Speaker 1When you think of King David, images of the shepherd boy, the giant slayer, and Israel's greatest king probably come to mind. That's the David most people know. But strip away this Sunday school version and the biblical text tells a much darker story about how he actually rose to power. We're here to make you rethink everything you thought you knew about Israel's most beloved king. Today we're talking about the real King David, what the biblical text says he actually did before he ever wore a crown, and why some scholars think Mafia Don is a more fitting description than shepherd turned king. I'm Megan Craig on the Bart Ehrman team and I'm joined again by Hebrew Bible scholar Dr. Joel Baden. We also have a special segment today, Hot Take, where Joel weighs in on a fight in the field. Whether it's a fight in the field or a fight in the field, it's a fight in the field. David was even a real historical person. Welcome to Misquoting Moses. Welcome back, Joel. Hi there. Well, before we jump right into David, it occurs to me that David is not Israel's first king. He's just Israel's most famous king. So let's give his predecessor a brief spotlight for a moment. Who was the first king of Israel?
Speaker 2Okay, I got to do one better than you. I got to say not who the first king of Israel was, but which Israel we mean, right? And so this is, I got to start with this as like a, this is important stage setting for this and for just about everything else. Because the term Israel is a confusing one because we use it to talk about the entire nation of Israel. Sure, right? Like, you know, Jacob's descendants, they are all Israel. But historically, like, Israel referred to what we call like the northern half, northern part of Israel. And Judah is the name of the southern part. And that's a division that like, existed. You know, it's in the Bible all over the place. Certainly, you know, in the in the times, like, we have it in the Bible after David and Solomon. But also like every empire that then controlled that place, right? You've heard of Judea and Samaria. Right? Same places, right? Judah is Judea in the south, and Samaria is what was used to be called Israel in the north. And so with that in mind, David is the first king of one of the Israels, and Saul is the first king of the other Israel. And now you have to know which one is which. So before David gets on the scene, at least according to the biblical story, and I think probably it's true, the northern tribes, of Israel, which is say basically everybody other than Judah, and Reuben, which didn't really exist, and Simeon, which didn't really exist. But like, all of these northern tribes, sort of, were operating independently. This is the sort of thing you have described in the book of Judges, right? Independent tribes, like, you know, working on their own, occasionally teaming up to fight off enemies, whatever. At a certain point, this is the biblical story, and again, I think it's like probably roughly true. Those various tribes realized that actually for purposes, I think probably of self-defense, it'd be really useful for us to all like band together and like have one military leader who like helps us fight off primarily the Philistines who have arrived not so long ago on the coast and are a threat. And so this like military organization of these tribes is the first group that we sort of call northern Israel or the northern kingdom of Israel. I don't think, no, that they called themselves that necessarily. We can't tell, but they did band together and they sort of like chose a leader who I think probably was this guy from the tribe of Benjamin named Saul, who seems to have been a successful military leader in terms of fighting off the Philistines. At least that's what the Bible says. And that's what I think is probably roughly true.
Speaker 1The Bible, though, doesn't paint Saul in a great light. I mean, if Saul was such a successful military leader, then why are we casting so much shade on the guy?
Speaker 2Well, so it's a fun question because you have to, like, we think of Saul as like that crazy guy who preceded David and like, you know, fell out of God's favor. But there's two sides to the story, right? There's the one that's like, oh, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. There's the side one. There's like the, you know, like this is like old school, like records, right? The like A side of Saul's story is this very successful, well-liked military leader who has the spirit of God in him. And the B side is a guy who went, who fell out of favor and sort of went crazy. That pattern of like all the good and then the bad is actually pretty well replicated. Like not just for Saul, but for David. But also for David and also for Solomon, which we'll get to. But what that's really speaking to is the fact that the stories that we have about these characters are probably have been like massaged and tweaked over time. Like there was a story about Saul. There's a history of Saul that was like the good thing. Then why would somebody write, for example, that God became unhappy with Saul, right? That's not a historical fact, right? Like, because, uh, I I'm pretty willing to come out and say that every time somebody invokes what God felt or thought or said, that's not historical, right? That's theological by definition. So why is somebody interested in Saul falling out of divine favor and that, what is that