I broke this off from a discussion in the Ancient vendettas thread, the relevant parts of which I’ve quoted here for context. I’ve also added bold headings for the topics I’ve addressed, assuming that not every reader will be interested in every topic.
Biblical Claims of Authorship from a Linguistic Perspective:
Offspring in its broadest sense is not a bad translation. In Hebrew, there are a lot of prefixes and suffixes involved in indicating relationships, so to see the full usage of the word you’ve got to look beyond the singular in isolation.
Some examples of the broader usage:
In 2 Chronicles 22:9, Ahaziah is referred to as ben-yəhōwōšāp̄āṭ (בן-יהושפט), but Jehoshaphat was his grandfather. In Genesis 31:55, Laban’s grandchildren are referred to as bānāw (בניו). The term ben-ᵓāḏām (בן-אדם), which appears in Ezekiel 2:1, is quite common. Sometimes it’s translated as “son of man”, but it literally means “descendent of Adam”. It’s just a flowery way to say “man”. The term bənę lęwî (בני לוי) in Nehemiah 12:23 means “descendants of Levi”. In Joel 4:6, bənę yəhūḏāh (בני יהודה) refers to the “descendants of Judah. These previous two examples can be repeated for all the twelve tribes, because they were patrilineages. All of which are collectively referred to as the bənę yiśrāᵓęl (בני ישראל) because they were conceived of as the patrilineal descendants of Jacob (see Exodus 1).
The cognate of the word is used the same in other Semitic languages. For example, Muhammed was of the Banū Hāshim (descendants of Hashim). The main reason why using bęn (בן) so broadly in ancient Israel/Judah didn’t matter is because the nuclear family didn’t matter. They didn’t even have a word for it. The smallest family unit was the bęṯ-ᵓaḇ, which can be imperfectly translated as “house of the father”. The problem with this is that it doesn’t necessarily mean house literally, and ᵓaḇ is just as broad (and in the same way) as bęn. In the context of the bęṯ-ᵓaḇ, ᵓaḇ means the oldest living male of the patrilineage. So ᵓaḇ can refer to any male progenitor, the founder of a lineage, a father, a grandfather, etc. Abraham (אברהם) was considered to be the father of “the children of Israel” though Isaac, and the Arabs through Ishmael (although Arab used to have a somewhat different meaning than today). Like so many of the legendary figures, his name ᵓaḇrāhām, meaning exalted ᵓaḇ, reflects his role in the story.
Returning to Ecclesiastes/Qōheleṯ… If the first line was in the original text, then I believe it was as I originally assumed, that the author was claiming (and may have actually believed) that Qōheleṯ (whether or not he was himself the author or the source) was a patrilineal descendent of David. This was a common claim for Jews to make in the Hellenistic period, which is ultimately unverifiable either way. It is also possible, that this line was added after the fact, in which case it may indeed have been someone attributing the text to Solomon. If so, the person who added the line may have himself believed it, though it is not possible that it is historically accurate.
Song of Songs, which some call Song of Solomon, may begin with a similar attribution added after the fact. In Hebrew: šîr ha-šîrîm ᵓăšer li-šlōmōh. The trouble is that this is a title that can be translated any of three ways:
- Song of Songs by Solomon
- Song of Songs for Solomon
- Song of Songs about Solomon
Only the first of the three, if it was the intended meaning, is an attribution to Solomon, but this interpretation is the source of the tradition that it was written by Solomon. However, I have gone over the text carefully and I am certain that it is from the Achaemenid period. I’m also certain that those who suggest that it dates to the Hellenistic period are wrong, but in any case, there is no plausible historical argument for it having been written by Solomon. Also, while it references Solomon, I don’t think it is about Solomon. The references seem to be similes, so I think the title was added later in the text’s development regardless of the intended meaning.
As an aside, there are some abstract usages of bęn (בן). For example, bin ha-kōwṯ (בן הכות) in Deuteronomy 25:2, that is literally “son of the beating” which means someone who deserves to be beaten. These types of usages come from the fact that the word is derived from the verb stem b-n-h which means “to create”. In other words, he brought that beating on himself.
Allegations against the Omride Dynasty:
A relevant point about Athaliah repeated from the previous section:
The Book of Kings is the most useful biblical text for historians of pre-exilic Israel and Judah, because its basic outline consistently matches extrabiblical sources and archaeology. The texts itself mentions its sources, which include the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Israel and the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Judah. These two sources were apparently chronicles of the reigns of the kings of the two dynasties. There is not really any doubt that they are the reason that the basic outline is historical. This outline was embellished and expanded using other sources with the details of the stories being modified and/or filtered to fit the ideology of its late redactor(s). The perspective of the late redactors was monolatrous and/or monotheistic and Judahite. Its main concern was in explaining the theological reasons for why this history unfolded the way it did.
Its unlikely that religion in Israel was any more idolatrous than what was common in contemporary Judah. The Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians 721 BCE, whereas the Kingdom of Judah survived a massive Assyrian onslaught under Sennacherib in 701 BCE during the reign of Hezekiah. Because Hezekiah was seen as a religious reformer, idolatry was retrospectively interpreted as the reason Israel was destroyed whereas Judah was spared, and anything that fit this narrative was emphasized. For example, Hezekiah seems to have centralized worship of Yahweh in Jerusalem, but his reputation as a reformer was somewhat exaggerated. Some reforms that probably first took place during the reign of Josiah were likewise attributed to Hezekiah. These weren’t necessarily fabrications, but rather may have been interpolations based on the notion that Josiah was following in the footsteps of Hezekiah. In other words, I think the narrative may have largely expanded via suggestion bias. I say this because sometimes this happens even with narratives devised by modern secular historians (see for example, the Sea Peoples)
In contrast to the Book of Kings, anything in the Book of Chronicles can pretty much be disregarded as a historical source regarding the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, because it was written in the late Persian or early Hellenistic period, and appears to completely rely on earlier biblical books as its sources, which it embellishes and reinterprets.
