria, Judah and Israel in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries B.C.E. (SBLMS 19; Missoula: Scholars, 1974) 116.

6. Doctrine by Misadventure 189  seemingly religious commitment to David in the same way that the author of Deut 11:29–30 read his two source-texts. What has happened here? One might respond that the Israelite, like anyone else, made mistakes; that although divine inspiration left him precious little license to do so, he sometimes misinterpreted difficult texts or reinterpreted and re-edited troubling texts. This is all true. But it is not all. In these cases, the author’s vision or meaning is no longer the object of interest, let alone of reverence. The words no longer convey a sacred truth. Now, the words – even the letters – are a sacred truth. They generate ad hoc meanings, new, fresh truths, that are taken to be as valid as the ideas their authors meant to express. The Chronicler misconstrues Samuel willfully, but abides by the letter of the truth. The same principle applies, without the element of personal willfulness (the willfulness, with the principle, had by then been generalized), to Matthew’s use of biblical prophecy to vindicate Jewish messianism. But already in the pre-exilic period in the texts discussed above, and certainly no later than the Chronicler’s time, the phenomenon of scripturalization, or of the institutional literalization of text, is in evidence. Certain texts are routinely deprived of their metaphoric interstices, converted into hollow verbal shells to be filled at the interpreter’s pleasure. They are depleted semantically, reduced to a sequence of letters; their replenishment depends not on a system of internal relationships, nor indeed on contextual bearings, but on the reader’s whimsy.

IV Any nation saddled with a legal establishment is necessarily prey to literalism. Strict constructionism and literalism rear their head at some point in every court, to some degree at least. But it does not follow that the legal tradition is the fount of Israelite literalism, even where the law itself is sacred scripture. Indeed, the phenomenon of doctrinaire reification does not occur unaccompanied by a certain – at least crepuscular – consciousness of the conflict between literally possible and intended meanings. Many of the instances cited above fall into the category of unintentional misinterpretation or the naive reification of metaphor. But the instances located in P, Chronicles, and Deut 11:29–30 represent deliberate distortions of puzzling or unacceptable texts. The identical urge is found in Genesis 20, a variant, commonly ascribed to E, of a picaresque episode in Gen 12:10–20; 26:6– 11.42 Here, God is acquitted of savaging Abraham’s innocent dupe (20:4–  42 Both are commonly imputed to J. The oral transmission and tradition-historical problems here are vexing. The E variant exhibits the same apologetic concerns as have reshaped the J account in Gen 16:4–14 in E’s Gen 21:9–21 (esp. v. 11). On E, see A. 

190 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  6; cf. 12:17; but note 20:17–18). But more important, Abraham is defended against the charge that he lied and defended by appeal to literal, or what we might call technical grounds (20:12); the moral justification offered in all three versions (12:11–13; 20:11; 26:7) is now regarded as insufficient to bear the weight of Abraham’s lie. The author of Genesis 20 has consciously reworked his materials to expunge the potential blot from Abraham’s character. In this instance, as has long been observed, a hagiographic bent not dissimilar from the Chronicler’s determines the manner in which the author supplements his source. This is neither the only nor the earliest example of such a phenomenon.43 But it is early enough and clear enough to dispel the thought that Israelite literalism arose only late and stemmed from the experience of some central legal establishment. Had we no further evidence, therefore, I should suggest that the preceding texts imply the end of a guild-centered religion, and the development of institutions, of bureaucracy, or of some other forum in which words were taken at face value. I should maintain that some loss of the ability to interpret religious metaphor had occurred, perhaps by virtue of the assimilation of differing factions, perhaps simply by bureaucratization; that ecstasy, mystical experience, visionary religion had given way to the demands of administration; that the religion of the rural “high places (bƗmôt)” had been conquered by the ideologues of centralization. That would, I think, be a terrible misrepresentation, as one final instance, quite possibly the most speculative of the lot, will illustrate. Commentators are in the habit of regarding the Priestly source in the Pentateuch as the incarnation of late Israelite religion. For apologetic reasons, some religious, some derived from Enlightenment optimism, P is regarded commensurately as more sophisticated than earlier materials. In fact, his seeming sophistication is the main ground for assigning to P a late date. Some critics distort or deplore the sophistication, arguing along the lines laid out in the preceding paragraph;44 but sophistication it remains. P’s god is more transcendent than J’s, presiding from a loftier heaven over  Jenks, The Elohist and North Israelite Traditions (SBLMS 22; Missoula: Scholars, 1977). 43 Cf. Gen 25:29–34 against ch. 27; 1 Sam 21:11–16 against ch. 27; 1 Sam 29: 1–30: 24; 2 Sam 1 against 1 Chr 12:20 (and omit from v. 20 wlҴ ҵzrm to v. 21 nplw ҵlyw as an insertion marked by the epanalepsis wmmnšh nplw ҵl dwyd bbҴw ҵm plštym ҵl šҴwl, blktw ҵl ‫܈‬qlg nplw ҵlyw mmnšh). Cf. 1 Sam 24 after 1 Sam 26. This is a particularly complex instance stemming from 2 Sam 23:15–17. In Greece, Homer’s acquittal of Odysseus of the charge of being the liar Sisyphus’ bastard son (as Polyaenus 6.52) is probably a similar instance. 44 See Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel, 410, 412 and throughout. This tendency is now diminishing. See Levenson, “Theology of Commandment in Biblical Israel,” HTR 73 (1980) 17–33, for discussion.

6. Doctrine by Misadventure 191  somewhat diminished mortals. And P attenuates the anthropomorphic language characteristic of other Israelite texts. This, most scholars agree, is a conscious penchant, conscientiously prosecuted.45 P is not altogether free of anthropomorphism – after all, mankind is created in God’s image (Gen 1:26, 27) in the same way that children are begot in their parents’ image (Gen 5:1–3). But he does seem to avoid wherever possible references, however metaphorical, to God’s limbs, features or bodily functions. Confronted with anthropomorphism in P, the reader is not at all disposed to take it literally. Except to a raving teleologist, there is nothing in this to indicate P’s sophistication over against J. P’s god may or may not be more transcendent than J’s; all we can say with certainty is that P is more explicit than J about his god’s transcendence. J, conversely, seems to emphasize his god’s immanence. That is, P’s concerns were not the same as J’s: P was intent on taking a stand against anthropomorphism. What could have motivated his aversion? Let me admit from the start that I have only an alternate view, not proof. Perhaps P thought his audience were taking J literally. Concerns of this sort are not infrequently found in antiquity. The Clementine homilies (2.52; 3.55–57) deplore precisely the anthropomorphism of the Pentateuch as being harmful to the reader and misleading to the worshipper. Plato’s attacks on the Athenian poets and tragedians (particularly in the Republic) are similar, though not directed so much toward the portrayal of the gods as toward the casting of models for human behavior. Much earlier – in fact as early as the sixth century BCE – the philosopher Xenophanes seems to have made the same point. Xenophanes understood the true god to be a transcendent one, omniscient, and in some other respects similar to P’s god. 46 He understood, further, that human beings would inevitably conceive of their god as human: had animals gods, those gods would be portrayed as, animals: ... mortals believe the gods to be created by birth, and to have their own (mortals’) raiment, voice and body. But if oxen (and horses) and lions had hands or could draw with hands and create works of art like those made by men, horses would draw pictures of gods like horses, and oxen of gods like oxen, and they would make the bodies (of their gods) in accordance with the form that each species itself possesses. Aethiopians have gods with snub noses and black hair, Thracians have gods with grey eyes and red hair.47

 45

See S. R. Driver, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (8th ed.; New York: Scribner’s, 1898) 140–141; Friedman, The Exile and the Biblical Narrative, 77. 46 See K. Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Oxford: Blackwell, 1956) 23.23–26. One wonders whether, confronted with the issues in all their bearings, J would have demurred from these considerations. 47 Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, 22.14–16.

192 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  But Xenophanes fretted over Homer’s and Hesiod’s presentations of the gods: the gods’ whimsicality, their wantonness, their immorality in the works of those classical authors filled him with concern.48 Here is an interpreter who understands that anthropomorphism is, so to speak, an accident of chromosomes. He further notes that human inquiry into theology – and into other domains – amounts to nothing more than speculation.49 Xenophanes’ concern was not for Homer or Hesiod, still less for himself. He fretted primarily for the reader, who might take or perhaps did take quite seriously the shameful anthropomorphic misrepresentations of the divine in the Greek poetic tradition. Like the Chronicler, Xenophanes saw both the metaphorical nature and the danger of his canon. P’s avoidance of anthropomorphism stems probably from a similar orientation. It may represent an attempt to foreclose on appeals either to J’s seemingly lax theology or to anthropomorphism in his own writing. Certainly, P responds elsewhere to problems raised for him by J. In contrast to J, he never reports a sacrifice until Aaron is consecrated and the tabernacle altar erected; this is a matter of deliberation, intended to drive home his views on the limitation of the sacrificial franchise.50 On the same lines, but more closely related to the issue of anthropomorphism, P avoids using angels throughout his narrative. 51 Since Gen 1:26 indicates that he accepts the existence of a heavenly council, and since seemingly allied works, such as those of the Chronicler and Ezekiel, do not exhibit the same inhibitions, one can conclude only that P, like Holmes’s “dog in the night,” is keeping his silence loudly: he is trying to deflate his predecessors’ metaphor, to dominate the cruder aspects (as he perceives them) of the antecedent litera 48 Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, 22.10–12. Note that in the Odyssey, Homer anticipates Athens’ dramatists by making divine action just, if still pockmarked by occasional eccentricities. This only goes to show how the movement in current issues and in ethics affects the discussion. Materials attributed already to Orpheus (as Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, 2.6, 9, 14), Pherekydes (14.1) and Anaximander (19.1) have related implications. 49 Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, 24.34–36: “And as for certain truth, no man has seen it, nor will there ever be a man who knows about the gods and about all the things I mention. For if he succeeds to the full in saying what is completely true, he himself is nevertheless unaware of it; and Opinion (seeming) is fixed by fate upon all things. Let these things be stated as conjecture only, similar to the reality. All appearances which exist for mortals to look at.” 50 See Friedman, The Exile and the Biblical Narrative, 82, 84–85 inter alia; Driver, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, 139–142. 51 Friedman, The Exile and the Biblical Narrative, 84, 85, e.g. There may, of course, be a stray angel or two in other reconstructions of P. But the general absence of heavenly messengers to man is striking enough even if one or two of them did creep into the narrative. Like J and Dtr, P may be somewhat restricted by the presence of prior traditions.

6. Doctrine by Misadventure 193  ture. He is trying to pitch sacred history on a purely literal plain. No text that indicates diversity in the pantheon or successful deviation in the polity will survive his Zadoqite razor. P tries not to lay himself open to the same charges with which he or his readers may have taxed J; he plays a safe, even tremulous game. But this does not make him more sophisticated than J. Instead, in addressing issues created in part by J’s presentation, P must argue in different terms. The aniconism of our “ten commandments” is a related case. The older parallel materials lie in Exod 20:23, at the outset of the Covenant Code, and in Exod 34:17, in the so-called Cultic Decalogue. 52 They forbid the construction not of images, nor of statues of divine beings, but only of metal, statues of gods. In this respect, they accord with what appear to have been the main lines of pre-monarchic (and even monarchic) practice in Israel.53 But in Exod 20:4 (Deut 5:8), in my view a Jerusalemite priestly text (in fact, a P text),54 we encounter a full-scale ban on imagery of all kinds (and the association of imagery with metaphor is not so idle as one might think – P in fact eschews metaphorical expression generally, not only anthropomorphism; 55 and this is a separate manifestation of the same

 52

On Exod 20:23, cf. Childs, The Book of Exodus, 465. Given the antiquity of the altar law and its confluence with this statute – both are conducive to premonarchic Israel’s semi-official backyard-barbecue type of cult; both prohibit the erection and use of elaborate urban (monarchic) sanctuaries and closed temples, thus protecting and preserving the distinction between rural highland Israel and lowland urban Canaan (contra E. Nielsen, The Ten Commandments in New Perspective [SBT 2/7; Naperville: Allenson, 1968] 52– 54) – and given the parallel in Exod 34:17 (but cf. Eissfeldt, The Old Testament: An Introduction, 216), I feel this law belongs in place, together with the altar law (note that the combination of the two has inspired Lev 26:1; further, aniconism carries with it the baggage of the restriction of sacrifice to wooden structures in Pythagoreanism when this theological complex travels to Greece). I very much doubt that the law originally had reference to the very different formulation in Exod 20:3–6, which is also much more thoroughgoing. On Exod 34:17, see Childs, The Book of Exodus, 604–607 and the sound proposal there (pp. 607–609). See further, and to the point as a whole, T. N. D. Mettinger, “The Veto on Images and the aniconic God in Ancient Israel,” in H. Biczais (ed.), Religious Symbols and their Functions (Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 10; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1979) 15–29, especially 25. 53 See the preceding note, and Mettinger, “The Veto on Images and the aniconic God in Ancient Israel.” 54 See now Mettinger, “The Veto on Images and the aniconic God in Ancient Israel,” 27. 55 Driver (Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, 130) notes: “Metaphors, similes, &c., are eschewed (Nu. 2717b is an exception [and if that hackneyed warhorse is the exception, then the reader should count P’s aversion to figure a blessing]); and there is generally an absence of the poetical or dramatic element, which is frequently conspicuous in the other historical books of the OT. (including J and E) . . .

194 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  phenomenon). No image of anything anywhere is to be made: “Make yourself no carving or image of what is in the heaven above or what is on the earth or what is in the waters under the earth.” This blanket injunction must be related ideologically to the standard biblical polemic against supposed idolatry. And this finds its own Greek parallel in Heracleitus’ later attacks on iconography and ritual imagery.56 All these attitudes reflect a fundamentalist, over-literal position; all take the metaphor, the image, to heart. It would, in my view, be an error of immense proportions to conclude that either P or Hosea (who already articulates the attack on icons in its fullest form – 8:6; 13:2; 14:9)57 had lost the ability to approach religious metaphor as metaphor. On the contrary, Hosea was fully cognizant of the fact that Bethel’s bull represented only artistically and cultically Yhwh’s war-steed. In the same sense, prophets such as Amos who reject ritual in their rhetoric (as Amos 5:21–27, among many similar passages) did not misunderstand the ritual to represent the real action of worship. Amos knew full well that the ritual expressed metaphorically the religious or emotional proskynesis of the nation. So, too, did the worshippers – let us do them no injustice – who otherwise could not have been expected to understand Amos’ canards. But to appeal again to a historical parallel, Cromwell ran around destroying idols – icons purported to represent Mary and Jesus – not because he thought they were literal manifestations of those divinities, not because he thought they were not symbolic, but because (he claimed) he did not trust the population at large to understand just how symbolic they were. Heracleitus’ and Xenophanes’ attacks on the Greek poetic tradition were apparently couched in just these terms.58 And so are Hosea’s, Isaiah’s and Micah’s attacks on Israelite iconography (Hos 13:2; Isa 2:8; Mic 5:12). The issue is not that the polemicist misunderstands the image, metaphor or sacrament (Amos 5:21–27), but that the polemicist thinks or claims the worshippers may.  It seems as though the habits of thought and expression, which the author had contracted through his practical acquaintance with the law, were carried by him into his treatment of purely historical subjects.” 56 See Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, 25.5, 33.128. 57 Mettinger (“The Veto on Images and the aniconic God in Ancient Israel,” 23 n.39) also points to the pun in Hos 4:17 and the apparent reference to the two bulls of Jeroboam in Hos 10:10. After Hosea, or at the same time, the related units Isa 2:6–8; Mic 5:9–13, both of which relate to Hosea 8 and Deuteronomy 17–18 (see Halpern, The Constitution of the Monarchy, 230–231), can be cited in extension of the argument. Hos 13:2 and probably 8:1ff. refer to the older legal statutes banning metal images of gods. Note that M. de Roche (“The reversal of creation in Hosea,” VT 31 [1981] 400–409) argues that Hosea had access to some form of P; he also provides bibliography for the argument that Jeremiah had access to P. 58 Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, 31.104, 22.10.

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 It is most likely that the dragons lanced by Hosea and Heracleitus, by Xenophanes and Isaiah and Amos and Micah and P, were chimerical. It is difficult to subscribe after benevolent reflection to the notion that votaries at Bethel regularly mistook the statue of a bull for a god, or even the bull represented by the statue for a god: had they, the local priesthood would surely have intervened vigorously. It is to my mind dubious that the readers of J misunderstood Yhwh to be human or whimsical or error-prone. In no way is it plausible that participants in Israelite ritual believed the ritual itself to have efficacy without any emotional or spiritual correlative, without some meaning, some message, in the metaphor (after all, is this not what liturgy and homiletic contribute to the ceremony?). What we read in our texts is polemic, after all; it is the work of men looking for handles to seize on to, looking for excuses to denigrate the next fellow. Whether or not we bundle them all together into one period, place or school of thought, Israel’s iconoclasm, P’s aversion to anthropomorphism and all other forms of metaphor, and the tendency to literalize both pre-existing metaphor and – pro re nata – texts under composition – all these phenomena may – rather, do – reflect not a growing theological sophistication, but a tonic against alleged backsliding, against literalizations of the sort that rile Xenophanes against Homer and Plato against the dramatists. In P, we see the logical extension of this concern – the cautious verbiage of institutional bureaucracy. The phenomenon of literalization in Israel symptomizes a religious and political struggle being fought ideologically in terms of paradigms for and modes of discourse. It is impossible responsibly to locate these developments historically, even though their rough temporal context is clear, at least without long disputations over detail. 59 But P seems in some sense to be fighting the wars of the Reformation, or the homoousios-homoiousios wars of the Middle Ages, or engaging in witch-hunts in Salem. Probably, this reflects his own isolation from the religion of the rural bƗmôt, and his polemical disposition toward it. Thus, the battle against anthropomorphic metaphor and cultic iconography may represent a part of the effort to centralize worship at the Jerusalem temple. It may be that attacks on more tolerant Levitic priesthoods (Mushite or other) were entailed; that pilgrimages to shrines other than that in Jerusalem – pilgrimages sanctioned and supported by appeal to the J version of the patriarchal history (as Gen 12:6–9; 13:18, etc.) – were subject to indictment in the context of the innovation. When Talley 59 For the time period, see the unerring work of Mettinger (“The Veto on Images and the aniconic God in Ancient Israel,” 24). This is roughly contemporary with Homer, and antedates Xenophanes and Heracleitus by 200 years. After Peisistratos, the inner-Greek process suffices to account for all the developments there (see below). But one ought not blithely rule out the possibility of Judaic influence.

196 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  rand and the Parisian hierarchy subscribed to Mirabeau’s Civil Constitution of the Clergy, after all, they leveled all sorts of charges against their colleagues outside the capital. And it is salubrious to recall that Peisistratos’ promulgation of the canonized Homer coincided with considerable ritual innovation and a pitched battle against the Athenian aristocracy. Indeed, it is arguable that Peisistratos’ actions arose from and led directly to the sort of literal-historical consciousness exhibited by Xenophanes and Heracleitus, the logical outcome of which was the rise of Herodotus and the historians on the one hand (history, being true, has a leg-up on legend) and to Plato (the quest for absolute, abstract truth) on the other. Israelite literalization from Hosea to the Chronicler suggests the influence of factional strife. The most attractive context in which to locate that strife would be the reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah: Jerusalemite theologians must then have attacked all other institutions. But the struggle that produced this literalization could equally have been international, against northern priesthoods, or internal to the Jerusalem bureaucracy. The central point here is that P’s caution with regard to anthropomorphism and other metaphor – indeed, Hosea’s attack on iconography – stems from a notion that metaphor cannot be or is not being taken metaphorically. Even when iconoclastic, reification is fetishist, in that it mistakes the image for the reality the image represents. When P reacts to others’ anthropomorphism (or when Isaiah attacks others’ attitudes toward cultic imagery, or Amos attacks their attitudes toward ritual), he assumes that his audience is too unsophisticated or too dishonest to distinguish figure from its intended content. P’s recourse is to be literal, which, after all, is the only way to deal with literalism. But it is interesting to note that scripturallyoriented religions – Judaism, Catholicism and Islam, in the West – have instead canonized tradition. This acknowledgment of the literal text’s inadequacy makes possible a more meaningful embrace of the text; it also preempts epileptic fundamentalism, which by absolutizing the literal succeeds only in absolutely relativizing it, and absolutizing the interpreter. Fundamentalism is religious and historical illiteracy, the exegetical counterpart of prescriptive social science. An authoritative tradition juxtaposed to the unchanging Text of Truth, even though coupled with what must amount to an intentional agnosticism of the New Critical variety, can short-circuit it. Israel’s demythologizing disposition was ultimately as literalistic as her aniconism. Because the image is not the life, images lie. Because the myth is not the historical event, myths lie. Because Yhwh is not a man, metaphor, particularly anthropomorphic metaphor, lies. And the fallout; sacred documents are literally true, not true in their intentions. If God swears in Genesis, God is a swearer, so that P must do his level best to prevent him

6. Doctrine by Misadventure 197  swearing. The rationality of Israelite religion as it survives in the canon is P’s rationality. And P is a literalist, or a guide to fundamentalists. In Exodus 14, in Judges 4, and in the other instances explored above, the beginnings of canonicity – in which the text assumes a life of its own, independent of the author and sacred to the reader – are in evidence.60 Exodus 15, Judges 5 were for the historians effectively sacred scripture, whose literal text was authoritative. That we have prose reformulations of history celebrated in lyric, and even, in Chronicles and elsewhere, of history recorded in prose, indicates a consciousness that the historian must recover, wrest history from his sources; that the reader is otherwise likely to misconstrue the sources in a way different from that in which the historian would like him to misconstrue them. But the texts themselves were sacred and true; the words, the very letters were true. So that even when a very rational historian such as the editor of the Pentateuch could not make uncontradictory sense of his materials – and as R. E. Friedman has demonstrated, he tried 61 – he was safe in assuming that some later literalizer would. What P evinces in these materials, and what our other historians evince, is the formative urge of scripture. Prosaic though it is to say so, that urge was fundamentalist, or a response to fundamentalism. But because reality cannot be reduced to a rational level, because there is always more in a vi 60

These remarks will tend to corroborate the conclusions arrived at in M. Fishbane’s “Revelation and Tradition: Aspects of Inner-Biblical Exegesis,” JBL 99 (1980) 343–361. I must stress, however, that the phenomenon of literalization or semantic depletion is the crux in determining incipient canonicity. This clears the way for re-application and the generation of new truths, new revelations, from the text (as Fishbane, “Revelation and Tradition,” 357, 361). Otherwise, one may be dealing with simple exegesis or literary or legal allusion, which need not imply canonicity at all. In other words, some criterion must be employed to distinguish T. S. Eliot’s recasting of Shakespeare or Oscar Wilde’s plagiarism from Longfellow from Matthew’s use of Isaiah. The use of JE in Deuteronomy is not itself “inner-biblical exegesis” unless one can demonstrate that for the author of the passages in Deuteronomy, JE had canonical status in the way that Isaiah had for Matthew. Contrast Fishbane’s approach and also L. Eslinger, “Hosea 12:5a and Genesis 32:29: A Study in Inner Biblical Exegesis,” JSOT 18 (1980) 91–99; M. Fox, “The Identification of Quotations in Biblical Literature,” ZAW 92 (1980) 416–431. Thus Fishbane is on soundest ground when dealing with the reinterpretation of prophecies (pp. 354–359). This is precisely a process of semantic depletion and arbitrary replenishment by the interpreter. What has commonly been called “inner-biblical exegesis” thus is not evidence of a consciousness of canonicity; it need in fact be no more than Israelite allusion. Though this is to quibble over terminology, it might be better to restrict the term “innerbiblical exegesis” to passages where some consciousness of canonicity is involved, and to call Israelite historiography and allusion what it is. 61 Friedman, “Sacred History and Theology: The Redaction of Torah,” in The Creation of Sacred Literature: Composition and Redaction of the Biblical Text (Near Eastern Studies 22; Berkeley: University of California, 1981) 24–34.

198 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  sion than reductionist literalism can yet express (I still hold out hope for the chemical formula, of course), this urge generated a reaction – partly in the metaphoric and mythic language of the authors of Judah’s exile, and partly in the subsequent interpretation of a literally true, but selfcontradictory canon. Literalization threw out of whack the balance of such historiographic gems as Judges 9, Judges 11, and 2 Samuel, in all of which divine and mundane causality are explicitly complementary rather than mutually exclusive. It created an atmosphere in which the jangle of combined sources went unheeded for thousands of years. But it was the logical outcome of Israel’s relentlessly historical, relentlessly material, relentlessly realistic religion.62 And just as the tension in Israel’s thought between the mythic and the historical modes for organizing knowledge dissolved in the mythicization of history and the historicization of myth, so the tension between literalism and metaphor dissolved in the dialectic between interpretation and image. From these dialectics, competing Israelite ideologies arose. From them, and from their canonical outgrowths, have sprung the religious sensibilities of Western man.

 62 Monotheism carried with it the seeds of all these developments, which to my mind led inexorably on the one hand to Daniel, and on the other to Qohelet. This, however, is fodder for another discussion. While the passage itself is too long to reproduce here, T. B. Macaulay’s essay on Milton in the Edinburgh Review of August, 1825 deals judiciously and elegantly with these issues. The essay is reprinted in Macauley, Critical and Historical Essays, Contributed to The Edinburgh Review (3 vols.; 6th ed.; London: Longman, Brown, Green and Langmans, 1849) 1.1–61, especially 22–23.

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 Figure A Judges 4:6

4:10

5:11d 5:12

5:13

(Deborah) sent and called to Baraq… and said to him, “Has Yhwh god of Israel not commanded? Go and array on Mt. Tabor, and take with you 10,000 men of the children of Naphtali and the children of Zebulun…” Baraq mustered Zebulun and Naphtali at Qadesh, and there went up on foot (or, under his command) 10,000 men, and Deborah went up with him. Then the people of Yhwh came down to the gates. Wake, wake Deborah! Wake, wake, sing a song! “Arise, Baraq, and capture, “You captives, son of Abinoam!” Then… came down…; The people of Yhwh came down to him with warriors:

5:14

Out of Ephraim, whose root is in Amaleq, After you (o, Ephraim), Benjamin, among your contingents. Out of Machir, rulers came down, And from Zebulun, wielders of the scepter.

5:15

The officers of Issachar to Deborah, So to Baraq, sent to the valley (? in force) under his command; In divisions (was) Reuben, with great resolution;

5:16

Do you not dwell among the hearths, Listening to the bleating of the flocks? To (your) divisions, Reuben, with great proofs of heart!

5:17

Gilead – who abides beyond Jordan, And Dan – does he not dwell at ease? Asher, who dwells on the shore of the seas, And abides on his spreads, Zebulun is a people that taunted death, And Naphtali on the heights of the field.

5:18

5:19

The kings came; they fought. Then the kings of Canaan fought, At Taanach, by Megiddo’s waters, They did not take a bit of spoil.

200 

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Figure B Judges 5:25–27

Judges 4:18b–21 He turned to her, to the tent, and she covered him with a…

Water he asked; Milk she provided; In a lordly krater she proffered ghee.

He said to her, “Water me with some water, please, for I thirst.” So she opened the skin of milk and watered him and covered him.

She sent her hand to the peg, Her right hand to the workers’ banger; She banged Sisera; she smashed his head; She splintered, she pierced his spitter.

At her feet, he kneeled, he fell, stretched out. At her feet, he kneeled, he fell. Where he kneeled, there he fell, slain.

And he said to her, “Stand at the opening of the tent, and if anyone comes and inquires of you, and says, ‘Is anyone here?’ say, ‘There is not’.” Yael, wife of Heber, took the tent-peg and took the hammer in her hand and came upon him surreptitiously and pounded the peg into his spitter and it bit in the ground. And he had slumbered, for he was tired; so he died.

Figure C.1 Exodus 15

1b 4–5 8–10

12 13–17

The horse and its driver he has loosed into the sea. Pharaoh’s chariots and his horsemen he cast into the sea; His choice... sank in the sea of reeds. The depths covered them; they descended into the deep like a stone. At the breath of your nostrils, the waters were heaped up; The currents stood up like a nƝd; The depths churned/congealed in the midst of the sea. The enemy said, “I will give chase....” You blew with your breath; the sea covered them. They plummeted like lead in the mighty waters. You stretched forth your right hand; the “earth” engulfed them. You guided in your fidelity the people you redeemed; You conducted them with your might to your holy pasturage. The peoples heard; they shook; Writhing seized the inhabitants of Philistia. Then the commanders of Edam were discomfited. The leaders of Moab – trembling seized them; All the inhabitants of Canaan melted away. There fell upon them dread and fear; At the size of your arm they were dumb as a stone, So that your people crossed over, Yhwh,

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 So that the people you acquired/created crossed over. You brought them and planted them in the mount of your possession; A dais for your enthronement you fashioned/acquired, Yhwh…

Figure C.2 Psalm 78 52–55 He moved his people like sheep, And piloted them like a flock in the steppe. He guided them securely, and they did not fear; And their enemies, the sea covered. He brought them to his holy territory, The mount that his right hand acquired/created. He expelled from before them peoples… 60 He forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent he pitched among men… 13–14

14–15

He cleft the sea and brought them across; He stood up the waters like a nƝd; He guided them by cloud in the day, And all the night by the light of fire. [continue to draw on Exodus 15]

7. Sacred History and Ideology: Chronicles’ Thematic Structure Indications of an Earlier Source* Before I was casting about looking for an anchor for using Israelite historiography and poetic materials to create a picture of pre-exilic society, I had, I thought, necessarily to engage the culture of history-writing in ancient Israel. A Harvard education – a fine one with Tom Lambdin, Frank Cross, William Moran, Thorkild Jacobsen, Paul Hanson and G. E. Wright – had involved forgoing a formal minor in the philosophy of history. This was all to the good, as I am unlikely to have picked up some of my other courses instead. But it left a lacuna in the sense that I desperately wanted to know how these people went about composing historical texts, mixed with theology to be sure, but then so are most historical texts. The first problem that caught my eye was the synoptic issue of Kings and Chronicles, where one could hope to arrive, I thought optimistically, at a useful comparative perspective. What I learned, mainly in mental dialogue with Hugh Williamson’s superb Israel in the Book of Chronicles, was that internal to Chronicles was the sort of disjunctive structure one finds also in Kings (the subject of a chapter here). At the time, Helga Weippert’s return to a thesis of a Hezekian source, represented previously and less ably by scholars in the 18th and 19th centuries (esp. J. J. Stähelin), was unknown to me, as I had only just finished my thesis and my only introduction to the redaction of Kings came from the summary regnant at Harvard, in Cross’s Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic. Even so, Howard Macy’s Harvard dissertation, cited in the study, had provided a hint that something was going on, in the instance with the naming of Judah’s queen-mothers, that distinguished the period after Hezekiah from that before it in Chronicles versus Kings. What makes this study the more interesting, therefore, is that it argues to a Hezekian source of Kings, a subject taken up in Chapter 8 below, based on the structure and usage found in Chronicles alone. The subject is of course approached differently by other scholars, notably Williamson himself, Gary Knoppers, Sara Japhet, Graeme Auld, Steven MacKenzie, Mark Boda, Tamara Eskenazi and Isaac Kalimi. It is susceptible to a purely literary explanation internal to Chronicles and stemming from concerns of the post-exilic era. For example, given a governor of Yehud named Hezekiah, it is quite possible that the efficacy of Josiah’s reform, foredoomed to failure in Kings, was in questionable odor among some late parties, and that Jerusalem’s survival under Hezekiah I, celebrated in (First) Isaiah, was paradigmatic for these groups. Still, the combination of this material with that from Kings, first systematically mined by Weippert in the studies discussed in

 * Originally published in R. E. Friedman (ed.), The Creation of Sacred Literature: Composition and Redaction of the Biblical Text (University of California Publications, Near Eastern Studies 22; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981) 35–54.

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 Chapter 8, and the rescission of the foredooming of Josiah’s reform in Chronicles (Chapter 9), make the approach in the present study one deserving further exploration by historiographers.

Introduction A few years ago, at a Waltham Massachusetts, computer firm, a PDP-10 system began rather suddenly to read out error-messages at random points in its operation. A program would run through smoothly once, twice, or ten times, but on the next run an error-message would slash it to a halt. If the program was sent through again, no hitch occurred. The operators were baffled; they checked the switches. The programmers were stymied; they examined the programs and, later, when that produced nothing, the compiler and the very grammar of the machine language. Digital Equipment Corporation eventually dispatched its field service representatives. They dismantled the machine piece by piece and put it back together. They found nothing. The error-messages continued in their random way – appearing and vanishing like a Circuit Pimpernel. The situation lasted for weeks. One day, one of the company’s hardware specialists noticed that an electric cord behind a line printer was piled in a slightly tangled way. He kicked it. From that moment, the error-messages ceased. The hardware man had no inkling of any connection between the cord and the error-ticks. He was just kicking a wire. But it transpired subsequently that the minute impulses that penetrated the cord’s insulation had influenced the memory banks to affect the line printer in such a way as to create the apparition of a perverse independent intelligence in the machine. Probably, if artificial intelligence ever is created, it will be by some such accident as this. Good art, curiously, is in the position of that computer. In its programmed imitation of the organic, it should take on an artificial life of its own. This constitutes a present danger to the scholar: a Biblicist who seeks to retroject that artificial life into the mind of the author or editor is in peril of confounding project with product.1 In essence, this problem is the one addressed in Richard Friedman’s essay above. In a very different sense, it is the subject also of the essay by John Russiano Miles below. Simply, the literary approach to biblical texts is unquestionably valid where authorship is unitary. Where the question of authorship is more complex, other considerations intrude. The authorial theory now prevalent in biblical literary studies, or the converse New Crit 1

See, recently, E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Validity in Interpretation (New Haven, Connecticut, 1967), for a fairly balanced assessment of the problems involved.

204 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  ical view of intent, is a legitimate implement for construing texts from the modern viewpoint. For the historian – of Israel’s religion, culture, ideas, or just of Israel – these are less useful. The biblical scholar who subscribes to the former2 is potential prey to the intentional fallacy precisely where the fallacy is plainest – where the author is under compulsion to acknowledge or even to include materials either irrelevant of antithetic to his viewpoint. In other words, the scholar is responsible to inquire to what extent was the form of a work dictated by the use of sources, and to what extent the product of the redactor himself? How did the redactor use his sources, if any? How did he regard them? As canon? As true reports? Or as fallible recollections of an imperfect journalist? Moreover, in what spirit did a redactor incorporate them? The models common today in scholarship – and to which I have myself on more than one occasion adhered – are far from being the only models on which to construe the redactorial enterprise. We are confronted with a phenomenon alien to us. It may be as complex as the Gordian knot – and it is not up to us to unravel it with a vorpal snickersnack. On the contrary, we are compelled to follow through each individual strand, until we recognize either a single, simple key, or the conglomerate, variegated nature of the problem. The books of Chronicles and Kings, by virtue of being the only demonstrably synoptic and extensive historical works in the Bible, provide a unique testing-ground for source criticism. The only difficulty lies in the fact that the relationship between the two has not yet been fathomed. In the succeeding pages, therefore I shall examine a specific but sprawling problem: does an extensive historical work underlie the present versions of Chronicles and Kings? In so doing, I mean to suggest that the model of redaction suggested by the evidence has relevance to “redaction” in all Israelite historiography (including the Pentateuch). Here, the only way to recover authorial intent is to judge, not just the final product, much less the material of which it was made, but the difference between the sculpture and the block

I The books of Chronicles first burst into full-blown narrative with a part of the story of Saul’s death, taken from 1 Sam 31 (1 Chr 10). From this point to 1 Chr 21, Chronicles marches more or less through 2 Samuel, on which it seems to depend. However, in contrast to Samuel, where Saul’s death  2

A case in point is H.G.M. Williamson, Israel in the Books of Chronicles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).

7. Sacred History and Ideology 205  represents the solution to a problem, the end of a certain narrative tension, Saul’s death in Chronicles serves more the function of the primeval history in Genesis: it erects the problem to which David presents the solution: “(Saul) did not seek Yhwh; so he killed him, and diverted the kingship to David ben-Yishai” (10:14).3 At the outset, David’s monarchy is recognized by Israel. He takes Jerusalem. Yhwh is with him, and his career is on the wax (11:9). This leads to a review of his followers, and those “who came to... Hebron to divert the kingship of Saul to (David)” (12:23). Immediately thereafter, David gathers all the people of Israel, from all the lands of Israel, and says, “Let us divert the ark of our god to us, for we did not seek him/it in Saul’s days” (13:3–4). The text alludes to 10:13–14; 12:24. David’s diversion (sbb) of the ark complements Yhwh’s diversion (sbb) of the kingship. David’s initial attempt to recover the ark (// 2 Sam 6:1–11; in 1 Chr 13) fails. It does lead, however, first to his recognition by Hiram (14:1–2 // 2 Sam 5:11–12), and then to his victory over Philistia. In the first instance, David’s kingship is “exalted upward” (nĞ’t lmҳlh; 14:2). In the second, David receives what appears to be his first (and only) directly reported direct communication from god. These come in the form of war oracles at David’s request (14:10, 14; 2 Sam 5:19, 22–23). It seems that they imply some form of priestly intermediation. At any rate, the victory leads to the remark, “David’s name went out among all the lands, and Yhwh instilled his fear in all the nations” (14:17). The same sort of reciprocal Davidic behavior as that evinced in his first attempt to “divert the ark to us” marks the succeeding chapter. 1 Chr 14:1 reports that Hiram sent David workers to build him a house; 14:2 states that “David knew that Yhwh had established him firmly as king over Israel (hkynw lmlk), for his kingship was borne upward.” 15:1 states, “He made himself a house/houses in the city of David, and established (wykn) a place for the ark of the deity, and pitched it a tent.” The text continues with David’s order that none but the Levites should “bear” (nĞ’) the ark. As Yhwh establishes, David establishes. As Yhwh bears upward, David prepares to bear upward. 1 Chronicles 15 begins with David’s organization of the priestly and Levitic orders. Most revealing is v. 13, which notes that Yhwh had aborted the earlier attempt at recovering the ark because “we did not seek him/it in the proper way.” On this occasion, however, the bugs are ironed out; the ark comes without incident to the city. On this follows the eternal dynastic

 3

See my The Constitution of the Monarchy in Israel (HSM; Chico, Ca: Scholars Press, 1981) ch. 6, for a discussion of the bearings of the accounts of Saul’s death. Chronicles seems to know of 1 Sam 28, and perhaps of Sam 13:7–15a, but not of 1 Sam 15.

206 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  promise of 1 Chr 17 (2 Sam 7). The victories of 1 Chr 18 (2 Sam 8) ensue; these are punctuated by the signal remark: “Yhwh gave salvation to David wherever he went” (18:6, 13; 2 Sam 8:6, 14). These chapters of Chronicles follow a distinctive pattern. The king seeks Yhwh; some recognition of his sovereignty ensues. He wins a victory. And, he prepares or organizes his followers. In David’s case, the process is one of incremental rapprochement with Yhwh – the gradual closing of the rift created by Saul. At the same time, Yhwh glorifies David by increments: he is recognized first by Israel, then by Tyre, and finally, dynastically, by Yhwh. He conquers first Jerusalem, then the Philistines (at this point remedying the problem attacked by Saul), and finally all of CisEuphratia (esp. 18:3). He begins in 11:9 on the wax (hƗlôk wegƗdôl), with Yhwh with him; in 14:7, his reputation extends across “all the lands,” while “Yhwh instills his fear in all the nations;” and in 18:6, 13 comes the remark that Yhwh gave him victory everywhere, wherever he went. The progression is one of constant growth, of continual expansion. It is correlated to the progressive narrowing of the gap between Israel and her god. Nevertheless, Chronicles is careful to reserve the final act of rapprochement. 1 Chronicles 16:39–42 report that Zadoq, Heman, and Jeduthun were stationed not at the ark in Jerusalem but at the tabernacle, domiciled at Gibeon. This particular is retrieved in 1 Chr 21:29–30. Though David has seen the angel of Yhwh (21:16), though Yhwh answers David with a sign (21:26), though David has acquired the future site of the temple (22:1), nevertheless, “David could not approach (the tabernacle of Yhwh) to seek god, for he was terrified by the sword of Yhwh’s angel” (21:30). Here, one recalls the cherub stationed outside Eden. The tabernacle is the locus for communion with god. Chronicles recalls (21:29) that it is the tabernacle made by Moses – the model for Israel’s communication with the deity (as Deut 34:10). It is Solomon, thus, who bridges the last gap between Israel and Yhwh. At the very outset of his reign, Solomon sacrifices with all Israel at what Chronicles calls ‘ǀhel môҳƝd hƗ-Ɵlǀhîm (2 Chr 1:3) – implying, perhaps, participation there in god’s “meeting” or “appointed time.” Correspondingly, Solomon receives what is probably the first direct communication from Yhwh to a king in Chronicles, and what is certainly the first unsolicited direct communication. Even more, despite the insistence of Kings that the appearance was a dream (1 Kgs 3:5, 15; but cf. 11:9), Chronicles states that Solomon received an epiphany (2 Chr 1:7). Solomon (who has yet another epiphany in 2 Chr 7:12–22 after the reunification in the temple of the ark and tabernacle – 2 Chr 5:4–9; 1 Kgs 8:3–9 – foreshadowed in 2 Chr 1:4) is the only king to attain this height. He is the king who achieves Israel’s fullest reconciliation with Yhwh.

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 In connection with the Davido-Solomonic materials, it is the modality of reward employed by Chronicles that is of interest. The plainest is victory at war. This applies not only to David but also to Abijah (2 Chr 13:13– 18 – here hƝsƝb marks Jeroboam’s failure where David in 1 Chr 14:14ff. is a success), Asa (14:6, 10–14), Jehoshaphat (20; esp. vv. 27, 29, where god’s fear falls on all the kingdoms of the lands, as in David’s case), Amaziah (25:7–10, 11–13), Uzziah (26:5–7), Jotham (27:5–6), and Hezekiah (32:l–23), all of whom are said to have sought Yhwh in one form or another in the immediate context of their victories. Nevertheless, other, equally important types of reward are associated with this one. Territorial expansion – particularly under David – is of some importance. Japhet has argued that from the time of the division Chronicles reports progressive Judahite conquest of the north. While her case has been refuted by Williamson,4 her underlying perception remains valid: Chronicles evinces a strong interest in Israel’s and Judah’s territorial growth. Growth is one of the marks of divine favor. In the same vein, Chronicles concerns itself with what it repeatedly calls “wealth and honor.” David reduces Moab to vassalage – to bearers of tribute (1 Chr 18:2). He captures hordes of men and equipment from Hadadezer (18:4), and exacts tribute of Damascus (18:6). He despoils Aramea and Edom of gold and silver in apparently unlimited quantity (18:7–11), dedicating it to Yhwh. His regnal account closes with the remark, “[David ben-Yishai] died at a ripe old age, full of days, wealth and honor...” (1 Chr 29:28). The same concerns appear in the account of David’s transferring the kingship to Solomon. 1 Chronicles 22 repeatedly stresses the infinity of wealth accumulated by David for the temple-building (vv. 3–4, 5b, 14, 15, 16). The motifs surface yet again in 1 Chr 28–29, at the actual passing of the mantle (28:1, 14–18; 29:2–5, 6–8, 12, 21). It is hardly necessary to dwell on the emphasis placed on Solomon’s wealth in 2 Chr 1–9. Already at 2 Chr 1:12 he is promised wisdom, honor, and wealth exceeding that of any king before or after. The succeeding materials hasten to bear out the point (1:14–17; 2:6–9; 3:4–7, 14; 4:7–8, 18, 19–22; 5:1; 8:17–18). They culminate in the remarks of 9:9–28, which include such statements as “silver was not reckoned as anything in Solomon’s days” (9:20c) and “All the kings of Arabia [? the west], and the governors of the earth used to bring gold and silver to Solomon” (9:14b). Nor is Solomon the only king rewarded with wealth or territory. Abijah seizes cities from Jeroboam (2 Chr 13:19). Asa carries off “very much spoil indeed” (14:12) from his encounter with Zerah (note 14:13–14). His  4 See Williamson, Israel in the Books of Chronicles, 100–101. The text so belies Japhet’s scheme here that one suspects her of an understandable but unfortunate infatuation with the scheme.

208 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  disbursal of funds to Aram, by contrast, leads to his condemnation to war for the rest of his reign: The spoil of Aram eludes him; he dies of a hideous disease (16:7–13). Jehoshaphat, conversely, seeks Yhwh throughout his reign. He is rewarded with tribute from all Judah: “he had wealth and honor in quantity” (17:5; 18:1). The Philistines and Arabs pay him tribute (17:11), and, as in David’s time, Yhwh’s fear goes forth upon all the lands about (17:9; 20:29). Jehoshaphat waxes ever greater (hôlƝk wegƗdƝl ҳad lemƗҳlâ) – again like David. His building activity burgeons (17:12b–19). His despoliation of Ammon, Moab, and Edom is so extensive as to require three full days (20:25). By the same token, the early part of Joash’s reign sees extensive royal capital accumulation (2 Chr 24:5–14). Only when Joash forsakes Yhwh is he, like his wicked predecessors Rehoboam (2 Chr 12:9) and Jehoram (21:16–17), plundered. Again, Amaziah despoils Edom while relying on Yhwh (25:9–10, 13). He in turn is despoiled (25:22–24) when and only when he rejects the divine counsel (25:14–16). Uzziah accumulates tremendous wealth and builds frantically, meanwhile extracting tribute from Philistia, Arabia, and Ammon (26:6–15), all because “He used to seek God in the days of Zechariah, who was understanding in fearing [or: seeing] God, and in the days of his seeking Yhwh, the deity gave him success” (26:5). Similarly, Jotham, who “established his ways before Yhwh his god” (27:6), built, conquered Ammon, and exacted tribute (27:3–5). The unregenerate Ahaz is first pillaged (28:8), and then disappointed at the results of his disbursing funds (28:21), all because he did not seek Yhwh. He is deprived of his cities (28:17–19); he is generally despoiled (28:5ff.). But Hezekiah’s reform reverses the situation. He reigns in opulence (30:24ff.; 31:4–12); he builds and creates (32:3–5). And, at his rescue, the text records, “Many brought tribute to Yhwh, to Jerusalem, and gifts to Hezekiah, king of Judah, and he was exalted in the sight of all the nations thereafter” (32:23). His regnal summary recalls David and Solomon in this regard (32:27–30). Though these motifs disappear after the account of Hezekiah’s reign, Chronicles up to that point is permeated with the notion that more is better. Wealth is good. Expansion is good. Growth is good (hence Solomon’s exaltation – 1 Chr 29:25, 2 Chr 1:1; esp. 2 Chr 9:22 – Solomon was “greater” than all the kings of the earth with regard to wealth and wisdom – after David’s, and before Jehoshaphat’s and Hezekiah’s – 1 Chr 11:9; 17:6, 12; cf. 26:15–16; 2 Chr 32:23). Size is good – for example, the temple must be “big,” Solomon says, “because our god is bigger than any god. And who could be strong enough to build him a house when the heavens – even the highest heavens – cannot contain him?” (2 Chr 2:4–5). Such emphases recur throughout – in Solomon’s magnification at accession (1 Chr 29:25) so

7. Sacred History and Ideology 209  that he, “a youth and weak” (1 Chr 22:5; 29:1), will be capable of building the temple;5 at the failure of the altar at the temple dedication to contain all the sacrifices (2 Chr 7:7); at the inability of the priests to enter the new temple because it was so full of Yhwh’s glory (2 Chr 6:14; 7:2–3). Simply, from David through Hezekiah, Chronicles regards and bestows abundance as a mark of divine favor. This is illustrated by the distribution of the root rbh, “much, many.” The vocable occurs 100 times in Chronicles, 96 times with positive or neutral force. Of the four occurrences with negative connotations, one – 1 Chr 21:15 – uses it in the sense “Enough!”, to stop the slaughter of Israel by Yhwh’s angel (and this is shared with 2 Sam 24:16). And two occur after Hezekiah’s regnal report (2 Chr 33:6; 36:14; the fourth is 2 Chr 28:13). These are the only two instances of the root after Hezekiah. By contrast, Kings uses the root only 30 times, of which fully two-thirds occur in the account of Solomon’s reign (as opposed to less than twenty percent in that account in Chronicles). Of the remaining 10 instances, at least 6, and possibly 8, carry negative connotations. This difference, in fact, symptomizes the differences between Chronicles and Kings. Except in shared passages, after Solomon’s reign, Kings virtually never speaks of Yhwh’s rewarding a pious monarch with wealth. The very lexeme “wealth” (ҳǀšer), which occurs eight times in Chronicles (1 Chr 29:12, 28; 2 Chr 1:11, 12; 9:22; 17:5; 18:1; 32:27), seven times in conjunction with “honor” (not in 2 Chr 9:22), occurs only three times in Kings (1 Kgs 3:11, 13; 10:23), all with regard to Solomon, and all with parallels in Chronicles (2 Chr 1:11, 12; 9:22). Kings is simply not oriented toward accumulation. Within Chronicles, the motifs of nearness to god, of salvation, and of expansion, growth, and accumulation all merge into a single complex, characterized by the rest motif. The motif surfaces already in 1 Chr 22:9, where David recounts that Yhwh promised him a son: He will be a man of rest, and I shall give him rest from all his enemies from about. For Solomon (šelômô) will be his name (šemô) and well-being (šƗlôm) and quiet (šeqe‫ )ܒ‬I shall bestow on Israel in his days.

The motif resurfaces in 22:18, and especially in 28:3, in which David explains that he was prevented from building the temple because he was “a man of wars” (and 22:8). Moreover, 1 Chr 23:25 correlates Israel’s rest with Yhwh’s (23:26): because Yhwh has given rest to his people “from about,” Israel is obliged to give rest to Yhwh; Solomon must build him a permanent dwelling. This same notion emerges in 1 Chr 28:2, where David  5

See my The Constitution of the Monarchy. I have argued there that this is a ritual actualized in narrative.

210 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  calls the temple a “house of rest,” a reference to Solomon, “a man of rest” (22:9). At the dedication of the temple, 2 Chr 6:41 retrieves the thought once again: Yhwh is called on to occupy his resting-place. The temple project is Solomon’s reciprocation for the rest bestowed on Israel by Yhwh. After Solomon, the theme continues to unfold. Though Abijah inherits the unrest caused by Jeroboam, Asa’s reign represents a period of peace and quiet (2 Chr 13:23c; 14:4c, 5b, 6d; 15:15, 19), characterized by prosperity, expansion, and salvation at war, so long as his heart was “wholly with Yhwh.” It is precisely at the point at which he abandons Yhwh that he is condemned to war for the remainder of his reign (16:9). Similarly, Jehoshaphat’s reign is marked not just by union with Yhwh, or wealth, and so forth, but also by peace (17:10). As in Solomon’s and Asa’s cases, Jehoshaphat achieves “rest from about” (20:30). His is an era of quiet (20:30). And at Joash’s accession, the text reads, “All the people of the land rejoiced and the city was quiet (wat-tišqǀ‫)ܒ‬. Athaliah they killed by the sword” (23:31). This is the response to Jehoiada’s righteous acts. This theme is consistently tied up with seeking Yhwh, with salvation, with prosperity, and so forth. Its final articulation comes in 2 Chr 32:22, toward the end of the Hezekiah account: Yhwh saved (wšҳ) Hezekiah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem from the hand of Sennacherib king of Assyria and from everyone’s hand, and he guided them from about (wayenahălƝm mis-sƗbîb).6

Notices of tribute borne to Hezekiah, of Hezekiah’s exaltation and wealth, of his humiliation before Yhwh all follow. This is the last occurrence of the term mis-sƗbîb, “from about,” in Chronicles, and of the root wšҳ, “save.” The verse appears to form an inclusion of Hezekiah with David, who also was saved wherever he went (1 Chr 18:6, 13). From Manasseh onward, the whole rest/prosperity/salvation complex disappears. The rest motif in Chronicles resembles closely that in Joshua and Judges (esp. 2 Chr 13:23; 24:4, 5; 20:30, 23:31 with Josh 11:23; 14:15; Judg 3:11, 30; 5:31; 8:28). Kings, however, evinces no such interest. It is noteworthy, for example, that the term n‫܈‬l ,”rescue,” occurs twelve times with regard to Hezekiah in Kings (nine of these shared with the Isaiah tradition in Isa 36– 39, and three more in the same pericope), and only once elsewhere, in close proximity (2 Kgs 17:39). The root yšҳ, “save,” occurs in Kings seven times with reference to Israel, not Judah, twice in the Isaiah tradition material (2 Kgs 19:19, 34 = Isa 37:20, 35), and once with reference to Ahaz’s importuning Tiglath-Pileser (2 Kgs 16:7). The notion of Yhwh’s intervention on behalf of the pious monarch is not explicitly elaborated.  6

For the verb, cf. Exod 15:13; note Pss 31:4; 23:2 for conjunction with nwh.

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 The situation with the rest motif proper is even starker. Numerous commentators have taken 2 Kgs 11:20 – “the people of the land rejoiced and the city was quiet” – to imply that syncretistic Jerusalem went into mourning at Athaliah’s death.7 In the context of Kings, where the lexeme šq‫ ܒ‬does not again appear, this interpretation is almost plausible. But Chronicles provides a context against which this verse demands to be read: the statement is unequivocally positive. The city was quiet – it was at rest. The case of 2 Kgs 11:20 is in and of itself somewhat suspicious. Only at one other locus does the rest motif crop up in Kings – that is, in 1 Kgs 5:4, 18, in the account of Solomon’s reign. 8 The latter is of greatest interest here.9 In it, Solomon writes to Hiram: You knew David my father, that he was not able to build a house to Yhwh’s, his god’s name, on account of the war that was about him, until Yhwh should give them over under the soles of his feet. So now, Yhwh my god has given rest to me from about; there is no opponent; there is none who does damage.

This sounds more like Chronicles than it does like Kings. David was prevented by his preoccupation with war from erecting a house to Yhwh. At least, like 1 Chr 22:9 with regard to 1 Chr 17, it stands in tension with the repudiation of the temple in 2 Sam 7. Certainly, it stands in tension with the remark of 2 Sam 7:1 that Yhwh had granted David “rest from about,” though this is probably a late insertion. It is a remark ungrounded elsewhere in the former prophets, but it falls into quite a natural context if read in conjunction with Chronicles. In this respect, 1 Kgs 5:4, 18; 2 Kgs 11:20 seem peculiar. Like the emphasis on wealth in Kings’ account of Solomon’s reign – like the stress of plenty, growth, and building there – the vestigial presence of the rest motif in three verses in Kings ought to evoke suspicion. In Chronicles, the whole account of Solomon’s reign, which is quite similar to 1 Kgs 3–10, integrates nicely with the rest of the narrative up to the account of Hezekiah. Chronicles focuses consistently on rest, on quantity, on divine interven 7 See, recently, J. Gray, I & II Kings (2nd ed.; OTL; Philadelphia: Warminster Press, 1970) 582. 8 I discount 2 Kgs 22:20; 2 Chr 34:28, in which Josiah is promised death “in peace, well-being (be-šƗlôm),” first, because the rest is not general: but second, even allowing that the context may imply that the phrase merely asserts that Josiah will not see Jerusalem’s destruction, an interpretation which seems to me to founder on other uses of šƗlôm and the Israelite distinction between violent and natural death, the character of the rest is sufficiently fleeting to distinguish it from other instances in the histories. Otherwise – and far more probably – Josiah’s Armageddon completely belies the promise, a fact with which Chronicles, at least, attempts to come to terms (2 Chr 35:21–22). 2 Kings 20:19, from the Isaiah-tradition (Isa 39:8), is an intermediate instance. 9 On the former, cf. OG, and esp. 2:46f–g.

212 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  tion. Kings is perversely sporadic in these regards. Thus, the term lâ-rôb (“in quantity”) occurs five times in Kings, all in the account of Solomon’s reign, and two of them shared with Chronicles. Chronicles uses the same term fully thirty-five times, only seven times in reference to Solomon’s reign, and last in 2 Chr 32:29 – the end of the account of Hezekiah’s reign. Again, Kings selects against the term qhl throughout. The root occurs nine times there, seven of them in 1 Kgs 8 (six shared with Chronicles) and two in 1 Kgs 12 (one shared with Chronicles). It is thus in relatively restricted usage.10 Conversely, Chronicles uses the root frequently in connection with the Israelite assembly. It occurs thirty-eight times from David to Hezekiah, referring usually to the assembly constituted in either its sacral or its deliberative capacity. There is little point in multiplying examples of this sort, except to indicate that they are both numerous and suggestive. The term Ğm‫“( ۊ‬to rejoice”), for example, occurs only eight times in Kings. Of these, two are shared with Chronicles (1 Kgs 8:66; 2 Kgs 11:20 and 2 Chr 7:10; 23:21). A third derives from a shared passage (2 Kgs 11:14 from 11:20). And the remaining five (1 Kgs 1:40 bis, 45; 4:20; 5:21) are all concentrated in the first part of the account of Solomon’s reign. In Chronicles, the root is distributed freely, occurring twenty-four times in all. Another example is that of the expression heyôt ҳim lƝb. This occurs in 1 Kgs 10:2 (2 Chr 9:1); it also occurs in 1 Kgs 8:17–18 (2 Chr 6:7–8). The latter instance is of particular interest. In it, Solomon states that David “had it in mind” to build a house for Yhwh, but Yhwh responded negatively. Chronicles, in which the same expression occurs eight times, grounds the remark fully. David himself has said as much in 1 Chr 22:7; 28:2. 2 Chronicles 1:11 has Yhwh respond (not in 1 Kgs 3:11) to Solomon, as to David in 1 Kgs 8:18 // 2 Chr 6:8, “Because you had it in mind, I shall reward you in such-and-such a way.” Indeed, after the account of Solomon’s reign, Chronicles twice more uses the expression in connection with establishing a relationship with the deity (2 Chr 24:4; 29:10). There are no other instances in Kings.  10 J. Milgrom has kindly called my attention to his attempt to trace out a linear typology for the use of qhl and ҳdh in the Bible (JQR 1979, unavailable to me at the time of this writing). See also my treatment in my The Constitution of the Monarchy. I am a bit suspicious of the typological approach in vocabulary questions (less so in semantic, though I am still hesitant), since regional, personal, factional, and other preferences in selection necessarily intrude, and since the quantity of text on which we must base our typologies is so limited. In other words, the fact that P only of the Pentateuchal narrators uses the word ҳƝdâ, “(sacred) community, (sacred) assembly” in no way suggests that the lexeme was unknown at the time when J wrote. The possibility is there; but the evidence is insufficient to prove it. At any rate, for the best attempt to impose chronological order on the biblical chaos, see R. Polzin, Late Biblical Hebrew: Toward an Historical Typology of Biblical Hebrew Prose (HSM 12; Missoula: Scholars Press, 1976).

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 Data of this nature, plentiful throughout the histories,11 suggest two distinct possibilities. Either Chronicles seizes upon certain isolated, anomalous texts in Kings, and applies the values they reflect to reports concerning kings from David to Hezekiah,12 or Chronicles draws consistently from a source used by Kings perhaps relatively heavily for the account of Solomon’s reign, 13 but thereafter only irregularly. Of these possibilities, the former seems inherently unlikely.14 The latter, that both histories draw on a common source, is naturally a possibility.

II It is, fortunately, possible to shed some light on this subject by brief examination of the attitudes struck by Kings and Chronicles toward Davidic dynasty over Israel. On this point, the histories diverge widely. Apart from the dynastic promise of 1 Chr 17, which duplicates that of 2 Sam 7 with minor variation, 15 Chronicles, like Kings, articulates Solomon’s arrangement with Yhwh in conditional contractual terms. David prays that Yhwh will endow Solomon with the Ğkl wbynh, “sense and insight,” that will enable him to “succeed” (1 Chr 22:11–13). He urges Solomon to “serve God” (28:9); he urges God to give Solomon a “whole mind, to observe” Yhwh’s will (29: 19). The issue, especially in 1 Chr 22:11ff., is whether Solomon will prove himself worthy of the dynastic award by observing Yhwh’s statutes sufficiently to be allowed to complete the temple. In this regard, it appears that Chronicles does not take the re 11 I shall marshal a series of such cases in a volume, now in preparation, on the common source of Kings and Chronicles. 12 One might argue chronistic generalization of materials in Solomon’s reign. However, such passages as 2 Kgs 11:20 (and, indeed, 2 Kgs 11 as a whole) and the anomalous character of those materials in Kings contraindicate that hypothesis. One must also strain somewhat to explain the absence of such values in Chronicles after Hezekiah. On the whole, the data are best organized by hypothesizing an earlier source. 13 See J. Liver. “The Book of the Acts of Solomon,” Bib 48 (1967) 75–101, on the source cited in 1 Kgs 11:41. Pace Liver, the source is probably closer to 1 Kgs 3–10 // 2 Chr 1–9 than to anything else. 14 Professor N. Sarna notes (in conversation) the absence of music from Solomon’s, but its prominence in Hezekiah’s, temple ceremonies. This suggests neither pro- nor retrojection, but plain recording. See below, and my forthcoming study. 15 Specifically, Solomon, rather than David, is the recipient of the dynastic award. This may be the more authentic tradition (!). See F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973): 219–273. Cf. also the fine study of N. Sarna, “Psalm 89: A Study in Inner Biblical Exegesis” in A. Altmann, P.W. Lown (eds.), Biblical and Other Studies (Institute of Advanced Judaic Studies, Brandeis University, Studies and Texts 1; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963) 29–46.

214 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  mark in Samuel, “He will build me a house” (2 Sam 7:13; 1 Chr 17:12), as a lapidary prophecy. Rather, it serves for Chronicles as an implicit protasis to the establishment of Solomon’s dynasty forever. If Solomon is pious, he will complete the temple. If, in David’s words, he “succeeds” in building the temple, Yhwh’s promise will have come true. For the account of Solomon’s reign, this interpretation has important ramifications. There, and thereafter, two types of rehearsal of David’s and Solomon’s contracts are in evidence. Kings features one refrain that has no counterpart in Chronicles. This is the expression “for the sake of my servant, David,” etc. (1 Kgs 11:34; 11:12, 13, 32; cf. 2 Kgs 20:6). Its alloforms invoke “the sake of my servant, David” to whom Yhwh promised a fief (nîr)16 forever (1 Kgs 11:36; 15:4; 2 Kgs 8:19; 2 Chr 21:7).17 This refrain accounts for ongoing Davidic ascendance in Judah and Jerusalem. It conveys the doctrine that under no circumstances will Yhwh revoke the Davidic charter there. What it amounts to, as Weinfeld and others have observed, is the justification for a land grant to the house of David.18 A second doctrine – that David’s dynasty depends on his successors’ behavior – is expressed with the clause, “There will not fail you / David a man sitting on the throne of Israel.” This surfaces three times in Kings and twice in Chronicles (1 Kgs 2:2–4 [in the structural locus of 1 Chr 22:7–13 and with the shared term Ğkl]; 8:25 [2 Chr 6:16]; 9:4–5 [2 Chr 7:17]; and cf. 2 Kgs 10:32; 15:12). A third text in Chronicles, 1 Chr 28:6–7, shares with them the notion that Solomon’s dynasty hinged on his behavior as king.19 However, as R. E. Friedman has observed, the texts that place the responsibility for the continuation of David’s dynasty on Solomon’s shoulders deal not with dynasty over a fief but with kingship over Israel.20 That is, none of the fief-refrains deals specifically either with kingship or with any of its Hebrew metonyms: none mentions “Israel.” None of the condi 16

See Rashi on 1 Kgs 11:36; P. D. Hanson, “The Song of Heshbon and David’s Nîr,” HTR 61 (1968) 297–320. 17 The instance in 2 Chr 21:7 is drawn, with the surrounding verses, from 2 Kgs 8:17–22. 18 See M. Weinfeld, “The Covenant of Grant in the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East,” JAOS 90 (1970) 184–203; idem, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford, 1972) 74–81; Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 237–265; J. D. Levenson, “On the Promise to the Rechabites,” CBQ 38 (1976) 508–514. 19 1 Kgs 6:11–13, though related, is absent from OG and marked off as secondary by the epanalepsis 6:9a, 14. Read brevior. On epanalepsis, see S. Talmon, “The Presentation of Synchroneity and Simultaneity in Biblical Narratives,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 27 (1978) 9–26. 20 See R. E. Friedman, The Exile and Biblical Narrative (HSM 22; Chico, California, 1981). I have developed his insight in its historical connections in my The Constitution of the Monarchy.

7. Sacred History and Ideology 215  tional (“there will not fail you...”) refrains addresses anything but kingship, and that always over Israel. Unlike the fief-formulae, which are scattered throughout Kings, the refrain, “There will not fail you a man sitting on the throne of Israel – if you obey Yhwh’s ordinances,” along with all articulations of a conditional dynastic agreement with Solomon, are confined in Kings and Chronicles to the account of Solomon’s reign. This intimates to what extent that reign served historiographically as a testing-ground for the dynasty. Chronicles emerges with an undeniably positive portrait of Solomon; Kings arrives at a negative evaluation. It is in the dynamic of their relationship in this regard that a clearer understanding of the histories can emerge. Chronicles’ view of Solomon is evinced in a variety of ways. For one thing, David states that only if Yhwh gives Solomon Ğkl wbynh, “sense and insight,” will Solomon “succeed” (1 Chr 22:12). At Gibeon, Solomon requests and receives ‫ۊ‬kmh wmdҳ, “wisdom and knowledge” (2 Chr 1:7–13), not the same thing at all. But a letter from Hiram settles the issue decisively. Hiram starts: “In Yhwh’s love for his people did he make you king over them” (2 Chr 2:10). This forms an inclusion with Sheba’s recognition of the same fact in 2 Chr 9:8. A second inclusion encompasses this first: the concluding notices of Solomon’s reign (2 Chr 9) report how extensively Yhwh fulfilled the promises he made, at the start of the reign, in the Gibeonite incubation. Hiram’s continuation is more revealing. He states: Blessed is Yhwh god of Israel, who made heaven and earth, and who gave David the king a son, wise, and knowing sense and understanding (‫ۊ‬ƗkƗm yôdƝăҳ ĞƝkel û-bînâ) who will build a house for Yhwh, and a house for his kingship [or: a dynasty for his kingship (!)]. (2:11)

Apart from the paronomasia on bn, “son,” bynh, “insight,” and bnh, “build,” in evidence here and often in this section of Chronicles, Hiram’s letter communicates subliminally to the reader. The gift bestowed by Yhwh at Gibeon, “wisdom and knowledge” (‫ۊ‬kmh wmdҳ) encompasses and surpasses the standard of wisdom necessary for Solomon to establish his dynasty (Ğkl wbynh), producing a king who is “wise, having knowledge of sense and insight.” Solomon does not merely meet the standard for securing the dynasty. He surpasses it, just as he surpasses all kings in wealth and in wisdom. Chronicles’ handling of Solomon’s reign in no way deviates from any of these intimations. The two epiphanies, the accumulation of wealth, the successful completion of the temple (esp. after 1 Chr 22:7–13) leave no doubt that Solomon has fulfilled all conditions laid upon him. Solomon has discharged his several obligations, earning perpetual dynastic sway over Israel. 2 Chronicles 7:11 – “in everything that entered Solomon’s mind to

216 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  do with regard to the temple of Yhwh or to his own house [or: dynasty], he succeeded” – confirms the point. And the statements of 2 Chr 9:22ff. should leave no doubt. Kings, however, takes an alternate view. Although it adulterates some of the pro-Solomonic materials of chs. 3–10, it does preserve much of the material contained in Chronicles. Where it diverges is primarily in 1 Kgs 11; there, it accuses Solomon of nothing less than outright apostasy (1 Kgs 11:1–8, 10). It is likely that by the time Kings was written, Solomon had already attained the sanctified status accorded him by Chronicles and most of subsequent Jewish tradition. Thus, only “in Solomon’s old age” (1 Kgs 11:4a) did he deviate from the righteous paths. Nevertheless, Kings reports that Solomon’s wives “perverted him,” so that “his heart was not wholly with Yhwh his god, as David’s heart had been,” and so forth. He “built altars to Chemosh… Molech,” etc. (v. 7; see v. 8), despite the fact that Yhwh had appeared to him twice (11:9; here the dreams are suddenly epiphanies). Solomon’s altars, of course, are destroyed by Josiah (2 Kgs 23:13–14), a hint that leads Weinfeld, along with Cross and Lohfink,21 to trace these reports, and Kings’ negative attitude toward Solomon generally, straight to the Josianic court. But these reports have headier implications still. In Kings, all the considerations above – Solomon’s supposed saintliness, David’s fealty, Solomon’s senile apostasy – have combined to produce a peculiar historiographic view: though Solomon precipitated by his apostasy the division of the kingdom, Yhwh nevertheless preserved, first, the integrity of the kingdom during his lifetime, and, second, a fief forever in Jerusalem for the sake of his servant David. The result is that Yhwh is said to have harassed Solomon throughout his reign. In particular, he incited the Edomite Hadad and the Aramean Rezin to revolt (1 Kgs 11:14– 25), though these notices do not easily square with Kings’ notion of Solomon’s early fidelity. This material, too, is at best incidental to the historian, amounting to minor proofs for his interpretation. The climax, so far as he is concerned, and the damning verification, is the division of the Davidic empire (11:9–13, 26–40; 12:1ff.). It is at this juncture precisely that Kings begins to invoke the fiefformula. The fief in Jerusalem is a cup of consolation to the Davidides deprived of Israel. Yet Chronicles, though cognizant of the Solomonic schism, finds no room for the formula. The reason is Chronicles does not recognize the legitimacy of the northern secession.  21 See Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 168–169; Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 274–289; N. Lohfink, “Die Bundesurkunde des Königs Josias,” Bib 44 (1963) 261–288.

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217

 A number of texts confirm this view. The historian states it straight out in Abijah’s battle-taunt of Jeroboam (2 Chr 13:4–7): Hear me, Jeroboam and all Israel! Oughtn’t you know that Yhwh the god of Israel gave the kingdom to David over Israel forever, to him and to his sons by a salt treaty? And Jeroboam ben-Nebat, Solomon ben-David’s servant, arose and rebelled against his liege? and there were gathered to him desperadoes,22 sons of bitches, and they took their stand against Rehoboam ben-Solomon? and Rehoboam was a youth and weak-hearted [or: weak-minded], and didn’t nerve himself in their presence?

The historian then vindicates Abijah by reporting Yhwh’s intervention on his behalf (2 Chr 13:14–20). By the same token, Chronicles addresses Hezekiah’s efforts to return Israel to the Davidic fold with considerable sympathy (2 Chr 30:1–11). Hezekiah’s reconciliation of parts of the north to the Jerusalem cult and the Davidic line produces the greatest and happiest assembly since the time of Solomon (30:13, 18–20, 23, 25–26) – that is, since before the schism. Perhaps most important, while both Kings and Chronicles report alliances between Judah and Israel, Chronicles in each case enters a prophecy against the league (2 Chr 19:1–3; 20:35–37; 25:7–9; perhaps 21:6, 12ff.). And certainly most obviously, Chronicles averts its narrative eye from materials that concern the northern kingdom. This practice extends so far that there is no report of Jeroboam’s making the golden calves, though Abijah alludes to them. There is no “sin of Jeroboam.” There is no report of the north’s fall. It is not that Chronicles is uninterested in the matter – as Abijah’s speech makes clear. Nor is it indifferent to the northern population – Hezekiah’s attempt at conciliation, among other texts (e.g., 2 Chr 28:5–15; 2 Chr 10:17; 31:1 on “all Israel in Judah” from Rehoboam to Hezekiah), is incompatible with that hypothesis. The point is Chronicles does not recognize the legitimacy of the division. It will not therefore report the course of northern history. Kings, which does recognize the schism, reports that history throughout. Each history justifies itself by appeal to Solomon’s reign. There are substantial indications that underlying the negative appraisal of Solomon in Kings is an originally pro-Solomonic source. Thus, every articulation of the dynastic covenant in Kings has a parallel or mirror text  22

’ănƗšîm rƝqîm. Dahood is in my view entirely correct in connecting the term with *ryq (Heb. “unsheathe” in C, Dahood’s “army, troops”). See M. Dahood, Psalms 1–3 (AB 16, 17, 17a; Garden City, NY, 1965–1970) 1.7–8, 195, 210. However, like the English idiom “eat humble pie,” which derives from the medieval English practice of feeding umbles pies to feudal retainers, the Hebrew expression has undergone a congeneric (and paronomastic semantic) assimilation, in this case with rƝg, “empty,” and taken on the connotation “worthless, shiftless, good-for-nothing.” Cf. already EA 292:47; 297: 14 for rƝq (EA ri-ki) as “worthless, nothing to lose” (cf. 2 Kgs 4:3).

218 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  in Chronicles. 23 The structure of 1 Kgs 3–10 closely resembles that of 1 Chr 1–9. Much of the material is shared verbatim. Second, the Kings dynastic promises, like those of Chronicles, appear in an atmosphere of general optimism. It is up to the reader to determine in the succeeding chapters whether Solomon has performed in the way specified by David (1 Kgs 2:2–4). However, it is plain from the ensuing verses that he managed to execute the blood-purge David enjoined on him at the same time (2:5–9 with 28–34, 36–46). Nor do the succeeding chapters intimate at any time that he deviated from the righteous way. By the same token, Solomon’s plea that Yhwh fulfill his promise to David – at the temple dedication (8:25–26; 2 Chr 6:16–17) – should evoke very positive expectations. Cases are rare in HB of characters making positive requests of Yhwh to no avail.24 There is none of which I am aware in which a character as guiltless as Solomon is at this point in Kings (or throughout in Chronicles) is rebuffed or disappointed by God.25 It may be noted, too, that Solomon’s request is couched in a phrase, yƝ’ƗmƝn debƗrkƗ (8:26; 2 Chr 6:17), which, used elsewhere by Chronicles (1 Chr 17:23–24; 2 Chr 1:9) but not by Dtr, appears to connote an abiding fulfillment (2 Chr 1:9). If so, the mitigation of the conditionality of the dynastic promise is implied. 1 Kgs 9:2–5, the last articulation of the dynastic agreement in Kings (2 Chr 7:17–18), presents yet another interesting point. The text affirms that the conditional agreement remains in force. It promises perpetual enfranchisement to Solomon’s line over Israel. 9:6–9, probably but not certainly an Exilic insertion, confront Israel with the possibility of exile (2 Chr 7:20–22). That is, the text provides for the Israelites’ destruction; it holds out nothing but promise for the Davidides. To a limited extent, even the Gibeonite incubation seems to share this understanding (1 Kgs 3:5–15). The text states that Yhwh is fulfilling his dynastic obligations to David (v. 6). The test erected by the text – the potential reward for Solomon’s fidelity – is length of reign (3:14). This is the issue that Solomon’s behavior will decide. First, the implication seems to be a tacit understanding concerning the ongoing nature of the dynasty.  23

On the exception, 1 Kgs 6:11–13, see above, n. 19. Jonah (Jonah 4:3, 8–9) and Elijah (1 Kgs 19:4) ask to die, and receive lessons in meteorology instead. The case of Job is a bit more intricate and is arguable from either position. 25 David’s prayer for his sick love-child is rebuffed (2 Sam 12:15–20). But this is a specific punishment for a (specific) sin (12:14). Generally, biblical narrators are not interested in the prayers of the kinds of characters whose prayers would be rebuffed. This is quite plainly the case in the Pentateuch, the Former Prophets, and Chronicles. 24

7. Sacred History and Ideology 219  Second, the fact that Solomon reigned for forty years must imply at least a modicum of fidelity on his part. Apart from such hints, and mutatis mutandis in conjunction with them, the presence of an occasional editorial apostil to the effect that Solomon fulfilled his obligations to the deity is decisive. 1 Kgs 3:3, for example, states that “Solomon loved Yhwh, adhering to the statutes of David his father...”. The Gibeonite episode concludes, “Divine wisdom was in him to perform justice” (3:28). Subsequent texts insist on his wisdom and demeanor (5:9–14, 26; 10:3–4, 9, 23–24), on the peace and prosperity he enjoyed (4:20; 51, 4–26; 10:1–29, etc.), and so forth. The atmosphere implies a positive evaluation of his performance. Given this information, and given especially the integration of the material on Solomon’s reign shared in 2 Chr 1–9 and 1 Kgs 3–10 with the rest of Chronicles, it is difficult to resist staking a conclusion: there was a source common to Chronicles and Kings, on which Chronicles relied more consistently than did Kings. This source seems to have been favorable to Solomon. It seems to have affirmed eternal Davidic dynasty over the northern tribes. It seems to have exuded the optimism of an expansive community.26

III If one were to seek a source underlying Kings and Chronicles, the logical period to which to assign it would be that of Hezekiah. There are several hints in the opening genealogies that this is the case. One speaks of the enrollment of a genealogy in Hezekiah’s time (1 Chr 4:41). The Saulide lists have eleven and thirteen generations in them (1 Chr 8; 9). Curiously, there are thirteen generations from David to Hezekiah. Moreover, the last instance of the term “enroll,” (hty‫ۊ‬Ğ) in Chronicles, used with reference to the genealogies, is found precisely in the account of Hezekiah’s reign (2 Chr 31:16, 17, 19). But sounder indications are to be sought in the formulaic variation after Hezekiah.27 Every accession formula in Kings (barring Asa’s, Jehoram’s, and Ahaz’s) for the kings of Judah reports the name of the queen mother. This continues down to the Exile. In Chronicles, however, the queen mother’s name disappears after Hezekiah, though it is consistently present to  26 See above, n. 12. Since 1 Kgs 3–10 derive from a source in any case, and since that source is probably the one from which 2 Kgs 11 is drawn (and note the convergence with Chronicles there), its concern with the temple should probably be mooted. 27 See H. Macy, The Sources of the Books of Chronicles: A Reassessment (unpublished PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1975) for the raw data.

220 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  that point. This does not, on the surface of things, seem likely to be a literary device. Similarly, the burial notices both of Kings and of Chronicles undergo a significant shift after Hezekiah’s. In Chronicles, most of the notices up to that point stipulate burial “in the city of David” (bҳyr dwd). None of those after Hezekiah does (2 Chr 33:20, 24; 35:24). Here, a similar phenomenon is present in Kings: up to Hezekiah, all kings are buried “in the city of David.” Thereafter, none is (2 Kgs 21:18, 26; 23:30). There is a palpable break at Hezekiah’s time. There are other indications in Kings that some Hezekian source was in use by the “Deuteronomist.” For example, 2 Kgs 18:5 states that Hezekiah was greater than any king who came after or before him. 2 Kgs 23:25 makes a remarkably similar statement about Josiah. Moreover, while Chronicles reports prophetic activity throughout Judah’s history, Hezekiah is the first king in Judah, according to Kings, to confront a prophet since the Solomonic schism. There is, in each account, something periodic about Hezekiah’s reign. Hezekiah, for Kings, is the first king to remove the high places. In both histories, he is the last king of Israel or Judah of whom it is explicitly stated that God was with him (2 Kgs 18:7; 2 Chr 32:7–8). In Chronicles, God is last with Necho, and against Josiah (2 Chr 35:21). It is perhaps to be inferred that he is also later with Cyrus (2 Chr 36:22–23). Within Chronicles, other schemes are in evidence. A relatively weak example is that of the notion of “strength, consolidation.” The clearest usage here is that of 2 Chr 1:1: “Solomon ben-David, ‘took hold’ over his kingship” (way-yit‫ۊ‬azzƝq ‘a1 malkûtô). This stands where one would expect the accession formula to appear. It is associated with Yhwh’s aid, and it leads immediately to the establishment of communication at the tabernacle. Similar statements are made about Rehoboam (2 Chr 12:13a; note esp. 13:7; contrast 11:7 and then 12:1), David (1 Chr 11:10), Abijah (2 Chr 13:21), Jehoshaphat (2 Chr 17:1), Jehoram (2 Chr 21:4), and Jehoiada (2 Chr 23:1), who was buried in the graves of the kings (2 Chr 24:16), though his protégé, Joash, was not (2 Chr 24:25).28 In these cases, the term relates either to taking hold of the kingship or to the accession formulae of the king. In other cases, the reference, and even occasionally the binyan of the verb, is different. Thus, Asa “takes hold” immediately before his reform (2 Chr 15:8; 16:9 is more difficult). Amaziah “takes hold” (2 Chr 25:11) by obeying Yhwh’s orders just before leading troops into battle. The notice, “when the kingdom was firmly in his grip” (25:3 – ka’ăšer hƗzeqâ hammamlƗkâ ‘ƗlƗyw; the same phrase has crept into 2 Kgs 14:5, one of two  28

Jehoiada is a royal figure for Chronicles. His 130-year life span is plain testimony to his righteousness; his burial among kings is proof.

7. Sacred History and Ideology 221  applications of the root to the kingship in all of Kings), forms the preface to his regnal record. The root occurs in similar bearings with regard to Uzziah (26:5, 8, 15, 16 – cf. 12:1), Jotham (27:6 with vv. 7–9), and, finally, Hezekiah (32:5 – in preparation for war with Assyria; Hezekiah, like Uzziah, is humbled in 32:25–26). In all, Chronicles applies the verb ‫ۊ‬zq, often in the hitpaҳel (Dt), to every Judahite king from David to Hezekiah, with the exceptions of Ahaziah and Ahaz. The last occurrence of the hitpaҳel refers to Hezekiah. In each case, there is some more or less general connotation to the usage. Contrariwise, after Hezekiah, the root is nowhere applied in the same connections. 29 It would be too much to suggest a deliberate connection between the use of ‫ۊ‬zq in Chronicles and the name Hezekiah (‫ۊ‬zqyh).30 At the same time, the disturbance in this case after Hezekiah is nearly as stark as the disappearance of the queen mothers’ names at that point. Perhaps it is even more significant. In this context of the breakdown of formulae, the breakdown of various Chronistic motifs at Hezekiah elicits no surprise. Hezekiah is the last king of whom it is reported that Yhwh was with him, saved him, rescued him, gave him any sort of rest, brought foreigners to pay tribute to him, and so forth. This is peculiar: an author who reports as frequently as does Chronicles that Yhwh entreated will not rebuke, that Yhwh, once sought, will not repudiate (1 Chr 28:9; 2 Chr 15:2; 28:11; 30:6, 8, 9; 14:6, etc.), is not the author to produce the story of Josiah’s death. Chronicles will produce Amaziah’s or Rehoboam’s or Uzziah’s or Asa’s or Joash’s backsliding, Manasseh’s or Hezekiah’s or David’s regeneration. But it will not kill an innocent king, as it does Josiah. It will not – as it does in the case of Josiah – report Yhwh’s championing an alien army. Josiah is the only Judahite king in Chronicles to die untimely, yet innocent of active trespass. He is the only king against whom Yhwh takes an active stance. He is the only king unreservedly endorsed by Chronicles whose accumulation of “wealth” is not reported. Even the simple formula “wealth and honor” disappears after Hezekiah. Generally, there is no enumerating the thematic shifts at Hezekiah in Chronicles. The examples above can serve to create only an impressionis-

 29 It pops up in 2 Chr 34:8, 10; 35:2, in the first two occurrences with regard to reinforcing the temple, and in the third with regard to reinforcing the priestly orders. These are pedestrian usage, and far from the more formulaic usage of Chronicles up to Hezekiah. 30 In conversation, however, Professor S. Talmon has drawn my attention to Isa 39:1, which, especially in the context of the preceding verses (esp. 38:16–17, 19–21) with their plethora of ‫ۊ‬ets, looks very much like intentional paronomasia.

222 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  tic effect. The text jettisons thereafter the entire rest-motif complex. The break is substantial. The break is clean. At the same time, there is another path by which the break at Hezekiah in Chronicles can be established: there is an inclusion formed there between Hezekiah and the “United Monarchy.” This has been recognized by various authors.31 Williamson, for example, notes the emphases on Hezekiah’s and Solomon’s wealth (2 Chr 32:27–29; 9:13ff.), on the bringing of tribute to both (9:23–24; 32:23), on the two-week length of the festival of temple dedication (7:8–9; 30:23, 26:1), and so forth.32 It would be difficult, additionally, to miss other bracketing devices – for example, Hezekiah’s Passover is described as the height of joy since the time of Solomon (2 Chr 30:26). And the duties ascribed to the priests in Hezekiah’s time (2 Chr 31:3) are precisely those described in the time of Solomon (1 Chr 16:39– 40; 23:31; 2 Chr 2:3; 8:13; cf. Isa 1:13–14). The notion of the priests’ selfsanctification occurs only in the accounts of Solomon’s and Hezekiah’s reigns (2 Chr 5:11; 29: 15, 34). And other items of a lexical and a thematic nature fall into the same scheme. There is very little point in multiplying examples here. It may be worth observing that with regard to Hezekiah and Solomon only (2 Chr 31:21; 7:11), Chronicles affirms that the king succeeded in all he sought to do with regard to the temple. It may be worth noting that Hezekiah (2 Chr 32:22), like David (1 Chr 18:6, 13), and, by implication, like Solomon, was successful in whatever he did. It may be worth observing that, like Solomon (2 Chr 1:1ff.), Hezekiah recovers access to the tabernacle (2 Chr 29:6 – way-yassƝb penêhem!), which Ahaz had shut off (2 Chr 28:24). It is important that unlike Rehoboam (2 Chr 12:14), but like the people under Solomon (1 Chr 22:19; 29:18), Hezekiah “fixed all his heart to seek Yhwh” (2 Chr 30:19, and cf. 28:8–9; cf. 19:3; 20:33). It is revealing that Yhwh listens to Hezekiah and cures the people of their impurity (2 Chr 30:20), the sort of tailored miracle that stands out in any biblical book.33 And it seems impressive that of the first six Hezekian Levitic leaders enumerated (2 Chr 29:12), five have names identical with those in the genealogies of David’s appointees to the temple service (1 Chr 6:20, 21, 29, 5–6, 6).  31 See, recently, R. I. Coggins, 1 & 2 Chronicles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) on Hezekiah. 32 See Williamson, Israel in the Books of Chronicles, 120–12.5. 33 It may be that the historian understood the “miracle” in a less-than-miraculous sense. So, for example, Yhwh cleansing the people may mean nothing more than that priestly (perhaps divinatory) dispensation was obtained. In very much the same way, Chronicles summarizes the civil war after Saul’s death by the phrase “Yhwh diverted the kingdom to David ben-Jesse” (1 Chr 10:14). Scholars will need to pay more attention to the modes of Israelite discourse in future attempts to understand the text and reconstruct the history.

7. Sacred History and Ideology

223

 Nevertheless, the strongest evidence is the repetition in Hezekiah’s account of themes first set out with regard to the United Monarchy. These have been reviewed above. The culmination of the rest-motif, with its associated notions of salvation, of prosperity, of abundance, of honor abroad, of foreigners bringing tribute – all in Hezekiah’s reign – the fact that Hezekiah’s Passover is specifically compared to Solomon’s temple dedication (2 Chr 30:26), the fact that Hezekiah is the first king since Solomon to address all Israel “from Beersheba unto Dan” (2 Chr 30:5; 1 Chr 21:2 and 2 Chr 2:16)34 all contribute to the general impression. That Hezekiah is said to have stationed the Levites at the house of Yhwh with timbrels, with lyres and with flutes, according to the command of David and Gad the royal seer and Nathan the prophet, because the command was from Yhwh’s hand, from the hand of his prophets (29:25),

recalling thereby Solomon’s receipt of the temple plans written by Yhwh’s hand, from David, and his stationing of the Levites in the Davidically ordained order (2 Chr 5:12–13 with 1 Chr 28:11, 19), indicates a conscious correspondence. Vestiges of the correspondence between Solomon and Hezekiah have even crept in Kings. Thus, David enjoins Solomon to piety, le-maҳan taĞkîl be-kǀl ’ášer taҳáĞeh, in order that you may do wisely/fittingly in all that you do. (1 Kgs 2:3)

And 2 Kgs 18:7 reports of Hezekiah, be-kǀl ’ášer yƝ‫܈‬Ɲ’ yaĞkîl, in everything he ventured he did wisely/fittingly.

These are the only such remarks in Kings. Chronicles regards Hezekiah as a second Solomon. The presence of the same motif in Kings, which is antagonistic to Solomon, suggests that the motif was a legacy of some prior, common source. Though the sort of lexical evidence that might be adduced to support this construct does not lend itself to sufficiently compressed presentation for inclusion in this context, a last thematic observation is worth expressing. Both Kings and Chronicles tend to erect certain narrative tensions around which to construct the history. In Kings, these are overwhelmingly negative: the major ones are, when will Yhwh eradicate the north, and when will Yhwh eradicate Judah? When will Yhwh avenge the sin of Jeroboam, and when will Yhwh repay the wickedness of Judah’s kings? Within these larger tensions, there are, of course, smaller ones. When will Yhwh eradicate the houses of Jeroboam, Baasha, and Omri? Will Yhwh fulfill his  34

See Williamson, Israel in the Books of Chronicles, 123, on the interpretation of ’r‫܈‬ yĞr’l in 2 Chr 2:16. His discussion typifies his strong grasp on the material.

224 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  dynastic promise to Jehu, and when will he eradicate Jehu’s house? Will Josiah destroy the Bethel sanctuary? Will Jezreel’s dogs take their portion of Jezebel? In fact, of all the prophecy-fulfillment schemes selected by von Rad in Kings,35 only three are potentially positive: the fulfillment of the promise to David that a son would sit on his throne (1 Kgs 8:20; 2 Chr 6:10); the four-generation promise of dynasty to Jehu (2 Kgs 10:30; 15:12);36 and the prophecy that Josiah would not see the coming destruction of Jerusalem (2 Kgs 22:15ff.; 23:30). The first lies partially outside the book (von Rad cites the promise in 2 Sam 7:13) and derives from older materials (probably the common source) that had become traditional (cf. Pss 89; 132, inter alia). The second is merely dilatory of the eradication of Jehu’s house (note 2 Kgs 10:31). And the third is similarly dilatory, but of an even greater disaster. Kings, that is to say, does not portray a world rife with milk and honey. The narrative tensions in Chronicles stand in a marked contrast. There, the first question (after “Will these genealogies and lists ever end?”) is, will David seek and find Yhwh? Will David recover communication with God? Will Solomon complete the rapprochement Will Solomon earn perpetual dynasty? Will Hezekiah return Israel from limbo to the Davidic fold? Most of the tensions in Chronicles are quite positive in their narrative bearings. Chronicles asks, how will a problem be solved? How will Israel’s lot ameliorate? Kings asks, conversely, when is the axe going to fall? Yet, after the account of Hezekiah’s reign, Chronicles ceases to ask the same sort of question. In fact, it seems to erect no narrative tensions at all. Events follow in sequence; but no expectations are evoked in the reader. The suggestion is, the work was geared to climax and to culminate in the account of Hezekiah’s reign. The foregoing argumentation has by necessity been impressionistic. It nevertheless opens up the possibility that a common source underlies Kings and Chronicles. This is not to say that Chronicles does not depend  35

See G. von Rad, Studies in Deuteronomy (SET 9; London, 1953) 78–82. Von Rad has, of course, restricted himself artificially. Chronicles, too, contains the element of prophecy-fulfillment. This is only a single narrative device among many; its importance can quite easily be distorted. In fact, one might well call the prophecy itself a release from tension, since the fulfillment is by and large mechanical. 36 Von Rad does not list this case, probably because there is no notice of prophetic mediation. But 2 Kgs 10:30 is open to the interpretation that the message came secondhand, or, rather, that the historian or his source understood that to be the case. 1 Sam 30:8 reports that Yhwh spoke to David; a glance at the preceding verse establishes that priestly mediation of the message is in point. It is perfectly plausible, thus, that 2 Kgs 10:30 represents a similar instance, but without the contextual control. Similarly, 2 Sam 5:19, 23–24; 1 Chr 14:10, 14–15 look very much like mediated war-oracles, though no notice of the mediation appears in the context.

7. Sacred History and Ideology 225  also on Kings – the statements that Asa and Jehoshaphat removed the bƗmôt, for example, are juxtaposed with remarks taken from Kings that the bƗmôt remained (2 Chr 14:2; 15:17; 17:6; 20:33). The fief-formula even occurs once in Chronicles (2 Chr 21:7), though it is wholly irrelevant to that work as it stands. But the vestigial presence in Kings of language and motifs full-blown in Chronicles strongly suggests common reliance on a prior source. The strong articulation of Hezekiah’s correspondence to Solomon and the stark shift of interest after Hezekiah point directly to a source from Hezekiah’s era. That is, in much the same measure as Josiah’s court produced a “Deuteronomistic” history, it seems that Hezekiah’s court produced an extensive historical work of its own. This work, used sparingly in Kings, formed the broader base for Chronicles. Possibly, given the distribution of the rest motif in Joshua and Judges, it actually embraced what later became the “Deuteronomistic history.” At all events, it exalted Solomon,37 rejected northern independence, and looked forward to a period of expansion, of wealth, or of reconstitution. It viewed the destruction of the north with equanimity – as a chance for reunification of Israel with the Davidic line. It left its mark on all subsequent Israelite historiography.

IV The present context does not afford space for extensive ramification on the basis of what precedes. These materials do suggest, however, a few points of general interest. First, the biblical historian – the redactor, arranger, tradent, whatever – was prepared to live with logical contradictions. This is true of Kings, of Chronicles, of Samuel, of Joshua, and of the Pentateuchal  37

Note further Prov 25:1. Hezekiah’s dabbling with wisdom suggests further preoccupation with Solomon at his court. Thus, the intuition of R.B.Y. Scott that Hezekiah’s court was the fount of Solomon’s reputation, though ineptly argued, evinces a certain prescience. See his “Solomon and the Beginnings of Wisdom in Israel” in M. Noth and D.W. Thomas (eds.), Wisdom in Israel (VTSup 3; Leiden, 1955) 262–279. More recently, see Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 161–162. Unfortunately, the notion that “wisdom” – the reification and restriction of which in the last quarter-century seem somewhat to have abated, yet without producing the rush to find “ignorance literature” and a “stupidity tradition” that one would expect in response originated at Hezekiah’s court seems to me to stem from the character and origins of the sources more than from any semblance of historical reality. See below. The fact that much of our documentation conies from the last century and a half of Judah’s early independence hardly precludes the possibility of an extensive written literature from earlier times. Quite the reverse: the consolidation of literature, its assembly, its collection, in the seventh century suggests a literary legacy of considerable size.

226 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  historians as well. The Israelite historian seems to have respect for his sources. Moreover, the apparent emphases of biblical compositions – of Chronicles on Davidic kingship, the unity of Israel, and on royal “consolidation, taking hold,” of Kings on Solomon’s positive achievements and on Hezekiah’s piety may be dictated in some measure by the use of sources. Chronicles ends with Yhwh championing two foreign kings, with Cyrus urging Judah to return and rebuild the temple under his authority. This is hardly a defense of Davido-Solomonic rule. Second, it may be that the historiographic enterprise was one undertaken in monarchic Judah on a basis more extensive, and to a degree more sophisticated, than most of biblical scholarship is prepared to countenance. If Kings includes texts affirming (1 Kgs 4; 5:27–28, 29–32) and denying (1 Kgs 9:22)38 Solomon’s conscription of Israelites, if Chronicles includes texts affirming and denying Asa’s and Jehoshaphat’s removal of the bƗmôt, one must reckon with the possibility not just that one or more historical traditions preceded but that historiography was sufficiently developed to deal with the problem, albeit in its own terms. Key, therefore, is the issue of selection. Thus, Kings selects less freely from the putatively Hezekian source than does Chronicles; Chronicles selects from Samuel only the materials pertinent to its enterprise.39 But selection and criteria must be examined in some serious manner. On the flip side, there is nothing to say that Isaiah’s account of Uzziah’s reign (2 Chr 26:22) or, perhaps, of Hezekiah’s (32:32) was not the equal of any other work in sophistication or breadth. Israel’s historiographic tradition is as hoary as J, perhaps hoarier. To neglect that fact is, I think, a signal miscalculation. Third, and finally, it seems likely that we are dealing here with a written document, a thematically integrated account. The evidence suggests to me that it encompasses all that we now call “Deuteronomistic history,” from Joshua to Kings. I have no doubt that this suggestion, if noted, will be called into question, that the thesis of this presentation will be subject to attack. Still, whether it is right or wrong, it strikes me that accretional, redactional, and other models – the question cui bono? asked a posteriori – will not suffice to explain either the thematic generalization in Chronicles of materials anomalous in Kings – from the term h‫܈܈‬rwt in 2 Kgs 11:14, a “technical term” shared here with Chronicles, which uses it more than  38 See Gray, Kings I & II, 155–156, for the most reasonable of the many attempts to explain the contradiction away. It seems to me, however, that the tension remains strong. 39 Chronicles may not have had Samuel in its present form, of course. Or, if the Samuel materials were included already in the source used by Chronicles, the source may not have had the current text. Especially 2 Sam 11:2–12:25 looks very much like an insertion. Possibly it seems so because the historian is integrating two different sorts of records about David’s reign.

7. Sacred History and Ideology 227  once, in a shared context, to broader themes, such as the rest motif – or the manifest ideological stratigraphy of both Chronicles and Kings. I therefore incline toward placing the supposed source in the reign of Hezekiah, the only king for whose reign literary activity is documented (Prov 25:1), and the king whose era produced the first prophetic books (that remain extant, of course). At the same time, what with J and Judges and the so-called Court History, it behooves us to recognize the existence of a complex of literature antedating Hezekiah, and largely unknown to us. Chronicles, citing its sources, makes known the existence of a fair body of documents. This is no deception. We may find, underlying Kings, an extensive historical account. We are almost certain to find, underlying Kings, an extensive historiographic tradition. Before we ask, “cui bono?” we may profitably inquire, is this an isolated phenomenon? Is this a constant of pre-Exilic Israel? If so, the criteria for the inclusion of materials and the methods employed – if any – to rework, as well as to supplement, materials assume a prime interest.40 Israel’s was an historically oriented culture, as even commonplace biblical scholarship will concede. In such a culture, historiography is no alien being. On the contrary, we may expect the records to be as extensive as they are for any ancient culture. Only, we must be open both to the possibility of their existence and to the subtlety of their influence. In David’s “court history,” Israel presents us with the most sophisticated historiography until Suetonius. She wines us on politics; she dines us on personality. That from the tenth century to the seventh she should impose an historiographic moratorium on herself is sufficiently improbable to command disbelief. In all likelihood, Israel had a flourishing historiographic tradition. Scholars may or may not be able to effect its recovery. But it is the duty of the historian to bear the possibility into account – in his reconstructions, in his researches, and in his deliberations. Treatments delinquent in this regard impoverish themselves, impoverishing the society that is their subject.

 40

Unfortunately, this consideration calls for a reevaluation of the “common authorship” of Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah. Depending upon the use of sources, common authorship remains a possibility. Here, principles of selection, exclusion, and reworking have prime importance.

8. The Editions of Kings in the 7th-6th Centuries BCE*' This study with David Vanderhooft originated in discussions we had about the composition of Kings during his time at York University pursuing an M.A. on the subject of Israelite kinship structures and the dating of P’s language about them. This turned out to be pre-exilic in nature, and certainly in ideology, and not to reflect the changed circumstances exhibited in texts addressing kinship in the post-exilic literature. In the study, we attempted to extend the analytical line that had been pioneered in modern times by Helga Weippert, but with a particular view to the historiographic structure, and particularly the formulae for accession, sources, death and burial, of the kings of Judah and Israel. We noted where these formulae were placed relative to other information about the kings in question. And we observed the presence in some of the death and burial notices of supplementary notes not included in the body of the regnal account proper. In attending to the skeleton of the reigns, rather than to the content of them, we hoped to find – and did find – patterns that confirmed Weippert’s intuition. We also arrived at the conclusion that certain anomalies required, rather than suggested, the introduction of materials, such as the body of 1 Kings 22, at particular stages in the evolution of Kings. Just prior to our own work, that of Iain Provan, a student of Hugh Williamson’s, was published, with extensive argument to the same effect. While subsequent reaction was far from uniform, this article remains the most systematic examination of the regnal formularies found in Kings, and formed, in part, the basis for the arguments made by myself in The First Historians about Kings and about the structure of the Deuteronomistic History generally. How my coauthor in the course of the research and writing of this paper came to have the nickname “Bigfoot” attached to him is a story of its own. The nickname was bestowed by my daughter, Orly, then a mere tot, who thought David’s feet large, and who was endlessly tolerated and indeed treated by him. By a coincidence that deserves elaboration as a story, his presence in our house coincided with that of two budgies, Martel and Bigfoot, the latter of whom died before he completed the M.A. York awarded its highest recognition for work at that level. R. R. Wilson served on the committee as the external reader, an unusual honor for an M.A. in itself. In any event, as Bigfoot left to study for his Ph.D. at Harvard, most of the block turned out, including many children, to celebrate “Bigfoot Goes to Boston with a Big Rah Rah.”

 *

Originally published with David S. Vanderhooft in Hebrew Union College Annual 62 (1992) 179–244. ' This study was conceived and executed during research for a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada General Grant accorded Halpern. Vanderhooft’s contributions were supported by funds awarded by York University and an Ontario graduate Scholarship.

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Introduction The Books of Kings, key to the redactional history of the Deuteronomistic History, use formulae to structure regnal accounts. Previously, scholars have appealed to the formulae evaluating the reigns of kings to hypothesize editions ending at the reigns of Hezekiah and Josiah, before the final edition, which extends into the Exile. A global examination of Kings’ formulae does not confirm earlier constructions of the regnal evaluations. However, the formulae for death and burial, for naming Queen-Mothers, for regnal evaluation, and for source citations reflect changes in authorship at Hezekiah and at Josiah. Also, the sequences in which information is integrated into the formulae – where assassinations are reported in relation to source citations, or where supplementary notes are inserted after the main regnal account – sustain the earlier redaction-historical hypotheses. Careful study also indicates that the prophecy of Huldah originates, as has long been claimed, in a Josianic version of Kings. Further, the originally oral materials in 1 Kgs 17–22 reflect both Hezekian and Josianic editorial activity, as materials in Chronicles also show. Overall, a picture emerges of three editions of the Deuteronomistic History, in line with other scholars’ reconstructions, reflecting the changing culture of eighth–sixthcentury Judah.

I Viewed from a pacific remove, the literature that has accumulated in the last decades concerning the redactional history of Deuteronomy and the Former Prophets exhibits extraordinary agreement. Martin Noth’s vision of a unified Exilic History, a Deuteronomistic History (DtrH), remains a centerpiece of all mainstream theories. Yet, in detail, there is little agreement on the provenance of even the most fundamental elements of DtrH: the accounts of the Solomonic schism, and of Hezekiah’s and Josiah’s reforms, the indexes of the ideology of kingship – all are awash in the boggy mire of uncertainty.1 The historiographic reality of an exilic DtrH discourages  1 The overview here is in the nature of a sketch. For recent, comprehensive reviews of the literature, see H. Weippert, “Das deuteronomistische Geschichtswerk: sein Ziel und Ende in der neueren Forschung,” ThRu V.F. 50 (1985) 213–49; I. W. Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings (BZAW 172; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988). Sigla employed in the text include: DtrH: the Deuteronomistic History  Dtr(x): the exilic version of the history

230 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  dissent from Noth’s notion of the final redaction. But DtrH’s literary prehistory remains enigmatic. Noth himself posited that the exilic composition (Dtr[x]) based itself on a mixture of sources; to this composition, additions accrued in transmission.2 Recent scholars continue to defend this view,3 although some maintain that the accretions came in the form of systematic, identifiable reeditions of the original. 4 Conversely, another school maintains that the sources of the exilic work had already been assembled into a unified history, such that Dtr(x) was itself a re-edition of a Josianic narrative (Dtr[jos]). This hypothesis, which enjoyed a vogue at the end of the last century,5 was  Dtr(jos): the Josianic version of the history Dtr(hez): the Hezekian version of the history H(Dtr)a: the historian responsible for version a (Hezekian or Josianic) of the history E(Dtr)x: the exilic editor of Dtr(x). C: Causative [C + , active; C-, passive] Chr: Chronicles, the Chronicler (and edition number) D: Pi‫ލލ‬el DBF: Death and Burial Formulary G: Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible OG: Old Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible QM: Queen-Mother. 2 M. Noth, Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien, 1 – Die sammelnden und bearbeitenden Geschichtswerke im Alten Testment (Halle: Niemeyer, 1943). 3 R. Smend, Die Entstehung des Alten Testaments (TW 1; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1978) 114–15; H.-D. Hoffmann, Reform und Reformen: Untersuchungen zu einem Grundthema der deuteronomistischen Geschichtsschreibung (ATANT 66; Zurich: Theologischer, 1980); J. van Seters, In Search of History (New Haven: Yale University, 1983). 4 R. Smend, “Das Gesetz und die Völker: Ein Beitrag zur deuteronomistischen Redaktionsgeschichte,” in H.W. Wolff (ed.), Probleme Biblischer Theologie: Gerhard von Rad zum 70. Geburtstag (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1971) 494–509; W. Dietrich, Prophetie und Geschichte: Eine Redaktionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zum deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerk (FRLANT 108; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972); T. Veijola, Die ewige Dynastie: David und die Entstehung seiner Dynastie nach der deuteronomistischen Darstellung (AASF B/193; Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1975); idem, Das Königtum in der Beurteilung der deuteronomistischen Historiographie: eine redaktionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung (AASF B/198; Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1977). 5 J. Wellhausen, Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments (Berlin: De Gruyter, 19634) 262–64; A. Kuenen, Historisch-kritisch onderzoek naar het onstaan en de verzameling van de Boeken des Oeden Verbonds (Leiden: n.p., 18672) 263–68; B. Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel. I. Geschichte Israel unter der Königsherrschaft (Allgemeine Geschichte in Einzeldarstellungen 1/6/1; Berlin: G. Grote, 1887) 73–79; C. H. Cornill, Introduction to the Canonical Booh of the Old Testament (London: Williams and Norgate, 1907[1891]) 217–220; C. Steuernagel, Lehrbuch der Einleitung in das Alte Testament (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1912) 245–49.

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infused with fresh vigor by Frank Cross’s powerful treatment of the thematic and literary development of the books of Kings.6 Cross’s views on Kings coincided with a fresh overture on the part of Helga Weippert.7 Weippert’s careful analysis of the judgment formulae in Kings led her to discern two successive pre-exilic editions of DtrH. More recently, she has affirmed the essential congruity of her “triple redaction” and Cross’s “double redaction”.8 Weippert, in effect, suggests that an originally Hezekian history (Dtr[hez]) was updated around the time of Josiah (Dtr[jos]) and again in the exile (Dtr[x]). She has attempted to correlate this view with painstaking redactional histories of individual pericopes.9 Latterly, Anthony F. Campbell has reevaluated Weippert’s evidence, following her lead at most points but identifying a “Prophetic Record” as the text underlying her first redaction. 10 Conversely, J. Brian Peckham, and, for other reasons, Iain W. Provan have embraced the notion of a Hezekian history, while jettisoning the intermediate, Josianic, stage between Dtr(hez) and Dtr(x).11 That the notion of a Hezekian history, like that of a Josianic history, recapitulates 18th- and 19th-century scholarship 12 gives the impression that  6 F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1973) 274–89; cf. also V. Lohfink, “Die Bundesurkunde des Königs Josias (Eine Frage an die Deuteronomiumsforschung),” Biblica 44 (1963) 261–88, 461–98; J. Gray, I and II Kings (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964) 6–9; J. D. Levenson, “Who Inserted the Book of the Torah?” HTR 68 (1975) 203–33; R. E. Friedman, “From Egypt to Egypt: Dtr1 and Dtr2,” Traditions in Transformation: Turning-Points in Biblical Faith (ed. Ǻ. Halpern and J.D. Levenson; Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 1981) 167–92; idem, The Exile and Biblical Narrative: The Formation of the Deuteronomistic and Priestly Works (HSM 22; Chico, CA: Scholars, 1981) 1–43; idem, Who Wrote the Bible? (New York: Summit, 1987) 136–149; R. D. Nelson, The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History (JSOTSup 18; Sheffield: JSOT, 1981); A. D. H. Mayes, The Story of Israel between Settlement and Exile: A Redactional Study of the Deuteronomistic History (London: SCM, 1983). 7 H. Weippert, “Die ‘deuteronomistischen’ Beurteilungen der Könige von Israel und Juda und das Problem der Redaktion der Königsbücher,” Biblica 53 (1972) 301–39. For an exploration of some of the implications of Weippert’s thesis, see A. Lemaire, “Vers l’histoire de la rédaction des livres des Rois” ZAW 98 (1986) 221–236. 8 Weippert, “Das deuteronomistische Geschichtswerk.” 9 H. Weippert, “Die Ätiologie des Nordreiches und seines Königshauses (I Reg 11,29–40)” ZAW 95 (1983) 344–75; idem, “Ahab el campeador? Redaktionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zu 1 Kön 22,” Biblica 69 (1988) 457–79. 10 ǹ. F. Campbell, Of Prophets and Kings: A Late Ninth-Century Document (1 Samuel 1–2 Kings 10) (CBQMS, 17; Washington: Catholic Biblical Association, 1986). 11 J. B. Peckham, The Composition of the Deuteronomistic History (HSM 35; Atlanta, Scholars, 1985); Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings. 12 J. G. Eichhorn, Einleitung in das Alte Testament (3 vols; Leipzig: Weidmanns Erben und Reich, 1780–83) 196; J. J. Stähelin, Kritische Untersuchungen über den Penta-

232 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  the redactional analysis of DtrH reverts to earlier states with a periodic regularity. Still, the conflicting hypotheses invite further discussion. The tack taken here, broadly speaking, harmonizes the positions of Cross and Weippert. As Weippert saw, there are compelling reasons to suppose that some form of the Book of Kings did initially culminate in the reign of Hezekiah, and that an independent edition of the history was produced during or immediately after his reign. Likewise, too many formal and, with Cross, thematic features indicate a change with Josiah to reject the notion of a Josianic edition. And, the history was certainly updated sometime after 560 BCE, possibly as late as 540–530. The structure of the analysis will be complex, and an overview of the discussion is therefore in place. In II, we examine the formula in which Kings reports the deaths of Kings. II.ii reviews the evidence concerning the first part of the formula, the phrase, “he lay with his fathers,” with which H(Dtr) reports peaceful demise. II.iii then discusses the second part of the formulary, concerning burial, in the cases of Israelite and Judahite kings. II.iv observes the consistency of the formulary from Solomon to the reign of Hezekiah, and II.v the variation that sets in from that point forward. Section III discusses a similar break at Hezekiah, both in Kings and in Chronicles, in the accession formulae reporting the name of the Judahite queen-mother (QM). Section IV discusses changes in the regnal evaluation formulae for kings of Judah and Israel. IV.i and IV.ii assess the variation in the vocabulary of regnal evaluations from Jeroboam to Pekah in the northern kingdom, and from Rehoboam to Hezekiah, and from Hezekiah to Josiah, in the southern. IV.iii then analyses the Judahite regnal evaluations for evidence of thematic changes after Josiah and, earlier, after Hezekiah. Section V.i examines the way in which the various segments of Kings place reports of assassinations in the sequence of closing formulae for each king. V.ii examines the placement of supplementary notes (remarks placed after the source notice and before the death formulae) for Judahite kings before and after Josiah. V.iii then reviews the source citations of Kings, the internal structure of which indicates a change starting with Hezekiah. In section VI, we turn from formulaic patterns to individual texts whose content is revealing for the redactional history of Kings. VI.i addresses the prophecy of Huldah, long a crux for the date of Josiah’s regnal account. VI.ii and VI.iii consider the likely context of that prophecy in view of its manifest intentions, and in connection with Judahite terminology concerning death. VI.iv indicates how the Huldah oracle was subsequently interpreted, while VI.v contemplates the oracle from the pre-exilic and exilic viewpoints. Section VII examines the contradiction between reports of  teuch, die Bücher Josua, Richter, Samuels und der Könige (Berlin: Reimer, 1843) 137– 40.

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peaceful and of violent death for Ahab, and isolates different hands in 1 Kgs 17–22. Section VIII then correlates this analysis with the three-tiered redactional scheme here proposed, and with the regnant thesis concerning the relationship of DtrH to Chronicles, reviewing as well the transitions undergone at each redaction of the history. Section IX closes the study with a reflection on the cultural history reflected in the formation of DtrH. It correlates the hypothesis advanced here with theses argued elsewhere about DtrH and about Judah in the eighthsixth centuries, considering the implications for the Hezekian, Josianic and exilic editions of the history.

