NADAV NAAMA N'''

THE SOURCES AVAILABLE FOR THE AUTHOR OF THE BOOK OF KINGS

INTRODUCTION

Biblica l his to riography was written first of a ll in order to convey reli­g ious, ideological and ethical messages to the r ead ers a nd hearers. The la te elate at which it was written, its li terary and ideologica l nature and extreme bias, an; serious fl aws for its use as a source for writing a history of Israel and Juctah according to the acceptable 'western' standards. In order to shed more light on the Book o f Kings as an historical source, son1e funda­mental issu es mus t be examined. What kinds o f early sources were ava il­able to th e author? Did he dea l with them critica lly? Where did h e find his sources?

To investigate these issues let me examine the Book of K ings. The d eci­sion of the author to follow the sequence of events from early to late incli­cates that he intended to write a history. He was aware of the importance of sources for writ ing a reliable history, and to corroborate the authentici ty of his descriptions he some times cited his sources. On many occasions he inserted data tha t was irrelevant to the messages he was trying to convey to his readers. The ir inclusion indicates his efforts to integrate in his work all th e details that h e discovered in his sources .

What kinds of sources were available to the author of Kings? Recovering the sources a nd the way h e worked them is essential for uncovering the hmdaments on which the his tory vvas built. Only the fina l work h as come clown to u s, and separating the sources from the la ter elements in whicl1 they were integrated is quite uncertain. In seeking to identif-y the sources we mus t firs t of a ll establish, what kinds of texts were produced by ancient Near Eastern kingdoms, where the documents were s tored, and h ow long they were kept.

,., Department o l' J ewis h Histo ry- Faculty of Humanities- Tel Aviv Univers ity - 69978 RAMAT

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ARCHIVES AND TEMPLE LIBRARIES

Archives th at have so far been d iscovered in long-enduring Near Eas tem cities usually contain only tablets of the last few generations 1• This is the case in the archives discovered in Babylonia, Assyria, Arrapha, E lam, Alalakh and Ugarit2

• Exceptional are the Hittites, who kept old tablets for many generations (Otten, 1986; Neve, 1987; 1990; Pedersen, 1998: 44-56). Howevet~ even in Hatti there is no indication that late scribes searched for old archival documents in order to retrieve information. There is no indica­tion that ancient Near Eastern scribes ever searched in archives in an effort to locate old documents and clarify events of great antiquity. Nor did pre­Hellenisti c Greek historians consult arch ives to retrieve information from original documents (Momigliano, 1966: 211 -217; Van Seters, 1983: 4, 40-51 , 195-199; Thomas, 1994: 35-37). It is evident that non-li terary texts, (such as legal, administrative and economic documents, or letters) were kept in ancient Near Eastern archives for only a few generations and then thrown out or disposed of for secondary use.

In light of this evidence, I very much doubt that Israel and Judah, unlike all other ancient Near Eastern kingdoms, copied archival documents for posterity. Indeed, there is no clear cita tion of archiva l documents in the Pentateuch and Early Prophets3 . The commonly-held assumption that bibli­cal authors consulted archives and retrieved information of great antiquity from origina l documents kept for centuries is erroneous. Similarly, the notion that the l)euteronomist had searched in the archives of the palace and temple for.source-material must be abandoned.

What were th e sources available to ancient historians when they composed tli'eir '..VOrks? To investigate the problem of th e source-material that might have been available to Manetho, Redford examined the contents of temple libraries in Egypt in the second half of the 1st millennium BCE. These · libraries encompassed a wide range of materials with which the fu lly-trained scribe was supposed to be familiar (e.g., king lists, 'annals', inventories, letters,

1 Throughout the discussion I dist inguished between archives and libraries, a lthough the dis tinction is not always clear and there are instances of archive with library, or a library with archive. For a discussion of the probfcm, sec Veenhof ( 1986); Pedersen (1998: 1·9). Veenhof ( 1986: 7) dell ned archive as «the total of records accumulated during the time a particular task was performed by an institution or person .... and still present with those who made them out or used them».

2 For a detailed s urvey of the archives discovered in Western Asia, see Pedersen (1998), witli earlier literature.

3 Documents arc quoted in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah for determining rights, and some scholm·s suggested tha t the it· authors used m·chival sources. See Bickerman ( 1946); Momigliano (1977: 3 1-33).

