Royal Apologetic in the Ancient Near East by Andrew Knapp

Abstract

Reviewed by: Royal Apologetic in the Ancient Near East by Andrew Knapp David A. Bosworth andrew knapp, Royal Apologetic in the Ancient Near East (WAW Supplements 4; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2015). Pp. xx + 419. $59.95. Knapp provides a valuable study of royal apologetic in the ancient Near East. He reviews the scattered scholarship on the subject and then turns to scholars of rhetoric for some much-needed clarity and borrows a definition of apology as "a public speech of self-defense" (p. 18). Ancient Near Eastern apologies are propaganda and therefore public, and K. strives to discern the intended audiences of ancient texts to determine whether they meet [End Page 325] this criterion (e.g., building inscriptions buried in foundations could be public in the sense of existing in many clay copies circulating among scribes). Apologies are speech in the broad sense that includes writing. The self-defensive nature of apologetic may be divided into defenses against specific allegations (called justifications) and wider defenses of legitimacy (called legitimations). Most importantly, K. clarifies that apology is not a literary genre but rather what scholars of rhetoric call a mood or mode, analogous to satire as a generally useful rhetorical category that may find expression in a wide variety of genres or forms (e.g., novel, lyric poem). Once the groundwork on apology in general is completed, K. offers in chap. 2 a list of motifs that commonly appear in ancient Near Eastern apologies, such as divine election, popular acclamation, and military success. He then lists sixteen ancient Near Eastern texts that qualify as apologies, from which he selects seven for analysis in the subsequent chapters, specifically: Proclamation of Telipinu, Autobiography of Hattusili III, Traditions of David's Rise and Reign, Succession Narrative of Solomon, Tel Dan Inscription, Accession of Esarhaddon, and The Rise of Nabonidus. K. limits himself to these texts because they include both legitimations and justifications, whereas the others lack the specificity of justifications. K. then outlines his approach to each text in subsequent chapters: summary of the ruler's accession, description of the text, transliteration and translation of the text (except the biblical texts, which are source-critically analyzed and summarized), analysis of apologetic motifs, and the circumstances of each text. The discussion of the biblical texts receives the most attention due to the length of the texts and the wealth of scholarship concerning them. K. notes that the biblical texts differ from the other ancient Near Eastern apologies in that they are composite texts whose earliest copies date to centuries after the events they purport to describe, and that they are not royal inscriptions. Without the two chapters on the biblical narratives, the monograph would be more focused with a more coherent collection of related texts. Although the biblical materials get the most attention, K. does not treat the ancient Near Eastern texts as "background" to the biblical narratives. K. does not seek to reconstruct an alleged singular narrative that was an apology for David. Rather, his "Tradition of David's Rise and Reign" (TDRR) consists of 1 Samuel 16–2 Samuel 24 minus those passages that seem late. For example, 2 Sam 11:2–12:25 presents an unusual interaction between the king and the prophet Nathan that K. thinks derives from a later prophetic source (it also happens to be hard to reconcile with an apologetic purpose). Knapp states, "Methodologically, I privilege the apologetic mode because I can coherently explain (to my mind, anyway) all other aspects of the Samuel narrative in light of this, but I cannot account for the apology with other models (such as those that treat 1–2 Samuel as a late fiction" (p. 195). Here and elsewhere, he notes the connection between the apologetic mode and historical reconstruction. If the text is apologetic, then it must be early and represent historical events (albeit in distorted fashion). He thinks that no such apology was needed centuries after the events, yet even in recent times many people have a vested interest in defending David from reasonable suspicions about his character that may be derived from the biblical text. Consider, for example, the many attempts to read Bathsheba as a dangerous seductress...