Questioning Jim’s minimalist assumptions
Jim West’s latest report from SOTS in cold, damp Chester, seems a bit strange to me. Let me quote the main part of his favourable comment on the paper he heard.
The paper delivered last night by Susan Ackerman was really fascinating- but, resting as it did on the unquestioned assumption that Josiah’s reform actually happened, it’s major underpinning was shaky. She presented essentially the fact that Josaiah’s reform saw women pushed to the margins of Israelite cultic practice and so they turned, perhaps, to worship of Asherah where they were allowed their lost cultic presence. But if there was no Josianic reform, then there has to be another explanation as to why women participated in the Israelite cult before Josiah but not much afterwards.
Now if I’ve got this right:
- Jim agrees that there is major watershed in the time of Josiah. Before that period, women participated in the Israelite cultus. After that period they didn’t. Something happened therefore which needs explaining.
- The First Testament itself, and many commentators on it, point to a religious reform movement under Josiah, probably (possibly?) to be associated with a Deuteronomic theology.
- Jim’s theory doesn’t allow him to believe in pre-exilic historicity, so he can’t accept an explanation rooted in taking the text as a historical witness.
Something happened which needs an explanation. There is a ready made explanation lying to hand, which is expounded effectively. A wide range of data supports the explanation, but the theory doesn’t allow it to be considered. Isn’t this a case where a simple application of Occam’s razor might just suggest that the data should be allowed to question the theory? In other words, to turn Jim’s closing sentence on its head: “If there is no other explanation of why women ceased participating in the Israelite cult, then surely a Josianic reform happened.”
I’m sure I’d be grateful for some comments from the Hebrew Bible specialists here, so please chip in.
January 5th, 2008 at 2:52 am
The destruction of all the cultic high places but Jerusalem by the seventh century BCE is already historically attributable to the Assyrians. This being so, Occam’s Razor requires the cutting out of the redundant explanation in Kings which attributes it to some religious reform under Josiah.
Wouldn’t it be quite likely that a theological-legendary-mythistorical book such as Kings–written in the fifth century BCE or later–would wrongly attribute the observable Assyrian destruction of high places centuries earlier to the later Yahwistic religious reforms? Any existing tales about the Assyrian armies that destroyed the sites could be developed into a story about Josiah’s own army (e.g. the Bethel / Man of God stories).
If this is the case, the Josiah/reformation story may well have developed in the same way as stories about the destruction of Jericho developed - by transferring the destruction of Jericho to the “Israelites” centuries later.
January 6th, 2008 at 3:51 am
A fifth century BCE or later date of composition for the Deuteronomistic history remains within the realm of possibility, but in order for it to stand, it’s necessary to produce an enormous number of ad hoc hypotheses of the kind Deane mentions (the Assyrians destroying all the cultic high places except Jerusalem: evidence please!).
It reminds me a bit of Scientology: plenty of daring and unusual interpretations of facts and tradition destined to gain a camp following of some kind, but be ignored by everybody else.
January 6th, 2008 at 10:54 am
The late 8th-century Assyrian destruction of all high places except Jerusalem is an “ad hoc” hypothesis? Hardly. There’s a destruction layer throughout Samaria and the entire Judean countryside in the late 8th century. This is actual “evidence”. The cultic sites were not spared. Altar stones were dismantled at Beersheba, and altars and standing stones were laid down and floored over at Arad. Even 2 Kgs 17 records a tradition about foreign disruption to Yahwistic worship at the high places, whatever the historical value (or not) of that chapter.
I guess you could attribute the comprehensive destruction layer to the Assyrians, but save the destruction of the high places for Hezekiah. But that reminds me a bit of Scientology - religous belief in (science-)fiction books.
January 7th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
What baloney, Deane. I can’t believe you fall for this line of argument. To the extent that Assyrians destroyed sites in the 8th century, just as the Bible tells us, what makes you so sure that, insofar as the sites were rebuilt, the high places were not rebuilt it as well? That the high places were also rebuilt should be the default hypothesis.
It’s cruel of you to tip over your own house of cards by pointing out that 2 Kgs 17 might contain historically reliable information. In that case, so might other chapters in the Dtr history.
In the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, the hypothesis that the Dtr history is in fact a history not unlike other ancient historiographical works (the Babylonian Chronicle on the one hand, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon on the other) is not unreasonable.
Ultra-minimalism, like the mini-skirt, will always turn a few heads. But it is a fashion that has already gone out of style, and rightfully so.
January 7th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
As I noted, the archaeological evidence shows that the Assyrian destruction coincided with the end of certain high places. As I said, “Altar stones were dismantled at Beersheba, and altars and standing stones were laid down and floored over at Arad.” There’s already a historical explanation for the widespread destruction of high places, and it’s the Assyrian invasions. That should be the default hypothesis, not the position of some later theologising literary invention hundred of years later.
Any traces of historical fact in Gen-Kings have been transformed by so much invention and ideology, that reliance on Gen-Kings as an ‘historical’ account is a genre mistake. Gen-Kings is a mythistorical collection of legends. Less and less of Gen-Kings is recognised as containing anything of a ‘historical’ nature. Gen-Kings is not comparable to Herodotus, whose primary method involves research, notably absent from Gen-Kings–although there is a superficial resemblance to Herodotus’ method of collecting legendary material. As the Greek historians well knew, before a certain time The nature of Gen-Kings is more Homer than Herodotus.
Recognition of the mythical-legendary nature of Gen 1-11 has been followed by recognition of the mythical-legendary nature of the Patriarchal stories and the Exodus and Conquest. Slowly, the idea of a historic united monarchy is also being eroded. The idea of a united monarchy is the result of an inventive collection of Saul/Daid/Solomon legends and myths. The idea of a ‘history’ in Gen-Kings has become a religious position, not a critical position. If there’s any trace of history in Gen-Kings, it’s nearly impossible to separate it out of the mythical-legendary form which is all we have access to in the texts themselves. It is only when there is comparative material (such as Sennacherib’s own records of the siege of Jerusalem) that some historic cause of the literary invention is able to be detected–but the historical detail is something quite different from the story in the literary works themselves.
January 9th, 2008 at 2:30 am
Hmmmmm… I managed to chop a bit out in my last reply. Maybe I overwrote it. Anyway, the thought went something like this:
As the Greek historians well knew, before a certain time, when there were no contemporary historians, the historic value of stories about a particular time was very poor. Before a certain time in the past, the sources for histories were not historic, but legendary. In Greek historical works, this was before and shortly after ‘Troy’. At a similar date in Hebrew mythistory, this was before and shortly after the ‘united monarchy’. Nothing from this earlier time is primarily ‘historic’. It is primarily legend.