Ancient Israel: The House of David

today we're going to deal with one particular entity which is the house of David anyone want to just make a wild stab at what the house of David means is just extra points yeah David's Kingdom okay and what is that can you what does that mean okay okay group over which David rules that's good and you're being very careful here not putting any particular words on that yeah mihaela it's okay yeah the diet like the dynasty or the yeah definitely great these are already two really good things anything else all right so this is what we'll work on today and the house of David tends to have two very competing images in the Bible okay in the first one and the later one really goes to what mihaela just said which is this kind of unending dynasty alright centered at Judah remember that Judah is in the south when you think in terms of the divided monarchy so this word David becomes the symbol of this perpetual dynasty centered at Judah alright that's one way to think about it and this is the way that the major traditions Judaism and Christianity see that the figure of David so in Judaism the Messiah will come and the Messiah will descend from the house of David right this is very important and not only that but any important some of the major Torah commentators are also said to come from the line of David so Rashi and Maimonides and a whole slew of others so pretty much anybody who is important comes from the line of David and in Christianity the way of linking into that was to say that Jesus descends from the line of David and if you read the book of Matthew which is the most Jewish gospel in a sense he starts out by detailing this long genial that leaves up to Jesus and it all goes back to David so this is something that is not only in the Bible but it's thriving in our traditions today it's very much alive but there is an older conflicting idea of David in the Bible and this really revolves around David as king of Israel so it's older it talks about David in a very particular place and time where he is really vying with the son of Saul over rule of Israel okay and if you remember Judah develops as something later so Israel if you're going back to the time of the judges what you really have is Israel and this kind of tribal system I use the word tribes really kind of flippantly but this tribal system in a way that binds together to fight against common entities or common enemies and that is known as Israel so this older kind of view of David really has to do with him as king of Israel fighting over king of Israel as king of Israel so that said the goal for today is going in the the vein of professor Fleming figure out what the house of David originally is go back to that first death that original meaning of the house of David and how Judah steals David and the house of David from Israel got it yeah yeah figure out what the house of David is originally and how Judah steals David and the house of David from Israel so we're gonna do that through four texts okay three that you have read the Tel Dan inscription first Kings twelve and Psalm 89 which you all have read and I'm throwing another one in there which is first or second Samuel three which really deals with this kind of ancient old story of David becoming king over Israel and the and this turn the house of David is used there okay so I'm relying on you guys to find the evidence in these texts and what we're going to be talking about is what Israel means in these texts what the different political entities are and how you can define them and how you can see them in these texts okay so that's that's the ongoing question for for today so the Talde an inscription you guys was there something up on blackboard was there a tilde an inscription on blackboard it was okay great so you all have read this then see this is the if for those of you who haven't seen it before that's the actual remnant of the inscription so you can see the kind of broken all the broken little pieces and what you can really read is between verses 2 and 10 and it breaks off after 10 and even this is very very broken so it's reconstructed in a lot of a lot of parts but the Taliban inscription comes from the 9th century so professor Fleming has talked about this before this is the first piece of external evidence that we have after the Merneptah stela for the existence of israel and it comes from the northeast corner of israel the area that is associated with the tribe of Dan and it is written in Aramaic this is ancient Aramaic script over there actually the one piece or inscription that actually comes from ancient Aram which is centered around Damascus in Syria today and you can find it's corroborated by the Bible if you want to go and read it in the Bible and second Kings eight and nine you actually hear of a similar story from the side of Israel so like these in most of these inscriptions they deal with you know a king bragging about all of the kingdoms that he conquers that's the goal of these inscriptions so that's what you have here and you have the king of Aram the aera main king saying my father went up and I don't know how people add in all of the broken pieces but against him when he fought at dot dot and my father lay down and he went to his father's he died and the king of Israel entered previously in my father's land and Haddad made me King anyone know who her dad is wild guess the storm God so he's also nick called Baal he's called hajdu and at you Garrett and how dad went in front of me and departed from the seven dot dot of my kingdom and I slew seven D Kings who harnessed thousands of chariots and thousands of horsemen or horses you can already see how brokenness is we don't really know all of what's there I killed Ahura son of a Hopf king of Israel