IF DAVID HAD N O T CLIMBED THE MOUNT OF OLIVES

THOMAS L. THOMPSON
University of Copenhagen

Virtual History as Historical Method

While Eduard Meyer long ago warned us of the slippery virtu-
ality of the Bible's historical slopes,1 and Kurt Galling distinguished
for us historical event from tradition variant,2 Otto Eissfeldt's
historicizing revision of Gunkel's Gattungsgeschichte has been nev­
ertheless successful in turning biblical narrative into a virtual cor­
nucopia of historical scenarios. 3 Biblical narratives were, he
claimed, storied events: a fictionalized past with roots in a real past
and a real history that could be uncovered through a proper
understanding of the history and growth of these traditions.4 Bible
historians needed not fear unemployment. And so indeed it was
... for nearly a half century.
However, if Joshua's assembly of the tribes of Israel at Shechem
offered a distant echo of history's sacred amphictyony creating
Israel as a people of Yahweh,5 Genesis's origin story of Israel in

1
E. Meyer, Die Entstehung des Judentums (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1906), pp. 130-
31.
2
Κ. Galling, Die Erwählungstraditionen Israels (BZAW, 48; Berlin: Alfred
Töpelmann, 1928), pp. 1-2.
3
I am thinking here especially of his contribution to the Gunkel Festschrift:
O. Eissfeldt, 'Stammessage und Novelle in den Geschichten von Jakob und seinen
Söhnen', Eucharisterion: H. Gunkel zum 60. Geburtstag, I (Berlin: Alfred Töpelmann,
1923), pp. 56-77; but see also his revisions of this thesis: Eissfeldt, 'Achronische,
anachronische und synchronische Elemente in der Genesis', JEOL 17 (1963), pp.
148-64; Eissfeldt, 'Stammessage und Menschheitserzählung in der Genesis',
Sitzungsberichte der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaft zu Leipzig, (Phil-hist. kl.
Bd 110, 4; Universität Leipzig, Leipzig, 1965), pp. 5-21.
4
Here, see esp. Eissfeldt, 'Stammessage und Menschheitserzählung', follow-
ing, above all, Martin Noth's revision and synthesis of Wellhausen and Gunkel
(M. Noth, Überlieferungsgeschichte des Pentateuch [Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1948]);
see also G. von Rad, Das formgeschichtliche Problem des Hexateuch (Stuttgart: W.
Kohlhammer, 1938).
5
M. Noth, Das System der zwölf Stämme Israels (BWANT, IV/1; Stuttgart: W.
Kohlhammer, 1930); Noth, 'Überlieferungsgeschichtliches zur zweiten Hälfte des
Joshuabuches', in H.Junker and J. Botterweck (eds.), Alttestamentliches Studien:
Friederich Nötscher zum sechsigen Geburtstag 19 Juli 1950 (BBB, 1; Bonn: Peter
Hannstein, 1950), pp. 152-67. On the literary and unhistorical characteristics of

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2000 Biblical Interpretation 8, 1/2

 IF DAVID HAD NOT CLIMBED THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 43

the familiar triad of the patriarchal narratives became, historically,

both redundant and unnecessary, understandable merely as a leg-
endary etiological expansion of Israel's original tribal rootedness
in the early West Semitic migrations.6 The peaceful migration of
Judges could then replace the conquering heroes of Joshua's early
chapters, and an original Mosaic monotheism might far better be
associated with Protestantism's prophetic forebearers. Moses was
no longer necessary, nor as important as he had been in a recon-
struction of ancient Israelite history. The tribal amphictyony under
Joshua not only rendered Moses expendable but incompatible as
an historical explanation of Israel's origins.7
The conservative side of the debate about Israel's origins was
far less rational, complicated as it was both by its point of de-
parture in the broad field of comparative ancient Near Eastern
studies and by its positivistic, if not fundamentalistic, orientation
towards biblical narrative.8 This latter issue is far more important
than has often been recognized, as it has encouraged historians
to ignore one of the most important aspects of reading texts his-
torically; namely, to understand the anachronic: the meaning of
documents which are not addressed to us.9 So, Gustav Dalman
could use his immense anthropological experience in Palestine to
recreate a virtual world of the Bible.10 This 'orientalist', romantic
understanding of the primitive is a denial of the historical, trans-
posing as it does the past with the present. William Albright, on
the other hand, followed a more realist bent, seeking to confirm
the reality of the past through its remnants.11 However, his depen-

the amphictyony, see most recently N.P. Lemche, The Israelites in History and
Tradition (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1998), pp. 104-107.
6
M. Noth, 'Zum Problem der Ostkanaanäer', ZA 39 (1930), pp. 213-22; Noth,
Geschichte Israeh (Gôttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2nd edn, 1954); Noth,
Der Beitrag der Archäologie zur Geschichte Israels (VTS, 7; Leiden: Brill, 1960), pp.
262-82; Noth, Die Ursprünge des alten Israel im Lichte neuer Quellen (Stuttgart: W.
Kohlhammer, 1960).
7
Noth, Geschichte Israels, p.128; cf. also Lemche, The Israelites, pp. 138-41.
8
See T.L. Thompson, The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives (BZAW, 133;
Berlin: de Gruyter, 1974), pp. 6-9, 52-57, 315-16.
9
Thompson, Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives, p. 328; Thompson, 'Das
alte Testament als theologische Disziplin', in Religionsgeschichte Israels oder Theologie
des alten Testaments (JBTh, 10; Neukirchen: Neukirchner Verlag, 1995), pp. 157-
73.
10
G. Dalman, Arbeit und Sitte in Palästina I-VII (Gütersloh: Deutsche Palästina
Verein, repr. 1964).
11
See esp. W.F. Albright, History, Archeology, and Christian Humanism (Balti-
more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1964).
44 THOMAS L. THOMPSON

