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.
One more instance is worthy of mention in this connection. King
Solomon, we are told, had, besides the daughter of Pharaoh, many
foreign wives, from Moab, Ammon, and other peoples, intermarriage
with whom Jehovah had forbidden (Deuteronomy xvii 17). And when he was
old, they seduced him to the worship of their gods, and he
erected on the Mount of Olives at Jerusalem high places for
Chemosh of Moab, and for Milcom of Ammon, and for the gods of his
other wives. As a punishment for this Jehovah announced to him
that his kingdom should be torn from him after his death and given
to his servant, and also raised up adversaries to him, in Hadad
the Edomite, who freed Edom, and in the Syrian Rezon teen Eliadah,
who made Damascus independent. And by the prophet Abijah of
Shiloh, he caused the Ephraimite Jeroboam, who then had the
supervision of the forced labour of the house of Joseph in the
fortification of the city of David, to be nominated as the future
king of the ten tribes. So we read in 1Kings xi. But Edom, and,
as it appears, Damascus as well, broke away from the kingdom of
David immediately after his death (xi. 2I seq., 25); and the
fortification of the citadel, in which Jeroboam was employed when
incited to revolt by Abijah, though it falls somewhat later, yet
belongs to the first half of Solomon's reign, since it is
connected with the rest of his buildings (ix. 15, 24). Now
Solomon cannot have been punished by anticipation, in his youth,
for an offence which he only committed in his old age, and the
moral connected with these events is contradicted by chronology
and cannot possibly be ascribed to the original narrator. The
Deuteronomistic revision betrays itself, in fact, in every word
of xi. 1-13. To the original tradition belongs only the mention
of the many wives--without the reprobation attached to it,--and
the statement about the building of the altars of Chemosh and
Milcom and perhaps Astarte, on the Mount of Olives, where they
stood till the time of Josiah (2Kings xxiii. 13). The connection
of the two events, in the relation of cause and effect, belongs to
the last editor, as well as the general statement that the king
erected altars of the gods of all the nationalities represented by
his wives.
In the Books of Kings, it is true, the tradition is not
systematically translated into the mode of view of the Law, as
is the case in Chronicles. What reminds us most strongly of
Chronicles is the introduction from time to time of a prophet who
expresses himself in the spirit of Deuteronomy and in the
language of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and then disappears. /l/
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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