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the Bible presents a nice and neat genealogical line extending from Abraham

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Abraham's son is called Isaac

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Isaac is the father of Jacob

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Jacob undergoes a name change to Israel

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Jacob/Israel is the father of twelve sons who represent the twelve tribes of the whole nation

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Jacob and his family go down to Egypt

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during the days of Joseph there

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they do fairly well

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then Egypt begins to oppress Israel

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they make their escape under the leadership of Moses

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Moses is descended of Levi, one of Jacob's twelve sons

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he's joined by his sister Miriam

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and his brother Aaron

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Aaron's line is awarded the role of prestigious high priests

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Moses passes the mantel onto Joshua who brings Israel into the promised land

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Joshua dies

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a series of Judges appear

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govern Israel and save them from their enemies

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each is from a different clan or tribe from Israel

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the Judges are eventually eclipsed by Saul, Israel's first king

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Saul proves to be the wrong person for the job

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eventually replaced by David

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after the death of David's son Solomon, his successor

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Israel is split into two

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the Davidic kings rule only in the southern part called Judah

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the myriad of rulers and their dynasties in the northern part don't have a unified dynasty

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so this is one simply story from Abraham down to the final kings of Judah and Israel

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we have to distinguish between what is a story which Biblical authors may have been creating to present Israel in a certain way

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we have to ask: are Moses and Miriam really brother and sister

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or do Moses and Miriam represent separate traditions which the Biblical authors brought together in order to affirm

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if this is the case, than the Biblical narrative is even more impressive achievement than one would otherwise suppose

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we also have to ask:

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why would the Biblical authors weave these stories together in the way they did

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how do their efforts in this regard relate to the experience of Israel's defeat and loss of sovereignty

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Sumerian King List

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presents the names and reigns of Mesopotamian rulers from prehistory to 1730 BCE

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they have a concept of a flood myth

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rules before the flood enjoy fantastically long life spans

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the authors have aligned all the rulers into a sequence

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even in cases when kings reign simultaneously

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if one king reigned at the same time as another in another city, the authors would say that one reigned before the other

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the most likely reason for this is simply because there is a concept of kingship and kingship is unified and it cannot be held by two kings at the same time

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Torkild Jacobsen: "Sumerian King List" (1939)

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"The author of the King List worked on the theory that Babylonia was and always had been a single kingdom. Within the country the capital could change from one city to another, but there was never more than one king at a time."

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it's not that kingship is passed from one place to another

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but Babylonia is a single kingdom

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the unifying thread is monarchic power

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a unity of history seen from the perspective of the throne, of monarchic power

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when we come to the Biblical stories we see that it does not focus on monarchic power

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monarchic power is place far back in history

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after the patriarchs and Exodus and Joshua and Judges

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what unifies the history is this God which becomes the God of Israel and Israel itself, this people who has a special relationship with this god

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it's more a unity of family, nation and their God in contrast to kingship and monarchic power that you have in the Sumerian King List