The Historicity of David

Saul was like, hey, love what you’re doing down there. Keep up the good work.

Love your work. Huge fan.

But in the story it gets turned into David played the harp and soothed the savage beast.

Right?

Another point in the gay column. I’m sorry.

Hey everybody, I’m Dan McClellan.

And I’m Dan Beecher.

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things, Dan?

Man? Things. Things are good. I’m out here combating misinformation like a dang superhero on your T-shirt or something.

It’s the Amazing Spider-Man today, those of you who are listening to us through the, the listening channels.

Or don’t get to see that. But you, you’re.

Yeah, you’re rather famous for it. It’s you, you got two things you’re, you’re famous for. Like there’s the sort of the Bible scholar thing and that’s like whatever. Okay, that’s fine. And then there’s this T-shirt thing that you do.

It is, it is a thing that I do. It’s, it’s nice though because when I go speak at universities, like give lectures and like named lectures, they’re like this is the Doctor So-and-So lecture. And I show up in a, in a, you know, thing T-shirts and I’m like, is this okay? And they’re always like absolutely. That’s what we wanted you to do.

And, and your institution can’t fire you for it cuz, cuz this is it. This is the only institution you got.

Yeah, this is as institutional as I get. So yeah, we have a, a great show on deck, don’t we?

Yeah. Speaking of heroes, you know, last week we did a thing called Biblical Heroes?

And is Enrique Iglesias really a hero?

Yeah. It turns out he, it turns out he very much is. But so we’ve got some more question mark heroes here. But interestingly our first Chapter and Verse, our first segment is going to involve lady heroes, which I think is awesome.

And the second, our second half of the show is going to be a History’s Mysteries where we discuss David by popular demand. Historicity has come up a few times from, from listeners.

So yeah, they want to know is, is this real?

What is historical about the story of ye old King David?

So the, the, the biblical figure, the one of the most important figures in the Bible constantly mentioned thereafter. And so we’ll we’ll, we, we’ll get to the, to the bottom of it, and by the end of the show, you will know definitively the historicity of David, more or less. I’m making that promise on Dan’s behalf. But first, let’s dive into a Chapter and Verse.

All right, what are we looking at?

So this is from the Book of Judges , and we’re, we’re looking at Judges, chapters four and five.

Which are both sort of the same thing, but in different form.

Yeah. We’ve got a bit of a historical narrative going on with, with our judge. Well, it’s actually about Deborah and Barak.

And then. And then we’ve got the famous Song of Deborah in Judges, chapter five, which is some poetry that some scholars think may be among the oldest poetry in all the Bible. This might be really, really old.

Wow. Okay.

There is disagreement about that, but isn’t there disagreement about.

I think our listeners have gotten to the point where they understand that, like, basically everything that we say, there’s disagreement about it.

Yeah, absolutely. So.

So, yeah, dive in. Dive in a little bit.

Set the table a little regarding Judges.

Because the, this, the Book of Judges is a collection of a bunch of stories about people who judged in Israel. Right. And we talked about.

About Samson last week.

Talked about Samson. Yeah.

Who’s a, who was one of these judges.

Yeah. And we get this. And it’s kind of like a—just these serial stories where the narrator is like, “And there was no king in the land. Everybody did what was right in their own eyes.” And—and God, you know, just was annoyed. So God brought this people to—to harass them. And then God was like, “Maybe I’m not so annoyed.” And so God raises up a judge, and this is basically a warlord. This is the person who is fighting back in the absence of a king and kind of a centralized authority. And this period in—in the history of ancient Israel is—the Book of Judges comes from much later than the time periods they narrate. But there are probably historical memories preserved in some of these stories from a period before the rise of an actual state when it really was just a bunch of scattered tribes just trying to survive off the land. And they occasionally have to defend themselves against the Philistines.

Those are the main ones that are—that are the enemies. Here we’re gonna see there are some Canaanites who—who are the villains. And—and basically they kind of band together under this chieftain, this warlord, who’s going to defend them against the people who are encroaching on their territory. And then as soon as that threat is gone, everything goes back to the way it was.

So it’s kind of a—a weird little kind of seasonal, where we’re briefly a type of kingdom, and then we’re not. And then we’re briefly a type of king. And so they’re—they’re not kings. They’re judges. But one of these is Deborah. And so at the beginning of chapter four, the Israelites are again doing what was evil in the sight of Adonai after the judge Ehud, which is basically—

That’s just the setup for all of these. As you say, all of these stories kind of start with that. And there’s a lot of, like, little stories and little things that are thrown in and judges. Like, I read the chapter before this, hoping it would provide me with some context. It did not.

But you didn’t like the Ehud story.

No, it was a fine story. It just didn’t give me any context for the Deborah story. Yeah, but what’s interesting is that the—the chapter before this ends with a single moment—a single verse that says, “After him came Shamgar son of Anath, who killed 600 of the Philistines with an ox goad. He, too, delivered Israel.” But that’s the whole story. Yeah, that was—yeah, he didn’t get a whole—you know, a whole, like, big old long thing like—like Samson did.

I mean, you know, Deborah gets two chapters. Samson gets, I think, three or four. Yeah, yeah. They—there are major judges, and then there are minor judges.

