Paul Evans - Sennacherib and the War of 1812

Welcome to OnScrib's Biblical World, a podcast exploring the history, archaeology, geography, and cultures of the Bible. Visit us at onScrib.study/biblicalWorld. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Biblical World Podcast. This is Matt Lynch coming to you from Regent College in Vancouver. We hope that you're doing well. We've got a new episode for you here on Sennacherib in the War of 1812. And I just want to give a special word of thanks to Jason Stark for producing this episode and to all of you who support us by giving regularly. You can do so at onScrib.study/donate if you'd like to do that or give us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. But otherwise we hope you enjoy the episode and thanks for listening. Welcome back Biblical World listeners. Today we have an exciting episode. I'm Kyle Kimer and I'm going to be interviewing Paul Evans, who's a associate professor of Old Testament at McMaster Divinity College. And we're going to be talking about his new book, which is entitled Sennacherib in the War of 1812, Disputed Victory in the Assyrian Campaign of 701BC in light of military history. And Paul, great to have you here. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, thanks. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. You know, it's funny. I actually came across your first monograph back when I was working on my dissertation. And for those of our listeners, some of you that might be familiar with that, it's the invasion of Sennacherib in the book of Kings, a source critical and rhetorical study of first Kings 18 to 19. And it was really instrumental in my own research for my dissertation, which was dealing with kind of parallel topics dealing with Hezekiah and the Assyrian Campaign of Sennacherib in 701. So it's a real pleasure to get to read this other book of yours and to be to talk to you today. Now, I know you've got a few other works as well. You've also got a commentary in first and second Samuel, and you've done a lot of work with Chronicles. And I know you're actually preparing a new commentary for the Nikot series on Chronicles. How's all that coming? Yeah. Yeah. Actually, Kings and Chronicles have kind of been my main focus on Samuel as well. But I love this historical books. So this new book I kind of think of as a sequel to my first one. Nice. That's why I tell my kids who I've already done them. Not really a sequel, but similar topic. Yeah. It's good. It's like, yes, I could see how they go together. And from what I remember, it's been several years since I were in the first one, but from what I remember, I could see some of the parallels that you're building on and bringing out. Now, just to throw out there for the listeners of the podcast, why don't you give us what is the main thesis of the book and then also what prompted you to kind of focus on this specific topic? Yeah. Sure. Well, I've always been fascinated with the invasion of Sniper, I believe it. And the story of Hezekiah told three times in the Bible, and then you have all this extra biblical material. Like, it's fascinating. We have so many copies of Sniper's account. And then ideas of how to correlate them. I've always fascinated me even when I was a graduate student, I wrote a paper on this and I just kind of got me into it. So it's an enduring fascination for me. Even starting with the source critical delineations and the two campaign hypothesis, I thought was really interesting at first until I kind of ended up concluding. I don't think there was two campaigns, but it was very fascinating to think that there's two sources put together in Kings. The one is a campaign in this year, and the other one is another campaign. So the more I've gotten into it, the more there's just so much to say about it. And the fact that there's so many sources, archeological evidence, but also of course, a Syrian and biblical sources, so much about this, to reconstruct this time, this war, but still no consensus among scholars. So we got more evidence than we do in most cases, but still less consensus. So there's just so much there. So I was, I'm fascinated by the question of like, how could both the Syria and Judah remember this war as their respective victory? And I think that it has, there hasn't been justice done to that question. Many people side with one or the other very often. And so I kind of reexamine the claims of the Syrian and the biblical texts. And I did a lot of reading on military history and talk about, you know, what counts as victory. How is victory assessed? How is victory perceived by people in a conflict? And what kind of expectations did people have regarding participating in a conflict? And then what that brings to bear in how we understand what these texts are. So in the end, I kind of argue that neither side is principally deceptive in what they've recorded or their view of this as a successful campaign or defense. However, we're going to look at it. Because I've found so many people saying that basically one of these two sources is lying. One's right, one's wrong, one's deceptive. And I find in the end, by comparing it with this interesting war, the War of 1812, which is between kind of what was became Canada and the United States where even today both sides think they won in some ways. I grew up in Canada. I'm Canadian. And I always learned that Canadians beat the Americans back in 1812. And of course, we could never beat the Americans today or any other time. But we always held onto that. I was told even in grade school that, you know, the White House is only white because we burned it and they had to paint it white, you know, kind of silly. But when I went, when I first talked to, I gave a paper about the SDSBL in Boston and ended up talking with some of my American friends and they had never heard the idea that Canada thought they won at all. What are you talking about? Because the other side things they won. So you got, for me, it was this perfect example to look at how can both sides think they won. And this is in a recent war, a lot more evidence to me have here. So by comparing the reasons that both sides perceive they won and then looking back at the biblical and the Syrian text, I thought, I saw a lot of analogs. So I started with a small paper and then I ballooned into this whole project, which I'm pretty happy, but I think it's an interesting comparison that looking at military history can help inform how we understand this, how this conflict's been remembered. Yeah. No, I think there's so much we're going to delve into here. You have so many great insights and I think just the size or the, let's just say the plethora of topics that you address in this is quite huge for, you know, it's not a super long book, but what you cover and what you do in here is really impressive. And you're, you know, just one comment to add out there again. You know, the point you made about the fact that in the late eighth century, the amount of material we have both from Assyria and biblical sources and the archaeology is probably better than what we have for any other period in the Southern Levant. And yet at the same time, there's no consensus about many of the details about what was