The Nehushtan נְחֻשְׁתָּֽן 

2 Kings 18.4 reads:

He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: For it was called Nehushtan.^[1]The Nehushtan נְחֻשְׁתָּן was the serpent pole that Moses constructed in the wilderness in the episode with the fiery flying serpents (Numbers 21.8-9). Literally Nehushtan = “a thing … Continue reading

Richard Friedman, who has extensively illustrated the explanatory power of the Documentary Hypothesis,^[2]Friedman, The Bible with Sources Revealed, HarperOne, 2005. gives us the following explanation of the Nehushtan:

Jeremiah is a priest, but he never sacrifices—which is also consistent with the position of the priests of Shiloh. Also, he is the only prophet to allude to the story of Moses’ bronze snake.^[3] Jeremiah 8.17-22. The story of that snake comes from E, the Shiloh source. King Hezekiah (reign 729-697 BCE) had smashed that snake. His destruction of an old relic that was associated with Moses himself was probably a blow to the priests of Shiloh. They were the ones who told its story, they held Moses in particularly great esteem, and they may have been Moses’ descendants.^[4]I find it worth noting here that the Brass Plates must have contained this story, as it was an E source document (probably), as it came from the line of the stewards of the records of Manasseh and … Continue reading King Josiah, on the other hand, who was the darling of the Shiloh priests, had a different record on the bronze snake. The term in Hebrew for the bronze snake was “Nehushtan.” Josiah married his son to a woman who may have been connected with the Shiloh circle, because she was named Nehushta (2 Kings 24.8).^[5]Nehushta, daughter of Elnathan, wife of king Jehoiakim (Reign 609-598 BCE) of Judah (Josiah’s second son) and mother of king Jehoiachin of Judah.

Friedman connects his ideas to another scholar, Baruch Halpern, when he says:

I would add to Halpern’s observations that not only is Jeremiah the only prophet to refer to Shiloh and to allude to Moses’ bronze snake; he is also the only prophet to refer to Samuel, the priest-prophet- judge who was the greatest figure in Shiloh’s history. Jeremiah speaks of Samuel alongside Moses as the two great men of the people’s history.^[6]Jeremiah 15.1. See: Friedman, p. 126.

There is one more thing connecting the prophet Jeremiah to Deuteronomy and the events surrounding it, and it is probably the strongest evidence of all. As many readers, both traditional and critical, have observed, the book of Jeremiah seems to be written, at several points, in the same language and outlook as Deuteronomy. Parts of Jeremiah are so similar to Deuteronomy that it is hard to believe that they are not by the same person.^[7]Friedman draws connections between the following texts: 1- Deut. 28.1 and Jer. 17.24; 2- Deut. 4.19 & 17.3 and Jer. 8.2 & 19.13; 3- Deut. 4.20 and Jer. 11.4; Deut. 4.29, 10.12, 11.13, 13.4 … Continue reading

Friedman quotes Halpern to draw the conclusion that the Law Code of Deuteronomy came from the Levitical priests of Shiloh. He contends that these priests was connected to the Deuteronomistic history, or “at least parts of it.”^[8]Richard Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible?, p. 127.

Friedman continues his investigation into the story of the Nehushtan and its destruction and removal from the temple, by explaining the difference between P and D:

P is a work of the Aaronid priesthood. They are the priests in authority at the central altar—not Moses, not Korah, not any other Levites. Only those who are descended from Aaron can be priests. All other Levites are second-level clergy. Only P among the biblical sources sees “priests” as something distinct from “Levites.” D speaks of priests generally as “the Levite priests.” But P always speaks of two distinct groups, the priests and the Levites. Who was the king who formalized the divisions of priests and Levites? King Hezekiah.

Chronicles reports explicitly:

And Hezekiah established the divisions of the priests and the Levites, according to their divisions, every man according to his task, for the priests and for the Levites (2 Chronicles 31.2).

The Aaronid priesthood that produced P had opponents, Levites who saw Moses and not Aaron as their model. What was the most blatant reminder of Moses’ power that was visible in Judah? The bronze serpent, “Nehushtan.” According to tradition, stated explicitly in E, Moses himself had made it. It had had the power to save people from death by snakebite. Who was the king who smashed Nehushtan? King Hezekiah.

King Hezekiah was the best thing that ever happened to the Aaronid priests. Until his time, their greatest supporter among the kings had been King Solomon. Solomon had removed the Shiloh priest Abiathar from Jerusalem and had given the authority in the Temple entirely to the Aaronid priest Zadok. Hezekiah followed Solomon’s priestly preferences.

In fact, it is extremely interesting to recall that Solomon had built various altars besides the Temple altar in Jerusalem. But, despite Hezekiah’s interest in centralization, Hezekiah left Solomon’s altars alone. What happened to those altars? Josiah defiled them.

Josiah, the darling of the Shiloh priests, destroyed the altars of Solomon. Hezekiah, the darling of the Aaronid priests, destroyed Nehushtan.^[9]To me, this is the heart of Friedman’s argument. The destroyers of one thing are establishing the authority of whatever it is they support by eliminating their rivals’ symbols, texts, claims … Continue reading

The ties between the two most favored kings and the two great priesthood documents, D and P, are fascinating. There were two kings who established religious centralization, and there were two works that articulated centralization. The laws and stories of P reflect the interests, the actions, the politics, and the spirit of the age of Hezekiah the way that D reflects the age of Josiah.^[10]Friedman, p. 211.

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