and noticed that the only part that we really have for evidence is we have an R and an M so people kind of filled this pardon just assuming this was the king and they filled in a half because that was the father we do have king of Israel so I killed Joe Harrison of a half king of Israel and I killed a has yeah who son of Jehovah of the house of David so once again the first part is all cut off so we kind of filled fill that in but we do have Israel and the house of and I set their towns into ruins and turned their land into desolation alright so this is this magnificent extra-biblical evidence that corroborates the Bible right big deal so what is it what does it tell us what do you learn about Israel here yeah Joe that Joseph Joe so the name so we have potentially we have the names of the Kings there that are kind of confirmed as kings of Israel which definitely connects to the Bible and that's really important yeah Dylan great so that's very important so we know there's some kind of division here and we have Israel and we have the house of David all right so what are those mean then what is Israel just very masking you really simple questions trying to get you to question what you might assume what's Israel at this point think about it just in terms of what you've learned this is the ninth century we have two kingdoms in a sense what is Israel yeah it's the what okay so it's a monarchy it has a king so somehow one person is ruling over a group of people and that's big because that's this that you can distinguish that from the era of the judges for example where if you remember in the judges there are all of these kind of local populations it's more kind of tribal groups it's not clear you know there's a local leadership but it's not clear that there's any one person ruling over a huge you know a massive group of people at one time so this is very specific we've got one king over a group called Israel did you have something has yahoo has Yahoo his son of Jehovah's no not of not of Jeroboam what are you talking about here oh yes yes yeah okay yeah definitely so what's this other area then any ideas yeah great what's the house of David Jerusalem okay other ideas that's a great guess and partially right yeah Judah alright why do you say that you're very smart yeah in fact in part yes it is Judah okay and it is Judah because the Bible would tell us that it's Judah so if you go to 2nd Kings 8th and second Kings 9 it does not say the house of David in this story of this massive salt it says Judah ok so it says Israel and it says Judah so in part yes that is absolutely right and modern-day scholars use this text in fact as evidence that Judah existed in the 9th century so there's this ongoing debate about when Judah actually emerged how it developed because we know it somehow followed David in a way but it's just not clear when it actually grew out of the soil of this landscape so people use this to corroborate that Judah was there in the 9th century ok but that's an interesting assumption because the question then is why do they say house of David and not Judah I mean you're saying Israel right you're not saying like the house of Omri right so why would you say Israel and why would you pair that with the house of David and not with Judah yeah what's your name max okay yeah that's a great idea in a way the Kingdom of Israel it's much bigger it's much more established it's easy to just to call it Israel in a way the house of David has this kind of lineage that goes back to David it's more specific it might be smaller at this point and we'll kind of we'll go back to this idea of of the this dynasty or this lineage because that really does you know it connects to that but the but the question still kind of persists as to why we would not just call this Judah at this time and it's a it's a valid question and something that we have to ask and indeed if we go back to the Bible which we're about to do on the one hand it does corroborate this idea that this is Judah like you said on the other hand there is this completely different story in the Bible this earlier story in which David is connected to Israel and so by that token trying to say that the house of David is Judah it just doesn't it doesn't work it doesn't kind of jive in that description of him as king of Israel okay so we'll hold this thought and for those of you who are interested these are the the actual letters that the beit Davi that say the house of David just for for those who are interested in where that is found all right so second Samuel 3 so this is this text that comes in this narrative where Saul has just died and suddenly there is this war over who is going to legitimately take over the kingship if you remember Saul is this first king of Israel we would call him a first king of Israel and David is you know kind of he comes from a particular tribe but he's kind of fed into and bred into the house of Saul in a way and by house I mean kind of the leadership or his actual royal house and so at this point we have Saul's son who the story calls each bow shet which is a funny name because it means man of shame and his original name is probably ishbal which means man of ball which is Baal the storm God which is probably their kind of family God so already you're you're getting a glimpse of the writers how they want you to perceive this line of Saul man of shame right it's kind of a pathetic name for this poor guy so you have each bow shed on the one hand and you have David on the other hand and they're fighting and this is the story in the Bible that people will kind of use to talk about this massive struggle between you know the house of Saul on the one hand and David on the other hand for this rule over Israel and they'll talk about it as this very kind