Blue Cord

James Getz at Kethubim has decided to post something on the Nevi’im. In a post entitled “Musings on Sacral Kingship in Ancient Israel”, he discusses James C. Moyer’s 1969 Brandeis dissertation, “The Concept of Ritual Purity among the Hittites.” James (Getz, not Moyer) points out a passage in which James (Moyer, not Getz) draws attention to the idea that the king in ancient Israel may have been inviolable due to his anointing. Both of the Jameses (Jamesayim?) have good things to say, and I encourage people to head over to Kethubim to read the post.

I wanted to add a couple of things that may support what they both have to say. It may be the case that David refused to attack Saul because he was God’s anointed. But we do have other cases in which kings were assassinated by others who had been anointed. The most obvious example is Jehu who was anointed with the specific instructions to strike down Joram, who presumably had also been anointed when he became king.

I also wonder about Solomon and Adonijah. Although the text does not explicitly say so, it is hard to imagine that Adonijah had not been anointed as king by Abiathar (1 Kings 1:5-10). Yet he is scared that Solomon, who has also been anointed (1 Kings 1:34), will kill him (1 Kings 1:49-53). Solomon does not do so at the time, although he later has Adonijah killed for requesting Abishag as his wife (1 Kings 2:25). It is interesting in this case that Solomon sent someone else to do it. If kings were inviolable except to others who were anointed, then apparently one anointed person could send a non-anointed person to kill another anointed person.

The connection between the story of the golden calf episode in Exodus 32 and the setting up of the golden calves by Jeroboam in 1 Kings 12:25-33 is well-known. One of the stories is dependent on the other, although the direction of dependence is still debated. The problem has been discussed in a number of places, but I wanted to draw out some implications of these stories for the history of the priesthood in ancient Israel.

There are three elements of the Exodus 32 story that bear on the priesthood. One is the anti-Aaron story that forms a main element of the story. It is unclear whether there was an original form of this story that did not include Aaron,¹ but in the story as it is currently found he is an inseparable part of the narrative. The second element of the story that bears on the priesthood is the pro-Levite story in Exodus 32:25-29. This story is an etiology for the service of the Levites as priests.² Noth judged this story to be a secondary addition to the original J narrative.³

It seems likely that these two elements came together at a time when there were two priestly factions vying for control. Obviously, that does not narrow the time frame that much. Opposition between the Aaronides and the Levites seems to have begun at least as early in the monarchy, Eli may also have been an Aaronide. The Aaronides, who were probably a sub-set of the Levites, rose to a position of prominence in Jerusalem and soon became the only priests who were allowed to serve in the Jerusalem temple.⁴ The rest of the Levites were left serving in other cities. This would mean that all the priests in the northern kingdom of Israel were Levities, at least originally.

We are told in 1 Kings 12:31 that Jeroboam appointed non-Levitical priests to serve at his shrines in Dan and Bethel. This pulls in the third element of the Exodus 32 story that bears on the history of the priesthood: the critique of the golden calf.  If we are looking for pro-Levite / anti-Aaronide authors who would have reason to critique golden calves, then the Levites in the north are the obvious choice. From their point of view, the story scores points against multiple adversaries: it critiques the religious practices of Jeroboam while painting the Aaronides in a negative light.

This means this story in its present form must have originated between 930-722 BCE. Some of the traditions are probably older, and this phase of the development of Exodus 32 may have been oral instead of textual. But to me these three elements indicate that the story in Exodus 32 is of northern origin and is based at least in part on the reforms of Jeroboam. It provides a brief but tantalizing glimpse into the development of the priesthood in the 9th-8th centuries BCE.

1. Aaron is barely mentioned in the parallel account in Deuteronomy 9:8-21. He shows up only in v.20 and his sin is unclear. [back]
2. Why Durham says that this story does not justify the Levites ordination as priests is unclear. John I. Durham, Exodus, Word Biblical Commentary 3 (Dallas: Word, 2002), 432. [back]
3. Martin Noth, Exodus, trans. J.S. Bowden, Westminster Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962), 245. [back]
4. Zadok and Abiathar were both Aaronides, although Abiathar and his descendants were banished from Jerusalem for supporting Adonijah against Solomon in 1 Kings 2:26-27. [back]

I have just come across a review of my book, The Campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I into Palestine, in JSOT 30.5 (2006): 51-52. The review is written by Diane Edelman. It is just a one paragraph review, and she mostly just summarizes what I have to say. At the end of the review, however, she says:

His analysis leaves unexplained three points: (1) why a pharaoh would establish a political alliance with a foreign commoner, marrying one of his daughters to him, (2) why the geographical scope of the list is limited to Cisjordan, unlike the wider range found in other such lists; and (3) why there are so many unique sites here that are not attested earlier or later.

I wanted to point out that I did, in fact, discuss all three of these points. In the conclusion on pp.98-99, I discuss the campaign from a foreign policy standpoint, suggesting that Shoshenq established a political alliance with Jeroboam in order to weaken Solomon’s kingdom. This policy changed the situation in Palestine. Egypt went from being faced with a relatively strong nation under Solomon, a nation that controlled the others in the region, to being faced with numerous weak nations, one of whom was in alliance with Egypt. This would have been a much more favorable situation as far as Egypt was concerned.