explaining? Right. Uh, and here's where we get into the David thing, right? Saul falling out of favor with God. Uh, is not part of Saul story. That's part of David story, right? That is, that's part of the explanation for how it is that David, not Saul's kid, not even from that part of the town, right? Like how did this, like, like nobody little shepherd kid from Bethlehem in Judah become king in Saul's place, right? Put it in like, like the graphic way of thinking about this. And I don't know if, um, you know, whatever, there's a moment in the story where again, David, the shepherd kid from like this nowhere town in this nowhere in like Judah, which was basically like largely uninhabited wilderness, that kid at a certain point in the story ends up holding Saul's crown after Saul has died. Right. This is like, you know, in the movie, this is like the, you know, he's holding it. It's like freeze frame. And then the narrator goes, how did I get here? Right. Like, and, and, and this is the background, like that, the Saul downfall story is like, it's part of the story of how David ends up holding Saul's crown
Speaker 1and then putting it on his head. And that's exactly why we had to start with Saul, even though this is ostensibly a David episode. Now you said that Saul was king over Israel, but just the Northern part of Israel and David doesn't even come from the same region. He's from the South. He's from a rural backwater. Uh, me too. I'm ready. I'm ready to root for the underdog here, but boy, something tells me I'm not going to feel comfortable about that for long. So David comes from this rural backwater. Uh, let's pause for a second and actually look at where in the Hebrew Bible are we at this point? We've clearly passed judges because these tribes have banded together and you know, now we've got something more like at least a confederation, if not a true monarchy with our first kingdom of Israel, where in the
Speaker 2middle of the first book of Samuel. Um, so, you know, uh, David really shows up in first Samuel 16. Um, uh, and again, that's just about halfway through and we're going to do David from that moment until like all the way through the second half of first Samuel, all of second Samuel and the first couple of chapters of first Kings. So we've got a long stretch of what we think of as like the historical books here, but most of the book of Samuel, the two books of Samuel is David's story. We've got our where geographically,
Speaker 1we've got our where textually let's do our, when, when in actual history does this story claim that we are? And would you agree with that assessment?
Speaker 2Yeah. I mean the general way that we do this and like, once you say it, it sounds so obviously artificial is like, Oh, well, David comes to power in 1000 BCE. And you know, the Bible says he ruled for 40 years. So a thousand to nine 60, it's like, that feels too on the nose because like nothing happens. You know what I mean? Like that's crazy. Um, and 40 years is probably not exactly like, that's obviously also a biblical like number for a lot. Still there's a, you know, if we don't go from like David down, but go from like what we'd know first, like probably almost certainly happened historically. And we work our way backward. you know, from the kings that, like, historically definitely existed, and we go back. and we go back and we go back. Probably we are still talking sometime at the beginning of the 10th century BCE. All right. We'll call it close enough. Yeah, it's close enough. Exactly.
Speaker 1Now, David is being introduced, not in the book of David, but in the book of Samuel. So who is
Speaker 2the Samuel fellow? So Samuel is like the hinge character between the judges and the kings. And, you know, it's interesting that the book is called the book of Samuel, but that's really just he's the first main character, right? The book starts with his birth and, you know, has 10 or so chapters of like the story of his being. And Samuel is, he's a judge, like the judges in the book of Judges. And he's like a priestly figure. And he is the one who anoints Saul as the first king. And there's this, you know, the story of Samuel is the story of like, should we have a king at all, Israel? And the debates around that, that's where all of that centers. So Samuel is this, yeah, this, this intermediate figure. I don't know that he really existed, but he does like a lot of work for the story.
Speaker 1So we get introduced to David in 1 Samuel 16, but actually we get introduced to David a few times. At least Saul gets introduced to David a few times, detecting a trend here. Is this another one of the stories where we have a few different threads that have been woven together? Because you try to read the David story front to back, and it's actually chronologically pretty confusing.
Speaker 2Yeah, especially, especially at the beginning. It's, and there's, you know, there's, it's not exactly like the situation we have with like creation stories, or, you know, other places in the Pentateuch where we have like clearly like very, very different sources interwoven. But the beginning of the David story really does look a lot that way. It gets more confusing and muddled as we go. But, you know, let's talk about the introductions. So in chapter 16 of 1 Samuel, we get this, we get this moment where like Samuel, the prophet and judge.
Speaker 1Oh, now we're calling Samuel a prophet. What is a prophet?