of gigantic war okay and this is what we have and this is the first instance in the David's story where we see this phrase the house of David and in fact it appears here in the story and then when David wins and he beats each boscia and he becomes the king of Israel it totally disappears it's gone it is not used again until the monarchy splits okay so something really interesting is going on there so just gonna read this text and think about the different political entities that are described here who is on each side how are they described okay so once Abner son of Nair and the soldiers which is actually servants is the actual word in Hebrew so when you read the English translation they're already trying to trick you into thinking a very particular thing about who these people are but servants is a little bit of an ambiguous term it could mean a lot of different things so Abner son of NER and the servants of each pochette so Abner is on each side son of Saul marched out from AHA nyam to Gibeon and Joab son of zeruiah and the servants of David also came out so Abner and Joab they confronted one another at the pool of Gibeon one group sat on one side of the pool and the other group on the other side of the pool and this is kind of a funny story actually Abner said to Joab let the young man come forward and sport before us yes let them Joab answered they came forward and were counted off twelve for Benjamin and each Bichette son of Saul and twelve of David's servants each one grasped his opponents head and thrust his dagger into his opponent's side thus they fell together that place which is in Gibeon was called he'll cough Howser dream which you can translate as the field of blades potentially so you know these twelve people on either side they come forward they kill each other right great battle scene a fierce battle ensued that day and Abner and the men of Israel were routed routed by David's servants the Benjamin Knights rallied behind Abner forming a single company and they took up a position on the top of the hill Abner remember Abner is for each bow shet called out to Joab who's on David's side must the sword devour us forever you know how bitterly it's going to end how long will you delay ordering your people the English translation says troops again trying to trick you to stop the pursuit of their kinsmen and that translation is brothers okay so this is this story and then this kind of ends after this long struggle the war between the house of Saul in the house of David was long drawn out but David kept growing stronger while the house of Saul grew weaker sons were born to David and her bran during the war between the house of Saul in the house of David Abner supported the house of Saul okay do you guys get what's going on here anyone have any questions about anything that's going on in the text yeah Joe well so the thing is is that we don't have two kingdoms yet so this is coming out of a very particular place you know and it's these kind of two different groups these two particular groups fighting over Israel but not necessarily between the north and the south so potentially between something else so who is on either side of this struggle how would you characterize or describe them what are the words to describe them here who's on David's side just look for words in the text yeah all right so we've got Joab on David's side who else what words here characterize who is on David's side as ambiguous as they may be all right servants okay you have Joab you have servants of David potentially soldiers if you want to translate it that way who else yeah great so we have Joab we have people and we have servants right really clear right that's just tells us exactly who these people are right we can just nail that down anything else yeah man of shame yeah absolutely so we've got the author that's a really good point what else Todd okay yeah yeah okay yeah the brothers is very interesting right because you want to think that there are these two different sides that there are these clear sides and on one side is Abner and on one side is Joab and yet here Abner is calling out to Joab how long will you you know when we're when are you gonna tell your troops to stop the pursuit of their brothers of their kinsmen so already you're complicating what potentially are two very distinct sides of the struggle all right and then you guys missed you know the title of the class the house of David this is on the side of David what about Saul Saul Saul has a little bit more language here yeah mihaela okay Abner the Benjamin i'ts what kind of how how would you describe what is the Benjamin eyes how is what is that characterizing what's behind that yeah Parris yeah okay yeah so tribal language okay so so each bush at has it's a little bit more clear right he has at least this tribe going for him Benjamin is the tribe of his father Saul Saul said to come from Benjamin anything else yep mm-hmm the servants something else big I'm totally fishing yeah the men of Israel all right that's important we don't see Judah in this text that's really interesting we don't see anything called Judah in this text we have house of David but we have nothing called Judah so whatever is backing David is not Judah here all right we have this vague language and yet only in one place but it is there I think it's verse 17 where ever the we have the men of Israel rallying behind you know each pochette so that's that's fascinating and yet when you look more closely who are the men of Israel a fierce battle ensued that day and Abner and the men of Israel were routed by David's soldiers the Benjamin Knights rallied behind Abner they're defined as the Benjamin eyes so if you're gonna ask yourself what Israel is in this text we're not talking about Israel as