Like, I’m gonna say Shamgar killing 600 Philistines with an ox goad is a pretty—you know, it’s—it’s not a thousand with a—a jawbone of an ass, but it’s still pretty—that’s no small shakes, I’m just gonna say.

Anyway, all I think of is the old Mickey Mouse cartoon where he kills seven flies with one swat, and then he opens up his windows and says, “I killed seven with one blow.” And they all think he’s talking about a giant. Seven giants. And they’re like, “Oh, well, there’s a giant who’s harassing us. Go. Right. Take on the giant.”

We’ll—we’ll talk about taking on giants later on.

Yeah, that’s a different story.

But—so Deborah is an—so—so the lead into the Deborah story is nothing. There is no lead into it. There’s just a guy killing people with an ox goad. And then we jump directly into the Israelites doing what was—what is evil in the sight of The Lord.

Right. And they—so they sold them into the hand of King Jabin of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. And Hazor is a—well now it’s just ruins, but used to be a good-sized city just north of the Sea of Galilee. You can go visit there. And the commander of Jabin’s army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth Hagoyim, which probably means Harosheth of the Gentiles or of the nations. Right. Rather than just another part of the—the name. And then the Israelites cried out to Adonai for help because these folks had a bunch of chariots and they had been oppressing the—the Israelites for some 20 years.

And chariots will help, man. Apparently that—that’s—that’s some high-tech warring stuff. So.

Well, that—that’s actually something that a lot of scholars think. The—the invasion of the Sea Peoples, which happened around 1200 BCE, which is what caused these people known as the Philistines to occupy the—the coastal area. That’s what brought them there. They probably brought chariots with them and introduced that technology into the region.

Right.

Because they had chariots.

They had chariots and. Yeah, what’s God gonna do?

It’s a little rich for my blood.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. You didn’t tell me they had chariots. What’s going on? All right, we get Deborah is introduced. It says at that time, Deborah, a prophet, wife of Lapidoth. At least that’s what it says in the NRSV. I did read that that is not the only possible translation of that moment, that Lapid or Lapidoth might mean. It might not have been a person, but a description of Deborah as being like a woman of fire or lightning or something like that.

Oh, yeah, I don’t know that I’ve looked that up.

But that’s what Wikipedia said.

That’s what Wikipedia says. Okay.

What it says in Wikipedia is Lapid translates as torch or lightning, and therefore.

Oh, look, there we go. Lapid. Okay. Which could be. The guy could be named after the notion of. But Lapidot would be. Sounds like it would be plural. And so that could be an abstract plural, an abstraction. So a woman of. Of lightningness, of light. Okay. Yeah.

So anyway, but most. I think most. Most scholars and you. As. As. Since you didn’t even know that that existed, I think it’s safe to say.

No, I didn’t. I had not looked at that.

Most scholars probably think that it’s just. She’s the wife of. Of Lapidoth. Yeah.

And she’s judging under a palm between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim. So this is the. The northern hill country. And this idea of. Of judging under a palm. We see this a handful of times. Like, even Saul was by his favorite tree when he’s ruling.

So that’s interesting. That is. Is. Is. Do we have a sense of why that is? Because, you know, we. A lot of the imagery of, like, the Buddha is under the tree and stuff we have. Is there a reason why ancient peoples of Asia are into. Their wise people being under trees?

I. There’s got to be some symbolism associated with. With life or with authority or something like that. There were trees that could be associated with certain deities, and. And like the date palm could be associated with a goddess. So there could be some of that kind of stuff lurking in the background, but I don’t know of any special significance associated with this particular one. And is this a date palm? I think this is. Yeah. Yeah.

Here’s my. Here’s a. Here’s a question that I have also. Or. Or rather, one thing we shouldn’t do is gloss over the fact that there’s a woman who’s being. Who’s declared a prophet and is what. And is the judge, is the warlord of this moment. That’s. That sounds unusual to me. Am I wrong? That’s. It seems like that’s not something that. Like that. That felt. That was very unexpected to me.

Well, they. They certainly don’t lead you in. They’re not like, get a hold of. Get a load of this.

No, it’s. It’s given no extra oomph in any way.

Yeah, we have. And, you know, this happens elsewhere, like when King Josiah finds the. The Book of the Law in the temple, they take it to Huldah the prophetess, and she’s the one who tells the king what to do. And so every now and then, you just have women showing up in positions of power and authority. And the text doesn’t seem to treat it as anything unusual. Of course, anyone who’s reading the text closely recognizes it is quite unusual for these texts. But whether this is a literary creation or just a feature of this time period, I don’t know. I think both kind of have ways that they make sense to me.

But I mean, either no matter what it is, I. I find it remarkable that it is that. That it’s treated as unremarkable.

That the fact, you know, that the fact that this. This woman was given all of this power and authority and that people. There’s no. No ink spilled to question her authority or her power or. Or her ability as a prophet or anything like that. It is just. It’s as. As assumed to be true as any of the men.

Yeah. And we don’t really get much questioning until we get to the pseudo-Paul in First Timothy and—and our interpolation in 1 Corinthians 14 . That’s when the—the claws come out. But so they—they’re gonna go hang out around Mount Tabor and they’re gonna try to draw Sisera and the enemy out to meet them there. And we’ve got this weird—this weird thing where Deborah summons Barak and he shows up and—and she tells him what the plan’s gonna be.