I addressed her third point on pp.44-46, where I discussed possible sources for the topographical list in Shoshenq’s relief. I think onomastic lists are a strong candidate for the source of the topographical list. Onomastic lists were kept up to date by the scribes so that they had an accurate catalog of cities. Since the other examples of topographic lists are from the Late Bronze Age, we should not be surprised that the Shoshenq list is different. It comes from several centuries after the lists of Thutmose III, Seti I, Ramses II, and Ramses III. The cities in Canaan had changed greatly during that those centuries, and the onomastic lists would have reflected those changes.

As for the list being limited to the Cisjordan, there are some sites, such as #22 (Mahanaim), which are located in the Transjordan. Given how incomplete the list is and the fact that we are unable to identify a large number of the sites, I don’t think we can say that the list is limited to the Cisjordan. I doubt the we have sites outside of Palestine (with the exception of ##1-9, which include Egypt, Nubia, and Libya), but the presence of Mahanaim means that we cannot rule out sites in the Transjordan.

If anyone is interested in reading a short summary of my dissertation, Bible and Interpretation has an on-line version of a paper I gave on the topic at the SBL meeting in 2000.

The final day of the SBL began with me at the Pentateuch section. This was the second Pentateuch section that was held together with the Deuteronomistic History session. Although four presenters were scheduled, Mark Zvi Brettler and Albert De Pury were not able to attend.  So, we only heard two papers, but fortunately they were both very good.

Thomas B. Dozeman’s paper “The Golden Calf in the Enneateuch” was first.  The is probably the best paper I heard at the conference, mostly because he combined excellent scholarship and new interpretive approaches in a paper that was logically organized and easy to follow. He discussed the passages that discuss the Golden Calf: Exodus 32, Deuteronomy 9-10, and 1 Kings 12.  He argues that Exodus 32 is the latest of these and is engaged in innerbiblical exegesis on the other two texts.

This has implications for some of the work I am doing.  Obviously, Exodus 32, which is non-P, is pro-Levite and anti-Aaronid.  This would suggest that it was composed around the same time as texts such as Ezekiel 44 and the reworking of Numbers 16-18 by HS. It seems a part of a larger dialog taking place in the post-exilic period about the place of the Levites.

The second paper was “The Envisioning of the Land in the Priestly Material: Fulfilled Promise or Future Hope?” by Suzanne Boorer.  She argued that Priestly material does not continue into the book of Joshua, which leaves the promise of the land unfulfilled in the Priestly document. Although it was a good paper, I disagree with her. As I argued in a paper last year at the EABS, I think there is a good deal of P in Joshua 13-21. But I do agree with Boorer that at some point the promise of land was broken off when Joshua was removed in the process that created the Pentateuch out of the Hexateuch.

Some of the discussion surrounding the papers was helpful for my own thought process.  One idea that came to me is that the Priestly layers in Joshua might have been added by HS in the post-exilic period in order to encourage people to return to Judah/Yehud from Babylon. A focus on the land would make sense at that point.

After a quick run through the book sale, I headed to the Kansas City Barbecue place across from the Hyatt.  Some scenes from the movie Top Gun were filmed there, and being an aficionado of  barbecue I thought I should give it a try.  The barbecue was OK, but not quite up to the standards of North Carolina, although the sweet potato pie I had for desert was excellent.

I will be heading to the airport this afternoon.  I have a red-eye flight back tonight at 11:00 pm.

Next year in Jerusalem Boston!

Although I am coming in rather late on this topic, I thought I would post a quick note on the recent discussion about the so-called “Jezebel Seal.”

In a forthcoming article in BAR, Marjo Korpel argues that a seal in the Israel Museum (IDAM 65-321) belongs to the infamous Jezebel, wife of King Ahab of Israel. Nahman Avigad had first published this seal in 1964, but noted that there is no solid basis for ascribing it to Jezebel. The story of Korpel’s identification was first reported in Ha’aretz. Several blogs have discussed this seal over the past week, and Chris Heard at Higgaion has a good summary of the debate and links to other biblioblogs that have touched on the subject.

Jim West has a guest blog about the seal by Chris Rollston of Johnson Bible College Emmanuel School of Religion. Chris and I were students together at Johns Hopkins, so I can attest that he is well-versed in epigraphy. His thoughts on an inscription such as this are always worth noting.

One of the more damaging critiques that Chris notes is that the writing on the seal is later than the 9th century (the date of the biblical Jezebel). If this is the case, then there is no possibility that the seal belonged to her. Avigad dated the seal to the 9th-8th century, but our knowledge of scripts has increased greatly since that time. Zbl is a common root in Northwest Semitic, so it would not be surprising to find other people with that element in their name.

All in all, there seems little reason to ascribe this seal to the Jezebel of biblical fame.

Follow up: Amihai Mazar has posted a short paragraph about the seal on the American Schools of Oriental Research website.