As my study on quantum gravitation seems to still take lots of time, I write a speculative short post on the Old Testament. There is a certain divergence between the work of Israel Finkelstein and the biblical account of the reigns of David and Solomon. I will take one small problem: Bathsheba.
As Finkelstein explains in one of his youtube talks, the Bible makes an apology against (natural) accusations that David had a hand in the killings of Saul and his sons. According to the Bible David was quite innocent, but that is not so certain. Finkelstein asks why is there an apology at all, why the Bible simply does not omit the discussion, and answers that after 725 BC Israelian refugees came to Judea in large numbers and this issue just could not be wiped out, the accusations had to be answered by an apology. I find this very reasonable. (As I find Finkelstein’s results, despite of recent announcements that Solomons temples or mines have been found, or David’s time fortified Judean city, to me it looks like Finkelstein is correct: no signs of any large Judean empire in the 10th century BC).
Then why is there the story of Uriah the Hittite and Bathsheba? Why not omit it? Answering the same way as Finkelstein: because there were important people who raised this question. For sure they were not Yahwe’s priests wanting the king to be faultless. They would have omitted the discussion. It must have been other people. I think it was the Jebusites. Bathsheba was a Jebusite, and so was Nathan the Prophet, who raised this issue with David. So, what did Nathan care of an elite warrior Uriah the Hittite? He was the former husband of Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon. In the Bible it looks like Bathsheba was simply Uriah’s wife, a beautiful woman, but her name is Bath Sheba, daughter of oath, and Solomon met Queen of Sheba. I do not think Queen of Sheba from Etiopia made a visit to a minor king Solomon, as Finkelstein is correct that Solomon ruled only a village of Jerusalem. Let us assume daughter of Sheba and queen of Sheba mean the same and designate the royal matrilinear house of Jebusites of Jerusalem. Canaanites, like Arabs, had often matrilinear inheritance of the throne, even though the king (husband of the queen) ruled the country. There are Ugarite documents where the eight child inherits and this eight child was the first daughter. James Frazer’s Golden Bough lists many cases of this practice. To become the king one has to marry the (often divine) queen.
David probably married his sister Abigail, wife of Nagal, or so speculate Cyrus Gordon and Gary Rendsburg in the Bible and the Ancient Near East. David married Saul’s daughter Michal, and Saul’s eldest son Jonathan considered David as the future king. David may have married Saul’s wife Ahinoam (Gordon and Rendsburg again). So, let us suppose, Uriah the Hittite was a Hurrian mariyanna and the king of Jerusalem, but at that time Jerusalem was under the power of Philisteans and David was a Philistean puppet. David arranged Uriah killed and married Bathsheba becoming the king. There was really no other way to conquer Jerusalem as there was no water shaft at that time that David’s men could use to get secretly to the city and daggers are not enough to conquer a fortified city. But a dagger is good for assassinating a person. This makes David an usurper to the throne of Jerusalem and gives a good reason to explain it in the best way in the Bible by an apology: it is not so bad if David did steal another man’s wife for love, much worse if he stole the throne. And later kings of the Davidic lineage suppressed all information of matrilinear inheritage, so the Queen of Sheba came to inform that actually she is the queen, but this also was explained in the best way.
David had problems with his sons. The eldest son Absalom tried to replace David in the throne, so did some other older sons. Had the inheritance been patrilinear, the eldest son would not have needed to rebel, but in Canaan societies the eldest son often did not inherit. Indeed, by marrying Bethsheba David tied the inheritance to the mother line and Solomon, Bethsheba’s son was David’s successor. This probably was not a question that Solomon was David’s favorite son by the favorite wife, but that Bethsheba was from the Jebusite lineage with the right to the rule of Jerusalem.
Maybe so, but this remains as speculation. It may still be interesting (to someone who has interest in these things), we know so little of Jebusites. The last kings of Jebusites had Hurrian names, so probably they were mariyannis. Hittites had lost their empire some centuries earlier, I would suggest Uriah was a Hurrian, though the name given in the Bible is Hebrew and probably not the Hurrian name.