Read The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero Online

Authors: Joel S. Baden

Tags: #History, #Religion, #Non-Fiction, #Biography

The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero (4 page)

BOOK: The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero
13.76Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Then there is the question of where David is when the second story begins. We learned in the previous chapter that Saul had taken him into his service as arms-bearer. Since Saul was now out on the battlefield, surely David should be with him, bearing his arms. But no—he is back home with Jesse, and he goes to the battlefield only to bring food to his brothers; he is even supposed to go right back home with news of how his brothers are faring (17:17–18). Admittedly, the second story seems to recognize this confusion about how David spends his time, and so we are told that “David would go back and forth from attending on Saul to shepherd his father’s flock at Bethlehem” (17:15). But even this explanation is scarcely acceptable. Are we to imagine that during peacetime David was in constant attendance on Saul as arms-bearer, but during a time of war he was there only occasionally? Furthermore, the narrative does not really match with this back-and-forth movement between Saul and Jesse: when David goes to the battlefield, it is not to attend on Saul at all, but only to check on his brothers. And it is clear that this is in fact David’s first time going to the battle, since when he sees Goliath and hears the giant’s challenge, he seems to have no idea that this has been going on for forty days already. All of which is to say that the verse stating that David went regularly between Jesse and Saul is not only illogical, but it stands as fairly clear evidence that the discrepancies between the two stories were felt even by the biblical authors, who made a half-hearted and transparent attempt to reconcile them.
8

But from there the problems only grow. When David goes to Saul and declares his intention to fight Goliath, Saul’s response is, in light of the previous story, rather surprising: “You are only a boy, and he has been a warrior from his youth!” (17:33). This can hardly be the same David who was introduced to Saul in the previous chapter as “a man of valor, a warrior” (16:18). David then describes himself entirely in terms of his career as a shepherd—“Your servant has been tending his father’s sheep”—although surely he should have said that he had been Saul’s arms-bearer.
9

The disconnect between the two stories comes to a head at the end of 1 Samuel 17: “When Saul saw David going out to confront the Philistine, he said to Abner, the army commander, ‘Whose son is that boy, Abner?’ ” (17:55). This question is, by any reckoning, inconceivable. Saul took David into his service in the previous chapter. David was especially pleasing to Saul. Saul appointed him his personal arms-bearer. David regularly played the lyre to soothe Saul’s spirit. Saul even communicated directly with Jesse. How could he now not know who David is? Only when we reach this unfathomable question do we realize that nowhere in the second story has Saul addressed David by name, nor has David offered it. It seems that, to Saul, David is just a youth who has volunteered to fight, and only when he is successful does it occur to the king to discover who the lad might be. But he should have known, and known well.

The conclusion of the Goliath story is to be found in the first verses of the next chapter, 1 Samuel 18, where we read that “Saul took him [into his service] that day and would not allow him to return to his father’s house” (18:2). And with this the parallel nature of the two stories is fully revealed. Both begin with no foreknowledge of who David is, such that we have to be introduced to him, and to his family: his father, his three eldest brothers, and his four unnamed brothers. Both describe how David comes to Saul’s attention: through his skill at playing the lyre, and through his bravery on the battlefield. Both have Saul being pleased with David: because he soothes Saul’s spirit, and because he is victorious against Goliath. And both conclude with the explicit notice that Saul took David into his permanent service, thereby severing David from his home in Bethlehem.

In short, what we have in these two chapters are two stories of David’s rise to prominence in Saul’s court—two stories that are identical in function and parallel in structure, but thoroughly incompatible as sequential episodes in a historical narrative. The parallel and independent existence of the two accounts is, remarkably, proved by the evidence of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the third century
BCE
, the Septuagint. For in the Greek text of 1 Samuel 17, huge chunks of the Goliath story we know from the Hebrew Bible are missing—and those chunks are precisely the ones that contain almost all of the contradictions with 1 Samuel 16 noted above.
10
The Hebrew version preserves a fully separate account of David’s defeat of Goliath, one that likely circulated independently—hence its reintroduction of the main characters, its distinctive description of David, its ignorance of David’s established relationship with Saul, and structural parallels with 1 Samuel 16. Only at a much later point was this independent story of David’s victory over Goliath combined with the alternative story found in the Septuagint, thereby creating the literary mess that is the canonical text of 1 Samuel 16–17.
11
We therefore have two independent and truly irreconcilable stories about how David emerged from obscurity to become a presence in the royal court of Saul.

