Note 2 — Chapter VI · Solomon in the Hexateuch.

Bishop Colenso seems to have found in such tales only the work of a Jahvist with a taste for obscene details, but too little attention has been paid to the investigations of Bernstein, who discovers in many of these legends a late Ephraimic effort to blacken the character of the whole house and line of Judah.2 Bernstein does not deal with the story of Adonijah and Jedidiah (Solomon), whose relative antiquity is shown, I think, in the fact that no shameful action is ascribed to the elder brother to account for the deprivation of his primogenitive right. After Solomon’s accession, however, Adonijah proposed to marry the maiden Abishag, who technically belonged to his father’s harem, and probably this tradition gave a cue to the inventor of the story of Absalom’s having gone to his father’s concubines in order to base on the act a claim to the kingdom while his father was yet alive.