Jeremy Rosen
The Kingdom That Split

Jeremy Rosen - The Kingdom That Split

- Okay, ladies and gentlemen, let’s get underway. This is a difficult and painful session we’re going to have in terms of Jewish history and Jewish life. It’s going to look a little bit like the “Game of Thrones” with a kingdom in the north and a kingdom in the south rivalling each other and fighting each other. It will also be indicative of how much we have changed over the thousands of years despite the fact that we’ve had this kind of common cultural background that in a sense has kept our identity. But the big question when we look at the books of the Bible that deal with the period of the kingdoms, the two kingdoms, who actually wrote it, because as you know, there’s no such thing as history. There are simply historians and each historian own experience. And because these two kingdoms are so different and in a sense so unstable, it’s very difficult to know which chronicler, which prophet is speaking in the text that we have before us. So one of the interesting issues is that at the time of the Talmud, 2,000 years ago, they already didn’t know for certain who wrote what books and how much of them were written by whom. So for example, if you were to look at the Talmud, the Talmud would go through and give you a list that differs from what appears to be the case. For example, they accept that the Psalms of David weren’t all written by David, or that the Song of Songs or the book of Ecclesiastes was not written by King Solomon as the text seems to imply. And there’s an argument about the actual Torah itself, who wrote the last verses that talk about Moses dying. Was this done by Joshua who followed him? Was it done by Moses himself under dictation from God with tears streaming around his face? Or was there somebody else?

And this applies basically to all the books of the Bible. There are different opinions as to who wrote them. And although you may think this is a result of modern critical scholarship, in fact, this debate goes back thousands of years. And in the end as always, we have the text and the text is all we have to go on. But of course we could look around us at different sources of information. So for example, we can look at the Egyptian record of a King Merneptah roundabout 1,300 years ago where he talks about conquering Israel. But what was Israel then? What did he mean by Israel? We know from other sources there’s a reference to the House of David. This is the House of David when? Is it the House of David during the time of David or after the time of David? And is a reference to Israel to the children of Israel, or to the kingdom of Israel? In all these situations, we’re not 100% certain what is what. All we know for definite is that there were tribes in the area that we call the Land of Canaan. The Canaan itself, the Canaanites were a mixture of different warring tribes. And the fact is that although the Torah demands that the Canaanites be gotten rid of, in fact they never were, they went on coexisting right throughout the period of the kings. There were still people under this general title living in the land of Canaan, certainly until the Assyrians destroyed them all in 722.

So we have the question of who wrote these books, where they were written, where the story of the southern kingdom written by southerners, and the story of the northerners written by northerners. And the trouble is when you look at the book of Kings 1 and 2 as we have them, they seem to be mixed in, seem to be mixed in. At one moment we’re talking about the south, and the next moment we switch to the north, and it’s very difficult to follow this genealogy. And so I have sharing my screen a little kind of a guide that I hope is going to come up properly. And this is on the left-hand side, if you look at it, you will see that column one has the dates. These are the dates going back in time. So it’s 200 BCE is the top, which is a guide to the beginning of the tradition. I put Abraham there. We don’t know that it was Abraham. He lived at about the time of Hammurabi and the Hammurabi code, which we do have a copy of, is very similar to the codes of law that were going to be written in the time of Moses or whoever it was. So in column number one, we have a date, 2,000 before the common era. I’ve put in 1,300 as the date before Moses, and these are all approximate, and they are not saying for one minute they are scientifically supported. It’s just that at the time of Moses, we do have this first reference in Egyptian sources to defeating the Israelites, but we don’t know which Israelites they were defeating. And we still don’t know about Exodus in specific detail.

