THE TROUBLE WITH BENJAMIN Philip R. Davies Among the many issues that have absorbed Graeme Auld’s wide- ranging interest, the books of Joshua to Kings occupy a central place. When Graeme and I first met, in Jerusalem, he was wrestling with a doctoral thesis on the book of Joshua, and especially the ‘Tetra- teuch–Pentateuch–Hexateuch’ debate. The fruits of that engagement were published as Joshua, Moses and the Land 1 and Graeme has returned to Joshua many times.2 His participation in the recent intensive debates about ‘Deuteronomism’ and the ‘Deuteronomistic History’ has also been extensive and, as always, perceptive and original, includ- ing his radical hypothesis concerning the relationship between Samuel–Kings and Chronicles,3 which, like so much of his work, illustrates how attention to detailed textual features can challenge the most strongly-established consensus. I am pleased to be able to offer Graeme a discussion on matters dear to his heart. The tribe and territory of Benjamin is an intriguing phenomenon, and remarkably underplayed in biblical scholarship. To date, still the only major treatment is Schunck’s Benjamin,4 summarised in his Anchor Bible Dictionary entry on ‘Benjamin’.5 The southernmost of the terri- tories that constituted the kingdom of Israel,6 at some point Benjamin 1 A. G. Auld, Joshua, Moses and the Land: Tetrateuch-Pentateuch-Hexateuch in a Generation Since 1938 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1980). 2 A. G. Auld, Joshua, Judges, and Ruth (DSB; Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984); idem, Joshua Retold: Synoptic Perspectives (Old Testament Studies; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998); idem, Joshua: Jesus, son of Naue, in Codex Vaticanus (Septuagint Commentary Series; Leiden: Brill, 2005). 3 A. G. Auld, Kings without Privilege: David and Moses in the Story of the Bible’s Kings (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994). 4 K.-D. Schunck, Benjamin: Untersuchungen zur Entstehung und Geschichte eines israeliti- schen Stammes (BZAW, 86; Berlin: Alfred Töpelmann, 1963). 5 K.-D. Schunck, ‘Benjamin’, ABD 1:671–73. In addition, a recent article devoted to the ‘Benjamin conundrum’ by Yigal Levin challenges ‘“new age” biblical unhis- torical criticism’ with its neglect of this issue. See Y. Levin, ‘Joseph, Judah and the “Benjamin Conundrum”’, ZAW 116 (2004), pp. 223–41. 6 The modern critical consensus is that the name derives from this southerly posi- tion. See Schunck, Benjamin, pp. 6–8 for discussion of the origin of the name. It is now the critical consensus that there is no intrinsic connection between this tribe and the (banu)-yamina of Mari. 94 philip r. davies became part of the kingdom of Judah, and for well over a century (between 586 bce and at least the mid-fifth century)7 it formed the political and religious centre of Judah. Thereafter members of the tribe of Benjamin are ‘Jews’. I want to suggest that Benjamin holds the key to the basic questions of how and why the biblical historiographical enterprise was initiated, and why ‘Judaeans’ began to call themselves ‘Israel’. I cannot develop this suggestion in full in a short essay, but I hope to lay the ground for a more substantial argument in the near future. 1. The Legacy of Benjamin The self-identity and allegiance of Benjaminites under the reinstated dominion of Jerusalem (from the mid-fifth century or later, onwards) and under the label of ‘Judaean/Jew’ provides scope for interesting and significant questions, which can be approached first through por- traits of individual Benjaminites. The most prolific author in the New Testament, Paul of Tarsus, was and is regarded as a Jew, but he was born in Cilicia, and not of the tribe of Judah. Well before his own time, Judaism had been regarded in the wider world in which it was dispersed as an ethnos, but one defined as a cult or as a phi- losophy. Hence Paul would have found it convenient and in a sense accurate to be called a ‘Judaean/Jew’ (more so than for this Welsh author to be called ‘English’, and which for a Scot would be an insult!). Yet while the Paul of Acts has no problem with his ‘Jewish’ identity’, his letters appear to betray some reservation. In Rom 1.16 (and throughout chapter 2, plus 3.1) Paul uses the categories of ‘Jew’ and ‘Greek’, but he does not identify himself as either. This is, I suggest, not merely a function of his theological principle that there is no distinction in Christ. It may be something personal, too. For he himself straddles the two identities (in addition to being a Roman citizen). In 1 Cor 9.20, he even admits to this dual identity, though he gives a pragmatic pretext: ‘to the Jews I became as a Jew, to win over Jews’, etc. (ka‹ §genÒmhn to›w ÉIouda¤oiw …w ÉIouda›ow ·na ÉIouda¤ouw kerdÆsv . .). Just once in his letters (Gal 2.15) Paul does 7 On the vexed question of when and why Jerusalem regained its status, see the detailed treatment in D. V. Edelman, The Origins of the ‘Second’ Temple: Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem (BibleWorld; London: Equinox, 2005)..