THE SOURCES AVi\l li\DLE I'OR T HE AUTHOR 01' THE BOOK 01' K INGS 107

stories, ritua l literature, reference compendia, etc.). He concluded that the rich sou rce-materia l of a temple library (or libraries) a llowed Manetho to write the ancient his tory of Egypt in his Aegyptiaca (Redford, J986: 206-228; Verbrugghe and Wickersham, 1996: 95-212). A Babylonian temple library (or libraries), which had a rich variety of texts (e.g. , Sumerian and Akkadian myths and epics, king-lists, chronicles, ri tua l literature, etc.), likewise a llowed Berossus to write the history of the country in his Babyloniaca (Burstein, 1978; Kuhrt, 1987; Verbrugghe and Wickersham, 1996: 13-91).

Josephus mentioned the Hellenistic wri ters Menander of Ephesos and Dius and asserts that they derived their material fTom the nat.ive sources of the Tyrians (Antiquities of the Jews IX 283, 287; Contra Apionem I 112, 116). He states that the Tyrians kept for many years old books in which were recorded memorable events (Contra Apionem I 107). The few passages that Josephus cites indicate that deta iled king lists, some chronicles a nd his tori­cal narratives, were available to the h istorians who wrote the his tory of Tyre in the Hellenistic period.

As for the 71h century BCE, about one-fifth of the 30,000 tablets and frag­

ments in the library of Ashurbanipal from Nineveh are non-lite rary (e.g. , legal and admi nis trative texts, letters, reports, etc.). The library conta ined mainly the 'canonical' literature of Mesopota mia, including the so-called 'omen texts', 'epic literature', 'wisdom literature', myths, incantations, conju­rations, prayers, sign lists , etc. This varie ty indicates the wide range of texts that might have been found in a Near Eastem royal library in the la te Imn Age (Oppenheim, 1964: 15-24; Parpola, 1986; Kwasman, 1986).

It is clear that libraries developed gradually in certain important urban centres, where urban life continued uninterruptedly for centuries (the library of Ashurbanipa l is an exception) . These libraries retained many composi­tions of various kinds, and the scribes and elite used them for study and teaching and in their professiona l duties . The ability of the late authors (Manetho, Berossos, Dius and Menander) to write the h istory of their coun­tries depended on the scope and quality of the sources available to them, and - no less important- on their understanding of the ancient rea li ty. The unin­ten:upted continuity and stability of the political structure, of the social and religious ins titutions, and of the spiritual and materia l culture might have h elped late authors to reconstruct the past in a relat ively faithfu l manne1: Total destruction and profound ch anges in the politica l, socia l, economic, religious and cultural constitutions of the state and society could lead to a complete misunderstanding of the ancient r ea lity even when some old sources were avai lable to th e late auth01:

The city of Jerusalem was the capita l of Judah for long time and many kinds of works must have accumulated in its library. The range of collected

108 N. NA'J\r.-'11\N

tex ts was certainly narrower than the ric h pa lace a nd temple librades of Mesopotamia and Egypt, but incl uded all that was neceSSC\1)' for the educa­tio n a nd Function o f the profession a l elite o f Jerusalem a nd the other urban centres in Judah . ll was probabl y located in the temple a nd was the source of practical and theoretical knowledge for the hi gh offi cia ls , priests and scribes, and fo1 · ins tructing young apprentices.

The temple library of Jerusalem must have been available to the author of Kings. The rich corpus accumulated there fo•· many genera tions was his main (or eve n exclus ive) source wh en writ ing the his tory, jus t as the a bove­mentioned Hellenis tic authors were a ble to use temple librari es when writing their his tories. He was probably a priest of high degree, hence his in timate knowledge of the inner temple, th e cult and the 'sacred literature' o f the priests and scribes. If thi s assumption is correct, the materia l, used by the author in hi s \Vork, re flects the source mater ia l available to him in the temple library.

Le t me discuss four examples of the kind o f sources available for the au tho•· of the Book o f Kings.

1. The Sources of the IntroductOJy Verses of the Kings of Israel a11d Ju dah

The author of Kings described the his tories of the kingdoms o f Israel and Juda h in parallel, linking them with synchron isms. In addition, the author stated the length o f each Icing's re ign in either kingdom.