in this northern kingdom like we talked about in the Tel Dan steely right we're talking about Israel here is just defined as the Benjamin eyes by a particular singular group of people in this very small area which seems to be the location for this entire fight all right so this is so this is very interesting so a few points for this before we just move on to the next one is to note that each pochette and David here are the words that are used to describe who is behind them these words like people servants soldiers or how we would describe soldiers this is this language that we might call collective governance okay so this is this term that we might use in an ancient landscape where there isn't any clearly defined polities when we're not describing something as a monarchy you know we're not describing something as a state we're not using these words and so the way to describe this kind of this kind of ancient landscape without these really clearly delineated categories is we describe them by things like people soldier or servants elders and that's what we see here so we're seeing something very very old at play in this text we're seeing something that really points us to this kind of original story that is going on here the other thing to notice is that while david is defined in very vague ways each pochette is defined as he's got the benjamin it-- so he has this very specific tribal language and israel really is the Benjamin i'ts so again it's it's small it's focused on this particular area in this particular tribe does this seem like when you read it does this seem like a large a large war does this seem like something that's happening with many many people in a large geographical area yeah well it's the only it little at least the only more specific element that can define who is in Israel so there may be other aspects to that that we're not seeing in this text and that's quite possible but in terms of what we see in what's defined and what's really important to the writer to describe is that it's the Benjamin i'ts so you know you're very right that it may very well involve other people and you could argue that it does but it's important to the writer to filter from the Benjamin eyes yeah so what we're seeing is something that's very very small okay and the other thing is just to note this relationship between the two soldiers that they're somehow connected okay they're not they're brothers in some ways and that might not be blood brothers that that might just be a category of war but trying to remind each other that they are somehow connected now just before we move on the house of Saul what might that be yeah yeah great yeah and really define like you're saying defined by him is the founder in a way of a particular thing yes and that is actually really key to understanding what this means notice that Sol is dead so you're you're defining each pochette by the house of Saul but Saul is no longer alive alive so somehow this is defining something that has grown up around Saul in particular and is now kind of extending from Saul so you could say the same thing about the house of David here this is something that is in a sense growing up around David something we don't know exactly who that involves it could be his servants it could be you know the male members of his household probably not the women but it could be start with the male members of his household and then extend out to you know other people but it's a very specific kind of a category so far and should not be connected to Judah per se okay so this is this oldest story that we have now after this text so David becomes king of Israel he wins the kingship and the house of David disappears so somehow when David becomes the king of Israel this category the house of David conflicts with the idea of Israel it doesn't work you can't you can't have those two coterminous in a way so it falls away in the text it is not used again and it is only picked up in this text that you guys read which is first Kings 12 and when it appears here one thing to notice is that this text could be much it could be a much later text and it seems to have kind of components that are older but also components that are heavily edited and it's and it's hard to pick out where those are but the story of this text and we all read these four sections is that this is this very important key point where the author's they are trying to describe for us how it is that this United Monarchy divided what it was that broke these two areas irrevocably forever okay and this story comes out of that trying to really describe that for us and this is where when David loses control of Israel or his son loses control or his grandson loses control of Israel and it kind of he breaks apart from Israel suddenly the house of David appears again all right so it's completely gone up until this point and so we see and this is different language you'll note this kind of different later language here especially after coming from second Samuel 3 when all Israel saw that the King had not listened to them the people answered the king we have no portion and David no share and Jesse's sons to your tents Oh Israel now look to your own house Oh David so the Israelites return to their homes but Rehoboam continued to reign over the Israelites who lived in the towns of Judah remember that Rahab um is David's grandson the son of Solomon King Rehoboam sent a dirham who is in charge of the forced labor but all Israel pelted him to death with stones thereupon King Rehoboam hurriedly mounted his chariot and fled to Jerusalem thus Israel revolted against the house of David as is still the case then and forevermore when all Israel heard that Jeroboam had returned they sent messengers and summoned him to the Assembly and made him