taking place in synacrybs campaign against Judah. And there's a lot of questions that really need to be addressed. And sometimes I find as, as you do in this book, we need to rethink how we're approaching some of these questions. And when we do, there's so many new insights we can bring. And I love the fact that you're bringing in military history. I'm a kind of a military history buff myself and I've done a lot with with bringing in perspectives of military history, the new military history, all these things. As we try to reevaluate and get into the mindset of some of these ancient actors and peoples, which is vastly different from a lot of what we experience today. And we'll kind of touch on that a little bit later. But I'll just say that you're, it's funny. You mentioned in Canada, you guys always thought, you won the war of 1812. In the US, we thought that as well. And I did a year of ROTC back in college. And one of the claims I remember them saying was that the Americans have never lost a war. And they've never had a war on their home ground. And yet, yes, yes they have. And the war of 1812 is the case in point. Not only did they potentially lose, again, depending on which side you're talking about, but Washington, D.C. was captured. The White House was burned. The Capitol was burned. All the major buildings in the Capitol were essentially destroyed. And yet, that's not to look to remember it. And that's not the narrative that is told. It's such a powerful example, I think, in using the War of 1812 to really get us to think about what ancient sources are bringing out. So why don't we jump into this and say, what are, you know, one of the questions you pose in the book, I should say, is what is success? Was Hezekiah successful? Was Sinacrupe successful? What, how would you define success? I guess it's going to be one of the questions that runs throughout this podcast. And in order to get to that question, what are some of the issues that you see surrounding Sinacrupe's third campaign? Again, this is the campaign in 701 BC to the West. He's already had to deal with some rebellions in the East before this and just kind of contextualizing for some of the listeners. But what are some of the issues that you see with this campaign? Well, yeah, like when you look at military history, I tried to. I did a lot of research trying to find out what historians, how they would qualify what success is and what it isn't. Sometimes it's hard to find anything stated out right, but there's a lot of assumptions. But through my research, I found a number of things are typically pointed to, like the capture of a symbolic item or a city. Sometimes it's a capital or something like that. forced active humiliation. The signing of a treaty is a very modern one, but in the ancient areas as well. But war aims is really important. If the war aims are set out and they're not met, then it's a failure. And there's this distinction between communicated war aims and actual war aims, as far as I can discern. Perhaps in this account here between Sankarib and Hizakaya, but for sure in the War of 1812, you have some of these things, Hall who claims they're going to conquer Canola. And then that's the war aim. Some people said, "Oh, taking Canola will be just a matter of marching." There's all these famous quotes from these American politicians. They're going to conquer Canola. And of course, Canola isn't conquered. But then when they were negotiating the peace treaty in Gant to end the war, the Americans said, "Oh, no, that actually wasn't our war aim." Like they said, that wasn't official. So like there's war aims communicated to Canadians, and they assumed that they win because those war aims weren't met. The Americans are saying that really wasn't our point. Our point was this. And so similarly, you could say with the taking of Jerusalem, the deporting of the people, like the Rabshake claims these are the war aims when he's talking to the people in 2 Kings 1819. You could say that the Assyrians didn't really care. A lot of historians who kind of favored the idea that Assyria one often said they didn't really want to take Jerusalem. Some even said, "Who cares about Jerusalem known? What will want Jerusalem?" Which I can't see why that would be the case. But it could be that it's not part is not necessary for them to take Jerusalem and still be victorious. So there's a lot of this expectations. What will count as the war aims? What's understood it? Taking of territory is a big issue. Like if you take the enemy's territory, it seems like you've won. So the issue of what territory was lost or gained, what parts of Judah were lost, or was it just gains they had made against the Philistines beforehand that were lost and redistributed to the Philistines. That's an issue. And there's a lot of debate on what the borders fluid as they might have been were after the end of the campaign. But that would be an idea, maybe who won, right? Winning the final battle is often a really big issue. And it's hard to know the chronology. We might talk about it with these Syrian texts. Like are they written in a geographical or chronological arrangement? There's a lot of anomalies in there. And even in the biblical text. But it seems like the last battle according to the biblical account was won by the angel of tax and it's snapper leaves, right? If there is this idea that the last battle was not a victory first snapper than maybe Judah could think they won. The last battle in the war of 1812 is that the Americans often point to the Battle of New Orleans, very famous of future president Jackson was in charge there. And it was probably the biggest victory they had over the British in that war. But it actually was fought after the peace treaty was already signed and making its way across the Atlantic. It just takes a long time for this nest to get communicated. So Canadians say, well, that doesn't even matter. We already settled for peace before that battle. And actually technically there's one small battle that happened after the British won, which would be the last battle. So there's all these debates about this. So maybe the last battle is important. A lot of it might have to do with historical perspective. Sometimes the initial perspective on a war might seem it was a victory. And then, you know, years later you look back and you think, actually, it wasn't that great a victory. In the book, I talk a little bit about like the Iraq war, which, you know, mission accomplished George Bush says very quickly afterwards. And then in retrospect, a lot of people look back and think it was, it was not really victorious. It was, and that's later historical perspective. And so similarly, the biblical texts are written a fair bit after the event. Maybe their historical perspective is they look back and think, hey, things went pretty well for us after the war because archaeological evidence suggests the expansion of Jerusalem, population zenith in the seventh century. Probably already starting within the dates of Hezekiah's reign, which we might talk about, because there's different views of that, of course. But so later historical perspective could view it as potentially victorious. And then there comes the idea of what