Chapter 30. Kings and Prophets: Monarchy, the Two Kingdoms and the Deuteronomic Revolution

Between about 1000 and 586 BCE the highland tribes of chapter 29 became first a kingdom, then two rival kingdoms, and finally a single surviving Judah whose priests and scribes wrote the core of the Hebrew Bible. This is the period in which religion and state merged most tightly in ancient Israel. The god of the dynasty became the god of the nation. Prophets attacked kings in the name of that god. A king, Josiah, made “Yahweh alone” state law on the basis of a book found in the Temple. The sources in the library disagree sharply over how much of the biblical account of this period is history and how much is the ideology of the scribes who wrote it. This chapter covers the archaeology, the political history, the prophetic movement, the reform of 622/621 BCE and the theories of how the Bible was written, and sets critical, traditional and radical readings side by side.

From Confederacy to Monarchy

J. Moore’s compact summary gives the conventional frame. “The basic source for the early history of the Hebrew tribes is the Old Testament, plus a little information from archaeology and the records of neighboring people.” The tribes, pressed by the Philistines (who “proved to be far better warriors than the Canaanites or the Hebrews—a major reason being that their swords and spears were made of iron”), turned to kingship. The united kingdom then split after Solomon. Later “Assyria conquered the Kingdom of Israel and dispersed its inhabitants, who disappeared from history as organized communities”, and Babylon ended Judah [Moore, From Genesis to Genetics, #27071, “Hebrew Political History and Biblical Source Criticism”]. Isidor Epstein, writing from inside Jewish tradition, describes the period of the Judges as a tribal federation “too frail to survive Joshua”, when “every man did what was right in his own eyes” (Judg 17:6) [Epstein, Iudaismul – origini şi istorie, #15429, opening chapters; Romanian, rendered here].

Mazar’s chapter on the United Monarchy (Iron IIA, c. 1000-925 BCE) states the archaeological problem frankly: “the archaeological evidence for the period of the United Monarchy is sparse, often controversial, and it does not provide unequivocal answers”. “The time of Saul hardly finds any expression in the archaeological record.” The only candidate is a fortress corner at Tell el-Ful, identified by Albright as Gibeah, which “may have been part of Saul’s headquarters”. For David, the “stepped structure” above the Gihon spring in Jerusalem, preserved 16.5 m high, is a “tempting” candidate for the “fortress of Zion”. The destructions of Megiddo VIA and Tell Qasile X “can perhaps be attributed to David”. Mazar concludes: “the modest archaeological data from the time of David, although not conforming with the image of an empire founder, is consistent with the biblical accounts, which do not attribute to him any building operations” [Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, #68234, “Archaeology of the Time of Saul and David”]. For Solomon, Mazar admits there are no remains in Jerusalem. He nevertheless argues that the biblical temple plan (tripartite, 50 x 100 cubits, with the pillars Jachin and Boaz) has close prototypes at Ebla, Megiddo, Shechem and Tell Tainat. In his view “the archaeological parallels to the biblical descriptions of Solomon’s buildings … validate the accuracy of these descriptions”. Solomon’s taxation and corvée, under which “the northern tribes were treated unfairly”, made “a division between the northern and southern parts of the kingdom … inevitable” [Mazar, #68234, “The Time of Solomon”; “Solomonic Buildings in Jerusalem”].

Two Kingdoms, Two Cults

Epstein describes the religious side of the split. Jeroboam installed golden calves at the northern and southern ends of his kingdom and “created a new clergy which, in opposition to the hereditary priesthood of the Levites, owed its favours to the king”. He also moved the Feast of Tabernacles, “driven by the same thirst for schism” [Epstein, #15429]. Under Omri (c. 886-874 BCE) Israel “knew a period of prosperity and military strength” and made Judah a near-permanent ally. Under Ahab and Jezebel, however, Baal worship flourished. The people, says Epstein, served both: “others served YHVH and Baal, YHVH being the god who protected the nation, and Baal the territorial god, the one who supplied the harvests and the fruit of the vine” [Epstein, #15429].

