By David M. Howard, Jr.

This review appeared in Shofar 11.3 (Spring 1993): 114-15.

Steven L. McKenzie. The Trouble with Kings: The Composition of the Book of Kings in the Deuteronomistic History. SVT XLII. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991. XII + 183 pp. N.P.

In this work, McKenzie treats the question of how the books of Kings came together. He argues for a position close to that of Noth, namely, that these books -- as well as the larger "Deuteronomistic History" to which they are assigned -- were the work of a single author/editor. Like Noth, he sees that the author used pre-existing sources, but that they were so re-worked as to render their recovery almost impossible, except in a very few cases (e.g., 2 Kings 9-10, portions of 1 Kings 21). In making this point, McKenzie maintains a running dialogue with those who see a long, pre-existent work, probably prophetic, underlying the Deuteronomistic History, and he steadfastly maintains that no such document existed.

He also sees numerous additions to the original edition of the Deuteronomistic work (conveniently listed on p. 152), but his emphasis is upon the coherence of the original work. Thus, he disagrees with those who see any systematic re-working of the Deuteronomistic History by any one later author, editor, or school.

McKenzie diverges from Noth's construct at two significant points, points where Noth has been most severely criticized. First, he takes issue (as do most scholars) with Noth's view that the purpose of the Deuteronomistic History was essentially negative, to show the causes of Israel's and Judah's downfall. Rather, McKenzie accepts Van Seters' argument that the purpose of this history was essentially a historiographical one, and no more: it was these nations' attempt to render an account to themselves of their own history. (His work appeared too late to take into account Younger's criticisms of Van Seters, in JSOTSup 98, 1990, however.)

Second, McKenzie disagrees with Noth's exilic dating of the work, and sides with Cross instead, assigning the work to the time of Josiah. He assigns the post-Josianic materials to an exilic editor, but he disagrees with Cross that this editor in any significant way reworked the earlier materials.

Thus, McKenzie's view is that the Deuteronomistic History is substantially the work of one author/editor from the time of Josiah, who used (not edited!) earlier materials in creating his own work, which was then updated in minor ways, and whose purpose was to present an account of Israel's national traditions.

McKenzie's work is erudite and thorough. Within the confines of his self-imposed method and focus ("The objectives and hence the methods of this monograph are strictly historical-critical" -- p. 19, n. 23), he presents a strong case. He interacts meaningfully and skillfully with all the major works on the Deuteronomistic History, including, helpfully, works in Spanish that are often overlooked. He deals in turn (and in depth) with the "Jeroboam cycle," oracles against the dynasties, "clear" prophetic additions, and the accounts of Hezekiah and Josiah; a distinctive of his book is the first chapter, on the "condensed" account of Jeroboam's reign found in several Old Greek versions (3 Reigns 12:24a-z). In almost all of these he finds some few pre-Deuteronomistic traces, some more post-Deuteronomistic traces, but, most consistently, he sees the Deuteronomist's own hand at work.

The major problem with the book lies in the method of study itself. The continued historical-critical debate about almost every aspect of the Deuteronomistic History gives added life to the skepticism about the entire method voiced by such scholars as Polzin, Alter, Childs, et al., and the present work is no exception. The painstaking splitting up of narratives into their component levels, sometimes hopelessly intertwined together (with some fragments as short as two words), and the confident assigning of the resultant fragments to one or another source or level, often stretches the limits of credulity.

Thus, in case after case, I found myself arguing with McKenzie that a discourse analysis or a literary approach would much more easily explain the anomalies that he or others explain by the addition or subtraction of yet one more editor. To be fair to McKenzie, he recognizes the existence of these other approaches, and even acknowledges their usefulness (p. 19, n. 23), even though he strictly limits his own inquiry. Also, his analysis is much more sober than some, which find many more redactional levels than he does.

However, the question still must be asked as to the ultimate profitability of this approach -- even when practiced by as skilled and careful a critic as McKenzie -- and as to what its ultimate goal is, whether it is to reconstruct a hypothetical original text at some one level, and then, presumably, to explicate its meaning, or to do so at every pre-existing level, or to do so at the final level. The historical-critical method, unfortunately, has given short shrift to the last of these, and, in the process, a sense of the biblical narrative has been lost, as Frei (The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative) and many others have noted.