king over all Israel only the tribe of Judah remained loyal to the house of David on his return to Jerusalem Rehoboam mustered all the house of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin a hundred and eighty thousand pict warriors to fight against the house of Israel in order to restore the kingship to Rehoboam son of Saul Oh Solomon sorry ok you guys notice how different this is you see it so what's going on here tell me about the political entities in this text what do you notice how is this different what's new yeah yeah really interesting right the Benjamin Knights we're on they were Saul's tribe and suddenly they're on the side of Judah which is very interesting yeah yeah so something is already developed something has already been kind of set in this landscape where we now have this kind of this kingship did you have something in the back there okay yeah and you're actually touching on a big debate here Benjamin is kind of a sticky point because if you'll actually notice in the text even the text is conflict it conflicts it doesn't say a hundred percent that Benjamin sided with Judah because if you where are we if you read just one line above it only the tribe of Judah remained loyal to the house of David so it's interesting so so that you have one tribe Judah remains loyal to the house of David and then right after that somehow suddenly Benjamin is now there along side of Judah so the text it's not really sure how it wants to explain that to you and what's interesting is that in the the text prior in first Kings 11 there is this you know kind of Oracle that Solomon before he dies that he's gonna lose control over all of the tribes except for one and the Oracle tells him that you're gonna lose control of all ten tribes except you know of ten tribes and you're gonna keep one so you do the math that's not twelve tribes so so somehow Benjamin they're just they can't quite figure it out where they want Benjamin to go so that's very interesting mihaela did you have something just right yeah absolutely and this in some ways tells us something about the way that we think because when we think about these different categories or these you know if we think in terms of Judah and Israel we have somehow this very clean break in our mind right and if you see it on a map there's this like very beautiful break where everything above and the north is green and everything in the south is purple and there's this kind of clear dividing line between one and the other and this text shows us that it's more fluid than that there's something else going on and in fact Judah here might be something geographical it might not actually be at least in that line it might not be you know a tribe or however else you want to define it yeah was there I saw another hand around here yeah yeah it's a big number yeah it's a you know it depends on where you read so in Joshua for example there are these tribal lists and Joshua and they'll kind of pick apart the numbers and in other places they'll pick apart the numbers and they try to make Judah as big as everything else and Benjamin tends to kind of fluctuate so it depends on what the writers want but Judah is always big at least in the writings so yeah how is Israel defined here in the last text we didn't really know but we did have this connection with Benjamin and that's different from here but there's something if you just look at the writing carefully how is Israel described and this gives you a clue that this is a later text actually any ideas yeah what's what's your name yeah they and their this kind of they're in mass right it's like this kind of group this gigantic mass what's your name again Shelley okay yeah so they are there is this kind of massive clump of people and we can't quite pick them out except that we know that the text describes is a little bit like ten tribes when we see all Israel right this term all Israel that's a hint that you know we aren't it's not saying you know the elders of such-and-such the elders of Israel but when we hear all Israel that's a clue that somehow they're being categorized in a way that maybe a later reflection of defining them kind of against Judah or against whoever's riding from from Judah or editing at least from Judah so yeah last thing what is the house of David here Paris yeah so it's really much rap it's wrapped around Rahab ohm in particular somehow wrapped around Rahab on what's the relationship between going off of this what's the relationship between the house of David and Judah yeah joe yeah so do you guys all hear that the Judah remains loyal to the house of David but is not the house of David somehow there they're separate here okay so but what is interesting is that you can kind you can catch this glimpse so the house of David is being reincorporated into this story and the writers want to reincorporate it into the story because they know the house of David is somehow indigenous to this landscape it goes back it has these roots in David but they can't quite figure out how to define it so suddenly in this text you have you know rather than this language of collective governance in terms of people in terms of you know troops or however we want to characterize what that means suddenly we have Israel all Israel we have this kind of tribal categorization of 10 to 2 or 10 to 1 we have Judah thrown in the mix so Judah is something right but then and then we also have house of David but they can't they just quite can't they can't quite figure out you know how it all connects so you're seeing this intermediate stage you're watching this development take place right here in terms of how these polities mesh together what they are did you ever come in yeah and this goes back to what our friend said in the back which when we