The prophet Elijah forced the choice. Epstein quotes his challenge: “If YHVH is God, serve him, but if it is Baal, then serve Baal!” On Carmel the people cried “YHVH is God!” and at Elijah’s command “threw themselves upon the prophets of Baal and killed them”. Yet “in spite of the ‘awakening’ on Carmel, Baalism remained dominant”: Jezebel swore to kill Elijah, who fled to Horeb [Epstein, #15429]. Armstrong tells the same scene: Elijah drenched the altar, called upon Yahweh, “fire fell from heaven”, and the people cried “Yahweh is God”. She adds that the Israelites “continued to worship Yahweh in the ancient shrines which they had inherited from the Canaanites at Beth-El, Shiloh, Hebron, Bethlehem and Dan, where there were frequently pagan ceremonies” [Armstrong, A History of God, #68999, ch.1]. John Day counts Elijah’s “monolatrous challenge” as the first stage in a long process that ran through the classical prophets to the Deuteronomic movement and Josiah [Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan, #86469, ch.8].

The Assyrian conquest of Samaria (722 BCE) changed the balance. Ephraim Stern reports that after the northern deportations the Assyrians “made major efforts to rebuild the entire area and replace its exiled inhabitants with new immigrants” throughout the seventh century. Jerusalem, meanwhile, “expanded considerably, both in area and in the size of its population. It is even claimed that the city’s built-up area equaled that of all the rest of the Judaean settlements combined and that the entire kingdom was but a large polis” [Stern, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible vol. II, #67114, chs on the Assyrian period].

Josiah’s Reform, 622/621 BCE

According to 2 Kings 22-23, the priest Hilkiah found a “Book of the Law” during Temple repairs in Josiah’s eighteenth year. Josiah then purged the Temple and the countryside. Armstrong writes: “It is almost certain that the ‘Book of the Law’ discovered by Hilkiah was the core of the text that we now know as Deuteronomy. There have been various theories about its timely ‘discovery’ by the reforming party. Some have even suggested that it had been secretly written by Hilkiah and Shapan themselves with the assistance of the prophetess Huldah, whom Josiah immediately consulted” [Armstrong, #68999, ch.2]. Day treats the reform as “one significant factor in the decline of the Canaanite deities and the enforcement of monolatry”. Josiah “abolished the high places, centralizing worship in Jerusalem and purifying the cult of Yahweh”, in accordance with a law book “traditionally understood as an early form of our book of Deuteronomy”. Day notes that “some scholars have doubted the historicity of Josiah’s reform” [Day, #86469, ch.8]. The objects removed, listed in 2 Kings 23:4, were “all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven” [Day, #86469, ch.2]. Among them were “the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun” (2 Kgs 23:11). J. Glen Taylor reads these as evidence of a solar form of Yahweh worship inside the Temple, not an Assyrian import [Taylor, Yahweh and the Sun, #66074, ch.2].

William Schniedewind places the reform within the history of scribal communities. “During the First Temple period, there are two defining moments—the Reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah. These Reforms would also shape the spatial aspects of priestly scribes by marginalizing the non–Jerusalem Temple priests” [Schniedewind, Who Really Wrote the Bible, #70950]. On this account, centralising the cult also centralised writing.

The conservative counter-reading is given by Walton and Sandy. The book of Deuteronomy “explicitly claims to preserve oral traditions originating with Moses as well as documents that he generated”, and “there is no reason to doubt that Moses generated such documents or that they were preserved”. That a document surfaced under Josiah does not, on their view, show that it was composed then: “We need not think that a book was written all at once as a literary piece in the time when the traditions it holds originated” [Walton & Sandy, The Lost World of Scripture, #65622, Part 1].

How the Books Were Written: J, E, D, P and the Deuteronomistic History

The critical framework behind most of these sources is the documentary hypothesis. Marc Zvi Brettler explains: “The so-called documentary hypothesis of the Torah discerns at least four major sources: J (Yahwist), E (Elohist), D (Deuteronomist), and P (Priestly).” His example is the call of Moses: “The classic source-critical analysis of Exodus 3–4 assigns the main narrative in Exodus 3 to E (3:1–6, 9–15, and 21–22) with short passages from J (3:7–8, 16–20), and the main narrative in chapter 4 … to J with short passages from E” [Brettler, Enns & Harrington, The Bible and the Believer, #50887, Jewish chapter]. Moore gives the conventional dates for Genesis: “The J source is the oldest and is thought to have been first produced in the tenth century b.c.” The redactor R, “in the fifth century, possibly between 450 and 400 b.c., combined J, P, and other sources to produce Genesis” [Moore, #27071].

