King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (43 page)

The biography of David is reported at the greatest length and in the greatest detail in the Book of Samuel. Since biblical Hebrew is a language written in consonants only, the Hebrew text of the Book of Samuel was compact enough to be contained on a single scroll. But when the Bible was first translated into Greek, a language of both consonants and vowels, two separate scrolls were required, and so the single work was divided into the First Book of Samuel and the Second Book of Samuel.

By tradition, the authorship of the Book of Samuel is attributed principally to the prophet Samuel, who figures importantly in its opening chapters. The portion of Samuel that depicts events after the death of Samuel himself is traditionally attributed to the prophet Gad. Modern scholarship, however, detects a great many sources within the text of Samuel, although neither Samuel nor Gad is among them.

The core of the Book of Samuel, which consists of the formal biography of David, is sometimes described by scholars as “the history of David's rise to power” or, more elegantly, the Court History of David. For that reason, its author has been dubbed the Court Historian, although he is sometimes identified rather less evocatively by the letter code “S,” a fanciful reference to Samuel. Because his account is so intimate, some scholars speculate that he may have been a member of the court of King David and perhaps even an eyewitness to some of the events he describes. Other scholars place him in the reign of King Solomon, David's son, or at an even later point in the history of ancient Israel. In any case, the Court Historian probably enjoyed access to the archives, battle reports, and chronicles of the royal house of David, and he cites a book, now lost to
us, where David's famous elegy of Saul and Jonathan was preserved: “Behold, it is written in the book of Jashar.” (2 Sam. 1:18)

The work of the Court Historian has inspired enthusiastic praise from Bible scholars and literary critics alike. “David's biographer was a man of genius,” writes Robert H. Pfeiffer. “Without any previous models as guide, he wrote a masterpiece, unsurpassed in historicity, psychological insight, literary style, and dramatic power.”
¹
Richard Elliot Friedman, in
The Hidden Book in the Bible
, argues that the same literary genius created both the Court History and the portions of biblical narrative attributed to the source known as “J,”
^*
while Harold Bloom imagines in
The Book of J
that “J is a
Gevurah
(‘great lady’) of post-Solomonic court circles, herself of Davidic blood, who began writing her great work in the later years of Solomon, in close rapport and exchanging influences with her good friend the Court Historian, who wrote most of what we now call 2 Samuel.”
²

But the Book of Samuel includes passages and whole chapters that are thought to be the work of sources other than the Court Historian. The portion of the text that is devoted to the Ark of the Covenant, for example, is considered the work of a different biblical source and is sometimes labeled “the Ark Narrative” to distinguish it from the rest of Samuel. The account of how Solomon bested his brothers in the struggle to succeed David on the throne of Israel is regarded as a separate work by some scholars, who identify it as “the Succession Document.” Other sections of Samuel, including the passages where Samuel condemns the very idea of kingship and fearlessly scolds the king of Israel, are
thought to have originated among the same circles that produced and preserved the prophetic writings of the Bible.

The task of identifying and describing the sources of the Book of Samuel is rendered all the more challenging because, like many other books of the Bible, Samuel was extensively edited and “overwritten” by later biblical sources. The most important of these later sources is the school of priests and scribes known collectively as the Deuteronomistic Historian. Embracing the distinctive theology and rhetorical style that were first presented in the Book of Deuteronomy by a biblical author known as the Deuteronomist (or “D”), the Deuteronomistic Historian is credited with at least one and possibly several editorial revisions of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings—a process that brought the history of ancient Israel into conformity with the Deuteronomist's worldview. The Deuteronomistic Historian, at work no earlier than the seventh century
B.C.E.
and perhaps later, is probably responsible for the theological spin that we find in the Book of Samuel and, notably, the pious speeches attributed to David.

Precisely because the Book of Samuel is so frequently overwritten by multiple sources—and because the text has been edited and revised so extensively over the centuries—the attribution of any given passage may spark debate among Bible scholars. Then, too, various passages of the Book of Samuel come down to us in what scholars describe as a “difficult” or “troubled” or even “corrupted” form. For that reason, significant differences can be identified in various passages of Samuel as they are preserved in the Masoretic Text, the ancient Greek translation of the Bible known as the Septuagint, other ancient translations, and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The life story of David continues into the First Book of Kings and concludes in its opening chapters. The rest of Kings is devoted to the history of the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern
kingdom of Judah, starting with the reign of Solomon and continuing through the conquest of Israel by the Assyrians in 722
B.C.E.
and the conquest of Judah by the Babylonians in 586
B.C.E.
Some scholars suspect that the opening passages of Kings, where the last days of David's life are described, originally appeared as part of the Book of Samuel and were moved into the Book of Kings by the Deuteronomistic Historian or some other biblical editor.

