THE PROPHETIC HISTORY AND THE REDACTION OF KINGS by

Since the advent of Martin Noth's groundbreaking monograph (1943) describing the Deuteronomistic History the consensus among biblical scholars has been that the Former Prophets in the Hebrew Bible repre-sent a single, extended history of Israel. Increasingly, however, recent scholarship has challenged Noth 's position regarding the date and authorship of the Deuteronomistic History on two fronts. Cross (1973, pp. 274-289) has enhanced upon the literary arguments of earlier scholars for more than one redactor of Kings. On the basis of contrasting themes in the Deuteronomistic History, Cross concluded that its primary edition was Josianic and that an Exilic editor updated it with slight revisions. Several recent publications have adopted Cross's basic con-clusions and have attempted to refine them. 1 On the basis of literary criteria, Smend ( 1971) has also posited more than one redaction of the Deuteronomistic History. His initial proposal has been expanded by Dietrich ( 1972), who has argued for distinct prophetic and nomistic redactions of the Deuteronomistic History in addition to the funda-mental, Exilic history. Veijola (1975 and 1977) has analyzed specific portions of the Deuteronomistic History, primarily in Samuel, using Dietrich's results. The conclusions of this Gottingen school have been accepted by Klein (1983) in his recent commentary on I Samuel ( espe-cially pp. xxix-xxx). In his masterful treatment of Samuel, McCarter ( 1980, especially pp. 18-20 and 1984, especially pp. 6-8) has integrated the observations of the Gottingen literary critics into the theory of a double redaction of the Deuteronomistic History as formulated by Cross. McCarter has identi-fied the developmental stage of Samuel which immediately underlies its Deuteronomistic editing as prophetic in orientation and agreeing gener-ally in its dimensions in 2 Samuel with the material attributed by Veijol