Deuteronomic History and the Prophets 3
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Wednesday, October 24, 2001
Abstract
Kings
The whole of Kings has the theme of God punishing sinners to lead up to the destruction of Jerusalem and the “Exile” in preparation for the “Return.” The “Return” was the start of Jewish history.
Kings must have been written after 561 BC when Evil-merodach acceded to the throne of Babylon and Jehoiachin was released from captivity. That is evident and uncontroversial. But commentators fatuously argue the book could not have been published after 539 BC, because the author omitted reference to Babylon falling, and the “return” to Palestine during the reign of Cyrus the Persian. The same commentators say that the history is a sacred history, and not factual in the sense that a social, economic or military history would be.
Thus the founder of Samaria is dismissed in a few verses, Menahem is shown in a bad light though the country seems to have been peaceful and prospered under his sensible policy of submission to the Assyrians. Uzziah was supposedly king of Judah for 50 years but is only briefly mentioned. The purpose of the author is to condemn the people as serial apostates, and rebels from the rule of God. His aim was not to show that they had been forgiven by God allowing them to return, but to realize that punishment still awaited them if they cntinued to apostatize in future. The author therefore omitted the return as counter to his aim, and the book could easily have been written a hundred or more years later. It was.
To suggest the book was written during the “exile” is fantastic. The fantasy has it that the deported Jews lived in freedom and, within fifty years, luxury, with leisure time to seek out and consult the annals of their former kingdom and write an extended history before they, by surprise, with the unexpected victory of the Persians, were able to return to their own barren land. No doubt Jews and Christians will see the finger of God in this, but scholars ought to see something quite different—mythologizing!
In reality, the ruling elite of the Judahites were sent as captives abroad with no prospect of returning. These deportations were permanent, not merely a sentence. Deported people were put in difficult situation, administering a distant province as a foreign elite, but disliked by the natives they were put in charge of. The people deported were clever and skilled, rulers, and they were made rulers of an alien country. It was meant to be a precarious existence that occupied their time fully, preventing them from plotting uprisings themselves for fear and lack of native support, but, while they ruled successfully for the Persian kings, they were rewarded and protected, and so had the chance of being prosperous, even if unpopular. The “returning Jews” were in just that boat themselves, being in reality the deported rulers of other Persian conquests.
The language of Kings belongs unmistakably to later than the Persian conquest. Many words and phrases in the book do not appear elsewhere in scripture. The language of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Kings closely resemble each other, and there is the rabbinic tradition that Jeremiah wrote Kings. The language of Kings and of Jeremiah seem so similar that the authors were either the same or one deliberately imitated the other. Characteristic similarities show it:
- hardened their neck (2 Kg 17:14; Jer 7:26)
- vanity and became vain (2 Kg 17:15; Jer 2:5)
- cast them out of His sight (2 Kg 17:20; Jer 7:15)
- for a prey and for a spoil (2 Kg 21:14; Jer 30:16)
There are many others, yet Kings does not mention Jeremiah in its account of the last days of Judah, and he is only mentioned twice in Chronicles (2 Chr 35:25; 36:12). As one commentator, James E Smith, remarks:
The role which Jeremiah played during those crucial days was so significant that it is hard to conceive of any impartial, not to mention pious and prophetic, historian ignoring both his name and his work.
Indeed, that seems to be what the redactor of Chronicles thought, and felt obliged to fill the gap, evven if inadequately, but this biblicist commentator can come to no sensible conclusions—the prophetic author of Kings was just modest.
It is unlikely, if not impossible, that Jeremiah lived in the times claimed internally in Jeremiah and yet wrote Kings. Jeremiah would have been too old. His prophetic years supposedly began in the thirteenth year of Josiah, 627 BC. If Kings could not have been completed before 561 BC, sixty-six years later, Jeremiah would have been about eighty-six. It is possible that such an old man would have started writing a book of history, but this, with the linguistic evidence, shows he did not.
Jeremiah can have had nothing to do with this fall of Jerusalem, but a later one, to the Persians during a rebellion, and that therefore is when he lived. Redacters have conflated the two occasions because they had no genuine accounts of the original fall of Jerusalem after perhaps 200 years and so they used a more recent seige. Moreover, scholars think Kings was written in Babylon, and Jeremiah never went there, but the author evidently did:
- He knew what happened in the court of Evil-merodach in Babylon.
- Kings does not mention the remnant of Jews that fled to Egypt after the fall of Jerusalem.
- In 1 Kings 4:24 the region west of the Euphrates River (Syria and the Levant) is called, literally, “beyond the river.” if this is just a relative reference then the author of Kings must have been east of the Euphrates, probably in Babylon. More likely however, the reference is to the name of the satrapy, Abarnahara, which means the same, but shows the book was written in the Persian period.
