Kingdom of Israel (united Monarchy) - History

History

According to textual criticism a number of distinct source texts were spliced together to produce the current books of Samuel. The most prominent in the early parts of the first book are the pro-monarchical source and the anti-monarchical source. In identifying these two sources, two separate accounts can be reconstructed. The anti-monarchical source describes Samuel (thought by a number of scholars to be a cipher for God himself) to have thoroughly routed the Philistines, yet begrudgingly accepting that the people demanded a ruler, and thus appointing Saul by cleromancy. The pro-monarchical source describes the divine birth of Saul (a single word being changed by a later editor so that it referred to Samuel instead), and his later leading of an army to victory over the Ammonites, which resulted in the people clamouring for him to lead them against the Philistines, whereupon he is appointed king.

According to Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman, authors of The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, the idea of a United Monarchy is not accurate history but rather "creative expressions of a powerful religious reform movement," possibly "based on certain historical kernels." Although in a later book Finkelstein and Silberman do accept that David and Solomon were real kings of Judah about the 10th century BCE, they cite that the earliest independent reference to the Kingdom of Israel is about 890 BCE, while for that of Judah is about 750 BCE.