The three Nathan narratives in 2 Samuel and 1 Kings, are given detailed consideration in this fascinating study. A persuasive attempt is made to reconstruct the original form of the traditions and to trace the modifications made to them before they were finally accepted into the Succession Narrative. The original Nathan, a court official and chief spokesman for the Jebusite group, sought a working compromise between the original Jebusite inhabitants of Jerusalem and its new Israelite settlers. After accepting service under King David, Nathan tried to secure the best he could for the Jebusites in this new situation. When this tradition was expanded, modified and theologized, the consistent Nathan of early tradition became a complex character, and almost appears as a dual personality: the diplomatic court prophet of the original narrative became an outspoken prophet of Yahweh in the 'theological' accounts of his activities.

The three Nathan narratives in 2 Samuel and 1 Kings, are given detailed consideration in this fascinating study. A persuasive attempt is made to reconstruct the original form of the traditions and to trace the modifications made to them before they were finally accepted into the Succession Narrative. The original Nathan, a court official and chief spokesman for the Jebusite group, sought a working compromise between the original Jebusite inhabitants of Jerusalem and its new Israelite settlers. After accepting service under King David, Nathan tried to secure the best he could for the Jebusites in this new situation. When this tradition was expanded, modified and theologized, the consistent Nathan of early tradition became a complex character, and almost appears as a dual personality: the diplomatic court prophet of the original narrative became an outspoken prophet of Yahweh in the 'theological' accounts of his activities.

As with archaeology, traditio-historical research of Old Testament literature proceeds backwards from the received text, travelling through the earlier stages of compositions to the probable origins. The canonical structure of the Hebrew Bible has therefore been taken as the point of departure in the traditio-historical study of the Nathan Narrative in 2 Samuel 7:1-17. By progressing backwards from the Canonical Prophets, the stages in the composition of the Joshua-Kings corpus, and of 2 Samuel 7:1-17, have been recovered through the application of redactio-critical and literary critical methods. A pre-history of the Narrative has also been retraced in the traditions that were preserved in the oral stages, in the typical forms and settings of transmission. Notwithstanding the valuable insights that have accrued from Martin Noth's hypothesis of a "Deuteronomistic History," both the hypothesis itself and analyses deriving from it have failed to account satisfactorily for the place of 2 Samuel 7:1-17 in the Joshua-Kings composition. That failure is due to a methodological flaw of taking a non-canonical configuration--namely the Deuteronomy-Kings corpus--as the point of departure and the interpretative key. This study tries to remedy that flaw.

"Many years ago, a prophet in ancient Israel by the name of Nathan told a touching story to King David in order to help him to see just how far he had strayed from this duty to love his neighbor ... This ... book will not only entertain youngsters, but will teach them about the importance of respecting the property of others. It will also warn children of the dangers that are associated with coveting, greed, and selfishness"--P. [4] of cover.

Nathan Lovell proposes that 1 and 2 Kings might be read as a work of written history, produced with the explicit purpose of shaping the communal identity of its first readers in the Babylonian exile. By drawing on sociological approaches to the role historiography plays in the construction of political identity, Lovell argues the book of Kings is intended to reconstruct a sense of Israelite identity in the context of these losses, and that the book of Kings moves beyond providing a reason for the exile in Israel's history, and beyond even connecting its exilic audience to that history. The book recalls the past in order to demonstrate what it means to be Israel in the (exilic) present, and to encourage hope for the Israelite nation in the future. After developing a reading strategy for 1–2 Kings that treats the book as a coherent narrative, Lovell examines the construction of Israelite identity within Kings under the headings of covenant, nationhood, land, and rule. In each case he suggests that the narrative of the book creates room for a genuine but temporary expression of Israelite identity in exile: genuine to show that it remains possible for Israel to be Yahweh's people during the exile, but temporary to encourage hope for a future restoration.