And Barak is just a leader of—he’s just an army general of some sort or something.

Yeah. And—and he says in verse eight, “If you will go with me, I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go.”

Kind of a weird thing. And she’s like, “Oh, I’m going to go with you definitely.”

But he’s like, “I’m not going if you don’t. If you don’t come, this is over. There’s no way, man. No way.”

And—and she says, “I will surely go with you. Nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.” So we do have kind of a—it’s a bit of a tip of the hat to the fact that—that it is unusual that a woman is stepping into this role. But this is not about Deborah. Right. It’s about somebody else.

Yeah, I—I assumed it was about Deborah when she said that. I was—I assumed that she was like, sort of obliquely talking, referring to herself, but she wasn’t. I also think that that’s a weird thing to say to a guy who was just right then showing reticence about going at all to be like, “And also, you’re not going to get any glory. Some other lady is going to get all the glory.” So have fun, Barak. It’s just like, okay, all right, we’ll just go then. And he gathers up his 10,000 men or whatever it was, and—and—and armies from other neighboring tribes, I guess.

Yeah, this—this is something that was pretty common at the time. When you had to go to war, you wanted to get all your friends involved. Yeah. So that you had as much power behind you as possible. And then Sisera shows up, they get the—the 900 chariots there, and 10,000 warriors are following Barak. And then it just says the Lord threw Sisera and all his chariots and all his army into a panic before Barak. So Sisera, like, falls off of his—his chariot. And I’m thinking of El Guapo at the end falling off his horse. “You stupid horse!” And—and Barak pursues the chariots and the army, and they’re going chasing after him. And then Sisera, he has fled away on foot. And he makes it to the tent of Yael. Adonai is El—is God—wife of Heber the Kenite. There was peace between this—this Canaanite and the—and Heber the Kenite.

And before we go on, I just want to make it clear: Sisera fleeing, he’s the only guy that made it alive. The—his entire army was destroyed by Barak, and he’s running away on his own. I also want to point out that every time I had to read the word Kenite, all I could think of was Ryan Gosling in the Barbie movie, because Kenite’s gotta have that kenergy. That’s all there is to it. So, yeah, so Sisera is defeated already. But yeah, he—he himself has—has not got caught, so there. So he has—he has fled to his boss’s wife’s tent, which I thought was a little bit like—like I—I was.

Yeah, at least—at least a—a comrade’s wife’s tent. And Yael comes out to meet him, says, “Turn aside, my lord. Turn aside to me. Have no fear.”

Yeah. What is it? What does that mean?

Surah. Turn aside. Oh, it’s just—come on in. You know, you’re—you’re on a—you’re on a journey in a certain direction. Turn off the road, take the exit, stop in to the tent. And it says, she covered him with a rug. Hope it wasn’t a very heavy rug. And then he asked for a little—a little water. He’s a little parched, so she gets him some milk and gives him a drink and tucks him back into his rug.

And he’s like, “Just keep a lookout. I’m gonna get a little shut-eye here.”

If anybody comes, tell them I ain’t here.

Yeah. And so she grabs a tent peg and a hammer and just goes and—and basically nails his head to the ground.

Right.

And it’s—it’s explicit. It’s funny because it skips over a lot of details but does not skip over any details with this tent peg and hammer. Like literally went softly. She, Yael, wife of Heber, took the tent peg and took a hammer in her hand. We had to know that it was in her hand. And went softly to him and drove the.

That is she.

You got to aim past the target. That’s the trick.

That’s the key.

Yeah. In martial arts to break the board, you got to aim past the board. That’s the trick. So she was—

Homegirl knew how to drive a stake, man.

Yeah. She had the fundamentals down. So he was really going to get—

Only one shot at that one. If you—if it’s a glancing blow, you’re—you’re—you’re in trouble.

Yeah. He was lying fast asleep from weariness.

And he died.

Yeah. So, so Jael gets the glory on that one. And—

Which is so—which is funny because she wasn’t even part of the—she wasn’t even part of the whole real battle. But she killed that—the one, the final boss, I guess.

Yeah. And Barak shows up at the tent and you can see him like run into the tent. He’s like, “I got you now. I’m going to get the glory.” And then she opens the door and he’s like, “Oh, oh, I bet you killed him already, huh?”

I mean, Barak was told. He knew this was coming.

And then we’ve got—we’ve got the Song of Deborah immediately after that, which tells the same story over again.

But go to Judges 5 . And it’s—and it’s suddenly a poem and it’s like, whoa.

But there’s some interesting features of this poem that a lot of people may not notice. You’ve got—and one of the things that the poem includes is Shamgar. I don’t know if you noticed that you mentioned that Shamgar who—the one who killed 600 Philistines with an oxgoad. Right at the end of Chapter 3, if you go into the song, verse 6, it says, “In the days of Shamgar, son of Anath, in the days of Jael, caravans ceased and travelers kept to the byways.” So they’re kind of describing kind of a Wild West scenario where, you know, it wasn’t safe to be out on the roads because there were brigands afoot. And so if you’re not careful, you’re—

Gonna get killed with an oxgoad. Like it’s—it’s dangerous out there.