Like Samuel, the Book of Kings was originally contained on a single scroll and was divided into two books by the translators of the Septuagint. And as in Samuel, the authors of the Book of Kings report that they have relied on several archival sources now lost to us, including the Book of the Annals of Israel and the Book of the Annals of Judah. But Kings is wholly lacking in the moments of literary grace, political acumen, and high drama that make Samuel such a compelling work of literature. Rather, the Book of Kings is mostly a theological exercise—the Deuteronomistic Historian judges every king according to whether or not he adhered closely enough to the strict legal code that we find in the Book of Deuteronomy.

The life story of David is reprised in the First and Second Book of Chronicles, but it is a very different David who is presented here. Composed sometime in the late sixth century
B.C.E.
or later, perhaps by the same priestly source who composed the Book of Nehemiah and the Book of Ezra, Chronicles retells the history of Israel strictly from a theological point of view. The Chronicler, as the source of Chronicles is sometimes called, felt obliged to censor out all the lurid details of David's life as we find them in Samuel, including the love affair with Bathsheba, the murder of Uriah, the rape of Tamar, and the rebellion of Absalom. And he felt free to rewrite the history of David, rendering him as an unfailingly pious king and crediting him with an active role in
preparations for the building of the Temple at Jerusalem. Appropriately enough, the original title of Chronicles in the Septuagint was
Paraleipomena
, which means “things omitted.”

Pious tradition assigns the authorship of the entire Book of Psalms to King David himself, but modern scholarship allows that only a few of the psalms date back to the supposed lifetime of David— and none can be proven to be his own work. The oldest of the psalms may have originated in the coronation rituals of the Davidic kings, and Psalm 45 in particular, apparently composed for the wedding of an Israelite king and a foreign-born woman, may refer to King Solomon, David's son. Other psalms, however, are dated no earlier than the Babylonian Conquest and the destruction of the Temple of Solomon in 586
B.C.E.
Still, various of the psalms are associated with specific events in the life of David. Psalm 51, for example, is linked to David's remorse over his sexual liaison with Bathsheba: “Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities,” pleads the man whom the Bible calls the “sweet singer” of Israel. “Create me a clean heart, O God.” (Ps. 51:11–12) Notably, no such self-abasing prayers are uttered by King David as we come to know him in the work of the Court Historian, and we are left to wonder which depiction of David— the worldly-wise king or the pious penitent—is more faithful to the flesh-and-blood David who can be glimpsed beneath the surface of the ancient text.

David figures importantly in portions of the Hebrew Bible even where he is not mentioned at all. Indeed, according to one fundamental theory of biblical authorship, the biography of David as
embodied in the Court History may have been the seed out of which the rest of the Bible grew.

Scholars propose that the composition of the Court History began during the reign of David and continued during the reign of his son Solomon—a period of prosperity and cultural flowering known as the Solomonic Enlightenment. Other books of the Bible, including portions of the sweeping “primal history” in Genesis and the saga of Moses in Exodus and Numbers, may have been composed at roughly the same time by the author called J, perhaps in order to provide the “backstory” leading up to the glorious reign of David.

Thus, for example, Joel Rosenberg characterizes Genesis as “a ‘midrash,’ if you will, upon the Davidic history,” that is, a theological commentary in the form of imaginative storytelling.
³
Walter Brueggemann characterizes portions of Genesis as “an extremely sophisticated statement by one of Israel's earliest, most profound theologians.”
⁴
And, as we have already noted, Richard Elliot Friedman argues that J and the Court Historian are one and the same.

If David is only anticipated in the early books of the Bible, he is openly celebrated in the books that follow Samuel and Kings, including the Psalms and the prophetic writings. Even the Christian Bible recalls and honors David, describing Jesus of Nazareth as “made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God.” (Rom. 1:3, 4) The flesh-and-blood David was transformed by these later biblical authors from an earthly king into a celestial one and then into a messianic icon. That is why he remains the touchstone of theology throughout the Bible.