The translators of the Jewish scriptures have constantly tried to keep the name of the Persian satrapy out of the text because it is a givaway, but “beyond the river” occurs frequently. It mostly literally translates Abarnahara.
Throughout Kings are passages in which the author reflects upon what he is relating and interprets it in the light of his overall theme. This is the Deuteronomistic framework which gives coherence and purpose to the book. The author is committed to the concept of a centralized sanctuary, at Jerusalem. Kings rails against the high places, and the book also attacks the infiltration of Baal worship into the kingdoms. Much of the Deuteronomic History presumes that Jerusalem has the only legitimate temple. It shows it must have been written when that was the state policy, and not when worship was legitimately practised in a variety of places all over the land.
Another concern of the editor of Kings is the monarchy of Judah. A late and substantial redaction portrays David, the mythical first noble king of Judah, as a God-fearing, ideal king (1 Kg 11:33, 38; 14:8), and the standard by which all the kings were judged. Kings of Israel are secondary and incorrigible anyway. The reason is that Israel, Samaria, no longer existed. Only Judah remained. Archaeological material for the study of Judah after 722 BC is abundant, not before, when the abundant material pertains to Samaria. Of the forty kings of Israel and Judah who are named in Kings, only fourteen are named in the inscriptions thus far unearthed by archaeologists, and none of the Jewish kings are early.
The reigns of the kings of the two countries do not match up without fudges, and unlikely presumptions. Josiah was born when Amon was sixteen, and Jehoiakim was born when Josiah was fourteen. Some have alleged that Hezekiah was born to Ahaz when the latter was eleven! Athaliah, queen of Judah, and Jehu, king of Israel, began to reign the same day. The city of Samaria fell in the sixth year of Hezekiah (2 Kg 18:10). Athaliah to Hezekiah Year 6 adds up to 165 yrs. Jehu to the fall of Samaria adds up to 143 yrs. Co-regencies are specifically indicated only on two occasions (1 Kg 1:34, 35; 2 Kg 15:5).
Coregency was the ancient means of guaranteeing succession and was not unusual, but Biblicists use it to settle the problem of dates—they reckon arbitrary years of coregency in the total of years attributed to both kings. If a father and son shared the rule for ten years, that ten years would be counted in the total number of both kings’ reigns. It just becomes a question then of juggling the reigns and regencies to get the desired numbers. Problem solved! But the dates are conjecture.
Most of the Judahite kings are seen by the Deuteronomists favourably, unless they had a Samaritan connexion or refused to destroy the “High Places.” For the kings of Judah, only Hezekiah (2 Kg 18:3-7) and Josiah (2 Kg 22:2) are mentioned uncritically. Asa (1 Kg 15:11-14), Jehoshaphat (1 Kg 22:43), Jehoash (2 Kg 12:2-3), Azariah (2 Kg 15:3-4), and Jotham (2 Kg 15:34-35) are treated with some favour, while the other kings of Judah are condemned as evil (2 Kg 8:18, 27; 21:2, 20).
The “High Places” look likely to mean Canaanite shrines, but could refer mythically to early shrines of the colonists, whether to El (originally) or to Yehouah, when the decision was taken to centralize worship in Jerusalem. Hezekiah is shown as the first king to address this issue but both he and Josiah look like retrogressed salvation kings—they are depicted as introducing Persian reforms anachronistically to give a spurious historical legitimacy to the reforms when they were really introduced new by Ezra in the fifth century BC. The Deuteronomists give Hezekiah unequalled praise for his “reform,” so much so that he is the Messiah in some Jewish traditions. Since the scriptures depict Cyrus as the Messiah, the two are equated. Hezekiah’s reforms are those of the Persian kings. I Provan suggests that Kings once ended here with no reference to the fall of Jerusalem. Instead the Persian colonists were the immediate successors of the mythical reformers in Hezekiah’s reign, and the reforms seemed continuous. Some later editor thought there was an omission and filled it.
The kings of Israel are unanimously condemned in Kings for not doing what was right in the sight of the Lord (1 Kg 15:26, 34; 16:25). The condemnation even falls on Jehu, the greatest defender of Yehouah in the north (2 Kg 10:29-31), though it is mollified. It is no accident of history or God that Judahite kings were often reforming ones while Isrelite kings were apostatizing ones. Yehud was being set up among people who worshipped Canaanite gods. The history depicted worshippers of Canaanite gods as apostatizing from their proper god, Yehouah. Among this phony historical condemnation of the intransigence of the people, some hope was needed.
