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- Title
Three's a Crowd in Shunem: Elisha's Misconduct with the Shunammite Reflects a Polemic against Prophetism.
- Authors
Hepner, Gershon
- Abstract
The links between the story of Elisha and the Shunammite (II Reg 4,8–37) and the conception and birth of Isaac (Gen 18,1–15; 21,1–3; 22,1–19) suggest that the Elisha narrative contains a hidden polemic against prophetism. The narrator implies that Elisha takes initiatives that Abraham leaves to Yhwh, fathering the Shunammite's child in an attic that parodies the tabernacle, contrasting with Abraham, who leaves the conception of Isaac to Yhwh. The birth of the Shunammite's son follows the paradigm of threefold breeding permitted to a slave in Ex 21,7–11. Elisha's conduct with the Shunammite echoes that which the Israelites suspect Moses of having committed after the Sinai theophany, and that of David with another Shunammite in I Reg 1,1–4. The data suggest that the Deuteronomistic Historian is as opposed to prophets as to the Davidic dynasty.
- Subjects
NARRATIVES; ELISHA (Biblical prophet); JEWISH apologetics; WOMEN prophets; ISAAC (Biblical patriarch); ABRAHAM (Biblical patriarch); DEUTERONOMISTIC history (Biblical criticism)
- Publication
Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 2010, Vol 122, Issue 3, p387
- ISSN
0044-2526
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1515/ZAW.2010.027