dence on narrative led him to champion one virtual history after

the other, whose acceptance was dependent—like most fiction—
not on evidence but on his constructs plausibility.12
For nearly two generations, Old Testament studies oscillated un-
certainly between two alternative virtual histories. The Bible was
read according to one's choice. I find it interesting that this im-
passe was finally broken when George Mendenhall offered what
was at heart a theological compromise. 13 Moses, who had been
dismissed by Noth and was nearly invisible in the archaeologically
oriented constructs of Albright, was reinstated, along with mono-
theism, as the original spring from which Israel's history flowed.
Alt and Noth's centuries-long peaceful immigration and
sedentarization of nomads and Bright and Albright's invading
conquerors inaugurating the Iron Age were synthesized by a ser-
mon to Palestine's peasants about freedom from slavery. Already
in 1967, Manfred Weippert, in his decisive critique of the conquest
theory, understood well both the attraction and plausibility of
Mendenhall's scenario, even as he remained faithful to Alt and
Noth's option.14 Although Norman Gottwald's support of Menden-
hall's hypothesis of a peasant rebellion with analogous models
drawn from the libraries of American sociology and a Vietnam-
era reading of the Bible in terms of 'liberation theology'15 gave
this scenario the form of historical reconstructions common to the
field, the border between historical argument and narrative virtu-
ality had been crossed. History's intrinsic intolerance for narra-
tive variants, once engaged, led to rapid deconstruction. Neither
Niels Peter Lemche's, Israel Finkelstein's nor this writer's short-
lived efforts to offer evolutionary models for Israel's origin16 could

12
Here, most notoriously, W.F. Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan (Lon-
don: Athlone Press, 1968); cf. T.L. Thompson, 'Review of W.F. Albright, Yahweh
and the Gods of Canaan\ CBQ 32 (1970), pp. 251-16; M. Weippert, 'Abraham der
Hebräer? Bemerkungen zu W.F. Albrights Deutung der Väter Israels', Biblica 52
(1971), pp. 407-32.
13
G.E. Mendenhall, 'The Hebrew Conquest of Palestine', ΒΑ 25 (1962), pp.
66-87; see also Mendenhall, 'Between Theology and Archeology', JSOT 7 (1978),
pp. 28-34.
14
M. Weippert, Die Landnahme der israelitischen Stämme in der neueren
wissenschaftlichen diskussion (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967).
15
N.K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated
Israel 1250-1050 BCE (Maryknoll, NY: Maryknoll Press, 1979); for a systematic
critique, cf. N.P. Lemche, Early Israel (Leiden: Brill, 1985); also T.L. Thompson,
The Early History of the Israelite People, (SHANE, 4; Leiden: Brill, 1992), pp. 50-76.
16
Here, one must refer to N.P. Lemche, Det gamie Israel (Ârhus: Anis, 1984),
 IF DAVID HAD NOT CLIMBED THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 45

shore up historical criticism's grand project. That we were deal-

ing in virtual history had become obvious, and the suspension of
belief we had freely granted our biblical scenarios no longer held.
Two of the guidelines of historical methodology in biblical stud-
ies have been (a) events are singular and (b) those of the past
that we are aware of are the ones we need for our histories. This
not only allows us to define data as evidence, it also allows us to
assert that the events of the past we imagine on the basis of this
evidence in fact happened. The sense that we make of our world's
relationship to biblical traditions, the importance of such guide-
lines even as we now begin to doubt them, will, I hope, become
clearer as we explore the literary events of our texts.
The awareness of the historicization of our traditions that has
been encouraged by Eissfeldt's and Noth's rationalizing para-
phrases, as well as of the politicization of both archeology and
history today, has increased our sensitivity to the relative charac-
ter of the histories of the past we have chosen to create.17 What
we have written as a history of Israel has been more a theological
product for an increasingly secularized world than it is the Bible's
history. We might well ask why it is that as soon as we find any-
thing at all that might be identified as evidence supporting a con-
firmation of the possible existence of a central biblical hero—and
here I am thinking of the bytdwd in the inscription from Tel Dan18
and the d(i?)w3t of the Karnak inscription—we begin to read the

published in English as Ancient Israel (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1988);

