David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (26 page)

The Persian provinces of Yehud and Samaria

In the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, we hear of continual Samaritan hostility to the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the establishment of the Temple. That hostility was abundantly returned. The inhabitants of Samaria saw themselves as the successors of the northern kingdom—specifically as members of the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim who had not been deported by the Assyrians. The Jerusalem priesthood, by contrast, saw them as aliens and pagans, descendants of the foreign peoples who had been brought in and resettled in this area by the Assyrian kings.

The historical truth undoubtedly lies somewhere between these opposing visions. Whatever their precise genealogical connection to the inhabitants of the northern kingdom of Israel, the people of the northern highlands maintained their attachment to the traditions of the people of Israel through the adoption of a distinctive and eventually sectarian version of the Five Books of Moses—the Samaritan Pentateuch. The biblical traditions connected with northern localities like Shechem and Bethel, and important biblical personalities like Jacob, Joseph, and Joshua, are explicitly connected with the north.

At the time of the writing of Chronicles, the northern kingdom was no more than a vague memory, having been destroyed by the Assyrians four centuries before. Yet the continuing political and religious power of Samaria was of great concern to the leaders of Yehud. Archaeological surveys in the highlands of Samaria have noted a substantial continuity of settlement from the end of the Assyrian period through the succeeding centuries. The discovery of an archive of inscribed fourth-century
BCE
papyri in a cave on the desert fringe of Samaria has revealed the complexity of political and social life and legal activity in the province during the later Persian period.

For centuries there had been a natural rivalry between the northern and southern highlands; this expressed itself in matters of religious practice and political strategy. The establishment of the province of Yehud and the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple brought those tensions once again into focus and resulted in a final schism between Jews and Samaritans. The construction of a single, central Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim near Shechem posed a northern religious alternative—and a severe threat—to the Jerusalem ideology.

The date of the construction of the Mount Gerizim temple has long been a matter of debate. The first-century
CE
Jewish historian Flavius Josephus dated its foundation to the early Hellenistic era in the time of Alexander the Great, yet Samaritan tradition maintained that their temple was constructed closer to the time of the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple, in the Persian period. These arguments rested solely on historical texts, as the site of the Samaritan temple was not investigated archaeologically. Finally, in the 1980s, large-scale excavations were carried out at the site by the Israeli archaeologist Yitzhak Magen. It is now clear that the Samaritan Temple was built in the Persian period, probably as early as the first half of the fifth century
BCE
; that it was devoted to the cult of the God of Israel; and that its layout was strikingly similar to the descriptions of the Temple in Jerusalem. Indeed, the vision of David and Solomon in Chronicles represents a direct response to the Samaritan challenge by redefining the very notion of Israel.

According to the Deuteronomistic History, the religious practices of the northerners were sinful. The cultic missteps of Saul, the reported construction by the first northern king, Jeroboam, of the idolatrous shrines at Bethel and Dan, and the Baal worship of the Omrides at Samaria were violations of divine command for which they would dearly pay. Although the northern kingdom and the northern kings were considered illegitimate, the inhabitants of the north were nonetheless still part of the people and land of Israel over which David and Solomon had ruled and which a righteous successor of their dynasty would rule again someday. Chronicles, on the other hand, does not deal with the conflict between David and Saul over the kingship or with Judah’s continuing conflict with the northern kings. The divine mission of David and Solomon is self-evident; in their version of history from Adam to Cyrus’s edict to rebuild the Temple, the books of Chronicles argue that God’s plan for his people centered on the giving of laws that could be fulfilled only in Jerusalem. Any other dynasty than the house of David and any other place of worship than the Jerusalem Temple was simply irrelevant—it was not part of the true history of the people of Israel.

The people of Israel must therefore be defined by religious allegiance rather than geography or political institutions. The unity of Israel would not be achieved by territorial conquest or holy war but by a clear religious choice. Chronicles makes the reign of David and Solomon not merely a golden age that might someday be recaptured, but the standard of acceptable religious behavior that will last for all time. David and Solomon—and their united monarchy—became a model and symbol for the unity of the nation, an archetype for a holy community of all Israel. Chronicles thus points the way for individuals from the north to join the community of God. The speech in Chronicles of Abijah, Solomon’s grandson, to the northern Israelites (which does not appear in Kings!) powerfully expresses this new vision:

Chronicles not only stresses that this standard of religious behavior was established by David and Solomon; it emphasizes the invitation of two later pious Davidic kings, Hezekiah and Josiah, to the northerners to come and worship in Jerusalem and become part of God’s people. In short, the books of Chronicles put the emphasis on the most Judahite figure, David; the most Judahite city, Jerusalem; and the most Judahite institution, the Temple, in order to show that the Samaritans’ attempts to usurp the traditions of Israel are folly. No kingdom, no people, and no individual can claim to be a part of Israel without Jerusalem and without following the righteous religious foundations established by David and Solomon. The Jerusalem Temple community of the time of Chronicles is presented as the only legitimate successor of the ideal, great Israel of the time of David and Solomon.

