The Succession Narrative in Twenty-first-century Research

Abstract

Although research on the Succession Narrative has proliferated in recent decades, no comprehensive surveys of secondary literature have appeared since the mid-1990s. In this article, I survey the many disparate works of Succession Narrative scholarship that have been published since that time. I focus on recent conclusions about the boundaries, unity, date, intention, and theme of the traditionally delineated Succession Narrative (2 Samuel 9–20; 1 Kings 1–2). While the traditional theory of the text, as formulated by Leonhard Rost, dominated scholarship of the twentieth century, in the twenty-first, nothing approaching a consensus can be claimed for any aspect of the Succession Narrative.