Kingship Remembered and Imagined: Monarchy in the Hebrew Bible and Postmonarchic Discourse in Ancient Judah
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Kingship Remembered and Imagined: Monarchy in the Hebrew Bible and Postmonarchic Discourse in Ancient Judah by Ian Douglas Wilson A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy Religious Studies University of Alberta © Ian Douglas Wilson, 2015 ABSTRACT This study addresses the question of how postmonarchic society in ancient Judah remembered and imagined its monarchy, and kingship in general, as part of its past, present, and future. By way of a thorough analysis of Judean discourse in the late Persian period, the study argues that ancient Judeans had no single way of remembering and imagining kingship. In fact, their memory and imaginary was thoroughly multivocal, and necessarily so. Various views of the past and of the future shaped and balanced one another, maintaining a polyvalent remembering of kingship in postmonarchic Judean society. Chapter 1 lays out the methodological and theoretical framework for the study, situating its historical and historiographical interests within the literate community of late Persian-period Judah, and arguing for a particular, systemic understanding of social memory that draws on cultural anthropology and narratology. Chapter 2 then examines the law of the king in Deuteronomy (17:14–20) and the pre-monarchic figures of Moses and Joshua, showing how this law and these figures functioned as primary frames for kingship-discourse, and thus for the social remembering of kingship, in ancient Judah. Chapter 3 argues that multivocality and overdetermination in the discourse’s transition from judgeship to kingship gave rise to and informed the multiple discursive potentials that play out in the rest of kingship’s story: the issues of dynasty’s successes and failures, of cultic devotion and apostasy, of divine promises, and so forth. With regard to these issues, kingship was doublethought, simultaneously possible and impossible. Chapter 4 focuses on David and Davidic kingship, especially with regard to the multiple discursive potentials highlighted in Chapter 3. Instead of limiting the discourse, instead of ii attempting to reduce it to a single voice, the contribution of David and Davidic kingship was to encourage and maintain the multivocality, as they were keyed to the mnemonic framework of the Deuteronomic king-law and the doublethought rise of kingship in the first place. Chapter 5 shows how, in prophetic literature, the remembered future was keyed to the remembered past. Prophetic literature drew on the discursive themes of the remembered past, as it was construed in historiographical books and in the prophetic books themselves. Images of the future, in the corpus of prophetic literature, balanced memories of the past. Judah’s model of past kingship reflected its model for future kingship, thus bringing a sense of balance and unity to the discourse as a whole and to Judah’s social remembering of monarchy. Chapter 6, the study’s concluding chapter, then considers a major implication of the foregoing analysis. This chapter argues that—on account of the prophetic literature’s discursive relationship with historiographical literature, and on account of its key function in Judah’s socio-mnemonics of kingship—the prophetic books participated in what might be called “metahistoriography.” It was a kind of historiography, but one with a pronounced speculative outlook; it reflected and took part in discourse about the past, but with a view of future potentials always firmly in mind. This study therefore reconsiders the generic function of Judean prophetic books in particular, as well as the interrelationship between historiographical and prophetic books in general, within Judean discourse. iii PREFACE This thesis is an original work by Ian Douglas Wilson. Some of the research conducted for the thesis appears in revised and expanded form in peer-reviewed publications by the same author. Portions of Chapter 2 appear in Ian Douglas Wilson, “Yahweh’s Anointed: Cyrus, Deuteronomy’s Law of the King, and Yehudite Identity,” in Political Memory in and after the Persian Period (ed. Caroline Waerzeggers and Jason M. Silverman; SBLANEM; Atlanta: SBL Press, forthcoming 2015). Portions of Chapter 4 appear in Ian Douglas Wilson, “Joseph, Jehoiachin, and Cyrus: On Book Endings, Exoduses and Exiles, and Yehudite/Judean Social Remembering,” ZAW 126 (2014): 521–34; and in Ian Douglas Wilson, “Chronicles and Utopia: Likely Bedfellows?” in History, Memory, Hebrew Scriptures: A Festschrift for Ehud Ben Zvi (ed. Ian Douglas Wilson and Diana V. Edelman; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, forthcoming 2015). Portions of Chapter 5 appear in Ian Douglas Wilson, “Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to rule by sense of smell! Superhuman Kingship in the Prophetic Books,” forthcoming. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I must praise my family. Every stress and burden I bore during this process my wife, Sally, has also borne. She was there for it all, supported me through it all, and will be there for all to come. In addition, the unflinching love of my two children, Ruth and Elise, has helped me carry on through the many highs and lows of life in the academy. I love them dearly. At the University of Alberta, many faculty members provided inspiration and encouragement. My supervisory and examining committees, in particular, were enthusiastic about this study from the get-go: Francis Landy and Willi Braun from Religious Studies, and Frances Pownall and Adam Kemezis from History and Classics, are scholars that I respect deeply and whose work and friendship will be ongoing sources of intellectual stimulation throughout my career. I also had an outstanding community of graduate-student colleagues. There are too many to mention, really, but I’d be remiss not to name a few that were particularly close: Clay Bench, Lauren Chomyn, Sonya Kostamo, Ellen Sabo, and Peter Sabo. Peter, being an astute literary critic with some (muted) historical interests, was a good match for my particular blend of historical criticism and literary interests. Perhaps at times to his annoyance, he became a main sounding board for many of my thoughts (biblical and otherwise), a source of intellectual exchange and debate for which I am exceedingly grateful. Many of the ideas presented in this study were tested and refined at various meetings of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, European Association of Biblical Studies, and Society of Biblical Literature. Numerous members of these scholarly communities helped me flesh out my thoughts and refine my theses. Again, there are too v many to mention them all; but they know who they are, and I thank them for their input. Frauke Uhlenbruch, organizer of the EABS research group “Science Fiction and the Bible” and the EABS panel “Chronicles and Utopia,” deserves special mention. The sessions she organized on these topics pushed me to try new approaches and provided the opportunity to think through many of the ideas in this dissertation. She is a superb colleague and friend. I am also especially grateful to Christophe Nihan of the University of Lausanne, who served on my examining committee, and whose off-the-cuff suggestion (at the 2013 EABS meeting in Leipzig) to think more about genre had a profound impact on this study’s development. I would like to thank Carol Newsom of Emory University, too, for her praise and encouragement, and for her insightful criticisms. She served as the study’s external reader, and her perceptive comments, especially those concerning historical-critical method, set the stage for a lively and collegial discussion at my doctoral defense. Finally, my Hebrew Bible professors at the U. of A. deserve special thanks. Francis Landy taught me that the wonder and beauty of biblical literature is to be found within its paradoxes and complexities, something that has a central place in my thinking and scholarship. More importantly, he has become a life-long friend. And of course Ehud Ben Zvi, my supervisor, has had a profound impact on my scholarly training and on this dissertation. A quick glance at my bibliography reveals as much. His intellectual guidance helped a young (and foolish?!) scholar take a seemingly impossible topic and turn it into something fruitful. His criticism was always constructive, his mood always jovial, and his door (and email) always open. He was and is a fantastic scholarly mentor, and will also be a life-long friend. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii PREFACE iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v ABBREVIATIONS ix CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Historiography, Memory, and Imagination in Judean Society 1 § Literature in Ancient Judah and Its Sociocultural Setting ................ 6 § The Literati of Judah under the Persian Empire ............................. 14 § Kingship Discourse among the Literati in Postmonarchic Judah ... 24 § Memory, Remembering, and Imagining: Past, Present, and Future in Society and Culture ......................... 30 § Social Memory and Narrativity: A Good Working Relationship ... 46 § Moving Forward ............................................................................. 57 CHAPTER 2 The Law of the King, Moses and Joshua: Torah and Its Guardians 61 § The Law’s Deuteronomic Setting ................................................... 64 § The Law .......................................................................................... 70 § Moses and Joshua, Kings and Conquerors: Revising Monarchy in a Postmonarchic Milieu ........................... 98 § The Law as a Mnemonic Frame