History or Myth?
History/myth: is it a binary choice? No! There are many more categories to consider when asking if we can trust the Law and the Prophets, as Jesus termed the Old Testament. Here are some that spring to mind: autobiography; contemporary accounts; official records; propaganda; prophets’ stories; traditional history; legends/myths. Here are some examples.
Autobiography
Autobiographies are the gold standard of historical evidence. They do not give the complete picture, but they are irreplaceable witnesses. Here are some of them:
Nehemiah was Governor of Judaea under the Persian emperors from about 444 to 425 BC. This was about the time of Herodotus, the first Greek historian.
The words of Nehemiah son of Hacaliah….While I was in Susa the capital, one of my brothers, Hanani, came with certain men from Judah; and I asked them about the Jews who had escaped the captivity…. They replied, ‘The survivors in the province are in great trouble and shame; the wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been destroyed by fire.’
When I heard these words I sat down and wept, and mourned for days, fasting and praying before the God of heaven…. (The king allowed Nehemiah to go to Jerusalem)
So I came to Jerusalem and was there for three days. Then I got up during the night, I and a few men with me; I told no one what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem. The only animal I took was the animal I rode. I went out by night by the Valley Gate past the Dragon’s Spring and to the Dung Gate, and I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that had been broken down and its gates that had been destroyed by fire…. (Nehemiah 1.1-4, 2.11-13, ed.)
Three hundred years before, in 740 BC, the prophet Isaiah had his first vision.
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs called to one another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ The pivots on the thresholds shook… , and the house filled with smoke. And I said: ‘Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!’ (Isaiah 6.1-4 ed.)
From about 1000 BC comes this lament, the actual words of the soon-to-be-king David:
“Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely! In life and in death they were not divided;… How the mighty have fallen in the midst of the battle! Jonathan lies slain upon your high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. How the mighty have fallen, and the weapons of war perished!” (2 Samuel 1. 23-27 ed.)
When we read these first-person accounts, the mists of time separating us from them simply vanish.
Contemporary Accounts
When did contemporary history start to be written down while they were still current affairs? I believe we can tell when, and who was responsible.
The start of history as we know it depends on a settled place where stories could be recited, written down, preserved and filed. For me this points to the time when David set up Jerusalem as his capital, and particularly after Solomon had married an Egyptian princess and imported aspects of the Egyptian court. That is just the time when we get detailed accounts of court intrigues. 2 Samuel describes in detail David’s adultery with Bathsheba and the killing of her husband (11,12); the rape by David’s son Amnon of his step-sister Tamar and his subsequent murder by Absalom (13); Absalom’s rebellion (14-19) , and Solomon’s coup d’état (2 Kings 1,2). They are not edifying, but they are gripping and clearly written by someone who was there.
Who was this person who started off the writing of Jewish history? I believe he can be identified as Jehoshophat son of Alihud. He was the court recorder under David (2 Samuel 8.16), and the only one of David’s officials to survive Solomon’s purge of the traditionalists (1 Kings 4.1-6). In fact we may hear his actual voice in the account of Solomon’s son Rehoboam:
All the assembly of Israel came and said to Rehoboam, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy. Now therefore lighten the hard service of your father, and we will serve you.’ Then King Rehoboam took counsel with the older men who had attended his father Solomon saying, ‘How do you advise me to answer this people?’ They answered him, ‘If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them, and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants for ever.’ (1 Kings 12.3-7, ed.)
No one was more senior than Jehoshophat, so I think this was his advice as much as anyone’s. Needless to say, Rehoboam did not take it and the result was the end of the united monarchy.
Later there is the vivid, surely contemporary account of the coup that Jehu carried out in Israel against the house of Ahab in 2 Kings 9 and 10. Here is a detail:
When Jehu came to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; she painted her eyes, and adorned her head, and looked out of the window. As Jehu entered the gate, she said, ‘Is it peace, Zimri, murderer of your master?’ He looked up to the window and said, ‘Who is on my side? Who?’ Two or three eunuchs looked out at him. He said, ‘Throw her down.’ So they threw her down; some of her blood spattered on the wall and on the horses, which trampled on her. (2 Kings 9.30-33)
All this 500 years before the start of Greek history!
Official Records
Various official books are mentioned: the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Judah; the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Israel, the Book of the Acts of Solomon, the Book of the Wars of the Lord andthe Book of Jashar. None of these have survived but it is clear that records were being kept. Short extracts survive in the summaries of the reign of each king. For example:
In the thirty-first year of King Asa of Judah, Omri began to reign over Israel; he reigned for twelve years, six of them in Tirzah. He bought the hill of Samaria from Shemer for two talents of silver; he fortified the hill, and called the city that he built Samaria, after the name of Shemer, the owner of the hill.
