lpetrich

She produced the three-part series The Bible's Buried Secrets, about

1. King David
2. Did God have a wife?
3. The Garden of Eden

The second episode we've discussed in these threads:
BBC's face of religion is a self-proclaimed atheist who claims God had a wife and Eve - FRDB
God was married to Asherah? [merged with God's Wife] - FRDB
Her thesis is hardly new, it must be said. It's rather well established that the Israelites had originally worshipped several deities, and that what we find in the Bible is a rewrite of history by YHWH-onlyists.


The first episode, about the possible historicity of King David, was interesting though inconclusive.

Did he have a big empire? Archeologists first thought he did, identifiying some northern-kingdom cities with his son Solomon's building projects. But work on pottery correlation and radiometric dating showed that they were at least a century too young for that. Instead, they date from the time of Omri and his successors, with not much before them. She points out that we have contemporary evidence of Omri in the Moabite Stone, though she didn't mention Assyrian references to a "House of Omri".

She notes that we have a lot of stuff from Omri's time and place, and not nearly as much from David's, making one ask how much he had ruled. Interestingly, the Bible does not say much about Omri and other northern kings, and some of them are portrayed as very bad.

But others have pointed out that the Biblical account of him does make him seem like a real person, even despite such stories as him vs. Goliath. I remember scoring him on Lord Raglan's scale, and he scored very low. He had obscure parentage, nobody tried to kill him when he was a baby, he lived in his future kingdom, he didn't fall into disfavor late in life, and he died of old age. His main Lord-Raglanish incident was him defeating Goliath.

Putting the pieces of the puzzle together, there was likely a historical King David, but one who only ruled the southern kingdom. He got credited with founding the northern kingdom by later mythmakers who had disliked its kings, but who had considered it part of their nation.


In the third episode, she presents a remarkable hypothesis: that the Garden of Eden story is an allegory about the fall of the Israelites' monarchy and the expulsion of the king from the first Jerusalem Temple.

She notes that in the Middle East, gardens are nice artificial places, not wilderness areas -- much of the Middle East is semidesert and desert, including most of the places that she shows in her documentary. Not surprisingly, God commands Adam to be his gardener, to take care of his garden (Gen 2:15).

The fruit? The Bible does not state that it's an apple, and she does not speculate on what it might be.

The snake? In the Jerusalem Temple, there had once been a bronze statue of a snake (Hebrew: nahash) called the Nehushtan. It was eventually removed as idolatrous, however.

The cherubs? Not cute little boys, but fierce monsters, something like the Assyrian monsters with the head of a man, the body of a bull, and the wings of an eagle.

Eve? The king's wife, or one of them. We find some stories of kings being led astray by their wives, so Eve could be one of them.

She continues with the layout of the temple, which is much like that of a temple in northern Syria whose ruins she showed. She proposes that the temple's interior was at least an allegory of a garden, something that the king was supposed to take care of. The king got kicked out because he got too arrogant and full of himself.


That's certainly a remarkable theory, and the next question is how it got interpreted as a creation story. Someone may have composed this allegory, and someone else may have stuck it at the beginning as a convenient place for some story that features archetypical characters.

bacht

Isn't Josiah the best candidate for this historical revisionism, working together with the Yhwh monolatrists?

Minimalist

There is no archaeological evidence for Josiah. Or "Solomon" for that matter.

lpetrich

Yes, King Josiah and his fellow Yahwists would be the first likely candidates. It was in his reign that high priest Hilkiah made that extremely convenient "discovery" of the "book of the Law".

It was around 622 BCE, about a century after the conquest of the northern kingdom by the Assyrians in 720 BCE. The southern kingdom narrowly escaped being conquered by the Assyrians in 701 BCE; Sennacherib's armies were not successful in besieging Jerusalem and they then departed.

