The United Monarchy of Israel – 1

The first Kingdom was the moment of Israel’s glory on the international scene—a moment to be remembered and recalled for millennia. What led to the creation of the Israelite monarchy? In the words of William E. Evans, “The impetus … [was] the Philistine threat.”  As most historians recognize, this is certainly part of the truth. However, external pressure came not only from the Philistines: An Ammonite threat also played a role in bringing an end to the loose tribal confederacy—if indeed that is what it was—by which Israel had been led and protected. Moreover, internal (social, economic and demographic) pressures must be taken into account.  Charismatic tribal leaders who arose as needed were no longer enough to lead the emerging nation. The United Kingdom of Israel lasted for about a century (c. 1030–931 BCE). Three strong personalities occupied the throne: Saul, David and Solomon. Then the United Kingdom split in two, with Israel in the north and Judah in the south.

Under Saul, the Israelite monarchy controlled a small, petty territory. Under David and then Solomon, Israel was transformed into a larger, unified kingdom with vassal states subject to it. As the monarchy assumed an international role, other powers in the ancient Near East, mainly Phoenicia and Egypt, were required to give due regard to Israel.

The historian of this period is fortunate: The biblical record is copious because this period was later conceived of as a kind of golden age. The Bible probably devotes more space to this century than to any other in ancient Israel’s history. Accounts of this period appear in both of the Bible’s parallel histories—1 Samuel 8 to 1 Kings 11 and 1 Chronicles 3 to 2 Chronicles 9.

The principal difficulty in reconstructing the history of the period, however, is that we are dependent almost exclusively on the Bible. The assurance that comes from a variety of sources is missing here, and the biblical account is often tendentious and includes traditions that are not completely reliable as history. It also tends to idealize this period. As underlined by J. Maxwell Miller: “The important question is not whether we should use the Hebrew Bible in our attempts to understand the origin and early history of Israel, but how we should use it. In my opinion, it should be approached critically, examined with the careful attention to its internal typology and stratigraphy that archaeologists give to their data, and then used very cautiously, alongside other kinds of evidence.”

To understand this period of Israel’s history, we must therefore consider questions of literary criticism, as well as differences in the various traditions preserved in the Bible. Finally, we must consider the light archaeology sheds (or fails to shed) on the monarchy—not an easy task, as exemplified by the contemporary controversy over the archaeology of the tenth century BCE  Two divergent views of this century have recently emerged, one known as the maximalist viewpoint, the other as the minimalist. The former group contends that the biblical account of the United Monarchy has a historical core, while the latter tends to deny that the biblical traditions of this period have any basis whatsoever in history.  The ensuing debates remind us that the results of literary criticism and the interpretation of archaeological discoveries are seldom clear-cut. One must therefore be very careful to distinguish what the biblical record says from the historical interpretation of it based on archaeology. Each reign presents different aspects of the problem.