II.i Probably the most obvious barometer of editorial shifts within Kings is fluctuation in its skeletal formulary. This is the index on which several of the aforementioned scholars depend, most notably Weippert. Their theory holds that variations in the regnal formulae in Kings reflect the activity of diverse authors; on the basis of such indications, the processes by which various pericopes entered the history may be reconstructed. This approach boasts the advantage of providing, first, an overview of the isolable redactional seams in Kings, and second, a means to locate individual pericopes in the context of the compositional development of Kings. Of course, the question does remain, when is variation a signal of changed authorship, and when the result of a single author’s exploration of a fixed form? Here, a conservative view, relative to the other literature on the subject, seems to be in order: if Qohelet decries the endless proliferation of scrolls, William of Occam cautions us against needlessly multiplying authors.

II.ii For the purpose of stratifying the literary history of Kings, one of the most telling regnal formulae is the Death and Burial Formula (DBF). This consists of a notice of the king’s demise, followed by a description of his burial (with or without his fathers), in a particular town. Typically, in cases of peaceful death, the formula runs, wyškb RN ҳm ’btyw (‘RN lay with his fathers’); thereafter comes a notice of burial, where appropriate, using the root, qbr ‘bury’ in either the active or passive (G or N). Down to Ahaz, the formula for kings of Judah then stipulates that the burial was ҳm ’btyw ‘with his fathers’. The remainder of the formula names the location of the burial (bҳyr dwd ‘in the city of David’, for kings of Judah down to Ahaz;

234 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  bšmrwn ‘in Samaria’, for most northern kings). There are variations, and kings who die violently are treated differently, as closer analysis will reveal. However, the general structure of the DBF is reasonably consistent (for the textual data, see Table 1). The elements of the DBF, and particularly its usual opening clause, wyškb ҳm ’btyw, literally, ‘he lay with his fathers’, reliably register changes in authorial activity. The meaning of the phrase way-yiškab ҳim ’abôtƗyw has been analyzed in several studies.13 Its distribution as an element of the larger DBF has not, however, been considered as a formal index for the redactional development of DtrH. The most thorough treatment of the meaning of the phrase is that of B. Alfrink, who showed that it refers not to interment in an ancestral grave, but to peaceful death.14 It is never used of kings who meet a violent or unnatural death, the problematic case of Ahab (on which see below) being the lone exception. 15 Outside of DtrH (and parallel passages in Chr), only J uses the phrase, and always in direct discourse: Israel, on his deathbed, pleads ‘Please do not bury me in Egypt, wškbty ҳm ’bty (When I lie with my fathers), bear me out from Egypt, and bury me in their [the fathers’] tomb’ (Gen 47:29–30). Here, as G. R. Driver has also noted,16 no reference to burial can be intended: the ‘lying with the fathers’ is the signal that burial is necessary, and between the two, that is between death and burial, the transportation of the corpse intervenes. One might plead an alternative to this understanding of Gen 47:30, by reading the verse as overloaded (‘do not bury me in Egypt, that I might lie  13

B. Alfrink, “L’Expression škb ҳm ’bwtyw,” OTS 2 (1943) 106–18; G. R. Driver, “Plurima Mortis Imago,” in M. Ben-Horin, et al. (eds.), Studies and Essays in Honor of Abraham A. Neuman (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1962) 137–43; S. R. Bin-Nun, “Formulas from Royal Records of Israel and Judah” VT 18 (1968) 414–32; Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 134–38. 14 Alfrink, “L’Expression škb ҳm ’bwtyw,” 111; cf. Driver, “Plurima Mortis” [n. 13], 137; also S. J. de Vries, Prophet Against Prophet: The Role of the Micaiah Narrative (I Kings 22) in the Development of Early Prophetic Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978) 97 and n. 7. 15 Technically, the deaths of Asa or Uzziah could be construed as unnatural, since they may have involved disease (1 Kgs 15:23; 2 Kgs 15:5–7). Conversely, Ahaziah’s mortal fall (2 Kgs 1:2–4, 17) is treated as death by violence. Without attempting an ontological distinction between “natural” and “unnatural” death, it may be noted that in the cases of Uzziah and Asa, the historian applying the formula enjoyed the latitude to conclude that the disease itself was not the cause of death. Contrast 2 Chr 21:18–19, where Chr treats Jehoram’s fatal illness as a divinely inflicted violent death. Chronicles also alters the vocabulary of royal death for David, where the phrase ‘lay with his fathers’ is eschewed in favor of an obituary much closer to P’s formulary for Abraham and Isaac (Gen 25:8; 35:29; see below), and that for Gideon in Judges (8:32). 16 Driver, “Plurima Mortis Imago,” 137.

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with my fathers,17 so bear me out from Egypt, and bury me in their tomb’). On such a reading, ‘lying with the fathers’ is effectively equivalent to burial in the ancestral crypt. But the first occurrence of our phrase (Deut 31:16) contraindicates this alternative. Yhwh addresses Moses, broaching the subject of his death, hinnekƗ šôkƝb ҳim-’abôteykƗ ‘You are about to lie with your fathers.’18 Yet Moses was thought not to have been buried in an ancestral grave (Deut 34:6), thus eliminating the possibility that the phrase has such a reference in this instance. In DtrH, the phrase occurs outside of the DBF three times in reference to David. The first two occurrences, in direct speech, are ambiguous, but suggest “peaceful death” more than burial. Nathan introduces his dynastic charter to David with the words, kî yimle’û yƗmeykƗ we-šƗkabtƗ ҳim- 19 ’abôteykƗ ‘when your days are fulfilled and you lie with your fathers...’ (2 Sam 7:12). The statement ‘when your days are fulfilled’ does not just mean “when you die.” Elsewhere the ‘fulfillment of the days’ denotes the time which must elapse before some other event can occur; thus, prescribed periods of ritual purity can be so delineated (as ȇ in Lev 8:33; 12:4, 6; Num 6:5, 13). Similarly, J speaks of the ‘fulfillment of days’ in reference to gestation (Gen 25:24); this signals imminent birth, but is not identical with it. ‘Lying with the fathers’ is the sequel to the fulfillment of David’s days. What event does it denote? In the context, burial would seem irrelevant. What is at issue is the succession, for which death, not the care of the corpse, is the decisive prelude. Thus Nathan’s words are not to be interpreted, ‘when you die, and you are buried ...,’ but rather, ‘when your time is up, and you die...’ A similar connotation attaches to the phrase when Bathsheba protests to David that she and Solomon will be proscribed on the king’s death, absent provisions for the succession: we-hƗyâ ki-škab ’adônî ham-melek ҳim ’abôtƗyw... ‘and when my lord the king sleeps [is sleeping?] with his fathers’ (1 Kgs 1:21). To be sure, it is difficult to determine the force of the infinitive construct: does it imply durative activity, such that one sleeps with one’s fathers perpetually, or does it refer only to the transition from one state to another, namely death or burial (cf. n. 25)? In context, it is  17

Gesenius-Kautzsch-Bergsträsser, Hebräische Grammatik (28th ed.; Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1983) 112aa and Bergsträsser, sec. 9d, 9h and 9i, where the cohortative, jussive, and imperative functions of the perfect consecutive are documented. 18 Technically, this expression could be translated ‘when you are lying with your fathers.’ But the futurum instans (hinnê + ptc., ibid, 116) typically denotes a single future action, rather than a future state. In the absence of any clear indication, therefore, that the idiom was used in a durative sense elsewhere, the conservative course is to interpret the participle as inceptive here. See further below. 19 Reading with S and ȉ (ǺHS), against the possibly original MT ’et.

236 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  David’s dying – his failure to remain alive – that threatens Solomon, so the active, transitional nuance seems preferable to the durative. Indeed, the phrase seems always to be used in this liminal sense, since no character is said to be lying ‘with the fathers’ at present (for the exceptional possibility that Deut 31:16 may be interpreted duratively, cf. n. 18). At any rate, even were burial the formal referent of the phrase as a euphemism, death remains in this case, too, the logical referent. The third application of the phrase to David comes after his death. Hadad, upon hearing in Egypt that šƗkab dƗwƯd ҳim ’abôtƗyw (1 Kgs 11:21), returns to Edom to rebel against Solomon (1 Kgs 11:14, 21). Here, it seems incongruous to suppose that Hadad has heard of David’s burial rather than of his death (‘The king is buried!’). Again, the phrase might refer to death euphemistically by mentioning burial; but the critical element, certainly for Hadad, is death. There is one last occurrence of the phrase in DtrH outside of the DBF: ‘All the people of Judah took Azariah [Uzziah], who was sixteen years old, and crowned him in place of his father, Amaziah. He built Eilat, ’a‫ۊ‬arê šekab ham-melek ҳim ’abôtƗyw (after the king slept with his fathers)’ (2 Kgs 14:21–22). The reader’s natural tendency here is to attribute the building of Eilat to Uzziah; in this case, ham-melek ‘the king’ is Amaziah, his father. But this violates an otherwise consistent pattern of usage, since Amaziah was assassinated: he died violently, and therefore would not have been described as having slept with the fathers. Indeed, Amaziah’s regnal formula omits ‘he lay with his fathers,’ stating only that ‘he was buried in Jerusalem in the city of David’ (2 Kgs 14:21). Alfrink recognized the difficulty and ingeniously identified ham-melek in this instance as the king of Edom. In other words, based on 2 Kgs 8:20–22, which suggests a renewal of the Edomite kingship during Jehoram’s reign, and 2 Kgs 14:7, which states that Amaziah had reannexed Edomite territory, Alfrink posited that Azariah was able to rebuild Eilat after the death of the Edomite king contemporary with his father, Amaziah.20 The stumbling block in this case is the fact that nowhere else is the phrase šƗkab ҳim ’abôtƗyw used of a foreigner. Moreover, there is no clue that a king of Edom had died, still less that the reader should infer such a death (or its relevance in view of Amaziah’s successful annexation). More plausible is the remaining alternative. Into Amaziah’s regnal account the story of his disastrous confrontation with Joash of Israel is integrated. This includes a recollection of the sack of Jerusalem and the capture of the king (2 Kgs 14:11–14). There follows a reprise of Joash’s closing regnal formulae (14:15–16), and a note that Amaziah outlived his cap 20

Alfrink, “L’Expression škb ҳm ’bwtyw,” 112.

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tor (14:17). Next come Amaziah’s closing formulae, and the notice that Azariah/Uzziah succeeded ‘his father, Amaziah. He built Eilat ... after the king lay with his fathers’(14:21). This last constitutes a supplementary note: The Book of Kings frequently attaches such telegraphic appendices to regnal accounts; but for kings of Judah, the supplementary note typically succeeds the source citation and precedes the DBF (on supplementary notes, see below and nn. 85 and 86). The fact that the supplementary note for Amaziah succeeds both his source citation and DBF is explained by the placement of the report of the coup against him. The conspiracy, death, burial, and succession must follow directly upon one another, thus, leading into the next king’s reign and precluding the possibility that a supplementary notice for Amaziah could have been inserted before 14:22. Without the conditioning factors, a supplementary note also comes after the succession notice for Jehoiakim in 2 Kgs 24:7; here, however, the supplementary note concerns the activities of the king of Babylon, rather than those of the Judahite king (see below).21 Two facts support the conclusion that Kings identifies Amaziah, not Azariah, as the builder of Eilat. First, ‘he smote Edom and seized Sela’ (14:7), the regnal account begins, so that 14:21 (‘He built Eilat’) forms an inclusion indicating that there was no exploitation of any expansion in Edom until Amaziah’s sovereign, Joash of Israel, had died (contrast 2 Chr 25:11–25). And second, the notice is in fact part of Amaziah’s regnal account, not Uzziah’s, which begins only after an interval of seven verses. The obvious interpretation that Uzziah built Eilat on Amaziah’s demise is excluded by the absence of any parallel in Kings for a narration of events in a king’s reign (as distinct from details of securing the kingship) before the start of his regnal account. The literary indications thus suggest that Joash of Israel was the king who ‘slept with his fathers’ and that Amaziah

 21 The original placement of the closing formula for Joash of Israel is unclear, and this may be material here. MT places the source citation and DBF in 2 Kgs 13:12–13, right after the accession formulae (13:10–11). This leaves the content of 13:14–25, concerning Elisha’s confrontation with Joash on his deathbed, Elisha’s burial, and Joash’s repelling Hazael, outside the framework of any regnal account. OG, conversely, encloses all this data in Joash’s account by placing the source citation and DBF after 13:25. And MT repeats Joash’s source citation and DBF in the context of Amaziah’s reign in 2 Kgs 14:15– 16, while OG omits the source citation and retains the DBF there. All this confusion may have arisen from an omission of Joash’s DBF until 14:16, with the original treating the reigns synchronously (as in the case of the Judahites and Israelites leading to Jehu’s coup). OG will then have systematized the presentation, MT originally treating 13:14–25 as a long supplementary note.

238 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  was the king who rebuilt Eilat; the historical implications, moreover, are consistent with reason.22 In all, Alfrink’s interpretation of the idiom in question to mean ‘die peacefully’ seems correct. The hypothesis that the phrase relates to burial23 implies too high a degree of redundancy in the formula, as well as in Gen 47:30. DtrH, moreover, applies the phrase to Israelite and Judahite kings indiscriminately, good or bad; that is, there is no correlation between divine approval and ‘lying with the fathers.24 The terminology attaches in the DBF only to kings who die peacefully (Ahab again excepted) regardless of the king’s merits. And of twenty-two kings said to have lain with their fathers, seventeen are also said to have been buried, and the place of burial is named. ‘To sleep with one’s fathers’ appears to be a simple euphemism for peaceful death.25 Not that simplicity implies unrestricted usage. The phrase attaches only to royalty, and to Israel and Moses, emblematic men. What do the distribution and content of the larger DBF (of which the euphemistic phrase for peaceful death is only the first element) indicate about the redactional history of DtrH?

 22

Sela is located some 60 kilometers south-southeast of the Dead Sea along the King’s Highway. The town’s strategic proximity to Eilat agrees with the thesis that Amaziah, in possession of Sela, could have rebuilt Eilat for Judah after Joash’s demise. For the mythic archetype reflected in the regular historiographie treatment of royal acts securing the kingship in passages preceding the accession formulary, see B. Halpern, The Constitution of the Monarchy in Israel (HSM 25; Chico: Scholars Press, 1981) 28, 138– 145. 23 G. A. London, “Homage to the Elders,” ǺA 50 (1988) 70–74, esp. 73. 24 De Vries (Prophet Against Prophet, 98–99) argues that the idiom is “reserved for persons of distinction, the circumstances of whose death (in peace and honor) were a witness to the quality of their lives.” This seems to be incorrect, since the historian applies the phrase to kings whom he cordially condemns. 25 Having followed Alfrink and Driver as to the meaning of the phrase, we nevertheless stress that it must carry with it more than the meaning, ‘to die peacefully.’ That is, the invocation of the fathers for every king who expires peacefully, and for Israel and Moses, signifies a conceptual trajectory that exceeds the intention to note how the king passed on. It appears, however, that the evidence is insufficient to support further analysis. On the other hand, examples from comparative religion may provide a conceptual link (cf. n. 114), permitting clarification. Speculatively, the phrase may relate to the passage from life to significant status as an ancestor.

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Table 1: Death and Burial Formulae A. KINGS OF JUDAH wyškb dwd wyškb šlmh wyškb r‫ۊ‬bҳm wyškb ’bym wyškb ’s’ wyškb yhšp‫ܒ‬

ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw

wyqbr wyqbr wyqbr wyqbrw ’tw a wyqbr wyqbr

wyškb ywrm wyškb ҳzryh wyškb ywtm wyškb ’‫ۊ‬z wyškb ‫ۊ‬zqyhw wyškb mnšh wyškb yhwyqym

ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw

wyqbr wyqbrw ’tw wyqbr wyqbr wyqbr

ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw

bҳyr dwd bҳyr dwd bҳyr dwd bҳyr dwd bҳyr dwd bҳyr dwd bҳyr dwd bҳyr dwd bҳyr dwd bҳyr dwd bgn-bytw

’byw

’byw ’byw

’byw

bgn ҳz’

1 Kings 2:10 11:43 14:31 15:8 15:24 22:51 2 Kings 8:24 15:7 15:38 16:20 20:21 21:18 24:6

B. VIOLENT DEATHS, JUDAH Ahaziah:

wymt

Ataliah: Jehoash: Amaziah:

wtwmt wymt wymthw

Amon:

Josiah: Jehoahaz: Jehoiachin: Zedekiah:

wyqbrw ’tw bqbrtw

2 Kings 9:27–28

bҳyr dwd

wyqbrw ’tw ҳm ’btyw bҳyr dwd wyqbr ҳm ’btyw bҳyr dwd byrwšlm wymytw ’t wyqbr(w) ’tw hmlk bqbrtw bbytw wymythw wyqbrhw bmgdw bqbrtw wymt šm NO BURIAL (not in Jerusalem) NO DEATH/BURIAL NO DEATH/BURIAL

11:16 12:21–22 14:19–20 bgn ҳz’

21:23,26

23:29–30 23:34 24:15 25:7b

 Annotations to Table 1: a Preservation of wyqbr ҳm-’btyw in OG probably indicates that MT has suffered haplography here; cf. n. 25.

 



240 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  Table 1 (cont.): Death and Burial Formulae C. KINGS OF ISRAEL wyškb yrbҳm ҳm ’btyw wyškb bҳš’ ҳm ’btyw wyqbr wyškb ҳmry ҳm ’btyw wyqbr wymt hmlk wybw’ šmrwn wyqbrw ’t-hmlk wyškb ’‫’ۊ‬b ҳm ’btyw wyškb yhw’ wyškb yhw’‫ۊ‬z wyškb yw’š wyškb yhw’š wyškb yrbҳm wyškb mn‫ۊ‬m

ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw ҳm ’btyw

wyqbrw ’tw wyqbrhw wyqbr yw’š wyqbr

btr‫܈‬h bšmrwn bšmrwn

bšmrwn bšmrwn bšmrwn bšmrwn

b

ҳm mlky yĞr’l ҳm mlky yĞr’l ҳm mlky yĞr’l

1 Kings 14:20 16:6 16:28 22:37 22:40 2 Kings 10:25 13:9 13:13 14:16 14:29 15:22

D. VIOLENT DEATHS, ISRAEL Nadab: Elah: Ahab:

Ahaziah: Jehoram: Zechariah: Shallum: Pekahiah: Pekah: Hoshea:

wymthw bҳš’ wymythw wymt wymt hmlk

wyqbrw ’t-hmlk

bšmrwn

wymt wyk ’t-yhwrm byn zrҳyw wy‫ ’܈‬h‫܈ۊ‬y mlbw wykrҳ brkbw wymythw wymythw wymythw wymythw NO REPORT OF DEATH

 Annotations to Table 1: b There is manuscript evidence for an omission here; G1 has wyqbr bšmrwn. c S (V) insert wykhw.

 



1 Kings 15:27–8 16:10 22:35b 22:37 2 Kings 1:17 9:24 15:10 15:14 15:25 15:30 17:4b

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Table 1 (cont.): Death and Burial Formulae E. RAW TEXTUAL DATA ON VIOLENT DEATHS: KINGS OF JUDAH Ahaziah: wy’mr [yhw’] gm-’tw hkhwc ’l-hmrkbh ... wymt šm wyrkbw ’tw ҳbdyw yrwšlmh wyqbrw ’tw bqbryw ҳm-’btyw bҳyr dwd (2 Kgs 9:27–28) Ataliah: wyĞmw lh ydym wtbw’ drk-mbw’ hswsym byt hmlk wtwmt šm (2 Kgs 11–16) Jehoash: wyqmw ‘bdyw wyqšrw-qšr wykw ’t-yw’š byt ml’ hywrd sl’ ... ‘bdyw hkhw wymt wyqbrw ’tw ‘m-’btyw bҳr dwd (2 Kgs 12:21–22) Amaziah: wyqšrw ҳlyw qšr byrwšlm wyns lkyšh wyšl‫ۊ‬w ’‫ۊ‬ryw lkyšh wymthw šm wyĞ’w ’tw ҳl-hswsym wyqbr byrwšlm ҳm-’btyw bҳyr dwd (2 Kgs 14:19–20) Amon: wyqšrw ҳbdy-’mwn ҳlyw wymytw ’t-hmlk bbytw (2 Kgs 21:23) wyqbr(w) ’tw bqbrtw bgn-ҳz’ (2 Kgs 21:26) Josiah: wylk hmlk y’šyhw lqr’tw wymythw bmgdw kr’tw ’tw wyrkbhw ҳbdyw mt mmgdw wyb’hw yrwšlm wyqbrhw bqbrtw (2 Kgs 23:29b–30a) Jehoahaz: wy’srhw prҳh nkh brblh b’r‫ۊ ܈‬mt (2 Kgs 23:33a) NO REPORT OF DEATH/BURIAL (death in Egypt in 23:34) Jehoiachin: wygl ’t-yhwykyn bblh (2 Kgs 24:15) NO REPORT OF DEATH/BURIAL Zedekiah: w’t-ҳyny ‫܈‬dqyhw ҳwr wy’srhw bn‫ۊ‬štym wyb’hw bbl (2 Kgs 25:7b) NO REPORT OF DEATH/BURIAL  F. RAW TEXTUAL DATA ON VIOLENT DEATHS: KINGS OF ISRAEL Nadab: wyqšr ҳlyw bҳš’ bn-’‫ۊ‬yh lbyt yĞĞkr wykhw bҳš’ bgbtwn ’ šr lplštym ... wymthw bҳš’ (1 Kgs 15:27–28) Elah: wyb’ zmry wykhw wymythw (1 Kgs 16:10) Ahab: wymt bҳrb wy‫܈‬q dm-hmkh ’l-‫ۊ‬yq hrkb (1 Kgs 22:35b) wymt hmlk wybw’ šmrwn wyqbrw ’t-hmlk bšmrwn (1 Kgs 22:37) Ahaziah: wypl ’‫ۊ‬zyh bҳd hĞbkh bҳlytw ’ šr bšmrwn (2 Kgs 1:2) ... wymt kdbr yhwh ’ šr-dbr ’lyhw (2 Kgs 1:17) Jehoram: wyhw’ ml’ ydw bqšt wyk ’t-yhwrm byn zrҳyw wy‫ ’܈‬h‫ۊ‬sy mlbw wykrҳ brkbw (2 Kgs 9:24) Zechariah: wyqšr ҳlyw šlm bn-ybš wykhw qbl-ҳm wymythw (2 Kgs 15:10) Shallum: wyҳl mn‫ۊ‬m bn-gdy mtr‫܈‬h wyb’ šmrwn wyk ’t-šlwm bn-ybyš bšmrwn wymythw (2 Kgs 15:14) Pekahiah: wyqšr ҳlyw pq‫ ۊ‬bn-rmlyhw šlyšw wykhw bšmrwn b’rmwn byt-mlk ... wҳmw ‫ۊ‬mšym ’y š mbny glҳdym wymthw (2 Kgs 15:25) Pekah: wyqšr-qšr hwšҳ bn-’lh ҳl-pk‫ ۊ‬bn-rmlyhw wykhw wymythw (2 Kgs 15:30) Hoshea: wyҳ‫܈‬rhw mlk ’ šwr wy’srhw byt kl’ (2 Kgs 17:4b) NO REPORT OF DEATH

242 

Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition

II.iii At base, as Table 1 illustrates, the DBF consists of the chain, way-yiškab RN ҳim ’abôtƗyw way-yiqqƗbƝr be-GN. Further, every Judahite king from Rehoboam to Ahaz, including those who die violently, is said to have been buried ҳim ’abôtƗyw be-ҳîr dƗwƯd ‘with his fathers in the city of David.’ Several texts locate the interment of Israelite kings in either Tirzah (Baasha) or Samaria, but none mentions the fathers. Further, two of ten Israelite kings who ‘lay with [their] fathers’ lack burial notices (Jeroboam ǿ, 1 Kgs 14:20; Menahem, 2 Kgs 15:22; Ahab’s burial occurs before he lies with the fathers in 1 Kgs 22:40). Thus, the primary difference between the DBF of Israelite and Judahite kings prior to Hezekiah is that every Judahite king is said to have been buried ‘with his fathers’ (and in the city of David), 26 while no such claim is lodged for Israelite kings. What explains the divergence? The notices that Judahite kings were ‘buried with (their) fathers in the city of David’ link all the Davidides from Rehoboam down to Ahaz (including those who die violently) to their predecessors. Only David and Solomon are not said to be buried with the fathers, in David’s case because  26

Provan (Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 134) cites Abijah as an exception. But here, only, MT is defective. 1 Kgs 15:8 runs (OG plusses italicized): * Abijah lay with his fathers in the twenty-fourth year of Jeroboam and they buried him (OG: and he was buried) with his fathers in the city of David.’ Though the synchronism in a DBF is unparalleled, and probably secondary, MT has likely suffered haplography from ‘with his fathers’ to ‘with his fathers’, followed by a mangled restoration of ‘he was buried’ from the margin. The formulation, ‘RN lay with his fathers and he was buried with his fathers in the city of David,’ lends itself to haplography. Thus in 2 Kgs 8:24, several texts omit ‘and he was buried with his fathers’ (one manuscript reflecting marginal restoration of ‘he was buried’). This variation underlies, or reflects, Chronicles variant, that Joram of Judah was not buried in the royal tombs (see n. 146). Similarly, 1 Kgs 22:51 MT reads, ‘Jehoshaphat lay with his fathers and he was buried with his fathers in the city of David, his father.’ OG omits the italicized phrases, the first of them certainly by homoioteleuton (1 Kgs 16:28h). The Vorlage of GA and other texts at 2 Kgs 15:7, 38 (Uzziah, Jotham) has experienced the same haplography, while OG and two minuscules in 15:7 and OG and the Latin in 15:38 reflect differing attempts at correction back to MT. In the case of Ahaz, OG omits ‘with his fathers,’ preserving ‘he lay with his fathers and he was buried (...) in the city of David.’ Most likely, this again reflects haplography with marginal reinsertion (of ‘he was buried’); and the OG variant (and one minuscule, g) either underlies or reflects the text of 2 Chr 28:27 (Ahaz not buried in royal tombs). Generally, MT is reasonably intact and the variation in the versions easily explicable on the basis of normal scribal practices. An exception may be the case of Ahaziah of Judah, where MT has ‘They buried him in his grave, with his fathers, in the city of David’ (2 Kgs 9:28); most G witnesses omit ‘with his fathers,’ but it is probably original with defective orthography in ’bt(y)w (or a collapse of -yw by haplography into -w) leading to haplography by homoioteleuton with bqbrtw. For divergences after Hezekiah, see below.

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he had no royal predecessors. Solomon was predeceased by David, and Provan finds the formulaic reflex of the fact in the expansion on Solomon’s burial location – he was buried ‘in the city of David, his father’ (1 Kgs 11:43).27 Against the observation it might be urged that the same expansion (‘his father’) follows the MT notices of burial ‘in the city of David’ for Asa, Jehoshaphat, and Jotham, regents reportedly buried with their fathers. However, versional evidence suggests that only in Solomon’s case is the expansion original, confirming Provan’s position.28 The consistency of the Judahite formulae, thus, suggests that they are a single author’s work from David through Ahaz. On the logic underlying the formulary, Rehoboam is the first Judahite monarch described as having been buried with his fathers because in fact he was the first of whom it was literally possible to say this. This analysis has the virtue of explaining an apparent anomaly in the Israelite formulae. Two kings, Jehoash (2 Kgs 13:13; 14:16) and Jeroboam II (2 Kgs 14:29), are said to have been buried in Samaria, ҳim malkê yiĞrƗ’Ɲl ‘with the kings of Israel’. At first blush, the phrase appears intrusive. But if Rehoboam is said to have been buried ‘with his fathers’ because he was the first Judahite monarch with more than one royal ancestor, then Jehoash and Jeroboam II are the only Israelite kings to whom a similar logic applies. They are the only Israelite kings with burial notices who had two dynastic predecessors. The Omrides also reigned four generations, but neither Ahaziah’s burial nor Jehoram’s is mentioned at all, since DtrH furnishes no burial information for northern kings who die by violence (Ahab again excepted). Even allowing for this differential treatment, 29 admittedly, Ahab, the second king in the Omride dynasty, is not linked to his father in the DBF as Solomon seems to be linked to David (see above).30 The hypothesis further de 27

Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 134, n. 3. The expansion, ‘his father’, after David’s name at the end of the formulary (‘in the city of David, his father’) is a typical gloss in most instances. In 2 Kgs 8:24, thus, it appears in kaige, but not MT, while conversely the MT expansion is unattested in OG for Asa (1 Kgs 15:24), Jehoshaphat (1 Kgs 16:28h; MT 1 Kgs 22:51) and Jotham (2 Kgs 15:38). In OG, assuming GB reflects it in 1 Kgs 11:43, this leaves Solomon as the only king to whose DBF the expansion is applied. 29 A response to the fact that the victims of assassination are, in the literary context, also objects of divine condemnation to exposure? This holds for Jeroboam’s, Baasha’s, and Ahab’s offspring, while neither Zimri nor Tibni is likely to have been properly interred. By the time the historian came to the first assassination among the Nimshides, his literary pattern was perhaps already formed. 30 Note, however, that while no such variant arises concerning Ahab, the earliest northern dynastic successor of whose interment we read, numerous witnesses report that Jehu’s successor, Jehoahaz was ‘buried with his fathers in Samaria’ (2 Kgs 13:9, MT om). 28

244 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  mands that one explain the avoidance of burial ‘with his fathers’ in the case of the Israelite kings, used of Davidides up to Hezekiah, as an attempt to distinguish dynastic instability in the north from continuity in the south: southern kings are buried with their fathers in the city of David, the capital where Yhwh causes his name to dwell. No such sense of continuity or divine imprimatur is accorded the northern monarchs. In all, then, it seems most conservative to conclude that DtrH expands the DBFs of Jehoash and Jeroboam II because, on the compiler’s criteria, they were the only northern kings who had more than one predecessor to be buried with. Any such hypothesis effaces the fundamental difference between the Israelite and Judean DBF prior to Hezekiah. The remaining anomaly involves shortened notices for Jeroboam I, Ahab, and Menahem. Of each we read, way-yiškab ҳim ’abôtƗyw ‘he lay with his fathers’ (1 Kgs 14:20; 22:40; 2 Kgs 15:22); but inside the DBF, the expected report of burial is omitted (Ahab is buried before the DBF). Were these omissions restricted to Jeroboam I and Ahab, one might infer that the author meant to implement prophetic interdicts on burial (1 Kgs 14:11; 21:24). The inclusion of Menahem, however, and Baasha’s burial (despite such a prophetic interdict, 1 Kgs 16:4, 6), as well as the fact that Ahab’s burial is reported before the DBF, all militate against the proposal. Indeed it is difficult to see what, if anything, links precisely these kings in the eyes of the author (cf. n. 29).

II.iv Despite minor variation, the foregoing overview indicates a remarkable continuity in the formulae for all kings down to Hezekiah: 1. All kings not said to have died violently are said to have lain with the fathers. (The problematic case of Ahab is treated below, section VII.) 2. All Judahite kings prior to Hezekiah, with the exception of Solomon and David, are also buried with their fathers. Solomon is reportedly buried ‘in the city of David, his father,’ which may reflect an intermediate indication of interment with a single ancestor, absent plural predecessors. 3. Among the kings of Israel, the only possible parallel to the Davidides’ burial with the fathers (as distinct from lying with the fathers) is the report that Jehoash and Jeroboam II were buried ‘with the kings of Israel.’ It has been suggested that the distribution of these notices and the contrast with Judahite kings’ burial notices are meant to underscore the opposition be-

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tween stable dynastic succession in the south and the unstable succession of the north. 4. Israelite kings who die violently lack a DBF, but Judahites are buried with their fathers in the city of David – perhaps reflecting Davidic dynastic stability. There is some irregularity in the succession notices for Israelite kings. Death notices for three Israelite kings who lay with their fathers are devoid of burial information. In one case, burial is reported before the formula begins (Ahab). Still, none of these observations suggest that the DBF in either kingdom from David down to Ahaz need have come from more than one hand. On the contrary, the author of the formulae seems to have organized his material by consistent criteria, producing a unified presentation down to the end of the Northern Kingdom. The sources of the author’s information may have varied considerably;31 but it is likely one author composed the formulae.

II.v With Hezekiah, this first author’s activity probably came to an end. Thus, while DtrH has every Judahite king before Hezekiah buried both with his fathers32 and in the city of David, no such remark attaches to any king from Hezekiah forward. The descriptions now change radically. Manasseh is buried be-gan bêtô be-gan ҳuzzƗ’ ‘in the garden of his house, in the garden of Uzzah’ (2 Kgs 21:18),33 Amon bi-qbûrƗtô be-gan ҳuzzƗ’ ‘in his tomb in the garden of Uzza’ (2 Kgs 21:26). Josiah is interred ‘in his tomb’ (2 Kgs 23:29). How spare this notice is can be seen by comparison with DBFs for other kings whose corpses, like Josiah’s, were transported from outside the city: the burial notices of Josiah, Ahaziah and Amaziah read,  31

B. Halpern, The First Historians, the Hebrew Bible and History (New York: Harper & Row, 1988) 213. 32 For Abijam, see above, n. 26, and the note in Table One. 33 H. R. Macy (The Sources of the Books of Chronicles: A Reassessment [PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1975] 149) identifies MT as conflate, since OG reads, ‘In the garden of Uzza,’ while Chronicles reads ‘in his house’ (G: ‘in the garden of his house’; cf. x to 2 Kgs 21:18). But this is unsure: the OG Vorlage may have suffered a haplography by homoioteleuton (bgn [bytw bgn] ҳz’), and as this is the first mention of the garden of Uzza, clarity may have called for the appositive. Chr never mentions the garden of Uzza, the absence of which does not necessarily imply a Vorlage at variance with MT Kings, although it does imply variance from the Vorlage of OG.

246 

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2 Kings 23:29–30 (Josiah): wymythw bmgdw ... 9:27–28 (Ahaziah): wyns mgdw wymt šm 14:19–21 (Amaziah): wym(y)thw šm 23:29–30 (Josiah): 9:27–28 (Ahaziah):

wyb’hw yrwšlm yrwšlmh

14:19–21 (Amaziah): wyqbr

wyrkbhw wyrkbw ’tw wyĞ’w ’tw wyqbrhw wyqbrw ’tw

ҳbdyw ҳbdyw ҳl bqbrtw bqbrtw

byrwšlm

23:29–30 (Josiah): wyq‫ۊ‬ 14:19–21 (Amaziah): wyq‫ۊ‬w kl

ҳm h’r‫’ ܈‬t RN bn RN ҳm yhwdh ’t RN ...

23:29–30 (Josiah): wyms‫ۊ‬w ’tw 14:19–21 (Amaziah):

wymlykw ’tw t‫ۊ‬t ’byw wymlkw ’tw t‫ۊ‬t ’byw RN

mt mmgdw hswsym ҳm ’btyw34 bҳyr dwd ҳm ’btyw bҳyr dwd

The report of Josiah’s death and burial is closer to Ahaziah’s than to Amaziah’s, although the comparison to Amaziah’s DBF is far from trivial. In both Ahaziah’s and Amaziah’s cases, at any event, the DBF preserves all the niceties of the pre-Hezekian formulary, including burial with the fathers (cf. n. 26) in the city of David. Josiah’s informs us merely that he was buried ‘in his tomb,’ signaling a significant truncation of the formula. Most likely, the historian here is still reporting burial in the city of David. The garden of Uzza, thus, is identified with the garden of Manasseh’s palace (‘his house’); Amon, too, is buried in the garden of Uzza. Further, the fact that Josiah is brought to Jerusalem implies burial in, or at least very near, the city of David. Yet the formula makes no reference to the city of David, for no apparent literary reason. 35 Still more, in contrast to its treatment of Manasseh, Amon, and Josiah, Kings provides no burial information whatever for either Hezekiah (20:21) or Jehoiakim (24:6). There is variation in the versions, but the disappearance after Ahaz of every trace of

 34

See n. 26. Chronicles’ version is of no value for establishing the text here. Provan (Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 136–38) sees in the scribal variation a difference in how two authors regarded the burial site – to H(Dtr)hez, it was David’s town, to E(Dtr)x, Yhwh’s. In this thesis, the omission of a notice of burial with the fathers is not itself a theological change, but a stylistic one. However, both archeological and textual evidence suggest precisely that the change was a cultural one, starting from the success of Hezekiah’s attempts to discourage ancestor cults among the elite. See. S. Loffreda, “Typological Sequence of Iron Age Rock-Cut Tombs in Palestine,” Liber Annuus Studii Biblici 18 (1968) 244–87; B. Halpern, “Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE: Kinship and the Rise of Individual Moral Liability,” in B. Halpern and D.W. Hobson (eds.), Law and Ideology in Monarchic Israel (ASORMS; JSOTSup; Gerstein Lectures; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991). 35

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the pre-Hezekian burial formulary in Kings is no accident of transmission.36 The exceptional burial data for Amon and Manasseh has led some scholars to infer a change in burial practice after Hezekiah; Yeivin even speculates that the royal tombs were full – based mainly on the ambiguous notice in 2 Chr 32:33 that Hezekiah was buried be-maҳaleh qibrê benê dƗwƯd ‘in the ascent of the tombs of the sons of David’.37 The expedient is ingenious – and there is evidence of a shift in burial practices in the eighth– seventh centuries (see n. 35), some of which may be reflected in the content of the Kings DBF – but burial did not cease, and thus no such hypothesis can account for the fact that Kings entirely omits the burial places of Hezekiah and Jehoiakim, without providing a substitute (as for Amon, Manasseh, and Josiah).38 Hezekiah and Jehoiakim are the only Davidides, ex 36

Cf. Macy, The Sources of the Books of Chronicles, 139–42. For Hezekiah, Chronicles adds a burial ‘in the upper part of the tombs of the sons of David’ (2 Chr 32:33), on which see below. Numerous Greek witnesses and Eth. and Syropal. assert ‘he was buried in the city of David’, OG adding ‘with his fathers’ (2 Kgs 20:21). MT’s omission of the entire sentence is not to be explained, however, as a haplography. With Manasseh, the witnesses make few adjustments (but see n. 33). Amon is buried ‘in his tomb, in the garden of Uzza’ in MT (2 Kgs 21:26), a notice Chronicles omits, treating Amon along the lines of the northern kings who die violently (further below). OG and Josephus identify the tomb as that of ‘his father’, bringing it more into line with the run of DBF’s in Kgs. There is again no mechanical explanation for the omission in MT. And in Josiah’s case (23:30), the Armenian reads ‘father’s tomb’ for ‘tomb’, and other codices (including OG) introduce burial ‘in the city of David’, a variant for the omission of which no normal pattern of scribal error can account. Noteworthy is the treatment of Jehoiakim in Chronicles, which has him exiled, and Josephus, the latter no doubt based on Jeremiah’s prophecy (22:26). OG adds interment in the garden of Uzza with the fathers to the report of Jehoiakim’s death (2 Kgs 24:6). As the present condition of MT can in none of these verses be explained as the product of common scribal errors, one must reconstruct either deliberate disfigurement of MT or fitful scribal systematization of the formulary in the Greek. Of the alternatives, the latter is by far the more benign assumption. In this instance, MT preserves the more conservative tradition reflecting variation in the construction of the DBF. For further evidence of systematization in OG, see also below, nn. 63, 91, and above, n. 21. 37 S. Yeivin, “The Sepulchers of the Kings of the House of David” JNES 7 (1948) 30– 45; see also Bin-Nun, “Formulas from Royal Records of Israel and Judah,” 430–31. 38 Yeivin’s suggestion of tombs that were full also falls afoul of Judaean burial practice, in which bones were removed from the bier and swept into repositories underneath. See, e.g., G. Barkay and A. Kloner, “Jerusalem Tombs from the Days of the First Temple” BAR 12/2 (1986) 23–39; A. Mazar, “Iron Age Burial Caves North of the Damascus Gate, Jerusalem,” IEJ 26 (1976) 1–8; L. Y. Rahmani, “Ancient Jerusalem’s Funerary Customs and Tombs. Part Two,” ǺA 44 (1981) 229–235. There are, further, indications that burial customs among some of the elite, and possibly the royal house, may have remained relatively unchanged in the seventh century, whether at Silwan (D. Ussishkin, The  Village of Silwan. The Necropolis from the Period of the Judean Kingdom (Jerusa-

248 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  cept Jehoahaz who died in Egypt (2 Kgs 23:34), who die but are not buried! Further, nothing in Josiah’s burial formulary would have precluded mention of burial with the fathers, or, probably, of burial in the city of David. Other scholars hypothesize a change in convention among scribes of “the Dtr school” to account for the anomalous notices after Hezekiah. 39 This is as much as to say, there is a change in authorship at Hezekiah. However, no evidence supports the assumption that formulaic king lists, with burial (and other, regular) data, were maintained and updated at every accession throughout Judah’s history.40 That lists of kings were maintained is all but sure. However, the idea that the whole formulary of accession and the DBF in Kings stem from such a list is far from certain. On the model of Mesopotamian chronicles, themselves compiled sporadically and with particular social valences (e.g., ABC 7, the Nabonidus Chronicle), we should view the source of Kings as a compilation, updated periodically from lists and other records, rather than as an ongoing literary work updated in each succeeding reign. Since a shift in the DBF occurs at the time of Hezekiah, the least forced explanation is the activity of a new author.

III Another important signpost on the overgrown redactional trail involves an abrupt change in Chr’s accession formulae for the kings of Judah. Chronicles names the Queen Mother (QM) in every case where Kings names her prior to and including Hezekiah. Kings continues to name each QM down to the exile. But this information concerning Hezekiah’s successors disappears in Chronicles altogether. Both Provan and one of the present authors have recently claimed that this divergence between Kings and Chronicles casts light on the composition of DtrH.41 In Halpern’s argument, the QM notices in Kings and Chronicles likely testify to the existence of written  lem: Yad ben-Zvi and the Israel Exploration Society, 1986]) or at St. Etienne (above, Barkay and Kloner, “Jerusalem Tombs from the Days of the First Temple.”). 39 Macy, The Sources of the Books of Chronicles; S. L. McKenzie, The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History (HSM 33; Adanta: Scholars Press, 1985) 174. 40 Van Seters, In Search History. 41 Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 139–43; B. Halpern, “Sacred History and Ideology: Chronicles’ Thematic Structure – Indications of an Earlier Source,” in R.E. Friedman (ed.), The Creation of Sacred Literature: Composition and Redaction of the Biblical Text (UCNES 22; Berkeley: University of California, 1981) 35–54; idem, The First Historians, 213–15; cf. also McKenzie, The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History, 174–75.

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sources employed by H(Dtr) in his composition.42 Both Provan and Halpern invoke Chr’s uneven treatment of the QM’s as evidence for an authorial shift at Hezekiah.43 The evidence merits review: Kings omits the QM’s name in the cases of two monarchs only, Jehoram and Ahaz. These are also the only kings in Chronicles, before Hezekiah, who lack QM notices.44 Stephen McKenzie, acknowledging the peculiarity, has dismissed the possibility of textual corruption as an explanation. 45 The disappearance of the QM in Chronicles with Manasseh, thus, invites the conclusion that the edition of Kings that served as the Vorlage of Chronicles (Chr1?) named no QM’s after Hezekiah’s. Otherwise, it is difficult to divine what ideological program led Chr to suppress information about kings after Hezekiah that he incorporated about kings up to Hezekiah.46 What has gone unnoticed is that Kings, too, changes its criteria for identifying QMs after Hezekiah’s.47 The praenomen up to and including Hezekiah is modified either by patronym or place of origin, but never both, as Table 2 shows. After Manasseh’s QM, named by praenomen only, the formula modifies the praenomen with both patronym and place of origin. 48 The precision with which the last six QMs are identified reflects a change in recording style, and suggests a change in authorship at the reign of Hezekiah in Kings as in Chronicles. Yet the Chronicler appears to have none of this ad 42

Halpern, The First Historians, 213–15. Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 139–41; Halpern, “Sacred History and Ideology.” 44 Chronicles identifies Abijah’s QM as ‘Micaiah the daughter of Uriel from Gibeah’ (2 Chr 13:2), whereas Kings names ‘Maacah the daughter of Abishalom’ (1 Kgs 15:2). Since Kings names the same QM for both Abijah and Asa (1 Kgs 15:11), Chr may be squelching a possible source of confusion. Yet, though Abijah’s mother is Micaiah in the accession formula of Chronicles, she is twice called Maacah outside the formulary (2 Chr 11:20, 22). Thus the change may have occurred in transmission, although it is noteworthy that the form of the addition is identical with that adopted by E(Dtr)x (below, and Table Two) Provan (Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 139, n. 19) suggests that the historian dropped Jehoram’s QM’s name to stress his connection with the Omrides But his marriage to Athahah is mentioned only subsequently, in the “judgment formula,” and there is no logical reason for the historian to have departed from his QM formulary It is more likely that QMs are named as occupants of a position (such as head of the female cult), and that Jehoram’s and Ahaz’s mothers predeceased their accessions, while Abijah’s mother outlived her son and had to be removed forcibly by her grandson. 45 McKenzie, The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History, 175. 46 Halpern, “Sacred History and Ideology,” 48, Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 140–41. 47 Contrast Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 139. 48 Josephus (Ant. X 3 i) places Manasseh’s mother in Jerusalem. There is no textual basis for this inference. 43

250 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  ditional data in his Vorlage. There will be occasion to return to this problem in connection with H(Dtr)jos. Table 2: Judahite Queen-Mothers by Reign 

Rehoboam Abijah Asa Jehoshaphat Jehoramc Ahaziah Jehoash Amaziah Azariah Jotham Ahaz Hezekiah Manasseh Amon Josiah Jehoahaz Jehoiakim Jehoiachin Zedekiah

Praenomen nҳmh mҳkh mҳkh ҳzwbh ҳtlyhd ‫܈‬byh yhwҳdn yklyh yrwš’d ’by d ‫ۊ‬p‫܈‬ybh mšlmt ydydh ‫ۊ‬mw‫ܒ‬l zbwdh n‫ۊ‬št’ ‫ۊ‬mw‫ܒ‬l

Patronym

Provenance hҳmnyt

bt ҳbyšlwma bt ҳbyšlwm bt šlhy bt ҳmry mb’r šbҳ mn yrwšlme myrwšlmf bt sdwq bt zkryhd bt ‫ۊ‬rw‫܈‬ bt ҳdyh bt yrmyhw bt pdyh bt ’lntn bt yrmyhw

mn y‫ܒ‬bh mb‫܈‬qt mlbnh mn rwmh myrwšlm mlbnh

Kings 1 Kgs 14:21 1 Kgs 15:2 1 Kgs 15:10 1 Kgs 22:42 2 Kgs 8:17 2 Kgs 8:26 2 Kgs 12:2 2 Kgs 14:2 2 Kgs 15:2 2 Kgs 15:33 2 Kgs 16:2 2 Kgs 18:2 2 Kgs 21:1 2 Kgs 21:19 2 Kgs 22:1 2 Kgs 23:31 2 Kgs 23:36 2 Kgs 24:8 2 Kgs 24:18

2 Chr 12:13 13:2 [15:16]b 20:31 21:6 22:2 24:1 25:1 26:3 27:1 28:1 29:1 [33:1]g [33:21] g [34:1] g [36:2] g [36:5] g [36:9] g [36:11] g

Annotations to Table 2: a Chr reads, mkyhw bt ’wry’l mn gbҳh (2 Chr 13:2), which does not comport with 11:18–22. In this text, Chr also spells the patronym, ’bšlwm. b Chr does not provide the QM’s name in the accession formula, mentioning the praenomen only in text. c Jehoram’s Omride wife is mentioned after the accession formula, in the evaluation segment, not in the usual locus of the QM. d There is slight orthographic variation on the name in Chr. e Chr myrwšlym. f Chr mn yrwšlm. g Chr alone does not report the name of the QM.

IV.i Consideration of the so-called judgment (or regnal evaluation) formulae in Kings leads to related conclusions. Weippert has catalyzed discussion of pre-Josianic redaction here. Her analysis led her to posit two pre-exilic redactions (RI, RII): the first began with Jehoshaphat of Judah and Jehoram of Israel and extended down to Ahaz and Pekah (dating, thus, in or just af-

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ter the reign of Hezekiah); the second (by H[Dtr]jos) framed the first, with accounts of the other kings from Rehoboam to Josiah. In each edition, structure and content distinguish southern formulae (IS1, IS2, IIS) from northern (IN, IIN). But this implies only that RI and RII treated the two kingdoms differently (or that their treatment mirrored a difference in their sources), not that northern and southern formulae were composed by different authors.49 Recent critiques of Weippert’s findings50 obviate the necessity to recapitulate her analysis in detail. An overview of how analysis of the judgment formulae may threaten or corroborate the present argument will suffice. The northern regnal evaluations, where Weippert has RI responsible for the block from Jehoram to Pekah, and RII for those preceding Jehoram,51 are a particular poser. The basis for isolating RI’s block is its consistent use of the expression, lǀ’ sƗr mik-kǀl ‫ۊ‬a‫ܒܒ‬Ɨ’ôt yƗrobҳƗm ben-nebƗ‫’ ܒ‬ašer he‫ۊ‬e‫ܒ‬î’ ’et-yiĞrƗ’Ɲl ‘he did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam benNebat, which he caused Israel to sin’52 Minor deviations do occur among the formulae of these kings who do ‘evil in the sight of Yhwh,’ but each one is said not to have ‘departed (lǀ’ sƗr) from the sins of Jeroboam.’ According to Weippert and Campbell, it is their consistency in applying this term that distinguishes the formulae of RI from those of RII: a negative evaluation stating that the king pursued the sins of Jeroboam also characterizes RII, but RII does not refer to ‘not departing’ (swr). There are, too, phrases in the northern evaluations of RII (kings preceding Jehoram) which do not appear in RI: ‘he walked in the way of Jeroboam’ (way-yƝlek bederek yƗrobҳƗm) appears in some form in all RII evaluations, and in only two of RI’s. RII also makes (less regular) reference to a king’s provoking (kҳs) Yhwh to anger, which is far less frequent in accounts concerning kings treated by RI, for example. Other formal variations adduced by Weippert and by Campbell confirm that the two groups of texts differ (see Table 3). The important question, as was the case with the DBF, is whether such differences demand the assumption of multiple authors, as Weippert and Campbell suggest.  49 Weippert, “Die ‘deuteronomistischen’ Beurteilungen der Könige von Israel und Juda und das Problem der Redaktion der Königsbücher,” 311. Campbell, Prophets and Kings, 176–78, argues otherwise. 50 Nelson, The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History, 29–42; Campbell, Prophets and Kings; Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 35–41, 48–55; W. B. Barrick “On the ‘Removal of the High Places’ in 1–2 Kings,” Biblica 55 (1974) 255–57. 51 Campbell, Prophets and Kings, 151–53, deletes Jehoram from Weippert’s RI and adds Hoshea, but otherwise concurs with her. 52 On the textual variation in the formula, see n. 56. Campbell (Prophets and Kings, 209–16) provides a convenient synopsis of the regnal evaluation formulae.

252 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  The alternative, of course, is to attribute a developmental viewpoint to a single author.53 Thus, kings before Jehoram of Israel walk in the way of (hlk bdrk) Jeroboam (RII), while those from Jehoram forward do not depart from his sins (l’ sr; RI). Similarly, the distribution of another phrase imputed to RII, he ‘provoked (kҳs) Yhwh to anger’ (1 Kgs 14:15; 15:30; 16:13; 16:26; 16:33; 22:54), suggests a progressive deterioration in the cult until Jehoram ‘put away the pillar of the baal which his father had made’ (2 Kgs 3:2). Thus, Omri reportedly did more evil than those before him (1 Kgs 16:25); Ahab was worse still (16:30, 33). Successive northern kings outdid the sin of Jeroboam, provoking Yhwh’s anger. Jehoram, though, stemmed the tide; his and Jehu’s reforms inaugurate a period of cultic stasis, where northern kings do not compound the sin of Jeroboam, they merely do not depart from it.54 The choice of terms seems intentionally to echo the theme of the high places not ‘departing’ (swr) in the south (see below, IV.ii). Another shift between the putative RII and RI sustains this view: northern kings up to Ahaziah go in ‘the way of Jeroboam’: Nadab ‘went in the way of his father and in his sin, which he led Israel to sin’ (1 Kgs. 15:26). Baasha ‘went in the way of Jeroboam and in his sin which he led Israel to sin’ (15:34; 16:2). Though Elah is said only to have sinned, with his father, leading Israel to sin and angering Yhwh, Zimri more or less conforms to the ‘way of Jeroboam’ pattern (16:19). And Omri ‘walked in all the way of Jeroboam and in his sin [Ketib: sins] which he caused Israel to sin, angering Yhwh, the god of Israel, with their vanities’ (16:26). Thus the formula builds to a crescendo, which reaches its climax, naturally enough, at Ahab: ‘As though it were not enough for him to go in the sins of Jeroboam benNebat,’ he married Jezebel and worshipped the baal (16:31). Ahaziah then maintains the tradition: ‘he went in the way of his father and in the way of his mother and in the way of Jeroboam ben-Nebat who led Israel to sin, and worshipped the baal ... and angered Yhwh, the god of Israel, in accordance with all that his father did’ (22:53–54). 55 All but Elah and Ahab, thus, go ‘in the way of Jeroboam,’ and Ahab even ‘goes,’ in the instance farther than his predecessors.  53

So Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 40–41; Halpern, The First Historians,

225. 54

Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 40–41; Halpern, The First Historians, 225; Campbell, Prophets and Kings, 178. 55 OG, reading ‘sins’ for MT ‘sin’ in 1 Kgs 15:26,34; 16:19,26, also has a variant here: Ahaziah pursued the ways of his father and mother, but also the ‘sins’ of the ‘house of Jeroboam.’ Whichever reading is original, Ahaziah still ‘goes’ and even ‘goes in the way of RN,’ crucial elements of the pre-Jehoram formulae.

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Table 3: ‘Going/Not Departing’ wylk bdrk ’byw wb‫’ܒۊ‬tw ’šr h‫ܒۊ‬y’ ’t-yĞr’l (1 Kgs 15:26b) wylk bdrk yrbҳm wb‫’ܒۊ‬tw ’šr h‫ܒۊ‬y’ ’t-yĞr’l (1 Kgs 15:34b) NO REPORT ҳl-‫’ܒۊ‬tw ’šr ‫ ’ܒۊ‬lҳĞwt hrҳ bҳyny yhwh llkt bdrk yrbҳm wb‫’ܒۊ‬w ’šr ҳĞh lh‫ܒۊ‬y’ ’t-yĞr’l (1 Kgs 16:19) Omri: wylk bkl-drk yrbҳm bn-nb‫ ܒ‬wb‫’ܒۊ‬tyw ’šr h‫ܒۊ‬y’ ’t-yĞr’l lhkҳys ’t yhwh ’lhy yĞr’l b‫ۊ‬blyhm (1 Kgs 16:26) Ahab: wyhy hnql lktw b‫’ܒۊ‬wt yrbҳm bn-nb‫ ܒ‬... wywsp ’‫’ۊ‬b lҳĞwt lhkҳys ’t-yhwh ’lhy yĞr’l mkl mlky yĞr’l ’šr hyw lpnyw (1 Kgs 16:31a, 33b) Ahaziah: wylk bdrk ’byw wbdrk ’mw wbdrk yrbҳm bn-nb‫’ ܒ‬šr h‫ܒۊ‬y’ ’t-yĞr’l (1 Kgs 22:53b) Jehoram: rq b‫’ܒۊ‬y yrbҳm bn-nb‫’ ܒ‬šr h‫ܒۊ‬y’ ’t-yĞr’l dbq l’-sr mmnh (2 Kgs 3:3) Jehu: rq ‫’ܒۊ‬y yrbҳm bn- nb‫’ ܒ‬šr h‫ܒۊ‬y’ ’t- yĞr’l l’-sr yhw’ m’‫ۊ‬ryhm ... l’ sr mҳl ‫’ܒۊ‬wt yrbҳm ’šr h‫ܒۊ‬y’ ’t-yĞr’l (2 Kgs 10:29a, 31b) Jehoahaz: wylk ’‫ۊ‬r ‫’ܒۊ‬t yrbҳm bn-nb‫’ ܒ‬šr-h‫ܒۊ‬y’ ’t-yĞr’l l’-sr mmnh (2 Kgs 13:2) Jehoash: l’ sr mkl ‫’ܒۊ‬wt yrbҳm bn-nb‫’ ܒ‬šr-h‫ܒۊ‬y’ ’t-yĞr’l bh hlk (2 Kgs 13:11) Jeroboam: l’ sr mkl-‫’ܒۊ‬wt yrbҳm bn-nb‫’ ܒ‬šr h‫ܒۊ‬y’ ’t-yĞr’l (2 Kgs 14:24b) Zechariah: l’ sr m‫’ܒۊ‬wt yrbҳm bn-nb‫’ ܒ‬šr h‫ܒۊ‬y’ ’t-yĞr’l (2 Kgs 15:10b) Menahem: l’ sr mҳl ‫’ܒۊ‬wt yrbҳm bn-nb‫’ ܒ‬šr-h‫ܒۊ‬y’ ’t-yĞr’l kl-ymyw (2 Kgs 15:18b) Pekahiah: l’ sr m‫’ܒۊ‬wt yrbҳm bn-nb‫’ ܒ‬šr h‫ܒۊ‬y’ ’t- yĞr’l (2 Kgs 15:24b) Pekah: l’ sr mn-‫’ܒۊ‬wt yrbҳm bn-nb‫’ ܒ‬šr h‫ܒۊ‬y’ ’t-yĞr’l (2 Kgs 15:28b) Hoshea: wyҳš hrҳ ... rq l’ kmlky yĞr’l ’šr hyw lpnyw (2 Kgs 17:2) Nadab: Baasha: Elah: Zimri:

 Note: to contextualize this admittedly facile lexical survey in the global usage of DtrH would require another monograph. ‘Going’ and ‘turning/departing’ are leitmotifs from Deuteronomy through the end of 2 Kings, as well as in other literary corpora; but any stratification of the occurrences would be eristic, and preliminary review of the data suggests that the variation is not semantic, but stylistic, in nature.

But with Jehoram, the ‘way’ (drk) of Jeroboam vanishes; he is reported to have ‘cleaved to’ (dbq) the sins of Jeroboam, thereby initiating a long series (to the end of the Northern kingdom) of kings who ‘do not depart from’ (l’ sr) the ‘sin’56 of Jeroboam.57 Why the change from ‘the way’ to  56 G consistently puts this noun into the plural, except at 2 Kgs 17:22, where it is singular in MT. MT frequently vocalizes it as plural, but sometimes as singular. On occasion, however, there is a pronominal reference to the ‘sin/sins,’ as in 2 Kgs 13:2, 11; 17:22, and this is consistently singular, with one exception. In 2 Kgs 10:29, Jehu is said not to have departed from the ‘sins’ ‫’ܒۊ‬y of Jeroboam. This notice, which here qualifies the extent of Jehu’s reform rather than evaluating his performance as king (as 10:31), uses the masculine biform of the formula’s usual word for ‘sin’; it simultaneously identifies the ‘sins’ as the two golden calves Jeroboam constructed, whereas 1 Kgs 12:30 identifies the erection of the calves as ‘a sin’ (feminine singular), and 1 Kgs 13:34 identifies the consecration of new priesthoods as ‘the sin [fem. sg.] of the house of Jeroboam.’ The

254 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  ‘the sin’ (‫[’ܒۊ‬w]t) of Jeroboam when kings stop ‘going’ and begin ‘not departing’ from it? One suggestion is that ‘going in the way’ (hlk bdrk) is dynamic, suggesting active pursuit. ‘The sin,’ unlike the ‘way,’ is not necessarily a process. ‘Not departing from it’ may deny active trespass. That is, the terminology may reflect only the failure of kings after Jehoram to reform existing practices, rather than their exacerbation of them.58 From the formulae of Jehoahaz (‘he went after the sin of Jeroboam... He did not depart from it,’ 2 Kgs 13:2) and Jehoash (‘he did not depart from the sin of Jeroboam... In it he went,’ 13:11), one might argue an equivalence of ‘going’ and ‘not departing’ from the sin; the case of Ahab (for whom going in the sin was not enough: 1 Kgs 16:31) might seem to sustain such a judgment. However, it seems equally likely that the fine distinctions reflect deliberation. Is it a coincidence, for example, that Jehoash, who last ‘goes’ ‘in the sin’, is the last king of whom any discord with a prophet is related? Is it a coincidence, indeed, that the noun that denotes sin as a process (as a path, drk) is discarded for one more static (sin, ‫’ܒۊ‬h) when the verb denoting the sin changes in the same direction (from going, hlk, to not departing, swr)? 59 Or that both changes occur when the tales of conflict with the prophets finally peter out? These changes have the earmarks of literary development, not of a change in authors.

IV.ii The question at best remains open whether the northern judgment formulae derive from more than one hand. A similar skepticism must be brought to bear concerning the southern formulae before Hezekiah. Again Weippert is  latter is the Josianic view, from a period in which Josiah could reverse prelatic measures, but could no longer get at the calves (Halpern, The First Historians, 249–50). In any case, 2 Kgs 10:29 is at variance with the evaluation formulary on several points. It is worth adding that ‘sin’ is modified by ‘all’ either in MT or in one or another of the versions on several occasions. The only one on which MT and OG agree, however, is at 13:11 (Jehoash of Israel). ‘All’ probably comes in late to the text on the understanding that h‫ܒ‬Ҵt is a plural, and is secondary in every occurrence. 57 Jehoram, 2 Kgs 3:3; Jehu, 10:29,31; Jehoahaz, 13:2; Jehoash, 13:11; Jeroboam, 14:24, Zechariah, 15:9; Menahem, 15:18; Pekahiah, 15:24; Pekah, 15:28; the Israelites generally, 17:22, 13:6. 58 Weippert, “Die ‘deuteronomistischen’ Beurteilungen der Könige von Israel und Juda und das Problem der Redaktion der Königsbücher,” 311. 59 swr has a number of meanings in DtrH, including the common sense .of ‘turn aside from one’s ongoing path.’ However, it also has the extended sense of English ‘go away,’ i.e., ‘to vanish, be no more,’ as in ‘the high places did not “depart” (swr)’. When swr is governed by a preposition, m(’‫ۊ‬ry/ҳl)-, it often describes the (dis)loyalty of the subject of the verb to the object of the preposition without any implication of physical movement.

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the main source. Through analysis of the distribution of particular words, she detected the hands of three redactors in the southern evaluations. RI, who was also responsible for the northern evaluations from Jehoram to Pekah (Hoshea), composed those for kings from Jehoshaphat to Ahaz during or just after the reign of Hezekiah. In Josiah’s reign, RII framed RI’s work by introducing formulae for Rehoboam, Abijah, and Asa, and Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amon, and Josiah.60 RIII treated only the final four kings of Judah.61 Weippert distinguishes the hand of her RI from that of RII by several criteria: RI, for example, compares each good king with his father, while RII compares kings with David. RI also introduces the statement, ‘The high places did not depart (lo’ sƗrû),’ adding that the people patronized them. RIII, then, supplemented the work down to the fall of Judah by condemning all four kings he treated, and comparing them in some cases to their collective predecessors, named only as ‘fathers/father’. Weippert’s methodological presumption is that any discernible difference in diction implies a difference in authorship – a shift in diction reflects a shift in authorship, from account to account. All her arguments to distinguish RI’s work from that of RII stand or fall with this presupposition. So, for example, one author (RI, from Jehoshaphat to Ahaz) relates that the high places did not depart, and were patronized by the people. A series of regnal evaluations (in the instance, from Rehoboam to Asa) without a reference to the high places, or even without a reference to popular patronage of them, in the case of Asa (1 Kgs 15:14), betrays the handiwork of a second redactor (RII) – the formula of RI distinguishes him from RII. This approach, by definition, precludes the possibility that a single author adjusted his diction in order to vary his judgments (as with the northern kings after Jehoram): different diction may reflect, not a change in authorship, but a change in the circumstances a single author is attempting to depict. In the case of the formula about the high places, by way of contrast, Barrick and Campbell have observed that the statement, ‘the high places did not depart,’ with its supplement, ‘the people continued sacrificing and burning incense on the high places,’ is applied only to ‘good’ kings, as a qualification of their achievements. 62 From this observation, however, it  60

Campbell (Prophets and Kings, 169–75) holds that the evaluations for Rehoboam, Abijah, and Asa now reflect the activity of H(Dtr)jos (= Weippert’s RII), but that it is not possible to ascertain whether they originate with RII. Other considerations, some of which are reviewed below, lead him to place all evaluations from Rehoboam to Hezekiah under one rubric. 61 Weippert, “Die ‘deuteronomistischen’ Beurteilungen der Könige von Israel und Juda und das Problem der Redaktion der Königsbücher,” 323–26. 62 Barrick “On the ‘Removal of the High Places’ in 1–2 Kings”; Campbell, Prophets and Kings, 177–78.

256 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  follows that Asa is the first king after Solomon (for whom 1 Kgs 3:3–4) to whom such a statement could attach. Possibly his notice lacks the supplement about popular patronage of the ‘high places’ because he is at the start of the series: only under Rehoboam, after all, are the people blamed for constructing the rural shrines,63 and Asa is the first good king after Rehoboam. After Asa, Jehoshaphat’s formulae exhibit the full form (1 Kgs 22:44; but cf. OG 1 Kgs 16:28b). So there is no sure indication of a transition from one author to another, as Weippert claims. A single historian may simply be applying his formulary in a consistent fashion. On the other side of Hezekiah, the formal indications are equally unclear. That Hezekiah removes the ‘high places’ makes it impossible to repeat the putative RI formula, ‘the high places did not depart,’ in his evaluation. The same is true of the other, later good king, Josiah. All other kings after Hezekiah are styled ‘evil,’ for which reason the formula about the high places not departing is inapplicable to them. Weippert also maintains that RI compared wicked Davidides to Israelites, where RII likens them to Amorites. Yet this, too, may be in the nature of a single author’s historical reconstruction and literary scheme. That the history portrays Manasseh in demonic terms might equally be invoked to explain why that king is compared to Amorites, not Israelites, and why it is said of him that he did evil, ‘according to all the abominations of the nations whom Yhwh supplanted before the Israelites’ (2 Kgs 21:2), rather than that he ‘went in the way of the Amorites.’ Amon, then, ‘went in all the way in which his father went’ (21:21). These reports fit well with those about the Judahites under Rehoboam, the first of the evil kings: they, too, did what the Amorites had done (1 Kgs 14:24). Like Manasseh’s son, Amon, Abijah, Rehoboam’s heir, then ‘went in all the sins of his father’ (1 Kgs 15:2). Out of this frame around the less apocalyptic prose of RI, Weippert has isolated RII’s handiwork. Provan attributes all this language to the final, exilic editor. But perhaps the comparisons to the Amorites signal only that the people under Rehoboam (Abijah?), and Manasseh (and Amon?), were actively building ‘high places’ – Ahaz, who allegedly practiced human sacrifice, attracts the same comparison (further below). Less likely is the possibility that the author of a Josianic edition of Kings chose to place wicked kings at the start of Judah’s history to correspond to those at the end (up to Josiah). In any case, the variation in diction may reflect the con 63 OG accuses Rehoboam of doing evil, as opposed to Judah, as in MT of 1 Kgs 14:22. However, the succeeding verbs are in the plural, indicating correction to the formulary in the Vorlage. Cf. also OG in 12:24a, with the simple statement that ‘he did evil in Yhwh’s sight, and did not go in the way of David, his father.’ On systematization in OG, see nn. 21, 36, 91.

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tent of what a single author wanted to say about particular kings, rather than the variation between two authors’ presupposed ideal schemes that assumed the complete identity of all wicked kings with one another. Overall, no distinction in the language of royal condemnation through Josiah demands or even makes probable a hypothesis of changing authorship. Similar problems beset Weippert’s attempt to distinguish comparisons with the king’s father from comparisons with David as marks of differential redaction. After Solomon, good kings with good fathers are compared with their fathers (1 Kgs 22:43; 2 Kgs 14:3; 15:3, 34); those with wicked fathers are compared with David (1 Kgs 15:11; 2 Kgs 12:3 + 14:3: 18:3; 22:2). It is true that in Joash’s case, the notice is belated: Joash did what was right while Jehoiada instructed him (2 Kgs 12:3); only at Amaziah’s accession does the reader learn that the latter’s righteousness was not on the order of David’s, but rather of Joash’s (14:3).64 Still, since the departure from routine is equally embarrassing to Weippert’s position, it must be conceded that good kings with wicked fathers could hardly have been compared to their fathers, so that recourse to David as ideal makes a sensible alternative. Indeed, Weippert suggests that RII left the unapocopated comparison of Asa, Jehoshaphat, and Hezekiah to David, but qualified it elsewhere.65 But why would RII modify an inherited comparison to David only for the series Joash-Amaziah-Uzziah-Jotham, and not for Asa or Jehoshaphat? If the criterion for a full-scale endorsement is cult reform (as 1 Kgs 15:12–13; 22:47; 2 Kgs 18:4; cf. temple-rebuilding in 2 Kgs 12:5– 17), why could this not also have been the criterion of an earlier historian, who applied different phrasing to different subjects? All this means that the case from the evaluation formulae for a change in authorship after Jehoshaphat and after Ahaz is not persuasive. Barrick and Campbell have already punctured the case for two redactions between  64 Provan (Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 93) argues that 2 Kgs 14:3, ‘just not like David his father,’ is secondary on the grounds that its removal leaves the evaluation in the condition of 15:34 (Jotham), and that there is a double ‘but’ in this and the succeeding verse. Neither argument is compelling: homogenization is perhaps desirable for simplification, but the argument for simplification of the literature remains unmade; and, the second ‘but’ qualifies the overall positive evaluation in connection with the high places, while the first qualifies the endorsement of personal behavior. There is no conflict here, and no versional evidence for accretion. Provan also fails to stipulate why a scribe should have introduced this supposedly intrusive notice in such an obviously jarring location. As it stands, the phrase distinguishes the righteousness of the whole series of kings from Joash to Jotham from that of David, Asa, Jehoshaphat, and Hezekiah (also, Josiah); the qualification of 2 Kgs 12:3 can be read to have similar implications (as Chronicles takes it to have). Note that Joash, Amaziah, and Jotham all suffer invasions, while Uzziah is forced from the palace by leprosy(?). Asa and Jehoshaphat fight only on foreign soil. 65 Weippert, “Die ‘deuteronomistischen’ Beurteilungen der Könige von Israel und Juda und das Problem der Redaktion der Königsbücher,” n. 7, 327–30.

258 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  Asa (effectively, Rehoboam) and Hezekiah. 66 However, at least for the break between Hezekiah’s and subsequent regnal accounts, there is reason to believe that Weippert’s instinct was true. The QM formulae are an important indication, and the same may be said of the formulae concerning burial. The most persuasive observation is perhaps Barrick’s, that after a sequence of good kings for whom the high places ‘did not depart,’ Hezekiah ‘caused the high places to depart.’ In this sense, Hezekiah is the high point of Kings.67 The specific language used of Hezekiah resonates across all the preceding formula. ‘He caused the high places to depart’ (2 Kgs 18:4) caps the sequence of reports that, under good Davidides, ‘the high places did not depart.’ Simultaneously, it erects a contrast with northern kings from Joram forward, who ‘did not depart from the sin of Jeroboam.’ It is instructive, thus, that 2 Kgs 18:6 relates of Hezekiah that ‘He cleaved to Yhwh and did not depart (lit., turn away) from after him’, while Joram ‘cleaved to the sin of Jeroboam... He did not depart from it’ (2 Kgs 3:3). Hezekiah is the mirror image of the northern kings, as well as the apogee of Davidic goodness.68 With the north in exile, the themes of the body of the history seem to culminate at his reign. The praise of Josiah, conversely, does not accord with that of Hezekiah. Josiah does not initially ‘cause high places to depart.’ The language describing Josiah’s deeds is far more graphic, and more violent: he ‘defiles’ (‫ܒ‬m’) the high places of Judah (2 Kgs 23:8, 13), ‘burns’ (Ğrp) Jeroboam’s (23:15), and ‘tears down’ (nt‫ )܈‬high places and altars (23:7, 8, 12, 15). The only high places that he ‘caused to depart’ are the last he deals with, the  66 Barrick “On the ‘Removal of the High Places’ in 1–2 Kings”; Campbell, Prophets and Kings, 69–87. 67 Barrick “On the ‘Removal of the High Places’ in 1–2 Kings.” 68 Campbell (Prophets and Kings, 176–77) denies that the use of sûr in the northern formula is related to its appearance in the southern formulary However, the contrast between Hezekiah and Joram reflects deliberation on the historian’s part. Solomon is the only other person in Kings who ‘cleaves’ to anything (1 Kgs 112), and what he ‘cleaves to’ is foreign women (Naaman’s leprosy also ‘cleaves’ to him in 2 Kgs 5:27) The term occurs elsewhere in DtrH as follows Deut 44, 10:20, 11:22, 13:5, 30:20, Josh 22:5; 23:8 in injunctions to ‘cleave’ to Yhwh; 2 Sam 20:2 (Judah cleft to their king, David); 23:10 (Eleazar’s hand cleft to his sword); Deut 13:18 (one’s hand must not cleave to any of the property under the ban in the apostate town); 28:60 (the illnesses of Egypt will cleave to you); in C, Judg 18:22; 20:42,45; 1 Sam 14:22; 31:2; 2 Sam 1:6, of pursuit at war, and Deut 28:21 in extended use based on this meaning. Solomon seems to fall afoul of the other G use, in Josh 23:12, an injunction against ‘cleaving’ to foreigners on pain of Yhwh’s refusing to supplant them – exactly what does occur in Judges 1–3. It is worth observing that Jeremiah uses the verb in an uncharacteristic sense only, with the C indicating that Yhwh stuck Israel to him like a loincloth or girdle (Jer 13:11), but Israel did not obey.

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high places of the north outside of Bethel (2 Kgs 23:19).69 Nor does Josiah ‘cleave’ to Yhwh, ‘returning to Yhwh,’ instead, ‘with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might’ (2 Kgs 23:25) in an echo of the Mosaic injunction of Deut 6:5 (the only other text with a pronominal suffix on m’d70). It is true that Josiah is said not to have departed, ‘from all the way of David his father’ (22:2). But the regnal evaluation (v. 2) does not relate to the high places, as Hezekiah’s does (18:3–8). This indicates that Josiah’s evaluation was not handled by the author who composed Hezekiah’s. That author took care to construct Hezekiah’s evaluation as the decisive contrast to the foregoing Israelite motif of ‘not departing from the sins of Jeroboam’, and to the preceding persistence of the high places in Judah: ‘he caused the high places to depart.’ Hezekiah’s evaluation, in contrast to Josiah’s, then, foregrounds the language and concepts of what has consistently gone wrong before, even in the cases of righteous kings. It presents Hezekiah as the king who solved the most intractable problems in Judahite history. The hypothesis that an early edition of Kings (the royal chronicles?) ended at Hezekiah helps to explain how it is that both Hezekiah and Josiah are said to have outshone all predecessors and successors (2 Kgs 18:5; 23:25). Similarly, the idea of a Hezekian history (Dtr[hez]) would account for thematic punctuation in Kings (2 Kgs 18:7 with 1 Kgs 2:3) and Chronicles, presenting Hezekiah as a second Solomon.71 Also, several themes reflecting concerns of the Josianic reform, but not of Hezekiah’s,72 have their earliest articulation in Kings in Manasseh’s regnal account. Thus the ‘host of heaven,’ to which 1 Kgs 22:19–23 make positive reference, figure as an object of disparagement in 2 Kgs 21:3, 5 – the first such negative case in reference to a Judahite in Kings.73 The ‘host’ was especially the object of incense offerings, so far as the texts testify, against which Jeremiah particularly, but Zephaniah and Deuteronomy, too, inveigh; only Josiah acts against the host (2 Kgs. 23:4–5).  69

Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 82–89; Halpern, The First Historians, 226–27. 70 Friedman, “From Egypt to Egypt: Dtr1 and Dtr2,” 171. 71 H. G. M. Williamson, Israel in the Books of Chronicles (London: Cambridge, 1977), 120–25; Halpern, “Sacred History and Ideology,” 50–51. 72 For discussion, see Halpern, “Jerusalem and the Lineages.” 73 Lemaire, “Vers l’histoire de la rédaction des livres des Rois,” 228. In connection with the north, note 2 Kgs 17:16. Deuteronomy rejects the host sharply (Deut 4:19; 17:3), and Jeremiah and Zephaniah, in the late seventh century, share this concern (as Jer 8:2; 19:13; Zeph 1:5); for positive reflections on the host, in different terminology, see Josh 5:14f.; Judg 5:19; 1 Kgs 22:19–23.

260 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  Further, the derogation in Manasseh’s regnal account focuses on cultic decadence and high places in the area of Jerusalem; yet Hezekiah had permitted Solomon’s high places (2 Kgs 23:13), the ‘altars that the kings of Judah dedicated’ (2 Kgs 23:12), and ‘the horses of the sun that the kings of Judah dedicated’ (2 Kgs 23:11) to survive: cultic activity in Jerusalem in his era enjoyed an imprimatur unavailable to the countryside. And the emphasis on bloodletting in Manasseh’s regnal account is wholly alien to that of earlier or later reports: for the kings after Josiah, a blanket dismissal suffices; for earlier kings, sins must be directed at Yhwh, not at people, to have any causative ramifications. This shift, too, seems to reflect varying authorial perspectives.

IV.iii If the evidence, overall, tends to shore up Weippert’s thesis of a change in authorship starting at Hezekiah, analysts of the regnal formulae have reached a relatively firm consensus on a shift in authorship roughly at Josiah’s death.74 In the formulation of this consensus, examination of regnal evaluations has played a central role. A review of this evidence will sustain the hypothesis of a change in the authorship of the regnal evaluations after that for Josiah. Thereafter, further attention to the evaluations will divulge evidence supporting not just a binary, but a tripartite redactional analysis: the regnal formula reflects changes in authorship after Hezekiah as well as after Josiah. Josiah’s four successors are all condemned without qualification. Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim, sons of Josiah, are evaluated with the sentence, way-yaҳaĞ hƗ-raҳ be-ҳênê yhwh ke-kǀl ’ašer ҳƗĞû ҳabôtƗyw ‘he did what was evil in Yhwh’s eyes according to everything that his fathers had done (2 Kgs 23:32; 23:37). The judgment for Zedekiah differs in that he is compared to Jehoiakim rather than to anonymous ‘fathers’ (2 Kgs 24:19). 75 And Jehoiachin (2 Kgs 24:9) is compared to his ‘father’ (sg.), Jehoiakim. The comparisons to ‘fathers’ for Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim are special evidence of changing authorship after Josiah. No other ‘wicked’ king with  74

Weippert, “Die ‘deuteronomistischen’ Beurteilungen der Könige von Israel und Juda und das Problem der Redaktion der Königsbücher,” 333–34; Nelson, The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History, 29–42; McKenzie, The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History, 175; Campbell, Prophets and Kings, 143, n. 10; Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? 101–16; Mayes, The Story of Israel between Settlement and Exile, 124– 32; for other reasons, Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 278–85; Provan demurs (Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 48–49), but see below. 75 Nelson, The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History, 39.

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a ‘good’ father is compared to his ‘fathers,’ or to any plural referent in Judahite history at all. Further, Zedekiah is the only king in either kingdom to be compared to a brother (cf. 2 Kgs 3:1–2 MT), and the only ‘wicked’ Davidide to be compared to an immediate predecessor by name (a point whose force is admittedly mitigated by the fact that he is the only Davidide to succeed a brother). The four kings treated after Josiah are treated – in terms of the rest of the history – most anomalously. One wonders, especially, to which ‘fathers’ these regnal evaluations refer. If royalty only are meant, the tactic seems inappropriate: most of the Davidides win favorable verdicts from the history, and the immediate father of both Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim is Josiah. If Judahites or Israelites generally are the referents, then the usage differs significantly from that in the other regnal formulae.76 It is, in sum, unlikely, that the last four evaluations stem from the same hand as those that go before: concepts, form, and usage speak against the common authorship of the regnal evaluations after Josiah and those up to Josiah. Against this verdict one might appeal to Provan’s demonstration that Weippert’s RIII cannot be isolated just by the rigidity of the evaluations of the last four kings of Judah.77 He observes that the last four kings of Israel (except for two: 2 Kgs 15:9, 18, 24, 28) receive similar treatment.78 Yet a world of difference separates the Israelite from the Judahite cases: the post-Josianic evaluations differ from earlier evaluations not just in their unchanging form, but in their very terms of reference. In the case of the Israelites, the formulae stipulate precisely the character of the sin, and even indicate that the last king of Israel, Hosea, was less blameworthy than those who preceded him (2 Kgs 17:2). Conversely, the last four Judahite evaluations state only that sin occurred. They are the only evaluations of Davidides that provide no specific information as to the nature of the king’s offense. Formally, too, these last four negative judgments differ from earlier ones. None of the kings is accused either of constructing bƗmôt or of pa-

 76 Closest would be Rehoboam’s in 1 Kgs 14:22, where the collective fathers of the Judahites are in point, but where Judah, not Rehoboam, is the subject of the evaluation in MT. On OG here, cf. n. 63. Zechariah is also compared to ‘his fathers’ in 2 Kgs 15:9, but in this case the term is more literal, denoting the Nimshide dynasts. Note Friedman, “From Egypt to Egypt: Dtr1 and Dtr2,” 177–78) on the fixation of E(Dtr)x on popular, not royal, transgression. 77 As, for example, Nelson (The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History, 36–41): “the rubber stamp character of the last four introductory regnal formulae is a strong indication that a second writer was responsible for them” (41). 78 Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 48–49.

262 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  tronizing alien cults, themes rife in the pre-Josianic evaluations.79 None is compared with David, or with the Amorites or the kings of Israel. Yet of eight Davidides who do evil down to the time of Josiah, three are compared with David; the promise of a fief for David or the election of Jerusalem is invoked in connection with four others. 80 This leaves a string of kings starting with Joash (by implication from Amaziah’s evaluation) and terminating with Josiah all of whose regnal evaluations are governed by direct or indirect comparison to David – one of the foundations of Weippert’s redaction criticism (= RII).81 The break at Josiah is particularly noticeable. Moreover, all five wicked Davidides between the time of Ahab and that of Josiah are compared to Ahab, to his dynasty, or to the kings of Israel (2 Kgs 8:18, 27; 16:3; 21:3, 20–21). Again, no such comparison occurs for Josiah’s successors. It follows that while the language of the post-Josianic evaluations is styled on those which go before, formal deviation and thematic incongruity belie any thesis that the post-Josianic formula reflects the hand that produced the formulae for the earlier kings. Yet the contrast to be drawn is not just between evaluations of kings who reigned after Josiah and evaluations of earlier kings. There are also indications that the formulae underwent a shift after the account of Hezekiah. Thus, DtrH compares the iniquities of five Davidides to the activities of the Amorites – Rehoboam (or Judah under him, 1 Kgs 14:24, for outfitting the high places and for sacred prostitution), Abijah (15:3, pursuing his father’s policies, which are suppressed by the next kings), Ahaz (2 Kgs 16:3, for infant sacrifice), Manasseh (2 Kgs 21:2, as a general rubric for all his policies), and Amon (2 Kgs 21:20–21, pursuing his father’s policies). That these comparisons differ both in their specificity and in what they identify as Amorite suggests that they need not stem from a single hand, as Provan presumes: 82 it is specific violations of Rehoboam, Abijah, and  79 For the former see Friedman, “From Egypt to Egypt: Dtr1 and Dtr2,” 174; for the latter, Halpern, The First Historians, 227. 80 Solomon (1 Kgs 11:4, 6), Abijah (15:3) and Ahaz (2 Kgs 16:2) are compared directly to David. The fief is mentioned as the reason Yhwh forbore to act against Joram (2 Kgs 8:19), as well as in connection with Solomon (1 Kgs 11:13) and Abijah (1 Kgs 15:4). And the election of Jerusalem, for David, is cited in the formulae for Rehoboam (1 Kgs 14:21) and Manasseh (2 Kgs 21:2), to whom Amon is likened in all things (2 Kgs 21:20– 21). The only other evil Davidide in the list is Ahaziah. 81 Weippert, “Die ‘deuteronomistischen’ Beurteilungen der Könige von Israel und Juda und das Problem der Redaktion der Königsbücher,” 327–31; see also Friedman, “From Egypt to Egypt: Dtr1 and Dtr2,” 174. 82 Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 77, 85–87. Note that no northern king is compared to the Amorites, and that the comparison of the northern population to the Amorites in 2 Kgs 17:8–11 focuses specifically on sacrifice at the rural high places 

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Ahaz, kings who reigned before Hezekiah, that DtrH first describes, and then styles as Amorite; for Manasseh and Amon, Hezekiah’s successors, the accusation of Amorite-like behavior becomes a general characterization, prior to any specific indictment. Further, the texts comparing Joram and Ahaziah to the house of Ahab or the kings of Israel (2 Kgs 8:18, 27) are hardly more flattering, since the implication is baal-worship, identified as Amorite in Judg 2:1–3:6 (by the Josianic edition of DtrH, as we shall see – n. 106). Joram, Ahaziah, and Ahaz are accused of going in the way of Israelite kings (2 Kgs 8:18, 27; 16:3) as a blanket indictment – no specific content attaches to any of these characterizations. But the same accusation is specific (building of an Asherah) in the cases of Manasseh (2 Kgs 21:3) and, by implication, Amon (21:20–21).83 That is, three different patterns of usage can be distinguished here. For kings down to Hezekiah’s time, comparisons to Amorites refer to specific acts, and comparisons to the Omrides are generalized. For Manasseh and Amon, comparison to the Amorites is generalized and comparison to the Omrides concerns specific deeds. H(Dtr)hez and H(Dtr)jos employ the Omrides and Amorites differently, while after H(Dtr)jos, neither Omrides nor Amorites are invoked. These are the only Davidic monarchs condemned in Kings without direct or indirect comparison to either the Amorites or the Omrides. All this adds up to a complex redaction-historical hypothesis. The first edition of the history (or, the first edition isolated by traditional methods) culminated with the reign of Hezekiah. A new edition was prepared under Josiah. And a third scribe produced the final form, which reaches down past the fall of Jerusalem into the exile.

 (much as one might expect from a Hezekian document). It is only in the succeeding renewal of the specific bill of indictment in vv. 15–18, where the Israelites are compared to their neighbors, not their predecessors, that the following are enumerated as sins: the two calves, the manufacture of an Asherah, worship of the ‘host of the heavens,’ serving the baal, passing sons and daughters through fire, and practising non-prophetic mantic arts. In our view, the latter text is Josianic or later. It presumes intercourse with surrounding populations, and possibly the survival of the Amorites (as Judg 1–3 – see n. 106), whereas the Hezekian usage predicates the eradication of the Amorites (as Amos 2:9–10). 83 Manasseh is not said to ‘go in the way’ of Ahab, but the difference in diction need not imply different authorship. On the other hand, it is of passing interest that the construct chain ‘the way of Yhwh’ (drk yhwh) occurs only in connection with Amon (2 Kgs 21:22) and in Judg 2:22, a passage derived on other grounds from H(Dtr)jos (as n. 106).

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V.i For the most part, the evidence for any individual stage in this hypothetical scheme is binary: the text to point “a” has such and such characteristics, and after point “a” has others. However, there is one formal arena apart from the treatment of high places and the evaluations in which the historiographic practice shifts with our hypothesized history of redaction. In question is the handling of assassinations, to which examination of the DBF has indicated H(Dtr) attached some importance. As further analysis will disclose, this is also an area where the historians’ diverging perspectives on succession and on source-notices come to un-self-conscious expression. And thus it is an ideal area in which to examine questions of authorship. DtrH is consistent in treating the assassinations of northern kings. The historian’s practice is to detail coups before the source notice (‘and the rest of the affairs of RN... Are they not written in the books of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?’), wherever he includes such a source notice.84 Since H(Dtr) suppressed the DBF for northern kings who met violent deaths, the source notice finishes the regnal account. This system reverses the pattern for kings whose offspring succeeded them. In these cases, the regnal account typically ends with the source notice preceding the account of death in the DBF; thereafter comes the succession notice (‘and RN, his son, ruled in his stead’).85 That is, where there is dynastic continuity, H(Dtr) empha 84 The source notice is attached to the accounts of Nadab (1 Kgs 15:31), Elah (16:14), Zimri (16:20), Ahaziah (2 Kgs 1:18 – violent death in 1:17), Zechariah (2 Kgs 15:11), Shallum (15:15), Pekahiah (15:26), and Pekah (15:31). There is no such notice for Jehoram, whose death is related in a narrative centered on Jehu’s deeds, not his own (2 Kgs 9:24–26). Ahab’s source notice (1 Kgs 22:39) sits after the report of his violent death (22:37), but before that of his peaceful death (22:40). 85 1 Kgs 14:19–20 (Jeroboam); 16:5–6 (Baasha), with a supplement on prophecyfulfilment in v 7; 16:27–28 (Omri), 22:39–40 (Ahab, but with violent death and a supplement on prophecy-fulfilment in vv. 37–38); 2 Kgs 10:34–35 (Jehu), with a supplement on regnal length in v. 36; 13:8–9 (Jehoahaz); 13:12–13 (OG after 13:25) // 14:15–16 with 14:28–29 (Jeroboam); 15:21–22 (Menahem). The pattern holds for every king who meets a peaceful end. Note that northern kings who die peacefully have supplementary notes (for which, Halpern, First Historians, n. 31, 219–20) only in the cases of Jehu (for regnal length, possibly because the Nimshide apology forbids its earlier insertion), Baasha (prophecy-fulfilment), and arguably Joash in MT (13:14–25, which OG encloses in the regnal account). These come uniformly after the succession notice, in contrast to the general pattern for Judahite kings (except Amaziah in 2 Kgs 14:22, where the form of the succession report is altered, and Jehoiaqim in 2 Kgs 24:7). No equivalent position existed for northerners who died violently – the DBF being absent. Here, the supplementary notes follow the source notices in the cases of Nadab (1 Kgs 15:32, a suspect verse concerning Baasha, omitted in OG), Zechariah (2 Kgs 15:12, prophecy-fulfilment), and Shal

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sizes it by reporting the source notice earlier in order to juxtapose death and succession. Where a northern dynasty ends, H(Dtr) reports the death, and closes off the account of the last king in the dynasty with a source citation – marking the discontinuity at each dynastic shift. The structure of the Judahite accounts is more varied. For kings who die peacefully, the pattern resembles that for those in the north. Thus the source notice comes first, followed by a supplementary note (for Solomon, regnal length in 1 Kgs 11:42), if any, after which come the DBF and the succession notice. This pattern, for Judahites as for Israelites, expresses the orderly character of the succession.86 DtrH does treat the two Davidides who fall victim to assassins down to the reign of Hezekiah differently from Israelite kings who die violently. Thus, H(Dtr) reports the assassinations of Joash (2 Kgs 12:21–22) and Amaziah (14:19–21) in supplementary notes, between the source notice and the description of death, burial and succession. In these cases, the historian chose to underline the continuity of the dynasty, over against the irregularity of the succession: the assassination is presented as having speeded the succession only, without otherwise altering the natural course of events. This is why Amaziah’s punishment of his father’s assassins is singled out (2 Kgs 14:5–6), along with the intervention of the ‘people of Judah’ against Amaziah’s assassins in the enthronement of Uzziah (2 Kgs 14:21). To this evidence may be added the fact that Asa’s illness is treated in a supplementary note – between his source and DBF notices, as though his were an unusual death. Still, the DBF follows the report of illness, and the continuity of the dynasty remains front and center. Between Hezekiah’s accession and Josiah’s, DtrH reports the assassination of one Davidide only – Amon. Here, however, the treatment mimics  lum (2 Kgs 15:16, his successor’s act). These supplementary notes exhibit a different character from those about the kings of Judah: where they pertain to the king whose regnal account they follow, they mainly concern prophecy. 86 1 Kgs 11:41–43 (Solomon, supplementary note on regnal length between); 14:29– 31 (Rehoboam, supplementary note on conflict with Jeroboam, and with the QM named between the DBF and the succession note); 15:7–8 (Abijah, supplementary note on conflict with Jeroboam); 15:23–24 (Asa, supplementary note on his ‘gout’); 22:46–51 (OG 16:28c–h, Jehoshaphat, supplementary note on cult reform and ventures in Edom); 2 Kgs 8:23–24 (Joram); 15:6–7 (Uzziah); 15:36–38 (Jotham, supplementary note on the SyroEphraimite invasions); 16:19–20 (Ahaz); 20:20–21 (Hezekiah); 21:17–18 (Manasseh); 24:5–6 (Jehoiaqim, with a post-succession supplementary note in v. 7 about the Egyptians’ failure to join battle thereafter). On the case of Amaziah’s post-succession supplementary note (2 Kgs 14:22), see above. A notice occurs between Jehoiaqim’s succession and the accession formulae of his successor, concerning the conflict between Babylon and Egypt over Western Asia. A notice concerning Rehoboam’s QM occurs after his DBF and before his succession notice. On variations in what the source notice includes, see below, and n. 91.

266 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  the sequence for Israelites who are assassinated. First come the conspiracy and murder (2 Kgs 21:23). Then comes the elevation of the successor (2 Kgs 21:24), in this instance by the ‘people of the land.’ Thereafter, the source notice appears; and the burial (not present for the Israelite kings) and succession of the son lead to the next reign. There is a palpable compromise with the northern pattern – the report of the coup precedes the source notice. Yet the impression of dynastic continuity still has its reflex in a sequence which details burial (but not death) and the succession last – the dynasty persisted, after all. So far, then, there is evidence of a change in the treatment of coups in Judah between Amaziah and Amon – signaling an authorial shift after H(Dtr)hez. The pattern reverts after the account of Amon’s reign. Josiah dies at the hand of the Pharaoh, Necho. Here, the source notice precedes the supplementary note describing Josiah’s demise (2 Kgs 23:28–29). There follow, necessarily, the burial and succession, mediated by the ‘people of the land’ (23:30); these cannot in any event have preceded the account of the death. Josiah’s death, in sum, is treated like the deaths of Amaziah and Joash. Thus, the kings who die violently before the reign of Hezekiah are dealt with as partners in a dynastic succession. The king who dies violently between Hezekiah and Josiah, Amon, is treated on the paradigm for dealing with Israelite kings who are assassinated. Then Josiah’s death attracts a pattern87 close to the first. The suggestion is, one author, H(Dtr)hez, dealt with the deaths of Joash and Amaziah, another, H(Dtr)jos, with that of Amon, and a third, E(Dtr)x, with that of Josiah. In particular, the dynastic concern reflected in the treatment of succession in the cases of Joash and Amaziah is absent from Amon’s account. Other explanations are possible (such as a differentiation of the violent deaths of wicked kings from those of good). However, redactional stratification is perhaps the most probable  87 Josiah’s is the only report of violent death that begins with a temporal clause: “in his days, the Pharaoh Necho came up from Egypt...” Amon’s and Amaziah’s assassinations are introduced by a converted yaqtul pl. of qšr, Joash’s with that of qwm and qšr, all in cases where underlings are accused of the murder. Northern regicide, except in the cases of Ahab’s death and Jehu’s coup, is introduced by converted yaqtuls. All begin with qšr except in the instances of Zimri’s (1 Kgs 16:17–18) and Shallum’s (2 Kgs 15:14) killings, where the historian implies a countercoup is in point. The only other temporal clauses in supplementary notes concern Asa’s illness (‘And it was, at the time of his dotage...’) and the start of the Syro-Ephraimite incursions (‘In those days, Yhwh began to send...’). Thematically, the formulation of Josiah’s death report links directly to the post-succession notice supplementary note of Jehoiaqim, ‘The king of Egypt no longer ventured forth from his land,’ in 2 Kgs 24:7. Egypt appears previously as ‘a broken reed’ in 2 Kgs 18:21, 24, and effectively 17:4, although an expedition by a king of Cush is mentioned in 2 Kgs 19:9a. For a list of supplementary notes, see below, n. 88a.

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cause of the variation, which is consistent with the other shifts in historiographic practice (and thus authorship), observed above, in or after the accounts about Hezekiah and Josiah.

V.ii Analysis of supplementary notes also corroborates this verdict. Thus, the supplementary notes for Judahite kings come after the source citation, and before the DBF, in the cases of Rehoboam (1 Kgs 14:30 – war with Jeroboam), Abijah (15:8 – war with Jeroboam), Asa (15:24 – illness), Jehoshaphat (22:47–50; OG 16:28d–g – cult reform and naval venture), Joash (2 Kgs 12:21–22 – assassination), Amaziah (2 Kgs 14:19 – assassination), Jotham (15:37 – the start of the Syro-Ephraimite war) and Josiah (23:29 – violent death). There are two cases, however, where the supplementary note succeeds the notice of succession – 2 Kgs 14:22, after the report of Amaziah’s murder and the popular enthronement of Uzziah occupies the normal place of the supplementary note (above); and, 2 Kgs 24:7, after the DBF and succession notice for Jehoiakim, a king whose formulary is otherwise undisturbed. The placement of Jehoiakim’s supplementary notice after the succession notice would be unremarkable if attached to a northern king’s account.88 That the content of the supplementary note has nothing to do with Jehoiakim himself (it speaks of Egypt’s abandoning Asia to Babylon) also has parallels among the northern regnal accounts. 89 But among Judahite regnal accounts, both the content and the placement of Jehoiakim’s supplementary note stand out. In short, the supplementary notes down through Josiah’s conform to a single Judahite pattern, but the sup 88

For kings who have successors and die peacefully, Baasha in 1 Kgs 16:7, with a supplementary note on the delivery of a prophetic condemnation; Jehu in 2 Kgs 10:36, with the regnal length appended at the end. Among kings who die without successors, Zechariah in 2 Kgs 15:12, a supplementary note on the fulfilment of the dynastic promise to Jehu; Shallum in 2 Kgs 15:16, a supplementary note dedicated not to Shallum, but to Menahem’s actions at Tiphsach. What in MT is a long supplementary note for Joash in 2 Kgs 13:14–25 is in OG enclosed within the regnal formula. This material is in any case focused on Elisha, although the final section, which follows from Elisha’s deathbed promise, has ramifications for Joash. The only standard supplementary note for northern kings is that giving regnal length for Jeroboam I in 1 Kgs 14:20a (where OG omits 14:1– 20, integrating much of the story there into 12:24g–n). 89 So 2 Kgs 15:16, on Shallum’s assassin, not Shallum himself. 1 Kgs 15:32, a supplement to Nadab’s reign, speaks of his assassin’s, not his own, confrontations with Asa, although this text is under the obelus. And it is arguable that 2 Kgs 15:12, on the fulfillment of Yhwh’s promise to Jehu, is not personal to Zechariah in the way that, say, the Judahite notices about illness, assassination, warfare, and commercial ventures concern the deeds or welfare of the kings to whose regnal accounts they attach.

268 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  plement for Jehoiakim was treated along the lines of the supplementary notes for northern kings. This historiographic shift reflects a change in authorship after Josiah (i.e., E[Dtr]x).89a

V.iii Another hint of changing authorship comes from variation in the source citations. The formula consists of the following elements: 1. “the rest of the affairs of RN” wytr dbry RN; 2. “and all that he did” wkl ’šr ҳĞh; 3. other data, particularly on the king’s martial prowess gbwrtw; 4. “are they not [or: lo, they are] written in the books of the chronicles of the kings of Israel/Judah.” The form tolerates minor variation in both north and south. Thus, neither the source citation nor a DBF appears for any exiled monarch.90 The same is true of Jehoram of Israel, while Ahaziah of Judah lacks the source citation. These are the two kings killed in Jehu’s Putsch, and perhaps the nature of the literary continuum in 2 Kgs 9:23–37 forbade divagation to close the kings’ regnal accounts (but cf. 9:29). As to the rest, there are minor variants where MT or OG lack ‘all’ in element 2, and several instances where

 89a The supplementary notes for kings of Judah appear between the source notice and the DBF in 1 Kgs 11:42 (Solomon, regnal length); 14:30 (Rehoboam, war with Jeroboam); 15:7 (Abijam, war with Jeroboam; cf. 15:6, under the obelus); 22:47–50 (Jehoshaphat, suppression of sacred prostitutes, status of Edom, naval venture and disaster, and, rejection of collaboration with Israel; cf. 16:28d–g, OG); 2 Kgs 12:21 (Joash, assassination); 14:19–22 (Amaziah, assassination, and information after DBF and Succession Notice, for which see above); 15:37 (Jotham, start of Syro-Ephraimite War); 23:29 (Josiah, death at hand of Necho, and information after DBF concerning succession). In 2 Kgs 24:7, there is a notice after Jehoiaqim’s DBF and before the accession formulae of his successor, the sole case of such a placement for a Judahite king who dies peacefully. For kings of Israel, supplementary notes occur at 1 Kgs 14:20 (Jeroboam, regnal length, after the source notice and before the DBF, OG omits); 15:32 (Nadab, war with Baasha, after the source notice [no DBF], OG omits); 2 Kgs 10:35 (Jehu regnal length, after the DBF); 15:11 (Zechariah, fulfilment of dynastic oracle to Jehu, after the source notice [no DBF]); 15:16 (Shallum, coup of Menahem, after the source notice [no DBF]). A notice also occurs after Baasha’s DBF, and before the accession formulae of his successor, regarding a prophecy against Baasha (1 Kgs 16:7). 90 In the north, Hosea; in the south, Jehoahaz, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah. 2 Kgs 23:34 mentions Jehoahaz’s death in Egypt (mwt).

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one or the other drops element 2 altogether, but the overall impression of unity remains strong.91 Table 4: Source Notice by Element – Kings of Judah KINGS OF JUDAH Elements 1 Kgs 11:41/Solomon: 1 Kgs 14:29/Rehoboam: 1 Kgs 15:7/Abijam: 1 Kgs 15:23/Asa: 1 Kgs 22:46/Jehoshaphat: (1 Kgs 16:28c–g/OG: [GL–, L; wyšlm RN, 2 Kgs 8:23/Joram: 2 Kgs 9:27-28/Ahazyahu: 2 Kgs 12:20/Joash: 2 Kgs 14:18/Amazyahu: 2 Kgs 15:6/Azaryahu: 2 Kgs 15:36/Jotham: 2 Kgs 16:19/Ahaz: 2 Kgs 20:20/Hezekiahu:

2 Kgs 21:17/Manasseh: 2 Kgs 21:25/Amon: 2 Kgs 23:28/Josiah: 2 Kgs 23:33/Jehoahaz: 2 Kgs 24:5/Jehoiakim 2 Kgs 24:11/Jehoiachin: 2 Kgs 25:6/Zedekiah:

1 Y

2 K

Y Y Y Y

K K wkl gbwrtw K wgbwrtw Kwҳšr hšlym RN wkl gbwrtw KK -K * K KK-* *

Y] Y -Y Y Y Y Y

Y Y Y -Y ---

K K-* K -K ---

3 w[OG, G: kl] ‫ۊ‬kmtw

4 Hl (book of RN)

Hl Hl #whҳrym ’šr bnh# Hl wL Hl wL --

wkl gbwrtw w’šr ҳĞh ’t hbrkh w’t htҳlh [OG K-] wyb’ ’t hmym hҳyrh w‫’ܒۊ‬tw ’šr ‫’ܒۊ‬

Hl Hl -Hl Hl Hl v Hl Hl

Hl Hl Hl -Hl ---

 91 Among Davidides, the MT source citations for Jehoshaphat, Amaziah, and Hezekiah lack element 2. Of these kings, Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah have long stipulations in element 3. Amaziah has no element 3. OG supplies element 2 for Amaziah and Hezekiah, but one wonders whether this does not reflect a systematizing Vorlage (above, n. 36; cf. nn. 21, 63, and possibly 28). Element 2 is omitted for two Israelite kings, Zimri and Shallum, where element 3 reads ‘and the conspiracy that he conspired’ wqšrw ’šr qšr. These are particularly short-lived monarchs (one week and one month, respectively) for whom it was perhaps appropriate to abbreviate the reference to content in the ‘chronicles’. MT omits element 2 without supplying an element 3 also for Zechariah (six months), but G again supplies element 2. Inside element 2, MT drops ‘all’ in the source citations for Jotham, Ahaz, and Amon in the south, and for Baasha, Elah, Omri, and Ahaziah in the north. OG concurs only in the cases of Baasha and Elah, but also drops it in Asa’s source citation. OG in fact drops element 1, along with element 2, in the case of Jehoshaphat (1 Kgs 16:28c), where MT retains element 1, but not element 2 (1 Kgs 22:46). See Table 4.

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KINGS OF ISRAEL Elements 1 Kgs 14:19/Jeroboam: 1 Kgs 15:31/Nadab: 1 Kgs 16:5/Baasha: 1 Kgs 16:14/Elah: 1 Kgs 16:20/Zimri: 1 Kgs 16:22/Tibni: 1 Kgs 16:27/Omri: 1 Kgs 22:39/Ahab:

1 #Y Y Y Y Y -Y Y

-K-* K

2 Kgs 1:18/Ahazyahu: 2 Kgs 9:24/Jehoram: 2 Kgs 10:34/Jehu:

Y -Y

K-* -K

2 Kgs 13:8/Jehoahaz: 2 Kgs 13:12/Joash:

Y Y

K K

cf. 2 Kgs 14:15: 2 Kgs 14:28/Jeroboam:

Y Y

KK

2 Kgs 15:11/Zechariah: 2 Kgs 15:15/Shallum: 2 Kgs 15:21/Menahem: 2 Kgs 15:26/Pekahiah: 2 Kgs 15:31/Pekah: 2 Kgs 17:4/Hosea:

Y Y Y Y Y --

*

2 -K K-* K (OG K-)

3 L w’šr mlk wgbwrtw wqšrw ’šr qšr wgbwrtw #’šr ҳĞh# wbyt hšn ’šr bnh wkl hҳrym ’šr bnh

wkl gbwrtw [G + wqšryw ’šr qšr] wgbwrtw wgbwrtw L ҳm ’m‫܈‬yh mlk yhwdh ... same wgbwrtw L w’šr hšyb ’t dmĞq w’t ‫ۊ‬mt lyhwdh byĞr’l wqšrw ’šr qšr

K K K --

4 Hl# Hl Hl Hl Hl -Hl Hl Hl -Hl Hl Hl

Hl

Hl Hl Hl H [OG Hl] H [OH Hl] --

Key to Table 4: Y wytr dbry RN; Y- = ytr dbry RN: ‘(And) the rest of the deeds of RN’ Ȁ wkl ’šr ҳĞh; K- = ’šr ҳĞh: ‘(and all) that he did’ * Ȁ in OG L ’šr nl‫ۊ‬m: ‘how he fought’ H hnm [Hl = hl’ hm(h)] ktwbym ҳl spr dbry hymym lmlky GN: ‘Behold, they are/are they not written on the scroll of the chronicles of the kings of Judah/Israel’ (Or, book of Solomon) #...# ... is under obelisk, OG omits = boldface

Notes to Table 4: 1 #2 for Asa-Jehoshaphat-Hezekiah suggest Judahite #2 is implicitly warfare 2 Ȁ probably original for all kings, north and south, except those killed by Jehu, plus Tibni (i.e., no closing formulary), and Zimri and Shallum (see #3) 3 Source citation absent wherever death notice is absent: funerary linkage?

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The significant variation occurs in the least regular element, element 3. DtrH applies element 3 to nine northern kings (Jeroboam I, Zimri, Omri, Ahab, Jehu, Jehoahaz, Joash, Jeroboam II, and Shallum).92 Since (MT Nadab, 1 Kgs 15:32) Baasha (16:7) and Zechariah (2 Kgs 15:12; and Shallum, 15:16) have supplementary notes, this would leave only the source notices of Elah, Ahaziah, Jehoram (who has no source citation), and the last four kings (Hosea, the last, having no source citation)93 unannotated. In any event, for the Israelite kings, element 3 uniformly addresses military achievements – how Jeroboam I fought and reigned (1 Kgs 14:19), Omri’s ‘prowess’ (MT + ‘that he did’, 16:27), Jehu’s ‘prowess’ (2 Kgs 10:35, G + ‘and his conspiracy that he conspired’), Jehoahaz’s ‘prowess’ (2 Kgs 13:8), Joash’s ‘prowess, that he fought with Amaziah, king of Judah’ (2 Kgs 13:12; 14:15), and Jeroboam II’s ‘prowess, that he fought and that he restored Damascus and Hamath to Judah through Israel’ (14:28). For Zimri and Shallum, element 3 refers to the coup alone (1 Kgs 16:20; 2 Kgs 15:15), probably with some disapproval, since no such reference is made in the cases of Jeroboam I, Baasha, Omri, Jehu (in MT), Menahem, Pekah, or Hosea. Still, Ahab is the lone outlier: element 3 here mentions ‘the Ivory-house that he built and all the cities that he built’ (1 Kgs 22:39). It is odd that Ahab’s ‘prowess’ is not mentioned, since 1 Kings 20; 22 place him in battle;94 the same might be said of Baasha, whose source citation is without embellishment, except that the other northern kings in point all win battles or at least independence. The content of element 3 for Israelite kings resembles its content for the Judahite kings to whom it is applied down to Hezekiah – Asa, Jehoshaphat, and Hezekiah. All begin by citing the king’s ‘prowess.’ Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah lack element 2 in MT (OG supplies it for Hezekiah), and in Asa’s case, the reference to the ‘prowess’ precedes element 2 (which, where it appears, otherwise succeeds element 1). So the ‘prowess’ is the focus of the expansion; indeed, mention of the ‘prowess’ has been taken to supersede element 2. For Asa, element 3 reads, ‘and (MT: all) his prowess,’ followed by element 2, followed by ‘and the cities that he built’ (MT only; 1 Kgs 15:23). For Jehoshaphat, the text runs, ‘and his prowess that he  92

In three cases element 2 is suppressed (1 Kgs 14:19, under the obelus; 16:20; 2 Kgs 15:15). The last two of these three cases, those of Zimri and Shallum, are discussed above in n. 91. 93 But note also Provan (Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 48–49) on the regularity of the evaluations for the last kings. 94 See, however, the discussion below (section VII) which indicates a probable explanation for this oddity: the battle narratives were not attached to the original account of Ahab’s reign.

272 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  did and that he fought’ (1 Kgs 22:46).95 For Hezekiah, element 3 alludes to ‘all his prowess, and that he made the pool and the channel and brought the waters into the city’ (2 Kgs 20:20). That Kings singles out Asa, Jehoshaphat, and Hezekiah to commend for valor and achievement is no surprise. 96 These are the three kings before Josiah whose behavior is likened without equivocation to David’s. They are not the only Davidides to whom the regnal accounts attribute military accomplishments – supplementary notes take cognizance of the wars of Rehoboam, Abijah, and Jotham (1 Kgs 14:30; 15:8; 2 Kgs 15:37), while Joram (2 Kings 3) and Amaziah (2 Kgs 15:7) win battles, Ahaz successfully resists invasion (2 Kgs 16:5), and Amaziah builds a city (14:22). It seems likely, then, that the author of the regnal evaluations (at least, down to Hezekiah’s reign), who likened these three kings to David, also penned the expanded source citations. There are, however, two anomalies. The first is the absence of any such expansion in Josiah’s account, despite his having captured and burnt parts of the north. The second is the application of element 3 to Manasseh: no mention is made of prowess, of military achievement, of city-building, or even Ivory-houses. 2 Kgs 21:17 speaks, instead, of ‘his sin that he sinned.’ Even here, there is no displacement of element 2, as in the cases of Asa, Jehoshaphat, and Hezekiah. Manasseh’s source citation is expanded on the model of the expansions in the source citations of Israelite kings. And, Manasseh’s element 3 is the only one that trades in the category of ‘sin.’ Even allowing that Zimri’s and Shallum’s ‘conspiracies’ are referred to disparagingly (but in each case displacing element 2), Manasseh’s source citation is the only one that suggests that the royal chronicles deprecate a Davidide. The intimation is that Manasseh’s source citation comes from a hand other than that responsible for the consistent treatment of earlier Davidides. The same can be said of Josiah’s. Possibly, H(Dtr)jos composed Hezekiah’s source citation on the model of the others, while E(Dtr)x inserted Manasseh’s (and omitted element 3 for Josiah). Alternatively, Hezekiah’s source citation may antedate H(Dtr)jos, in which case Manasseh’s source citation is the work either of H(Dtr)jos or of E(Dtr)x. Still, the evidence of the source citations indicates

 95 As noted, OG omits element 1 here as well as element 2, and runs: ‘and how Jehoshaphat made an alliance and all his prowess that he did and how he fought’ (1 Kgs 16:28c). 96 Solomon is also commended in element 3, for ‘(G: all) his wisdom’ (1 Kgs 11:41). However, in this case, there is no displacement of element 2.