Speaker 2Yeah, that one's, sorry, I should have said that one earlier. You're right. You're right. You're doesn't like Saul anymore. And he's got to go find the next, the next dude. Um, and then like, we get the Cinderella story, uh, like literally, uh, where Samuel ends up like going to David's house and being like, it's one of these people. Um, but like all of his brothers, his seven brothers are like older and stronger. And Samuel's like, it's gotta be one of these guys. And Saul's like, and Saul and God is like, no, no, no. Like, uh, you know, don't you have another daughter? Uh, you know, uh, and Oh yes. Well, you know, she's just sweeping up the ashes. And so like David comes out and it was like, Oh, this is the one. Um, so you get this, like the secret sort of private anointing scene where Samuel anoints David, uh, as like the next King, but doesn't tell anyone, um, least of all Saul, least of all Saul. I liked it. Uh, and then in like the next breath, and this is part of the same story, right? Saul of course has had like the good spirit of God removed and a bad spirit put on him and to soothe his evil spirits. Saul wants someone to play the liar for him. And lo and behold, somebody has heard of this kid, uh, David who plays a mean liar. And David is brought into Saul's court just to like, you know, strum the guitar for him and make him, uh, you know, feel better. Uh, and Saul's like, likes him a lot. And Saul says, I, I'm, I like this kid. I'm going to keep him with me. Send a note to his dad, uh, saying like this kid is now going to be my arms bearer, right? Like that's like the, that's how I keep him next to me all the time, right? He's the one who's carrying around my armor when I need it. And that's the end of first Samuel 16. And then the next chapter begins and it's the Goliath story. And if you know your Goliath story, you know, that it, uh, it also has this like trope of, you know, uh, David's brothers have all gone to war and David, the young kid is like a shepherd and, you know, he kind of wants to be in on the action. So like he, he keeps on sneaking off to the battle to like see what's going on and report back to his dad and bring his brothers like food and supplies and stuff. And that's where like having snuck into the battlefield, like he sees what's going on and sees Goliath issue the challenge to the Israelites. And he's like, I'm going to do this. And, you know, the slingshot, cause he's a shepherd and all of that stuff. And at the end of that story, uh, right. When he has stepped forward to face Goliath, Saul turns to his general and goes, who the hell is that? Right. And that's the moment where you look up and be like, if you haven't already and be like, wait, hold on. Pretty sure Saul knows who that is. Cause he's the kid who's been playing the guitar for him. And also it's weird that David was like back shepherding because his job since the previous chapter has been Saul's literal arms bearer. And here is Saul literally at war. You would think that his arms bearer would be like with him. But somehow he's not. And at the end of the Goliath story, like, uh, Saul's like, find out who this kid is and who his father is. It's like, you know, who his father is. You already like you've been in touch with him. Anyway, you've got, what you have there is as, as, as much as the two creation stories in Genesis are mutually exclusive. The two stories about how Saul came to know about David and how David ended up part of Saul's court, uh, are mutually exclusive. It can't be that like the lyre playing and the Goliath story both happened. They, they just totally don't work together.
Speaker 1These two introductions to David are really important, not just because they reveal different textual threads in the story, but because they really reveal different personalities of this character. Is this David, the musician poet? Is this David, the warrior? These are different Davids, right? What do you, what do you find more convincing about who this person likely was as you read this story?
Speaker 2Yeah. Likely neither. Um, which is to say, I mean, you knew, you knew I was going to say this, but like, you know, I have a lot of, I will admit, I have a lot of issues with trying to sort of suss out what the actual origins of David were. At a certain point, I'm, I'm pretty sure that this David character was indeed some sort of warrior type. Um, you know, maybe not like the glorious kind of warrior that we're, we're used to. Um, like, do I think that David was actually like a good musician? I have no reason to think that. Um, that's, that's like just part of this origin myth that goes with this, this private anointing. Do I think that David actually like stepped forward and killed this giant Goliath in a battle between the Israelites and the Philistines that somehow came down to one-on-one combat between a giant and a kid? No, I don't think that either. And I don't think that one, especially, um, uh, because I like, if anyone killed Goliath, it's not David. It's the other person in the book of Samuel who is credited with killing Goliath. And if that is a weird thing for you to, to, to hear just because you haven't read the entire book of Samuel very well, right. There is a moment later on in the story where we're like, the text is going through David's various like warriors that are among his like chief army guys. Um, and they've all got these like Greek style, you know, hero little bits, you know, oh, and that's the one who once barehanded, like killed three wolves. And that's the one who slew a thousand Philistines with, you know, just his pinky finger. Uh, and then you get one of them, whose name is, uh, uh, whose name is, uh, Elhanan. Uh, and, and what we're told about him is, oh, Goliath, the, the guy from Gath who had a, you know, a spear, like a weaver's bar, which is literally word for word, the same description of Goliath we have in the David story. Now what's more likely that, uh, there was a story about our glorious King David killing a giant and somebody else was like, it wasn't the glorious King. It was a guy you've never heard of. Or is it more likely that there was a story about a guy you've never heard of who killed a giant. And somebody was like, not a guy you've never heard of our great hero. David did that and then blows it up in something bigger. So the second one is, I think much more likely. Um, neither of them I think is true. Of course, it's just a question of like the David Goliath story seems to be an expansion of, and a borrowing of like valor from, uh, some, no one you've never heard of that appears actually elsewhere in the text
Speaker 1kind of amazingly. So we've got these different origin stories for David, but they both converge into this new character of David, the King. How does, David come to take the kingship? Okay. So I'm going to tell you a story.
