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Baruch Halpern is Covenant Foundation Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Georgia and former codirector of the Megiddo Expedition. His other books include The Constitution of the Monarchy in Israel, The Emergence of Israel in Canaan, The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History, and Law and Ideology in Monarchic Israel.

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The Bible portrays King David as an exceptional man and a paragon of godly devotion. But was he? Some scholars deny that he existed at all. Did he? This challenging book examines the written and archaeological evidence critically in an effort to paint an accurate picture of one of the Bible's central figures.

Neither defending nor rejecting the traditions about David, Baruch Halpern, a leading scholar of biblical history and the ancient Near East, traces the origins and development of David's persona. Because the biblical text clearly responds to concerns that can only be contemporary with David himself, we can believe that David was both real and a central actor in the historical drama of ancient Israel. Yet at the same time, the written record also shows that contemporaries understood David's character to be much more unsavory than the tradition has hitherto allowed.

Halpern digs beneath the layers of tradition to understand David as an individual, as a person. The man he uncovers turns out to have been complex, ambiguous, and--above all--surprising. According to Halpern, the image of David grew over time. He was the founder of the dynasty that perpetuated the texts about him, and they progressively exaggerated his accomplishments. But in the earliest writings David remains a modest figure, as this book shows for the first time. To understand David as a human being, one must keep in mind that he was primarily a politician who operated in a rough-and-tumble environment in which competitors were ready literally to slit throats.

Halpern's work raises many provocative questions: Was David an Israelite or a Philistine? Was Solomon really David's son? Did David take the throne ofIsrael by the consent or against the will of the people? How many murders did he commit on his way to the crown? Indeed, was David someone it would have been wise to even invite to dinner? The challenging arguments in "David's Secret Demons are sure to provoke all kinds of discussion among biblical scholars and general readers alike. In addition--a big bonus--Halpern's accessible, at times humorous prose will itself draw readers everywhere into the compelling story of David found between these covers.

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David's Secret Demons

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Chapter One

The Surprising David

The Gregorian calendar calls the year A.D. 2000 the 2000th Year of the Lord(annus domini) or the 2000th year C.E. (of the Common Era), depending onone's sensibilities. Thousands of celebrants planned travel for the year well inadvance, many of them learning only later that 2000 C.E. was the end of the 2ndmillennium of the Gregorian calendar, not the start of the 3rd. In Gregorianreckoning, there was no Year 0. Hence the year 1000 was the 1000th year in thecalendar, the last year of the 1st millennium. January 1, 2001 marked the startof the new millennium.

    The Year 1 in this calendar is defined as that of the birth of Jesus, thoughtby Christians to be the Messiah, the anointed son of God. But the claim that Jesusis the Messiah, the claim that he is the son of the Jewish God, depends on hislinear descent from David. There is no direct juxtaposition of Jesus with Moses,and no implication in the Jewish or Christian traditions that Moses's descendantswould somehow redeem humanity. Likewise, no gospel text stresses Jesus'sconnections with the patriarchs of Genesis, such as Abraham. Instead, theemphasis is on the connection to David, because the messianic hopes of theJews, near the turn of the era (1 C.E., not 0), focused principally on figures ofDavidic ancestry. (There are other messianic figures in the Dead Sea Scrolls, butthese do not figure in mainstream Jewish tradition.)

    In biblical and later Jewish tradition, David is not a lawgiver. Though a greatking, though a conqueror, he is far from being a saint, or even demonstratively pious.Yet his is the line that is elected by Yahweh, Israel's God. In a nonconfessionalview, this means that the kings of David's dynasty, who ruled the state of Judah afterthe division of the kingdom in 932 B.C.E. (Before the Common Era), claimedthat their God had promised them eternal kingship. The truth of this claim cannotbe evaluated by historians. Its longevity, however; its acceptance in Judaism,in Christianity; its survival in the West are remarkable phenomena. The idea of amessiah, of a Millennium with a capital M, revolves around David.

    For this longevity, whatever the claims of the dynasty, we must accordcredit to the picture of David himself. Some of this picture comes from later reflectionson that king, including the idea that he composed a large number ofbiblical psalms. Some of it, such as the report on David's combat with Goliath,or on his relations with Saul, is of indeterminate age, though it is older than thepietistic view of David propagated in Chronicles, for example, or in the usualinterpretation of Psalms. But a great deal of what the books of Samuel and thefirst chapters of 1 Kings have to say about David is contemporary, or very nearlycontemporary, with that king, in the 10th century B.C.E.

    Strangely, it is not in the texts in which he is most saintly that David's imagecaptivates readers and even worshippers. The historical David appears inthe books of 1 and 2 Samuel, and dies in the 2nd chapter of 1 Kings. He is, thetext tells us, promised eternal kingship in Israel. He is, the text tells us, Yahweh'select, the fulfillment of all Yahweh's promises to the patriarchs about Israel'sland and nationhood. These properties exalt him, make him crucial to Jesus'sgenealogy. But even if we were to regard these claims as somehow independentof his dynasty, as true, they would not account for David's appeal in the historyof Western literature and culture.

    Moses, to be sure, is portrayed in art, film, and novels. Jesus has been endlesslyportrayed. But the novelists, artists, and filmmakers are almost uniformin presenting the Moses that a confessional audience expects, the Jesus that redeemsthe world. There are exceptions, including film satires — Monty Python'samusingly adolescent Life of Brian, Luis Bunuel's superbly sardonic TheMilky Way. And in novels, excellent, earthy explorations of Jesus as a person arenot uncommon, as Nikos Kazantzakis's Last Temptation of Christ and RobertGraves's King Jesus. Still, the imagining even of Jesus is almost always devotional,however it may humanize him.

    David is another story. He is, like Moses or Jesus, the subject of "ClassicComics" portrayals. In these, the story of his fight with Goliath is fore-grounded,and misrepresented, as it is in the tradition: David is the underdog,relying on faith. This is probably the only time that David exhibits the transcendentdevotion that marks him as a man (or, rather, boy) of faith.

    But David is far from being a redemptive figure even in the tradition. True,Moses can be represented as a man tortured by doubt about his own enduranceand greatness, as a punishingly resentful man of flashing anger. David, however,is presented differently. His story invites more earthy, steamy treatments. Evenin unembarrassedly partisan hagiographies, movies such as Gregory Peck's Davidand Bathsheba or Richard Gere's King David mix in human violence, murder,warfare, sex, and court politics in a more realistic way than any film aboutJesus or Moses has ever done. Absalom and Ahitophel reflects on David emotionallyin such a way as to concretize a suicidal agony unknown even in Moses'sdeepest despair.

    Novels about David sometimes present him with the reverence accordedother iconic biblical characters. In a work like Disraeli's David Alroy ("Davidthe King"), his persona is even combined with that of Joshua in an intricate celebrationof military imperialism. Absalom, Absalom evokes him as an evil parentalarchetype, manipulative, cruel, yet almost as a counterpart of Job, suffering,however guilty, pulsations of unmerited pain.

    Both the promise of David's youth and the flaws of his maturity imprintthemselves on the imagination of writers. No novel about the Bible is so accomplishedin the historical art as Stefan Heym's brilliant The King David Report: ina profound comment both on ancient Israel and on life behind the Iron Curtain,Heym shows how a state in control of reporting on itself, in control of themedia for propagating history, twists, airbrushes, and sanitizes the seamy aspectsof its past. Like Heym's exposé, satires also tend to deconstruct the text, topenetrate to a reality behind the veil of representation, and to present David ina less favorable or less saintly light. This is clear from the disappointing satiricaltheodicy of Joseph Heller, God Knows, in which David reports discovering afterexperimenting with various techniques that it was easiest to collect foreskinsfrom the Philistines, as a bride-price for Saul's daughter, "if you killed themfirst." Heller too attacks the image of David that has become his icon, and inspiredMichelangelo's iconic statue: the warranty of his divine election, thefight against Goliath. The poor oaf "didn't stand a chance."

    What is it about David? Why does he, of all the figures in the Bible, attractsuch treatment — treatment that is at once irreverent and serious, treatmentthat punctures his apparent holiness, heroism, and honesty? The answer is thatthe text itself invites such an approach. 1 and 2 Samuel furnish a circumstantialcharacter history whose complexity makes even the most sophisticated ancientbiography seem like a cartoon in comparison. Samuel takes its reader throughthe protagonist's evolution from shepherd, to courtier, to therapon — Patroclesto the Achilles of King Saul's son, Jonathan. He flees into exile, is transformedinto a bandit, then mercenary, statesman, leader, king, victor, conqueror, andruler. The author of 2 Samuel traces the growth of an independence of the law,a personal lust, born in David's days as an exile in the wilderness, but cultivatedin power, that results in adultery and murder. He documents the disintegrationof the royal family, internecine intrigue and revolt, and imputes to David's lawlessnessa Lear-like status in his dotage. At the end, he is a weak, yet still violentand vengeful old man, unable to hold his own either in politics or in bed.

