The Stripping of the Bulls: A Reexamination of the Role of Ahaz in Deuteronomistic Historiography

What is it about?

In this submission, I encourage my reader to look at one of the more maligned rulers in the book of Kings, Ahaz of Judah. Each king is evaluated by the text as a good or evil ruler. The language utilized to make these evaluations is quite formulaic, with similar phrases used to evaluate good and bad kings throughout the text. However, the evaluation of Ahaz does not fall into one of these more formulaic descriptions. When we look at the portrayal of Ahaz a bit closer, we note that if we look at the way the text describes his actions independently from his negative evaluation, he doesn't appear quite so evil. This essay argues that in an early version of the text, Ahaz may have been considered to be a "good king" and only became a "bad king" due to changes from a later editor. The final portion of this contribution provides a detailed account for how this change may have happened.

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