Let us begin with some conceptual and chronological definitions. Defining state is as difficult as defining the word tribe. Indeed, the comparison of state systems of sociopolitical organization with nonstate or pre-state systems often reveals no clear distinctions between them. Nonetheless, some salient features of a state, found consistently in many different geographical and temporal settings, provide useful components of a working definition. The organization of power and leadership along lineage systems or kinship units (whether real or constructed) characterizes segmentary societies, as in premonarchic Israel. In contrast, a state system involves the formal concentration of power on a basis other than kinship. States typically have a more or less stable hierarchy that can control resources and activities across the previously autonomous units that comprised its pre-state segments. Unlike other sociopolitical units—hunting bands, autonomous agrarian communities, perhaps even chieftaincies—states can overcome the tendency of such groups to split or subdivide as the result of local hostilities, competition for land and resources, and leadership struggles. Kinship ties within local communities remain integral to the activities of daily life; but as authority and status become detached from family or clan relationships and come to reside in national structures transcending local or traditional ones, kinship ceases to be the only determining factor in organizing community life. Kinship yields some functions to the power of kingship while maintaining others integral to daily activities and family life.
The Kingdoms of Saul, David, and Solomon
These comments describe early or archaic states, not modern or industrial nations. Early states such as ancient Israel were without exception agrarian, with largely sedentary populations and mixed agricultural economies. Such states can be described as either pristine or secondary. Pristine or original states emerged from a less complex system without knowledge of or contact with existing states. Such states are known only through archaeology. Their formation was not conscious or intentional but probably resulted from endogenous stimuli that slowly moved a society to increasingly complex, centralized, and hierarchical structures. Examples of pristine states, of which there were no more than a few dozen, are Teotihuacán in central Mexico in the early centuries CE, ancient Sumer, Shang China, and perhaps early dynastic Egypt. Secondary states share many of the same characteristics as pristine ones, but their emergence and shape are affected by contact with or pressures from existing state systems. They often take the organization and actions of existing states as models. Perhaps the simplest case of secondary-state formation occurs when one state arises out of a preexisting one in much the same territory, like the division of the early Israelite monarchy into two discrete kingdoms in the late tenth century BCE. A much more varied and complex dynamic is at work, however, when states existing elsewhere serve as a model or stimulus to the creating of structures of political control in an emergent state. Such were the processes at work in the early or United Monarchy in ancient Israel.
Closely linked to the concentration of power across kinship lines is the personality of the individual who wields power over the population comprising the state. The term king or its equivalent in other languages is the most obvious and frequently found term for the (male) sovereign whose authority extends over a region and its inhabitants. The king not only stands at the apex of centralized power of a state but also becomes its chief symbol; his personal and political successes and failures are intimately and inextricably linked to the fortunes of the kingdom.
To this point, we have not named the kings at the apex of the early Israelite state. Our resort to abstraction in this and other respects is deliberate. It is important that we think of ancient Israel as a monarchy apart from the individuals who first occupied the throne. Particularistic historical writing, of which the Bible is a prime example, often ascribes social change to the talent, luck, or whim of a few highly visible leaders. Although the role of individuals in bringing about a royal state and in heading its organizational structures is significant, that role is not necessarily primary. We must set aside the “great man” notion of the emergence of the Israelite monarchy, as resulting from the charisma of a person and/or the supernatural direction of a deity, in order to examine the social dynamics and environmental features of state formation and organization. The rise of a state system in Israel is best comprehended by identifying the social pressures and patterns hidden beneath the layers of traditional theological and political explanations.
The rapidity with which states become established and the length of time they endure differ enormously. Variables that coalesce at the moment a state system becomes visible may have been present, latently, long before any semblance of a state appears. The duration of an existing state is easier to estimate, and for the early Israelite state a reasonable chronology can be established. Here, the biblical record of the reigns of three men and the archaeological traces of centralization and territorial integration together specify the individuals and dates associated with Israel’s United Monarchy.
The three men are Saul, David, and Solomon. All provided leadership above the kinship level, although whether all unequivocally qualify as kings of a national state is debated. Scholars have established the chronology of their reigns by calculating backward from the death of Solomon, the last of the three. Not until the late sixth century BCE can a date in Israelite history be securely established by comparing biblical and nonbiblical sources. But the books of Kings’ chronologies for the Israelite and Judean kings do permit us to calculate, with an error factor of about ten years, the regnal spans of all the monarchs in question. These calculations place the death of Solomon at about 928 BCE. Working back from that date, it would seem simple to use the biblical information about the reigns of David and Solomon, were it not that these two kings are each said to have ruled for forty years (1 Kings 2.11; 11.42), a suspiciously round and symbolic figure. In the absence of other data, and because both kings apparently had long and eventful reigns, the date of David’s ascension to kingship is generally placed at about 1005 BCE.