expectations are in a war. Modern expectations have gotten pretty high where if there's too many casualties, the war is terrible. It's a waste of time. Or if there's any suffering involved, it's not worth a war. But I think in the, in the ancient mindset, not even that ancient in more recent, not maybe not recent, but history even 100 years ago, people had a different view of whether a war could be worth it. Suffering or some devastation doesn't necessarily mean the war wasn't worth it. So the fact that Jude has suffered destruction of some cities and, but in the end, they ended up perhaps at least feeling like it was worth it because they had success after as the population grew. Their commercial interest grew. Hezekiah stayed on the throne was not replaced as all the other kings in the Levant were by a Snackrub. So you can view that as a victory. So a lot of it has to do with perspective what you value, what counts as showing what victory might be. And a lot of it is perception, how they perceive what the outcome of the war was. And sometimes we import, I think, our modern ideas into ancient world. Yeah, I think that this perception that you that you're touching on here is such an important aspect, not only in your study, but I think just in general, thinking about so many of our ancient sources. Obviously, they all are written from a specific perspective. And so in each case, every ancient source, even modern sources has an ideology of some sort because it's written from a general perspective, or a given perspective. Our task as modern historians is to understand the ancient perspective that these sources are framed within and not impose our own. And so many times, I think it is difficult because our world is changing so quickly, so fast. Technology is changing things that we sometimes forget or are ignorant of other perspectives that might be out there that would have been common even 50, 60 years ago. And I think using not only this war of 1812, but like you said, I was going to bring up the example of George Bush as well, mission accomplished. Well, was it? Yeah, I think of so many other examples in military history in particular where things are done and views come out of it that when you look back and kind of retrospect, wait a second, how did you come to that understanding? Why do you think that? And you draw out so many great examples, particularly from the war of 1812 for the American perspective, we get the national anthem out of this war. So many famous military quotes. These are coming out of this conflict that in that specific instance, and historically when they're happening, really aren't what they've been mythologized and have become in modern society. And so it makes a lot of sense then to look at the ancient sources in this similar way and question, what's going on and why might they also develop these views? Yeah, I was fascinating to me. I didn't know a lot of this until I started research in the war of 1812, but how much you could say was added to the mythology of military law in the United States from this war, which is a content, you know, it's still debated if they even won the war. But it's like there's these famous lines from people like Al Trice or, oh, why those are regular or don't give up the ship, all these things, or the fact that they had to wear gray at this one point later becomes an explanation for why this one regiment wears gray or is it the West Point? I can't remember. Yeah, on my head. Even though that's an monachranistic thing because they wore gray before this, but now they say they wear because of what happened in the war of 1812. The star-spangled banner, of course, is written at the defense of Fort McCannery. That was right after Washington was burned and captured, and then they go and they bombard Baltimore, but don't take Baltimore, and that's more important to the American mythology than the fact that their capital was burned and taken. And from the, I thought it was interesting I learned from the British respective. They didn't care that they didn't paint Baltimore. They thought they put on a good show of force with all the rockets. Of course, the anthem is the rockets red glare showed our flag was still there and then totally different perspectives on the same events. So it's fascinating. I won't ask you to sing, so don't worry. Oh, thank you. Your audience will be glad that I'm not singing. But it's interesting. And also, I guess the Manifest Destiny of America kind of comes out of this too and they start to expand West and take over. And so there's all this kind of, you could say, mythological things that come out of the war. And then a lot of people in the past in biblical scholarship have pointed to, for example, the rise of the inviability of Zion is tied to this survival of Jerusalem in the face of the Assyrian. Attack. So the mythologies that might have come out of that too, even though it's as a war that's disputed, I found a lot of a lot of interesting parallels there. Yeah, between the two. Well, yeah, since you're bringing up right now, let's give us a few more thoughts then on how you think this, the perspective could have impact is Zion theology because there's different debates out there, you know, again, for the listeners who may or may not be familiar, the Zion theology is the idea that Jerusalem is inviolable. It can't be conquered because this is the domain of Yahweh. This is where his temple is, where he resides. And good luck taking it. Not going to happen. And look, we've got proof to show this, right? The city hasn't been destroyed ever since we took over with David. And there's views as to when this theology started. Was it already kind of an original Canaanite type thing? Was it a Davidic idea? David approaches Jerusalem back in Samuel. They say, you'll never Take care. even the blend, their lane could repel you. You know, like, it almost seems like in that story that they already had this kind of tradition of Jerusalem not being taken. Of course, David takes Jerusalem. But there is debate over whether the war or 7-01 or the survival of Jerusalem against Sinacra is kind of the origins of it, or maybe it just kind of solidified it or built it up. It's unclear. There's a lot of speculation in there, but a lot of people do point to this event as being at least something that solidified it or made it, popularized it, that you always home is in Zion and it cannot be taken. Which, of course, became a problem perhaps in Jeremiah's day when he's saying, no, submit to the Babylonians, they're like, no, the temple of the Lord is here. We're all good. So it becomes a problematic doctrine in a way as well. But it's interesting to me that something like that could cut-- if there is something to it, it's obviously not my original argument that it's connected to 7-01. Many people have said that it comes out of this event that if it was actually a total defeat, how is it that this mythology comes from? But it's interesting you have this similar kind of mythology from the War of 1812 for the Americans when it could have been not actually a victory either. Well, and it raises an interesting side topic, or a related topic, which I think kind of runs through your book as well, and you're thinking again about