So the righteous people who remained true to Yehouah were saved. The main prophet of Kings (2 Kg 18-20) is Isaiah, meaning “Salvation is Yehouah.” The Yehudim (Jews) were those who worshipped Yehouah and Yehud (Judah) was their country. Besides those already mentioned, Asa (“Salvation”) is a reforming king (1 Kg 15:11-15) and so is Jehoash (2 Kg 12:2-16) meaning “Yehouah Saves”. The even more favourable account in Chronicles gives more good Jewish kings.
Foreign Alliances
Another theme is that of foreign alliances. Jehoshaphat did not remove the high places, but also made a treaty with the king of Israel (1 Kg 22:44). Indeed, Jehoshaphat seems to be a vassal of the Israelite king (1 Kg 22:1-4). The purpose of this being mentioned in the history, whether it is true or not, is to warn the Jews, whose suzerain was Persia, not to make covenants with other countries. it was a requirement of ancient covenant treaties and this is a reminder of it.
Jehoram (2 Kg 8:16-19) forms a treaty with Israel and so did Ahaziah (2 Kg 8:25-29), and Jehoash, a forty year king (signifying God’s favour) paid all the wealth of the temple to Hazael of Damascus in tribute. Ahaz similarly settled with the Tiglath-pileser of the Assyrians (2 Kg 16:1-20), but he was also an apostate. In contrast, good king Hezekiah apparently rebelled against the Assyrians and was rewarded. Neither Isaiah nor Kings favour foreign alliances, but want the people to have faith in Yehouah providing they are righteous. This suited the Shahanshah but he could hardly have viewed favourably a successful rebellion against the foreigner.
The Deuteronomist always wanted the threat of God’s wrath for wrongdoing, yet here is a promise of God’s eternal protection of Jerusalem. It seems unlikely that this could be the work of the original Persian authors, and the rebellion might be a later addition in Maccabaean times, the narrative at this point becoming conspicuously layered (2 Kg 18:13-19:37). The story of Sennacherib’s invasion appears three times, the first one merely in brief. The Persian one must have been that of Hezekiah following the advice of the salvation prophet, Isaiah, and securing the safety of Jerusalem (2 Kg 18:7-19:9,36). The original author probably meant the Assyrians to represent the Persians as foreign conquerors, and meant foreign treaties to be respected, but a later editor thought it wrong or dangerous to encourage any foreign alliances, and God’s destruction of the Assyrian army was added, perhaps even signifying the destruction of Persia.
Some Prophets
According to R P Carroll, the prophets were “invented.” The post-Persian editors of the prophetic works did not understand the prophecies of the earlier practical period of Jewish formation, and were swayed by the subsequent evolution of the cultus and its mythology in the Greek period, so they introduced errors of transcription and irrelevant and misleading “explanatory” glosses.
Zephaniah seems to have been composed in the time of the seventh century reforms of Josiah, king of Judah, but its awareness of a world wide judgement and restoration of Jerusalem betrays its origin in the Persian period to rational minds.
Isaiah seems to be set towards the end of the eighth century when the Assyrians were subjecting Palestine but the identification of Second and Third Isaiah as identifiably later, and many “interpolations” in the first 39 chapters, show it to be a production of the Persian period when the temple state of Yehud was “saved” from extinction. Words written three centuries before turn out to be prophetic of the fifth century colonists building Yehud. They were contemporary texts written to encourage them and give them a spurious history.
Amos seems to be set even before Isaiah, in the middle of the eighth century. Amos (“The People are Saved”) begins by being a prophet of salvation but ends being a prophet of judgement. Biblicists accept the book’s own date even though the book has plain signs it was written later. It is because of later redaction, they say, and doubtless editors did work on it after the original writer, but it was not written when it claims anyway. Indeed, even if there were a book about a man called Amos written in the eighth century, what we have now was written much later. Once it is accepted that the book was actually written later and is not contemporary with its contents, it could be purely fictional, merely set at a time in the past.
Believers and biblicists will rarely consider this, for the simple reason that they have already convinced themselves that the bible must be “the word of the Lord.” They end up in a conspiracy of lies to uphold their God and His holy word, as they see them. That is just what has happened for centuries, and continues today, though their line is untenable. Liars write for other liars, refusing to think what is for them the unthinkable and refusing to voice any doubt out loud for fear of losing their admission to God’s balmy place. They happily explain to us God’s Truth knowing but not admitting it to be lies. They call themselves biblical scholars, thus reducing scholarship to deceit. They know what they want to be the core of these works, and do not mind arbitrarily rejecting what reveals it as false, called the “interpolations” of later editors. Lo! They find just what they expected—the utterances of an eighth century prophet. Mention of the Assyrians prove the time as the eighth century. So the author of a play called Julius Caesar must have been a first century BC Roman not an Elizabethan English playwright.