Yeah. And we have this story about just basically how things are. You know, they’re causing trouble in the neighborhood.

Until we have in verse 12, “Awake, awake, Deborah, awake, awake. Utter a song. Arise, Barak, lead away your captives, O son of Abinoam.” And one gets the sense that this poem is a lot older than the narrative. And so the narrative may have been constructed kind of in light of the poem, because Barak doesn’t really have much of a role in the story. We have a bunch of people who are mentioned. They call—they basically say, “All right, everybody who’s for the Lord, for Adonai, come to battle against Sisera the Canaanite.” And it rattles off a bunch of names. From Ephraim, they set out into the valley following you, Benjamin, with your kin. From Machir, march down the commanders, and from Zebulun, those who bear the marshal’s staff. And we get a bunch of tribes. And most of them are the twelve tribes of Israel. But not all of them are here.

Because it lists those who came, and then it condemns those who didn’t.

But it doesn’t mention Judah at all. And some of the tribes have different names. Like Machir is a different one. And Meroz—they did not come to the help of the Lord. To the help of the Lord against the mighty. So one theory is that this may be poetry that’s preserved from an earlier period, before they kind of settled on what the twelve tribes were going to be and what their names were going to be. That this is preserved from an earlier time. And it doesn’t have the southern tribes.

Right.

Or it doesn’t have Judah. And so maybe this is when Israel just referred to the kingdom of Israel in the northern hill country. So there’s—there’s a lot of debate about what all this means, but it is—I think it’s fascinating to think of this poem, at least the list of tribes, as a preservation of the earliest tribes of Israel before they went mainstream. Yeah. You know, we—we get the twelve tribes that we know today.

It does occur to me, is this—I don’t—I don’t know what historians and academics say about this, but it seems very, very possible to me that oral histories were passed down in song and poetry.

Oh, yeah.

For. For a long time. And that maybe that’s the origin of many of these stories. We just don’t have the songs that, that were the origin of these things. Yeah, as you said, like you suggested that this song predates the story and then the story was just a reworking of the information contained in the song to make sense of it.

I think that’s, that makes sense to me just because the, the narrative contains much more detail and I think we’ve discussed it before, but you don’t have historical narrative, narrative prose in alphabetic languages like Hebrew until the late 9th century BCE. And so prior to that, all the texts are, are either like short little missives or they are poetry. And so, yeah, absolutely. The stories from prior to the rise of narrative prose would have been structured around poetry because that’s one of the ways, that’s one of the ways to give structure to something in a way that makes it easier to remember.

Yeah, it makes it sticky, makes it catchy.

Right. So whether it’s meter or whether it’s rhyme or whatever it is, that’s one of the ways to, to help remember it. Whereas narrative prose, it’s the fact that it’s being committed to text that facilitates, you know, it’s later access. It’s not something that you’ve got to memorize. So, so poetry frequently is earlier than the narrative.

And we, you mentioned time periods. One thing we didn’t touch on is when is this story of Deborah meant to have taken place? And what time period do we think the, the text is from?

So the, the Book of Judges is not incredibly clear on time periods. It kind of is jumping regionally and chronologically around, but it, in general, it would have been between like 1200 BCE and, and Saul toward the end of the 11th century BCE. So you know, you’ve got around a 200 year span. Okay. And, but the reality is that these, most of these stories probably come from the 9th or the 8th century BCE, but this poem, the Song of Deborah, could come from before that, you know, possibly as early as around a thousand BCE.

So, so when, when this text was, was written, or especially the, not so much the poem, but chapter four rather than chapter five, that was likely written in the, in you say the 800s.

BCE or the 9th or the 8th century, more than likely the 8th century. So that would be the 700s.

Okay, 700s, but about the 11th or 12th century. Is that what you said? I’ve now I’ve lost the plot 13th.

It’s probably looking back toward historical memories from much earlier. But but probably not, probably not any further than around 1000 BCE.

Okay, and are there any other texts. We’ll be talking more about this, but are there any other non biblical texts that affirm any of this story? Or is this story. Basically it’s just here, but. And we have no, like, there’s no way to verify any kind of historicity with this.

There’s, there’s not. There are some ways that people will track down like place names. Like in one of the stories of David, it’s like he got the booty and he split up the booty and the booty went to the people from this town, in this town, in this town, in this town, in this town. And like, if you go dig into a lot of archeological stuff, you will find that, that those towns weren’t inhabited in the time when David was supposed to be alive, but they were all inhabited in like, you know, the 750s BCE or something like that. So you might be able to say. So it sounds like this story at least was written in, in no earlier than this time period.

Right.

But apart from that kind of stuff, there’s not really much that we can do. But there are some fascinating, some other fascinating things I wanted to point out in here. One of the things that I really enjoy is the fact that in verse 20 says the stars fought from heaven. From their courses they fought against Sisera. And so the stars are the, the heavenly bodies, the host of the heavens. And the host of the heavens just means the armies of the heavens. And here they’re actually functioning precisely as Adonai’s armies because they are, they’re in their courses, they’re, they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing. But because they are divine beings and they’re God’s army, they are also capable of being deployed in battle. And so they.

