I have done a little personal genealogical research, and found that my own family’s oral traditions were riddled with errors (missing by centuries the date of first immigration), misunderstandings (our “Dutch” ancestor was in fact “Deutsch” - German), and wrong names beginning just three generations back. I also noticed that the temptation to embellish and extrapolate is strong in family storytellers.
Perhaps this has colored my perceptions of oral family histories. 
The fertile imaginations of misogynistic Bronze Age sheep herders, you mean?
The story about beibg enslaved and then esecaping from Egypt (events which never occurred to the Isralites in reality) are probably based on garbled and reimagined iterations of the Hyksos expulsion.
The histories are literary constructions which incoporate some fragments of oral tribal tradition, but they created to provide a heroic national origins story. They are literary fabrications, not written oral histories.
The kings list given in the Bible is most likely more-or-less accurate. They can even be dated with more or less accuracy (dates in BC):
United Monarchy of Israel
Saul 1047 - 1007
Ish-bosheth 1007 - 1009
David 1010 - 970
Solomon 971 - 931
Rehoboam 922 BC - 915
Kings of Judah
Abijah 914 - 910
Asa 910 - 873
Jehoshaphat 873 - 848
Jehoram 848 - 840
Ahaziah 841
Athaliah 842 - 836/835
J(eh)oash 835 - 796
Amaziah 797/796 - 768/767
Uzziah/Azariah 768/767 - 740/739
Jotham 740/39 - 736/735
Ahaz 732/731 - 716/715
Hezekiah 715 - 686
Manasseh 687/686 - 643/642
Amon 643/642 - 641/640
Josiah 641 - 609
Jehoahaz 609
Jehoiakim 608 - 597
Jeconiah/Jehoiachin 598/597
Zedekiah 597 - 586
Northern Kingdom of Israel
Jeroboam I 931 to 910
Nadab 910 - 909
Baasha 909 - 886
Elah 886 BC - 885
Zimri 885
Tibri 885 - 880
Omri 880 - 874
Ahab 874 - 853
Ahaziah 853 - 852
Joram/Jehoram 852 - 841
Jehu 841 - 814
Jehoahaz 814 - 798
Joash/Jehoash 798 - 782
Jeroboam II 782 - 753
Zechariah 753 - 752
Shallum 752
Menahem 752 - 742
Pekahiah 742 - 740
Pekah 740/739 - 732/731
Hoshea 732 - 723
King Saul also has a tentative genealogy, which could come from some remnant data at the time. As king, it seems plausible that such data would have been researched and stored.
Aphiah -> Bechorath -> Zeror -> Abiel -> Kish -> Saul
But when it comes to Abraham, Moses, Aaron, Jacob, Esau, etc. it’s fairly likely that what is being discussed is tribes and ideas rather than individuals. Esau’s nickname “Edom” means “red” and the Edomites were a people who lived in Petra, a region of red stone. The Levites are presumed to be the descendants of Levi, a clan of highly religious people who become the priest class. More likely the word “Levi” meant “priest” and the tribe of Levites was a fiction that retconned the etymology of the word.
It’s possible that there was some great leader known as Abraham who either moved the tribe from the region of Babylon, or that he was the tribe leader who established them in the region of Southern Canaan. It’s possible that Moses was a great leader who lived somewhere near Egypt or the Egyptian territory of Southwest Canaan, and who led his tribe in some mighty battles or some such.
Essentially, anything previous to Saul is almost certainly myth, legend, or fiction. There may be some granules of truth, but it’s impossible to know which bits that is.
Skald: Please see post #31
Diogenes: Please focus on the genealogies
Please don’t junior mod.
You’re right. :o Sorry. :smack:
I basically agree with you, but I disagree with a nuance. Oral tradition is not concerned with being right or wrong per se [since it is assumed to be correct], and it has two mechanisms for correcting itself: individuals who know the facts and conformity to the broader traditions of the group (the so-called “Law of Self-Correction”). The latter is a powerful force.
The other issue is that the Biblical genealogies are not pure oral tradition: they are a literary tradition built upon oral tradition, and we cannot be certain that multiple authentic systems were not combined to create the text we have. (Well, Biblical scholars might know, but I don’t.)