Amos is a defender of the poor in a supposedly rich kingdom, and a critic of the king and the national cultus, said to be based at Bethel, a place that archaeology cannot find at that time. Amos prophesies that the kingdom would be swept away. It was indeed! The picture is written as a mirror of what happened to Judah, which the Persian claimed to be reversing, thus saving the people. That is the very meaning of the name, Amos. A miracle, apparently. Amos issues a whole series of oracles not just against Israel and Judah, but against the “nations” who strangely are those that constitute the Persian satrapy of Abarnahara. Each begins with, “Thus said Yehouah” showing that Yehouah was meant to be the god of all of these nations. He was the god of all of the people of Abarnahara—the Hebrews!
Imaginary History
Biblicists like to say the Deuteronomic History is too accurate historically to be a fiction or a forgery, yet it bears little resemblence to anything archaeologists have revealed in the earth. Despite the archaeology, they cannot bring themselves to assess the Deuteronomic History properly. No basis for an empire like David’s has ever been found. Nothing has been found that suggests any splendour like Solomon’s. Nothing testifies to Judah even existing until Israel was absorbed by the Assyrian empire. The Deuteronomic History is full of anachronisms, but biblicists overlook them, or explain them away. It is special pleading.
When almonds or lemons are mentioned before the Persians introduced them, it is a late editor’s interpolation, but it cannot be that the whole bible is a late work. Anachronistic names betray that late editor again, not that the texts are late anyway. So all the anachronisms are cut out as the work of late editors, and Lo! what remains is historically accurate.
The books are not even internally consistent. Moses came first according to the bible, but made such a slight impression that he is hardly mentioned by other writers. Let us suggest that the few mentions of Moses in the scriptures other than in the Pentateuch are the late additions of editors, and believers are aghast. Doubtless it is “know-it-all cynicism”. Jehoshephat set up a judicial system, but in the chronology of the bible, Moses had already done it. David (1 Chr 15:2) gave the Levites the responsibility for looking after the Ark of the Covenant. It was a responsibility they already had (Dt 10:8-9). David (1 Sam 30:23-25) decides how booty shoul be divided up, but it was a rule already agreed (Num 31:27). Most glaring of all is that Ezra came from Persia to give the Jews a law when Moses is supposed to have done it a millennium before. A book could be written about biblical anachronisms, but they never deter believers.
Zevit writes that the traditions of the Pentateuch are “retrojections providing mythical support”. Quite so, but support for what? It is for the Judaism introduced by the Persians. Indeed, David and Moses are two quite separate and contradictory foundation myths for Judaism. Zevit makes Moses the later one. He will be right on this, David being the Persian one—albeit nothing like as refined as it has become in Samuel—and Moses was added by the Greeks in Ptolemaic times.
The Deuteronomists and later editors did not necessarily write pure fiction. They did not have to invent all of these sagas, but had material to work from that they edited in such a way that the aims of the returning priests were fulfilled. They put their own extensive gloss on the fragments of legend they already had, recasting them as allegories of the struggles of the foreigners deported into Israel by the Persians, and later editors fleshed it all out with fiction based on events they knew such as the guerilla war of the Maccabees against the Greeks. That is, new legends were added by the Hasmonaean editors to give the newly founded free state of Judah a history.
But even when biblical facts are “confirmed” in secular history, they are often significantly different. The Deuteronomic Historian tells us that two sons of Sennacherib killed their father when he had returned from the stand off with Hezekiah over Jerusalem (2 Kg 19:35-37). The assassination of Sennacherib has been confirmed in Assyrian records, and it was by a son, but it was years later. Sennacherib survived to seize Babylon in 689 BC, twelve years after the seige of Jerusalem, and the assassination did not hapopen until 681 BC another eight years on. In total, the assassination, which in the bible seems to have been a prompt punishment by Yehouah, was actually twenty years later. If an almighty God meant retribution, why would he leave it so long, so that the retribution seemed utterly divorced from the act that brought it about? Why then would God or His Holy Ghost, make it seem in His Holy Word that the retribution soon followed the deed? That is dishonest. Is it God who is dishonest or the biblical authors? Either way, how can the bible be simply accepted as true? It cannot.
What began as an instrument of Persian foreign policy finished up as an imaginary history to found the national identity of the Jews when the national state was set up as independent by the Maccabees. Inventing history might have exceeded the boundaries of Jewish piety by then, but taking the ragbag of legends and romances they had and reworking them to suit their own aims did not. Thus, the history of the mixed peoples of Palestine was revised to give them a national and ethnic identity to be proud of, to show the hand of the god of the second temple, Yehouah, behind that history and to show the Israelites apostatizing as ever.
Moses and Exodus
