Sources & Citations

This guide keeps four kinds of claim distinct — the biblical text, the scholarly reconstruction (how and when Kings was edited), what readers interpret, and the Latter-day Saint frame — and labels each for what it is. Every verse is quoted from the text itself (LDS/KJV), and every regnal verdict in the timeline is checked verbatim against 1–2 Kings. Deepens, not debunks.

Scripture

• The Holy Bible, King James Version, and the Latter-day Saint editions of the standard works (Book of Mormon; Doctrine and Covenants; Pearl of Great Price, including the Articles of Faith). All quotations are checked against the text, never from memory.
• The Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 15a — the tradition that Jeremiah compiled the book of Kings, and (a few clauses later, in the same passage) that Ezra compiled Chronicles “up to his own time,” with Nehemiah completing it — placing Kings in the exile and Chronicles in the Persian-period return.

The Kings and Their Chronology

• The regnal-evaluation timeline is built from a verse-by-verse reading of 1–2 Kings: every reign length and every “did right / did evil in the sight of the LORD” verdict is quoted from the text, with the evaluation reference recorded for each of the thirty-nine rulers.
• Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (University of Chicago Press, 1951; rev. eds.) — the standard framework for absolute dates. This guide intentionally leaves the BCE dates open (the co-regencies and synchronisms make the stated figures overlap) rather than imposing one chronology on the text.

How Kings Was Written (Scholarly Reconstruction)

A model under discussion, presented as interpretive leverage — not as settled fact and not as Church doctrine.

• Martin Noth, Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien (1943; in English as The Deuteronomistic History) — the proposal that Deuteronomy through 2 Kings is a single, purposeful history composed in the exile.
• Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Harvard, 1973) — the double-redaction refinement (a Josianic Dtr1 and an exilic Dtr2 ending with Jehoiachin’s release).
• The Göttingen / Smend school (Rudolf Smend, Walter Dietrich, Timo Veijola) — the multi-layered alternative that distributes the work among several later editors.
• William M. Schniedewind, Who Really Wrote the Bible: The Story of the Scribes (Princeton University Press, 2024) — a recent study arguing that the Hebrew Bible was produced not by lone authors but by communities of scribes, trained by apprenticeship and traceable through ancient inscriptions and archaeology. It underlies this guide’s “Who Held the Pen?” and “The Royal Scribes in Exile” (the exiled royal scribes behind Kings, Isaiah, and Jeremiah), the northern-hymn reading of Psalm 20, the “sons of the prophets” as an apprentice guild, and the dating of the Arad temple’s closure to Hezekiah’s reign.

Jeroboam’s Calves and the Northern Cult

• Mordechai Cogan, 1 Kings: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Anchor Bible 10; Doubleday, 2001) — the standard critical commentary behind the close reading of 1 Kings 12.
• John Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan (Sheffield / JSOT Press, 2000) — the bull as the mount or pedestal of the invisible deity in Canaanite (El and Baal) iconography.
• Wesley I. Toews, Monarchy and Religious Institution in Israel under Jeroboam I (SBL Monograph 47; Scholars Press, 1993) — the question of whether Jeroboam innovated or preserved an older northern Yahwism.
• Koog P. Hong, “The Golden Calf of Bethel and Judah’s Mimetic Desire of Israel,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament (2023) — the calf read as a distorted “double” of Jerusalem’s cherubim. The “pedestal, not a rival god” reading of the calves is associated with Frank Moore Cross (above) and is broadly held.

Temples Beyond Jerusalem (Archaeology)

Behind the point that sanctuaries once stood across Israel and Judah, not only in Jerusalem.

• Shua Kisilevitz, “The Iron IIA Judahite Temple at Tel Moẓa,” Tel Aviv 42, no. 2 (2015): 147–164 — a ninth-century Judahite temple about 7 km from Jerusalem, on a plan echoing Solomon’s.
• The Arad sanctuary inside the Judahite fortress, excavated by Yohanan Aharoni — a functioning temple with an altar and standing stones: evidence of sanctioned worship outside Jerusalem.

The Samaritan Aftermath

Behind the observation that the north–south fracture hardened, by Jesus’ day, into the Jew–Samaritan divide (John 4:9).

• The biblical account of Samaria’s resettlement after the Assyrian conquest (2 Kings 17:24–41).
• Reinhard Pummer, The Samaritans: A Profile (Eerdmans, 2016) — the standard modern overview; and Magnar Kartveit, The Origin of the Samaritans (Brill, 2009). (Scholars debate how early the Samaritans became a distinct community — the schism crystallized over centuries — but its roots reach back to the divided kingdom.)

