Prolegomena to the History of IsraelWellhausen, Julius
Religion
Prolegomena to the History of Israel
Wellhausen, Julius
Bible. Old Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Jews -- History -- To 70 A.D.; Judaism -- History -- To 70 A.D.
Yet this is as nothing over against the disharmony of the total
impression. See what Chronicles has made out of David! The
founder of the kingdom has become the founder of the temple and
the public worship, the king and hero at the head of his
companions in arms has become the singer and master of ceremonies
at the head of a swarm of priests and Levites; his clearly cut
figure has become a feeble holy picture, seen through a cloud of
incense. It is obviously vain to try to combine the
fundamentally different portraits into one stereoscopic image;
it is only the tradition of the older source that possesses
historical value. In Chronicles this is clericalised in the taste
of the post-exilian time, which had no feeling longer for anything
but cultus and torah, which accordingly treated as alien the old
history (which, nevertheless, was bound to be a sacred history),
if it did not conform with its ideas and metamorphose itself into
church history. Just as the law framed by Ezra as the foundation
of Judaism was regarded as having been the work of Moses, so what
upon this basis had been developed after Moses--particularly the
music of the sanctuary and the ordering of the temple
_personnel_---was carried back to King David, the sweet singer of
Israel, who had now to place his music at the service of the
cultus, and write psalms along with Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun,
the Levitical singing families.
VI.I.3. With regard to Solomon, Chronicles (2Chronicles i.-ix.)
nowhere departs very far from the lines of the Book of Kings.
As the story of 1Kings i., ii., which is not an edifying one, and
mercilessly assails that of 1Chronicles xxii.-xxix., required to
be omitted, the narrative accordingly begins with 1Kings iii., with
Solomon's accession, sacrifices on the great altar at Gibeon, and
the revelation of Jehovah, which was thereupon communicated to him
in a dream. This last is transcribed with slight alterations,
but at the outset a characteristic divergence is found. "Solomon
loved Jehovah, walking in the statutes of David his father, only
he sacrificed and burnt incense on the high places (because
there was no house built unto the name of Jehovah until those
days). And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there; for that
was the great high place; a thousand burnt-offerings did Solomon
offer upon that altar, and Jehovah appeared unto him in a dream:
Ask what I shall give thee." So 1Kings iii. 2 seq. Chronicles,
after its manner, first surrounds the king with a great assemblage
of captains of hundreds and thousands, of judges and princes
and heads of houses, and purely Pentateuchal dignities, and then
proceeds:
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