Zechariah 9 and the Recapitulation of an Ancient Ritual Pattern

Abstract

TIVELY discussion currently is being carried on over the question of the sources of Jewish apocalyptic. Zechariah 9 should be introduced into that discussion as a composition betraying one sphere of influence which was of vast significance in the emergence of apocalyptic eschatology from its roots iru ciassical prophecy, viz., the sphere of archaic ritual forms. Tracing ultimately to the ritual of ancient Near Eastern myth, these forms were mediated by the league and especially the royal cult of Jerusalem, being absorbed into the complex stream which we call apocalyptic from the sixth century on. Nevertheless, this chapter has been denied its important message by a phenomenon not uncommon in biblical research, the repeated application of a method of interpretation which, while yielding satisfactory results elsewhere, simply does not apply to the material at hand. For over a century biblical scholars have persisted in dating and interpreting Zechariah 9 on the basis of alleged historical allusions, especially the military campaign in vss. 1-7 and reference to the sons of Yawan in vs. 13. For hundreds of pages arguments have been advanced, with equal persuasiveness, for an htstorical setting during the reign of Hezekiah, Josiah, Tiglath-pileser, Sargon, Alexander, or the Alaccabees.l The flaw in this line of interpretation is methodological: the genre of the composition has been perceived incorrectly, and thus an inappropriate method of interpretation has been applied; in short, a Di-

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