1 Kings 1-11
Alright! Now we are cooking with gas! This first part of Kings is one of my favorites because we are introduced to my favorite character in the Old Testament, Solomon. Some really great books of the Old Testament are attributed to him and I love his philosophy. He is supposedly the wisest King in all of Israel's history and is responsible for building the very first Temple of Yahweh. The house of the living god of the Hebrews and home of the Ark of the Covenant. There is no surviving record of Solomon's Temple since it was destroyed by the Babylonians in the 500s B.C.E. The ark has since been lost, but the Temple was rebuilt over time and had a complete restoration under Roman occupation by the appointed governor Herod the Great in about 49 B.C.E. After that it was destroyed in the Jewish war with Rome and later the muslims built the Dome of the Rock in its place, where it stands to this day and is the source of much contempt between the muslims and the jews.
The setting of the time for 1 Kings begins in the year 1001 B.C.E. During this time in history the actual people were probably a scattered smattering of different tribes and cultures. With the power vacuum of the loss of the major ancient Empires there are many alliances and wars between the groups. Out of this chaos arose a kingdom that was united in the rejection of minor dieties made of stone and dedicated to the idea of a monotheistic God that was the protector of their kingdom. Jerusalem has been an ancient city of importance throughout the centuries because of its strategic location between the major kingdoms of the times. It had been left alone until the time of King David when he ransacked the place and made it his new headquarters. During the reign of Solomon it was built upon and doubled in size. The truth of the events of this time is murky because most of the incidents that took place in these stories occured in major modern cities of Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Egypt and the governments have heavy security concerning archeology. I can only assume that because most of the governments rely heavily on a religious community it would not be in their interest to discover evidence that refutes the Biblical account of history.
However, here are a couple of interesting things I have learned concerning this time in history.
The Habiru
From roughly the years 1800-1100 B.C.E there are records from the ancient empires of Sumer, Egypt, the Hittites and Akkadians of a group of nomadic people that were a collection of all the various tribal regions of the time. They were described as a wandering band of mercenaries, rebels, outlaws, warriors, slaves and tradesmen and all sorts of other walks of life. These group of nomads would raid the little pockets of civilization between the Sumerian and Hitite Empires of the north and the Egytian Empire of the south. They were called the Habiru. This is the first non biblical indication of a collection of various tribes and cultures uniting under one community. It could be the foundation for the stories of the begining of the Hebrew nation, but it must be noted that many biblical scholars do not recognize any link between the Habiru and the biblical Tribes of Israel.
The House of David
According to at least one survivng Egyptian tela (stone records of events) the House of David has been around for about as long as the Bible states that it was. There is very little information regarding the specifics of David's rise and Saul's fall nor is there much extra biblical information about Solomon and the building of the first Temple. However, it is clear that there was some sort of influencial leader of the time that established a monarchy and a dynasty centered around the worship of a single god called Yahweh.
Solomon's great, but even he is human. No ammount of wisdom could save him from his emotions. After he is gone we see the begining of the civil war that will tear the community in two.
