1. In my reading today of The Surprising Election and Confirmation of King David, Randall Short discusses the murder of Abner in II Samuel. Randall acknowledges that the narrative—”in the reported speech of David and in the words of the narrator” (125)—transparently seeks to defend David from the charge that he murdered Abner. So has Randall’s thesis—that the History of David’s Rise is not a court apology for King David—been overthrown? Not so fast, Randall responds.
First of all, Randall asks, if the History of David’s Rise in I Samuel 16-II Samuel 5 was an apology defending David from numerous accusations of murder, then why do we only see an explicit defense in the narrative when it comes to the death of Abner? Why don’t we see this transparent sort of apology with regard to other alleged accusations, which (according to Randall) certain scholars are reading into the text?
Second, Randall asks, if the story about the death of Abner only makes sense as an apology for King David, then why was “it transmitted from generation to generation, when the issues of the historical David’s life were no longer ‘lively’” (126)? Obviously, the story can speak to people as something other than a court apology for King David. Randall states that “the accounts of the deaths of Abner and Ishbaal dramatically demonstrate the ongoing threat against God’s elect from the treachery and lies of enemies, whether from within or without” (126).
I wonder what Randall has in mind here. Joab was a zealous official in David’s army who killed David’s enemies, such as Abner (who technically wasn’t David’s enemy when he was killed). What sort of historical situation could such a story have been addressing? I suppose that there were numerous hotheads in the camp of Israel in Israel’s history. I think of the murder of Gedaliah by Judahites intent on re-establishing the David dynasty, after Babylon had destroyed Jerusalem.
2. I’m not sure what to say about my reading today of Jacob Neusner’s Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah. So far, Neusner is discussing the pre-70 C.E. opinions in the Mishnah on certain issues. He concentrates on the opinions attributed to Hillel and Shammai. He seems to believe that the opinions attributed to Hillel and Shammai really did come from them. At some point in the book, though, he acknowledges that later people could have put words in the mouths of earlier rabbis. So why does he believe that the words attributed to Hillel and Shammai were really spoken by Hillel and Shammai? I vaguely recall reading him say that the parts of the Mishnah that contrast Hillel and Shammai look like sayings that would be memorized and passed down, so he concludes that they go back to Hillel and Shammai. Why else would they be considered important enough to memorize and pass down?