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a change at Hezekiah;97 the distribution of supplementary notes indicates a break after Josiah. Cumulatively, the evidence concerning Chronicles Vorlage, the distribution of the DBF in Kings, and variations in the other regnal formulae create a strong impression of disjunction at the reign of Hezekiah. Based on similar data, Provan maintains that a Josianic scribe produced an early edition of the history covering the kings from the Solomonic schism to Hezekiah, after which an exilic redactor updated the work.98 This view, in its mechanics close to Peckham’s, is economical, and, despite our demurral from it, essentially well conceived. Still, alterations in the formula, and in content (see below, VI–VIII), for Josiah’s successors undergird the older view that disjunction at the reign of Josiah reflects an edition of the history that ended and culminated with that king, as Weippert, Cross and others have long maintained. And the change in the DBF at Hezekiah, whose accession formulae resemble those of earlier kings, suggests that the first edition ended in his reign, not after.99

VI.i Moving away from formulaic patterns toward individual texts, the vexed oracle of Huldah indicates the Josiah account could not have been written in the exile, as Provan maintains.100 In this text, the prophetess ordains the destruction of Judah. She announces that Josiah will be gathered to his fathers, and gathered to his grave in peace, and will not see the destruction (2 Kgs 22:15-20). The oracle falls into two parts, both introduced by a reference to Josiah – “Thus says Yhwh, the god of Israel, ‘Say to the man who sent you to me, “Thus says Yhwh, ‘Behold, I... because...’”’” (22:15–17); and, “And to the king of Judah who sent you to seek Yhwh, thus shall you say to him, ‘Thus says Yhwh, the god of Israel, “Because... behold, I...”’” (22:18–20). This double helix has all the marks of intentional construction. Yet the two halves of the oracle – concerning Judah and concerning Josiah – seem to reflect different dates. On the one hand, the oracle about Judah declares that destruction is fated; it seems to reflect exilic composition. On the oth 97 Hezekiah’s source citation is the only one pertaining to a Davidide that names a specific project. Among source citations in northern regnal accounts, that for Ahab mentions the Ivories-house, and that for Jeroboam II stipulates just what it was that he conquered. 98 Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 151–55. 99 See also Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 134–38. 100 Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 147–51.

274 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  er hand, the oracle to Josiah seems to promise him a peaceful death, as though the author were unaware that in 23:29 an Egyptian arrow would cut the king down in his prime (at the age of thirty-nine). Older commentators understandably made this point a centerpiece when hypothesizing a Josianic edition of DtrH. 101 In reconciling the indications of a pre-exilic date with indications that the author knew of the exile, scholars have tended to take the oracle as an exilic construct postponing the exile until after Josiah’s reign, and to hypothesize a pre-exilic kernel.102 Citing the oracle’s literary unity, however, Provan has followed Mayes and Hoffmann in denying that 22:20 predicts Josiah’s peaceful death. 103 Rather, the logic runs, what is vouchsafed is death of an indeterminate nature, and burial in peacetime. At issue here are two questions: would an exilic editor, aware of Josiah’s violent death, have endorsed this oracle – or, stated differently, would an exilic editor have inserted the oracle in its present form, rather than reinterpreting any difficulties it presented; and, did the oracle originally promise Josiah a peaceful death, or only death in peacetime?

VI.ii Two considerations contradict the thesis that Huldah’s pronouncement is exilic. First, the prophetess declares that Josiah’s righteousness entitled him to special consideration, (22:19); yet on Provan’s interpretation, Huldah merely promises that Josiah will die before the exile. Josiah was not the lone Judahite to die in this interval: many others also died between 622 (the date of the oracle) and the exile of 586 BCE; so, on this interpretation, no special boon actually accrued to Josiah himself. What, then, is Josiah’s own, special reward for fidelity?104 What is the value, in an Israelite culture that equated longevity in office with reward for righteousness (1 Kgs 3:14, with ample parallels in Phoenician inscriptions), of a promise that the righteous king will die young? To take this first indication further (for the second, see below, Vl.iii): in the current edition of DtrH, Josiah’s death is the first step on the march to doom: even Josiah’s incomparable righteousness (2 Kgs 23:25) did not  101 See, e.g., R. Kittel, Geschichte des Volkes Israel (Handbücher der alten Geschichte; Stuttgart: Friedrich Andreas Perthes, 1925) 2. 441. 102 As Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel. I, 79; Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 286 and n. 46. 103 Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 147–49; Mayes, The Story of Israel between Settlement and Exile, 129–30; Hoffmann, Reform und Reformen, 181–89. 104 This observation is from Professor Sidney Halpern, in conversation.

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deflect Yhwh’s wrath (23:26–27), so Josiah died (23:28–30); there ensued the exile of Jehoahaz, the harrying of Jehoiakim (24:2–4), and the exiles of 597 and 586. This perspective bears the marks of the exilic conviction that Manasseh had foredoomed Judah to destruction. If the oracle promises only that Josiah’s death will precede the destruction, it is nevertheless contradicted by the fact that his death is the beginning of the process of destruction. That is, Josiah does not really die in ‘peacetime’; far from claiming that Yhwh temporarily reprieved Judah on his behalf,105 the history asserts that Josiah’s life was cut short so that Yhwh could execute his wrath. Inside DtrH, the contrast is to Hezekiah’s more lucid concern for ‘peace’ ‘in my time’ (2 Kgs 20:19). A promise that Josiah’s natural life would delay the onset of doom would be grounds for embracing an exilic date. But what is the value of an assurance of ‘peace’ in Josiah’s time (or in Hezekiah’s) if it means only that an enemy will cut the king’s ‘time’ short? Huldah’s oracle, on these grounds, should be pre-exilic.

VI.iii The second reason for tracing Huldah’s prophecy to an edition antedating 609 is that Huldah’s idiom for Josiah’s death does not suggest ‘death in peacetime’, but peaceful death. Through Huldah, Yhwh says to Josiah, ‘Lo, I will gather you to your fathers, and you will be gathered to your tomb(s) in ‘peace’ hnny ’spk ’l ’btyk wn’spt ’l qbrtyk bšlwm (2 Kgs 22:20). “To be gathered to [one’s] fathers and to be gathered to [one’s] tomb in ‘peace’,” suggests peaceful death – just as the guarantee that Abraham will “come to [his] fathers in peace” (Gen 15:15) implies burial “at a ripe old age.” The invocation of the term ‘peace’ alone has such implications, as it has for Zedeqiah (who will die in peace, not by the sword, Jer 34:4–5), and for Ahab’s return from Gilead should Micaiah have mistaken his man (1 Kgs 22:27–28). Indeed, it is important to note that, Josiah alone excepted, everyone who dies bšl(w)m, or is vouchsafed such a death, dies in peace; those told they will not die bšl(w)m (Joab, Ahab) die violently. The dichotomy seems rather a simple one. ‘To be gathered to the fathers’ alone also probably implies peaceful death. The expression occurs in one other text – in Judg 2:10, all the generation of Joshua are said to have been gathered to their fathers kl hdwr ... n’spw ’l ’bwtyw. This is the only direct parallel to Huldah’s words, and it comes at an important juncture of the Josianic edition of the history, where  105

Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 286.

276 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  the high places are traced to the Amorites. 106 Presumably, however, Joshua’s generation expired peacefully, before the next generation forgot the lessons of the conquest and intermarried with Canaanites, calling down on their heads by apostasy the wrath of Yhwh (Judg 1–3). Josiah’s ‘gathering to the fathers’ looks very like a portmanteau of two other idioms. J and H(Dtr), we have argued, employ the expression ‘to lie with the fathers’ to denote the peaceful death of royal or ancestral figures. P, conversely, applies the phrase, ‘to be gathered to one’s kin ҳmy’ to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Israel, Aaron, and Moses. None of these, again, dies violently. But the ȇ phrase denotes a phase between expiration and burial: Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac ‘expired and died’ wygwҳ wymt (Gen 25:8, 17; 35:29); Israel ‘expired’ wygwҳ (Gen 49:33); and Moses and Aaron ‘died’ wymt (Deut 32:50) before being ‘gathered to the kin’; Abraham and Isaac are gathered to their kin before being buried (Gen 25:8f.; 35:29).107 Driver therefore concluded that the idiom denotes the soul’s migration to the underworld, after death and before burial.108 This contention draws some support from texts in which one ‘gathers’ a ‘life’ npš when one kills (Judg 18:25; Ps 26:9) or where Yhwh collects a creature’s ‘spirit’ rw‫( ۊ‬Ps 104:29; 34:14 f.). In the latter cases, however, Yhwh’s action precedes the collapse of the physical organism ygwҳ, ҳl/’l ҳpr yšwb[wn]; the concept is similar to what Driver (and Alfrink, cf. n. 108) hypothesizes for ‘gathering to the kin,’ but the timing of the soul’s flight differs, and the soul must be named explicitly as the object of the verb. E evinces the same perspective in Gen 35:18f.: ‘when her life npšh went forth,’ Rachel ‘died’. Again, the ‘soul’ is mentioned explicitly, and again, death follows its departure. In all, therefore, ‘gathering’ of the soul seems to come before death, whereas ‘gathering to the kin’ comes between death and burial. The ȇ expression does not refer to the flight of the soul as other texts understand it, and does not refer to burial.108a  106

Halpern, The First Historians, 220–28. Driver, “Plurima Mortis Imago,” 142. 108 Driver, “Plurima Mortis Imago,” 142–43; similarly Alfrink, ‘L’Expression n’sp ’lҳmyw,” OTS 5 (1948) 118–131, esp. p. 128; the proposal dovetails with texts such as Isa 14:12ff. on the life of the underworld, and, as Driver notes, with Ps 49:20[19] where it is intimated that the soul npš of a man who dies will ‘go unto the generation/council [dwr] of his fathers.’ 108a Gabriel Barkay has suggested (personal communication) that “gathering” after the death refers to laying the corpse on the bench of the family tomb. “Burial,” on this scheme, would refer to the secondary placement of the bones, together with grave goods, in repositories under the benches. There are a number of difficulties with this proposal. First, while gathering certainly is connected to preparation of the corpse before burial, or to an indeterminate shift in status of the deceased individual, it cannot be a reference to interment proper. This is decisively demonstrated in the DBF of Kings, where wyqbr in 107

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ȇ twice uses the term ‘gathered’ n’sp in connection with death, both times after ‘gathering to the kin’ has appeared in full (Num 27:13; 20:26). In Num 20:26, however, a character is to be gathered before dying mt. The sequence is: (23) Yhwh said to Moses and to Aaron... (24) “Let Aaron be gathered to his kin... (25) Take Aaron... (26) And strip Aaron of his clothes and have Eleazar, his son, don them. Let Aaron be gathered and die there.” (27) Moses did as Yhwh had commanded... (28) Moses stripped Aaron of his clothes... And Aaron died there at the peak of the mountain... (29) The congregation saw that Aaron had expired, and mourned Aaron...

This is the one case in which a character is in effect prepared for burial before death. Since Aaron here is more or less treated as a corpse while alive, it seems unlikely that the sequence, ‘gathering’-death, reflects P’s concurrence, in one passage only, with the view expressed by other sources, that the flight of the soul precedes physical death. More likely, ‘gathering to the kin’ in this passage, possibly including the transfer of vestments, occurs prematurely, before death. Outside of P, ‘being gathered’ n’sp alone also occurs in connection with death in Isa 57:1:109 ‘the just perishes... And loyal men are ‘gathered’... For in the face of evil, the just is ‘gathered’. He enters in peace, they rest on their biers...110 The nuance is obscure, but the sense seems to be that those ‘gathered,’ then resting on their burial benches, repose in respite before the coming retribution on the wicked.111 Isaiah’s extension of P’s usage refers to people dead of natural causes being ‘gathered’ before they rest on biers. This usage has parallels in other applications of the verb, ‘gather’. Most significant are the texts in which Jeremiah, a contemporary of Huldah’s, refers to the ‘gathering’ of (butchered) corpses (Jer 8:2; 9:21 [D ptc.];  dicates interment per se, and not secondary deposition of the bones, and occurs immediately following the death. There is no compelling lexical reason to expect that qbr should imply secondary deposition in the phraseology of P. Next, if “burial” indicates secondary deposition of the bones following the gathering, “burial” could occur only after decomposition of the corpse, and these stages would require a considerable lapse of time. The cases of Abraham (Gen 25:9) and Isaac (Gen 35:29) clearly suggest that their respective sons “buried” them immediately after they had expired (wygwҳ), died (wymt), and been gathered. 109 Isa 49:5 probably refers not to death but to Yhwh’s restoring Israel from exile (read Qre), and thus gathering them to him. In Job 27:19, ‘the rich man who lies down l’ y’sp, his eyes open, and he is gone.’ Most likely, G is correct to read l’ ywsp ‘he will not continue.’ 110 The ending, ‘who goes opposite him,’ is difficult, and the rendition in G is loose. ȉ takes the phrase to refer to the righteous, who pursue Yhwh’s will, and this may be correct. 111 T. J. Lewis, “Death Cult Imagery in Isaiah 57,” HAR 11 (1987) 267–84; P. D. Hanson, The Dawn of Apocalyptic (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975) 192k.

278 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  25:33) in preparation for burial. 25:33 describes corpses that ‘will not be bewailed, and will not be ‘gathered’ and will not be buried, but will become detritus on the face of the soil.’ Since death is past, as in the case of the ȇ expression, it is not the referent here. Rather, the context suggests that the survivors ‘will not’ execute a preparation for burial – the ‘gathering of the corpse.’ It is probably no coincidence, granting the foregoing, that the term for an army rearguard is ‘the gatherer’ (Num 10:25; Josh 6:9, 13). 112 ‘Gathering’ here, against Driver, is a stage of preparation before burial, which in P’s theory may or may not imply a movement of the ‘soul’.113 The sequence as delineated in P, therefore, appears to be: 1) expiration (= flight of soul/breath?); 2) death; 3) wailing (= proclamation of death); 4) gathering to kin (= lying in of corpse, possibly with divestment, wake and transformation into ancestor); 5) burial.114 Huldah’s message to Josiah more or less combines the ȇ expression ‘to be gathered to one’s kin’ with the DtrH/J idiom, ‘to lie with the fathers.’ The latter certainly denotes peaceful death. The idiom of ȇ confirms this impression, as Gen 15:15 demonstrates. There Yhwh announces to Abraham that we-’attâ tƗbô’ ’el-abôteykƗ be-šƗlôm tiqqƗbƝr be-Ğêbâ ‫ܒ‬ôbâ ‘you  112 A ‘gatherer’ is also one who takes strangers in for the night (Judg 19:15, 18; cf. Isa 52:12). Note, in any case, that ȇ does not claim that Joseph, among others whose deaths he reports (as Terah, Esau, Lot), was ‘gathered to his kin.’ Yet Moses and Aaron, buried outside the land of the promise (in Moses’ case, allegedly in a secret location), are. In Joseph’s case, perhaps the embalming stands in for ‘gathering’. See below. 113 P’s vocabulary of death does not generally include a distinction between peaceful and violent decease. Thus ȇ applies mwt to violent death in Gen 35:18; Lev 10:2, 7, 9; Num 3:4; 16:1f.; 26:61; arguably Exod 20:16; C+ in Exod 16:2–3; Lev 20:4; Num 14:2, 35, 37; 16:13; 17:6; 20:3, 4; 35:19–21; C- in Lev 19:20; 20:2, 9–13, 15, 16, 27; 24:16f., 21; Num 15:35; 35:16–18, 31, but to peaceful death elsewhere. gwҳ denotes violent death in Gen 6:17; 7:21, but not in Gen 25:8, 17; 35:29; 49:33; Num 17:27f; 20:29. Violent or untimely death can also be expressed with the verbs ’bd (Num 17:27, qal), qy‫( ܈‬Gen 6:13), and npl (Num 14:3, 29, 32). For murder, ȇ uses the idiom špk dm (Gen 9:4–6; Lev 17:4 [13]; Num 35:33) or the participle r‫( ۊ܈‬Num 35:1 if., 16–21, 25–28, 30f; also, Exod 20:13), and the verb hkh (Lev 24:17f,21; Num 3:13; 8:17; 25:14; 31:4 [+ GN]; 33:4; 35:15–18, 21, 24, 30), also used of rightful killing (as Num 3:13; 25:14). In the Flood and Sodom episodes, ȇ uses the verb š‫ۊ‬t, once in C (Gen 6:13), four times in D (Gen 6:17; 9:11, 15; 19:29). Of these, 9:11; 19:29 take a GN as object, the latter (with ‘city’) perhaps being taken over from J’s Sodom account (Gen 18:28, 31f.; 19:13 bis, 14), where its objects (in C) are ‘place’ and ‘city’. ȇ has applied the term to the Flood to create an elaborate pun on š‫ۊ‬t N in Gen 6:11f., suggesting that God’s response was reciprocal. ȇ also uses š‫ۊ‬t as the term to denote slaughter of a sacrifice. Interestingly, ȇ uses hrg in one war account only (Num 31:7f., 17, 19) and in a legal text in which male partners in bestiality (men, cattle) ‘are to be killed’ mwt (C-), but in which the females (women) ‘you will kill’ hrg (Lev 20:15–16). 114 A close parallel to the last four elements is found in M. Bloch, Placing the Dead. Tombs, Ancestral Villages and Kinship Organization (London: Seminar, 1971) 141–143.

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will come to your fathers in peace and be buried at a ripe old age’. This text leaves no doubt about Abraham’s peaceful death at a ripe old age. Likewise Huldah’s words imply that Josiah will die peacefully. Ǵ will gather you to your fathers such that you will be gathered to your tombs in peace’; the parallel to Abraham is clear. And Huldah’s locution is mirrored in the description of a generation ‘passing away’ in Judg 2:10. Possibly, Judg 2:10 and 2 Kgs 22:15–20 pair the occupation of the land with the promise of its final disposition, the latter dependent on Josiah’s actions.

VI.iv Far from choosing to avoid saying Josiah would ‘lie with his fathers,’115 the Huldah oracle uses an idiosyncratic locution to promise Josiah a peaceful death. The suggestion is that a historian writing before Josiah’s death updated an earlier (Hezekian) document, leaving a mark in the instance both in Josiah’s regnal account and in Judges 2. The latter has on other grounds been identified as integral to the Josianic edition of the history (cf. n. 106). The historian’s phraseology deviated from that of the earlier edition (and from that of the later) in introducing the idea of ‘gathering,’ whether to the kin or to the grave, and in introducing a prediction of a peaceful death.116 Elsewhere, moreover, the expression bšlwm means ‘in well being,’ or ‘without conflict’ (Judg 11:13); only in one text (1 Kgs 2:5) might it mean ‘in time of peace’, as Provan would have it, and there only in paronomasia contrast to the standard meaning (Joab ‘spilled war-blood bšlm ... So don’t send him to Sheol in peace!’). Even here, the talk is of murdering people with whom Joab’s liege is in league, not, as in Josiah’s case, of death in a military confrontation (2 Chr 35:20–23). 117 Still, 1 Kgs 2:5 links Joab’s blood guilt to his murdering two men recently bound to David as allies – Abner (2 Sam 3:21) and Amasa (2 Sam 19:14). Since the former murder occurs before the resolution of David’s first civil war, it can hardly be said to occur ‘in peacetime’; the same is true of Amasa’s murder, which occurs  115

So Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 149, n. 53. There are only two instances where škb ҳm ’btyw has future reference (2 Sam 7:12; 1 Kgs 1:21). Neither is a suggestion of how the king will die. Rather, these texts predicate peaceful death as the forerunner, or even the precondition, signifying the onset of a subsequent prediction. In other words, the death is not part of the prediction, but an inevitable event that is the precursor of the prediction. In Huldah’s oracle, the death itself, or the nature of the death, is the object of prediction. Huldah’s oracle resists classification in the category of the other occurrences. 117 See esp. A. Malamat, “Josiah’s Bid for Armageddon,” JANESCU 5 (1973) 267–279. 116

280 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  when David is allegedly threatened by the Sheba insurgency. In each case, the point is not that the country is at peace; rather, David, and therefore his hatchet man, Joab, were in a friendly relationship – in a relationship of šƗlôm – with the person Joab hatcheted. The use of the term bšlm in 1 Kgs 2:5 has some relevance to the resolution of Huldah’s prophecy, and may even have served as a guide to its interpreter, E(Dtr)x. As Chr, the Babylonian Chronicle, Josephus, and Herodotus make clear (see n. 119), Josiah in fact died in a conflict with Necho over Necho’s attempt to come to the aid of the Assyrians against the Babylonians. Yet E(Dtr)x implies in his description of Josiah’s death that Necho was in league with Babylon against Assyria, and thus Josiah’s ally (Necho ҳlh ... ҳl the king of Assyria, 2 Kgs 23:2g).118 The obfuscation looks deliberate; its effect is to infer an ironic fulfillment of Huldah’s oracle – Josiah met his death at the hands of one with whom he was bšlwm, i.e., on a peaceable footing, even in collaboration, just as Joab’s liege had been in a collaborative relationship with Abner and Amasa, whose war-blood was  118 Similarly, Shishak ҳlh ҳl Jerusalem (1 Kgs 14:25; 2 Chr 12:2, 9), Shalmeneser V ҳlh ҳl Hosea (2 Kgs 17:3), and Samaria (2 Kgs 18:9), and Sennacherib ҳlh ҳl ‘all the towns of Judah’ (2 Kgs 18:13, 25; Isa 36:1, 10). The same phrase appears in the same sense in Exod 10:12, 14; Josh 22:12, 33; Judg 6:3–4; 12:3 (read ҵl for Ҵl with GB); 15:10; 18:9; 1 Kgs 15:17; 20:22 (cf. 2 Chr 24:23); 2 Kgs 12:18; Isa 14:8; 36:10; Jer 50:3, 21; 51:42; Ezek 38:11; 1 Chr 14:10 (cf. 2 Sam 5:19); 2 Chr 16:1; 24:23; 36:6; Joel 1:6; Zech 14:13 (cf. Nah 2:2); Eccl 10:4. It is reversed in 1 Sam 6:20; 14:46; 1 Kgs 15:19 = 2 Chr 16:3; 1 Kgs 16:17; 2 Kgs 12:19; Jer 21:2; 34:21; 37:5, 11, with which contrast the end of a divine manifestation in Gen 17:22; 35:13; Exod 40:36–37; Num 9:17, 21–22; 10:11; Ezek 9:3; 11:23–24; Jon 4:6 (cf. also ȇ at Num 16:24, 27). Cf. Lev 6:2; 16:9, 10; 19:19 and Num 19:2; Judg 13:5; 16:17; 1 Sam 1:11; 6:7; 1 Kgs 6:8; Isa 8:7; 32:13; Ezek 44:17; 47:12; Hos 10:8 (where an instrument does or does not ҳlh ҳl a thing or person, having some effect on the object [also cf. Gen 38:12; Exod 20:26; Deut 28:43; Josh 2:8; Ezek 38:16; Prov 31:29; Lam 1:14; Neh 12:37; 1 Sam 2:28; 14:13; 24:23 (like 1 Sam 14:10, dubious, but the latter [cf. v 12] may be a pun); 2 Sam 19:1 (as Judg 9:51); 1 Kgs 12:32– 33 (like Exod 20:26); Isa 14:14; 60:7; Ezek 41:7, Ps 132:3, and in ‘come to mind’ in 2 Kgs 12:5; Isa 65:17; Jer 3:6; 7:31; 19:5; 32:35; 44:21; 51:50; Ezek 20:32; 38:10]). ҳlh alone with a directive accusative has the sense of attack in such texts as 2 Kgs 24:10 (and v 1); Isa 7:1. For ҳlh b without a concrete location (as Gen 31:10, 12 [?]; 41:5, 22; Exod 19:12, 13, Deut 5:5 and Ps 24:3 [going up on the mountain]; Exod 33:3, 5; Num 13:22; 20:19; Deut 1:22; 29:22; Judg 1:3; 1 Sam 1:7; 2 Sam 2:1; 15:30; 1 Kgs 22:20 = 2 Chr 18:19; 2 Kgs 2:23; Ezek 13:5; 38:18; Ob 21; Joel 2:9; Neh 2:15; Cant 7:9; Job 6:19; Ps 18:9 = 2 Sam 22:9; 2 Kgs 19:28 = Isa 37:29; cf. Jer 6:4–5; Ezra 8:1; Neh 7:5; Dan 8:3; Job 5:26; 1 Chr 11:6 for temporal usage); and where the preposition is not instrumentalis (as Gen 28:12; Judg 8:11; 13:20; 1 Sam 9:11; 1 Kgs 12:18 = 2 Chr 10:18; 2 Kgs 2:11; Isa 15:5; 34:3; Ezek 40:6,22; 1 Chr 13:6; 21:9; 2 Chr 20:16; Ps 47:6); in an adversative sense, note Exod 7:29; 2 Kgs 17:5; Ps 78:21, 31; Isa 7:6; 15:5; Jer 5:10; 2 Chr 21:17; 36:16. Of all these occurrences, only Gen 38:12 seems to apply the verb and preposition in the sense demanded by 2 Kgs 23, if that text is to describe Necho’s supporting the Assyrian king at war (i.e., PN ‘ascending upon’ PN in a non-adversative sense).

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spilled bšlm (cf. Necho’s contrast between Josiah and ‘the house of my war’ in 2 Chr 35:21). 2 Chronicles 35:20–23, by contrast, accurately recalls Necho’s interest in the battle of Carchemish.119 That E(Dtr)x manages to fashion the ironic fulfillment of Huldah’s oracle only by twisting fact into an alien appearance indicates how far the seeming intention of the oracle both bound and buffaloed him; E(Dtr)x would have selected against such a text had it not already lain enshrined in an inherited history – that of H(Dtr)jos.

VI.v Read in this light, as a pre-exilic document, Huldah’s oracle of Judah’s imminent destruction has the implication that all future kings (and the Judahite elite) must behave as Josiah behaves in order to forestall cataclysm (2 Kgs 22:15–20). It functions as an extreme ideological instrument of the reform, using rhetoric similar to the unadulterated doomsaying of Jeremiah as a call not just to repentance but to rigid, even internalized, submission to Yhwh.120 Even in the present edition, after all, Huldah’s words galvanize Josiah into action – purifying Jerusalem, collecting or discharging rural priests, defiling high places, murdering northerners. The plain intention is to root out the causes of Yhwh’s anger in order to pacify him. The exilic  119

A. K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles. Texts from Cuneiform Sources (Locust Valley, N.Y.: J. J. Augustin) 3:61, 66–69; 4:16–18; 5:1–7; 2 Chr 35:20– 21; considerably later, Josephus still has access to the detail that Necho fought against the Babylonians and Medes (Ant. x v 1). Herodotus 2.159 may refer to the episode as a battle between Necho and the “Syrians” at Magdolus. So E. Sellin, Geschichte des israelitisch-jüdischen Volkes (Leipzig: von Quelle & Meyer, 1924) 294–95. See generally A. Malamat, “Josiah’s Bid;” idem, “The Kingdom of Judah Between Egypt and Babylon: A Small State Within A Great Confrontation,” JSOT 48 (1988) 117–29. On the relation of Chr to DtrH here, see Williamson, “The Death of Josiah and the Continuing Development of the Deuteronomic History,” VT 32(1982) 242–48; C. T. Begg, “The Death of Josiah in Chronicles: Another View,” VT 37 (1987) 1–8; Williamson, “Reliving the Death of Josiah: A Reply to C.T. Begg,” VT 37 (1987) 9–15. 120 There are numerous examples from comparative religion to illuminate this tactic: since the destruction of the community is imminent, the community must behave righteously, even fanatically, to ensure divine favor. Certainly, this is one function of the apocalyptic texts preserved by the ascetic Qumran community; indeed, it seems to be an integral aspect of apocalyptic generally. Of course, the destruction envisioned in the case of apocalyptic awaited the entire human race except the righteous community, but it nevertheless functioned to induce piety and, thereby, inclusion in the chosen community. Addressed to the individual as imposed by Western cultural canons, the fire-andbrimstone sermon of the American evangelical tradition embodies a similar rhetoricoemotional strategy.

282 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  verdict is Josiah had to die so that Yhwh could carry out his own equally radical purge. More to the point, Huldah’s oracle also indicates that there was a second pre-exilic edition of DtrH. An exilic scribe would not, after all, have selected Huldah’s promise of peaceful death for inclusion, only to reinterpret it as a promise of an early, violent death. The oracle was inherited, therefore, from a pre-exilic report about the reform, already integrated with the themes of Kings. It is difficult, too, to understand why any historian bent on blaming Manasseh for the exile would so lionize Josiah, when his reforms could have no effect whatever; or, why a historian bent on lionizing Josiah would so explain the exile as to trivialize the reform. The simplest expedient is to hypothesize an edition of Kings that covered Josiah, updated by an exile who recognized Yhwh’s rejection of Judah (2 Kgs 21:12–15; 22:16–17; 23:26–27; 24:2–4, 13–14, 20; 25:26), but not of the Davidic line (25:27– 30). This exile inherited, and did not insert, stories indicating that Josiah had repaired the sin of Solomon (1 Kgs 11:7–13; 2 Kgs 23:13) that had precipitated the schism, as well as the sin(s) of Jeroboam (1 Kings 12:31; 13:2, 33–34; 2 Kgs 17:27–34; 23:15–20) that had entailed the fall of Israel. 121 He even intimated that the ‘wickedness’ of Josiah’s successors was a consequence of Manasseh’s sin (2 Kgs 25:2–4, 20), and he remained sufficiently partisan to feel a need to explain Josiah’s death – the beginning of the end for Judah – as the consequence of his grandfather’s depravity (2 Kgs 23:26–27). His explanation involved only a minor reinterpretation of the fulfillment of Huldah’s oracle. Modified to conform with Provan’s view that the earliest edition extended back to Rehoboam (or earlier), Weippert’s hypothesis of successive editions down to Hezekiah, to Josiah, and to the exile most satisfactorily accounts for the data. This hypothesis has concrete implications, in view especially of the distribution of the DBF, for solving another textual conundrum: that concerning Ahab’s death and the account of the battle at Ramoth-Gilead in 1 Kgs 22:1–40.

VII.i As we have noted, 1 Kings 22 contains the most disturbing quirk in the distribution of the DBF in Kings before Hezekiah. That narrative focuses on Micaiah ben-Imlah and Ahab’s and Jehoshaphat’s campaign to recapture Ramoth-Gilead. 22:40 closes Ahab’s career with the formula, way 121

Halpern, The First Historians, 220–28.

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yiškab ’a‫’ۊ‬Ɨb ҳim ’abôtƗyw, ‘Ahab lay with his fathers.’ Yet the foregoing narrative relates that Ahab perished facing the battle after suffering an arrow wound, and was buried in Samaria. Ahab is the only Israelite king whose violent death is explicitly followed by burial. He is the only king in either kingdom whose burial is mentioned before the fact that ‘he lay with his fathers.’ He is the only king who both dies violently (22:37) and ‘lay with his fathers.’ This difficulty prompted Driver to expunge 22:40 with the explanation: ... it must have been added by someone anxious to bring the notice of Ahab’s death into line, as he supposed, with those of the deaths of other kings but ignorant of the precise connotation of the expression which he was interpolating into the text.122

Driver’s proposal, however, raises another, more serious question: why did this someone not alter the DBFs of the other Israelite kings who died violently and who consequently lack burial information? Driver’s solution requires the supposition that an unknown, unidentifiable redactor dropped into Kings at precisely this point to alter the text only once. Driver correctly saw the incompatibility of v. 37 and v. 40. He regarded v. 40 as the intrusive text, however, because denying the accuracy of 1 Kings 22 had unacceptable implications for our ability to reconstruct the Omride period.123 J. M. Miller’s analysis of 1 Kings 22124 marked a brilliant advance over the view typified by Driver. He identified three reasons for doubting that 1 Kgs 22:1–38 belonged to the reign of Ahab at all: First, the Assyrian annals imply that Israel and Syria were allies rather than enemies during Ahab’s last years. Second, it is difficult to understand why Ahab would have found it necessary to “restore” one of the cities of Gilead, since the whole territory seems to have remained in Israelite hands throughout his reign [2 Kgs 10:32–33]. Third, and perhaps most significant, the Deuteronomist was apparently unaware that Ahab met an untimely death.125

The foregoing analysis of the DBF verifies Miller’s last statement. The simplest explanation for the evidence is that the author of the Israelite and Judahite DBF down to Hezekiah (H[Dtr]hez) composed the summation of  122

Driver, “Plurima Mortis,”140. Steuernagel (Lehrbuch, 362) already recognized the difficulty implied in this pericope and dealt with the problem by identifying the text as a late accretion to DtrH. 123 For a reconstruction making expert use of 1 Kings 22, see Ǻ. Mazar, “The Aramaean Empire and its Relations with Israel,” ǺA 25 (1962) 97–120. 124 J. M. Miller, “The Elisha Cycle and the Accounts of the Omride Wars,” JBL 85 (1966) 441–55. 125 Miller, “Elisha Cycle,” 444; cf. also M. Astour, “841 BC: The First Assyrian Invasion of Israel,” JAOS 91 (1971) 383–89. Others who have argued for the secondary provenance of the pericope include R. H. Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old Testament (New York: Harper & Bros., 1941) 409; and Dietrich, Prophetie und Geschichte, 135.

284 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  Ahab’s career in vv. 39–40; the formulaic continuity is unmistakable; 126 with Hezekiah, changes in the DBF occur, and the locution in Huldah’s oracle (2 Kgs 22:20; also Judg 2:10), stemming from the Josianic historian, differs markedly. Moreover, it is uncharacteristic of the author of the formulae for kings earlier than Hezekiah to provide any information concerning place of burial (indeed, burial generally) for any northern king who died violently, as 1 Kgs 22:37 does for Ahab. The case appears very strong, therefore, that the Hezekian author of the formulae had no access to the tradition now connected with Ahab in 1 Kgs 22:34–38. To claim that this author, in possession of vv. 34–38, nevertheless ascribed to Ahab a peaceful death would require us to suppose he willingly contradicted an otherwise painstakingly consistent scheme of regnal formulae. Conversely, a later historian, inserting 1 Kgs 22:1–38 in its present place, might well have resolved the conflict with v. 40 for himself by adopting an ad hoc interpretation of the expression, ‘to lie with the fathers.’ Added secondarily, thus, by an author presumably familiar with its meaning, this idiom gratuitously contradicts his narrative, when other expressions would equally serve. In the text already, when a later author inserted the Micaiah story, it would have been liable to reinterpretation and harmonization.127 Other features of 1 Kgs 22:1–38 corroborate the intuition that the narrative should be considered late. Miller proposed that 1 Kings 22, along with chap. 20 and 2 Kgs 3:4–27, was a battle account that underwent changes that “reflect the interests of prophets.” It was this “prophetic” appropriation of the battle accounts which led to the suppression of the king’s name (possibly Jehoram or Jehoahaz) in favor of melek yiĞrƗ’Ɲl: the role of the prophet was paramount.128 When this version, circulating independently as part of the Elisha cycle, reached Judah, the fact that Jehoshaphat was in  126 Miller, in the quotation above, ascribes these verses to the Josianic H(Dtr) on precisely this assumption. However, the formulary for peaceful death may have been employed only by H(Dtr)hez and by E(Dtr)x. That is, H(Dtr)jos may have had a hand in none of the burial formulary. See further below, and section VIII. 127 This is not the same as arguing, like Driver (above n. 122), that 1 Kgs 22:40 must have been inserted later by an author unfamiliar with the meaning of the idiom. Thus de Vries’s objection (Prophet Against Prophet, 98) that “if we are to assume a postdeuteronomistic redactor would have been unfamiliar with the formula’s meaning, what is to prevent us from assuming the same for the original Deuteronomist?” is inapplicable to our argument. The point is, H(Dtr)hez composed the formulae unaware that such a tradition as is presently connected with Ahab existed. He fully appreciated the significance of the idiom. When a later writer deduced that the Micaiah narrative, preserved separately, in fact pertained to the Omride period, he was impelled to harmonize the two traditions. See section VII.ii below for a resolution of the difficulty which the juxtaposition engendered. 128 Miller, “Elisha Cycle,” 445–46.

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league with the Omrides led storytellers to supply his name. 129 Consequently, it was Ahab, Jehoshaphat’s contemporary, who became associated with the role of the northern king.130 Whatever the merits of the other particulars of Miller’s proposal, Ahab’s secondary introduction into the narrative does explain why, in a text otherwise given to identifying the players explicitly, the king of Israel is unnamed except by title in 29 of 30 attestations.131 It indicates, too, that the tradition of Ahab’s violent death may be both secondary to and relatively later than the work of the author who composed the original formula in vv. 39–40.

VII.ii One other aspect of the text indicates that the author responsible for the formulae down to Hezekiah did not know 1 Kgs 22:1–38. This is the tension entailed by an elaborate apparatus of prophecy, non-fulfillment, explanation, and fulfillment in chaps. 21–22. Thus, Elijah prophesies the abolition of Ahab’s house in 1 Kgs 21:20–24; in vv. 27–29, that prophecy is postponed to the reign of Ahab’s son. Yet it is the clear intent of 1 Kgs 22:38 to fulfill the original oracle. More than one commentator has detected the difficulty. Cross, in his influential discussion of the “Themes in the Book of Kings,” wrote: ... the word of Yahweh was in part delayed (1 Kings 21:29), in part fulfilled in Ahab’s death (1 Kings 22:37 f.) and in Ahaziah’s death. The prophecy was roundly fulfilled in the revolution of Jehu in which the king (Ahab’s son Joram) together with the “seventy sons of Ahab” and Jezebel the queen mother were slaughtered in Jezreel and Samaria.132

Cross’s explication of the now cloudy nature of this prophetic fulfillment dovetails neatly with the thesis about authorial layers proposed here.

 129 Miller, “Elisha Cycle,” 447–48. De Vries (Prophet Against Prophet, 99, 127) also argues that the story cannot initially have referred to Ahab because of the formulaic contradiction, and, like Miller, posits that the kings involved may have been Joram of Israel and Ahaziah of Judah. 130 Miller posits a similar development for 2 Kgs 3:4–27. It should be noted that further analysis will indicate the original independence of the story from those concerning Elisha, such that different oral cycles should be hypothesized. Further, there is no necessity to suppose that 1 Kings 22 reached Judah only after 722, as Miller does, since traffic in goods and traditions does not seem to have been interdicted before that time. 131 Weippert, “Ahab el campeador?” 458–59. Note also de Vries, Prophet Against Prophet, 5 and n. 10. 132 Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 281.

286 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  Without plumbing the redactional history of the Elijah material in 1 Kgs 17–19, 21, 133 it may be assumed that the material, originally oral (esp. 2 Kgs 8:4),134 came to whoever integrated it into the history much as it is. Its probable antiquity suggests it was available to the author of the regnal formulae. Indeed, as Miller proposed, the postponement of Elijah’s prophecy against Ahab in 1 Kgs 21:27–29 must stem from the author who juxtaposed the Naboth story with 1 Kgs 22:39–40.135 In the author’s understanding, Jehu’s coup did indeed “roundly fulfill” the prophecy of 1 Kgs 21:20– 24; so, the postponement of that prophecy in 21:27–29 was needed to explain, as Miller noted, “why precisely the fate which overcame the king of Israel in 1 Kgs 22:38 did not befall Ahab”.136 It is not as though chap. 21 itself followed well upon 19:15–18, which prepare the way for Jehu’s coup, or chap. 20, in which Ahab is condemned to death, all preceding the sin, prophecy, and retraction in connection with Naboth. 137 Still, Elijah’s curses now find their fulfillment only in Jehu.  133

This is treated at length in a variety of monographs, for which see O.H. Steck, Überlieferungs- und Zeitgeschichte m den Elia-Erzählungen (WMANT 26; NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener, 1968); the work of G. Fohrer, Elia (ATANT 31; Zurich: Zwingli, 1957) remains a classic. For more synchronic approaches to the problems of the text, however, see also de Vries, Prophet Against Prophet, 4–7, 112–36; B.O. Long, 1 Kings, With an Introduction to Historical Literature (FOTL; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 174–207; and R.L. Cohn, “The Literary Logic of 1 Kings 17–19,” JBL 101 (1982) 333– 50. 134 2 Kgs 8:4 is an example of an oral tradition tracing its own origin to an oral matrix, as Halpern, The First Historians, 248. Cf. also Lemaire, “Vers l’histoire,” 232 n. 52. 135 Miller, “Elisha Cycle,” 444–45. 136 Miller, “Elisha Cycle.” The prophecy against Ahab in 2 Kgs 21:19–24 is threefold: 1) the dogs would lick Ahab’s blood where they had licked Naboth’s (Jezreel); 2) the eradication of the house, including no burial; and, 3) the dogs would eat Jezebel in the field of Jezreel (presumably, Naboth’s, abutting the palace). The postponement of the catastrophe onto Ahab’s son allows Jehu to fulfill the program by 1) casting Jehoram’s corpse onto Naboth’s lot (2 Kgs 9:25–26); 2) eradicating Ahab’s house (10:1–17) and, exposing at least some of the corpses (10:8); and, 3) defenestrating Jezebel, who is then eaten (9:30–37). 1 Kgs 19:15–18 anticipates these developments, and the ensuing slaughter of the devotees of the baal (2 Kgs 10:18–28; see Wellhausen, Composition, n. 5, 238). In 1 Kgs 22:38, however, Ahab’s corpse travels to Samaria, not Jezreel, and his blood is washed into the pool, from which dogs lap it indirectly, not directly, and harlots wash in it. This latter element is a playful pun on the use of ‘dog’ to mean ‘male prostitute,’ and not necessarily, as Gray supposes (1 and 2 Kings [n. 6], 455) an indication of a separate folk tradition. 137 For this reason, OG reverses the order of chs. 20 and 21. This expedient allows the postponement of the penalty in chap. 21 to have effect, such that it is the sin of chap. 20 for which Ahab is ultimately killed in ch. 22. Still, the fact that the mode of his death permits the partial fulfilment of 21:19, and the fact that Jehu’s coup is already provided for in 19:15–18, both suggest that this is a secondary attempt to alleviate only the most obvious tension in the MT textual tradition.

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Thus the order of literary integration is clear enough: the oral Elijah (Elisha) materials were imported into the history by the Hezekian Historian when he composed the edition that included the regnal formulae down to Hezekiah, and specifically Ahab’s formulae (1 Kgs 22:39–40); the tensions created by this combination were alleviated by the addition of 1 Kgs 21:27–29.138 If the Hezekian author supposed that Ahab, his arch-villain, had died violently, he would happily have said so. Thus, the narrative concerning Ahab in 1 Kgs 22:1–38, with its anomalous death notice in v. 37, entered the history after 1 Kings 21, and certainly after the author of the regnal formulae down to Hezekiah had completed his work. The stages involved in the integration of the narrative correspond, as the following section will show, with the stages of our proposed redaction hypothesis.

VIII Who, then, introduced the narrative detailing Ahab’s death into the history? Why was he interested in the fulfillment of Elijah’s prophecy against Ahab? And why did he not eliminate the tension between the narrative and the earlier combination of Elijah’s postponement of Ahab’s punishment and Ahab’s peaceful death? The likelihood is that it was the Josianic historian, H[Dtr]jos. This is the historian, after all, who employed the idiosyncratic idiom, ‘to be gathered to the fathers’ for the death of a king (and a generation); he may, it was suggested above (n. 126), have had a hand in none of the DBFs, though these are all irregular, from Hezekiah onward (in the instance, those for Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amon; H[Dtr]jos will nevertheless have shaped elements of the formulae other than the DBF in these cases, including the placement of Amon’s source-citation after the report of his assassination). The extent of his activity and the oddity of his usage in the case of Josiah make it quite possible that he was able to adopt a sufficiently plastic interpretation of the DBF terminology to live with the con 138

A possible corollary to this conclusion, and to the foregoing considerations concerning the relationship of 1 Kings 21 to 1 Kgs 19:15–18; 20, is that the Naboth episode was a late accession to the literary Nimshide apology, and was associated with it only secondarily. As Fohrer (Elia, n. 133, 56) has discerned, the calumny in the account reflects contemporary animus toward Jezebel; and the exculpation of Ahab from active, conscious trespass reflects a more benign disposition toward that figure than is apparent in 1 Kgs 17–20; 22. The story thus most probably took shape in the period between Ahab’s death and Jezebel’s, or possibly just after Jezebel’s defenestration. The Naboth story would then have formed part of early Nimshide lore, originally damning Jezebel. But it was perhaps transmitted discretely: the demonization of Ahab may have been integrated later into partisan lore still in the oral stages.

288 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  tradiction. Indeed, was he the party responsible for the death and burial notices in the list of “minor judges” in Judg 10:2, 5; 12:7, 10, 12? Confirmation for the idea that H(Dtr)jos did not shape DBFs from Hezekiah’s on down, however, comes chiefly from the fact that 1 Kings 22 is closely paralleled in 2 Chronicles 18. Since, as others have argued, Chr’s Vorlage in Kings probably did not extend past Josiah’s reign, 139 an ascription of 1 Kings 22 to E(Dtr)x entails electing the less parsimonious solution – namely, that what the exilic editor inserted was available to earlier authors, and that a later redactor of Chr then introduced into that work substantial blocks inserted into Kings by E(Dtr)x. This sort of textual interference is known to occur;140 but it would require a certain boldness to hypothesize the secondary introduction of so long a unit as 1 Kings 22 into Chr, unless one could also explain why other long units also omitted by ChrI were not accorded the same treatment. That is, a second edition of DtrH was composed during the reign of Josiah. ChrI had this text, but not the exilic update. It remains to review, in brief, some of the arguments for these positions. As argued above, Chronicles omits the names of QM’s after Hezekiah’s because its Vorlage did so: were Chr suppressing the names of QM’s, he would not have implemented the program starting at an arbitrary point. In Kings, the form for reporting the QM’s name also changes after Hezekiah. But the new form is consistent from Amon to the exile. This suggests that it was E(Dtr)x who reconstructed the QM formula, and that his additions were unavailable to Chr. If Chr’s Vorlage was Josianic, not Hezekian, however, H(Dtr)jos must have omitted the names of Manasseh’s, Amon’s, and Josiah’s QMs. H(Dtr)jos could have provided the names of QMs, as his major source had done for the other Davidides: the omission is glaring enough in Chronicles, where Manasseh’s and Amon’s accession formulae otherwise mirror Kings. But it may be that H(Dtr)jos did not name QMs because the position of QM had lost its function (priestess of the female cult? cf. 1 Kgs 15:13) in the reform era;141 or perhaps such data simply did not concern him. Presumably, then, E(Dtr)x noticed the lacuna, and furnished the names of QM’s stretching back not just to Jehoahaz, but to Manasseh, out of antiquarian interest. Thematically, too, variations in Chronicles indicate that Chr relied on a pre-exilic Vorlage which reflected disjunction, still discernible in Kings, at  139

Esp. McKenzie, The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History, 181–87. See also Williamson, “Death of Josiah”; Williamson, “Reliving the Death.” 140 Y. Zakovitch, “Assimilation in Biblical Narratives,” in J. Tigay (ed.), Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1985) 181ff. 141 Note in this regard the endorsement in a pre-Hezekian account of Asa’s ruthlessness with the QM (1 Kgs 15:13).

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the reign of Hezekiah.142 That Chr’s Vorlage extended beyond the reign of Hezekiah, though, is clear from his use of post-Hezekian materials from Kings. Thus, the evaluation of Manasseh in 2 Kgs 21:1–9 is quoted almost verbatim in 2 Chr 33:1–8, and the reign of Amon is paralleled in sufficient detail to warrant the conclusion that here, too, Chr relied on Kings (2 Kgs 21:19a // 2 Chr 33:21; 21:20 // 33:22a; 21:23 // 33:24; 21:24 // 33:25). Another index is the report that Amaziah (2 Kgs 14:6 // 2 Chr 25:4) observed the injunction ‘in the book of the Torah of Moses ... let each man die for his own sin.’ The reference is to Deut 24:16, indicating that Chr had a Vorlage that already included the Deuteronomic code (12–26 and some of the frame). This, despite literary arguments to the contrary, 143 formed the ideological basis of the history in its Josianic edition; it was probably attached to it in some way. It is a delicate matter, given all the variation between Chr and Kgs, to determine just where Chr departs from, or lacks, a source.144 In Josiah’s reign, however, all obvious dependence of Chr on Kings ceases. Here, McKenzie has mounted a persuasive argument; he cites the lack of parallels between Chr and Kgs after Josiah as evidence for Chr’s dependence on sources other than DtrH for its presentation of the regnal accounts of the last four kings of Judah.145 Thus, Chr provides no regnal evaluation for Jehoahaz (it also omits Abijah’s, a king whose condemnation in Kings it seems to revise); it omits any comparison to fathers or other kings for all four of Josiah’s successors (but also for Abijah, Asa, and Amaziah). More striking, Chr has no parallel for the exilic claim that Manasseh precipitated Judah’s fall (2 Kgs 21:10–16a), and instead rehabilitates that king, and even, to the extent that they worship only Yhwh, the commons (2 Chr 33:11–17). Chr also diverges from Kings in failing to report any deaths after Josiah’s, though Kings claims that Jehoahaz died in Egypt (23:34) and that Jehoiakim, whose exile 2 Chr 36:6 reports, ‘slept with his fathers’ (24:6). It would be striking if Chr, otherwise obsessed with the details of burial,146 knew an exilic edition of Kings, yet felt comfortable leaving Davidides declared dead in his source hovering in limbo in foreign lands.  142

Halpern, “Sacred History and Ideology.” As Levenson, “Who Inserted the Book of the Torah?” 144 Generally see T. Willi, Die Chronik als Auslegung: Untersuchungen zur literarischen Gestaltung der historischen Überlieferung Israels (FRLANT 106; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972); also McKenzie, The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History. 145 McKenzie, The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History, 181–87. 146 Chronicles dispenses with any notice of burial ‘with the fathers’ except for Jehoshaphat, Amaziah, and Uzziah. However, he expands Asa’s funerary report with details on the tomb and on the funeral itself (2 Chr 16:12–14; cf. 1 Kgs 15:24), and adds that Jehoram (2 Chr 21:20, possibly due to haplography in the Vorlage), Joash (24:25, who in 143

290 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  Various observations converge, therefore, on the compilation of both a Hezekian and a Josianic edition of the history. This circumstance, it has been shown, is likewise reflected in both the form and the content of Chronicles. Chr worked from a Vorlage that reflected thematic and formulaic patterns evident in Kings down to Hezekiah.147 Yet Chr’s Vorlage included Kings’ accounts of Manasseh, Amon, and Josiah. He had an edition of Kings that extended to Josiah; changes in Chr at Hezekiah reflect variations embedded in DtrH when H(Dtr)jos revised the Hezekian history. Conversely, as McKenzie demonstrates, Chr had no recourse to the work of E(Dtr)x, since his post-Josianic material does not much parallel that of Kings. Admittedly, McKenzie’s thesis demands complicated reconstruction in connection with complex texts, such as the account of Sennacherib’s invasion and subsequent death. Nevertheless, it represents the most economical explanation for the basic data. Thus modified, Weippert’s thesis of editions closing with Hezekiah, Josiah, and the exile boasts the advantage that it accommodates evidence of thematic and formulaic shift at the reigns both of Hezekiah and of Josiah. Provan defends a less complex solution, with a first edition written for Josiah that closed with Hezekiah. But beyond the formulaic evidence from regnal formulae (the regnal evaluations, DBF, and supplementary notes) and the case of Huldah’s prophecy (which might have survived in a separate history of Josiah’s reform), all reviewed above, and the stylistic and theological evidence cited by earlier critics, 148 substantial thematic evidence sustains the hypothesis of an edition ending with Josiah, as well as one ending with Hezekiah.  a sense is displaced by Jehoiada), and Ahaz (28:27, where the MT double-reading [cf. G] may have seemed to imply special treatment) were buried in the ‘city of David’ but not in the royal tombs. 2 Chr 26:23 carefully stipulates that the leprous Uzziah was laid to rest ‘in the burial field pertaining to the kings.’ Hezekiah is interred specifically ‘in the ascent of the tombs of the children of David,’ and he is said to have been much honored at his death (32:33). And, 2 Chr 21:19 denies that Jehoram had a pyre, while 2 Chr 35:24–25 elaborate on the lamentation of Josiah. All this added detail betrays a decided interest in the location and treatment of the corpse. Chr furnishes no detail on burial in the cases of David, Amon, and the successors of Josiah (all of whom suffer exile in its version). It omits the location of the burial for Ahaziah. On 2 Chr 33:20, Manasseh’s interment only ‘in the garden of (G) his house,’ (2 Kgs 21:18 ‘in the garden of his house (OG om.), in the garden of Uzza’), see above, nn. 33, 26. 147 Halpern, “Sacred History and Ideology;” McKenzie, The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History, 174–76. 148 I. Benzinger (Jahvist and Elohist in den Königsbücher [Berlin: Kohlhammer, 1921]) argues that the Pentateuchal sources continue through the books of Kings: interestingly, he suggests that the work of J ceased at the reign of Hezekiah, while that of E ceased at Josiah.

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Here again, Cross’s arguments loom large. However one understands his dichotomy between conditional and unconditional dynastic grants, 149 his understanding of the Josianic edition of DtrH as a Josianic program piece remains fundamental.150 Thus, starting from Cross’s view, Friedman has observed in how many aspects DtrH portrays Josiah as a new Moses,151 as a king poised to lead Judah back into deserving possession of her true inheritance. Like the canonization of Josiah, with its stringent reformationist demands on all his successors, this is not a theme one would expect an exile to develop. In Josiah’s Jerusalem, H(Dtr) must have regarded the reunification of north and south as the litmus test of Josiah’s political ambition. The end, of course, demanded rigid enforcement of Deuteronomic norms. H(Dtr), consequently, set the stage for his liege historiographically. The prophecy against Jeroboam and Bethel by the Judahite ‘man of god’ (1 Kgs 13:1f.) makes a sacred mission of Josiah’s actions in 2 Kgs 22:15–20: dismantling the Bethel altar, burning the high places, and eradicating illegitimate priests.152 Further, H(Dtr)’s peroration on the fall of Israel in 2 Kings 17 insists on continuity in the priesthood of the northern cult to give Josiah the chance (the calves being beyond his reach) to take action against the causes of Israel’s fall (2 Kgs 17:27–41), whether Jeroboamic or Solomonic (above). For H(Dtr), Josiah is David: ‘he walked in all the way of David his father and did not turn to the right or to the left’ (22:2). Josiah was most like David in his apparent effort to restore the hegemony of Judah in the north. That an exilic author should have gone to the trouble of inserting a prophecy of Josiah’s Bethel expedition, or of blaming the schism on the Solomonic high places Josiah tore down, or of tracing the continuity between Jeroboam’s priesthood and the priests Josiah burned, only to protest the foreordained futility of Josiah’s measures because of Manasseh’s depravity, defies credulity. What pedagogic function could such a bifurcated presentation serve? H(Dtr) patently had it in mind to locate Josiah’s program in reference to the evil that men had done, and that Josiah undid. To situate the meticulous unfolding of this messianic scheme in the exile is to slight its intense political valence.153 What, then, of the scapegoating of Manasseh? As McKenzie argues,154 2 Kgs 21:1–9 is probably pre-exilic, since it was available to Chr. This hy 149

See Halpern, The First Historians, 157–67. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 281. 151 Friedman, The Exile and Biblical Narrative, 171–74. 152 Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 279. 153 McKenzie, The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History, 147–49. 154 McKenzie, The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History, 164. 150

292 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  pothesis squares with the needs of a Josianic H(Dtr): someone had to be blamed for reversing Hezekiah’s policies of eliminating bƗmôt, smashing ma‫܈܈‬Ɲbôt, and cutting down the ’asƝrâ (2 Kgs 18:4–5). H(Dtr) was thrown back on blaming Manasseh – who had in fact presided over the recovery of the Judahite countryside and the regeneration of at least some of the rural cult 155 – because Amon’s reign was so short. Indeed, in contrast to the practice of attenuating charges against northern kings who inherited disaster (Jehoram, Hosea), Davidides whose successor’s reform are accused of heightened evil:156 they provoke reform. Even a cursory review of the cultic crimes attributed to Manasseh reveals a close correlation to Josiah’s corrective measures (see Table 5). The suggestion is, the bill of indictment against Manasseh was produced by the author responsible for describing Josiah’s reform. This author, it must be noted, passionately believed that Josiah’s measures would prove effective in reviving Judah’s status as an independent international power. Only with the fall of the southern kingdom did it become necessary to introduce 2 Kgs 21:10–16 into the account of Manasseh’s reign, the remainder of which may well reflect H(Dtr)’s extremism in support of Josiah. Indeed, the exilic editor most likely deduced that Manasseh triggered Judah’s doom precisely because H(Dtr) left him a text expounding that king’s sacrilege at length (a text, significantly, that resonated with the sermon of 2 Kings 17 on the fall of Israel).157 E(Dtr)x felt no need to finger those who followed Josiah, as Ezekiel did (8:7fr); the cause had been delineated in nuce already by H(Dtr) jos.

 155

For details, see Halpern, “Jerusalem and the Lineages.” Rehoboam presides over the building of high places and the worst behavior in the history of Judah, like that of the Amorites (1 Kgs 14:22–24), before the short reign of Abijah, who followed his lead (15:3). Jehoram and Ahaziah prosecute the policies of the Omrides (2 Kgs 8:18, 27). Ahaz pursues the path of the kings of Israel and also of the Amorites, and uses high places (2 Kgs 16:3–4). And, Manasseh, who rebuilds the high places and an Asherah like Ahab’s, outdoes the Amorites in sin (2 Kgs 21:1–9). 157 Parallels between 2 Kgs 21 and 2 Kgs 17 abound: 21:2 // 17:8; 21:3a // 17:9b; 21:3b // 17:16c; 21:6 // 17:17; 21:7 // 14:16b; and the invocation of the unheeded divine admonition in 21:7–9 parallels 17:12–15. 156

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Table 5: The Cult under Josiah and Manasseh Manasseh rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed (21:3) He erected altars for Baal, and made an Asherah, as Ahab ... had done and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served them (21:3) built altars in the house of the lord... and built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of Yhwh (21:4-5) burned his son as an offering (21:6)

practiced soothsaying and augury, and dealt with mediums and wizards (21:6) the graven image of Asherah that he made he set in the [temple] (21:7)

Josiah he defiled (wa-ye‫ܒ‬ammƝ’) the high places where the priests had burned incense (23:8) brought out of the temple of Yhwh all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven, he burned them... (23:4) the altars on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of Yhwh he pulled down and broke in pieces (23:12) he defiled Topheth which is in the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or daughter as a mulk offering (23:10) put away the mediums and the wizards and the teraphim and the idols... (23:24) he brought out the Asherah from the house of Yhwh... and burned it (23:6)

IX After defending at such length one view of the redactional history of Kings – and, implicitly, of DtrH as a whole – it seems most proper to attempt to situate that history in its broader social and cultural environment. To paint a fuller picture of the cultural history reflected in the reedition of DtrH calls for broader brush-strokes, and the integration of conclusions concerning DtrH and concerning the history of Judah won by scholars elsewhere. Despite the limitations inherent in a briefer consolidation of the discussion, the sketch that emerges of diversity and of transitions in Judahite thinking seems to us to merit contemplation. In a very real sense, the history of the redaction of DtrH is a history of elite culture in Jerusalem in the seventh century BCE. Nowhere is this more clear than in Provan’s treatment, in which a redactional layer evincing the paranoiac conviction that “the entire history of the monarchy is ... one of rebellion against Yhwh, with Josiah the only king to have acted properly” 158 regards the high places as foci of foreign worship and the merest hint of attachment to heterodox traditionalism as apostasy. Provan, like Peckham and, indeed, many others since Noth, locates this fanatical  158

Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 151.

294 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  redaction in the exile.159 Reflecting as it does, however, the extraordinary fervor of Josiah’s earth-scorching reformation, this layer, as we have seen, vents contemporary, not retrospective, reflection. It is overlaid on a layer, more benign in its attitude toward high places (above), deposited by H(Dtr)hez. The full extent of this earlier work is uncertain; but it must have reached back into the period of the United Monarchy, and, if indications discerned in Judges by Wolfgang Richter are reliable,160 as they seem to be, perhaps beyond. On the early edition, the Josianic historian worked vital changes, stressing the illegitimacy of Jeroboam’s priesthoods, for example (1 Kgs 12:31– 32; 13:33–34; 2 Kgs 17:27–32) and heralding Josiah’s foray against the shrine at Bethel (12:33–13:32). He introduced the motif of the sin of Solomon that led to the secession of Israel, such that Josiah’s demolition of Solomon’s high places could presage the recovery of Israel. This explanation for the schism entailed two further innovations: First, as a consolation prize after Israel was forfeit to Solomon, H(Dtr)jos introduced the “fief-formula”, the promise that David’s descendants would enjoy a perpetual possession in Jerusalem. This promise first appears, and is relevant, only when Solomonic sin has precipitated the loss of Israel (1 Kgs 11:13, 32, 34, 36; 15:4; 2 Kgs 8:19; 2 Chr 21:7). Second, at the same time, as Friedman and Nelson have argued, his acceptance of the view that the Israelite secession was divinely inspired and therefore legitimate led H(Dtr)jos to conditionalize the Davidic dynastic charter (as 1 Kgs 2:4; 6:11–13; 8:25; 9:4–9) to allow for the loss of the throne over all Israel:161 the conditional formulations, all of which mention the throne of Israel as a whole (contrast the unconditional fief-formula) are restricted to  159 Peckham, The Composition of the Deuteronomistic History; Noth, Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien. 160 W. Richter, Traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zum Richterbuch (BBB 18; Bonn: P. Hanstein, 1963); idem, Die Bearbeitung des ‘Retterbuches’ in der deuteronomischen Epoche (BBB 21, Bonn: P. Hanstein). 161 The literature on the subject is growing, starting for practical purposes from Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 274–289. Levenson (“The Last Four Verses in Kings,” JBL 103 (1984) 353–61, esp. 355, n. 10) has responded against Friedman (The Exile and Biblical Narrative, 12–13) and Halpern (The Constitution of the Monarchy, 99–105) and Provan (Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 106–111) against Nelson (The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History, 99–118). Their chief argument revolves around the absence of a distinct promise of the throne of the northern kingdom to David for the conditionalizing passages to refer to (the position of Nelson and Friedman). This objection is blunted, however, if the conditional clauses refer to kingship over all Israel, as reinterpretations of 2 Samuel 7 (Halpern, The Constitution of the Monarchy, 36–40; idem, The First Historians, 157–74; Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 107–109). The conditions, thus, were triggered by Solomon’s apostasy, which in turn led to the concessive preservation of David’s fief. All this text is of a single piece.

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the account of Solomon’s reign because, in the view of the historian, Solomon violated those conditions and thus lost the throne over all Israel; the conditional formulations thereafter lost their relevance, and only the fiefformula continues to occur. By way of contrast, Chr denies the legitimacy of the Israelite secession – and of course does not report that Solomon precipitated it by a sin. This stance probably reflects the embedded view of H(Dtr)hez.162 Clearly, H(Dtr)jos also introduced into the history passages (like 2 Kgs 17:11) fleshing out the contentions of Deuteronomy that the high places were relics of the Amorites, and must be destroyed. In Judges 1–3, for example, he traced Israel’s misfortunes of the premonarchic period to intermarriage with the Amorites and the consequent adoption of their gods and cultic practices (above): his program will have involved inserting such justifications of Josiah’s policies (as, again, 1 Kgs 13). Still, not all the new accessions were so pointedly ideological – new texts, such as 1 Kgs 20; 22:1–38, also found their way into the Josianic corpus. Again, the Josianic provenance of 1 Kgs 22:1–38 helps explain why Ahab’s supplementary notice does not stress his military prowess. One of the (two) sources of 1 Samuel may have accrued to the history at this juncture, as well as material reaching from Hezekiah to Josiah. From these examples, there is a strong presumption that H(Dtr)jos redrew his source in ways that preclude the confident recovery of much intact source text. Scholars have not in general given themselves over to imagining in its fullest frenzy the political and theological atmosphere in Josiah’s Jerusalem. Judah was whirling in a vortex, in Malamat’s word,163 a “maelstrom,” at the center of which invincible Assyria was disappearing from the earth. Assyrian deportees occupied sprawling tracts of what had formerly been Judah’s neighbors’ lands. Rural Judah had been depopulated in 701, and the crown was still in the process of pioneering old frontiers. Babylon and Medea and Egypt were girding up slowly for what would be the decisive struggle for succession in the civilized world. And into this primal political chaos, Josiah’s courtiers injected a Hezekian policy of centralization, imbued with a new and more pointed monotheistic fanaticism. The world turned upside down – and as the heavens thundered, and the earth shook, only the bloody business of urgent reform could stay their foundations’ flight. This, Josiah’s fervor furnished. Josiah alone could stem approaching catastrophe. Then Necho killed him.  162

Halpern, “Sacred History and Ideology,” 46–48. A. Malamat, “The Twilight of Judah: In the Egyptian-Babylonian Maelstrom,” VTSup 28 (1975) 123–45; idem, “The Last Years of the Kingdom of Judah,” in A. Malamat and I. Eph’al (eds.), In The Age of the Monarchies: Political History (WHJP 4/1; Jerusalem: Massada, 1979) 205–29, 349–53. 163

296 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  Josiah failed. Doom rode up the hilltops of Judah in Egyptian and Babylonian colors. The end overtook the Davidic state, sending most of its elite to Mesopotamia. How does one explain the death of a savior, a messiah? The path later marked out in the theologies of Deutero-Isaiah, primitive Christianity and Sabbateanism was not yet an option. Ezekiel, full of fury, blamed Josiah’s successors – the recourse Chr seems to choose. Jeremiah petulantly denied that there had been a reform at all (44). E(Dtr)x chose a course of resignation, of fatalism. Josiah had been doomed to fail, doomed to die. Manasseh had determined the lot of Judah. E(Dtr)x updated the history from Josiah to the exile, but his perfunctory treatment of Josiah’s successors evinces a lack of intrinsic interest. He quickly dispatched the last four kings of Judah, pulling up to provide a deeper perspective only at the end. What he added to the early portions of the history is not clear.164 At the end, having laid the exile at Manasseh’s door, he could hold out only the faintest glimmering of hope. At this late stage, yet just before the new dawn (and perhaps at its first prospect), all Israel’s chances focused in the ragtag figure of a prisoner king (2 Kgs 25:27–30).165

 164 For various views, see Levenson, “Who Inserted the Book of the Torah?;” idem. “The Last Four Verses in Kings;” Friedman, “From Egypt to Egypt: Dtr1 and Dtr2;” idem, The Exile and Biblical Narrative, 26–43; Nelson, The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History; 43–98; Mayes, The Story of Israel between Settlement and Exile, 106– 32. We doubt that E(Dtr)x interfered much in DtrH between Deuteronomy and the reign of Manasseh. 165 Levenson, “The Last Four Verses in Kings.”

9. Why Manasseh is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile: The Evolution of a Biblical Tradition* While working with graduate students on the book of Jeremiah and on the treatment of the last kings of Judah in Kings and Chronicles, I noted an anomaly, the explanation of which was almost uniformly the excision of Jeremiah’s blaming the Babylonian exile on Manasseh. This comported with the report in Kings that, in effect, Josiah’s reform was foredoomed to failure, as Cross had noted, a clear indication of post-Josianic intervention by his exilic redactor, Dtr2, whose existence and activity, whether as DtrN or whatever siglum (my E[Dtr]x, or exilic editor; see “Editions of Kings,” this volume), was universally accepted. This problem was one of the elements that had led Cross to analyze Kings’s composition as he did. Scholars for the most part assumed that this exilic explanation was then later inserted into Jeremiah, an argument for which the only evidence is the operation of the explanation in an exilic context. Yet, as this article documents (and as another, “The New Names of Isaiah 62:4: Jeremiah’s Reception in the Restoration and the Politics of ‘Third Isaiah,’” JBL 117 [1998] 623-643, suggests), Jeremiah’s reception in the exilic and especially post-exilic communities confirms that Jeremiah clung to the idea of ancestral moral liability exhibited in the Decalogue and the Deuteronomistic History generally (for Israel, and for the survival, so long as it did, of Judah as a state: see the contrast between Jeremiah and Ezekiel regarding the effect of sour grapes in Chapter 10). Jeremiah’s ideological influence in particular is to be reckoned with, responsible, quite possibly, for the delay in the completion of the second Jerusalem temple, seventy years after the exile of 586, and more certainly for the aniconic, limited nature of Second-Temple Jerusalem’s elite culture. Where Ezekiel, Jeremiah’s ally and opponent by turns, the Shammai to his Hillel, reflects sociological developments in an evolving power structure among the elite, Jeremiah enjoyed a programmatic ideological status, a privileged status that appears to permeate even adherents to Ezekiel’s policy. The following essay, then, is a preliminary attempt to sort out the history of the explanations for the exile. It is, at the same time, an indication that intermediate explanations, between Josiah and the exile, were in competing play and that the standard model for a single exilic redaction following the Josianic history, or indeed for later revisions, does not explain the evidence satisfactorily.

I. The Question The differences between the books of Kings and Chronicles in recounting the history of the kingdom of Judah are manifold and obvious. Chronicles,  *

Originally published in Vetus Testamentum 48 (1998) 473–514.

298 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  unlike Kings, does not recognize the legitimacy of the Israelite kingdom, and therefore does not reiterate materials concerning it from its source in Kings.1 Chronicles also edits the account of Solomon’s reign to eliminate materials blaming that king for the secession of the northern tribes under Jeroboam (as 1 Kgs 11). Yet 2 Chr 10:15 does refer to Yhwh’s oracle to Jeroboam as the reason for the schism, leaving it up in the air whether and how Solomon precipitated the crisis – and suggesting that he did, even if some of the blame is laid at the door of Rehoboam’s extremism. But there is no reference to the Northern cult, nor to Jeroboam’s consecration of non-Levites as priests, as there is in Kings. These divergences between the two texts may seem minor. After all, Chronicles also omits mention of the civil war between David and Ishbaal, summing it up in the statement that, on Saul’s death, “Yhwh diverted the kingship to David” (1 Chr 10:14): the editorial choice to shorten the account, which concerns Israel as well as Judah, is not atypical – Jehoshaphat’s connections, for example, to the Omrides and even Elisha’s activity being acknowledged in Chronicles, without any exploration. And there are various other differences in the facts or sequence of events reported in Chronicles and in Kings, some of which have been attributed to Chronicles’ putative Tendenzen, others to Chronicles’ midrashic bent, still others (or, indeed, some of the same texts) to Chronicles’ deductions from Kings, or even from additional sources. Nowhere, however, are the differences between Chronicles and Kings so stark as where they address the demise of the kingdom of Judah. Starting in their accounts of Manasseh, the contrasts, perhaps even contradictions, are so extensive that at least one scholar has suggested that Chronicles was working with a text of Kings that ended some time in Josiah’s reign.2 At the heart of this parting of the ways is the question of the Babylonian exile. This catastrophe, as is well known, Kings places squarely on the shoulders of Manasseh, son of the reformer Hezekiah and grandfather of the even more rabid reformer Josiah (for detailed citations, see below). Chronicles, on the other hand, blames the exile on a cumulative process of turning away from Yhwh, culminating in the reigns of Josiah’s successors. Manasseh, in Chronicles’ account, is even rehabilitated before his death (2 Chr 33:12–16, 18–19).

 1 See H. G. M. Williamson, Israel in the Books of Chronicles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 2 See S. L. McKenzie, The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History (HSM 33; Atlanta, Scholars Press, 1985); repudiated in his subsequent The Trouble with Kings (Leiden, Brill, 1991).

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II. The Strategy of Explanation in Chronicles A. Chronicles on the Exile Huldah’s oracle apart, the most explicit passage from Chronicles is that following the accession formula of Zedekiah, Judah’s last king before the Babylonian exile of 587: He did (what was) the evil in the sight of Yhwh, his god. He did not submit before Jeremiah the prophet to Yhwh’s utterance. And he also revolted against the king, Nebuchadnezzar, who had adjured him by God, but stiffened his neck and girded his heart against repenting to Yhwh, god of Israel (2 Chr 36:11–13). And also all the officials of the priests and the people multiplied the commission of offences according to all the abominations of the gentiles, and they profaned the house of Yhwh which he had consecrated in Jerusalem. So Yhwh the god of their forefathers sent (word) against them by the agency of his messengers, regularly and from early on, for he took pity on his people and on his habitation. But they made mock of the god’s messengers and belittled his words, and made fools of his prophets, until Yhwh’s bile rose up against his people beyond healing. So he roused the king of the Chaldeans against them... (2 Chr 36:14–17).

An account of Nebuchadrezzar’s depredations, the destruction of the temple, and the exile follows (2 Chr 36:17–21). The text then describes the expiration of the exile, in accordance with the prophecy of Jeremiah, and Cyrus’s edict of restoration (36:20–3).3 B. Collective Sin (36:14) At first blush, it might appear that 36:14–16 refer to the behavior of Judah’s officialdom, possibly in the reign of Zedekiah only. After all, a uni 3

On the relationship between the final verses of Chronicles (2 Chr 36:22–3) and the identical opening verses of Ezra (1:1–3) suggesting continuity from the end of the former to the start of the latter book, see especially L. W. Batten, The Book of Ezra and Nehemiah (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1913) 1–2; W. Rudolph, Esra und Nehemia samt 3. Esra (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1949) 2–3. The reversal of this view in recent scholarship, while sound, does not adequately address the implications for literary and historiographic, as distinct from authorial, intention. Note, too, that 1 Esdras repeats the last two chapters of Chronicles, not just the last two verses. For its identity as the original continuation of Chronicles in its present form, see T. C. Eskenazi, “The Chronicler and the Composition of 1 Esdras,” CBQ 48 (1986) 39–61; B. Halpern, “A Historiographic Commentary on Ezra 1–6: Achronological Narrative and Dual Chronology in Israelite Historiography,” in W.H. Propp, B. Halpern and D.N. Freedman (eds.), The Hebrew Bible and its Interpreters (Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 1990) 103–18, 127, 130–6. The implication is a more complex compositional history for Chronicles than is contemplated, for example, by S. de Vries, 1 and 2 Chronicles (FOTL; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989) 16–17. See generally the comments of J. W. Kleinig, “Recent Research in Chronicles,” Currents in Research: Biblical Studies 2 (1994) 44.

300 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  versal exile is described in 36:17–21, and no mention is made of Zedekiah’s own fate: presumably, this is subsumed under the description of the general destruction. This treatment stands in stark contrast to that accorded to Manasseh, Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin, all of whom are said by the Chronicler to have been taken off to Babylon (2 Chr 33:11, 36:6, 10), while a plundering of the temple (but no exile of population) is also mentioned in connection with Jehoiakim’s exile (36:7). Similarly, Jehoahaz, son of Josiah, is removed to Egypt (2 Chr 33:3). Like Zedekiah, the Chronicler accuses these kings of doing “what was evil in Yhwh’s sight,”4 although only in the cases of Manasseh, before his reprieve, and Zedekiah, does the bill of indictment include particulars. In other words, in Chronicles, all the “evil” kings from Manasseh forward suffer personal punishment (Amon, Manasseh’s son, is assassinated, for patronizing his father’s icons which in theory Manasseh had removed: 2 Chr 33:15, 22–4). In the final exile of 587, however, it is the people who are punished. It would seem to follow that a passage such as 2 Chr 36:14–16, explaining why they deserved this fate, was called for. Nevertheless, the passage enumerating the sins of Judah’s officials and people gives some evidence of Chronicles’ not restricting the phenomenon to the reign of a single king. First is the usage, “they multiplied the commission of offences” (hrbw lmҳl mҳl): they did so “according to all the abominations of the nations”. This latter phrase recalls four earlier statements in Chronicles. Three come from Kings. Ahaz sacrificed in the ben-Hinnom Valley (not in 2 Kings) and passed his son through fire; Manasseh did what was evil. Both did so, “according to the abominations of the nations that Yhwh had supplanted from before the Israelites” (2 Chr 28:3 = 2 Kgs 16:3; 2 Chr 33:2 = 2 Kgs 21:2). Manasseh also “perverted Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to do greater evil than the nations whom Yhwh destroyed from before the Israelites” (2 Chr 33:9 = 2 Kgs 21:9). The only other references to “abominations” (tҳbwt) in Chronicles come in connection with their elimination (from Israel’s whole territory) during Josiah’s  4 The MT’s account of Jehoahaz has suffered haplography by homoioteleuton from “Jerusalem” (2 Chr 36:2) to “Jerusalem” (G: 36:2c): the Greek and, roughly, 2 Kgs 23:31–3, supply: “He did what was evil in Yhwh’s sight according to all that his fathers did. So the Pharaoh Necho arrested him in Deblatha in the land of Hamath so that he might not reign in Jerusalem.” The homoioteleuton and confusion of *Riblah with Deblath indicate a Hebrew Vorlage for G. G also explicitly has Jehoahaz taken captive to Egypt here (36:3), not after the crowning of the successor (cf. 36:4; 2 Kgs 23:34). Conversely, G supplies the name of the Queen Mother (2 Chr 36:2b), a detail Chronicles otherwise omits for kings after Hezekiah. G also supplies the punishment of the people at large (36:4a), a detail present in 2 Kings (23:35), but suppressed in Chronicles. A complicated history of scribal error and correction from Kings is thus suggested; some at least of the data of G 2 Chr 36:2b–c is presumably original.

9. Why Manasseh is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile 301  lifetime (2 Chr 34:33), and in a “source notice” mentioning their commission by Jehoiakim (36:8). The latter reference is to the king’s, not the population’s, guilt, and presumably explains his exile (in Chronicles). 5 The only other non-synoptic passage addressing Judah’s collective sin (as in 2 Chr 33:9) in comparison to aliens comes in 2 Chr 21:13: Jehoram prostitutes Judah, on the model of “the house of Ahab,” not the “nations” (cf. vv. 10–11). The multiplication (rbh, C) of sin is also a motif with restricted distribution in Chronicles. Amon is said to have multiplied guilt (2 Chr 33:23), Manasseh, before his reprieve, to have multiplied the doing of evil (33:6).6 Moreover, a collective “commission of offence” against Yhwh (mҳl) in 2 Chr 12:2 accounts for the campaign of Shishak (against Israel, vs. 1, as well as Judah?). More important, however, it is against the “offences” of the “fathers” that Hezekiah’s reform is oriented (2 Chr 29:6, 30:7), and these are exemplified by the “offences” at large for which Judah suffered under the unrepentant Ahaz (28:19, 22; also, 29:19), as well as by the offences of the youthful Manasseh (33:19; for others, see below). It is tempting, too, to connect these cases of collective guilt to the ongoing patronage of high places by the Judahites even after Manasseh’s rehabilitation (2 Chr 33:17). Certainly, Josiah is concerned with the “fathers”’ incitement of Yhwh (2 Chr 34:21), and the implication, since he has already reformed the cult, is the same in Huldah’s oracle (34:25; cf. also 24:17–18).

C. Profaning the Temple (36:14) The profanation of the temple, while also a concern of Ezekiel (as in v. 11, 23:38, 36:18) and Jeremiah (as in 7:30, 32:34), is reported by Chronicles in some detail in the indictments particularly of Ahaz and Manasseh (by implication, also of Amon). Chronicles documents other cultic deviations on occasion (as in 2 Chr 12:1, 20:33, 21:11, 13, 23:17, 24:17–18, 24, 27:2,  5 Jehoiakim dies a natural death in 2 Kgs 24:6. The adjustment in Chronicles represents a concession to the concept of an exile under Jehoiakim (Jer 52:28). In a related vein, Josephus (Ant. x 97–8) has Jeremiah’s prophecy (22:19) regarding Jehoiakim’s non-burial fulfilled. In Kings, the MT lacks a record of burial, but the OG adds interment in the garden of Uzza with the fathers (2 Kgs 24:6), and this probably reflects an original Vorlage omitted by homoioteleuton (“fathers... fathers”); the alternative, namely, systematization of burials in the LXX cannot altogether be excluded, but is less likely especially in the Lucianic tradition. See further below on Jer 22:18–19, 36:30–1 on Jehoiakim, and 34:4–5 on Zedekiah as unfulfilled oracles. 6 These and 2 Chr 36 are the three only negative uses of the root rbh in Chronicles, which appears 100 times in all. See B. Halpern, “Sacred History and Ideology: Chronicles’ Thematic Structure–Indications of an Earlier Source,” in R.E. Friedman (ed.), The Creation of Sacred Literature. Composition and Redaction of the Biblical Text (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).

302 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  28:6, bҳzbm, 25, implicating Judah generally; 25:14, 26:16–21, 28:2–4, 33:3, 6). Nowhere outside the reports on Ahaz (2 Chr 28:22–5) and Manasseh (2 Chr 33:4–5, 7), however, is desecration, by the introduction of specific alien goods, reported (Uzziah, in 2 Chr 26:16–21, violates the Aaronic monopoly on the cult, but introduces no alien implements). Hezekiah, however, removes the profanations from the temple (2 Chr 29:16), and these reforms are not necessarily identical with his repair of damage done by his immediate predecessor (29:19), though they do restore the temple to its original order (29:25–30). Manasseh’s reform (33:15–16) may refer to his own earlier reaction against Hezekiah’s reforms; but Josiah is precisely not said to have purified the temple itself, but only Jerusalem and Judah (2 Chr 34:3–7, 33), presumably because Manasseh had already done so: Josiah is restricted, rather, to composing the disrepair left unremedied by earlier kings (34:9–11). No profanation of the temple by Zedekiah, nor, for that matter, by his immediate predecessors, is reported. Conversely, deviation from the official cult outside the temple (as in 2 Chr 14:2–4, 15:8, 16– 17, though some of v. 8 may be related to 13:9, 17:3, 6, 19:3) could be related without any specific antecedent stipulating the construction of alternative cult sites (2 Chr 12:1 “and all Israel with him”, 14?). Deviation in the countryside, in short, might almost be regarded as a norm. The temple itself was immune from contamination except on the basis of royal policy. D. Prophetic Cautions (36:15) Might one, then, conclude that Zedekiah’s predecessors were responsible for the profanation of the temple and the debauchery of the people to which the exile was a response?7 Even this limited view seems to be without warrant: none of Zedekiah’s immediate predecessors profanes the temple, nor do the people incur liability collectively in their regnal accounts. More substantially, when 2 Chr 36 traces the exile to the Judahites’ mocking of the prophets (plural), it implies that the practice encompassed more than the reign of Zedekiah. Zedekiah himself “did not submit before Jeremiah” (36:12), a figure invoked three times in Chronicles. Yet the reason for the popular exile is the repeated rejection and mockery of prophetic warnings, which Yhwh commissioned from early on and regularly. In other words, the “officials” and people of Judah are indicted in precise language of more vehement and more temporally extended rebuff of prophetic remonstration than is Zedekiah himself.  7

So, e.g., S. Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and its Place in Biblical Thought (Jerusalem, 1977 [Hebrew]) 147, n. 489, 312–13; E. L. Curtis and A. A. Madsen, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Chronicles (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1910) 523; W. Rudolph, Chronikbücher (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1953) 337.

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 True, the language of early and repeated (hškm w + verb) remonstration is a staple of Jeremiah’s discourse, though it occasionally refers to his own activity (Jer 7:13, 25, 9:7, 25:3, 4, 26:5, 29:19, 32:33, 35:14, 15, 44:4). But the difference is that Chronicles concretizes the motif in the form of repeated prophetic intervention, unparalleled in or expanded from Kings, in the case of almost any monarch requiring a rebuke.8 Sometimes, the objects of the prophecy are receptive. Thus, Shemaiah discourages Rehoboam from campaigning against the schismatic Jeroboam (2 Chr 11:2–4), and recalls him from error (12:1) to Yhwh’s way during Shishak’s conquest (12:5–8). Azariah’s oracle spurs Asa to countryside reform (2 Chr 15:1–8). Asa (2 Chr 14:10–11) and Jehoshaphat (20:5–13, 13–30; the “synoptic” counterpart is 2 Kgs 3) win favorable war oracles. Though graphically dressed down by disease, Uzziah’s arrogation of a priestly role also attracts an effective response (2 Chr 26:16–21, esp. vv. 18). More often, the prophecy or warning has no deterrent effect. Abijah rightly informs Jeroboam and Israel that their secession, against Yhwh’s will, dooms them to defeat (2 Chr 13:4–20). Jehoram, the first of three kings who, Chronicles says, pursued the path of the “kings of Israel” or “house of Ahab” 9 (2 Chr 21:6; Ahaziah, 22:3–4; Ahaz, 28:2) receives a forecast of punishment from Elijah by post (21:12–19). The inclusion of his children in the chastisement (21:14) may explain why Ahaziah’s murder is described without oracular prediction, though it is justified by his reliance on an Omride queen-mother (22:3–4) and by a narrative statement of divine agency (22:7).10 Ahaziah’s foreign alliance (22:5) is one of only two in Chronicles that does not attract a rebuke in direct discourse; of the two, it is the one not involving a defense of Judah or its hegemonic interests. Importantly, Judah’s “officials” (cf. 36:14),11 suffer along with Ahaziah (22:8), perhaps because of their own links to the Omrides (22:4). Even kings responsive to some oracles prove resistant in other cases. Hanani angers Asa by condemning his foreign alliances (16:7–10). Micaiah ben-Imlah (2 Chr 18 < 1 Kgs 22) fails to disrupt Jehoshaphat’s alliance with the Omrides. A related rebuke, from Jehu ben-Hanani, excuses Jehoshaphat on the grounds of his otherwise spotless record (2 Chr 19:2–  8 On prophecy in Chronicles, see especially Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles, 154–66; generally, R. Micheel, Die Seher- und Profetenüberlieferungen in der Chronik (Frankfurt, 1983); R. Then, “Gibt es keinen mehr unter den Propheten?” Zum Fortgang der alttestamentlichen Prophetie in frühjüdischer Zeit (Frankfurt, 1990). 9 The phrase (< 2 Kgs 8:18, 27, 9:7–9, 10:10–11, 30, 21:13; Mic 6:16), instead of “house of Omri,” deserves attention in the light of extra-biblical attestation of the latter. 10 That a prophecy concerning Israel and with ramifications for Ahaziah, as in Kings, was suppressed should not have deterred Chronicles from providing another in its place. 11 The term “officials” in Chronicles may sometimes denote representatives of the citizenry; see especially below on 2 Chr 24.

304 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  3). And a prophet condemns Jehoshaphat’s joint naval venture with Israel, an option the Judahite refuses in 1 Kgs 22:48–50 (after his source notice), to disaster (2 Chr 20:35–7). Slightly more complex is the case of Amaziah. This king dismisses his hired Israelite auxiliaries at the word of a “man of God” (2 Chr 25:6–10); the disappointed mercenaries plunder his kingdom (25:10, 13). But Amaziah’s downfall (25:17–24) follows both from his rejecting an opponent’s warning (25:18–19) and from his death threat against a “prophet” concerned that he is patronizing Edomite gods (25:14–16). Like Amaziah, Joash rejects direction in a passage (2 Chr 24:17–22) with thematic links to 36:14–17: After the death of Jehoiada, the officials of Judah came and prostrated themselves to the king. Then the king listened to them. They abandoned the house of Yhwh, the god of their fathers, and served the Asherim and the ‘‫܈‬bym, so that Yhwh’s wrath came on Judah and Jerusalem for this their guilt (’šmh). He sent prophets among them to redirect them to Yhwh, and they preached to them, but they did not give ear. And the spirit of God invested Zechariah, son of Jehoiada...

Zechariah promised divine retribution. The people stoned him at Joash’s command in the temple court. “Joash did not remember the fidelity with which Jehoiada... had dealt with him, but killed his son,” who prayed at his death for vengeance. Here, as in 2 Chr 36, the rejected messenger is not just one stoning victim, but “prophets”, generally. And these prophets testify against the people at large, not just the king. Further, it is the officials who initiate the transgression, as with Ahaziah in 2 Chr 22:3–5, 8, albeit with the king’s approval. Foreigners then kill the officials and king (2 Chr 24:23–6), but whether this altogether effaces the guilt or mollifies Yhwh, even on the Chronicler’s scheme of rapid divine response, remains a question: Chronicles can justify intergenerational forbearance (as in 2 Chr 21:7). And the text of 2 Chr 36 itself, extending beyond Zedekiah’s reign in the case of the “officials” (and people), suggests that guilt, too, could be temporarily counterbalanced, and expiation postponed (so, too, 2 Chr 19:2–3, 24:21 in the context of Josiah’s reforms). Ironically, the most skilled and least repentant sinner in Chronicles is the beneficiary of prophetic direction. An Israelite army, having despoiled errant Judah, obeys an oracle and restores its captives and much of their booty (2 Chr 28:5–15). Ahaz, who immolates children, manufactures idols and high places (28:2–4, 23–5), and allies himself with a foreign power (v. 16), suffers repeated razzias (vv. 5–7, 16–18), including one by his erstwhile foreign savior (v. 20). Here, the silence of the prophets is the more peculiar in that the book of Isaiah documents encounters with Ahaz. The reason is that Ahaz is not himself solely to blame, but represents only punctuation mark in a wider history of Judahite debauchery.

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 Hezekiah removes the stigma, including that of Ahaz, from the temple (2 Chr 29:5, 15–19) but imputes the consequent sorry history of repeated plundering to “our fathers”’ “offences” (29:6–9). Again, the “offences”, plural, were committed by the “fathers”, plural. Not unrelated is the Unheilsgeschichte of Ezra 5:11–12: it was the sins “of our fathers” that led Nebuchadrezzar to destroy the temple. The passage describing Hezekiah’s temple rededication mentions the founder, David’s, “seer” and “the prophet”, and invokes Davidic precedent four times (2 Chr 29:25–30). Some northerners “mocked” Hezekiah’s messengers (2 Chr 30:10): the word is that of 2 Chr 36:16. But others, and all Judah, were moved to join the reform (30:11–12), purging Jerusalem’s illicit altars (vs. 14) and the cult installations of Judah and the central hills (31:1). Chronicles thus celebrates Hezekiah’s reign as a wholesome contrast to the previous history of the Divided Monarchy. Even in the face of Assyrian siege (historically, a question mark),12 the king’s (prophetic) encouragement to his subordinates is unflagging (32:1–8). Sennacherib’s blasphemy – an inverted prophecy, so to speak – is then requited by catastrophe (32:9–22). Even in this context, Chronicles explores the limitations of reform. Hezekiah’s pride, in the wake of a promise of recovery from illness, incited Yhwh; his submission (knҳ, a Leitwort of Chronicles), and that of the Jerusalemites, however, palliated Yhwh’s wrath (q‫܈‬p), which “did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah” (2 Chr 32:24–6). Kings links Hezekiah’s only punishment to his compliance with a Babylonian embassy (2 Kgs 20:12–19), while Chronicles treats this as divine test of his loyalty (2 Chr 32:31); yet the punishment Isaiah ordains in Kings, the exile to Babylon of his sons, “who will issue from you, whom you will beget,” is partly fulfilled in 2 Chr 33:11.13 Probably, the Chronicler deduces Hezekiah’s sin from his illness in Kings, and his submission from the efficacy of his subsequent prayer (2 Kgs 20:1–3). As Isaiah pronounces the illness fatal in Kings, the submission reflects prophetic intervention; yet Chr does  12

The Chronicler deduced the siege from the arrival of Assyrians at Jerusalem in force (2 Kgs 18:17) and from the devastation of the Assyrian army by plague (2 Kgs 19:35) read in the light of analogous passages (especially 2 Kgs 7:6–7 in its context, but also Jeremiah on the Babylonian siege, as a contrast), as well as from Hezekiah’s siege preparations which he reports (from Kings, Isaiah, and independent historical recollection – against R. North, “Does Archaeology Prove Chronicles Sources?” in H.N. Bream, R.D. Heim and C.A. Moore [eds.], A Light unto My Path. Old Testament Studies in Honor of Jacob M. Meyers [Philadelphia, 1974] 375–401). 13 So already Gersonides on 2 Kgs 20:18, who notes that the prophecy, dated in the MT to Hezekiah’s fifteenth year (of twenty-nine), antedates by three years the birth of Manasseh, who comes to the throne at age twelve in 21:1.

306 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  not mention it. In any case, the death can be postponed, but not indefinitely: submission can lead to immediate, but not to ultimate, relief. Manasseh’s reign again spotlights collective guilt: “Yhwh spoke to Manasseh and to his people and they did not harken” (2 Chr 33:10), before captivity in Babylon led the king to repent. This makes plural and conditional the condemnation of 2 Kgs 21:11–15, placed in the mouths of “prophets”. In Manasseh’s source notice, however, where Kings has no such parallel, Chronicles does mention “the words of the seers who spoke to him in the name of Yhwh” (2 Chr 33:18). Despite the king’s rehabilitation, patronage of the high places continues (33:17). In this context, Huldah’s harsh sentence for Judah’s collective sins, taken from Kings (2 Chr 34:21, 25), has an air of inevitability.14 Though Josiah’s reform is total (34:33), and his Passover restores a DavidicSolomonic (35:3–4, 15) or older order (35:18), Josiah falls into the trap of ignoring “messengers”: Necho sends these to announce his divine commission; not heeding this oracle of God, Josiah dies (35:21–4).15 This is the last prophetic rebuke in Chronicles before Zedekiah fails to submit (knҳ) to Jeremiah (36:12). The reference to Yhwh’s sending messengers “often and early” (2 Chr 36:15), then, is substantiated mainly in passages before Josiah’s death – when Judah’s irrevocable doom is forecast. 2 Kgs 34:2–3, by way of contrast, makes reference to generalized prophetic doomsaying in Jehoiakim’s reign. Here, in sum, as in the passages about “fathers” reviewed above, Chronicles implies that the cause of the exile was cumulative, that the punishments meted out to peccant kings and their followers did not altogether expunge the guilt from the land. This comports with the fact that Chronicles does not claim the temple was profaned, or that the people sinned collectively, after the reign of Manasseh or Amon, or, Manasseh’s and Josiah’s reforms. E. Prophecy as a Mark of Divine Sympathy and its Mockery (36:15–16) Outside 2 Chr 36:15, signs of divine pity on a sinful Judah are rare. However, in 2 Chr 19:2–3, a prophet counterbalances Jehoshaphat’s transgressions against his merits, announcing a divine commitment to preserving the king. In 2 Chr 21:7, Yhwh forgoes the deserved punishment of Jehoram, for the sake of David, his ancestor, satisfying himself instead with the sorts of misfortune meted out routinely to other deviant kings. Moreover, repentance (especially knҳ) leads to remission of punishment, as in the case of  14

The plus in G to 2 Chr 25:19a–d, however, which recapitulates 2 Kgs 23:24–7 and blames the exile specifically on Manasseh, is the product of scribal adjustment back to Kings. 15 For this text, and the interpretation of it in Kings and Chronicles, see below.

9. Why Manasseh is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile 307  Manasseh (33:19, 23) – Amon (33:23) and Zedekiah (36:12) being the chief counter-examples. But the sequence of 2 Chr 32:25–6, which report Hezekiah’s submission (knҳ), then announce that Yhwh’s wrath did not, therefore, fall on Judah “in the days of Hezekiah”, suggests that the wrath could be stored up, assuaged, without being laid to rest. Indeed, the presentation of Huldah’s oracle of destruction (2 Chr 36:24–5), and the postponement of the punishment in Josiah’s time (34:27–8) because of his submission (knҳ), were taken over into Chronicles from Kings: the implication is exactly the same, that of postponement of the reckoning until after the reign of the righteous king. Outside a reform context, the only notice of popular submission, in 2 Chr 12:6–7, comes early enough to prevent the eradication of Jerusalem, but not of the countryside (12:4) by Shishak. Although Solomon’s temple dedication, thus, elicits Yhwh’s promise to “forgive their sin” when the people “submit” (2 Chr 7:14), and “heal” (rp’) the land, the indications are thus of a partial evasion of consequences during the duration of their submission only. Nor can Huldah’s prophecy, with its irreversible pronouncement of doom, be considered a case of “pity”: the most that can be achieved, and this by the far-reaching reforms of Josiah, is a temporary postponement, until Josiah fails to listen to Yhwh’s instrument, Necho. Other than Josiah, the last king before Zedekiah to reject prophetic rebuke in Chronicles is in fact Amaziah. Thereafter, such rebuke is either unreported (especially Ahaz, Amon and Josiah’s successors) or taken to heart. The only passages referring to “mockery” or other maltreatment of prophets likewise refer exclusively to times earlier than that of Josiah – specifically under Jehoram, Joash, Amaziah and Hezekiah (2 Chr 30:20). In the late period, the prophets sent “often and early” are not only effective; they are also taken seriously, whenever mentioned. When these indices are considered in conjunction with the ongoing motif of the unmotivated proliferation of cult sites in Judah’s countryside, a motif also absent in the accounts of kings following Amon, the suggestion is that divine tonics applied to individual kings and their servants are not, in the Chronicler’s view, in and of themselves complete requitals of the guilt incurred. Nor, however, are the kings after Josiah, let alone Zedekiah himself, more than partly to blame for the final blow. The guilt of the nation has accrued over time.

F. Divine Wrath (36:16) The vocabulary of “submission” in Chronicles actually consists of a semantic field of which the verb, knҳ, is only one component. Other entries in the same field include šwb, and, on a different semantic plane, drš and bqš. Similarly, the Chronicler’s vocabulary of divine anger includes such terms

308 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  as q‫܈‬p and ‫ۊ‬rh. A text reviewed above is of special interest here: Yhwh forbears with David’s dynasty during a time of testing, under Jehoram (2 Chr 21:7). Like Huldah’s oracle in its context, this would seem to imply intergenerational postponement of requitement for guilt. That Yhwh’s anger could no longer be healed, however, is the assertion of 2 Chr 36:16 (‘d ‘lwt ‫ۊ‬mt yhwh bҳmw ‘d l’yn mrp’). Jehoram, again, the object of Yhwh’s forbearance with the dynasty, the fratricide who perverts all Judah on the model of Ahab, is smitten with an illness not susceptible to being healed (l’yn mrp’, 2 Chr 21:18). Yhwh, too, promises such healing (rp’), of the land, when, in response to cataclysm, the people “return” to him (2 Chr 7:14); he is said to have healed the people in connection with Hezekiah’s reform (2 Chr 30:20, perhaps influenced by the usage in 2 Kgs 20:5, 8). Only with the finding of the Book of the Torah under Josiah is the irrevocable coming of Yhwh’s anger (‫ۊ‬mh) – for the sins of the “fathers” – acknowledged (2 Chr 34:21, 25). But this “anger” is invoked by a prophet to explain Israel’s plundering Ahaz in 2 Chr 28:9, and it is avoided by repentance in 2 Chr 12:6, 7. Yhwh’s wrath (q‫܈‬p) is similarly avoided in 2 Chr 32:26, temporarily, and in 2 Chr 19:2, under Jehoshaphat. It is incurred otherwise in 2 Chr 19:10, 24:18, 29:8 (and 1 Chr 27:24). Again, it is the repeated incitement of Yhwh, and the postponement of his vengeance, that seems to be reversed in 2 Chr 36. A further consideration is of even greater moment. Where Yhwh’s anger works itself out earlier in the text, it is in the form of campaigns or plagues or other catastrophes directed against particular groups, against Judahites in a particular time, or against kings. The exile as a punishment is out of all proportion to anyone’s guilt if the earlier punishments of individuals or individual generations suffice to expunge such guilt: presumably, Zedekiah himself, or Zedekiah and his immediate predecessors, could have been punished sufficiently by the usual means, without resort to so extreme a measure.16 Indeed, the text contends that the exile lasted “until the land enjoyed its years of rest all the days of the desolation” (2 Chr 36:21). The implication is, again, that the land itself required healing, of the sort promised in 2 Chr 7:14, not for the sins of any particular king, or even a short sequence of kings, but for the collective guilt of the people of Judah (as, again, 2 Chr 7:14). Chronicles presents the exile as an interruption in nationhood rather than a final rupture with Yhwh (36:22–23). But the extremity of this spe 16 Chronicles’ presupposition of individual liability, though certainly ingrained, is thus incomplete, and with good historical reason: on individuation, see B. Halpern, “Jerusalem and the Lineages in the Seventh Century BCE: Kinship and the Rise of Individual Moral Liability,” in B. Halpern and D.W. Hobson (eds.), Law and Ideology in Monarchic Israel (Sheffield, 1991) 11–107.

9. Why Manasseh is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile 309  cific response to Judah’s dereliction distinguishes it from all the other responses detailed in earlier regnal accounts. Chronicles’ explanation for the exile is one of accumulated profanation – of the temple, and of Yhwh’s word, especially – despite occasional mitigations. In that sense, the sins of Manasseh, detailed in the first part of his regnal account and renewed, in Chronicles’ theory, by Amon, are encompassed as a partial, but not as the sole, cause of the catastrophe. Closely read, Kings can also lead to the same conclusion: the exile is forecast because of the sin of Manasseh, to be sure (2 Kgs 21:10–14); it is also, however, a response to the fact that the people had “done what was evil in (Yhwh’s) view and regularly enraged (him) from the days when their fathers went forth from Egypt and until this very day” (2 Kgs 21:15). This dual explanation, often ignored in scholarship, seems on the face of it to have inspired the Chronicler’s view.

III. Kings and the Account of Josiah As noted, Kings, in contrast to Chronicles, blames the exile almost entirely on Manasseh. Which of these strategies of explanation is the earlier? Whence do they derive? More important, into what ideological matrices do the two explanations fit: what determined their invocation in the two works? Part of the answer lies in the history of the development of Kings itself. Scholars today espouse various hypotheses about the compositional history of Kings or the Deuteronomistic History.17 For the present purpose, it suffices to recur to the observation, long invoked by others, that, in its current form, the blaming of the Exile on Manasseh in Kings creates considerable awkwardness. Especially, this explanation makes utter nonsense of Josiah’s reform:18 were the Exile unavoidable, the most generous promise that Huldah could make would be that Josiah would die in peace, and not himself experience the onrushing cataclysm. Yet in thematic terms, Josiah’s reign is the climax in some senses of the books of Kings, and indeed represents an inclusion of sorts for the entire  17

See recently, with bibliography and history of scholarship, G. Knoppers, Two Kingdoms Under God. The Deuteronomistic History of Solomon and the Dual Monarchies. 1. The Reign of Solomon and the Rise of Jeroboam (Atlanta, Scholars Press, 1993) 17–54; E. Eynikel, The Reform of King Josiah and the Composition of the Deuteronomistic History (Leiden: Brill: 1996) 7–31. 18 So far as I know, this was first explicitly observed by F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973) 288–9. See further B. Halpern, The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History (San Francisco, 1988) 113.

310 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  complex of historical recitation from Deuteronomy forward.19 Not least is the fact that Kings motivates Josiah’s entire reform effort through the rediscovery of the Book of the Torah (2 Kgs 22:8–23:24), almost universally identified as some form of Deuteronomy. Taken after Manasseh’s regnal account, this merely appears to be the final gilding on a public pronouncement of doom. Yet the account of Josiah’s activity leaves the reader in no doubt as to the fact that he brought the cultic state of Judah into conformity with the Mosaic demands of the Book of the Torah (as 2 Kgs 23:3, 21, 24). Moreover, in accordance with the demands of Deuteronomy (6:5), Josiah is the only figure in any biblical book said to have “returned (šwb) to Yhwh with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the Torah of Moses” (24:25). Why such scrupulousness – not so much on the part of Josiah as on that of our reporter – if the curses of the Book were already poised and precipitated upon the heads of the Judahites? Josiah’s reform, foremost, reverses the “sin of Manasseh”, whom Kings does not rehabilitate. Whereas Manasseh does “what was evil in Yhwh’s view, according to the abominations of the nations whom Yhwh had supplanted from before the Israelites” (2 Kgs 21:2), Josiah does “what was right in Yhwh’s sight, and went in all the way of David, his father, and did not turn off right or left” (22:2), returning to Yhwh heart, soul and uttermost (24:25). Manasseh rebuilds high places, erects altars to “the baal”, makes an Asherah, and erects altars to “all the host of the heaven” and a statue of the Asherah in the temple (21:3–5, 7). Josiah cashiers priests whom the “kings of Judah” had emplaced to worship “the baal: the sun, and the moon and the constellations and all the host of the heaven” and desecrates the high places (23:5, 7); he purges the temple of goods “dedicated to the baal and to the Asherah and to all the host of the heaven”, along with the Asherah (23:4, 6–7), and, specifically, Manasseh’s and Ahaz’s altars (23:12). Manasseh immolates children and multiplies illicit mantics (21:6). Josiah desecrates the Tophet (23:10) and suppresses non-prophetic mantics (23:24). The details in the Manasseh account are synoptic (2 Kgs 21:1–9 // 2 Chr 33:1–9). For one last detail Chronicles has no counterpart: Manasseh, 2 Kgs 21:16 reports, “also spilled innocent blood in great quantity until he had filled Jerusalem from mouth to mouth.”20 This is of special interest, as,  19

See esp. R.E. Friedman, The Exile and Biblical Narrative (Chico, Ca: Scholars Press, 1981) 1–43; idem, “From Egypt to Egypt: Dtr1 and Dtr2,” in B. Halpern and J.D. Levenson (eds.), Traditions in Transformation: Turning-Points in Biblical Faith (Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns: 1981) 171–3. 20 2 Kgs 21:16. On the expression, “from (upper?) mouth to (lower) mouth,” cf. 2 Kgs 10:21; Ezra 9:11; KTU 1.23: 61–2 with špt, “lip”.

9. Why Manasseh is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile 311  in the culture of the Hebrew Bible, murder regularly entails expulsion from “civilized society” (as in the cases of Cain, Levi and Simeon, Moses, Absalom).21 The accusatory plus, in sum, adds another justification to Kings’ explanation for the exile – a fact not lost on medieval exegetes. All the same, the plus comes after the indictment to which the account of Josiah represents a rejoinder, and after the pronouncement of an ultimate reckoning for Manasseh’s other sins. Taken in sequence, Josiah’s actions give the impression of rectifying Manasseh’s transgressions. Even without rehabilitating Manasseh, Kings on the surface implies that Josiah’s reform repaired the damage his grandfather had done, suggesting that the conflict with Yhwh depicted at least in the synoptic portions of the Manasseh regnal account had been laid to rest. Josiah’s policies also fill a second breach between Yhwh and Jerusalem. That is the issue of the Solomonic schism. Chronicles offers no clear explanation for this development and to an extent blames not just Solomon, but also Rehoboam and Jeroboam (2 Chr 13:5–7). In Kings, Solomon’s senile apostasy accounts for the northern secession, specifically his construction of shrines to Ashtoret and other deities opposite Jerusalem (1 Kgs 11:1–13). DtrH takes the view that this action abrogated the (conditional) covenant of kingship over all Israel that had been awarded to David; only the “fief” of Judah, in perpetuity, was thereafter vouchsafed to David’s descendants, to whom a perpetual kingship (over an indeterminate space) had been promised.22 But Josiah was the one who destroyed the Solomonic

 21 For comparative data, see E. Peters, “Some Structural Aspects of the Feud among the Camel-herding Bedouin of Cyrenaica,” Africa 37 (1967) 261–82. Chronicles no longer seems to recognize this custom, as the retribution for Jehoram’s killing his brothers indicates. 22 For treatment and literature, see Halpern, The First Historians, 155–67; B. Halpern and D. S. Vanderhooft, “The Editions of Kings in the 7th–6th Centuries BCE,” HUCA 62 (1991) 242–3; cf. Knoppers, Two Kingdoms Under God 1, 94–112; Eynikel, The Reform of King Josiah, 29; and, I. Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings. A Contribution to the Debate about the Deuteronomistic History (Berlin, 1988) 100–31, who still hold to Cross’s assignment of “unconditional” dynastic promises to the pre-exilic, “conditional” to the exilic period. This position, aside from being contraindicated by the usage of the passages concerning the kingdom(s) in question, involves invoking a pre-emptive diachronic explanation (two different hands and ideologies) where a synchronic and encompassing explanation (one hand, describing two different periods) is more economical. Knoppers makes an important point (p. 102, n. 188): “the exilic Deuteronomist never directly addresses the Davidic promises, whether to renounce them, qualify them, or reaffirm them. One would think that if [E(Dtr)x = Dtr2] authored both the [conditional dynastic promises] and [the account of Judah’s fall], he would make more of an effort to draw clear links between them”. That is, E(Dtr)x never invokes the conditional promises to justify the rejection of David’s line, which, if they were invented for this purpose, is markedly peculiar. This consideration drives Knoppers to attribute the conditional prom

312 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  shrines (2 Kgs 23:13), who shattered their pillars and cut down their “asherim” (icons or groves). For good measure, he filled them with human bones, ensuring disuse (23:14). Again, the reader of Kings comes away with the impression that Josiah removed a major stumbling-block to the resurrection of the Davidic relationship with Yhwh: all signs of the cause of the division of the kingdom are eradicated.23 Josiah heals a third rift with Yhwh as well. In 2 Kgs 23:15, he destroys the altar and incinerates the high place of Bethel (both foreshadowed in 1 Kgs 13), including its “asherah”.24 He becomes the first biblical figure to desecrate graves, using those attached to the high place to defile the altar (23:16–18).25 Josiah similarly defiles all the high places of the Samaria region, and sacrifices the very priests on their altars, as well as other human bones (23:19–20).26 As the northern tribes have in Kings already been exiled, and no doubt the calves of Dan and Bethel with them, it is impossible for Josiah to demolish the icons or lay his hand on living Israelites. However, 2 Kgs 17:25–9 goes to some trouble to establish the continuity between the priests of Israel and those of the Assyrian province; and it is on illicit northern priesthoods that 1 Kgs 12:32–3, 13:2, 33–4 lay stress as perturbing Yhwh (this is also a key point in 2 Chr 12:13–15, 13:9, 12). As far as possible, then, Josiah’s reform addresses the causes of the Assyrian exile. In sum, a reader coming away from the account of Josiah’s activities is entitled to think that the king rectified three severe problems: the wrath of Yhwh called down on Judah by Manasseh; the Solomonic provocation leading to the loss of the north; and, the sins of the northern monarchy and population itself. If ever the stage was set for the resurrection of the Davidic state, it is at the time of Josiah’s Passover, unexampled among previous kings. Josiah’s reign should in prospect herald a time of extensive prosper ises to a third hand, not just a second, which he nowhere else finds in evidence. However, the key point is that E(Dtr)x precisely presupposes the ongoing fidelity of Yhwh to the Davidic dynasty even as he rejects Judah itself. See further below. This means that the “conditional promises” are in fact of a piece with the unconditional. 23 Halpern, The First Historians, 154–5; G. Knoppers, Two Kingdoms under God 2. The Reign of Jeroboam, the Fall of Israel, and the Reign of Josiah (Atlanta, 1994) 187–91. 24 Though this has been the subject of controversy, it is probably original to the verse: see Knoppers, Two Kingdoms under God 2, 197–8. 25 This critical linkage of high place with funerary use has been overlooked in the literature, but is connected to Deuteronomy’s attempt to eliminate high places and at the same time restrict funerary and ancestral devotions. See Halpern, “Jerusalem and the Lineages;” K. van der Toorn, Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel (Leiden: Brill, 1996) 215–16. Note that Josiah’s desecrations must begin in Judah. 26 See Knoppers, Two Kingdoms under God 2, 197–207, on this material.

9. Why Manasseh is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile 313  ity and of reconciliation with Yhwh comparable to that of David’s time, and with a leader comparable in status and in intention to Moses. None of these expectations, of course, materializes in Kings. Rather, Manasseh’s sin has doomed the reform to futility from the start. It is this dissonance that most powerfully has evoked hypotheses of an early and a later edition of Kings, the former culminating in Josiah, the latter expressing exilic dejection, and blaming messianic failure on Manasseh. The idea of a Josianic Dtr1 and an exilic Dtr2, then, arises from the literary relation of Manasseh and Josiah.27 But even the choice of Manasseh as scapegoat has not been wholly satisfactory. Already Gersonides (on 2 Kgs 25, 23:4), invoking the king’s rehabilitation in Chronicles, remarked on the length of Manasseh’s reign. At 55 years, this is the longest of any king of Judah or Israel. Yet regnal length was the one gift to Solomon that Yhwh made conditional on obedience to the covenant (1 Kgs 3:14), and the Hebrew Bible, like related literatures of the ancient Near East, regularly regards longevity as a blandishment for piety. Gersonides blames the exile on Manasseh’s spilling of innocent blood, the one sin unreversed either in his or in Josiah’s reform; he concludes that Manasseh’s own reform postponed the coming of the exile and resulted in the extension of his regnal years. This conflation of Kings with Chronicles is certainly sophisticated, and may reproduce, as medieval exegesis often did, the Chronicler’s own reflections on Kings: why, after all, was the exile postponed? Why was Manasseh’s reign so long? But one difference between the texts is fundamental. In Chronicles there is no foreordination of the exile in Manasseh’s or at any time. In this respect, as an exegesis of Kings, Gersonides’s attempt remains unsatisfying. Modern attempts to explain why Kings should blame Manasseh for the exile have been no more felicitous. Recent scholars maintain that Manasseh presided over Judah’s recovery after Sennacherib’s devastation and

 27

This has not, however, been the form the argument for two editions has taken. See, among early studies, J. Wellhausen, Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments (Berlin, 18993) 262–4; A. Kuenen, Historisch-kritisch onderzoek naar het onstaan en de verzameling van de Boeken des Oeden Verbonds (Leiden, 18672) 263–8; B. Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel. I. Geschichte Israels unter der Königsherrschaft (Berlin, 1887) 73–9; C. H. Cornill, Introduction to the Canonical Books of the Old Testament (London, 1907) 217–20 = Einleitung in die kanonischen Bücher des Alten Testaments (Tübingen, 19055) 135–7; C. Steuernagel, Lehrbuch der Einleitung in das Alte Testament (Tübingen, 1912) 245–9. Earlier work drawing similar conclusions, including that of Ewald, is not available to me at this time. Even the programmatic study of Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 274–89, introduces the argument mainly as an afterthought, and it has not been emphasized in work derived from Cross’s, for which see the bibliography in the reviews of scholarship mentioned above.

