Talk:Books of Samuel

Authorship and date of composition

the silver quarter-shekel which Saul's servant offers to Samuel in 1 Samuel 9 almost certainly fixes the date of this story in the Persian or Hellenistic periods

An editor commented that "the citation seems to be mistaken - I own this book and that page doesn't say anything about this"

Here's a direct reference - it clearly shows the exact point. It's from the 2003 edition - perhaps this editor has a different edition.

http://books.google.ie/books?id=2Vo-11umIZQC&pg=PA219&dq=%22the+silver+quarter-shekel%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mQZCUq25NZO3hAeS3oHAAw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22the%20silver%20quarter-shekel%22&f=false

--Rbreen (talk) 21:44, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Composition

@Altari, The article says that the Deuteronomistic history hypothesis advanced by Noth and amended by others enjoys overwhelming consensus, and this is referenced. The idea that anyone today would find J and E in Samuel is incorrect, and I don't think that's what Tsumura is saying.Please read him again, and see if he isn't referring to the pre-Noth period.

The notes by Randall C. Bailey that you sent me (thanks) say many things I agree with, but in a few places I think he's misleading. At the very beginning he talks about Wellhausen and Duhm's conclusions about the structure of the OT. Wellhausen's conclusions (at least the famous ones) were about the origins of the Pentateuch, not the OT in general. Duhm's theories were most famously on the prophets. So while it's true that together they add up to work on the OT, there's a danger of conflating them. This is to back up what I said above: the documentary hypothesis, associated with Wellhausen, applies only to the Pentateuch, not the entire bible.

The DH is only one of three ways of looking at the possible formation of the Pentateuch. The other two are the fragmentary hypothesis and the supplementary. These terms can also be confusing, because different scholars will use them in different ways. It's also best to see them as models rather then theories - these are the three ways, and the only three ways, in which the Pentateuch might have been composed, assuming it wasn't the work of a single author. It might have been done by combining at least two separate documents (meaning complete stories, running from Genesis to the end of Numbers); or by combining a number of separate fragments, none of them a complete document in the sense used above (i.e., a story with beginning, middle and end, running from Genesis to Numbers - so a complete story about Joseph, say, would be a fragment, not a document); or by adding supplements (additions, expansions) to an original document (sort of a half-way house between documentary and fragmentary approaches).

These are not theories (not hypotheses) - they're models, they're simply the only possible ways of constructing the Pentateuch from multiple sources: there are no others. In practice, scholars normally combine two or even all three of the models.

What's commonly called the documentary hypothesis is in fact a particular hypothesis (theory) developed by Julius Wellhausen. It was so widely accepted for the hundred years from 1878 to about 1980 that it came to be called the documentary hypothesis. It sets the number of source documents at four, and sets out a process and timetable for their combination by editors (redactors). It was a rather extreme example of the documentary model - there wasn't much room for the other models in it. It's now rather in disarray, following developments in the 1970s.

And it has nothing to do with Samuel. In fact it can't - it's a way of explaining how the set of books from Genesis to Deuterono0my came to be composed, but Samuel isn't a set of books, and it isn't even a single book. It was originally the first half of a very large book that took up what are now Samuel and Kings. So there's no need to explain how it came to be exposed from documents, since there's a beginning to Samuel, but really no end - it joins on to Kings.

Nevertheless, there are of course theories about how Samuel-Kings came to be. The dominant theory is fragmentary - Samuel and Kings are made up of sources, but these sources provide individual stories, they don't run continuously from the beginning of Samuel to the end of Kings. Tsumura explains this on page 13 and onwards. I imagine the explanation starts somewhere on pages 11-12, but as I said, I can't access those pages.

So, to conclude, what you want to say is, in general terms, true - very early scholars did try to find J and E in Samuel and Kings, and also in Joshua and Judges. But those attempts have been dropped. The overwhelming consensus today is that there is no sign of J and E in there. The overwhelming consensus is that the DtrH exists, that it was composed in the late 7th to 6th centuries from older sources,and that those sources are fragmentary in nature. And Noth didn't put forward a fragmentary hypothesis, his theory was on the very existence of the DtrH as a unified composition - the DtrH is not an alternative to the DH, they're two quite different things, one a theory about the existence of a unified history, but not about how it came to be composed, the other a theory about how a separate history, the Pentateuch, came to be composed.

Tsumara, page 16 onwards, gives an overview of Noth and later approaches to the DtrH. There are also the books in the bibliography of this article. For an up to date look at the documentary hypothesis and ways of approaching the Pentateuch, try Walter Houston's The Pentateuch, especially his chapters 5 and 6.

PiCo (talk) 10:41, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

So you are saying that this statement part of fragmentation is now out of favor:

Thus Eissfeldt’s theory was really a modification in which he
proposed “. . . to separate the pre-Deuteronomic materials in the
Hexateuch into three continuous strands, which he designated by
the sigla L (LaienschriftorLay-source), J, and E, his “L” in
Genesis being roughly equivalent to what had previously been
assigned to J. L is so called because it is at the other extreme from
the sacerdotal P; it reflects the nomadic and Rechabite ideal, with
its hostility to the Canaanite way of life, and is to be dated about
the time of Elijah. Eissfeldt has since traced L through Judges and
even Samuel.” 37

Even if this is out of favor hypothesis wasn't it still important enough to deserve mention as failed line of thought? This is advanced biblical authorship theory and not my normal element of investigation. Thanks for the instruction. Alatari (talk) 11:09, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

The itheory sketched in your quote certainly isn't representative. My feeling is that Wikipedia articles are aimed at entry-level readers without a detailed knowledge of the subject - no biblical scholar would come to Wikipedia to find out about his subject. We aim to give a broad but accurate overview, with good sources that the reader can then consult to get a more advanced knowledge if they wish. Of course, there's no actual policy on this, so you have to make your own mind up. PiCo (talk) 21:47, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Merge (implemented)

• Book of Samuel the Seer is a stub which asserts that the Chronicles mention refers to a lost book, however there is no reference supporting this and in searching for any discussion describing a lost "Book of Samuel the Seer" I found only pages which identify it with the canonical Books of Samuel. I suspect the stub was created by someone who mistakenly assumed all books mentioned in 1 Chronicles 29:29 were lost. I therefore suggest a merge. - Scyrme (talk) 15:43, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
• I've now implemented this merge, since there have been no objections. Scyrme (talk) 16:47, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Isn't it 1 and 2 Kings in the Septuagint and Orthodox Bibles?

And shouldn't the articles mention this? Imerologul Valah (talk) 12:35, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

"1Sa." listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect 1Sa. has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 November 19 § 1Sa. until a consensus is reached. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:49, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

goliath or goliath's brother

I notice that our article at Elhanan, son of Jaare-oregim explains there are various translations and interpretations regarding the identity of the figure that he kills. Either we should be be non-specific here (which seems really hard!), or we should perhaps just go check the sources from that and work out some suitable wording. Morwen (talk) 21:13, 11 May 2026 (UTC)