asked ourselves then when we're trying to compare these two texts second samuel 3 and this text and also when we compare it to other evidence that's outside the Bible even Bronze Age evidence from Syria that actually has this language house of we learned that the house of X right where X can be David or it becomes Omri later on because oh Murray founds Samaria as a capital even though he's a later king that X always connects to a founder of something and what that something is is still unclear so people want to say it's a tribal category that then kind of grows into some kind of monarchy but again when we use these words we don't really know how we would distinguish you know a tribal category from a monarchy so David this house of David he's the founder of something and most likely this is the founder of a kingdom but when we say Kingdom a kingdom can just as easily be decentralized as it can be centralized so it's not like you jump from tribe to some other centralized thing that's suddenly a kingdom so the kingdom can be decentralized it can be tiny or large we don't you know there's no kind of rule or pattern as to how big it has to be and so this is what is growing out of the landscape that we still don't we still don't really know what it is or how to define it but the important thing to recognize is that in the beginning it's not Judah per se it's something else it's something distinct and then Judah puts a claim on it right they want to draw it into their story into their history and then David becomes this kind of dynastic symbol from Judah and that's something that develops and we can understand due to more we can start to understand how politics work in ancient Israel when we can see that development we can start to seek more clearly how this all comes to be and a classic case then so when you by the time you hit the Psalms so Psalm 89 for example the Psalms are a collection they're very very different than the historical books and by historical books I mean you know Samuel and kings and the Psalms are this collection that while they draw in kind of older language older motifs they are now often dated much much later and they're very strongly too attached to Jerusalem and to the temple so it's a it's a completely different kind of texts and the goals are completely Judah height they come from the southern developed kingdom they come after the fall of the North so when we read the Psalms we can then we can somehow see this striking distinction between some of the older stories and then some of the theology in a sense that develops in these Psalms okay so we can see it right here and just just listen to the way that David is described in this text it's very different than what we just read then you spoke to your faithful ones in a vision and said I have conferred power upon a warrior I have exalted one chosen out of the people I have found David my servants anointed him with my sacred oil my hand shall be constantly with him and my arm shall strengthen him no enemy shall oppress him no vile man afflict him I will crush his adversaries before him I will strike down those who hate him my faithfulness and steadfast love shall be with him his horn shall be exalted through my name I will set his hand upon the sea his right hand upon the rivers he shall say to me you are my father my god the rock of my deliverance I will appoint him firstborn highest of the kings of the earth I will maintain my steadfast love for him always my covenant with him shall endure I will establish his line forever his throne as long as the heavens last if his sons forsake my teaching and do not live by my rules if they violate my laws and do not observe my commands like Solomon for example I will punish their transgression with the rod their iniquity with plagues but I will not take away my steadfast love from him I will not betray my faithfulness his line shall continue forever his throne as the son before me as the moon established forever an enduring witness in the sky it's pretty powerful stuff what do you notice from this what's different what's striking yeah yeah we've completely lost that original story where there was actually a question of who is going to rule that kind of gritty messy story in second Samuel and suddenly David is just he's elevated above everybody else absolutely what other how about particularly egde --that you notice yeah okay yeah okay so political strategy pushing a very particular ideology here yeah you can see that yeah and in some ways that what you're saying is you know in some ways the Psalms are much more personal and so when you read the Psalms you can get you can get a hint of real people behind the text you know and particularly is that they have beliefs that they have and in that way you might you might be hitting on something that really you know is a very specific idea from a particular person or a groups of people yeah oh yeah sorry about that mm-hmm yeah absolutely any other I mean the Covenant is a huge one right suddenly we have these kind of language that describes monarchy that describes covenant kind of strong language that we haven't seen before did you have something - absolutely so what what is this connection between how would you describe the connection between God and David here do you notice that you know the whole thing you spoke to your faithful ones and a vision and said this whole language is this is God in the first person here okay yeah Dylan oh the other one sorry yeah very very tight yeah okay yeah potentially the one thing is that the deuteronomistic history the definition of it is that it takes the language of Deuteronomy and extends through Kings but kind of stops there so it could be that someone is actually from that language then you know maybe pulling it in yeah