see now, however, The Israelites; see also I. Finkelstein, The Archeology of the Isra-
elite Settlement (Jerusalem: IES, 1988), now also Finkelstein, 'The Archeology of
the United Monarchy: An Alternative View', Levant 28 (1996), pp. 177-87; and
T.L. Thompson, The Early History of the Israelite People: From the Written and Ar-
chaeological Sources (Leiden: Brill, 1992); see now, however, Thompson, The Bible
in History: How Writers Create a Past (London: Jonathan Cape, 1999), published in
the USA as The Mythic Past: Biblical Archeology and the Myth of Israel (New York:
Basic Books, 1999).
17
Already J.M. Sasson, 'On Choosing Models for Recreating Israelite Pre-
Monarchic History', JSOT 21 (1981), pp. 13-24; cf. also B. Long, Planting and
Reaping Albright: Politics, Ideology, and Interpreting the Bible (Pennsylvania: Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1997).
18
A. Biran and J. Naveh, 'An Aramaic Fragment from Tel Dan', ŒJ 43 (1993),
pp. 81-98; also Biran and Naveh, 'The Tel Dan Inscription: A New Fragment', IEJ
45 (1995), pp. 1-18; T.L. Thompson, '"House of David": an Eponymic Referent to
Yahweh as Godfather', SJ0T9 (1995), pp. 59-74; Thompson, 'Dissonance and Dis-
connections: Notes on the bytdwd and the hmlk.hdd Fragments from Tel Dan',
SJOT9 (1995), pp. 236-40.
46 THOMAS L. THOMPSON

Bible historically.19 Whether or not such confirmations are valid,

they add litde to our history and nothing to our understanding of
the historicity or function of our biblical narratives. There never
has been any debate about whether the Old Testament reflected
the past. The recent debates have rather been about whether the
biblical narratives were in any way historical accounts of the past,
or whether they could be used as part of our account of that past.
The debate has been about history and about how our historical
perspectives have changed our perception of the Bible. It is as if
we stop being critical and resort to the fundamentalism of our
childhood that history might not corrupt our faith. We close our­
selves within the biblical story and avoid all the necessary exegeti-
cal and historical questions which might resolve the debate
through changes in our understanding of the narrative's context,
function and goal. By trying to defend what is called 'the Bible's
view of its past', we have ignored the literary questions that give
us access to the text's implicit voice expressing that view.
The question also needs to be asked: Is virtual history all that
biblical studies ever had? In asking this question now, we are with­
out irony's self-conscious safeguard of knowing what a history of
the real past might look like, a saving grace that supports any
delight over the exposure of our historiography's pretension.
These virtual histories of Israel have been, as Keith Whitelam has
argued, 20 narcissistic mirrors of our own ideologies, politics and
theology, and substantially arbitrary histories at that. That they
have been written as alternatives to history is a question that
Whitelam's work forces us to ask. Here, the exercise of this vol­
ume might well help us in understanding the history we have cre­
ated. Let us choose reflectively virtual histories that we might play
with such themes as evidence and causality, including the
historian's ideal that such causality proceeds in chains. Let us check
the firmness of the linkage and let us refuse to censor our story­
tellers' variants.

19
K.A. Kitchen, Ά Possible Mention of David in the Late Tenth Century BCE,
and Deity *Dod as Dead as the Dodo?',/SOT 76 (1997), pp. 29-44.
20
K.W. Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian
History (London: Routledge, 1996).
 IF DAVID HAD NOT CLIMBED THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 47

If David Had Not Climbed the Mount of Olives, What Then?

As a historical question, of course, this one is nonsense. A his-
torian doesn't ask that kind of question. The historical questions
are, Did he climb the mountain or not? And was it the Mount
of Olives? When did he climb it? And did he ever come down?21
Nevertheless, our question is asked about a story in the Bible (2
Sam. 15), and we might suspend for a moment any domain as-
sumption that the question is a historical one. After all, our
modernist's faith in historical necessity has already destroyed more
than a little of the Bible's theology. Even more to the point, sto-
ries and literature of all kinds ask such questions at every turn.
'What if is the guiding light of philosophical discourse through
narrative. This question is asked implicitly, for example, by Mat-
thew: 'Do not presume to say to yourselves, "We have Abraham
for our father". I tell you that God can make children out of these
stones here' (Matt. 3:9). There is nothing irrational about the
question in this context. God, it is implied, is the lord of history.
Matthew well understands that Abraham and the children his wives
bore to him lived in a virtual history, whose arbiter was the di-
vine. It is in Matthew's spirit that I ask my question.
If one wishes to convert the Bible's theological discourse into
historical discourse, virtual history is the product of choice. We
engage ourselves in the exploration of a literary world—past as it
is—and we become thereby dependent on the strength of our
imaginative grasp of the world created by the literature we ex-
plore. It is important to recognize that such a world breaks down—
as it has been breaking down since the Enlightenment—as soon
as our sense of the reality of the past departs substantially from
this constructed world. In a world nurtured by historicism, it is
hardly surprising that the stories of Adam and Eve and of the great
flood, of the tower of Babel and of Sodom and Gomorrah were
the most vulnerable and the first lost to our historical imagina-
tions. It was not because they were either preposterous or im-
possible. Our imaginations failed us. Charles Darwin's Origin of
Species of 1859 combined fatally with the discovery and translations
of the Bible-like tales of Gilgamesh (1850) and the Enuma Elish
(1876). Though my history of science tells me otherwise, I believe