Lis ts of kings with the yeat·s of their reign were kept throughout the ancient Near Eas t. As we have seen, such lists served all th e .his torians wh o worked du1·ing the Hellen is tic period, and were the main, som etimes th e only, sou1·ces they had for reconstructing the sequence of the reigning kings. It is evident that the a uthor of Kings had seen the lists of the kings of Israel and Juda h wi th th e years of their reign, and integrated them in his work.

As for the source of his syn chronisms, this is a subject of controversy, because the ancient lists had no such features. I very much doubt if a work, correlating events that took place in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, was in fact composed in o ne of these kingdoms. On the contrary, the Book of Kings re fers to << th e chronicles of the kings o f Israei/Judah» as two separate works. It seem s to me that a lmos t all the synchronisms were calculated by the author on the basis of the years of reigns of the kings, and that he possessed on ly a few synchronisms, such as the assu med s imul taneous accession of Reho boam and Jeroboam, the d emise of Joram of Israel an d Ahaziah o f Judah a t the same time, and the date of the capture of Amaziah of Juda h by Joash of Israel. Hence most of the synchronisms are of limited value in determining the chronology of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and such a ch ronology shou ld rest primarily on the years of the kings' reigns.

Til E SOURCES AVAILABLE r OR Ti l E AUT IIOR Or TilE BOOK O r KINGS 109

The int.-oductOl')' verses a bout th e kings of Judah usua lly mention the age of the king upon accession and the name of his mothe1; but the1·e is no such in formation a bout the kings of Israel. Such data are not found in king lists from th e ancien t Nem· East, bu t the h is tory of Menander of Ephesus records the age of the king and the years of his reign, as well as deta ils about the c hanging dynasties in the Kingdom of Tyre (Josephus, Contra Apio11e111, 121-123). There is no exact equ iva lent in ancient Near Eastern documents of a king lis t that compiles the years of the re ign, the age of the king upon accessio n and information a bout the change o f ru le following a n uprising. But such a list may be compared to the Assyrian chronicles from Mari, which a re elated to the latter half of the I 8'" century (Birot, I 985). These c hron icles include a list of li111u , beside references to major events that took place du ri ng that time, a nd com ments about the c hanges of rule in the king­do ms that were involved in th e s truggles then raging in northern Mesopota mia. The Assyrian King List also includes, here and there, comments o f a chm nicle-like nature, mostly referring to the circumstances of the c hanging ru le in Assyria (Gelb, I 954; Oppenheim, I 969: 564-566; Yamada, I 994, wi th earli er literature) . It seems, therefore, that the lists of kings and their reigns that were written in a nu mber o f ki ngdoms sometimes included add itio na l deta ils about the rulers and changes of dynasties.

The lis t of the kings of Israel p.-obably included that names and reigns, perha ps with comments about •·ebellions and the c hanging rule in the king­do m. It is not impossib le that th is was the source from which the author of Kings deri ved a ll , o1· part o f his information abou t the different ruling dynas­ties in the kingdom. The lis t of the kings of Judah included the names of the kings, their age a t the time of accession, the years of their reign and possibly the na mes of their mothers. These d ata enabled th e a u thor to write the intro­duc tory verses for every king in both ki ngdoms, while the synchronisms between the m were genera lly calculated by him.

2. The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Ismei!Judah

In the concludi ng verses about every king o f Israel or Judah the author of the Book of Kings names the sou rce (or sources) upon which he had drawn: <<And the rest of the acts of so-and-so .. . are they not written in the Book of the Chroni­cles of the kings of Israei/Judah ». The term <<book of the chronicles» (Hebrew dibrey hayyiimfm) s ignifies a dry record of events in chronological order. I t suggests a source in the fo rm of a scroll-book that recorded the events in the reigns of the kings of Israei/Judah, from which the a uthor drew his information.

The first part of this formula (<<And the rest of the acts of so-and-so ... ») is a lways fo ll owed by some reference to the con ten ts of the said source. In

110

some cases it is, «and a ll his might>>, or «how he warred>>, and someti mes w ith the name of the opponent with whom the king had fought. In the case of Zimri and Shallum, the text a dds , <<and his cons piracy which he m ade>> . Also in the case of some of the kings, there are references to their building projects. Singu lar formu lae appear in the case of Solomon ( <<an d his wisdom>>), and Manasseh (<<and his sin that he s inned>> ). These extensions of the formula are the chief indications from which to try a nd deduce what kind of source is being quoted .