Those early kings (Saul, David, Solomon) are all legendary. We have no firm historical or archaeological confirmation that they existed at all, much less that their dates are accurate.
Yes, obviously the further back one goes the more likely that the data will be wrong. Still, there’s no particular reason to think that they couldn’t have kept record all of the way back to Saul. The lifespans and periods of reign are plausible.
If the the early kings did exist, it’s possible that there were some forgettable kings who were forgotten. But, the more monarchs that you insert, the further back the reign of Saul and the others becomes. That starts pushing things into the 1100s or even 1200s. It seems to me to be more likely that if Saul existed and unified the Israelites to establish a single kingdom, then the longer a period of time that they were organized, the greater the odds that someone would have noticed the Israelites or that they would have left behind some evidence of their existence. Since neither of those is true, the latest possible date for Saul seems more likely. So if we assume that early kings did exist, we are perhaps best to assume that there was no unlisted kings.
(All of which isn’t to imply that a “kingdom” necessarily means that the people are settled and living in stable towns and villages. Their “kingdom” could mean little more than that some various nomadic tribes took orders from one other nomadic tribe.)
I suspect that multiple mythic systems were combined, often linked by bits of part-genuine, part-mythic geneology to the various tribes that combined to make up the Hebrew “nation”.
Archaeology keeps pushing the date of the purely mythic back. It is well known from contemporary sources referenced in the archaeological record that the Omrid kings, for example, were actual historic rulers; there was never any reference to any Davidic kings, other than the OT.
This changed in the 1990s with the discovery of the so-called Tel Dan Stele:
It’s the first discovery of any reference to a “House of David” (a Davidic line of kings) outside of the OT. It is still not a contemporary reference to an actual King David, but it is an indication that, a century or so after his supposed death, enemy tribes were still referencing him; it makes it that much more likely that a real “King David” existed and had a certain prestige.
In short, fifteen years ago the weight of evidence indicated that there was no such person as a historical David; it now appears more likely than previously that there was a historic king named David, and that he was a prestigeous ruler (though of course whether he resembled in any way the David of the OT is still purely conjecture).
Compare this account with the king lists for Judah and Israel above:
Now, it could be that “David” is a purely mythic ancestor, like Greek rulers claiming descent from Hercules. However, it should be pointed out that before this stele, there was no mention whatsoever known of any “David” in the acrchaeological record.
I’m not supposed to say but… it was me. Please don’t tell anyone.
The Tel Dan Stele has a disputed interpretation. The letters in question are BYTDWD for which the proposed interprtation is Beth David (“House of David”), but the fact that the letters are written as a single word instead of two is more indicative of place names in Hebrew and would not be expected to indicate a monarchic dynasty.
“Beth” means “house,” but in compound words is a very common prefix for place names, usually because they’re rooted in references to temples which existed at given locations (Beth-El: "Temple [house] of God; "Beth-Anu [Bethany]: "Temple of Anu; Beth-Lehem “House of Bread” [or possible “Temple of Lahamu”] and so forth.
BYTDWD could indicate a dynastic “House of David,” but it could also be a town.
I’m not saying David was necessarily mythical. Even Finkelstein and Silberman think he was probably a real guy, just that he was a minor, local chieftain rather than the grand king of the Bible, but the Tel-Dan Stele doesn’t quite prove it, and my larger point was that any genealogies purporting to go back to David would be spurious since any historical record at all of that figure are virtually non-existent.
The phrase is variously interpreted but the majority, scholarly view appears to be that the phrase indeed means “house of David” as in ‘dynasty of davidic kings’.
Assuming for the purposes of argument that the majority view is correct, it is no longer the case that there is no corroberating evidence that there existed a historic David: there is still, of course, not much, but considerably more then there was before the stele was discovered. Before that there was none, aside from the OT itself. The scholarly landscape has changed, and recently.
The importance of the reference on the stele (again, assuming it refers to a line of Davidic kings and not to a place-name) is two-fold:
It is at least some proof that David existed as an actual ancestor; and
It is at least some proof that, even more than a hundred years after his death, ancestry from “David” carried prestige.