Latter-day Saint Scholarship

• Margaret Barker — the British biblical scholar, widely discussed among Latter-day Saints, whose work proposes an older temple theology displaced by Josiah’s reform.
• Kevin Christensen, “Paradigms Regained: A Survey of Margaret Barker’s Scholarship and Its Significance for Mormon Studies” (FARMS Occasional Papers 2, 2001) — the reading of the brass plates as preserving a pre-Deuteronomic tradition. Offered explicitly in the “some scholars propose” register.
• The eighth Article of Faith (“as far as it is translated correctly”) as the framework that already makes room for transmission and compilation history.
• The Come, Follow Me (Old Testament) curriculum — the manual’s own willingness to sit with the hard passages (the “lying spirit” of 1 Kings 22).
• Published largely through FARMS / the Neal A. Maxwell Institute, BYU Studies, and the Interpreter Foundation.

Asherah, the Tree, and the Divine Feminine

The subject of “The Lady of the Temple.” The layers are kept distinct — biblical text, archaeology, interpretation, and the Latter-day Saint frame.

• Biblical text: the asherah (“grove”) in the temple and its removal (2 Kings 21:7; 23:6; 1 Kings 15:13); Wisdom as “a tree of life” (Proverbs 3:18; 8:22–31); the “queen of heaven” (Jeremiah 44:17); cherubim guarding the tree of life (Genesis 3:24); Nephi’s tree-and-virgin vision (1 Nephi 11:8–21).
• Archaeology: the Kuntillet Ajrud (c. 800 BC) and Khirbet el-Qom (later 8th century BC) inscriptions blessing “by YHWH… and his asherah.” William G. Dever, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (Eerdmans, 2005). The standard drawing of the Pithos A painting (the sacred tree flanked by ibexes and a lion) is by Pirhiya Beck, Imagery and Representation: Studies in the Art and Iconography of Ancient Palestine (Tel Aviv, 2002), 98 fig. 4 — reprinting her foundational study, “The Drawings from Horvat Teiman (Kuntillet ‘Ajrud),” Tel Aviv 9 (1982): 3–68. (The reading is widely held; what “asherah” denotes — the goddess, her tree-symbol, or a common noun — remains debated.)
• The goddess “type” and the Greek strand: the Minoan Snake Goddess (faience, Temple Repositories at Knossos) — Arthur Evans, The Palace of Minos (1921–35); on the contested reconstruction and identity, Kenneth Lapatin, Mysteries of the Snake Goddess (2002). The Levantine nude-goddess-with-serpents (Qudshu/Qadesh) and tree-trunk pillar figurines: Izak Cornelius, The Many Faces of the Goddess (2004), and Othmar Keel & Christoph Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel (Fortress, 1998). Athena from a Minoan household snake-goddess: Martin P. Nilsson, The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and Its Survival in Greek Religion (2nd ed., 1950); the Linear B a-ta-na potnia is Knossos tablet V 52. Cadmus and the Phoenician alphabet: Herodotus, Histories 5.58. Near Eastern (incl. Canaanite) influence on early Greece: Walter Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution (Harvard, 1992), and M.L. West, The East Face of Helicon (Oxford, 1997). (The Minoan–Canaan relationship is a shared iconographic type, not descent; the Canaan/Phoenicia→Greece links are transmission the Greeks themselves recalled and scholars have argued — offered as cultural context, not doctrine.)
• Margaret Barker — The Older Testament (SPCK, 1987), The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God (SPCK, 1992), and The Mother of the Lord, Volume 1: The Lady in the Temple (T&T Clark, 2012): the “temple theology” reading of a suppressed feminine divine presence.
• Daniel C. Peterson, “Nephi and His Asherah” — Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 9, no. 2 (2000): 16–25; a longer version appears in Mormons, Scripture, and the Ancient World, ed. Davis Bitton (FARMS, 1998).
• Alyson Skabelund Von Feldt — “Does God Have a Wife?” (FARMS Review 19, no. 1, 2007), a review essay engaging Dever; and "‘His Secret Is with the Righteous’: Instructional Wisdom in the Book of Mormon" (FARMS Occasional Papers 5, 2007; repr. Interpreter 66, 2025).
• John S. Thompson, “The Lady at the Horizon: Egyptian Tree Goddess Iconography and Sacred Trees in Israelite Scripture and Temple Theology” (Interpreter 38, 2020).
• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Gospel Topics essay “Mother in Heaven” — the doctrinal reference point for the Latter-day Saint frame; and the hymn “O My Father” (Eliza R. Snow).

Images, Maps, and Graphics

Original to CFM Corner (created for this guide): the map of the divided monarchy and the regnal-evaluation timeline are original digital artwork — drawn from scratch with no copyrighted basemap, and with every verdict and reign-length verified verbatim against 1–2 Kings. The photographs of the Throne Room at Knossos and the Minoan “Snake Goddess” are the author’s own. There are no third-party rights to clear.

Public domain: the Beth Alpha synagogue mosaic (6th century AD) — a faithful reproduction of an ancient public-domain artwork.

Return to the Divided Kingdom home, or read its companion guide to Solomon’s Temple — the house this whole story orbits.