On the Oxford Handbook of the Historical Books of the Hebrew Bible

This Oxford Handbook is an interesting selection of essays by experts on the Historical Books of the Hebrew Bible. By the Christian reckoning, that’s the stretch from Joshua to Esther, though many of the essays divide it — or challenge the division — into the Deuteronomical History (Deuteronomy to 2 Kings) and the Chroniclers’ History (1 Chronicles to Nehemiah). Two books don’t really fit either category: Ruth and Esther, which are more like short stories but sit best in the Deuteronomical and Chroniclers’ narratives respectively. The essays cover a wide array — theological and historical questions, archaeological debates, reception history — and the best of them are in the section on reception. It was fascinating to read how figures like Joshua, Deborah, Samson, Saul, David, Solomon, and Ezra have been received over time; I expected to be most curious about David, but Saul’s chapter turned out to be the most fascinating of all.

The Saul–David cycle really is the most fascinating part of the historical books, and the whole narrative is in the book (or two books) of Samuel. It’s interesting it’s titled Samuel at all, since he doesn’t appear in the second half — he dies before Saul does, only to be summoned back by a necromancer (the “Witch of Endor”) to reveal Saul’s fate. First Samuel ends with Saul’s death and David’s taking of the crown. I love Samuel because it’s honest in a way few other biblical texts manage: both Saul and David are praised and then excoriated, each a hero until he becomes a villain, though David has been received far more warmly — Jesus Christ, the “Anointed One,” is depicted as following in David’s footsteps, while Saul gets nothing like the same respect. Judges and Kings are balanced in their own fascinating ways: where Joshua is a call for genocide and total conquest, Judges makes clear that never really happened, giving us a very different picture of the late Bronze Age, or early Iron Age, Levant; Deborah’s heroism is praised, while Samson’s is far more complicated; and Kings complicates belief itself, since Elijah and Elisha read as true monotheists while nearly every other figure is what we’d call a Yahwist — Yahweh is clearly the chief god, but there’s still room for the Baals and Astartes, the Canaanite couple ruling the pantheon. There’s something beautifully poetic in Elijah’s discovery of God not as a thunderous sound but as a thin whisper, the sound of silence.

All of which is to say I really love the Deuteronomical history. If I had to rank it from best to worst:

1. Samuel
2. Ruth
3. Judges
4. Deuteronomy
5. Kings
6. Joshua

The Chroniclers’ narrative is a totally different story. Written and redacted after the return from Babylon, it shows the early makings of Second Temple Judaism — that is, of Judaism. It seems almost obvious reading these texts that Yahwism and Judaism are nearly two different religions, and the impression is sharpened by the ethnonationalism of Ezra and Nehemiah, who demand that all Hebrew men divorce their Canaanite wives. The Torah and Joshua point in that direction, but the other books point to the reality of ethnic mixture: Ruth is a Moabite — one of the peoples, alongside the Philistines, Edomites, and Ammonites, marked for destruction in the conquest of the Holy Land — and yet she marries Boaz, a Hebrew, and David is her grandson, which makes David himself of mixed background. Ezra and Nehemiah thus break from the books between Judges and Kings, and it isn’t a particularly interesting break. I’ve digressed a long way from the Handbook under review, but the only reason I can say any of this is that I read it alongside the Historical Books themselves, and it deeply enriched my understanding. Some of the chapters were much better than others. For anyone curious, take a look.