perspective. And how is it that Judah can claim victory, even though, say, the Shfeh Law is decimated, and they lost-- and many number of cities were burned or destroyed as we'd see from the archaeology. But Hezekiah is not removed from the throne. He remains. And depending on when we date Hezekiah's reign, there's two different main options. Either 728 to 698, or 726 to 698, or 715 to 687. It gives you two different possibilities of framing and thinking in a Judean perspective, a Judea-hyper-spective, how victory might have happened, because if Hezekiah dies shortly after this campaign, maybe it's not so powerful of acclaimed a victory, but if he does continue to reign until 687, we're looking at almost another 15 years after this campaign that he's on the throne. And so it gives time for a myth to develop. I mean, the myth could have developed very early on, but it gives you even more time to do this. Yeah, I mean, it's debatable, which set of dates were going with. Either way, the recovery of Jerusalem had already started before he died. Even if it was 698, it seems to be archaeological evidence for quick recovery in some parts. Some parts not, especially if it was a later date. And one thing I thought was interesting just studying the Assyrian annals for this was this rebel Lule the king in Phoenicia, who escapes, according to the earliest rendition of the annals, the Ratham cylinder, the Assyrian text, it says that Lule escapes, or he fled. But it doesn't say anything about his fate. Later, renditions say he died. And then the latest rendition, which is like, instead of a 7-0-1, which is when it occurred, it was like 684, I think, is the latest rendition. And it says he died in Cyprus. And they make sure to comment on his fate. The later renditions updated with the death of the rebel. Interestingly, they never mentioned the death of Hezekiah. So if he died in 698, why wouldn't they have updated? There's various versions that are later in that 687, 684. It's interesting to me that they'd never mentioned, because they could have mentioned that, and Hezekiah died in this loyal Vassal and Assycianithron. I'm not sure. I haven't heard that come into the discussion about his dates before. I thought that was interesting. Yeah, I know. That was really interesting. And I hadn't seen that either. And I thought it was really interesting the way that you delved into the Assyrian sources, which, you know, I think there's been work done on the fact that these are kind of redacted over the years as they're copied and as a king reigns in power. But these specific points, I haven't seen brought out before. And I thought it was really a great way. It gives credence, I think, to understanding the biblical composition as well in the ancient Near East, right? You're perhaps writing stories down, sometimes close to the event, sometimes well after. But there's a tradition that comes with them. And in some ways, evolving these traditions and thinking about them as time goes on to make them pertinent, to make them relevant, to bring out specific points. You see it with the Assyrian sources as you bring out. You see it in biblical texts in many instances as well. And I think it's just a nice parallel that hadn't been brought out. So clearly, I think, in some of the other research that I've seen at least. Yeah. And it's really interesting how the Assyrian annals gloss over parts of the campaign or downplay parts that from a modern historian's perspective may not have been ideal, like, lullia successfully escaping, basically escaping punishment. They never mention what happens with tire. Tire is the capital of Phoenicia there, the island city. Doesn't talk about a battle of tire or anything. What happens with tire? It's a major-- it would be a major victory if he took it. So most historians assume he didn't take tire at the time. Doesn't mention the rebellious status of Gaza, whether it was loyal or not. The Bible interestingly mentions Gaza, because it says Hezekiah, you know, attacks the Philistines as far as Gaza. It's interesting what the Bible mentions and then what the Assyrians don't. So Bible mentions Gaza, they don't. The Bible mentions La Kishe. La Kishe is not even mentioned in the Assyrian annals, although, of course, there's the famous release from Snackers Palace. And then there-- whether what's going on at Al-Tekah, a lot of people think it's out of chronological order, perhaps. Or the restoration of Patti on the throne is very interesting. Patti is the king of Echron, who had been handed over to Hezekiah, it says, in the Assyrian annals. And then it says, he restored him to the throne, and then it goes on and talks about other things. And then it eventually gets to Judah, Hezekiah, who he shuts up like a burden of cage. Well, how did he get Patti out of Jerusalem? It must not be chronological, because he just chose to mention it here. I assume it was in deliberations with Hezekiah that Patti was freed. I don't know. We don't know. There's this one interesting comment by Al-Ai. He wrote a biography of St. Acre, who says, he might have been freed through a commando mission, but with no other explanation. I always thought that was interesting. I'm not sure what that commando mission would look like. But clearly, things are a little bit out of order, and we don't know. And Patti has never mentioned in the Bible. Nor is Hezekiah working with the Philistines, if that's what's going on, because they handle them over to Hezekiah. Or did Hezekiah force them to give the king and was Hezekiah in charge of their territory? None of that is said, but-- So both sides focus on different things, and omit different things. And of course, you have Hezekiah. Never comes out and submits or bowels himself. It sends his tribute later, after you're back in Nineveh, and he sends someone to do obedience. Snackrub says, things that earlier, he's always replacing these rebel kings. And he seems to be that Hezekiah is, like one of the chief rebel kings. A lot of people think he was the ringleader. That's debatable, too. He seems to-- he's talked about in language that seems to make him a powerful enemy. What comes of him? Well, he pays tribute later. We've trapped on like a burden of cage, but now most think that language is kind of covering over the fact that they didn't actually conquer the city. So there's a lot of-- it's written from a way to glorify Snackr, obviously, but things historians might look for are kind of covered over. And you could say the same thing about the biblical text. It doesn't talk about everything that happened, either. So it was really interesting. I can tell you a fresh study of the Assyrian text, sir. Yeah. And you-- let me contextualize for the listeners here a second. Then my question is going to be just focusing on the biblical portrayal of Hezekiah and why you might have that specific portrayal. And it all comes back to being connected perhaps to the line of David. But before coming on that, again, you're highlighting all this discussion, highlighting all the issues that we have in interpreting this event, which again, we have a huge amount of data for. But it's how do you read the Assyrian annals? How do you interpret them? How do you read the biblical