Abstract
One point of confusion regarding the Deuteronomistic History is its attitude toward the monarchy. Is it for or against the monarchy? Is it both at different points? Do apparent changes in this attitude indicate changes in diachronic layer? Marty Michelson’s principal aim in Reconciling Violence and Kingship is to suggest a way to read certain texts that holds these opposing points of view in an uneasy but coherent tension. His method is primarily synchronic and literary. In many respects he is successful. Unfortunately, his study is unnecessarily limited by his choice of texts and weighed down by his insistence on using the terms and concepts of René Girard.
Michelson’s texts are Judg 8.29-9.56; Judg 17.1-21-25; and 1 Sam 9.1-11.15. The rationale for this unlikely grouping is that these texts deal directly with kingship. Of the intervening texts, he says, correspondingly, that they ‘have nothing to do with kingship’ (Jephthah and Samson), or else they ‘do not deal with a person in the office of the king’ (Hannah, Eli, and Samuel). This is clearly arguable. Can one say that Micah or the Levite (Judg 17-19) are holders of a royal office, at least more so than Jephthah (Judg 11.9-11), or Eli, whose chair may have royal connotations (1 Sam 1.9; 4.13), or even Jair the Gileadite, whose thirty sons ruled thirty cities (Judg 10.3-5)? Can one even talk about a literary justification for the monarchy without including the character of David? Admittedly, one has to define a study’s boundaries somewhere. The question is whether Michelson’s boundaries are justified or sufficient to give an accurate account of the DtrH’s overall attitude toward the monarchy.
After an introduction and survey of past scholarship, Michelson’s study shines brightest in chapters three through five. Here he reads his texts carefully, identifying common motifs and plot patterns among them, and he does this well. Less satisfying is his identification of a kind of progression among the stories, which lays undue stress on Saul’s slaughtering a yoke of oxen as a kind of ideal action of an ideal leader/king.
The sixth chapter is a general discussion of Girardian theory and an application of it to the results of the previous three chapters. While Girard himself uses texts to explain human social behaviour outside of those texts, Michelson’s use of Girardian theory is less historical than it is narratival. He uses it more as an archetypal plot structure (mimetic rivalry emerges from mimetic desire leading to resolution via a scapegoat). I have neither the time nor the expertise to engage fully with Michelson’s use of Girardian theory in this review, but I did not find it at all elucidating or even consistent in its application. The book improves when the sixth chapter is removed.
A distracting (and ultimately unnecessary) use of Girardian theory and a questionable text-delimitation are the main weaknesses the book. On the other hand, where Michelson keeps to a close reading of his texts his study makes some very interesting observations.