The latter point is made by the inclusion of the description “of the house of David” in the stele, given that the point of the stele was to celebrate the creator’s victory over these kings. Naturally, the more prestigeous the kings, the greater the victory. Pointing out that Ahaziahu was a descendant of the house of David not only identified him, but also puffed his legitimacy and power. A defeat of such a king, the implication would be, is a defeat really worth celebrating.
To date, actual corroborated historiography goes back, I believe, to king Omri; there are two artifacts, both Assyrian, that independantly reference his immediate descendants:
Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III - Wikipedia
The Black Obelisk (I saw it it the British Museum!) shows “Jehu, son of Omri” kissing the feet of the Assyrian King Shalmaneser III, and offering tribute. In the Obelisk, Jehu’s name appears as mIa-ú-a mar mHu-um-ri-i or “Jehu son of Omri (Bit-Khumri”). The “House of Omri” was an Assyrian name for the Kingdom of Israel; analogous to the “House of David”.
And the Kurkh Monument:
Which names king Ahab.
Omri lived about a century after the purported King David. So while there is as of yet no archaeological reference to a “David” directly, we can get pretty close; the Tel Dan Stele brings us that much closer.
To my mind, I do not dismiss the geneological lists of Israelite kings as “spurious”. At some point, the historical accounts found in the Bible shade over into pure mythology, it is true - same is true for every ME culture. Where the line is drawn between “fact” and “myth” depends, as always, on a close analysis of all the available evidence. In the case of Biblical kings, the field is complicated by the fact that so many modern folks have so much invested in proving or disproving the “literal truth” of the OT; it is more productive to look at the OT purely in context as if it were any other set of mixed ME history and tribal mythology.
Not true. The majority opinion is only that it could be, not that it is definitively so.
That is not the majority view,
It is far from definitive that the stele refers to a dynastic House of David, so it can’t be called corroboration. It is arguably so, but not definitively so.
None of this matters unless “House of David” is the correct interpretation, and to make that interpretation conclusive, it would have to be explained why it was anamolously spelled as a one-word place name rather than as the two words would would be more normal. The plain reading is a place name.
Correct.
Not until someone can prove the stele actually refers to a dynsatic House of David.
Omri might have been a template for the Solomon legend, by the way. Finkelstein and Silberman think so.
Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. There’s no good schlarly reason to preseume their accuracy.
There really aren’t any archaeologists trying to disprove the Bible. Quite a few get sponsored by religious groups to try to prove it, but it isn’t true that there’s any cabal of atheist scientists trying to debunk it, any more than archaeologists in Greece are trying to debunk Homer. They don’t think that way. It’s the evidence itself that keeps proving the Bible to be largely ahistorical, but it’s true that it begins to become more historically accurate after the Omride dynasty (which is also around the time when the mythic histories began to be invented).
Perhaps an interesting analogy would be to ask what we know of other historical characters; the most common examples being King Arthur (Help, help! I’m being repressed!) and Robin Hood.
Again, Arthur is likely some chief or general of early Britain allegedly during the fight against the anglo-saxon invasion from what I’ve read; we know almost nothing about him (make that “nothing” - even to whether there was 0, 1 or many Arthurs), and much of the back story is fun stories of exploits of old written 500 years after his alleged exploits; people found it more interesting to say “King Arthur did this…” than to tell a story about some random fictitious knight “once upon a time there was a knight who…” .
OTOH, Robin of Locksley, if that is him, existed in a time of fairly common written records; yet we still know very little about him.
Most of their publicity came from stories written down or made up at a time when their exploits were already counted as historical fiction, sort of like Don Quixote without the comedy.
However - I think we give very little credit where due to oral traditions in a pre-literate/illiterate society. People who intensely watch their favourite movie several times can recite the dialog verbatim, including the nuances. Before mass media and written stories, sitting around the campfire or hearth listening to the limited number of same stories* over and over again would be standard entertainment. The better story tellers - the ones thus chosen to repeat the stories daily - would know them by heart. And as others pointed out - who you are, where you came from, and your connection to the rest of your people is very very important in a less safe world where your relatives are all you have to rely on; so geneologies are no dry lists of names, they are the essence of your identity.
So the genealogies like many other oral traditions are either:
(a) made up on the spot frequently
(b) accurate as far as the original source, possibly fictional before that source
© embellished from time to time in an approved manner.
