84 KINGS
Even the second redaction did not absolutely fix a single authoritative recension of the book, as appears in detail by comparison of the LXX, version with the Hebrew text.
The LXX. of Kings is not a corrupt reproduction of the Hebrew receptus, but represents another recension of the text. Neither recension can claim absolute superiority. The defects of the LXX. lie on the surface, and are greatly aggravated by the condition of the Greek text, which has suffered much in transmission, and particularly has in many places been corrected after the later Greek versions that express the Hebrew receptus of the 2d century of our era. Yet the LXX. not only preserves many good readings in detail, but throws much light on the long-continued process of redaction at the hand of successive editors or copyists of which the extant Hebrew of Kings is the outcome. Even the false readings of the Greek are instructive, for both recensions were exposed to corrupting influences of precisely the same kind. The following examples will serve to illustrate the treatment through which the book has passed.
1. Minor detached notices such as we should put in footnotes or appendices are inserted so as to disturb the natural context. Thus 1 Kings iv. 27 (Heb., v. 7) must be taken continuously with iv. 19, and so the LXX. actually reads. In like manner the LXX. omits 1 Kings vi. 11-14, which breaks the context of the description of the temple. Again, in the LXX., 1 Kings ix. 26 follows on ver. 14, so that Solomon's dealings with Hiram are continuously recorded. The notices intervening in vers. 15-25 (in a very unnatural order) belong to a class of floating notes about Solomon and his kingdom which seem to have got stranded almost by chance at different points in the two recensions.
2. There are direct or indirect indications of transpositions and insertions on a larger scale. Thus in the LXX. the history of Naboth (1 Kings xxi.) precedes chap. xx. And in fact chaps. xx. and xxii. are parts of one narrative, obviously quite distinct from the history of Elijah. Again the story of Abijah's sickness and Ahijah's prophecy (1 Kings xiv.) is not found in the LXX.,[1] but another version of the same narrative appears at xii. 24, in which there is no reference to a previous promise to Jeroboam through Ahijah, but the prophet is introduced as a new character. This version, which places the prophecy of the destruction of Jeroboam's house between his return from Egypt and his elevation to the throne, is no doubt a mere legend, but it goes to prove that there was once a version of the history of Jeroboam in which chap. xi. 29-39 had no place. In truth, after xi. 26-28 there must once have stood some account of a rebellion in which Jeroboam "lifted up his hand" against King Solomon. To such an account, not to the incident of Ahijah and the cloak related in vers. 29-39, ver. 40 is the natural sequel. Thus all that is related of Ahijah falls under suspicion of being foreign to the original history, and it is noteworthy that in a passage peculiar to the LXX. the incident of the tearing of the cloak is related of Shemaiah and placed at the convention at Shechem, showing how much fluctuation there was in the tradition.
These instances show that there was a certain want of definiteness about the redaction. The mass of disjointed materials, not always free from inconsistencies, which lay before the editor in separate documents or in excerpts already partially arranged by an earlier hand, could not have been reduced to real unity without critical sifting, and an entire recasting of the narrative in a way foreign to the ideas and literary habits of the Hebrews. The unity which the editor aimed at was limited to chronological continuity in the events recorded and a certain uniformity in the treatment of the religious meaning of the narrative. Even this could not be perfectly attained under the circumstances, and the links of the history were not firmly enough rivetted to prevent disarrangement or rearrangement of details by later scribes.