Estimating the duration of the reign of the preceding king, Saul, presents a different kind of problem—textual corruption. The relevant biblical passage states that he was “a year old when he began to reign; and he reigned two years” (1 Sam. 13.1; my translation). That flawed information is usually adjusted upward. If there is any validity to the multitude of events that the Bible narrates for Saul’s reign, he ruled for at least ten years but not much more than twenty-five. Add to that the brief two-year reign of Saul’s son Ishbaal (or Ish-bosheth), which may have overlapped with the early part of David’s reign, and the beginnings of the monarchy in Israel can be dated toward the end of the third quarter of the eleventh century BCE. From beginning to end, then, the combined reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon lasted about a century, at the beginning of the Iron II period (Iron IIA).
This correlation between the United Monarchy and the Iron IIA period is not universally accepted. Some archaeologists hold that the material culture of Iron I does not change substantially enough until the end of the tenth century to warrant a change in period designation until that time; and others claim that features of the tenth-century Iron IIA culture continue well into the next century. The division followed here links historical-political events with material culture. The archaeological evidence contains differentiations that can be related to processes of state formation and consolidation. With allowances for a time lag between complex events and their traces in the archaeological record, the designation of the late eleventh and most of the tenth centuries as a distinct period seems justified.
Biblical Sources for Reconstructing the Early Monarchy
The task of understanding how and why Israel’s monarchy emerged, and the changes it brought about in the lives of many Israelites, involves the use of a variety of materials and methods. Foremost among them is the Bible. Indeed, an earlier generation of historians of ancient Israel, confronting problems of the historicity of biblical texts a
nd of large gaps in the record, were often frustrated in their attempts to reconstruct the ancestral history of Israel and to delineate the premonarchic period. They came to the monarchic era with a sense of relief. Here at last, they felt, was extensive textual documentation replete with specific places, times, and events—the stuff from which history can be written. The whole of 1 and 2 Samuel, along with the first eleven chapters of 1 Kings, were deemed exceptionally full and of great historical value. Although not actual historical records themselves, the biblical texts seemed to draw on eyewitness accounts and to provide a fuller picture of monarchic beginnings than of any other period in Israel’s long history.
This optimistic perception meant that scholars holding divergent views about the ancestral and premonarchic periods often produced remarkably similar reconstructions of the beginning of the monarchy. That sequence began with the disastrous collapse of the tribal confederation in the face of severe military pressure from neighboring peoples, continued with the heroic deeds of Saul and David in rescuing the beleaguered people from the Philistine menace, and culminated in the development by David and then Solomon of a dynastic monarchy with a brilliant royal court and a glorious temple in Jerusalem. Opposition to these developments recorded in the biblical narratives was read as conservative resistance to change.
More recently, the traditional assessment of 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 Kings 1–11 as reliable sources for understanding monarchic history has been turned on its head. Literary studies have cast new light on the narratives about the first three kings, and also on those about Samuel, the charismatic figure whom the texts present as kingmaker in relation to both Saul and David.
Well before the advent of these newer literary analyses, scholars recognized that the dramatic tales of Samuel and Saul, and of David and Solomon, are embedded in the so-called Deuteronomic History (DH). A “school” or group of traditionists, probably originating in the northern kingdom of Israel after the division of the monarchy when Solomon died and shifting to Jerusalem after the collapse of that kingdom in 722 BCE, collected and told stories about Israel’s emergence and history, beginning with the “conquest” of Joshua and extending to the demise of the southern kingdom of Judah in the sixth century BCE. An early version of this narrative formed part of the propaganda associated with Josiah’s expansionist policies and economic and religious centralization in the seventh century. A final edition must have been shaped in the sixth century, after the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of many Judeans. These two formative epochs in later monarchic history are the interpretive lenses through which the DH views all previous episodes of national life.
The biblical materials dealing with the rise and duration of the United Monarchy thus bear the mark of a distinctive DH style and perspective. As in Joshua-Judges, the Samuel-Kings narrative contains speeches and prayers, anticipatory leads and evaluative summaries, all of which put an unmistakable spin on the events recounted: the deeds of the people and their leaders are measured against the standards of the Torah of Moses. The DH knows how the story will end: the monarchy will divide, and each kingdom in turn will collapse. The DH’s editorial framework and its inserted theological interpretations anticipate and explain the horror of those events. The last edition even gives a hint of repentance and restoration.