So when we’ve got the Judean kings, we’ve got Moses who runs down 1300, followed by Joshua, followed by the period of the Judges. And so you’ve got Joshua, the first successor of Moses. He wrote his book and maybe he wrote part of the Torah, too, according to the Talmud. Then you’ve got the Judges, the famous one of Deborah, who was both a judge and a prophetess. Powerful women had a role in what could have been a matriarchal society. You have Gideon, and then you have the first significant leader after Moses who combines the spiritual and the governmental or political role, and this is Samuel. And so after the book of Moses, the Torah, we have the book of Joshua. After Joshua, we have the book of Judges. After Judges, we have the books of Samuel 1 and 2, and it’s in the books of Samuel that we’re introduced first time to the idea of kingship, and we’re introduced to the persona of Saul. And if you look at the column to the right of that, the third column, you have how many years according to the Bible was Saul the king. On the left-hand side, you have the rough dates of 1,050 for Samuel before the common era, 1,028 for Saul before the common era. He ruled for two years and then he died. We assume that immediately after that came along King David, but that wasn’t the case because there were splits in the tribes. Throughout the period all the judges, the tribes, are fighting each other. At one moment, the tribes almost obliterate the tribe of Benjamin. But it seems that when Saul is appointed, although he was from the tribe of Benjamin, he managed to unite everybody together.

But unfortunately, when Saul dies, his son, Ish-bosheth, retains the mantle of the king of the united kingdom, except that David was simultaneously appointed king in Hebron of the south. So you already have the division between the south, which is the tribe of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin, and the north, which is the 10 other tribes. David manages to unite them and he manages to rule as king for 40 years. And he was followed, as we’ve studied before, by King Solomon who also reigned for 40 years. Coincidence? Many of the numbers that we have in the Bible are, in a sense, symbolic. 40 probably means a generation. We’re going to look at the armies that the two kingdoms put into the field to conquer each other. And their numbers just don’t make any sense whatsoever. There’s no way there were 180,000 soldiers from Benjamin and Judah who tried to keep the community and the kingdoms together by force. So we have a situation where Solomon has succeeded in controlling this kingdom and expanding it, expanding it to the boundaries that were actually predicted in the earlier stages of the Bible. But we also know that Solomon, in order to build his temple, imposed heavy taxes. He posed an obligation for each tribe to provide workers, and all these workers and all this taxation money was coming into Jerusalem. And in Jerusalem the buildings were going up, and everybody outside of Jerusalem was a bit uncomfortable with this.

They were uncomfortable with this because their money was going to Jerusalem. So it’s not unlike, shall we say in Britain today, the tension that exists between London and the provinces. London has all the buildings, the government centres, all the nice big buildings, meanwhile all the taxpayers outside pour their money into London and London benefits, and the provinces suffer, which is one of the reasons, of course, why the Scots wanted to break away and may still do. So the tensions of the tribes that we saw from the beginning, the tensions between the sons of Jacob, and then the tension between Joseph and Jacob, and then the rivalry during the period in the desert of tribes feeling they weren’t getting enough of the action, or enough of the good jobs was always seething beneath the surface in this people who were a stiff-necked, argumentative people. And the amazing thing is that the only person who really succeeded in getting together originally was Moses, who is described as the most modest of human beings, the least articulate, the least charismatic if you like, and if you like the least aggressive, although there are times when he called in help from outside. So we are examining here the nature of kingdom, the nature of the ruler, and against the background of the Middle East where the king was always the representative of God on earth.

So the king was supposed to set the example of being the God-like representative. And according to the Torah, the king was always subject to the constitution, to the law, and he had an obligation to see that it was adhered to. But that rarely ever happened. We are going to enter a period in which both in the north and the south, kings fail, they are disasters, they return to idolatry, they betray their values, and the question then is who is the real leader? And parallel with this, you have the prophets who are the people who carry with them the spiritual message to go parallel with the political one. But initially, as you know, David was the religious leader, although he made mistakes, and he was responsible for bringing the tabernacle back up to Jerusalem, but he couldn’t build a temple. It was left to Solomon to build a temple. Solomon builds the temple and this is where we ended last time. And now we come to Solomon’s death. Solomon in first book of Kings, chapter 12, is on his deathbed and he hands over the reigns immediately to his son, rah-ha-vam, or Rehoboam. Towards the end of his life there was already rebellion. There was a rebellion by a man called Jeroboam, or veer-ah-vam, who objected on behalf of the northern tribes to the king putting so much investment into the south. So here are two names, rah-ha-vam, or Rehoboam. and veer-ah-vam, Jeroboam. And when you look at the list of kings and you go down Psalm 10, you see at the end of Solomon, you have Judea on the one hand, Israel on the other. Rehoboam is the king starting 933 before the common era in the south, And Jeroboam is the king of the north.