Speaker 2This is, this is my favorite way of doing this. Um, so here's the story. I'm just sort of like abstractly. So you've got a King, uh, who is like sitting on his throne and he's got his kid who's next in line. Um, and then there's like this other figure floating around him who is like his, a general in his army, who's very, very successful in battle seemingly. Um, and his success in battle makes the king jealous. Right. Like it seems like the people actually maybe prefer this general to the king himself. And after a while, the king's like, this is not good for me or the like, you know, the possibility of my son caring, you know, taking over after me. I really probably should do something about this general who's getting like too big for his bridges, to use a good biblical idiom. And so the, you know, this king tries to eliminate the general. But the general says, like, the general is supported by the people and God is on the general's side. And even though the king is trying to kill the general, the general swears up and down, like, I'm not trying, I'm not trying to take power. I'm not trying to take control. I don't want your throne. But eventually, like, is forced by Virgil. And so it's a virtue of the king's incessant pursuit to fight back. And because God is on his side, right, the general kills the king. And like, what are you going to do? He didn't want it, but now he's in charge and now he's sitting on the throne. And actually, it's an OK thing because the God isn't, God likes him and the people love him too. And that's how this general in the king's army becomes king, even though he wasn't in line for the throne. If you know this biblical story of David, that ought to feel. Relatively familiar, but that's not the story I was telling. The story I was telling is one from like the 14th century in Turkey. And it's the story that we get from a Turkish Hittite king named Khatushyli the third. That's going to be on the quiz. And Khatushyli the third tells in a first person account of how it is that he became king, even though he wasn't supposed to be. And it is eerily similar to the David story. So I'm not trying to say that the David story in the Bible didn't exactly didn't actually happen. Although I'm not sure that I don't want to say that. But what I want to say is like. The the story that we have in the Bible is not, again, pure history telling. It's actually participating in an ancient literary genre that we call today like an apology, which say an explanation for why something happened that probably shouldn't. Have happened, but happened anyway. How did this no one kid David end up holding Saul's crown? Well, the way the story tells it is David was just a really good general in Saul's army. And Saul got so angry about this and so jealous that he like went into a rage and tried to kill David and pursued him. We have like chapter upon chapter of Saul pursuing David and David hiding and running. And he even has to end up like he even ends up like living with the great enemy, the Philistines, because it's the only place that's safe for him. And then. Like in the end, Saul actually dies in battle against the Philistines. But David wasn't there. Isn't that convenient? And then. And then once Saul is dead. Somehow, like the kid who picks up Saul's, you know, Saul's crown on the battlefield is like, I know the best person to bring this to. It's that guy, David, who's been living with the Philistines for a couple of years and like nobody has heard from. And he runs down and hands it to David. David's like, well, I guess I'm king now. Doesn't that story seem true and like believable?
Speaker 1We're back to our record scratch freeze frame, but I'm not buying it. Yeah. Well, we've got a great cliffhanger. So let's go ahead and take a break and we'll start to ask some more questions about the historical David when we get back. I've got two reminders for you today. First, this is episode four. We're in a limited series called Misquoting Moses. We are evaluating whether we should turn this into a regular show. So if you are enjoying it, please like share it with someone who will enjoy it. And most of all, leave us a comment. So we know that you want more of this sort of content that will be greatly helpful to us. As another reminder to celebrate the launch of this series all through August. We've got Joel's course on sale. The Hebrew Bible exploring the literature. The literature of ancient Israel. It's a full semester's worth of material. 28 lectures where Joel walks us through how the Hebrew Bible actually came together. There are so many parts of our episode that we have to leave out today because we just don't have time to get to it all. I mean, we haven't even talked about how the David story gets retold in the book of Chronicles. But that's something that we do get to in the semester length course. What was your favorite part about teaching this course for us, Joel?
Speaker 2I mean. I love doing these intro course things just generally. I love teaching the introductory course at Yale. I love doing these kinds of things for this community. My favorite part is actually not my lecturing, but the Q&A that happens at the end. I really love seeing what's piqued people's interests and responding and the on the fly nature of it. It's just it's super fun and it's great to see what's sticking and what people are getting worked up about.
