101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

Myths of the Heroes 275
These passages show a traditional belief that the Gershom branch of Levi had a
close relation to Manasseh and to the northern tribes. The passage identifying the
ancestry of the priests at the Danite cult center must have been written after Israel and
the Danite cult center had ceased to exist, because the text refers to Israel’s captivity,
either by Assyria or Babylon.
The names Jonathan and Micah both have connections to Saul, the first king.
Jonathan was his son and also a good friend of David. The betrayal of Ephraim by
Jonathan the priest mirrors the betrayal of Saul by Jonathan his son, who befriended
David and helped him escape from Saul. Saul’s Jonathan had a grandson named
Micah, but we know nothing about him. The father of that Micah was Meribbaal.
The Saulite Micah, the Ephramite Micah, and Jeroboam all appear to be the same
person. The name Jeroboam means something like“the people increase.”This is a variation
on the name of Rehoboam, Solomon’s successor and Jeroboam’s rival, which has
approximately the same meaning as Jeroboam. This suggests that Jeroboam’s name
was a throne name chosen after he came to power.
In the story of Jeroboam, his father’s name is Nebat and he comes from Ephraim,
but as we have seen from the naming of the Levite, names and genealogies easily can
be changed to fit the needs. Jeroboam may have been descended from Saul and his
original name may have been Micah.
In its original form, the story of Micah was a parable, a fictional tale presenting a
moral or religious lesson in which the characters would have been readily recognizable
by the intended audience. The message of the parable was that kingship is evil and
that the Shilohite priesthood was Israel’s chief means of prosperity. Written originally
in the time of Jeroboam as an attack on his leadership, the storyteller disguised the central
characters by placing them in the pre-monarchical period.
The tale survived, almost certainly in a written form, and centuries later the biblical
scribes incorporated it into a history of Israel. Unfortunately, by that time they no
longer knew the original meaning and treated it as a simple narrative about problems
in pre-monarchical history.