Strangely, almos t a ll the events mentioned in the fina l verses are known from the history of the said kings. Thus, for exai11ple, there is a d etai led descript ion of the war waged by Asa against Baasha, then it is said that h e had built the c ities of Mizpah and Geba. Thus the text, <<The rest of the acts of Asa, a ll his might, and all that he did, and the cities which he bu il t, a re they n o t written in the Book of the Chronicles of the kings of Judah >> (I Kings 15:23), only summarizes the preceding detailed description . Th e history of Joas h, k ing of Israel, narrates how he de feated the Aramaeans in three battles, and how he a lso fought and defeated Amaziah of Judah . His final verses (II Kil1gs 13: .12; 14:15) merely repeat in briehvhat h ad been ampli fied before . A comparison between a ll the fi nal formulae in the Book of Kings and the his tories of the kings in question, reveals that only the building proj­ects of Ahab and H ezekiah are absent in the preceding text (the final formula concerning Jeroboam II, in II Kings 14:28, is so corrupt that scholars cannot agree a bout its o rig ina l form). Th e a uthor n eeded no written source a bout H ezekia h's quarrying project (II Kings 20:20: <<how he made the pool and a conduit and brought water into the city>>), since as an inhabitant of Jerusalem he knew perfectly well who had m ade the pool and the tunnel that , were in use in his time. Ahab's building projects, refe rred to in his f inal formul a (I Kings 22:39: << the ivory house wh ich h e built and a ll the cities th at h e built>> ), are not mentioned earlier in his his tory, but it is not impossible that the author deduced this much fTom the prophetic s tories about Ahab and his s uccessors tha t referred to the palaces he had built in Samaria and Jezreel (I Kings 2 1:1; II Ki11gs 9:.15, 30-33) (Na'aman, 1997:155- .162).

On th e whole, an ana lysis o f the final formulae reveals that the author made the utmos t use of the sources at his dis posal. Even if we found the sou rce called << the Book of the Chron icles of the kings of Israei!Judah>>, it is doubtful if it viould significantly expand our k.no ... vledge of the history of the two kingdoms. The formu la, <<and the rest o f the acts of so-and-so and a ll that h e did ... >> was put-in to emphasize that the work was based on sou rces, and therefore trustworthy. In this sense it resembles the phrase <<unto this clay>>, by which the au thor indicates that the state of affairs described in his s tm·y persists in his time, reinforcing his trus tworthiness.

T l·IE SOURCES AVAILABLE f'OR TilE AUTHOR Of' TH E BOOK Of' KINGS 111

W ha t was the nature of the works entitled <<the Book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel/Judah >> , and how extensive were the data that the autho1· d rew fro m them? According to the author o f Kings, these were his only sources for the acts of the kings of Israel and Judah, including descriptions of battles, u pris ings, building projects, even cultic arrangements. The ques­tion arises, could a ll the material about the acts of the kings of Israel and Judah have been clt·awn excl usively from those sources? The extensions in the form ulae concerning Solomon (<<and h is wisdom>>) and Manasseh (<<and his s in th at he s inned>>) s how that the author was making broad use of the formula, s ince it is not li kely that w isdo m literature and a list of <<s ins >> appeared in any bare chronicles. The s tereotypical natu re of the fina l verses calls for cau tion in considering the nature and scope of the said works4 .

There is no doubt that considerable portions of the versatile material in the Book of Kings, notably the prophetic s tories, a re inappropriate to a <<book of chronicles>> -type of source. The information about the relations between the kings of Israel and Judah was perhaps drawn h·om <<the Book of the Chronicles of the kings of Judah>>. But a series of chronicle-like comments worked into the h istory o f the kings of Israel (I Kit1gs 16:24; II Kings 10:32; 13:3, 22,24-25; 14:25; 15:19-20, 29; 17:3-6) must have derived from a work written in Israel. We may therefore assume that the author of Kings had a sou rce of northern origin . I have earlier proposed tha t the source. for all, or some of the updsings that took place in the kingdom of Israel was a king lis t, which included the years of reign and comments about th e changing dynasties. If that was indeed the case, than the Book of the Chronicles of the kings o.f Israel must have been fa irly li mited in scope, and most of its da ta related to the late 9111-8111 century (such as the wars between Israel and A ram and the campaigns of the Icings of Assyria to Israel). But it is a lso possible that data taken from the king list were integrated with in this sou rce, so that the material about the kings of Israel that reached the author of Kings was m ostly contained in a single scroll, named <<the Book of the Cb mnicles of the kings oflsrael >> .