As soon as rah-ha-vam, Rehoboam, ascended the throne, the north sent delegates. And the delegates to him were, “Look, we are not happy with the situation. We would like you to make some compromises. We’d like you to reconsider how this united kingdom can be brought together.” Sounds a little bit like the Democrats and the Republicans in the United States of America. We won’t talk about Israeli politics. Rah-ha-vam, hearing the situation says, “Look, I am prepared to take advice on this matter.” Rather wise. And meanwhile, the people in the north have called this guy veer-ah-vam, Jeroboam, back up to help them with the negotiations. So initially there’s no suggestion at all that he is going to be a challenge to rah-ha-vam. Rah-ha-vam turns to two groups of people. He turns to his elders, the experienced politicians, and he says to them, “What should I do?” And their reply is, “You should compromise. We want to keep the kingdom together. Don’t be rigid about it. Compromise.” And then he turned to the young princes, the young men who were the jet setters around Jerusalem in those days night clubbing, driving around in their Maseratis, enjoying life and all the privileges of being the top guys. And they turned to him and said, “No, whatever you do, don’t give in. They’ll think you’re weak. And if you think they’re weak, they’ll undermine you and they’ll destroy you, destroy your power and you’ll ruin all the goodies that we have. So don’t give in.”

And so what happens is they are now, rah-ha-vam has moved up from Jerusalem to what appears to be the capital of the north, Shechem, except that at this moment Shechem hasn’t yet been built and the real capital in the north is Tirzah, but that doesn’t matter. He goes to the north and he starts to enter into the negotiations. And veer-ah-vam says to him, “Are you prepared to consider any kind of compromise?” And rah-ha-vam turns round in the famous phrase, says, “No, if my father lashed you with whips, I will lash you with scorpions. My little finger is going to be stronger than my father’s thigh.” In which veer-ah-vam, in the famous phrase, turned around and said, “What future do we have with a House of David.” “To your tents, Israel, go home. Let’s go back to our tents, to our homes. We’ve got no chance of making a deal with this man.” And that was the beginning of the divide between the north and the south. And as we’re going to see, the north remained loyal to the House of David with one brief exception who was a woman, , who we’ll come to due course. All the kings of the south were descendants of the House of David. Whereas when we come to the kings of the north, they are a disastrous collection of people who assassinate their way to power, who barely survive two or three generations. And just look at the difference in the two columns between the years of the kings on the left of Judah, and some of them are short. There are a couple later on, twos and threes. One is shorter and one is longer. The shorter one is the kingdom of Israel that veer-ah-vam set up.

And this kingdom of Israel lasts for a couple of hundred years, until in 722, when we come to the end of the northern kingdom, the Assyrians come down like a lion on the fold, helmets were gleaning in silver and gold, and destroy and eliminate the kingdom of Israel. We’re going to come back to this of course, this is just giving you the background. Simultaneously, the kingdom of the south under David carries on and will carry on for another couple of hundred years until the Babylonians, who replace the Assyrians, destroy that one, too. So both these kingdoms are going to be destroyed. And essentially the rabbinic Talmudic opinion is they were destroyed because they betray themselves. They did not live up to their expectations. Despite the fact that the religious leadership, under the prophets, had the right idea and kept on trying to get them on track, it just did not work. The kings were a disastrous lot, which I have to say always amazes me, when in our Hebrew prayers we ask for the return of the House of David because quite frankly, however good David may have been, or Solomon, or Hezekiah, or some of the good kings, and about half of them were religious and the other half were pagan on the Judean side, it wasn’t such a successful dynasty if you come to think about it.