314 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  reassignment of territories peripheral to the Jerusalem area.28 This revival, they reason, involved the reconstruction of the rural cult, including ancestor worship and local high places. The historians of Kings, the Josianic author, Dtr1 (H[Dtr]), and by derivation the exilic author, Dtr2 (E[Dtr]x), adhered to the doctrine that only one cult site was sacred, that of the Jerusalem temple. The repopulation of Judah under Manasseh, with its inevitable restoration of the traditional cult, led them to condemn his policies.29 Although these treatments discard the prejudice against anything other than Josianic monotheism, they are, in a sense, variants of the ancient allegation that Manasseh was evil. This inference inspired rabbinic and medieval midrashim to the effect, for example, that among the innocent blood spilled by Manasseh was that of Isaiah and other prophets, and those who did not worship alien gods.30 Rashi goes so far as to claim that the attribution of prophetic books to Manasseh’s reign was deliberately suppressed because of his wickedness (to 2 Kgs 21:10). Yet the medievals may be displacing the murder of prophets on to Manasseh from three Jeremianic references: (1) Jer 2:30, a reference to the killing of prophets that is ostensibly set in Josiah’s time (Jer 1:2 [+ 4–19], 3:6), but which may, like the rest of Jer 1–25, reflect retrojection from a time after 605 – it is difficult to imagine that the complaint about murdering prophets came in the time of Josiah (see #2); (2) Jer 26:20–3, where Jehoiakim executes Uriah for delivering an oracle resembling the one in ch. 7 (// 26:4–6); Jer 7:6 is one of the passages in which Jeremiah explicitly mentions spilling innocent blood; and, (3) 22:17, where the prophet accuses Jehoiakim of spilling innocent blood. 31 The referent(s) of these latter passages may also underlie 2:30, and the apparently legal spilling of innocent blood in 2:34–5: the concern at the end of ch. 2 is first with the slaying of prophets, then with that of “the innocent indigent” and the inevitable denials. Taken as a reference to pre-Josianic activity, this text may underlie the claim that Manasseh spilled innocent blood.32  28

For the historical situation, see Halpern, “Jerusalem and the Lineages,” 28–77. So, e.g., L. W. Tatum, From Text to Tell: King Manasseh in the Biblical and Archaeological Record (unpublished PhD dissertation, Duke University, 1988), with bibliography. 30 See Qimতi on 2 Kgs 21:6; Gersonides on 2 Kgs 21:6 and on 23:4. 31 The origin of this oracle in the period before 597 is not open to much doubt, as 22:18–19 err in predicting that Jehoiakim would be neither interred nor mourned (but cf. 52:28). Like Jer 34:4–5, which err in vouchsafing to Zedekiah a death “in peace” like that promised to Josiah, plus a traditional funeral, and which must therefore antedate 586 and Zedekiah’s blinding and exile (2 Kgs 25:7), this is an honest attempt at the representation of an oracle antedating the assembly of the book. 32 See n. 5 and further below on the OG of 2 Kgs 24:4, and the relationship of Jeremiah and Jehoiakim to Manasseh’s sin in Kings. 29

9. Why Manasseh is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile

315

 Such “historical” explanations, however, do not reckon with the literary complications of laying the Exile at Manasseh’s door. The exile, after all, occurred not just after Josiah’s reform, but some 55 years after the end of Manasseh’s reign. That the memory of cultic activity in new villages in the Arabah or at the fortress of Lachish somehow rankled in the Exile and was distinguished at that time from local sacrifice throughout the monarchic period seems unlikely. That it alone drove a literary decision to account for the Exile, presumably sometime in the 540s, is implausible. A similar charge could, after all, have been brought against any monarch who introduced deviation into the cult – Jehoram and Ahaziah, Ahaz, and especially Josiah’s successors. If Yhwh might wait two hundred years, after all, before avenging Jeroboam’s sin on the North – in none of whose kings any author in Kings discovers any merit – then a delayed judgment on Judah and the House of David was certainly an authorial option. It was nevertheless eschewed, in favor of blaming a king whose longevity, ever a mark of divine favor, was unmatched in the history of the kingdoms. Why, in the exilic period (or later), did it appeal to Dtr2 (E[Dtr]x) to impute the disaster to Manasseh? The strategy, as noted, renders Josiah’s reform literally futile, except perhaps as a delaying tactic – the more so in that Josiah is cut down in his prime. Moreover, the blaming of Manasseh left clear marks of redaction, of reconsideration of a history that hitherto had culminated in a paean to Josiah’s piety and to the essential providence of his reform. And yet, these problems cannot have been ones of which the editor or redactor was unaware. On the contrary, this author made the choice to cast Manasseh as the most despicable villain in Israelite history. The choice was conscious, the literary consequences clear. Comparably, Jer 22:18–19 and 34:4–5 make predictions about the deaths of two kings, Jehoiakim and Zedekiah, which were falsified by the events. The text of Jeremiah makes no effort to reconcile the difficulty, though later texts do muddy the nature of Jehoiakim’s demise.

IV. Josiah’s Death and the Blaming of Manasseh In fact, Dtr2 (E[Dtr]x) chose Manasseh as his scapegoat for the very purpose that is posed as a problem above: Manasseh’s irreversible provocation of Yhwh precipitated the failure of Josiah’s reform to save a Judah and Samaria now wholly purified of cultic pollution. 33 In particular, Manas 33 Gersonides maintains that the Judahite people continued to do evil even during Josiah’s reform, and in this way reconciles the pronouncements of Kings concerning Manasseh (which are thus in one sense proleptic) and Chronicles’ contention that the guilt 

316 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  seh’s sin explained why Josiah was killed by Necho, rather than dying a natural death, an ideal to which Kings repeatedly adverts. This position was espoused by S. B. Frost in 1968: Frost held that DtrH could overcome the theological conundrum of Josiah’s untimely death while maintaining his spotless reputation only by a double strategy: by relating the incident very briefly; and, by blaming Josiah’s death on his predecessor, who had foredoomed Judah’s valiant redeemer to failure.34 In” this view, Manasseh causes not just the exile, but Josiah’s impotence to forestall it beyond his own curtailed lifetime. A critical factor in understanding this strategy of explanation for Josiah’s death is the presence of the oracle of Huldah in the account of Josiah’s reign. This oracle, constructed in response to the inquiry of the king concerning the newly-discovered “book of the Torah,” has been at the vortex of critical controversy since medieval times: A. Huldah’s Oracle (2 Kgs 22:15–20; 2 Chr 34:24–8) Huldah is otherwise unheralded in our literature. Rashi (on 2 Kgs 22:14) relates that Josiah expected a woman to reply more gently than would Jeremiah; and, besides, Jeremiah was away. Qimতi adds that Huldah, in Jerusalem, was conveniently close to hand. Gersonides (on 22:20) endorses this view, though he thinks that other prophets (farther afield?) were available. The text, which falls into two parts, each with its own subdivisions, is relatively clear: 1. Regarding Judah a. rubric: Thus says Yhwh, god of Israel: Say to the man who sent you to me, Thus says Yhwh: b. intention: Lo, I am bringing evil upon35 his place and upon its inhabitants,36 all the words of the book37 that the king of Judah read,38  expunged by the exile was cumulative. His inspirations are principally 2 Chr 33:17, documenting popular persistence during Manasseh’s reform, and Jer 1–20, taken as treating Josiah’s era. 34 S. B. Frost, “The Death of Josiah: A Conspiracy of Silence,” JBL 87 (1968) 369–82. 35 MT ’l, other witnesses ҳl. 36 G of Chronicles omits the inhabitants. 37 MT of Chronicles: “all the sanctions (’lwt; G: words) which are written on the book.” The use of ’lh in this context, as “sanction”, has parallels mainly in Deuteronomy (as 29:20, 30:7), P (Num 5:21, 27) and Jeremiah (23:10, 29:18, 42:18, 44:12), as well as Ezekiel. It is not characteristic either of DtrH or of Chronicles.

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 c. logic: because they abandoned me and sacrificed/burned incense to other gods in order to anger me with 39 the doings/manufacture of their hands, d. result: so that my wrath is kindled40 against this place, and it will not be extinguished. 2. Regarding Josiah a’. rubric: But to the king of Judah who is sending you to seek Yhwh, thus shall you say to him: Thus says Yhwh, god of Israel: c’. logic: As for the words you have heard, because41 your heart was tender, and you submitted (knҳ) before Yhwh 42 when you heard what I spoke43 against this place and against its inhabitants, that it would be a desolation and a curse,44 and you tore your garments and you wept before me, I myself,45 too, have heard, says Yhwh. b’. intention: Therefore,46 Lo, I will gather you unto your fathers, and you will be gathered to your tombs(!)47 in peace, d’. result:  38 Chronicles: MT, “which they read before the king of Judah;” G, “that was read before the king of Judah.” 39 Chronicles adds “all”. 40 Kings wn‫܈‬th, also in 20:13; wttk, also (ntkh) in 2 Chr 34:21. Cf. especially Jer 7:20 ntkt, 42:18, 44:6 and below on Jeremiah and Chronicles. n‫܈‬h (N) used with the meaning “devastate” (settlements) in Jeremiah (probably 2:15, 4:7, 9:9, 11, 46:11, 19), and in the same way in Isa 36:26 // 2 Kgs 19:25 (= the late, B2, account of Sennacherib’s operations at Jerusalem). The root appears elsewhere only in Lam 4:15. It is not always distinguishable from the term, y‫܈‬t (N), with the meaning “kindle” (Jer 2:15, 9:9, 11, 33:12, 46:19, 49:2; also Neh 1:3, 2:17), which is in point in Kings here but not elsewhere (it does appear in the qal in Isa 9:17, perhaps 33:12). The latter term is more common in the hiphҳil, as in Jer 11:16, 17:27, 21:14, 32:29, 49:27, 50:32, 51:30; Ezek 21:3; Amos 1:14; Josh 8:8, 19; Judg 9:49; 2 Sam 14:30–1; Lam 4:11; Isa 27:4. But it is almost always used with “fire”. Neither term is either Deuteronomistic or Chronistic in usage. 41 G to Chronicles: “and”. 42 Chronicles: MT, Elohim; G “me”. 43 Chronicles, MT: “his (i.e., Elohim’s) words”; G, “my words”. 44 For “that it would be a desolation and a curse”, Chronicles (MT and G) reads, “and you submitted before me”. This is probably a dittograph, displacing the original phrase. 45 Kings ’nky, Chronicles ’ny. 46 So (lkn) MT of Kgs, reflected in G, Lucian, and the Ethiopic as *l’ kn. Chronicles omits. 47 G of Kings singular, “tomb/grave”.

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And your eyes will not see all the evil that I am bringing on this place.48 Is this a seamless composition? The syntax in the rubrics is deliberately inverted. In a further inversion, Yhwh’s statement of intention precedes its justification in the oracle to Judah, but succeeds the justification in the oracle to Josiah. This chiasmus has the effect that the operative clause (b) of the first oracle (“I am bringing evil on this place”) comes last (d’) in the oracle to Josiah (“all the evil that I am bringing on this place”). Literary cohesion does not under any circumstances indicate unity of authorship – editors, after all, prize consistency as much as authors do. But the conscious ordering of Huldah’s words has led scholars to affirm their original unity.49 This certainly seems preferable to hypothesizing a late re-edition in which parts of the oracle were updated, but others, possibly even more problematic than the parts that were updated, were left alone:50 such an explanation presupposes that Huldah originally said nothing about a catastrophe, but it is hard to imagine a prophecy demanding reform without threatening unequivocally a severe judgment – this is how “classical” prophecy always seems to have worked: Micah’s prediction, for example, that Jerusalem would be “ploughed as a field” was not untrue, merely subject to rescission through Hezekiah’s entreaty (Jer 26:16–19).51 And this is sometimes also the case in DtrH (and Num 14:20), where prophecy is postponed, principally on to descendants (as of Jeroboam, Baasha, Omri-Ahab, Jehu and Hezekiah), or made conditional.52 To treat Huldah’s words, therefore, as though they were the narrator’s irreversible statement of onrushing cataclysm, is to neglect both the narrative context and the canons of prophetic expression. The terms of her pronouncement are not only vague, but implicitly made conditional; this is prophecy, not prediction. Both parts of Huldah’s oracle presuppose foregoing action in the account of Josiah’s reign. Huldah, for example, refers to the imprecations detailed in the newly-found book of the Torah. Moreover, Josiah sends his delegation to the prophetess because “great is the wrath of Yhwh that is  48

Chronicles adds, “and on its inhabitants.” Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 147–9; A. D. H. Mayes, The Story of Israel between Settlement and Exile: A Redactional Study of the Deuteronomistic History (London, 1983) 129–30; H.-D. Hoffmann, Reform und Refomen. Untersuchungen zu einem Grundthema der deuteronomistischen Geschichtsschreibung (Zürich, 1980) 181–9. 50 See, e.g., the treatment in Knoppers, Two Kingdoms under God 2, 140–56, with bibliography, especially p. 145, n. 48. 51 For further cases of conditionalization in Jeremiah, see below. 52 As 2 Sam, 12:12–13, 24:10–16; 1 Kgs 20:32, 34, 13:4, 6, 21:28–9; 2 Kgs 20:1–6. The prophecies of doom connected with Sennacherib may nevertheless be the major template. 49

9. Why Manasseh is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile 319  kindled against us” because the “fathers” did not abide by the terms of the book (2 Kgs 22:13; 2 Chr 34:21). Yhwh’s kindled wrath is central to the result forecast in Huldah’s words against Judah. Similarly, on hearing the book, Josiah rends his garments (2 Kgs 22:11; 2 Chr 34:19) and seeks a prophecy: it is this manifestation of concern that triggers Yhwh’s oracle of “weal” to the king.53 Not only does the oracle evince careful internal construction; it also yields evidence of being at home inside the existing account of Josiah’s reign. Still, Huldah’s oracle seems to predict the exile, via the “words” (Kings) or “sanctions” (Chronicles) of the book of the Torah. If the book in question is indeed something approaching Deuteronomy, then the curses are presumably those of Deut 28:15–68 (’lwt in Chronicles may refer specifically to Deut 29:19–20 and the succeeding description of exile; cf. Deut 30:7; especially Jer 7:20; also 42:18, 44:6). Deut 28:21 threatens eradication from a variety of causes. Exile, of “you and your king whom you will establish over you,” is predicted in 28:36 (v. 37 resembles 2 Kgs 22:19) 54 and in 29:27 (cf. Jer 21:5, 32:37), a diaspora in 28:63–5, and reindenture in Egypt in v. 68.55 Possibly, as 29:17–20 suggest, these threats originally attached only to some portion of the nation (for restoration, see Deut 30:1– 10).

 53

Against Hoffmann, Reform und Refomen, 176, the reference to Josiah’s abasement at Yhwh’s words of doom can of course refer to the curses of Deuteronomy, rather than to the first part of Huldah’s own oracle. While 1 Kgs 22:19 mentions Judah’s transformation into a proverbial wasteland, such language is present, e.g., in Deut 28:37, and note 28:15, 45. The sentiment of this expression is more common in Jeremiah (as n 18:16, 19:8, 24:9, 25:9, 11, 18, 29:18, 42:18, 44:12, 22, 49:13, 51:37) and is picked up in Chronicles (as in 2 Chr 7:20, 29:8, 30:7) and 1 Kgs 9:7–8, with an antecedent in Mic 6:16. Compare also Zeph 2:15; Lam 2;15, 16; Jer 49:17 and the context in Jer 19:8, 49:17. The implications of these data as to time of composition are at best ambiguous. The same goes for other nexuses to DtrH and Jeremiah in the passage – however much their language is picked up in post-exilic settings. Knoppers, Two Kingdoms under God 2, 142, also notes that the second part of Huldah’s oracle mentions Josiah’s tender heart, humility and weeping as well as his rending of clothes; only the last is reported in the narrative (2 Kgs 22:11). But as no reaction whatever is recorded between the first and the second parts of the oracle, which is delivered not to the king but to his officials, this is again no argument that Huldah’s words to Josiah can be divorced from the preceding narrative and assigned a later date (in fact, the rending of garments implies the other reactions cited by the prophetess, as well as furnishing the only antecedent for them). 54 The closest texts to 2 Kgs 22:19, “to a desolation and a curse”, are Jer 42:18, 44:12, 22; a little more distant are Jer 25:18, 49:13. 55 For this latter text and its implications (and citation of the tradition also expressed in Deut 17:16), see especially Friedman, “‘From Egypt to Egypt,’” 189–90.

320 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  B. Dating Huldah’s Oracle Conditioned by the identification of the book of the Torah in whole or in part with Deuteronomy, and by the pronouncement of exile already under Manasseh, scholars since medieval times have related Huldah’s prophecy to the events of 587, when the temple was destroyed. The one fly in the ointment is that Huldah affirms clearly that Josiah will die “in peace” (bešƗlôm). Yet both 2 Kgs 23:29 and 2 Chr 35:23 relate that Josiah’s life was cut short by the forces of Necho, pharaoh of Egypt, at Megiddo in 609. Josiah, it would seem, did not die “in peace” at all. The medievals addressed this conundrum with aplomb. Rashi (on 2 Kgs 22:20): “And what is this ‘peace’? ‘Your eyes will not see’ the destruction of the temple.” Qimতi poses the contradiction with Josiah’s death in battle (in 2 Chronicles) explicitly. “What is this peace?” he asks, “That the temple was not destroyed in his days, and thus (the verse) explains and goes on: ‘Your eyes will not see all the evil that I am bringing on this place”’ (for Gersonides, see below). And, to be clear, this remains the sole recourse of those who read Kings as the product of the exile or restoration. Scholars who insist on the integrity of Huldah’s oracle recapitulate the medieval interpretation that no “peaceful” death is intended: all that is meant is that Josiah would die before catastrophe overtook Judah. The oracle is, on this reading, exilic in its entirety.56 This interpretative strategy raises several objections. First, the assumption that the oracle predicts the (total) exile comes entirely from the larger context. The oracle refers not to exile, but only to the “words (/sanctions) of the book that the king of Judah read.” True, there is an indictment for abandonment of Yhwh and service to “other gods”; but this is a chief concern of Deut 13, and of the code (and DtrH and Jeremiah) in general. At no point does Huldah mention Manasseh, as one would expect were Kings thematically monolithic. The exilic updater of Kings (Dtr2 = E[Dtr]x) was not so reticent about mentioning either the exile or its cause. 2 Kgs 22:16– 17 is completely uncharacteristic of his work in this respect.57  56 So Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 147–51; Mayes, The Story of Israel between Settlement and Exile, 129–30; Hoffmann, Reform und Refomen, 170–89. 57 That Huldah’s oracle presupposes the book of the Torah, and abbreviates itself by referring to, rather than quoting, that document in the matter of the punishment poised above Judah’s head has not been sufficiently explored. In the internal narrative logic, Huldah assumes that Josiah knows what is in the book – that is, the foregoing action explains her telegraphic approach to the book of the Torah. As an exposition to the reader, the same assumption holds: for the oracle (and Josiah’s responsive reform) to make sense to the reader, the latter must have either the book of the Torah itself or a fairly sharp image  of its contents. As noted below, the implication is that Deuteronomy, assuming its

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 Second, Josiah’s peaceful death, as the medievals noted, means only that he will not witness the onset of Yhwh’s inconsolable anger. But, the oracle stipulates, this is because of his anguish at finding the hitherto unheeded book. What the oracle does not reckon with – because Kings’ narrative sequence forbids it to do so – is Josiah’s subsequent sanitization of the Judahite and Israelite cult and geographical spheres (2 Kgs 23:1–24), “bringing to realization the words of the Torah which were written on the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the temple of Yhwh” (23:24).58 Josiah’s reaction to doom was more active than that of Hezekiah: the latter survived disease by prayer (2 Kgs 20:1–6, versus the Chronicler’s account); when confronted, however, with an oracle of his sons’ exile, he accepted the inevitable, “so long as peace and permanence shall abide in my time” (2 Kgs 20:16–19, again in contrast to Chronicles). Josiah, however, not only acted out his dismay, but immediately sought prophetic counsel in the hope of averting an onrushing doom (2 Kgs 22:11–13). Huldah’s oracle, in this light, responds to his actions to this point, not to any further or future policies he implements. This reading permits the adoption of an alternative unified reading of Huldah’s oracle. The prophetess promises the exercised Josiah a peaceful death, before a coming cataclysm whose nature she does not detail (because it is laid out in the new-found book, including some form of exile). But the oracle of doom acts not as the cause for despondence, nor yet for Hezekiah’s complacency, but rather as a spur to action. And act the king does. It is a staple of theological exegesis that underlying every oracle of doom is a condition: doom will be coming unless you change your course – and this interpretation of oracles of doom is frequent in the book of Jeremiah (most obviously, 26:13 and 26 generally in relation to ch. 7; also 26:19; but 4:1 after 3:21–5, 23:13–14, 21–2, 25:3–5, 8, 36:2–3, and the regular emphasis on a failure to “repent”). In the same way, and without any literary mediation whatever, Huldah’s oracle inspires the most extensive, successful cult purification in Israelite history, at least according to the narrator. Such an oracle makes perfect sense in a pre-exilic setting: ignorance of the book of the Torah had induced Judah to the precipice of disaster; drastic and swift action could and should have rescued it. Against such a reading, Josiah’s untimely death at the hands of Necho’s army, and at the age of thirty-nine, would be an enormous embarrassment.  rough identity with the book of the Torah, must belong to the same narrative stratum of DtrH as Huldah’s oracle. In the context of the argument here, it was already attached to the Josianic edition of DtrH. As this conclusion, commonsensical though it is on other grounds, flies in the face of scholarship, it will require a full defense elsewhere. 58 Or “that Hilkiah, priest of the temple of Yhwh, found.”

322 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  In favor of interpreting the oracle narratologically, as an incentive to panicked reform, is the assurance to Josiah of a peaceful death. Why would an exilic author, aware of Josiah’s violent death, write into the oracle the phrases regarding his natural death? It would have been better to state directly, without mediation, that he would not see the Book’s curses executed. And, if the medievals were right to claim that this is the oracle’s meaning now, what benefit accrues to Josiah, as distinct from, say, Jehoiakim, who, in Kings at least, predeceases even the fall of Jerusalem in 597, let alone the destruction of the temple? (for this point, see Halpern and Vanderhooft, “Editions of Kings,” 222.) Josiah is neither rewarded with “length of days,” like Manasseh, Uzziah, Asa, Solomon or David, nor rescued from fatal illness, like Hezekiah. Cutting his life and reign short curtly dismisses his piety. Indeed, as more detailed review indicates (below), the existing edition of Kings treats Josiah’s death not as a postponement of Yhwh’s punishment, but rather as its onset. Despite a loyalty to Yhwh comparable only to that demanded by Moses (with all his heart, soul and strained fabric of his being: 2 Kgs 23:25), the text takes Josiah’s killing as Yhwh’s affirmation of his intention to reject Jerusalem and the temple by means of exile (23:26–7, 29–30). The consequences were the captivity of Jehoahaz (23:33–4), invasions under Jehoiakim paving the way for an exile promised by Yhwh’s “servants, the prophets” (2 Kgs 24:1–4), the deportation of Jehoiachin (24:10–16), and the destruction of the temple and exile of the population under Zedekiah (24:20, 25:21, 26). Josiah’s death is the milestone marking the start of the road to exile (Halpern and Vanderhooft, “Editions of Kings,” 222–3). Not only is there no death in “peacetime”, there is no reprieve whatever: in the text’s presentation of what follows, Huldah’s prophecy of comfort to Josiah in fact goes unfulfilled no matter how one reads it (Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 286). And, from Josiah’s death forward, the text speaks specifically of exile, not some unspecified disaster; it addresses the era after Zedekiah in a way that Huldah does not. The contrast to Huldah’s oracle and Josiah’s response to it has never been explained or even explored by those who, like the medieval exegetes, hold that both sets of texts reflect a knowledge of Nebuchadrezzar’s campaigns. A further reason to eschew an exilic date for Huldah’s oracle is that she promises not “death in peacetime” but a natural death. Kings consistently distinguishes between kings who “lay with their fathers,” or died natural deaths, and kings who died violently.59 This distinction is widespread in  59 See B. Afrink, “L’Expression škb ‘m ’bwtyw,” OTS 2 (1943) 106–18; G. R. Driver, “Plurima Mortis Imago,” in M. Ben-Horin et al. (eds.), Studies and Essays in Honor of Abraham A. Neuman (Leiden: Brill, 1962) 137–43; S. R. Bin-Nun, “Formulas from Royal 

9. Why Manasseh is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile 323  pre-exilic culture: significant figures in J also “lie with the fathers” (die naturally). Likewise, every other figure who dies “in peace” dies naturally.60 Jeremiah promises Zedekiah death “in peace”, not by violence (34:4– 5), though his prediction of burial with the fathers, and probably that of death in peace, is belied by 2 Kgs 25:6–7. Micaiah denies that Ahab will return from battle “in peace”, meaning that the king will be killed (1 Kgs 22:27–8, 34–5, 37). When David enjoins Solomon not to send Joab to Sheol in “peace”, the latter rightly takes it as a sentence of death on the faithful retainer (1 Kgs 2:6, 28–34). Huldah specifically promises that Josiah will be gathered to his fathers and to his tombs(!) in peace. The first expression has only one parallel: in Judg 2:10, part of the Josianic edition of Kings (see Halpern The First Historians 220–8), all Joshua’s generation “were gathered to their fathers.” This presumably reflects the (natural) passage of the complement that had experienced divine intervention in the “wars of Yhwh.” Further, the J and DtrH expression, “to lie with the fathers,” and the P expression, “to be gathered to one’s kin,” which together underlie Huldah’s words, both apply only to those who die naturally. 61 Huldah’s “gathering to the fathers” would seem to be a portmanteau, used only by the Josianic author of Kings. Huldah’s second promise to Josiah is even more specific. Related is the promise to Abraham, fulfilled in a natural death, that “you will come to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a ripe old age” (Gen 15:15). The explicit invocation of deposit in the sepulcher “in peace” is, again, hardly something that an editor anticipating Josiah’s violent demise would insert. This troubles Gersonides: he glosses the phrase, “I shall gather you unto your fathers,” to mean that “at his death he would be buried near his father, and the evil would not occur in his days.” Like other harmonizers attacking the oracle, he reads the terms in isolation from their usage elsewhere. But this is strong evidence that Huldah’s words come from a time before the end of Josiah’s reign.62 Early critics concluded accordingly that the Josianic edition of the history had been updated in 2 Kgs 22:15–20 to

 Records of Israel and Judah,” VT 18 (1968) 414–32; Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 134–8; Halpern and Vanderhooft, “Editions of Kings,” 183–94, 223–7. 60 For the case of Ahab, see Halpern and Vanderhooft, “Editions of Kings,” 230–5; cf. H.-J. Stipp, “Ahabs Busse und die Komposition des deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerks,” Biblica 76 (1995) 471–96. 61 See Halpern and Vanderhooft, “Editions of Kings,” 223–7, with discussion of relevant passages in prophetic literature as well. 62 Contra Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 149, n. 53, who maintains that the author of the passage deliberately avoided the expression, “to lie with the fathers”.

324 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  include a prediction of exile.63 As indicated above, Josiah’s reaction to the oracle, and the oracle’s relation to the preceding narrative and its failure to stipulate exile explicitly all suggest that it can be read, as the product of Josiah’s day, in harmony with its narrative context. C. Fulfilling Huldah’s Oracle This view is confirmed by the attempts of Kings to fulfill Huldah’s oracle in its report of Josiah’s death. 2 Kgs 23:29 relates: In his64 days, Pharaoh Necho, king of Egypt, went up (to battle) against the king of Assyria at the River Euphrates. And king Josiah went to meet him, and he65 killed him at Megiddo when he saw him.66

‘lh ‘1, means “went up (to battle) against”: the phrase is consistently adversative – though there is at least one exception.67 But this text is misleading. For it is known from the Babylonian Chronicle that Necho was not the opponent, but the ally of the king of Assyria. In his years 16 and 17, Nabopolassar, allied with the Medes, traded control of the Harran region with Asshur-Uballit and Egypt. 68 In year 20, Egypt invested Kitmuhu, west of the Euphrates, the Egyptian army stationed “in the town of Carchemish” repulsing a Babylonian riposte (Grayson, ABC 4:12–26). The next year, Nebuchadrezzar expelled Egypt from Carchemish and thereafter from central Syria (Grayson, ABC 5:1–8). In Nabopolassar’s years 18 and 19, then, 609–608 BCE, Necho, in aid of the Assyrians, briefly reconstituted an Egyptian empire reaching the Euphrates. Josephus (Ant. x 74–7) still recognized that Necho fought the “Medes and the Babylonians, who had destroyed the hegemony of the Assyrians”, in order to secure an Asian empire. Josiah, Josephus relates, impeded Necho’s progress against the Medes. 69 Herodotus (2.159) reports  63

See, e.g., R. Kittel, Geschichte des Volkes Israel (Stuttgart, 1925) 2, 441; Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel. I, 79; Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, n. 183, p. 286 and n. 46. 64 OG, “Josiah’s.” 65 G, Necho; OG, Pharaoh. 66 For the MT krҴtw ’tw, the OG seems to read kqr’tw ’tw, which may reflect either a dittograph in the Vorlage or a double reading. In the light of the discussion below, the former alternative is preferred here. 67 For the occurrences, see Halpern and Vanderhooft, “Editions of Kings,” 228, n. 118. 68 A.K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (Locust Valley, New York, 1970) 358–69. 69 This text (Ant. x 75) abbreviates “Medes and Babylonians” from the preceding line, but may also reflect Josephus’s close relation to 1 Esdras, whose text he often prefers to that of Ezra in reconstructing the restoration.

9. Why Manasseh is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile 325  Necho’s victory over the “Syrians” at Magdolus, but this is probably merely the encounter at Megiddo.70 Josiah, like Hezekiah, revolted against Assyria; unlike Hezekiah, he came into conflict with Assyria’s surrogate, Egypt, which ascended under Psammetichus, Necho’s father. Like Hezekiah, he was an ally of Babylon. Necho was advancing to assist, not attack, the Assyrians.71 And that was known, as to Josephus, to the author of the account of Josiah’s death in Kings. What was gained by having Assyria’s enemy, not ally, kill Josiah? Josiah, the ally of Babylon, would then be his killer’s ally as well. In the current formulation, Josiah died at the hands of one with whom he was in alliance, bešƗlôm.72 By making Necho the enemy of Assyria, the author of the account of Josiah’s death was inferring an ironic, but nevertheless legitimate, fulfillment of Huldah’s prophecy. One other (pre-exilic) text in DtrH confirms the possibility of such a word play here. In 1 Kgs 2:5, David instructs his successor, Joab “spilled war-blood bšlm... So don’t send him to Sheol in peace (bšlm)!” The reference is to Joab’s killing two men allied with David – Abner (2 Sam 3:21) and Amasa (2 Sam 19:14). Abner dies not “in time of peace,” but during a civil war. Joab’s killings were actionable because he behaved as though he were at war with just such allies. The crime is murder – hence the play on words in 1 Kgs 2:5. The play in 1 Kgs 2:5 may have guided the reconciliation of Josiah’s violent death and Huldah’s contrary prophecy (so Halpern and Vanderhooft, “Editions of Kings,” 227–8). Josiah fell victim to an ally, just as Joab’s victims did. The continuation also obscures the issue: Josiah went “to meet” Necho (lqr’tw), a term ambiguous enough to imply either confrontation (the historical situation) or greeting. Necho killed him “when he saw him” (kr’tw’tw), a formulation that leaves it in the air whether there was a battle at all. 2 Kgs 23:29, in sum, goes to some lengths to infer an ironic fulfillment of Huldah’s oracle.73 The parallel to the ironic fulfillment of another oracle – namely, that to Croesus in his conflict with Cyrus (He-

 70

So, e.g., W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus (Oxford, 1912) 1, 247. Contrast E. Sellin, Geschichte des israelitisch-jüdischen Volkes (Leipzig, 1924) 1, 294–5. 71 See especially A. Malamat, “Josiah’s Bid for Armageddon,” JANESCU 5 (1973) 267–79; idem, “The Kingdom of Judah Between Egypt and Babylon: A Small State Within A Great Confrontation,” in W. Claassen (ed.), Text and Context (Sheffield, 1988) 117–29. 72 On the treaty implications of this phraseology, see recently, T. J. Lewis, “The Identity and Function of El/Baal Berith,” SBL 115 (1996) 401–23. 73 As a result, Halpern and Vanderhooft, “Editions of Kings,” 229, attribute the verse to the exilic redactor of Kings, E(Dtr)x. See further below.

326 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  rodotus 1.53–4, 75, 87) – is palpable, including the element of the postponement of the catastrophe (1.91–2). Chronicles extends this “ironic” fulfillment, yet in a circumspect vein. The MT reads: Necho, king of Egypt, went up to fight at Carchemish on the Euphrates, and Josiah went forth to meet him (lqr’tw) (2 Chr 35:20).

The Greek reads “against the king of the Assyrians” for the MT “at Carchemish.” But the introduction of “the king of the Assyrians” probably reflects infection from Kings, as does the Greek of the preceding verse.74 his version avoids the bald-faced claim that Necho was fighting Assyria and was bšlm with Josiah. But a speech (also in 1 Esdras) conveys the same message: Necho does not want to fight Josiah, but his unnamed “house of war” (byt ml‫ۊ‬mty) – the contrast being to a presumptive “house of peace” (šlm). Here, Chronicles follows Kings in fulfilling Huldah’s oracle ironically. This element, however, is attenuated. First, Chronicles does not state that Necho was Assyria’s enemy, correcting the implications of Kings. Second, Chronicles explains Josiah’s death in a different way, namely, that God had sent Necho, a claim the narrator confirms: Josiah was struck down because he failed to recognize Necho’s divine commission (2 Chr 35:21–3). Nor does Chronicles position Huldah’s oracle as does Kings: in Chronicles, Josiah’s reforms precede the finding of the Book of the Torah (esp. 2 Chr 34:3–7). In the main, what Josiah seems to have accomplished after finding the Book is only a popular commitment to observe its statutes and a lawful Passover (2 Chr 34:29–35:19). 75 Without invoking Manasseh’s  74 2 Chr 35:19a–d < 2 Kgs 23:24–7. The MT might have omitted “against the king of the Assyrians” in a haplography by homoioarcton (‘1... ‘1) if the intervening “at Carchemish” – an accurate element – preceded the phrase ҳlh nkw... lhl‫ۊ‬m bkrkmš ‘1 mlk ’šwr ‘1 prt). But the suppression of Carchemish from G is then inexplicable. 1 Esd 1:23 follows Chronicles here, indicating that the MT is early. G also adds “River” to “Euphrates”; it and 1 Esdras add “Pharaoh” to “Necho”. 75 The exception is 2 Chr 34:33, which claims that Josiah removed all the “abominations” from the lands belonging to Israelites, but this may be a recapitulation of his achievements in his year twelve – 34:6–7, itself a version of his achievements outside Jerusalem in Kings. The verse represents the counterpart in this respect to 2 Kgs 23:24, which is reinserted in the Greek of Chronicles at 2 Chr 35:19a. Contrast D. A. Glatt, “The Role of Huldah’s Prophecy in the Chronicler’s Portrayal of Josiah’s Reform,” Biblica 77 (1996) 23–4. Glatt correctly notes that the positioning of Huldah’s oracle in the middle of Josiah’s “reforms” recapitulates a pattern in Chronicles of the renewal, after prophetic intervention, of a reform begun on the king’s initiative (pp. 25–91); to the finding of the book of the Torah, however, there is no parallel in the other passages, which may therefore be regarded as derivative from the emblematic instance of Josiah (as Chronicles reconstructs the reign).

9. Why Manasseh is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile 327  sin, Chronicles finds personal reasons for Josiah’s failure (and 2 Chr 34:33 affirms his success during his lifetime). It then blames the exile on kings other than Josiah, and yet in part on his untimely demise, which cut short the healing of previous incurred guilt.76 Yet it does follow Kings in fulfilling Huldah’s oracle – by imputing Josiah’s death to a king with whom he was not at war.77 The implications are two. First, both Kings and Chronicles concern themselves with explaining the dissonance between Huldah’s oracle and Josiah’s death. Neither suppresses either the oracle or the death report. However, second, the recourse of Kings and, derivatively, Chronicles, to a strategy of ironic fulfillment indicates that the oracle was already embedded in a text with which the author of the fulfillment felt no license to tinker. Were Huldah’s oracle not present in a received history, in its present form, neither the exilic author who polished DtrH nor the Chronicler would have composed it. Huldah’s oracle, at least so far as it touched Josiah, and probably in its entirety, was part and parcel of a pre-exilic account of Josiah’s reign – an account relating to other central themes of Kings and of DtrH as a whole. Huldah’s oracle, in its original context in Kings, was the motivating force for Josiah’s desperation and reform: it was decisive for authenticating the book of the Torah. 78 Here, the need for mantic validation indicates a consciousness of the possibility of forging written documents, a seventh-century perspective representing the transformation between Isaiah’s distrust of oral tradition (29:13) and Jeremiah’s of written (8:8). It could not be done without.

 76

Note Glatt, “The Role of Huldah’s Prophecy,” 24–5: “What emerges... is that if not for Josiah’s personal backsliding, Huldah’s prophecy indeed could have been averted altogether...” Glatt goes on, however, to conclude that Chronicles blames the exile on Zedekiah, Josiah having completed the process of reconciliation between people and god. 77 “Further on the relation of Chr. to DtrH concerning the death of Josiah, beyond the issues here, see Williamson, “The death of Josiah and the continuing development of the Deuteronomic History,” VT 32 (1982) 242–8; C. T. Begg, “The death of Josiah in Chronicles: another view,” VT 37 (1987) 1–8; Williamson, “Reliving the death of Josiah: a reply to C.T. Begg,” VT 37 (1987) 9–15, See also Glatt, “The Role of Huldah’s Prophecy,” 16–20. 78 See generally Halpern and Vanderhooft, “Editions of Kings,” 229 and n. 120; Halpern, The First Historians, 226–7; cf. Knoppers, Two Kingdoms under God 2, 140–56, 194–6; Eynikel, The Reform of King Josiah, 354.

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V. The Exilic strategy of Explanation in Kings As it stands, Kings goes farther in explaining Josiah’s death than inferring the fulfillment of Huldah’s oracle. Through “his servants, the prophets,” Yhwh announces (2 Kgs 21:10–15): Because Manasseh committed these abominations... therefore,79 thus says Yhwh, god of Israel: Lo, I am bringing evil on Jerusalem and Judah such that the two ears of all who hear it shall ring. [Jerusalem will suffer the fate of the house of Ahab and Samaria.]80 And I shall relinquish the remnant of my inheritance and give them into the hand of their enemies, and they will be a spoil and a despoliation for all their enemies, because they did what was evil in my sight and were constantly enraging me from the day when their fathers went forth from Egypt until this very day.81

The echoing (or, in the narrative, the foreshadowing) of the language of Huldah’s oracle against Judah here could not be clearer, even though the concerns and words differ: both introduce a speech, “Thus says Yhwh, god of Israel” (though in Huldah’s oracle this is the prophetess’s introductory rubric of the message to Judah, and Yhwh’s introduction of a proclamation only in the message to Josiah); both begin the message of judgment, “Lo, I am bringing evil on Jerusalem/this place;” both express the fate of the people with a phrase consisting of two nouns (here, “spoil and despoliation” against Huldah’s “desolation and curse”); both condemn the people’s behavior. But 2 Kgs 21 focuses attention on Manasseh’s actions and unmistakably describes the exile. Hence the universal attribution of the passage to the exilic edition of Kings. Two other passages in Kings, absent like 2 Kgs 21:10–16 from Chronicles, pick up this same motif. Thus, 2 Kgs 24:2–4 singles out Manasseh’s spilling of innocent blood (unmentioned and thus unreversed in Chronicles) among his sins. Nebuchadrezzar reduced Jehoiakim to vassalage, whereupon he revolted, and Yhwh dispatched invaders:

 79

G takes MT lkn as l’kn. Compare also n. 46 on 2 Kgs 22:20. The comparison is to the cleaning of a plate (OG, tablet) inverted to dry. 81 The beginning of 21:16 might formally represent the continuation of this direct discourse, an impression which is corrected only at the end of the verse, so that the narrator’s indictment concerning Manasseh’s spilling of innocent blood is virtually indistinguishable from the oracle of divine condemnation. The same narrative construction and a similar content characterize the transition to the spilling of blood in 2 Kgs 24:4 in the OG variant, where Jehoiakim is the culprit; on this, see n. 84 and below. Note also that the emphasis on the sins of the fathers in 21:15 is a theme shared with all levels of Jeremiah’s prophecy: as in 9:13, 16:9–13, among many other passages, pre-exilic as well as later. 80

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329

 And (Yhwh) sent them against82 Judah to destroy it, according to the word of Yhwh that he spoke by the agency of his servants the prophets. For Yhwh’s anger83 was against Judah (MT, ’k ҳl py yhwh hyth byhwdh), to remove it from his presence, for the sins of Manasseh for all that he had done. And also the blood of the innocent that he84 shed – and he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood – and Yhwh did not assent to forgive.

Kings reports that Jehoiakim died naturally (2 Kgs 24:6, with burial against Jer 22:18–19; 36:27–32; cf. Jer 34:4–5 on Zedekiah, against 2 Kgs 25:7); this may have determined the placement of the editorialization, for none attaches either to Jehoahaz or to Jehoiachin, both of whom are exiled. The alternative is that 24:2–4 acknowledges in a crepuscular way the displacement on to Manasseh of bloodguilt of which Jeremiah accuses Jehoiakim himself (Jer 7:6 with 26:20–3; especially 22:17, as above): indeed, the OG may preserve the original reading in 24:4, namely, that it was Jehoiakim who “spilled the blood of innocents”, the latter phrase paralleled only in Jeremiah’s dm nqyym (19:4; also, 2:34). In this case, 2 Kgs 21:16, which accuses Manasseh of filling Jerusalem with innocent blood, actually elaborates 24:4’s repetition of Jeremiah’s accusation against Jehoiakim. With Judah’s last king, Zedekiah, the (related) explanation is even more basic. Zedekiah did evil, like Jehoiakim, and revolted against Babylon because (24:19–20) Yhwh’s anger was against Jerusalem and against Judah (ky ‘l ’p yhwh hyth byrwšlm wbyhwdh) to the point at which he85 cast them out from his presence.

Here, the exposition of Yhwh’s wrath precedes the report of the king’s revolt, inverting the order for Jehoiakim, and the text can be read to imply that Zedekiah’s very wickedness was a consequence of Manasseh’s evil. Nor is Manasseh named – by this point an unnecessary detail. What follows is a litany of destruction. Kings goes, as noted, one step further, bringing Manasseh to book for Josiah’s death as well. Josiah had eliminated evil, realizing the words of the Torah (2 Kgs 23:24 = G, 2 Chr 35:19a); like him, there was none (OG “no king”) before or after86 (2 Kgs 23:25):  82

The G, but not the OG, adds “the land of.” The G and 2 Kgs 24:19–20 ’p, against MT py, “utterance”, which may, however, be original. 84 Note the variant in the OG: Jehoiakim. See above, and n. 81, and below. 85 The OG adds, “he acted and,” ҳĞh w. 86 This last phrase has been excised as secondary (= Dtr2/E[Dtr]x), as noted by Knoppers, Two Kingdoms under God 2, 219 and n. 82, who quotes Nelson as to the absence of any apparent seam between it and the rest of the verse. Syntactically, however, one might expect this continuation of the main clause to appear before the relative clause, along with the beginning of the main clause: there may in fact be a “seam”. To settle the question, one would have to find parallel syntax in other undisputed H(Dtr) texts. 83

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But Yhwh did not relent from the burning of his great wrath which wrath burned against Judah for all87 the provocations with which Manasseh provoked him. And Yhwh (had) said, Judah, too, I shall remove from my88 presence, as I removed Israel, and I shall reject this89 city, which I had chosen, Jerusalem, and the temple... (2 Kgs 23:26–7).

Thereafter comes a source notice, followed by a supplementary note describing Josiah’s death. The sequence leaves little doubt that it was the sin of Manasseh that led Yhwh to disregard Josiah’s piety and to have him killed, rather than live out his life. This passage in particular anticipates and precipitates the medieval (and quondam modern) view that Josiah’s death fulfilled Huldah’s oracle by protecting him from the horrors of exile itself. Like 2 Kgs 21:10–16, 24:2– 4, 20, it comes from the exilic hand that finished the books of Kings, and attributed the exile to Manasseh. This attribution reflects the author’s dissatisfaction with or insensitivity to the fulfillment of Huldah’s oracle in the characterization of Necho’s confrontation with Josiah. It was not enough, in other words, that Huldah was right, that Josiah was killed by one with whom he was “at peace”: his violent death itself demanded a more direct, more explicit, explanation namely, Manasseh’s dooming Judah to exile.

VI. Implications for the Stages of Composition The preceding treatment has no implications for the composition of Kings or DtrH before the time of Josiah.90 From that time, however, the implication is that some text was fixed. The latter presumably included Deuteronomy, as Josiah’s regnal account and Huldah’s oracle repeatedly advert to it, and even make do with allusions to, rather than quotations of, its contents. This Josianic text also included Huldah’s oracle, and portrayed Josiah as the king who repaired the breaches by which Solomon and Jeroboam, especially, precipitated the Solomonic schism and, ultimately, the exile of the northern tribes (1 Kgs 11:7–13; 2 Kgs 23:13; 1 Kgs 12:31, 13:2, 33–4; 2 Kgs 17:27–34, 23:15–20) (Halpern, The First Historians, 220–8). This much, again, has frequently been argued in the past; the present treatment differs (so Halpern and Vanderhooft, “Editions of Kings,” 22, 1–30) only in treating Huldah’s oracle not just as an unadulterated whole, but as the product of Josiah’s time. The ironic fulfillment of Huldah’s oracle implies a stage of composition that postdates Josiah’s  87

G omits, but the OG preserves “all”, which is also present in 2 Chr 35:19c G. Some G mss read “his”. 89 G, “the”, also 2 Chr 35:19d G. 90 For hypotheses concerning pre-Josianic editions of Kings or DtrH: see latterly Eynikel, The Reform of King Josiah. 88

9. Why Manasseh is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile 331  death; yet the author responsible for this fulfillment was unable or unwilling to retract or rewrite the oracle, preferring instead to imply that Necho was an Assyrian ally in order to resolve the conflict between promise and event. Technically, the ironic fulfillment of Huldah’s oracle could come from the exile. But this conclusion is not foregone. Against it is the use of Manasseh’s sin to explain Josiah’s death, rendering the ironic fulfillment either redundant or too subtle for most readers to perceive as a resolution of the problem. That is why the medieval commentators focus on the continuation of Huldah’s oracle (“your eyes will not see”) to explain the term, “in peace.” From an exilic perspective, at least as expressed by E(Dtr)x, Manasseh’s sin and the exile were invoked to explain Josiah’s failure. (The contrast is to Chronicles, where Josiah bears more responsibility.) For E(Dtr)x, Huldah’s oracle was fulfilled by the postponement of the catastrophe until after Josiah’s interment. This might also argue against dating Josiah’s death account after the exile of 597. But here, with a Davidide still on the throne, the argument carries less weight. Even when E(Dtr)x acknowledged the exile as Yhwh’s rejection of Judah (2 Kgs 21:12–15, 22:16–17, 23:26–7, 24:2–4, 13–14, 20, 25:26), he insisted on Yhwh’s fidelity to the Davidic line (25:27–30). An author writing before Zedekiah’s loss of power would be even more circumspect about casting aspersions – as the Chronicler did – on the patron saint of Israel’s “rediscovered” ideology. Notably, no such aspersion is to be found, for example, in Jeremiah. How does the account of Josiah’s death advance the narrative sequence of Kings? On this basis, the assignment of the episode to E(Dtr)x makes little sense. And yet, it makes no more sense to assign the text to the Josianic historian responsible for the construction of DtrH as we know it – Dtr1, or H(Dtr). In fact, the account of Josiah’s death has several valences, both literary and ideological. On the literary plane, the death leads to a report that Josiah’s corpse was transported by chariot from Megiddo to “his tomb” in Jerusalem (2 Kgs 23:30).91 The parallels are two: Ahaziah also died at Megiddo and was carried by chariot to Jerusalem (2 Kgs 9:27–8); Amaziah, assassinated at Lachish, was brought home by horse (2 Kgs 14:19–20). Chronicles adds a request by Josiah to be removed from the scene of the battle. This most closely apes Ahab’s death (1 Kgs 22:34 = 2 Chr 18:33). But it permits Josiah to die in Jerusalem (2 Chr 35:24), again mitigating the fact of his death in battle. The ideological valences are more complex. Kings’ first premise is that Huldah was right. Making Josiah’s violent death conform to Huldah’s  91

Note that the parallel 2 Chr 35:24 buries him “in the tombs (plural) of his fathers,” fulfilling Huldah’s oracle both in rendering “tombs” (plural) and in invoking the fathers.

332 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  promise, the account reads as though it were the prophetess’s self-defense (cf. the defense of Delphi in Herodotus 1.91–2). But Huldah’s defense has more than a personal dimension (as in 1 Kgs 22:26–8). What, asks Deuteronomy, exposes a prophecy uncommissioned by Yhwh (as in 1 Kgs 22:19–23)? “What the prophet prophesies in Yhwh’s name, and the prophecy does not come true or materialize, that is the prophecy that Yhwh did not prophesy” (Deut 18:20–2). The defense of Huldah preserves the urgency of reform. More important, it validates her authentication of the Book of the Torah. In contrast to the scapegoating of Manasseh in 2 Kgs 21:10–16, 23:26– 7, 24:2–4, the ironic fulfillment of Huldah’s prophecy does not imply the coming of the exile. Rather, the reverse: it rescues the prophetess’s prediction of a “peaceful” death, almost surgically, without overt reference to the rest of the oracle. In fact, the death account “marginalizes” Huldah’s oracle to Judah, diverts attention from it, and so makes best sense before the prediction of catastrophe was fulfilled. Come the exile, the cause of Josiah’s death, as the scapegoating of Manasseh indicates, was, for E(Dtr)x, at least, a detail, and moot. Before the exile, however, Josiah’s violent death might have seemed to invalidate Huldah’s claims altogether: explaining her “error” as no error at all, but as a case of the king’s hubris (as Chronicles), meant that the rest of the oracle, the call to reform, was as urgent as ever, that the book of the Torah was genuine, that the program of Josianic reformation needed to be pursued to the end. In short, the ironic fulfillment of Huldah’s promise to Josiah belongs to the pre-exilic era, and is best dated even before the exile of much of the population in 597, when Huldah’s primary message was vindicated. That is why the ironic fulfillment survives even in Chronicles, which does not share Kings’ accounts of Josiah’s four successors. The implication is of a pre-exilic touch-up to the Josianic DtrH, a touchup whose explanatory scheme may have generated variants sufficiently diverse in annotations of the history to explain the divergences between Chronicles and Kings about the reign, as well as the death, of the great reformer. Chronicles, after all, elaborates Kings’ ironic fulfillment, but remains true to the history of Egyptian intervention in the east. Chronicles has also had the time to integrate the ironic fulfillment into the narrative of Josiah’s regnal account, rather than appending it, as in Kings. Moreover, Necho, silent in Kings, speak in Chronicles. And Chronicles repeatedly adverts to Jeremiah, both as Josiah’s mourner, and in blaming the exile (Jer 15:4 apart) principally on Josiah’s successors, and on other kings, and the people, of Judah – a property of Jeremiah and Ezekiel the importance of which in shaping the Chronicler’s view has not been sufficiently appreciated. It is ironic, in fact, that Jeremiah, who in scholarship is closely as-

9. Why Manasseh is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile 333  sociated with Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic literature (not to say, “movement”), is repeatedly invoked in Chronicles, Ezra and Haggai, but not once in the Deuteronomistic History.92 Jeremiah’s influence on several Chronistic passages relating to the exile has essentially gone unremarked. In Kings, the relationship is unsurprising. There, the exilic accusation that Manasseh “spilled innocent blood in great quantity to the point where he filled Jerusalem from mouth to mouth” (2 Kgs 21:16; also, 24:4) has echoes in Deut 19:10 (“let not innocent blood be spilled in the midst of your land”) and Isa 59:7 (“they hastened to spill innocent blood...”) as well as in Joel 4:19; Ps 106:38; Prov 6:17. Only Jeremiah relates it directly to the exile: he ties the injunction against “spilling innocent blood” to Judah’s survival (22:3, 17, 7:6; cf. again 26:20–3, 2:30– 5); in 19:4, he alleges that the people “and their fathers and the kings of Judah” “filled [the Tophet] with the blood of innocents.” Immediately before this accusation, Yhwh announces, “Behold, I am bringing evil on this place, such that any who hears of it, his ears will ring” (Jer 19:3): the exilic Deuteronomist (E[Dtr]x) uses the same phraseology in 2 Kgs 21:12: “Behold, I am bringing evil on Jerusalem and Judah, such that all who hear of it, his two ears will ring.” The only other occurrence of the phrase “any who hears of it, his two ears will ring” comes in 1 Sam 3:11. Yet for Kings, unlike Jeremiah, Josiah permanently defiled the Tophet (2 Kgs 23:10, unparalleled in Chronicles). Other intersections with Jeremiah occur in the same material, some of them especially influential on E(Dtr)x = Dtr2. The notion of E(Dtr)x in 2 Kgs 21:15 that Judah’s fatal sin was ancestral as well as contemporary (Manasseh’s) is prominent, as noted, in Jeremiah, who propagandizes for the rejection of ancestral ways (as does DtrH). 2 Kgs 24:4 dislocates on to Manasseh (in the MT, not the OG) the charge of spilling innocent blood, a charge then leveled against Manasseh in his regnal account (21:16). Originally, in Jeremiah, as noted, and in the OG of 2 Kgs 24:4, Jehoiakim is hauled up on this particular charge. Likewise, it may be that the whole strategy of blaming Manasseh for Josiah’s death is derived from, and not secondary in, Jeremiah: notwithstanding generations of scholarship that have read the relationship as implying post-E(Dtr)x editing of Jer 15:4, it is entirely conceivable that Josiah’s death and the contingency of Judah’s fate was an issue for the prophet already before Jerusalem’s fall; indeed, the discussion here indicates that such a dating of Jeremiah’s oracle (to 597 or shortly thereafter, in line with Spinoza’s argument that Jeremiah is not chronological in organization) is consonant with what is known about the  92 For history of scholarship, see C. T. Begg, “A Bible Mystery: the Absence of Jeremiah in the Deuteronomistic History,” Irish Biblical Studies 7 (1985) 139–64, with a fresh proposal.

334 Part II: Cultural Transformations and Composition  period. Jeremiah exhibits none of the subtlety that inclined the author of 2 Kgs 23:29 to defend Huldah’s oracle with a quibble. More minor, but more surprising, is the agreement between Jeremiah and Chronicles on Huldah’s oracle: where 2 Kgs 22:17 relates that Yhwh’s “wrath will be incited (wn‫܈‬t ‫ۊ‬mty)” against Judah, 2 Chr 34:25 (and v. 21) and Jer 7:20 substitute the verb ntk (Chr: wttk ‫ۊ‬mty, Jer: w‫ۊ‬mty ntkt; cf. further Jer 42:18, 44:6; 2 Chr 12:7). And Jeremiah alone speaks of Yhwh’s sending prophets early and often to the Judahites’ ancestors: Jer 7:13 + 15, 25, 11:7–8, 25:3–4 (contrast 23:9–40); 26:5, 29:19, 32:33, 35:14–15. As noted above, Chronicles concretizes the idea by introducing regular prophetic rebukes throughout its history of Judah – the influence looks as though it flowed from Jeremiah to Chronicles. Even the phrase, “sent (prophets) often and early” has its sole reflex with respect to prophecy in the explanation of the exile offered in 2 Chr 36:15. Likewise, while other texts deploy the motif of the derision of prophets (2 Chr 36:16), no one in the pre-exilic period elaborates it with the paranoiac plangency of Jeremiah (as 15:17, 20:7; cf. e.g. 11:19–21, 17:14–27, 18:18, 20:7–12). All this goes along with the Jeremianic locution (7:25, 25:4, 26:5, 29:19, 35:15, 44:4), derived from Amos (3:7), “(Yhwh’s) servants, the prophets” – an expression picked up by E(Dtr)x (2 Kgs 21:10, 24:2) as well as H(Dtr) (2 Kgs 9:7, 17:13, 23). While reflected in “Chronistic” literature only in Ezra 9:11 93 the phrase contrasts starkly with Jeremiah’s typical views of his contemporary competitors (as in ch. 13): the phrase refers to the prophets, again, whom Yhwh had formerly sent (as in Jer 28:8). And the idea that ancestral Judahite sin prevented Yhwh’s wrath from being “healed” (2 Chr 36:16) is also most closely paralleled in Jeremiah (as in 14:19; but also 8:15, 15:18, 19:11 = Deut 28:27, 35). Most important, Jeremiah repeatedly makes two affirmations: that the ancestors, not just the present generation, are responsible for Judah’s straits, a notion shared by both Kings and Chronicles; and that Josiah’s reform did not really “take”, so that the ancestral sins continued in the period after his death – a notion alien to the exilic edition of Kings, but present in Chronicles.94 The exilic edition of Kings blames Manasseh for Josiah’s death. It reinterprets that death as the first movement in the long, inevitable slide into total exile. The failure of Josiah’s or any reform begins at this critical moment. E(Dtr)x, in other words, renders otiose not just the undertaking of the reform itself, despite the lionization of Josiah in his source, but also the necessarily earlier ironic justification of Huldah’s words. Conversely,  93

Further, only Zech 1:6; Dan 9:6, 10. For further discussion of Jeremiah’s status in the post-exilic literary world, see the author’s “The New Names of Isaiah 62:4: Jeremiah’s Reception in the Restoration and the Politics of ‘Third Isaiah,’” JBL 117 (1998) 623–643. 94

9. Why Manasseh is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile 335  Chronicles reflects the culture of a later elite, one already secure in the values encoded by Josiah’s reform, howsoever the details may have been elaborated in texts other than Deuteronomy, such as P, Jeremiah and Deutero-Isaiah. In releasing Manasseh from guilt, in making Josiah responsible for his own demise partly, perhaps, because of a misguided conviction that he would die “in peace,” such that Huldah’s oracle was self-working, like the dreams of Joseph, or like the oracle of the Pythoness to Croesus, or of the Pythoness to Oedipus’s father, Laius, and to Oedipus himself95 – the Chronicler discloses that defense of Josiah, and of the Book of the Torah, is no longer a live issue. With the exile, and the emergence of a Babylonian elite so committed to Deuteronomy that the oracles of Ezekiel are even dated by the era marked by the finding of the Book, it was no longer necessary to hold the line on Josiah’s perfection – hence the absence of 2 Kgs 23:25 in Chronicles (but cf. 2 Chr 34:33). It was enough to remember that Huldah had been right about Josiah’s death, if ironically, about the exile, which Josiah was not to see, and, perhaps above all, about the authenticity of the Book of the Torah. In the culture wars of the seventh– sixth centuries BCE, the real battle was fought not over the question which kings precipitated the exile, but over what the Mosaic constitution was that could make Israel right with her god. If the traditionalists of Jeremiah 44 could point out that disaster overtook them only when “we stopped making libations to the queen of the heavens” as the ancestors and kings and officials of Judah had done for as long as memory could extend its reach, E(Dtr)x’s endorsement of that view was meant to turn it on its head: it was Manasseh’s traditionalism, not Josiah’s reform, that had caused the disaster, foreordained reform to fail. The Chronicler, more sophisticated than the exile, rejected the notion that Josiah’s death was the first stop on the road to perdition: about the rightness of the reform, about the legitimacy of the single cult place, there could no longer be any meaningful dispute. As to Josiah’s ineffectiveness, in the light of the testimony of Jeremiah (and Ezekiel?), the questions that had been anathema to E(Dtr)x were already resolved.

 95

E.g., Apollodoros 3, 5–8. Had there been no prophecy that Oedipus was to kill his father, he would not have been staked to the mountain to die, and then adopted; had he not learned of it, he would not have fled his (adoptive) homeland, and encountered his biological parents. Similarly, the dreams in the Joseph story represent self-working prophecies, leading the brothers to their attempt on Joseph, which in turn leads to his rise to power over them.



Part III The State’s Rejection of Religion Revolution and Reformation

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE: Kinship and the Rise of Individual Moral Liability*' This essay arose ultimately from a seminar at the Institute of Advanced Studies, at the Hebrew University, hosted by Abraham Malamat and Yigael Yadin. The participants in this seminar also included Alan Millard, Henri Cazelles, Pinchas Artzi, Amihai Mazar, Siegfried Herrmann, Israel Finkelstein and Larry Stager. For me, the seminar was a formative experience, first of all for the exposure it provided to archaeological logic: my first paper to the group, the first delivered by a non-sponsor, became Chapter 3 of The First Historians, on the Ehud story. This paper, locating a story in the context of Israelite architecture, and since disputed both literarily and archaeologically, could not have been written except for the support that year of the Albright Institute, the guidance of Sy Gitin and David Ussishkin, and in fact, the whole milieu into which I was thrust. The same holds for the essay that follows, which was born from a simple observation, namely, that the Decologuic god, and that of much of the Hebrew Bible, who rewarded or punished descendants was replaced, partly in the Deuteronomic code, but especially in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, by one who rewarded or punished individuals. That transition had to be rooted in a social upheaval, and that social upheaval had to have some archaeological reflex. My friends in the seminar and at the Albright helped me to locate some of that reflex – Gitin still insists I should have attributed the observation about cooking pots to an oral observation of his “under the tree in the Albright garden.” The story is that of a revolution, and of the sharpening of the prophetic critique discussed above in Chapter 1, into state policy by a gradual progression over the course of the eighth–seventh centuries.

 * Originally published in B. Halpern and D. W. Hobson (eds.), Law and Ideology in Monarchic Israel (JSOTSup 124; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991) 11–107. ' This study was stimulated by work supported by the Alexander von HumboldtStiftung, in 1984–85, under the sponsorship of Klaus Baltzer and Manfred Weippert, A York University Faculty of Arts research leave, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend brought this draft to completion. As always, my chief partner in applying historical imagination to the data was Professor Sidney Halpern. I have also shamelessly reaped a rich harvest of insights from A. Baron, Y. Beit-Arieh, K. Baltzer, J. Bradley, M. Broshi, Y. Dagan, I. Finkelstein, D. N. Freedman, R. E. Friedman, R. S. Hendel, Z. Herzog, D. Hobson, J. S. Holladay, A. Kempinski, A. Mazar, N. Na’aman, S. M. Olyan, W. H. Propp, the late Y. Shiloh, D. Small, L. Stager, and P. R. Swarney. I owe special thanks to S. Gitin, P. Wapnish, and B. Hesse, who shared important unpublished data and ideas, and to my students, D. Armstrong, D. Vanderhooft, and G. Pratt, the last of whom contributed the phrase, ‘Sennacherib’s reform’. A less technical version of this essay will appear in a volume edited by J. A. Hackett [plans for this volume seem to have been abandoned – ed.].

340 

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It was the original thought of our group at the Institute for Advanced Studies to publish a volume in common. But, partly because Yadin died at the end of our year there, this never issued into a reality. I remember with particular fondness travelling with the group, and with Albright and ASOR luminaries including Paula Wapnish, Bill Dever, Jim Sauer and others, and watching them, and Yadin and Finkelstein and Mazar, ask tough questions at every site we visited. In any event, on my return from Jerusalem to York (in 1985, after a lovely experience with the Alexander von-Humboldt-Stiftung, and Klaus Baltzer, Dietz Edzard and Claus Wilcke in Munich, as well as Manfred and Helga Weippert in Heidelberg), I tried to recreate, as best I could, the atmosphere of the Institute meetings in a year-long seminar on Law in its Social Setting in the Ancient Mediterranean World. With the support especially of Deborah Hobson, and the participation of colleagues at York and the University of Toronto, as well as multiple distinguished visitors, this issued in the publication of two volumes of essays, one of which included the following. When it did come out, the essay reinforced earlier work, and laid the foundation for a narrative of eighth–seventh century history in Judah and, in part, the west generally. It also spotlighted again the ideological importance of the Sprachkritik on which the Rejection of Tradition, which is to say western culture, was ultimately founded. It remains, however one quibbles with details, a synthesis to which my friends and colleagues occasionally make reference both for individual observations and for the larger picture it paints.

I. Collective or Individual Reward? The god of Israel describes himself in one late text as “visiting the sins of the fathers on the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me” (Exod 20:5; Deut 5:9; cf. 7:10). Medieval exegetes, in light of Ezekiel and Jeremiah (below), reasoned that Yhwh did so only if the children, too, were evil. 1 However, another logic underlies the text: namely, traitors, those who “hate” (i.e., reject) Yhwh, were to be uprooted, offspring and all – the fourth generation was the last generation a parent was likely to see.2 Indeed, when the oracle discloses that Achan has peculated from Yhwh’s ‘ban’, Joshua takes the booty “and his sons and daughters and ox and ass and sheep and tent” – who did not absquatulate – and burns and stones them by turns (Josh 7:10–26): the remedy is prescribed in Deut 7:25–26. Yhwh, it seems, conducts vendettas. The principle of collective responsibility, ancestral and contemporary, underlies much of Biblical prophecy and historiography: an ancestor shines, the descendants prosper; a king sins, the nation suffers. Law codes, too, treat Israel collectively, and Yhwh’s beneficence toward one’s child 1 Cf. F. I. Andersen and D. N. Freedman, Hosea: A New Translation (AB 24; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980) 177–182. 2 A. Malamat, “Longevity: Biblical Concepts and Some Ancient Near Eastern Parallels,” CRRAI 28 (1982) 215–24; M. Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972) 25.

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

341  ren turns on obedience in the present (as Deut 4:40; 5:26; 7:13; 10:15; 12:28). Conversely, the threat of national exile, frequent both in Deuteronomy and in the Priestly source in the Pentateuch, presupposes the suffering of innocents. This view has diverse theological underpinnings. Pollution – moral or cultic – stains the fabric of its environment. Human justice is specific, like a sort of spot-remover; divine wrath is general, fire among the flax. The theology inspires enforcement of the law. It expresses the premise that failure to apply the law is tantamount to abetment. As an engine of explanation, a perspective on the fate of nations, such a system works efficiently only where individual (male) identity is attenuated. The individual derives his identity from an expanded kinship network – the village or neighborhood, the town, the nation – which is a horizontal (synchronic) corporation. The line of descent – clan, tribe and nation – transposes the kinship network into a historical dimension: the vertical counterpart of the horizontal corporation, where the upper generations are (or are equivalents of) village, town, tribe, nation. The collective burial of the family and the doctrine of ancestral reward and punishment (Yhwh visits the sins of fathers on children, who are by implication undeserving of punishment) illustrate the point. The Israelite took his identity from a horizontal, or contemporary, and from a vertical, or ancestral, corporation. In law, this principle was never universal – all Israelite law codes stipulate individual punishments for infractions including capital offences (as Exod 21:12–14). Collective punishment attached, rather, to particular crimes – those, like that of apostasy in Exod 20:5 (and Deut 5:9: cf. Deut 8:19; 11:6) or Amorite-like cult practice (Deut 7:25–26; 9:4–5; Lev 18:24– 30; 20:4–5), that could be construed as treasonous, as ‘hatred’ of Yhwh or, presumably, the state. 3 Thus, the Covenant Code invokes the ‘ban’ for those who “sacrifice to gods... other than Yhwh alone” (Exod 22:19), but not for oppressors of widows, aliens and orphans (22:20–23). Deuteronomic law endorses collective punishment (the ‘ban’) against settlements abetting apostasy (13:13–19; cf. 2 Kgs 10:11).4 The forfeit of descendants in such cases reflects the implementation of attainder, routinely applied to civil traitors (1 Sam 22:19; 2 Kgs 9:26;  3

R. Yaron, “Social Problems and Policies in the Ancient Near East,” in B. Halpern and D.W. Hobson (eds.), Law, Politics and Society in the Ancient Mediterranean World (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991); cf. T. N. D. Mettinger, Solomonic State Officials. A Study of the Civil Government Officials of the Israelite Monarchy (ConBOTS, 5; Lund: Gleerup, 1971) 82. 4 On Lev 20:4–5, see M. Greenberg, “Postulates of Biblical Criminal Law,” in M. Haran (ed.), Yehezkael Kaufmann Jubilee Volume (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1960) 28. This text should be read against the background of the related Lev 18:24–30.

342 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  10:11) and treaty violators (Judg 5:23; 21:8–10; 2 Sam 21:6–9; 2 Kgs 25:7).5 This is why King Amaziah’s failure to apply attainder against his father’s assassins attracts special notice in the Deuteronomistic History (2 Kgs 14:5–6).6 It is also why the daughters of Zelophehad, petitioning for the perpetuation of their father’s house, are at pains to stipulate, “he was not among the congregation who congregated against Yhwh in the congregation of Qorah, but died for his [own] sin” (Num 27:3). 7 Israelite law consistently affirmed the idea of collective punishment in cases of treason. Nevertheless, around 600, both Jeremiah and Ezekiel repudiated even the attainder of apostates: both assailed the proverb, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the teeth of the children ‘are set on edge’” (Jer 31:29; Ezek 18:1–4). This text does not restrict itself to legal liability for treason, but asserts that the actions and decisions of ancestors result in the economic, political or military misfortunes of the day. The prophets, at least, stick to capital offenses: persons must die for their own sins; the critique misappropriates the implications of the proverb. The prophets differ. Jeremiah postpones the application of the new principle. First comes Judah’s corporate restoration, and only thereafter the era of personal liability (31:27–30): the new regime vouchsafes immortality to Judah as a nation restored, no longer liable to corporate chastisement (31:34–40). Ezekiel claims that the principle of personal liability is already in force (18:2–4, 29–32), and perhaps that it always has been. Further, Jeremiah links the principle to a new covenant (31:31–34), but does not explore it in depth. Ezekiel spells out all the implications and even provides for rehabilitation and backsliding (18:4–28). The differences are important. By retaining the doctrine of collective retribution in the present, Jeremiah is able to cling to the scapegoating of Jeroboam and Manasseh (as 15:4) for national cataclysm. It is in the future that individual liability precludes a destruction of the re-established collective, unless all its members are evil. And the ‘new covenant’ repairs the ‘evil inclination’ of Israel’s heart: after the Exile, therefore, Yhwh’s promise to Israel of immunity from corporate liquidation improves on the one that he accorded to humanity as a whole after the Flood in J. Jeremiah’s  5 See Greenberg, “Postulates of Biblical Criminal Law,” 24, and, on vicarious punishment in law, R. Yaron, “Biblical Law: Prolegomena,” in B.S. Jackson (ed.), Jewish Law in Legal History and in the Modern World (Jewish Law Annual Supplement 2; Leiden: Brill, 1980) 35. 6 For a Hittite parallel see H. M. Kümmel, Texte aus der Umwelt des Alten Testaments. I. Rechts- und Wirtschaftsurkunden. Historisch-chronologische Texte (Gütersloh: G. Mohn, 1981) 464–66; E in Exod 21:22–23, cited by Yaron, “Biblical Law: Prolegomena,” 35 against CH 209–10. 7 See J. A. Dearman, Property Rights in the Eighth-Century Prophets (SBLDS 106; Decatur, Ga: Scholars Press, 1988) 113.

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

343  ‘new covenant’ will have the longevity of Noah’s, and the guarantee comes in the form of Noah’s guarantee: Jer 31:35–36 uses the terms ‘day’, ‘night’, ‘seed’ and ‘they will desist’ from Gen 8:22, adding allusions to creation, and to the turbulence of the sea. Ezekiel views the old doctrines contemptuously, dismissing the vertical corporate interpretation of guilt as a smokescreen of special pleading against Yhwh’s judgments (18:2, 4, 19, 29, 31–32). Each exile, each slave, each cadaver testifies to an individual’s sin. This theology resembles P’s doctrine of retribution for murder – also after the Flood (Gen 9:4–6); but P is not systematic. Unlike J, P seems to put limits upon, if not to eliminate, vertical (Num 26:10 versus Num 16:31–33; Deut 11:6) and horizontal corporate identity (as Lev 4:3, 13); probably, Ezekiel dated individual liability to creation. The disagreement is predictable. Ezekiel’s nationalist party, exiled with Jehoiachin in 597, entertained hopes of eventual restoration. Under their stewardship, the nation had remained intact, the temple standing. Individual punishment reduced the party’s culpability, by implying that exile was a function of individuals’ sins. Jeremiah’s faction – a collaborationist wing of the Josianic coalition led by courtiers descended from Shaphan – was installed in power in 597, and presided over the destruction of Jerusalem. On Ezekiel’s reading the Shaphanite crowd must have perverted all of Judah; he says, in fact, that they reversed Josiah’s reforms (as 8:7–16; probably 11:1–3). Jeremiah’s reading permitted an evasion of responsibility – the scapegoating of Manasseh. Only later would the principle of individual responsibility come into play. But Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the Hillel and Shammai of the sixth century, disagree about everything, starting with the identity of the one true prophet. What is remarkable, therefore, is their concurrence. Other documents of the seventh–sixth century restrict human punishment to individual perpetrators, but allow that divine retribution may exceed this limit (P in Lev 20:1–5, and in the Decalogue; for Deuteronomy, see above). Yet both Jeremiah and Ezekiel, at the start of the sixth century, accept a doctrine limiting even divine retribution to the individual. The shift has ramifications other than the political ones outlined above. Thus, the concept, of a remnant assumes a new nuance: the remnant are by definition righteous, or at least rehabilitated.8 Moreover, the old system was quite ductile, as its use  8

Ezek 14:21–23 speaks of exiles, punished for the sins they exemplify (whose survival in the theology of ch. 18 may imply repentance). Ezek 36:19–33 speak of Yhwh’s shrieving exiles for restoration for his own sake (cf. Deut 9:4–5): but these have been ‘judged’ (i.e. sentenced to exile) already, and are eligible now for rehabilitation. I thank Professor Moshe Greenberg for calling these passages to my attention. It may be added, the restriction of Yhwh’s leeway for punishment in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, but not in Deut

344 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  in Kings illustrates. The new system is rigid. In prescribing a one-to-one mapping of sin and suffering, it alone provokes the agony of Job. Job (14; 21) dismisses the concept of ancestral reward – the idea of the importance of the vertical corporation after death. Nor do the comforters suggest that Job ransack the family albums or the neighborhood for the causes of his plight (they even hypothesize that Job’s children died for their own sins – 8:4). Job’s dilemma draws its locomotion from the dissonance, then, between rigid reality and the even more rigid theory of individual retribution; he, and he personally, must have sinned. Job, and Ecclesiastes, puncture the theory of individual retribution; against the old, supple idea of corporate responsibility, their lances would splinter harmlessly. The inevitable breakdown of this new theory of divine management – one that Diderot lampooned in Jacques the Fatalist – surely helped lever the emphasis of Jewish and later theology from mundane reward to otherworldly. What facilitated the socialization of the new doctrine? Scholars almost unanimously read it as a denial that Yhwh is so unjust as to visit exile upon the children for their ancestors’ sins.9 The repudiation of corporate guilt by Ezekiel’s god inspires this view. Job’s response on the loss of innocents resonates in George Eliot’s pronouncement, “There is no punishment that does not exceed its bounds in pulsations of unmerited pain”. Individual punishment reduced divine retribution to a human scale (as Deut 24:16). It did away – so the consensus – with the injustice of genetic dental problems (Jer 31:30). It reflected a desire to “lie for god” (Job 13:7–8), or to do the duty Tom Paine pronounced “incumbent on every true Deist, that he vindicate the moral justice of God against the calumnies of the Bible.”10 The theological analysis, to some extent, misprises the political implications. Moreover, Jeremiah, who embraces the new doctrine in principle, never disparages the justice of corporate retribution. Jeremiah saw the justice in a son suffering for his father’s deeds: they were part of the same corporation, literally as well as figuratively, their fates knitted tightly in blood – and economic interests. Does Jeremiah mean to imply, then, that Yhwh is less than just, but will repair its ways in future? Or will Yhwh  or P (esp. Lev 20:5), indicates that the prophets here innovate over against the law. It is unlikely that the just god of these prophets will have been allowed much to regress to his older habits of familial and corporate, rather than individual, persecution. This is not to say that P must be earlier than Ezekiel (although it seems likely). But P cannot much postdate Ezekiel, on any scheme except an harmonistic reading of Lev 20:5 (and the Decalogue) to imply that anyone punished is by definition a sinner. 9 See M. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20 (AB 22; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983) 338–41. 10 T. Paine, Complete Writings (ed. P.S. Foner; New York: Citadel, 1945) 523.

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345  loose the fate of the individual from the moorings of kinship for entirely different reasons? In fact, both Jeremiah and Ezekiel espouse what amounts to a statist ideology, one with a long history in Israel.11 Israel was a traditional society, based in local kinship ties, on which a national administration was superimposed. This superstructure occasionally entered into conflict with the clans in the appropriation of resources.12 The state therefore had an interest in limiting the clans’ political latitude. 13 In addition, as observers of the American inner city would expect, kinship units (or gangs with territories) had to be restrained from independently administering extramural discipline: authority is central only so far as the state exercises a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, on coercion. States particularly attempt to contain the vendetta, an expression of kinship solidarity in a state environment, or, from the statist viewpoint, the local usurpation of central authority.14 Israel’s clan structure incorporated the vendetta – the institution of the ‘blood avenger’. But legal limitations were stark. The political context in which Amaziah spared his father’s assassins’ families (2 Kgs 14:6) is opaque. However, containing the vendetta is said to have been central to David. Confronted with a fratricide, David promises to reflect or investigate (2 Sam 14:4–9); relieved of possible guilt, he offers temporary immunity (14:10); but only when put in mind of possible vigilantism does he issue an unqualified pardon (14:11–12). The state, then, shields the weak from the strong, a principle already articulated in the Code of Hammurabi. Similarly, Leviticus (19:16–17), Deuteronomy (19:11–13) and the Covenant Code (Exod 21:12–14) allow for blood vengeance in cases of premeditated murder (not quite endorsing ongoing vendetta), but allow for sanctuary in cases of accidental or other manslaughter (Deut 19:1–10). Deuteronomy 24:16 explicitly proscribes the vendetta: “the fathers will not be killed for the sons, nor the sons for the fathers; each man will die for his own sin.” Legal liability is limited: human justice is specific.  11

Greenberg, “Postulates of Biblical Criminal Law,” 20–27. Mettinger, Solomonic State Officials; H. Tadmor, “Traditional Institutions and the Monarchy: Social and Political Tensions in the Time of David and Solomon,” in T. Ishida (ed.), Studies in the Period of David and Solomon and Other Essays (Tokyo: Yamakawa-Shuppansha, 1982) 239–57; B. Halpern, The Constitution of the Monarchy in Israel (HSM 25; Chico, Ca: Scholars Press, 1981). 13 Mettinger, Solomonic State Officials, 121–22; B. Halpern, “Sectionalism and the Schism,” JBL 94 (1974) 519–32. 14 See K. V. Flannery, “The Cultural Evolution of Civilizations,” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 3 (1972) 399–426. 12

346 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  If legal liability is not moral liability, the two go hand in hand. A god who “visits sins on the children” is logically the god of a society where legal liability is corporate. That legal theory should individualize punishment is predictable, particularly in a state environment. The state therefore promoted ideologies restricting the god, so far as possible, to individual retribution. So, it is no surprise that such ideologies should crop up. Here, the line was drawn at treason, when the crown found itself in vendetta. Even so, Amaziah’s temperance was no doubt in some measure an attempt to furnish a role model to the lineages, the operating kinship groups in Israelite society. But what implications had the change for the royal regulation of the countryside lineages? More important, how was the statist ideology valorized so as to permit the repudiation of the obvious causal relationship between the welfare of the ancestors and the circumstances of their descendants? Jeremiah and Ezekiel propose a cosmology in which individual merit corresponds to individual welfare: to each according to his ability. How did Judahite culture travel from the sense that the ancestors’ luck determined the circumstances of the descendants to the conviction that Yhwh was responsible, no longer for the fate of the collective, but for the just requital of every individual? The answers to these questions begin far afield.

II. Assyria in Judah A. From Field Force to Hedgehog Defense In the eighth century BCE, the power of Assyrian arms ranged far to the west, taking up permanent station in the region of the Mediterranean littoral. Typically, Assyria faced coalitions of western petty states; and occasionally, those resisting partnership in these combinations petitioned for Assyrian aid to drive off their erstwhile coalition partners.15 During the century, western defense strategy underwent a shift. In the ninth century, western coalitions met Assyria in the field. By the mideighth century, they were electing the dilatory technique of fortress warfare. This was the only choice for those who sought Assyrian aid against the coalitions – to hold out until relief arrived. For example, Ahaz’s response to a Syro-Ephraimite invasion was to hole up in the capital (2 Kgs 16:5–9; KTP16 72.11; Isa 7; 8:5–8; 10:5–9; 17; Hos 7:11) waiting for Tiglath-Pileser. But the same pattern soon began to characterize the anti 15 16

As KAI 24.6–8; 215.10–15; 2 Kgs 16:5–9; cf. KAI 202A; 1 Kgs 15:17–22. KTP = P. Rost, Die Keilschrifttexte Tiglat-Pilesers III (Leipzig: Eduard Pfeiffer, 1893).

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

347  Assyrian forces. Whether or not the Azriau of Tiglath-Pileser III’s annals was Azariah of Judah (KTP 20.123; 22.131),17 western strategy from 720 forward was to huddle behind city walls – even the allies at Hamath seem to have taken shelter inside the fortifications18 – and to try to tease a field force out of Egypt (as Hos 7:11; 8:13; 9:3, 6; Isa 30:1–5). The ‘broken reed’ intervened – so the Assyrian stylus – only in defense of Gaza, on its border in 720.19 Sargon’s forces met only token opposition in the region in 716 and 712. By the last quarter of the century, Assyrian deportations had depleted western manpower – the main deportations were from Hamath, Damascus, Samaria and Ashdod. This was the policy under Tiglath-Pileser, Shalmaneser and Sargon. By introducing foreign populations, these kings undermined the region’s capacity for revolt.20 The results of these measures are gauged in the reduced resistance to Sennacherib in 701: only Sidon, Ashkelon and Judah stood up to be counted.21 Resettlement had thinned the rebel ranks – as at Ashdod, Damascus, Hamath and Samaria.22 No power that had suffered deportations joined the revolt of 701.  17 H. Tadmor, “Azriyau of Yaudi,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 8 (1961) 232–71; N. Na’aman, “Sennacherib’s ‘Letter to God’ on His Campaign to Judah,” BASOR 214 (1974) 25–39. 18 H. Tadmor, “The Campaigns of Sargon II of Assur: A Chronological – Historical Study,” JCS 12 (1958) 37–39; A. G. Lie, The Inscriptions of Sargon II, King of Assyria. Part I: The Annals (Paris: Geuthner, 1929) 8.53–57. 19 cf. J. E. Reade, “Sargon’s Campaigns of 720, 716 and 715 B.C.: Evidence from the Sculptures,” JNES 35 (1976) 101. 20 As Lie, The Inscriptions of Sargon II, 20–22, 120–23; see B. Oded, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 1979) 43–54, 63–67. 21 Cf. D. D. Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib (OIP 2; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924) 30.50–60; 69.19–20. 22 Ashdod: Oded, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, 29.63; H. Winckler, Die Keilschrifttexte Sargons I (Leipzig: Eduard Pfeiffer, 1889) 38.227; ABL 1307; Lie, The Inscriptions of Sargon II, 40.261; ABL 158 (supervisory Ru’ua?). Damascus: 2 Kgs 16:9: Amos 1:5; Winckler, Die Keilschrifttexte Sargons I, 108.57; Lie, The Inscriptions of Sargon II, 12.76–78; ABL 158: M. Streck, Assurbanipal und die letzten assyrischen Könige bis zum Untergange Ninevehs (3 vols.; Vorderasiatische Bibliothek 7; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916) 72, 199 (Arabs to Damascus?); H. W. F. Saggs, “The Nimrud Letters, 1952 – Part II,” Iraq 17 (1955) 138.5–9; Oded, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, 64. Hamath: Oded, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, 29, 64; Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 2.183; Winckler, Die Keilschrifttexte Sargons I, 106.49; 108.55–56: Rost 1893: 22.131–33; B. Parker, “Administrative Tablets from the North-West Palace, Nimrud,” Iraq 23 (1961) 40. Samaria: Winckler, Die Keilschrifttexte Sargons I. 4.11–17, 20.94–97; Tadmor, “The Campaigns of Sargon II of Assur,” 33–40; 2 Kgs 17:24 and M. Cogan,

348 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  The deportations left the allies no choice: they were thrown back on their terrain, their forts, and their storehouses, prospectively supplemented by sea-borne supplies from Egypt. 23 From unified field-force tactics, the allies were driven to conscript-based, static defense. Chronicles hints at increased reliance on the muster starting in the late ninth century (2 Chr 25:5; 26:12–13; 28:8–15). If so, domestic instability restricted spending even earlier; but this is unsure. ‘Hedgehog’ defense (the term is B. F. Liddell Hart’s) – a pattern of selfcontained, fortified nodes – required fewer skilled troops, and less expensive weaponry than field tactics. Its costs were those of fortification, and one political liability, the repercussions of which in Judah the following discussion will explore: it meant abandoning the countryside to the aggressor. In the end, this meant loosing urban royal ideologies from the constraints more traditional modes of thought had earlier imposed – it meant the effective disenfranchisement of the countryside. B. Hezekiah and Friends 2 Kings 16:5–9 suggests that Ahaz first approached Assyria, a distant liege, to avert the loss of southern trade through Eilat. By the time of the fall of Samaria, however, in 722, the new vassal was flirting with rebels. Around 716–715, Sargon styles himself ‘subduer of distant Judah’ 24 in connection with his campaign of 720;25 in the absence of evidence that Judah participated in the anti-Assyrian coalition of the time, it is possible that the notice refers to formal submission, or to collaboration in colonizing Philistia and Samaria in 716.26 A later text speaks of Egypto-Ashdodite

 Imperialism and Religion: Assyria, Judah and Israel in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries BCE (SBLMS 19; Missoula, Mt: Scholars Press, 1974) 105–108; Oded, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, 66–29; Ezra 4:1–2, 9–10; also, J. Naveh, “Writing and Scripts in the Seventh-Century BCE, Philistia: The New Evidence from Tell Jemmeh,” IEJ 35 (1985) 9–21; esp. N. Na’aman, “Population Changes in the Land of Israel in the Aftermath of the Assyrian Deportations,” Cathedra 54 (1989) 43–62. 23 Implied in Saggs, “The Nimrud Letters, 1952 – Part II,” Iraq 17 (1955) 127.25–27; C. J. Gadd, “Inscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrud,” Iraq 16 (1954) 179.42–48; Tadmor, “The Campaigns of Sargon II of Assur,” 34; Lie, The Inscriptions of Sargon II, 20–22.120–25; and see M. Elat, Economic Relations in the Lands of the Bible (Jerusalem: Bialik and Israel Exploration Society, 1977) 131–32. 24 Winckler, Die Keilschrifttexte Sargons I, 168.8. 25 Tadmor, “The Campaigns of Sargon II of Assur,” 38, n. 146. 26 As Lie, The Inscriptions of Sargon II, 20–22, 121–25; Gadd, “Inscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrud,” 179.37–49.

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

349  lobbying of Judah in 712.27 In no case is it sure that Judah suffered military consequences.28 However, Egypt had sown the seeds of conflict between Sargon and Ahaz’s successor, Hezekiah. Hezekiah revolted irrevocably shortly after Sargon’s death, in 705. 29 The general uprising centered in Babylon. Indeed, 2 Kgs 20:12–13, though displaced because of thematic organization of the regnal account from its place at the outset of the revolt, relate that Babylonian emissaries examined Hezekiah’s treasury, a story paralleled in Athens’s audit of the Egestaeans before taking them on as ‘allies’. 30 One must imagine some similar relationship between the Babylonian Merodach-Baladan and Hezekiah. So strategically central was the Babylonian role in the revolt, in fact, that it was four years before Sargon’s successor, Sennacherib, had sufficiently secured his southern front to risk a march to the west. But if Judah’s strength figured in Merodach-Baladan’s calculations, Hezekiah must have begun plotting revolt sometime shortly after 712 – the more so in that his Sidonian allies were in open revolt by 709.31 Hezekiah also had backing from Egypt, which had been routed by Sargon in 720 at Raphia, but where the new 25th Dynasty hoped to recoup its influence in Asia, and perhaps avert invasion. Sidon, too, joined in, in the hope of preserving the advantages in rare earths and other trade that the burst of eighth-century Phoenician colonization in the Mediterranean had once promised:32 in Phoenicia, the urge to resist or to satisfy Assyria had in some measure driven colonization; the inflation that probably resulted (cf. Philip II) and contact and competition with Greek traders will have led to an impulse to codify authentic high Phoenician or even West Semitic culture (see below). One suspects that Sidon, Egypt, and Hezekiah together engineered a coup in Ashkelon, on the Philistine coast: a rebel party headed by Sidqa succeeded the government of Sharruludari (or Rukibti) and annexed the forts of accommodationist Ashdod (possibly these had been  27 Winckler, Die Keilschrifttexte Sargons I, 188; Gadd, “Inscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrud.” 28 Cf. Tadmor, “The Campaigns of Sargon II of Assur,” 80–84; Na’aman, “Sennacherib’s ‘Letter to God’ on His Campaign to Judah;” idem, “Hezekiah’s Fortified Cities and the LMLK Stamps,” BASOR 261(1986) 13–14. 29 Note E. Vogt, Der Aufstand Hiskias und die Belagerung Jerusalems 701 v. Chr. (AnBib 106; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1986) 9. 30 Thucydides 6.6; cf. also Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 42:31–37; C. Begg, “2 Kings 20:12–19 as an Element of the Deuteronomistic History,” CBQ 48 (1986) 6 on 2 Kgs 20 stemming from a source; the prophecy of his children’s exile was fulfilled in 701. 31 J. Elayi, “Les relations entre les cités phéniciennes et l’empire assyrien sous le règne de Sennachérib,” Sem 35(1985) 19–26. 32 L. E. Stager, in conversation.

350 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  annexed to Ashkelon after the Ashdodite uprising of 712).33 Hezekiah himself installed a puppet government in Ekron, between Judah and Ashdod, deposing the pro-Assyrian king Padi, whom Sargon had perhaps installed in 720.34 Notwithstanding this elaborate fabric of alliances. Hezekiah’s national defense strategy remained fortress-based. Hezekiah’s measures all reflect the expectation of protracted siege operations. They intimate, therefore, a concern that, after the events of 720 at Raphia, relief from Egypt might be neither timely nor effective. Isaiah recites this position regularly (20:3–6; 19:19–25; 30:1–11; 31:1–3), starting in about 712. This was by no means an attack on his liege-lord’s policy of revolt. Instead, levering Assyrian propaganda about Egyptian impotence (as 2 Kgs 18:21; 19:9–14).35 Isaiah turns a strategic defect into a decisive justification for Hezekiah’s unprecedented mobilization of resources (cf. Deut 17:16, possibly a reference to sending agents, but more likely to the Amarna practice of selling slaves to Egypt, in this period). Egyptian field-force support, though an asset, was not to be relied on. C. At Home with Hezekiah Isaiah’s analysis proved accurate, and in some quarters among the general staff must have been vigorously urged as an argument against revolt. The nationalists then used it as a rationalization – Hezekiah prepared a static, hedgehog defense; he conceded to the enemy freedom of maneuver in the countryside. Pericles laid down the same policy for the Peloponnesian War, in order to wage a sea campaign against the land power, Sparta. Hezekiah’s object, however, can only have been to buy time until Babylonian, Elamite or Egyptian intervention, or logistical interruption (or Sidonian coastal raids?), compelled the Assyrians to withdraw. Apparently, like the king of Elam during Sennacherib’s seventh campaign,36 Hezekiah expected outlying fortifications to occupy the besiegers’ energy until relief materia 33

Rukibtu came to the throne in Ashkelon (succeeding Mitinti) during TiglathPilescr’s campaign to the west in 738. Whether Sharruludari succeeded him and was deposed by Sidqa is unsure. The wording of Sennacherib’s report (“Sharruludari, son of Rukibtu, their former king”) suggest that Sidqa was not of the same dynasty. In any case, lmlk ware in Ekron and Ashdod (Na’aman, “Hezekiah’s Fortified Cities and the LMLK Stamps,” 18, n.11) indicates how far-flung Hezekiah’s influence was. 34 See Reade, “Sargon’s Campaigns of 720, 716 and 715 B.C.,” 99–102; Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 30.65–31.81. 35 Cf. H. W. F. Saggs, “Assyrian Warfare in the Sargonid Period,” Iraq 25 (1963) 151–54; idem, Assyriology and the Study of the Old Testament (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1969) 17; cf. Winckler, Die Keilschrifttexte Sargons I, 188.34; P. Machinist, “Assyria and its Image in the First Isaiah,” JAOS 103 (1983) 719–37. 36 Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 40.1.81–41.5.11.

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

351  lized. In this sense, he was no more than recapitulating a strategy that had succeeded for Ahaz during the Syro-Ephraimite War. Preparing a hedgehog defense involved three mechanical tasks. First, the forts had to be refitted – there is some evidence of this in Jerusalem, where Hezekiah built the Siloam tunnel and probably the first incarnation of the Broad Wall.37 Isaiah 22:9–11 preserves a recollection of this activity, including the demolition of suburbs. Like 2 Chr 32:2–6, Isaiah juxtaposes the fresh fortification to Hezekiah’s waterworks (2 Kgs 20:20 mentions the waterworks only), which drained the old pool into a new, lower one inside the new walls; these projects were massive, although their unified physical logic requires further investigation.38 How intensive the work was south of Jerusalem is unclear (2 Chr 32:29 mentions city-building). Hezekiah probably refitted bastions not just in the capital, but elsewhere (Tel Batashi, Azekah, Gath, Maresha), including some stockades to protect the Negev caravans (Beersheba II,39 Arad X–VIII, Hesi VII, Aroer 4, and Qadesh Barnea, middle fortress). North of Jerusalem, the earliest gate at Tell en-Nasbeh may have been replaced in roughly this period. Second. Hezekiah had to stock the forts for large numbers both of conscripts and of professional garrison troops, whose job it will have been to prevent popular defection. Provisions made for the conscripts may echo in 2 Chr 32:28–29, which speaks of Hezekiah’s aggregating stores and stables, along with forts, but these topoi are typical of Chronicles, and, one might argue, are the products of the historian’s reflection rather than of his sources. Architectural evidence suggesting a chain of command includes a large four-room house with a courtyard on the city-wall at Tell Beit Mirsim, the so-called West Tower and Gate. The complex was founded in the tenth– ninth century, but reached a fully developed form only in the last phase of stratum A2,40 just before 701.41 At Arad, an earlier fort was refitted with a solid wall (str. X–VIII) in the second half of the eighth century.42 Another  37

N. Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Shiqmona, 1983) 49–60. See Y. Shiloh, Excavations at the City of David I. 1978–1982 (Qedem 19; Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University, 1984) 23, 28–29 for argument that a 5m thick Hezekian wall enclosed the water system of stratum 12 (2 Chr 32:3, 5; 30), based partly on the expansion of the city to include the western hill. 39 Y. Aharoni, “The Horned Altar at Beersheba,” BA 27 (1974) 2–6; see below. 40 W. F. Albright, The Excavation of Tell Beit Mirsim. III. The Iron Age (AASOR 21– 22; New Haven, Ct: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1943) 47. 41 Y. Aharoni and M. Aharoni, “The Stratification of Judahite Sites in the 8th and 7th Centuries BCE,” BASOR 224 (1976) 73–90. 42 O. Zimhoni, “Iron Age Pottery of Tel ‘Eton and its Relation to the Lachish Tell Beit Mirsim and Arad Assemblages,” TA 12 (1985) 84–87; A. Mazar and E. Netzer, “On the Israelite Fortress at Arad,” BASOR 263 (1986) 87–91; cf. Z. Herzog. M. Aharoni, A. F.  38

352 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  substantial four-room house occurs at the city-gate of Tell en-Nasbeh (bldg. 379),43 and one dominates the centre of Tel ’Eton.44 These buildings may reflect the extension of royal oversight to smaller regional centers, from the larger forts, like Megiddo, where governors were stationed from the time of the United Monarchy forward.45 The location of the buildings at Tell Beit Mirsim, Tell en-Nasbeh, Megiddo and Tell el-Far’ah at a gate is particularly suggestive, since the gate functioned as a centre of military command and civil administration. That the appointment of royal ‘mayors/majors’ in the small towns can be dated to Hezekiah’s time is, however, unsure, since royal interference in judicial administration may have meant appointments earlier. 46 Still, that Hezekiah militarized rural Judah or exploited the militarization of immediate predecessors seems an inescapable conclusion. N. Na’aman has even suggested that the list of fortified towns in 2 Chr 11:6–10, though attributed to Rehoboam, actually reflects Hezekiah’s fortification activity.47 Ceramic evidence, too, in the form of the lmlk (‘the king’s’) store jars, seems to attest the central distribution of food supplies for garrison troops. Scholars have long linked the large lmlk pithoi with Hezekiah’s preparations for siege.48 However, the exiguous numbers of jars and fragments so far recovered suggest rather that their use was restricted to the professional

 Rainey, and S. Moshkovitz, “The Israelite Fortress at Arad,” BASOR 254 (1984) 1–34; Herzog, “The Stratigraphy of Israelite Arad: A Rejoinder.” 43 C. C. McCown, Tell en-Nasbeh, I. Archaeological and Historical Results (Berkeley: Pacific School of Religion, 1947) 211–12; note Y. Shiloh, “The Four-Room House: Its Situation and Function in the Israelite City,” IEJ 20 (1970) 190. 44 E. Ayalon, “Trial Excavation of Two Iron Age Strata at Tel ‘Eton,” TA 12 (1985) 61. 45 At Megiddo, buildings 1728 and 338; but see D. Ussishkin, “Schumacher’s Shrine in Building 338 at Megiddo,” IEJ 39 (1989) 149–72; at Tell el-Far’ah [N], see A. Chambon, Tell el-Far’ah. I. L’Age du fer (Paris: ADPF, 1984) pl. 20, by the gate; for the ‘basement house’ of Beersheba, see Shiloh, Excavations at the City of David I, 42, n. 10. 46 Dearman, Property Rights in the Eighth-Century Prophets, 88–101 47 Na’aman, “Hezekiah’s Fortified Cities and the LMLK Stamps.” Cf. also V. Fritz, “The ‘List of Rehoboam’s Fortresses’ in 2 Chr 11:5–12 – A Document from the Time of Josiah,” Eretz Israel 15 (1981) 46–63, and the antecedent argument by Fritz in ZDPV 93 (1977) 30–32 toward a Josianic dating of the list (but this can be reconciled with reflection on the history of Assyrian conquest in the eighth century, Fritz, personal communication); Y. Garfinkel, “2 Chr 11:5–10 Fortified Cities List and the lmlk Stamps – Reply to Nadav Na’aman,” BASOR 271 (1988) 69–73; N. Na’aman, “The Date of 2 Chronicles 11: 5–10 – A Reply to Y. Garfinkel,” BASOR 271 (1988) 74–77. 48 See N. Na’aman, “Sennacherib’s Campaign to Judah and the Date of the LMLK Stamps,” VT 29 (1979) 61–86, with references.

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353  soldiery.49 Sennacherib’s annals make reference to the importation of such troops into Jerusalem.50 As distinct from the landed classes, these mercenary troops had no interest in local fields and orchards the Assyrian army might fire; even the inducements Assyria offered to defectors – “each man [eating of] his own vine, and each his own fig, and... each the water of his own cistern” until removed to an equally fertile land abroad (2 Kgs 18:31–32) will have seemed generous to the landless and appealed to others going hungry under siege. A modest royal garrison in each fortress – the Amarna materials suggest that 25–100 men would suffice – would have been a small investment to make in protracting the duration of a siege, and was a necessity in any event for directing defensive operations. It is no surprise, then, that the Lachish reliefs sustain just such a distinction.51 For the professional garrisons, pay and rations had to be provided (as for the ktym later at Arad), from the royal paymaster in the capital. This pattern is a mortise into which the lmlk jars dovetail. The lmlk store jars were manufactured in a central place, probably in the region of Lachish.52 They were produced over a short period of time, as the exiguous number of seals used on them indicates, and stamped with one of four place names and one of two scarab types;53 some carry private seals (of officials, presumably) as well. The dating of the jars depends largely on that of Lachish level III, which has yielded up something on the order of 350 lmlk seal impressions. Not to explore all the issues, 54 the consensus and the current excavator, with good reason, place the destruction of La-

 49

Note P. Welten, Die Königs-Stempel. Ein Beitrag zur Militärpolitik Judas unter Hiskia und Josia (ADPV; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1969) 141; on distribution, see Y. Garfinkel, “The Distribution of Identical Seal Impressions and the Settlement Pattern in Judaea before Sennacherib’s Campaign,” Cathedra 32 (1984) 35–52; Na’aman, “Hezekiah’s Fortified Cities and the LMLK Stamps.” 50 Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 33–34.40–41. 51 R. D. Barnett, “The Siege of Lachish,” IEJ 8 (1958) 161–64; cf. J. E. Reade, “The Neo-Assyrian Court and Army: Evidence from the Sculptures,” Iraq 34 (1972) 87–112; M. Wäfler, Nicht-Assyrer neuassyrischer Darstellungen (AOAT 26; Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1975). 52 H. Mommsen, I. Perlman and J. Yellin, “The Provenience of the lmlk Jars,” IEJ 34 (1984) 89–113. 53 A. Lemaire, “Classification des estampilles royales Judéennes,” Eretz Israel 15 (1981) 54–59. 54 See especially Y. Yadin, “Beersheba: The High Place Destroyed by King Josiah,” BASOR 222 (1976) 5–17; Aharoni and Aharoni, “The Stratification of Judahite Sites in the 8th and 7th Centuries BCE.”

354 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  chish III in 701. If so, the lmlk jars, of both the two-winged and fourwinged varieties, were produced just before.55 The lmlk jars are distributed abundantly, in forts large and small, in the north, on the border between Judah and the Assyrian province of Samaria,56 and in the west, between the Judahite hills and the Philistine coast. At Tel Batashi, the site of ancient Timnah on the border with Ekron, a public building – probably a barracks attached to an officer’s house – served as the local distribution point for stores from the lmlk jars. No unrelated ware was found in the building.57 There was no extensive contemporary destruction elsewhere on the site: the garrison was destroyed by Sennacherib,58 or by local elements traducing Hezekiah. This finally verifies the view that the jars held siege supplies. The concentration of the jars in the public building thus reflects the cleavage posited above between the professional garrison and local denizens: if the townsmen were Philistine (as 2 Chr 28:18, possibly the Chronicler’s reconstruction), the surgical destruction in stratum III would reflect local connivance with Assyria after the restoration of Padi of Ekron,59 where there are signs of a small Judahite presence as well.60  55

D. Ussishkin, “The Destruction of Lachish by Sennacherib and Dating of the Royal Judaean Storage Jars,” TA 4 (1977) 56; idem, “Reassessment of the Stratigraphy and Chronology of Archaeological Sites in Judah in Light of Lachish III,” in Biblical Archaeology Today (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1985) 142–44; M. McClellan, Quantitative Studies in the Iron Age Pottery of Palestine (PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1975); C. D. Evans, “Judah’s Foreign Policy from Hezekiah to Josiah,” in C.D. Evans. W.W. Hallo and J.B. White (eds.), Scripture in Context (Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1980) 163; cf. H. D. Lance, “Royal Stamps and the Kingdom of Judah,” HTR 72 1971) 315–32; J. S. Holladay, “Of Sherds and Strata: Contributions toward an Understanding of the Archaeology of the Divided Monarchy,” in F.M. Cross, W.E. Lemke and P.D. Miller (eds.), Magnalia Dei: The Mighty Acts of God (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976) 266–67. 56 See H. Eshel, “A lmlk Stamp from Bethel,” IEJ 39 (1989) 60–62. 57 A. Mazar, “Between Judah and Philistia: Timnah (Tel Batash) in the Iron Age II,” Eretz Israel 18 (1985) 306–308. 58 Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 32.6–7. 59 On which, note J. N. Postgate, Taxation and Conscription in the Assyrian Empire (Studia Pohl, Series Maiora 3; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1974) 21.1–3 from 699. 60 Two lmlk handles, T. Dothan and S. Gitin, Tel Miqne-Ekron. Summary Report of the 1985 Excavations (Jerusalem: Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University, 1985) 3; note also the one in Ashdod, Na’aman, “Hezekiah’s Fortified Cities and the LMLK Stamps,” 18, n. 11; but some 32 in Gezer – Eshel, “A lmlk Stamp from Bethel,” 62, n. 12; it is interesting to note the decline in pig-consumption at these Philistine sites: note B. Hesse, “Animal Use at Tel MiqneEkron in the Bronze Age and Iron Age,” BASOR 264 (1986) 17–28; P. Wapnish and B. 

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355

 Few lmlk jars have appeared in the Judaean hill country or south.61 The hills have been sparsely excavated, and cannot be discussed with any confidence. But Hezekiah did not, it seems, stockpile southern Judah with the jars (none at Hesi or Mahata, one each at Tel Beersheba [not from the Lachish clay], Ira, Lahav, Khirbet Gharreh and Tell esh-Shuqf, three at Aroer, four at Beit Mirsim, and nine at Arad). 62 Arguably, this distribution reflects an expectation that Assyria would ignore the south (hills?). Na’aman suggests that Sargon took the Beersheba region when he seized the caravan routes from Arabia.63 Sargon’s interest in the region is indisputable. 64 Still, the loss of southern Judah by Ahaz would have been too juicy for the historian of Kings to pass up (as 2 Kgs 16:5–6). And evidence of Hezekiah’s southern expansion (1 Chr 4:39– 43) 65 coincides with geopolitical evidence for a presence in the south, 66 including Edom’s supplication to Sennacherib.67 Moreover, at Tel Beersheba II, a large altar consisting of a number of blocks of stone was dismantled, presumably by Hezekiah. The altar’s stones were used in what was apparently the wall of a public stable68 – a stable being erected only after local sacrifice left off, so as to avoid startling the horses. What this implies for the nature of Hezekiah’s cultic policy is not clear-cut (see section V, below). But it is probable that the cultic preparations were conducted by Hezekiah, with Sennacherib in mind. The reform at Tel Beersheba weighs against the epigraphic rumor at Arad 69 adduced to suggest a contemporary threat from Edom: 70 Judah is  Hesse, “Philistine/Israelite Animal Use in Iron Age Canaan,” (Annual Meeting, Society for Ethnobiology, March 1987, unpublished) on Batashi and Miqne. 61 See Welten, Die Königs-Stempel; Na’aman, “Sennacherib’s Campaign to Judah and the Date of the LMLK Stamps.” 62 Na’aman, “Hezekiah’s Fortified Cities and the LMLK Stamps,” 12; Garfinkel, “2 Chr 11:5–10 Fortified Cities List and the lmlk Stamps – Reply to Nadav Na’aman,” 70; M. Aharoni, “Inscribed Weights and Royal Seals,” in Y. Aharoni (ed.), Arad Inscriptions (erusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981) 126–27. 63 Na’aman, “Sennacherib’s Campaign to Judah and the Date of the LMLK Stamps,” 75; idem, “Hezekiah’s Fortified Cities and the LMLK Stamps,” 13–14. 64 As Tadmor, “The Campaigns of Sargon II of Assur,” 77–78. 65 Best located after D. J. Wiseman, “Two Historical Inscriptions from Nimrud,” Iraq 13 (1951) 23.22. 66 The drive to Gaza, in combination with Ashkelon, in 2 Kgs. 18.8 = Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 33: 31–34. 67 Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 30.56–57. 68 J. S. Holladay, “The Stables of Ancient Israel. Functional Determinants of Stable Construction and the Interpretation of Pillared Building Remains of the Palestinian Iron Age,” in L.T. Geraty and L.G. Herr (eds.), The Archaeology of Jordan and Other Studies (Fs. S. Horn; Berien Springs, Mi: Andrews University Press, 1986) 103–66. 69 Y. Aharoni, Arad Inscriptions (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981) 70–74.

356 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  the star of Assyrian reports about the region in this era; Edomite and Arab activity was restricted to the far south. Hezekiah left the south unstocked, either because, his resources limited, he anticipated no activity there, or because he counted on Egyptian interest in the Wadi Besor-Beersheba basin. He probably did devote some energy to fortification in the region (above); but desert garrisons relied on local pastoralists for supply, not on lmlk jars (2 Chr 32:29, although central distribution was the role later at Arad). Hezekiah’s third step was to concentrate the rural population in the forts, to preserve it as an economic resource, so far as possible, against Assyrian depredations. This was the first premise of static defense, as the Athenian and Elamite parallels indicate. Provision, then, had to be made for evacuation, billeting, work details, and sustenance. Immediate implications were two: the rural population had to be set to work updating fortifications, and rehearsed in its removal to the fortresses – it had to be informed that the king planned to abandon the countryside; and, at the fortresses, assuming that rural produce collection was a family chore, temporary quartering had to be arranged. One mark of this stage may survive in the record of Hezekiah’s registration of the southern population (1 Chr 4:41). It stands to reason that universal registration was part of a larger administrative scheme. Fitting the forts, provisioning the garrisons, and coordinating the population transfer were big jobs. Of them, mobilizing the landowners and other population may have been the most complex; after all, abandoning the countryside meant abandoning the land promised by Yhwh to Israel, abandoning the land of the ancestors. Is it a coincidence then, that Hezekiah is also the first king who reportedly removed the ‘high places’ (2 Kgs 18:4), the loci (see further section V, below) of the rural cult? Is it a coincidence that the altar at Beersheba went out of service around this time?71 Yet how can one reconcile the persistence, in some form, of the Arad sanctuary (level VIII), 72 and probably that at Lachish (Mic 1:13) 73 with this programme?  70 Na’aman, “Hezekiah’s Fortified Cities and the LMLK Stamps,” 13; 2 Chr 28:17 is misappropriated from 2 Kgs 16:6. 71 Aharoni, “The Horned Altar at Beersheba;” cf. Yadin, “Beersheba: The High Place Destroyed by King Josiah;” Aharoni and Aharoni, “The Stratification of Judahite Sites in the 8th and 7th Centuries BCE.” 72 Herzog, Aharoni, Rainey and Moshkovitz, “The Israelite Fortress at Arad,” 19; cf. Mazar and Netzer, “On the Israelite Fortress at Arad;” Herzog, “The Stratigraphy of Israelite Arad: A Rejoinder.” 73 Y. Aharoni, Lachish V. The Sanctuary and Residency, (Tel Aviv: Tel-Aviv University Press, 1975) 30–31.