Haran ( 1999) has proposed that the Book of the Chronicles was a work composed during the First Temple period on the basis of what he has called the <<royal an nals>> , a nd a copy of it reached the h istorian in the Babylonian ex ile. Th e histo1·ian used it in h is work and n amed it <<chronicles» , a fter the primary sources used by the a uthor of the presumed early compi lation. Haran assumed that the Book of Kings was first composed in the Babylon­ian exi le , and that its a utho1· had only a single source th a t contained all the various sources embedded in it. Howevet~ there is no ancient Near Eastern

4 Fo1· recent discussions on this issue, see Haran ( 1999); Cogan ( 1999), with earlier literature.

112 N. NJ\'A~lJ\N

para lle l for s uch a comprehensive chronicl e- like work. Moreove1~ introduc­ing an interim s tage between the written sources a nd the his to ry requires the existence of anothet~ anonymous, author and places a needless burden on our unders tanding of the process of the composition. It is better to assume that the authot· of Kings composed his work in Jerusalem towards the end of the Fit·st Te mple period, having at his dis posal a rich trove of documents originating in the library of the Jerusalem temple, among which were the texts he named «the chronicles of the kings of ls raei/Juda h».

3. Did the Author of the Book of Kings Have Access to Royal Inscriptions?

The only royal inscriptions From the F irs t Temple pe riod that have so fa r been found in the a reas of Palestine and Transjordan - in addi tion to those of the r ule rs o f the great empires- are those of Hazael, king of A ram, Mesha, king of Moab, Achis h, king of Ekron and the kings of Ammon. No inscl'ip­tio ns of the kings of Israel and Judah have so far been found, despi te the many excavations conducted all over the country5 . It seems that the kings of Israel and Judah did not display many inscriptions to commemorate theit· victories or completed building projects - but this is not to say that such inscriptions were never made. On the contrat ·y, it is quite likely that these kings did put up s uc h inscriptions on s pecia l occas ions, but in sma ll numbers, so that the chance of finding them is slim.

The Book of Kings was wt'itten in Jerusa lem, and in so far as such inscriptions were seen by the au thot~ they were presumably the ones erected in the ca pital c ity, primarily in the temple and palace.

How can we dis tinguish a biblical text based on a royal inscription? In th e firs t place', we must assume that th e inscriptions in Jer usalem commemorated the dedication of a new bu il d ing, or the restoration a nd expansion of an impor­tant centra l ed ifice. Throughout the ancient Near Eas t, inscriptions commem­orating the dedication of a new edifice or the resto ration of a n o ld one always included a description of the construc tion, and invaria bly ref:e tTed to some historical occurrences. Royal inscriptions found in Syria-Palestine, commemo­rating the dedica tion of an edifice, a lso included a description of the building project. On this basis it is reasonable to assume that roya l inscriptions erected in Jerusa le m, notably in the temple a nd palace, included such descriptions, ped1aps referring to an historical occurrence as well. These are the kind of inscriptions that the authm~ might have seen when writing his \vorl<.

5 Two fragme nted inscriptions discove red in Jerusalem might have been pm·t of royal inscrip tions. Sec Navch (1982; 2000: 1-2}; Renz (1995: 266-267).

TH E SOURC ES AVAlLi\BLE !'OR T H E AUTIIO R 01' TH E DOOK 0 1' KINGS 113

\Ale may also assume tha t exceptiona l o r distinctive expressions, espe­cially express ions about construction, m ight be re flections of royal inscr ip­tions . But it must not be forgotten that the author processed and expanded the sources he used in his work. We might try to reconstruct the fonT'l and principal themes of royal inscriptions, in so far as they are embedded in the fa bric of the biblical descriptions, but we s hould not expect to reconstruct the original text that the author o f the Book of Kings had before h im.

