Writing and Rewriting the Story of Solomon in Ancient Israel by Isaac Kalimi

Abstract

Reviewed by: Writing and Rewriting the Story of Solomon in Ancient Israel by Isaac Kalimi Josef Sykora Isaac Kalimi. Writing and Rewriting the Story of Solomon in Ancient Israel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 315 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009419000965 Isaac Kalimi's latest book brings to life the characterization of King Solomon in biblical literature. With a brush small enough to capture the tiniest details of the biblical depiction of Israel's wisest monarch and sufficiently broad to situate him against the backdrop of the ancient Near East, Kalimi presents the portrayal of Solomon as a historical figure whose story in Samuel-Kings is later rewritten in Chronicles to present him in a more idealized light. The book consists of two parts. The first section deals with the question of the historical credibility of Solomon's reign. Kalimi argues that neither the paucity of unearthed epigraphical documents nor the variously interpreted archeological findings offer a firm foundation for refuting the biblical assertions concerning Solomon's kingship. Therefore, Kalimi disagrees with those scholars who are suspicious about the existence of the United Monarchy, criticizing them for rejecting the biblical texts out of hand. To illustrate this point, Kalimi focuses on several contested aspects regarding Solomon's reign. For example, he claims that the modest size of Jerusalem, reconstructed from the available archeological data, may be explained in that Jerusalem was an administrative, not a residential, center. Similarly, Kalimi counters those assertions that the kingdom of David and Solomon could not control the area depicted in the Bible by arguing that [End Page 187] even a relatively small population could exert, with the help of northern tribes, military control over the southern Levant at the time of a rare geopolitical power vacuum. Having defended the historical plausibility of Solomon's existence, in the second part of his study Kalimi turns to the biblical material to scrutinize the individual details related to the birth, rise, and reign of Israel's sagest king. Against those authors who propose that the narrative of 2 Samuel 10–12 contains later additions, Kalimi stresses that the three chapters (with the exception of 2 Samuel 12:24d–25) were composed as one unit shortly after the events they depict, to defend Solomon's pedigree. In considering the instance of Solomon receiving the name Yedidyah, Kalimi draws on other ancient Near Eastern texts in which new names were given to those kings who ascended to the throne through unusual means or to those who viewed themselves as beloved of their particular gods. The likely later insertion in 2 Samuel 12:24d–25 then combines these two motifs to legitimize Solomon's right to Israel's throne in correspondence with 1 Kings 1–2. Kalimi then briefly considers Solomon's birth and name as found in Second Temple literature. In his view, 1 Chronicles 3:5–6, for example, reshapes the earlier tradition concerning Solomon's birth (2 Samuel 5:14–15) by presenting him as the fourth (and thus chosen) son of Bathsheba. To examine Solomon's ascension to the throne, Kalimi argues that the Succession Narrative (2 Samuel 9–20 and 1 Kings 1–2) forms (for the most part) one literary unit, written possibly by an eyewitness. 1 Kings 1 portrays Adonijah as the expected heir of Israel's kingdom at the time when David was weak and old, and depicts the prophet Nathan conspiring with Bathsheba to establish David's younger son Solomon as king. The Chronicler, on the other hand, omits any negative reference to these characters, and presents Solomon as divinely chosen from even before his birth (1 Chronicles 22:8–10). In terms of Solomon's coronation, Kalimi views David's instructions to his successor in 1 Kings 2:1–9 as an amalgamation of two sources. The political element (in verses 5–9) was not pronounced by David himself but written shortly after his death as a cover-up for Solomon's murderous actions. David's instructions of a religious nature in 1 Kings 2:2–4 were also likely added later to frame Solomon's reign from a Deuteronomistic perspective. The Chronicler, on the other hand, omits all references that...