DAVID AND SOLOMON AS THEOLOGY

With David and Solomon established as the touchstones of religious authority in the Jerusalem Temple, important literary collections of cultic poetry, prose, and songs of thanksgiving were gradually ascribed to them. Although Chronicles was the crystallized expression of their place in religious tradition, the earlier narrative in the Deuteronomistic History proved a rich source of allusions and associations that provided links with other cultic practices and beliefs. The tradition of David’s skill with the harp in stilling the tortured soul of King Saul—mentioned in 1 Samuel 16:14–23—became the basis for ascribing to him the establishment of ritual music in the Temple as well as the authorship of dozens of psalms probably regularly sung there. Likewise the fabled wisdom of Solomon—“He also uttered three thousand proverbs; and his songs were a thousand and five” (1 Kings 4:32)—suggested that he was the source for the collections of traditional wisdom contained in “the proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel” (Proverbs 1:1). And his reputation as a great lover linked him forever with the erotic verses of yet another composition retained in the Hebrew Bible: “The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s” (Song of Solomon 1:1).

Scholars disagree on the date of composition of these books of the Bible. The book of Psalms contains hymns of praise, lament, and celebration that may have been sung in the Temple in monarchic times. Yet its present form is postexilic. The origins of Proverbs and the Song of Songs are even harder to pin down, but they are generally believed to be postexilic. All of them were preserved, edited, and elaborated in the scribal circles of the Temple; their ascription to David and Solomon is hardly surprising in view of their theological centrality. One might also mention the book of Ruth—placed by its author in the period of the Judges, but most likely compiled in postexilic times. Its romantic story of the Moabite maidservant who chooses to stay with her Judahite in-laws (“for where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God”—Ruth 1:16) not only embodies the principle of religious choice as the basis for membership in the house of Israel; it explicitly identifies Ruth as the grandmother of David himself.

Thus, by the end of the postexilic period, and certainly in the Hellenistic era, David and Solomon had become icons: distant, dreamlike embodiments of the official cult and theology of the Jerusalem Temple—and through the Temple, to communities of Jews everywhere. With the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek during the Hellenistic period, the images of David and Solomon reached an even wider audience, tied neither to the political fate of the long-vanished Davidic dynasty nor to Judah’s territorial conquest of the highland towns and villages of the north. David and Solomon had been transformed from Iron Age kings into models of religious virtue. They had become a focus for personal religious allegiance that would be maintained both by Rabbinic Judaism and—as we will see—by Christianity. That central fact alone explains why their tradition is still so powerful.

IF THE AUTHORS OF CHRONICLES BELIEVED THAT DAVID
and Solomon would forever remain just patron saints of the rebuilt Temple and its cultic rituals, they were badly mistaken. Over time, as the region’s political and economic landscape was gradually transformed, the powerful traditions of the founding fathers of Judah—and united Israel—offered a kaleidoscope of other stunning images that were useful in new ways. Sweeping victories over foreign invaders; miraculous election to the kingship; royal repentance and concern for the downtrodden; vast wealth, wisdom, and esoteric knowledge: all these stories would be put to uses far wider than the regulation of daily sacrifices and yearly festivals by the Jerusalem priestly establishment.

Our sources for the later history and development of the David and Solomon tradition are scattered. We cannot be sure that the various Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Greek, and Latin documents from the following centuries that we still possess actually express all of the uses to which the David and Solomon tradition was eventually put. Yet it is obvious that the great ideological switch that occurred in the postexilic period—namely, the use of David and Solomon as the avatars of later religious belief, rather than dynastic fortune—gave rise to a wide range of interpretations that would be influential among the new religious variations that gradually evolved within Judaism, and later in Christianity.

By the Hellenistic period, the prestige of David and Solomon had become pervasive among communities of Jews throughout the Near East and the Mediterranean. And as adherence to some form of the biblical tradition began to spread beyond the people of Israel, David and Solomon would be seen as the ancient embodiments of the true faith and harbingers of future redemption, in whatever form a particular interpreter—or community of interpreters—believed that faith and that redemption would take.

