The Mythic Past by Thomas L. Thompson

Author:Thomas L. Thompson [THOMAS L. THOMPSON]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2012-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

Historians create history

1 The historical David and the problem of eternity

The historical discussion today about the role and nature of the tenth century in the history of Palestine is a close variant on the old question that teachers of philosophy put to their students, about whether there is a sound of trees falling in the woods when there is no one to hear it. Our biggest problem with writing the history of the tenth century is that one doesn’t write history without evidence. This century of Palestine’s history is as silent about Jerusalem and monarchies as was Yahweh’s voice when he passed before the prophet Elijah at Horeb. Once we look quite clearly at the completeness of our ignorance on such matters, we are all the better prepared to state what we have evidence for and do know about Palestine’s early history.

This chapter will try to address the question of historicity directly. It takes up two problems: that of the tenth century and the ‘United Monarchy’on one hand, and that of the exile and return on the other. For the one we have too little evidence; for the other too much. We have discussed both of these issues in our sketch of various pivotal periods of Palestine’s history. In this chapter, we will consider them by asking how much we can use the biblical stories to help us write a history of Palestine. To what extent do the biblical legends deal with an historical past? Do they give us evidence that we can use in our own reconstructions of the past?

Unlike the problems of historicity of some of the traditions we have already discussed, that of the United Monarchy and of the tenth century (including the reigns of Saul, David and Solomon over a united Palestine) is not directly tied to efforts to claim that the wonderful stories about these kings and their rise to power were in fact histories. That claim has frequently been made, of course, but it does not take a central place in the discussion of historicity. The dominant literary beauty and strength of these stories has always been recognized. That they reflected history has been assumed as necessary, though never argued. It is thought necessary to the establishment of Israel as a nation, embracing both the Iron Age highland states of judah and Israel. It is also often thought to be implied in the existence of a Davidic dynasty, as well as in the stories of exile and return.

In fact, arguments for the history of other periods – from the time of the patriarchs to the period of the judges – have usually taken the period of the United Monarchy as the destination of their role as origin accounts. It has been as the origin of an Israel of the United Monarchy with its capital in Jerusalem that such origin stories were understood to have meaning. Even in very recent histories of Israel, the United Monarchy has served as a kind of historical watershed within the biblical account.

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