21
The implicit allusion of my questions to Moses and the mountains he climbed
is intentional.
48 THOMAS L. THOMPSON

that the discovery of these literary variants were the most decisive
in undermining the worldview (or imagination) which had ren-
dered the historicity of the Bible's stories plausible. The analogous
and virtual character of literature stands categorically opposed to
the singularity of historical events. This was so precisely the cen-
tral issue in biblical studies that almost the entirety of critical schol-
arship was exercised throughout the nineteenth century with the
problems of variability of motifs and stories: a crisis which was
ultimately resolved historically with the Graf-Wellhausen 'documen-
tary hypothesis', the foundation for historiography in the field ever
since. Historical faith can not tolerate the fertile profligacy of more
literary commitments. Historical possibility is singular. Two can
be debated. A third exposes the literary motives of the tradition.
One can, for example, entertain the defeat of the Jebusites in
Jerusalem by David as potentially historical only by excluding from
consideration the conquest of the Canaanites by Judah or of the
Amori tes of the city by Joshua. One hardly wishes to entertain the
question of whether David was in a cave or a valley with Saul, or
whether Jesus was on a mountain or in a plain with his sermon.
And if one does, the understanding which awaits us is more theo-
logical than historical. There is also a technique of variation in
our biblical narrative where one tradition draws from another and
places its story through citation and allusion into conversation with
its predecessor. This is the type of exegetical process by which Paul
can speak of Jesus as the 'new Adam'. In another manner, Mark
links Jesus with Elijah and Moses in a vision of those who, like
Enoch, 'walk with God'. With yet another form, Luke links his
story of Jesus' birth, illustrating 1 Samuel's song of Hannah. Just
so, stories about Jesus often portray him in images drawn from
David. Such ancient exercises in virtual history are well known to
us. It is this kind of literary technique and motif I would like to
explore in my own effort at virtual history, beginning in a read-
ing of David on the Mount of Olives.22
The greater story line to which the story of David on the Mount

22
The roots of the story of David on the Mount of Olives, as it is now pre-
sented in 2 Sam. 15, involve several central themes of biblical composition. These
I have discussed in greater detail elsewhere and limit my discussion here to the
briefest of comments. For a further discussion of David's role in Bible stories, see
T.L. Thompson, 'Historie og teologi i overskrifterne til Davids salmer', Collegium
Biblicum krsskrift 1997 (Ârhus: Collegium Biblicum, 1997), pp. 88-102; Thompson,
The Bible in History, pp. 21-22, pp. 70-71.
 IF DAVID HAD NOT CLIMBED THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 49

of Olives in 2 Samuel 15 provides a climax might be seen to begin

already in the scene at the very beginning of 1 Samuel, in which
Hannah, like Sarah before her, is barren (1 Sam. 1:2). In her great
grief she prays to Yahweh in the temple (v. 10). Her prayer is so
intense that Eli the priest believes her to be a drunk and scolds
her. Hannah, in defense of her integrity, offers a paraphrase of a
psalm of David, Ps. 42:5-7, 12 (1 Sam. 1:15). In acknowledgement
that it is a divine spirit that has possessed her, Eli prophesies that
her prayer will be heard. It is Eli as prophet that Hannah ad-
dresses when she closes the scene with: 'May your servant find
grace in your eyes' (1 Sam. 1:18), a prayer which many of Luke's
manuscripts find answered in Gabriel's address to Mary in
Nazareth (Luke 1:28). In Samuel, the prayer is one expressive of
Hannah's humility in prayer. Hannah has prayed for a child; now
she prayers for the grace that God wishes her, a thematic contrast
which forms a leitmotif in 1 Samuel 1-2. When the child is born
she calls him Samuel. Why? Because 'she prayed (she'iltiv) to
Yahweh for him' (1 Sam. 1:20). In form, this is, of course, a clas-
sic naming etiology, belonging to the traditional patterned scene
of 'the birth of a saviour'.23 The cryptic pesher of the word play,
however, renders the answer to her prayer 'in God's eyes'. In the
Hannah story, the child's name Shemu'el, 'the divine name', is
bound inextricably with the fulfilment of her prayer, which, as we
remember was, in her eyes, to take away the shame and humilia-
tion she had shared with Rachel (1 Sam. 1:6, 11; cf. Gen. 30:23).
The answer to her prayer, the grace which she was to receive, was
to be 'grace in God's eyes'. And so Hannah returns to the moun-
tain of God to pray (1 Sam. 1:24-28). Here Hannah epitomizes
piety. She is 'the woman who stood (there in the temple) and
prayed to Yahweh' (1:27). She prayed (she'elati) for this child and
God gave her what she prayed for (sha'alti). Now she offers
(hish'iltihu) the child to God. All his days he is dedicated (sha'ul)
to God.
The story is a story about prayer. The events of this world are
events which are seen only by a mirror's refraction. Not Saul, but
Samuel is the grace which in God's eyes is given to Hannah to take

23
Cf. the table of this traditional narrative pattern in D. Irvin, Mytharion
(AOAT, 32; Neukirchen: Neukirchner Verlag, 1978). See also, B.O. Long, The
Problem of Etiological Narrative in the Old Testament (BZAW, 108; Berlin: de Gruyter,
1968).
50 THOMAS L. THOMPSON