yeah that's a nice that's a nice idea anything else if you notice David is is almost divine here and in fact you could argue that he is seen as divine here I will set his hand upon the sea his right hand upon the rivers this is actually like Ugaritic language right and the BAL cycle aaron yeah so you've got this kind of he's somehow controlling the natural elements in a way his throne as the son before me as the moon established forever and enduring witness in the sky that's really powerful beautiful striking language about what David is and this kind of line between him as someone who is human versus someone who is divine here that we see for those of you who there are people here who in mark Smith's class right who's in mark Smith's class you are yeah you guys heard his thing yet he talks about the president and how the president now mirrors kingship so when we choose a president before we for those of us who believe in the presidency and government you choose a president and you think that this person is going to be like a god right they are incapable of error and then the first time that they show that they're human everyone is they're just destroyed they're completely upset and in some ways it goes back to this monarchy right this is this idea of someone who is anointed almost by God right I have found David my servant anointed him with my sacred oil so some of the stuff that we have even in this country you know you can find these ties back to this ancient world but what's what's really important and you'll notice by these pictures that I chose is that this is the ideology or the theology that has endured through the through Jewish and Christian traditions today and this is what we really see in what we really pull out of the biblical text and what's really important to people today so this is this mosaic that comes from the dura europas synagogue which is in syria it's dates back to the 3rd century CE II and this is a really it's really important fine because this synagogue was destroyed but the way that it was destroyed was it was kind of covered over in a way that everything was preserved completely inside of it so it has these beautiful mosaics that we have rediscovered and this one in particular has Samuel anointing David so you can see just by the mosaics that people choose how important this idea is and kind of persists today and then the second one which is hilarious this is the Statue of David that's in the basilica of santa maria maggiore which is the biggest basilica in rome and you see david now he's like this roman god right this is how he's been created with the golden curls in the crown on his head and you know so so these are the ideas that persist and what we lose and what we forget about our is the background the roots that we really can find if we look for them in the biblical text so just to connect this to what we've done in the past and you'll notice you guys seen my the nice clean line I told you green on the top and purple on the bottom right the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom very clean geographical align so to connect it back to the divided monarchy and the what professor Fleming said in the lecture last week was that the Bible that we have it really comes from Judah it's really a Judah creation and what happens is the North Falls the Northern Kingdom Falls Way before Judah it falls in 722 BCE whereas Judah Falls in 586 to Babylon and so something happens and we have these older traditions from Israel that come that with a lot of the people we're not sure exactly how this happens but many of the people the Exile from the north actually come down to the south and so their stories and their traditions these old traditions and stories they end up coming down to Judah and when Judah has these traditions in these stories you at this point Judah is attached to David right David and Solomon attached to that line has this idea of coming from this dynasty of Judah and yet David is attached to Israel just in the text that we read he is attached to being king of Israel and so Judah in a sense needs to show that they also are attached to Israel that they claim that inheritance in order to claim the inheritance of David in a sense and so they filter and they reimagine and they reconfigure these people and the traditions and the stories from the north and so that's why in a lot of places in the Bible you'll see you know distinction between something like judges which is all focused on Israel on tribal categories on small local populations and that is clearly coming from something older from Israel and yet you'll see you know chapter if there's a chapter tacked on in the front of judges that suddenly talks about Judah and it's a way of Judah kind of putting their own claim on these texts and the same thing happens with the David story and the same thing happens with the early monarchy is that they take stories rooted in Israel and they put their claim on that text and it's not that their claim is any less than because at that point there's nothing strongly there's no strong Judah in a sense and geographically everything takes place right around here so it's not like David is any left king of Judah than he is of Israel but the problem is is that Judah actually hasn't completely developed yet does that make sense so that's what's happening and that's something to keep in mind as you continue with this class and as you continue to read the texts that's pretty much it for the day

Channel: New York University

Views: 37,425

Rating: 4.4490356 out of 5

Keywords: Daniel Fleming, Ancient Israel, New York University, NYU, Open Ed, Open Education, House of David, Bible

Id: DjmY8kGTXbE

Length: 60min 53sec (3653 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 01 2012