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357

 It is unlikely that the reforms were coincidental. They antedated Sennacherib’s assaults – at Beersheba, certainly, and, so far as the speech of the Rabshakh indicates, elsewhere as well (2 Kgs 18:22).74 We may add, early classical prophecy, so full of iconoclasm and assaults on the cult, can have been transmitted in writing only by Hezekian partisanism:75 the codification and preservation of eighth-century ‘classical prophecy’ was a Hezekian programme. The policy of centralization, thus, antedates Sennacherib’s advent. Traditionally, scholars have linked ‘centralization’ to theological fanaticism, to economics, and to the realities ensuing on Sennacherib’s siege.76 But theological theory in the capital never converged with countryside practice. And the reform regime could anticipate no significant stream of new money, in the form of sacrifices, pouring into the capital; centralization pays off economically only when a regime can seize the lands and other assets of an established church (Philip IV, Henry VIII, Talleyrand).77 Hezekiah’s policy had an ideological matrix in attacks on the cult in classical prophecy. What was its political valence? The new doctrine was implemented in the context of Hezekiah’s centralized urbanization of the rural population. The reform also made political sense as an adjunct to abandoning the countryside. By dismantling the rural cult – but not the state cult housed in temples in the fortresses (Arad, Lachish; no enclosed shrine was found at Beersheba) – centralization desacralized the land sanctified by the ‘high places’ and by ancestral shrines. It justified ideologically prising the peasantry into the forts, severing the old ancestral and customary ties, and securing the relation of the individual or the family to the central authority, instead of to the land. A rural population favoring appeasement was thus subjected to military discipline to prevent defection – as in the case of the garrison at Tel Batashi. A New Model Army, an army of reform, could be brought to bear against rural conservatism in the matter of the ancestors. The same force could be used to co-opt local priesthoods into the state cult. That Pericles faced the same difficulties with less revolutionary measures is clear. The mechanics of Hezekiah’s maneuvers will be the subject of further review below.

 74 For the timing, see Evans, “Judah’s Foreign Policy from Hezekiah to Josiah,” 161–63. 75 B. Halpern, “‘Brisker Pipes than Poetry’: The Development of Israelite Monotheism,” in J.A. Neusner, B.A. Levine and E.S. Frerichs (eds.), Judaic Perspectives on Ancient Israel (Fs. H.L. Ginsberg; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) 77–115. 76 See Evans, “Judah’s Foreign Policy from Hezekiah to Josiah,” 162. 77 Cf. W. E. Clayburn, “The Fiscal Basis of Josiah’s Reform,” JBL 92 (1973) 1–22.

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III. Sennacherib’s Reforms A. Sennacherib at Large The outcome of Hezekiah’s policy was predictable. If centralization was a measure for herding the peasantry into forts, Assyrian invasion was the way to herd them out again. Sennacherib claims to have razed 46 forts and countless suburbs, and exiled 201,500 people, along with all the livestock in the country.78 These allegations deserve more credence than is usually accorded them for a number of reasons, some of which should be elaborated. First, the annals are concessive: they admit that Jerusalem survived; they further stipulate that Hezekiah paid his tribute later, not on the spot, exercising a latitude otherwise unexampled for a defeated vassal. Both elements blemish the victor’s achievement. 79 In fact, the rural spoil and deportations, like depiction of the siege of Lachish in the Lachish Room of Sennacherib’s palace, are offered as a second-rate consolation for a partial failure. The conservative course is to take the testimony seriously. Second, abandoning the countryside invited this kind of devastation, as Pericles, among others, discovered, because devastation is good policy – it taunts the victim to join battle in the field, mobilizes the landed classes to press for submission, and reduces the power of the victim to resist and his resources for resisting aggression. It also demonstrates to potential allies that freedom of maneuver lies with the aggressor.80 Third, for just these reasons, 81 it was Assyrian policy to denude the countryside when conditions forbade access to the ruler in revolt. In the ninth century, for example, Shalmaneser III burnt the region of Hubushkia when its king took refuge in the mountains.82 Again, the population of Bit Adini dispersed at Shalmaneser’s approach; its king, Ahuni, withdrew into  78

Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 32.18–33.27. see J. J. M. Roberts, “Isaiah 33: An Isaianic Elaboration of the Zion Tradition,” in C.L. Meyers and M.P. O’Connor (eds.), The Word of the LORD Shall Go Forth (Fs. D.N. Freedman; Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 1983) 20; A. R. Millard, “Sennacherib’s Attack on Hezekiah,” TynBul 36 (1985) 70–72; H. Tadmor, “Sennacherib’s Campaign to Judah: Historical and Historiographical Considerations,” Zion 50 (1985) 65–80. 80 For the logic of rural devastation as s military tactic, see, for example, Polybius 2.64; 3.90–91: Thucydides 2.11, 14–16; 20; 3.26; 4.83–88; 5.83; 6.15; 8.24. For parallel thoughts among modern strategists, see, e.g. H. Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960) 165–72. For further discussion, see J. Eph’al, “On Warfare and Military Control in the Ancient Near Eastern Empires: A Research Outline,” in H. Tadmor and M. Weinfeld (eds.), History, Historiography and Interpretation. Studies in Biblical and Cuneiform Literatures (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1983) 91–97. 81 Cf. Saggs, “Assyrian Warfare in the Sargonid Period,” 151–54. 82 E. Michel, “Die Assur-Texte Salmanassars III (858–824),” WO 1 (1947) 9.11.9–14. 79

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

359  the security of the capital. So Shalmaneser set about ravaging the landscape. Ahuni had sufficiently spared his manpower next to join a coalition of four powers against Shalmaneser. In a battle at Lutibu, on the border of Sam’al, Shalmaneser failed to destroy the enemy field force, and so leveled the town. Yet, as he advanced westward, the coalition stood, and attracted new accessions. Similarly, Shalmaneser claims to have worked out his frustration on Hamath’s palaces, when decisive victory eluded him at Qarqar (all this in the Monolith, ANET 277–79). He pillaged hundreds of settlements in enemy territory (ANET 279). Similar actions accompanied the escape of Aramu the Urartean.83 Most vividly, Shalmaneser’s unsuccessful siege of Damascus in his eighteenth year (841) led him to lay waste the entire region (ANET 280). Shalmaneser’s tactics survived among Sennacherib’s immediate predecessors. Tiglath-Pileser III may have destroyed some districts to expedite resettlement in Babylonia (as KTP 8.39–41; 42.8–44.10; 58.15–60.22; 62.29–64.36) and punish recurrent revolt (KTP 10.51–521). More often, he devastated districts whose kings had fled (KTP 6.28–8.34: 26.158–28.162; 44.22–46.36; 50.29–52.45; and 14.67–73; 30.173–79, with resettlement), or remained unbowed (10.51–52?). Given the scribes’ poetic hyperbole (KTP 42.8) and departures from chronological sequence to end the reports with a rhetorical flourish of obliteration, we cannot always tell whether Tiglath-Pileser ruined regions during or after a siege (8.39–41) or pursuit (28.162–64). But some descriptions of widespread destruction (as KTP 32.180–83 and following) are silent about the enemy king, suggesting that the core of the army escaped. A graphic passage, of the sort Sennacherib later applied to Hezekiah, explicitly describes Tiglath-Pileser’s siege of Rezin in Damascus and the demolition of his fields and orchards and rural districts (KTP 34.197–36.209); a similar passage attaches to the Sealands (KTP 60.23–25). The tactic is explicitly identified as an incentive to submission: 84 it has this effect, too, on the young Merodach-Baladan (KTP 60.26–62.28). Sargon conforms to the pattern. Deportees’ towns are leveled.85 But Raphia was torn down86 because tactical and strategic logic forbade pursuit of the Egyptian king. The same conditions motivated later demolitions. 87  83

See P. Hulin, “The Inscriptions on the Carved Throne-Base of Shalmaneser III,” Iraq 25 (1963) 63. 84 KTP 10.42; Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 41.11–16; 42.31–43.43 with Saggs, “Assyrian Warfare in the Sargonid Period,” 149. 85 Lie, The Inscriptions of Sargon II, 32.198–201; 8.58–65: cf. Gadd, “Inscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrud,” 183.55–58. 86 Lie, The Inscriptions of Sargon II, 8.55–57. 87 Lie, The Inscriptions of Sargon II, 18.106–108; 66.450–68.451.

360 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  Otherwise, kings who retained strategic resources were prime targets of vandalism, including especially the elusive Merodach-Baladan.88 Sargon’s burning of Izirtu89 might be exceptional; but most likely,90 rural devastation led the rebel to submit to vassalship there.91 The paradigmatic instance evoked a letter to Asshur in praise of the destruction of Musasir, and Sargon’s magnificent dismantling, his systematic obliteration, of the paradisiacal capital of Rusa of Urartu. Sargon’s song was the poetry of cataclysm, and his muse portrays it as a sort of ballet noir.92 The text simply assumes that Rusa’s withdrawal beyond Sargon’s reach had precipitated the destruction of the garden.93 Outside Judah, Sennacherib was also true to type. Unable to capture Merodach-Baladan, he laid waste the southern reaches of Babylonia.94 He burnt the land of the Kassites, then rounded up the fugitive population for resettlement; he imposed the same justice in Elippi, charring the soil as he went, when the king had withdrawn95. And, eluded by his opponents in his fifth and seventh campaigns, he again razed town upon town,96 being frustrated in the latter case only by the onset of winter. In the sixth campaign, he rampaged in Elam – where Chaldean refugees had established a base – before the Elamite king met him in the field.97 Assyria found a variety of uses for rural marauding as fewer antagonists offered open battle. Esarhaddon marauded to secure unconditional sur 88

For Sargonic devastation of other kings’ territories, see F. Thureau-Dangin, Une relation de la huitième champagne de Sargon (714 av. J.-C.), (Textes cuneiforms du Musée du Louvre 3; Paris: Geuthner, 1912) 14.80–16.90: Winckler, Die Keilschrifttexte Sargons I, 106.47: 148.25–26; Lie, The Inscriptions of Sargon II, 22.131–24.133: 34.208–211; Lie, The Inscriptions of Sargon II, 30.184–191, with Scythian-type tactics; Winckler, Die Keilschrifttexte Sargons I, 110.68–70. For Babylonia, where Sargon’s frustrating failure to lay hold of Merodach-Baladan determined his policy, see Gadd, “Inscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrud,” 186.50–62; Lie, The Inscriptions of Sargon II, 40.262–44.282 with 50.332–337, 62.9–10, 64.7–8 and note the scorched earth policy of 50.11–13. 89 Lie, The Inscriptions of Sargon II, 14.87. 90 See Winckler, Die Keilschrifttexte Sargons I, 104.41–42 and the parallel case of Mita, 126.149–128.153. 91 Lie, The Inscriptions of Sargon II, 18.108–109 92 Especially C. Zaccagnini, “An Urartean Royal Inscription in the Report of Sargon’s Eighth Campaign;” cf. A. L. Oppenheim, “The City Assur in 714 BC,” JNES 19 (1960) 133–47. 93 Lie, The Inscriptions of Sargon II, 24.139–28.165; Thureau-Dangin, Une relation de la huitième champagne de Sargon (714 av. J.-C.), esp. 200–32. 94 Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 52.34–54.53: 35.59–70. 95 Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 58.23; 59.27–30. 96 Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 35.75–38.31; 39.6140.80. 97 Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 38.44–46.

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

361  render.98 But Sennacherib’s activity in the Judahite countryside is entirely in character. Hezekiah was insulated in the capital, and Sennacherib maintained forms by reducing as much of the country as time and his troop strength allowed. Hezekiah had invited destruction, and it was a matter of Assyrian honor that the invitation be taken up. If the king and ruling classes could not be got at, the rest of the land had to go. Fourth, deportation was the highest form of devastation, and Sennacherib was a master of both, as Oded has documented.99 He executed a resettlement identical in magnitude, of 208,000 Babylonians, in the first campaign. This figure may reflect some, but not great exaggeration. A sample of 5,000 indicates that twenty-five per cent or less were males of an age to do service (ABL 304), which means that Sennacherib claims to have acquired roughly 50,000 workers. How the figures were reckoned – to include casualties, or elements reseated locally – is opaque. But the number is not inflated by a factor even of, say, four (or the sample of 5,000 is ten per cent of the total). Tiglath-Pileser III claimed to have exiled 155,000 people from the Sealand, Sargon 90,000 from Bit-Yakin. Sennacherib’s claim, even if bloated, is in line with the other figures.100 Survey evidence, though somewhat dirigible, puts the nadir of Babylonian demography in just this era.101 Fifth, neo-Assyrian sums of western deportees are otherwise realistic,102 and are corroborated by archaeological results103 or later events. 104 Assyrian logistics capable of sending 30,000 Samarians to the east or their replacements westward could service a pipeline, given time, for 200,000 cap 98

R. Borger, Die Inschriften Asarhaddons Königs von Assyrien (AOB 9; Graz: E. Weidner, 1956) 104–105.11.1, 16, 33–35. 99 Oded, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, 21. 100 Cf. J. A. Brinkman, “Babylonia under the Assyrian Empire, 745–627 B.C.,” in M.T. Larsen (ed.), Power and Propaganda. A Symposium on Ancient Empires (Mesopotamia 7; Copenhagen: Akademisk, 1979) 227; for a list of over 1,200 Aramaeans, see Parker, “Administrative Tablets from the North-West Palace, Nimrud,” 40. 101 J. A. Brinkman, Prelude to Empire. Babylonian Society and Politics 747–626 B.C. (Occasional Publications of the Babylonian Fund 7; Philadelphia: University Museum, 1984) 10. 102 See Oded, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, 20–22, 31–32, 37–38. 103 For the Galilee, see Z. Gal, The Settlement of the Lower Galilee (ASOR Dissertation Series; Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 1992) 7.3, where the figure of 13,520 deportees is shown to correspond to a realistic density of 30 persons/dunam. 104 For Samaria, see J. Eph’al, “Israel: Fall and Exile,” in A. Malamat and I. Eph’al (eds.), The Age of the Monarchies: Political History (World History of the Jewish People 4.1; Jerusalem: Massada, 1979) 185–88 and 190 on Israelites in exile; especially. Na’aman, “Population Changes in the Land of Israel in the Aftermath of the Assyrian Deportations.”

362 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  tives.105 Why, then, single out the figure for Judahite captives for scorn? And what possessed Sennacherib to invent the curious number, 200,150, instead of a round (and therefore rough) figure? Exaggeration has been isolated in blanket remarks about exiling ‘everyone’ but has never been proved in relation to specific figures.106 Any suggestion of fanciful invention must itself be contrived.107 Sixth, Sennacherib was erecting a new capital in Nineveh at the time, and drew enormous quantities of labor from the west. 108 Westerners manned the naval force of the sixth campaign, much of it unskilled labor.109 This is not to mention projects outside the capital,110 including the Asshur temple (in a town freed from corvée), or field force requirements.111 Sennacherib’s appetite for manpower was voracious, and the high pitch of his deportations reflects his need.112 Seventh, deportation had created population imbalances in the empire. Where Sennacherib settled Judahites, as distinct from earlier exiles, is not transparent. 113 The Rassam cylinder speaks of allocations of Judahites  105

Oded, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, 52; Lie, The Inscriptions of Sargon II, 12.75; Gadd, “Inscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrud,” 179.21–24: Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 76.102–103. 106 Despite Oded, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, 20– 21, n.5. In the case of Rost, Die Keilschrifttexte Tiglat-Pilesers III, 79–83, the continuation shows that the exaggeration is metaphoric, not literal. 107 As H. Sauren, “Sennachérib, les Arabes, les déportés Juifs,” WO 16 (1985) 80–99. 108 Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 95.71; 104.54–56. 109 Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 73.57–64 and 86.23–87.24. 110 As Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 58.24; 59.32. 111 See Brinkman, “Babylonia under the Assyrian Empire, 745–627 B.C.,” 242, n.28; idem, Prelude to Empire. Babylonian Society and Politics 747–626 B.C, 17–22, 52; ABL 304. 112 See Oded, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, 90; H. Tadmor, “Assyria and the West: The Ninth Century and its Aftermath,” in H. Goedicke and J.J.M. Roberts (eds.), Unity and Diversity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975) 40–42. 113 For an Israelite (Nadbiyau) in Assyria in 709, see ADD 234. For attempts to locate Judahites, Eph’al, “Israel: Fall and Exile,” 190–91; Barnett, “The Siege of Lachish,” 161–62 (with a depiction of Judahites in Sennacherib’s guard); R. Zadok, The Jews in Babylonia during the Chaldean and Achaemenian Periods (Haifa: Haifa University, 1979) 35–38; S. Stohlmann, “The Judaean Exile after 701 B.C.E.,” in W.W. Hallo, J.C. Moyer and L.G. Perdue (eds.), Scripture in Context II (Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 1983) 167–68. Note further ADD 148, where a loan contract from c. 660 involves grain measured in a GIŠ-BAR ša mat Ia-ú-di (the lender A-du-ni-পa-a, either Adoniyah[u] or Adonihay, presumably from Judah, the borrower Atarsuri); B. Parker, “Economic Tablets from the Temple of Mamu at Balawat,” Iraq 25 (1963) 91, with a mIa-u-da witnessing a contract on 1 Ab 687 (limmu of Sennacherib); BT 105.11.

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

363  among all the districts and cities of the empire;114 for economic exploitation, a grave concern, 115 populations needed to be reshuffled along with provincial boundaries (2 Kgs 18:31–32). Having suffered far-reaching deportations under Tiglath-Pileser and Sargon as well as Sennacherib, Babylonia must have been experiencing a crying need for cultivators,116 and in 701 Sennacherib may have planned to locate Judahites there: a neoBabylonian demographic resurgence 117 presumably reflects the influx of deportees to replace those Assyria removed in the late eighth century. Such a policy under Sennacherib would account for seemingly prescient predictions of Mic 4:10 and 2 Kgs 20:17–18 118 about exile to Babylon, which were later interpreted to refer to the events of 597–586 (as in 2 Kgs 20:19), and which some modern scholars consequently excise as secondary. Indeed, were a Judahite population already established in Babylonia, the rapid assimilation and economic success of the exiles of 597 and 586 would find an easy explanation. 119 In any case, the neo-Assyrian empire could easily have digested the deportees from Judah of which Sennacherib speaks. Eighth, whatever drove Sennacherib to leave Judah before consummating his victory may itself have demanded additions to his labor reserves. In any case, it was essential for Sennacherib to provide against a fresh renewal of the revolt, and a Hezekian assault on communications with the West. This concern is reflected in Sennacherib’s assignment of Hezekiah’s ‘towns that I plundered’ to Philistine city-states. Regular deportations to Samaria – under Sargon, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal – may also reflect a continuing nervousness about Judah. So whether Sennacherib sent 200,000 Judahites eastward, or allotted some to Philistia (repopulating Ekron?),120 rural depopulation was a way of purchasing insurance against  114

Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 61.60. Oded, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, 67–74. 116 As Stohlmann, “The Judaean Exile after 701 B.C.E.,” 173–74; later, ABL 942. 117 R. McC. Adams, A Heartland of Cities: Surveys of Ancient Settlements and Land Use on the Central Floodplain of the Euphrates (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) 177. 118 Cf. Stohlmann, “The Judaean Exile after 701 B.C.E.,” 170–74. 119 Note Zadok, The Jews in Babylonia during the Chaldean and Achaemenian Periods, 78–79. 120 For deportees to Philistia, see Naveh, “Writing and Scripts in the Seventh-Century BCE, Philistia;” but cf. A. Kempinski, “Some Philistine Names from the Kingdom of Gaza,” IEJ 37 (1987) 20–24; for the possibility of deportees from Israel at Ekron, see S. Gitin, “Tell Miqne-Ekron: A Type-Site for the Inner Coastal Plain in the Iron Age II Period,” AASOR 49 (1989) 49; idem, “Incense Altars from Ekron, Israel and Judah: Context and Typology,” Eretz Israel 20 (1989) 59*–64*. Stohlmann (“The Judaean Exile after 701 B.C.E.,”) argues that a period of delay intervened between capture and deportation (as 2 Kgs 18:31–32), and that not all the Judahites who were captured (201,500) 115

364 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  immediate upheaval on the Egyptian border: leaving a rebel state without taking the capital was a novel experience, though an Elamite winter later reproduced it.121 Sennacherib could not discipline the ruling classes, rout the flower of their army, or even raze their major fortress, leaving only a headless population (as he chose to do at Ekron). Exiling the population was an intelligent alternative. Sennacherib, so excellent in resettlement, will have adopted it. Ninth, as an estimate of the rural population of Judah, 200,000 is far from being inappropriate. Thus, Samaria, long cut off from resources outside the Ephraimite hills, after a successful siege by Shalmaneser V, yielded a haul of almost 30,000 exiles to Sargon (who replaced them) in 720. Sennacherib claims to have despoiled 46 walled towns, 4,351 people per fort on average. Mesha, comparably, claimed to have taken 7,000 Israelites in Nebo (KAI 181.14–17);122 Sargon removed 9,033 people from Raphia in 720. These were not the towns’ standing populations. Rather, they reflect an emergency concentration of the outlying areas (cf. 1 Sam 11:1 in 4QSama; Josephus).123 This was a corollary of abandoning the countryside to the aggressor – as the king of Elam did once Sennacherib loosed his raiders in the seventh campaign, 124 and as Pericles did in the face of Spartan land power.125 An average of 4,000 people per enclosure, combining town and rural population, falls within the realm of reason.126 A mass grave at Lachish, in fact, contained the burnt, disarticulated bones of some 1,500 war dead in a pile 1.3 meters high (Tomb 120), and other tombs contained emergency burials from the same period, of up to 500 corpses (T. 107, 108); animal bones, including pig, were strewn across the tops of the  were necessarily deported. He bases this conclusion in part on the Rassam cylinder, where the formal notice of deportation (Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 61.60) is separated from that of the capture. However, the record of deportations is also placed after Hezekiah’s messengers and tribute arrive in Nineveh. The section is substantively, not chronologically, ordered, relating the division of spoils, not their initial acquisition. This does not, however, reduce the likelihood that some captives were sent to Philistine towns, others further abroad, and some to Assyria. 121 Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 39.61–41.11, noting the capital’s evacuation. 122 Cf. F. M. Cross, “The Ammonite Oppression of the Tribes of Gad and Reuben: Missing Verses from 1 Samuel 11 Found in 4QSamuela,” in H. Tadmor and M. Weinfeld (eds.), History, Historiography and Interpretation (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1983) 154. 123 Cf. Cross, “The Ammonite Oppression of the Tribes of Gad and Reuben.” 124 Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 40.1–41.5. 125 Thucydides 2.13–16, 65. 126 Note G. Barkay, “Jerusalem as a Capstone City,” in S. Bunimowitz, M. Kochavi and A. Kasher (eds.), Settlements, Population and Economy in the Land of Israel in Ancient Times (Tel Aviv: Institute for Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, 1988) 125.

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

365  piles. 127 This reflects Israelite losses, as Assyrian bodies will have been recovered after each engagement and buried properly away from the mound. Allowing that the number of adult male casualties128 equates with even half the adult male population, a conservative estimate of the population of the fortress in the emergency runs to around 12,000. This is probably low. Total population estimates based purely on archaeological samples are necessarily crude: they do not reflect fluctuations in the construction of upper stories, in the average density of settlement, squatter and woodframe construction (as Thucydides 2.14, 52), and so on. Some idea of the complexity of these calculations can be had from the work of Shiloh and Stager.129 Nevertheless, Israel in the eighth century came as close to carrying capacity as at any time before the Roman period. Since Hezekiah had seized land and people from Philistia (Gath, and towns from Ekron, Ashdod and Gaza), Sennacherib’s total is immune from gross ridicule. Indeed, evidence of marked depopulation will be adduced below. B. Sennacherib’s Judah Tenth, Sennacherib’s figure of 46 walled towns compares well to the physical evidence. It is not realistic to expect that Assyria leveled every town. Yet, neither will excavation determine which towns fell and which did not: some will have surrendered to threats and blandishments, others to shortages; still others (Batashi III) suffered local breaches, not general destructions. Sennacherib takes care not to say that he fired the remains – his reticence dovetails with the claim that he redistributed much of Hezekiah’s domain to Ashdod, Ekron, Gaza, and, in one text, Ashkelon.130 Hoping to cement these vassals’ loyalty, he will have spared the local architecture, where appropriate. Under the circumstances, a regional enumeration of ‘walled towns’ is indicated. There should be no dispute that Assyria ravaged the northern approaches to the capital, and, though some scholars link it to other events,131 Isa  127

O. Tufnell, Lachish III. The Iron Age (London: Palestine Exploration Fund, 1953) 193–96; D. L. Risdon, “A Study of the Cranial and Other Human Remains from Palestine Excavated at Tell Duweir (Lachish) by the Wellcome-Marston Archaeological Research Expedition,” Biometrika 31 (1939) 99–166. 128 At 45–50% based on Risdon, “A Study of the Cranial and Other Human Remains from Palestine,” 103–104. 129 Y. Shiloh, “The Population of Iron Age Palestine in the Light of a Sample Analysis of Urban Plans, Areas and Population Density,” BASOR 239 (1980) 25–35; and L. E. Stager, “The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel,” BASOR 260 (1985) 21. 130 Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 70.29–30; 33.30–34. 131 See Stohlmann, “The Judaean Exile after 701 B.C.E.,” 159–60, n. 40.

366 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  10:28–32 (with 9–12 sites) furnishes a notional itinerary – in a context directly concerned with the return of Israel’s exiles from Asshur to Davidic sovereignty (10:20–27 [10:26–27 referring to 9:3–5]; 11:10–16). lmlk stamps are well represented in this region. At two sites, Gibeon and Tell en-Nasbeh, excavators saw no signs of a 701 destruction.132 However, at Gibeon, in a large cut, the uppermost level contained pottery of the Tell Beit-Mirsim-A2/Ain-Shems-IIc horizon, 133 implying marked contraction after 701. Na’aman has shown that the rock-cut pool, with 75 lmlk handles in its silt, went out of use in 701; the stepped tunnel represents the next phase of occupation on the site.134 Tell en-Nasbeh is more confused.135 Here, there was no Babylonian destruction; but the early phase of stratum I, poorly isolated, yielded numerous lmlk stamps and ceramic and other parallels to Beit Mirsim A2.136 And, even apart from those in the fill of which lmlk handles were found,137 a profusion of cisterns fell into disuse in the early seventh century.138 Probably, Tell en-Nasbeh was depopulated in 701, before the late phase of Stratum I, a conclusion sustained by McClellan’s demonstration that Stratum II, 139 with its eighth-century pottery, is identical with the early phase of Stratum I. Any Assyrian levee striking south from the province of Samerina passed this site, and will have reduced it to secure logistical links with the north.140 Subsequently, en-Nasbeh may have become the southern border of Samaria, as it was in the ninth century; this would explain why it  132 J. B. Pritchard, Gibeon Where the Sun Stood Still (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962) 161; McCown, Tell en-Nasbeh, I, 151–53. 133 See J. B. Pritchard, Winery, Defenses, and Soundings at Gibeon (Museum monographs; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum, 1964) 44–45. 134 Na’aman, “Population Changes in the Land of Israel in the Aftermath of the Assyrian Deportations,” 74, n. 29. 135 T. L. McClellan, “Town Planning at Tell en-Nasbeh,” ZDPV 100 (1984) 53–54. 136 McCown, Tell en-Nasbeh, I, 156–159, 160, 183, 246. 137 McCown, Tell en-Nasbeh, I, 130–32. 138 See McCown, Tell en-Nasbeh, I, cisterns 320, fig. 27B, esp. 19, 20, 29, 30, and Assyrian ware; 368, fig. 29B.33, 10; 370; 139, fig. 30A–C, and cf. the jugs in Wampler and McCown, Tell en-Nasbeh, I, 18, comparable to Ain Shems IIc; 176, fig. 25A–B (esp. B:8.10, 14): 183, p. 132; 191, fig. 25C: 3,4; 285, fig. 26A–B: 304, p. 168, with Assyrian ware, pl. 26D.33: 325, pl. 27C–D, as at Lachish III: 363, fig. 28D. 29A, with eighth– seventh-century forms. Note that, if it had not already been replaced by the later gate, the early gate must have gone out of use at this time. The single lmlk jar handle found at Bethel (Eshel, “A lmlk Stamp from Bethel”) does not necessarily imply Hezekian activity there. 139 McClellan, “Town Planning at Tell en-Nasbeh,” 55. 140 Note Na’aman, “Sennacherib’s Campaign to Judah and the Date of the LMLK Stamps,” 76.

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

367  was later elected by the Babylonians as the administrative centre of Judah – it had remained quiescent during Jerusalem’s revolts in 605–586. Similar problems surround the reconstruction of events at Tell el-Ful. Here, the pottery of Fortress IIIA has been correlated to Beth Zur III and Ain Shems IIc, both at 701,141 but also to Lachish II, Ein Gedi V, and Ramat Rahel VA, all of which fell in the sixth century. 142 However, there were gaps in occupation before and after Fortress IIIA, and the later fortress, IIIB, contained lmlk stamps, as well as rosettes.143 IIIB, then, may be a seventh-century rebuild of a ruined Hezekiah fortress (IIIA). Inadequate stratification and publication forbids any secure conclusions;144 but if the identification of el-Ful with Gibeah of Saul is maintained,145 texts such as Isa 10:29 demand an eighth-century occupation. Ramat Rahel VB was also destroyed, and reoccupied by Assyrians: here, lmlk stamps and associated ware appear below the Assyrian ‘palace ware’ that seems to mark the seventh century.146 The Assyrian goblets, as Na’aman has observed, belong to the last phase of VA, and the beginning of VA therefore logically coheres, at the latest, with the period of Assyrian

 141

See below, and Aharoni and Aharoni, “The Stratification of Judahite Sites in the 8th and 7 Centuries BCE.” 142 N. Lapp, The Third Campaign at Tell el-Ful: The Excavations of 1964 (AASOR 45; Cambridge, Ma: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1981) 82–83. 143 L. A. Sinclair, An Archaeological Study of Gibeah (Tell el-Fûl) (AASOR 34–35 (1954–1956); New Haven, Ct: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1960) 32–35; idem, “An Archaeological Study of Gibeah (Tell el- Fûl),” BA 27(1964) 59. 144 See I. Finkelstein, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1988) 57. 145 As W. F. Albright, Excavations and Results at Tell el-Fûl (Gibeah of Saul) (AASOR 4 (1922–23); New Haven, Ct: Yale University Press, 1924) 28–43. 146 Y. Aharoni, Excavations at Ramat Rahel. Seasons 1959 and 1960 (Rome: Centro di studi semitici, University of Rome, 1962) 40–41, 51: Na’aman, “Sennacherib’s Campaign to Judah and the Date of the LMLK Stamps,” 71–73; cf. G. D. Pratico, “A Reappraisal of Nelson Gleuck’s Excavations at Tell el-Kheieifeh,” American Schools of Oriental Research Newsletter 6 (March, 1982) 9; Aharoni, Excavations at Ramat Rahel. Seasons 1959 and 1960, 59–60; idem, Excavations at Ramat Rahel. Seasons 1961 and 1962 (Rome: Centro di studi semitici, University of Rome, 1964) 123–24; Y. Aharoni, “The Citadel of Ramat Rahel,” Archaeology 18 (1965) 20 for the view that the Assyrian ‘palace ware’ is a late local imitation, leaving VA late and VB, and the lmlk stamps in Josiah’s reign – in support of Lance, “Royal Stamps and the Kingdom of Judah;” Holladay, “Of Sherds and Strata,” 266–67. th

368 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  domination under Hezekiah and Manasseh.147 The destruction of the earlier phase, VB,148 is most sensibly attributed to Sennacherib.149 With Isa 10:28–32 attesting a line of march fanning out down the spine of the hills north of Jerusalem, there is thus a case to be made out that Sennacherib encountered a large number of settlements in the region. How many were counted as ‘fortified walled cities’ is unsure. But to link up with the contingents in the Shephelah, and to impair Hezekiah’s communications with the Shephelah and Philistia, this cohort had also to seize the roads leading west. Towns commanding such routes included Gibeon, Khirbet el-Burj, 150 Beth-Horon, Ayyalon, Shaalbim, Khirbet Kefira, Qiryath-Yearim and Chesalon. A count of fifteen sites north of the capital is conservative. How far east the Assyrian army extended itself is unclear. The force moving south through Michmash took control of the main roads to Jericho.151 No fortified centers were to hand in the region. Smaller settlements offered targets for forage and gratuitous destruction. The central arena of Sennacherib’s assault was the Shephelah. Here, Lachish III shows how assiduous he was.152 The destruction of this Level was followed by a gap in settlement that may have lasted half the century; tombs of a hundred years’ standing suddenly go out of use.153 Other defensive concentrations included Zorah, Eshtaol. Zanoah, Azekah, Sochoh, Adullam, Tell Judeideh, Tell Bornat, Maresha, and perhaps Yarmut, where Iron II is not yet attested (further Mic 1:9–15. with Moreshet Gath and a royal centre at Achzib [for storejar manufacture?]154). Gezer, to judge from the 32 lmlk stamps found there, also passed from Assyrian (or Samarian or

 147 Na’aman, “Sennacherib’s Campaign to Judah and the Date of the LMLK Stamps,” 72. 148 On which see Y. Yadin, “The ‘House of Baal’ in Samaria and in Judah,” in Eretz Shomron. 30th Archaeological Convention (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1973) 62. 149 Na’aman, “Sennacherib’s Campaign to Judah and the Date of the LMLK Stamps.” 150 M. Kochavi (ed.), Judaea, Samaria and the Golan: Archaeological Survey 1967– 1968 (Jerusalem: Carta, 1972) 186. 151 See A. Mazar, D. Amit and Z. Elan, “‘The Border Road’ between Michmash and Jericho and the Excavations at ণorvat Shilha,” Eretz Israel 17 (1983) 236–50. 152 D. Ussishkin, “The ‘lmlk’ Store Jars and the excavations at Lachish,” Qadmoniyot 9 (1976) 63–68; idem, “Excavations at Tel Lachish – 1973–1977,” TA 5 (1978) 38, 51–53, 63–74. 153 As T. 1002 – Tufnell, Lachish III, 229–36. 154 Note Na’aman, “Sennacherib’s Campaign to Judah and the Date of the LMLK Stamps,” 74.

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

369  Gittite) to Judahite hands, before its reconquest.155 Nor is Gezer the only town controlled by Assyria to succumb to Hezekiah’s ambition between 712 and 703. Its fate had also overtaken Ekron and Gath, which Sargon had secured along with Gibbethon,156 all at Assyria’s expense: The status of Gibbethon in 701 has not been ascertained, the site not having been identified with any certainty. But it must have been near Gezer, and if the identification with Tel Melat is maintained, must be envisioned as being in Hezekiah’s hands. In other words, between 712 and 703, Hezekiah systematically undid what Sargon had achieved in northern and central Philistia. The excavators date the fall of Tell ‘Eton to 750, but report a history of settlement after the period uncovered in their soundings.157 However, it is certainly possible that ‘Eton fell in 701, given the history of Tell Beit Mirsim and Tell Halif: the absence of lmlk ware on the site need not provoke remark, given the scarcity of this ware in the southern Shephelah and the limited area excavated at Tell ‘Eton; the latest elements in the pottery repertoire have their closest parallels at Lachish III and Arad X–VIII, both ending in 701 or thereabouts. Halif VIB (with one lmlk stamp) suffered a violent destruction in 701. The same is true of Beit Mirsim A2 (four lmlk impressions), and the more important Beth Shemesh IIc.158 At Beth Shemesh, nineteen lmlk handles and a sealing of Elyaqim the servant of Yo/awchin accompany a major olive processing industrial centre that is probably to be attributed to the eighth century.159 The fall of Beth Shemesh is a premise both of the increase in deer consumption below, at Batashi, and of the industrialization of seventh-century Batashi and Ekron (see below). Some of the destruction layer attributed by the excavators to IIb may  155 See EAEHL 2.428–443; J. Eph’al, “Assyrian Dominion in Palestine,” in A. Malamat and I. Eph’al (eds.), The Age of the Monarchies: Political History (World History of the Jewish People 4.1; Jerusalem: Massada, 1979) 180–91. 156 M. N. el-Amin, “Die Reliefs mit Beischriften von Sargon II. in Dûr-Sharrukîn,” Sumer 9 (1953) 35–37; Reade, “Sargon’s Campaigns of 720, 716 and 715 B.C.,” 99–102; further below. 157 Ayalon, “Trial Excavation of Two Iron Age Strata at Tel ‘Eton.”; Zimhoni, “Iron Age Pottery of Tel ‘Eton and its Relation to the Lachish Tell Beit Mirsim and Arad Assemblages.” 158 Aharoni and Aharoni, “The Stratification of Judahite Sites in the 8th and 7th Centuries BCE.” 159 E. Grant and G. E. Wright, Ain Shems Excavations. V (Haverford: Haverford College, 1939) 75–84; for industrial-scale olive processing in an analogous position inland from the northern coast during the eighth century, see Z. Gal, “A Phoenician Fort at ণorvat Rosh Zayit,” in Highlights of Recent Excavations 15 (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 1990); further, D. Eitam, “Olive Oil Production During the Biblical Period,” in M. Heltzer and D. Eitam (eds.), Olive Oil in Antiquity. Israel and Neighboring Countries (Haifa: University of Haifa, Israel Oil Industry Museum and Dagon Museum, 1987) 23–25.

370 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  in fact have pertained to the stratum in question, and there were hints of destruction in IIc itself.160 However, the real evidence for the fall of Beth Shemesh is the history of the olive-processing industry, which passed decisively into the hands of Ekron after 701 (below): it is of course possible that Sennacherib captured the town without overmuch violence. Further south, Judah’s hegemony stretched out toward the plain, embracing Ekron, carried by fifth columnists, and Tell Batashi III, carried by assault,161 possibly domestic (below). Gath was under Hezekiah’s sway,162 recovered, like Ekron 163 and Ashdod’s territory, after Sargon’s siege. 164 Ashdod’s weakness created a power vacuum drawing both Judah and Ashkelon in. And of former Israelite possessions on the Philistine border, Hezekiah had apparently acquired Gezer and, probably, Gibbethon (above). According to 2 Kgs. 18.8, Hezekiah controlled lands from Gath to Gaza (which need not imply conquest of Gaza), suggesting he also played an active role in placing Sidqa on the throne in Ashkelon.165 He may have refortified Tell ‘Erani IV; but the destruction is not yet securely dated,166 and certainly must await the publication of B. Brandl’s re-evaluation. This collocation raises the question whether Sennacherib reckoned some of the towns on the plain, such as Eltekeh, as Judaean. In any event, Hezekiah will also have assumed control of Tell Zayit, and, outside Lachish, Tell Hesi 167 and Tell Najila. 168 The region thus contained upward of twenty forts to which Sennacherib will have addressed his attentions. The Negev did not altogether escape the furor.169 Tel Beersheba II was leveled, 170 and it was leveled after the implementation of Hezekiah’s  160

Grant and Wright, Ain Shems Excavations. V, 13–14, 73. G. L. Kelm and A. Mazar, “Tel Batash (Timnah) Excavations. Second Preliminary Report (1981–1983),” in W. Rast (ed.), Preliminary Reports of ASOR Sponsored Excavations (BASORSup 23; Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 1985) 104–103. 162 Na’aman, “Sennacherib’s ‘Letter to God’ on His Campaign to Judah,” 26–27. 163 El-Amin, “Die Reliefs mit Beischriften von Sargon II. in Dûr-Sharrukîn,” 37–40. 164 As Lie, The Inscriptions of Sargon II, 249–62. 165 This would account for Sennacherib’s relative leniency there, Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 30.60–31.68. 166 S. Yeivin, First Preliminary Report on the Excavations at Tel ‘Gat’ (Jerusalem: The Gat Expedition, 1961) 6–10. 167 R. W. Doermann and V. M. Fargo, “Tell el-Hesi, 1983,” PEQ 117 (1985) 1–24; for a late eighth-century Phoenician name at the site, lsmk, possibly evidence of Assyrian deportation, A. Lemaire, “Notes d’épigraphic nord-ouest sémitique,” Sem. 35 (1985) 13–17. 168 S. Bülow and R. A. Mitchell, “An Iron Age II Fortress on Tel Nagila,” IEJ 11 (1961) 101–10. 169 See above, and, generally, Na’aman, “Sennacherib’s Campaign to Judah and the Date of the LMLK Stamps,” 74–75. 161

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

371  reform. 171 It is not plain how Aroer 4 fared: 172 only recently built, it required extensive rebuilding in the seventh century,173 and two lmlk stamps were found at the site.174 The excavators now lean toward a late dating; as the next layer reflects Assyrian influence, though, their original dating, which would equally square with Na’aman’s hypothesis of a Sargonic context, was probably correct.175 At Tel Malhata, there may have been contraction after the eighth century on the lower, southern part of the tell;176 but in the seventh century the resettled site flourished, establishing trade links with Edom and the Mediterranean. Before a similar expansion, there are signs of an outpost at Tel Ira; and a small settlement existed at Bir aSaba.177 Further south, the Middle Fortress at Qadesh Barnea may have fallen; but it is doubtful whether Assyrian armies ranged quite so far without making themselves felt around Eilat.178 Outside Beersheba, then, only Arad VIII shows unmistakable signs of a major conflagration, after considerable refitting at the end of the eighth century. 179 And here, the two stratified lmlk impressions, from stratum VII, must have arrived in the aftermath of the Assyrian destruction (whether under Sargon or Sennacherib), or, conceivably, a slightly later attack from the south. This is perhaps also true of the stamped handle at Kh. Gharreh. In all, these regions offered something on the order of forty walled towns as potential targets. How many surrendered cannot be determined. The pattern of Assyrian tactics contradicts the assumption that more than a  170 Y. Aharoni, Beer-Sheba I (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1973) 56; cf. Yadin, “Beersheba: The High Place Destroyed by King Josiah,” 5–14; Aharoni and Aharoni, “The Stratification of Judahite Sites in the 8th and 7th Centuries BCE,” 83. 171 Aharoni, “The Horned Altar at Beersheba.” 172 See A. Biran and R. Cohen, “Aroer, 1976,” IEJ 26 (1976) 139–40. 173 A. Biran and R. Cohen, “Aroer, 1978,” IEJ 28 (1978) 197–99. 174 A. Biran and R. Cohen, “Aroer,” IEJ 25 (1975) 171. 175 For Na’aman’s hypothesis of a Sargonic context, Na’aman, “Hezekiah’s Fortified Cities and the LMLK Stamps,” 13–14; see A. Biran, “Tel Ira and Aroer in the Last Days of the Kingdom of Judah,” Cathedra 42 (1987) 30–32. 176 M. Kochavi, “The First Season of Excavations at Tel Malhata,” Qadmoniyot 3 (1970) 22–24; idem, “Tel Malhata,” RB 79 (1972) 594. 177 Herzog, in correspondence. 178 See G. D. Pratico, “Nelson Glueck’s 1938–1940 Excavations at Tell el-Kheleifeh: A Reappraisal,” BASOR 259 (1985) 1–32. 179 Mazar and Netzer, “On the Israelite Fortress at Arad;” cf., however. Z. Herzog, “The Stratigraphy of Israelite Arad: A Rejoinder,” BASOR 267 (1987) 77–79; J. S. Holladay, “Religion in Israel and Judah under the Monarchy: An Explicitly Archaeological Approach,” in P.D. Miller, P.D. Hanson and S.D. McBride (eds.), Ancient Israelite Religion. Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) 256–57.

372 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  few were bypassed.180 Some targets, such as Halif and Beit Mirsim, seem strategically marginal; but these may have figured in a flanking movement (below). Furthermore, there is evidence that Sennacherib penetrated the hill country as well. Three sites he assaulted lay on the verges of the hills – Halif, Beit Mirsim, and Beth Shemesh. Inside the hills, he reduced Khirbet Rabud, probably Debir.181 The action against Rabud makes strategic sense as a maneuver to turn the Shephelah line from the south, a maneuver dictating assaults on Beit Mirsim, Halif and, if it was occupied at the time, Tel ‘Eton. Such a thrust can only have been made with great circumspection and the systematic obliteration of garrisons on the path – for the hills were a region of great vulnerability to a marching field force. But even if contained south of Hebron, the invaders will have had contact with Duma, Adoraim, Eshtemoa, Khirbet Fuqeiqis,182 Khirbet el-Marajim183 and several other forts. The thrust toward Hebron may even have met with success. The excavations at Beth Zur, north of Hebron, produced few stratified remains. However, the preponderance of the published ceramic assemblage from stratum III184 appears to belong on the 701 horizon, with parallels at Lachish III, Beth Shemesh IIc and Tell Beit Mirsim A2.185 All the stratified pottery, including that beneath the only evidence of destruction uncovered in the excavations, is in this category.186 Beth Zur was occupied in the seventh century as a station on the Jerusalem–Hebron road. It may, nevertheless, have been resettled, perhaps chiefly in the citadel, on the ruins of a larger, eighth-century site.187 The case of Khirbet Rabud documents a tactical interest in the western slopes, and the virgate watershed, of the Judaean hills. Even if frustrated, this inroad would function as a feint, diverting resources from the Shephelah toward  180

See also Saggs, “Assyrian Warfare in the Sargonid Period,”151–54 M. Kochavi, “Khirbet Rabûd = Debir,” TA 1 (1974) 12–18. 182 Kochavi (ed.), Judaea, Samaria and the Golan: Archaeological Survey 1967– 1968, 65. 183 Kochavi (ed.), Judaea, Samaria and the Golan: Archaeological Survey 1967– 1968, 66. 184 Together with 11 lmlk stamps; Welten, Die Königs-Stempel, 90–91. 185 As O. R. Sellers, The Citadel of Beth Zur (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1933) 42, pl. 9.12, 14; P. Lapp and N. Lapp, “Iron II – Hellenistic Pottery Groups,” in P.W. Lapp (ed.), The 1957 Excavations at Beth-Zur (AASOR 38; Cambridge, Ma: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1957) 57, 59, 61–64, as fig. 15; 16.13–24; 19.13, 14; note N. Lapp, The Third Campaign at Tell el-Ful: The Excavations of 1964 (AASOR 45; Cambridge, Ma: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1981) 82–83. 186 Sellers, The Citadel of Beth Zur, 37, 39 fig. 32, with the ring-burnished bowls: and, 42, pl. 9, the hole-mouth jars. 187 For the view that the site continued undisturbed, see Na’aman, “Hezekiah’s Fortified Cities and the LMLK Stamps,” 6. 181

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373  the centre. If successful, it will have cut all effective communications between Jerusalem, in the north, and the Shephelah, preventing flight while Sennacherib, having sealed off the northern access roads188 and then struck inland, rolled up the Shephelah from the south (2 Kgs 19:8; Mic 1:10–12, 13–15). It will also have severed Jerusalem’s lines of supply from the southern hills, the Negev, and Egypt. Most important, the settlement survey of Judah now being conducted by Avi Ofer indicates a low point in hill country occupation after 701, before resettlement in the seventh century. That the Assyrians, then, should have reduced five to ten towns in the hill country is not too much to imagine. And the figure of forty-six walled towns is therefore probably on the mark. That Hezekiah found it necessary to stock so many garrisons is a sound indicator that his demographic resources were substantial. Should we reduce Sennacherib’s captive count even by half, the result would be an average of 2,174 persons per fortress, or roughly 540 adult males. For a country in a state of emergency urbanization, this seems to fall on the low side. Sennacherib’s own figure (4,351 persons, 1,080 adult males per fort) would suggest that Judah’s general staff exercised a more sensible economy of scale.

IV. The Countryside Reformed A. The Depopulation of Judah On the record, then, Sennacherib left the countryside in ruins, and there is corroboration. Most obvious, if subject to the most dispute, are literary references. 2 Kgs 18:13, for example, makes the unusually clear, detailed statement that “Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them”. This ratifies explicitly the claims of the Assyrian annals, avoiding, like the annals, the claim of widespread property destruction. The verse is the more remarkable in that, in Kings, reports of campaigns that reached the capital usually omit or play down the foregoing action in the countryside. It is worth mentioning that the summary of 2 Kgs 18:13 also corroborates Sennacherib’s claims about the size of Hezekiah’s tribute (18:14),189 although it does seemingly place the payment of tribute before the fall of Lachish (18:16; cf. 19:8); 18:13–16 may be part of a reconstruction of the  188

Na’aman, “Sennacherib’s ‘Letter to God’ on His Campaign to Judah.” For Sennacherib’s figures of 30 gold and 800 silver talents, 2 Kgs 18:14 has 30 (OG 300) gold and 300 silver talents. It is highly possible that the figure ‘thirty’ was applied mistakenly by the scribe to the quantity of silver as well (cf. the OG figure for gold, clearly displaced from MT’s similar figure). 189

374 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  campaign – in two stages – so as to accommodate both the domestic tradition (2 Kgs 18:17–19:37; Isa 14:24–27, dated to 701 in Mettinger, In Search of God, 139), possibly derived from a dedication (cf. KAI 202, where the agent of salvation is that of 2 Kgs 13:5), and the evidence from the Assyrian annals and the reliefs at Nineveh (cf. ADD 148 in 660). In this case, the text has little value as an independent witness; still, the report that Sennacherib destroyed ‘all the fortresses’ (not 46) in Judah matches the archaeological as well as the annalistic picture. This same assertion has brothers in contemporary literature, not least in Isaiah’s efforts to portray a devastated hinterland and the spared Jerusalem as an imprimatur on Hezekiah’s reform (Isa 1:7–9, 24–31; 2:5–11, 20; 3:1– 4, 13–17. the ‘daughters’ not just suburbs, but all villages subordinate to Jerusalem, and women; 4:3, etc.). That Sennacherib’s marauding was Yhwh’s judgment on the rural cult (as well as government corruption) will have been the view of Hezekiah’s ideologues at large (as Mic 1:13; 5:9– 13; Isa 1:11–17), whose attacks on the cult (cf. Hos 8:11–14) lie at the heart of the policy of centralization.190 In fact, events in the countryside led to a prophecy that the countryside would be repopulated from the one population centre still left – Jerusalem (Isa 37:30–32, where 37:32c reflects Isa 9:6c, and 37:30–31, Isa 9:2). Hezekiah’s prophets used the fate of the hinterland in much the same way they had used the fate of the northern kingdom191 – as a judgment on others, justifying their own political programs. Of such non-historiographic references to the events of 701, Isa 1:7–9 stands out.192 After excoriating the nation as sinners (the survivors in Jerusalem are called “captains of Sodom, people of Gomorrah” in 1:10), the prophet relates:

 190

Shaw proposes instead to link such texts to a hypothetical revolt of the countryside against Jerusalem during the Syro-Ephraimite War under Ahaz, the hinterland towns joining in the Aramean revolt against Tiglath-Pileser III; C. S. Shaw, “Micah 1:10–16 Reconsidered,” JBL 106 (1987) 223–29. But in the first place, it is Sargon, not TiglathPileser, who styles himself ‘subduer of Judah.’ In the second, the author of Kings would have been pleased to relate a history of secession under Ahaz, a king whom he condemns roundly. For the view that the Syro-Ephraimite War never occurred, cf. R. Bickert, “König Ahas und der Prophet Jesaja. Ein Beitrag zum Problem des syrischephraimitischen Krieges,” ZAW 99 (1987) 361–84; but this is extreme, and is based on the assumption that the two allies, Damascus and Israel, did not act in concert because only Arameans are mention in Kings. 191 See T. N. D. Mettinger, In Search of God. The Meaning and Message of the Everlasting Names (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) 140–41. 192 A. Alt, Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel. II (Munich: Beck, 1953) 242.

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375

 Your land is desolation, Your towns are burnt with fire. Your soil, before you, aliens eat her, And she is desolation like the overthrowing of aliens. There remains the daughter of Zion, Like a booth in a vineyard, Like a lodge in a cucumber-patch, Like a town preserved. Had Yhwh of Hosts not left us a tiny remnant, Like Sodom would we be, Gomorrah we would resemble.

Zion’s lonesome survival among the smoldering shambles of a people (cf. also Isa 2:12–22; 3:24; 6:9–12) corresponds to one historical situation only – That reported in Sennacherib’s annals, and expressed in 2 Kgs 18:13 (all the forts captured). The Isaianic concept of a ‘remnant’ repopulating Judah is actually a picture of the return of those sheltering behind the walls of the capital to the surrounding land in the wake of Sennacherib’s departure. That an earlier event, the Syro-Ephraimite War, could be the subject of this discourse is refuted by three considerations: first, the object of the Syro-Ephraimite coalition was to install a new dynasty (Isa 7:6) in Judah to face Assyria, so the preservation of the indigenous population and architecture will have been a paramount consideration; second, Sennacherib alone can be said to have denuded Judah, turning it over to aliens, to the point at which Jerusalem’s survival was a singular phenomenon; and, Isaiah’s articulated posture on the Syro-Ephraimite threat was specifically that it was nugatory, and would be superseded by more serious Assyrian inroads (Isa 7:5–17; 8:5–8). Isaiah thereafter applies similar imagery to the capital (as 4:3), speaking of the countryside as shaved bald (3:16–17, a reference to the hilltop settlements of the Judahite hills), as abandoned (5:5–7; 6:13), as ‘flooded’ with a flood to be evaded only in the capital (28:15, on which see Halpern, “‘Brisker Pipes;’” cf. Mic 1:9). The 701 campaign is in point (as Isa 5:26–30), and Jerusalem is the only fortified centre Sennacherib’s marauders failed to place under siege.193 Similar implications emerge from 2 Kgs 19:28–32, where it is only Sennacherib’s taunt of Jerusalem that provokes Yhwh’s wrath, and where the resettlement of the countryside will be accomplished only by the Jeru-

 193 Further, see Vogt, Der Aufstand Hiskias und die Belagerung Jerusalems 701 v. Chr., 90–94; cf. A. van der Kooij, “Das assyrische Heer vor den Mauern Jerusalems im Jahr 701 v. Chr.,” ZDPV 102 (1986) 93–109.

376 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  salemite ‘remnant’. This tradition, however late,194 is a product of Hezekian party thinking after the event. Moreover, passages and imagery similar to those in Isaiah recur in Micah, such as a section promising the rehabilitation of Judah through the depopulation of the countryside (5:9–13 after 5:1–8; cf. 7:13) – surviving the Assyrian assault ushers in a period of eschatological purity and prosperity.195 That is, the Hezekian interpretation of the 701 campaign seems to have been that Assyria was the ‘rod of [Yhwh]’s anger’ until it independently turned on Jerusalem (as Isa 10:5– 34; cf. Mic 4:8, 11–13 with 5:1–5, as Isa 10:24 with 11:1–11). This view leaves the status of the countryside ambiguous: was Sennacherib’s campaign a tangible divine judgment on the rural cult?  194 See R. R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980) 213–219; the argument on the resemblance of Hezekiah’s to later prayers discounts the impact of modeling. 195 Mic 1:2–4:7 concern Judah (1:5, 9; 3:10, 12; 4:2, 7), and Assyrian depredation, as in Israel, is at issue. Micah’s prediction (3:12) of Jerusalem’s destruction was located in this context no more than a century later (Jer 26:18–19) – again, the reference is to destruction, not a Syro-Ephraimite takeover; a second prediction, of exile to Mesopotamia, comes in 4:10, probably a part of the same literary unit. So, 1:10–16 allude to Shephelah destructions, 1:9 expressing the fact that the devastation reached as far as Jerusalem. Cf. also 2:8, 12–13. The ‘captains’ of Sodom of Isa 1:10 (and 3:6, 7; 22:3) may be related to the ‘captains’ of Mic 3:1, 9 given the term’s infrequency (only six other occurrences). Note further the relationship of Mic 4:14 (mentioning the Assyrian siege: cf. 5:4–5) to Isa 10:24, and of Mic 5:1 to Isa 11:1 (and various passages in Micah, such as 3:1–3; 6:7– 8, to Isa 1:10–17). The superscriptions of Micah and Isaiah both employ the phrase, ’šr ‫ۊ‬zh ҳl... wyrwšlym. Mic 1:2 and Isa 1:2 invoke heaven and earth as witnesses. Mic 1:6–9 and Isa 1:5–9 speak of the devastation of the land up to Jerusalem, and both blame the judges (Mic 3:1–4, 9–12; Isa 1:21–23). And both speak of the refinement of Jerusalem effectively by suffering (Mic 3:12 before 4 after 2:33 Isa 1:18–20, 24–31). On Mic 1:10– 16 as a possible parallel to Isa 10:28–32 in 701, cf. C. S. Shaw, “Micah 1:10–16 Reconsidered,” JBL 106 (1987) 223–29, with the argument that rejoicing in the Shephelah reflects Jerusalem’s comeuppance in the Syro-Ephraimite War; but Micah’s words about rejoicing are probably ironic, as he announces the exile of the Shephelah. And Isaiah (2:2–4) and Micah (4:1–3) speak in identical terms of the necessity of returning from a war-time to a peace-time standing, in a word, of retooling (D. Armstrong, “The Excluded Middle: Hezekiah and the Leaders of the Lineages,” unpublished seminar paper at York University, 1989). Essentially, Micah and Isaiah 1–5; 9–12; 28–33 are in close agreement, and relate mainly to the events of 701. Isa 14:24–27, holding that Assyria was broken in Yhwh’s land, has been related to 701 by Mettinger (In Search of God, 139). It seems to announce the end of Assyrian political ascendancy and to promise, later, an end to its economic demands (v. 25, taking the ‘yoke’ as political, and the ‘load’ as economic, but this is notional). If so, it would be inappropriate much after 701. Nor is it unrelated to the earlier Isa 9:3; 10:27. These texts seem to be a keystone of the ‘miracle tradition’ of Hezekiah’s escape, which may in turn have required the later historian of Kings to reconstruct a double-campaign.

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377

 A second indication of rural depopulation is physical: fallow deer became a staple at Tel Batashi in the seventh century,196 where it was previously insignificant. In one household, for example, it represents thirteen per cent of the animal detritus. This change reflects unrestricted access to the hills, now, along with Tel Batashi, part of the hinterland of Ekron.197 The quantity of deer in the sample suggests that the consumers at Batashi were experiencing no competition from other deer hunters. Predators, chiefly human, were so depleted in the Shephelah and western hills that game could become a reliable component of the diet. The implication is that a vast preponderance of the hills population had been deported (and much competing livestock, as Sennacherib claims).198 Third, after the invasion, Sennacherib assigned substantial portions of Judah to Philistia. His early inscriptions (the Rassam cylinder, The Oriental Institute Prism) report that he assigned the cities he had plundered to Ashdod, Ekron and Gaza; the Nineveh Bull inscription adds Ashkelon (with its new pro-Assyrian regime) to the list.199 Ekron, the easternmost of these towns, bears witness to the process. Beth Shemesh, as noted above, showed signs of industrialization in connection with olives in the eighth century.200 In the seventh century, however, Tel Miqne (IB), with 102 olive processing installations, 88 of them technically advanced, 201 almost completely absorbed the Shephelah olive processing industry, with a capacity of 1.1 million liters per year. Ekron also developed an impressive wine production capacity (eight presses located to date), and was probably home to a major textile center 202 – Ekron’s textiles, too, may have flourished in the absence of serious competition for resources by Judah and several other Philistine centers. 203 Sec 196

Wapnish and Hesse, “Philistine/Israelite Animal Use in Iron Age Canaan.” So N. Na’aman, “The Negev in the Last Days of the Kingdom of Judah,” Cathedra 42 (1987) 14, n. 21 against A. Mazar, “Between Judah and Philistia: Timnah (Tel Batash) in the Iron Age II,” 321. 198 Cf. Isa 5:5–6; A. Kempinski reports that fallow deer multiplied in the same region after 1948. 199 Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 33.30–34; 70.29–30. 200 Grant and Wright, Ain Shems Excavations. V, 75–84. 201 D. Eitam, The Oil Industry in the Iron Age at Tel Miqne (Jerusalem: Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University, 1985); T. Dothan and S. Gitin, Tel Miqne-Ekron. Summary Report of the 1986 Excavations (Jerusalem: Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University, 1986) 8. 202 T. Dothan and S. Gitin, “The Rise and Fall of Ekron of the Philistines: Recent Excavations at an Urban Border Site,” BA 50 (1987) 215–218. 203 Cf. Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 60.56; H. Tadmor, “Philistia under Assyrian Rule,” BA 29 (1966) 86–102: a substantial portion of Hezekiah’s tribute was paid in textiles. 197

378 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  ondary reuse of discarded olive processing equipment in stratum IB at Ekron may suggest a shrinking capacity as against the earlier IC.204 However, it is equally probable that the decline in production during the midto-late seventh century at Ekron is to be correlated with the resurgence of Judah. Its repatriation and nucleation of the olive processing industry, and a simultaneous increase in Judah’s southern trade, diverted supplies away from the Mediterranean: the kings of Judah in the seventh century will have wanted desperately to recapture cash crops such as olives to put themselves on a sound financial footing (see further below). With these accumulations came an unexampled prosperity: Ekron grew fat by siphoning off the olives, and the viticulture, of the western declivities; these were no longer intercepted by the Shephelah towns of Judah. Ekron availed herself of vast new markets opened up to her by the empire, 205 burgeoning from a sleepy village into a sprawling town of fifty acres. Judaean pottery on the site 206 may mean that Sennacherib contributed human as well as commercial resources to Ekron’s floruit;207 it surely signals the flow of goods from the mountains to the markets – the markets not just among Assyria’s vassals, but also in the developing trade network of the Mediterranean basin unfurled in the seventh century by Phoenician mercantile resources. Ekron in particular developed a large and rich elite district (Area IV), in which East Greek pottery and Assyrian palace ware, as well as jewelry hoards, beautifully carved ivories and inscriptions, have been found.208 Numerous ostraca bearing dedications to Asherah, and one reading ‘to the sacred precinct’, though not yet published, along with seven altars, attest that the elite area was home to a flourishing cult.209  204

First uncovered in 1990 excavations, Gitin, in conversation. Note N. Na’aman, “The Negev in the Last Days of the Kingdom of Judah,” Cathedra 42 (1987) 10–11; S. Gitin, “Incense Altars from Ekron, Israel and Judah: Context and Typology,” Eretz Israel 20 (1989) 52*–67*. 206 Dothan and Gitin, Tel Miqne-Ekron. Summary Report of the 1985 Excavations, 5; Dothan and Gitin, Tel Miqne-Ekron. Summary Report of the 1986 Excavations, 8. 207 Gitin, “Incense Altars from Ekron, Israel and Judah: Context and Typology,” adduces evidence of deportation from Israel to Ekron. 208 S. Gitin, “Tell Miqne-Ekron: A Type-Site for the Inner Coastal Plain in the Iron Age II Period,” AASOR 49 (1989) 23–58. 209 The association of Asherah with trees (usually palms) makes her association with the olive industry at Ekron the more piquing: it may be that as Asherah gives suck to the gods, she is naturally associated with the production of liquids. Incense altars are also found in the processing area, one room closer to the street than the presses: it is thus possible that Asherah was invoked in the preparation of nourishment for the other gods. However, the burning of incense is regularly associated in Israelite (reformationist) literature with homage to gods inferior to Yhwh called baals and asherot/ashtarot, which are generic names for Israelite gods and goddesses (styled foreign in Josianic literature, but 205

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

379

 That is, Judahite centers no longer stood between the benefits or highlands agriculture and the coastal plain. Further, between Ekron and the Shephelah centers, increased deer consumption (above) and a (growing?) olive industry at Batashi corroborate the inference.210 This situation – the hills and Shephelah countryside utterly denuded, the fat places preyed upon by aliens, Hezekiah’s castle and environs alone spared the torch – is the one to which Isa 1:7–9 makes such poignant reference. Overall, texts, archaeology, military history and the historiographic background of the annals all converge on what Sennacherib tells us. It is possible, as older scholars contended, that Hezekiah’s reform was a retrojection to a king favored by Yhwh of a policy adopted by Josiah.211 Or perhaps Hezekiah made a virtue of necessity, and promulgated centralization in Sennacherib’s wake. But most likely, Hezekiah’s reform was in preparation for revolt.212 Hezekiah had been waiting for Sennacherib. He suppressed rural cults (further below), whether first excepting those in the forts (as Arad VIII;213 on Lachish, Mic 1:13), or including them (Tel Beersheba II, above). If gar-

 see Halpern, “‘Brisker Pipes than Poetry;’” cf. Akk. ilu, ištarƗte). If Asherah (mention of whom is still restricted to ostraca found in the elite areas) was the object of the incense offerings (or first fruits of the presses) in the industrial zone, we would have at Ekron the first reflex of the theology against which Israel’s reformationist literature is railing. In this case. Gitin’s demonstration (“Incense Altars from Ekron, Israel and Judah: Context and Typology”) that incense altars of a type formerly found in Israel and Judah appear only in Ekron in the 7th century may well indicate an adoption or at least socialization, as he claims, of Israelite folk religion at the site. This would not be altogether inconsistent with the occurrence of the Phoenician (or Aramaic?) name, ‫ۊ‬mlk (A)himelek (cf. [A]hiram), on the site (but written in Aramaic script!). However, the incense altars at Arad may be 7th-century, D. Ussishkin, “The Date of the Judaean Shrine at Arad,” IEJ 38 (1988) 142–57. Note, in any case, that the situation at Philistine Ekron in the seventh century establishes the basis for later associations of Demeter with the Philistine coast. As to other gods at Ekron, an ostracon uncovered in 1990 reads ‘holy to ‫ۊ‬q..š’ (another reads, ‘holy to Asherah’), a divine name possibly from a dialect related to that of the patronymics (?) found in the ostraca from Tel Jemme (Naveh, “Writing and Scripts in the Seventh-Century BCE, Philistia”). This would tend to sustain Kempinski’s views on the Jemme ostraca. 210 Kelm and Mazar, “Tel Batash (Timnah) Excavations. Second Preliminary Report (1981–1983),” 104–107; A. Mazar, “Between Judah and Philistia: Timnah (Tel Batash) in the Iron Age II,” Eretz Israel 18 (1985) 310–11. 211 As J. Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel (Cleveland, Oh: Meridian [=2nd ed; Berlin: G. Reimer, 1883], 1965) 46–47, 480–81; latterly, L. K. Handy, “Hezekiah’s Unlikely Reform,” ZAW 100 (1988) 111–15. 212 H. H. Rowley, “Hezekiah’s Reform and Rebellion,” BJRL 44 (1962) 395–431. 213 Y. Aharoni, “Arad: Its Inscriptions and Temple,” BA 331 (1968) 26–27.

380 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  rison temples were initially exempted,214 subsequent events led Hezekiah’s exponents to disown them. In any case, Hezekiah herded the free peasantry under arms into points of military concentration. The Chronicler, who either reconstructs or has information about the preparations in Jerusalem (2 Chr 32:2–6), preserves echoes of this policy (32:27–29) without recognizing its strategic or cultic linkage (cf. 32:30). Rosenbaum has argued that the Chronicler had access to reliable sources concerning Hezekiah.215 This argument and the reflection of Hezekiah’s countryside policies without a sense of their integration into a broader political program, tend to reinforce one another. Sennacherib and Hezekiah between them left the Judahite countryside ravaged. Jerusalem therefore quadrupled in size, reaching a population on the order of 25,000. 216 Outside of the bloated capital, and its immediate dependencies, little manpower could have been available for resettlement – a reality reflected in the concept of repopulation from Jerusalem that Isaiah advanced (above). Sennacherib established an Assyrian military presence in the Shephelah (as Gezer217), near Jerusalem (the ware at Tell en-Nasbeh and Ramat Rahel218), and in the plain, guarding the routes inland toward Arabia (as Tell Jemme and the enormous fortress inland at Tel Haror, in sight of Jemme and, to the east, of Tel Sera’ [where a seventh–sixthcentury bone scepter parallels others found in Jerusalem and at Ekron]). An Assyrian entrepot, founded in the mid-eighth century by Sargon, and enduring into the fifth century, particularly flourished at Ruqeish:219 Assy 214 Here, much turns on the treatment of the altars of Arad VIII; note Holladay, “Religion in Israel and Judah under the Monarchy,” 256–57, esp. Ussishkin, “The Date of the Judaean Shrine at Arad;” on incense altars, Gitin, “Incense Altars from Ekron, Israel and Judah: Context and Typology.” 215 J. Rosenbaum, “Hezekiah’s Reform and the Deuteronomistic Tradition,” HTR 72 (1979) 24–43; see also B. Halpern, “Sacred History and Ideology: Chronicles’ Thematic Structure – Intimations of an Earlier Source,” in R.E. Friedman (ed.), The Creation of Sacred Literature. Composition and Redaction of the Biblical Text (Near Eastern Studies 22; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981) 35–54. 216 M. Broshi, “The Expansion of Jerusalem in the Reigns of Hezekiah and Manasseh,” IEJ 24 (1974) 21–26; Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem, 26–60; M. Broshi and G. Barkay, “Excavations in the Chapel of St. Vartan in the Holy Sepulcher,” IEJ 35 (1985) 111–19. 217 S. Spieckermann, Juda unter Assur in der Sargonidenzeit (FRLANT 129; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982) 141. 218 Cf. van der Kooij, “Das assyrische Heer vor den Mauern Jerusalems im Jahr 701 v. Chr.” 219 E. Oren, N. Fleming, S. Kombergg, R. Geinstein, and P. Nahshoni, “A Phoenician Commercial Center on the Egyptian Border,” Qadmoniyot 19 (1986) 83–91, identifying it with Sargon’s ‘sealed quay of Egypt’; cf. R. Reich, “The Identification of the ‘Sealed kƗru of Egypt,’” IEJ 34 (1984) 32–38.

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

381  ria employed Philistia as its central marketing agency, for Egypt, for the southern trade, and for the sea-lanes of the Mediterranean. Its strategy seems to have been to privilege the inland centers (Ekron, Haror) in order to retain control over the direction of resources to gateway sites (ports), and thus to determine their economic fates without engaging in siege operations proper: revolts by coastal sites were particularly dangerous, as supply by sea could protract operations for years. Indeed, it was in reaction to Assyrian expansionism that Phoenicia began to reach out toward the western Mediterranean in the first place, starting in the ninth century, creating an artificial hinterland on which to draw for resources. Sennacherib assigned rural Judah to Ashdod and Gaza, which remained loyal, and to loyalist kings of Ekron and Ashkelon, whom he restored – and his texts suggest the reallocation embraced the entire hinterland, which may well have been the theory.220 Sennacherib also claims to have plundered all the livestock in the country. Philistia reoccupied the western countryside (as Batashi II); Hezekiah’s manpower focused in the capital. If Sennacherib left some exiles in the vicinity, no significant number remained a part of Hezekiah’s domain. 221 In the circumstances, and given Manasseh’s later standing, we may dismiss the suggestion that Hezekiah later renewed his revolt.222 In sum, Judah entered the seventh century in a state of emergency urbanization. The consequences of this circumstance merit contemplation. Yet to assess the impact of the catastrophe that befell the country, we must subpoena into evidence what can be known about the traditional social fabric of Judah. Only then will it be possible to determine what revolutions in society, in royal policy, and in popular mores the changes of 701 wrought. B. The Traditional Organization of the Countryside Because Israelite kinship terminology is so plastic, the lines between different levels of tribal organization often blur. However, the skeletal structure of the old Judahite kinship system is made visible in several texts, the simplest of which is Josh 7:14–18 (cf. 1 Sam 10:19–21, reading with OG). Here, four segmentary levels are in evidence:  220

Alt, Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel. II, 242–49; cf. Na’aman, “Sennacherib’s Campaign to Judah and the Date of the LMLK Stamps,” 83–86; idem, “Hezekiah’s Fortified Cities and the LMLK Stamps,” 17. 221 Cf. Stohlmann, “The Judaean Exile after 701 B.C.E.,” 161, for the view that many fugitives eluded Sennacherib and returned home on his departure. 222 W. H. Shea, “Sennacherib’s Second Palestinian Campaign,” JBL 104 (1985) 401– 18; C. Begg, “2 Kings 20:12–19 as an Element of the Deuteronomistic History,” CBQ 48 (1987) 27–38.

382 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  a) the tribe – usually referred to as the ma‫ܒܒ‬eh or šƝbe‫ܒ‬, but sometimes called a bêt ’Ɨb (lit., ‘father’s house’) or mišpƗ‫ۊ‬â; b) the clan, or, better, patriclan – called the mišpƗ‫ۊ‬â or, at times, the bêt ’Ɨb – in its military incarnation this may be referred to as the ’elep, or ‘thousand’,223 as in 1 Sam. 10.19; c) the extended family, or household – bayit (‘house’), bêt ’Ɨb (or bêt PN); d) the individual adult male – gbr, usually married. Thus, in Josh 7:14–18, sortition singles out the tribe of Judah, from among all the other tribes; within the tribe of Judah, the clan of Zerah is distinguished. Zerah is reviewed by ‘individuals’, the ‘house’ of Zabdi being selected. This entity is then paraded by ‘individuals’, and Achan the son of Karmi the son of Zabdi is chosen – an adult male with sons and daughters and his own establishment (7:24), all of whom share his own fate. In a brilliant study of the Israelite family, L. E. Stager has attempted to locate kinship units in the ground, specifically in the housing patterns of Iron Age villages.224 Stager focused attention on the housing compounds, consisting of several houses butted one against the other, that occur in Iron I villages. Though local practice may have varied,225 texts consistently indicate the predomination of patri-virilocal marriage and patrilateral inheritance. The compound, then, reflects the practice of married sons building houses abutting their father’s and brothers’ homes. The practice persists in modem Arab villages in Israel. Examples are reasonably abundant at small sites in the Iron Age, into Iron II at such sites as Tell Beit Mirsim (A2),226 Beth Shemesh, and even some larger towns, such as Tell en-Nasbeh and Tell el-Far’ah.227 It is not to be presumed that such compounds were universal, as Wilson has observed on the basis of the excavations at Tel Masos.228 Rather, they  223

G. E. Mendenhall, “The Census Lists of Numbers 1 and 26,” JBL 77 (1958) 52–66. Stager, “The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel,” 17–21. 225 See J. R. Goody, Comparative Studies in Kinship (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969) 120–46. 226 Especially, Albright, The Excavation of Tell Beit Mirsim. III, pl. VII. 227 For which see R. de Vaux, “Les Fouilles de Tell el-Farah près Naplouse,” RB 62 (1955) 575–89, pl. VI; A. Chambon, Tell el-Far’ah. I. L’Age du fer (Paris: ADPF, 1984) 24, plan III, 149B, 161, 163, 410A, 436, plan V, 362, 366, 336. 228 R. R. Wilson, “Enforcing the Covenant: The Mechanisms of Judicial Authority in Early Israel,” in H.B. Huffmon, F.A. Spina and A.R.W. Green (eds.), The Quest for the Kingdom of God: Essays in Honor of George E. Mendenhall (Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 1983) 62–63; see V. Fritz and A. Kempinski, Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen auf 224

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

383  attest a form of kinship organization that often, but not necessarily always, articulated itself in architectural abutment. Other factors entered in, such as limitations of space, defense, urban planning, and so on.229 Still, whether consisting of adjoining houses, or houses in a single, spatially-defined area, the compound deserves investigation. Stager concluded that the compound is at most that of an extended family, which would represent maximally some 25–40 individuals. The maximum number of abutting houses seems to be about five, with fewer more the role. Assuming that the compound originates as an extended family unit, it is essentially a (patri)lineage, whose members can prove their common descent. The main house, that of the lineage founder,230 may have figured in reckoning the double-inheritance of eldest male heir (Deut 21:17), either as a double-portion of itself, or as a second house to be appropriated in the compound (as opposed to the single house of each of the younger brothers). In any event, the location of ovens at sites such as Tell Beit Mirsim A2 NW in common courtrooms or in alleys accessible to all units of a compound231 indicates that at least some aspects of household economy were shared – minimally, fuel preparation and cooking, and maximally the main meals. Similarly, Deut 25:5 provides for the levirate ‘when brothers live together’: the widow should not be sent ‘outside’. Plainly, the brothers are married, which implies that each has his own establishment. And that the eldest son of the levirate should ‘arise in the name of [the levir’s] dead brother’ (Deut 25:6) suggests that, to preserve the son’s inheritance, the widow may typically have remained in possession of her husband’s house – ideally, in polygamous households, wives occupied separate suites in any case (Rachel and Leah, for example, have separate tents, and this remains Bedouin practice today). But the principal point is, the text assumes that the brothers remain in the same compound – whether in abutting houses or in a single, defined neighborhood. The institution of the levirate, then, in  der ‫ۏ‬irbet el-MšƗš (TƝl MƗsǀs) 1972–1975 (2 vols; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1983) 7– 91; we might add I. Finkelstein, ‘Izbet Sartah, An Early Iron Age Site near Rosh Haҵayin, Israel (BAR International Series 299; Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1986), among others. 229 See Y. Shiloh, “The Casemate Wall, the Four-Room House, and the Beginnings of Planning in the Israelite City,” in S. Bunimowitz, M. Kochavi and A. Kasher (eds.), Settlements, Population and Economy in the Land of Israel in Ancient Times (Tel Aviv: Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, 1988) 145–65. 230 See, e.g., Finkelstein, ‘Izbet Sartah, An Early Iron Age Site near Rosh Haҵayin, Israel, 15. 231 See now D. S. Vanderhooft, Kinship Organization in Ancient Israel (Unpublished M.A. thesis, York University, 1990).

384 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  its Deuteronomic instantiation (against Ruth 4:3–6), depends on the normalcy of compound construction. Again, in Judg 17:4–5, Micah has a ‘house’, in which he installs a shrine and a priest. This is a separate ‘house of God’, inside Micah’s compound, to which the priest is entitled as though he were one of Micah’s sons (17:11). Several further references – one to Micah’s ‘houses’, one to ‘the house of the Levite lad at the house of Micah’ – make it clear that this is the case (17:5, 11–12; 18:2–3, 13–15). Indeed, when the tribe of Dan as a whole ‘came to the house of Micah, the five men who had gone to reconnoiter the land of Laish answered and said to their brothers, “Do you know that in these houses there is an ephod and teraphim and a carved image and its regalia?” (18:13–15): Micah’s house consists of a number of houses. The ‘houses that were with Micah’s house’ (18:22), whose residents took Micah’s part in a contretemps with the tribe of Dan, have been identified by Gottwald and Stager as those of his compound mates;232 in light of the evidence here, it seems more probable that neighboring compounds are involved. In any case, ‘the house of Micah’ in the account is in fact ‘Micah’s compound’. By the same token, the compound chief in the case of Achan son of Karmi is at best Achan’s grandfather (‘the house’ of Zabdi, Josh 7:18). Although tents, not houses, are the idiom of discourse in this account, the social assumptions are those of Iron Age Israel, and the fact that Achan has his own tent, and household, inside Zabdi’s compound is significant. After the compound, or lineage, scholars generally identify the primary tribal section, the clan (mišpƗ‫ۊ‬â, or primary kinship section) as the next rung on the kinship ladder.233 This may be precipitate. Most texts enumerate between four and eight clans, in general, for each tribe, and no more than six for most234 – the ten-tribe Israel of the Song of Deborah, for example, fields forty clan regiments (Judg 5:8). Judah is always divided into four or five clans. As the Samaria Ostraca attest, the few clans named for Manasseh were indeed the functioning subunits of the tribe – and no clan name unrecorded in biblical genealogies appears in the ostraca. Yet, such  232

N. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250–1050 B.C.E. (New York: Orbis, 1979) 291–92; Stager, “The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel,” 22. 233 C. H. J. de Geus, The Tribes of Israel (Studia Semitica Neerlandica 18; Assen: van Gorcum, 1976); Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250–1050 B.C.E., 257–84; Stager, “The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel,” 20–22; Wilson, “Enforcing the Covenant: The Mechanisms of Judicial Authority in Early Israel,” 63. 234 See Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250–1050 B.C.E., 239–318; B. Halpern, The Emergence of Israel in Canaan (SBLMS 29; Chico, Ca: Scholars Press, 1983) 115–16.

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

385  large units would have been unwieldy tools for managing local political affairs, which is why scholars tend to posit a great number of smaller clans, consisting of a few extended families only – who banded together, not necessarily along descent lines – for common defense and administration. The trouble is, the texts never inform us of such entities. The temptation is therefore to identify the village as an intermediate political unit.235 There is a great deal to be said on behalf of this alternative. Between clan names and patrilineages in Israelite genealogies, we often find the names of regional eponyms, of town eponyms, or of town founders. Of critical importance is the fact that the village is implicitly understood to be a kin-unit, with one founder (as 1 Chr 2:24, 42–55). 236 It is sometimes named for a founder or ancestor.237 It can even be called a ‘mother-unit’ (’Ɲm – 2 Sam 20:19; cf. Ezek 21:26).238 This usage allows a speaker to divide the patriclan into sections, just as discussion of the ‘mother-units’ (’ummФt) of the tribes (Rachel, Leah, Bilhah, Zilpah) subdivides the nation. The urge to categorize regions in terms of matrilineage echoes, too, in the expression ‘daughters’ for small settlements in the hinterland of a larger towns (as ‘daughters of Zion’ for the settlements of Judah). Further, Hebrew usage assumes the consanguinity of village and town residents: settlement names, among other things, are governed by ‘elders’, a term almost always used with kin-units.239 A. Malamat has observed that Jer 3:14, “I will take you one from each village, two from each clan (mišpƗ‫ۊ‬â)”, implies that the clan is larger than the village, but that the village is a unit in the clan hierarchy.240 The genealogical metaphor generally reflects the fact that villages were administrative units. The metaphor is apt, though, because the reality of village life is such that agnatic and affinal ties weld the population together. Simultaneously, an Israelite could have expressed the consanguinity of the ‘clan’ and the even closer coherence of each of two villages by suggesting that a single male was the ancestor of both villages, by different wives.  235 G. E. Mendenhall, “Ancient Israel’s Hyphenated History,” in D.N. Freedman and D. F. Graf (eds.), Palestine in Transition: The Emergence of Ancient Israel (Social World of Biblical Antiquity Series 2; Sheffield: Almond Press, 1983) 91–103. 236 Cf. A. Demsky, “The Genealogy of Gibeon (I Chronicles 9: 35–44): Biblical and Epigraphic Considerations,” BASOR 202 (1971) 19. 237 B. Mazar, “The Early Israelite Settlement in the Hill Country,” BASOR 241 (1981) 75–85; Stager, “The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel,” 23–24. 238 A. Malamat, “UmmƗtum in Old Babylonian Textes and its Ugaritic and Biblical Counterparts,” UF 11 (1979) 527–36. 239 Halpern, The Constitution of the Monarchy in Israel, 196–97. 240 Malamat, “UmmƗtum in Old Babylonian Textes and its Ugaritic and Biblical Counterparts,” 535.

386 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  It is important to recognize that the congruence of the village with a tightly-knit section of a clan was theoretical rather than real. In small settlements, no doubt, denizens were all close relations.241 But in larger villages (small towns and large), various ‘families’ will have been represented. Thus, 1 Chr 2:53 speaks of four mišpƗ‫ۊ‬Фt (‘families’, ‘clans’) occupying Qiryath Yearim, and this will have been the rule rather than the exception (see below on Judges 9). Even the compound will not have reflected kinship bonds in towns where circumvallation limited new construction, where economic constraints dictated the sale of property, or where the accidents of fertility and of gender left housing stock available for disposal. Conversely, where there was a surfeit of male grandchildren, or as a condition of exogamous matches, new compounds might be founded, either within the village or on neighboring hilltops. Thus a village might consist of several extended families (patrilineages), all closely related in accordance with the theory governing Hebrew usage. A town, even on the order of Tell Beit Mirsim (pop. ca. 350, max. 840242) might comprise one or two ‘expanded families’ – that is, combinations of extended families – like the four represented at Qiryath Yearim. These would be local sections usually of one, but perhaps sometimes of more ‘clans’ of the ‘tribe’. Indeed, in the cases of larger settlements, as in the case of shrines (Shechem, Jerusalem), there may even have been a tendency to spring up not just on routes of commerce, but actually at intersections of kin-group territories. The village, in sum, was not the real intermediate kinship entity between the clans and the patrilineages. Rather, local sectors of the clans functioned as the agencies of interhousehold administration. These clan sectors – corresponding to the clans hypothesized by Gottwald, Stager and Wilson – transcended individual compounds. In short, they were much like the Arab village hamula (a word whose use is as plastic as that of biblical kinship terminology), or expanded family – a group of (real or fictional) common ancestry, traced to an eponym, in which all males of one’s own generation are regarded as ibn ‘amm, ‘cousin’, and all males of the older generation are regarded as ‘amm, ‘uncle’. It is a function of their identity with the large clans, and of the plasticity of the kinship terminology (as with ‘hamula’) that we have no lexical reflection of the clan sectors. But the existence of such forms of kinship or 241

So the various genetic defects reflected in D. L. Risdon, “A Study of the Cranial and Other Human Remains from Palestine Excavated at Tell Duweir (Lachish) by the Wellcome-Marston Archaeological Research Expedition,” Biometrika 31 (1939) 99–166, in Lachish. 242 On the coefficient of M. Broshi and R. Gophna, “The Settlement and Population of Palestine During the Early Bronze Age II–III,” BASOR 253 (1984) 42.

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387  ganization finds reflection in a wide variety of texts. Ezra 8, for example, enumerates coherent kin-groups with 28–300 adult males – groups too small to be quarter-tribes, but for the most part too large (ca. 110–1200) to be lineages or compounds.243 In 1 Chr 2:49–55, likewise, clan sectors of Hur – itself a section of the clan, Hezron – populate about eleven villages in Judah (similarly 2:42–45). Yet in some cases a village is said to have been divided among two or more ‘families’ (mišpƗ‫ۊ‬Фt: as 1 Chr 2:43, 52– 54; 4:2, 21). These were operative kin-groups intermediate between the clan and the compound, but not congruent with a whole village. If the Greek is correct (and it probably is) the compound head with the greatgrandchildren in Josh 17:16–18 is in fact the eponym of a clan sector (= Zimri of 1 Chr 2:6). The reference to “the men who were in the ‘houses’ that were ‘with’ Micah’s ‘house’” in Judg 18:22 may presuppose the same social configuration. These men act in concert with Micah against outsiders. However, the awkward formulation does not restrict itself to the lineage, avoiding the simpler, “the men of Micah’s house”, which is what one would expect (given 17:4–5, 12; 18:2–3, 13–15) were the compound alone in issue. And 18:22 stipulates that the ‘men had been summoned (nz’ qw) to muster. The likelihood is that a whole clan sector is in point. Some corroboration can be found in the fact that the Danite spies, too, were lodged “’with’ Micah’s house”, but had to ‘turn aside’ in order to find the Levite serving in the shrine there (18:3). Evidently, they were not lodged inside the compound, but by it – and the “houses that were ‘with’ Micah’s compound” were those other compounds lying in the same vicinity or settlement. Alternatively, the model may be that of a settlement like Izbet Sartah II, where a large manor house was surrounded by more ordinary stock, perhaps the homes of less affluent clan-sector-mates.244 In any event, Dan’s 600 warriors are imagined as cowing, not a group of five adult males, but one of, say, twenty to fifty: Micah’s pursuit (of a group of five Danite ruffians who have been seen skulking about the compound) is not risible to begin with; the literary topos is, he organizes a respectable posse to pursue the five men, and then his posse encounters the main Danite detachment. The operation of a clan-sector, smaller than a town but larger than a compound, underlies Isaiah’s description of men pressing military captaincies on others in their ‘father’s house’ (3:6–7), where the unit presumably exceeds in size an establishment such as the compound, which could pro 243 For another view, not contradictory, see D. L. Smith, “The Polities of Ezra,” (seminar paper for the Society of Biblical Literature consultation on the Sociology of the Second Temple Period; SBLSP; Decatur, Ga; Scholars Press, 1988). 244 See Finkelstein, ‘Izbet Sartah, An Early Iron Age Site near Rosh Ha’ayin, Israel, 15.

388 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  duce only five or so able-bodied adult males. The same implication is even more stark in the case where Abimelek, the pretender to the throne of Shechem in Judg 9:1, lobbies his mother’s natal clan sector (mišpƗ‫ۊ‬at bêt ’abî ’immФ) to support his enthronement. Since his mother’s ‘father’s compound’ can hardly consist of five houses and yet succeed in carrying the town as a whole, one must presume that demographic or other pressure has fissured families off from the compound, leading to the evolution of a multi-compound ‘father’s house’ (bêt ’ab; cf. 2 Sam 9:10, 12), i.e., a primary section of the clan as a whole. To these cases may be added that of a curse on the house of Eli, and on the house of his father, against their ever producing an elder – i.e., a compound head (2 Sam 2:31–32). 245 The curse on the house of Eli himself precludes the establishment of independent households with children in Eli’s compound (lineage, house; cf. 2 Sam 3:29; 7:19, 29). The curse on Eli’s father’s house addresses itself to Eli’s clan sector, not his father’s physical compound (part of which he no doubt inherited): hence the 85 adult males in 1 Sam 22:11, 15–18, far too many for a single compound, and far too few for a fifth of a tribe. In this light, Jeremiah’s (3:14) “one from each village, two from each patriclan” (mišpƗ‫ۊ‬â) may refer to the ‘clan sector’, a body numerically equivalent to one or more villages, or a part of a city. The most vivid illustration of the clan sector at work, however, stems from a hypothetical case in the Davidic Court History. In 2 Sam 14:7, the “wise woman of Tekoa” presents a plea for her suppositious fratricidal son, whose death “all the mišpƗ‫ۊ‬â” demand. Now, the mother’s compoundmates, her son’s paternal uncles and cousins, if any, might be expected to be sympathetic to her, since they must do levirate duty, endangering their own legacies (cf. Ruth 4:6). Yet the deceased husband’s mišpƗ‫ۊ‬â are all for retribution. They are numerous enough to prohibit individual identification (14:7, 10). Against the mišpƗ‫ۊ‬â, the mother offers to bear the guilt herself – with her bêt ’Ɨb. Since the guilt cannot be taken on unwillingly, even unknowingly, to judge from other texts, and since the mišpƗ‫ۊ‬â are trying to avoid guilt by expunging it, not taking it upon themselves, it seems that the woman has introduced a distinction between her husband’s bêt ’Ɨb, the compound in which she resides, and her husband’s mišpƗ‫ۊ‬â, the local clan sector, here standing in for the clan as a whole – which is far too widely distributed geographically to take a hand in justice in a single  245 That the expression, ‘elder of the house of PN’ (2 Sam 12:17: Gen 24:2; 50:7) refers to servants suggests that the compound head alone had the status of an elder in dealings with other compounds, at least in the first generation. Where the father was deceased, however, or even infirm, the situation in less clear: it seems inherently unlikely that one had to leave the compound in order to join in the elders’ deliberations.

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

389  village. This view draws confirmation from the fact that the term mišpƗ‫ۊ‬â is never used to designate a mere extended family, but always refers to the clan sector, or clan, or, metaphorically, the primary section of some larger kinship unit.246 A similar cleavage appears in Judg 6:27, where the clan is Abiezer, but where the local compounds are divided. The clan sector (mišpƗ‫ۊ‬â) enforces justice (2 Sam 14:9): the compound in the instance resists it. C. Community in the Clan Sector In the clan sector, then, one can locate the functioning medium of village and town administration in the countryside. First, it is the local seat of jurisprudence: the elders are probably the compound heads, and these administer justice, with their male dependents, in matters transcending the bournes of the compound. Law codes and narratives sometimes presuppose the congruence of the settlement with the clan sector in juridical contexts, where the elders presided and the male dependents executed sentence (Deut 21:18–21; 22:14–21; 25:5–10; Ruth 4:2, 9).247 But these regulations would serve equally in cases involving more than a single clan sector. 248 No doubt the notional equivalence of clan sector and settlement was reinforced by partial endogamy – statistical distortion in gender distribution in the clan sector’s small population would prohibit a rate much higher than forty per cent – which would minimize the alienation of property. It is no coincidence, after all, that the incest taboos stop short of prohibiting cousin marriage (cf. 1 Kgs 15:2; Gen 24:15; 29:10 [matrilateral crosscousin]).249 Conversely, the same laws effectively prohibit wife-exchange between proprietors of residential units inside the compound in the first generation (Lev 18:6–20; 20:11–12; Deut 27:22; cf. Gen 20:12; 2 Sam 13:12–13): that is, brothers could not wed co-resident half-sisters, aunts or brothers’ daughters. The fact that the incest taboos end just short of prohibiting parallel cousin marriage is an indication that that was the preferred marriage pattern. Schematically, the compound was exogamous (in the first generation) within a clan sector with a preference for endogamy. Similarly, the clan sector is the seat of real estate title. Thus, the ideal ‘redeemer’ is the paternal uncle or cousin, which is to say, a former compound mate (Jer 32:6; Deut 25:5; Amos 6:10). But more distant relations are also eligible to fulfill the role – as Leviticus (25:47–49) and Ruth (2:1,  246

Vanderhooft, Kinship Organization in Ancient Israel. Halpern, The Constitution of the Monarchy in Israel, 199–200. 248 Note Wilson, “Enforcing the Covenant: The Mechanisms of Judicial Authority in Early Israel.” 249 Patrilateral parallel, Goody, Comparative Studies in Kinship, 216–34. 247

390 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  20; 4:4) provide. This customary complex, like that of the ‘blood avenger’ (2 Sam 14:11) presumes cohesion not in the clan, but in the clan sector, otherwise village land could fall permanently into absentee hands, the very eventuality against which the practice of land redemption is directed. The Deuteronomic Levirate, similarly, represents another method of keeping property within the compound. Along with blood claims and claims on the land, the clan sector shared its ancestry. Indeed, ancestry and the common treatment of the ancestors were a language in which claims to property could reliably be lodged. If it is impossible to gauge the size of the clan sectors architecturally – compounds being liable to fracture, and some clan sectors dividing their lodgings across two or more towns or villages (1 Chr 2:52, 54)250 – their size is sometimes expressed through burial customs.251 Most Israelite rock-cut tombs before the seventh century were multichambered. In each chamber, skeletal remains, once the bodies had decomposed, were swept from the burial benches into repositories dug out underneath them. For the extended family (the bêt ’Ɨb), there was no regular need for more than three benches: even if every male for four generations had two male offspring, the tomb would house only thirty adult interments in a century, and fifteen to twenty would be more realistic. Large tombs, therefore, or crowded tombs like those at Tel ‘Ira, express supracompound relationships – the tomb of a great-grandfather is already shared by second cousins, and having the tomb in common would have reinforced solidarity in a group whose effective kinship network reached across the limits of extended families. From this it follows that the clan sector, the hamula, was probably the focus of the ancestral cult. One text illustrates the point: David lakes leave from Saul on the pretext of having an “annual sacrifice of the whole mišpƗ‫ۊ‬â” (1 Sam 20:6). This annual event is restricted to the ‘family’ – it is certainly distinguished from a national festival. But it can hardly be envisioned as a sort of birthday celebration restricted to Jesse’s compound (never denoted, in any case, by the term, mišpƗ‫ۊ‬â ‘primary [tribal] section’: see above). A clan sector celebration, a feast of the ancestors, must be in reference. Indeed, the custom of pouring the blood of one’s sacrifice into the earth (Deut 12:21–24; 15:23; Lev 17:10–14), appropriated early as a rite for Yhwh (Exod 23:18; 34:25; 1 Sam 14:32–35; Deut 12:13–28; Ex 250

See Stager, “The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel,” 20. As S. C. Humphreys, “Family tombs and tomb cult in ancient Athens: tradition and traditionalism,” JHS 100 (1980) 122–23; note J. M. O’Shea, Mortuary Variability (Orlando: Academic Press, 1984) 3–13; M. P. Pearson, “Mortuary practices, society and ideology: an ethnoarchaeological study,” in I. Hodder (ed.), Symbolic and Structural Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) 99–113. 251

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

391  od 29:12; Lev 3:17; 4:7, 18, 25, 30, 34; 7:26–27; 17:10–12; Ezek 33:25), may have originated as an ancestral offering; by the time of P (probably seventh-century), it was understood to preempt ancestral ritual (construed as a communion of eating meat without draining the blood – Lev 19:26 – 32). In any case, the informal sacrifice around which the patrilineal clan sectors gathered was one directed toward the ancestors. Each hamula, then, had property (potentially) in common: stretches of land, modest herds, an altar or two (Judg 17:4 with 18:22; note Judg 6:25– 30, where the clan sector share in Joash’s altar), and one or more benchtombs. 252 The bench tombs housed those to whom the living owed their right to the use of the land. Compound fracture might occur under demographic or exogamic pressures, as extended families fissured into neighboring compounds and sent out tendrils to nearby settlements. Under these pressures, however, the centripetal forces of endogamy, labor exchange, communal property rights and descent, and common cultic and ancestral duties held the local clan sector together. The extended family compound furnished an environment in which three to five generations of each family lived, bred, worked and worshipped together, surrounded by less proximate relations. These realities fostered the doctrine of collective reward, of a god who visits sin on children unto the third and fourth generation (Exod 20:5), which is, on the coresidents of a compound.253 The fourth generation equates to second cousins, perhaps the limit of the extended family, even the linkage across the lines of the extended family within the expanded family. Since Yhwh reserves persecution to the descendants of ‘those who hate him’, of traitors, the punishment represents the utter attainder of all compound-heirs (not necessarily compound-mates, except in the case of a paterfamilias) and the endangering of clan-sector mates. The Israelite inherited the house of his ancestors, the fields of his ancestors, the tools of his ancestors, the gods of his ancestors, and, in the end, the place of his ancestors in the tomb. The continuity between generations was a reality, a grim reality for those whose inheritance was a flotsam of sour grapes. This is the environment that vanished in Hezekiah’s, and Sennacherib’s, reforms.

 252 Cf. J. R. Goody, Death, Property and the Ancestors (London: Tavistock, 1962) 410–12 on the Lo Dagaa. 253 See Malamat, “Longevity;” note, too, ABL 453.13–19.

392 

Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion

V. The Aftermath Hezekiah’s policies created a Judah in which the rural landowners and the clans had been stripped of their power, in which court parties and the standing army were ascendant. The rural priesthoods lost direct access to agricultural revenues as the state took formal control of the cult (cf. 2 Chr 31:15); the state probably underwent a transition from tax farming through priests and settlement heads to bureaucratic tax collection.254 The tradition that Hezekiah registered the priesthoods (2 Chr 31:16–20), though possibly deduced from his registration of the lineages (1 Chr 4:41) in preparation for their concentration in the forts, fits flawlessly into this scheme of things. With the priests and the population under crown control, countryside conservativism could no longer put the brake on royal innovation. Not to underrate the staying power of traditional modes of thought, the eighthcentury elite, amid a growing accumulation of wealth that made itself felt throughout the country,255 had amassed a welter of fresh doctrine, the intellectual explosion of which expressed itself both in Hezekiah’s reform and in the assembly of the first written corpus of classical prophecy. But this is to address the short-lived state of things in Judah before the summer of 701. What of the aftermath of Sennacherib’s spring? The great task confronting Hezekiah’s son, Manasseh, was to recover and resettle Judah. This he did, though the processes by which he did so are more or less opaque to us. The generally infertile wilderness regions of eastern Judah probably never fell under effective Philistine control, and the same may be true of the mountain ridges. In the south, the territorial competitor was not Philistia, but Edom, a power poor in population, and weakened by Assyria’s Arabian campaigns.256 Still, it seems likely that Edomite territorial designs on Judah in the seventh century had their ideological roots in the period when Sennacherib was dismembering Hezekiah’s territory, and Edom was not explicitly included in the feast. On the western hillslopes, Philistia retained control for a longer period. The long gap between the destruction of stratum III and the construction of stratum II at Lachish, the anchor of the Shephelah defensive system and of its southern extension around Tel Erani, Tel Hesi and Tel Nagila, suggests that Jerusalem reasserted its authority over the Shephelah no earlier than the mid-century.257 Correspondingly, the Shephelah remained sparsely set 254

See G. W. Ahlström, Royal Administration and National Religion in Ancient Palestine (SHANE; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1982). 255 E.g. P. J. King, “The Eighth, the Greatest of Centuries,” JBL 108 (1989) 3–15. 256 On which, J. Eph’al, The Ancient Arabs (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984) 81–169. 257 Ussishkin, “The Destruction of Lachish by Sennacherib and Dating of the Royal Judaean Storage Jars;” idem, “Excavations at Tel Lachish – 1978–1983 – Second Prelim-

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

393  tled throughout the century: the painstaking survey of Yehuda Dagan revealed that there were only a few sites, mainly 0.5–1 ha. in size (in correspondence). This is no more than we should expect: so long as Philistia was able to withstand Judah’s inroads, it will have held onto the Shephelah, for military reasons as well as economic. Indeed, some of the Shephelah sites themselves may have been Philistine farmsteads. Nevertheless, Manasseh, under Assyrian supervision, 258 accomplished an astonishing revival. By the late seventh century, almost all the sites destroyed by Sennacherib had been reclaimed. In addition, a line of small settlements was pushed out down toward the Dead Sea at Tel Goren and in the Buqeiah farmsteads259 and at Tel Masos, Tel Ira, Aroer, ণorvat Uzza and Qadesh Barnea, among others, into the Aravah and through the south.260 Manasseh’s resettlement was systematic. Its distribution reflects an interest in cash crops and the spice trade from the south. An Arabian presence in Jerusalem261 indicates a nexus from the south through the capital integrated with the Assyrian trade network Sargon created by locating Arabs in Samaria and Damascus, and secured by Sargonid campaigns in Arabia,262 where Sargon himself installed a trading colony.263 This interest in the southern trade was ongoing,264 and was in some measure both reflected and, one suspects, heightened by Sennacherib’s daring naval campaign in the Persian Gulf, and by the destruction of Babylon in 689. In any  inary Report,” TA 10 (1983) 133–34; only around Jerusalem is the pottery sequence unbroken after 701. 258 Spieckermann, Juda unter Assur in der Sargonidenzeit, 307–16. 259 See F. M. Cross and J. T. Milik, “Explorations in the Judaean BuqƝ’ah,” BASOR 142 (1956) 5–17; L. E. Stager, Ancient Agriculture in the Judaean Desert: A Case of the Buqe‫ޏ‬ah Valley in the Iron Age (PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1975); A. Mazar, “Iron Age Fortresses in the Judaean Hills,” PEQ 114 (1982) 87–109; Mazar, Amit and Elan, ‘The Border Road’ between Michmash and Jericho and the Excavations at ণorvat Shilha.” 260 See the list of settlements in the wilderness district of Joshua 15; Na’aman, “The Negev in the Last Days of the Kingdom of Judah,” 5–6; R. Cohen, “Negev Emergency Project, 1984–1985,” IEJ 36 (1986) 111–12. 261 Y. Shiloh, “South Arabian Inscriptions of the Iron Age II from Jerusalem,” Eretz Israel 19 (1987) 288–94. 262 Tadmor, “The Campaigns of Sargon II of Assur,” 77–78; D. D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia (2 vols; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1926) 2.118; Lie, The Inscriptions of Sargon II, 20.120–22.123; Gadd, “Inscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrud,” 179–80; M. Elat, Economic Relations in the Lands of the Bible (Jerusalem: Bialik and Israel Exploration Society, 1977) 131–38; but note Y. Yadin, “An Inscribed South-Arabian Clay Stamp from Bethel?” BASOR 196 (1969) 37–45. 263 On the identity of which, Reich, “The Identification of the ‘Sealed kƗru of Egypt;’” Oren, et al., “A Phoenician Commercial Center on the Egyptian Border.” 264 See Eph’al, The Ancient Arabs, 112–69.

394 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  event, the centers of southern Transjordan flourished in this era, presumably by mediating the flow of southern goods to various reaches of Assyria’s empire. Over the course of the seventh century, Edom waxed increasingly strong.265 Possibly, its growth was fed by Assyrian deportations.266 At ণorvat Uzza, the seventh–sixth-century onomasticon includes Edomite names:267 there, a seventh-century bulla depicts Sin of Harran,268 suggesting an Aramean presence in the vicinity, quite possibly to the south, in Edom proper. Edom expanded up to the borders of southern Judah, even erecting a temple at ণorvat Qitmit.269 Only the resurgence of Babylon at the end of the century initiated a period of decline. Judahite interest in southern goods was equally strong and equally natural, which is why royal projects on the Red Sea are a staple theme in the books of Kings. Earlier, Ahaz had submitted to Tiglath-Pileser in order to avert or reverse the loss of Eilat (2 Kgs 16:5–6). With the Phoenician markets open, the south was the logical hinterland for Jerusalem (as Hiram and Solomon, and the Negev developed in the tenth century; Jehoshaphat and Ahaziah; Uzziah building Eilat during the reign of Jeroboam II). The loss of this resource, in EB III, had propelled the wealthy south of EB III into ruin, and in the Iron Age, the importance of the trade was old hat to the rulers of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Necho’s confrontation with Josiah, part of the struggle for the Assyrian empire,270 may also have turned on local competition over trade: not long after, Necho dug a canal to secure communications with the Arabian peninsula, while Nabonidus was slightly later to transfer his residence to Teima for the same reason. Much of the tension between Judah and Edom will have turned on competition as to whether the southern goods were to flow north or west. Nevertheless, Judah’s southern stations were riddled with Edomite personnel  265 C. M. Bennett, “Excavations at Buseirah (Biblical Bozrah),” in J.F.A. Sawyer and D.J.A. Clines (eds.), Midan, Moab and Edom (JSOTSup 24; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984) 9–17; idem, “Excavations at Tawilan in Southern Jordan, 1982,” Levant 16 (1984) 1–23; Pratico, “Nelson Glueck’s 1938–1940 Excavations at Tell el-Kheleifeh: A Reappraisal,” on Kheleifeh IV; S. Hart, “Some Preliminary Thoughts on Settlement in Southern Edom,” Levant 18 (1986) 51–58; idem, “Excavations at Ghrareh, 1986: Preliminary Report,” Levant 20 (1988) 89–99; Na’aman, “The Negev in the Last Days of the Kingdom of Judah,” 10. 266 Hart, “Some Preliminary Thoughts on Settlement in Southern Edom,” 54–57. 267 Y. Beit-Arieh and B. Cresson, “An Edomite Ostracon from Hurvat ‘Uza,” TA 12 (1985) 96–101. 268 P. Beck, “A Bulla from ণorvat ‘Uzza,” Qadmoniyot 19 (1986) 40–41. 269 Y. Beit-Arieh, “An Edomite Temple at ণorvat Qitmit,” Qadmoniyot 19 (1986) 72– 79; for the horned goddess there, P. Beck, “A Head of a Goddess from Qitmit,” Qadmoniyot 19 (1986) 79–81; further, below. 270 A. Malamat, “Josiah’s Bid for Armageddon,” JANESCU 5 (1973) 267–79.

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

395  (Arad ostraca, ‘Uzza ostracon) and goods.271 The location of the Edomite shrine at Qitmit, too, lends support to A. Kempinski’s argument that the Beersheba Valley was resettled under Edomite pressure.272 That this means that the region was not under Manasseh’s effective control – that Edomite elements were proxies for Philistia in the south during the period when Sennacherib’s territorial reassignments still held force – is not so clear. Certainly, outside of Qitmit, built at the end of the century in a period of Edomite expansion, excavations have produced only small samples of Edomite pottery.273 And the forts must have furnished a conduit for merchandise passing through Jerusalem as well as to the coastal areas274 – or else the Arabian co-connections through Jerusalem to Samaria and Damascus would make little sense. The Negev must have figured prominently in Manasseh’s plans for economic recovery – the more so in that seventhcentury Greek and Cypriot personnel and goods were finding their way into citadels like that at Arad (the ostraca), and forts at Tel Šera‘ IV275 and Tel Ira.276 No such powerful a figure as Manasseh could sit idle while fortunes were being made on his borders. The commodities in which seventh-century Judah dealt are identifiable in part. This was an era of mass production, of scale: Other than the southern goods, such as sesame, streaming up from the Negev, several intensive agricultural programs can be identified. At the Dead Sea, therefore, herbs used in the production of perfumes will have been raised.277 At Gibeon, an enormous wine industry developed,278 a more modest counterpart of which is attested in the storage facilities of rooms 376 and 380 in Building 379 at

 271

E. Mazar, “Edomite Pottery at the End of the Iron Age,” IEJ 35 (1985) 253–69; Beit-Arieh and Cresson, “An Edomite Ostracon from Hurvat ‘Uza;” Biran and Cohen 1976; Kochavi, “The First Season of Excavations at Tel Malhata.” 272 Y. Beit-Arieh and P. Beck, Edomite Shrine. Discoveries from Qitmit in the Negev (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1987). 273 E. Mazar, “Edomite Pottery at the End of the Iron Age,” 264. 274 So Herzog, in correspondence. 275 EAEHL 4.1062. 276 A. Biran, “Tel Ira and Aroer in the Last Days of the Kingdom of Judah,” Cathedra 42 (1987) 27. 277 B. Mazar, T. Dothan and I. Dunayevsky, En-Gedi. The First and Second Seasons of Excavations 1961–1962. ‘Atiqot, 5 (Jerusalem: Department of Antiquities, 1966) esp. 20–21; Herzog, Aharoni, Rainey and Moshkovitz, “The Israelite Fortress at Arad,” 19; note J. Patrich and B. Arubas, “A Juglet Containing Balsam Oil(?) From a Cave Near Qumran,” IEJ 39 (1989) 43–59. 278 Pritchard, Gibeon Where the Sun Stood Still, 92–99; J. B. Pritchard, Winery, Defenses, and Soundings at Gibeon (Museum monographs; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum, 1964).

396 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  Tell en-Nasbeh.279 In the west, olive oil production developed; multiplication of incense altars at Ekron suggests that here, local production and the southern trade may have been intertwined, scented oils, among other things, being produced for export.280 And, on the coast, a Judahite onomasticon and an administrative appeal at Mesad Hashavyahu dictated that corvee labor was applied to intensive cash-crop agriculture, at least in the vicinity of the shipping lanes. Na’aman has brilliantly thrown into dispute the association of Mesad Hashavyahu with Josiah.281 The onomasticon there, however, is Israelite.282 Too, the seventh-century forts at Tell el-’Erani.283 Tel Masos,284 and possibly that at Tel Hesi 285 attest expansion in the direction of Philistia. Na’aman, who also situates Judah’s efflorescence in the context of the Assyrian trading empire, bases his argument on the principle that Egypt was the successor state in Canaan in the era of the empire’s decline:286 Judah could not have expanded into the plain, which was under Egyptian control. Still, Egypt’s dominance on the coast was achieved only after a long conflict with Ashdod (Herodotus 2.157), in the territory of which Mesad Hashavyahu probably belonged. That Judah should have taken the opportunity to expand at Ashdod’s expense is entirely possible – indeed, the fort may even have been ceded to Manasseh: Josiah, at least, seems to have moved with freedom in the neighboring province of Samaria (2 Kgs 23:15– 20). Nor is the Greek pottery at the site an indication of direct Egyptian control, 287 for the Judahite commander of Arad stratum (VII–)VI had Greek subordinates of his own, possibly including troops based at Tel Malhata.288 Greek pottery, in the trading world of the seventh century, is as likely an economic as an ethnic indicator.