DAVID AND SOLOMON: THE ROYAL HELLENISTIC VERSION

In Hellenistic times the Jerusalem Temple continued to be the focal point of Jewish practice. David and Solomon’s paramount role as its founders continued to be elaborated in priestly circles and celebrated in a growing body of wisdom literature. In addition to the final forms of the book of Psalms (largely ascribed to David) and of Proverbs and the Song of Songs (ascribed to Solomon), various other works of worldly wisdom and personal guidance drew their authority from their supposed connection to David and Solomon themselves. Thus, for example, the book of Qoheleth, “the Preacher,” known as Ecclesiastes in its Greek version and probably written in the late third century
BCE
, offered the insights and observations of a world-weary Jewish sage under the pen name of “the son of David, king in Jerusalem” (1:1). In the apocryphal book of Ben Sira, also known as Ecclesiasticus, which was composed in the early second century
BCE
, both David and Solomon are likewise described as paragons of religious virtue and righteousness.

Yet the meaning of kingship was changing even as these works were being written or elaborated in their final forms. The David and Solomon tradition had grown out of the ancient Near Eastern milieu in which Egyptian, and especially Assyrian, models of divine royalty were the dominant forms. By the Hellenistic period new concepts of kingship were emerging, deeply influenced by Greek conceptions of the ideal ruler as a philosopher king. They can be seen clearly in the images of David and Solomon in the Greek translation of the Bible, the Septuagint, the first parts of which were compiled in the third century
BCE
, probably in Ptolemaic Egypt. In its description of David’s righteousness and Solomon’s wisdom, the semidivine qualities of the Hellenistic king are apparent: in addition to piety, the two kings are endowed with philosophical insight and extraordinary practical knowledge of the sciences most prized in Hellenistic circles. A Hellenistic Jewish composition entitled the Wisdom of Solomon places in the mouth of the ancient Judahite king a lengthy paean to Sophia, the feminine emanation of God’s wisdom, with whom he seeks mystical union, with a philosophical intention that is unmistakably Greek.

We lose the trail of written commemoration of the David and Solomon tradition in Judea
*
during most of the rule of the Hasmonean dynasty, extending from 165 to 37
BCE
. The reason is quite simple. Although the Hasmoneans (or the Maccabees, as they were originally called after their first great leader, Judah Maccabeus) rose to power at the head of a national revolt and established the first independent state in Judea after more than four centuries of imperial subjection, and although their capital was Jerusalem and its focus was the Temple, they were not themselves of Davidic ancestry. To make matters worse they ousted the priestly Zadokite line (which traced its origins back to the time of David) from succession to the high priesthood, thus earning for themselves bitter religious opposition within Judea and—as we will see—sparking among their opponents a renewed interest in David and Solomon. Yet even the Hasmoneans could not completely ignore the power of the Davidic tradition. The ancient core of Jerusalem was still known as the City of David, and local legend ascribed the inner line of the Hellenistic fortifications to the building projects of David and Solomon. (Flavius Josephus,
The Jewish War
5.137–43.) Indeed when Simon the Hasmonean assumed the titles of national leader and high priest, his appointment was conditional—“until a trustworthy prophet shall arise” (1 Maccabees 14:41)—that is to say, when Davidic rule in Jerusalem would presumably resume.

The grandest impresario of Hellenistic-style commemoration of David and Solomon was Herod the Great, the notorious client of Rome and iron-fisted tyrant of Judea from 37 to 4
BCE
. Though not of Jewish ancestry, Herod gained Roman support for his assumption of kingship over Judea, ousting the last of the Hasmonean rulers in a bloody civil war. Yet once in power he demonstrated his respect for the national traditions by erecting a great new Temple and palace in Jerusalem, on the model—if not in quite the same style and size—as the biblical Solomon. Clearing the summit of the Temple Mount, where the earlier Jerusalem Temples had stood, Herod conscripted thousands of workmen to erect a massive platform on which elaborate colonnades and courtyards and the great Herodian sanctuary would be built.

There are other indications that Herod self-consciously modeled himself as a symbolic successor to David, as ruler of nearly the entire biblical land of Israel, and to Solomon, as the Temple’s great patron and master architect. Yet as a king imposed by distant Rome, he could not force anyone to venerate him, since his rule over Judea was brutal and his fawning subservience to his Roman overlords angered local Jewish sensibilities. In the end, Herod reinforced the religious iconography of the Davidic tradition without doing much to quell political unrest. He thus ironically ensured that David and Solomon would become even more potent symbols of political and eschatological hope.