It is easy enough to see why both would be valuable to the biblical authors. As we have already seen, both stories present David in a flattering light as a young man faithful to both his king and his God. But both cannot be historically true, for they contradict each other at almost every turn. These contradictions illustrate one of the main difficulties with reading the Bible as history: the Bible preserves disparate and frequently irreconcilable traditions, even about a single figure. These traditions may have great value from a theological perspective—and after all, the Bible is nothing if not a theological work—but they cannot provide us with firm grounds for historical reconstruction. In a situation like that presented by these two chapters, we are forced to make a decision as to which tradition seems more likely to have any historical value, a decision that we can make only on the basis of a close analysis of each tradition independently.

Unfortunately, when we look closely at these two famous biblical traditions about David—as the musically gifted author of the psalms and as the uniquely courageous slayer of Goliath—we find that not only can both not be historically true, but in fact neither is historically true.

 

 

The Author of the Psalms?

 

S
O MUCH OF OUR
standard image of David depends on the words of the psalms. These words of faith and devotion that David is said to have composed in his times of crisis and triumph color the traditional characterization of him and allow us to relate to him on an emotional and a spiritual level. It is therefore more than mere historical detail that is at stake here—David’s connection with the psalms is integral to his status in Judeo-Christian culture.

Any discussion of the authorship of the psalms must logically begin with the book of Psalms itself. There we find, as noted above, that 73 of the 150 psalms in the Hebrew Bible have David’s name in their superscriptions, in the Hebrew phrase
le-David.
Tradition takes this phrase to mean “by David,” and if such an understanding is correct, there would seem to be some evidence for Davidic authorship. The problem, though, is what to do with the many psalms that use the same Hebrew construction but with a different name in place of David’s: “the sons of Korah” (Pss. 42; 44–49; 84–85; 87–88), “Asaph” (Pss. 50; 73–83), and “Ethan” (Ps. 89). The superscriptions to two psalms mention not David, but Solomon (Pss. 72; 127). One says “Moses” (Ps. 90). And there is even one without a proper name, simply “a poor man” (Ps. 102). If
le-David
means “by David,” then all of these alternatives should mean the same thing: “by the sons of Korah,” “by Asaph,” etc. In which case, one cannot say that David wrote the psalms—at most, one could say that David wrote seventy-three of the psalms, and that other people wrote the rest.

Further complications ensue in those psalms that mention more than one figure in this sort of superscript: “the sons of Korah” and “Heman” in Psalm 88; “Jeduthun” and “David” in Psalm 39. Again, if the Hebrew phrase really does intend to ascribe authorship, then evidently we have here jointly composed psalms. Finally, we may consider the very common superscription mentioning “the conductor,” evidently referring to the person who would perform or lead the performance of the psalm in question. The very same Hebrew construction with
le-
is used in these cases also, so if we are to be consistent, we should translate this too as “by the conductor,” which is somewhat awkward. But here the problem is especially acute, because only two Psalms mention “the conductor” alone (Pss. 66–67); everywhere else, the phrase appears in conjunction with another such phrase: for example, “By the conductor. By David” (Ps. 11); “By the conductor, with instruments. A psalm by Asaph” (Ps. 76); “By the conductor. By the sons of Korah” (Ps. 85); and so on.

This is all to say that if we take the superscription
le-David
as attributing authorship, then we are faced with a large number of psalms that are either attributed to someone else or jointly attributed, including the very many Davidic psalms that also mention “the conductor”—thirty-nine of the seventy-three, in fact, or more than half.
12
This is problematic enough for the claim of Davidic authorship. The more substantial difficulty is that the Hebrew preposition
le-
has a fairly wide range of meanings, but “by” is not among them.