away her shame. In the transcendent perspective of the divine,

Hannah prays for all of Israel, for all humanity and for the shame
to be removed, as an answer to her prayer is glimpsed in the birth
of yet another child, in 1 Sam. 4:21: Ichabod, Eli's grandson who
was marked with the shame Çi-kabod) of Israel's loss of the divine
kabod, when God's name no longer dwelled in Israel. It is in
Hannah's Son Shemu'el that an understanding of grace, as God sees
it, can be understood. It is in names that human destiny is estab-
lished (a historical necessity and causality which has ever been the
envy of the historian). This is the beginning of the Saul story in
God's eyes: to re-establish God's kabod in Israel. This scene estab-
lishes a plot tension within the narrative which is not resolved until
2 Samuel 6-7, when David brings the ark back to Zion and Yahweh
establishes David's house forever (le-'olam, 2 Sam. 7:29) that the
children of Israel might be established as God's eternal people (ad
'olam, 2 Sam. 7:24) and Yahweh as their God.24 It is in this implicit
author's voice that Hannah's universal and cosmic psalm of salva-
tion is to be read, and with it the whole of 1 and 2 Samuel within
the context of this song, which is reiterated at its closure in 2
Samuel 22: There is no rock like our God' (1 Sam. 2:2); 'Yahweh
is my rock, my fortress, my salvation' (2 Sam. 22:2). It is also
Yahweh, Hannah sings (in yet another variation of this wordplay,
Saul and David's destiny are wrapped within a cryptic allusion to
the theme of birth and salvation), who is the one who both 'brings
one down to Hades (she'ol) and raises one up' (1 Sam. 2:6; 2 Sam.
22:6).
The story in 1 Samuel turns again to this theme in the story of
Samuel's call in 1 Sam. 3:1-19. At the close of this scene Eli inter-
prets the mysterious voice which has called Samuel from his sleep
in a time in which God is silent:25 'He is Yahweh: he does what is
good in his own eyes!' This definition of Yahweh as Israel's pa-
tron that introduces the complex chain of narratives in 1 and 2
Samuel can already be seen in Genesis 1 in the set reiteration of
the refrain: 'And God saw that χ was good', especially as it stands
in contrast to the woman of Gen. 3:6 (made in God's image, Gen.

24
This is well understood by Luke 1:25 as once again the birth of a child
removes Israel's shame (I wish to thank I. Hjelm for pointing out the importance
of the Ichabod tale in reference to the Hannah and Elizabeth stories).
25
So, in the introduction to the story in 3:1, there is a situation of grave
threat comparable to Jerusalem just before the fall (Lam. 2:9); also a day of hope
and truth in which the pious hunger for Yahweh's silent voice (Amos 8:3; so in 1
Kgs 19:12b).
 IF DAVID HAD NOT CLIMBED THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 51

1:26) who 'sees the tree as good' and so eats of it, and establishes
the universal chain of narratives in Genesis 1-11 about the divine
and the human in conflict over their contrary views of the good.
1 and 2 Samuel bring this patron-client conflict into explicit fo-
cus. So, for example, the bridge narratives linking Judges 1-16 with
the books of Samuel is historiographically structured in evil times
'when there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what he saw to
be good' (Judg. 17:6; 18:1; 19:1; 21:25). In the implied voice of
this greater story, the role of Yahweh's messianic king is illustrated
by David's role in 2 Samuel 22 as piety's epitome of the fear of
God:26 to do not as he himself wishes, but to be a true king and
'ebed Yahweh, to do what in God's eyes is good. Only so can the
children of Israel survive as the people of God.
That it is Yahweh who controls events in this world, 'brings down
to Hades and raises one up in life', provides a paired motif in 1
and 2 Samuel: the eternal covenant by Yahweh's choice, which is
used to illustrate Hannah's song of Yahweh's power over life and
death. Eli and his house, with whom Yahweh had made an eter-
nal covenant (ad 'olam, 1 Sam. 2:30), however, is rejected. The rea-
son for the rejection? Because Eli had honoured his sons more
than God (1 Sam. 2:29). In his place, Yahweh's chosen will be 'a
true priest' (kohen ne'eman) and for him Yahweh will build up a
house of truth (bayit ne'eman) so that he will walk before his mes-
siah forever (kol hayyamim: 1 Sam. 2:35). But, of course, Samuel's
sons too, in a doublet of the Eli tale, also fail the test of the kohen
ne'eman (1 Sam. 8:3), and Israel's destiny passes to Saul.
Already in the very request for and choice of Saul as king, the
story begins to collect portents of disaster. The scene of Israel
asking for a king is a deft reiteration of the wilderness murmur-
ing tradition. In 'Samuel's eyes' (1 Sam. 8:6) this was wrong. As
in the Moses story, however, human evil is not taken very seriously
by the Lord of history (Gen. 50:19-20); the people's rejection is
not of Samuel but of Yahweh. When Samuel prays to Yahweh to
send thunder and rain because of this demand for a king that
Yahweh 'sees' as 'evil'(l Sam. 12:17), Yahweh sends the storm. The
people, then, beg Samuel to pray to Yahweh for them that they
not die for their evil in asking for (lish'ol) a king (1 Sam. 12:19)!

