To: "'peter_kirk AT sil.org'" <peter_kirk AT sil.org>, Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: SV: Book of Kings and history
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2000 15:49:47 +0100
Peter Kirk writes:
> I wonder if you could explain what you mean by this phrase? For I find
> one of the major difficulties I have with views such as yours and
> Prof. Lemche's is that of explaining how the books of Kings come to
> include a significant amount of data which is confirmed in various
> quite different sources, mainly Assyrian and Babylonian.
[Thomas L. Thompson] I had written:
> But II Kings here is drawing on a literary trope, and must be so
> understood, before we can talk about its historical uses.
>
Here I am paraphrasing a rather complex argument that I have
developed in my Early History of 1992, p. 334-365 and especially in my
contribution to the essays collected by L. Grabbe (The Exile in History and
Tradition, sheffield 1998--sorry I don't have the page numbers here).
As for your other question about what you speak of as 'confirmed'
parts of Kings, I am somewhat puzzled. What do you think my views are?
Obviously the past was not a tabula rasa for our authors and obviously they
used sources. I have always maintained that: and quite vigorously.