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Solomon: the lure of wisdom

Steven Weitzman’s book on Solomon (Solomon: the lure of wisdom, Yale University Press, 2011) is an elegant account of a famous biblical figure, the reasons for its appeal, and the risks that the pursuit of wisdom entails. I found it a frustrating read and here is why.

The author knows the exegetical and historical literature but proceeds to write as if 1 Kgs 2–11 is both story-telling and historical truth. God, Nathan, Ahijah of Shiloh and others meant or didn’t mean what they said or did. In the past tense. The author’s use of tenses is simple. The frequent use of the present tense suits a commentary and expansion on universalist or presentist aspects of a tale, but occasionally the past tense appears to suggest things did happen as the tale says, and the use of this past tense is rendered even more “historical” with a number of “perhaps, may…” Of course, this is nothing like Flaubert’s use of the imperfect and preterite in Un cœur simple (in Trois contes), where the first evokes not only the length, repetitiveness, and hardship of the character’s work and devotion (Félicité) but also the dynamics between fiction (Im-perfect, unrealized) and reality (that of XIXth c. servants). I wasn’t under any such enchantment, when reading The lure of wisdom. When there were moments of contemplation, I was quickly brought back to my ironic self by the strange insistence on historicity.

The book does discuss interesting ideas, such as the irreality of names like Shlomo, or the “unscriptability of human behavior…” (p. 14). One wants to retort to the author that, of course, the writer of this tale wants both to glorify a certain kind of kingship and show how dramatically tragic it can become for the simple reason that he is writing long after this king’s reign, in fact after the fall of the monarchy. And the writer doesn’t draw his tale in too subtle a way. Solomon is the son of a murderous, treacherous David. Born after proper marriage, however, not like the first baby which simply must disappear. It is the later writer’s dilemma which is of interest. How does he manage to glorify kingship yet explain its radical failure.

The book is retelling a good folktale but falters or is even deceptive when it keeps the reader guessing about the nature of the work: story telling of a sophisticated kind (both that of the original writer and Weitzman’s), or history, or both? If story, why not say, when talking about the Messiah for instance, p. 14, that “as this figure has yet to appear” is one take? And why drop little historical notes such as “no mean accomplishment in an age when many kings died prematurely,” about Solomon’s putative rule of forty years? Instead, shouldn’t one wonder about this perfect number and its meaning in biblical story-telling?

Page 18, the author speaks of the seduction (of the readers) by Freud and modern heirs such as Aviva Zornberg who purport to retrieve the “biblical unconscious.” What he himself is doing too, in launching into the description of historically framed sentiments, frustrations, etc…. He doesn’t wonder why the baby born of the adulterous and criminal relationship of David and Bathsheba dies, and why the one born after “proper” marriage survives…. Isn’t the end of the Israelite kingdom in this beginning, and aren’t we listening to a writer who knows better (long after whatever events there were)?

Regarding the story of David on his deathbed in 1 Kings 2 advising his heir Solomon (one of many possible heirs):

(page 21) Critical scholarship has concluded that this speech isn’t from David himself; it was written, or drastically rewritten, by an author living centuries after the king. [….] But other readers, accepting it as authentic, have detected within it certain intimations of that relationship, and theirs is a more productive approach to the text for our purposes.

Etc. Unbelievable. In fact, it is what the modern author assumes is the less productive critical view that is the more interesting, regarding the “author living centuries after the king.” And a large exegetical literature exists now that deserves more than a nod. Why write this way? The hopes and fears, as well as the interests, of the author of this speech, in the exilic or post-exilic period, that would surely be a “productive approach to the text.”

Then, very soon after this passage, as he is discussing the rabbinic exegesis of Solomon’s superior wisdom (superior to David’s), the author slips back into the critical mode: “Apart from the fact that such stories are completely made up…” (pp. 22–23).

The dream of 1 Kgs 3 is discussed, fairly extensively, pp. 23–30. It would present a rupture in the king’s life, a sudden irruption of a deeper form of wisdom… The author notes it is the only dream of Solomon that has been recorded (surprising turn of phrase!), when in fact it is the only dream of any Israelite or Judean king that has been invented, which should raise some questions. Of course it is not the only dream in the Bible. Other kings, typical of hated foreign rule, that is, the Pharaoh (Joseph story) and its eastern imperial counterpart the Babylonian king (Daniel) had dreams set in stories produced very late (Hellenistic period for Daniel, a little earlier for Joseph’s cycle?). Yet, these kings were so naïve and incompetent, in the view of the post-exilic writer, that they had to call upon their Yahweh-informed onirocritics to understand what they meant, how history really went…. Clearly, the biblical story-tellers, by which I mean the post-exilic biblical story-tellers, didn’t care much about their own kings having dreams, which in the ancient world was tantamount to laying claim to direct access to divine will. They were not willing to grant them that kind of access. The fact that of all the kings of Israel and Judah only Solomon had a dream revelation of Yahweh’s will should be cause to question the motivation of the story-teller, and whether we are not looking at a completely made up tale.

Weitzman has opted for a kind of enchantment that depends on extending the strength of the original tale. For enchantment he needs power: he needs to hold the reader in his grip and keep the magic going. Not only does he hope to derive some of that power metonymically from the massive artistic and literary interest in the Solomonic figure over the centuries—including the Song of Songs and all of its mystical and literary wake—but he also needs to anchor the magic in a historical reality, no matter its nature. This he attempts to do by writing as if Solomon existed and performed or thought the things described in 1 Kings. On top of that, he uses a special, shadowy theoretical modern language (Freudianism, literary theory, etc.) as substitute for a more critical inquiry. To me, that’s a magic trick, which is fine entertainment. Tall order, this magic vs reality thing. We are not amused.