26
The role of David as piety's 'everyman' is discussed in some detail in T.L.
Thompson, 'Historie og teologi'; cf. also Thompson, 'Metaphors of Eternal Life:
Resurrection Motifs in the Psalter', forthcoming.
52 THOMAS L. THOMPSON

In closing this variant of the golden calf story, the narrative voice,
having raised this forward looking spectre of Saul, reminds the
audience of Yahweh's power over life and death. Samuel prom-
ises to show them the good and right way. They must serve Yahweh
'with their whole heart' and not follow after gods of emptiness. If
however, they do evil, they and their king will die (1 Sam. 12:20-
25).
One is hardly surprised that Saul's inaugural saving deed as
Yahweh's messiah and Israel's king in 1 Samuel 13 ends in disas-
ter. Saul's perspective is set in contrast to Yahweh's demand for
unwavering obedience. Saul's great lesson is put bluntly as Samuel
declaims, 'Whereas you have not obeyed the command Yahweh
your God has given you, and whereas at this time (ki 'atah) Yahweh
has established your kingdom over Israel ad 'olam, now (we-'atah)
your kingdom will not stand. And, Yahweh now will choose a king
'after his own heart' (1 Sam. 13:13-14). Here the narrative offers
a lightly cryptic allusion to David (dwd, 'the beloved'): the great
Sha'ul, the portent of She'ol, a king according to Israel's heart, is
contrasted to the choice of Yahweh's heart.
It is in the variant to chapter 13 which we find in 1 Samuel 15,
that the test of Saul over Yahweh's patronage reaches its climax.
The double entendre surrounding Saul's name seals his fate. In the
story's opening, the narrator offers us a human perspective of
Saul's victory over the Amalekites. The king destroys 'all that was
worthless and despicable' (1 Sam. 15:9). The reader finds Good
King Saul, the good general. He spares Agag. And he puts aside
the best of the sheep and cattle, the calves and the lambs to offer
them to Yahweh. Yahweh, however, is angry again. As in chapter
13, Yahweh demands obedience, not sacrifice. Innocent Saul is un-
aware that he is undone (1 Sam. 15:13)! The story is hardly kind
to Saul. He is stopped in mid-sentence of his victory celebration,
as Samuel asks him, 'Do you want to know what Yahweh says?'
Saul's tragedy in this tale reflects the hubris of humanity. Saul's
great deed is evil in Yahweh's eyes (1 Sam. 15:19). Saul does not
understand because 'he has utterly destroyed the Amalekites'. The
effort of his piety to sacrifice to Yahweh is met with a greater in-
difference than that Yahweh had shown to Cain (Gen. 4:5), as
Saul's story turns to its threefold humiliating closure. 'Yahweh is
not a man that he should repent' (1 Sam. 15:30)! Saul is a man,
however, and does repent. He abandons all that he wishes, even
forgiveness, only that he might worship Yahweh. In the face of such
 IF DAVID HAD NOT CLIMBED THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 53

abject humility, this last request is accepted, that he might wor­

ship. Having dealt with the all-too-human 'Good King Saul' in his
repentence, the story closes inexorably as Samuel cuts Agag to
pieces before Yahweh. Saul has been rejected because he did what
he saw to be right: evil in Yahweh's eyes. True belief is loyalty and
allegiance, submission and unquestioning obedience to the divine
will. This same theme has long been recognized in the climax of
the Job story, which portrays a scene of humiliation similar to
Saul's. The just man dares to call Yahweh before the court of jus­
tice. This is according to the human understanding of justice.
Appropriate to the theme of the divine perspective as diametri­
cally opposed to the human, Yahweh never appears in Job's imagi­
nary court. When he does show himself to Job, Job submits; and
what he says is pertinent: Ί spoke of what I did not understand
... / had heard of you only by the hearing of the ear; now, however,
my eyes see you, and I despise myself and repent ...' (Job 42:3-6).
Human understanding is not the same as God's; what we under­
stand as true and what we see as good is not thereby true and
good. What is true and good is as God sees it.
The story that stands in polarity to Saul's rejection is found in 2
Samuel 15. This story of David illustrates the headings of so many
of his psalms. Now, all David's efforts to avoid disaster collapse.
Hunted by Absalom, abandoned by his friends and despairing of
all hope that he can ever turn his fate away from defeat, David
'seeks refuge in Yahweh' and finally 'walks in piety's path of righ­
teousness'. He climbs the Mount of Olives, overlooking Jerusalem,
where, the text tells us, one is 'wont to go to pray' (2 Sam. 15:32).
It is time for the man of action to give himself to prayer. David,
in his role as piety's representative, is used to illustrate the power
of prayer. David's story reflects the exhortation in Ps. 2:8: 'Pray,
and I will make the world your inheritance.' It is the role he was
given in Ps. 3:1, 'when he fled from his son Absalom'. 'My enemies
are many; they rise against me; they say: God will not save him'
(Ps. 3: 2-3)! David has nothing left; he climbs to his final refuge.
He weeps as he climbs the mountain. He is barefoot; his head is
bowed; everyone who is with him has his head bowed and weeps.
David speaks to Zadok (sedeqah: 'righteousness, discernment') and
the story clarifies its theme. This is the Zion that Hannah had
climbed before him; a mountain like Abraham's Moriah in Gen­
esis 22, one to test his life to the core. Israel's time of 'Ichabod'
shame is David's burden. Now seeking counsel in righteousness,
54 THOMAS L. THOMPSON