Speaker 1This course is already fully recorded, so you can start streaming it today. Head to bartairman.com slash HB deal to grab it at the discounted price in here. All of those great lectures and Q&A sessions. It's 50 percent off the entire month of August. Back to the show. So we've got David, the reluctant king, and we've only touched a little bit on what it appears that David was. Actually up to before accepting this crown. It's kind of strange that he's working for the Philistines, who we've established as a pretty major enemy of Israel at this point. What has David really been up to all of this time, these years that he was away?
Speaker 2Yeah, this is another place where, like, the criterion of embarrassment is, I think, a pretty good one here. Like who if this was if it wasn't true that David had actually spent some time with the Philistines, who would ever make up that story? About David, of all people. So, you know, a lot of the way that we would answer this, because there is no we have no archaeological evidence. We have no comparative. There's nothing to go on except what's in the text of the Bible. So you could very well say none of it. Like, like, I don't know anything about what's happening with David. And that would be, I think, totally fair. But if what I'm saying about, like, these stories. About David's rise as like an apology, a way of explaining how something happened that shouldn't have happened. The only reason you need to do that is if something happened that probably shouldn't have happened. In other words, like another way to think about these this kind of an apology genre is in the way I tend to talk about it is it's spin. It's like political spin. And we are super familiar with that, especially today in, like, modern politics. Something happens. And everybody gets tried to get out front of it and explain, like, no, it's not our guy's fault. It's the other guy's fault. Right. Or it looks bad that this happened. But actually, this is a really good thing. Right. Every single day, every newspaper, every news story is doing exactly this kind of work one way or another. So if I think about the Bible as like spin, which I and I think that's the way that I would I would tend to read the David story and actually lots of other parts, too. The question underlying. It's like, you don't spin something that didn't happen, but you don't need to. You don't need to explain away a fiction that you could have just written it the nice way to begin with. So why, like the story tells us that David was with the Philistines for like a year and a half, but not because he wanted to. He didn't like a volunteer. He was on the right. He had to write. It was the only place it was safe for him to hide from Saul was like in this foreign place, because that's one way. Right. Of spinning David's presence with the Philistines. And then it also tells us that, like, you know, when David was the Philistines, he would he was expected as a good Philistine to be like raiding the towns and countryside of Judah, because that's what the Philistines were doing. And if he's going to work for them, that's the kind of work that he would be doing. And so the Bible admits that that was what he was supposed to do, but then says, but he didn't do it. He said he did it, but he lied about it. He was lying.
Speaker 1Of course not. Don't worry.
Speaker 2Right. And then the Philistines go to war with Israel in the battle where Saul and his son Jonathan die. And you'd expect David as a vassal of the Philistines to go to war with them. Right. Like he is a warrior. But the Bible tells us, no, actually, the Philistines were like, no, we don't really trust you. So why don't you go somewhere entirely else while we're fighting, like in the opposite direction? So you're nowhere. So you're nowhere near this battle when it happens. And so that's what the Bible says. And so, like, off you went. And which makes it again, I keep coming back to the same moment, but I think it's like such an important one that we gloss over. Right. Which makes it all the weirder that, like, there's a battle that the Philistines engage in where they beat Saul and defeat Israel. And somebody picks up Saul's crown. And instead of giving it to the Philistines who actually won the battle or finding some descendant of Saul to give it to, they run to David, who is working for the Philistines. And David, who is working for the Philistines, wasn't at the battle site and had, like, has nothing to do with any of this stuff. Right. Record scratch. Right. how did i end up with this right that's the moment and like the thing about that record scratch moment is if you have been reading the story from the beginning like the biblical story you're not surprised by this because you know that david was secretly anointed king already and that god wants this to happen so when david ends up at the crown you're like yeah there's the fulfillment of the divine promise but imagine how this would have looked to the all of humanity uh even the world of the story that didn't know that that anointing had secretly happened why the hell is this this david philistine guy uh holding the crown like so what do i think he was actually doing i think he was actually like i think he would like the bible is going to all these lengths to say he wasn't he was with the philistines but he he didn't want to be he was supposed to be raiding but he didn't he was supposed to be fighting with but he didn't and like at a certain point
Speaker 1you know i just think he did i mean this is troublesome because this doesn't even fall into the category of those stories where yeah it something happened it wasn't exactly like this or maybe anything like this but for the ancient readers they're just making this sound you know really good for themselves we think it's problematic in our modern day and age that something like the conquest you know would be seen as morally acceptable or you know something to be promoted and uplifted as this great story we think that these are terrible things that are happening but for the ancient audience well ancient near eastern kings always bragged about genocides that was just the cool thing at the time this is not bad i mean this
