Dogma in Kings and Chronicles

     In the Bible we find several books which present history froma theological perspective, as a display of God's acting through history, in accord with the dogmaof the day. These books are those of Kings and Chronicles, an amalgam of common religiousdoctrine of the day, incorporating elements of unquestioned wisdom tradition, anunquestioning and naive dogma of God immanent in history and events, as well as a veryunsophisticated, gullible perspective on the prophetic tradition. These books give us valuableinformation on one stage of the Jewish tradition (but they do not give us 'the infallible Word of God,' or God's commentary on the political and social situation of the day.)

      Earlier manuscripts, such as Samuel, while they refer to people and places that existed, are not history books, but are political polemics written in the style of fable employing mythological elements. We come closer to something we could call history in the books of Kings and Chronicles. Even here we do not have pure historical documents.

     Much effort has been expended trying to 'reconstruct'both the chronology of these events and the history of these times. Scholarshave proposed different schema and none have unanimous support, which shouldsurprise no one.

      Even when history is presented in these books it still is not what we would call history today. For instance (I am making this up) we could note thatChamberlain had a sexual parlay with a chambermaid in the English parliament. Later on England was at war with Nazi Germany.

      I could write 'a history' of this event as follows. "Chamberlain slept with the chambermaid and sinned against God, so that the anger of God onceagain blazed out against England. So God stirred up the Nazis, and therewas war between England and Germany in those days." Now Chamberlain may haveslept with a chambermaid and certainly there was war with the Nazis, but thetheological spin I have introduced into the story is not 'historical'. It istheological. I have overlaid an ideological mask over my presentation ofhistorical events. The ideology is not 'historical'. The events are. In thesame way much of what you read in Kings and Chronicles is not 'history' butrather ideology and theology (and of a naive sort, at that).

The 'history' of King Joram:
An example of wisdom school ideology

     Consider the story of King Joram of Judah.

"He married Ahab's daughter. He did what was wrong in the sight of YAHWEH. Yet for the sake of thecovenant God had made with David, he was unwilling to destroy the king." ( 2 Chronicles 21:6 )

     We are then told of what God did instead. Edom revoltedagainst Judean rule and remained independent

"to this very day." (2 Chronicles 21:10)

      Nextthe King received a letter, purportedly from the prophet Elijah, informing himthat because of his sins against God, he would

"suffer a chronic bowel disease,so that they prolapse and become severely ulcerated." (2 Chronicles 21:15)

      This is thendescribing as happening, just as prophesied, and

"the people kindled no fire inhonor of the king as they had done for his fathers. His passing went unsung,and he was buried in Jerusalem, but not in the burial place of the Kings." (2 Chronicles 21:19)

      Now notice the simplistic and naive view of historypresented here. No sophisticated social and political analysis is offered for the Edomite rebellion. Rather, when these historical events are read within the theological context imposed upon them itturns out that the Edomites rebelled because the king sinned, and the specific sin mentioned is thathe married Ahab's daughter. Thus the Edomites rebelled. We could compose a simple mindedproverb on this great lesson learned from God. 'A good king marries a noble woman, but awicked king marries the daughter of a fool. The daughter of a fool leads the king into ruin, andthe nation suffers disaster.' Etc. Try this yourself when reading Kings and Chronicles and soonyou'll have composed a whole booklet of facile dogmatic proverbial slogans, so called objectlessons from history. (See the sections on Karma doctrine and the Proverbs for more detail.)

      Of course we run into difficulties when historical or socialreality is seen to conflict with dogmatic slogans. You might find a Job on a dung heap, arighteous man whose children came to nothing and who lacked bread. (Must have been his ownfault.) You can also find kings who married Ahab's daughter still on the throne, but no doubt thiswas not corrected 'because God did not want to make trouble for the king because of the promiseto David.' Well, at least not until the king got that prolapsed ulcerated bowel. But perhaps thatwas just the last straw.

