Totally Fabricated?

In The Bible As a Human Witness to Divine Revelation, I read Marvin A. Sweeney's essay, "The Portrayal of Assyria in the Book of Kings." On pages 276-277, Sweeney discusses the Book of Kings' depiction of King Ahab of Israel's relationship with Syria, or Aram.

In the ninth century B.C.E., Northern Israel was part of "a coalition of nations" led by Hadad-ezer of Damascus (in Syria), which "successfully blocked King Shalmaneser III [of Assyria] from invading western Asia". The Assyrian army "attempted to cross the Euphrates River at Qarqar in 853 B.C.E. in an effort to invade Aram and western Asia". Although Shalmaneser's annals proclaim that Assyria won a victory against the Syrian-led coalition at Qarqar, scholars note that Shalmaneser's "advance was halted."

While Assyrian records present Syria and Northern Israel as allies, Sweeney asserts, scholars have noted that the Book of Kings offers a different picture. In Kings, Ahab is continually at odds with Syria, and Ahab dies when he tries to prevent the Syrians from taking over "Israel's trans-Jordanian territories." Sweeney states that "Many interpreters argue that the narratives concerning Israel's wars with Aram, including Ahab's death at Ramoth Gilead, were fabricated as part of a larger effort to portray Ahab as a sinful monarch and thereby serve the DtrH interpretation of history."

Sweeney acknowledges that the Deuteronomistic Historian presents history according to his theological agenda. After all, the Book of Kings does not mention one of Ahab's successes---the battle of Qarqar---for it tries to portray Ahab as wicked, which, in the Deuteronomistic worldview, entails that bad things are supposed to happen to him, not good things. But Sweeney does not believe that the Deuteronomistic Historian completely fabricated the tension between Northern Israel and Syria. Inscriptions "provide evidence that Israel did indeed lose control of the Trans-Jordan to Aram and Moab during the mid-ninth through the mid-eighth century B.C.E." Sweeney contends that this is because "losses of trained chariot soldiers left Israel vulnerable to its erstwhile ally after the Assyrian threat had passed." I presume these losses occurred at the Battle of Qarqar. Moreover, Aram's attacks on Israel would explain why Israel turned to Assyria as an ally.

I have two reactions to all this. First of all, I had no idea that there were biblical scholars who were so minimalist as to assert that the author of the Book of Kings completely fabricated Israel's tension with Syria. As my long-time readers may know, I did a weekly quiet time through I-II Kings. Some scholars treated the biblical account of Ahab's conflict with Syria as accurate. Others held that there were battles between Syria and Israel, but I Kings gets the dates wrong. But I don't remember reading anyone who claimed that the battles were completely fabricated. So I was surprised to read Sweeney's statement that there are many scholars who believe this way.

Second, I disagree with the claim that DtrH wants to portray Ahab as a continual failure on account of his sinfulness. The same goes for other sinful kings of Northern Israel. In I Kings 20, God helps Israel to attain military victories against the Syrians because the Syrians stated that the God of Israel is powerful in the hills, but not in the plains; Ahab and Ben-hadad of Syria then cut a deal. In II Kings 13, the prophet Elisha instructs the wicked king of Israel to smite the ground with arrows, which would symbolize the number of times that Northern Israel would smite the Syrians. DtrH's ideology is more complex than "good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people," for DtrH acknowledges that God can give Northern Israel success even when she is wicked---perhaps to convince his straying people that he deserves their worship. Moreover, maybe DtrH had to deal with the realities of history, which didn't always accord with his ideology of retribution. Josiah of Judah, after all, was a good king, and he died at the hands of the Egyptians, as DtrH admits. Sometimes, DtrH tried to work around inconvenient facts; sometimes, he simply mentioned an inconvenient fact and left it at that. But I believe that DtrH was working with historical facts, some of which were inconvenient, and so I doubt that he was fabricating a lot of stuff.

But why doesn't the Book of Kings mention the Battle of Qarqar? Maybe he didn't think that it was relevant to the history that he wanted to present. The Book of Kings is about God's relationship with Israel, and Syria was more prominent in the Battle of Qarqar, although Northern Israel was a participant. Israel winning a battle as part of a coalition that another nation led may not have fitted neatly into the mission of DtrH, which was to discuss how God interacted with Israel based on her relationship with him.