Speaker 2looks really really really bad for david right this is like different right this is something that it's not something that looks bad to us but they thought was cool this seems to be something that they thought looked bad right it looked bad that david was working for the philistines and then ended up like that's not how they want their king to be thought of as like a traitor or as a usurper so they tell this whole story to make the bad thing look better and it's not just there right if you keep reading the david story even after the death of saul but you get i mean whatever how to say this a lot of other deaths of lots of other people all of which consolidate david's like rule and power but all of which the story like tells us david wasn't actually responsible for and like how many people can die to david's benefit and it's just pure happenstance right again it's a place where it looks like the bible is saying it looks bad that like david it looks like like you might have heard that david killed everybody on his way to power but that's not really what happened right which is an admission of like a moral position right it doesn't look great for our king to have like killed his way to the top and we can use that as a way to say that david wasn't actually responsible for what
Speaker 1happened and we can yet make david look even worse when we jump back to the part of the story where he is on the run from saul before he even becomes king and has that level of power he is already abusing some level of power that he seems to have when you think of david you may think of david having a handful of wives and the way that he acquires some of them are definitely a little bit troublesome in our modern eyes and perhaps even in the ancient eyes besides working for the philistines what else was david up to before taking the crown yeah so you know this the story
Speaker 2about david has him like running away to the wilderness right he was working for saul and everything was great and then saul got jealous and chased him off and when he chases him off where does david run he runs into the wilderness that's where you hide from like still right that's where people go to hide um and when he's there we are told he like attracts to himself like 400 like it says people like people who are in debt like people who are in debt like people who are in debt or in distress which is i think basically a way of saying like uh criminals um bandits you know people who are have like fallen outside of like society's norms um and it's like you got a dude with 400 armed people roaming around the wilderness like what does that group like that do generally um they're not farmers right uh they're not you know shepherds uh they are it's like you know it's like the wild west right like you know you've seen the movies um the town is peaceful and then in comes the you know this like a group of outlaws with their bandanas on and they say like give us your everything and you know they shoot their pistols in the air david probably didn't have pistols um uh yeah probably uh did he have 400
Speaker 1men i mean not necessarily that specific number but this also seems like the kind of detail you would not want to make up it's like you know it's like you know it's like you know it's like you
Speaker 2know it's a little oddly specific right i mean you know the 400 again like round numbers are are not particularly trustworthy frankly neither are not round numbers um but um but again like yeah what's would you like to think that your king started off like with a band of ruffians in the in the in the wilderness going around basically going up to people being like give us your money or we'll kill you and if you think that that's like a crazy thing for me to say read first samuel 25 right which is a story about david and his family and he's like oh my god i'm gonna kill you his guy's going up to someone and being like give us your money or we'll kill you and then the story this is so good right and then the story uh there is that like and and then the guy's wife the this rich person's wife comes out to david and is like no like i my husband is an idiot like don't hurt him um and also you know when things go well for you david uh i think you know wink wink i think that you should uh keep me in mind wink wink and and david's like okay you're right i'm not gonna hurt your husband and then miraculously 10 days later god kills her husband and david is like i guess i i guess i'll take all his stuff and his wife and now that wife who was doing all the winking is now david's wife he's like second or third i can't remember in any case uh it's like that story is crazy to tell about your king when we have like epic legendary king stories they just generally don't sound like that
Speaker 1and now you know why we've titled this episode king david the mafia
Speaker 2yeah i mean you know in the whole thing right if you've seen the godfather and you have right there's like this process of consolidation of power right like the upstart who like you know has to make the deals and like the the people get the right people have to die in order like to achieve the power and there's the power of the godfather and there's the power of the pushback and there's the revolts and there's the you know the rebellions from within that all have to be tamped down that's the david story that's the david story is of like uh and i mean there's literally extortion there is literally protection rackets um there is all of that stuff um there is you know david being forced from the throne by his own kid and having like the inter-family squabbles and there is at the end it used to be that when i would teach this um i would get to the end of david's life realize that like i'm jumping the gun here but we get to the end of david's life when um he's like dying he's on his deathbed and he's instructing solomon and like what to do next solomon who's going to be king after him and he's like says to him look this guy was really good to me make sure you take care of him and this guy wasn't good to me make sure you take care of him you know what i mean um and so it goes through like all of the like his friends and enemies and it's like you know make sure that that person doesn't die a like a a nice happy death Solomon's like okay pop and I would get to that moment in the story and I would literally show a clip of like if you know it right the the the orchard scene at the end of of the godfather the first one uh where you know uh where uh he's like uh he's like I tried I tried to do my best to do everything and uh you know the the and uh Pacino is like I got it like we're gonna take care of it pop I got I I got it like I I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna do it I'm gonna I'm gonna make it all happen um like it's the godfather it's just it's a timeless tale evidently but these stories are