text? What are the text critical issues, both in biblical and Assyrian sources? Are we looking at chronological descriptions of an event? Are we looking at topographical or geographical descriptions of an event? How do we view the role of miraculous in all of this as well? What would the Assyrians do they believe in miraculous things as well? Or is that only a simply biblical thing? And then, of course, there's always the modern interpreters view of this. And look at modern scholarship, there's you either demithologize some of the elements that are out there because of how you view things or you allow for the mythologist, myth, whatever that word is. You allow for it to be there. Well, actually, I found that was interesting as something that always-- I had a bit of a problem with when I first started studying this topic, even. There's so many statements in there that kind of like the angelic attack, if we're going to call it that, at the end of the biblical account, had to be a much later theological reflection of the event. They always wanted to separate it and say it often gets into the post-exilic, really late, because it's such a miraculous end, right? Like the idea that the theologizing of the event had to be later, because early on, they were just interested in an objective history. And I think that's really problematic. I mean, for example, you look at Sennacher of Daniels right in his account written one year after he's talking about the weapon of Asher, you know, overwhelmed them. There are theologizing right away. I have no reason to believe that ancient dutites would not. have theologized if they survived to say, "Hey, y'all, y'all, it delivered us right away." They don't, it doesn't take centuries later to look back and think, "Okay, God saved us." But that seems to be almost like some of the source critical delineations when in my first book I looked at it. I think that they're often just trying to find a core that's historical and there's kind of an antimeraclust bent sometimes in scholarship. And so the miraculous stuff is added later. But initially you have this kind of cold objective, annel, like we would want to write today or something like that, which I think is naive, and that's not how the people in the ancient world or even everybody today might think either. Again, coming back to the issue of perspective, modern scholars are approaching it largely from our frame of view and what is allowable, what is not possible. And yet, maybe it's not that we need to approach it that way because that's not the way that the ancient people conceived of things and why they're writing things. And so again, coming back to ancient perspective is step number one. It's not something that comes later, but it has to be right from the get-go of, "Okay, how do we read this in an appropriate perspective and try to limit it, bringing our own bias into this or our own worldview into this?" And I think at one point later in the book you make a comment that we might not have to essentially pick or choose which view is right or wrong because they're both right. And in the written from a perspective that is making a specific claim for each audience and it's not cut and dry, it's not black and white, there's a lot of gray area in between there. Yeah, and a lot of it is perspectival in that. I really think in the end it's not that one is being deceptive and the other is telling the truth that they're both. And in today's, I'm speaking, you could say, they're communicating their own truth. I really want to go there, but as much as they're own from their perspective, they really have a case to that they won or that it was in the end, it was a positive development, you know. Even with the issue of like a lot of people talk about the expansion of Jerusalem and the success in the seventh century as due to the Paxi Siriaca. And basically that because a Siria wanted to gain wealth from these territories, they settled up in such a way that wealth could be brought. And so they wanted, in a way, they wanted the success of the Levant because they kept it meant more coming their way, a very economic perspective. In some ways, I think some of the Paxi Siriaca discussion is imposing a modern mentality of kind of globalization and economics into the ancient world. And it ignores sometimes that wars are fought over petty reasons or for reasons of honor and revenge and these kinds of things. But anyway, but the Paxi Siriaca may have been part of what is behind the success of Jerusalem. But from the respect of people living in Jerusalem, success is success. We're prospering after this rebellion. Hezekiah led us into and he retained the throne and now things are going well. We're growing. We've got more money or our economy is growing. Well, from their perspective, it'd be like I said somewhere in the book, any politician worth of salt could spin that in such way as my policies are responsible for this economic prosperity. Rather than saying this is only due to a Siria. It'd be easy to look at Hezekiah as rebellion and success given the economic prosperity that followed in the next century. At least from a perspective, maybe from a modern perspective, you could argue against that. Well, and again, from the ancient perspective, I think you also bring out as far as they didn't necessarily lose any land. If you look at the Assyrian annals of what Sennacher did, he mentions giving land back to the Philistines, which if you factor in the Biblical account, Hezekiah had just taken that land from the Philistines. Really, Judah wasn't losing land per se. They had to give back land that wasn't theirs. You can spin that to say, "We didn't lose any land, therefore we win." Which is what the War of 1812 both sides point to the same thing and say, "We didn't lose any land." It's kind of interesting. It's part of their justification for why they won as well. It comes back again to what are the aims of each of these sides? What were Assyrian aims or what were Sennacher's aims with this campaign? Then what were Hezekiah's aims? I mean, if Hezekiah's aim is to survive, like Saddam Hussein survived the first Gulf War, "Hey, I win. I'm the victor." If Sennacher's aim is different, is it to either open up or just as they put down rebellions, bring back peace, open up trade lanes, whatever it is, he was successful as well. The analog with the War of 1812, I thought it was interesting to think of an empire perspective on that because really it wasn't Canada. It was the British Empire really they were fighting, right? From the British Empire perspective, they were involved in a war with Napoleon at the time. That was their main objective is to beat Napoleon at France. That's where all the problems with the United States started from because they were impressing sailors on US ships to join the Napoleonic War because they needed people and the Americans thought those were violation there. They saw our routine. That's where the war started from. But in the end, once they defeat Napoleon, they didn't really care that much about the War of 1812. The Americans thought, "Yeah, we did it. We proved that we were independent nation and we're powerful." The Brits were like, "Okay, we beat the Napoleonic Wars. We're going to stop