 279

C. C. McCown, “The Long-Room House at Tell en-Nasbeh,” BASOR 98 (1945)

2–15. 280

Gitin, “Incense Altars from Ekron, Israel and Judah: Context and Typology.” Na’aman, “The Negev in the Last Days of the Kingdom of Judah,” 7, 12–14. 282 See J. Naveh, “The Excavations at Mesad Hashavyahu: Preliminary Report,” IEJ 12 (1962) 90–113. 283 Yeivin, First Preliminary Report on the Excavations at Tel ‘Gat’; Kempinski, in correspondence. 284 Fritz and Kempinski, Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen auf der ‫ۏ‬irbet el-MšƗš (TƝl MƗsǀs) 1972–1975, 124–30. 285 W. M. F. Petrie, Tell el Hesy (Lachish) (London: Palestine Exploration Fund, 1891) 32. 286 A. Malamat, Israel in Biblical Times. Historical Essays (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1983) 228–34. 287 As Naveh, “The Excavations at Mesad Hashavyahu: Preliminary Report,” 97–99. 288 Aharoni, Arad Inscriptions, 12–13. 281

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397

 In any event, integration into the Assyrian empire entailed palpable advantages: Assyria had opened huge markets to Judah,289 which Manasseh was quick to exploit. Nor was his work unavailing. Trade in wine, oil and balms thrived – and much of the processing of the imported materials may have been done either in Judah or on Judah’s borders. On the archaeological record, it is no great surprise that Manasseh is ranked second, after Baal of Tyre, in all lists of Assyria’s western tributaries. Under (Hezekiah and) Manasseh, Judah crossed over from a traditional economy based in extensive agriculture to a cash-cropping, industrial economy, a transition that implied and produced a centrally-directed state.290 Still, even meticulous central planning could not resuscitate the status quo ante-bellum. Under Manasseh, Jerusalem remained bloated, the lineages off the land. What population could be spared from the capital and from the work of meeting Assyrian demands was meted out to agricultural and strategic endeavors – it was spread thin – and Judah became a sort of Assyria in miniature through a policy of internal deportation. Systematic exploitation of agricultural and industrial resources was standard Assyrian strategy.291 Adherence to this strategy, especially in the south, repaid Manasseh’s efforts with a mild demographic recuperation. That the recuperation did not entirely relieve the limitations constricting Jerusalemite policy should be clear: the gap at Lachish after 701 speaks to a failure to translate human resources into territorial recovery. The resettlement at Lachish, and the contemporary resettlement at Gezer, was small,292 and the Shephelah as a whole remained relatively empty (Dagan, above). Internal sites such as en-Nasbeh, Beth Shemesh, Beth Zur, and Tel ‘Eton never regained their earlier stations. Some of this comports, as well, with what we should guess of Assyrian military demands, including troops for Ashurbanipal’s invasion of Egypt. But where did Manasseh find the manpower even for resettling the hills and south? On Sennacherib’s record, natural increase is ruled out: no significant population of undetected fugitives can be posited;293 further, one looks in vain for evidence of deportations to Judah (cf. ণorvat Uzza, above), never an Assyrian province. The systematic repopulation was orchestrated by the court. With the north, Shephelah, western hills and south  289

Note Saggs, Assyriology and the Study of the Old Testament, 19–21. Note Flannery, “The Cultural Evolution of Civilizations,” 418. 291 Oded, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, 67, 70–74, with bibliography; especially, J. N. Postgate, Taxation and Conscription in the Assyrian Empire (Studia Pohl, Series Maiora 3; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1974) 381–82; Saggs, “The Nimrud Letters, 1952 – Part II,” 139–40. 292 See W. G. Dever, Gezer. II (Jerusalem: Hebrew Union College, 1974) 73–84. 293 Contra Stohlmann, “The Judaean Exile after 701 B.C.E.,” 161. 290

398 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  in ashes, the only possible source of settlers was the population Hezekiah had safeguarded within the walls of the capital – a deduction the mortuary evidence sustains (below). Repopulation took place from Jerusalem, as the Isaianic prophecy had it. The policy can only have been implemented at the cost of fragmenting the large kin-groups from rural areas near the capital that had been assembled in Jerusalem for the siege. With the rehabilitation of rural areas, we should expect the reopening of old shrines, a policy to which Assyria can only have been indifferent.294 This, like much else, we charge to Manasseh, the scapegoat of the books of Kings. It is to Manasseh, that Josiah’s scribes and an exilic editor 295 attribute a diametrical reversal of Hezekiah’s policies: collaboration with Assyria, redevelopment of the rural cult, apostasy (2 Kgs 21). How far this went is uncertain. Rural reclamation demanded resacralization.296 But to a considerable extent, the renewal may have been inaugurated by the kingroups. What was the contribution of the state? The argument that Manasseh presided over a cultic reaction has stark political implications: Hezekiah’s had been a cargo cult. It is no coincidence that the first king known to have adopted holing up in Jerusalem as a first line of defense – Ahaz – is also the first to have removed metal imagery from the temple nave (2 Kgs 16:17): for all that Kings convicts Ahaz for an apostate (for introducing a larger altar and taking the old one for his personal use), he removed both the bulls or oxen supporting the bronze sea, and the wheeled basin stands, on which were impressed lions, bulls and cherubim (1 Kgs 7:29).297 Like his son, Ahaz must have adopted a line, or exploited one, developed from the start of classical prophecy – the assault on iconography. Possibly, the bovine imagery in particular gave offence in the aftermath of the Syro-Ephraimite War. It is equally likely, however, that aniconic ideology rationalized the royal expropriation of temple resources. Hezekiah expanded the range of Ahaz’s iconoclasm, not just to the serpent, Nehushtan, but also to other aspects of the cult. But for all that Hezekiah’s elite remained at the court, Sennacherib, and a forlorn vassalage, had rendered his cultic policy inexpedient. Manasseh’s men may have scoffed at the claim that religious reform had produced Sennacherib’s withdrawal and later death, that the rural areas were laid waste because the  294

Contrast Spieckermann, Juda unter Assur in der Sargonidenzeit. F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (HSS; Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press, 1973) 275–89. 296 Ahlström, Royal Administration and National Religion in Ancient Palestine, 75–81. 297 See Holladay, “Religion in Israel and Judah under the Monarchy,” 295–96; these are the template of the vision in Ezek 1. 295

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399  high places were there (as Isaiah, Micah). Assyria had left Judah a rump state, and deported the population of the north, the south, the Shephelah and the western hills. Manasseh’s reign, then, would bear the marks of political pragmatism. Nevertheless, Hezekiah’s ideologues remained. They attributed Sennacherib’s withdrawal, and his death, much later, to Hezekiah’s reforms. They even acceded to power, seven or eight decades after Hezekiah’s revolt, implementing a doctrinaire programme characterized by a dogmatism transmitted with Hezekiah’s dogma. It is hard to imagine that the party of revolt was sealed off from policy-making for almost a century, to materialize without warning in Josiah’s (eighth or) eighteenth year. In fact, the only hard evidence for state-directed resacralization under Manasseh is the reform of Manasseh’s grandson, Josiah, around 622. It is out of this reform that the literature slandering Manasseh for an apostate emerged. However, it is reasonably clear that Hezekiah’s measures had been far less radical than Josiah’s were. Thus, Hezekiah left standing shrines at Lachish and at Arad; at the latter he may have eliminated some iconography.298 He did dismantle an altar at Beersheba,299 but not an altar  298 Aharoni (“Arad: Its Inscriptions and Temple,” 26–27) held that the main, earthand-fieldstone altar for burnt offerings at Arad went out of use after stratum VIII, as a result of Hezekiah’s reform (and remained out or use until Josiah ruined the sanctuary): he reports an intact floor of stratum VII, with an oven, on the spot where the altar stood, with the altar’s last phase belonging to stratum VIII; probably, in the same phase, two ‘incense altars’ (see generally Gitin, “Incense Altars from Ekron, Israel and Judah: Context and Typology,” especially n. 4 where an association with ‘meal offerings’ is suggested) were buried in the steps of the holy of holies, and two stelae plastered over inside the holy of holies (the removal of the incense altars was originally attributed to stratum IX, but it is now clear that the sanctuary cannot have been built before stratum X, sometime in the eighth century). Aharoni also reported that Josiah subsequently buried the holy of holies under a casemate wall (further Herzog, Aharoni, Rainey and Moshkovitz, “The Israelite Fortress at Arad”); but this stemmed from the Hellenistic period, not the seventh century (Max and Neuer 1986; cf. Herzog, “The Stratigraphy of Israelite Arad: A Rejoinder”). Nevertheless, there may be signs of Josiah’s reform in some Iron Age partition walls above the Holy of Holies (Mazar and Netzer, “On the Israelite Fortress at Arad”), which would imply that the temple was in disuse. Ussishkin, however, has shown that the incense altars may have been discarded only at the final destruction of the shrine in stratum VI, Ussishkin, “The Date of the Judaean Shrine at Arad.” This in turn implies that only the covering over the large, courtyard altar, and the plastering over of the pillars inside the Holy of Holies could possibly antedate Josiah; it may even be that the entire complex survived Josiah’s reform, or that the large altar and pillars went out of use. Should the two (small) incense altars be correlated to the two stelae, and associated with oblations to (male and female) classes of intermediate divinities – the baals and asherot (or ashtarot) – chiefly served through the burning of incense, according to our contemporary texts? The huge altar of burnt- offering would then pertain to Yhwh, the main object of meat sacrifices. In any event, Hezekiah certainly left the temple standing as a func-

400 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  in a formal temple, like those at Lachish and Arad. Further, the account of Josiah’s reform indicates that the high places Solomon built on the Mount of Olives opposite Jerusalem survived Hezekiah’s reform (1 Kgs 11:1–3; 2 Sam 15:30–32; 2 Kgs 23:13). Nor is this all. The account of Josiah’s reign notes that he destroyed “the altars that Manasseh built” (2 Kgs 23:12); but the same verse speaks of “altars that were on the roof of Ahaz’s upper chamber that the kings of Judah made.” That is, various kings supplied these altars, just as the kings of Judah” in general provided the “horses... for the sun” (23:11). But between Ahaz and Josiah, only Hezekiah, Manasseh and Amon reigned – did Hezekiah build one or more of the altars? Certainly, he let Ahaz’s altars survive (contrast the inference of 2 Chr 28:23– 25; 29:18–19). Solomon’s high places were dedicated to a variety of gods that Israelite theology regarded as subordinate to Yhwh (as Deut 32:8–9; Job 1–2) and that the author of Kings regarded as foreign, alien deities located in the traditional theology among the host of heaven.300 Did the paraphernalia of the host of heaven (2 Kgs 23:4) come into the temple under Manasseh? Or was this paraphernalia never suppressed? Did the priests hired by the “kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places in the towns of Judah” all find work first under Manasseh? Or were the ‘high places’ Hezekiah removed different establishments from those which Josiah squelched? Did Hezekiah tolerate state-sponsored centers of worship, in temples in major fortresses? The altar at Beersheba had a serpent inscribed on its side.301 The ophite motif recalls Moses’ serpent, Nehushtan, which Hezekiah destroyed (2 Kgs 18:4);302 it also raises questions as to the significance of Isaiah’s image of the seraphim by the altar, instead of cherubim.303 Possibly, Hezekiah dis tional structure. It is difficult to imagine his leaving the priesthood intact there, or enrolling rural priests there, without making some provision for sacrifice or at least ritual slaughter. Some of the ambiguities of the interpretation of the data will be clarified with the final publication of the site, which Herzog promises (Herzog, “The Stratigraphy of Israelite Arad: A Rejoinder”). For the interim, it seems most conservative to suggest that any marked reform of the temple at Arad be associated with Josiah, or with the Babylonians. 299 Aharoni, “The Horned Altar at Beersheba.” 300 Halpern, “‘Brisker Pipes than Poetry’: The Development of Israelite Monotheism.” 301 Aharoni, “The Horned Altar at Beersheba,” 4. 302 Note E. Stern, Excavations at Tel Mevorakh (1973–1976). Part Two: The Bronze Age (Qedem 18; Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1984) 21–22; W. G. Dever, “The Contribution of Archaeology to the Study of Canaanite and Early Israelite Religion,” in P.D. Miller, P.D. Hanson and S.D. McBride (eds.), Ancient Israelite Religion. Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) 230. 303 Tadmor, oral observation.

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

401  mantled the Beersheba altar, then, as an assault on a ‘Levitic’ or Mosaic304 countryside priesthood, whereas public shrines served by other priests (Aaronides?) were left standing. It is more likely, however, that Hezekiah removed the Beersheba altar because it lay outside a formal sanctuary.305 Hezekiah’s policy may have been consistent, and consistently less fanatical than Josiah’s. 306 No report indicates that Hezekiah centralized the rural priests in the capital (2 Chr 31:15–20). Conversely, Josiah executed the priests of Samaria (2 Kgs 23:20), and herded those of Judah into the temple (2 Kgs 23:8–9). Josiah seems to have taken the business of centralization a good deal more seriously than Hezekiah. Unlike Hezekiah, he allegedly suppressed all worship outside the temple, not just sacrifice outside Jerusalem and the state forts.307 Hezekiah’s measures may thus have been directed principally against the old rural cult of the lineages. Of this, archaeological attestation is relatively rich.308 In texts, only meager traces survive. One associated complex is the altar law of Exod 20:20–23, forbidding expensive metal figurines, expensive hewn altars, and expensive altar platforms: a pile of dirt will do for sacrifice; “any place where I cause my name to be called, I will come to you and bless you” (Exod 20:21; cf. Judg 6:19; 1 Sam 7:9; 14:32–35, etc.). No trained ritual specialists are necessary (Judg 17:5; 1 Kgs 12:31; 2 Kgs 16:15). Any Israelite anywhere will do – truly a ‘nation of priests’. This distributive theory of sacrifice dovetails into the circumstance that Yhwh’s sacred mountain, Sinai, is extraterritorial: yet Amos articulates a tradition that sacrifice began only in Canaan (5:25; cf. Jer 7:22); in Canaan, then, Yhwh was peripatetic (drk, mthlk), no more concentrated geographically than the Levites, and this sacred mountain is the hill country as a whole in Exod 15:17 – no particular locus in Canaan assumes, in popular religion, a supreme sanctity. Jeroboam I articulated the same theology by placing his bulls at Dan and Bethel, such that if the Yhwh thought to sit between the cherubim stood upon the bulls, he bestrode the whole of the land. Again, Deuteronomy 33, which fondly cites local mountain sacrifices (vv. 18–19), playfully portrays Israel’s conquest with the line, “on their ‘high places’ you will tread/dominate” (v. 29) – a line with which the  304

See Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 195–215. Yadin, “Beersheba: The High Place Destroyed by King Josiah.” 306 Halpern, “‘Brisker Pipes than Poetry’: The Development of Israelite Monotheism,” 93–98. 307 Thin walls above the holy of holies may suggest he destroyed a shrine at Arad [VII–]VI. 308 See Holladay, “Religion in Israel and Judah under the Monarchy,” 275–80. 305

402 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  whole litany culminates (cf. Hab 3:19), no doubt in imminent expectation of participation in a sacrificial meal. In Deut 32:13, Yhwh himself brings Israel to the ‘high places’ to enjoy the fruits of ‘the Hills/Shadday’; here the implication of sacrifice is palpable, and the hills are designated with an epithet pertaining to Yhwh. And in Amos 4:13, Yhwh, who fashions the hills, the wind, and humanity, and controls the dawn, “treads on/dominates the ‘high places’ of the land/earth” – it is he that Israel, in the cultic context of Amos 4–5, should expect to ‘meet’ (Amos 4:12). The phrase, “who treads on/dominates the ‘high places’ of the land/ earth” (Amos 4:13) is the one that Micah levers into a picture of the destruction of the high places (Mic 1:3–5); but in the countryside, the suggestion is, Yhwh’s frequenting the high places was usually experienced as an endorsement of the informal religious practices of the clans (as 1 Sam 20:6; 9:12: Judg 11:40; 21:19). Thus, Yhwh was not, as the Arameans are lampooned for thinking, a ‘god of mountains’ (1 Kgs 20:23); rather, it was in the hills that Yhwh was to be encountered (bhr yhwh yr’h, reappropriated now to mean, “On the mountain of Yhwh he appears,” Gen 22:14, to validate Zion’s cultic exclusivism). The traditional cult, then, was probably distributive, spread across the entire land. Shrines in the home (Judg 17) were probably compoundbound, which would perhaps explain the fitful distribution of figurines by house; 309 like ovens, icons served the extended family as a whole. Clan sector and civic shrines (does Judg 6:27–31 reflect such an institution?) may have been more public (1 Sam 9:12; 1 Kgs 3:4), or, in some cases, may have been associated with the tomb. In all, the popular religion, mirrored in state ‘high places’ like those of Dan, Beersheba or Bethel (bƗtê bƗmФt?), seems to have been the principal object of Hezekiah’s reform. If Ahaz had cleaned the bull iconography (or most plastic iconography) out of the temple, differentiating the Judahite cult from that of the north, Hezekiah’s intolerance for high places could also be portrayed as a rejection of Israelite practice (Mic 1:5, 13; Isa 28:1–15; the assault on multiplication of sacrifice in Isa 1:10–17). Josiah’s historians presumed the ideological congruence of Hezekiah’s and Josiah’s cultic policies. They attributed deviant iconography largely to Manasseh, though antiquarian precision prohibited their imputing specific items specifically to that king.310 But the congruence is not sustained by the evidence: Hezekiah’s measures appear to have been geared more directly toward his general approach toward defense, his need to sever the lineages from the land, his need to deconsecrate the land or the ‘high plac 309

Holladay, “Religion in Israel and Judah under the Monarchy,” 276. Generally B. Halpern, The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988). 310

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403  es’ of which Yhwh ‘trod’. In sum, how far Manasseh reversed Hezekiah’s politics, and how far he merely retained them, will probably never be known. The material aspect of Manasseh’s policy, however, is its impact on the old kinship structures of Judah. The diminutive settlements established outside the vicinity of Jerusalem were centrally designated and designed. This meant sending out smallish work-groups from the capital, fracturing the patrilineages – and achieving in the process one of the incidental objectives of Hezekiah’s policies by establishing the unchallengeable ascendancy of the throne. Several factors suggest that clan sector disintegration was extensive. Thus, lineage compounds do reappear in the seventh century. But the new wilderness settlements, like Tel Goren V, were mostly too small to house whole clan sectors. Second, the new settlements, nearly all of them forts, have been called ‘paramilitary’. Their layout and location seems to reflect a new economic order, geared mainly to state trade.311 They are hierarchical in nature, military in organization – the impression is strong at Mesad Hashavyahu, Lachish II, Arad VII, Qadesh Barnea, Masos ‘post-1’, Aroer, Ira and even Beersheba I. At Beit Mirsim, the only structure that may have survived into the seventh century was the public West Tower and Gate. Not to overestimate the survival of epigraphs from the eighth century (epigraphs tend to survive more abundantly from just before a destruction layer), weights seem to have been standardized around the end of that century, suggesting increasing state intervention in commerce.312 And extant epigraphs support the same conclusion:313 administrative ostraca suddenly abound as well:314 an unpublished bulla from southern Judah, from Manasseh’s or Josiah’s reign, reads, b-26 lmlk ’ltld, “in the twenty-sixth (year) of the king, Eltolad,” 315 providing the earliest example of a date or village name already cut into the seal. The transition from the eighth to the seventh century for Judah was a transition, as McClellan called it, from “town to Fortresses.”316 Nor could Manasseh afford, in the light of his in 311 On Ekron, Gitin, “Tell Miqne-Ekron: A Type-Site for the Inner Coastal Plain in the Iron Age II Period;” idem. “Incense Altars from Ekron, Israel and Judah: Context and Typology;” on the Negev and the Buqeiah, above. 312 F. M. Cross, in conversation. 313 Y. Aharoni, Arad Inscriptions, 24–25, 88. 111; KAI 194; S. Talmon, King, Cult and Calendar in Ancient Israel (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1986) 80–86. 314 Aharoni, Arad Inscriptions; Beit-Arieh and Cresson, “An Edomite Ostracon from Hurvat ‘Uza.” 315 N. Avigad, public lecture, 1990. 316 T. L. McClellan, “Towns to Fortresses: The Transformation of Urban Life from the 8th to 7th Century BC,” in P.J. Achtemeier (ed.), Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers 1978 (Missoula, Mt: Scholars Press, 1978) 277–86.

404 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  tegration into the imperial economy,317 to undo the military administrative model Hezekiah had imposed. The crown’s relations with the nuclear family in this era were direct, unmediated by the clans, which the state had in effect supplanted, without, however, discarding the ideology and language of kinship (as Deut 16:18– 20; 25:1–3; see below). The first kings had attacked the clans to cement a central government in power. 318 Hezekiah rendered them politically and administratively marginal by herding them off the land. By god’s grace and Sennacherib’s, he and Manasseh polished them off. Material-cultural indicators point toward the same conclusion. Thus, cooking pots and ovens diminish in size in the seventh century, without marked change in functional design. This is a typical reaction to a change in the number of those being fed at one time, since villagers economize on the number of ovens in use in order to save fuel. 319 But the change occurred on a massive scale. Evidently, most cooks were serving the same cereal gruels to fewer people than before.320 The indication of reduced table fellowship matches the architectural residue. Even more important, however, is the change in burial customs. In the seventh century, the old multi-chambered Israelite rock-hewn tombs with several burial benches in each chamber persisted in use at a number of sites, such as Khirbet el-Kom.321 However, a marked shift took place toward single-chambered rock-hewn tombs in the countryside in this era. These were often square in plan, most often with three benches; they sometimes also had an antechamber, 322 and only two benches in some in 317

H. Reviv, “The History of Judah from Hezekiah to Josiah,” in A. Malamat and I. Eph’al (eds.), The Age of the Monarchies: Political History (World History of the Jewish People 4.1; Jerusalem: Massada, 1979) 200; Elat Economic Relations in the Lands of the Bible, 223–25. 318 Mettinger, Solomonic State Officials, 112–21; Halpern, “Sectionalism and the Schism,” 528–31; idem, The Constitution of the Monarchy in Israel, 237–49. 319 C. Kramer, Village Ethnoarchaeology. Rural Iran in Archaeological Perspective (New York: Academic Press, 1982) 120. 320 The observation and the inference concerning the number of those dining is that of S. Gitin (orally, 1984). A. Kempinski kindly called my attention to the diminished capacity of 7th-century ovens. For a parallel, note that Graves and Hodge remark a decline in oven size, and in the size of butchers’ joints, as family size dwindled in Britain after the First World War, R. Graves and A. Hodge, The Long Weekend. A Social History of Great Britain 1918–1939 (Orig. Pub. 1940; London: Hutchinson, 1985) 352. 321 W. G. Dever, “Iron Age Epigraphic Material from the Area of Khirbet el-K‫۾‬m,” HUCA 40 (1969) 139–204; cf., e.g., J. Naveh, “Old Hebrew Inscriptions in a Burial Cave,” IEJ 13 (1963) 74–92. 322 A. Mazar, “Iron Age Burial Caves North of the Damascus Gate, Jerusalem,” IEJ 26 (1976) 5–8, with the prototypes at Tell ‘Eton and the seventh-century parallels in the countryside; J. Waldbaum, “Philistine Tombs at Tell Fara and their Aegean Prototypes,”

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405  stances. 323 That is, the ancestral community, the kin corporation, had moved decidedly in the direction of smaller units, probably centered on the nuclear family. In the seventh century, for the first time, examples of single burials, headrests on burial benches, and burial benches with ridges on the outside, occur outside Jerusalem, where the urban and royal burial system had already developed such features.324 Though double-chambered325 and multichambered 326 tombs occur even in the capital, the former, some without repositories, appear to have been small, extended-family, not clan sector accommodations that were expanded after long use; 327 in some cases, 328 three-bench square tombs were expanded to include a second three-bench square room. Of the multi-chambered tombs in use in the capital in the seventh century, one, at St Etienne, 329 probably stems from Judaean royalty, with founders’ sarcophagi preserved in the innermost chamber. 330 Further, the richly-appointed Siloam tombs, nearly all with only a single burial bench (but some allowing twin interment), bear more than a passing resemblance to those of St Etienne.331  AJA 80 (1967) 331–40, for a Philistine origin of the burial type; D. Ussishkin, The Village of Silwan. The Necropolis from the Period of the Judaean Kingdom (Jerusalem: Yad ben-Zvi and the Israel Exploration Society, 1986) 86–87. 323 See S. Loffreda, “Typological Sequence of Iron Age Rock-Cut Tombs in Palestine,” Liber Annuus Studii Biblici 18 (1968) 244–287. 324 Note G. Barkay and A. Kloner, “Jerusalem Tombs from the Days of the First Temple,” BAR 12.2 (1986) 29; D. Ussishkin, “On the Shorter Inscription from the ‘Tomb of the Royal Steward,’” BASOR 196 (1969) 16–22; J. R. Abercrombie, “A Short Note on a Siloam Tomb Inscription,” BASOR 254 (1984) 61–62; A. Kloner, “A First Temple Burial Cave at ৡobah,” Hadashot Archaeologiyyot 78–79 (1952) 71–72; G. Barkay, “The Garden Tomb: Was Jesus Buried Here?” BAR 12.2 (1986) 51; idem, Ketef Hinnom. A Treasure Facing Jerusalem’s Walls (Catalogue 274; Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1986) 19–20. 325 D. Davis and A. Kloner, “A Burial Cave from the End of the First Temple Era on the Slopes of Mount Zion,” Qadmoniyot 11 (1978) 16–19. 326 A. Mazar, “Iron Age Burial Caves North of the Damascus Gate, Jerusalem,” 2–4; Barkay and Kloner “Jerusalem Tombs from the Days of the First Temple.” 327 Especially, Davis and Kloner, “A Burial Cave from the End of the First Temple Era on the Slopes of Mount Zion,” 19; B. Arensburg and Y. Rak, “Jewish Skeletal Remains from the Period of the Kings of Judaea,” PEQ 117 (1985) 30–4; A. Mazar, “Iron Age Burial Caves North of the Damascus Gate, Jerusalem,” 4. 328 E.g. Kloner, “A First Temple Burial Cave at ৡobah.” 329 Barkay and Kloner “Jerusalem Tombs from the Days of the First Temple,” 37–39. 330 The case may be similar with A. Mazar, “Iron Age Burial Caves North of the Damascus Gate, Jerusalem,” 2–4; Barkay, “The Garden Tomb: Was Jesus Buried Here?” 56. 331 Ussishkin, The Village of Silwan. The Necropolis from the Period of the Judaean Kingdom, 257–60.

406 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  All the Siloam and St. Etienne installations reflect the mores of the urban elite. The architecture is alien to the earlier rural mortuary repertoire: particularly noteworthy is the absence of bone repositories at Siloam, 332 and the prevalence of single (or paired) burials there. The individual had been divorced from the clan sector. Concepts of the afterlife must have been in upheaval, as ancestral ties were loosed; and the notion of Job that the dead do not know of or care for their descendants’ welfare (14:21–22) will already have been forming. Many of the Jerusalem tombs stretch back, to judge from the epigraphs and from the numbers of interments, into the eighth century or earlier. The funerary practices of the capital, in short, had skewed from traditional interment customs, chiefly in lavishing attention on and in isolating the individual or married couple, or perhaps the nuclear family. With the spread of cash-crop and trade-generated wealth in the eighth century, some fresh ideological winds will have swept into the hinterland, but evidence for their impact is exiguous. In the seventh century, however, funerary practices in the countryside began assimilating to those of the capital: 333 the transfer of population from the capital to the land is in evidence. With this population travelled an elite ideology concerned not with expressing the segmentation of the elite into competitive clan-sectors, but with articulating spatially the integrity of the individual against the claims of traditional kinship bonds; and this new configuration, at least at Siloam, expressed the camaraderie of all the individuals joined in the necropolis, rather than in family crypts, in the service of the true and broader collective, the nation, the state. Of all Hezekiah’s and Sennacherib’s legacies, this last element may have had the most enduring intellectual effects. Resettlement, after all, severed the physical links to the ancestors, the material token of that old, pervasive continuity. As part of Hezekiah’s reform, Isaiah had developed a fierce polemic against the ancestral cult (28:5–22;334 2:6; 5:1–10 with 11– 15; 8:19; 14:9–11; 19:13; contrast the only other early comment on ancestral sacrifice in Amos 6:6–7). One might even suspect that the phrase, ‘the living god’ (’elǀhîm ‫ۊ‬ayyîm), found in Isa 37:4, 17, was a coinage meant to contrast Yhwh not to the ‘dying and rising god’ of second-millennium Canaanite myth, but to the ancestors of the living Israelites.335 The clan cults  332 Ussishkin, The Village of Silwan. The Necropolis from the Period of the Judaean Kingdom, 262–64. 333 H. Eshel, “The Late Iron Age Cemetery of Gibeon,” IEJ (1987) 16; Barkay and Kloner, “Jerusalem Tombs from the Days of the First Temple,” 36. 334 On which see Halpern, “‘Brisker Pipes than Poetry.’” 335 Contrast, however, Mettinger, In Search of God, 82–91. Though the earliest reference to the ‘living god’ in Israel comes from Hosea (’Ɲl ‫ۊ‬Ɨy), the emphasis on the ‘living

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407  were centrifugal, conspiring to frustrate national policy. The ideologues at the court had to offer Hezekiah’s garrison equivalent of the New Model Army – and any rural priesthoods now being put on the state payroll in the forts – a cogent rationale for forcing the peasantry into their points of concentration. This Isaiah (and others) furnished in their descriptions of the ancestors’ fate; even worse, they were cultically competitive with Yhwh. The cult of the ancestors was no more than a foul delusion. For Hezekiah’s purposes, it had been essential to amputate the ancestors, those responsible for the bestowal of rural property on their descendants: they, and they alone, consecrated the possession of land. 336 They stood between Hezekiah and a population herded into fortresses: if Israelites failed to feed their ancestors, the ancestors were condemned to a diet of excrement, 337 one likely to excite their displeasure: if the family left them, too, how could one be gathered to the ancestors, in the clan-sector tomb? The assault on ancestral practices, which survived the jetsam of Hezekiah’s other programs (Deut 14:1–2; 18:10–14; 26:14; Lev 19:31; 20:6), helped justify dissolving the clan sectors – spreading them thin in the systematic resettlement of Judah. It also issued in a proscription on child sacrifice (2 Kgs 23:10), a rite quite logically associated with the ancestral cult in Josiah’s time, and possibly earlier (Lev 18:21; 20:2–8; Deut 18:10). Josiah’s suppression of ancestral worship (2 Kgs 23:10, 16, 20) reacts, thus, against the minimal retribalization of Judah under Manasseh and reflects a heightened stridency about deviation from the state cult, 338 now defined as morally normative and radically analeptic rather than as a refinement of the traditional religion. Indeed, the assault on the clans grew  god’ (Isa 37:4, 17; 2 Kgs 19:4, 16) comes principally after the end of the seventh century: Deut 5:23 (cf. 5:3); Jer 10:10; 23:26; possibly, 1 Sam 17:26, 36. The expression is related to the oath formula, ‘As Yhwh lives’ (for the linkage, cf. S. Kreuzer, Der lebendige Gott [Beiträge zur Wissenschaft des Alten und Neuen Testaments 6/16; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1983] 260–299), and is thus multivalent. However, it seems more likely that inside Israel it erects a contrast with the chthonic ancestors than that it represents a polemic against practice abroad. Significantly, Jer 2:13; 17:13 contrast Yhwh as the “source of living waters” with other gods, “broken cisterns that do not hold water.” The cistern, like the chthonic god, is subterranean, which may have inspired the comparison. This is not to say, however, that Jeremiah is not lumping together ancestral spirits with heavenly subordinate gods. 336 See Goody, Death, Property and the Ancestors, 400–403. 337 P. Xella, “Sur la Nouriture des Morts. Un aspect de l’eschatologie mésopotamienne,” in B. Alster (ed.), Death in Mesopotamia (Mesopotamia 8; Comptes rendus des rencontres assyriologiques 26; Copenhagen: Akademisk, 1980) 151–60. 338 As B. Lang, “George Orwell im gelobten Land,” in E.W. Zeeden and P.T. Lang (eds.), Kirche und Visitation (Stuttgart: Klott-Cotta, 1984) 21–35, mainly interpreting Deut 13; 17:2–7.

408 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  more radical still: repopulating the land had meant cutting not just ancestral ties, but the bonds of contemporary kinship as well. So outside Jerusalem, the seventh century rang in the disintegration of the clans – and therefore of the local incarnations, the clan sectors – structures that until this time constituted a channel of authority parallel to that of the crown. Zion’s contemporary expansion was a by-product of Hezekian strategy, probably unrelated to those unfortunate but unattested Samarian refugees whom scholars tag as the couriers of Deuteronomy.339 Even in Jerusalem, conditions would not have permitted the physical articulations of kinship that characterized the village – abutting houses, nearby tombs, adjoining fields. The capital was the special stomping ground of the king, and the newcomers to it had no economic share in it. All this is not to mention the ecumenical pressures life in the capital imposed, pressures that had already promoted individual or nuclear-family interment. Indeed, after the eighth century, even the old royal cemetery was closed, as changes in the royal burial formulae of Kings and Chronicles suggest.340 So, in the countryside, the clans were gone. In Jerusalem, they were reduced to powerlessness. Y. Suzuki has argued in fact that for all its references to adjudication by elders and people,341 Deuteronomy reflects a pass at which the state has supplanted the kinship system as the administrator of justice. Despite its probable overvaluation of KAI 200 as a source on the administration of Judah, this view has much to commend it: the emphasis on stamping out elements of the traditional religion (Deut 13; 17:2–1; 14:1; 26:14); the creation of a central cult (12; 16:5–6:16); the erection of a centralized judiciary and appellate court (17:8–13 and 16:18–20; 25:1– 3); and, while there is little to support Suzuki’s hypothesis that laws in the second person singular address the administrator of justice, both the laws insisting on denunciation of relatives (13:7) 342 and the predominantly second person singular address contribute to an impression of a devaluation of kinship segmentation: the lawgiver speaks directly to the individual, his voice unmediated by lineage usage. Scripture has supplanted tradition.  339

See Broshi, “The Expansion of Jerusalem in the Reigns of Hezekiah and Manasseh;” Stohlmann, “The Judaean Exile after 701 B.C.E.,” 161. 340 L. Y. Rahmani, “Ancient Jerusalem’s Funerary Customs and Tombs. Part Two,” BA 44 (1981) 232–34. 341 Y. Suzuki, “Juridical Administration of the Royal State in the Deuteronomic Reformation,” Seishogaku Ronshuu 2 (1985) 50–94; Halpern, The Constitution of the Monarchy in Israel, 198–206; H. Reviv, The Elders of Ancient Israel. A Study of a Biblical Institution (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1983) 48–127. 342 See especially P. E. Dion, “Deuteronomy 13: The Suppression of Alien Religious Propaganda during the Late Monarchical Era,” in B. Halpern and D.W. Hobson (eds.), Law and Ideology in Monarchic Israel (JSOTSup 124; Sheffield: JSOT, 1991) 147–216.

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409

 Deuteronomy stresses the homogeneity of the people, Israel, and attempts to impose upon this undivided people the social control elements of a ‘shame-culture’, as David Daube has demonstrated.343 Noteworthy – to take only one of the many cases Daube adduces – is the Deuteronomic idea of deterrence: “all Israel shall hear and fear” when capital punishment is imposed (13:12; 17:13; 19:20; 21:21). That is, the individualization imposed by Deuteronomy is, ironically, a collectivization, an attempt to impose a common code of moral indignation throughout the country, a cultural identity that outstrips the obligations of kinship – the obligations of the village – in its claims on individual loyalty. Not surprisingly, what M. Weinfeld calls the ‘humanism’ of Deuteronomy – its revaluation of the status of women, slaves, debtors, resident aliens, war-captives and the like 344 – precisely levels the distinctions of gender, class, ethnicity and even cultic status that lead to factionalization in the nation. It enlists the aid of the underclasses, and of establishment sympathy for them: it particularly lobbies women, among all those who passed from one to another kinship status, to join in forging a national agenda divorced from the (male) politics of the lineage. Daube rightly disputes the linkage of Deuteronomy to ‘wisdom’ literature, characteristically concerned to teach an elite the key to social success.345 Like Josiah’s cultic centralization, which proscribed access to Yhwh except through the king, the leveling urges of Josiah’s lawbook are those of a statist out to ‘cut down the high corn’ in the interest of imposing uniformity and unity on the people as a whole. Deuteronomy’s retribalization of the old kinship structures and of land tenure, its appeal to covenant forms, reflects nostalgia, an ideological commitment to the traditional organization of Judah’s patrilineages. Yet the reality of village life never again approximated that of the eighth century – indeed, P’s constant focus on the acknowledged lineage chiefs, the neĞî’îm, rather than the elders, indicates an assumption that the kin-groups operate only through state recognition. The statist treatment accorded Josiah’s reforms in Kings reflects the same tension (so Cross, in conversation): the state, now, acted as a surrogate for the old tribal institutions, while professing all the while the ideology of those institutions. Indeed, the more the social context broadened, and became national, no longer respecting the lines of the old clan sector, the more differentiated the individual became within it. Individuation, first among the elite, and subsequently among the citizenry at large, reflected the citizen’s membership first not in a local clan sector, but in a national collective. This devel 343

D. Daube, “The Culture of Deuteronomy,” ORITA 3 (1969) 27–52. Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 282–97. 345 Daube, “The Culture of Deuteronomy,” 51. 344

410 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  opment eventuated in the social creation of the individual in Israel – and of the self-consciousness, alienation and loneliness that necessarily attended that creation – matters to be explored in greater detail in the closing section.346 It is understood, of course, that here, one speaks in terms of degree, not in terms of absolutes. In the late seventh century, the clans having been demolished, nothing but the nominal sovereignty of Assyria impeded royal plans for expansion. A certain amount of retribalization had no doubt occurred. Against these, even while embracing the ideology of the lineages, Josiah directed his reforms – and against any cultural elements that reinforced symbolically the cohesion of the lineage against the state. The state’s relations with the nuclear family, and more specifically with its adult male heads were direct, now, unmediated – precisely individual.

VI. The Seventh Century: Renaissance and Reformation A. The Road to Josiah How far and how fast the old patterns of kinship revived is unclear. Their recrudescence will have been encouraged by traditional patterns of thought and language, which manifested itself in the survival of an ideology of kinship organization even among the elite. Yet the regeneration of the old kinship patterns will have been retarded by the hierarchical, state-oriented administration of the resettlement programme. Regimented administration followed from the military and economic exigencies facing Hezekiah. The military model also went hand in hand with the court’s assault on the lineages, the land, the ancestral cult – on continuity. The perspective informing all these policies betrays an origin in court life: concentrated in the capital, lacking a psychological or direct economic basis in the land, Hezekiah’s congeries struggled not for subsistence or the accumulation of wealth, but for influence. In this struggle, lineage mates were the danger: half-brothers were rivals, cousins competitors, affinals potential foes. Hezekiah’s courtiers expressed their rapacity in the rasp of Realpolitik. They were quintessentially detribalized men. This same elite probably had a hand in Manasseh’s rural planning, though of this we cannot be sure.  346

See Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, Aspects of Sociology (Boston: Beacon. Inst. of Soziologische Exkurse; Frankfurt: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1956, 1972) 37–48 for the correlation of individuation with state control, and the breakdown of primary groups.

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411

 It was only toward the end of the seventh century that the reform party shed all shadows of restraint in dealing with the capital’s hinterlands. Their programme by this time had assumed a polarized, virulent form, the more so in that the rural clan sectors were in no position to resist. Hezekiah had left various shrines intact (Arad, Lachish) and had spared a good deal of Judahite iconography (Solomon’s high places, the ‘horses’ given to the sun, probably the regalia of the ‘host of heaven’ in the temple). Josiah’s iconoclasm was Cromwellian in scope, directed against any plastic art that could remotely be construed as cultic.347 Josiah probably removed the temple that had survived Hezekiah at Arad, and, more certainly, the shrines of Solomon opposite the walls of Jerusalem. This policy represents the ultimate triumph of Hezekiah’s elite – no cultic activity was to be tolerated outside the temple, and the temple itself was purged of subordinate gods. Under Hezekiah, countryside worship had been banned, but not state temples. After 701, however, the judgment of god had been passed on the rural cult as a whole; centralization now meant sacrifice only in the Jerusalem temple, and the suppression of the ‘host of heaven’, identified as the stuff of foreign cults (as Deut 4:19–20; 32:8–9 [read ‘god’ for ‘Israel’ with LXX, Qumran]; 17:3; Jer 8:2: 19:13; Zeph 1:4–5).348 How early the avant-garde developed this exclusivist logic to its logical extreme is unsure – the events of 701 licensed the interpretation, but no text before Josiah’s era reflects such views, 349 and some sources of the  347 It is not yet clear whether Josiah’s reform in Jerusalem extended to the realm of private religion. The City of David excavations uncovered numerous zoomorphic and fertility figurines, scattered in houses rather than concentrated, except for a single cache of some 80 figurines. Nearly all were disarticulated in the destruction layer of stratum X (586 BCE; Shiloh, in conversation). For the 27 figurine fragments found in the Temple mount excavations, see Nadelman 1989. In essence, there is not yet any way of knowing whether these figurines, or the Jerusalem Cave 1 deposits (most recently, Holladay, “Religion in Israel and Judah under the Monarchy,” 259–60) were deliberately spared Josianic iconoclasm. 348 M. Noth, The Laws in the Pentateuch and Other Studies (London: SCM Press, 1966) 52–55. 349 Note Isa 13:4; 14:13; Ps 148:3; Job 38:7; also, Israel’s comparability to the stars, as Gen 15:5; 22:17; 26:4; 37:9; Exod 32:13; Num 24:17, later a demythologized cliché, as reflected in P’s identification of Israel as the ‘hosts’ of Yhwh of Hosts – Exod 7:4; 12:17, 41; contrast Gen 2:11. Note the depersonalization of natural phenomena this configuration implies – no longer is the ‘host of heaven’ an active group of gods: the depersonalization of nature is a phenomenon typical of Renaissance-type literate thinking, placing a society on the road to a Reformation (see below, VI B, and R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism [West Drayton: Pelican, 1938] 24). For Europe, further, see R. C. Hoffman, “Fishing for Sport in Medieval Europe: New Evidence,” Speculum 60 (1985) 886–87, on mediaeval sports, fishing and especially fishing manuals. Essentially, 

412 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  Deuteronomistic History even reflect favorably on the ‘host’ (Josh 5:14– 15, with Joshua prostrating himself to the captain of the ‘host’; Judg 5:20; 1 Kgs 22:19). The nature and the extent of Josiah’s centralization speak volumes about the party’s doctrinaire theology, ruthless fanaticism, and long-standing frustration. Josiah’s elite entertained no delusions as to the fact that it was revising Judah’s traditional way of life. In the Deuteronomistic History, in fact, it traced the old rural cult to the aboriginal Amorites,350 identifying the cult as a paradigm of backsliding into the sins of the peoples who by their sins had earned eradication at Israel’s hands (in P, note Lev 18:25, 28; 20:22). Constrained neither by tradition nor by veneration of the ancestors, concerned to liberate the denizens of the present from the tyranny of the past, confined to stylite seclusion from the social fabric of an agrarian hinterland, these sophisticates now repudiated the whole notion of corporate existence, of collective liability. The innovation refined the caliber of divine retribution. But against the larger background, philosophical considerations recede. The kings of Judah and Assyria had all but minced the old vertical and horizontal corporations. The grapes of reform soured into the vinegar of extremism; the bouquet of Isaianic hope dissipated, leaving the grim lees of desiccated desperation. B. Individuation and Literalism In his context, two factions of Josiah’s coalition – represented, respectively, by Jeremiah and Ezekiel – loosened the ties between the fates of individuals and those of their ancestors and collaterals. The Babylonian exile can only have accelerated the intellectual and social processes. The relationship between state authority and the individual was now direct. The clan sector was no longer a seat of jurisprudence, though, curiously, a consciousness of its value may have been one result of the deportations to Mesopotamia. But this was the period of extensive legal codification – Deuteronomy and P351 – and, no doubt, of systematic royal administration of law in the village. The circumstances reviewed to this point contributed to the phenomenon of individualization in the Western religious tradition. The whole of the story would have to include the impact of cultural discontinuity and  nature is alienated from the realm of the divine, which is thus less accessible to the individual. A reaction enabling the individual to deal with the divine, rather than the community, is thus precipitated. 350 Halpern, The First Historians, 134–37, 220–28. 351 R. E. Friedman. Who Wrote the Bible? (New York: Summit, 1987) 204–11.

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413  exile on the ongoing socialization of the new dogma. But two points deserve emphasis. First, as propaganda, it appears that Hezekiah commissioned the first collection of literary prophecy consisting of four books with near-identical superscriptions and related intellectual profiles: Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and Micah. 352 The literary product, significant only to the court elite and to the Reformist army, was the tip of an iceberg. Traditional Judahite culture was gone for good, swept away in the scheme of Assyrian deportations that removed the population of Israel and the rural population of Judah in the last half of the eighth century. The ratification of theology in writing was symptomatic of the change from a traditional to a literate culture.353 Indeed, with Deuteronomy, sacred text itself was introduced as an object into ritual (2 Kgs 23:2–3) in Judah, quite possibly for the first time: Judah thus took an enormous stride toward the transformation of Israelite religion into an elite religion of the letter, of what was fixed in writing. Even the ratification in P of priestly procedure, the codification of Deuteronomy, as canonical documents represented a significant step away from traditional and toward elite culture, the culture of literacy, of a common national norm. To introduce a fixed text into the cult – to fix a liturgy – is, after all, to establish the national standard over against the local, and thus to establish the primacy of wide (and thus individualed) social relations over against local: as Goody has observed, literacy levels social distinctions because what is written, at a remove from the various segments of society, must apply to the segments universally, regardless of local history and conditions; lawcodes in particular homogenize society below the level of the central authority.354 One index of such homogenization is amelioration in the lot of women and others whose legal standing is marginal; accordingly, Deuteronomy equalizes all citizens and residents against the hierarchical classification characteristic of the patrilineages. 355 In the instance, the need to maximize the pool of economic agents after 701 was a contributing factor. However, evolution in custom to the point where women naturally inherited even land (as Job 42:13–15) is a reflection of the social atomism that attends the Leveling of Reformation.  352

Andersen and Freedman, Hosea, 53–56, 145–47. Note M. Weippert, “Assyrische Prophetien der Zeit Asarhaddons und Assurbanipals,” in M. Fales (ed.), Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: New Horizons in Literary, Ideological, and Historical Analysis (Orientis Antiqui Collectio 17; Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 1981) 101, citing urbanization as a factor. 354 J. R. Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) 11–13; cf. Flannery, “The Cultural Evolution of Civilizations.” 355 Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 282–93. 353

414 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  Second, Hezekiah is the earliest king under whom literary activity is documented (Prov 25:1; KAI 189), although earlier monuments (2 Sam 18:18) and texts did exist.356 Still, it was in the eighth century that Israel began to make the transition from a traditional to a literate culture. This is the era in which the written forms of the Yahwistic prose epic in the Pentateuch (the J source) and its Elohistic alloform (E) were probably produced.357 From this period the earliest extant written prophecy (Amos, Hosea) survives. This is also the period from which ostraca and other inscriptions are first recovered at sites in Israel, but that may be a function of the fact that texts recovered archaeologically tend to be products of the decades preceding a site’s abandonment or destruction. More telling is the fact that, starting in the eighth century. Israelite personal seals more frequently than before exhibit text – the name of their owners. With increasing frequency, starting in this period, they can be distinguished one from the other on the basis of the specific text alone.358 The texts even include occupations, such as the seal of Hanan, son of Hilqiyahu the priest.359 Why include such elements, except to establish one’s status? Although pre-exilic Hebrew orthography does not often represent vowels, and is thus best fitted out as an aid to oral transmission rather than as a tool of purely written communication, the evolution of seals from early pictures to later pure texts surely indicates the spread of literacy among the propertied classes. Simultaneously, by no coincidence, individual interment burgeoned in the capital. As part of the transition to a widely literate culture, the elite culture, as reflected in the early prophetic corpus, developed a critique of traditional culture on which Reformation critiques of traditional Catholicism were closely patterned. Icons, in this critique, were not symbols of gods, but were worshipped as gods themselves. Rituals were empty gestures, so that between the festivals, worshippers could sin against Yhwh’s norms with impunity. The temple, taken as a guarantee of Yhwh’s protective presence, was an empty symbol. Subordinate gods – the baals, the host of heaven – were powerless, empty cisterns as distinct from the living waters of the high god. Yhwh was the reality, but the Israelites were misled to revere  356

Generally A. Lemaire, Les écthes et la formation de la Bible dans l’ancien Israël (OBO 39; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981). 357 Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible?, 87. 358 A. Demsky, “Writing in Ancient Israel and Early Judaism. Part One: The Biblical Period,” in M.J. Mulder (ed.), Miqra. Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (CRINT 2.1; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1988) 2–20. 359 J. Elayi, “Le sceau de prétre তanan, fils de তilqîyahu,” Sem. 36 (1986) 43–46.

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415  mere representations of him. Yhwh’s will was the way, but the Israelites turned right and left to perform empty gestures of compliance with it. It was on this critique that Ahaz must have seized when removing metal imagery from the temple nave. Hezekiah’s men used it in order to isolate the rural cult from that of the state – Yhwh did not want sacrifice, after all, but the obedience of his people. Isaiah and Micah articulated this view, in treating Sennacherib’s deportations as Yhwh’s verdict on the rural cult, the cult that the Deuteronomistic History exposes as Amorite, as foreign. And Josiah’s Puritan aniconism, and Jeremiah’s radical monotheism both presuppose the same ideology. The very ideology that produced a doctrine of moral individuation, monism, the one, and not the many, was the order of the day.360 The intellectual logic actuating the prophetic critique sharply distinguishes a representation from the thing it represents. It further indicts others (idolaters) for failing to make the same distinction. Thus, icons, ritual, temples are misunderstood by the worshippers, taken to have a life of their own. This Sprachkritik reflects a literalistic mentality, a semantic deflation that fails to engage the poetic dimension of metaphor. What is portrayed in metaphor as beautiful is perceived, in reality, as tainted. Expressions of devotion are mere lip service (as Amos 8:4–6; Hos 6:1–6; Isa 1:15–17), so that feasts will be transformed into mourning (Amos 8:10; Hos 9:4) or eliminated (Amos 5:21–27; Hos 2:11). Icons represent gods, but are not gods (as Amos 4:4–5; Hos 4:12; 8:4–6; 2:5–8; 11:1–4; 12:5–11; Isa 2:6–22; 10:11; 19:3), so the icons, with the altars, will be destroyed (Amos 3:14–15; Hos 12:11; 8:6). Appearances are deceiving – and wealth proceeds not from piety, but from oppressing the poor (Amos 2:6–7; 4:1; 6:12; Isa 1:23; 5:7–10: Mic 2:1–2). So all things beautiful in appearance must be defaced to reflect their hideous essence (Amos 4:2–3; Hos 2:9–10; Isa 1:7, 22; 3:16–24; 5:1–6; 7:23; Mic 1:6; 3:12). Even military security is a sham, when based on alliance with other powers than Yhwh (Hos 2:5–8; 5:13–15; 7:8–12; Isa 7:7– 11; 8:5–8; 10:5–6; 30; 31): evanescent political alliances are lures in which to snare a fickle people. And Israel’s election by Yhwh is not the same as immunity from correction: Israel must be treated as others have been, broken down, defeated, destroyed (Amos 2:4–3, 15; 9:7; Hos 1:9; Isa 1:9–10). The Bauhaus character of the critique is unmistakable: the law does not deliver justice (text itself originates in the lying pen of the scribes), because centrally-imposed written law cuts across the grain of local customary usage: ‘law’ and ‘custom’ (mišpƗ‫ )ܒ‬are suddenly in conflict. 361 Any  360 361

Halpern, “‘Brisker Pipes than Poetry’: The Development of Israelite Monotheism.” Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society, 127–32.

416 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  communication, any action or representation, is a deception. Paranoia reigns. Hezekiah deconsecrated the land, assaulted the resonance of its timeless ancestral associations: The reform ideology rejected the resonance of language, of gesture, of religious and non-religious metaphor, as mere hypocrisy covering a lack of substance. As Hapsburg ornamentation seemed to the Bauhaus movement, as Catholic iconography seemed to the Reformationists, all symbol was deceit, or at least, any symbol was liable to be seized on as a deception. Between the reality of human manipulation and the environment on the one hand, and, on the other, the perception of that reality, there should ideally be no softening, metaphoric medium, no expression – symbolically,362 no intermediary between God and the individual, between the king and the people. No intermediary gods, and no intermediary ancestors or lineage institutions. Under this anti-poetic programme, Kantian reason also operates upon the multiplicity of reality; thus, other divine beings are merely Yhwh’s representatives; reality is the One, the underlying cause and unifying will, and the many are mere epiphenomena – useless, deceptive intermediaries. By Josiah’s time, the host of heaven were identified with the baals,363 or  362

D. Armstrong, “The Excluded Middle: Hezekiah and the Leaders of the Lineages.” ‘The baal’, Hebrew hab-ba’al, does not refer to a single god, Baal, by name, but is a title, sometimes applied to Yhwh (as Hos 2:18; Isa 1:3; and in the onomasticon in the case of Saul’s sons Ishbaal and Meribbaal or the judge Jerubbaal – see Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 263–64), specifically ‘master’. As the word for ‘husband’, its application to Yhwh fathered and disseminated Hosea’s imagery of apostasy as adultery, or whoredom. The title never refers to a god unless qualified, most often by the definite article, to indicate which particular god of this class is in point. In 8th-century and later literature, however, hab-ba’al, ‘the baal’, is often a collective plural, ‘the baals’, the gods of the class, baals’. Thus, Jeremiah, who speaks regularly of the baals in the plural (as 2:23; earlier in Hos 2:15, 10; 11:2), identifies child sacrifices as a rite directed toward ‘the baal’, yet identifies the ‘host of heaven’ as beneficiaries (7:32–8:3; 19:5, 13), and in a parallel text (32:29, parallel to 19:13) speaks of the baals. 2 Kgs 23:4–5 speaks of those “who burn incense to hab-ba’al, to the sun and to the moon and to the constellations and to all the host of heaven”, where hab-ba’al is set in apposition with the succeeding objects of worship. And Zephaniah includes priests and worshippers of the host of heaven among the ‘remnant of hab-ba’al’, an expression that itself suggests a collective plural (1:4–5). These and other texts suggest that the baals were included, at least in Josianic theology, among the host of heaven. The baals were perhaps popularly identified with the planets, as gods enjoying greater independence than those represented by the other stars (but the identification of the baals with gods of all the foreign nations – Spieckermann, Juda unter Assur in der Sargonidenzeit, 201–11; Noth, The Laws in the Pentateuch and Other Studies, 52–55; Halpern, “‘Brisker Pipes than Poetry’: The Development of Israelite Monotheism,” – speaks to a more inclusive club in certain circles, perhaps like the fifty great gods in Mesopotamia). The customary cult practice was to burn incense in their honor on rooftops – Jer 19:13; 32:29 – where various cultic activities took place (1  363

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

417  were demythologized (Deut 4:19; in P, Gen 2:1). 364 Here, the reformists reached the intellectual stage at which adulation directed to the host was not merely pointless, but pernicious, where Jeremiah could imagine a divine realm wholly devoid of gods other than the One,365 where P could rewrite the folk history suppressing all mention of angels,366 where the very insignia of the host had to be suppressed from the cult (2 Kgs 23:4–5). The gods, along with nature, were alienated from Yhwh, identified as alien. The contrast is to the old theology (Deut 32:8-9; Mic 4:5; Judg 11:24; Num 21:29), which lived comfortably with their stewardship of other nations in subordination to Yhwh. It was an era of alienation – from land, gods, kin, tradition. This critique, like Protestantism, gathered momentum from cultural integration into a world economy. The eighth century saw the dawning of the first truly international age, principally in Western Asia and Egypt. During the eighth and seventh centuries, Phoenician colonization reached a feverish pitch in the western Mediterranean (Carthage having been founded around 814, with the prospect of Assyrian monopoly on the eastern trade  Sam 9:25–26, the designation of Saul; 2 Sam 16:2 after 11:2, Absalom entering unto David’s harem on the spot where David had spotted Bathsheba; Isa 22:1, 13, sacrificial feasting in the face of Sennacherib’s destruction of the countryside; Neh 8:16, tabernacles on the roofs; Isa 15:3; Jer 48:38, Moabite mourning on the roofs [and squares]; Judg 16:27, Philistines watching Samson from the temple roof; cf. Josh 2:6, Rahab’s roof with pšty h’‫ ܈‬spread out; Prov 21:9; 25:24). This was also the locus of sacrifice to the host (Zeph 1:5), suggesting that Ahaz’s roof with the altars built by ‘the kings of Judah’ was an astral installation – in other words, again, that the cult of the host survived Hezekiah’s measures unimpaired. The cultic activity attested for the host is the same as that attested for the baals, chiefly burning incense (and, for the latter, child sacrifice); and it is worth noting that Spieckermann identifies the kmrym of Hos 10:5; Zeph 1:4; 2 Kgs 23:4 with the astral priests of KAI 225–226 (see KAI 2.275), Spieckermann, Juda unter Assur in der Sargonidenzeit, 83–85. Exod 23:19 already proscribes animal sacrifice for any god but Yhwh, and this rule may have been honored traditionally, though sometimes, no doubt, as with child sacrifice, in the breach as much as in the observance. On the identification of the baals as gods of the nations, and the equation of these with the host under Josiah, see Halpern, “‘Brisker Pipes than Poetry’: The Development of Israelite Monotheism.” The dynamic may have been different under Hezekiah, Mark Smith reminds me. But Hosea’s polemic against baals and alliances is suggestive. The equation of what is foreign with what is evil is a chief point of the method of the historian who produced DtrH. The likelihood is that this was a tendency inherited from earlier members of the Jerusalem elite, starting at least with Hezekiah. 364 See Spieckermann, Juda unter Assur in der Sargonidenzeit, 224–25, though his view that the host was Assyrian, as p. 273, fails to reckon with such texts as Josh 10:10– 13; Judg 5:20. 365 Halpern, “’Brisker Pipes than Poetry.’” 366 R. E. Friedman, The Exile and the Biblical Narrative: The Formation of the Deuteronomistic and Priestly Works (HSM 25; Chico, Ca: Scholars Press, 1981) 84, 88, 92, 97.

418 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  already realized). Assyria, too, brought prosperity to the west, as Phoenicians plied the western routes and Judah and Aram competed for commercial influence over the southern spice trade. The Assyrians also adopted a vigorous policy of deportations, sometimes with devastating implications for ethnic identity and for the preservation of traditional culture. The alienation was worldwide. Christopher Hill, writing of the English Reformationists, observes that before Puritanism, “Sin, like poverty and social inferiority, was inherited.” The fathers had eaten sour grapes, and the teeth of the poor were set on edge. As the Church, however, offered indulgences for sale in order to cash in on the growing wealth new technologies were generating, a reaction set in among the wealthy: sacraments and priestly mediation were rejected as fraudulent; and salvation, ‘justification’ were internalized, liberating the community of the elect, particularly the self-made middle classes, from their humble roots and encouraging them to seek salvation on an individual basis.367 New wealth, combined with widespread landlessness, the breakdown of the multi-generational family, and theological skepticism based on the circulation of printed canons – these are elements that affected Britain in the seventeenth century. The Israelite elite, with its new prophetic canon, J, E and other literature, was in a similar position in the eighth– seventh centuries BCE – although the landlessness may in the main have been Assyria’s doing. The relationship of the Protestant programme to capitalism has been extensively plumbed: 368 the depersonification of reality, the desacralization of nature, leads to an analysis of the economy and of physics as impersonal objects.369 Industrialized urban Judah of the seventh century was as receptive to the monadic critique as, later, Cromwell’s England or Roman Greece were to be. Individuation both of the god and the person was an adaptive intellectual strategy in an era of lineage fissure, of economic expansion, of industrialization. It was, as Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged in firing the bullet of glasnost toward the target of perestroika, a strategy that promoted profitable innovation, flexible personal effort: it placed one’s fate firmly in one’s own hands, and thus labor and puritanical morals promised capital and divine favor. The diet of the fathers no longer determined the orthodonture of the man. And all this promised to benefit two parties, the meritorious, industrious individual, and the central state. Centralization and the prophetic critique thus conspired to keep down the old entrenched interests, the old estab 367

C. Hill, The World Turned Upside Down. Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975) 151–58. 368 Especially, Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. 369 Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, 24.

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419  lishment, that stood in the way of radical economic and military policies. The tolerant, heterodox, unselfconscious folk religion of an age of relative prosperity – the eighth century 370 – gave way to self-conscious radicalism,371 as the elite theology adapted to an environment in which individual mobility was possible. Josiah, and probably Hezekiah, turned countryside conservatism back on itself, accusing the worshippers on the high places of apostasy, of foreign practice, the very charge no doubt leveled earlier against Solomon, who introduced the principle of a central temple, a royal chapel, into a rural culture. What, after all, was the rural view of the capital, if not that it was a hotbed of syncretism and alien custom, where foreign craftsmen, foreign architectural forms, foreign cultic objects and foreign emissaries accumulated? Hezekiah’s or Josiah’s tactic was calculated to appeal to a meritocratic, individuated urban elite, the servants of the king and not their kin (cf. Nabonidus’s alienation of the capital by revaluing the hinterland). The parallels here to other Reformations run deep, but a description of the situation in the eighth–seventh centuries should suffice to suggest them. Along with an increasingly extensive and increasingly intensive pattern of contacts across land and sea there developed, not unnaturally, a sense of Kulturkampf. The elite were those engaged in defining the essence of their own cultures – at the same time as a sort of international culture arose, with such Western phenomena as prophecy burgeoning in Assyria.372 The job of self-definition persisted through the seventh century. One obvious way to consolidate a conceptual grip on one’s identity is appeal to the past, and Mesopotamian chronicles and historiography multiply in this period as in no other.373 The annals of the kings of Judah and those of the kings of Israel must also have been compiled at this time, as Van Seters has shown.374 At the end, of the period, Josiah’s court party produced the Deuteronomistic History, probably rewriting an older Hezekian document in order to do so.375  370

Cf. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, 206–207. Halpern, “‘Brisker Pipes than Poetry’: The Development of Israelite Monotheism.” 372 Weippert, “Assyrische Prophetien der Zeit Asarhaddons und Assurbanipals,” 101– 105; H. Tadmor, “Assyria and the West: The Ninth Century and its Aftermath,” in H. Goedicke and J.J.M. Roberts (eds.), Unity and Diversity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975) 36–48. 373 Van Seters, In Search of History, 79–92; A. K. Grayson, “Histories and Historians of the Ancient Near East: Assyria and Babylonia,” Ori 49 (1980) 140–95. 374 Van Seters, In Search of History, 298–302; Halpern, The First Historians, 213–18. 375 Halpern, The First Historians, 114–15, 134–36 and passim; B. Halpern and D. S. Vanderhooft, “The Editions of Kings in the 8th – 7th Centuries B.C.E.,” HUCA 63 (1992) 179–244. 371

420 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  The extent to which appeal to the past permeated Near Eastern cultures in the era is reflected, too, in the spate of ‘founders’ names that suddenly appear as throne-names – Jeroboam II in Israel, Hiram II at Tyre, Rezin II at Damascus – all three commemorating figures from the tenth century (cf. also Amos 6:5) – and Sargon II in Asshur. At Asshur, an update of the Assyrian King List was drawn up, and new claims to hoary dynasty advanced; 376 royal dress fossilized while other fashions continued to change. 377 More obviously, Ashurbanipal’s library consolidated Mesopotamia’s literary heritage: 378 and we might add the systematic collection, especially under Esarhaddon, of omens and the erection of a network of scholars, 379 excavations at ruined temples continuing down through the sixth century, the appropriation of Babylonian culture in such works as Sennacherib’s akƯtu-house, and a host of other, related activities. Assyria was grasping for its identity against the denaturing impact of empire. 380 The systematic approach to omens and astronomical observation suggests that the historical enterprise, too, was an experiment with empirical modes of investigating a (theological) cosmology. Yet the very act of defining their identity led the elite in Israel to a consciousness of the dissonance between elite and traditional culture. The Priestly source in the Pentateuch, for example, set out to correct the distortions in anthropomorphism, distributive sacrificial ritual, and angelology that earlier national epics had created.381 ‘Classical’ (i.e. literary) prophecy is another sign of the new situation, with its daring critique of the traditional cult, and its movement toward a distinctive aniconic monotheism. Literary prophecy, too, is riddled with appeals to the past, reviews of the nation’s heritage. Israelite covenant theology, if it antedated the literary prophets,382 predisposed divines to rehearsal of Israel’s history – Yhwh’s “righteous acts on behalf of Israel” (Judg 5:11) – were, after all, the focus of the paschal cult and the reason one executed his commands; literary prophecy thus conforms to an established pattern in its citations of national history. Still, the idea that a textual record could be as authoritative as a  376

H. Tadmor, “History and Ideology in the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions,” 26–30. J. E. Reade, “Neo-Assyrian Monuments in their Historical Context,” in M. Fales (ed.), Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: New Horizons in Literary, Ideological, and Historical Analysis (Orientis Antiqui Collectio 17; Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 1981) 152; cf. Zeph 1:8. 378 Streck, Assurbanipal und die letzten assyrischen Könige, 256.17–18. 379 See S. Parpola, Letters from Assyrian Scholars to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal (Kevelaer: Butzon and Bereker, 1980) 380 Spieckermann, Juda unter Assur in der Sargonidenzeit, 306 381 Friedman, The Exile and the Biblical Narrative. 382 As J. D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988) 131–48. 377

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421  spoken oracle, the idea that history could be a proving ground for the revisionist theology, for an elite philosophical system, was new. The past, however distant, was now to be construed as a model on which to revolutionize present practice, to correct the peasant deviation from elite norms. No more telling evidence of this fact could be adduced than the pseudepigraphic attribution of Deuteronomy to Moses. This, like Hezekiah’s canon of literary prophets (and Ashurbanipal’s redefined canon of Mesopotamian literature), reflects the urge to inject a new ‘literacy’, a ‘literacy’ of a second order, into elite society. Textual records offer the possibility of establishing that there are contradictions in the tradition.383 Conversely, a literary canon, like literacy proper, creates a common frame of reference, a treasury of common points of reference, of common symbols and languages, to which the literate can be expected to refer – which is why canon guilds sometimes attempt to monopolize literacy,384 and why literacy and canon travel hand in hand.385 In the eighth–seventh centuries, canons formed, and even genealogies – so plastic, polyvalent and protean in peasant hands 386 – were recorded (1 Chr 4:41; 5:17). Tradition lost its fluidity, and its fixity, as in other literate cultures, left traditional culture open to critical scrutiny387 and rejection. Administration fell to a (doubly) literate elite. Those who retailed the ‘righteous acts of Yhwh’ in the cult could now be checked up on and compelled to admit the authority of one or another standard version. And thus the literacy of the elite made public knowledge a control on one’s assertions about the past.388 Yet all of these developments presuppose a desperation to hold onto the authentic elements of Judah’s past; a despair, “of creating a human world out of freedom and consciousness” of the sort that might drive one to model history on vegetable life and decay, or to isolate culture and the spiritual from the externalities of a civilization, to “set... up  383

See J. R. Goody and I. Watt, “The Consequences of Literacy,” in J.R. Goody (ed.), Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968) 27–68. 384 E. L. Eisenstein, “The Advent of Printing and the Problem of the Renaissance,” Past and Present 45 (1969) 19–89; J. R. Goody, The Interface between the Written and the Oral (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) 140–43. 385 Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society, 3–4. 386 A. Malamat, “King Lists of the Old Babylonian Period,” JAOS 103 (1968) 719–37; idem. “Tribal Societies: Biblical Genealogies and African Lineage Systems,” Archives Européenes de Sociologie 14 (1973) 126–36; R. R. Wilson, Fenealogy and History in the Biblical World (Yale Near Eastern Researches 7; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977). 387 Goody and Watt, “The Consequences of Literacy,” 44–48; Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society, 10. 388 For a parallel, Eisenstein, “The Advent of Printing and the Problem of the Renaissance,” 55, 63, 75–76.

422 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  culture against the latter and render... it absolute. And often enough in so doing it opens the gate to the true enemy, barbarism.”389 Any Reformationist attempt to create cultural preserves, in sum, is fraught with opportunities for Torquemadas. After all, what is the Western tradition of Inquisitionism, except the discovery of hidden cabals of those who cling or are said to cling to earlier traditions – Judaizers, peasant witches, worshippers of olden gods now demonized?390 With Deuteronomy turning the very idea of a Holy War inward against members of one’s own nuclear family (13:2– 18), with the Josianic program, the state/church of ancient Judah reached its own inquisitorial, cultural Jacobin stage. To paraphrase a recent analysis of Islamic culture,391 Judah’s social organization passed from a stage in which individuals were housed within kinship and patronage groups to one in which their links to central authority and to their god were immediate, unmediated, without having the opportunity to develop any significant institutions or customs of civil society, of moderate political culture. In the same period, in Greece, similar processes were under way.392 The eighth century was the Homeric era, in which Mycenaean tombs became shrines, and were imitated. An era in which the alphabet was widely appropriated, the city-state developed, and figurative art imported. In the cult, links to the Bronze Age were forged. At the same time, reverence of the founders – a hero-cult – ascended new heights,393 and into the seventh century, the systematization of theogonic cosmology was the result.394 This was the period in which colonization and integration into the network of international trade effectively began. Simultaneously, poets happened onto the first person, and asserted the worth of the individual in the context of a rejection of dominant cultural values (Archilochus). The rest of the development in Greece was episodic, unlike that in Israel. The Homeric epic was canonized, fixed in written form, at the end of the sixth century, under Peisistratus. Meanwhile, the Pythagorean and Orphic doctrines of the soul repudiated ancestral reward; the state legislation under Solon in Athens restricted the authority of the family; further, an individuated notion of purity, of morality, gradually overtook that of generalized guilt, such that the internalized concept of intention came to be  389

Frankfurt Institute, Aspects of Sociology, 92–93. See generally, C. Ginzburg, Storia Notturna: Una Decifrazione del Sabba (Turnin: Einaudi, 1989). 391 D. Pryce-Jones, The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs (New York: Harper & Row, 1989). 392 Especially, J.-P. Vernant, Mythe et pensée chez les grecs (Etudes de psychologie historique; 2nd ed; Paris: Francois Maspero, 1966) 267–314. 393 Snodgrass 1982, 114–17. 394 For Hesiod see, F. M. Cornford, The Unwritten Philosophy and Other Essays (Ed. W.K.C. Guthrie; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950) 95–116. 390

10. Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century BCE

423  the determinant of guilt in the Draconian code. At this point, logic and law replaced tradition as the governing factors in elite life, 395 and ‘law’ and ‘custom’ once again stood in opposition to one another (Antigone). Indeed, philosophers such as Antiphon and Plato even came to see the State itself as an enactment of human society, much like the revolutionary views expressed in Judg 8–9; 1 Sam 8; 10:17–12:25 and, tellingly, Deut 17:14–20. No longer were state laws necessarily divine. Antiphon went so far as to suggest that Natural Law, a concept manipulated by self-appointed spokesmen of the ‘oppressed’ against those in power, was Truth, state law mere opinion. The consequence was that the needs of the state might lead it to pervert natural justice396 – precisely the view expressed among the literary prophets, in stories in the Deuteronomistic History, and in the Deuteronomic concern to make the ‘oppressed’ the social equals of the propertied classes. The philosophical tradition, too, came to recognize the one god, different from the others, who has no cult, is invisible and unchangeable and unlike any representations of the gods: 397 Anaximander even uses ‘god’ as the term for the stuff of the universe.398 In part this progression responds to increasing literacy, and increasing legal codification in which the state singles out the individual as legally liable. In part it reflects the increasing desacralization of politics in the eighth to seventh centuries BCE, culminating in the conviction that humans, the citizens of the polis, control right and wrong,399 stand in a position, that is to say, to determine their fate. That legal codification should characterize the new era in Israel (as in Greece) is only to be expected: such codification permitted the definition of the culture. Enshrinement of (reconstituted) custom in law represented an attempt to maintain it in stasis, against the inroads of alien customs; again, fluidity was sacrificed, both in terms of change in usage over time and in terms of synchronic heterogeneity. Again, codified law, not specific to particular locales, broke down segmentary distinctions.400 At the same time, the publication of written law creates the opportunity for conflict between the law’s letter and its unseen spirit, the reality it represents (Jer 8:8).401 Similarly, the rise of Jeremianic prophecy, based on  395

Z. Barbu, Problems of Historical Psychology (New York: Grove, 1960) 90–122. See Frankfurt Institute, Aspects of Sociology, 19. 397 See K. Jaspers, “Xenophanes,” in H. Ganer (ed.), Aneignung und Polemik. Gesammelte Reden und Aufsätze zur Geschichte der Philosophie (Munich: R. Piper, 1968) 32–42. 398 Cornford, The Unwritten Philosophy and Other Essays, 11. 399 J.-P. Vernant, The Origins of Greek Thought (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982) 68–105. 400 Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society, 11–12. 401 Generally, Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society, 127–70. 396

424 Part III: The State’s Rejection of Religion  the ‘word’ and denying the visibility of the only god (as Deut 4:12),402 is a predictable outcropping of a literal, monadic consciousness: a multifarious visible reality is the epiphenomenon of the unseen unifying cause. Further, the use of written registers to determine the status of those who returned to Judah from the Babylonian exile (Ezra 2, esp. vv. 59–63; 8:1–14; and note the status of archival materials in Ezra 1; 2; 3:7; 4:6–22; 5:6–12; 7:6, 11– 28; 8:34, etc.) reflects the valorization of the same mindset throughout an entire community. However, the new literate mentality was fundamentally that of an elite. In classical Greece, therefore, the philosophical tradition remained confined, with the exception of Socrates, to the elite. The introduction of a semi-monadic programme under Nabonidus in sixth-century Babylon was wholly abortive. In Judah, on the other hand, Sennacherib had deported the entire rural population, leaving a society concentrated in the capital, under the watchful eyes of the royal house and its army. The process of literalization, of elite alienation, of moral and legal individuation, began with Hezekiah’s centralization and Sennacherib’s response. It was carried through, and in the form of monotheism became a distinguishing mark of Judahite culture, because Judah survived as an industrial rather agrarian society, an urbanized rather than rural organism, for a century amid the Kulturkampf and ethnic chaos of the seventh century. In the absence of a restraint in the hinterland, the elite theology sacrificed the comfort of the collective on the altar of the individual; it flattened the security of the unchanging past on the anvil of economic and scientific progress. It successfully defined traditional culture as un-Israelite, as pagan, as inferior, a position that Western literary religions have continued to maintain ever since.

 402 Levenson, Sinai and Zion. An Entry into the Jewish Bible (Minneapolis: Winston, 1985) 147–51; Halpern, “‘Brisker Pipes than Poetry’: The Development of Israelite Monotheism,” 98–99 and 114, n. 99.

Part IV The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies



11. The Assyrian Astronomy of Genesis 1 and the Birth of Milesian Philosophy* The prophetic critique in Israel did not come into being in a vacuum. Its assault on symbol concentrated, in the acted social realm, on ritual versus personal piety, in the personal realm or ideationally shared social world, on poetry, epic-making, versus reportage of “unvarnished” reality, warts n’ all. But it was, of course, a local variant. Similar developments, and at the same time the reaction to them, were occurring in Mesopotamia, as Chapter 10 documents. Perhaps one of the most diagnostic activities begun in Mesopotamia in the eighth century, contemporary with our first historical attestations of the prophetic critique – validated by an earthquake in the aftermath of Amos 7–9 and by the eclipse of 763 – was the introduction of a more systematic approach to divination. Our earliest datable evidence for this is probably astronomical, the subject of the essay that follows. In this realm, the transition was in progress between the collection MUL.APIN, containing older knowledge, and the Enuma Anu Enlil that would become the handbook of omenology in the future. There was no separation of the scribes of the one from those of the other. Rather, what we have is a practical separation of the technical or truly predictable, mechanical aspect of the field from that against which apotropaic measures were to be taken. The experts, far from distancing the cosmos from themselves, personalized it in seeking meaning in its regulation. The same relationship held in early modern astronomy. What made Brahe desirable as a court astronomer was precisely that his measurements, taken on his death by Kepler, enabled him better to predict the movement of bodies in the sky: this made him the best of the astrologers of his day, and not just the patron of modern astronomy. This study is the first of a series on the impact of astronomical observation on thinking in the peripheries. But the reality is that the elements of the observation were ancient, attested as early as the Venus Tablets of Ammisaduqa in Old Babylonian times. The regularity and precision of observation was what most changed the way in which information about the sky was used and shared with peripheral elites, who still found, in the mix of predictability and technical knowledge, adequate grounds for a new worldview, one in which they repudiated the independence of subsidiary astral bodies to a controlling central force. It also spawned, perhaps even in Mesopotamia in the forms of the Enuma Elish that reach us, new cosmological thinking. The third entry in the series in question is my contribution to Manfred Weippert’s Festschrift on the astronomy of the book of Job and its implication for the dating of that book. I begin to wonder, in this context, whether I should not have identified Amos’s famous skwt with Job’s Ğkwy, and identified the earlier reference with Perseus (šu.gi) as

 *

Originally published in Eretz Israel 27 (Fs. Hayim and Miriam Tadmor; 2003) 85–89.

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well. In any case, the import of the systematization of liver omens, birth omens and astronomical omens in the Babylonian and Assyrian spheres cannot be overstated, particularly in the effect it had on peripheral elite thinking. The following essays attempt to document that impact, and pave the way for exploring the impact of science, such as it was, in its “sleepwalking” state, and technology, such as it was, in those developments.

I. Israelite Astronomy An old joke, recirculated, like so many, on the Internet, runs as follows: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, out camping, crawled into their sleeping bags for the night. They slept for several hours. But, in the middle of the night, Holmes shook his friend awake. “Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see.” “Why, countless millions of stars.” Holmes asked, “What does that tell you?” Watson: “I see that Jupiter is in Leo. That it must be about one o’clock. The weather promises a glorious tomorrow. There are millions of galaxies, and probably planets. And I can see my insignificance in the scheme of the entire universe. What does it say to you?” “Watson, you idiot,” Holmes answered. “Some bastard has stolen our tent.”

There is a rich literature about Mesopotamian astronomy, and an even richer one about Greek astronomy. No previous scholarly discussion has addressed the astronomy of Genesis 1. Biblical literature about stars is familiar enough. The stars fight from their courses against Sisera.1 The stars are Yhwh’s hosts. The host advise Yhwh in counsel. The stars are the gods, and most of them descend to the underworld, as they descend below the horizon, some to rise on the opposite side. Hence the comparison of Israel to the stars – the reference ties Israel to its ancestors, by suggesting that each Israelite, on earth as in the underworld, is represented by a deity.2 But in the eighth and especially the late seventh century, there was a revolution in the way Israelites saw the sky. This is the first period in which the terms “heavens of the heavens,” “host of the heavens,” or “pitched the heavens” appear.3 The development coincides with rejection  1 Judg 5:20; likewise, against Babylon in Isa 13:4–5 with 13:10. Abbreviations: DK = H. Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (10th ed.; W. Krantz, ed.; Berlin: Weidmann, 1961); R = J. Mansfeld, Die Vorsokratiker (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1983). 2 Gen 22:17; 26:4; Exod 32:13; Deut 1:10; 10:22; 28:62; Neh 9:23; 1 Chr 27:23; paradigmatically Gen 37:9. Conversely, in Deut 32:8 (with LXX, QR), the number of the gods determines, and thus reflects, the number of inhabited territories. 3 Heavens of the heavens in: Deut 10:14; 1 Kgs 8:27; 2 Chr 2:5; 6:18; Ps 148:4; Neh 9:6; compare the term indicating the circumpolar stars, “the stars of El” in Isa 14:13, a text reflecting familiarity with the Mesopotamian conception of the stars of Enlil (and Anu and Ea). Host of the heavens in: Deut 4:19; 17:3; 1 Kgs 22:19; 2 Kgs 17:16; 21:3, 5;

11. The Assyrian Astronomy of Genesis 1 429  of the stars as autonomous elements in P, who consistently defines Yhwh’s hosts as Israel, as opposed to the singular host of the heaven and earth. 4 It is accompanied by explicit denials that the stars signify divine intention, that they portend, in Jeremiah 10 and Deuteronomy 4, both from the late seventh century. 5 It is also accompanied by diatribes against the host of heaven in Deuteronomy, Zephaniah, Kings and Jeremiah.6 The rejection of astral signs has striking corollaries in P and Ezekiel. Of these, P presents the greater challenge to modern understanding:

II. The Heavens of Genesis 1 Genesis 1 is a pyrotechnics of cosmogonic speculation. Though rarely understood as such, it is comparable to the speculations of early pre-Socratic naturalists. Still, one of the standing problems of the text, and a source of embarrassment from patristic times forward, is that the light is divorced from the stars. How can it be, asked those to whom rabbis, Church Fathers and even Reformation theologians replied, that there was light beside and before that of sun and moon? How can it be, later skeptics inquired, that a day passed when the earth did not rotate once around the as-yet uncreated sun? To resolve the tension, one need only bring to Genesis 1 the assumptions of a Hellenistic doxographer, namely, that this most orderly of all texts is systematic in intention.7 The opening line of Genesis 1 contains a geography of the cosmos.

 23:4, 5; Isa 24:21 (of on high, mrwm); 34:4; 40:26 (of on high, mrwm); 45:12; Jer 8:2; 19:13; 33:22; Zeph 1:5; Dan 8:10; 2 Chr 33:3; 35:5; Neh 9:6; compare, “host of Yhwh” in Josh 5:15; further, Ps 33:6; 103:21; 148:2, with parallels in texts such as Ps 29. For “pitched the heavens,” see below. 4 Exod 7:4; 12:41; cf. 6:26; 12:17, 51; Num 1:3, etc.; 33:1. The singular host of heaven and earth in Gen 2:1 includes such things as vegetation. 5 The argument that Jeremiah 10 is post-exilic is decisively refuted by the work of B. Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66 (Stanford: Stanford University, 1998). Further, B. Halpern, “The New Names of Isaiah 62:4: Jeremiah’s Reception in the Restoration and the Politics of ‘Third Isaiah’” JBL 117 (1998) 623–643. The view that Deuteronomy 4 is post-exilic is based on its similarity to Deutero-Isaiah’s theology, but as Sommer shows that Deutero-Isaiah was influenced by Jeremiah 10, the likelihood is that Deuteronomy 4, which is closely related to Jeremiah 10, constituted another of the influences on him. Dismissal of astrology also occurs in Isa 47:13. 6 See above, n. 3. 7 The various divisions of the creation, though they tend to confirm the central hypothesis, will not be treated here.

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In the beginning of god’s creation of the heavens and the earth – when the earth was muck and dreck, and darkness was across the surface of the depths, and god’s wind fluttered across the surface of the water – god said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light...8

The character of the primordial tǀhû is evident from its later differentiation into purer constituent elements, when draining of the water leaves dry land producing vegetation. The tǀhû is a mix of water and soil, with the former primarily at the top. Darkness enfolds it, and god’s wind flutters through the darkness. The creator, whose name later turns out to be Yhwh, is extracosmic: he is neither in the watery chaos nor amid the earthly darkness. Light is the first new element. The light is also fire, as the two are not divorced in any ancient cosmology. A doxographer might infer that the wind roiled the water in the tǀhû and evaporation led to its combustion in the air on divine command.9 Yhwh “divided the light from the dark. Elohim called the light day, and the darkness he called night.” Yhwh specifically divides the light from the dark, indicating that light and dark coexist; but they do not yet alternate. So the question arises, what is the realm of light, what that of darkness? The division of the waters by the firmament, the division between land and seas, between seasons, and between day and night are all partly porous. They allow transitional mixing. Thus, dark and light are physically separate with liminal mixing. Logically, the light, like Yhwh himself, is external to the primordial world and the darkness enfolding it. It does not eliminate the still-existent darkness, on the surface of the waters. Possibly, it affects the upper part of the darkness; possibly, the light remains outside the darkness altogether. In any case, it does not completely penetrate the primitive muck, the waters below the darkness. The light is above the dark.10 Yhwh next installs a “firmament.” P calls this a rƗqîaҳ in the description of the second day. Later in the creation account, it is, more formally, consistently “the rƗqîaҳ of the skies”. 11 This is “the plate”, or vault, for the  8

Gen 1:1–2, the translation structurally following R. E. Friedman, Commentary on the Torah (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2000). r’šyt br’ is to be construed on the model of r’šyt mmlkt. 9 To continue the thought, the wind then created the heavenly plate (below), by cooling or compression. The fire must be created before the plate, because the cosmic fire is behind the plate of the heavens. 10 The alternative, of light beside the dark, is less probable, given the sequence that follows. 11 Gen 1:14, 15, 17, 20. When Yhwh creates it, he and the narrator call it “a plate” (rƗqîaҳ: 1:6, 7 bis, 8); and he calls the plate simply “heavens” (1:8). But thereafter P is careful to stipulate to which plate he is referring with the term, namely, that of the heavens. Note that the equation of the plate with the heavens, or sky, is no more an indication  of complete identity than the equation of the light with day or the dark with night.

11. The Assyrian Astronomy of Genesis 1 431  verb, rqҳ, denotes the application of a plating, including the earth’s crust.12 The birds “of the skies” will fly “across the surface of the plate of the skies” (1:20), never just “across the surface of the skies”. This mirrors Mesopotamian concepts of the sky as a tent – just as Yhwh first “pitches” the sky in Jeremiah’s era. The “plate” is “in the midst of the waters”: it is contained entirely within the tǀhû, where it separates water above from water below.13 The region below the vault (or, “plate”), the air where the birds will fly, is the biosphere. The light is above the upper part of the tǀhû. The plate separates it from the lower part of the tǀhû. As of the second day, then, no light penetrates below the plate, and darkness still enshrouds the inhabited earth. On the third day, Yhwh drains the waters that are below the vault into a single basin; land emerges from the primordial muck. The land then brings forth terrestrial vegetation.14 The terrestrial vegetation seeds itself in the absence of light, just as seeds germinate in the dark. All this furnishes the nether plate: the dry land plates the earth. Thus, the biosphere is complete: its upper plate appears on day two, its lower on day three. The fourth day brings the heavens to completion, with the creation of the stars and planets:

 Light and dark define day and night by distinguishing them; likewise, the plate gives definition to the sky above rather than being identical with it. Note that Yhwh stops naming things explicitly after the third day, when he names dry land “earth” and basins of water “seas.” In all the cases where he names things, he has introduced new distinctions into the natural order that existed before his creation. From day three forward, he introduces new creations (vegetation, the luminaries, fish and birds, animals and humans, the Sabbath) within the world that he created earlier. Of these, the creations from day four forward are probably altogether new. 12 A metal plate to cover an icon (Jer 10:9; Isa 40:19) or altar (in P, Num 17:3–4; cf. Exod 39:3) or a coating of plaster or mud applied to a street (2 Sam 22:43) – something stamped or hammered on (cf. Ezek 6:11; 25:6). Second Isaiah applies it to the earth’s crust (Isa 42:5; 44:24; likewise Ps 136:6), that is, the lower plate. 13 If there is no soil, or very little soil, above it, the text presupposes sedimentation in the muck. The light will eventually shine through the waters above. 14 Just such double-duty days led to the eighteenth-century view that the structure of the week was imposed secondarily on the “original” creation account of Genesis 1. See for example K. D. Ilgen, Die Urkunden des ersten Buchs von Moses in ihrer Urgestalt zum bessern Verständnis und richtigern Gebrauch derselben in ihrer gegenwärtigen Form aus dem Hebräischen mit kritischen Anmerkungen und Nachweisungen auch einer Abhandlung über die Trennung der Urkunden. Die Urkunden des Jerusalemischen Tempelarchivs in ihrer Urgestalt als Beytrag zur Berichtigung der Geschichte der Religion und Politik aus dem Hebräischen mit kritischen und erklärenden Anmerkungen auch mancherley dazu gehörigen Abhandlungen I (Halle: Hemmerde und Schwetschke, 1798) 433–435 (also with the objection to the day existing before the sun).

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God said, let there be luminaries (m’rt) in the plate of the heavens, to distinguish between the day and the night, that they be for signs, both for festivals/appointed times/seasons and for days and years,14a and that they be luminaries (m’wrt) in the plate of the heavens, to throw illumination (lh’yr) on the earth. And it was so. God made the two large luminaries (m’rt), the large luminary (hm’wr) for governing the day and the small luminary (hm’wr) for governing the night, and the stars. And God put them in the plate of the heavens to cast illumination on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to distinguish between the light and the dark... (Gen 1:14–18)

The light remains above the plate of the sky. And no new light is created on the fourth day. The term for the luminaries is not the causative participle, “shiners” (m’yr), but a noun with either a passive or a locative sense.15 That is, the luminaries, which rotate into position each day or year or period of years, permit the light that penetrates the upper waters to filter through the plate of the sky onto the earth. Light exists independently, previously, behind the plate, and these “lighted things” or “places of light” transmit it to the earth. So, these entities “in the plate of the heavens” must be intermediaries, functioning as membranes, which regulate how much light negotiates the division between the extracosmic region of Yhwh and his light and the cosmic region between the earth and the sky. This is why Yhwh sets the luminaries into the plating of the sky (1:17), as opposed to where birds fly: across the surface of the plating of the sky (1:20; cf. 1:1, across the surface of the deep/water). Like the fountains of the deep and windows of the sky in the Flood account, the luminaries connect two realms – the biosphere, and, on the other hand, a realm of purer elemental composition. If the luminaries are merely membranes set into the plate of the sky, then the plate itself must be in motion relative to the plate of the earth. The stars, sun and moon would rotate in fixed positions on the plate of the sky. Likewise, the holes in the upper plate might be associated with the admission of water, as in the association of lightning – light, fire – with rain, by Jeremiah.16 The later metaphor for the stars is the “eyes” of Yhwh, as in  14a

Thanks to W. R. Garr. For the functions of the maqtal, see C. Brockelmann, Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen (Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1908) 196. The nouns, mzr‫ۊ‬, the place where the sun rises, mҳrb, the place were the sun sets, mzb‫ۊ‬, a place of sacrifice, and the like (mw‫܈‬Ҵ, mbw’) come to mind. This may be an extension of the principle of a passive meaning: thus, mktb, something written (but also, the place on which something is written), mb‫ۊ‬r, something chosen, mb‫ۊܒ‬, something trusted, as distinct from b‫ۊܒ‬, trustingness (security). Note the overlap between the meanings in the alternation between “fortified towns” (ҳrym b‫܈‬rt) and “towns with fortifications” (ҳry mb‫܈‬r), where the last term alone can mean “a place of fortification” or “fortified place”. 16 Jer 10:10–13, esp. v. 13, “at the sound of his placing the commotion of waters in the heavens, when mists (of evaporation) rise up from the ends of the earth, he makes thunderbolts into rain, and sends forth wind [Greek: light] from his storehouses.” My  15

11. The Assyrian Astronomy of Genesis 1 433  Zechariah.17 And Jeremiah (8:23) repudiates the standard conceit by having Yhwh wish counterfactually that his head were waters, his eyes fountains. The celestial membrane is thus conceived on the model of the eye, admitting light and water. In this cosmological system, the stars and planets would be inanimate, and incapable of independent movement. They are merely holes.18 This reading may seem idiosyncratic. It does comport with Second Isaiah’s view: Yhwh plated the earth and pitched the sky – there are upper and nether plates. Still, the Enuma Elish already depicts the vault of the sky as a sort of tent. And neo-Assyrian astronomers reckoned the stars as being on a single two-dimensional surface (hence they could be referred to as “inscriptions in the heavens”).19 Their premise produced results: probably in the eighth century,20 astronomical diaries were commissioned in Ba-

 concern at this moment is not the correlation of the seventh-century cosmologies with the traditional Israelite views, but note Ps 29, affirming Yhwh’s enthronement on the “flood,” in the heaven, and provision of rain in conjunction with lightning. 17 Zech 3:9 + 4:2, 10, with reference to the seven planets; see B. Halpern, “The Ritual Background of Zechariah’s Temple Song,” CBQ 40 (1978) 174–177; and R. Hestrin and Y. Israeli, Inscriptions Reveal (2nd ed.; Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1973) 188–189 (the ‫ލ‬Ein Gedi synagogue inscription citing Zechariah, with reference to the zodiacal constellations that are enumerated at the start of the inscription). And note for stars as eyes, Prov 17:24, “the eyes of ‘the Fool’ are at/on the ends of earth,” a play on Orion. For El with four eyes, Sakkunyaton in Eusebius, Praep. Evang. 1.10:36–37; these must correspond to the four lumƗšnj of Esarhaddon’s temple dedication inscription in R. Borger, Die Inscriften Asarhaddons Königs von Assyrien (AfO Beiheft 9; Graz: E. Weidner, 1956) 28:10– 12; R. S. Ellis, Foundation Deposits in Ancient Mesopotamia (New Haven: Yale University, 1968) 121–122; CAD L 245 relates them to stars whose heliacal risings correlated to solstices and equinoxes. More likely, however, these are the alpha stars of constellations, described in Enuma Anu Enlil 22 as follows: “When Anu, Enlil and Ea, the great gods, created heaven and earth, established the signs, designated the ‘stations’, founded the ‘positions’, appointed gods of the night, distributed the courses, the stars (that were) [their own] counterparts (lit., the stars of their representations) they [in]scribed as lumƗšnj, they divided night from day...”; cf. B. Landsberger and J. V. Kinnier Wilson, “The Fifth Tablet of Enuma eliš” JNES 20 (11961) 154–179, p. 172. Similarly, read Enuma Elish 5:1–2 as “He devised the stations for the great gods; the stars that represent them he stationed as lumƗšnj.” 18 The antiquity of this view may be greater than is argued here, though it was not regnant in Israel before the developments described below. However, note, for the eye as a source of water, the use of the term “eye” to denote a “spring”, and of the maqtal derivative, mҳyn, to denote a water source (a place of water). 19 See W. Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 1998) 258, and the expression ši‫ܒ‬ir šamê. Note also Job 38:32. Job’s astronomy is closely related to that of Ezekiel. Jer 10:2–3 speaks of both stars and statues as the “inscriptions of the peoples,” describing both as mere appearance. 20 The consensus has it that the programme was undertaken in 746, in year one of Nabu-naৢir, the date given in essence by Ptolemy, in Almagest 3.7. Alternate dates are poss

434 Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies  bylonia, which led some astronomers – those not wedded to earlier systems – as early as the eighth century, to predict lunar eclipses, and, at least as early as 668, to predict solar eclipses. The predictions were not always successful, being based on periodicities only.21 But by the late eighth century, an oracular inquiry discounted the effects not just of lunar but even of solar eclipses in divine responses, despite the continuing importance of eclipses as omens.22 And this explains the depersonalization of the host in P: their behavior was in no way unpredictable – not even in the matter of eclipses, the most freighted celestial events of the premodern world.23

III. The Milesian Sky P’s astronomy, as reconstructed above, has its closest parallel in Milesian views of the sky in the sixth century. Around 560, 24 shortly after P and Jeremiah, Anaximander produced a cosmology alleged to be the first in Greek prose. Like many of his successors, he was concerned to explain how Thales predicted the solar eclipse of 585. That event – without physical explanation for two centuries – sounded the knell for the independence of any astral body in elite Greek cosmology. In Anaximander’s world, the sun’s heat attacked the primordial muck, and steam set the wind into motion. The sequence in Anaximander is like that in Jeremiah 10, where the true god lifts water with thunderbolts, and the evaporation causes lightning, which causes rain; the lightning and  ible, but the programme was very likely in full flight by about 720. The earliest recovered diary text dates to 651, the next earliest to 567. Both are for full years. See H. Hunger and D. Pingree, Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia (Handbuch der Orientalistik; Leiden: Brill, 1999) 140–144. The evidence would also support a conclusion that records were first kept of certain kinds of events (lunar eclipses, for example), and only over time evolved into detailed nightly recording of observations. 21 They were skewed by parallax, especially the limits of latitude and longitude, and also by the relative size of sun and moon in the case of solar eclipses. The 668 prediction was bang on for opposition, but not for an eclipse visible at Babylon; it was a month off for an eclipse in Babylon that ended before sunrise – Hunger and Pingree, Astral Sciences, 187. 22 SAA 4.XXIX.5 with a reference to AfO 11 361:19. The ezib clause is possibly of the sort that declares a phenomenon irrelevant to the reply, rather than of the sort that asks indulgence for a possible ritual error. 23 The atheism of the objects of the polemic in Zeph 1:12 is probably not so much atheism as a defense of traditional religion, taken by the prophet to mean astral cults. 24 Tradition puts Anaximander’s heyday around 570–550: for the Apollodoran chronology, see A. A. Mosshammer, “Geometrical Proportion and the Chronological Method of Apollodorus” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 107 (1976) 295ff.

11. The Assyrian Astronomy of Genesis 1 435  moisture cause wind.25 Anaximander’s air, or wind, derives from evaporating water, and solids from the coincident drying of the Infinite, primordial tǀhû. In this resolution of the elements, Sea was restricted to the area encircling the earth (gathered to one basin, as in P), which Anaximander conceived as a disk.26 Evaporation also created animate beings. The generative element is fire, disaggregated from the primordial material.27 Conversely, a Hellenistic doxographer might summarize P’s creation as wind alienating water from the primordial muck, generating fire (in the way that wind kindles brush fires) and animate beings.28 The cosmologies, while not identical, are related. Indeed, it is not when thinkers such as P and Anaximander agree that one can rightly understand the relationship between them: it is when they enter into dispute with one another. Anaximander’s creation stems from his astronomy. Above the earth, concentric wheels of pure fire turned in the heavens. The fire was restrained and masked from view by clouds – their thick moisture, a residue of the original chaos,29 prevents the fire from consuming the world.30 The clouds occluding the fire thus constitute the rims of the celestial wheels. The sun is a hole in the highest wheel, the moon a hole in the next highest, the planets and fixed stars holes in one or two lowest wheel-rims.31 On the wheel-rims, the positions of the stars are fixed. The multiple wheels of fire explained the differential circulation of sun, moon, planets across the ecliptic and the zodiacal and other constellations and fixed stars.32  25

Jer 10:10–13 (51:15–19). See above. A cylinder whose height was one third of its diameter. It continues to shrink: one wonders whether Anaximander was not influenced, as Xenophanes is said to have been, by inland marine fossils. In Anaximander’s view, the fire will one day consume the last of the primordial muck. Compare Polybius’s view that the Black Sea would one day silt up (4.40–42). 27 The doxographers identify Anaximander’s “god” with the infinite primordial material. But Anaximander’s real god may have set the relationship among the phenomena into action, as in P. 28 Anaximander also differs from P in deriving humans through successive generation from fish, for example, which theory reflects the sort of taxonomic considerations informing the J account of the creation of humans and beasts in Genesis 2. It is also witnessed in Berossus, indicating a Babylonian origin (see S. Burstein, Berossus). Fish are the first creation because the world was originally covered with water. 29 DK 12 A 27. 30 R 19 = Turba philosophorum, p. 109:20f, Ruska: from M. Plessner, Vorsokratische Philosophie und griechische Alchemie (Wiesbaden, 1975). 31 The wheel of the sun is 27 (variant, 28) DK 12 A 21 = R 21 Aetius 2 20.1, 28x; Hippolytus, Haer, 1 6.3–5 = DK 12 A 11, R18; 27) times greater than that of the earth, that of the moon 19 times greater. 32 Assuming the wheel of the planets is different from that of the fixed stars (depending on the interpretation of Aetius 2 15,6 [DK 12 A 18 = R22], where there may be four wheels; DK 12 A 10, Ps.-Plutarch, Strom, 2, fr. 179 Sandbach = R17, where only three  26

436 Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies  Anaximander’s fire burned perpetually, like P’s light. 33 Through the holes, it blazed into view. Anaximander explained eclipses as occlusion of the holes by moisture, a device that also explains the phasing of the moon. Inside the wheels, the fire attacks the moisture, and the evaporation creates wind to make the wheels rotate, while rain stems from the evaporation of terrestrial waters – Jeremiah 10 again, and the reverse of P, where wind attacks water to create fire. The winds themselves separated the occluding cloud, revealing the fire’s light, in a form that made it appear as stars. Lightning was the fire bursting through, when a fresh gust separated the mists34 – Anaximenes would compare the flash of the water when an oar is inserted.35 This explanation could be brought to bear on comets and meteors, as temporary openings in the atmospheric covering of the fire. Essentially, then, wheels of fire rotate differentially overhead. But the fire is hidden from view by the mist. This is not precisely P’s fire behind the plate, but it is similar in conception.36 The planets and stars are holes in the wheels. Through the holes shines the fire that dried the waters, created the wind, set the universe in motion. As in Mesopotamian astronomy, Anaximander’s stars sit on the surfaces of the heavens, always at the same distance from the earth. Anaximander’s earth sits on air, probably at the base of the cosmos, and the wheels above rotate at an angle to it, so bodies like the sun and moon can be obscured by the horizon, without ever going underneath. Certainly, this is the view represented just afterward by Anaximander’s disciple, Anaximenes. 37 The same theory underlies Jeremiah’s and Xenophanes’s  are mentioned, though more may be assumed; DK 12 A 11 = R 18, Hippolytus, Haer, 1 6.3–5, mentioning three). 33 Hence Yhwh manifests himself in fire as Exod 9:15–16, a view inherited from earlier sources, including classically E in Exod 3:2, but also in the solar epiphanies of early poetry. Note further Deut 4:24; 9:3. Hence the insistence on perpetual fire, and the emphatic interdiction on “strange fire” in Lev 10:1; cf. Lev 6:6. See esp. J. G. Taylor, Yahweh and the Sun (JSOTSup 111; Sheffield: JSOT, 1993). 34 DK 12 A 11, R24, Hippolytus, Haer, 16.7; and Turba philosophorum 110.15f Ruska = R25. 35 DK 13 A 17 (Aetius 3.3.2), and see DK 12 A 23 (Aetius 3.3.1) for a derivation from Anaximander. 36 The generative element is fire, disaggregated from the primordial material. Later doxographers identified the “god” of Anaximander with the infinite primordial material on which the fire acted. Possibly, therefore, Anaximander understood god to be the actor who set the relationship among the phenomena into action, as in P. 37 DK 12 A 5, Pliny N.H. 2.31; also 12 A 11 (Hippolytus, Haer. 1.6.3–5), and perhaps Plato, Phaedo, 108e–109a. Though the accuracy of the attribution to Anaximander has been disputed, the angle of the ecliptic was known earlier in the Near East, and the rest of Anaximander’s system, with the various wheels at different heights above earth, would seem to demand it. The point is explicit in Anaximenes, DK 13 A 7 (Hippolytus, Haer,

11. The Assyrian Astronomy of Genesis 1 437  more extreme claim that the earth is infinite (downward as well as in lateral extension). It comports with the denial of an afterlife in these thinkers, and thus of an underworld, a process beginning in all likelihood with Isaiah, but coming to a head with Jeremiah and P in the late seventh century.38 Still in the mid-sixth century, Anaximenes adopted Anaximander’s view that the stars pass below the horizon, but never under the earth: the stars rotate as a turban winds (or, is wound) around one’s head. This is topologically more Mobius than wheels, involving complex angles and twists; yet “the universe turns like a millstone,”39 like P’s plate. However, the sun and moon now circulate under the vault of the sky, and the stars are corporeal, fixed in the “crystalline like nails.”40 The stars’ fire is kindled by evaporated water, again as in Jeremiah, a view that shapes shape another cosmology with Near Eastern links, that of Xenophanes. 41 For Anaximenes,

 1.7.6), 14 (Aristotle, Meteor, B1 354a 28). However, it is presupposed in the argument of Anaximander (DK 12 A 11) that the earth is equidistant from all parts of the heaven: that is, the (surface of) heaven is a hemisphere (as in some Mesopotamian astronomies); it follows that the terrestrial disk is at the center, and, as the rings of fire are overhead (DK 12 A 18, Aetius 2.15.6, among others), also the bottom of the cosmos. 38 The assault on ancestral divination and service starts with Isaiah, in chs, 8, 28–29, though Amos does assail the marzeah satirically, earlier. The real attacks come in Deuteronomy, P and Josiah’s reform, followed by Jeremiah. For Hezekiah’s assault on the ancestral cult, which issued in tomb desecration under Josiah, see B. Halpern, “Jerusalem and the Lineages in the Seventh Century BCE,” in B. Halpern and D. W. Hobson (eds.), Law and Ideology in Monarchic Israel (JSOTS 123; Sheffield: JSOT, 1991) 11–107. It is possible that the corbelled tomb at Megiddo was in fact a marzeah, as finds in connection with it in the 2000 season indicate. 39 DK 13 A 12 (Aetius 2.2.4). For the turban (pilion), DK 13 A 7 (Hippolytus, Haer, 1.7.6). 40 DK 13 A 6, 7, 14, 15 = R 8–11 (Ps.-Plutarch, Strom 3; Hippolytus, Haer, 1.7.4–8; Aetius 2.14.3; 22.1). The fixing of the stars in the crystalline is not an explanation of how they remain aloft, as the air bears them aloft, like the earth, by virtue of their flat shape and thinness (as DK A 14, 15 “the sun is flat like a leaf”): DK 13 A 6, 7. 41 In fact, fire and the stars stem from “the earth, through the mists rising from it”: DK 13 A 7 (Hippolytus, Haer, 1.7). For Anaximenes, the sun is closer to earth than the stars, which is why the latter do not provide warmth (DK 13 A 7 1.7.6). The contrast is to Anaximander, who has the sun farther than the other bodies from the earth, in the highest heaven of his three or four. The sun’s closeness and corporeality argue for an infracosmic god, and is thus perhaps part of Anaximenes’s comparability to Jeremiah (Anaximenes holds that the gods are inside the biosphere, but are themselves created). So when Anaximenes relates that the sun is flat like a leaf, (DK 13 A 15; B 2a), Pseudo-Plutarch and Hippolytus infer that it, like the flat earth, can be carried on the air. Like the stars, it consists of earth so refined of moisture as to have become fire: DK 13 A 6, A 7; the influence of this view on Xenophanes is crucial to his cosmology. Thus, their underlying conception seems to be that of the cinder carried upward by heat and air.

438 Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies  wind causes the evaporation, so his first principle resembles P’s. 42 Like Anaximenes, P has two plates, in his case created on separate days, of which the upper one rotates.

IV. Wheels within Wheels If the Milesian astronomies recall P’s, they also relate to another astronomy of the mid-sixth century. In Ezekiel’s account, a storm-wind, fire at its center, bears four-winged griffins with human arms and calves’ feet. 43 Each has four faces – those of man, lion, bull and eagle.44 The beings do not rotate relative to one another. They glow, and flash like lightning.45 Below are wheels within brilliant wheels, which move with the griffins without pivoting, for the living wind is in the wheels.46 The flesh, hands, wings and perhaps backs of the cherubs are filled with eyes. 47 The spokes and the rims of the wheels are also filled with eyes.

 42 For the air in Anaximenes, see DK 13 A 5, 6, 7, 10 = R 7, 8, 12–14 (Simplicius, Phys 24, 26f; Ps.-Plutarch, Strom 3; Hippolytus, Haer, 17, 1; Cicero, Nat d, 1.26; Augustine, Civ 8.2). In their readings, all solids, including the earth itself, derive from the air. 43 Ezekiel thus differs from P and Anaximenes, and concurs with Anaximander, in positing fire or light as the first principle. The fire causes evaporation (in the form of cloud, the smoke of water), and the evaporation wind. 44 The lion faces to the south, the bull to the north, and the eagle to the rear. A correlation to the various heavenly geographies of Mesopotamia is probably in order. See Horowitz, Cosmic Geography 252–260. 45 Ezekiel 1:4–14. Read brq for bzq in v. 14. 46 Ezekiel 1:15–20. Reading chapter 1 in a vacuum, it is conceivable that each creature has four wheels, but less likely than that there are four in total, each of which consists of two perpendicular circles, and thus four quadrant semicircles. This is clearly stated in 10:9–10. On the rendition, “rims”, seemingly against 10:12, cf. 1 Kgs 7:33, gb, with M. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983) 47. 47 Ezek 10:9–12: the word for spokes could denote hands or arms, that for rims backs; the other terms, flesh (absent in the Greek) and wings, can only refer to the cherubim. 10:14 again enumerates the faces. These remain the same (as 10:15, 20 insist). But Ezekiel uses the description, “face of the cherub”, for the bull visage, suggesting it is this image that he associates specifically with cherubim. Such an assumption might explain two mysteries: whence the bovine imagery of Jeroboam – it was identical with or very close to the cherubim iconography in the Jerusalem adyton; and, as one of this volume’s honorees once asked in conversation, why does Isaiah prefer to place Seraphim in Yhwh’s council – precisely in repudiation of the bovine iconography. However, the identification of cherubim with bovines is highly problematized in 1 Kgs 7:29, and it is unlikely that there was a uniform view on the subject. What is certain is that Ezekiel does not identify them with lions, and thus sphinxes.

11. The Assyrian Astronomy of Genesis 1

439

 Above the cherubs is a plating like ice, or frost. This is the “plate” of the heavens – the crystalline of Anaximenes 48 – pitched, like a tent, the image also applied by Jeremiah and Deutero-Isaiah.49 Above the crystalline plate, the fire is Yhwh on a sapphire throne.50 As in Genesis 1, he is extracosmic, located beyond the “plate,” in the heavens of the heavens, and he transmits fire (light) to the cherubim and wheels. With the fire comes the living wind, causing the wheels to rotate. The parallel to Anaximander rears its head. Ezekiel’s wheels within wheels are Anaximanders’s wheels of the sky, with allowance made for the wheel of the inner planets, for example. Thus, Heracleides in the fifth century described Mercury’s orbit as a wheel within the solar wheel. The heavens both rotate and wind like a turban, as in Anaximenes. The omnipresent “Eyes” are again the membranes between the heavenly fire, which is Yhwh, and the atmosphere, as in Anaximander and P. They are the stars. For Ezekiel, the infinite is the fire surrounding Yhwh, which blazes out through the membranes. These comprise the constellations and fixed stars as well as planets. The sixteen faces of the cherubim represent the zodiacal constellations, of which neo-Assyrian astronomy knew seventeen.51 Here, however, each cherub has one face turned inward, leaving twelve visible to earthly observers. If the bull facet is Taurus, the lion Leo, and the human Aquarius (or conceivably Orion), then the eagle is probably to be found in the region of Scorpio: each is the solar house centered between an equinox and a solstice.52 The “eyes” on the bodies of the cherubim represent the fixed stars, and the wheels can dip below the horizon, but not the earth.  48

DK 13 A 14 (Aetius 2.14.3); Ezek 1:22. Note the comment of Greenberg (Ezekiel 1–20, 48) that this represents one of the two planes of the vision, reflecting the binary cosmic geography presupposed in the other astronomies under discussion. 49 Ezek 1:22. Cf. Jer 10:12; 51:15; Isa 40:22; 42:5; 44:24; 45:12; 51:13; also, in Zech 12:1 citing Isa 51:13; 104:2; Job 9:8; 26:7. The usage of Ps 18:10 (= 2 Sam 22:10) is different; cf. Ps 144:5. The usage is almost all confined to the sixth century. 50 Ezek 1:22–28. The radiance of the gods themselves is a staple of Mesopotamian cosmology, including the Enuma Elish. See A. Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1951) 129. The specific gem colors invoked by Ezekiel include blue (sapphire), white (lightning), yellow (torches) and tarshish-stone, probably red, as well as the rainbow. 51 See H. Hunger and D. Pingree, MUL.APIN. An Astronomical Compendium in Cuneiform (AfO Beiheft 24; Graz: Weidner, 1989) I iv 33ff. and p. 144: “gods standing in the moon’s path”. 52 In the Assyrian heavens, Taurus, Leo and Aquarius take something like their familiar forms. Scorpio, however, would take a different form in Ezekiel’s imagination or tradition than it did in the Assyrian tradition. A number of texts suggest that Israelite astronomy hypothesized twelve zodiacal constellations relatively early, among them espe

440 Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies  Ezekiel’s vision draws on a variety of sources. The stands for the lavers in the nave of the temple were one of these. Each laver was four-wheeled; each was inscribed with lions, bovids, cherubim and palms.53 The implication is that Ezekiel was adapting a view of the sky earlier expressed in the paraphernalia of the temple nave. But neither that view nor the precise correlates of the four double-wheels of Ezekiel’s celestial chariot is now accessible.

V. The World Turned Upside-down Perhaps the most important element in the new cosmologies is the repudiation of the notion that the celestial bodies circle the earth. Instead, they rotate with the heavens, never traveling to the underworld. As Hippolytus notes, the normal view was that the celestial bodies circle the earth. The traditional view, in which the astral bodies were three-dimensional and travelled under the earth, implied the existence of an underworld. The repudiation of this view was one of the most stunning transformations in the culture of the 7th and 6th centuries. For late pre-exilic Judahite state theology, and for its representatives in the Restoration, there was no life after death, and the same view characterizes the sixth-century Milesians. If too radical to persist, the doctrinal residue of this revisionist theology programmed much later cosmology. In effect, the hypothesis that the stars were merely inscriptions on the vault of the heavens, that they were membranes allowing access to the biosphere from the realm beyond the vault (as P, Ezekiel, Anaximander), or fixed on the surface of the vault (Anaximenes), implied that they had no independent existence. This would lead to a denial not just of their threedimensionality, but of their very stability. Among some thinkers, including the Ionians of the late sixth century, the luminaries became temporary atmospheric phenomena, like lightning or meteors. This Ionian advance, anticipated by Jeremiah, resonates in Heracleitus and Xenophanes, and in Trito-Isaiah (in which Yhwh promises Restoration Judah to shine perpetually, replacing the daily sun). The sun and planets as orbs would return with a vengeance in the fifth century, and remained important in other theologies throughout. But the reduction of celestial phenomena to two dimensions by P, Ezekiel and Anaximander – with another  cially Gen 37:9–10 (E); but also Num 24:17 and the passages comparing the Israelites to stars cited above. 53 1 Kgs 7:27–37. See the discussion in Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 51–58. Note that the inscribed portions of the stands were removed with other plastic iconography from the nave in Ahaz’s reform (2 Kgs 16:17).