Nowhere outside of the book of Psalms does
le-
signify authorship. It means, rather, “to,” “for,” “regarding,” or “belonging to.” These meanings open an entirely new array of possibilities for understanding the superscriptions to the psalms. At this point, however, it is necessary to look briefly at the way that Chronicles presents David’s relationship with these songs. Chronicles repeatedly claims that David was the first to institute the regular praising of God through song in the sanctuary in Jerusalem.
13
As David was, by all accounts, the one who initiated the formal worship of Yahweh in Jerusalem, this is perfectly sensible as a historical premise. Nowhere in the Chronicles account, however, does it say that David actually wrote any of the songs. Rather, his innovation was to assign certain Levites, the priests who ministered in the sanctuary, to be in charge of the singing. The premise of Chronicles here seems to be that these songs were already in existence and that David simply organized their formal recitation as part of the cultic ceremonies.

More striking are the names of the Levites whom David picked to lead the singing, names that ought to be familiar to us: “Heman son of Joel and, of his kinsmen, Asaph son of Berechiah; and, of the sons of Merari their kinsmen, Ethan son of Kushaiah” (1 Chron. 15:17); “Heman and Jeduthun had with them trumpets and cymbals” (16:42). Heman, Asaph, Ethan, Jeduthun—these are precisely the names we find in the superscriptions in the book of Psalms. As for the sons of Korah, they are mentioned later, during the reign of Jehoshaphat, but with the same function: “Levites, from among the sons of Kohath and of the sons of Korah, got up to extol the Lord God of Israel at the top of their voices” (2 Chron. 20:19). These figures are not presented as authors of psalms; they are, rather, professional singers and likely represent guilds of cultic singers that bore their names. The superscriptions that mention them should not mean “by Asaph,” for example, but rather something like “of Asaph,” in the sense of “to be performed by” or even “according to the style of ” if we imagine that each guild had its own particular manner of singing. This rendering conforms well also to “the conductor”: “to be performed by the conductor” is far more sensible than “composed by the conductor.” It also explains the frequent addition of “with instruments”: these superscriptions are instructions, detailing who is to perform the psalm and how.

Can this understanding apply also to the superscriptions that say
le-David
? It is certainly possible. The phrase might signify that there was a particular style of performance that was attached to David’s name—maybe with a lyre?—or that there was a guild, perhaps part of the royal court, that took David’s name to signify the guild’s origins. Some scholars have suggested that these superscriptions signify psalms that were meant to be performed by the king himself during the cultic ceremonies, just as we know that in neighboring cultures the king regularly offered certain sacrifices as part of the ritual proceedings.
14

Alternatively, we might understand the phrase
le-David
to mean “regarding David” or even “about David”—that is, the psalms bearing this heading were viewed as particularly appropriate to certain experiences in David’s life. As we noted earlier, the psalms capture virtually the full range of human emotions—and no character in the Hebrew Bible had nearly as many ups and downs as David. Since these cultic songs were already associated with David in Chronicles, and since David was a talented musician according to 1 Samuel 16, the association of particular psalms with David’s life is almost obvious. Thus in the Psalter we find headings that are remarkably specific—not just “about David,” but, for example, “A psalm about David when he fled from his son Absalom” (Ps. 3:1). There is, however, nothing in Psalm 3 that explicitly mentions either David or Absalom, or anything else related to that biblical narrative; it is simply a song of lament, asking God to save the speaker from his enemies—one among many such laments in the book of Psalms. Such a song fits perfectly with that episode from David’s life, however, and it is easy enough to see how someone might intend the reference to David to illustrate the type of situation in which one might recite this particular psalm.
15

BOOK: The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero
13.76Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Cold-Hearted by Christy Rose
Un inquietante amanecer by Mari Jungstedt
Sins of Innocence by Jean Stone
Elfhame (Skeleton Key) by Anthea Sharp, Skeleton Key
Lord of the Changing Winds by Rachel Neumeier
Sophie's Throughway by Jules Smith
Kiss of the Wolf by Jim Shepard