But there we are, we love nostalgia. The south starts with Jeroboam, and Jeroboam now has a problem. The religion of the people has been a religion based on the sanctuary of the temple. And this sanctuary in Jerusalem is where, according to the Bible, three times a year, whoever can should make a pilgrimage up to Jerusalem. Now he has a problem. “How can I have an independent kingdom if religious authority is somewhere else in the south? And not only is it somewhere else in the south, but my citizens are expected to go to the south three times a year. This cannot make sense. I have to find an alternative.” And what’s always surprised me is the alternative he chose. There could have been other solutions, but he chose to establish two sanctuaries, one in Bethel, which was nearer to Jerusalem in the West Bank, and the other, Dan, which is probably to the north up to the Galil. And in these two sanctuaries he placed golden calves of the very sort that Moses had destroyed in the desert. So you cannot think of a greater repudiation, a greater repudiation of the Mosaic tradition than what Jeroboam did. And yet despite that, he still considered himself to be an Israelite king. And so this raises another interesting issue. We know the term Israel was used, as I say, back to the Egyptians hundreds of years before this, and that we are the children of Israel. Why is it that when it came to establishing the state of Israel, the powers that be amongst the very discussions they had about what we should name it, named it Israel after the most disastrous kingdom that there was, and you could imagine.

Unless of course, because most of those who decided were secular, they rather preferred the idea of a secular tradition with names famous in Israel today like Zimri, and Omri, and Ahab, and so forth who were all idol worshipers. But nevertheless, it’s an interesting point. So at this stage, going back roughly speaking 3,000 years ago, you’ve got the kingdom of Israel with the 10 northern tribes of whom the tribe of Joseph is the most dominant. And so in time Joseph is going to be the leadership of the north religiously. Secondly, you have Judea, Judah, the tribe of Judah with Benjamin as a much, much smaller adjunct to Judah. And this is where the Judeans come from. And this is where the Judeans are going to survive longer ‘cause they did and went into exile in Babylon. And maybe that’s why Judea became the name of the Jewish settlement in the land of Israel for the next period when they were able to return, and through the Roman period and even to a certain extent today. So here we are with these two governments, two sets of kings, and we are going to try and examine what they did and what the ramifications were. The Talmud actually mentions the fact that to get round this problem of Jerusalem, there were some faithful in the north who remained true to it and went secretly to Jerusalem to the temple and disguised things when they went there as objects of work and import/export, rather than as religious tokens to be used in the temple 'cause they didn’t want to be seen in the temple, be seen taking stuff to the temple to sacrifice.

So what happens is that rah-ha-vam has tried to win over the north. He sent his tax collector, van-koor Adoram, to try to negotiate a second time, but they’re fed up with rah-ha-vam, with his way of negotiating. And poor Adoram gets stoned to death. At this moment, the king of the south, rah-ha-vam, gathers together an army that is supposed to be an army of 180,000 men to go and try and suppress and force the north back into power. Well, a messenger comes, a messenger comes through Shemaiah, the prophet. And Shemaiah the prophet says, “Don’t go to war, do not fight. Military is not the solution. Don’t think that you’re going to win this way.” And to his credit, rah-ha-vam was persuaded to return, to go back home, there was no war. And from that moment, the relationship between the two kingdoms became a rather difficult one, but one nevertheless that sometimes was peaceful, and the two royal families married with each other and intermarried, but on other times collapsed into brutal attack in which Jew was killing Jew, Israelite was killing Israelite, the north the south, the south the north. It was an utter mess. So we have this northern kingdom which has been set up by King Jeroboam, and in comes, as he’s standing by his new temples, sacrificing them, in comes a prophet who says, “I’m telling you all that you’re doing here in the northern kingdom is going to be destroyed in the long term by a king who’s going to come called King Josiah.” Now Josiah, if you look on your list to the left, we’ll see he doesn’t come for quite a long time.