It seems to me that two episodes in the Book of Kings were composed on th e basis of roya l inscr ip tions (Na'aman, 1998: for cri ticism, see Parker. 2000) . The fi rst is the s to ry of th e revo lt o f the priest Jehoiad a a ga inst Athaliah, the crowning of Joash, a nd the latter's restoration of the temple in the twenty-third year of his reign (II Kings 11; 12:5-13). In the descriptions of both the revolt and the temple restorat ion th ere are unique expressions whi ch might have come fTom a royal inscrip tion .

The passage descr ibing the a ltar mad e by Ahaz in Jerusalem in the pattern of o ne that he saw in Damascus (II Kings 16:10-16) may a lso have been taken from a royal inscription . Certain terms in the description of that construction of the altar are associated with the Pl'iestly stratum in the Bible , a nd it seems to me that they originated in the dedication insct'iption of Ahaz, or else wet·e de liberately phrased by the author in the language of the pries ts who served in the Firs t Temple.

It is not impossible that o ther descriptions in the Book of Kings derived fTom royal inscriptions, but this cannot be substantiated.

4. Prophetic Stories

Scholars have been aware fTom the early clays of biblical research that the author of the Book o f Kings ha d access to stories about the acts of prophets and the fu lfil ment o f their prophecies. These were not confined to the pet'iod o f the separate kingdoms o f Israel and Judah - it is enough to recall th e s to ries about Samuel and Nathan. The s tories refet· to known by nam e prophets, as well as some anonymous ones, who operated in ~he Northern Kingdom of Israel and took par t in its history. Thus, for example, the story about Ahijah the Shilonite and the wife of Jeroboam is fitted in to the history of the reign of that king, the stories of Elijah are worked into the his tory of Ahab, while the cycle of Elisha stories is mainly woven into the his tory of Joram, and partly into the history of Joash6 .

6 For d iscussions on the prophetic s to ries, see Schmi tt (1 972); Schweizer (1974); St ipp (1987; 1997, with ea rl ier litera ture); Rofc ( 1988); Simon ( 1997). "' ith earlier literature .

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Before pmceeding, we need to note the difference between the prophetic s tories, which have a plot and an unmistakab le lite rary s tyle, and prophetic speeches composed by the author of Kings, in accm·dance with his unde r­standing of the course of his tory. Among these prophetic speeches are the two prophecies delivered by Ahija h to Jeroboam (I Kings 11:29-39; 14:7- 11 , 14-17), the prophecy o f Jehu son of Hanan i to Baasha ( 17: 1-4 ), the prophecy of E lij ah to Ahab (21:21-24), and Huldah's prophecy to Josiah (22:15-20a). In these speeches the author presented hi s conception of the way the god of Is rael directed th e his tory of his people, when in response to the s ins of the ir ruler he sent a prophet who uttered a prophecy of d isas tet; which sooner 01· later came true. T he insertion of prophetic speeches into the prophetic stories gave them a theological content which they had not had before, a ltered their messages and turned them into an important component of the demons tra tion of the au thor that the will of Yahweh is manifested in his tory. One example is the story of the revolt of Jehu , which described the ki lling of the two kings, their kinsfolk and suppor ters, and the purification of the cult of Baal. The additions o f the author (II Kings 9:7 -10, 36-37; 10:.10, 17b) gave the s tory a new theological d imension, and linked it tightly to E lijah's prophecy to Ahab and Jezebel, so tha t every s tage of the revolt appeared as the fu lfilment o f a previous d ivine prophecy.

Some schola rs formerly assumed tha t the prop hetic stori es were composed in the Kingdom of Is rael, that their language vvas northern and thei1· worldview reflected that of th e prophets who worked in th e Northern Kingdom. For. example, Burney (1903: 207-209) proposed tha t the language of those st01:ies had distinctive fea tures which might have been associated with a northern Israeli te dialect, and this proposition was adopted by other scholars (Rendsburg, 1990: 8-9; 1992) . But the supposedly northern quality of many of the exp1·essions that Burney p icked out is far from certain. More­ovel; Young ( 1995) pointed out that these dis tinctive expressions appear in the direct speech o f Israelites or Arameans, and has suggested that the author of these stories deliberately put them in the mouths of these people by way of characterizalion7 . It is also noteworthy that the s tories about the reigns o f Ahab and his son Joram in which both the kings of Israel and Judah appeat; clearly favou r th e king of Judah, and were presumably written in Judah (I Kings 22; II K ings 3 ). It therefore seems li kely that some of the

7 Schniedewind and Sivan ( 1997) have suggested that there is a clea r linguistic resemblance between the literatu res written in Samaria and Jen1salem, therefore language analysis would be an uncertain bas is fo r determining the origin of the stories. However, they maintain tha t the spoken language was markedly di ffe1·ent in the two kingdoms, and therefo1·e the northe rn dia lect is recognizable, chiefly in passages containing direct speech.