David climbs as a man of piety to shout his song that Yahweh might
answer from his holy place (Ps. 3:5): 'If I find grace in Yahweh's
eyes, he will let me see once again his ark and his dwelling'(2 Sam.
15:25). And then wisdom's key which unlocks the story: 'If he says
that he no longer wishes to bother with me, so then may he do to
me as he sees as good' (2 Sam. 15:26). David as the man of piety
stands in contrast to Saul: he is emptied of all self-will. He is the
apogee of Yahweh's messiah and king: humanity's representative
as the servant of Yahweh. In humility, David crosses over his moun-
tain. Absalom—though Yahweh's messiah—dies ignominiously,
hanging from a tree. David turns towards Jerusalem as the king,
Yahweh's beloved, and, riding down the mountain on a donkey,
enters his kingdom.
In the virtual history which is the Bible, David had to climb his
mountain just as Abraham was certain to hold to his faith on Mount
Moriah and Hannah to offer her child on Zion. David is the one
chosen after Yahweh's heart. It was the essence of his character to
seek refuge in Yahweh and to take himself to the mountain to pray
as much as it had been Saul's destiny to fail. If David had not
climbed the Mount of Olives, Absalom would not have been hung
from his tree and killed; David would not have entered his king-
dom; the temple would not have been built; and David would not
have been the 'beloved' of Yahweh.27 In other words, David would
not have been David. His destiny was by necessity, given the text
in which he played out his life. Each of our literary heroes fol-
lows the necessity of his or her role as reiteration of the transcen-
dent truth expressed more philosophically for us in Ps. 1:6: Yahweh
affirms the path of righteousness, but the way of the godless fails.'
This is the reality which underlies all of our stories; the fate of
our heroes is not by their own decision or choice but by the will
of God: by necessity. This is a literary voice, which deals with vir-
tual histories as a matter of course. Historical causality is Yahweh's,
a historical necessity which is inscrutable and ineffable.

Virtual History as Method in Intellectual History

A literary discourse lies at the center of our historical as well as
exegetical questions which entertain the question of a text's im-

27
On the relationship between David, the divine epithet dwd and the temple
in Jerusalem, see Thompson, '"House of David"'.
 IF DAVID HAD NOT CLIMBED THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 55

plicit authorial voice. If we now turn to introduce our modern

question of virtual history to the Bible, it must be addressed to
what is more appropriately the literary history we write: the rela-
tionship of our texts and traditions, the intellectual history implicit
in our tradition.
Let us stay with David on his Mount of Olives and ask a literary-
historical question: If David had not climbed the Mount of Olives,
would Jesus have been crucified? It is Hannah and David's 'every-
man's' story of piety which the Gospels have Jesus reiterate in
Jesus's story on the Mount of Olives in Mark 14:32-42 (Matt. 26:30-
46). Here too the exhortation to prayer of Ps. 2:8 lies at the cen-
ter of the story's illustration: Tray and I will make the world your
inheritance; you will possess the ends of the earth.' 28 Just as surely,
it is Ps. 3:5-7 that Matthew has Jesus and his disciples sing with
confidence that Yahweh will answer his prayer from his holy moun-
tain, that they may rest in sleep and awake to Yahweh's support.29
Jesus reiterates on the Mount of Olives the virtue of humility and
self-understanding that David sang of in Ps. 37:11 and Jesus taught
the crowd in Matt. 5:5: 'It is the meek who will inherit the earth.'
Prayer is to find one's refuge in God, to recognize that it is the
divine that determines one's fate. All climb the mountain to illus-
trate the power of such prayer. The messiah enters his kingdom
through humility and meekness.
The manner in which the different stories illustrate this transcen-
dent truth varies, but the truth reiterated is invariable. When Jesus
climbs the Mount of Olives the night before he dies, he too plays
the role of everyman in his story. He goes where one is wont to
go to pray. He is abandoned by his friends; he weeps in grief and
despair and is without hope. In his turn, he speaks Hannah's and
David's prayer of righteousness: 'Not my will, but yours be done.'
The reader sought by this story in all its variations is the one who
might recognize that it is not by human will but by the will of God
that one enters the kingdom; it is those who pray, the meek, who
inherit the earth. This reiterated, virtual history is a philosophi-
cal discourse on a tradition's meaning.
At the close of his story, Mark transforms Absalom's ignomini-
ous death hanging from an oak tree (2 Sam. 18: 9-17) by linking
it with David's story. Jesus goes down from the Mount of Olives