He’s about the fifth one from the bottom of the list of the kings of Judea. And therefore the question is why is he predicting this for so far ahead, unless this is retroactive, unless we’re seeing that it’s retroactively that everything that the north tried to do religiously was destroyed and their religious tradition, their idolatrous religious tradition, did in fact come to an end even though it’s going to be challenged along the road. So this situation continues of a clash between the kings of the south, the kings of the north, and the prophets who are trying to keep everybody on an even spiritual religious keel. But they have no power, no authority, other than their own charisma. King Jeroboam, veer-ah-vam, he reigns for some 22 years. Long, long time. But in the case of Jeroboam, he outlives him. However, when Jeroboam dies, he is succeeded by his son, a young man called Nadab. Nadab lasts for two years before he is assassinated by a general by the name of Baasha. So this process of assassinating and taking over with a new dynasty begins when Baasha destroys the dynasty of Jeroboam. And actually Baasha starts a war against the son of rah-ha-vam in the south called Assam. So in a sense it’s the north that takes the initiative in fighting a battle. And in this battle, Baasha starts building a kind of a fortification wall between the north and the south as a basis of attacking and trying to destroy the south. And there’s a war between them.

And this war goes on and it makes life painful for everybody. And then another prophet arrives this man called Jehu bin Hanani, and he turned to Baasha’s destructive immoral man, “You are not going to live for very long. Your dynasty so to speak is going to come to an end.” And although he lived for 24 years, by the end of that period he succeeds, Elim succeeds, Baasha rules in the new capital of Tirzah. And he’s there for a couple of years and he’s assassinated by another guy called Zimri, who is a general in the army, who turns round and kills it. And Zimri lasts for seven days before he’s assassinated by another guy called Omri. And Omri is appointed king and he’s acclaimed. Zimri actually, he didn’t assassinate him. Zimri committed suicide before he could assassinate him. But whereas Omri appoints himself as king, he’s immediately challenged by another general called Tibni. And Tibni manages to last for two years, competing general, until Omri wins, and Omri gets rid of him and he reigns for 12 years in partnership, and another 12 years in his new capital , which he builds to replace Tirzah. Omri lived for 12 years, ruled for 12 years, and Omri was succeeded by a man called Ahab, ahk-hav, Ahab, the man who married Jezebel, the idolatrous Phoenician princess who casts a malevolent shadow over the history of the north and the history of the south because her daughter is going to marry into the southern kingdom and cause havoc there.

But let me concentrate just for a little on the character of Ahab. And the idea has to be reiterated that all the kings of the north were idolatrous. What was different about Ahab is that he had a wife who was a proselytes. It was common to have lots of different gods in those days, but she is the first one who insists that Baal, the prophets of Baal, are the dominant ones and they should get rid of anybody who refuses to accept their authority. So you have this first missionary activity going on. It’s interesting that the policy of Judea was not to necessarily get rid of idolaters. If you remember, King Solomon was quite happy for some of his wives to have their own worship, practise religion, evenly build their own little temples. So whereas the Judean tradition was, if you like, tolerant of other religions so long as you abide by the law of the land, it’s in the reign of Ahab that we suddenly get this desire to convert. And whenever you get this passion to convert, in my opinion, you are always storing up difficulty for yourself in the long run. And so at this moment with Jezebel in charge, and with Jezebel killing as many God-fearing people as she can, we are introduced to the prophet Elijah. Elijah, the prophet, is going to stand up to this man and see if it is possible somehow or other to save the northern kingdom. Now one of the interesting features of this whole period that I’ve already indicated is what do we mean by a prophet? And if you look at the book of Deuteronomy, you will see that the book of Deuteronomy says, chapter 13, “If somebody arises and says, 'I’m a prophet and I can give a sign, and a sign can come from God that I am right.’ And if that prophet’s message is that you should abandon the tradition of Moses, you must not listen to that prophet.”

