The biblical texts about Bathsheba have notorious gaps, even by the laconic standards of Hebrew narrative. Post-biblical receptions of the story flesh out the terse chapters of 2 Samuel 11–12 and 1 Kings 1–2, ascribing feelings and motives to Bathsheba and David that are not contained in the Hebrew text. This essay examines the intersection of reception history and feminist biblical scholarship by considering eleven novels about Bathsheba from the twentieth and twenty-first century. These novels expand Bathsheba’s character beyond the text, but in fairly gender stereotypical ways, such that feminist readers of the novels may be left wanting more.
Although research on the Succession Narrative has proliferated in recent decades, no comprehensive surveys of secondary literature have appeared since the mid-1990s. In this article, I survey the many disparate works of Succession Narrative scholarship that have been published since that time. I focus on recent conclusions about the boundaries, unity, date, intention, and theme of the traditionally delineated Succession Narrative (2 Samuel 9–20; 1 Kings 1–2). While the traditional theory of the text, as formulated by Leonhard Rost, dominated scholarship of the twentieth century, in the twenty-first, nothing approaching a consensus can be claimed for any aspect of the Succession Narrative.
AbstractReading 1 Kings 1-2, the account of the succession of Solomon, one is left with a strange impression. On the one hand, in its current telling and context it clearly seeks to offer a favourable account of the process. On the other hand, one just has to scratch the surface of this story to see an underlying and less favourable account. The paper notes the importance role that private conversations play in the story to argue that an earlier telling of the story was largely fabricated by a party opposed to the Davidic monarchy and Solomon in particular. According to this telling, a cloud stood over Solomon’s legitimacy; David was hoodwinked by Nathan and Bathsheba into believing that he had made an earlier promise that Solomon would succeed; Solomon came to the throne by means of a palace coup; Abishag was not David’s concubine and Adonijah’s request for her was quite innocent; however, his approach and private conversation with Bathsheba was manipulated by Solomon and his supporters to remove significant personal opponents.
Scriptures Hebrew and Christian. Vol. I. Hebrew Story from Creation to the Exile, Comprising Material from the Following Books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicels, Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Amos, Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah. Edward T. Bartlett , John P. Peters