Table 5.1 Relative Lengths of the Narratives about Saul, David, and Solomon
One of the best examples of the DH perspective comes in Solomon’s long address in 1 Kings 8 at the dedication of the Temple. While he invokes the idea that God had covenanted with David to establish an eternal dynasty, Solomon also warns that the people will repeatedly disobey God and will have to be carried away into exile. But, he goes on, if they repent they will earn God’s forgiveness and presumably will be restored to their homeland (w. 22–26, 46–53). Other major instances of the DH worldview in the account of the early monarchy are Samuel’s speech in 1 Samuel 12 about choosing to have a monarchic government, and the speech of the prophet Nathan with the accompanying prayer of David in 2 Samuel 7 about the divine promise of a “house” (that is, a temple) for God and of an eternal “house” (a dynasty) for David.
So effectively did the DH combine authentic sources with interpretive additions that it is difficult to read the narratives in 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 Kings 1–11 without being caught up in the ideological concerns of the ancient editors. The legitimization of the Davidic dynasty, the sacralization of its capital in Jerusalem, and the attribution of an active role to Yahweh (symbolically present in the ark and then in the Temple), have been inextricably interwoven into the shape, sequence, and content of materials selected for inclusion in the DH’s dramatic portrayal of this epoch.
David—the epitome of the royal figure and the embodiment of the later hope for restoration—is the DH’s central figure in its account of the early monarchy. A statistical glance (see table 5.1) at the balance, or rather imbalance, of materials about the first three kings reveals David’s centrality.
In highlighting David and his deeds, the DH captures the sympathy of the audience. It is difficult to follow David’s story without being caught up in his heroic rise from shepherd boy to dynastic paragon. That he perpetrates violence and brutality along the way, the DH takes for granted. What other recourse has he against his enemies, who are cast as God’s enemies as well? One of the best examples of the aggrandizement of David is the Goliath story; the accomplishment of Elhanan in slaying the Philistine warrior (2 Sam. 21.19) becomes part of the David legend (1 Sam. 17).
The larger narrative context of the biblical account of the early monarchy—the entire history of Israel in the land, from Joshua to the exile—has also shaped the ancient editors’ choice and arrangement of materials. Samuel’s prominence as a “judge,” for example, links him to the sequence of stories about charismatic leaders in the preceding block of DH materials. Remarkably, the etymology given for Samuel’s name in 1 Samuel 1.20, the announcement in verse 28 that Samuel is to be dedicated to God, and the various references in 1 Samuel 1 to “requests” from God all contain wordplays on Saul’s name rather than Samuel’s. A narrative of Saul’s birth has apparently been appropriated for Samuel, to give him thematic prominence as the connector between the rule of judges and of kings, and also because of the text’s generally negative portrayal of Saul.
Within the interpretive setting provided by the DH, several major thematic segments can be discerned in the narratives of 1–2 Samuel and 1 Kings 1–11:
• A set of Saul stories, including an old cycle in which Samuel probably played no part, and later materials in which Samuel’s role as kingmaker is prominent, are found in 1 Samuel 8–15, though Saul’s story continues in subsequent chapters because his career overlaps with that of David until his tragic battlefield death.
• The account of David’s rise to power, and of Saul’s diminishing effectiveness, is given in 1 Samuel 16 to 2 Samuel 5.
• The Court History of David, part of which is sometimes called the Succession Narrative, appears in 2 Samuel 9–20 and climaxes with the final days and death of David in 1 Kings 1–2.
• The reign of Solomon is set forth in 1 Kings 3–11.
In addition to these substantial blocks of material, several smaller but thematically important sections appear in the two books of Samuel:
• The birth and call narrative of Samuel in 1 Samuel 1–3, with its supplement in 1 Samuel 7, connects the rule of kings with the preceding rule of judges. It also accounts for the legitimacy of the Zadokite priesthood, which prevailed in Israel from David’s time until the exile and beyond, thereby replacing the priesthood of Eli and his family, which played a central role in premonarchic religious affairs.
• The story of the ark of the covenant, a central icon of early Israel, appears in 1 Samuel 4–7.2, and has links to 2 Samuel 6 and 7.
• A miscellaneous appendix in 2 Samuel 21–24 of psalms, lists, and narratives connected with David.
This bare listing does not, however, reveal what lit
erary analysis makes clear: the historiographic framework embraces segments that are highly legendary and folkloristic, if not novelistic. The account of the early monarchy is replete with traditional literary materials, including stylized motifs such as the sending of messengers or the hiding of spies; repeated type-scenes such as battle accounts and news of defeat; private dialogues in settings that preclude eyewitness records; strong interest in the private life and character of a few individuals at the expense of details about their public works and worlds. These artful literary constructions depict tensions and conflicts in the personal lives of the first kings, and in so doing they convey, more subtly and successfully than explicit history writing could, the moral questions inherent in the concentration of power in the hands of a few.
The Oxford History of the Biblical World Page 29