impressing your sailors." That's why we're stopping. But the Americans are like, "They're stopping and pressing because we fought them." It's just all about perspective. From an empire perspective, Sennacherib's goals may not have demanded the submission of Jerusalem or Hezekiah. I think they would have preferred it in my estimation, but from one perspective though, it didn't demand it. The Syrians continue to be the greatest empire in the region unopposed largely. It all those come down to war aims and how we might define them. What's essential? What's not essential part of the war? I think that's where using a military history perspective offers so many added insights that military historians probably would say, "Oh, of course. You think about these perspectives and all these things, but in biblical studies and in archaeology of ancient Israel, they're not typically perspectives that you come across, all that broadly." In your mind, what was one of the biggest, kind of, aha, perspective moments in bringing in military history to analyze this event? Was there anything that really stood out? I was like, "Oh my gosh, this has changed the way I've just been thinking about this, and I really now just makes much better sense." Well, I found a lot of the assessments I had read before, a little bit simplistic, like, for instance, saying one is deceiving, one is not, or that there's just a clear cut only one person can win this war. But when you look at military history, not even just the war of 1812, I point to other wars as well, where people dispute over who won, and this idea of perspective and war aims was really big for me. Also in how we assess sehazakaya, I found a lot of modern scholars look at hezakaya as a bad king, and they'll say it's pretty straight out because he led them in the conflict. And like Ernest Axel-Noff says, "A good king is a king who brings as much peace as possible to his times, and that's what a good king is." Or on Menace, they write that, "It's a good indication of success of his reign as it was peaceful. There's no destruction levels found in Menace's lane." So as if the ideal of peace is all that matters, and that's how you assess whether a ruler is good. But looking through military history, you see, many times people think a war was necessary, and even though people died without leader actually benefited our society, the war benefited us in sometimes intangible ways or other ways. But we've often, I think, messed up kind of taking a modern kind of more, sometimes pacifistic or at least very few wars or worth fighting view and imposing it on the ancient mindset. For example, Clements in his study of Isaiah's oracles that are critical of Hezakaya. He thinks that Isaiah was angered at the rebellion, and he says, "because they were going to involve Judah in conflict." That's a quote from him. So basically, he's thinking Isaiah is just opposed to any conflict, no matter what. Peace above all else is all that matters. And I think it's really hard to defend that from the biblical text that that's really what the prophets are all about. No, we just need to avoid conflict, no matter what it does to our people. Well, you don't see that in the Bible, I don't think. But I think it's just, uncritically, we can sometimes bring modern wars to bear on these texts and not realize it and try and find our morals in them when really we have to try and uncover how would an ancient mind thought about this. Yeah. And I think that says, you have an entire chapter on this monoperspective of how we've been approaching not only this topic, but ancient wars in particular. And the whole idea that number one, we're moving towards a world of peace is highly debatable and problematic if you look at the news. But it is this, I mean, I told you before the Ukraine war broke out even. Yeah, but in the West, though, I mean, I think you're right, there is amongst many people, there's this utopian view that we're moving towards better times and that war is bad and that all we have to do is be diplomatic. And this is coming out of enlightenment thinking as well. But it's not really the mindset that has dominated most of history. And you think even within Christian tradition, which is supposed to be, we don't want to have wars, but there's just war. Think about Augustine, you have just war and the tradition's dominated so much of Christian history. There is a time when you're supposed to pick up arms and fight, or when you can pick up and fight. And even this view has been simplified and perhaps whitewashed in much of scholarship as we approach some of the ancient sources and have this sense that, yeah, you just want to have peace. Anything, you know, success is peace. Success isn't necessarily peace, though. Like, I find that ignorance of military history can lead us to think that, like Hezekiah is often criticized because he brought the people in a conflict. They must think he was just ignorant or a poor communicator. It wasn't a good diplomat. There's always a way to avoid war. You know, it's almost like the mindset that is behind that. The belief avoidance of conflict is always possible if they're through civilized negotiations, which is not. It doesn't bear out as true in so many contexts through military history. Few wars break out due to poor communications. There's a lot of different reasons for wars and we should watch how we might criticize an ancient ruler as if that they should have just been able to avoid that war. If we can all just get along if we just put down our weapons and talk it out. Well, the other side might not want to do that. It doesn't always work out that way. But we cast moral aspersions on people who resort to war. They think it's worth their stupid or they're greedy or they're trying to exploit or they're just vain or something. But lots of things are going on and sometimes the enemy is the enemy and there's nothing you can talk to say to get out of it. And it assumes, too, that there's a dialectic between the general population and the leaders. And it's only those leaders who want to go to war, whereas all the peace-loving people are like, "No, no, no, don't go to war," which isn't generally the case a lot of times. Exactly, for sure. As we think back to the biblical portrayal of Hezekiah, what are. You bring out some points as to why we have some of the specific details in the biblical account about Hezekiah and why they might be there. Can you say a bit more about that because you bring out the fact, you know, Hezekiah is of the line of David. What are all some of the events? Erecia, you say, what are some of the factors in your mind that come into the biblical portrayal? Not only of how Hezekiah is victorious in this event, but why some of the specific details that we see in the Syrian annals aren't mentioned in the biblical text and why they're highlighted. Sure. So in 2 Kings 18, you have, you know, he's like David. He's compared to David. He's one of the few positive Kings in the Book of Kings, right? At the Senate of David, he. It says Yahweh was with him, kind of sounds like Emmanuel, God with us, if there's a hold of faith over whether Hezekiah is behind the Emanuel oracle therein. Isaiah 7, but he resists the Philistines, which