11. The Assyrian Astronomy of Genesis 1 441  reality behind them – was one of the most productive theories of the seventh–sixth centuries in terms of revolutionizing and secularizing cosmology. The denial of significance to the stars, from Deuteronomy and Jeremiah and P on down, begot a cosmos that was Newtonian, regular, susceptible to scientific understanding. The advances that led to this counterintuitive perspective were not Israelite in origin, still less Greek. What we have is a similar reception of Mesopotamian advances in astronomy in the Israelite and Ionian cultural zones. The change is datable, and the reception rapid. In the late eighth or seventh century BCE, Jerusalem’s royal and priestly elites socialized a view of the heavens derived from observation and prediction in Mesopotamia. This episode explains the shape of Genesis 1 and of Ezekiel 1, and reflects the recruitment of Judah’s elite by the Assyrian center. The Milesian cosmologies of the sixth century show that Assyria’s influence in the eighth and seventh centuries was not limited to Judah. Rather, the dialogue between Mesopotamia and the West embraced the Ionian coast. Indeed, the codification of Phoenician cosmology by Sakkunyaton (whom Philo Byblos associates with Semiramis) probably reflects the same sort of influence, as, famously, do Homeric epic and the compilations of Hesiod. 54 The orientalizing elements of Archaic Greek culture have long been attributed to Assyria’s influence.55 And there are rich connections between Jeremiah in Babylonian Judah and Second Isaiah, under heavy Babylonian influence, in Restoration Judah, on the one hand, and the later Ionians, Xenophanes and Heracleitus, 56 on the other hand. These testify that Near Eastern interlocution with the Aegean world continued throughout the neo-Babylonian era. The disclosure to Thales of eclipse data in 585 BCE furnishes a political context for the continuation. The king of Babylon, after all, was one of the mediators of the conflict that Thales’s prediction brought to a halt. Genesis 1 and Ezekiel 1, and Anaximander and Anaximenes, are mutually illuminating. But neither set of texts – each pair representing work

 54 For archaism and cultural codification in the aftermath of 8th-century Assyrian expansion, see B. Halpern, “Jerusalem and the Lineages.” 55 For a superb survey, W. Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1992). 56 These will be the subject of a separate study, B. Halpern, “Late Israelite Astronomies and the Early Greeks,” in W.G. Dever and S. Gitin (eds.), Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palaestina. Proceedings of the Centennial Symposium W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and American Schools of Oriental Research Jerusalem, May 29–May 31, 2000 (Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 2003) 323352. For Babylonian influence on Deutero-Isaiah, the starting point remains the study of S. Paul, “Deutero-Isaiah and Cuneiform Royal Inscriptions” JAOS 88 (1968) 180–186.

442 Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies  inside a single local tradition – represents a coherent view of the cosmos it purports to represent unless once assumes that behind it lies the astronomical theory derived from Mesopotamian celestial observation under Assyrian state sponsorship. It is old news that Genesis 1 in large measure duplicates the Enuma Elish in its order of creation.57 However, the contribution of later Mesopotamian, and specifically Assyrian, cosmology to that text and to Ionian natural philosophy deserves recognition as well. Seventh-century Assyria, to judge at least from the royal annals, underwent a transition toward more demonstrative public piety, and an interest in archaizing also characterized its neo-Babylonian successor state. Its vassal, Judah, experienced what can only be called a Reformation. It involved the rejection of tradition, but was cloaked in a rhetoric that claimed to champion a more authentic and ancient tradition. The same rejection of tradition, but with an open embrace of the new, characterized the elite in Ionia, all the while Greece was celebrating its Mycenaean, rather than more recent, roots. Appeal to the invented, distant past to revise living tradition strikes modern onlookers as ironic. But the ongoing “disenchantment” of the world, the radical break with a universe in which the stars, and thus the gods, were independent, or even real, necessitated desperate strategies. The virtual invisibility of the revised celestial landscape in Assyrian and Babylonian polytheism is an index of its function. It shone out among foreign dependencies, to whose elites the new occult knowledge was exported. The new cosmology was an agency of Assyrian state policy, aimed at the manufacture of an international elite culture in which petty nationalisms dissolved. Like the Assyrian common market in economics, it played midwife to the emergence of Western culture, in both its monotheistic and its scientific incarnations. The real irony, in the end, is that neither Assyria nor its successors, Babylon and Persia, ever underwent the same transformation. Assyria choreographed the transition from traditional to Western culture, and yet never went to the dance.

 57

See Heidel, Babylonian Genesis.

12. Late Israelite Astronomies and the Early Greeks* This study represents a continuation of the previous one (Chapter 11). It explains, however, some of the rhetoric of Jeremiah and explains why he regarded the baals, in his case, astral gods conceivably related to the ancestors as well (and Yhwh’s promise to make Israel numerous as the stars), as empty, mere appearance, or, to be more specific, lenses of thin ice in the dome of the sky – holes. Perhaps more important, the resonance of Jeremiah’s rhetoric, doubtless shared by later writers, and certainly shared with Deuteronomy 4 (whenever one dates that text), had implications directly or indirectly for the proposition of new cosmologies in the sixth century in particular. The propagation of such cosmologies involved an international elite, which was to a large extent deracinated by its interactions abroad. And travelers certainly make up a part of the story insufficiently explored until now – not just exiles and refugees, but characters educated in foreign elite circles and dispatched back to their own cultures to report on what they had seen, to share knowledge (one thinks of the Etruscan liver model), and to impress their contemporaries with the importance of taking an international view. Beyond the obvious questions of trade and influence at a political level, and of cosmological speculation that was to become increasingly radical, as in the case of Xenophanes, or of the divinity, socialized among the elite, who transcended the sublunary gods, the complex had other implications for the rejection of tradition. This appears foremost in the role of divination and in the treatment of death and afterlife in the various societies the dialogue affected. It is only in part that this treatment addresses the Ionian responses to the question, which relate directly to the cosmologies themselves and to the increasing disregard for the dead exhibited in the late 7th and 6th centuries (versus the imitation, for example, in Greece of LB Mycenaean tombs in the period just earlier, rejected by the Ionian elite). However, in examining the views of Jeremiah, to a degree Ezekiel, and certainly Xenophanes and Heracleitus, one can see traces of an international dialogue kept more securely under wraps, which is to say, not furnished for public consumption, in the still more corporatist elites of Mesopotamian scholars. In many of these cases, the concept of the afterlife came to approach that of Taoism. Naturally, in traditional settings the reaction was fierce and firm. This essay does, however, indicate what paths need closely to be followed in order to understand the transition from traditional modes of thought to Westernization, or at least modernization. It addresses most directly the role of science in that transition, without entering in to the de-

 * Originally published in W. G. Dever and S. Gitin (eds.), Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palaestina. Proceedings of the Centennial Symposium W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and American Schools of Oriental Research Jerusalem, May 29–May 31, 2000 (Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 2003) 323–352.

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tails about medicine, chemistry and refinement, and other branches of technology for which new theories must at the same time have been emerging.

I. Israel’s Priestly Astronomies and Their Milesian Counterparts1 In 585 BCE, a Milesian sent shockwaves through the Hellenic world by predicting a solar eclipse. No Greek could explain Thales’ accomplishment for 200 years. In the late seventh century BCE, a Jerusalem priest (P) produced a cosmology, Genesis 1.2 Both there and in Ezekiel 1, earth and sky were enclosed beneath a two-dimensional vault. Behind the vault, but below the  1

Section I of this essay summarizes an initial publication, “The Assyrian Astronomy of Genesis 1 and the Birth of Milesian Philosophy,” Eretz Israel 27 (Fs. Hayim and Miriam Tadmor; 2003) 85–89 (reprinted in this volume), which contains fuller documentation and argument. The interpretation was inspired by a course in Assyrian astronomy taught at the University of Heidelberg’s Institut für Assyriologie by Erlend Gehlken in 1999, which I attended thanks to my student Kay Joe Petzold, and was first made explicit in the spring semester, 1999, at the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien, Heidelberg. 2 This was the author of the P source. For the sources of the Pentateuch, see R. E. Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1985). Friedman dates P to the late eighth or early seventh century. However, as the following discussion shows, P cannot much antedate the sixth century. Instead, P is in dialogue with Deuteronomy and Jeremiah. While P’s date is highly controverted, the philological evidence assembled by Hurvitz indicates it antedates Ezekiel, A. Hurvitz, A Linguistic Study of the Relationship between the Priestly Source and the Book of Ezekiel (Cahiers de la Revue Biblique 20; Paris: Gabalda, 1982); idem, “Once Again: The Linguistic Profile of the Priestly Material in the Pentateuch and Its Historical Age. A Response to J. Blenkinsopp,” ZAW 112 (2000) 180–91. Further, references to P in Jeremiah (605–580 BCE) ensure that it was written before the sixth century, as Friedman has observed, R. E. Friedman, The Exile and Biblical Narrative (HSM 25; Chico, Ca: Scholars Press, 1981) 72–6. In addition, the representation of foreign names in P does not permit one to set it back further than the seventh century, B. Halpern, David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King (Grand Rapids, Mi: Eerdmans, 2001) ch. 3. P’s astronomy also fits far better in the period toward the end of the seventh or start of the sixth century than earlier or later. I believe that P is best understood as a rival to Deut at almost the same time as the latter, in which sense Engnell’s D-work :: P-work contrast was on the right track, in part, I. Engnell, A Rigid Scrutiny (Nashville, Tn: Vanderbilt University, 1969). While the author of the Josianic edition of DtrH, therefore, justified his vantage point by appeal to a revised history of the nation, after the time of the canonical national epic, JE (which was certainly written down by the late eighth century or at least considerably earlier than P, based on phonological evidence), the author of P rewrote the mythic epic to justify his own. The incentive to create a JED and a JEP was to show in each case that each of the two competing versions conformed to the tradition that it in fact was deliberately subverting! P’s strategy suggests that DtrH had usurped the more compelling choice.

12. Late Israelite Astronomies and the Early Greeks 445  god, Yahweh, was water. Above the water was fire, emanating from Yahweh. The stars were membranes in this celestial vault, admitting the fire and water from above into the biosphere. Lightning, comets and meteors were temporary rifts in the vault. The vault’s rotation produced the regularities of the celestial cycle. Ezekiel’s more elaborate description has been taken as fantasy. His vault consists of ice, crystalline. Above it is thunder and the heavenly fire, which courses down through the vault, refracted like the rainbow, to the constellations, in the shape of cherubim. The constellations are marked by stars (“eyes”) on these griffins’ bodies, and on wheels below them.3 These wheels, and wheels within them, are fixed relative to one another. The internal wheels represent the things, such as the inner planets, that from a geocentric perspective rotate around the solar wheel. Like P’s understanding of the sky, Ezekiel’s presupposes the regularity of astral and atmospheric phenomena. Two mid-sixth century BCE Milesian naturalists concur with their conceptions. The earlier, Anaximander, posits an eternal cosmic fire. However, moisture, which evaporated from earth’s primordial muck, forms a vault concealing the fire from view. The fire acts on the moisture; the evaporation creates wind; wind causes the moisture, or cloud, to rotate. The stars are holes in the cloud, like standing waves in rapids, caused by the wind; irregular astral and atmospheric phenomena are caused by sudden gusts. Anaximander’s three or four wheels of fire, with cloud-rims that reveal the fire in spots, resemble the four wheels in Ezekiel’s vision. Their number reflects the conviction that astral orbits are multiple – for fixed stars, sun and outer planets, inner planets, and perhaps the zodiacal constellations. The fire outside the heavenly vault, the moisture, is the fire of Ezekiel and Genesis 1. And the appeal to the fire as the agent of creation – it created the evaporation that caused cloud and wind – probably approximates what Ezekiel had in mind. Shortly after Anaximander, Anaximenes suggested that the stars were pegged to “the crystalline,” the vault of heaven, like nails. The vault rotated, carrying the stars with it. The stars were two-dimensional, like leaves, a shape borne aloft by air. The sun was lowest, presumably because it provided heat. Further, the heavens wound like a turban around one’s head: the paths of the stars crossed over one another, confounding observers. Anaximenes hypothesized that the stars originated from the wind’s ef-

 3

This is why Ezekiel uses the term “eye” (‘yn) to mean “appearance” with greater frequency than any other source, however one construes the meaning of the term in P (Lev 13). The usual terms for “appearance” involve other roots altogether – r’h, dmh, t’r, úlm, and so on.

446 Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies  fect on the primordial waters; the same view probably underlies Genesis 1. Further, his vault rotates as a whole, as in Genesis 1. Thus, in large measure, Anaximander and Ezekiel coincide, and Anaximenes and P coincide. The coincidence of Jerusalemite and Milesian views in the seventh through mid-sixth centuries BCE has a genetic explanation. In the mideighth century, Babylonian astronomers began compiling daily diaries of heavenly phenomena. They had long known that lunar eclipses could only occur at the full moon, solar eclipses at the new moon. In Sargon II’s time, these astronomers were incorporated into the service of an Assyrian realm reaching into the Mediterranean. Nor did it take them long to discover the periodicity of lunar eclipses. By the end of the century, they were undertaking to predict solar eclipses, and would do so with increasing success. Assyrians conceived the sky as a two-dimensional surface. This assumption programmed the Western astronomies reviewed above. Indeed, Anaximenes places the earth equidistant from all points of the crystalline. This is the basis of his argument that it is suspended on air. Anaximenes understands the heavens as a hemisphere, supported on the air like the earth at their center. From Thales to Anaximenes, Milesian astronomies reflect Assyrian and Babylonian influences. The same holds for P and Ezekiel, and, as argued below, other figures both in Judah and in Ionia. The commonality suggests a mechanism for the transfer, which is explored below. By sharing the results of celestial observation, Assyria and Babylon introduced the notion of the predictability of the sky into Judah and Greece, precipitating profound theological turmoil, since the independence of the gods was suddenly called into question. Even eclipses were mechanical. The Western revolution facilitated by Mesopotamian astronomy has its roots in the eighth century BCE. At that time, Mesopotamian glyptic shifted away from anthropomorphic representation toward using symbols of gods, which became dominant in neo-Babylonian art. 4 Whether West Semitic or Mesopotamian in origin,5 the shift toward non-figurative icono 4

T. Ornan, “The Transition from Figured to Non-Figured Representation in First Millennium Mesopotamian Glyptic,” in J.G. Westenholz (ed.), Seals and Sealings in the Ancient Near East (Jerusalem: Bible Land Museum, 1993) 39–56. 5 See T. N. D. Mettinger, No Graven Image? Israelite Aniconism in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1995); cf. T. Ornan, “The Mesopotamian Influence on West Semitic Inscribed Seals: A Preference for the Depiction of Mortals,” in B. Sass and C. Uehlinger (eds.), Studies in the Iconography of Northwest Semitic Inscribed Seals (OBO 125; Fribourg: University of Fribourg, 1993) 52–73; R. S. Hendel, “Aniconism and Anthropomorphism in Ancient Israel,” in K. van der Toorn (ed.), The Image and the Book. Iconic Cults, Aniconism, and the Rise of Book Religion in Israel and the Ancient Near East (Leuven: Peeters, 1997) 205–28. The two modes of representation probably coexisted for millennia, and almost certainly from the onset of scribal literacy (in Mesopotamia, for example, the scribal sign for the sky god, An, was a star).

12. Late Israelite Astronomies and the Early Greeks 447  graphy is paralleled in seventh century Syria and Transjordan, where the trend was toward astral symbols. In Judah, starting in the eighth century, the transition was toward aniconic seals, although rare seals with figures also moved from solar to lunar and astral imagery in the seventh century.6 Against the background of international developments and particularly the socialization of astronomical knowledge during these centuries, the change in art probably had multiple significations, not all mutually exclusive. On the one hand, it expressed the elevation of astral gods. Prescinding from iconic invocation of the high (solar) god in favor of more proximate subordinates may, however, reflect deference to the god’s special pertinence to the king, or even local subordination to an international or universal overlord. Or perhaps it celebrated the heavens’ regulation, the divine natural order. Deuteronomy, the Josianic edition of Kings, Zephaniah, and Jeremiah (as well as P and Ezekiel, obliquely) first introduce the term “the host of heaven.” Their assault on “the host of heaven” coincides with the introduction of the terms “heavens of the heavens” in Deuteronomy and Kings and “pitched [as a tent] the heavens” in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. That is, in the late seventh century, a new idea of the sky arrived in Jerusalem. The skies were limited by the plate, or vault, restricting access to the heavens of the heavens – the sky above the terrestrial sky.7 The stars were membranes, holes, in the vault. The presence of such language in literature from Josiah’s court – and the resistance to assault on the host in concessive sources, such as P and Ezekiel – indicate that the producers of royal literature had not only deployed the astral theories of the Mesopotamian center, but were in addition squabbling over their implications. How far these theories penetrated and how they were appropriated, both in Judah and in Ionia, is the subject of the next sections of this discussion.

 6 For the date of the transition, see C. Uehlinger, “Northwest Semitic Inscribed Seals, Iconography and Syro-Palestinian Religions of Iron Age II: Some Afterthoughts and Conclusions,” in B. Sass and C. Uehlinger (eds.), Studies in the Iconography of Northwest Semitic Inscribed Seals (OBO 125; Fribourg: University of Fribourg, 1993) 284–86; for the transition itself, see O. Keel and C. Uehlinger, Göttinnen, Götter und Gottessymbole. Neue Erkenntnisse zur Religionsgeschichte Kanaans und Israels aufgrund bislang unerschlossener ikonographischer Quellen (Quaestiones Disputatae 134; Freiburg: Herder, 1992) 327–429. 7 This is why Ezekiel (1:1) can say, “the heavens were opened”: the visible sky is a fabric, like a tent.

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II. Astronomy in Jeremiah and Xenophanes Judahite astronomies, like those of P and Ezekiel and, indeed, Jeremiah and others, are occult, not explicit. Whether this represents a defensive strategy, concealing iconoclastic treatments of the heavens from broad audiences, is unsure. However, Near Eastern writing is often intended for a bifurcated audience of insiders and outsiders. The effect on outsiders is supposed to be different from that on insiders.8 This is why it is so often anonymous: the authorship is communal, shared among the insiders. Even in texts with authorial attribution, the same principle often applies, so that, for example, Ezekiel’s assumptions about the sky and its constellations are encoded into rather than espoused by his vocation narrative. Examination of the consequences of Assyrian proselytization in the seventh–sixth centuries BCE consequently requires attention to implicit assumptions or cryptic elements in biblical texts. These relate astronomy to theology, extending the earlier cosmologies described above in ways resembling their extension in Ionia. The rejection of the astral gods in seventh-century Jerusalem entailed a reinterpretation of Yahweh’s Host. Late in the century, P writes in Gen 2:1: “The heaven and the earth were completed, and all their Host.” Here, the Host is singular, and represents all created things. P identifies Yahweh’s Hosts, plural, specifically as Israel (Exod 12:40–42): So it was, at the end of thirty years and four hundred years, that in the middle of this very day, all the hosts of Yahweh went forth from the land of Egypt. It is a night of commemoration to Yahweh, to their having been brought forth from the land of Egypt... for all the sons of Israel for their generations.

But the Host’s desacralization went farther. Jeremiah 10 and Deuteronomy 4, around 600 BCE, extend it.9  8

Halpern, David’s Secret Demons, ch. 5C. A post-exilic dating of Jeremiah 10, based on its resemblance to Deutero-Isaiah, is refuted by B. Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66 (Stanford: Stanford University, 1998); see further B. Halpern, “The New Names of Isaiah 62:4: Jeremiah’s Reception in the Restoration and the Politics of ‘Third Isaiah,’” JBL 117 (1998) 623–43. The view that Deuteronomy 4 is post-exilic is also based on its similarity to Deutero-Isaiah’s theology, but as Sommer shows that Deutero-Isaiah was influenced by Jeremiah 10, the likelihood is that Deuteronomy 4, which is closely related to Jeremiah 10, constituted another of the influences on Jeremiah. For the dating of Deuteronomy 4, see Friedman, The Exile and the Biblical Narrative. Note that the characterization of Yahweh in Jeremiah 10 is picked up again in Jeremiah 51, indicating it is earlier than that collection; Jeremiah 50–51 are a prophecy against Babylon, repeatedly invoking protoIsaiah, but except in an added verse, 51:28, calqued from 51:27, it evinces no knowledge of events after 539 BCE. Similarly, the vocabulary of Jeremiah 10 is purely Jeremianic, including terms such as hebel, not employed for this purpose in Deutero-Isaiah; neither 9

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 Deuteronomy 4:6–11 claim that the nations see Yahweh’s laws as Israel’s incomparable wisdom. No great nation has gods as “close” as Yahweh is to Israel. The Israelites saw, with their own eyes:10 Yahweh spoke to you from the midst of the fire, you hearing the sound of the words, but not seeing an image, only a sound.

Yahweh provided the tablets of the covenant. 11 Moses stresses that they saw no image at Horeb, lest they fashion images of any sort, male or female, bird, animal, or fish (4:13–18), and, coordinate with this, lest you lift up your eyes to the heavens, and see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of the heavens, and stampede12 and prostrate yourself to them and serve them, which Yhwh your god distributed to all the peoples under all the heavens, whereas, you, Yahweh took, and brought you forth from the iron furnace, from Egypt, to be a people to him, an ancestral lot as on this day.13

The conclusion renews the emphasis on avoiding iconography, “for Yahweh your god is consuming fire” (4:23–24): Yahweh is fire in Deuteronomy (and these images are meaningful). He, not the stars, is the fire behind the vault of the heavens. This text equates the stars with icons. The argument that icons are of human manufacture (4:28) traces its pedigree through Isaiah (2:8); our pas does Deuteronomy 4 resemble Deutero-Isaiah. Finally, the frontal assault on astral divination is not an element in Deutero-Isaiah, where it is merely mocked in 47:13: it is not a concern of the late sixth, but of the late seventh century BCE. 10 Note that he reminds them of how Horeb burnt unto the heart of the heavens, with darkness, cloud and dark cloud (‘rpl): the epiphany is fire surrounded by dark cloud, moisture that contains it. The emphasis on eyewitness testimony handed down through the generations is particularly ironic in an archaizing pseudepigraph, yet central to its purpose. 11 And instructed Moses in the law for Canaan (Deut 4:12). That is, Deuteronomy is presented as the supplement to the J Decalogue of Exodus 34, and as an elaboration of the Covenant Code in E, when in fact it deliberately revises both. The contrast to Ezekiel’s and Jeremiah’s views of JE, treated below, is important. 12 ndh: the term appears with the meaning “to be impelled from the true path” in Deut 4:19; 13:6, 11, 14; 30:17; Jer 23:2; 30:17; 2 Kgs 17:21 Qre (probably incorrectly). It is a standard term for the act of exile in Jeremiah (8:3; 16:15; 23:3, 8; 24:9; 27:10, 15; 29:14, 18; 30:17; 32:37; 40:12; 43:5; 46:28; 49:5, 36; 50:17) and Deuteronomy (30:1, 4 > Neh 1:9; also Deut 22:1), and also appears in portions of Isaiah (16:3–4; 27:13) and Ezekiel (4:13; 34:4,16; in dialogue with Jeremiah), in Joel 2:20; Ps 5:11; Dan 9:7; 2 Chr 21:11, and, with a slightly different meaning, in Mic 4:6 = Zeph 3:19; Isa 13:14; Deut 22:1. The hiph‘il appears to mean “to cause to stampede.” The term is characteristic of Deut and Jeremiah only, and is certainly not derived there from post-exilic sources. 13 Deut 4:19–20. This represents a reinterpretation of Deut 32:8–9 (and also Mic 4:5, “all the nations go, each in the name of its own god”) to imply that the nations all follow the same, equally meaningless, gods, namely, those they think are reflected in the stars (see below).

450 Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies  sage adds that they distort reality – that Yahweh has no image, a theology shared with Jeremiah.14 The stars are not Israel’s special province, but are universal. Unlike Yahweh, who is near to Israel, immanent, sublunary, the stars are distant, disinterested. In the same vein, Deuteronomy banishes all mantic arts other than direct aural revelation by Yahweh (18:8–22). Jeremiah 10:2 likewise pairs icons with star-gazing: Don’t learn the way of the nations, nor be panicked by the signs of the heavens, for the nations are panicked by them.

The stars, statutes and statues15 of the nations are illusion (hebel), manufactures (Jer 10:3–9). Yahweh is the real (’mt) living god, causing earthquakes, who established the world (tbl) with his wisdom and with his insight pitched the heavens, at the sound of whose putting water in the heavens (thunder), mists rise up from the ends of the earth, who makes lightning into rain, causing the wind to go forth from his treasure-houses (10:10–13; 51:15–19). The real god lifts water with thunder, and the evaporation causes lightning, which causes rain; the lightning and moisture cause wind. Unlike the lifeless (“windless”) gods of the foolish peoples, this is Israel’s proprietary god (10:14–16). Jeremiah’s immanent god (“am I a god from nearby, and not a god from afar?” [Jer 23:23]), thus, like P’s and Deutero-Isaiah’s, while immobile, causes locomotion, which P, at least, defines as life. Conversely, it is central to the gods (or primary causes) of Thales, Anaximenes, and Heracleitus that they are themselves in motion. Xenophanes’ disciples, however, explicitly deny the possibility of such motion. On the stars, Thales represents a traditional view. P maintains that the stars circulate only with the heavens. This is assumed by Anaximander and Ezekiel, and stressed by Anaximenes.  14 Ezekiel, by contrast, attributes a fire-like image to the deity that assumes a quasihuman shape (as in 1:13, 26–27). 15 hqwt: Jeremiah uses this term relating to the astral bodies in 31:35; 33:25 and to time in 5:4. Only in the narrative account in Jer 44:10, 23 is the feminine plural used in referring to Yahweh’s statutes, in the vein of Leviticus (P), Num 9:3 (P), Deuteronomy, 1 and 2 Kings, Ezekiel, Gen 26:5, 2 Sam 22:23 = Ps 18:23, Ps 89:32, and, in a single instance only in Chronicles, taken from a source in 1 Kings, 2 Chr 7:19. The feminine singular appears only in P texts. Jer 5:22 uses the masculine singular again in a cosmogonic context, as Jer 31:36 uses the masculine plural form. The narrative in Jer 32:11 uses the masculine singular form in a legal context. In sum, the usage in Jeremiah relates this term to the natural world, and the main referent is the stars. It is noteworthy that the term never occurs in Deutero-Isaiah. However, as the term means both statutes and inscriptions, it represents a pun on the stars, as šiĠir šamê, writings of the heavens. The intertextual reference is to Deuteronomy 4:5ff., which opens with the statement on Yahweh’s statutes as Israel’s wisdom. Yahweh wrote his statutes in the sky as well as on the tablets of the commandments.

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 As Hippolytus notes, the traditional view was that the celestial bodies circle the earth. This assumption implied the existence of an underworld, which is absent from the texts described above. The repudiation of the underworld and afterlife transformed the culture of the seventh–sixth centuries BCE. Too radical to persist, its doctrinal residue nevertheless programmed later cosmology. The Milesian recourse was to deny the threedimensionality of the stars. This overture, anticipated by Jeremiah, resonates in Heracleitus and Xenophanes, and in Trito-Isaiah. The sun and planets as orbs would return with a vengeance in the fifth century, and they remained important in other theologies throughout. But the reduction of celestial phenomena to two dimensions, with another reality behind them, from Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, and P onwards revolutionized and secularized cosmology, begetting a cosmos that was Newtonian, regular, susceptible to scientific understanding. The connections between Jeremiah and Deutero-Isaiah, on the one hand, and radical cosmologies in sixth century Ionia, on the other, are of central moment for understanding Assyrian and Babylonian influences in the West. There are hints as to the connections: Jeremiah 10 and DeuteroIsaiah deploy satire against iconography; one pre-Socratic joins them. Xenophanes mocks icons, as well as anthropomorphism and divine immorality in Homer and Hesiod.16 The resemblance is to P and Jeremiah,  16

Germane in this context are the following fragments and testimonia: Diogenes Laertius 9.20; Aristotle, Rhet, B23 1399b 5; B26 1400b 5; Timon fr 60 = Sext Emp, Pyr, 1.224; Diogenes 9.18; Athenaeus 11.462c 19–22; and especially DK fragments 11–12, 14–16, 23. DK Frag 15. Clem, Strom, 5.110: But if cattle and lions had hands, or could draw with hands and fashion artworks as do men, then horses would draw images of gods like horses, cattle images of gods like cattle, and they would draw bodies according to the frame that has. DK Frag 16. Clem, Strom, 7.22: And Ethiopians flatnosed (simos, concave) and black (-haired?), while Thracians (say theirs are) light-eyed and red-haired. The principle is summarized in DK Frag 23. Clem, Strom, 5.109, the start of a key sequence: One god, greatest among gods and men, not like mortals in bodily frame or thought. The protest is carried into anthropomorphism in general, as Clement continues: DK Frag 14. Clem, Strom, 5.109: But the mortals believe (hold) the gods to have been born, to have their (mortals’) own clothing, and voice and (bodily) frame. And Sextus reports in DK Frag 11. Sext, Math, 9 193 (also DK Fr 12. Sext, Math, 1 289): All those things, Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods, which among men are a disgrace and a failing, to steal, to commit adultery, and to trick/defraud one another. The view is confirmed by a retort concerning the power of the dead attributed by Plutarch to Hieron: Plutarch, Reg apophth, (Sayings of Kings and Commanders) 175c: To Xenophanes the Colophonian, when he said he could barely keep two servants, he (DK Hieron) said, ‘Yet Homer, whom you disparage, keeps more than a myriad as a dead man.’

452 Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies  both of whom minimize anthropomorphism. 17 Deuteronomy’s stress on god’s disembodiment (4:12) is also a theme taken up by Xenophanes. He takes Homer and Hesiod to task for not realizing that “god” is an absolute, not relative, quantity. Related is the rejection of JE in Deuteronomy, P, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel – a rejection of anthropomorphism, the ancestral cult, and, principally, tradition. Like Hosea, and especially Jeremiah, Xenophanes insists that the gods are manifestations of something more basic, the one, greatest being. Aristotle in particular makes it clear that Xenophanes defined both “god” and earth as “unbounded” spatially and temporally.18 Furthermore, Xenophanes’ god is all intellect: he perceives and knows as a whole, does not move,19 and moves the world by force of mind,20 as P’s creator does by fiat.  17 On the “finger of god” in the mouth of Egypt’s prestidigitators, see Exod 8:15; see also Exod 31:18 = Deut 9:10, in a work that denies that Yahweh has any form (see below); further anthropomorphism in P tends toward the most hackneyed expressions only, for example, Exod 7:4–5. 18 See Aristotle, On the Heavens, 2.13 294a 21 (where Empedocles criticizes Xenophanes for thinking that what cannot be seen is like what can be seen, that is, for extrapolating from the known rather than the unknown!); Rhetoric B23 1399b 5, where, with Aeschylus (Supplices 96–103), Aristotle applies to the many gods the argument Xenophanes almost certainly applied to the One; cf. Metaphysics A5 986b 18, where Aristotle has Xenophanes fail to address whether the prime cause and/or the constituent matter of the universe is the One. There is a uniform concordance between our antique synthesizers and epitomizers and the extant fragments of Xenophanes’ discourse that he was the first figure surviving into the Greek philosophical tradition who maintained the Oneness of the cosmos, and particularly of god. So Aristotle, Metaphysics, A5 986b 18; Cicero, Acad Pr, 2.118; less so Plato, Sophist, 242cd. Gibbon remarks in connection with Stoicism, “as it was impossible for them to conceive the creation of matter, the workman in the Stoic philosophy was not sufficiently distinguished from the work; whilst, on the contrary, the spiritual God of Plato and his disciples resembled an idea rather than a substance,” E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (New York: Modern Library, n.d.) 27. Xenophanes fell into neither trap, standing, as it were, ahead of the bifurcation. The ancients counted as his successors Parmenides and Empedocles, and the entire Eleatic school. But they tended either to elaborate or to reject particular elements of his system of thought (as is implied in Aristotle, Metaphysics, A5 986b 8–34). 19 Diogenes Laertius 9.19–20; Aristotle, Metaphysics, A 5 986b 18; Simpl, in Phys, 22, 22ff.; Hippol, Haer, 1.14, 1ff.; Cicero, Academ, 2.118; d n deor 1.11.28: Pseudo– Galen, On Philosophical History 7 (DK 604 17); Timon fr 59 Sext Emp, Pyr, 1.223; Timon fr 60 Sext Empir, PH 1.224; Diogenes Laertius 9.18; Theodoret 4.5 from Aetius D 284; Galen, Commentary on the Hippocratic Treatise on Nature (in Hippocr D nat hom) 15.25k; Aetius 2.4.11; DK Fragments 23, Clem, Strom, 5.109; 24, Sext, Math, 9.144 (Diog 9.18ff. has similar); 25, Simpl, in Phys, 23.19; 26, Simpl, in Phys, 23.10. 20 See especially DK Fragment 25. In Xenophanes’ universe, there is no intellection without perception (especially Fragment 18, but also Fragments 24–25, 34–36; Philo, 

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 Xenophanes’ astral theory was strongly influenced by Thales’ prediction of the solar eclipse of 585.21 Xenophanes, in Weberian terms, inhabited a “disenchanted” world. Xenophanes characterizes celestial phenomena as ephemeral, misleading, illusory. Dust carried skyward by evaporation combusts, creating stars, which coalesce into suns. Where there is no water, the resultant sun vanishes. Suns are repeatedly created and extinguished. Heracleitus follows Xenophanes in saying that “the sun is new every day.” Jeremiah calls the stars hebel, vapors, phantoms. 22 Deutero-Isaiah, in a related vein, speaks of multiple “suns” and of permanent illumination by Yahweh replacing the ephemeral sun and moon.23 Jeremiah describes Yahweh as “the source of living waters” and the rising of water into the sky for lightning as the essence of creation. He and Xenophanes have transcendent gods that are immanent, near, inside the biosphere.24 In this combination of views, Xenophanes is unique on the Greek side and Jeremiah alone on the Israelite. One Jeremianic complex deserves closer attention: ancestral devotion to “bootless” non-gods and “(the) baal” (2:8, 11), characterized as vapors (2:5), made the ancestors’ vapors (2:5). Jeremiah (2:13) summarizes:  Prov, 2.39; Hippol, Haer, 1.14.5–6; Sext Emp, Math, 7.14; and the various natural scientific observations). 21 Along with Herodotus (1.74) and Heracleitus (DK 22 B 38), Xenophanes was highly impressed by the prediction (see DK 21 B 19). 22 Jer 10:2; cf. the invocation of “statutes” in 31:35–36, in which Yahweh is “he who installs the sun for daily light, the statutes (= engravings) of the moon and stars for light at night, who quiets the sea that its waves murmur.” In 15:9, Jeremiah uses the stars as a metaphor: “the progenetrix of seven is anguished, her soul expires, her sun sets while it is still daytime....” Why the mother of seven and the setting of the sun? The image is that of the planets, the Pleiades (Hebrew kîmâ), or both. The mother of seven is the Israelite (high) goddess whom Jeremiah rejects. Thus šeqer in Jeremiah is “mere appearance.” For the Heracleitan fragment, see DK 22 B 6; for the image of the Pleiades in the company of the sun and moon found at 7th-century-BCE Ekron, see S. Gitin, “Tel Miqne-Ekron in the 7th Century B.C.E.: The Impact of Economic Innovation and Foreign Cultural Influences on a Neo-Assyrian Vassal City-State,” in S. Gitin (ed.), Recent Excavations in Israel. A View to the West: Reports on Kabri, Nami, Miqne-Ekron, Dor, and Ashkelon (AIA Colloquia and Conference Papers 1; Dubuque, Ia: Kendall/Hunt, 1995) 71, Fig. 4.14. 23 Isa 54:12, with the permanent illumination in a new heaven and earth (60:19–20; 65:17; 66:22). The new heaven and earth are the rebuilt temple of Jerusalem, and the direct illumination by Yahweh in place of the impermanent sun and moon reflects unmediated access from the temple to the region originally beyond the vault of the heavens. Whether the suns of Isa 54:12 are astral or architectural is disputed, as is its relation to Ps 84:12. 24 The clearest statement of this principle in Jeremiah is in 23:24: “Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?” Note further Deut 4:7 and Jeremiah’s extension of it in 23:23. Jeremiah’s god, like Xenophanes’, is infinite.

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For my people have done two bad things: [1] they abandoned the source of living waters (meqôr mayîm hayyîm) to [2] hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that do not hold water.

In a second passage, Jeremiah extends the metaphor. The extramural high place with altars and asherim by leafy trees will be despoiled (17:2–3), desiccating the man who trusts in man (17:5–6); the man who trusts in Yahweh will flourish like a leafy tree, never fearing drought, always producing fruit. Yahweh’s anger is fire, his benefice water. The continuation there adds: O, Israel’s reservoir (miqwe), Yahweh! All who abandon you will dry up (or, blanch: ybšw), and will be reckoned (lit: written) as those turning into the Earth,25 for they have abandoned the source of living waters, Yahweh.

Jeremiah contrasts the Edenic park terraces of the high places with the true nourishment of the faithful. Yahweh is the “source of living water.” “Living” water is ground water,26 which excludes foreign rivers, the Nile and Euphrates (Jer 2:18). Apostates from the true waters are as those reverting to their state as earth27: they “dry up,” like the primordial mud in Xenophanes’ later cosmology, and this desiccation is the nature of death. The reason is that they “trust in man,” a reference that may include the ancestors. Also pertinent is Jeremiah’s image for the deities for whom Israel abandoned Yahweh, namely, the broken cisterns that do not hold water. The reference is twofold. On the one hand, it calls to mind subterranean tombs, not intended to retain water. On the other, Jeremiah refers to “the land of the living,” a term he shares with other sources, including Ezekiel.28 This  25

Read with 4QJera, wswry b’rú yktbw; on the first term see Jer 2:21, as well as 17:13 Qere. Cf. the inscription of the sin in 17:1, to which this line returns. 26 It can sit in a well (Gen 26:19, J). For the term, see Gen 26:19, J; Lev 14:5, 6, 50– 51, 52; 15:13; Num 19:17; Deut 4:10; Jer 2:13; 17:13; Zech 14:8; Cant 4:15. 27 Cf. J in Gen 3:19. The J passage is a divine pronouncement to humans that they came from earth and revert to it. While it is not the point of this paper to trace differences in various Israelite cosmologies, examining them helps to situate Jeremiah and later texts, such as Job (as 7:21; 14:7–22), in related trajectories. J regards humanity and all animals as the products of a mixture of earth with Yahweh’s breath, which is the animating force. In Greek terms, the equivalence would be earth and wind (pneuma) or air. Enuma Elish, by contrast, traces man to earth mixed with divine blood, something that does not translate as readily into the later elements of the Greek philosophical tradition. P regards the animate to have the wind or inspiration of god, and to be mobile as a result. 28 Jeremiah 11:19, with occurrences in Isa 38:11; 53:8 (cut off from); Jer 11:19 (cut off, as a tree, so that his name is no longer mentioned); Ezek 26:20; 32:23–27, 32; Pss 27:13; 52:7; (?56:14; 116:9, lands of the living); 124:3; 142:6; Job 28:13 (33:30). Descent of the living to Sheol appears in Num 16:30, 33; Ps 55:16; Prov 1:12.

12. Late Israelite Astronomies and the Early Greeks 455  contrasts with the underworld, as consignment there ends the memory of a man, or, in the metaphor, of a tree. Admittedly, this is close exegesis. But the context is definitive. Chthonic objectification of other gods cannot have been lost on Jeremiah’s colleagues. Moreover, the image of the broken cisterns is supplemented in Jer 31:37. The context features some of Jeremiah’s more innovative speculation: Yahweh’s rejection of ancestral moral liability (31:29–30), the inscription of a new covenant into the hearts of the remnant (31:31–34), and the assurance that Israel’s nationhood will be as enduring as the natural law of the alternation of the luminaries, of the shining of the sun, moon and stars, and of the movement of the sea. After 31:37, Jeremiah continues: Behold, days are coming, says Yahweh, when the city will be rebuilt for Yahweh...29 And the offal, and all the terraces (šdmwt) up to the Kidron Brook, up to the Corner of the Gate of the Horses to the east, will be sacred to Yahweh, it will not be torn up nor destroyed again forever (31:38–40).

The offal, terraces, and Kidron call to mind Josiah’s reform report. So, too, does the gate of the horses to the east, namely, the direction of the sun’s rising (Jeremiah employs the term connected with that rising, mizra‫ ;)ۊ‬the gate of the horses was probably located somewhere in the vicinity of the present Lion’s Gate. This is the region Josiah disturbed, and used as a ground of profanation. It must be where the horses dedicated to the sun were situated before the Reform. Jeremiah is making the extraordinary claim that Jerusalem’s burial grounds will be purified, just the opposite of Josiah’s intentions. A statement on the processual regularity of the luminaries and the sea leads to Jer 31:37: Could the Heavens be measured, upward, could the foundations of the earth be plumbed, downward, I too would reject all the seed of Israel because of all they have done.30

This does not necessarily mean that the heavens extend infinitely upward and the earth infinitely downward. However, the heavens do not surround the earth and the earth’s underside cannot be reached, that is, the stars do not circulate beneath the earth. It is a consequence of that inference – the  29

“…from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate. And the measuring tape will go forth again before it, to the Hill of Gareb, and around to Goah.” On Gareb, cf. only 2 Sam 23:38, a Yitrite officer. G reads the succeeding segment of the verse as “it will be surrounded with precious stones.” 30 G seems to read yrmw for MT ymdw, and perhaps to emend y‫ۊ‬qrw. It understands Yahweh to be saying, “Could the heavens be raised (higher) into the air, the foundations of earth be lowered below...?” The translator imposed his own cosmology onto Jeremiah’s words.

456 Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies  extension of the known into the unknown – that there can be no netherworld. Xenophanes, going further still, alleges that the earth stretches infinitely, both in extension and in depth. Xenophanes also denies the reality of afterlife. In general, then, Jeremiah’s language reflects an assault on ancestral worship. Jeremiah’s most explicit concern is astral deities.31 While his Yahweh is “the source of living waters” and a “reservoir,” “the baal” are “broken cisterns, that do not hold water.” The implication is that the host, the stars, were membranes through which the heavenly waters flowed into the biosphere – broken cisterns. Jeremiah’s immeasurable heavens and earth may or may not have been infinite. Jeremiah does speak of stars as inscriptions; and he does employ the phrase, “pitched the heavens.”32 But his doctrine foreshadows Xenophanes’ view that the stars are ephemeral. For Jeremiah, the stars are illusory in the sense that they are at best two-dimensional, holes, not three-dimensional independent objects. Xenophanes amplifies and concretizes the implication. Not coincidentally, Xenophanes denies the possibility of divination; he is the only classical thinker, with the possible exception of Epicurus, to take this stance. It coincides with the rejection of astrology and divination in Deuteronomy and Jeremiah, and of divination in Deutero-Isaiah. It also coincides with the view that astral circulation is determined, and that there is no underworld. Denial of an afterlife relates directly to the denial of divination in societies reliant on necromancy. Jeremiah, too, denies the possibility of direct human knowledge of god’s presence: “Who has stood in the council of god and seen and heard his word?” (23:18). There is no council, he implies. Divination comes from within. Deutero-Isaiah maintains that only Yahweh himself can predict the future. One biblical passage coincides almost directly with Xenophanes, namely, Isa 40:28: Yahweh is an eternal god, creating the farthest reaches of the earth.33 He does not tire (yy‘p), nor does he weary himself (yg‘), there is no delving his intellect.  31 As in Jer 7:18; 8:2; 10:2; 19:13; 44; from 19:13, it follows that 32:29 belongs to the same category. 32 For the stars as heavenly writing, see Jer 10:3; 31:35; 33:25; similarly, Job 38:33. Deuteronomy 4 shares the Jeremianic view and probably represents its inspiration. For “pitched the heavens,” a leitmotif in Deutero-Isaiah (as in 40:22; 42:5; 44:24; 45:12; 51:13, 16), see Jer 10:12; 51:15. Note the “four extremities of the heavens” in Jer 49:36, although this does not necessarily imply limitations, as Deutero-Isaiah, who seems to posit an infinite earth, speaks of Yahweh as creating the earth’s extremities. 33 qswt h’rs. The term qsh means the edge or side, used regularly in P’s account of the construction of the Tabernacle (Exod 25:18–19; 26:4, 28; 27:4; 28:7, 23–26; 36:11, 33; 37:7, 8; 38:5; 39:4, 16–19), in the description of the Temple adyton (1 Kgs 6:24), and for the end of a stick in Ezek 15:4; Judg 6:21; 1 Sam 14:27, 43. Its use with “of the people”

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 Xenophanes’ version is: But aloof from exertion (apaneuthe ponoio) by the imagination of the intellect (noou phreni) he sets all things in motion.34

This is arguably a logical consequence of transcendental monotheism, and it has an antecedent in Jeremiah 10 (above). But the resemblance, as well as the relation to, Genesis 1 is eerie. This is evidence that the conversation was international. Xenophanes’ god cannot be localized, because he is ubiquitous and infinite temporally35 and spatially.36 The exegetical tradition confirms this –  in Gen 19:4; 47:2; Num 22:41; 1 Kgs 12:31; 13:33; 2 Kgs 17:32; Judg 18:2 (Jer 51:31?); Ezek 25:9 is more general, the meaning being, from some of the people. Job 26:14 speaks of the ends of god’s way, as though they were in fact the merest beginnings, the tip of it (including pacifying Sea-Rahab and puncturing the slithering snake in the heaven, Drago). Similar is Balaq’s counsel to Balaam that from a certain vantage point he will see only the tip (q‫܈‬h) of Israel, not all of it, in Num 23:13. The ends of the heavens appear in Deut 4:32 (from the first things, from the time Yahweh created man on the earth, from the ends of the heavens to the end of the heavens, has ever such a thing been?, representing the temporal and spatial extent of human reality); 30:4 (quoted in Neh 1:9); Jer 49:36 (the four edges); Ps 19:7 (and the heavens, namely the stars, address the end of tbl in 19:5). Isa 13:5 mentions “from a distant land, from the end of the heavens” (cf. Isa 5:26, “the end of the earth”). The idea in 1 Kgs 8 that even the highest heavens, the heavens of the heavens, cannot contain Yahweh implies that the god is the only infinite in that theology. The end(s) of the earth appears in Deut 28:49, “a distant nation from the edge of the earth”; Isa 5:26, summoning a nation from the end of the earth (cf. Isa 13:5, “the end of the heavens”); 26:15; 40:28; 41:5, 9 (// ’‫܈‬yly, where he gathered Israelites from); 42:10 (likewise); 43:6 (likewise); 48:20 (likewise); 49:6 (Israel as the light to the nations, to the end of the earth); 62:11 (Yahweh made it known to the end of the earth). Except for the reference to their creation, the ends of the earth in Isaiah are always the most distant peoples, not the land itself. In Jeremiah, (m)q‫܈‬h h’r‫ ܈‬occurs in 10:13 = 51:16, the region from which Yahweh raises mists ( > Ps 135:7); and in 12:12; 25:31, 33, where the reference is in fact as in Deut 13:8; 28:64, to the edges of Canaan (see physical boundary below). End of the earth also occurs in Ps 46:10; 48:11; 61:3 (“from the end of the earth I call on you”); 65:6. Prov 17:24 may pun on ksyl, “fool” and “Orion”: the eyes of the fool/stars of Orion are on the end of the earth. The term denotes a physical boundary in Gen 23:9; 47:21 (from the edge of the territory of Egypt unto its edge); Exod 13:20; 16:35; 19:12; Num 11:1; 20:16; 22:36; 33:6, 37; 34:3 [Deut 13:8 + 28:64 (“from the edge of the land to the edge of the land,” i.e., Canaan = Jer 12:12; 25:31, 33)]; Josh 3:8, 15; 4:19; 13:27; 15:1–2, 5, 8, 21; 18:15–16, 19; 1 Sam 9:27; 14:2; 2 Kgs 7:5, 8; Isa 7:3, 18; Ezek 25:9; 48:1; Ruth 3:7. The term limits time in Gen 8:3; Deut 14:28; Josh 3:2; 9:16; 2 Sam 24:8; 1 Kgs 9:10; 2 Kgs 8:3; 18:10; Ezek 3:16; 39:1. In Isa 56:11, the term seems to be purely metaphoric. 34 Kradainein: “shakes, agitates”; or “wields”. Simpl, in Phys, 22, 22ff.; DK Frag 25; cf. Frag 24.

458 Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies  Aeschylus, Euripides, and later texts explain why there could not be more than one such god; if god is everywhere, no other such god could be there.37 The other ancient Near Eastern god who is not localized is that of Jeremiah, and perhaps Deuteronomy.38 Because his god is infinite, Xenophanes rejects theogony: those who claim that gods can be born are as blasphemous as those who say that gods can die. 39 The only anterior Mediterranean traditions without a theogony are Israelite, specifically in the combination of JE, and in D, P, Jeremiah, and Deutero-Isaiah. As Hezekiah’s men codified JE, we ought not to expect Isaiah or Micah to provide evidence of theogony.40 Conversely, later philosophers, and later Israelites, did incorporate forms of theogony into their cosmologies.41 Related is Xenophanes’ treatment of the dead. One should not mourn gods, he claims, nor worship mortals. This view derives from the implications of earlier astronomies, and its extrapolation explains why the earth stretches infinitely downward in Xenophanes, and cannot be plumbed in Jeremiah. Xenophanes, and implicitly Jeremiah, reject what is uncertain in favor of what is real: they extend the earth downward, rather than positing a realm of the gods below the earth. They can do so because the heavens turn as a whole, with the stars not circulating under the earth. The effect is to reduce the number of the gods, which no longer includes the stars.  35

See especially DK Frag 26 and Diogenes Laertius 9.19; see also Arist, de Melliso, Xenophane, Gorgia (ed. Bekker and Brandis) 977a, 14.2, 8; Simpl, in Phys, 22.4–5; Hippol, Haer, 1.14.2; Cicero, Acad, 2.118; Theodoret 4.5; Aetius 2.4.11. 36 Simpl, in Phys, 22.5, 9; Cicero, Acad, 2.118; d n deor 1.11.28; Aetius 2.24.9; Aristotle, On the Heavens, 2.13 294a 21 = DK Frag 28; the earth is infinite in the following: (Ps) Plut, Str, 4 (Eusebius, Praep ev. 1.8.4.D.580); Aetius 3.9.4; 2.11.12; Cicero, Prior Academics, 2.39.122; Hippolytus, Haer, 1.14.3. 37 See especially Arist, de Melliso, Xenophane, Gorgia (ed. Bekker and Brandis) 977ab, 978ab, 979a; Simpl, in Phys, 22.22.1–9; Hippolytus, Haer, 1.13.2; Cicero, Nat d, 1.11.28; it turns out string theory now invalidates the assumption underlying the syllogism. 38 One could argue as to whether Deuteronomy’s later partisans shared this view (“even the heavens of the heavens cannot contain you” in 1 Kgs 8:27, a text from the Josianic or Hezekian edition of Kings). 39 Diogenes Laertius 9.19; Arist, de Melliso, Xenophane, Gorgia (ed. Bekker and Brandis) 977a 14.2, 8; Simpl, in Phys, 22.4–5; Hippolytus, Haer, 1.14.2; Cicero, Acad, 2.118; Theodoret 4.5; Aetius 2.4.11. 40 The Psalter, although full of cosmogony, some of it involving theomachy, exhibits very little theogony except in the form of references to the “sons of El.” It has been filtered through the sifter of Hezekiah’s court. The older materials, such as Psalm 68, are those that do not address cosmogony. 41 Israelites do so, especially in apocalyptic literature, in positing the generation of divine beings, sons of “God,” demons and so on, rather than in the postulation of successive generations of divine rulers.

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 Jerusalem holds the line on this issue. Ezekiel holds out hope for a resurrection, rescuing the tradition represented by entombment near high places and by tomb offerings. But Josianic reform repudiates afterlife by the first systematic desecration of the graves of one’s own people in history (see III below). The repudiation is taken up, as noted, in Jeremiah, and a group among the Israelite elite embrace it for some time. Job positively denies afterlife: a tree has hope, but, though all the water of the sea be spilt out, a man will not revive (14:16–20). The Greeks, however, rebel. Heracleitus follows Xenophanes on an absence of cosmogony or theogony, as well as on the evanescence of the sun. But, ever conservative, he insists on an immortal afterlife.42 Later, no one agreed that the earth was unbounded in depth or breadth, because, starting with Parmenides and the developed Saros cycle of the sixth–fifth centuries, the earth became spherical, the moon reflected the light of the sun, and already in Empedocles, eclipses are correctly explained. From the fifth century on, the earth undeniably had an underside.

III. The State Assault on the Ancestors The denial of an afterlife or of ancestral power took firmest root in Judah, principally by virtue of the state’s attempt to forge a national, rather than local, identity. It is here that one sees the implications of the new cosmologies acted out in practice. Judah was ripe for such a development. The first inroad against the ancestors comes in Amos’ prophecy against the funerary society (marzƝah). Later, Isaiah denies the effectiveness of ancestral protection against Assyria and consigns the participants in the funerary cult to the underworld.43 Isaiah ridicules necromancy and petitions for ancestral intercession: Wrap up the document; seal the oracle among my students. I await Yahweh, who is hiding his face from the House of Jacob, and I wish for him ... But should they say to you, “Seek the spirits, and the mediums, who chirp and murmur. Should a people not seek its

 42

See especially DK 22 B 25–27, 62–63, among others. Amos 6:1–10; Isaiah 28, especially vv. 14–20; 5:11–15; cf. Jer 16:5–7. Note further Isa 14:9–11, where uninterred ancestors have biers of maggots and shrouds of worms; 14:18–20, where even the undead lament when an Assyrian king (Sargon II, or predictively, Sennacherib), who, claiming kingship in Babylon, devastated the region, and is denied a formal burial and funerary celebration. On Isaiah 28, see B. Halpern, “The Excremental Vision: The Doomed Priests of Doom in Isaiah 28,” Hebrew Annual Review 10 (1986) 109–21. 43

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gods, on behalf of the living, (seek) the dead?” To (written) oracle and document (they should seek...) (8:16–20).44

The life of those who do not seek the oracle is dimness, like the underworld (8:17–22). Isaiah repeatedly suggests the impotence of the ancestors. This rejection of tradition coincided with a shift in funerary practice in the countryside. After Hezekiah’s revolt against Assyria, interment in tombs containing multiple family units or clan sections gave way to the construction of tombs designed for individual households. Hezekian policy seems to have been geared to marginalizing the kinship system, of which the ancestral cult was an important symbolic expression, and the lineage tombs an even more important object of attachment.45 Hezekiah’s policy was intensified in Josiah’s reforms. In Bethel, Josiah exhumed bones from a cemetery on a hill facing the Bethel altar, sparing only the grave of the man of god who had predicted his actions:46 ...the altar that was in Bethel...and the high place, he tore down, and he burned the high place, crushed it to ash, and burned an asherah-icon. Now, Josiah turned, and saw the graves that were there on the hill, and he sent and took the bones from the graves and burned them on the altar, and defiled it... (2 Kgs 23:15–16).

The man of god’s oracle was: Altar...a son will be born to David’s house, Josiah is his name, and he will sacrifice upon you the priests of the high places who make offerings on you, and the bones of humans they will burn on you (1 Kgs 13:2).

The local prophet adds that Josiah will do the same to all high places in Samaria (1 Kgs 13:32). Since 1 Kgs 13:2 was written in light of Josiah’s actions, 2 Kgs 23:16 must fulfill the prophecy that priests and bones would be sacrificed. Even the diction in 1 Kgs 13:2 implies sacrifice of the dead – one never “sacrifices” bones, only animals or people. But by mentioning both priests and bones, 13:2 misleads the reader to expect human sacrifice. At other towns in Samaria: Likewise all the high-place temples, which were in the towns of Samaria, that the kings of Israel donated in order to anger (Yahweh), Josiah removed. And he did to them like all

 44

The reference is to their preparation in v. 8:16. For denial of the value of necromancy or of ancestral intercession, see, in addition to Isa 8:19, also 19:3 and 29:4. 45 B. Halpern, “Jerusalem and the Lineages in the Seventh Century BCE: Kinship and the Rise of Individual Moral Liability,” in B. Halpern and D.W. Hobson (eds.), Law and Ideology in Monarchic Israel (JSOTSupp 124; Sheffield: JSOT, 1991) 11–107. 46 The protagonist of the story in 1 Kgs 13 is modeled on Amos, B. Halpern, The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988) 248–54.

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 the deeds he did in Bethel. And he sacrificed all the priests of the high places who were there on the(ir) altars, and burned the bones of humans on them (2 Kgs 23:19–20).47

The double sacrifice of priests and human bones corresponds to 1 Kgs 13:2; the sacrifice in Samaria’s towns corresponds to 1 Kgs 13:32 – the verses fulfilling the oracles beginning and ending 1 Kings 13 enclose Josiah’s actions in the north.48 The diction, too, gives the impression that Josiah sacrificed live priests; yet careful reading discloses that he disinterred all the priests that he “sacrificed.” The treatment of priests in Judah – they are not killed, but are awarded a Temple prebend – indicates how he addressed the living. This disparity between rhetoric and reality again confirms the authenticity of the account and its contemporaneity with that king: were the account later, it would not employ mere ambiguity to deceive the reader. These are the tools, the linguistic technologies, of royal inscriptions.49 The account of Josiah’s northern reforms discloses that elite cemeteries, with marked tombs, lay in sight of high places.50 Barrick has shown that high places were often constructed and intramural;51 some, however, were  47

Following for the most part the Lucianic readings (in parentheses). 2 Kgs 23:15, 19. The placement of the seemingly more radical act at the end of the 2 Kgs 23 Reform Account has parallels, for example in 2 Samuel 8, the list of David’s conquests. The author’s idea – and no doubt this technique was taught in school (“Advanced Royal Inscriptions”), with 2 Samuel 8 used as a paradigm – was that placing a strong statement at the end of the recitation would leave the reader with an exaggerated impression of the king’s achievements, B. Halpern, David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King (Grand Rapids, Mi: Eerdmans, 2001) Part 3. 49 In this case, they are deployed not on a monument, but in historiography, with a reach that extends clear back to the Book of Deuteronomy. Were the material invented late and in a vacuum of information about the Iron Age, unambiguous lies would have been adjudged more serviceable. In Samuel-Kings, these tools are applied to sculpt the regnal accounts of David, Solomon, Hezekiah, and possibly Jehoshaphat. Conversely, about David’s youthful career, sheer, unqualified lies abound. 50 The text claims that the northern cemeteries are those of the priests of the high places. The sources place us in an unfortunate position with regard to the northern priesthood. On the one hand, it is clear that there were Levitic, or specialist, elements in priestly service there, not least at Dan (Judg 18:30). On the other hand, Kings claims that only non-Levites were ordained. Not unnaturally, many scholars, including this writer, have dismissed this as a mere canard. And yet, even the most sustained polemic may in fact invoke genuine differences between states or cultures. 51 W. B. Barrick, “High Place,” in D.N. Freedman (ed.), The Anchor Bible Dictionary rd (3 ed.; New York: Doubleday, 1992) 196–200. See further, for the indubitable argument that high places were architectural in character, W. B. Barrick, “What Do We Really Know about High Places?” Svensk Exegetisk Årsbok 45 (1980) 50–7; idem, “On the Meaning of bêt hab-bƗmôt and bƗtê hab-bƗmôt and the Composition of the Kings History,” JBL 115 (1996) 621–42. 48

462 Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies  extramural.52 The location of cemeteries in sight of the (extramural?) high places suggests hope for preference in the hereafter; specifically, the inhumations probably involved public commemoration at the high place. There is textual and archaeological evidence of such a connection at Jerusalem: an elite necropolis for individuals and nuclear families is situated across the Kidron, Jerusalem’s ancient boundary, at the foot of the Mount of Olives and Jebel Batin al-Hawa.53 2 Sam 15:30–32 locates a shrine atop Olivet, facing Jerusalem. Solomon’s shrines also face Jerusalem, from the south of Har Hammashhit.54 David’s precinct was within sight of the elite necropolis.  52 Outside of 2 Kgs 23, see B. Halpern, “‘Sybil, or the Two Nations’? Alienation, Archaism, and the Elite Redefinition of Traditional Culture in Judah in the 8th-7th Centuries BCE,” in J.S. Cooper and G. Schwartz (eds.), The Study of the Ancient Near East in the 21st Century. The William Foxwell Albright Centennial Conference (Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 1996) 298–99, nn. 20–21, as well as Solomon’s high places. For the association of high places with cemeteries or the dead, note the commemoration of the burial locations of the “minor judges,” which probably reflect shrines; see K. van der Toorn, Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel (SHANE 7; Leiden: Brill, 1996) 206–35, and 239–41, 244–45, 253–71 for their occasional extramurality (e.g., Rachel’s tomb; the oak of Tabor/Deborah; Abraham’s altar east of Bethel, and perhaps that at “the sacred place of Shechem”). Note that family tombs are often “in” towns (e.g., in Judg 8:32; 10:2; 5; 12:7, 10, 12, 15; 1 Sam 10:2). Qish’s family tomb is reportedly in Zela (2 Sam 21:14) or Zela of the Clan (Josh 18:28), but possibly merely on a hillside (as in 2 Sam 16:13). David’s men bury Abner in Hebron, with a procession to the tomb (2 Sam 3:31–32). In 2 Sam 4:12, they bury the head of Ishbaal in the tomb of Abner in Hebron, and in 2 Sam 2:32, they bury Asahel “in the tomb of his father ’šr byt lhm.” If this denotes “which is at Bethlehem” (relative + unmodified locative GN), do these texts imply intramural inhumation? Bethlehem is circumvallated (hence the heroes breaching the Philistine camp to reach the gate of Bethlehem in 2 Sam 23:13–17). Yet there is no archaeological evidence of intramural inhumation in the Israelite period, but substantial evidence of extramural inhumation. Thus, the evidence favors the burials being in the territory, rather than within the walls, of the town. The same might apply in the case of some high places, even though, as Barrick (“High Place”) observes, these are consistently said to be “in” towns. Note, however, the locution regarding Abraham’s location “in Hebron” when he builds his altar there in Gen 13:18; cf. the altar west of Bethel in 12:8–9; 13:3–4 or at the oracular oak of Shechem in 12:6–7. Whether or not state shrines were ever extramural, therefore, clan shrines may consistently have been, which would explain the dearth of shrines in settlements as well as phenomena such as the Bull Site and Mt. Ebal. The lumping together of state and clan shrines as illegitimate is a function of deuteronomistic ideology in the Josianic era only. 53 D. Ussishkin, The Village of Silwan. The Necropolis from the Period of the Judean Kingdom (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1993). 54 Today, Har Hammashhit is sometimes identified with Jebel Batin al-Hawa; cf. M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB 11; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1988) 289. But for the Iron Age, both this hill and some part of the Mount of Olives constitute plausible candidates. If Solomon’s high places were on Olivet, or on the east side of Batin al

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 Josiah’s desecrated priestly graves simultaneously defiled sanctuaries (2 Kgs 23:15) and punished the dead; hence the unnamed man of god is exempted. In other towns, Josiah sacrificed all the priests of the high places who were there on the(ir) altars, and burned the bones of humans on them (2 Kgs 23:20). The double description of the action both insinuates the sacrifice of living priests and expresses the valences of punishing acolytes and defiling shrines. The acolytes were probably identified as priests by virtue of their interment in sight of the sacred precinct. The posthumous vengeance on priests does not just profane Israel’s bƗmôt, but all who officiate at them. Filling Solomon’s high places with bones (2 Kgs 23:14) defiles them permanently, like the northern high places.55 Scattering the ash of the asherah-icon over graves profanes the icon. Regarding Judah, however, the text conceals where the bones come from. It does not explain how Josiah defiled the Tophet (23:10) or the rural high places (23:8). He dismantles, but does not defile, the high places outside Jerusalem’s gates (23:8). 56 And the text does not mention bones until 23:14, so that readers, having encountering earlier references to action in Judah, miss the implication even in connection with Solomon’s bƗmôt of tomb desecration.57  Hawa, facing the town, as the text says, and to the right of the hill as regarded from the town, they too had a direct view of the necropolis. 55 In contrast to the Second Temple period, unclean meat could not be employed for this purpose in the Iron Age. The filling of the sanctuaries defeats the efficacy of rituals to purify Israelites from contact with the dead (for this observation, I am indebted to my friend, Gary Knoppers). Note, however, the limitation of priestly mourning to the nuclear family (Lev 21:1–5, 10–11; Ezek 44:25; see also Num 6:6). 56 ntú. Yadin’s identification of the altar inside the gate at Beersheba with a “high place of the gates” is absolutely emblematic of how archaeologists err in the identification of artifact with text. Yadin did not examine the usage, which clearly indicates that the high places in question were outside the gates, and specifically outside a particular Jerusalem gate (a double gate system; see B. Halpern, “The Death of Eli and the Israelite Gate,” in Eretz Israel 26 [F.M. Cross volume; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1998] 52*–63*). The altar inside the fortification wall at Beersheba functions as a civic, state shrine. The distinction between intramural and extramural shrines was crucial in the worldview of the ancient Israelites and of Hezekiah’s reformationists. 57 The single case in which Josiah moves bones in Judah – as distinct from scattering ash on graves – is eloquent in its implications. Only Solomon’s high places and the sanctuaries of Samaria have more than one form of destruction visited upon them. The other heterodox installations are torn down, burnt, and defiled, without detail being furnished. The priests royally installed in Judah’s high places are not killed, nor disinterred, merely cashiered and awarded a Temple prebend. We might infer, then, that Josiah treated the high places explicitly identified by him with foreign gods, of the sort that Micah identifies in his famous couplet (4:5: “all the peoples go each in its own god’s name…”; cf. Deut 32:8–9 with 4Q LXX), with a combination of disinterment – played diminuendo in Judah – and defilement with human remains. This implies that the Solo

464 Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies  Although the fact is often overlooked, Kings also identifies the priesthoods of the north as central to Jeroboam’s sin. True, 1 Kgs 12:30 reports that the calves entice the people “to go before” them. But Jeroboam’s crimes continue: he made bƗmôt-temples 58 and appointed non-Levitic  monic and northern high places are treated in the text as especially alien, especially offensive, to Josiah’s cult. And this explains why 2 Kgs 23 addresses Solomon’s high places at the end of the account of reform in Judah and just before the reform in Samaria. These are transitional both in precipitating the schism in 1 Kgs 11 and in Josiah’s remedying its causes, Halpern, The First Historians, 154–55, 174–75, 220–28, 248–54; Knoppers, Two Kingdoms Under God (HSM 52; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993) 187–91. The northern high places, of course, are in the theology of Josiah’s court ideologues one of the causes of the Assyrian exile. This in turn raises the question of the organization of the reform account. Regarding Judah, the movement is complex. The first unit is the Temple itself, but this is not separable from the baals, the astral gods, attributed to the countryside – so the two come together. The asherah of the Temple is the next subject, and it is not altogether separable from the Temple itself and, therefore, does not lead to massive measures of contamination. Then come the priests and high places of the towns and of Jerusalem, the former dealt with rather humanely, the latter with an indeterminate defilement. The final movement equates iconoclasm in Jerusalem with the profaning of the Tophet and of the Solomonic high places. The principle of organization seems to be an escalating degree of offensiveness. Josiah strewing the asherah’s ash over graves is not his solution for the asherah-icons of Solomon’s high places or Bethel (23:15). The ash of the kings’ altars, for example, goes into the Kidron Brook (23:12), as do the goods donated to the host at the Temple (23:4). Consideration of this action, however, produces new backlighting for the text. In 23:4, Josiah incinerates the vessels of the host on the šadmôt of Kidron. The Targum, followed by the medieval commentators, and by Stager, takes it to mean the floor by the wadi, that is, the agricultural terrace – mîšôr (Stager extends the meaning to include architectural terraces, L. E. Stager, “The Archaeology of the East Slope of Jerusalem and the Terraces of the Kidron,” JNES 41 [1982]). Yet Jeremiah 31:40 associates the šedƝmôt with the Jerusalem city rather than the wilderness side of the Kidron, and associates the valley floor with corpses and offal (dešen, the term used in 1 Kings 13 to prefigure the human bone desecration), no more to be torn up. Admittedly, the Mot in šedƝmôt may have no more significance than the sin in syncretism. The removal of the ash to Bethel is a bit odd, as all other ash is locally disposed of, and one wonders if Rashi is not right to read “to an impure place,” rather than the place name. This may be the chapel house of the high place. The other ash disposed of in Jerusalem is that of the altars of former kings (23:12), and it is again removed to the Kidron Brook. The Kidron is also the place were goods donated to the host are removed (23:4). This regular disposal at the Kidron may be connected with the grave sites there, as in Jeremiah. And the association of the Kidron with the graves in 23:6 comes early enough in the account to inform our understanding at least of what happens to the altars’ ash. This possible association of the Kidron with interments cannot be proved. But the scattering of the asherah-icon’s ash on the graves leads to another question. In implementing a policy of disinterment, is Josiah merely punishing the dead priests and defiling the sanctuary, or is he additionally making some statement about the ancestors? 58 1 Kgs 12:31–32; read houses, plural, with G, as in 1 Kgs 13:32. As Barrick (“High Place”) stresses, these are temples or at least shrines located at the bƗmôt. However, note 

12. Late Israelite Astronomies and the Early Greeks 465  priests.59 1 Kgs 13:33–34 refers to this last point alone. The priests are the moral fulcrum of the condemnation of Israel after the Solomonic schism. The punishment of dead northern priests is justified by an assertion of continuity in priestly tradition after the loss of the calves to Assyria. 2 Kgs 17:24–41 relates the instruction of the Assyrian transplants, establishing continuity between Jeroboam’s cult and the cult that Josiah destroyed. 2 Kgs 17:29 claims that the transplants reused the old high places, and v 32 claims that they “made priests” “from their qƗúôt – the qƗúôt and the unusual expression, “to make a priest,” echo Jeroboam’s actions. The northern priests and devotees of Josiah’s time are identified as closely as possible with Jeroboam’s; and vv. 34 and 41 take us to Josiah’s time in the narrative universe to reinforce the point. In sum, Josiah undoes the causes of Israel’s schism and fall. In the absence of the calves, only the priests and precincts of the north remained for expurgation. This is the earliest text in which a king celebrates desecrating domestic tombs. Slightly earlier, Asshurbanipal shattered, instead of capturing, Elamite gods60 and uprooted shrines. He also demolished royal tombs.61 Still,

 the peculiar usage found in Mesha of “making” bƗmôt: this appears in three of eight occurrences in Kings, in one of four occurrences (Ezekiel v. Jeremiah) in the prophets, and in two of four in Chronicles. “Making” is used much less frequently with “house” than “building” in Kings; except in 1 Kgs 7:8 (where G omits and where OG has a variant reading), and in the making of bƗmôt shrines, it is only applied to the metaphoric use of “house” for “dynasty” (as also in Exod 1:21). Similarly, towns are built, not “made.” However, at least in the account of Solomon’s reign, the architectural elements of buildings are “made.” It is difficult to figure out what to make of “making” bƗmôt and bƗmôthouses (shrines). However, Mesha may provide some guidance: in line 3, he reports that w’‘Ğ hbmt z’t lkmš, whereas in line 27 he relates that ’nk bnty bt bmt ky hrs h’. The latter may be either a town name, or a shrine at Aroer. But the contrast in usage suggests that “making” bƗmôt involves dedicating or preparing them for sacrifice, whereas “building” them refers to the construction of the actual building in which ritual meals might take place. 59 The sense of 1 Kgs 12:31–33 is that Jeroboam constructed multiple shrines, appointed priests for all of them, and then inaugurated the new cultic regimen with a sacrifice at the Bethel altar. Thus, at the end of v 22, in the accusative nominal phrase, “the priests of the bƗmôt that he made,” it is impossible to determine whether the verb in the relative clause refers to priests, bƗmôt, or both. 60 For the earlier revolts, see Rassam Annals 3.35ff.; 4.1ff.; 5.21–40; for shattering images, 5.119 (BIWA 52 A V 119 F IV 61). It is noteworthy that even Shushinak, the Elamite god who determines fate, “the work of whose divinity no one sees” (A 6.30–32), and who dwells apart or perhaps in obscurity (ina puzrati) is liable to deportation, and is thus presumably iconically represented. 61 The text is cited in W. B. Barrick, “Burning Bones at Bethel: A Closer Look at 2 Kings 23, 16a,” SJOT 14 (2000) 3–16: I wasted, destroyed, exposed to the sun the  tombs of their earlier and recent kings,

466 Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies  Asshurbanipal was dealing with incorrigible rebels. The Judahite variation, typically, directed this response inward, as it directed Assyrian treaty provisions into the nuclear family. 62 Josiah’s account, too, spotlights the bones’ effect on places, not the disinterment. Still, Josiah’s actions shatter the tradition. In the last movement of the reform, Josiah suppresses Judah’s necromancers.63 The Jerusalem Tophet that Josiah defiled (2 Kgs 23:10) was probably also part of the ancestral complex. There, fathers rather than specialists sacrificed children. After Josiah’s death, Jeremiah discusses the Tophet.64 He complains (7:30–31) that Judah introduced šiqqûúîm into the temple; that Yahweh never demanded infanticide, a refrain he repeats; and later claims that infanticide is apostasy, a rhetorical trope. His remedy (7:32 ff.) is that offal will be strewn on the Tophet.65 The text concludes: They will exhume the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of its officials, and the bones of the priests and the bones of the prophets and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem from their tombs. And they will slaughter them to the sun and to the moon and to all the host of the heavens, whom they loved, and whom they served, and after whom

 who did not fear Asshur and Ishtar, my lords, who perturbed the kings, my fathers. To the land of Asshur I took their bones. I imposed sleeplessness on their spirits; I let them thirst for ancestral offerings and water libations. kimƗhƯ šarrƗnƯšunu mahrnjti arknjti la pƗlihnjti dAššur u dIštar bƝlƝya (variants here) munarriĠnj šarrƗni ƗbƝya appul aqqur ukallim dšamši eúmƝtišunu alqa ana mƗt dAššur eĠimmƝšunu la úalƗlu Ɲmid kispƯ nƗq mê uúammešunnjti Annals 6.70–76 (M. Streck, Assurpanipal und die letzten assyrischen Könige bis zum Untergang Niniveh’s [Leipzig: Hinmels, 1916]); BIWA: 55: A VI 70 F V 49 – A VI 76 F V 54 (F is missing A VI 75–76); 241 F V 49–54 (tr). Note also A II 115–118. For the condemnation of the spirits to no rest, compare 1 Sam 28:15. 62 See especially Deuteronomy 13; Dion, “Deuteronomy 13: The Suppression of Alien Religious Propaganda during the Late Monarchical Era;” Halpern, “Jerusalem and the Lineages in the Seventh Century BCE.” 63 And the teraphim used in necromancy, as van der Toorn (Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel) stipulates. It is not coincidental that Rachel, whose tomb was the object of a cult, probably one of intercession (Jer 31:15), is associated with the successful theft of Laban’s teraphim. 64 In his temple sermon, as in Jer 26:1; ch. 26 is the narrative version of ch. 7. 65 The contrast being to Rizpah’s protection of the Saulides. Note that Jeremiah’s claim that there will be burials in the Tophet for want of room elsewhere does not explain the failure to inter remains there.

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 they went, and whom they sought. They will not be introduced into tombs for burial, and they will not be interred, but will be detritus on the surface of the earth (Jer 8:1–2).66

In a parallel passage, Jeremiah claims that the kings and people alienated the Tophet to non-traditional gods (19:1–13, especially vv. 11–13). 67 He castigates them (19:5) for building the high places of the baal (7:31, bƗmôt of the Tophet), for infanticide, of which Yahweh never dreamed. The indictment is: (1) worshipers claim to sacrifice to Yahweh; (2) Yahweh never enjoined human sacrifice; and (3) the worshipers were really sacrificing to new gods.68 This reversal of the traditional understanding, flatly contradicted in Mic 6:6–7, also involves rereading Genesis 22.69 It leads directly to Jeremiah’s rejection of JE as a scribal forgery (Jer 8:8–9).70 Some time after 609 BCE, Jeremiah could predict universal exhumation of all devotees of astral deities. The dead would be punished. Their bones would defile the Tophet. The dual valence of the disinterment and profana 66 The last is one of Jeremiah’s pet expressions: 8:2; 9:21; 16:4; 25:33 (but not in the later materials). Elsewhere it occurs only in 2 Kgs 9:37, which is probably Jeremiah’s point of departure, and in Ps 83:11. On ’sp, to prepare for burial, note that it is a stage secondary to the mourning of death in Jer 25:33. Introduction of the corpse into the tomb is the likely referent, with burial representing the sealing of the tomb and some attendant ritual of separation. For more on the vocabulary of death, see B. Halpern and D. S. Vanderhooft, “The Editions of Kings in the 7th–6th Centuries B.C.E.,” HUCA 62 (1991) 179– 244. 67 At this point, Jeremiah returns to the subject of the Tophet outside the “Potsherd Gate.” He promises evil against Jerusalem that will make the ears ring, a motif associated with the condemnation of Manasseh, probably afterward. He condemns the Judahites for filling it with the blood of innocents (another phrase associated with Manasseh in Kings). 68 The renaming of the site follows in 7:32, and it is where, in 19:7, the corpses of Judah will again be exposed. “I’ll feed you,” he continues (19:9), “your sons’ flesh and your daughters’ flesh” and each other’s, in siege conditions. Then he repeats that there will be burials in the Tophet, for lack of room elsewhere – in other words, emergency mass graves. He plans to make the whole town like a Tophet (19:12–13) for burning incense to the astral gods and pouring libations out to other gods. This remark inverts Isaiah’s wonderful suggestion that the town would become a Tophet for those who assail it. Aside from 2 Kgs 23:10, Jer 7:31–32, and 19:6, 11–13, Isa 30:33 is the only biblical text to mention the precinct by name. 69 And of texts in J, such as Exod 34:20; such a reinterpretation occurs in P, where the Levites become substitutes for offerings of the first-born. 70 The trmyt and regression of 8:4ff. refer back to the accusations and condemnations of 7:1–8:4. Ezekiel likewise refers to JE as a fraud, but as one authentically perpetrated by Yahweh rather than the scribes (Ezek 20:25). This, too, comes in immediate juxtaposition to the sacrifice of the first-born in Ezek 20:26, where the verb h‘byr is used to denote the sacrifice. Ezek 20:5 echoes Exod 6:3, 7, and the sequence in Ezekiel 20 presupposes a giving of the law at Sinai, then a second exhortation to obey it on the plain of Moab. As Ezekiel here repeatedly echoes P, it is likeliest that he was following that text, or P plus Deuteronomy. Getting rid of JE was clearly an important part of the reformist agenda after Josiah’s reign.

468 Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies  tion mirrors the presentation of Josiah’s deeds. Were the other gods, to whom libations were poured out, also ancestral? 71 Were the astral gods identified with the ancestors, as Israel was to be as numerous as the stars? Jeremiah’s diatribe (cf. 32:34–35) indicates that Josiah did not strew corpses on the Tophet or raid the Silwan necropolis. In Judah, he used bones to defile, not to punish past trespasses. This suggests a certain unwillingness to disinter Judahites. This unwillingness, masked by the text, is regularly missed by readers.72 The text insinuates that disinterment was not a policy in Judah. And yet, the author of the reform report wished to imply that it was.73  71

The libation ritual also attaches to astral and sky gods, and Jeremiah’s qualification in 19:4, “other gods, whom they did not know, neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah,” suggests an exclusion of the ancestors from this address. 72 Two other texts describe Josiah’s innovation. As is well known, the Chronicler backloads all Josiah’s lustrative reforms into his 12th year, reserving year 18 for the covenant and Passover only. In year twelve he began to purify Judah and Jerusalem from the high places and the asherim and the icons and the massƝkôt [molten images or plating on the other icons]. And they ripped down [ntú, D] before him the altars of the baals and the [unidentified cult objects – hammƗnîm – seemingly in the position of the massƝbâ] that were above them he felled [gd‘], and the asherim, and the icons and the massƝkôt he shattered and crushed [dqq, C] and hurled [zrq, v Kgs, šlk, C] onto the surface of the graves of those who sacrificed to them. And the bones of priests he burnt on their altars and he purified Judah and Jerusalem. And in the towns of Manasseh and Ephraim and Simeon all the way to Naphtali, in their ruins all about. And he ripped down [ntú, D] the altars and the asherim, and the icons he chopped up to crush, and all the hammƗnîm he felled [gd‘] in all the land of Israel (2 Chr 34:3–7). The hammƗnîm appear in Isa 17:8; Lev 26:30; Ezek 6:4, 6; Isa 27:9; 2 Chr 14:4; and, with the meaning altar or chapel, in Nabatean and at Palmyra. These objects, as well as high places and multiple sanctuaries, are legitimate in the P text, as the context indicates. Ezekiel reinterprets the P curse formula to imply that they were illegitimate. The Chronicles text homogenizes Josiah’s treatment of Judah with that of Israel, which is probably something like the impression the author of Kings wanted to create. It extends the scattering of the ash of the asherah-icon to embrace the other items it takes to have been expunged early, and interprets the graves of the people in 2 Kgs 23:6 as those of votaries (probably under Jeremiah’s influence). The Chronicler could justify his interpretation by claiming that the altars, hammƗnîm, icons, and molten items were what 2 Kgs 23:4 says Josiah cast into the Kidron from the Temple nave, that is, dedications to the astral gods (the Chronicler would claim that the asherah-icon and the astral cult with the Asherah of Yahweh were identical). Chronicles also extends the exhumation of priests to embrace Judah, again because of Jeremiah’s prophecy for the Tophet. But one cannot be certain from the text whether the burnt human bones come from above or below the ground. Jeremiah exerts a remarkable influence on Chronicles, which sometimes understands his words, on the basis of the intentional implication of the text, to have antedated Josiah’s death. For the influence of Jeremiah on Chronicles, see B. Halpern, “The

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  New Names of Isaiah 62:4: Jeremiah’s Reception in the Restoration and the Politics of ‘Third Isaiah,’” JBL 117 (1998) 623–43; idem, “Why Manasseh is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile,” VT 48 (1998) 1–42. This interpretation tells us a good deal about the effect of the text on an early reader. The later reader goes further. In Ant 10.50, Josephus determines that Josiah’s reforms began when the boy was 12, taking 2 Chr 34:3 or its original Vorlage in Kings (lost because of haplography from year 8 to year 18) to report the year in Josiah’s life rather than of his reign. Josephus probably derived this inference by comparing Josiah’s seeking Yahweh in year 8 (2 Chr 34:3) with Josiah’s accession at the age of eight (34:1). Josephus accepts, as do the medieval harmonizers, the story of Manasseh’s reform (2 Chr 33:12–16). He concludes that Josiah was able to reform because his predecessors’ follies no longer held (Chronicles introduces the reform to explain Manasseh’s longevity.) Josephus alleges that as a 12-year-old, young Josiah demolished groves, altars, and dedications to foreign gods all over Jerusalem and Judah (10.52). In his 18th regnal year, after finding the book, he ejected the vessels that had been placed in the Temple as dedications to foreign gods (10.65). This is a brilliant qualification: accepting the assertion of Chronicles that Manasseh purged the temple, Josephus deduces that Manasseh inadvertently failed to expunge the secondary accumulation of goods for illicit gods. Josephus also has Josiah execute non-Aaronide priests of the idols, as the context (10.66) makes clear, all over Judah and Jerusalem. Josephus follows the Chronicler’s interpretation, in other words, about the application of Josiah’s purge to Judah, but moves some of it to Josiah’s 18th year. The Chronicler had the reform of year 12 embrace Israelite territory, but Josephus felt that the source meant that Judah was reformed in year 12 and Israel in year 18 of Josiah’s life. The Chronicler infers the sacrifice of the priests of Judah’s high places from the treatment of the north in Kings. Josephus disambiguates it, explicitly to include killings. Probably, Josephus found this interpretation confirmed in the fact that Jeremiah predicted it (Jeremiah, again, being misdated to before the reform). But Josephus confines the explicit actions of 2 Kgs 23:4–20 to year 18. Some of this, all the same, he must read in the pluperfect. Thus, the removal of the asherah from the Temple (23:6) and possibly the houses where women wove for the asherah (23:7) may belong to year 12 of Josiah’s reform. More certainly, the defilement of the high places in 23:8 does belong to year 12, and possibly even the destructive action in 23:13 against Solomon’s high places. Less clear is how Josephus understood the ingathering of the rural priests in 2 Kgs 23:8a, 9. He clearly associates the elimination of the horses and the altars in 2 Kgs 23:11–12 (Ant 10.69) with year 18, and also consigns the killing of Judah’s priests to the end of his account of the reform in Judah (10.65), just before the similar actions in Israel (10.66). In so doing, Josephus mirrors the placement of the account of the Solomonic high places at just before the campaign in Israel in Kings. In sending Josiah north, Josephus combines Kings (in providing details about Bethel) and Chronicles (in identifying further searches in the north [2 Chr 34:33], before Passover), his rendition of which follows Chronicles. Overall, Josephus’ account reflects considerable critical acumen. In Kings, again, the profanation of Solomon’s high places with human bones is followed by Josiah’s northern activity. Chronicles and Josephus show that the sequence implied to sympathetic readers that Josiah killed the priests of illicit shrines in Judah. Josephus, of course, is also harmonizing Chronicles with Kings. The Chronicler’s notice of a reform in year 18 of “all the lands belonging to the Israelites” (2 Chr 34:33) leads him to relate Kings’ last reform measures in Judah to the same stage as the killing of the priests. All the same, where Josephus elects to discover a shift in the tense of his source narrative

470 Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies  Altogether, the text asks us to infer that: (1) Josiah killed priests of the cults; (2) he disinterred corpses to defile the high places; and (3) the disinterred were priests, sacrificed posthumously for sacrificing illegitimately. Yet Josiah neither killed nor disinterred any priests in Judah. The victims’ status, too, may have been deduced from their location in order to salve the opposition – both personal and principled – that a policy of desecrating graves would arouse. Even this plea applies only to the north. The resistance to desecration was stronger in Judah, where the indigenous population was partly in place74 and was an important royal constituency.75  is instructive: between 2 Kgs 23:8–9, the ingathering of the priests, but also the destruction of the high places, which he clearly places in year 12, and 2 Kgs 23:11, the elimination of the horses and chariots of the sun, which he clearly associates with year 18. Between the two – and year 18 is the year in which Josephus believes priests to have been killed – falls 2 Kgs 23:10, the verse about the Tophet, which, again, was validated and dated for him historically by Jeremiah’s words. Taking his cue from the combination of Josiah’s desecration of the site and Jeremiah’s description of it, the latter stemming from the treatment of the north by Josiah, at least as reported in Kings, Josephus concludes that what falls after 23:10 all belongs to year 18, and is homogeneous with what he takes to be the report about Israel, namely, that living priests were sacrificed (or, in Chronicles, dead ones exhumed). In other words, Josephus concludes that 2 Kgs 23:5–9, framed as it is with a humane treatment of the priests of the high places, is given as background to the much more radical reform of year 18 introduced in 23:4, the narrative of which must pick up at 23:10. Or we could say that Josephus was guided by the inclusion between 23:5 and 23:9, or indeed the seeming epanalepsis, in the use of the verb, “to cashier,” in 23:4 and 23:11. 73 As an aside, consider a modern case of tomb desecration – H.H. Kitchener’s destruction of the Mahdi’s tomb. The repugnance that Churchill characterizes as Christian and progressive was not shared by Kitchener or, publicly at least, by Lord Cromer; and it is arguable that these officials were thinking in terms of retribution for Chinese Gordon’s dismemberment. But Churchill’s outrage, which was expurgated after the first printing of The River War, is instructive. Concern with Mahdism probably played a role among the British colonial administration. It is not at all out of court that a similar thought process motivated Josiah and Jeremiah, the hereafter being connected to the high place. And yet, they must also have been restrained in some significant measure both by a natural repugnance of the sort that flows from Churchill’s pen, and by the even more virulent repugnance of the local populations. See the excerpts from Churchill in the appendix at the end of this paper, W. L. S. Churchill, The River War (2 vols.; London: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1899). 74 For the history of the population and settlement in Judah in the 7th century, see Halpern, “Jerusalem and the Lineages in the Seventh Century BCE;” and archaeologically, A. Ofer, The Highland of Judah during the Biblical Period (PhD dissertation, Tel Aviv University, 1993). 75 In much the same way today, in central Pennsylvania in the USA, for example, when multiple churches with small memberships consolidate, those with cemeteries are least likely to close. They often survive on the part-time assistance of a clergyman from a neighboring institution. And the attachment of cemeteries to churches is also connected

12. Late Israelite Astronomies and the Early Greeks

471

 What does it mean that our text creates the impression that Josiah was more radical than he in fact was? The first implication is that the audience was the wing of the Josianic coalition most disapproving of the ancestral cult and rural priesthoods. This conclusion contradicts the consensus that DtrH was the work of a disenfranchised Levitic faction. The second implication is that our authors shared Jeremiah’s views on the matter. Exhumation even in Samaria was radical, and it confirmed to the elite that the dead were, after all, powerless, as Isaiah had argued. This also became their guiding doctrine, such that the distinctively Judahite repudiation of afterlife76 pervades Deuteronomistic literature, although not the Book of Deuteronomy. How this party set out to change culture and the degree of its success makes for an interesting story. The difference between the party and the Book of Deuteronomy, let alone between the party and the sources of the Former Prophets, indicates that the party as we know it took ideological shape well after the writing of the book, or that a purge of moderates occurred before Josiah’s reform. The strategy employed in Kings to relate Josiah’s desecrations dictates that, were we insensitive to the depth of Israelite ancestral veneration, we would understand Josiah’s disinterments not as desecration, but as activity aimed at the pollution of other cults, just as the graves are used as a polluting acid bed for the asherah. Some hints of the process are tantalizing. In Josiah’s period, the phrase “the living god” assumes prominence (2 Kgs 19:4, 16; Isa 37:4, 17; Deut 5:3; Jer 10:10; 23:26, elǀhîm hayyîm, with a precursor in Hos 2:1, ’Ɲl hƗy, and possibly 1 Sam 17:36). The polemic is indirect; yet the phrase seems to imply Yahweh’s superiority to dead gods and that the most pervasive of these are the ancestors (as in Isa 8:19; 1 Sam 28:13).77  with concerns for communal continuity and for the welfare of the ancestors in the afterlife. 76 In the Book of Job (as 14:18–22) and, as Gary Knoppers reminds me, in Ecclesiastes. No comparable doctrine is preserved elsewhere in the Semitic world. 77 See further van der Toorn, Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel, 206–65. Typically, the locution is understood to contrast Yahweh with the dying and rising gods of neighboring cultural spheres, especially the Egyptian and Hellenic. However, after the thirteenth century, no evidence for the phenomenon occurs in the West Semitic pantheon; and the reference to Tammuz in Ezek 8:14 is an isolated one to a Mesopotamian deity. Rather, the implications of the phrase probably come by derivation from the oath formula, “as Yahweh lives,” and the acclamation formula, “may the King live.” For the oath formula, see S. Kreuzer, Der lebendige Gott (Beiträge zur Wissenschaft des Alten und Neuen Testaments 6/16; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1983); on the royal acclamation, see B. Halpern, The Constitution of the Monarchy in Israel (HSM 25; Chico, Ca: Scholars Press, 1981) ch. 5.

472 Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies  Similarly, by the late seventh century, the Hebrew Bible stigmatizes all other gods as “foreign.” This includes the gods in Yahweh’s suite, the baals and asherahs that are the host of heaven. 78 Foreign gods (’elohê nƝkƗr), and other gods (’elǀhîm ’ăhƝrîm) are identified with the host and with the baal(s).79 The Rephaim present a similar case. In biblical and Ugaritic poetry, the Rephaim are ancestral figures, possibly of elite groups. In seventh century prose works, however, the Rephaim are a native group of Canaanites that was supplanted by Israel. 80 The ancestors, like the baals and the high places, are identified with the aborigines. Deuteronomy 2 introduces the usage repeatedly, in a conscious conceit. It affirms that, whatever the name of a local population at the time of Israel’s advent in Canaan,81 all were Rephaim, that is, members of an overarching ethnic group, like the concept of Hebrews in J’s ethnography, or, indeed, P’s, which covers divers political units. The results are comparable to the European “Christianization” of Madagascar in the 18th–19th centuries: as the British assailed the ancestral cult, the islanders developed the idea that the ancestors were really aborigines displaced by more appealing modern inhabitants. Some desecration of ancestral shrines resulted.82 Although Deuteronomy limits ancestral devotions, it preserves the concept of a kinship network. 83 P conforms to this worldview in presenting  78 Although in a partitive sense, it is possible that the host are the stars and the baals and ashtarot either the planets or the planets and the constellations. However, the usage tends to be plastic, so that Jeremiah’s “baal,” for example, seems to include the ancestors, as detailed above. 79 For the character of the usage, with “baal” as a collective noun denoting a class of gods or possibly all classes of gods, see B. Halpern, “The Baal (and the Asherah) in Seventh-Century Judah: Yhwh’s Retainers Retired,” in R. Bartelmus, T. Krüger, and H. Utzschneider (eds.), Konsequente Traditionsgeschichte. Festschrift für Klaus Baltzer zum 65. Geburtstag (OBO 126; Fribourg: University of Fribourg, 1993) 115–54. 80 S. Talmon, “Biblical RepƗ’îm and Ugaritic Rpu/i(m),” Hebrew Annual Review 7 (1983) 235–49. 81 It takes the local names from Genesis 14: Deuteronomy’s historical recitation, as is well known, was written on the basis of the JE material in the Pentateuch. There does seem to be some contact with P, but it is not of a sort that enables us to determine whether the phenomenon reflects a dependence of D on P or the use of shared oral exegesis. The references to Genesis 14 are part of the intellectual and argumentative structure of Deuteronomy 2, itself integral to the book. The implication would seem to be that Genesis 14 was a part of JE before the writing of Deuteronomy. 82 G. M. Berg, Historical Traditions and the Foundations of the Monarchy in Imerina (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1973). 83 The observation stems from D.S. Vanderhooft, who treats the related issue of kinship in P in his M.A. thesis, D. S. Vanderhooft, Kinship Organization in Ancient Israel (unpublished MA thesis, York University, 1991. This must have to do with the coalition politics of the era. Note that Deuteronomy and DtrH never trace Abraham from a particular  town: he is referred to only as an Aramean in Deut 26:5 and as hailing from “across

12. Late Israelite Astronomies and the Early Greeks 473  systematic national genealogies, but also evinces a converse principle by furnishing a single funerary shrine of the patriarchs (Gen 23; 25:9; 35:27– 29; 49:30; 50:13). P propagates the Josianic view that the dead pollute the state cult (as in Lev 21:1–4, 11; 22:4; Num 6:6, 9; 19:11–18; cf. Hag 2:13). The view arose late, since only starting with Manasseh were royal interments divorced from the temple (Ezek 47:3).84 But P expected that a national tomb site away from Jerusalem would centralize the elite ancestral cult. The patriarchs would insinuate themselves into the domestic cult, a result visible in later biblical and Jewish liturgy. The contrast is to Isaiah’s diminution and Jeremiah’s dismissal of the power of the ancestral spirits, and to Hezekiah’s and Josiah’s policy. P’s tomb concept co-opts the cult, on the same principle as the nationalization of elite ancestry in traditional China. It is possible that Jerusalem would have launched or did launch its attack on the ancestral cult without the impetus of astronomical advances. But Jeremiah and P, at least, representatives of the fiercest phases of that assault, incorporate the new astronomy into their ideological arsenal. It was not just compatible with the rejection of tradition, but accelerated it, in Judah as well as in Ionia.

 the River” in Josh 24:3 (for “the River” as referring to the Euphrates only from the seventh century on, see Halpern, David’s Secret Demons, ch. 14). Why J locates Abraham in Harran is unclear, but P’s Babylonian affinities may reflect Hezekiah’s or Josiah’s alliances. For the restrictions on ancestral connections, note Deut 14:1–2; 18:10–14; 26:14. The limitations on mourning in Deuteronomy and P (Lev 21:5) relate to contemporary as well as older practice: Mic 1:16; 4:14; Isa 3:24 15:2; 22:12; Jer 16:6; 41:5; 48:37; Ezek 7:18; 27:31; Amos 6; 8:10; Isa 28. This is mocked in 1 Kgs 18:28 as well. The echoing of Deut 14:1, htgdd and qrh, in Jer 16:6 (cf. also 5:7; 47:5) is clearly conscious and direct, so that the implication of the text may be more complex than a surface examination suggests. This is particularly interesting in that sumptuary laws become a staple of classical legislation beginning in the mid-fifth century at the latest: in the equation governing the speed of cultural transmission (the velocity of the idea multiplied by the capacity of the means of communication and by the inverse of the resistance in the particular sphere of custom), this is immediately after the publication of Deuteronomy. Among formal texts, it was, after all, law-codes that traveled fastest when collectors wanted them; and with them, but more slowly, followed interpretation, such as Jeremiah’s. Notably, bilateral citizenship also is introduced almost simultaneously in Judah and Athens. 84 See Halpern and Vanderhooft, “Editions of Kings,” 194–96. The shifts in interment practice reflect the attack on the ancestral cult (Halpern, “Jerusalem and the Lineages in the Seventh Century BCE,” 71–7), so it is unlikely that Manasseh and his successors were moving toward the Temple rather than away from it.

474 

Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies

IV. The Mechanisms of the Transfer Assyrian astronomical scholarship on lunar eclipses kick-started cosmological revisionism. It lay behind Thales’ prediction of the solar eclipse. The same source propels Israelite innovations. Among these are in the eighth century the literary prophets’ Sprachkritik, the removal of astral imagery, starting with Ahaz, from the Jerusalem Temple, and perhaps the invocation of Seraphim rather than Cherubim in Isaiah’s call narrative.85 The center remained conservative, and the whole Near East experienced an access of archaism because increased cultural commerce created a need to reassert local identities. On the peripheries, however, Assyria’s program of domination and exploitation impelled intellectual accommodation and created opportunities for implementing new insights in policy: it is on the most far-flung peripheries that evidence of these comes to light.86 The Babylonian assumption that the stars were on a curved plane relative to the earth underlies the theorizing of Anaximander, Ezekiel, and P. It was amended by Anaximenes and attacked by Xenophanes, but discarded in Greek thought only in the fifth century, by Empedocles and Anaxagoras. This led to the Hipparchan cosmos, materially like our own. The innovation spread from Mesopotamia. Still, the affected elites maintained contact with one another, as the dialogue of Xenophanes and the Judahite elites and of fifth century Athens and Jerusalem shows. What of the seventh century shift in glyptic, from solar to stellar iconography? 87 Glyptic is drawn from a common elite, public fund of motifs. But this is hardly an elite revolt against court-sanctioned “monotheism.” The court would punish iconography that defied its impositions. In addition, if eighth century royal Judahite lmlk-seals feature solar scarabs, seventh century glyptic rosettes can be taken as substitutes for starbursts. And the names of the courtiers are monotheistic. The epigraphic seals that increasingly dominate seventh century Judah also express elite ideology by  85

On the astral connections of the seraphim, see L. D. Morenz and S. Schorsch, “Der Seraph in der Hebräischen Bibel und in Altägypten,” Orientalia 66 (1997) 365–86, who link the cherub, by contrast, with the wind. The question of why Isaiah invokes seraphim, not cherubim, was posed to me by Hayim Tadmor in a conversation in 1984; the choice is certainly freighted theologically, and may also have to do with Hezekiah’s elimination of the snake-icon, Nehushtan. 86 In Judah in the seventh century; in Ionia in the sixth century; in Babylon, in a way, in the sixth century; and in Persia from the fifth century on (but with the sun above, not below, the great fire). 87 Keel and Uehlinger, Göttinnen, Götter und Gottessymbole. Neue Erkenntnisse zur Religionsgeschichte Kanaans und Israels aufgrund bislang unerschlossener ikonographischer Quellen, 335–39. At this time, too, personal names shed all elements of divine names other than that of Yahweh or epithets unambiguously pertaining to Yahweh.

12. Late Israelite Astronomies and the Early Greeks 475  avoiding visual symbolism. If luni-stellar iconography reflected militant polytheism, then aniconism would reflect its monotheistic counterpart, the innovation against which the crescent moon is directed. But such open conflict among the elite is rare in the authoritarian court life of the ancient Near East. Furthermore, on the reverse of some aniconic stamp seals imagery still appears. The impression might be aniconic, but the seal is not. The shift toward stellar iconography was part of a process that led to ideological aniconism. Judahite avoidance of solar-disk iconography increased the distance between iconic reference and Yahweh. But solar iconography might affirm the puissance of celestial bodies. Lunar eclipses took place semi-annually, whether they were seen or not. Solar eclipses also exhibited regularity, but their exact periodicity was more difficult to stipulate. Solar iconography was ambiguous, but its absence was not. Luni-stellar iconography proclaimed that all celestial phenomena were predictable, determined by the greater intelligence behind the vault or, for Jeremiah and Xenophanes, permeating the cosmos. The dominance of aniconic seals by 600 BCE comes together with the latter worldview, although it also reflects an increasing emphasis on literacy. 88 Late Western stellar iconography may have had a theological valence with this development. 89 Was elite astral worship in Judah reconceived as an expression of monotheistic devotion?  88

Keel and Uehlinger, Göttinnen, Götter und Gottessymbole. Neue Erkenntnisse zur Religionsgeschichte Kanaans und Israels aufgrund bislang unerschlossener ikonographischer Quellen, 406–25; cf. Halpern, “Jerusalem and the Lineages in the Seventh Century BCE,” 79–91 for the view that it also reflected increasing abstraction and literacy in Judahite society 89 The rejection of the old iconography, as by Josiah, by Ahaz, in part by Hezekiah, was itself a product of a Bauhaus critique. Thus, the stars could be pictured as lacking the significance that the sun held in the earlier glyptic tradition. Even in seventh century Judah, figurines continue to be well represented archaeologically in households at every site still excavated, R. Kletter, The Judean Pillar-Figurines and the Archaeology of Asherah (BAR International Series 636; Oxford: Tempus Reparatum, 1996); on their distribution and its implications, see J. S. Holladay, “Religion in Israel and Judah under the Monarchy: An Explicitly Archaeological Approach,” in P.D. Miller, P.D. Hanson, and S.D. McBride (eds.), Ancient Israelite Religion (Fs. Frank Moore Cross; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987) 249–99; for an overall discussion, see W.G. Dever, “Iron Age Epigraphic Material from the Area of Khirbet el-Kom,” HUCA 40–41 (1969–70) 139–204; see also W. G. Dever, “Recent Archaeological Confirmation of the Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel,” Hebrew Studies 23 (1982) 37–43; idem, “Material Remains and the Cult in Ancient Israel: An Essay in Archaeological Systematics,” in C.L. Meyers and M.J. O’Connor (eds.), The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth (Fs. David Noel Freedman; Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 1983) 571–87; idem, “Asherah, Consort of Jahweh? New Evidence from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud,” BASOR 255 (1984) 21–37; idem, “The Contribution of Archaeology to the Study of Canaanite and Early Israelite Religion,” in P.D. Miller, P.D. Hanson, and S.D. McBride (eds.), Ancient Israelite Religion (Fs. Frank Moore Cross 

476 Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies  One point of the foregoing treatment is that the job of deciphering texts from the seventh century onward involves awareness of categories in surrounding cultures. For example, P’s light is not just visual, but tactile – fire. P’s wind, and Jeremiah’s, is air as well, just as the pre-Socratics’ air is wind. Jeremiah’s terms hebel and šeqer, usually related to deceit, equate to doxographic phainomene, (mere) appearance. Xenophanes’ view of the stars and planets as deceptive is related. The world was closely intertwined semantically as well as economically. 90 It may be that Xenophanes was responding as much to Jeremiah as to his Ionian predecessors. But this is no accident. The denial of astral signification in Israel and Greece reflects the calculated recruitment of peripheral elites from the Mesopotamian center. Although tradition reasserted itself, its rejection is the scarlet thread. Assyria had an interest, and Babylon after it, in the evisceration of traditional local symbol systems. Elite hostages, like Ezekiel, were natural targets; so, too, were travelers and fellow travelers. Nor were Assyria and its successors the only parties engaged in recruitment. Egypt also played the game, affording Ionian travelers, and no doubt Judahites, unparalleled access to her temples. Hecateus allegedly was impressed by the  festschrift; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987) 209–47; idem, Recent Archaeological Discoveries and Biblical Research (Seattle: University of Washington, 1990); idem, “Ancient Israelite Religion: How to Reconcile the Differing Textual and Artifactual Portraits,” in W. Dietrich and M.A. Klopfenstein (eds.), Ein Gott allein? (OBO 139; Freiburg: University of Freiburg, 1994) 105–25; S. M. Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel (SBLM 34; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988). But among the elite, the insistence that the symbol should represent itself, not something else, had taken hold – a view first urged in the eighth century by Amos and Hosea, B. Halpern, “‘Brisker Pipes than Poetry’: The Development of Israelite Monotheism,” in J.A. Neusner, B. Levine, and E.S. Frerichs (eds.), Judaic Perspectives on Ancient Israel (H.L. Ginsberg festschrift; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987) 77–115; see also W. G. Dever, “The Silence of the Text: An Archaeological Commentary on 2 Kings 23,” in M.D. Cogan, et al. (eds.), Scripture and Other Artifacts (Fs. Philip J. King festschrift; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994) 143–68. Thus, in the seventh century, stars on seals represented themselves, as being insignificant except in pointing to a more distant divinity. Possibly, to parts of the elite, they remained all that they were before – symbols of the divine (like Sin in Babylon). So, some parties were meant to think that the world was as it always had been, with a shift of emphasis to the stars. In that case, our internal Judahite documents, the Jeremiahs and Ezekiels, in effect represented occult literature until after the exile, much as one assumes the early Milesians and other Ionians did. But this is far from sure, just a possibility for consideration. 90 E.g., W. G. Dever, “Orienting the Study of Trade in Near Eastern Archaeology,” in S. Gitin (ed.), Recent Excavations in Israel. A View to the West: Reports on Kabri, Nami, Miqne-Ekron, Dor, and Ashkelon (AIA Colloquia and Conference Papers 1; Dubuque, Ia: Kendall/Hunt, 1995) 111–119; Gitin, “Tel Miqne-Ekron in the 7th Century B.C.E.: The Impact of Economic Innovation and Foreign Cultural Influences on a Neo-Assyrian Vassal City-State.”

12. Late Israelite Astronomies and the Early Greeks 477  360 generations of ancestors he was shown in an Egyptian temple, versus his own 10 or 15 generations (were the Egyptian “ancestors” ushabtis?). Xenophanes and Heracleitus both reputedly repudiated Egyptian ancestral worship on the spot.91 Herodotus visited both Babylon and Egypt, in an era of Persian involvement in mainland Greek politics. The travelers in question were ambassadors and potential moles at home. The disclosure to Thales that an eclipse was in the works did not take place in a vacuum. This is also why Ionian philosophers so frequently ended up as advisors to tyrants. Assyria shared secrets with potential agents on the peripheries, which would never have been revealed in Mesopotamia itself; it thus inducted the agent and gave him a leg up at home. And it was Mesopotamia that won out in Ionia: Nabonidus, or more probably Nebuchadrezzar, was a mediator in the Lydian war of 585 BCE; the Babylonians continued Assyrian policy in Ionia as in Judah, where Jeremiah was a recruit. In this sense, Western culture is the deep penetration agent of Assyrian imperial ambitions: Assyria advanced an elite international culture, promoting monism for a unified world. Its aim was to manufacture a post-nationalist ecumene in which local nativism was abated. Every empire attempts, some more successfully than others, to hoodwink vassals into thinking that peace rather than war, accommodation rather than aggression, is in their best interests. No such new ideas came to the fore at the center. Esarhaddon and Asshurbanipal were more traditionally sanctimonious than their predecessors. Their Babylonian successors went to extremes in archaizing. In the case of Judah, at least, the new culture was presented in the same light, as archaism rather than innovation. But the archaizing required pseudepigraphic support, in the form of Deuteronomy and perhaps P. The astronomies described above were circumscribed chronologically. They were tenable only during one chronological window of opportunity. By the early fifth century, when contacts between Jerusalem and Athens exploded, eclipses were predictable. The identification of the earth’s shadow on the moon revealed that the earth was spherical. It showed that the earth could be interposed between sun and moon. This invalidated the radical view that the earth was infinite, rather than limited and spherical. The chronological implications are profound. Deutero-Isaiah depends heavily on Jeremiah.92 Yet the Heracleitan view of astronomy that Deutero-Isaiah reflects could not possibly date from the mid-fifth century. Even assuming, against overwhelming probabilities, that Deutero-Isaiah is a forgery, one could not in good faith place the text after 450 BCE. All this  91 DK 21 A 13; 22 B 127. DK regards the latter as a false attribution. The oldest version of the report on Xenophanes, however, relates the story with regard to Elea. 92 Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66.

478 Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies  means that the cosmologies expressed in P, Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, and so on must antedate 500 BCE and post-date 700 BCE. Post-exilic Judah remained in close contact with Greece. But the cosmological upheavals of the seventh and sixth centuries were in large measure responses to stimuli originating in the eighth century. When the preSocratics transmitted Near Eastern culture to the West, they were in dialogue with the last of the great Israelite prophets of the seventh and sixth centuries BCE.

Appendix: Excerpts from Churchill, The River War (1899, 2 vols.) On the occupation of Omdurman (2:175–76): ...the Sirdar rode steadily onward through the confusion, the stench, and the danger, until he reached the Mahdi’s tomb. Here a shocking accident occurred. The open space in front of the mausoleum was filled with troops, when suddenly a shell screamed overhead and burst close to the General and his Staff. All looked up in blank amazement, and when two more shells followed in quick succession everyone hurried from the square in excitement and alarm. But Mr. Hubert Howard, who had dismounted and was standing in an adjacent doorway, was killed by a fourth shell before he could follow. The two guns which had been left outside the town had suddenly opened fire on their attractive target. Apparently their orders, which directed them to shell the tomb under certain circumstances, justify their action; nor does it seem that any blame attaches to the officer in command, who had received his instructions personally from Sir H. Kitchener.

On the memorial service for Gordon (2:205): More than thirteen years had passed since the decapitated trunk of the Imperial Envoy had been insulted by the Arab mob. The lonely man had perished; but his memory had proved a spell to draw his countrymen through many miles and many dangers, that they might do him honour and clear their own, and near his unknown grave, on the scene of his famous death, might pay the only tributes of respect and affection which lie within the power of men, however strongly they be banded together, however well they may be armed.

On a visit to the Mahdi’s Tomb (2:211–15): From the Khalifa’s house I repaired to the Mahdi’s Tomb. The reader’s mind is possibly familiar with its shape and architecture. It was much damaged by the shell-fire. The apex of the conical dome had been cut off. One of the small cupolas was completely destroyed. The dome itself had one enormous and several smaller holes smashed in it; the bright sunlight streamed through these and displayed the interior. Everything was wrecked. Still, it was possible to distinguish the painted brass railings round the actual sarcophagus, and the stone beneath which the body presumably lay. This place had been

12. Late Israelite Astronomies and the Early Greeks

479

 for more than ten years the most sacred and holy thing that the people of the Soudan knew. Their miserable lives had perhaps been brightened, perhaps in some way ennobled, by the contemplation of something which they did not quite understand, but which they believed exerted a protecting influence. It had gratified that instinctive desire for the mystic which all human creatures possess, and which is perhaps the strongest reason for believing in a progressive destiny and a future state. By Sir H. Kitchener’s orders the Tomb had been profaned and razed to the ground. The corpse of the Mahdi was dug up. The head was separated from the body, and, to quote the official explanation, ‘preserved for future disposal’ – a phrase which must in this case be understood to mean that it was passed from hand to hand till it reached Cairo. Here it remained, an interesting trophy, until the affair came to the ears of Lord Cromer, who ordered it to be immediately reinterred at the Nile. Such was the chivalry of the conquerors! Whatever misfortunes the life of Mohammed Ahmed may have caused, he was a man of considerable nobility of character, a priest, a soldier, and a patriot. He won great battles; he stimulated and revived religion. He founded an empire. To some extent he reformed the public morals. Indirectly, by making slaves into soldiers, he diminished slavery. It is impossible for any impartial person to read the testimony of such men as Slatin and Ohrwalder without feeling that the only gentle influence, the only humane element in the hard Mohammedan State, emanated from this famous rebel. The Greek missionary [Ohrwalder] writes of ‘his unruffled smile, pleasant manners, generosity, and equable temperament.’ When the Christian priests, having refused to accept the Koran, were assailed by the soldiers and the mob and threatened with immediate death, it was the Mahdi who, ‘seeing them in danger, turned back and ordered them to walk in front of his camel for protection.’ When Slatin went to report the death of the unhappy French adventurer Olivier Pain, the Mahdi ‘took it to heart much more than the Khalifa, said several sympathetic words, and read the prayers for the dead.’ To many of his prisoners he showed kindness, all the more remarkable by comparison with his surroundings and with the treatment which he would have received had fortune failed him. To some he gave employment; to others a little money from the Beit-al-Mal, or a little food from his own plate. To all he spoke with dignity and patience. Thus he lived; and when he died in the enjoyment of unquestioned power, he was bewailed by the army he had led to victory and by the people he had freed from the yoke of the ‘Turks.’ It may be worth while to examine the arguments of those who seek to justify the demolition of the Tomb. Their very enumeration betrays a confusion of thought which suggests insincerity. Some say that the people of the Soudan no longer believed in the Mahdi and cared nothing for the destruction of a fallen idol, and that therefore the matter was of little consequence. Others contend on the same side of the argument that so great was the Mahdi’s influence, and so powerful was his memory, that though his successor had been overthrown his tomb would have become a place of pilgrimage, and that the conquering Power did not dare allow such an element of fanaticism to disturb their rule. The contradiction is apparent. But either argument is absurd without the contradiction. If the people of the Soudan cared no more for the Mahdi, then it was an act of Vandalism and folly to destroy the only fine building which might attract the traveller and interest the historian. It is a gloomy augury for the future of the Soudan that the first action of its civilised conquerors and present rulers should have been to level the one pinnacle which rose above the mud houses. If, on the other hand, the people of the Soudan still venerated the memory of the Mahdi – and more than 50,000 had fought hard only a week before to assert their respect and belief – then I shall not hesitate to declare that to destroy what was sacred and holy to them was a wicked act, of which the true Christian, no less than the philosopher, must express abhorrence.

