Studies in Antiquity
King David
Sacred and Secular in Biblical Times
E Bruce Brooks
The rise of the Kingdom was the decisive event in the history of the ancient Hebrews, and its fall was their great catastrophe: it meant the failure of the promise of God to David, and the end of the worldly aspirations of the people of Judah. The Biblical texts which record these events were written over centuries, and together, they reveal a process of continual growth and doctrinal adjustment. This book follows those changes, both in in social forms (increasing emphasis on law, with an improved social status for women) and in doctrine (the ongoing conflict between the priestly and the kingly interest, the sacred and the secular). It follows the Promise Narrative, which links the first contacts with the Land of Canaan to the later Conquest. Canaan itself, the people who were there first, figure prominently.
Many regard the Pentateuch texts as post-Exilic. The finding of this book is that some texts or parts of texts (the Miracles in Egypt, at the beginning of Exodus) date from before the Kingship; others anticipate the Kingship (the Tabernacle instructions at the end of Exodus anticipate Solomon's Temple); others reflect the Exile (Kings is a theological analysis of how the sins of the kings caused it); and still others (Chronicles) express the hopes of a renewed Kingship that were inspired by the Return, The loss of faith (Job) and the emergence of a different kind of faith (Jonah) bring the book to a close.
To untangle these texts, the standard methods of philology are used, The simplest of these is to distinguish between earlier and later versions of a story. Thus, the Conquest is told in two incompatible ways (one textual, the other archaeological); which is nearer to what actually happened? Or at a more modest level, the killing of Goliath (pictured above; the first act attributed to the future King David) occurs not in one, not in two, and not in three versions, but in seven versions. Why seven? And who benefits from each stage of that process: David, or somebody else?
This book is not an Introduction to the Old Testament. The passages it does include are touched on only briefly; the discussion must be suggestive rather than exhaustive. What it intends to suggest is a what a historical reading of the Bible would look like. We hope to see, in some detail, what was going on. What were these people up to? Out of what materials did they construct, and then reconstruct, and then update, their stories? These are the questions on which we focus. At the end, we hope to have seen something of the more modest, and more complex, history that lies behind the present Biblical story.
Front Matter
Orientation, 11
Cover
Canaanite Tradition, 33
The Northern Patriarchs, 49
Out of Egypt, 83
The Laws of Exodus, 97
Leviticus and Numbers, 111
Deuteronomy, 133
Conquest, 163
Three Kings, 183
Two Kingdoms, 205
Exile and Return, 221
The Parting of the Ways, 243
End Matter, 267
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