Pre-Monarchic Israel & the Reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon:
In the broader sense regarding the thread title, there is now general agreement that the biblical texts contain authentic historical memories dating back to the Iron I (c. 1225–1000 BCE) and one from the Late Bronze Age (the fact that Hazor was the leading city of a powerful local coalition), but anything earlier than that is a matter of dispute. In any case, earlier memories if authentic only very vaguely reflect the historical realities known to us from extra-biblical sources. Those historical memories of the Iron I are primarily contained within the Book of Judges, which is a collection of folk stories interpreted through a later theological lens.
The reigns of David and Solomon were probably limited to the Judean Highlands. If something like the United Monarchy existed, it was probably more of a patronage network than a kingdom. David was known as a conqueror and Solomon as a great building. On a very local scale, there is archaeological evidence in support of these notions. I've discussed this in depth here, but for an updated summary, the following recycled from a relatively recent post in Ethos, Mores et Monastica should suffice:
Historians, and biblical scholars generally doubt that David and Solomon ruled over a great monotheistic “United Monarchy” that included the territories of both Israel and Judah. The main reasons for this is that most of the monumental architecture traditionally believed to have been built under the reign of Solomon dates to the reigns of Omri and Ahab, archaeological estimates of the population of the Judean and Samarian Highlands during the period David and Solomon would have reigned are quite low, extra-biblical primary sources refer to Judah as the “House of David” whereas Israel is referred to as the “House of Omri”, while the Bible itself retains ample evidence that early Judah was polytheistic.
Determining exactly what portion of, and what details from, the early monarchic stories constitute historical memory isn’t an easy task. Obviously, a lot of anachronistic embellishments went into them when they were written down centuries later, but a couple points to consider:
- Israel as a tribal affiliation predated the Kingdom of Israel, the earliest extrabiblical corroboration of this being the Merneptah Stele c. 1208 BCE.
- Based on the fact that the Kingdom of Edom is essentially invisible to archaeology outside of their industrial scale copper mining, Erez Ben-Yosef makes the reasonable point that if a united monarchy based largely on patronage networks existed for a couple generations, it might likewise be invisible to archaeology.
- Ben-Yosef also notes that the survey methodology used to estimate the population can’t really account for tent-dwelling pastoral semi-nomads.
- The biblical text relevant to this period certainly contains authentic historical memories. For example, Shoshenq I’s campaign in the Levant c. 925 BCE.
- During the Eleventh Century, a cluster of settlements developed on the Benjamin Plateau. These include Mizpah, which was Saul’s capital according to the biblical text.
- Based on archaeological evidence, by the late-Eleventh/early-Tenth Century BCE, Jerusalem appears to have become the capital of a small kingdom, which included the Benjamin Plateau to the north. This is contemporaneous to David's reign according to the biblical text.
- Subsequently, a series of building projects were carried out in the settlements on the Benjamin Plateau, which appear to represent Jerusalem’s efforts to solidify their hegemony there. This is roughly contemporaneous with Solomon’s reign according to the biblical text.
The last three points match the rough outline of the biblical text, only on a smaller scale. For these reasons, archaeologists working on this period in Israel find it completely reasonable to accept that Solomon built a temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem, regardless of whether or not the northern Israelite kingdom had ever been ruled from there.
Judahite Monolatry or Monotheism:
Exclusive veneration of Yahweh developed in Judah. Yahweh was the national god of Israel according to extra-biblical sources. Yəhōšafat (Jehoshapat in English) the king of Judah c. 870–848 BCE had a Yahwistic name. ᵓĂḥazyāh (Ahaziah in English) the king of Israel c. 853–852 BCE likewise had a Yahwistic name. Therefore, I don’t see any reason to accept any hypothesis which proposes that the two kingdoms initially had different national gods.
This may be true, and it’s widely accepted, but these types of hypotheses that biblical scholars come up with are tenuous.
The view that true monotheism developed during the Exilic period is based on the fact that most of the explicitly monotheistic statements can be found in the writings of the hypothesized Deutero-Isaiah, that is Isaiah 40–55 written from the perspective of a Judahite in exile in Babylon after Jerusalem had been destroyed.
The argument that Josiah’s reforms represented monolatry rather than monotheism is based on the assumption that “the Book of the Law” found in the temple (2 Kings 22:8) was Deuteronomy, which includes “You shall have no other gods before me” (Deuteronomy 5:7). But what 2 Kings 22:8 actually says was found was “the Torah scroll”. Incidentally, what Deuteronomy 5:7 literally says is “You will have no other gods on (or over) my face”. What it actually means though, is “over me”. That is no god is greater than Yahweh. If this line really reflects Josiah’s reform, then what was the problem with Asherah? Something isn’t consistent in the hypothesis.
Then there is 2 Kings 19:19: “Now, Yahweh our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, Yahweh, are God.” This is attributed to Hezekiah, Josiah’s great grandfather, but sits in a passage that most biblical scholars seem to argue was written during the reign of Manasseh, Josiah’s grandfather, or is at least pre-Exilic. Oh, except for this line, which they argue was added during the Exilic period, based on the fact that it’s clearly monotheistic. Okay, maybe, but you can see how that’s circular reasoning.