I recently received a question about the books of Joshua and Judges: when were they written? They are fascinating books — flat out GREAT stories in them — and need to be placed in the historical context of their author to be understood. But when was that, and what ideas were guiding his narrative?
I discuss such issues in my textbook The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction, right after my coverage of the Pentateuch. Here is what I say there.
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As we move now beyond the Pentateuch, we come to another collection of historical writings in the Hebrew Bible. Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings are usually thought of and treated as a group of books, probably all written by the same author (or group of authors). These books narrate the life of Israel once it comes to the Promised Land, as it conquers the peoples already dwelling there, divides up the land, lives in the land as a group of tribes, comes to be ruled by kings, and eventually is defeated by other foreign powers and removed from the land. In the Tanakh these books are considered the “Former Prophets”; modern scholars have preferred calling them the Deuteronomistic History, as they record the history of ancient Israel between the entry to the land and the exile in terms highly reminiscent of, and probably dependent on, the religious views set forth in the older D source that makes up the book of Deuteronomy.
The Deuteronomistic History
The six books of the Deuteronomistic History (just four books in the Hebrew Bible, as 1 and 2 Samuel are counted as one book, as are 1 and 2 Kings), cover a large span of time, nearly 600 years. These six centuries can be…
Dr. Ehrman,
I’ve been reading about a “cursed tablet” that was discovered which contains Hebrew characters and dates to somewhere around 1500 BCE. The archaeologist from Katy, TX who was part of the team that discovered it seems to believe that this is irrefutable proof that the Old Testament was written at the time the events took place. He doesn’t explain how this discovery resolves all the anachronisms in the text, so I suspect he may be biased. But I’m curious as to what you think about this discovery and what impact might come from it. Also, what is a “cursed tablet” and how was it used? BTW, the text was written in “chiastic parallelism” which is a term that I understand only because I have been a blog member for several years and, of course, it is something you’ve covered here.
Why would a curse table on a different topic demonstrate when other books were weritten?
In an interview with Gutsick Gibbon a while ago, I remember you said the Priestly Tradition within the Torah “usually dates” to the exilic or post-exilic period. Richard Elliot Friedman thinks or thought when he wrote The Bible with Sources Revealed that it was written around the time of Hezekiah’s centralizing reforms. Can you say a bit about why scholars “usually” reject this view? And if it has to do with the Holiness Material of Leviticus 17-26, can you say a bit about why scholars might reject Israel Knohl and Jacob Milgrom’s contention that this was added in a later redaction?
I”m afraid I don’t know all the ins and outs of the current debates. But there does seem to be a greater emphasis on priestly concerns when the people of Judea realize with graphic clarity just how important the then-destroyed temple and the priestly observances in it were to their social, cultural, and religious identity.
Many (most) of the stories in Judges are obviously legendary. Do you think that the tribes really had military judges ruling over them?
Seems plaubile, but I don’t really know.
I wish that when you talk about this stuff, you would be considerate of us who are trying to keep it all straight, specifically, the distinction between the meaning of the words “Israel” and “Jews”, as explained on the blog some time ago.
Ah, right. Israel originally meant all the chosen people; it later came to refer to the northern kingdom. Jews were the people in the Persian period (later) who came from Judea – the reconstituted southern kingdom.
I’ve recently encountered the hypothesis that the united monarchy period might not be merely embellished by legend, but entirely legendary (and only appearing after the Assyrian conquest of Israel). What’s your take on this, Bart? Is there solid historical evidence to support the historicity of the united monarchy period?
Not per se, but we do have a non-Israelite inscription that refers to the “House of DAvid.” Look up Tel Dan inscription. Do probably there was a Davidic Kingdom of some kind.
Bart,
The multiple authorships, sometimes referred to with letters such as E, J, P and D, certainly make the chronological understanding of these book challenging. Plus, the redundant/similar names for the various kings of Israel and Judah are hard to keep straight. I have read ‘Who Wrote the Bible’ by Friedman and ‘The Bible Unearthed’ by Finkelstein, which attempt to clear things up a little bit.
I was wondering if there have been any new discoveries on clarifying the history around the time of the last BCE ‘Messiah’ (Josiah), especially in regards to the dating and authorships. Understanding this deconstruction of the lands of greater Israel would certainly help us to set the construction of the stage appropriately for the future appearance of John the Baptist and Jesus.
I’m not aware of further research, but I’m sure there’s a bunch of it. I don’t really keep up much with what’s happening in research on pre-exilic Judah.
This is unrelated to the current topic, but I did have an observation. I have watched several of your conversations/debates with evangelical scholars on whether the Bible is a reliable history narrative or if miracles can be considered part of what we know of the historical Jesus. I am registered for your April 9th debate, As with previous such debates, it does seem the will be the stalemate which occurs whenever historical skepticism runs up against beliefs rooted in absolute faith.
I think the issue is whether purely historical scholarship can establish the probability that a supernatural event has occurred. For that I don’t think there should be a stalemate. If an event requires a certain set of religoius beliefs, it’s not historical scholarship by definition. Many people don’t see that, but it’s actually not even a debate among historians themselves….
I’m fascinated by the depiction of the Conquest especially since it turns out to be unhistorical. Why would a culture create a narrative that deliberately celebrates genocidal mayhem? Unless that was exactly the way the Deuteronomist thought things should work! We tend to sympathize with Saul when he spares the Amalekites but for the Deuteronomist Saul is the bad guy of the piece, right? We view Ruth’s use of her sexual wiles to accomplish her goals as morally ambiguous but the ancient writer intended to celebrate her for it, right? Isn’t this what is happening in Revelation? We’re appalled but that’s because we moderns are the ones who don’t get it, right? These ancient writers would have found our ideas as crazy as we find theirs, right?
Lots and lots of ancient literature celebrates the destruction of others. Think The Iliad and the Odyssey! The Aeneid! And son on…. Yes, ancients would have seen our views as very bizarre.
Are those stories historically correct??.
Almost certainly they are much later legends. There’s no evidence of such things actually happening.
I listened to your discussion on Unbelievable, on “Did Christianity give us our belief in equality compassion&consent”. A post summarising your rebuttal to Glen’s thesis would be valuable. His thesis is revisionist, in terms of anachronistic projections of modern values onto biblical texts, and of purported Christian underpinnings behind the Scientific Revolution, though his stance is typical of narratives promoted by Christian apologists and scholars. Some scholars in field of science-religion dialogue present plausible accounts of Enlightenment scientists viewing their science as an exploration of God’s created order, while operating under methodological naturalism. I particularly like your curt refutation of Glen’s interpretation of Genesis2 about Eve as pinnacle of creation, and God presenting pre-existing animals to Adam for naming: “snakes and aardvarks are superior to humans in that scheme!”, “there’s no perfect tense in Hebrew” (NIV translators hiding the contradiction). Despite many disagreements, you agree Jesus’ ethics of service was counter-cultural against Greco-Romans valorising strength and dominance. I wonder if the contrast is an artefact of extant Greco-Roman accounts written by the politically powerful, while early Christian writers were underdogs disinterested in conquest (where dominance triumphs), interested in winning converts across socioeconomic spectrum and building church communities (where service wins)?
I used the search field for “How many followers did Jesus have?”
I did not see the answer I remember you giving a while back. I seem to recall you suggesting the historical Jesus did not have as many followers as the Jesus of the gospels.
You did not divide those followers into Jewish followers and Hellenist followers, like Stephen and the six other leading Hellenists.
There is mention of the exemplary faith of the Roman centurion, but the gospels do not seem to indicate how Hellenists came to be so impressed with Jesus that they would follow him and organize themselves into a community.
Were the Hellenists first proselytes like Queen Helena or were they Gentiles who did not want to convert to Judaism?
TWO QUESTIONS
1) How many followers did you think the historical Jesus have? (Was it less than 100?)
(In the gospels, I knew of the 12 who left their wives behind and the 72 (Luke 10:1) who were sent out ahead of Jesus to every town and place He was about to visit.)
2) Of the followers that would go through the trouble of setting up a Jesus community, approximately, how many were Jewish vs. Hellenist (like Stephen and Prochorus)?
By “followers” do you mean people walking around with him? Maybe 15-20? People who were comletely commited to his teachings during his lifetime? Surely fewer than 100. Not 13,000 as in the Gospe of Mark! (5000 men fed, not counting the women and children!) There weren’t any Jesus communities in his day. After his resurrection, the first community was Jewish, in Jerusalem. There may have been others in Judea and Galilee, but there’s not much evidence of it. The ones we know about are primrily or entirely gentile.
Judges through 2 Kings contains stories with a primitive view of God. YHWH receives human sacrifices (e.g., Jephthah’s daughter), and actively does battle for Israel, like when YHWH hurls giant hailstones from the sky to kill their enemies. YHWH seems to constantly have his finger on the SMITE button. From Judges through 2 Kings, there’s no reference to a written law until it is “found” during temple renovations for Josiah. There’s hardly any mention of Moses and certainly no veneration of him. There’s veneration of Moses and reference to the written law of Moses in Joshua, which seems Deuteronomistic. But it seems there are some post-exilic (Persian period) tinkering in Joshua, too. Rahab refers to “God in heaven.” There are iterations in which Joshua conquered all the enemies, followed by another iteration that says some enemies were unconquered. I wonder if they needed stories about having been the rulers of all the land in the past to bolster their desire for ascendancy in the new Persian province “Beyond the River”. Bart, any thoughts on Joshua vs Judges through 2 Kings?
“The sacrificial cult is to be localized in the Temple in Jerusalem; other cultic sites are strictly forbidden.”
Was this requirement due to the priests wanting to make sure that they were the only ones who could perform the sacrifices and therefore earn their percentage of the sacrifice?
It’s not completely clear what is behind it, though certainly it is easier to control ritual/liturgical/cultic variation if there is only one central sanctuary instead of sanctuaries and their priests spread out all over the place, and consistency of practice was always a huge issue for ancient Israel living in a multiverse of religions.
Was Samuel thought to be a created character similar to Abraham and the patriots rather than a historical person that existed?
Depends whom you ask. There’s no outside evidence for him, of course; in these texts he serves as the transitional figure between the “judges” of Israel and the “kings.”
What is your thought on Samuel actually existing? And on King Saul actually existing?
I don’t think any of the stories about them are probably historical, though there may certainly have been a king before David and Israelite leaders who were transitional figures to the kings…