Now the rest of the acts of Omri that he did, and the power that he showed, are they not written in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Israel? Omri slept with his ancestors, and was buried in Samaria; his son Ahab succeeded him. (1 Kings 16.23-24, 27-28)
Propaganda
Where you have official histories, it is important to keep an eye out for propaganda, the slanting of information to promote a particular viewpoint.
1 & 2 Chronicles
The books of Chronicles were written after the exile, and they are frankly tendentious. They entirely ignore the northern kingdom of Israel, seeking to show that vice is always punished and virtue rewarded. Even if it means inventing a repentance by the bad and long-lived king Manasseh (2 Chronicles 33.12-13) and a blasphemous act by the otherwise good king Uzziah who got leprosy.(2 Chronicles 26.19)
There are some interesting bits which may have been copied from surviving royal archives, such as the description of the great Passover under Josiah. (2 Chronicles 35)
Deuteronomic history
In 622 ‘The Book of the Law” was discovered in the temple in Jerusalem, probably a version of Deuteronomy. It is a lengthy call for Israel to be faithful to the one true God. Those who followed Deuteronomy created the Books of Samuel and Kings as we have them today. They saw the history of Israel and Judah solely through the criterion of fidelity to the God of the Mosaic Covenant. For instance, Omri was a successful king of Israel who founded a dynasty which lasted fifty years. But the Deuteronomic historian simple says:
Omri did what was evil in the sight of the Lord; he did more evil than all who were before him. For he walked in all the way of Jeroboam son of Nebat, and in the sins that he caused Israel to commit, provoking the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger by their idols. (1 Kings 25-26)
Building the temple
In 2 Samuel 7 David had a bad conscience about living in a palace while the Ark of the Covenant was in a tent. The prophet Nathan encouraged him, but that night the LORD gave him a message for David, saying two things: First, “I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt” (i.e. I don’t need one). Second, “I will build you a house”, ( i.e. descendants who will continue as kings of Judah). However, right in the middle of this speech comes this verse:
“(Your offspring) shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever.” (1 Samuel 7.13)
I think this is an addition by Solomon to prop up his ambition to be a top-rate Near Eastern monarch.
Prophets’ stories
We have seen that there is autobiography in Isaiah. But there is also third- person contemporary accounts, such as:
When the house of David heard that Aram had allied itself with Ephraim, the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.
Then the Lord said to Isaiah, ‘Go out to meet Ahaz, you and your son Shear-jashub, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the Fuller’s Field, and say to him, Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint…’ (Isaiah 7.2-4)
Clearly this was written by one of Isaiah’s followers.
A vivid description of the process comes in Jeremiah around 600 BCE. Jeremiah had dictated a long message to his scribe Baruch to be read publicly in the temple. The officials took the scroll to the king, who listened to it.
As Jehudi read three or four columns, the king would cut them off with a penknife and throw them into the fire in the brazier, until the entire scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the brazier… Then Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to the secretary Baruch son of Neriah, who wrote on it at Jeremiah’s dictation all the words of the scroll that King Jehoiakim of Judah had burned in the fire; and many similar words were added to them. (Jeremiah 36.24, 32)
There were many prophets and guilds of prophets in Israel. In 2 Kings 2 we read of a company of prophets at Bethel, another at Jericho, and of fifty of them who accompanied Elijah to the Jordan. It is among groups like these that storytellers must have recited stories about Samuel, Elijah, Micaiah, Elisha and others. They were probably only committed to papyrus in the royal court of Judah under the impulse of the religious reformation of Josiah in 622 BCE. Another opportunity to preserve the royal and prophetic stories could have been after the first siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in 598.
He carried away Jehoiachin to Babylon; the king’s mother, the king’s wives, his officials, and the elite of the land, he took into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon, (among them the priest/prophet Ezekiel). (2 Kings 24.15)
We have no independent verification of the stories about the prophets. Their denunciations of royal disobedience come over as authentic. The stories of miracles like the constantly refilled jar of oil (1 Kings 17.16) and the floating axe head (2 Kings 6.4-7) are more difficult for some of us to believe.
Traditional History
The first seven books of the Bible tell stories of the older past. They recount tales of Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua and the Judges. Here we rely on the skill and competence of traditional storytellers. They were were both repositories of the traditions which bound their societies together, and also entertainers. So, did Samson really let Delilah cut off his hair? (Judges 16) Why not? Did Gideon really trick the Midianites into a panic night-time defeat? (Judges 7) Could be. We certainly get closer to the actual life and events of ancient Israelite history than by taking them at face value than by saying “I know nothing”.