is something that David famously did, of course, most of the Kings of Israel are Judah, should I say. Don't have these successful campaigns, but it highlights that he's fighting the Philistines. Now, but maybe they don't talk about, like I said, his having the King of Echron, Patti, or if there was an alliance or was he working with Philistines in this, that's not mentioned in the Bible because it highlights his action against the Philistines because the Philistines are kind of this age-old enemy of Israel, right? Like, and a good King. Even when the monarchy was first conceived back in 1 Samuel 9, when Samuel is going to go anoint the 1st King of Israel, Saul, God says to him, he's going to deliver the people from the Philistines. That seems to be the main reason for the monarchy. If you're working with the Philistines, that might not go that well, although David seems to kind of work with them too. But anyway, so in that way, the Bible may avoid some things about what's going on with the Philistines there. Interestingly, the Syrian text also avoid part of what the Bible says that Hezekiah had attacked the Philistines as far as Gaza, and they don't even mention Gaza. So they all have their own perspective of what they're doing, but it could be they avoid some of the interaction of the Philistines to highlight his David-like quality of resisting the Philistines, perhaps, something like that. And this is where reading this episode within the larger narrative is instructive and provides insight as well. Because if you're only focusing on this narrative, there's the differentiation, the perspective you get between the Syrian sources, the biblical sources, but then there's the added perspective you gain by considering the Bible text as a whole. Yeah, sure. I mean, because it is part of this larger story, especially if you hold to a theory of a Duturistic history or something that one editor/author put this all together, they're probably thinking it in terms of connections between David and Hezekiah. And of course, the author of Kings is always looking back to David as some kind of an ideal. So it is part of a larger story. It's not just this one source that we can just isolate as just a historical source about the invasion of Snackrub. But sometimes the story is we want to do that day often. I find most of the discussions of this don't take into account the larger framework of a story or even a theory of authorship like the Duturistic history is usually not brought up in the context of any historical discussions over this. Yeah, well, speaking of, that's my, that actually is my next question for you. What, implications do you see for understanding the kind of composition or reduction of the Duturistic history? So for the listeners out there, right, for those who might not be aware, there's different debates about this Duturistic history, which is basically an early version of Israel's history up to the destruction of Jerusalem, or slightly thereafter perhaps, depending on what you want to add. The question is when is this history compiled? Is it drawing from resources that we have from, as early as David and Solomon's time, and then are kind of put together in a rough version and has a kaya's day re-edited in Josiah's day re-edited again in the post-exilic period, or is it a history that only kind of comes together in Josiah's day and then is edited in the exilic and post-exilic period? And how many times is it edited? So in light of all we've been discussing and thinking about the portrayal of Hasakaya, do you see any implications for understanding the writing or the is just a dating of the Duturistic history? Yeah, well, I mean, that's a, that's a very complicated question with a lot of different different ideas, like you said, whether there's a jocianic edition updated in the exile where you got the three exilic editions or more of kind of the German God's-Kun School. I'm a bit agnostic on it, but I like the theory in general of an exilic reduction or a compilation put together, but that is based on earlier traditions and earlier sources. I'm a little skeptical on how well we can isolate those sources, for instance, in the Hasakaya story. It was often going back to Shade and Childs. They deposit three distinct sources, account A is just like second things, 18, 13, 16 or something, and then account B is 17 to 19, eight or something like that, and then the account B2 is post-exilic and they separate them all up. In my first book on this, I think I did, I showed how it's not a very sound reconstruction of the sources. I think sources are involved, but we're sometimes too confident how we can parse them out specifically. So my view is something like Notes View, not exactly, but that somebody put together this history drawing on earlier books, some of which could have perhaps circulated sort of in a book form on some. I'm a little agnostic on that. Not sure like the book of Samuel or judges. Sometimes they seem to have their own character, but I can see Notes arguments for the speeches, uniting them, a lot of the deuteronomic language, the language of deuteronomy that permeates the more deuteronomy as a standard judgment for the kings and the Passover that Josiah celebrates seems to be a deuterimistic one. So I think that the deuterimistic history theory is very helpful, and I think that there's something there. I think most people would see that these were all written in light of deuteronomy. I'm not sure about the Josianic version updated, like the Harvard School. It's an interesting theory. I think more, I look more towards more of an exilic without a separate Josianic edition. Of course, Proven, even Proven has the Hezekiah kind of dating for the first edition, which makes a good case for that too. I just think that it's possible, but pretty hard to prove. And I see more of a unity to it that it could have just been all done in exile. Perhaps into the post-exilic theory, but I'm not in favor of pushing the dates later and later to where you have chronicles being contemporary history like Raymond Person might say or someone. I think the chronicleer is looking back on a previous work that was already done, and I posit the chronicleer's writing in the fourth century, BBC. So I think that the deuterimistic history has to be before that. I don't think it's a contemporary competing history, but he's looking back to that and drawing on it. So all that to say is I'm not entirely sure what this book contributes to the deuterimistic history theory, but I still hold to something like that, something like a neo-Noti and you perhaps. What do you think about that? Well, just struck me as it was reading in some of the points you bring out that thinking of again, a perspective of how the Biblical text is portraying this episode and also the specific details that it chooses to include versus the details it chooses to exclude. It makes a lot of sense that you might even have an early version coming from the days of Hezekiah as you're starting to craft this mythology of what in the world happened. Well, here it is, right? We Hezekiah did this good stuff. He's on the throne, right? He survived. Jerusalem is not destroyed. We didn't lose any land. Yes, Shrela is booming again. If you look at the archaeological material, either a very late 8th century or early 7th century, the countryside of Judah is at its densest kind of population-wise. And so everything seems to be going well. Again, the question is whether this is an internal process or the result of the Paxeserriac is up for debate, pulling everything together. In my mind, at least, it raises the question, well, it makes a lot of sense, then, that you might have this perspective showing up already as a way of commemorating Hezekiah. And the fact that you're tying it to David, this ancestor from before as well, is one of the key markers of that. And it also sets Hezekiah apart from preceding kings that either were pro-Syrians, such as his father, or who just didn't have to face certain kind of conflicts like this. The only other king that really faces military incursion from imperial forces like that is going to be, or the next one is Josiah, forget the Northern Kingdom because we don't care about that at all. So it makes sense, then, in some regards, that you would have some early stories being crafted about Hezekiah, putting him in with this history that has already maybe orally presented in the story of your people, as you've known it so far, that then, again, is adopted and adapted. Yeah, I don't think that this history was composed in the exile out of whole cloth. I think that there were definitely documents, probably, some kind of archives. Things were recorded from these important events throughout their history, and I think the Book of Kings suggests that they are always recording who the Queen Mother is. They're recording all these details about the kind of the reignal resumes. It seems to me that they're recording things as they went along, but it was probably all put together later into this kind of long narrative, perhaps. But yeah, I think definitely this would have been recorded at the time. And we don't need to posit centuries in between before they've theologized about it or considered this that it was some kind of divine victory or that God had saved them from this. I think that that was what was interesting looking to war of 1812. How quickly some of this kind of mythology that military lore in the United States caught on. I think one of the catch phrases was only uttered in June of 1813, and then by September it was already on a flag on a boat. Like they had it up there. Like just a few months it became a hallmark of the war. How quickly these kind of things can become important. And you don't have to posit these massive amounts of time in between. Yeah, no, I think that's a great point. I love that example when you brought it out. I was like, oh, yeah, it's months. And you've got a story. You've got a myth already. And it's a good reminder, I think, for biblical scholars and or just ancient historians in general, as we're dealing with these ancient sources, is that people will be pretty smart back then. We don't have to assume that the farther back we go, the less intelligent or less complex or less contemplative they were, they can come up with things pretty easily very early on. And you don't have to posit some big window in between an event and the portrayal of that event. Yeah. And the irony of it is sometimes they do think of earlier as being more primitive than later, but then they often talk about the later being more theological than the earlier it. It's inconsistent the way it's sometimes the characterized kind of the ancient mind. Well, Paul, this has been a fascinating discussion in your book. Sennacher in the War of 1812, disputed victory in the Assyrian campaign of 701 BC in light of military history, which just kind of rolls off the tongue there, is out. It's a TNT clerk for those that are interested in purchasing it. And again, there's so many other points in there. It provides such a good overview of the history of scholarship for so many of these points that we've kind of just even glossed over in our time here today. So if you want more details, I would recommend checking this book out because there's a wealth of information in there. And just really appreciate the perspective that you bring. And I think it's going to be a really helpful one as hopefully a scholars move forward and think about some of these ancient events is that, you know, what is the perspective that we're approaching some of these things with and is it an ancient perspective or is it the perspective we ourselves are bringing to that thing. So Paul, I just want to thank you again. Any last comments before I sign off? Well, I thought of one interesting thing I found about the War of 1812 that is probably completely random, but not knowing that much about American history. I always heard about Uncle Sam, but apparently the origins of Uncle Sam come from the War of 1812. I don't even realize. So there was this guy, Samuel Wilson, who worked for the Army, who was a meat inspector, and he would stamp everything with a U.S. and due to the problematic nature of food supplies for the Army during the period, people who were opposed to the war started saying U.S. did for Uncle Sam because this guy is Sam Wilson, which I think is interesting because I'm a superhero fan that Sam Wilson is the name of the Falcon in the Marvel movies who becomes Captain America. This food is positively in the future. So anyway, little useless tidbit, which I thought was interesting in there. That's great. No, I found it. It was really helpful just to view the analog with the War of 1812 and thinking how both sides could view have a very different perspective. So when you look at the biblical history when it's compiled, Hezekiah's achievements are compared with David, the King who won Israel's independence, Israel, the Siserian crisis, which obviously would have been hard for the people. As it passed in due to history, it wasn't seen back. It wasn't when they looked back at it. It wasn't just this futile and costly struggle that some people now attribute to Hezekiah that he just brought them into conflict, or that they'd just barely escape. But it was viewed as a glorious triumph where the god of Judah, the small nation, repulsed the great empire. And show that he was more powerful than Sniperb or his gods, which I think is a very early significant perspective that they would have had even initially on. I thought it's an interesting analog that helps me. I think I understand a little bit better of how Hezekiah is remembered so fondly, even though we have all this evidence of devastation that happened in 7-1. No, it definitely led me to rethink just thinking back to my dissertation from years ago and rethinking my own views I had back then of questioning that and say, "I'm think I had a modern perspective on some of these things, so I appreciate the insight that you have brought." Well, Paul, thank you for being here. This has been so much fun. Appreciate you spending the time with us and Biblical world listeners. Until next time, keep on digging. You've been listening to OnScripps Biblical World Podcast. If you enjoy this show, please show your support by giving us a rating on iTunes or wherever you listen. You can support the show by visiting onScripps.study/donate. Until next time, keep digging. [Music]