INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORICAL BOOKS

South Asians tend to have a cyclical view of time. From a Hindu perspective, it consists of everlasting cycles of creation, sustenance and destruction, with the result that history simply repeats itself. This may explain why the history of ancient India was largely preserved in the great epics known as the Ramayana and Mahabharata, in which history meshes with mythology. Formal records of Indian history began only in the thirteenth century, with the advent of Muslim rule.

This being the subcontinent’s tradition, why would the history of a small country on the distant shores of the Mediterranean Sea interest us?

Christians, however, take a very different view of history. The Bible views time as linear rather than cyclical, and we believe that we are part of its timeline. Thus the historical books of the OT tell our corporate story.

The Library

A complete shelf of all the OT history books would hold seventeen volumes, forming a series that starts with Genesis and finishes with Esther. However, the first five books in this series are usually relocated to a shelf labelled “the Pentateuch”, and only the remaining dozen books are referred to as the “historical books” of the OT.

Jewish scholars would arrange the shelf a little differently. They would put Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings on a shelf labelled “the Former (earlier) Prophets” and put Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, as well as Ruth and Esther, which are short novels, on a separate shelf with the others books referred to as “the Writings” (for more information on the Jewish Bible, see the article titled “Introduction to the Old Testament”).

The events of Genesis 1–11 are called pre-history because they occur before dateable time. History proper starts with Genesis 12, when Abraham emigrated from his home in Mesopotamia to Canaan.

This event is dated about 1700 BC, about the same time that the great cities of the Indus Valley Civilization were dying. Genesis tells the story of the growth of Abraham’s family, their relationship with God and how they came to relocate to Egypt. The exodus, that is, the departure of the twelve tribes descended from Abraham from Egypt, probably occurred in about 1200 BC. The events of the conquest and settlement of Canaan, and the period when judges ruled cover the next 200 years. The story of Ruth belongs in this period. Then, around 1000 BC, the monarchy appeared. At this time, in Komaranahalli in Karnataka, smiths were casting metal to form artefacts – the Iron Age had arrived in India. The kingdom of Israel was birthed under Saul and flourished under David and Solomon, who built the temple in Jerusalem. In 931 BC civil war broke out and the ten northern tribes separated from the others, resulting in two sister kingdoms – the northern kingdom of Israel with its capital in Samaria and the southern kingdom of Judah with its capital in Jerusalem. They went their own way until Samaria fell to the Assyrians in 722 BC and the people in the northern kingdom were carried into exile, never to return. By this time in India, the Aryans had organized their territorial holdings into sixteen mahajanapadas or “great states”, several of them semi-democratic republics.

Judah’s end was not much better than Israel’s. In 587 BC, Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians and Judah’s captivity began. The people pined “by the rivers of Babylon” until the Persians freed them to return in 538 BC. In 515 BC, the rebuilt temple was dedicated.

Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther belong to this period. With this, the OT draws to a close, around the same time when Buddha received his last meal from the hands of a blacksmith named Kunda. Thus the books on our history shelf cover more than a thousand years of history.

The Historians and the History

How were the historical books put together? Like modern historians, the ancient historians gathered material in the form of oral traditions and written records. They mention the written sources they consulted, and even refer the interested reader to these works for additional information. Some of these sources would have been found in the royal archives. Thus we find references to “the book of the annals of Solomon” (1 Kgs 11:41), “the records of Nathan the prophet” and “the records of Gad the seer” (1 Chr 29:29). There are also references to other sources such as the “Book of Jashar” (Josh 10:13) which apparently contained poems, an instruction manual for Levites that David and Solomon co-authored (2 Chr 35:4), and a book of laments that Jeremiah composed at Josiah’s death (2 Chr 35:25). The historians also consulted and cited diplomatic letters (e.g. 2 Kgs 5:5) and royal decrees (e.g. Ezra 1:1).

Although these books contain history, none of the writers refer to what they have written as “history” as many of us understand it, that is, as an objective account of what happened in the past. Clearly, we need to understand how the ancient world saw “history” and the reporting of it.

First, we need to understand that the ancient writers were not journalists but storytellers. As such, they selected their material and creatively arranged it for maximum impact. For example, the writer of Chronicles organized his work around the twin themes of the house of David and the house of God, dividing his material into chapter blocks that mirror each other. The account of the building and dedication of the temple forms the centrepiece, and around it are arrayed chapters on genealogies (9 chapters), the reign of David (3 chapters), David and the temple (17 chapters), Solomon and the temple (7 chapters), the reign of Solomon (2 chapters), and the reigns of other kings of Judah (26 chapters).

Secondly, the biblical historians intended their accounts of the past to explain the present. They were interested in cause and effect.

For example, the author of the book of Kings wanted to explain the presence of Samaritans among the Jewish population (2 Kgs 17:24- 41). This cause-and-effect sequence was not constructed on rigorously scientific principles but was intended to present theology – an understanding of how the divine hand joins the human one in drawing the timeline of history. Thus, in 2 Kings 17:7-23 the historian painstakingly details the sequence of events that led to Israel’s exile in Assyria.

The two points above show that history writing was much more than the boring rehash of names and dates we so often find in history books. The pages of biblical history became the meeting ground for aesthetics and theology. One beautified the work; the other enriched the reader.

History writing was a corporate, national enterprise. Instead of working like Ramachandra Guha, who produced his India After Gandhi on his own, there were schools of writers who produced works of history unified by a key concept. For example, the subseries of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings is sometimes called the Deuteronomistic history because the writers used the book of Deuteronomy as a script for describing the drama of Israel’s history from the conquest to the exile. They used Deuteronomy’s language and vocabulary, its emphasis on the covenant, and its paradigm of blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience.

Why We Read This History

The result of such history writing is a shelf full of books that serve not as tedious textbooks but as instruction on how to live one’s daily life.

They describe how to rightly relate to God and provide moral codes to live by. Indeed, that is one reason we read the history books of the OT. They provide a hall of heroes to model ourselves on. They tell cautionary tales of misdeeds we must guard against. Most of all, they assure us that God works in human history – both at the level of the individual and in the international arena.

Another reason why reading biblical history is important is that it provides, in one broad sweep, a view of our past and our future. The long line of OT saints are our ancestors in the faith. The ancient nation of Israel was a precursor to the kingdom of God, of which we are subjects. Our imperishable hope is that Jesus, the greatest of the descendants of David, will return to rule from Jerusalem, over a realm that has no end. The history recorded in the OT tells of those on the other side of the cross. It offers us, who are on this side of it, a glimpse of God’s master plan for time and for eternity.

Havilah Dharamraj