MESSIANIC VISIONS

The rule of non-Davidic kings in Judea and the dispossession of the Zadokite priesthood in the second century
BCE
gave rise to persistent countercurrents that would once more energize the David and Solomon tradition. During the rule of the Hasmoneans, when various sectarian groups split off from the religious mainstream, a new vision of David and Solomon emerged—not as establishment founding fathers, but as models of righteous behavior to be followed in order to
regain
control of the Temple from a wicked, illegitimate priesthood and to lead the people of Israel piously.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, are filled with allusions to David as the standard of righteousness that would ultimately triumph. Composed in the second and first centuries
BCE,
the collection of more than eight hundred texts discovered in caves near the western shore of the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1956 includes many previously unknown works of poetry, religious instruction, and prophecy in which an uncompromising veneration for David can be seen. At a time when the authors believed the Temple to be in the hands of an evil and impious priesthood, one text (known to scholars as 4Q505) sees David as the eternally elected leader, with whom God had established a covenant “so that he would be like a shepherd, a prince over Your people, and would sit upon the throne of Israel forever.” Others more pointedly anticipate that a Branch of David would arise to destroy Israel’s internal oppressors and external enemies.

These messianic allusions closely follow phrases of earlier prophets, but they place them in a decidedly contemporary context. Other groups had equally vivid visions and began to see the return of the Davidic savior as a moral guide as much as a military leader, who would destroy foreign domination and impiety at a single stroke. In a collection of hymns titled by later editors
The Psalms of Solomon,
the tribulations of the first century
BCE
were described in moving, quasi-biblical verses—in particular, they focused on the wickedness of the Jerusalem elite and the unspeakable horror of the ransacking of the Temple by the Roman general Pompey in 63
BCE
. They nevertheless had great faith that a change was coming in the person of a Davidic heir, as predicted by the earlier prophets:

The longing for such a heavenly savior continued through the first century
BCE
, but with the death of Herod, in 4
BCE
, at least for some, the time of waiting seemed to be over. A succession of rebel leaders arose in Judea over the following decades, many of them acting the part of the long-awaited savior, hoping to restore the glory of Judah and Israel not by righteous word or miracle, but by the sword.

In a description that is suggestively reminiscent of “David’s Rise to Power,” the first-century
CE
Jewish historian Flavius Josephus recounts the emergence of a particular bandit leader amidst the disturbances that followed Herod’s death:

Athrongaeus was eventually captured by the Roman forces, but new royal pretenders arose to take his place. Josephus describes the pervasive (and to his mind, mistaken) belief among the Jewish masses that “one from their country would become ruler of the world.” And indeed, throughout the first century
CE
, as Judea became a Roman province, messianic visions and messianic leaders repeatedly arose to challenge Roman power and to take up the messianic quest.

We cannot tell to what extent all of them identified themselves as Davidic redeemers, for through the years of Roman rule a whole parade of biblical-like figures strutted on the revolutionary stage: In the forties, a would-be Joshua named Theudas drew crowds to accompany him down to the Jordan River, which he promised he would split asunder to permit a victorious reentry of the people of Israel into their Promised Land. Later, a mysterious Moses-like figure known only as “the Egyptian” led thousands of eager followers to the summit of the Mount of Olives with the promise that he would cause Jerusalem’s walls to collapse miraculously and then lead them into the city as conquerors rather than slaves. These would-be saviors were all killed or expelled by Roman forces. In time, however, these messianic hopes spun out of control.

In 66
CE
, despite the pleading of its Hellenized aristocracy, Judea exploded in open revolt against Roman rule. Sacrifices for the health of the emperor (which had been instituted in the time of Herod) were abruptly discontinued; the Roman garrison in Jerusalem was slaughtered; and the people of Judea prepared to meet the might of Rome—presumably with the divine protection that the oracles of the coming of the “last days” and the Davidic savior had foretold.

As battles raged and the Roman general (and later emperor) Vespasian gradually regained the upper hand, the various revolutionary factions within Judea fought among each other, with several of the rival leaders conspicuously assuming a kingly manner. Menachem, the leader of the violent rebel group who had seized Herod’s fortress at Masada, appeared in the Jerusalem Temple “adorned with royal clothing,” according to Josephus, only to be killed by members of a rival gang. Simon bar Giora, one of the last surviving rebel commanders in the final Roman siege of Jerusalem—led by Vespasian’s son Titus—attempted to stage a dramatic, if desperate, miracle even after the Temple itself had been destroyed. According to Josephus, “imagining that he could cheat the Romans by creating a scare, [he] dressed himself in white tunics and buckling over them a purple mantle, arose out of the ground at the very spot on which the temple had formerly stood.” This attempt at simulating the supernatural materialization of the long-expected messiah failed miserably. Stripped of his royal purple, Simon was thrown in chains and shipped off to Rome, where he was executed for public amusement during Vespasian and Titus’s victory parade.