Our main sources state rather different things about that failed siege. The author of 2 Kings tells us that one of YHWH's angels zapped the Assyrian army, while Assyrian chroniclers describe the enormous amount of loot that the Assyrians brought home, and how King Hezekiah was trapped in Jerusalem like a caged bird.

So under those circumstances, it may not have been difficult for Josiah and Hilkiah and their fellow Yahwists to put down the northern kingdom -- they were bad, and they got what they deserved at the hands of the Assyrians.

Doug Shaver

And therefore, what?

Minimalist

And therefore there is reason to accept his existence any more than Hercules, King Arthur or Luke Skywalker.

He exists within the pages of one book...of dubious authorship and less accuracy.

spin

This misrepresents the evidence, although it is in the strictest sense only in the pages of that book, but then some indirect evidence is relevant here. The basic indications we have of Hezekiah reflect what we know from Mesopotamian sources, as do those regarding Jehoiachin ("Yaukin", as the Babylonians referred to him). There's nothing legendary about Josiah who fills part of the gap between Hezekiah and Jehoiachin in the 2 Kings narrative going off to fulfill his Mesopotamian overlord's bidding and getting himself killed by Necho. There were definitely Jewish kings with Yahwistic names at the general time and archaeological and epigraphic evidence supports the biblical narrative in a sketchy manner. There may not have been a Josiah (after all we have only a single source for him), but there certainly was a Jewish king at the time: it's a little too rich to argue that where we only have biblical data in this specific matter we should not trust its basic account. I think that there is sufficient evidence to accept that there was a king probably called Josiah allowed to rule by the Assyrians and who got killed by the Egyptians, while accepting that he was probably also greatly romanticized by the Hasmonean king John Hyrcanus, whose deeds seem to reflect those of Josiah.

Minimalist

This overstates the evidence. There was probably a 'king' in Jerusalem ( all the other local states were run by kings and there is no reason to think they were any different.) Whether he was "Jewish" or not ( in any sense that we would recognize the word) is a whole other story.


I once made the mistake of using that same argument with Niels Peter Lemche. In effect, "what's the harm of calling him "Josiah?" It beats calling him "Joe Blow." The retort, which I had to concede was a good one, is that using the name Josiah saddles one with a whole lot of bible bullshit for which there is no hard evidence. Better to call him "the king" without pretending that the bible has any historical basis.

lpetrich

I forgot to mention FS pointing out the Tel Dan inscription and its reference to the "house of David".

Minimalist, I think that a more pertinent comparison is with Livy's History of Rome. We have independent evidence of later politicians, like the Scipio family, but not of earlier ones, like Numa Pompilius or Romulus.

So who is King Josiah more like? King David?

I recall someone once claiming that many ancient histories have a sequence of three eras without clear boundaries between them:

1. Gods and creation
2. Heroes
3. Ordinary people

One can find that in Livy's history book, in Greek mythology, in the Sumerian King List, etc. The Bible also fits very well.

After creating the Universe, the Biblical God does less and less, and human heroes get the attention. These heroes themselves become more and more ordinary.

• Creation stories: 1
• Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua: 1 to 2
• Judges period, Samuel, Saul, David, Solomon: 2 to 3
• Omri, Hezekiah, Josiah, Jehoiachin: 3

That's also repeated in the New Testament and early Xian history:

• Jesus Christ: 1
• Paul: 2
• Church Fathers: 3

Minimalist

Surely you are not asserting that Livy's recounting of Roman foundation legends constitutes "history?"


"Josiah" is positioned at a time when we already have evidence that literacy existed in Judah. Certainly the same cannot be said for the pre-republican phase of Roman history. Yet, we have not a single reference to "Josiah" in any Judahite nor Assyrian, Babylonian or Egyptian texts. Find a single inscription with the name of Josiah on it and I will gladly use that name instead of "Joe Blow."

I agree with you about the stages of ancient "historical" writing. I also agree that the bible fits in well with the description. That is why I reject it as merely another example of such literature. I don't consider the Iliad to be a historical document either.