28
Thompson, The Bible in History, pp. 22-23.
29
Thompson, The Bible in History, pp. 70-71.
56 THOMAS L. THOMPSON

with David: to enter Jerusalem. With Absalom, he hangs from

Golgotha's tree in his passage into his kingdom. In doing so, Mark
draws from yet another tradition, which one might well glimpse,
for example, in Pesher Nahum's motif of the crucifixion associated
with the coming of the Kittim and the 'Lion of Wrath'.30 This theme
has its roots in the theme of testing and suffering, of the wilder-
ness as the path to resurrection and to a new creation. In the fifth
song of Lamentations, the sign of a desert Jerusalem's andjudah's
godlessness on the day of wrath is a city in which women and 'vir-
gins are raped and princes hung by their hands' (Lam. 5:11-12).
It is through such suffering that the messiah in Mark on his day of
wrath comes into his kingdom.
The motif of David's entrance into Jerusalem cursed and humili-
ated (2 Sam. 16:5-13) finds David's prayer, 'May Yahweh see my
need and give me this day happiness instead of a curse' (2 Sam.
16:12), is answered at the very end of David's struggles—'when
Yahweh had saved him from all his enemies' (2 Sam. 22:1). It is
interpreted in terms of Hannah's vicarious 'raising the horn of
Yahweh's messiah' in her song of victory (1 Sam. 2.10). This in-
terpretation of messianic potency sung by David himself in chap-
ter 22, casts the whole of 1 and 2 Samuel's long narrative in the
light of eternity. 'David sings to Yahweh his song of praise and is
saved from his enemies' (2 Sam. 22:4). 'He has given his king great
victories; he has shown himself true to his messiah, to David and
his family to eternity' (2 Sam. 22:51). It is this interpretation that
Mark uses. It is through suffering and humiliation that Jesus comes
into his kingdom. Mark's placement ofJesus' triumphal march into
Jerusalem marks Jesus' entry into this world's Jerusalem, setting
up an ironic contrast to his entry into his heavenly kingdom
through humiliation. Mark 15:33-39 offers a powerful scene with-
out any excess of commentary. Jesus' final despairing complaint
is 'My God, my God, why have you abandoned me'? With echoes
of the Mount of Olives, Mark presents Jesus as Yahweh's suffering
messiah: he quotes David singing Ps. 22:2-3: 'My God, my God,
why have you abandoned me? You are far from my shout for help,
from my scream. My God, I shouted in the day, but you do not
answer, and at night but I find no rest.' This prayer with which
Jesus' dying scream opens inescapably calls up the confident the-

30
Cf. G. Doudna, Pesher Nahum: A Critical Edition (Copenhagen International
Seminar; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, forthcoming).
 IF DAVID HAD NOT CLIMBED THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 57

ology in Ps. 1:2-3 that he who prays day and night will be like a
tree of life planted by Yahweh's stream.31 Jesus takes on the role
of David as the man of prayer. Like David, he has put his trust in
God; he was scorned and despised by people. In Mark, those who
misunderstand his call to God offer the reader an implicit proph-
ecy: like David, the messiah is to be betrayed; he is to be aban-
doned even by God, a prelude to his entrance into his kingdom.32
This role is furthered by yet another quotation from a song David
sang in his suffering: 'They gave me poison to eat and vinegar to
quench my thirst' (Ps. 69:22). At his scream, the curtain of the
temple that separates the transcendent from this ephemeral world
is torn in two: the messiah enters his kingdom. Mark's story self-
consciously mirrors 1 and 2 Samuel's presentation of David in the
role of Yahweh's messiah, not only in the story of David on the
Mount of Olives, but also in its interpretation in 2 Samuel 22 and
throughout the Psalter, where David takes up the messianic role
of warrior in Yahweh's cosmic war.
Now, when we return to our question of virtual history, it is
clearly irrelevant whether David did or did not climb the Mount
of Olives, or whether Jesus was ever crucified. The truth of our
stories hardly lies in their events. These events can easily be re-
placed by some dozen alternatives. Human history offers ephem-
eral illustrations of eternal truths. If, on the other hand, we put
our question to Paul's statement, 'If Jesus had not risen, our faith
is in vain', we find that we have entered a world, not the virtual
history of this world, but one of theological necessity. Paul's state-
ment is hardly to be read as a historical argument, as Roland de
Vaux once paraphrased it.33 It is hardly used to cast doubt on
faith. Rather, Paul's assertion reflects a typically Hellenistic indif-
ference to the historical. It echoes Qphelet. Our faith is not empty,
but a faith in the living God. Therefore, resurrection and life are
to be affirmed! As David, playing the role of piety's representa-
tive, is forced by intellectual necessity to submit his will to Yahweh's
because he is in his essence the 'beloved' of Yahweh, so too must
Jesus, as piety's representative of the victory over death, play his

31
For this interpretation, see Thompson, The Bible in History, pp. 244-48.
32
Thompson, The Bible in History, pp.358-59.
33
'Si la foi historique d'Israel n'est pas fondée dans l'histoire, cette foi est
erronée, et la notre aussi' (R. de Vaux, 'Les patriarches hébreux et l'histoire', RB
72 [1965], pp. 5-28 [7]).
58 THOMAS L. THOMPSON

Absalom role, hanging from a tree that he too might enter his
kingdom. This is the role he has.
In the world of biblical narrative, the world of experience is
virtual; it is passing and variable. However, the world as God sees
it stands. It is not the story of David, but the interpretive song of
2 Samuel 22. The Israelite tribes did not conquer Jericho. Yahweh's
heavenly warrior of Josh. 5:15 did. The real world of transcen-
dence can be seen occasionally breaking into the human world of
experience: in the vision of Ezekiel 43, in the future of Isa. 11:1-
9 and in the transfiguration of Mark 9:9-13. For the rest, we see
as through a mirror, darkly.

ABSTRACT
The history of Israel has always been a virtual history. Until recently, historical
debate in the field has confined itself almost entirely to a discussion about alter-
native fictional scenarios for the past: the patriarchs and the conquest stories as
an alternative to the exodus and setdement narratives; Moses or Ezra; Josiah or
John Hyrcanus. Evidence, when it has been of interest to the field at all, has
ever been in regard to any given scenario's persuasiveness. The story of David on
the Mount of Olives is used as an example of the theological world at stake in
the Bible's virtual history; particularly in regard to the motif of Yahweh as 'the
lord of history'. Recognition of such virtuality in the biblical tradition aids the
contemporary historian of intellectual history. The story of Jesus on the Mount
of Olives is used to illustrate this.
 ^ s
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