The Succession Narrative in Twenty-first-century Research

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.

History and Wisdom Literature

“Wisdom Literature” has sometimes been defined in opposition to “historical writings.” However, it is likely that these texts all came from a shared scribal world. If we read the historical texts through a lens informed by Wisdom Literature, interesting themes emerge, revealing that both sets of literature were grappling with shared clusters of ideas. In particular, both explore the nature of human wisdom and divine intervention. This chapter examines five historical texts—the stories of Adam and Eve, Joseph, the Succession Narrative, Solomon, and Esther—to show how these “Wisdom” themes emerge.

Deciding the Boundaries of ‘Wisdom’

Whilst it is generally agreed that the book of Proverbs is the mainspring of ‘wisdom’, there is considerable disagreement as to what exactly, beyond Proverbs, to include in the wisdom category and what the criteria for inclusion should be. That Job and Ecclesiastes should also form this core and that it should be further defined by the apocryphal books of Ben Sira and the Wisdom of Solomon is often taken for granted, but the material is very diverse in nature and genre. Then the question arises, should the net be widened to other parts of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, to narratives such as the Joseph Narrative and Succession Narrative or to a slippery selection of psalms that appear to be ‘wisdom’ in character, to Song of Songs and beyond. In fact, how do we classify any text showing significant wisdom influence? Indeed, is this categorization of ‘wisdom’ helpful at all? In this chapter, I suggest that there is a ‘core’ of wisdom material and that, as I have argued elsewhere, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes make up this core. Here, I go beyond this statement to evaluate the associations of other material with this core and suggest that the notion of family resemblance is a helpful descriptor for complex relationships between this material. I also consider the role of Solomon as the ‘father’ of wisdom and as the (symbolic?) figure that holds this ‘family’ together.