The Solomonic Fantasy

This study takes on a historical-critical approach to the analysis of the Solomonic narrative (1 Kings 1:1-12:24) within the larger Deuteronomistic (Hi)Story (DH) by employing a postcolonial-psychoanalytic reading strategy. Sonia Wong argues that the DH is a cumulative, composite text which originated in the late fourth-century-BCE Persian Yehud. Through a Freudian model of fantasy as a disguised fulfillment for a repressed wish, Wong argues that the Solomonic Kingdom is a cultural fantasy that reflects the imperialized Yehudites' ambivalent wish to take the dominant, privileged position of the Persian imperializer through a pacifist mode of domination and to critique the imperializer's oppressive traits. The study provides a detailed textual analysis of the fantasy-thoughts, traces the fantasy-sources to the Persian context, and describes the psychic mechanisms involved in the fantasy-work.