T ilE SOURCES AVA I LADLE f'OR Tl IE AUTIIOR O F THE DOOK OF K INGS 115

pmpheti c s tories were composed in Juda h, while others were adapted to some extent to make them accessib le to the inhabitants of Juda h too.

Another question is, when were the prophetic s tories composed? The [u ll complexity of this question lies beyond the present article, but we may s ta te th a t even the earli est stories were written many years after the even ts they described. They mus t have been transmitted orally through the generations, in th e course of which th ey underwent so many changes that they 1·efl ect the time of their composition rathe r tha n the period to which they are attrib­uted . Add to this the pro blem of the literary genre, and the grea t limitations of th ese stori es as hi storica l sou rces become obvious.

It must be emphasized tha t the authot· wrote his wodc towards the end of the monarchica l per iod, many years after the even ts in his na rra tives . He was not a n historian of the school tha t firs t developed in Greece in the classi­ca l period, and did not check his sources and their au thentic ity for the purpose of his torical recons truction. He had no idea when the prophetic stories had been composed - as far as he was concerned, they were legiti­mate sources, no different from a ll the others which he used in his his tory. He thet·efore integrated the availa ble s tories in his work, usually unchanged (except for a few addi tio ns, the most important of which were the above­mentioned prophetic speeches). From these stories he a lso deduced the re li­gious rea li ty in the periods to whi ch he attributed the s tories, and judged the rulers o f those times accordingly. In other words, the prophetic stories about the Omride dynas ty were among the sources available to the authm; who· utilized them in composing his work.

On ly one prophetic s tory from the Kingdom of Juda h has been preserved - that of the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in the reign of Hezekia h, and the central role played by the prophet Isaiah in the events (II Ki11gs .1 8: 1 7-19:37). The early s tory, which was included in the history, comprised the two speeches of the Rab-shakeh before the walls of Jerusa lem, the response of Hezekia h, the appeal to the prophet and the prophet's message of hope, wh ich came to be [·ulfilled \vith the Assyrian withdrawal and Sennachedb's murde1· (18:17-1 9:9", 36-37). This s tm·y set-ved the author as an important source, both for the pos itive viev.r of Hezekia h and for the description of the consequences of the Assyri an campaign agains t Judah. It was expanded dur ing the exile into an account o f the second Assyria n expedition to Jerusalem and th e d ramati c intervention by the God of Israel to turn the course o f events (l 9:9b-36), which a ltered the scope of the s tory and its theo­logica l messages (Cl1ilds , .1967: 103-169; Gonc;:alves, 1986: 33 .1 -487, with earlier lite rature; Cogan and Tadmm; .1988: 223-244; Na'aman, 2000).

All in all, there is no doubt that the author of the Book o f Kings used the prophetic s tories to complete his work. He a lso deduced from them how the

116

personae behaved and wha t they did, whi ch ena bled him to describe in deta il the s ins of the kings of th e Omri de dynasty. But he found no such s tories concerning the kings of the dynasties of Baasha and Jehu, and was obl iged to describe their conduct in cultic ma tters briefly and schematically in the preambles to theh· his tories.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Esta blishing th e possible o rigin of the som'ce ma te ria l used by an au tho r is on ly the firs t step in the critica l eva lua ti on of his compositio n . Some texts migh t have been composed shortly after the related events, while others were vvri tten long after the events they descri be and were based on ora l t radition . Some sources (such as king-lis ts and ch ronicles) are easily exploited for the historical reconstruction , while others are wri t­ten in genres tha t are not easily applicable to the t·econs truction. His torical­c ri tical approach o f the kind developed in Greece s ince the classical period was alien to the a uthot; who must have given credibili ty to all his sources. For this reason we find concrete de ta ils and dry accounts s ide by s ide with legendary, novelis tic and fabulous narratives. The his tory is founded -with no d istinction -on the ora l litera ture and written sources available to its autho1:

Le t me survey in br ief the assumed sources used by the author in writing about differen~ s tages in the history of the two kingdoms.

