ROYAL IDEAL AND ROYAL REALITY Sholomoh And His Successors: The Promise Broken The Biblical tradition in I Kings 1-11 and much subsequent interpretation is of a divided mind in the assessment of Sholomoh. He brought tiny IsraEl to a position of unparalleled prominence in the world of his time. The splendour of his court and his monuments is often a matter of pride to those who look on his era as a golden age. Much in the Biblical tradition celebrates his achievements, including his personal wisdom, but the tradition also knows and finally reports with brutal honesty that Sholomohs reign deeply compromised the IsraElite covenant Faith and led to the division of the kingdom. Current assessment of Sholomoh is deeply influenced by a fuller understanding of the social models of Kenaanite royal culture which Sholomoh borrowed and infused fully into his own royal system. By the end of Sholomohs regime the Yerushalem state was a thoroughly paganized Syro-Hittite regime and was condemned as intolerable by the prophets, who represented the continuity of the YAHwist Faith. IsraEl under Sholomoh ceased to live as an alternative community in the world (although some kept this Faith alive), and instead adopts a model of royal ideology and management borrowed from surrounding Kenanite culture. It is this royal model opposed to the covenant alternative which we must seek to describe as fully emerged under Sholomoh and continued by most of his successors in the northern and southern kingdoms.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Apr 2014 19:19:10 +0000