My guess is that (a) and (b) are the result a traumatic event - a tribe that is virtually wiped out or a cast-out person who has to start their own community almost from scratch. I suspect the social pressure to conform to tradition rules out © except when it’s a really good story; like filling in from the original leader back to Hercules /Adam / Jupiter.
That isn’t my understanding. Perhaps you could educate me as to your sources for the majority view? I get my impression from Professor Dever’s account - he’s certainly not a Biblical literalist in any shape or form. He describes himself as a Biblical “minimalist”, and yet he’s of the opinion it refers to a dynasty.
“Arguably so” is a long way from ‘nothing’, which is what existed before the discovery of this stele.
Again, the authorites I have read disagree. I myself do not read ancient Aramaic. However, in context, and considering that terms such as “house of Omri” are common in such inscriptions, the name of a dynastry makes considerably more sense than a place-name.
Again, that is a natural result of the great prestige associated with the name of Omri - as in the use, in the Black Stele, of “house of Omri” as an Assyrian descriptor.
The use of the “house of David” similarly indicates prestige (assuming for the sake of argument it is not a place-name).
So far the king’s list up to Omri is probably reasonably accurate. As for “David”, there is now more reason than there used to be to believe he’s a historical figure.
That isn’t how scholarly controversies work. We agree there are groups of scholars who are deeply invested in “proving” the literal truth of the Bible; this creates, naturally enough, a counter-reaction. I’m not saying that there is a cabal of atheists who set out to “debunk” the Bible, but rather that any scholar, under these cirumstances, who gets deeply invested in Biblical ‘minimalism’, is going to pursue the evidence for the actual, literal existance of biblical personages with less objectivity than they would (say) the existence of proto-historical Thai monarchs, about whom there is less controversy.
Way I look at it is this: the Bible contains historical information but it was not written, or redacted, by people with any knowledge of, or interest in, historical accuracy. The historical information it contains is mixed with mythology, legend and propaganda. The further back one goes in time from the time of redaction, the less of history there is and the more of mythology. The issue is where on that scale to locate King David - mythic figure, or real king? Prior to the discovery of the Tel Dan Stele some fifteen years ago, the weight of evidence was that David was wholly mythical. That weight has shifted, and now I would say the better view is that, on a balance of probabilities, a real “David” probably existed, and was probably a prestigeous King (so as to have a dynasty associated with him). That does not of course mean that the stories about him in the OT are literally true.
This stopped me cold.
In other recent threads I’ve been examining what constitutes historical evidence and how much weight should be paid to ambiguous statements. (I’m doing much primary research in real life so this preys on my mind.)
The Bible is notorious for special pleading and circular reasoning in order to prove its accuracy. Whether you meant it as such, your statement is a prime example.
There is a King David and his lineage in the Bible. We have found a reference that contains several letters in common with David. Everything beyond that is speculation.
It may or may not be true that the letters refer to the personal name David. (They may be a place name or even the Hebrew word beloved.) It may or may not be true to that the letters correspond to a phrase meaning a dynasty. It may or may not be true that the personal name corresponds to the same dynasty as the Biblical David. (They may be a reference to a much older dynasty or as a generic reference.) It may or may not be true that the fragments have even been restored in the proper order.
I am not remotely qualified to comment on these. I’m just a low-level autodidact historian with my own problems.
Perhaps it’s because I’m an outsider that I can see what a huge leap your statement makes. That’s not saying that you’re wrong. It’s certainly a major find. It’s the right place and the right time period. Historic evidence is often as scanty and yet is used because it’s all we have.
The stele is not “some proof.” It’s at best an important piece of evidence that means nothing by itself and can only take on meaning by placing it in context and using it as one of a series of steps toward a conclusion. When the Bible is involved, people have a proven historic tendency to skip those steps. That’s not history; that’s faith.
Woah, it is you who are making the leap. Please read my statement more carefully.
I premised it with the following:
“again, assuming it refers to a line of Davidic kings and not to a place-name”
In short, I am making an asumption for the sake of argument and then looking at what conclusions, based on that assumption, we can draw.
You are (I assume inadvertantly) supplying proof for my thesis: