The Cultic Reformation Chiastic Structure in the Book of Kings

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In the adopted methodology, the author of the study analyzes the literary structure of the Book of Kings in their final form, ignoring the previous stages of their creation, which is a justified scientific procedure used by many exegetes. He also accepts the historiographic perspective of the ancient Middle East, contained in the royal chronicles, in which the achievements of subsequent kings were assessed according to religious criteria. 

Starting from these two assumptions, he makes a detailed analysis of the worship data and the manner in which they are presented in the context of the rule of the kings of Israel and Judah. The results allowed him to outline the course of specific religious reforms conducted by individual kings, and based on their attitude towards Yahweh, assign them the label of a good or evil king. Thanks to a thorough comparative analysis of the distinguished kings, he extracted the chiastic arrangement of appropriate episodes from the text, which allowed the theological implications to be drawn for potential readers of the Book of Kings. Following the course of the reforms and the unveiling of its chiastic structure is an important scientific contribution to the process of learning and understanding the complex and complicated composition of the Book of Kings. When recommending publication in its current form, I would like to pay attention to two minor inaccuracies. On p. 12 of the study, there is a statement: Invoking Ahab’s name, 2 Kgs 17:16–17 explains the basis for Israel’s destruction. Meanwhile, the name Achab does not appear in this text or in the whole chapter 17. At the end of the same paragraph, the sentence also appears: Because of these two kings’ sins, Israel and Judah have no choice but to perish (1 Kgs 16:32–33; 2 Kgs 17:10; 21:2–4, 6, 13–14). In the references indicated here to biblical texts (1 Kings 16:32-33 and 2 Kings 17:10. 21.2-4.6) there is no mention of destroying Israel and Judah. Only 2 Kings 21:13-14 refers to the destruction of Jerusalem, but the announcement of it begins already in v.12.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The overall argument is strong, even if I am nervous about the possibility of an audience being able to recognize a chiasm across such a significant stretch of text. However, you seem to struggle with integrating Solomon into your argument, and at points have him as good and ambivalent at others. I suspect that this is because Kings only offers explicit evaluations after the division of the Kingdoms - it is perhaps worth reflecting on whether the difficulty in finalizing an evaluation on Solomon (a difficulty well-evidenced in the secondary literature) may itself be part of the rhetorical goals of the text. My other concern is that Kings devotes a considerable portion of text to the Elijah / Elisha stories (plus Micaiah), stories which move outside of Israel at key points. It is not altogether clear how these contribute to your structure. It may be that there are multiple structuring devices in Kings and this could be considered.

Author Response

Please see the attachment 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf