Political Loyalty in the Biblical Account of 1 Samuel XX-XXII in the Light of Hittite Texts (original) (raw)
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HIPHIL, 2009
Did the ancient Israelites write history as it happened in ancient Mesopotamia and Greece? This is a question that has marred historians and biblical scholars alike since the dawn of enlightenment -not least during the last decades -and though the textual material has been available for ages and there has been plenty of time to discuss the subject it is probably right to say that there is less agreement now than there has ever been! One of the obvious problems in understanding the idea of history and the practice of writing history in ancient Israel is, of course, that the author(s) of the main narrative of Genesis through 2 Kings in the Hebrew Bible -unlike the Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides and the later Jewish historian Josephus -does not describe the purpose of the account. 2 Another complicating factor is that our conception of "genuine" or "true" history writing is based on the standards of ancient Greek history writing. Herodotus (ca. 485-425 B.C.) has become known as the "Father of History" in the sense that his writings preceded those of any other modern Western scholar who recorded historical events. He used recognized structuring techniques in his writing, unifying time, events and analytical interpretation in ways which distinguished him from mere writers of fictional literature or epic poetry. Thucydides (ca. 460-400 B.C.) followed Herodotus by several decades and began to further perfect historical style and content in his accounts of major events, and it is only natural that, in the course of Enlightenment, they were seen as forerunners of the impartial, critical, and rational research favoured by modern historians. Greek historiography became the yardstick against which all history writing was to be measured and it can come as no surprise, therefore, that ancient Israelite history writing fell short in comparison with such Greek standards. Though certain scholars continue to apply such Greek standards in the discussion on the biblical texts, 3 there 1 Revised version of a paper presented to a seminar on Text and History at Copenhagen Lutheran School of Theology June 18 th 2003. 2 Contrast, e.g., the re-writing of Israel's history by Josephus, who in his Jewish Antiquities tells us about his authorial intent, ev kdihgh, sasqai dia. tou. s ev n tw/ | gra, fein lumainome, nouj th. n av lh, qeian, "in order to refute those who in their writings were doing outrage to the truth," and intended readers, tau, thn de. th. n ev nestw/ san ev gkecei, pismai pragmatei, an nomi, zwn a[ pasi fanei/ sqai toi/ j [ Ellhsin av xi, an spoudh/ j\ me, llei ga. r perie, xein a[ pasan th. n parV hv mi/ n av rcaiologi, an kai. th. n dia, taxin tou/ politeu, matoj ev k tw/ n VEbrai? kw/ n meqhrmhneume, nhn gramma, twn, "and now I have undertaken this present work in the belief that the whole Greek-speaking world will find it worthy of attention; for it will embrace our entire ancient history and political constitution translated from the Hebrew records" (H. St.