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How many of them are actually important? Was King Solomon really highly regarded for his wisdom? Was King David really that great of a king? Are the rest forgotten ancient despots?

spin

We only have biblical data on most of them, so there is little way that we can make historical comments on those.

Whether David and Solomon were real people is rather hard to say. There are many more tales about David. There are only two basic things for Solomon's reign: his building of the temple and his palace, and demonstration of his proverbial wisdom. Solomon's wisdom was a topic of interest late in Jewish literature. I can't see anything in the account of his life to suggest he was a real person, but that may be my bias.

It was after Solomon's death that the Jewish kingdom was supposed to have split according to the bible. Now there are actually a few epigraphical traces of the Israelite kingdom (the northern kingdom) in Assyrian records from Omri to the last kings. There are no traces of Judahite kings until just before Hezekiah.

Jerusalem in the 9th century BCE was a very small place, so small that it cannot be considered the centre of a kingdom. In fact up until Hezekiah the largest city in the area was Lachish, and its size suggests that it was the more important city for the who period, so it could well be that there was no kingdom of Judah until the emergence of the realm around the time of Hezekiah (or not long before). Judah plainly started to come to the fore when Israel was being crushed by Assyria.

It could be of course that there were all the kings of Judah listed in the book of Kings, but the evidence clearly points against them. Many of the king entries are very stereotyped.

If you want good guys to read about, obviously try Hezekiah and Josiah. They are seen as good by later Jewish tradition (for example Ben Sira) and there's a couple of chapters on each in Kings.


spin

offa

The kingdom was united briefly by David. Before David it was not united. Solomon's opponent was another descendant of David claiming to better deserve the monarchy. Kind of like Arabs and Jews today.

Check out the ages of the kings when they had their children. Some of them were before puberty and no one believes the "twelve year rule" (you have to add 12 years to get their ages right).