Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear Ian,

You write:

>I don't see that Kings is presented as historical. The writers consistently
>use religious phraseology, someone did what was right in the eyes of the
>Lord, while someone else didn't. Something happened because someone had
>sinned against the Lord. Someone did not obey the Lord and transgressed his
>covenant... God talks to Hezekiah through the mouth of Isaiah. The kings who
>do what God wants are painted as good, the others painted as bad.

I do not see that these facts are determinative in the issue as to whether
Kings is presented as historical. I may have missed the all of the
discussion's definition of "historical." Peter used the word to mean that
something actually happened. You used it to refer to a writer's deliberate
intent to function as a historian in the modern sense of the word,
compiling accurate records about the past.

You are right that the material in Kings is given by somebody from a
religious perspective and thus is religious literature. But the author may
have had every intent of recording what actually happened, and also of
compiling it in an accurate way.

The author lived in a theocracy and may have been a prophet himself. After
all, these books are sometimes called the "Former Prophets." He may have
correctly evaluated the people about whom he wrote, since he lived in a
theocracy where God was actively involved. It seems question begging to
dismiss the historicity of the literature because it was written from a
religious perspective. The heart of the issue is whether these written
records of divine involvement in a nation's history are factually true.

                                Yours,
                                Harold