General, Reviews

± violence?

I am curious about a new book on violence, by Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard: *The better angels of our nature: why violence has declined*. I look forward to reading it but couldn’t find it at our local book shop yet. Will it make the usual points about how much more violent hunter societies were before the Neolithic period? On this, see Guilaine in *Caïn, Abel, Ötzi*, pages 197–99, or Guilaine and Zammit, *The origins of war: violence in prehistory*. Note that a sort of containment of violence happens with the appearance of the professional warrior, sometimes in the Bronze Age (2d millenium), except in the city-states of Mesopotamia, where it happens a little earlier (i.e. 4th millenium BC).

It will be interesting to see the tables which the author gathered in support or illustration of this thesis. Can one really do the kind of research done by Muchembled on the Middle Ages (end) and the early modern period (much before Pinker) on other periods? It shows a clear decrease of all kinds of violent behavior. See Muchembled, *Une histoire de la violence: de la fin du Moyen Âge à nos jours*, which broadens the scope of his *thèse de doctorat d’état* on violence in Artois between 1400 and 1660, published in 1985.

It will be interesting also to see what is measured under this name “violence?” Is the violence of a patriarchal society going after its daily bread the same as the violence in a society in which there is a surplus of goods since at least the 18th c., though ill distributed, and in which the reason for violence is much less connected to this bread-earning need? And is it measured by the number of acts deemed violent today, in relation to the presumed demographics of yesteryear and the better known modern population numbers?

What are the reasons the author gives for this civilizational trend? In his talk on Ted.com—a sort of TV university—, Pinker speaks of four possibilities: the role of Hobbes’ Leviathan state in taming our ur-brutish instincts, the higher price put on life, the realization that life is a non-zero-sum game (cooperation profits parties, commerce and better understanding of the commonality of interests are good for everyone, peace dividend also. In other words: rational calculations), and the expanding circle of empathy (expanding beyond kinship systems for instance). I would like to be sure that what is to be explained is not assumed as pre-existing. The thesis seems partly to go along with the likes of Norbert Elias, perhaps Weber, and against a presumed modern sentiment, often hostile to religion, or against the picture drawn by Foucault. No need to scare ourselves silly with thrillers and big bad wolf stories. Even the nazi kind?

When listening to Pinker’s talk on Ted.com referred to above, I was curious about his remarks on violence in the Bible, which is a very common theme in modern conversations. If the general thesis is that violence has gone down thanks to a civilizing process à la Norbert Elias (who thinks court life had much influence, vs Muchembled who sees the influence of early urbanization), why does Pinker bother to refer to the frequent passages of the Bible which call for the extermination of the enemy, as in Numbers? Does he think the Biblical passages are actually reactionary because of the underlying monotheism, or is he just interested to show that they simply belong to their time (Assyrian cruelty is well documented too), no matter what theologians say about “ethical monotheism?”

Footnote on this discussion of violence and monotheism: see Jean Soler and others who follow a long tradition of laying much of the Western tradition of violence at the feet of monotheism. For instance Soler in *La violence monothéiste*; Assmann considers the question honestly but wants to save the baby (ethical monotheism): *The price of monotheism*; more generally on religion and violence, see Hans Kippenberg, “Aktuelle religiöse Gewalt aus Handlungstheoretischer Perspektive. Frobenius-Vorlesung 2002”; and Kippenberg and McNeil, *Violence as worship: religious wars in the age of globalization*.

Pinker’s talk on Ted.com made clear that he subscribes to a view of the “civilizing process” as non-Rousseauist (brutish origins) and accepts that technological progress and an ever fuller mastery over nature simply breeds too many interlocking interests which violent behavior cannot be allowed to threaten. So Hobbes mixed with Elias. I have to ask: what happens when the mediation of the state falls by the wayside?

Finally, I would like to see if the book by Pinker has anything to say about the effects of religious representations, so important surely in transforming the practices of war as well as justice since late antiquity. For instance, what of the effects of the beliefs concerning the body (other people’s body) manifested by the evolution of crucifixion scenes, and later on such etchings, drawings or paintings as those of Callot or Goya (both on war disasters, however)? Quoting from the *Encyclopaedia Britannica* (online), but see Mâle, Dupront et al:
>By the 6th century, however, representations of the Crucifixion became numerous as a result of current church efforts to combat a heresy that Christ’s nature was not dual—human and divine—but simply divine and therefore invulnerable. These early Crucifixions were nevertheless triumphant images, showing Christ alive, with open eyes and no trace of suffering, victorious over death. In the 9th century, Byzantine art began to show a dead Christ, with closed eyes, reflecting current concern with the mystery of his death and the nature of the incarnation. This version was adopted in the West in the 13th century with an ever increasing emphasis on his suffering, in accordance with the mysticism of the period.

Were the paintings of the dead Christ by Mantegna (1490) and especially Holbein (1521–22) a manifestation of the expansion of empathy and compassion brought about by a better perception of the advantages of economic cooperation, or do they come from a longer tradition which actually brought about more cooperation? From a willingness to look at the body of a tortured man, far away in time and space, as somehow closely related to oneself, even ground for oneself? Chicken or egg question. In any case, the book by Pinker promises to be an interesting read.