So it’s very clear that what we mean by a prophet in the Bible is somebody who tries to reinforce the Mosaic tradition. Other people are mentioned as a prophet. Miriam is mentioned as a prophetess, and is a prophetess because she has an impact on people. The women come out and join her dancing and singing. Abraham is described as a prophet because he, too, has an impact. So the idea of a prophet is somebody who has an impact, and based on the idea that whoever is the temporal ruler has to come under the control of the prophet himself. The question that people often ask, therefore, is, “Why did prophecy virtually end with the destruction of the two kingdoms?” There were a few prophets, remnants of them in Babylon, but by and large it ends with exile. Does this mean that prophecy is something linked to the land of Israel? And if you’re not in the land of Israel then it’s not applicable? But on the other hand, we know that the prophets were preaching to the non-Jewish world. We’ll come to that in due course. So it can’t just have been that. It seems that the ability to reach out across the divide of the people on a popular level is what they were really about. And therefore when the populations were eventually dispersed, that capacity seems to have dispersed.

And so the exile of the people from the land was also the end of the concept of a prophet. And as the Talmud says, since that period, what we call prophecy is left to children and fools. But this does seem to be a question of personal charisma that these people had. And it’s interesting because here we have examples of people with personal charisma who were magnificent, and upstanding, and moral, and unfortunately since then so much of charisma is destructive. But at the same time we are going to encounter parallel with them, false prophets who also claim they’re speaking in the name of God. And interestingly enough, in the north, these prophets also claim to be speaking about the God of the south. And this is the message that Elijah is going to come to bring to Ahab’s kingdom. And as you know, the famous trial took place. Elijah was pursued by Ahab and Jezebel who tried to kill him. He fled. He fled to caves to the north, to the south. He was constantly on the run. He was miraculously surviving, but he was constantly being harried. And eventually he managed to meet Ahab, or at least came into contact with him, and he said, “Let’s have a challenge, a challenge between the prophets of Baal to see if you’re right, and the prophets of Israel, namely me, to see if I’m right.” And that led to the famous test on Mount Carmel. Wherever Mount Carmel was, there are several locations for it in the Bible, not necessarily where Mount Carmel is today, but this is where this trial took place. And it’s this test between the two systems of worship that is the point at which I’m going to end today and move on to questions and take up next time we get round to our session. And so now I am going to scoot out of this and go on to the stop sharing and see if I can start with the questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Jennifer, “Thank you very much.”

Elliot, “I was blessed to have learned about your class recently. I appreciate your thought.” Thank you very, that’s really nice. But you’ve got two questions.

Q: “Have you read Bloom’s books, the book of Jeremiah, who’s my wife’s cousin? Would you consider giving a class on Kehillat? I think that’s a very highly controversial, little known, controversial. Please continue to bless us.”

A: Two answers. One of them, I haven’t read Harold Bloom on the Bible. On other things, yes, but not on the Bible or on Jewish subjects. And I’d be delighted to give a on Kehillat, Ecclesiastes, which is the book of wisdom, which in due course is on my agenda to come to.

Q: “Would you be able to download your chart so we can print it off?”

A: Well if you will email me, I’ll send it to you, jeremyrosen@msn.com, and I’ll send it to anybody who asks. I’m not certain how to download the chart. If I had that expertise, I would do it. Maybe, you know what I’ll do? Maybe I’ll ask Lauren if she will do it afterwards and be able to send it out.

Q: “Which Egyptian sources, I’ve heard that there was no reference to Israelites whatever.”

A: Yes, there is a reference to , referring to the destruction of Israel. I’ve got it on the book at my side. I don’t have it available, but I will if you, again, if you email me, I will send you the reference and I’ll send you the books where I get it from.

So Rosenberg, “We’re going to get a copy of this page.” Ah, well I’m going to get it sent out. Hopefully Lauren will be able to send it out maybe for next time.

Q: Sue Freeman, “How did the kingdom in the south originate? Why was the kingdom of the south got its title?”

A: I think I dealt with that in the course of the lectures.

Q: “Where did each of the 12 tribes end up according to legend and history?”