Limited.number of sources was availa ble to th e au thor for writing the his tory of the Northern Kingdom . H is most importan t sources were proba­bly a king lis t, the work called «the book of the chron icles of the kings of Israel», and prophetic s tories. The former sources must have included the names of kings, their years and dynasties, details of the rebellions and the overthrow of dynasties, and sporadic even ts relating to some Israelite kings (such as the wars with the Arameans and Assyrians).

The source ma teria l availa ble for the histo ry of J udah in the 9t h_8t h

centuri es was richer than tha t o f Is rael. It includes such exceptiona l deta ils as the names of the queen-mothers and the age of the kings when they ascended the throne . Deta ils concern ing the relations of the kings o f Juda h and Israel were proba bly extrac ted [Tom the Judahite «book of the chroni­cles» and prophetic s tories. Some synch ronisms between the kings o f Israel and Juda h were extracted h·om sources, but mos t of them were computed by the au thot: Fina lly, the historian might have derived some information fTo n• a few royal inscriptions erected in the temple of Jerusalem, which he worked in to his compos ition .

TI·IE SOURCES AVAILt\DLE r-OR TilE AUTIIOR or- THE BOOK OF KINGS 117

The author wrote his his torical work in the late 7 th centu ry, so tha t no wrillen sou rces should be sought for the his tory of Manasseh, Amon and Josiah . The firs t edition o f the his tory proba bly closes with the restoration of the temple and th e re ligious reform of Josia h, culmina ting with the celebra­tio n o f the Passove1.ll . The episode of the death of Josiah and the history o f Judah until the release of Jehoiachin fTom his prison were written by a la te autho r o f the same ideological school. The la te author lived in Babylon ia, and completed the early work u p to his own time on the bas is o f oral in for­ma tion. The late author also revised the work of his predecessor .in an e ffort to adapt its messages to th e circumsta nces tha t has arisen a fter the destruc­tion of Jerusalem and the temple, with the exile of the royal house and the elite to Ba bylonia.

The working of the sources by the author was not uni form. Sometimes he rewrote texts in a way that makes it impossible to reconstruct the original source; at o ther times he wrote passages a nd inserted them into his sou rces, whi ch were otherwise left in tact; on s till o ther occasions he copied tex ts ver batim with o nly minor additions. Nevertheless, he left his ma rk o n the composition as a whole and cast the variegated texts into a u nified literary­ideological-rel igious entity. The his tory written in the late 7 th cen tury is a full-blown his toriographi c composition, the earl iest work that fu lly deserves the des ignation 'hi story'.

In sum, only a rela tively small part of the material immersed in biblical his to riogra phy may be used for writing a his to ry of Israel and Judah accord­ing to 'western' standards. Wh en discussing th e history of the two kingdoms in the la te 10th_8 th centuries it is necessary to sepa rate the sources ava ilable to the author h.·om the texts that he wrote, and, as far as possible, to try to establish the historica l recons truction on these sources. The history of the Kingdom of Judah fmm the lime of Manasseh to the destruction a nd exile is based on the vivid memories of the historia n and his successor who wrote in Babylonia, and thus many deta ils included in the last chapters of the Book of Kings seem reliable .

Finally, modern historians s hould never forget that the image of the past in ma ny ways represents the t.·eality and conceptions of the lime in which it was written about, and tha t many e lements in the his tory might reflect the lime o f their au tho r. Moreovet; bi blical his tori ography was written primari ly

$ For lhc themy of pre-exilic and exilic redact ions of lhe Deuteronomistic history, which has many varian Is, see Cross ( 1973: 274-289); Nelson (1 98 1 ); Friedman ( 198 1 ); Mayes (1 983); Cogan and Tad mot· ( 1988); McKenzie ( 199 J ); Knoppers (1993- 1994); Na'aman (2002: 43-68, I 08- 120).

118 N. NA,I\l'VIJ\N

in order to shape the present, and to deliver religious and ideolog ical messages to its readers and hearers. This ideologica l-theologica l objective requires a critical approach for all texts, whether they describe the early o r the late his tory of Is rael.

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