3. The continued efforts of successive redactors can be traced in the chronology of the book. The chronological method of the narrative appears most clearly in the history after Solomon, where the events of each king's reign are thrown into a kind of stereotyped framework on this type: – "In the twentieth year of Jeroboam, king of Israel, Asa began to reign over Judah, and reigned in Jerusalem forty-one years." ... "In the third year of Asa, king of Judah, Baahsa began to reign over Israel in Tirzah twenty-four years." The history moves between Judah and Israel according to the date of each accession; as soon as a new king has been introduced everything that happened in his reign is discussed, and wound up by another stereotyped formula as to the death and burial of the sovereign; and to this mechanical arrangement the natural connexion of events is often sacrificed. In this scheme the elaborate synchronisms between contemporary monarchs of the north and south give an aspect of great precision to the chronology. But in reality the data for Judah and Israel do not agree, and Wellhausen, following Ewald, has shown that the synchronisms were not in the sources, but were calculated from the list of the years of each king (Jahrb. f. D. Theol., 1875). It appears further that these latter data are not all derived from historical tradition, but are in part due to conjectural subdivision of the cycle 480 (twelve generations of forty years) which appears in 1 Kings vi. 1 as the period from the Exodus to the foundation of the temple, and according to the Judæan list of kings as the period from the foundation of the temple to the end of the captivity (536 B.C.).[2] In the early part of the Judæan history the first dates not accessions are connected with the temple, and apparently derived from temple records. Of these the most important is the twenty-third year of Joash, which the chronological scheme makes the one hundred and sixty-first year of the temple, trisecting the four hundred and eighty years cycle. Other one hundred and sixty years bring us to the death of Hezekiah, and the last third of the cycle begins with the accession of Manasseh, whose sins are treated as the decisive cause of the exile. Within these limits a few dates were given by the sources; the rest, as can easily be shown, were filled in with reference to a unit of forty years.[3] Again the duration of the kingdom of Israel, according to the northern lists, was two hundred and forty completed years, viz. , eighty years before the first expedition of Benhadad, eighty years of Syrian wars, forty of prosperity under the victorious Jeroboam II., whose first year belongs to the period of war, and forty years of decline. The trisections in each case and the round numbers of 480 and 240 point strongly to a systematization of the chronology on the basis of a small number of given dates, and the proof that it is so is completed when we learn from the exactly kept lists of Assyrian chronology that the siege of Samaria fell in 722, whereas the system dates the captivity from 737 (535+480-37-241).
The key to the chronology is 1 Kings vi. 1, which, as Wellhausen has shown, was not found in tho original LXX., and contains internal evidence of post-Babylonian date. In fact the system as a whole is necessarily later than 535 B.C., the fixed point from which it counts back.
4. Another aspect in the redaction may be called theological.
Its characteristic is the application to the old history of a standard
belonging to later developments of the Old Testament religion.
Thus, as we have already seen, the redactor in 1 Kings iii. regards
worship in high places as sinful after the building of the temple,
though he knows that the best kings before Hezekiah made no
attempt to suppress these shrines. So too his unfavourable judg
ment on the whole religion of the northern kingdom was manifestly
not shared by Elijah and Elisha, nor by the original narrator of the
history of these prophets. This feature in the redaction displays
itself, not only in occasional comments or homiletical excursuses, but
in that part of the narrative in which all ancient historians allowed
themselves free scope for the development of their reflexions – the
speeches placed in the mouths of actors in the history. Here also
there is textual evidence that the theological element is somewhat
loosely attached to the earlier narrative, and underwent successive
additions. We have seen that the LXX. omits 1 Kings vi. 11-14,
and that both prophecies of Ahijah belong to the least certain part
of the textual tradition. So too an indication that tho long prayer
of Solomon, 1 Kings viii. 14-53, the Deuteronomic colour of which
is recognized by all critics, did not stand in the oldest account of the
dedication of the temple is preserved in the fact that the ancient frag
ment, vers. 12, 13, which in the Hebrew text is imperfect, appears
in the LXX. after ver. 53 in completer form and with a reference to
the book of Jashar as source ((
Greek characters) = (Hebrew characters) = (Hebrew characters)). The redactional insertion displaced it in one recension and
led to its mutilation in the other. The older parts of this chapter
have also been retouched in conformity with later (even post-exile)
ritual and law. The Levites who appear at ver. 4 in contrast to the
priests, in a way unknown to the pre-exile history, are not named
in the LXX., and the post-exile "congregation" ('ēdah) at ver. 5 is
also wanting. The processes illustrated by these examples were
doubtless at work in many places where external evidence fails us,
and may often be detected by a careful use of internal evidence
alone. See especially Wellhausen's detailed analysis in the last
edition of Bleek's Einleitung.
To gain an exacter idea of the main redaction of Kings
and of the nature of the original sources, we may divide
the history into three sections: – (1) the conclusion of the
"court history," 1 Kings i. ii., the further consideration of
which belongs to the criticism of SAMUEL (q.v.); (2) Solomon,
1 Kings iii.-xi.; (3) the kingdoms of Ephraim and Judah.
For (2) the main source, as we learn from 1 Kings xi. 41,
was a book called Acts of Solomon. This work can hardly
have been a regular chronicle, for the history founded on
it contains no continuous narrative. All that is related of
Solomon's reign is grouped round the description of the