Speaker 1really interesting with questions about the historicity of the Hebrew Bible in mind because they do have some elements in them that ring true because why would you make this up about your greatest king but there are also these literary elements of the story that are really important to me and I think that's what I'm trying to do here that are especially if you know Hebrew really funny and seem to have been these additions of the author that are kind of these little wink wink nudge nudge moments to you as the reader of course we've got the whole record scratch freeze frame but you also mentioned when David takes Abigail as his wife this all starts when David approaches her husband in part of his protection racket be a shame if something happened to all of your sheep and your goats and she says please excuse my husband he's an idiot and as a matter of fact his name in Hebrew is Nabal which means what Joel idiot idiot I mean and the thing
Speaker 2is it's like it's it's it's such an over-the-top pun that it's not just that his name is the Hebrew word for idiot and she says forgive my husband he's an idiot she even says and his name is even
Speaker 1idiot right uh that's a that's a pretty good yeah not remotely subtle and these are the things that do clue you into the fact that although there are some of these potential elements that are there that are really important to the story and that David is really up to some pretty rough stuff
Speaker 2this is still a story yeah it's this is enormously literary um and people have like for a long time scholars have recognized like a really this really impressive literary scope of the it's incredibly long right it's like the longest continuous narrative about any single person moses has like moses is alive for longer but the story is not about him for as much um we certainly don't know as much about moses's life as we do about david's this is very long complicated like but in many cases beautifully written and beautifully constructed story and again we have to always remember when we're reading the bible that we're not reading and what we're reading is not a thing that happened right that's an event we're reading a text which would say somebody's retelling of this story and the question that i'm asking here and that we are always asking is so why did they tell it this way what are they trying to convince me of by by telling the story this way and not some other way and there's lots of places in the bible where we don't just have to ask that abstract abstractly like how else could they have told it this is one of those places and there's lots of others where their story is told multiple times so i can actually compare it and be like oh this story story is told here one way and here another way why would it be told either of those ways and like comparing them gives us an opportunity to really like see where the author is intervening
Speaker 1and who do we think that author is based on all of the very juicy little details that we have here not just twisting the life of david but fitting this story into the larger overarching narrative
Speaker 2that surrounds it that's a very leading question uh but i so i'm almost never going to tell you who an author was in part because that's like you know what do you want me like schmooly uh who lives around the corner like no i don't know who wrote it um but i can tell you again you know my best guess based on the way the story is told all right who would have an interest in sort of cleaning up the story of david from what seems to have happened and making it into a story that like makes it look okay so clearly somebody who likes david good that like that doesn't narrow it down much because as you know david is like the hero of the hebrew bible and you know um basically the the biblical hero until jesus comes along um but who would this person be needing to convince this is this is where i think the fun the fun part comes in right like again we can think about political spin that we have today right like i don't need to spin something that nobody knows happened right and in the ancient world there weren't newspapers and there weren't books and there weren't like records that people would go back and look at and there wasn't like you know their idea of history was much vaguer than ours i guess is a way of saying it the point is if you're gonna say oh you think that david actually was responsible for the death of whomever like i'm gonna hear to tell you not like the only people who would think that david was responsible for the death of whomever are probably people who lived right around that time the time of david right after david but some some people for whom that memory still existed i realize you said we weren't going to do this but like just to quickly like there is another story of david in the bible and it's in the book of chronicles and the book of chronicles is written like in 400 bce so like hundreds of years later and i know that by then they didn't know any of this stuff about david anymore so they like there was they didn't remember that david had you know worked for the philistine church and they didn't remember the philistines right so there's not there's no need to spin it like chronicles doesn't bother talking about that at all it doesn't need to make an excuse for david because nobody thought
Speaker 1that was the case but at the same time it does conveniently reconcile what appeared to be some
Speaker 2of the contradictions in our earlier david's story sure but it's like it it's it's trying to clean up david entirely right make this perfectly whitewashed david but the point is they don't need to spin anything because there's no one around who thinks that david did anything wrong so the author or authors of the david story that we have in samuel this like this apology for david the the stuff that makes him look good despite x y or z i think they probably were like kind of contemporaneous with david you know you know like that text i was talking about that hittite text the apology for hatu shili right like that's from him right that's him trying to explain how he got the apology for hatu shili and he's like who else would care um and i think it's likely likely you know i wouldn't i wouldn't want to like bet my house on it or my car but like it it does seem to me likely that this david early david material this apology stuff is probably pretty contemporaneous with david leads us
