1 Kings

9 Episodes

1 Kings is part of the Deuteronomistic History, a Judean literary project that turns older royal traditions into a theological account of Israel's monarchic past. Its narratives about Solomon, the divided kingdoms, and figures like Ahab and Jezebel are shaped by later editors concerned with covenant loyalty, competing cults, and the legitimacy of kingship.

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Why this book matters

1 Kings comes up on the show whenever debates about Israelite religion, monarchy, and textual development converge. The hosts return to Solomon’s marriages, Ahab and Jezebel, competing deities like Baal, Asherah, Chemosh, and Milcom, and reform narratives about who counted as legitimate priests because the book preserves so many places where later theological framing is still visible in the seams of the text.

That makes 1 Kings especially useful for Data Over Dogma’s recurring method: read the story closely, compare translations, notice scribal corruptions and editorial additions, and then ask what those features reveal about when these traditions were written down and whose interests shaped them. On the podcast, 1 Kings is less a source of tidy moral lessons than a case study in how royal memory, sectarian polemic, and later redaction became scripture.

Where to start

Start here for the strongest listening on 1 Kings.

Quotes from the Data

“You have 1 Kings 11 is interesting for so many reasons. Verse 5 refers to Solomon following Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites. But then you go down to verse 7 and it says, then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab. We've talked about Chemosh before. And for Molech, the abomination of the Ammonites. So we've just seen it was Milcom who's the abomination of the Ammonites, and now we have Molech, the abomination of the Ammonites. This is a scribal corruption.”

Dan McClellan Episode 139

“So a lot of scholars will suggest that the reference to the prophets of Asherah is probably a later addition. Some editor was probably like, 'Yeah, throw the one about the Asherah folks and Jezebel in there as well.' And then they did and just ignored that they're not in the rest of the story.”

Dan McClellan Episode 123

“You don't have historical prose in alphabetic writing until after Ahab was dead. The second half of the 9th century, that's when it first pops up in the record. And what that means is, and by historical prose, I mean that genre of historical narrative. Like, you had poetry, you had letters, you didn't have historical narrative. So Kings, Samuel, the overwhelming majority of all of that, apart from a few scattered pieces of poetry, were written after Ahab was dead and gone.”

Dan McClellan Episode 123

“One of the points that I made in there was that I wanted to engage the story in all its details, whether, you know, no matter how boring, no matter how controversial, because I wanted anyone who read that story and actually internalized the story and understood it. The last thing I wanted is for them to grow up and actually go, you know, maybe they study it at school or maybe they just find out on the internet, 'Oh, I was lied to.'”

Dan McClellan Episode 140

All episodes

Every episode currently tagged with 1 Kings.