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Part IV: The Dynamics of Cosmological Thought in Iron Age Societies

No man who holds by the splendid traditions of the old Liberal party, no man who is in sympathy with the aspirations of Progressive Toryism, can consistently consent to such behaviour. It will also be condemned by quite a different school of thought, by the wise public servants who administer the Indian Empire. It is an actual offence against the Indian Penal Code to insult the religion of any person; nor is it a valid plea that the culprit thought the said religion ‘false.’ When Sir Bindon Blood had forced the Tanga Pass and invaded Buner, one of his first acts was to permit his Mohammedan soldiers to visit the Tomb of the Akhund of Swat, who had stirred the tribes into revolt and caused the Umbeyla campaign of 1863. It is because respect is always shown to all shades of religious feeling in India by the dominant race, that our rule is accepted by the mass of the people. If the Soudan is to be administered on principles the reverse of those which have been successful in India, and if such conduct is to be characteristic of its Government, then it would be better if Gordon had never given his life nor Kitchener won his victories.93

 93

At this point, the editor, Col. F. Rhodes, inserts a notice of his disagreement with the author and his agreement with Cromer that the destruction of the tomb and removal of the body were necessary and justifiable, although he does feel that the manner of the desecration and disinterment was awkward.



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Source Index

Hebrew Bible Genesis 1

1:1–2 1:1 1:14–18 1:17 1:20 1:26–27 1:26 1:27 2–3 2–4 2 2:1 2:11 3:6 3:16–19 3:19 4 4:26 6:1–4 6:13 6:17 7:21 8:3 8:22 9:4–6 9:11 9:15 12:6–7 12:6–9 12:6



42, 54, 140, 427, 428, 429, 431, 439, 441, 444, 445, 446, 457 430 432 432 432 431, 432 47 191 191 27, 124 22 140, 435 27, 39, 124, 125, 429, 448 411 94 130 454 140 125 22 278 278 278 457 343 278, 343 278 278 462 195 188

12:8–9 12:10–20 13:18 14 14:2 14:4 14:9–11 14:19–20 14:19 15:1 15:5 15:15 16:3 16:4–14 17 17:1 17:22 18:12 18:28 18:31f 19:4 19:13 19:14 19:29 20 20:3 20:12 21 21:9–21 22 22:5 22:14 22:17 23:9 24:2 24:15

462 189 195, 462 181, 472 181 182 182 32 65 32 90, 411 275, 324 94 189 184 32 280 184 278 278 457 278 278 278 189 94 389 91 189 73, 83, 137, 139, 467 150 402 90, 411; 428 457 388 389

510  25:17 25:8 25:8f. 25:9 25:24 25:29–34 25:32 26:4 26:5 26:6–11 26:19 27:45 27:46 28:12 29:4 29:10 29:32 29:34 30:15 30:18 30:20 30:30 31:10 31:12 31:19–35 32:30 33:14 34 35:13 35:18 35:18f. 35:19f. 35:27–29 35:29 37:9–10 37:9 38:12 41:5 45:7 47:2 47:21 47:29–30 47:30 49 49:10 49:13 49:14 49:30 49:33 49:33



Source Index 276, 278 234, 276, 278 276 473 235 190 150 90, 411, 428 450 189 454 150 150 280 180 389 94 94 94 94 94 152 22, 280 22, 280 22 53, 131 152 66 280 278 276 24 473 234, 276, 277, 278 440 90, 411, 428 280 22, 280 75 457 457 234 238 149 149, 151 149, 150 149 473 278 276

50:7 50:13 50:25 50:26

388 473 163 163

Exodus 1:8 2:15 2:19 3:2 3:14 4:14 4:22–23 6 6:2–3 6:3 6:26 7 7:4–5 7:4 7:29 8:15 9:15–16 9:30 10:12 10:14 11:2 11:5 11:8 12:12 12:17 12:29 12:40–42 12:41 13:2 13:12 13:13–15 13:15 13:19 13:20 14 14:9b 14:22–23 14:24–25 14:24 14:26 14:27a 14:28–29

163 38 38 436 52, 123, 125 181 138 125 32 467 51, 429 467 452 91, 41, 51, 124, 411, 429 280 452 436 124 280 280 38 138 152 138 41, 51, 91, 411, 429 138 448 51, 91, 124, 429 137, 139 139 137 139 163 457 162, 179, 197 17, 18, 23, 26, 28, 163 163 160, 161 161 163 163 163

Source Index

511

 15 15:1–18 15:1 15:8b 15:10ab 15:11 15:13–16 15:13–17 15:17 15:22 16:2–3 16:35 19:12 19:13 20 20:1–17 20:3–5 20:3–6 20:4–5 20:4 20:5–24 20:5 20:6 20:8–11 20:12 20:13 20:16 20:19–23 20:20–23 20:20 20:21 20:22 20:23 20:26 21:3 21:12–14 21:15 21:17 21:22–23 21:29 21:34 21:36 22:10 22:11 22:13 22:14 22:19 22:20–23 22:26



32, 115, 146, 161, 162, 180, 197 167 163 179 179 36, 115 162 179 401 36 278 457 280, 457 280 105, 121 30 130 193 47 30, 60, 193 135 340, 341, 391 140 139 184 278 278 30 401 31 401 183 38, 130, 193 280 22, 94 341, 345 184 105 342 65 65 65 65 65 65 65 79, 80, 341 341 79, 80

22:27 22:28 23:18 23:19 25:18–19 26:4 26:28 26:33 27:4 27:19 28:7 28: 23–26 29:12 30:20 31:18 32 32:8 32:11–14 32:11 32:12 32:13 33:3 33:5 34 34:12–17 34:13 34:14–17 34:15 34:19 34:20 34:25 35:18 36:11 36:33 37:7 37: 8 38:5 38:20 38:31 39:4 39:16–19 40:36–37

79, 80 137 390 417 456 456 456 54 456 155 456 456 390 84 452 48, 87 79 139 150 150 90, 411, 428 280 280 449 130 62 30 80 139 137, 467 390 155 456 456 456 456 456 155 155 456 456 280

Leviticus 2:11 3:17 4:3 4:7 4:13

83 390 343 390 343

512  4:18 4:25 4:26 4:30 4:34 6:2 6:6 7:26–27 8:21 8:28 8:33 9:13–20 10:1 10:2 10:7 10: 9 10:10 11:47 12:4 12:6 13 14:5 14:6 14:8 14:50–51 14:52 15:13 16:9 16:10 16:25 17:4 17:7 17:10–12 17:10–14 18:6–20 18:21 18:24–30 18:25 18:28 19:8 19:16–17 19:19 19:20 19:26 –32 19:27–28 19:31 20:1–5 20:2–5 20:2–8 20:2



Source Index 390 390 84 390 390 280 436 390 84 84 235 84 436 278 278 278 54 54 235 235 445 454 454 150 454 454 454 280 280 84 278 80 390 390 389 22, 138, 407 341 412 412 69 345 280 278 391 22 407 343 22 407 278

20:4–5 20:4 20:5 20:6 20:9–13 20:11–12 20:15–16 20:15 20:16 20:22 20:27 21:1–4 21:1–5 21:5 21:7 21:10–11 21:11 22:4 23:20 23:20 24:16f. 24:17f 24:21 25:12 25:47–49 26:1 26:30 27:14 27:21 27:23 27:26–30 27:30 27:32

341 278 344 407 278 389 278 278 278 412 278 473 463 473 94 463 473 473 69 69 278 278 278 69 389 193 468 69 69 69 138 69 69

Numbers 1:3 3:4 3:12–13 3:12 3:13 3:37 3:40–46 3:50 4:32 5:13 5:19–20 5:21 5:27 5:29

429 278 138 139 278 155 138 138 155 94 94 317 94, 317 94

Source Index

513

 6:5 6:6 6:9 6:13 6:20 8:15 8:16–18 8:16 8:17 9:3 9:17 9:21–22 10:11 10:25 11:1 13:22 13–14 14:2 14:3 14:13–19 14:20 14:29 14:32 14:35 14:37 15:32 15:35 16:1f. 16:9 16:13 16:24 16:27 16:30 16:31–33 16:33 16:21 17:6 17:27 18:10 18:17 19:2 19:11–18 19:17 20:3 20:4 20:19 20:26 20:29 21:18 21:29



235 463, 473 473 235 69 139 138 139 278 450 280 280 280 278 150 280 139 278 278 139 318 278 278 278 278 139 278 278 54 278 280 280 454 343 454 54 278 278 69 84 280 473 454 278 278 280 277 278 149, 151, 174 92, 417

22:40 22:41 23:13 24:17 25:14 26:61 26:10 27:3 27:4 27:13 30:11–15 31:4 31:7f. 31:17 31:19 33:1 33:4 35:1 35:15–18 35:16–18 35: 16–21 35:19–21 35:21 35:24 35:25–28 35:25 35:30 35:30f. 35:31 35:33

79 457 457 90, 411, 440 278 278 343 342 150 277 94 278 278 278 278 429 138, 278 278 278 278 278 278 278 278 278 150 278 278 278 278

Deuteronomy 1–11 1:10 1:22 2 2:10–11 2:12 2:20 2:22 4 4:5ff. 4:6–11 4:7 4:9ff. 4:10 4:11 4:12

172 428 280 472 182 182 182 182 27, 44, 60, 429, 443, 448, 456 450 449 453 50 454 48 424, 449, 452

514  4:15 4:16–28 4:19–20 4:19 4:23–24 4:24 4:25–32 4:32–36 4:32 4:40 5 5:3 5:5 5:6–21 5:7–9 5:8 5:9 5:23 5:26 6:4 6:5 7:5 7:10 7:13 7:25–26 8:19 9:3 9:4–5 9:10 10:8 10:14 10:15 10:20 10:22 11:6 11:22 11:29–30 12 12:13–14 12:13–28 12:15–16 12:17–18 12:21–24 12:21–25 12:28 13 13:2–18 13:5 13:6



Source Index 48 130 92, 411, 449 39, 44, 50, 60, 73, 417, 428, 449 449 436 60 48 457 341 105 407, 471 280 121 130 193 340, 341 407 341 44 259 62 340 341 340, 341 341 436 341 452 54 428 341 258 428 152, 341, 343 258 188, 189 90, 408 90 390 90 90 390 90 341 321, 408 422 258 449

13:7 13:8 13:11 13:12 13:13–19 13:14 13:18 14:1–2 14:1 14:28 15:2 15:19 15:22–23 15:23 16:5–6:16 16:18–20 16:21 17:2 17:3 17:8–13 17:13 17:14–20 17:16 18:1–8 18:1–22 18:5 18:8–22 18:8ff. 18:10–14 18:10 18:20–22 18:21–22 19:1–10 19:10 19:11–13 19:20 21:13 21:17 21:18–21 21:21 22:1 22:14–21 22:22 22:23 23:9 23:14 24:1 24:4 24:16

408 457 449 409 341 449 258 22, 407, 473 408, 473 457 94 138 90 390 408 404, 408 62, 64 408 39, 44, 60, 93, 411, 428 408 409 35, 112, 180, 423 320, 350 138 34 33 450 24 407, 473 138, 407 333 122, 172 345 334 345 409 94 383 105, 389 409 449 389 94 94 155 174 94 94 136, 289, 344, 345

Source Index

515

 25:1–3 25:5–10 25:5 25:6 25:11 26:5 26:13 26:14 27 27:5 27:22 28:15–68 28:15 28:21 28:27 28:36 28:37 28:43 28:49 28:57 28:60 28:62 28:64 29:18 29:19–20 29:20 29:22 30:1 30:4 30:7 30:17 30:20 30:22 31:16 32 32:8–9

32:8 32:9 32:13 32:17 32:50 33 33:2–3 33:2 33:18–19 33:21 33:27 33:29



404, 408 389 383, 389 138, 383 94 472 69 407, 408, 473 188 183 389 319 45, 319 258, 319 35, 335 319 45, 319 280 457 149 258 428 457 74 319 317 280 449 449 317, 319 449 258 449 236 15 16, 26, 35, 39, 92, 93, 400, 411, 417, 449, 463 428 93 402 35, 67, 79, 80 276 149, 401 21 69 401 151 29 401

34:6 44

235 258

Joshua 1–6 2:6 2:8 3:2 5:14–15 5:14f. 5:14 5:15 6:9 6:13 6:19 6:26 7:10–26 7:14–18 7:18 8:30–35 8:31 8:8 8:19 9:1–2 9:16 10:10–13 10:10–14 11 11:1–10 11:7 11:8 11:10 11:23 14:15 15:24 17:16–18 17:18 18:28 19:36–37 21:27 22:5 22:12 22:33 23:8 23:12 24:3 24:11 24:32 24

188 78, 416 280 457 90, 412 259 39 39, 429 278 278 69 138 340 381, 382 384 188 183 317 317 157 457 90, 417 183 154 157 157 157 157 210 210 63 387 160 462 157 63 258 280 280 258 258 473 3, 94 163 188

516 

Source Index

Judges 1–2 1–3 1:1–35 1:3 1:19 1:27–33 2:1–3:6 2:20–3:6 2:1–5 2:8–10 2:9 2:10 2:11–19 2:13 2:22 2:46 3–12 3:7 3:11 3:12 3:26–27 3:30 4

4:1 4:3 4:6 4:10 4:11 4:13 4:15 4:17–22 4:17 4:18–21 4:21–22 5

5:2 5:3 5:5



113 258, 263, 295, 276 58, 60 280 160 163 263 163 163 163 163 275, 279, 284 77, 116 63, 64 263 27 163 62, 64, 77, 116 210 77, 116 151 210 145, 146, 147, 148, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166, 167, 173, 174, 175, 176, 179, 180, 187, 197, 200 77, 116 160 148, 153, 156 148, 153, 158 156 160 158, 161 154 158 174 154 32, 145, 150, 157, 159, 161, 163, 167, 173, 174, 176, 187, 197, 200 148 148 148

5:7 5:8 5:9 5:11–13 5:11–18 5:11 5:11b 5:11d 5:11ff. 5:12–13 5:13 5:13a 5:13b 5:14–15b 5:14–18 5:14 5:14b 5:14d 5:15 5:15b–c 5:15c–17 5:16 5:17 5:18 5:19–22 5:19 5:19b 5:20 5:23 5:24–27 5:25–27 5:26 5:27 5:31 6:1 6:3–4 6:19 6:21 6:25–30 6:25–32 6:25 6:26 6:27 6:27–31 6:28 6:30 6:31–32 6:31 8–9

148 148, 384 148, 149 149 173 148, 420 153 148, 149, 153 153 153 148, 149, 157 149 148, 149, 150 153 148, 149 149, 150 153 153 158 153 148, 150, 153 149 149, 150, 153 153 160 149 149, 153, 259 90, 157, 412, 417, 428 148, 341 160 155 154 90, 149, 157, 174, 175, 412, 417, 428 210 77, 116 280 401 456 391 78 62 62 389 402 62 62 78, 95 66 423

Source Index

517

 8:3 8:5 8:11 8:28 8:30 8:32 8:33 9

9:2 9:3 9:4 9:6 9:7 9:18 9:20 9:23 9:24 9:25 9:26 9:46 9:47 9:49 9:51 10:1–5 10:2 10:5 10:6–16 10:6 10:16 11 11:1–3 11:13 11:24 11:40 12:3 12:7–15 12:7 12:10 12:12 12:15 13:1 13:5 13:6 13:9 13:10 13:16 13:17–18 13:20



387 152 280 210 24 24, 234, 462 64, 77 27, 64, 77, 94, 103, 164, 180, 198, 280, 317, 386, 388 94, 180 94 27, 64, 77 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 64, 94 94 317 94, 280 24 288, 462 288, 462 78 63, 78, 116 64 198 163 279 17, 26, 36, 417 402 280 24 288, 462 288, 462 288, 462 151, 462 77 280 94, 131 94 94 131 53, 131 280

14:15 15:10 16:14 16:17 16:23 16:27 17 17:4 17:4–5 17:5 17:11–12 17:11 17:12 18:2–3 18:2 18:9 18:13–15 18:14–20 18:22 18:25 18:30 19:3 19:15 19:18 19:22–23 20:4 20:5 20:42 20:45 21:8–10 21:19

94 280 155 280 79 78, 416 402 391 384, 387 22, 384, 401 384 384 387 384, 387 457 280 384, 387 22 258, 384, 387, 391 276 461 94 278 278 94 94 94 258 258 341 402

1 Samuel 1:7 1:8 1:11 1:22 1:23 2:3 2:11–13 2:11 2:12 2:13 2:17 2:19 2:28 2:29 2:36 3

280 94 280 94 94, 150 77 77 77 77 77 77 77, 94 280 150 77 204

518  3:11 3:16 4:4 4:19 4:21 5:1–5 5:15 6:7 6:20 7:3–4 7:3 7:9 8–14 8 8:11–18 9:11 9:12 9:25–26 9:27 10:1 10:2 10:13 10:16 10:17–12:25 10:19–21 10:19 10:25 11:1 12:9 12:10 12:12 14:2 14:10 14:13 14:22 14:27 14:32–35 14:46 17:3 17:26 17:36 19:13 19:17 20:6 20:19 21:5–7 22:11 22:15–18 22:19 24:23



Source Index 334 94 27, 124 94 94 26 35 280 125, 280 63 77 401 34 34, 111, 112, 423 35 280 402 78, 416 457 34 24 78 78 423 381 382 112 364 157 63, 78 34 457 280 280 258 43, 456 390, 401 280 78 407 407, 471 16, 22 150 390, 402 150 69 388 388 341 280

25 25:13 25:19 25:42 28 28:7 28:13 28:25 30:24 31:2 31:10

181 150 94 152 24, 33 94 471 471 150 258 63

2 Samuel 1:6 2:1 2:22 2:31–32 2:32 3:21 3:29 3:31–32 4:12 5:1–3 5:11–12 5:19 5:21 5:22–23 5:23–24 6–7 6:1–11 6:2 7 7:1 7:1b 7:7 7:12 7:13 7:19 7:29 8 8:6 8:14 9:10 9:12 11:2–12:25 11:2 11:26 12:12–13 12:15–20

258 280 36, 37, 150 388 462 279, 326 388 462 462 180 205 205, 224, 280 188 205 224 124 205 27, 124 34, 205, 211 211 183 76 235, 279 214, 224 388 388 205, 461 206 206 388 388 226 78, 416 94 318, 389 218

Source Index

519

 12:17 13:26 13:28–36 14:4–9 14:5 14:7 14:9 14:10 14:11–12 14:11 14:30–31 15:16–18 15:30–32 15:30–33 15:30 16:1–4 16:2 19:1 19:11–13 19:13 19:14 19:18 19:25–31 20:1 20:2 20:19 21:2 21:12 21:14 21:6–9 22:9 22:11 22:15 22:23 23:1–5 23:13–17 23:38 24 24:8 24:10–16

388 36, 37, 150 171 345 94 94, 388 389 345, 388 345 390 317 152 400 462 280 172 78, 416 280 180 36, 37, 150 279, 326 172 172 180 258 385 35 94 462 341 280 124 161 450 146 462 455 34 457 318

1 Kings 1–2 1:21 1:40 1:45 2:2–4 2:3 2:4



35 236, 279 212 212 214, 218 259 294

2:5 2:26–27 3–10 3:2–3 3:2 3:3–4 3:3 3:4 3:4ff. 3:11 3:13 3:14 4 4:16 4:20 5 5:4 5:17–18 5:21 5:27–28 5:29–32 6–8 6:7 6:8 6:11–13 6:23–28 6:24 6:35 7:8 7:23–26 7:27–37 7:29 7:51 8 8:4 8:5 8:8 8:10 8:18 8:20 8:25 8:27 8:66 9:2–5 9:4–9 9:7–8 9:10 9:22 10:2 10:23

279, 280, 326 106 211, 218, 219 48 80 255 80, 219 402 48 209 209 274, 313 226 63 212 183 18, 211 183, 184 212 226 226 34 183 280 214, 294 31 456 151 465 31 440 398 69 212, 457 69 80 69 69 212 224 294 428 212 218 294 319 457 226 212 209

520  11 11:1–3 11:1–8 11:1–10 11:1–13 11:4 11:5–8 11:6 11:7–13 11:7 11:8 11:12 11:13 11:14–25 11:14 11:21 11:29–40 11:32 11:33 11:34 11:35 11:36 11:41–43 11:41 11:42 11:43 12 12:4 12:16 12:18 12:25–33 12:30 12:31–32 12:31–33 12:31 12:32–33 12:33–34 12:33 13 13:1 13:1f. 13:2 13:4 13:6 13:16 13:32 13:33–34 13:33 13:34



Source Index 113, 298, 464 66, 113, 400 35, 116 60 311 262 62 262 282, 331 63 79 35, 214 214, 262, 294 216 236 236 35 214, 294 62 214, 294 62 214, 294 265 269, 272 265, 268 243 87, 112 35 180 280 35 253 294, 464 465 282, 331, 401, 457 280, 312 282 84 295, 312, 461, 464 84 291 80, 86, 282, 312, 331, 460, 461 318 318 35 460, 461, 464 294, 312, 331, 465 457 253

14:11 14:15 14:19–20 14:19 14:20 14:20a 14:21 14:22–24 14:22 14:23 14:24 14:25 14:29–31 14:29 14:30 15:2 15:3 15:4 15:6 15:7–8 15:7 15:11 15:12–13 15:13 15:14 15:15 15:17–22 15:17 15:19 15:23–24 15:23 15:24 15:26 15:26b 15:27–28 15:30 15:31 15:32 15:34 15:34b 15:8 16:2 16:4 16:5–7 16:5 16:6 16:7 16:10 16:13 16:14

244 62, 252 264 270, 271 242, 244, 268 267 250, 262 292 261 62 256, 262 280 265 269 267, 268, 272 249, 256, 389 262 214, 262, 294 268 265 268, 269 257 257 61, 288 255 69 346 280 280 265 234, 269, 271 243, 267, 289 252 253 241 252 264, 270 264, 268, 271 252 253 267, 272 252 244 264 270 244 267, 268, 271 241 252 264, 270

Source Index

521

 16:17–18 16:17 16:19 16:20 16:22 16:25 16:26 16:27–28 16:27 16:28b 16:28c 16:28c–g 16:28c–h 16:28d–g 16:28h 16:30 16:31 16:31a 16:33 16:33b 16:34 17–19 17–20 17–22 17:17 18 18:19 18:21 18:22 18:24 18:25–27 18:25 18:26 18:27 18:28 18:39 18:40 19:4 19:5 19:7 19:10 19:14 19:15–18 20 20:10 20:22 20:23 20:32 20:34 21



266 280 252, 253 264, 270, 271 270 252 252, 253 264 270, 271 256 269, 272 269 265 267, 268 242, 243 252 252, 254 253 62, 68, 252 253 138 116, 286 287 229, 233 94 36, 95 61 37, 61 61 125 61 61 61 41 473 37 61 218 37 37 125 125 36, 286, 287 271, 287, 295 152 280 402 318 318 286, 287

21:1–38 21:20–24 21:24 21:27–29 21:28–9 21:29 22 22:1–38 22:1–40 22:5 22:15ff. 22:19 22:19–22 22:19–23 22:20 22:27–28 22:34–38 22:34–35 22:34 22:35b 22:37 22:38 22:39–40 22:39 22:40 22:43 22:44 22:46–51 22:46 22:47–50 22:47 22:51 22:53–54 22:53b 22:54 23:4 23:6 23:12

287 285, 286 244 285, 286, 287 318 285 20, 140, 228, 271, 282, 283, 284, 287, 288 284, 285, 295 282 242 46 39, 90, 93, 319, 412, 428 21, 22, 116 122, 259, 333 280 275, 324 284 324 332 241 241, 264, 284, 285 285, 286 264, 286, 287 264, 270, 271 242, 244, 264, 284 257 80, 256 265 269, 272 267, 268 257 243 252 253 252 464 464 464

2 Kings 1:2–4 1:2 1:3 1:6 1:8 1:16 1:17

234 67, 241 67 67 94 67 234, 241, 264

522  1:18 2:10–12 2:11 2:23 3 3:1–2 3:2 3:3 3:4–27 3:9 3:26–27 4:1 4:8–37 4:9 4:14 4:22 4:26 5:17 5:27 6:5 6:17 7:4 7:5 7:6–7 7:8 8:3 8:4 8:18 8:19 8:20–22 8:23–24 8:23 8:24 8:27 9–10 9:7 9:24–26 9:24 9:26 9:27–8 9:27–28 9:28 9:29 9:30–37 9:37 10:1–17 10:8 10:11 10:18–28 10:19



Source Index 264, 270 37 280 280 303 261 252 253, 254, 258 284 152 136 94 109 94 94 94 94 79 258 310 37 150 457 305 457 457 286 116, 262, 263, 292 214, 262, 294 236 265 269 242 116, 262, 263, 292 36 335 264, 286 241, 270 341 332 241, 269 242 268 286 467 286 286 341 286 79

10:21 10:24 10:29 10:29a 10:30 10:31 10:31b 10:32 10:34–35 10:34 10:35 10:36 11–16 11:14 11:16–18 11:18 11:20 12:3 12:4 12:5–17 12:5 12:5ff. 12:18 12:19 12:20 12:21–22 12:21 12:33–13:32 13:2 13:5 13:6 13:8–9 13:8 13:9 13:11 13:12–13 13:12 13:13 13:14–25 13:25 14:3 14:4 14:5–6 14:6 14:7 14:10 14:11–14 14:15–16 14:15 14:16

311 79 253, 254 253 224 224, 254 253 214 264 270 268, 271 264, 267 241 212, 226 44 36 211, 212, 213 257 80, 86 257 280 42 280 280 269 241, 265, 267 268 294 253, 254 374 62, 68, 254 264 270, 271 243 253, 254 264 270, 271 243 267 264 34, 257 80, 86 265, 342 136, 289 236 150 237 237, 264 270, 271 243

Source Index

523

 14:17 14:18 14:19–20 14:19–21 14:19–22 14:19 14:21–22 14:21 14:22 14:24 14:24b 14:28–29 14:28 14:29 15:3 15:4 15:5–7 15:6–7 15:6 15:7 15:9 15:10 15:10b 15:11 15:12 15:14 15:15 15:16 15:18 15:18b 15:21–22 15:21 15:22 15:24 15:24b 15:25 15:26 15:28 15:28b 15:29 15:30 15:31 15:34 15:36–38 15:36 15:37 15:38 16:2 16:3–4



237 269 241, 332 265 268 267 236 236, 237, 265 237, 264, 265, 267, 272 254 253 264 270, 271 243 34, 80, 257 80, 86 234 265 269 38, 242, 272 254, 261 241 253 264, 268, 270 214, 264, 267, 271 241, 266 264, 270, 271 265, 267, 268, 271 254, 261 253 264 270 242, 244 254, 261 253 241 264, 270 254, 261 253 157 241 264, 270 257 265 269 267, 268, 272 243 262 116, 292

16:3 16:4 16:5 16:5–6 16:5–9 16:7 16:9 16:13 16:15 16:17 16:19–20 16:19 17 17 17:2 17:3 17:4 17:4b 17:5 17:8–11 17:10 17:11 17:13 17:16 17:17 17:21 17:22 17:24–41 17:24 17:25–9 17:27–32 17:27–34 17:27–41 17:29 17:30 17:32 17:39 18:3 18:4–5 18:4 18–20 18:5 18:6 18:7 18:8 18:9 18:10 18:13–16 18:13

85, 138, 262, 263, 300 80, 86 272 355, 394 346, 348 210 347 84 401 398, 440 265 269 48 291, 292 261 280 266, 270 241 280 262 62 84, 295 335 39, 60, 62, 93, 429 138 449 253, 254, 335 465 348 312 294 331 291 465 40 457 210 257 292 24, 43, 62, 84, 84, 257, 258 43 220, 259 258 220, 223, 259 355 280 457 373 280, 373, 375

524  18:14 18:16 18:17–19:37 18:17 18:21 18:22 18:24 18:25 18:31–32 19:19 19:25 19:28–3 19:28 19:35 19:4 19:8 19:9–14 19:9a 20:1–3 20:1–6 20:5 20:8 20:12–13 20:12–19 20:16–19 20:17–18 20:18 20:19 20:20–21 20:20 20:21 21 21:1–9 21:1–17 21:2 21:3–5 21:3–7 21:3 21:5 21:6 21:7 21:9 21:10 21:10–14 21:10–15 21:10–16 21:10–16a 21:11–15 21:12–15 21:12



Source Index 373 373 373 305 266, 350 41, 357 266 280 353, 363 34, 210 317 375 280 305 16, 75, 406, 471 373 350 266 305 318, 322 308 308 349 305 322 363 305 211, 275, 363 265 269, 272, 351 247 329, 398 289, 291, 292 43 94, 256, 262, 300, 310 310 116 39, 40, 62, 93, 259, 39, 40, 93, 259, 429 138, 310, 314 7, 61, 310 300 314, 35 309 329 20, 292, 329, 331, 333 289 306 282, 332 334

21:14 21:15 21:16 21:17–18 21:17 21:18 21:19–24 21:19a 21:20–21 21:21 21:22 21:23 21:24 21:25 21:26 21:35 22:2 22:3–20 22:3 22:8–23:24 22:11–13 22:11 22:13 22:14 22:15–17 22:15–20 22:15ff. 22:16–17 22:17 22:18–20 22:19 22:20 23 23:1–24 23:2–3 23:2g 23:3 23:4–5 23:4–20 23:4

23:5–9 23:5 23:4

75 309, 334 136, 311, 330 265 269, 272 245 286 289 262, 263 256 263 241, 266 266 269 241, 245, 247, 262, 263, 429 60 257, 291, 310 44 43 310 322 319 319 316 273 273, 279, 281, 291, 316, 324 224 282, 321, 332 84, 335 273 319 211, 275, 284, 321, 329 280, 461, 462, 464 322 413 280 310 90, 94, 259, 416, 417 469 7, 24, 27, 33, 39, 40, 61, 71, 79, 310, 313, 314, 400, 417, 429, 468, 470 470 39, 40, 74, 310, 429, 470 464

Source Index

525

 23:6 23:6 23:6 23:6–7 23:7 23:8–9 23:8 23:8a 23:9 23:10

23:11–12 23:11 23:12 23:13–14 23:13

23:14 23:15–16 23:15–20 23:15 23:16 23:19–20 23:19 23:20 23:21 23:24–7 23:24 23:25 23:26–27 23:28–29 23:28–30 23:28 23:29–30 23:29 23:29b–30a 23:30 23:32 23:33–4 23:33 23:33a 23:34 23:37 24:1–4



134 62 62, 468 310 258, 310 106, 401, 470 86, 258, 463 469 469, 470 16, 20, 22, 136, 138, 310, 334, 407, 463, 466, 467, 470 469 44, 260, 470 94, 258, 260, 310, 400, 464 216 24, 35, 62, 116, 260, 258, 282, 312, 331, 400 62, 134, 312, 463 460 331, 396 62, 258, 312, 461, 463, 464 134, 460 461 134, 259, 461 80, 401, 463 310 306 22, 330, 310 259, 275, 323, 336 275, 282, 323, 331, 332, 333 266 275 269 323 267, 268, 321, 325, 326, 335 241 224, 266, 332 260 323 269 241 248, 268 260 323

24:2–4 24:2 24:4 24:5–6 24:5 24:6 24:7 24:9 24:10–16 24:10 24:11 24:13–14 24:15 24:19–20 24:19 24:20 24:25 25:2–4 25:6–7 25:6 25:7 25:7b 25:20 25:21 25:26 25:27–30

20, 275, 282, 329, 331, 332, 333 335 136, 315, 329, 334 265 269 247, 301, 330 237, 264, 266, 267, 268 260 323 280 269 282, 332 241 330 260 282, 323, 332 310 282 324 269 314, 330, 342 241 282 323 282, 323, 332 282, 296

Isaiah 1–5 1:2 1:10–17 1:10 1:11–17 1:11 1:13–14 1:15–17 1:18–20 1:21–23 1:22 1:23 1:29–31 1:3 1:5–9 1:7–9 1:7 1:9–10 2:2–4

376 376 42, 376, 402 376 374 150 222 415 376 376 415 415 42, 374, 376 65, 133, 416 376 374, 379 415 415 376

526  2:5–11 2:6–8 2:6–22 2:6 2:8 2:9 2:12–22 2:16 2:18–22 2:20 3:1–4 3:6 3:7 3:13–17 3:16–17 3:16–24 3:24 3:26 4:3 5:1–6 5:1–10 5:5–6 5:5–7 5:7–10 5:11–15 5:26–30 5:26 6 6:1–10 6:8 6:9–12 6:13 7 7:1 7:3 7:5–17 7:6 7:7–11 7:23 8 8:5–8 8:7 8:19 9–12 9:2 9:3 9:6c 9:17 10:1–4 10:5–6



Source Index 374 24 415 406 194, 449 42 375 42 42 374 374 376 376 374 375 415 375, 473 150 375 415 406 377 375 415 406, 459 375 457 31, 116, 132 21 22 375 375 346 280 18, 457 375 280, 375 415 415 437 346, 375, 415 280 24, 406, 471 376 374 376 374 317 110 415

10:5–9 10:5–34 10:10f. 10:11 10:19 10:20–22 10:20 10:21 10:22 10:24 10:27 10:28–32 11:1–11 11:1 11:11–16 11:11 11:15–16 11:16 13:1–6 13:4 13:4–5 13:5 13:10 13:14 14:5 14:8 14:13 14:14 14:18–20 14:19 14:22 14:24–27 14:25 14:60 14:9–11 15:2 15:3 15:5 15:9 16:3–4 16:8 16:12 16:14 17 17:3 17:7–10 17:8 18:2 18:7 19:1

346 376 42 415 75 74 75 75 75 376 376 366, 368 376 376 121 74, 5 180 74, 75 90 39, 411 428 457 428 449 151 280 22, 90, 411, 428 280 459 66 75 373, 376 66 280 406, 459 473 78, 416 280 75 449 93, 95 93 75 346 74, 75 42 62, 468 66 66 42

Source Index

527

 19:3 19:8 19:13 19:19–25 20:3–6 21:17 22:1 22:3 22:5 22:9–11 22:12 22:16 22:23 22:25 23:18 24:21 26:15 27:4 27:9 27:13 28–29 28–33 28 28:1–15 28:5–22 28:5 28:14–20 28:15 28:18 28:28 29:2 29:4 29:13 30 30:1–5 30:1–11 30:22 30:33 31 31:1–3 31:7 32:13 33:12 33:20 33:22 34:2–4 34:2 34:3 34:4 36:1



24, 42, 415 150 406 350 350 75 13, 22, 78, 416 376 22, 66 351 473 151 155 155 69 39, 91, 429 457 317 42, 62, 468 449 437 376 459, 473 402 406 74, 75 459 135, 375 46 161 150 24 42, 28 415 347 350 42 22, 73, 136, 137, 467 415 350 42 280 317 155 151 91 39 280 39, 429 280

36–39 36:10 36:26 37 37:4 37:20 37:29 37:30–31 37:30–32 37:32c 37:35 38:11 39:1 39:8 40–55 40:18–31 40:18 40:22 40:26 40:28 41:5 41:9 42:5–16 42:5 42:10 43:6 44:6–20 44:21–28 44:24–28 44:24 45:7 45:12 47:13 48:20 49:5 49:6 51:9–11 51:13 51:16 52:7–12 52:12 53:8 54:2 54:12 56:11 57: 5–6 57:7 59:7 60:19–20 62:11

210 280 317 75 17, 406, 471 210 280 374 374 374 210 454 221 211 102, 121 47 47 456 39, 47, 91, 429 456, 457 457 457 121 456 457 457 47 47 121 456 54 39, 91, 429, 456 429 457 277 457 121 456 456 121 278 454 155 453 457 80 80 334 453 457

528  63:1–14 65:17 65:3–4 65:3 66:22

Source Index 121 280, 453 80 86 453

Jeremiah 1–25 1:2 1:4–19 1:9 1:16 2:2 2:10–16 2:11 2:13 2:15 2:18 2:21 2:23–28 2:23 2:23a 2:23ff. 2:26–27 2:27 2:28 2:3 2:5 2:8 2:30–5 2:30 2:34 3:6 3:6 3:7–10 3:10 3:14 3:17 3:21–5 3:23 4:1 4:7 5:2 5:4 5:7 5:10 5:12 5:14 5:16



44, 74, 314 314 314 132 44, 72, 84 22 44 72, 453 71, 407, 453, 454 317 454 454 44 38, 71, 73, 416 22 39 136 72 72 69 453 71, 116, 453 314, 334 314 136 280 314 44 135 93, 94, 385, 388 74 322 44 322 317 135 450 45, 72, 473 280 45 125, 132 125

5:22 5:31 6 6:4–5 6:12–14 6:13 6:19f. 6:20 7 7:1 – 8:3 7:13 7:15 7:18 7:20 7:21–28 7:22 7:24 7:25 7:30–8:3 7:30–31 7:30 7:31–32 7:31 7:32–8:3 7:32 ff. 7:32 7:4–15 7:4 7:6 7:8 7:9 8:1–2 8:1–3 8:2–3 8:2 8:3 8:7–9 8:7 8:8–9 8:8 8:9–11 8:10 8:15 8:19 8:23 9:2 9:4 9:7 9:9

450 135 134 280 133 135 45 150 122, 134, 322, 466 116 303, 335 335 44, 87, 72, 74, 82, 456 317, 319, 335 45 76, 401 74 303, 335, 454 74 134, 466 301 22, 136, 467 39, 280, 467 72 466 467 45 132, 135 136, 314, 330, 334 132, 135 72, 85, 135 467 39, 134 78 39, 60, 94, 259, 277, 411, 429, 456, 467 449 45 133 467 133, 134, 328, 424 133 135 335 45 433 135 135 303 317

Source Index

529

 9:11 9:12–13 9:13 9:21 10 10:2–3 10:2–5 10:2 10:3–9 10:3 11:7–8 10:10–13 10:10 10:12 10:13 10:14–16 10:14 11:10 11:12–13 11:13 11:16 11:17 11:19 11:23 12:2 12:12 12:16 13:10 13:11 13:25 14:14 14:15 14:16–20 14:19 15:4 15:9 15:17 15:18 16:4 16:5–7 16:5 16:6 16:9–13 16:11 16:13 16:15 16:17 16:19–20 16:19



317 45 72, 329 277, 67 44, 46, 429, 434, 436, 448, 451, 457 433 50 50, 92, 450, 453, 456 450 456 335 432, 434, 450 125, 407, 471 456 457 450 135 72 72 40, 116 317 72 454 75 132 457 72 72 258 135 135 116 459 335 334, 342 453 46 45, 335 467 459 25 473 329 72 72 449 136 45 135

16:19f. 16:20 17 17:2–3 17:2 17:5–6 17:13 17:21–27 17:27 18:2 18:16 18:18 18:31–32 19:1–13 19:3 19:4 19:5 19:6 19:7 19:8 19:9 19:11–12 19:11–13 19:11–14 19:11 19:12–13 19:13 20:6 20:8 21:2 21:5 21:14 21:22 21:25–29 22:3 22:17 22:18–19 22:19 23 23:2 23:3 23:4 23:5 23:8 23:9–40 23:10 23:13–14 23:13 23:14

44 136 150 454 62 454 407, 454 45 317 132 319 46 93 467 94, 334 72, 73, 136, 468 39, 136, 280, 467 22, 467 467 319 467 136, 467 73 22 335 467 39, 45, 60, 72, 78, 259, 411, 416, 429, 456 135 46 11, 280 319 317 48 48 136, 334 136, 314, 330, 334 301, 315, 330 301 132 449 75, 449 84 84 84, 322, 449 335 317 322 72, 116 135

530  23:16–18 23:17 23:18 23:23 23:24 23:25–26 23:26 23:28 23:32 23:32 23:37 24:9 25:3–4 25:3–5 25:3 25:4 25:6 25:9 25:11 25:18 25:31 25:33 26–29 26 26:1 26:5 26:13 26:15 26:16–19 26:17–19 26:18–19 26:19 26:20–3 27 27:10 27:13 27:14 27:15 27:16 28:8 28:15 29:6 29:9 29:14 29:18 29:19 29:21 29:23 29:31 30:17



Source Index 48 74 46, 456 450, 453 46, 453 135 407, 471 46 135 135 136 319,449 335 322 303 303, 454 72 319 319 319 457 277, 457, 467 122 122, 466 466 303, 335, 454 322 136 318 43 376 322 314, 330, 334 72 135, 449 150 135 116, 135, 449 135 335 135 94 135 449 317, 319, 449 303, 335, 454 135 135 135 449

31:15 31:24 31:27–30 31:29–30 31:29 31:30 31:31–34 31:32 31:34–40 31:35–36 31:35 31:36 31:37 31:40 32:2 32:6 32:11 32:29 32:32 32:33 32:34–35 32:34 32:35 32:37 33:12 33:22 33:25 34:21 34:4–5 35 35:14–15 35:14 35:15 35:17 36:2–3 36:27–32 36:30–1 37:5 37:14 38:17 39:3 40:12 40:15 40:16 41:5 42:18 43:2 43:5

466 466 342 455 342 344 342, 455 67, 93, 94 342 343, 453 456 450 455 22, 69, 464 72 389 450 72, 78, 317, 416, 456 136 303, 335 468 301 22, 136, 280 319, 449 317 39, 90, 429 456 11, 280 275, 301, 314, 315, 330 72 335 303 72, 303, 454 125 322 330 301 11, 280 135 125 75 449 75, 150 135 473 22, 317, 319, 335 135 449

Source Index

531

 44 44:1–30 44:1ff. 44:3 44:4 44:5 44:6 44:7–14 44:7 44: 8 44:10 44:12 44:15–18 44:15–19 44:15 44:16 44:17–18 44:19 44:21 44:22 44:26 45:5–7 46:11 46:19 46:28 47:5 48:35 48:37 48:38 49:2 49:5 49:13 49:17 49:27 49:36 50–51 50:3 50:17 50:21 50:26 50:32 51 51:15 51:15–19 51:16 51:17 51:27 51:28 51:30



6, 59, 33, 72, 82, 90, 94, 456 43 24, 40 59, 72 303, 454 72 319, 335 59 75, 125 72 23, 450 22, 317, 319 59 82 72 24 85 94 280 319 24 46 317 317 449 473 93 473 78, 416 317 449 319 319 317 449, 456, 457 448 280 449 280 75 317 448 456 434, 450 457 135 448 448 317

51:31 51:37 51:42 51:50 52:28

457 319 280 280 301

Ezekiel 1:1 1:13 1:16 1:18 1:26–27 2:8–3:3 3:16; 4:13 6:4 6:6 6:7 7:18 8:2 8:7–16 8:10 8:11 8:14 9:3 10:12 11:1–3 11:23–24 13:5 14:21–23 15:3 15:4 16:16–21 16:18 16:32 16:45 18:1–4 18:2–4 18:2 18:4 18:4–28 18:19 18:29 18:31–32 18:29–32 18:31 19:11 20:7–8 20:9

447 450 91 91 450 132 457 449 468 468 137 473 137 343 151 86 69, 471 280 91 343 280 280 343 155 456 80 86 94 94 342 342 343 343 342 343 343 343 342 150 151 139 139

532  20:11–12 20:11–32 20:18–20 20:22–24 20:25–26 20:25 20:26 20:28–31 20:28 20:32 20:5 20:7 21:3 21:26 22:26 23:14 23:37 23:41 25:9 26:20 27:31 32:23–27 32:32 28:11–18 33:11 33:25 34:4 34:16 38:10 38:11 38:18 38:16 39:1 39:11 40:4 40:6 41:7 44:2 44:17 45:1 45:4 47:3 47:12 48:1

Source Index 139 135 139 139 139 467 467 80 80 280 467 135 317 22, 385 54 151 86 86 457 454 473 454 454 22 150 390 449 449 280 280 280 280 457 22 149 22, 280 280 463 280 69 69 473 280 457

Hosea 1–3 1:4–5 1:9



38, 39 36 415

2:23–3:5 2 2:1 2:2 2:5–8 2:7 2:9–10 2:10 2:11 2:15 2:18 2:19 3:4 4:1ff. 4:2 4:11–19 4:12 4:13–14 4:13 4:17 5:8 5:13–15 6:1–6 6:6 7:1 7:11–12 7:11 7:32–8:3 7:8–12 8:4–6 8:6 8:11–13 8:11–14 8:11 8:13 9:3 9:4 9:6 9:15 10:1 10:2–5 10:2 10:5 10:6 10:8 11:1–4 11:2 11:5 12:1

95 71 95, 471 36 415 95 415 38, 40, 41, 71, 416 415 71, 95, 416 41, 43, 67, 93, 94, 416 71, 72, 95 22 95 72 40 40, 415 80, 95 86 40 151 415 415 40 95 95 39, 346, 347 416 415 40, 95, 415 66, 415 40 374 95 347 95, 347 415 347 40 95 40 95 76, 79, 95, 417 95 95, 280 415 40, 71, 79, 80, 86, 95, 416 95 46

Source Index

533

 12:4–5 12:5–11 12:5 12:6 12:11 12:12 13:1 13:2 13:4 14:4 14:9

91 415 46 91, 125 415 40, 80 95 40, 95, 194 43 95 40, 95

Joel 1:6 1:8 2:17 2:20 2:9 4:19

280 94 150 449 280 334

6 6:1–6 6:1–10 6:5 6:6–7 6:8 6:10 6:12 6:14 7–9 7:10–17 7:12–17 8:4–6 8:8–9 8:10 8:14 9:1 9:5 9:7

473 25 459 420 406 125 389 415 91, 125 427 38 111 40, 415 180 40, 415, 473 39, 40 40 91, 125 30, 415

Obadiah Amos 21 1:5 1:8 1:14 2:1 2:4–3 2:6–7 2:9–10 2:15 3:7 3:8 3:13 3:14–15 4–5 4:1 4:2–3 4:4–5 4:12 4:13 5:5ff. 5:14–16 5:18 5:21–25 5:21–27 5:25 5:26 5:26f. 5:27



347 75 317 136, 138 415 415 263 415 335 40 91, 125 415 402 415 415 40, 415 402 402 40 125 150 40 194, 415 76, 401 40, 60 39 125

280

Jonah 4:3 4:6 4:8–9

218 280 218

Micah 1:2–4:7 1:2 1:3–5 1:5 1:6–9 1:7 1:9 1:10–12 1:10–16 1:13–15 1:13 1:16 2:1–2 2:12 3:1–3 3:1–4 3:1 3:6

376 376 402 376, 402 376 42 375, 376 373 376 373 356, 374, 402 473 110, 415 75 376 376 376 46

534  3:6–11 3:9–12 3:9 3:10 3:12 4:1–3 4:2 4:4–5 4:4 4:5 4:6 4:7 4:8 4:10 4:11–13 4:14 5:1–5 5:1 5:4–5 5:9–13 5:11 5:12–14 5:12 5:13 6:6–7 6:7–8 6:7 6:16

Source Index 24 376 376 376 45, 376, 415 376 376 95 91 16, 417, 449, 463 449 376 376 363 376 376, 473 376 376 376 374 24 42 194 62 73, 467 376 39, 136 319

Nahum 2:2

280

Habakkuk 3:3 3:5 3:19

68 152 401

Zephaniah 1:4–5 1:4 1:5 1:8 1:12 2:9 2:15 3:19



39, 94, 74, 411, 416, 75, 79, 417 39, 60, 78, 259, 416, 429 420 434 125 319 449

Haggai 2:13

473

Zechariah 1:2–3 1:6 3:9 4:2 4:2–3 4:10b 9:9 10 10:4 14:13 14:20 14:21 14:8

93 335 433 91, 433 93 91 162 433 155 280 69 69 454

Malachi 2:11 2:15

69 75

Psalms 1 2 5:11 12 12:51 18:9 18:23 19:7 23:4 24 24:3 26:9 27:13 29 29:1 29:2 33:6 34:14 45 46:10 47:6 48:11

146 106 449 125 91 280 450 457 22 30 280 276 454 15, 30, 115, 429, 432 21 93 39, 91, 429 276 106 457 280 457

Source Index

535

 50 52:7 55:16 56:14 59:6 60:9 61:3 65:6 68 68:14 68:25–30 76:3 78 78:9 78:13b 78:15 78:16 78:21 78:31 78:44–51 78:53–55 78: 52–53a 80:2 80:5 80:20 81:13 82 82:1 82:6 83:9 83:11 84:9 84:12 86:16 89:7 89:9 89:32 89 99:1 103:21 104:29 105:28–36 106:28 106:37 106:38 116:16 116:9 108:9 118:22 124:3



146 454 454 454 125 151 457 457 458 149 153 181 185 149 179 179 179 280 280 184 162 179 124 125 125 74 15, 30, 91 21, 115 93 157 467 125 453 180 22 125 450 106, 224 124 91, 429 276 185 38, 79, 80 67, 79, 80 334 180 454 151 109 454

132 132:3 142:6 144:6 148:1–5 148:2 148:3 148:4

106, 182, 224 280 454 161 39 429 90, 411 428

Proverbs 1:12 1:19 3:27 6:17 7:11 12:4 16:22 17:8 17:16 17:24 21:9 22:27 25:1 25:24 31:11 31:23 31:28 31:29

454 65 65 334 150 94 65 65 150 433, 457 78, 416 150 225, 227, 413 78, 416 94 94 94 280

Job 1–2 5:26 6:19 7:21 8:4 13:27 13:7–8 14 14:7–22 14:18–22 21 26:14 27:19 28:13 33:30 30:2 33:23 38:32

21, 116, 400 280 280 454 344 151 344 344 454 471 344 457 277 454 454 150 21 433

536  38:33 38:7 40:6–32 42:13–15

Source Index 456 411 121 413

Canticles 1:7 4:3 4:15 6:7 7:9

150 154 454 154 280

389 389 457 389 384 389 389 388

Lamentations 1:14 2;15 2:16 3:39 4:11 4:15

280 319 319 150 317 317

Qohelet/Ecclesiastes 10:4 7:16 7:17 8:8 55

280 150 150 65 150

Esther 1:17 1:20 9:12

94 94 16, 75

Daniel 8:10



280 335 449 335

Ezra

Ruth 2:1 2:20 3:7 4:2 4:3–6 4:4 4:9 4:6

8:3 9:6 9:7 9:10

1–6 1 1:1–3 2 2:59–63 3:7 3:8 3:11–13 4:3 4:6–22 4:7 5:6–12 5:11–12 7:6 7:11–28 8 8:1–14 8:1 8:28 8:34 9:8 9:11 9:14

167 424 299 424 424 424 75 184 75 424 75 424 305 424 424 387 424 280 69 424 155 311, 335 75

Nehemiah 1:3 1:9 2:15 2:17 7:5 8:6 8:16 9:6 9:7 9:23 10:29 11:1 12:37

317 457 280 317 280 125 78, 416 39, 428, 429 125 428 20, 75 20, 75 280

1 Chronicles 39, 91, 429

1–9

218

Source Index

537

 2:6 2:24 2:42–55 2:43 2:49–55 2:52–54 2:52 2:53 2:54 4:2 4:21 4:39–43 4:41 5:17 6:5–6 6:6 6:20 6:21 6:29 8 10 10:14 11:1–3 11:6 11:8 11:9 11:10 12:6 12:23–41 13 13:6 14:1 14:10 14:12 14:14–15 15 15:29 16:39–40 16:39–42 16:41 17 17:1 17:6 17:12 17:23–24 18 18:2 18:6 18:13 18:18



387 385 385 387 387 387 390 386 390 387 387 355 219, 356, 392, 421 421 222 222 222 222 222 9, 219 204 222, 298 180 280 75 208 220 65 180 205 280 205 224, 280 188 224 205 147 222 206 75 205, 213 183 208 208, 214 218 205 207 210, 222 210, 222 90

21 21:2 21:3 21:9 21:15 21:29–30 22:1 22:11–13 22:11ff. 22:19 22:5 22:7–9 22:7–13 22:7 22:9 23:25 23:31 24:23 25:4 26:15–16 27:23 27:24 28–29 28:2 28:6–7 28:9 28:11 29:1 29:12 29:18 29:25 29:28

204 223 150 280 209 206 124 213 213 124, 222 208 183, 184 214, 215 212 183, 209, 211 209 222 181 181 208 428 308 207 209, 212 214 221 19, 223 208 209 222 208 209

2 Chronicles 1–9 1:1 1:1ff. 1:3 1:7–13 1:7 1:9 1:11 1:12 2:3 2:4–5 2:5 2:10 2:16 5:6

207, 219 208, 220 222 206 215 206 218 209, 212 209 222 208 428 215 223 80

538  5:11 5:12–13 6:8 6:10 6:16 6:17 6:18 7:10 7:11 7:12–22 7:14 7:17–18 7:17 7:19 7:20–22 7:20 8:13 9 9:1 9:2 9:8 9:13ff. 9:22 9:22ff. 9:29 10:15 10:16 10:17 10:18 11:2–4 11:6–10 11:7 11:20 11:22 12:1 12:2 12:4 12:5–8 12:6–7 12:6 12:7 12:9 12:13–15 12:13a 12:14 13:2 13:4–7 13:4–20 13:5–7 13:12



Source Index 34, 222 223 212 224 214 218 428 212 215, 222 206 307, 308, 309 218 214 450 218 319 222 215 212 209 215 222 208, 209 216 75 298 180 217 280 303 352 312 249 249 302, 303, 312 280, 301 307 303 307 308 308, 335 208, 280 312 312 222 249, 250 217 303 311 312

13:13–18 13:14–20 13:21 13:23 13:23c 13:7 13:9 14:2–4 14:2 14:4 14:4c 14:5b 14:6 14:6d 14:10–11 15:1–8 15:2 15:8–16 15:8 15:15 15:16–17 15:16 15:17 15:19 16:1 16:3 16:9 16:12–14 17:1 17:3 17:5 17:6 17:8f. 18 18:1 18:18 18:19 18:33 19:1–3 19:2–3 19:2 19:3–4 19:3 19:10 19:11 20:5–13 20:13–30 20:16 20:30 20:33

207 217 220 307 307 312 302, 312 302 41, 62, 225 41, 468 307 307 302 307 303 303 302 41 220, 302 307 302 61 225 307 280 280 220 289 220 302 209 62, 225, 302 42 288 209 39 280 332 217 304, 306 308 42 62, 222, 302 308 42 303 303 280 307 222, 225, 302

Source Index

539

 20:35–37 21:4 21:6 21:7 21:11 21:12–19 21:12ff. 21:13 21:14 21:17 21:18–19 21:18 21:19 21:20 21:23 21:24 22:3–4 22:3–5 22:4 22:5 22:7 22:8 23:1 23:17 23:21 23:31 23:34 24:4 24:5–14 24:5 24:6 24:14 24:16 24:17–18 24:17–22 24:18 24:21 24:23–26 24:23 24:24 24:25 25:4 25:5 25:6–10 25:7–9 25:10 25:11–25 25:11 25:13



217, 304 220 217, 303 214, 225, 294, 304, 307, 308 302, 449 303 217 301, 302 303 280 234 308 290 289, 290 289 289 303 304 303 303 303 303, 304 220 302 212 307 289 212, 307 208 307 289 75 220 301, 302 304 62, 308 304 304 280 302 220, 290 289 348 304 217 304 237 220 304

25:14–16 25:14 25:16 25:17–24 25:18–19 25:19 25:19a–d 26:12–13 26:16–21 26:22 26:23 27:2 28:2–4 28:2 28:3 28:4 28:5–7 28:5–15 28:6 28:8–9 28:8–15 28:11 28:13 28:16–18 28:16 28:18 28:19 28:20 28:22–5 28:22 28:23–25 28:23 28:24–25 28:24 28:27 29–31 29:3 – 31:21 29:5 29:6–9 29:6 29:8 29:10 29:12 29:15–19 29:15 29:16 29:18–19 29:19 29:25–30 30:1–11

304 86, 302 150 304 304 150 306 348 302, 303 226 290 302 302, 304 303 84, 85, 300 80, 86 304 217, 304 302 222 348 302 209 304 304 354 301 304 302 301 304, 400 80 86 222 242, 290 24 43 305 305 222, 301 308, 319 212 222 305 34, 222 302 400 301, 302 302, 305 217

540  30:5 30:6 30:7 30:8 30:9 30:10 30:11–12 30:14 30:19 30:20 30:22 30:26 31:1 31:3 31:15–20 31:15 31:16–20 31:16 31:17 31:19 31:21 32:1–8 32:2–6 32:3 32:5 32:7–8 32:9–22 32:12 32:16 32:22 32:23 32:24–26 32:26 32:27–29 32:27 32:29 32:30 32:31 32:33 33:1–8 33:1–19 33:2 33:3 33:4–5 33:5 33:6 33:7 33:9 33:10 33:11–17



Source Index 223 302 301, 319 302 302 305 305 86, 305 222 222, 307, 308 80 222, 223 217, 305 222 401 42, 392 392 219 219 219 222 305 351, 380 30, 351 30, 351 220 305 86 124 210, 222 208 305, 307 308 222, 351, 380 209 351, 356 380 305 247, 290 289 43 300 39, 40, 300, 302, 429 302 39, 40 301, 302 302 300, 301 306 289

33:11 33:12–16 33:15–16 33:15 33:17 33:18–19 33:18 33:19 33:20 33:21 33:22–4 33:22 33:22a 33:23 33:23 33:24 33:25 34:3–7 34:3 34:4 34:5 34:8 34:9–11 34:10 34:19 34:21 34:24–8 34:25 34:27–8 34:28 34:29 – 35:19 34:33 35:3–4 35:5 35:15 35:18 35:19 35:19a 35:19d 35:2 35:20–21 35:20–23 35:20 35:21–22 35:21–23 35:21–24 35:21 35:23

300, 05 298, 69 302 300 80, 301, 306 298 306 301, 307 220, 290 289 300 80 289 301, 307 307 220, 289 289 302, 327 43, 469 80 84 221 302 221 319 301, 306, 308, 317, 319 316 301, 306, 308, 335 307 211 327 301, 302, 306, 327, 328, 336, 469, 470 306 429 306 306 331 327, 330 331 220, 221 281 279, 281 327 211 327 306 220, 281 321

Source Index

541

 35:24 36 36:6 36:7 36:8 36:10 36:11–13 36:12 36:14–16 36:14–17

332 301, 304, 308 280, 289, 300 300 301 300 299 302, 307 300 299, 304

36:14 36:15–16 36:15 36:16 36:17–21 36:20–23 36:21 36:22–23 36:24–25

New Testament Matthew 21:1–10 185 21:1–11 162

Quran Sura 2.165 43.20–23



60

303 306 306, 335 280, 305, 307, 308, 335 299, 300 300 308 220, 299 307



Author Index Abercrombie, J.R. 405 Adams, R. McC. 363 Aharoni, Y. 87, 90, 353, 356, 367, 369, 371, 395, 396, 399, 400, 403 Aharoni, M. 87, 351, 355 Ahlström, G.W. 18, 22, 24, 26, 32, 112, 113, 392, 398 Albertz, R. 14 Albright, W.F. 13, 14, 22, 31, 99, 123, 132, 166, 186, 339, 340, 351, 354, 367, 377, 382, 441, 443, 462 Alfrink, B. 234, 236, 238, 276 Alt, A. 32, 118, 120, 374, 381 el-Amin, M.N. 369 Andersen, F. I 38, 71, 76, 340, 413 Andrew, M.E. 44 Angerstorfer, A. 23, Arensburg, B. 405 Armstrong, D. 339, 376, 416 Astour, M. 283 Aufrecht, W. 67 Auld, G. 7, 202 Avigad, N. 65, 67, 351, 380, 403

Beit-Arieh, Y. 339, 394, 395, 403 Bennett, C.M. 394 Benzinger, I. 290 Berg, G.M. 472 Bickert, R. 374 Bin-Nun, S.R. 234, 247, 323 Biran, A. 69, 371, 395 Bloch, M. 278 Blum, E. 126 Boling, R. 152, 154, 155, 174, 175 Borger, R. 76, 361, 433 Brockelmann, C. 432 Bright, J. 45, 134 Brinkman, J.A. 361, 362 Broshi, M. 41, 339, 380, 386, 408 Brown, N. 138, 185, 187, 198 Brownlee, W.H. 27, 123 Brueggemann, W. 100, 101 Budde, K. 64 Bülow, S. 370 Bupp, S. 168 Burkert, W. 441 Burstein, S. 435

Baentsch, B. 18 Balscheit, B. 19 Baltzer, K. 27, 57, 116, 133, 148, 339, 340, 472 Barbu, Z. 423 Barkay, G. 247, 276, 364, 380, 405, 406 Barnett, R.D. 353, 362 Barrick, W.B. 31, 251, 255, 257, 258, 461, 462, 464, 465 Barthelmus, R. 57, 116 Batten, L.W. 299 Baudissin, W.W. 29 Beaulieu, P.-A. 117 Beck, P. 23, 32, 374, 394, 395 Beecher, H.W. 114, 127 Begg, C.T. 281, 328, 334, 349, 381

Campbell, A.F. 231, 251, 252, 255, 257, 258, 260 Cassirer, E. 170 Cassuto, U. 19 Chambon, A. 352, 382 Chaney, M. 101 Childs, B.S. 164, 177, 183, 193 Churchill, W.L.S. 470, 478 Clapham, L.R. 28 Clayburn, W.E. 42, 357 Clifford, R.J. 47, 179 Cogan, M. 119, 188, 348, 462, 476 Coggins, R.I. 222 Cohen, R. 371, 393, 395 Cohn, R.L.286 Collingwood, R.G. 170, 185



Author Index

543

 Coogan, M.D. 146, 148, 151 Cooper, A.M. 29, 120, 462 Cornill, C.H. 230, 313 Cowley, A.E. 19 Cragie, P.C. Crenshaw, J.L. 54 Cresson, B. 394, 395, 403 Cross, F.M. 16, 25, 27, 32, 34, 35, 37, 47, 64, 65, 67, 83, 89, 94, 116, 118, 119, 121, 123, 145, 146, 149, 150, 163, 167, 173, 177, 178, 179, 202, 213, 214, 216, 231, 232, 260, 273, 274, 275, 285, 291, 294, 297, 309, 311, 313, 323, 325, 354, 364, 371, 393, 398, 400, 403, 409, 416, 463, 475 Crowfoot, G. M. 22 Crowfoot, J. W. 22 Crüsemann, F. 105 Curtis, E.L. 302 Dagan, Y. 32, 339, 393, 397 Dahood, C. 218 Dalley, S. 123 Daube, D. 409 Davis, D. 405 Dearman, J.A. 98, 110, 111, 342, 352 Demsky, A. 385, 414 Dever, W.G. 23, 68, 69, 132, 134, 340, 397, 400, 404, 441, 443, 475, 476 Diels, H. Dietrich, W. 230, 283, 476 Dion, P.E 59, 60, 408, 465 Doermann, R.W. 370 Dothan, T. 354, 377, 378, 395 Driver, G.R. 70, 191, 192, 193, 234, 238, 276, 278, 283, 284, 323 Dunayevsky, I. 395 Eichhorn, J.G. 232 Eisenstein, E.L.421 Eissfeldt, O. 28, 33, 61, 100, 116, 182, 188, 193 Eitam, D. 81, 369, 377 Elayi, J. 349, 414 Eliade, M. 28 Ellis, R.S. 433 Emerton, J.A. 23, 153 Engnell, I. 444



Eph’al, J. 295, 358, 361, 362, 369, 392, 393, 404 Eshel, H. 354, 366, 406 Eskenazi, T.C. 202, 299 Eslinger, L.M. 197 Evans, C.D. 354, 357 Eynikel, E. 309, 311, 328, 331 Fales, M. 70, 413, 420, Finkelstein, I. 105, 339, 340, 367, 383, 387 Fishbane, M. 100, 197 Flannery, K.V. 345, 397, 413 Fohrer, G. 286, 287, Fox, J.M. 197 Frankel, H. 51 Frankfurt Institute, 410, 422, 423 Freedman, D.N. 38, 69, 71, 76, 99, 101, 109, 110, 124, 145, 146, 148, 149, 157, 167, 299, 339, 340, 358, 385, 413, 461, 475 Freeman, K. 51, 52, 191, 192, 194 Frerichs, E.S. 13, 14, 82, 116, 134, 357, 476 Freud, S. 117, 170 Friedman, R.E. 25, 44, 60, 69, 125, 132, 137, 147, 164, 167, 169, 184, 191, 192, 197, 202, 203, 214, 231, 248, 259, 260, 261, 262, 291, 294, 296, 301, 310, 320, 339, 380, 412, 414, 417, 420, 430, 444, 448 Fritz, V. 352, 382, 396 Frost, S.B. 316 Gadd, C.J. 91, 348, 349, 359, 360, 362, 393 Gal, Z. 361, 369 Garfinkel, Y. 352, 353, 355 Garr, W.R. 125 Gaster, T. 148 Gerleman, G. 146 de Geus, C.H.J. 163, 164, 384 Gibbon, E. 452 Ginsberg, H.L. 116 Ginzburg, C. 422 Gitin, S. 69, 81, 82, 84, 87, 132, 134, 339, 354, 363, 377, 378, 379, 380, 396, 399, 403, 404, 441, 443, 453, 476 Glatt, D.A. 327, 328

544 

Author Index

Globe, A. 146 Goedicke, H. 362, 419 Goldstein, 120 Goody, J.R. 9, 382, 389, 391, 407, 413, 415, 421, 423, 424 Gordis, R. 14 Gottwald, N.K. 19, 101, 129, 163, 384, 386 Graf, F. 99, 101, 385 Grant, E. 214, 228, 369, 370, 377 Graves, R. 404 Gray, J. 150, 211, 226, 231, 286 Grayson, A.K. 281, 325, 419 Greenberg, M. 19, 99, 127, 135, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 438, 439, 440

Hoffmann, H.-D. 230, 274, 318, 319, 321 Hoffman, R.C. 411 Hoftijzer, J. 133 Holladay, J.S. 89, 116, 183, 339, 354, 355, 367, 371, 380, 398, 401, 402, 411, 475 Holland, T. 23 Horowitz, W. 433, 438 Huffmon, H.B. 123 Humphreys, S.C. 390 Hunger, H. 433, 434, 439 Hurvitz, A. 444

Hackett, J.A. 25, 339 Hadley, J.M. 68 Haldar, A. 24, 33 Halpern, B. 26– 28, 32–35, 58–60, 64, 77, 78, 82, 86–88, 90, 91, 95, 100, 102, 103, 105, 108–110, 112, 113, 116, 127, 133–135, 140, 179, 182, 183, 194, 228, 231, 238, 245, 246, 248, 249, 252, 254, 259, 262, 264, 274, 276, 282, 286, 289–292, 294, 295, 299, 301, 308–312, 314, 323– 326, 328, 331, 339, 341, 345, 357, 375, 379, 380, 384, 385, 389, 400– 402, 404, 406, 408, 412, 415–417, 419, 424, 429, 433, 437, 441, 444, 448, 459, 460–467, 469–476 Handy, L.K. 379 Hanson, P.D. 64, 67, 89, 116, 371, 400, 475 Hart, S. 394 Hauer, C.E. 33 Hayes, J.H. 41, 146 Hehn, J. 17, 18 Heidel, A. 439, 442 Held, M. 82 Heltzer, M. 81, 369 Hendel, R.S. 339, 446 Herzog, Z. 87, 88, 89, 339, 351, 356, 371, 395, 399 Hesse, B. 339, 354, 377 Hestrin, R. 82, 433 Hill, C. 385, 418, 455 Hillers, D.R. 100, 124 Hirsch, Jr., E.D. 186, 203

Jacobsen, T. 127, 202 James, F.W. 23 Japhet, S. 124, 202, 207, 302, 303 Jaspers, K. 3, 32, 51, 53, 54, 423 Jenks, A. 53, 190 Jensen, A. 37 Jepsen, A. 41, 150



Ilgen, K.D. 431

Kahn, H. 358 Kapelrud, A.S. 28, 30, 32, 38, 47 Kaufman, S.A. 25, 168 Kaufmann, Y. 13, 14, 15, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 27, 29, 55, 58, 116, 341 Kearney, P. 163 Keel, O. 28, 447, 474, 475 Kelm, G.L. 370, 379 Kempinski, A. 81, 339, 363, 377, 379, 382, 395, 396, 404 King, P.J. 393 Kinnier-Wilson, 433 Kittel, R. 19, 274, 325 Kletter, R. 475 Kloner, A. 247, 405, 406 Knoppers, G. 202, 309, 311, 312, 318, 319, 328, 330, 463, 464, 471 Knudtzon, J.A. 107 Kochavi, M. 364, 368, 371, 372, 383, 395 Kombergg, S. 380 van der Kooij, 133, 375, 380 Kramer, C. 404 Kreuzer, S. 407, 471 Krüger, 57, 116, 133, 472 Kümmel, H.M. 342

Author Index

545

 Kuenen, A. 230, 313 L’Heureux, C.E. 25 Landsberger, B. 101, 433 Lang, 13, B. 124, 407 Lapp, N. 367, 372 Lapp, P. 22 Lemaire, A. 23, 58, 60, 67, 68, 231, 259, 286, 353, 370, 413 Levenson, J.D. 28, 34, 42, 44, 179, 190, 214, 231, 289, 294, 296, 310, 420, 424 Levin, 126, 130 Levine, B. 13, 14, 82, 116, 134, 357, 476 Lewis, T.J. 277, 326 Liddell Hart, B.F. 348 Lie, A.G. 347, 348, 359, 360, 362, 370, 393 Lightstone, J. 114 Lindblom, J. 149 Loffreda, S. 246, 405 Lohfink, N. 7, 37, 105, 119, 216, 231 Lombra, R. 545 Luckenbill, D.D. 347, 349, 350, 353, 354, 355, 358, 359, 360, 362, 363, 364, 365, 370, 377, 393 Lundbom, J.R. 133, 134 Machinist, P. 119 Macy, H.R. 202, 219, 245, 247, 248 Malamat, A. 157, 159, 279, 281, 295, 326, 339, 340, 361, 369, 385, 391, 394, 396, 404, 421 Mandelkern, S. 63 Marx, K. 98 Mayes, A.D. 148, 152, 153, 231, 260, 274, 296, 318, 321 Mazar, A. 83, 88, 132, 247, 339, 351, 354, 368, 370, 377, 379, 393, 404, 405 Mazar, B. 61, 95, 157, 385, 395 Mazar, E. 395 McBride, S.D. 64, 67, 116, 371, 400, 475 McCarter, Jr., P.K. 25, 67, 68 McCarthy, D.J. 27, 148 McClellan, T.L. 354, 366, 403 McCown, 352, 366, 396



McKenzie, S.L. 248, 249, 260, 288, 289, 290, 291, 298 Meier, G. 70 Mendenhall, G.E. 19, 31, 99, 100, 101, 102, 105, 110, 129, 382, 385 Meshel, Z. 23, 66, 67, 68 Mettinger, T.N.D. 27, 30, 41, 91, 124, 125, 168, 193, 194, 195, 341, 345, 373, 374, 376, 404, 406, 446 Michel, E. 358 Miles, J. C. 70 Milik, J.T. 83, 393 Millard, A.R. 70, 339, 358 Miller, J.M. 41, 89, 100, 116, 149, 150, 173, 283, 284, 285, 286, 354, 371, 400, 475 Miller, P.D. 21, 64, 67, 149, 173, 475 Mittmann, S. 23 Momigliano, A. 187 Mommsen, H. 353 Morenz, L.D. 474 Moshkovitz, S. 87, 352, 356, 395, 399 Mosshammer, A.A. 434 Motzki, H. 31 Mowinckel, S. 27, 46, 106, 120, 163 Mullen, E.T. 16, 28 Müller, J.-P. 31, 123, 146 Müller, K.F. 107 Murray, D.F. 153 Na’aman, N. 30, 67, 79, 339, 347, 348, 349, 350, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 361, 366, 367, 368, 370, 371, 372, 373, 377, 378, 381, 393, 394, 396 Naveh, J. 23, 67, 81, 348, 363, 379, 396, 404 Nelson, R.D. 152, 156, 231, 251, 260, 261, 294, 296, 330, 371, 394 Netzer, E. 88, 351, 356, 371, 399 Neusner, J. 13, 14, 82, 116, 134, 357, 476 Nielsen, E. 193 Nietzsche, 131 Nikiprowetzky, V. 18, 30, 36 von Nordheim, E. 34 North, R. 53, 152, 190, 247, 305, 315, 347, 351, 361, 404, 405 Noth, M. 64, 95, 153, 164, 174, 225, 229, 230, 293, 294, 411, 416

546 

Author Index

O’Shea, J.M. 390 Oded, B. 41, 347, 361, 362, 363, 397 Ofer, A. 373, 470 Olyan, S.M. 14, 33, 60, 67, 68, 71, 82, 83, 136, 138, 339, 476 Oppenheim, A.L. 360 Oren, E.D. 380, 393 Ornan, T. 446 Otto, E. 14, 105, 106, 126 Overholt, T.W. 46 Paine, T. 344 Parker, B. 347, 361, 362 Parpola, S. 420 Peckham, B. 5, 7, 64, 83, 133, 231, 273, 293, 294 Peters, E. 311 Petitjean, A. 29 Petrie, W.M.F. 396 Pfeiffer, R.H. 283, 346 Plessner, M. 435 Polzin, R. 212 Pope, M. 25 Porten, B. 69, 89 Postgate, 354, 397 Pratico, G.D. 367, 371, 394 Pritchard, J.B. 67, 83, 366, 395 Propp, W.H.C. 72, 95, 109, 137, 299, 339 Provan, I. 228, 229, 231, 234, 242, 243, 246, 248, 249, 251, 252, 256, 257, 259, 260, 261, 262, 271, 273, 274, 279, 282, 290, 293, 294, 311, 318, 321, 324 Pryce-Jones, D. 422 von Rad, G. 188, 224, 230 Rahmani, L.Y. 247, 408 Rainey, A.F.87, 352, 356, 395, 399 Reade, J.E. 347, 350, 353, 369, 420 Redford, D.B. 9, 117 Reich, R. 232, 380, 393 Reisner, G. 66 Reviv, H. 404, 408 Richter, W. 58, 64, 146, 152, 153, 154, 157, 160, 232, 294 Ringgren, H. 17, 32 Roberts, J.J.M. 118, 358, 362, 419 Robertson, D. A. 32, 83, 145, 146, 149 Robinson, T.H. 17, 19, 20



Rosenbaum, J. 380 Rost, P. 150, 346, 347, 362 Rowley, H.H. 33, 379 Rudolph, W. 299, 302 Saggs, H.W.F. 347, 348, 350, 358, 359, 371, 397 Sasson, J.M. 99 Sauren, H. 362 Schmid, H.H. 22 Schmidt. W.H. 22 Sellers, O.R. 372 Sellin, E. 19, 281, 326 Shaw, C.S. 374, 376 Shea, W.H. 381, 390 Shilo, Y. Sinclair, L.A. 367 Skinner, J. 45, 134, 170 Smend, R. 230 Smith, M. 14, 50, 61, 63, 67, 69, 138, 417 Sommer, B. 429, 448, 477 Spieckermann, H. 58, 75, 76, 79, 95, 380, 393, 398, 416, 417, 420 Stade, B. 230, 274, 313, 325 Stager, L.E. 23, 140, 339, 349, 365, 382, 383, 384, 385, 386, 390, 393, 464 Stähelin, J.J. 58, 60, 202, 232 Steck, O.H. 286 Steiner, G. 169 Steuernagel, C. 230, 283, 313 Stohlmann, S. 362, 363, 365, 381, 397, 408 Strobel, A. 141 Sulzberger, M. 110 Suzuki, Y. 408 Tadmor, H. 25, 119, 140, 345, 347, 348, 349, 355, 358, 362, 364, 377, 393, 400, 419, 420, 427, 444, 462, 474 Tadmor, M. 22, 23 Talman, S. Talmon, S. 35, 100, 109, 112, 214, 221, 403, 472 Tatum, L. 314 Tawney, R.H. 411, 418 Taylor, J.G. 95, 436 Thureau-Dangin, F. 107, 360 Tigay, J. 66, 288

Author Index

547

 van der Toorn, K. 69, 70, 312, 446, 462, 466, 471 Tov, E. 100 Tufnell, O. 23, 365, 368 Uehlinger, C. 446, 447, 474, 475 Ussishkin, D. 81, 82, 87, 88, 89, 105, 247, 339, 352, 354, 368, 379, 380, 392, 399, 405, 406, 462 Van Seters, J. 248, 419 Vanderhooft, D.S. 7, 60, 90, 228, 311, 323, 324, 325, 326, 328, 331, 339, 383, 389, 419, 467, 472, 473 de Vaux, 118, 148, 150, 153, 173, 382 Vawter, B. 149 Veijola, T. 230 Vogt, E. 349, 375 de Vries, S.J. 234, 238, 284, 285, 286, 299 Waldbaum, J. 404 Wapnish, P. 339, 340, 354, 377 Watt, 9, 421 Weinfeld, M. 20, 29, 30, 42, 66, 68, 214, 216, 225, 340, 358, 364, 409, 413 Weippert, H. 7, 25, 47, 202, 228, 231, 232, 233, 250, 251, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 260, 261, 262, 273, 282, 285, 290, 339, 419, 427 Weippert, M. 25, 70, 413 Weiser, A. 146, 153, 154, 156, 173, 174, 176 Wellhausen, J. 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 27, 101, 120, 145, 147, 156, 173, 175, 190, 230, 286, 313, 379 Welten, P. 353, 355, 372 Wensinck, A..J. 31 Westenholz, J.G. 109, 446 de Wette, 14, 60 Widengren, G. 17, 18, 19, 29, 30, 35, 54 Wiener, N. 169, 187 Willi, Th. 289 Williamson, H.G.M. 147, 202, 204, 207, 222, 223, 228, 259, 281, 288, 298, 328 Wilson, R.R. 228, 376, 382, 384, 386, 389, 421 Winckler, H. 347, 348, 349, 350, 360



Wiseman, D.J. 355 Wolff, H.W. 38, 46, 140, 230 Wright, G.E. 99, 117, 120, 202, 369, 370, 377 Wyatt, N. 66 Yadin, Y. 23, 339, 340, 353, 356, 368, 371, 393, 401, 463 Yardeni, A. 69, 89 Yaron, R. 113, 341, 342 Yeivin, S. 247, 370, 396 Yellin, J. 353 Zaccagnini, C. 360 Zadok, R. 362, 363 Zakovitch, Y. 288 Zevit, Z. 68 Zimhoni, O. 351, 369 Zimmerli, W. 41 Zobel, H.-J. 148, 149



Selected Subject Index Aaron, 93, 180, 192, 276, 277, 278 Abdi-Hepa, 107 Abel, 140 Abiathar, 106 Abijah, 207, 210, 217, 220, 242, 249, 250, 255, 256, 262, 265, 267, 272, 289, 292, 303 Abimelek, 34, 77, 164, 180, 183, 388 Abinoam, 151, 199 Abner, 279, 280, 326, 462 Abraham, 13, 22, 30, 103, 118, 184, 189, 234, 275, 276, 277, 278, 323, 324, 339, 462, 472 Absalom, 78, 171, 172, 311, 416 Achaios, 5 Adad, 116 Adoraim, 372 Adoram, 66 Adullam, 368 Aeschylus, 452, 458 Aetius, 435, 436, 437, 439, 452, 458 Ahab, 36, 58, 68, 108, 122, 231, 233, 234, 238, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 252, 253, 254, 262, 263, 264, 266, 270, 271, 273, 275, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 292, 293, 295, 301, 303, 308, 318, 324, 329, 332 Ahaz, 60, 78, 80, 84, 85, 86, 92, 138, 208, 210, 219, 221, 222, 234, 242, 243, 245, 246, 249, 250, 255, 256, 257, 262, 263, 265, 269, 272, 290, 292, 293, 300, 301, 303, 304, 305, 307, 308, 310, 315, 346, 348, 351, 355, 374, 394, 398, 400, 402, 414, 416, 440, 474, 475 Ahaziah, 221, 234, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 245, 246, 250, 252, 253, 262, 263, 264, 268, 269, 271, 285, 290, 292, 303, 304, 315, 332, 394 Ahazyahu, 269, 270



Ahijah of Shiloh, 35, 36 Ain Shems, 366, 367, 369, 370, 377 Akhenaten, 117 Amaleq, 150, 151, 199 Amasis, 103 Amaziah, 86, 111, 136, 207, 208, 220, 221, 236, 237, 238, 239, 241, 245, 246, 250, 257, 262, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 271, 272, 289, 304, 307, 332, 342, 345, 346 Ammon (Ammonites), 17, 25, 31, 43, 60, 62, 63, 78, 80, 92, 118, 208, 239, 241, 245, 246, 247, 250, 255, 256, 262, 263, 265, 266, 269, 287, 288, 289, 290, 292, 300, 301, 306, 307, 309, 400 Amorites, 50, 58, 77, 183, 256, 262, 263, 276, 292, 295, 412 Anathoth, 44, 63 Anatyahu, 69 Anaximander, 192, 423, 434, 435, 436, 437, 438, 439, 440, 441, 445, 450, 474 Anaximenes, 436, 437, 438, 439, 440, 441, 445, 446, 450, 474 Arad, 68, 71, 81, 87, 88, 89, 351, 353, 355, 356, 357, 369, 371, 379, 380, 394, 395, 396, 399, 401, 403, 411 Aram (Arameans), 30, 36, 37, 78, 80, 207, 216, 374, 394, 402, 417, 472 Aravah, 393 Aristotle, 437, 451, 452, 458 ark, 31, 45, 80, 124, 205, 206 Aroer, 351, 355, 371, 393, 395, 403, 465 Artaxerxes, 89 Arubas, 395 Asa, 41, 61, 207, 210, 219, 220, 221, 224, 226, 234, 243, 249, 250, 255,

Subject Index

549

 257, 258, 265, 266, 267, 269, 270, 271, 272, 288, 289, 303, 323 Ashdod, 347, 349, 350, 354, 365, 370, 377, 381, 396 Asher, 149, 152, 153, 199 Asherah, 23, 24, 33, 37, 48, 57, 61, 64, 67, 68, 69, 81, 82, 83, 93, 116, 133, 135, 263, 292, 293, 310, 378, 468, 472, 475 asherah, 61, 62, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 82, 83, 84, 87, 93, 312, 460, 463, 464, 468, 469, 471 Asherat Yhwh, 69 Asherot, 70 Ashkelon, 347, 349, 350, 355, 365, 370, 377, 381, 453, 476 Ashtar Chemosh, 26, 69, 73 Ashtarot, 58, 63, 70, 82, 378, 399, 472 Ashtoret, 57, 58, 62, 63, 68, 76, 79, 81, 82, 83, 311 Ashurbanipal, 134, 141, 363, 397, 420, 421 Asshur, 18, 25, 29, 32, 38, 107, 115, 325, 360, 362, 366, 420, 466 Assyria (Assyrians), 37, 41, 43, 73, 88, 106, 115, 119, 121, 137, 188, 210, 221, 280, 295, 305, 325, 326, 327, 346, 347, 348, 349, 350, 353, 354, 355, 360, 362, 363, 364, 365, 369, 373, 375, 376, 378, 381, 392, 393, 394, 397, 398, 410, 412, 417, 418, 419, 420, 441, 442, 446, 459, 460, 465, 474, 476, 477 Astarte, 57, 63, 69, 83 Aten, 31, 117 Athaliah, 36, 210, 211 Athenaeus, 451 Athiratu Yammi, 69 Athtar, 26 Axial Age, 3, 50, 53 Ayalon, 352, 368, 369 Azariah, 236, 237, 250, 303, 347 Azekah, 351, 368 Baal Addir, 64 Baal Berit, 77 Baal Berith, 64 Baal Hammon, 64 Baal Hermon, 64 Baal Lebanon, 64



Baal mgnm, 64 Baal Rosh, 64 Baal ৡemed, 64 Baal Shamem, 61, 64, 95, 96 Baal Zaphon, 64 Baal Zebub, 67 Baal, 24, 25, 28, 32, 36, 37, 38, 41, 57, 61, 64, 65, 66, 75, 77, 95, 96, 116, 119, 120, 133, 135, 293, 326, 368, 397, 416, 472 Baal (s), 25, 33, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 49, 57, 58, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 90, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 116, 252, 263, 286, 310, 378, 399, 414, 416, 443, 453, 456, 464, 467, 468, 472 Baaloth, 63 Baasha, 223, 242, 243, 244, 252, 253, 264, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 318 Baraq, 148, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 176, 179, 199 Bathsheba, 78, 95, 109, 235, 416 Beersheba, 84, 87, 223, 351, 352, 353, 355, 356, 357, 370, 371, 379, 395, 399, 400, 401, 402, 403, 463 Bigfoot, 228 Berossus, 435 Beth Ashtarot, 63 Beth Horon, 368 Beth Shean, 23, 63 Beth Shemesh, 60, 66, 369, 370, 372, 377, 382, 397 “the blood of innocents,” 85, 136, 310, 313, 314, 328, 329, 333, 467 Beth Zur, 367, 372, 397 Bethel, 19, 33, 35, 40, 48, 58, 68, 80, 86, 194, 195, 223, 259, 291, 294, 312, 354, 366, 393, 401, 402, 460, 461, 462, 464, 465, 469 Bit Agusi, 68 Carian Zeus, 91, 125 Carthage, 83, 140, 417 Chemosh, 24, 26, 32, 36, 39, 48, 57, 62, 63, 92, 95, 96, 216 cherubim, 31, 86, 398, 400, 401, 438, 439, 440, 445, 474

550 

Subject Index

Chronicler, 43, 86, 147, 183, 188, 189, 190, 192, 196, 230, 248, 249, 260, 288, 289, 290, 291, 298, 299, 300, 304, 305, 307, 308, 309, 313, 322, 327, 328, 332, 333, 336, 354, 380, 468, 469 Cicero, 438, 452, 458 Court History, 227, 388 Covenant Code, 26, 126, 137, 193, 341, 345, 449 Croesus, 326, 336 Cyrus, 46, 220, 226, 299, 326 Dagon, 38, 79, 81, 369 Damascus, 37, 80, 207, 247, 271, 347, 359, 374, 393, 395, 404, 405, 420 daughters of Zelophehad, 342 David, 7, 22, 25, 33, 62, 65, 78, 101, 103, 108, 109, 171, 172, 179, 180, 183, 188, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 226, 227, 228, 230, 234, 235, 236, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 262, 272, 279, 290, 291, 294, 298, 305, 306, 308, 310, 311, 312, 313, 315, 323, 324, 326, 339, 345, 351, 352, 390, 409, 411, 416, 444, 448, 460, 461, 462, 473, 475 Deborah, 146, 151, 152, 153, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 166, 173, 174, 176, 183, 185, 199, 340, 462 Decalogue, 30, 105, 121, 193, 297, 343, 344, 449 Deir Alla, 25, 67, 79, 133 Demeter, 82, 379 Deutero-Isaiah, 17, 18, 27, 32, 33, 46, 47, 51, 75, 101, 103, 296, 336, 429, 439, 441, 448, 450, 451, 453, 456, 458, 477 Deuteronomistic History, 22, 58, 60, 61, 90, 96, 113, 123, 132, 138, 140, 163, 225, 226228, 229, 231, 248, 249, 251, 260, 261, 288, 289, 290, 291, 294, 296, 297, 298, 309, 311, 318, 334, 342, 349, 381, 411, 412, 415, 419, 423 Diogenes Laertius, 451, 452, 458 doxographers, 435, 436



Dtr(hez), 230, 231, 259 Dtr(jos), 230, 231 Dtr(x), 230, 231 Dtr1, 37, 231, 259, 261, 262, 296, 310, 313, 314, 332 DtrH, 7, 60, 69, 75, 78, 87, 92, 94, 95, 123, 128, 132, 141, 229, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 238, 243, 245, 248, 253, 254, 258, 262, 263, 264, 265, 271, 274, 275, 278, 281, 282, 283, 288, 289, 290, 291, 293, 296, 311, 316, 317, 318, 319, 321, 322, 324, 326, 328, 331, 332, 333, 334, 417, 444, 471, 472 Duma, 372 Dus, J. 49 E(Dtr)x, 60, 230, 246, 249, 261, 266, 268, 272, 280, 281, 284, 288, 290, 292, 296, 297, 311, 314, 315, 321, 326, 330, 332, 333, 334, 335 eclipse, 427, 434, 441, 444, 453, 474, 477 Elijah, 13, 36, 37, 61, 96, 218, 285, 286, 287, 303 Edom (Edomite), 17, 25, 31, 67, 86, 118, 138, 178, 207, 208, 216, 236, 237, 265, 268, 304, 355, 356, 371, 392, 394, 395, 403 Elisha, 13, 36, 37, 38, 61, 237, 267, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 298 Eilat, 236, 237, 238, 348, 371, 394 Ein Gedi, 367, 433 El Berith, 64 El of the Covenant, 27 El Shadday, 32, 67, 79 El, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 38, 63, 65, 66, 67, 90, 92, 93, 118, 119, 137, 326, 370, 428, 433, 458 Elah, 240, 241, 252, 253, 264, 269, 270, 271 Elam, 134, 350, 360, 364 Elephantine, 18, 19, 39, 40, 82, 89, 125 Elqunirsa, 65 Eltolad, 403 Elyaqim, 369 Elyon, 32, 63, 93 Enuma Anu Enlil, 427, 433 Enuma Elish, 18, 21, 27, 28, 76, 116, 127, 427, 433, 439, 442, 454

Subject Index

551

 Esarhaddon, 70, 76, 360, 363, 420, 433, 477 Eshbaal, 41, 94 Eshmun, 67, 83 Eshtaol, 368 Eshtemoa, 372 Ethbaal, 36, 41 Eusebius, 137, 139, 140, 433, 458 Fast of Gedaliah, 121 First Isaiah, 75, 121, 350 Gareb, 455 Gath, 351, 365, 368, 370 Gaza, 81, 347, 355, 363, 365, 370, 377, 381 Gersonides, 305, 313, 314, 316, 321, 324 Gezer, 354, 368, 370, 380, 397 Gibbethon, 369, 370 Gibeon, 185, 206, 215, 366, 368, 385, 395, 406 Gilead, 152, 153, 164, 199, 275, 282, 283 Gilgal, 68, 80, 188 Gilula, 23 H(Dtr), 64, 77, 94, 96, 232, 249, 264, 265, 276, 284, 291, 292, 314, 330, 332, 335 H(Dtr)hez, 246, 263, 266, 283, 284, 294, 295 H(Dtr)jos, 7, 250, 251, 255, 263, 266, 272, 281, 284, 287, 288, 290, 292, 294, 295 Hadad, 116, 216, 236 Haddu, 25, 28, 30, 33, 38, 40, 57, 61, 66, 116, 118, 120 Hamath, 123, 271, 300, 347, 359 hamula, 386, 390, 391 Hanan, son of Hilqiyahu, 414 Hanukkah, 121 Har Hammashhit, 462 Haran, 20, 109, 341 Haroshet Goyim, 160 Hazor, 22, 157, 159, 160, 161, 176 “heavens of the heavens”, 428, 439, 447, 457, 458 Hebron, 159, 205, 372, 462 Hecateus, 476



Heracleitus, 51, 53, 92, 194, 195, 196, 439, 440, 441, 443, 450, 451, 453, 459, 477 Herodotus, 5, 91, 103, 173, 196, 280, 281, 325, 326, 327, 333, 396, 453, 477 Hesiod, 51, 192, 422, 441, 451 Hezekiah, 7, 23, 24, 41, 42, 43, 44, 52, 60, 62, 78, 86, 87, 88, 89, 95, 98, 110, 124, 196, 202, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 213, 217, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 229, 231, 232, 234, 242, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 265, 266, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 279, 282, 283, 285, 287, 288, 289, 290, 292, 293, 294, 295, 298, 300, 301, 302, 305, 307, 308, 311, 318, 321, 322, 323, 324, 326, 348, 349, 350, 351, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 361, 363, 364, 365, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371, 372, 373, 374, 376, 377, 379, 380, 381, 391, 392, 397, 398, 399, 400, 401, 402, 403, 404, 406, 407, 408, 410, 411, 412, 413, 414, 415, 416, 417, 419, 421, 424, 437, 458, 460, 461, 463, 473, 474, 475 high places, 48, 58, 62, 72, 73, 74, 77, 78, 80, 84, 85, 86, 93, 101, 134, 190, 220, 252, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 262, 264, 276, 281, 291, 292, 293, 294, 295, 301, 304, 306, 310, 312, 314, 356, 357, 398, 400, 401, 402, 411, 419, 454, 459, 460, 461, 462, 463, 464, 465, 467, 468, 469, 470, 472 Hippolytus, 435, 436, 437, 438, 440, 451, 458 Hiram, 5, 183, 205, 211, 215, 394, 419 Holiness Code, 126 Homer, 51, 190, 192, 195, 196, 451 ণorvat Qitmit, 394 ণorvat Rosh Zayit, 369 ণorvat Uzza, 393, 394, 397 Host (Host of Heaven), 24, 39, 40, 43, 44, 47, 50, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 67, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 79, 80, 84, 85, 87, 90, 91, 92, 93, 96, 125, 128, 132,

552 

Subject Index

136, 162, 259, 263, 293, 310, 400, 411, 414, 416, 417, 420, 428, 429, 434, 447, 448, 449, 456, 464, 467, 472 Huldah, 84, 229, 232, 273, 274, 275, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 284, 290, 299, 301, 306, 307, 308, 309, 316, 318, 319, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 331, 332, 333, 335 Ikausu, 81 incense altars, 81, 86, 87, 88, 89, 379, 380, 396, 399 incense burning, 62, 72, 74, 78, 79, 80, 84, 85, 86, 88, 90, 400, 416 inheritance, 16, 101, 291, 329, 382, 383, 391 “innocent blood”, 85, 136, 310, 313, 314, 328, 329, 333, 467 Isaac, 101, 118, 137, 184, 202, 234, 276, 277 Ishbaal, 41, 65, 159, 298, 416, 462 Ishtar of Arbela, 70, 116, 125 Ishtar of Nineveh, 70, 116 Ishtar, 70, 82, 466 Izbet Sartah, 383, 387 Jabin, 157, 158, 159, 160, 166 Jacob, 16, 66, 101, 103, 118, 131, 181, 305, 459 Jael, 154, 155, 158, 159, 161, 166 Jebel Batin al-Hawa, 462 Jedediah, 103 Jehoahaz, 239, 241, 243, 248, 250, 253, 254, 260, 261, 264, 268, 269, 270, 271, 275, 284, 288, 289, 300, 323, 330 Jehoiachin, 239, 241, 250, 260, 268, 269, 300, 323, 330, 343 Jehoiada, 210, 220, 257, 290, 304 Jehoiakim, 122, 237, 246, 247, 250, 260, 261, 267, 269, 275, 289, 300, 301, 306, 314, 315, 323, 329, 330, 334 Jehoram, 208, 219, 220, 234, 236, 240, 241, 243, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 264, 268, 270, 271, 284, 286, 289, 292, 301, 303, 306, 307, 308, 311, 315



Jehoshaphat, 36, 41, 207, 208, 210, 220, 224, 226, 242, 243, 250, 255, 256, 257, 265, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 282, 284, 289, 298, 303, 306, 308, 394, 461 Jehu, 36, 37, 38, 48, 58, 79, 96, 223, 237, 243, 252, 253, 254, 264, 266, 267, 268, 270, 271, 285, 286, 304, 318 Jephthah, 26, 92, 103, 109, 163, 181 Jericho, 188, 368, 393 Jeroboam, 5, 31, 33, 35, 37, 58, 79, 84, 194, 207, 210, 217, 223, 232, 242, 243, 244, 251, 252, 253, 254, 258, 259, 264, 265, 267, 268, 270, 271, 273, 282, 291, 294, 298, 303, 309, 311, 312, 315, 318, 331, 342, 394, 401, 419, 438, 464, 465 Jerubbaal, 65, 157, 164, 180, 416 Jeshurun, 29, 66 Jesse, 41, 94, 180, 222, 390 Jesus, 53, 103, 114, 122, 134, 162, 185, 194, 405 Jezebel, 36, 58, 66, 96, 224, 252, 285, 286, 287 Joab, 275, 279, 280, 324, 326 Joash, 41, 208, 210, 220, 221, 236, 237, 238, 257, 262, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 289, 304, 307, 391 Joram, 242, 258, 262, 263, 265, 269, 272, 285 Josephus, 89, 181, 247, 249, 280, 281, 301, 325, 326, 364, 469 Josiah, 7, 13, 24, 34, 36, 37, 39, 42, 43, 44, 47, 49, 50, 52, 54, 58, 60, 62, 71, 80, 84, 87, 88, 89, 96, 98, 106, 113, 132, 134, 138, 139, 140, 196, 202, 203, 211, 216, 220, 221, 223, 225, 229, 231, 232, 239, 241, 245, 246, 247, 250, 251, 253, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 300, 301, 302, 304, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 330, 331, 332,

Subject Index

553

 333, 334, 335, 343, 352, 353, 354, 356, 357, 367, 371, 379, 394, 396, 398, 399, 400, 401, 402, 403, 404, 407, 409, 410, 411, 412, 415, 416, 417, 419, 437, 447, 455, 460, 461, 463, 464, 465, 466, 467, 468, 469, 470, 471, 473, 475 Jotham, 103, 108, 109, 207, 208, 221, 242, 243, 250, 257, 265, 267, 268, 269, 272 Karatepe, 65 Keret, 118 Khirbet el-Burj, 368 Khirbet el-Kom, 23, 404, 475 Khirbet el-Marajim, 372 Khirbet el-Qom, 67, 68 Khirbet Fuqeiqis, 372 Khirbet Gharreh, 355, 371, Khirbet Kefira, 368 Kition, 83 Kingu, 28 Kronos, 83, 137 Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, 23, 24, 31, 37, 39, 66, 67, 125, 475 Lachish, 23, 64, 82, 89, 315, 332, 351, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357, 358, 362, 364, 365, 366, 367, 368, 369, 370, 372, 373, 379, 386, 392, 396, 397, 399, 403, 411 Lahav, 23, 355 Law of the King, 112 Leah, 383, 385 Leviathan, 21, 121 Levites, 34, 42, 75, 80, 205, 223, 298, 401, 461, 467 LMLK jars, 138, 205, 349, 350, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 366, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371, 372, 381, 403, 474 Lord of Hosts, 124 Lord of the Heavens, 82, 95 Maacah the daughter of Abishalom, 249 Madagascar, 472 Mahdi, 470, 478, 479 Manasseh, 5, 24, 41, 43, 60, 79, 80, 93, 136, 138, 210, 221, 245, 246, 247, 249, 250, 255, 256, 259, 260, 262, 263, 265, 269, 272, 275, 282, 287,



288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 296, 297, 298, 300, 301, 305, 306, 307, 309, 310, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 321, 323, 327, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 334, 335, 342, 343, 368, 380, 381, 384, 392, 393, 395, 396, 397, 398, 399, 400, 402, 403, 404, 407, 408, 410, 467, 468, 469, 473 Marduk, 18, 25, 26, 28, 29, 32, 38, 76, 93, 106, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120, 127 Maresha, 351, 368 Megiddo, 31, 152, 157, 199, 321, 325, 326, 332, 352, 437 Melqart, 25, 26, 39, 40, 61 Menahem, 242, 244, 253, 254, 264, 267, 268, 270, 271 Mephiboshet, 172 Mercury (planet), 92, 439 Merenptah Stela, 108 Meribbaal, 65, 172, 416 Merodach-Baladan, 29, 349, 359, 360 Mesad Hashavyahu, 67, 396, 403 Mesha, 25, 26, 36, 39, 69, 73, 108, 136, 364, 465 Micaiah, 46, 122, 140, 234, 249, 275, 282, 284, 303, 324 Michmash, 368, 393 Milcom, 32, 57, 62, 63, 76, 95, 96 Moab, 17, 25, 26, 31, 62, 63, 78, 79, 92, 93, 118, 178, 200, 207, 208, 394, 467 Molech, 22, 60, 62, 76, 138, 216 Monotheism, 5, 13, 18, 30, 36, 82, 98, 116, 117, 134, 198, 357, 400, 401, 415, 416, 419, 424, 476 Moses, 13, 24, 27, 53, 93, 96, 103, 109, 118, 126, 131, 149, 161, 179, 180, 184, 206, 235, 238, 276, 277, 278, 289, 291, 310, 311, 313, 323, 400, 421, 431, 449 Mot, 21, 28, 120, 464 Mount Ebal, 188, 462 Mount Gerizim, 188 Mount of Olives, 62, 76, 78, 400, 462 Nabonidus, 18, 42, 52, 109, 117, 141, 248, 394, 419, 424, 477 Naboth, 112, 286, 287 Nabu-nasir, 433

554 

Subject Index

Nadab, 240, 241, 252, 253, 264, 267, 268, 270, 271 Naphtali, 148, 152, 153, 156, 158, 173, 176, 199, 468 Nathan, 103, 108, 112, 223, 235 Nebuchadrezzar, 299, 305, 323, 325, 329, 477 Necho, 220, 266, 268, 280, 281, 295, 300, 306, 307, 316, 321, 322, 325, 326, 327, 331, 332, 333, 394 necromancy, 24, 34, 122, 456, 459, 460, 466 Nehushtan, 33, 41, 84, 398, 400, 474 Odysseus, 119, 190 Omri, 108, 223, 252, 253, 264, 269, 270, 271, 303, 318 Omrides, 36, 37, 93, 243, 249, 250, 263, 283, 284, 285, 292, 298, 303, 304 Orly, 228 Othniel, 64 Padi, 350, 354 Passover, 42, 120, 121, 122, 222, 223, 306, 313, 327, 468, 469 Pekah, 232, 240, 241, 250, 251, 253, 254, 255, 264, 270, 271 Pekahiah, 240, 241, 253, 254, 264, 270 Peloponnesian War, 350 Pericles, 5, 9, 350, 357, 358, 364 Pherekydes, 192 Philistia (Philistines), 5, 26, 30, 33, 81, 83, 78, 79, 81, 82, 141, 178, 188, 200, 205, 206, 208, 348, 349, 354, 363, 365, 368, 369, 370, 377, 379, 381, 392, 393, 395, 396, 404, 416, 462 Philo of Byblos, 137, 441, 452 Phoenicia (Phoenicians) 64, 78, 81, 83, 140, 141, 349, 381, 417 “pitched the heavens”, 428, 429, 450, 456 Plato, 191, 195, 196, 423, 436, 452 Pliny, 436 Plutarch, 435, 437, 451 Polybius, 358, 435 Popeye the Sailor-Man, 123 Porphyry, 137, 139, 140 Poseidon, 119 Priestly Code, 20



prostitutes, 86, 268, 301 Pseudo-Plutarch, 437, 438 Purim, 121 Qadesh Barnea, 351, 371, 393, 403 Qarqar, 359 Qedesh, 154, 156, 157, 158, 159 Qimতi, 182, 188, 314, 316, 321 Qiryath Yearim, 386, 368 Qishon, 160 Queen Mother, 230, 232, 248, 249, 250, 258, 265, 288, 300 Queen of Heaven, 23, 58, 59, 60, 72, 74, 76, 79, 82, 83, 85, 87, 95 Qumran, 16, 100, 281, 395, 411 Rabshakh, 357 Rachel, 24, 101, 156, 276, 383, 385, 462, 466 Rahab, 21, 78, 416, 457 Rahmani, 247, 408 Rak, 405 Ramat Rahel, 23, 367, 380 Ramoth-Gilead, 282 Raphia, 349, 350, 359, 364 Rashi, 214, 314, 316, 321, 464 Rassam cylinder, 362, 363, 377 Raven, 52 Reed Sea, 121, 161, 167, 178, 179 Rehoboam, 66, 208, 217, 220, 221, 222, 232, 242, 243, 250, 251, 255, 256, 258, 261, 262, 265, 267, 268, 269, 272, 282, 292, 298, 303, 311, 352 Rephaim, 182, 472 Reuben, 150, 152, 153, 199, 364 Rezin, 216, 359, 419 Rib-Addi, 69, 181 Risdon, 365, 386 Rukibtu, 350 Sabbath, 45, 121, 135, 136, 139, 431 sacrifice (animal), 79, 88, 139, 417 sacrifice (infant/child), 72, 73, 78, 79, 80, 83, 85, 86, 93, 132, 134, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 262, 407, 417 sacrifice (meat), 79, 80, 84, 90 Sakkunyaton, 28, 137, 140, 141, 433, 441 Salem, 35, 181, 195

Subject Index

555

 Samaria, 22, 41, 66, 68, 70, 76, 89, 91, 96, 234, 242, 243, 280, 283, 285, 286, 312, 316, 329, 347, 348, 354, 361, 363, 364, 366, 368, 372, 384, 393, 395, 396, 401, 460, 461, 463, 471 Samarian exile, 91 Sanballat, 89 Sarepta, 67, 83 Sargon, 5, 91, 107, 109, 123, 347, 348, 349, 350, 355, 359, 360, 361, 362, 363, 364, 369, 370, 371, 374, 380, 393, 420, 446, 459 Sarna, 163, 173, 182, 213 Saturn (planet), 137 Saul, 14, 24, 25, 33, 34, 48, 65, 78, 103, 109, 204, 205, 206, 222, 298, 367, 390, 416 Second Isaiah, 47, 117, 121, 130, 431, 433, 441 Seleucids, 121 Sennacherib, 41, 43, 78, 82, 89, 115, 210, 280, 290, 305, 314, 317, 318, 339, 347, 349, 350, 352, 353, 354, 355, 357, 358, 359, 360, 361, 362, 363, 364, 365, 366, 367, 368, 370, 371, 372, 373, 374, 375, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381, 391, 392, 393, 395, 397, 398, 399, 404, 406, 415, 416, 420, 424, 459 seraphim, 31, 400, 474 Shaalbim, 368 Shaddayim, 67 Shad-rapa’, 67 Shallum, 240, 241, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272 Shalmaneser III, 108, 280, 347, 358, 359, 364 Shamash, 116 Shamshi-Ilu, 8 Shaphan, 343 Sharruludari, 349, 350 Shechem, 27, 181, 188, 386, 388, 462 Shevuot, 120 Shiloh, 149, 179, 201, 339, 351, 352, 365, 383, 393, 411 Shishak, 280, 301, 303, 307 Sibitti, 95 Sidon, 63, 78, 347, 349 Sidonians, 62, 63, 81, 82



Sidqa, 349, 350, 370 Siloam, 351, 405, 406 Simplicius, 438 Sin of Harran, 394 Sin, 299, 418, 476 sins of the fathers, 329, 340 Sisera, 145, 146, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 166, 173, 174, 175, 176, 180, 200, 428 Sochoh, 368 sodomy, 555 Solomon, 22, 24, 31, 34, 35, 36, 48, 58, 62, 63, 75, 76, 78, 79, 91, 92, 95, 96, 103, 109, 113, 124, 172, 183, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 232, 235, 236, 242, 243, 244, 255, 257, 258, 259, 260, 262, 265, 268, 269, 270, 272, 282, 294, 298, 307, 309, 311, 313, 323, 324, 331, 345, 394, 400, 411, 419, 461, 462, 463, 464, 465, 469 Song of Deborah, 105, 145, 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 165, 167, 176, 384 Song of Songs, 25 Song of the Sea, 162, 178 sons of El, 92, 28 Sparta, 350 St. Etienne, 405 stars, 4, 27, 39, 47, 61, 90, 91, 93, 135, 140, 411, 416, 428, 429, 431, 432, 433, 435, 436, 437, 439, 440, 441, 442, 443, 445, 447, 449, 450, 451, 453, 455, 456, 457, 458, 468, 472, 474, 475, 476 Sukkot, 120 Syro-Ephraimite War, 265, 266, 267, 268, 346, 351, 374, 375, 376, 398 Tamar, 171 Tammuz, 69, 471 Tannit, 82, 83 Tekoa, 75, 388 Tel ‘Eton, 351, 352, 369, 372, 397 Tel ‘Ira, 355, 371, 390, 393, 395, 403 Tel Batashi, 351, 354, 355, 357, 365, 369, 370, 377, 379, 381

556 

Subject Index

Tel Dan, 35, 40, 48, 58, 67, 68, 108, 150, 152, 182, 199, 223, 312, 384, 401, 402, 461 Tel ‘Erani, 370, 396 Tel Goren, 393, 403 Tel Malhata, 371, 395, 396 Tel Masos, 382, 393, 396, 403 Tel Melat, 369 Tel Miqne (Ekron), 4, 5, 67, 68, 69, 81, 82, 83, 84, 87, 132, 350, 354, 363, 365, 369, 370, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381, 396, 399, 403, 453, 476 Tel Rehov, 4 Tel Sera‘, 380, 395 Tell ‘Eton, 352, 369, 404 Tell Beit Mirsim, 351, 352, 355, 366, 369, 371, 372, 382, 383, 386, 403 Tell Bornat, 368 Tell el-Far‫ޏ‬ah, 352, 382 Tell el-Ful, 367, 372 Tell el-Hesi , 351, 355, 370, 392, 396 Tell Jemme, 81, 379, 380 Tell en-Nasbeh, 351, 352, 366, 380, 382, 396, 397 Tell esh-Shuqf, 355 Tell Halif, 369, 371, 372 Tell Judeideh, 368 Tell Qasile, 83 Tell Zayit, 370 Teman, 66, 68, 125 Thales, 434, 441, 444, 446, 450, 453, 474, 477 Theodoret, 452, 458 Theophrastus, 137, 139 Thucydides, 5, 349, 358, 364, 365 Tiamat, 28, 120 Tibni, 243, 270 Tiglath-Pileser III, 5, 210, 347, 359, 361, 363, 374, 394 Timnah, 83, 354, 370, 377, 379 Tirzah, 58, 242 Tophet, 39, 73, 74, 76, 85, 134, 136, 138, 139, 310, 334, 463, 464, 466, 467, 468, 470 Torah, 44, 105, 132, 133, 134, 136, 147, 197, 289, 308, 310, 316, 319, 321, 322, 327, 328, 330, 333, 336, 430 Trito-Isaiah, 29, 440, 451 Tyre, 26, 36, 183, 206, 397, 419



Ugarit, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 33, 39, 65, 93, 118 Uriah, 68, 112, 314 Uriahu, 23, 68 Uzziah, 207, 208, 221, 226, 234, 236, 237, 242, 257, 265, 267, 289, 302, 303, 323, 394 Valley of ben-Hinnom, 73, 74, 84, 85, 138 Venus (planet), 92, 427 Venus Tablets of Ammisaduqa, 427 Xenophanes, 51, 54, 191, 192, 194, 195, 196, 423, 435, 436, 437, 440, 441, 443, 448, 450, 451, 452, 453, 454, 456, 457, 458, 459, 474, 475, 476, 477 Yamm, 21, 28 Yavneh, 114 Yedaniah, 89 Yehud, 89, 202 Yhwh Sebaoth, 92 Yhwh Elohim, 91 Yhwh of Hosts, 91, 94, 125, 411 Yhwh of Samaria, 125 Yohanan, 89 Zabdi, 382, 384 Zadok, 33, 362, 363 Zanoah, 368 Zebulun, 148, 149, 151, 152, 153, 156, 158, 173, 176, 199 Zedekiah, 46, 122, 239, 241, 250, 260, 261, 268, 269, 299, 301, 302, 304, 306, 307, 308, 314, 315, 323, 324, 328, 330, 332 Zerah, 207, 382 Zeus Stratios, 91 Zeus, 26, 53, 118 Zeus-Amun, 26 Zimri, 243, 252, 253, 264, 266, 269, 270, 271, 272, 387 Zobel, 148, 149 Zorah, 368