A: Well, we will go into this later on, but essentially the 10, the northern kingdom, the northern kingdom was totally destroyed by the Syrians, Assyrians in 722. And it was the policy of the Assyrians to scatter the tribes they conquered and spread them all out across the massive Assyrian empire, which covered Assyria, Iraq, Persia to this day. And so the 10 northern tribes ended up there, and they were replaced by other people brought from other parts of the empire to replace them who became known as the Samaritans, because the north, the capital was Samaria and those who lived in the north were Samaritans. And there’s a whole question about were they half Jews, whole Jews, what were they? And we’re going to deal with that when we deal with the end of the northern kingdom, which will come next session. But the 10 tribes were scattered into this empire. Some of them probably got as far as Afghanistan, maybe even further into China. And some of them stayed in the area. And by tradition we know, we are told that they were lost. But they were not lost because we also know that many of them turned up in Babylon when the Judeans were sent into exile in Babylon. And because the Babylons had a different policy of allowing people they conquer to stick together, and so they created a community, they merged back into the community. And again, I’ll bring you evidence for that next time we talk. So I don’t believe they are completely lost, any more than half of those Jews today who assimilate are called the lost Jews. They’re not. They’re just Jews who assimilated.

“Email copy of the dates.” Yes. “Please add detail footnotes for the king’s table. First mention story elaborated. Done a history of this table. Reference books ”

Okay, I’ll try and produce some reference books for you. Let me just here. Here’s an example of a very good book that I hope you could see, which you can readily buy. It’s called “The Time Chart History of Jewish Civilization.” And it doesn’t only cover the… It goes right through from beginning to end, but it does cover this early period. So I would recommend you looking at this book, see if you can get ahold of it, and this will provide a great resource for everything. So with, rah-ha-vam, Jeroboam, no relation at all. Rah-ha-vam, Rehoboam, and veer-ah-vam, rah-ha-vam and veer-ah-vam were no relation. So many names, Hebrew names, are similar all the time. And we’re going to have cases of kings in the south having the same name as Kings in the north and vice versa.

Alan Gans, “I took a screenshot of it.” Oh, thank you Alan. Am I going to do that? “Actually if you just share the chart again, we can focus it.” Okay, so let me, shall I share it again? Let’s me do this. Let me share this again, and let me open it up wide and hopefully you can see that. Can you all see that? I hope you can see that. It’s there. So having shown you that, let me go back to my stop share and go back here to continue with the questions.

“Repeat the name of Nadab. I know somebody of that name.” Yes, yes. There are lots of people. These names are very, Omri, Zimri, Nadab, Avi, all of them are very, very popular names in Israel today.

Q: “Was the split,” Robert asks, “the kingdom of Solomon to the north and south because the refusal to alleviate Solomon’s tax policy.”

A: In theory, yes. In theory and it is very similar to the United States, but it also indicates, as in the United States, there were rival states, rival communities. And so the Jews were never united. People think, “Oh well the good old days when we were united.” We were never united. We were always tribal, or if not tribal, communally, rivalry, it’s always been there.

Esther, “You could ask them for a copy of this lecture if you go to a head office and ask.” So I will mail you the list. I mentioned the wall between the north.

Q: “Can you describe the geographical location?”

A: We don’t know the exact geographical location. All we’re given is the name of a place in the Bible where these fortresses were actually placed. And if I can just quickly check where the name of the place was, which I have, actually happen to have in front of me, where he built this wall. Um, um hmm, I thought I had it in front of me at this moment, but I can’t see it. So let me have another look, and where it was. No, I don’t have it at the moment. I thought I did, I thought I put it down. But you see how unreliable my memory is, I’m sorry. It’s in the Bible and it will be in the Bible in the book of Kings, and it’ll be in the Bible in the book of Kings roundabout, sorry… No, no I didn’t mention the fort. I’ve got the fort but I didn’t go its name here handy, in chapter 15 of the book of Kings. So the geographic location of the two kingdoms is Judea was Jerusalem south to Be'er Sheva, south to Be'er Sheva from the Dead Sea. That’s from like say the Sudan and Amorite, the Dead Sea, roughly towards the coastal plane where Tel Aviv is today, which was inhabited by the Philistines. So it was a hill country where south of Jerusalem. The northern kingdom was north of Jerusalem where we call Samaria today. So Judea and Samaria in Israel are the locations of the two different kingdoms. Let’s go on. You’ve got that book. I’m glad you’ve got it, Carla got it. Fairly good shot the . That’s also true. has a very good chart.

