Thread by @DrPJWilliams

Thread: 4 Bible books begin 'After the death of ...'

Jos 1:1 'And it happened after the death of Moses'
Judg 1:1 'And it happened after the death of Joshua'
2 Sam 1:1 'And it happened after the death of Saul'
2 Kgs 1:1 'And Moab rebelled against Israel, after the death of Ahab'

Sometimes it's suggested the division of Samuel and Kings into 2 books only came after they were written.

For example, see the 'Jewish Study Bible' (Oxford University Press), which I scribbled on a while ago.

But that doesn't explain why the phrase that appears at clear book boundaries (Joshua & Judges) should occur at precisely where one would want to divide a book going onto two scrolls anyway.

This division thus seems to represent a single literary conception.

We see a gradual decline in the standing of the 4 individuals involved:

Moses > Joshua > Saul > Ahab

And with the final one, the grammatical pattern of the previous ones is broken.

The breaking of the grammatical pattern parallels the disruption of history spiritually by Ahab.

Though it's suggested that the division of the books of Samuel & Kings was related to the desirable length of scroll, the Dead Sea Scroll 4QSam-a probably presents both books of Samuel in a single scroll.

Scroll division may have been desirable, but not necessary.

I assume therefore that the authors presented the formulae in 2 Samuel 1:1 and 2 Kings 1:1 as *optional* scroll breaks.

An optional scroll break is still different from an indication of literary structure.

According to overviewbible.com/word-counts-bo… the books have the following word counts:

Joshua 15,671

Judges 15,635

1-2 Samuel 20,387 + 17,170

1-2 Kings 20,361 + 18,784

The possibility that this kind of death announcement is an optional marker for a scroll break also helps us with Genesis, which after Jeremiah, is the second longest book in the OT at 32,046 words.

So what if you want to divide Genesis?

Almost certainly it’s no coincidence that the *only* other time that the full formula ‘And it happened, after the death of X’ occurs stands right in the middle of Genesis:

Genesis 25:11 ‘And it happened after the death of Abraham, God blessed Isaac his son.’

This divider allows the two halves of Genesis (divided into 2 scrolls) to be roughly the same length as Joshua or Judges.

To be clear: this is about physical, not literary, structure of Genesis, which many see as divided into toledoth (genealogies/family histories).

However, if this is right it is yet another marker of a single literacy conception running through the books from Genesis to 2 Kings.

Abraham is arguably superior to Moses (even if Moses is mentioned more).

So we have a sequence of 5:

Abraham > Moses > Joshua > Saul > Ahab

(I won’t make a big deal of the fact that the element Ab ‘father’ occurs as the first element of the first name Abraham and the last element of the last name Ahab.)

I’m glad Genesis isn't 2 scrolls.

That would spoil the idea of the Pentateuch (5 scrolls).

But if back in scroll days you did need to divide, I speculate that 25:11 would have been a good place to do so.

Some of the above is speculation & other bits observation.

I'd be interested to know if anyone's speculated that about Genesis 25:11 before.

The observations are more important than the speculation, & one of their main values is to help us remember the text.

RT if appreciated.