The Elisha Cycle and the Accounts of the Omride Wars

S early as the turn of the century, Abraham Kuenen' and Rudolf Kittel2 argued that certain of the Elisha legends belong in the context of the Jehu dynasty rather than at the end of the Omride period where they now appear in the deuteronomic history. More recently Alfred Jepsen3 and C. F. Whitley4 have advanced the same argument concerning the two battle accounts of I Kings 20. Specifically, Jepsen and Whitley believe that the king of Israel who fought these two battles was Joash rather than Ahab and that the Ben-hadad whose attacks he withstood was none other than the king of Syria called by the same name in II Kings 13 3 and 24-25.5 Whitley has gone even further to explain that the deuteronomist purposely transferred most of the Elisha legends and these two battle accounts from their original context to the Omride period in order to support his theocratic view of history.6 The present writer agrees that many of the events reflected in the narratives which now appear in the context of the Omride period actually occurred at a later time in Israel's history, yet doubts that any of them can be dated as late as Joash's reign and feels that a more adequate explanation is necessary as to how they came to be misplaced. The purpose of this paper is to analyze further the narratives in question in search of their proper historical context and to advance an alternate proposal as to how they came to be transferred to the Omride period.