And so they. Well, that would explain the confusion that, that the, that Sisera’s army experienced. If they’re, if they’re getting like laser beamed from the stars, that. Yeah, that would explain why they, why they went into a panic.

Yeah. And then we have, we have the curse of Meroz. Says, it says, says the angel of the Lord, which is probably a later part of the text, curse bitterly its inhabitants because they did not come to help, come to the help of the Lord. And this is. There’s a theory about the rise of the nation of Israel that initially, you know, we have a reference to Israel in the Merneptah Stele from around 1208, 1210 BCE and it refers to Israel using a determinative for a people. So it’s not a city-state. It’s not a kingdom. It’s not a nation. It’s just a people. And there’s a theory that. Well, there are a variety of theories associated with this, but the one that I think makes the most sense to me is that these were really just a bunch of scattered tribes, and if, you know, somebody came to cause trouble from outside, they banded together, and they’re like, all right, we’re gonna become this. This little confederation, or amphictyony, if you want to borrow a term from further west in the Mediterranean.

And. And if you were part of that organization, if they, you know, raised the banner, you had to go fight, and there was somebody would. Would take up position as the head chief, the. The head warlord or whatever. And it sounds like some of these folks didn’t come to the battle, that they named the tribes that did, and they named the tribes that didn’t. And. And the tribes that didn’t got. Got shamed for it. But one theory. Yeah, got put on blast. One theory is that they. This was a seasonal thing. It was an. You know, a situationally emergent thing. And then at some point, they just decided, we need to stay together, and, you know, so. And so is gonna take up the throne as king, and then you’ve got the nation of Israel.

Right.

And. And then, you know, centuries later, we get the story about how, oh, Abraham gave birth to Isaac, who gave birth to Jacob, and Jacob gave birth to all of the tribes that are now confederated. And so we’re all part of the same family. And so it. That is probably all a later fictional literary creation from these tribes that originally probably were not genetically related, but just happened to occupy the same northern hill country.

Right. Okay, there you go. After the. One of the parts that stuck out to me in the song. We’ll just get. We’re about to move on. But I just. Yeah, they’re talking about the spoils of the war.

And we got. We got Jael. Jael takes care of Sisera in the. In the poem as well.

Yes. Yes, that’s right. So we. So. So all of the main plot points line up.

And then. And then it just. Just in case you weren’t. You. You were. You were worried that this wasn’t a sexist part of the book because there were these women heroes. It does say that in the spoils of the war. And are they not finding and dividing the spoil, A woman or two for every man spoil? And then. So one of the spoils of War is women for everybody. And then the rest are dyed and embroidered clothes. So those. Those are the things of value. I guess so. There you go. That’s. That’s the story of Deborah. Very interesting stuff.

Oh, hang on a second. So I was. I’m looking at the. The context of this. Out of the window she peered. The mother of Sisera gazed through the lattice. Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why tarry the hoofbeats of his chariots. Her wisest ladies make answer. Indeed, she answers the question herself. Are they not finding and dividing the spoil? A woman or two for every man. Spoil of dyed stuffs for Sisera. Spoil of dyed stuffs embroidered. Two pieces of dyed work embroidered for my neck as spoil. This is Sisera’s mom.

Oh, I had missed that.

What’s. What. Why is Sisera taking so long? Dinner’s getting cold. And then goes, oh, he’s. He’s on the war path. He’s. He’s raping and pillaging. He’s gathering his.

His. His. Women.

Yeah, women.

A woman or two. Okay, there you go.

And then.

So that’s actually a disappointment. We don’t. We don’t know if women were divvied or not.

That. That’s just Sisera’s mom just daydreaming. Him coming back with a bunch of extra virgins. Yeah.

Too bad he’s a. A tent peg now.

Yeah, he. He did. And then she says, so perish all your enemies, oh, Adonai, but may your friends be like the sun as it rises in its might. That. That is in. That’s such a. I don’t think I have taken note of who is doing the talking there before, but that’s such a poetic way to end this.

And she’s. Yeah, she’s dreaming about all of the embroidered stuffs that she’s going to get.

And when her son comes back, a victor.

A rather ominous drawing to a close of. Yeah. Weird narrative.

I don’t know why. I never know either.

That’s really. That’s really interesting. Okay.

Okay, cool.

Well, we. You know, you live and you learn, and we. We both didn’t catch that until just now. I love it. Let’s move on to History’s Mysteries.

And who is the, the mystery guest for today? Well, I guess we already talked about it. It’s no mystery.

We already mentioned David. Okay. Yeah, but, but yeah, I mean I mentioned earlier that, that many people have written in to us to ask us to talk about David, the history, the historicity of David and also his son Solomon. Maybe we can touch on that a little bit as well.

A little bit. Yeah.

But yeah, let’s start with. Well, I mean, you can start wherever you want. I will say that I grew up and the only thing I knew about David was that he killed a giant. Which you ruined for us in a previous episode because you’re welcome. Because that wasn’t David. Or was it? Or was it? And then when I actually read some of the, of the book, I learned that he had a very special relationship with a guy named Jonathan. We won’t get into that too much, but it does seem very intense. Yeah, but, but Jonathan. But there’s this whole thing about Saul, who is the king and all this. Anyway, it’s a big long story and a lot of time is spent on the rise of David, on David being pursued by Saul, and then eventually David becomes king and becomes like kind of the most important king in the history of Israel.

Would that be fair to say?

I think so, because a lot of the prophetic material, a lot of the stuff coming in the exile and after, is all about that longing for the glory days of the Davidic kingdom. And David, David’s dynasty lasts longer than any other dynasty associated with the nations of Israel or Judah. So his line is the longest reigning one.

And he’s kind of credited with, you know, we talked about these scattered tribes and all this stuff. He’s kind of credited with consolidating everybody and like, and he’s credited with. He took Jerusalem and then sort of made that home base and talk more about sort of the contributions that he made theoretically, because we’re going to get into whether there was a he or not.

And well, well, similar to the stuff with the judges, we have Saul, we have David, we have Solomon, and then we get Jeroboam and Rehoboam. God identifies somebody who says, you’re my guy. And then, you know, he just can’t lose for a little bit. And then it turns out he was a loser the whole time. And so God’s like, you’re no longer my guy, this is my guy. So like, it happens with Saul, it happens with David, it happens with Solomon. It happens with all the. All of the kings. So this cyclical thing that we got going on with the judges continues to go on. And there’s a sense in which the story kind of bleeds from the judges, at least that the structure of these polities kind of bleeds into what’s going on with Saul and David. Because basically, Saul is just the warlord who happens to be in charge when Israel decides, hey, we’re just gonna stick together as this larger unit rather than break back up into our tribes.

So that’s. That’s probably what happens when. When Saul, if Saul is historical, takes the throne and David. When we look at the narratives that talk about David’s rise to the throne, we’ve got a handful of different things. There are things that are related to Saul, there are things that have nothing to do with Saul, and there are things that are very clearly literary inventions intended to pump David up and just make it seem like he was the chosen one all along. Right.

Because it is confusing, because Saul. Because David is not Saul’s son, which would be the traditional way that, you know, mode of succession to kingship.

Yeah. And that’s. And that’s a great point. David was not Saul’s son, so why is David king? And so a lot of these stories are. Are kind of intended to spackle over the. The holes in the story. And.

And it kind of feels that way.

You could. You could.

You can feel. Feel that as you’re reading the narrative. Like, it feels like, oh, this is. You’re just plugging holes here. You’re not.

Well, and that’s. And David and Jonathan is the exact same. Jonathan is Saul’s son. Jonathan would be the heir to the throne. But from the instant the two of them are in the same room together, they can’t keep their hands off each other. And Jonathan, like Jonathan, the. The. This little covenant ritual that they do that some people compare to a marriage. Jonathan gives him all of the symbols of his royalty. Basically, Jonathan is saying, you are the rightful heir, not me. And so that’s very clearly this literary invention, covering the holes, trying to make it seem like David got there through, you know, no fault of his own. He wasn’t, you know, he wasn’t a warlord who just took over.

Right.

He, you know, Jonathan, Saul’s own son said, this is the man.

And. And when it comes to Jonathan and David’s relationship, you got a lot of strong feelings on all sides of this. But there are two, I think, decent books that cover the historical David, one by Joel Baden called The Historical David and the other by Jacob Wright, who we have had on the show called David, King of Israel, and Nehemiah in Biblical Memory. And they all, then they both talk about this to some degree, but you know, you don’t. Anciently they didn’t have a concept of a homosexual person or a heterosexual person. Sex was a lot more fluid than that. You know, just like for someone who may be spending the rest of their life in prison, they might find themselves in a little more fluid orientation than, than otherwise. And so it, it wouldn’t be entirely unheard of if this was a romantic relationship between David and Jonathan. We don’t really think in earliest Israel they really had a lot of concern for this kind of thing. Okay. The only concern we get is like post-exilic Holiness Code, priestly authors who are like, everything’s supposed to be clean and everybody’s got to be clean.

We got to purge the land. Like that’s happening centuries down the road in this little minority group. And so I don’t think we have the data to say one way or another that this was or was not a romantic relationship. It’s certainly plausible.

I mean the data is you read the book and you go, oh, well that seems really, really clear.

Well, yeah, he says that he loves him more than his love for him exceeded the love of women.

Which could just, could just be, you know, hyperbole. But it also could mean the love was functioning as that way.

They’re constantly praising each other and hiding behind rocks and giggling. I don’t know. It was just, it’s just an. It, it feels very clear to me. But the, but the. Then on the other side of the question, there’s also the idea that yes, in order for this story to work, we need Jonathan’s buy-in

Right.

To David in order for him to give up his birthright of the kingdom. And so, and so having him that sort of worshipful of this kid who is not even. I mean, is he even of. He’s like. I don’t know if there’s no real concept of nobility here, but he’s the son of a like sheep farmer or something.

Yeah. So this is Jesse. David is the youngest of eight sons of Jesse. And, and when you go back in in time, if you were the eighth son, nothing was coming to you.

Yeah. Nobody gives a crap about you.

Yeah. You either went to join the army or the clergy.

Right.

You had one of those two things. And so David probably is a warlord who was operating in the south when you know whether it was Philistines or whoever putting pressure on them, David was probably in charge of. Of some groups. And it’s actually very close to the story of Jephthah. You. I don’t know if you recall, Jephthah. This is Judges 11 . So it starts off that Jephthah was the son of a man and a sex worker, okay? And so Jephthah grew up in this guy’s household, but all of this guy’s legitimate sons were like, hey, we don’t like you, and you’re not gonna inherit anything. And they end up driving him off. And so he runs off and he becomes a.

Of mercenaries or warriors. And so he seems to have kind of made a name for himself as a warlord and was probably in charge of the groups that were taking care of fending off the… the encroachment of the Philistines in the southern territory. And that’s probably how he got in good with Saul. Saul was like, hey, like, love what you’re doing down there. Keep up the good work.

Love your work. Huge fan.

But in the story, it gets turned into David played the harp and soothed the savage beast.

Right?

Another point in the gay column. I’m sorry.

But then… and it’s weird. Saul’s like, who is this young man? I love the cut of his jib. Yeah. And… and then, you know, he finds out who he is. And then the next chapter, Saul’s like, what are we going to do about this battle with this Philistine? And David is out there, and he’s like, who is this young man? I like the cut of his jib. And… and you’re like, you… it’s David again. It’s still David.

You already liked his jib. His jib is already currently liked. What are you doing?

You know this man? And… and then we get the, you know, the story with the… with Goliath, which has been appropriated from Elhanan. And so… so many of the stories are very clearly just ways for later authors to.

Say, no, no, no, no, no, no.

David… David was legit. He, you know, had right to be king. It wasn’t like he just killed all the right people, like as most kings find their way to the throne. Right. But yeah, I think the… the historical David was probably a warlord, somebody who left the family and went off and… and joined a group of… of mercenaries and… and warriors, and they made a name for themselves. They… and, uh, Joel Baden makes an interesting point in his story about the historical David that the text keeps saying that David just won battle after battle after battle against the Philistines, but never discusses any territory changing hands, which suggests that these are… these are not significant battles. This is not really changing the tide of anything, which means it’s probably just these skirmishes going on at the border, you know, in… in the no man’s land and along the borders, which supports the notion that he was just, you know, a warlord, just out trying to.

Just a bunch of highwaymen and wayfarers.

Yeah, and not the… oh, gosh now, not the Kris Kristofferson Highwayman. Not the good kind of highwayman, but… and… and there’s a theory that most scholars don’t think there was ever a united kingdom, that is that there was a northern kingdom of Israel and then there was a southern kingdom of Judah. The earliest reference that we have to both of these political entities is the Tel Dan Stele, which we said, there’s not a lot going on there, but it’s this Aramean named Hazael who says, yeah, I killed all these. I killed this guy. He was the king of Israel. And this guy, he was the king… and then it… he refers to another guy from the House of David. He doesn’t say the… the kingdom of Judah. He just says from the House of David. Which means this is probably a dynastic successor, and there’s not yet an actual kingdom in Judah. And so there’s a theory that I kind of like that David was trying to take over the kingdom of Israel from Saul, and it didn’t really work out well enough.

And he made his way south, took over Jerusalem, and then was like, fine, I’m going to start up my own kingdom and starts up a little chieftain or some chiefdom or something like that in the south in Judah with Jerusalem as the capital. And then that becomes, you know, Israel’s little brother until around 722 BCE, when we got Tiglath-Pileser III coming in and destroying the northern kingdom. And then Judah is all that’s left. And so Judah kind of appropriates the identity of Israel, the traditions, the literature, the… the history. And Judah is the one telling the story from then on out. And so… but because Judah is part of the Davidic dynasty, not Israel’s dynasty, David becomes the main man, the.

And then they just… so, so they… they inject the… the David story into all of these other stories that they’re… that they’re appropriating.

Or. Or. Or, you know, set it in among those other stories or something.

Yeah. So. And. And they’re probably. These stories were probably in circulation for a while. There were the. The early traditions about David where he’s going and, and he’s even participate. You know, he’s. He’s like. They represent him as kind of undercover fighting for the Philistines for a while. Yeah.

For a minute there, he’s like. He’s like going from Philistine guy to Philistine guy, being like, hey, let us hold up here with you, and I’ll.

And like, he keeps. He keeps siding with all of the wrong people.

It’s weird. And you have this. There’s a story of Nabal and Abigail that. That is an interesting story where he shows up at this. At Nabal’s house. And first off, the name Nabal means fool. Okay. So, like, right off the bat, this is very clearly fictional.

Right.

And. And says, hey, we’ve been protecting your crops from the. All the roving madmen. A real kind of, “You got a lovely store here. It… it would. I would hate to see something happen.”

Right.

He’s running a protection racket.

Yeah. And. And Nabal’s like, get off my property. And, you know, just runs him off. And later on, David comes back and they kill Nabal and everybody else. And then David marries Abigail. And it’s. This is another way that, like, you can imagine how this went. He’s running a protection racket, Nabal doesn’t buy into it, so he’s like, all right, well, option B, we’ll just kill you. And. But the way the story is told in. In the Bible, they represent Nabal as like this oaf, this idiot who is like, you know, doesn’t listen to the Lord and is doing everything wrong. And Abigail is out there kind of behind the scenes helping David out so that, that, you know, David will be. Will be merciful. And then I think it even has God killing Nabal instead of David.

Oh, wow.

But it’s very clearly a sanitization, sanitizing.

Right.

I am not. I’m. I think the cyclobenzaprine is still affecting my ability to form words, but.

But it’s. It’s a sanitized version of, you know, a tale as old as time. Right. For the Wild West, where that kind of thing goes on. So. Yeah.

Was Abigail. Abigail was. Wasn’t. Was that David’s first wife? David took a lot of wives.

Yeah, he took a. He took a handful. And. And something that is pointed out that. Oh, is it. Is it to David or Solomon? Does Nathan say. Yeah, I think Nathan tells David that the Lord gave you all of your master’s, or, you know, your master’s wives into. Into your bosom. I think that was Nathan telling David that, but I don’t remember.

It was kind of a way. I mean, it was kind of a way of consolidating a bunch of tribes. Like, he. It seems like he would go in and sort of like when he would take over a tribe, he just marries somebody from that tribe, a prominent woman from that tribe. And then.

Yeah, they’re.

They’re his now. Yeah, sort. Sort of thing.

Yeah. And then I don’t remember if Abigail was his first wife or not, but.

Okay. Yeah. At one point in the Book of Chronicles, I guess it lists his sons with. With various wives, so there’s, you know, a whole. A whole bunch of things. The most famous son being Solomon by Bathsheba. Bathsheba is his wife from a. A pretty sketchy moment in his history. I mean, it’s funny, if anyone jumps to the defense of David, if. If. If. If they have the impulse to say, why is Dan saying David was such a bad dude? Read the book. Because, like, the stuff he’s. He doesn’t do good things. This. The whole. The whole Bathsheba thing is such a shocking story to me. You know, he sees her.

He sees her on the roof of. You know, naked on the roof of her building. And like.

Well, it doesn’t even say roof or.

Oh. Oh, right. He could be looking through. I’m. I was imagining it. On the roof. He could be looking.

You were thinking about Leonard Cohen. You saw her bathing on the roof, right? No.

Maybe that’s it. Yeah, but. But he sees her, like, bathing.

He’s.

He’s. He’s a peeping Tom. Brings her in, does not give her many options. Just.

Oh, no, no options.

Takes her. Yeah. Has her. And then her husband comes back and, you know these Hittites and their anger management issues.

But actually, her husband’s, like, awesome to him, but he doesn’t want her husband to know what happened and sends him. And then sends him back to the front, to the war front, and with instructions for him to be killed.

Yeah. At least put him in a situation where he was definitely gonna die, even though he showed himself to be much more of a man of God than David. He was like, hey, go home. You know, the, the, the text says wash your feet. Which is, which is a euphemism.

Right. And what he says, like the game here. Right, is David is worried that he got Bathsheba pregnant and he doesn’t want her husband coming home to find a pregnant wife. So he’s like trying to trick him into going and having sex with her so that it’s plausibly his kid.

Yeah. Cover it up.

And then, and then he doesn’t, he won’t. He’s like, no, I’m loyal to you.

Well. And he’s, he doesn’t want to. The idea seems to be that he’s a warrior and if he’s going to stay in God’s favor and have God looking out for him on the battlefield and if he’s going to be a pure warrior, then, you know, no sex before a fight kind of rule. You gotta. So he sleeps outside of the bed chamber so that he maintains his ritual purity so that he can do well in battle. Unfortunately, it does not work.

Yeah, well, it does. I don’t know how well he did in battle, but when the rest of the army takes a step back and just lets the other army have at him, it doesn’t matter how well you do, you’re. You’re still going to lose.

Yeah. And. And as we’ve spoke about before in our episode on women covering up, this was totally David’s fault.

That Bathsheba wasn’t doing anything wrong. Bathsheba had absolutely no agency and Bathsheba was just doing what she was required to do as a woman of this time period. Yeah.

There was no, there’s no mention of her being a seductress or anything like that. That argument just falls flat on its face if anyone were to make it. It’s a, it’s a fascinating story. He’s an interesting anti-hero. But it sounds to me like you’re convinced that there was a David at least.

I think it’s more likely than not that there was some kind of historical David. I think these, some of these stories about this warlord who just kind of was roaming around with a band of, you know, men who could have been merry. That we.

We can’t. We can neither confirm nor deny the merriness, but.

And their seams were probably perfect every time as the show says. I think that’s more likely than not. I don’t know that we can know anything really about this individual. But, but I think the start of this dynasty that is named in the Tel Dan Stele, I think that’s got to be embedded in the foundations of those social memories. And so some features of David are probably historical.

Okay, well, there you have it, friends. Maybe we’ll come back to David at some point because there’s a lot of David stuff. But for now, we’ll leave it at that. Thanks, Dan. Thank you. If you guys would like to—now, Dan, you and I are about to go and record our after party. That’s more bonus content that we do every week. If you would like to get that bonus content or just get an early ad-free version of every episode of this show, you can head over to patreon.com/dataoverdogma. If you’d like to write into us, you can reach us at contact@dataoverdogmapod.com and if none of those things appeal to you, we’ll just see you again next week.

Bye, everybody.

The Historicity of David

Segments

The Transcript

Scripture Index

Terminology