Sometimes the Law and the Prophets record different traditions which can be checked against each other; e.g. Judges 1 gives a more nuanced account of the conquest of Canaan than the wholesale destruction recounted in Joshua.
Another question is how far the Biblical narrative is supported or cast into doubt by archaeology. This is complicated and definitely beyond my competence. But even when some of the written details fit into a later age, is that not to be expected as stories are retold for modern audiences?
Moses
Can we trust the stories of Moses? It is certain that Moses existed, because his name is Egyptian. No Hebrew is going to invent an Egyptian name for their national saviour. There seem to be at least two branches of the tradition , one based in Judah which uses the name Yahweh and where the holy mountain is called Sinai, and one from the northern kingdom which uses the name God and where the holy mountain is called Horeb. So Exodus 3.11-12 says:
Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ He said, ‘I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.’
While Exodus 6.10-12 says:
Then the LORD spoke to Moses, ‘Go and tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to let the Israelites go out of his land.’ But Moses spoke to the LORD, ‘The Israelites have not listened to me; how then shall Pharaoh listen to me, poor speaker that I am?’
The Hebrew editors of the books were content to accept both (or all) traditions. Why shouldn’t we? As Karl Marx said, “The point is not to understand the world, the point is to change it.”
Abraham
Abraham probably lived a thousand years before the first datable reference in Ezekiel 33.24. Apparently the relationship he had with God was like that of Arab nomads in recent times. His journeys from Ur to Haran, to Canaan, than back and forth to Egypt, are not unbelievable. I think we get more useful information by accepting the stories than not.
Is oral history reliable? A case study from Easter Island
In 1955 Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian archaeologist, led an expedition to Easter Island in the Pacific. It is famous for its enormous stone statues, all of which had been thrown down following the civil war between the the long-ears and the short-ears. Across one promontory ran a ditch. The natives said it was the last defence of the long-ears in the civil war, a moat filled with brushwood which had been set on fire and which had trapped the long-ears so that all but one were massacred. The geologists said it was “a natural formation caused in pre-human times by a flow of lava from the centre of the island”. (Aku-Aku p. 125) . When Thor made the dig, and he found an ancient man-made ditch in which an immense fire had raged about 1650 AD. The people had been right all along.
A few days later, Thor Heyerdahl had a conversation with the mayor about the statues:
“You’re a long-ear, mayor, don’t you know how these giants were raised?” “Yes, señor, I do know. There’s nothing to it.” “Nothing to it? It’s one of the greatest mysteries of Easter Island!” “But I know it; I can raise a moai.” “Who taught you?” “Señor, when I was a very little boy I had to sit on the floor, bolt upright, and my grandfather and his old brother-in-law Porotou sat on the floor in front of me. They taught me many things, just as in school nowadays. I know a lot. I had to repeat it and repeat it until it was quite right, every single word. I learnt the songs too.” …
I did not believe him. I coolly offered him a hundred dollars on the day when the biggest statue at Anakena stood in its place up on the temple wall.
“It’s a deal, señor,” said the mayor quickly. (p. 142-3)
And he did it! with the help of 12 men and three poles he moved and raised a giant statue weighing 25 to 30 tons. There are photos in the book to prove it.
The point is that that knowledge had been faithfully passed down generation after generation for over 300 years. It does not mean that everything we read in the early part of the Bible is completely true, but it behoves us to treat it with respect.
Pre-History
The first eleven chapters of Genesis are in a different category. They tell two stories of the creation of the world, the end of mankind’s innocence, the first murder, ancient genealogies including Methusaleh who lived 969 years, the Great Flood and Noah’s Ark, some more genealogies and the Tower of Babel. There are strong links with ancient Mesopotamia, as in the story of the Flood in the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. A mysterious peek into this ancient history comes in Genesis 6:
When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them,the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose…The Nephilim were on the earth in those days — and also afterwards — when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown. (Genesis 6.1,2,4)
I don’t think it is possible to retrieve actual history from these stories. Just who were the “sons of God? Actual events may be in the background, but they were preserved to describe how the world works and to do this through stories. When my stepson Peter was 7, he sat in on a Bible discussion in the vicarage where we looked at Adam and Eve in Genesis 3. When I talked about the passage as a problem, Peter announced, “Oh, it’s easy. It’s a parable.”
Out of the mouth of babes…