      The books of Kings and Chronicles were composed fromearlier source materials (referred to by name in the manuscripts as "the Chronicles of the Kings ofJudah," for example, where the reader is told to go "for more information". These sourcedocuments no longer exist, and were probably destroyed when the temple was destroyed, justbefore the time of exile. The temples in ancient times served as a library and were also the placewhere official government documents, treaties, etc., were stored.) We can imagine these tomes asbeing massive in size, and the authors merely picked through them and summarized the reign ofeach king in just a few pithy remarks. It is obvious that a dogmatic religious filter is applied inpicking out 'the relevant facts of each kings reign'. Note also the extremely simplistic model ofhistory writing adopted here, that of history as being 'about kings.' This model became thestandard conceptual framework for all history writing by North American and European historiansfor centuries. "God moves heart of king," as the proverbs had it.

      It seems likely that the authors also had other sources attheir disposal, one of which was various collections of writings which purported to be prophecy,and which also had to be filtered.

Prophecy in the wisdom tradition

     Make note of how specific the prophecy of the king'sdeath is, even detailing 'the prolapsing' of his bowels, and ulceration. If the king died in just thisway, and this was interpreted by the priests as an obvious 'sign from god,' as immanent andcontrolling of all history as God was, and the people, superstitious as they were, saw the event inthe same way. As for the detailed prophecy, this is a common feature in these historical typebooks in the Bible, but prophecy is always presented in the same naive and gullible way, and fromthe same conceptual framework. Prophecy in these books resembles fortune telling, with thevalidity of the prophecy always measured by its historical accuracy.

      This brings up the interesting question of just where theseprophecies came from. I believe that the authors of these manuscripts were far to naive andgullible to have simply made up prophecies out of thin air, but rather the process was morecomplex. Popular mythology had also been co-opted by the prevailing ideology of the day, andmany, many folk tales were circulated with the prophet Elijah as the most popular of characters,indeed as he was in Joshua's day, and as he remains today. It would then be the popular custom tospin and weave tales of Elijah's amazing fortune telling skills, this being only one of his amazingtalents. Of course Elijah knew all about that prolapsed ulcer. Of course he wrote a letter andwarned the King. Examples of such a genre can be found in ancient Jewish writings outside theBible, with the prophet Elijah portraying a kind of 'supernatural prophetic Superman' character,filling in the gap until someone could invent the comic book.

      It would then be a simple matter of having some credulous author pick up such mythological prophecy from one his source books andincorporate it into his Book of the Kings of Judah. There is one troubling detail that is ignored in theconceptual framework of this little story. You see, if weread of Elijah and Joram we find that before Joram became King, Elijah had already been takenaway to live up in heaven with God. It is left unexplained how one goes about posting lettersaddressed to monarchs dispatched from heaven, or just how gullible both writers, people, andkings must have been in those days to actually accept such miraculous letters sent from Elijah.

      How to determine the authenticity of such a purported letter? Was it postmarked 'heaven'? Apparently, having left the earth to live in heaven, Elijah did not restfrom his labors, but continued with his appointed task of prophesying, limited only by the fact thathe was now in heaven and would henceforth be forced by circumstances to do all his prophesyingvia mail. Whateverthe case may have been, we can see that long after he was gone from the scene Elijah keptbusy.

     To be fair to the author, I should point out that the story of Elijah going to heaven is found in the earlier books of Kings. The books of Chronicles and Kings have much material in common, but it is even more interesting to note that in rewriting the Books of Kings, while the author kept much, much was also excluded. In some ways the Books of Kings and Chronicles seem to be redundant in the Bible, sharing so much material in common. It is the material that they do not share that makes for an interesting read, as well as the propensity of the author of Chronicles to change 'facts' found in the Books of Kings as well as disposing of much material. For example if the book of Kings said that so and so did not remove the High Places, in the Book of Chronicles it will be said that the High Places were indeed removed. The story of the flight to heaven of Elijah is edited out of Chronicles. If we assume that we are to read Kings and Chronicles as 'the infallible Word of God' then we encounter the embarrassing problem of having Elijah prophesying from heaven by mail, and if we read the book of Chronicles as a seperate work, we read of the prophet Elijah as murderer, which creates problems for us later when we read the prophet Hosea. However, by disposing of the story of the Rapture of Elijah the author of Chronicles could at the very least keep to his agenda of defending certain Kings and certain state policies by appealing to the activity and authority of a certain highly esteemed prophet who never went anywhere, which at the very least was convenient, more convenient in any case than a prophet in heaven who left authors of Chronicles and certain Kings to take credit for their massacres themselves.