Q: “Was Jewishness passed on by wives at this time? And if so, what these kings foreign wives, non-Jewish wives?”

A: Judaism was passed on on two levels. The tribes were always descended from the male. So male like male aristocracy and the royal families of Europe and elsewhere tended to be a male thing. But in those days what was common was that if you went to live in a foreign country, you adopted the religion of the foreign country. Interestingly, the wives of Solomon didn’t do that and so they didn’t convert, although some people would like to say he did, but it doesn’t make sense if they were still worshipping idols. On the other hand, we know from the Bible that having a Israelite woman made you an Israelite, ‘cause we have the story of the son of an Israelite woman and an Egyptian oppressor in slavery who was part of the Israelites. So it was a kind of a dual system. But in those days you adopted the citizenship, so to speak, of the country you were living in.

Thank you, Irma. “The border between the north and the south.” Well let’s say just north of Jerusalem on the way to Ramallah. So you might say Ramallah is the other side of the wall.

Q: “How historically accurate is the Bible?”

A: Look, it’s impossible to say how historically accurate it is because it demeans what, it depends what you mean by historically accurate. After all, you’ve got so many different opinions throughout history of all kinds of historical events. Why did Alexander the Great lose his battle? Where is Alexander the Great’s throne or tomb, or why have we no record of it? All kinds of issues like this are open because we have to go back and see if we can find archaeological evidence. And even archaeological evidence is so contradictory. It’s very, very difficult to know. All I can say is that without doubt, the background attenuate rings true. All the details of the type of life they lived, the type of situation, who were the major powers in that time? What were the major battles in that time? Who were some of the great kings of that time? We have a lot of information. Now, I don’t think history necessarily is the only criteria. It’s a criteria. Just as in literature there are so many different ways of understanding texts and what they mean. So I believe that increasingly we’re finding very little contradiction in what we discover that contradicts the broad picture of the Bible. We can argue then, shall we say about numbers. Do you literally mean 40 years, or does 40 years mean, if you like, a general number?

How big was the army? Everybody exaggerates armies. The Egyptians exaggerated their armies. The Hittites exaggerated their armies. So, you know, there are many aspects of it we don’t know. So I cannot say that it is proven historically and accurately. In America, we have the history channel where regularly they like to have these programmes that prove that this is where Moses led them across the Red Sea 'cause we found some chariots there. Well, this proves that, or proves where Sinai is, or proves the other. None of these things prove anything. It’s all a matter of conjecture. But the Bible for us is a source of wisdom, a source of culture, a source of religious inspiration. And ironically the inspiration is that human beings are a messy bunch and we mess up all the time. We are not perfect. Nobody’s perfect, no king, no leader, nothing. There isn’t such a thing as a saint. And therefore the Bible in a sense is encouraging us to try to be better and not to give up however many times we get knocked down because of our own incapacity to make the right decisions. But all the time this incapacity has led us to make the wrong decisions as we’re going to see next time.

My email address, jeremyrosen, that should be easy enough, @msn.com. MSN, strikes the Microsoft network, or as I like to say it stands for, stands for , MSN.

Q: “Have you intention of visiting your country, Jerusalem in the near future?”

A: Look, I’ve got six grandchildren in Jerusalem. All my siblings are in Jerusalem. I can’t wait to get back to Jerusalem, but I ain’t going to budge until I think it’s safe. But hopefully I will be in the not-too-near future. Before Corona, I used to come at least once a year and hopefully I’ll be coming back again. So on that happy note, I will end and hope to see you next time.