The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies presents the current European model of continuous growth. “Under the influence of the eighth-century prophets and their demand for exclusive loyalty to God backed by social justice”, Deuteronomy (D) was composed in the seventh century. It “absolutizes the practice of monolatry within the former national cult and … ascribes transcendent aspects to the former national God”. The narrative works “were permanently revised and enlarged in the course of the seventh century, and above all after the fall of Jerusalem in 597/587 BCE”. The Decalogue itself “draws upon prophetic sources (cf. Hos. 4:2) as well as a legal source”, the Book of the Covenant [Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies, #363277, “The Growth of the Old Testament”]. In the Deuteronomistic books of Kings, “against the background of the original unity of the kingship under David, the divided kingship which existed until 720 BCE is taken as an infringement of the command to centralize the cult”. The Handbook also notes the later theory, shared by Josephus (Against Apion I.37-41), “that each epoch had its prophets, and that the prophets were the chroniclers of their time” [#363277].

Mark S. Smith warns that this Deuteronomistic History (Joshua-Kings) is ideological history, not neutral record. When scholars describe early Israel as a pure Yahwism corrupted by Canaanite “syncretism”, they are extending biblical historiography. “Because the historical works of the Bible view the religion of the Judges period in this way, then some scholars have concluded that the biblical view represents historical reality” [Smith, The Early History of God, #67245, ch.1 §1]. The Dictionary of Deities and Demons makes the same point about the asherah: the Deuteronomistic History supplies 24 of 40 references, and “one of its chief concerns is cultic purity, a strictly monolatrous Yahwism”, so that “the Deuteronomistic historians have done their work so well” that scholars tend to treat such cult objects as foreign [van der Toorn et al., Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, #66939, “Asherah”].

Schniedewind stresses the cost of the catastrophe that ended the period. “The Babylonians destroyed the larger cities and towns … over the course of a few decades, the population declined by as much 85 percent … The entire economy and infrastructure of Judah collapsed.” “Writing and scribal communities require affluence, infrastructure, and patronage.” The Babylonian period also “marks a major shift in the language of scribal communities—Aramaic becomes the standard language” [Schniedewind, #70950]. Where the Bible was written after 586 BCE, and by whom, therefore becomes the question of chapter 31.

A Radical Reading: Douglas Reed

Douglas Reed’s The Controversy of Zion puts the documentary hypothesis to polemical use. “During the hundred years that followed the Assyrian conquest of Israel, the Levites in Judah began to compile the written Law. In 621 BC they produced Deuteronomy and read it to the people in the temple at Jerusalem. This was the birth of ‘the Mosaic law,’ which Moses, if he ever lived, never knew” [Reed, #64653, ch.3 “The Levites and the Law”]. Reed separates the two kingdoms morally. “Israel rejected the chosen people creed which was beginning to take shape in Judah and went its own way”. “Israel had fallen from grace, but Judah had betrayed; the allusion is plainly to the Levites’ new Law” [Reed, #64653, ch.2 “The End of Israel”]. From this he draws a modern political conclusion: “the use of the name ‘Israel’ by the Zionist state which was created in Palestine in this century is in the nature of a forgery”, since it is “the name of a people who were not Jews and would have none of the creed which has become Judaism” [Reed, #64653, ch.2].

Key points

• Mazar finds the United Monarchy archaeologically “sparse, often controversial”. Saul barely appears, David’s remains are modest but “consistent” with the Bible, and Solomon’s temple is supported only by architectural parallels [Mazar, #68234].
• After the split, Jeroboam’s calves and royal clergy and the dual worship of “YHVH and Baal” (national god and god of the land’s crops) set the stage for Elijah’s challenge on Carmel [Epstein, #15429; Armstrong, #68999].
• After Samaria’s fall in 722 BCE Jerusalem grew until, on one claim Stern reports, Judah was “but a large polis” [Stern, #67114].
• Josiah’s reform (622/621 BCE) centralised worship and purged the cults of Baal, Asherah, the host of heaven and the sun’s horses. Armstrong finds it “almost certain” that the Book of the Law was the core of Deuteronomy, possibly written by the reformers themselves [#68999; Day, #86469; Taylor, #66074].
• The documentary hypothesis (J, E, D, P) and the Oxford Handbook‘s model of continuous growth place D in the seventh century and much revision after 587 BCE. Brettler’s analysis of Exodus 3-4 shows the method at work [#50887; #363277; #27071].
• Smith and the Dictionary of Deities and Demons warn that the Deuteronomistic History’s “strictly monolatrous” ideology has shaped modern pictures of Israel’s religion [#67245; #66939].
• Walton and Sandy dissent: a document’s discovery under Josiah does not prove it was composed then [#65622].
• Reed reads the same data polemically. The Levites “produced Deuteronomy” in 621 BC, Israel and Judah were opposed peoples, and the modern state’s use of “Israel” is “a forgery” [#64653].