Thinking about Zion’s History in the Psalms

I am reading J.J.M. Roberts work on Davidic and the Psalter. “J.J. M. Roberts “The Davidic Origin of the Zion Tradition” originally published in JBL 92 (1973) 329-44. Also in The Bible and the Ancient Near East Eisenbrauns 2002.

His claim: The Zion material begin during the Davidic-Solomonic period.

One of the things you notice when you read or reread this article is how much the terrain has shifted since 1973. Roberts was arguing against a pre-Israelite Zion tradition.
Edzard Rohland and Gunther Wanke He properly observed that the weakness of this poisition was that it depended on the “unproven and unprovable assumptions about Jebusite role in Davidic Jerusalem.” (314)
“…if the Zion tradition goes back to the pre-Israelite inhabitants of Jerusalem, and particularly to the cult of El, that tradition should be compatible with the extra-biblical traditions about this Canaanite deity. However, such is not the case.” (316) For instance the mythological topography of Zion do not match.
“There is no reason to believe the Jebusites would have fused the separate mythological traditions of EL and Baal.” (321)
While Roberts refutes a pre-Israelite  Zion tradition he does think that Ps 110:4-5 indicates that “traditions about Melchizedek is unquestionably pre-Israelite. But as they say on television that is a different show.
Roberts says about what he is doing in this essay. “So far this paper has attempted to show that one cannot derive the Zion tradition form the pre-Israelite cult of Jerusalem. …I suggest that all the features in the Zion tradition can be explained  most adequately by positing an original Sitz im Leben in the era of the Davidic-Solomonic empire.” (324)
The Psalms texts in play are Pss 46:5; 47:3; 83:19; 97:9 and Ps 82.
Roberts is leading us  to a major methodological direction. “Politico-religious propaganda has never been overly concerned with keeping its mythology straight.” The rise of the Davidic “empire” provides the impetus for the creation of Zion tradition. This process may have borrowed form Canaanite mythology.
Nonetheless Roberts rightly says: “Religious ideology often outlives the political realities it was in part  created to justify.” (329)

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