Speaker 1perfectly into our bonus segment where we're going to ask whether david likely even was historical we spent this whole episode talking about this david figure and it appears that there are some really strong literary hints in the story that this might have at least been a real dude certainly his life didn't play out exactly like the story tells but when we actually invert things and read the story backwards the parts of his life that the story is trying to cover up there appears to be a difference between the two of them and i think that's a really good way to put it and i think that's a really good way to put it and i think that's a really good way to but is there any historical evidence for a david outside of the biblical text that's what we're going to talk about in our bonus segment hot take joel you have a hot take on this do you think that david was a historical person why or why not uh so yeah i do and like that is only a hot take
Speaker 2in my world you know what i mean like it's just like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know it's interesting uh i think most people would have just assumed that david was real um in part because i think most people don't sit there and ask the bible like why are you lying um but in my field there was an assumption that david was real for a long time and then recently in the last 50 years people being like no um the whole david story is just uh it's like a foundation myth it's you know it and part of the reason why i think david was real is because he was the reason for that is that it presents like david as ruler of like not just like the northern kingdom not just the southern kingdom but like it's creating this big unified united monarchy israel uh that is like exactly the glorious boundaries of the imagined great israel that that you know the bible wants us to believe in and they're laying claim to and you know sort of this this complete mythological um no never existed you know like our third world war kind of legendary king um and that was a reasonably popular opinion and in some cases still remains that um i've talked today about why i think actually the literature suggests there was probably a real david which is to say i'm not sure why you write the story of david this way unless there was something real that you were trying to explain but i'll admit that that's like a pretty roundabout way of getting at historical reality so in the early 90s i mean which is incredibly recently in uh my field in the world of archaeology and uh and biblical studies in the early 90s uh they were archaeologists were excavating um the the city of uh dan uh up in the north of israel um you know like the tribe of dan uh like if it's a relatively famous biblical place i'm sure it'll be interesting to dig into but in the early 90s they were excavating the city of dan and they found a stela right like a a little um stone uh inscribed uh monumental text not israelite aramean right uh from the 9th century like 850 bce around there um uh by an aramean king talking about how he had successfully conquered you know you know and fought battles against the northern kingdom of israel and also he said that he had conquered the northern kingdom of israel and also he said that he had and also against the house of david which is to say right like the you know the the the southern kingdom of israel of judah and that's a pretty amazing thing right to have a foreigner say the house of david when they have no stake in the question of whether david was real or not now you can imagine a world in which israelites had already started thinking about themselves as like a davidic dynasty even if david didn't exist but it's really it's a weird thing to say that would be like you know like our cultural historical memory like we go back to you know whatever george washington and that's 250 years ago um and you know like this it would be weird to create a mythological founder like a couple of generations back and people would know so the idea that a foreigner would be referring to the house of david does to me suggest that they're probably was someone named David whom that dynasty traced itself back to. Again, it says nothing about the historicity of the David story that we have. It doesn't say anything about the extent of his kingdom or his power, but it does suggest there probably was a David who was a king and maybe a founder, at least, of a dynasty. That was this stela, this Tel Dan stela, it's called, was so much, obviously, like a force in favor of David's historicity that the scholars who didn't think David existed tried to argue that it was like a forgery or it was much later or it didn't really say that, all of which is, you know, sort of like, I think, like making clear that if this thing is legit, it's pretty good evidence for a David. That's just about it, though, right? That stela is just about... The only thing that says David outside of the Bible, there's like a possibility that another stela like that from around the same time also says David, but that one's much less obvious. But that's what we have to go on. I think that these two pieces of evidence, the stela and the internal literary biblical evidence, they're convincing to me. It would be really cool to find more. But that's what we have to go on.
Speaker 1This opens up a really interesting line of inquiry about how historians, specifically archaeologists, can actually tell whether or not an artifact is even authentic because forgeries do exist. And I hope we can get to issues like that in our future episodes, because we just don't have the time today. But I do want to thank you for watching our limited series. Miss Quoting Moses. We don't yet know if there will be another show. So please remember to like these episodes, leave a comment letting us know what you think and what topics you'd like to hear us discuss in the future, because we have a lot of ideas. But until then, thank you for watching. This has been an episode of Miss Quoting Moses with Joel Baden. I'm your host, Megan Craig, and we're excited to bring you more episodes of silliness, snark, and skype. on Fridays. So be sure to subscribe to Bart Ehrman's YouTube channel so you don't miss them. Thanks for listening.
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