    David, in a word, is human, fully, four-dimensionally, recognizably human.He grows, he learns, he travails, he triumphs, and he suffers immeasurable tragedyand loss. He is the first human being in world literature.

    There is more. David is almost, or perhaps more than, a Shakespearean character.Even at the height of his career, he is not a religious symbol, but the embodimentof worldly success. At the nadir of his fortunes, he embodies the fragility ofachievement, the importance of the right life rather than a high station. But at almostall times, he is a secular icon — a character so extraordinary and yet so veryhuman, so realistically fallible, that the innocent reader almost inevitably empathizeswith him. His deeds are divorced from miracle, his relationships are withother people, whether friend or foe, rather than with his God. Heller erred inimagining David reviewing his life in dialogue with his God, rather than humans.The reasons for David's behavior and even the consequences of his behavior remainalways on a purely human, and often unconventional, level.

    In basing his relationships on personal and political foundations, in banishingsupernatural intervention and sometimes even instruction from thearena of social activity, David is a consummate revolutionary. Subtly but repeatedly,he sets traditional assumptions and practices on their ear. The greatgenius of his portrayal is not merely that it is convincing: it is that his nature,his individuality, drives his behavior at every crucial juncture in the story. Davidis not just the first human in literature, he is the first true individual, thefirst modern human.

    Nowhere is this principle better exemplified than in the story of David'scombat with Goliath (1 Sam. 17), and nowhere is it clearer how the impositionof our own cultural values in interpretation can veil the text's real meaning.

    Two problems with the story should be mentioned. First, the oldest translationof the text, the "Old Greek" version of the Septuagint, probably from the3rd century B.C.E., lacks much of the text present in the Hebrew. Some scholarsbelieve that the Hebrew text is a combination of two stories, one of which wasincorporated only after the 3rd century. But this is probably incorrect. In1 Samuel, David has already been attached to Saul's court when the Goliathstory begins. But several verses in the story presume that David and Saul arestrangers (when Saul asks, `Who is that boy?' for example, and Abner does notrespond, `I don't know, but he's always around when we need him'). The omissionsin the Greek contain all of the verses suggesting that David was unknownto Saul when the confrontation with Goliath took place. So it looks as thoughthe Greek text was harmonizing apparent contradictions. In any case, theomissions do not materially affect the shape of the story.

    Second, there is still another tradition about Goliath's death. Materials appendedat the end of 2 Samuel describe the achievements of David's heroes.Among them is the verse, 2 Sam. 21:19:

There was another battle in Gob with the Philistines, and Elhanan son of Yaare Orgim from Bethlehem smote Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam.

The name of Elhanan's father has been garbled — Orgim means "weavers" andhas been mistakenly copied from the description of Goliath's weaponry. Theparallel text in Chronicles and the Old Greek translation recognize the word asa scribal error and suppress it. The only other Elhanan and the only otherBethlehemite in the lists of David's heroes is "Elhanan ben-Dodo from Bethlehem"(2 Sam. 23:24). He was probably originally listed as Goliath's killer.

    Two texts reconcile the entry about Elhanan with the narrative of Goliath'sdeath in 1 Samuel. The Targum, the translation of the Bible into Aramaic, identifiesElhanan as David, seeing as both are from Bethlehem (Targ. to 2 Sam.21:19). But why then list Elhanan among David's heroes? And why, as the medievalcommentator David Kimhi asks, do the killings occur in different places?Elhanan kills Goliath at Gob, whereas David in 1 Samuel kills him at Socho orEphes Dammim.

    A second text, in Chronicles, says that Elhanan slew Lahmi, Goliath'sbrother (1 Chr. 20:5). But Goliath's brother's name reflects a misreading ofLahmi ('et lahmî) for (Elhanan) "the Bethlehemite" (bet hallahmî) in Samuel.Chronicles has either emended the text or seized opportunistically on a scribalerror to produce a brother of Goliath and resolve the conflicting claims. TheJewish historian Flavius Josephus, writing late in the 1st century C.E. (Ant.7.302), simply omits the name of Goliath in connection with Elhanan, whomhe identifies as David's relative (as both are from Bethlehem). We could also resortto a fourth harmonization, namely that there were two "Goliaths fromGath, the shafts of whose spears were like weavers' beams." With that eminentbiblical scholar, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, then, we might suggest that Daviddid not kill Goliath, but another man of the same name.

Continues...

Excerpted from David's Secret Demonsby Baruch Halpern Copyright © 2004 by Baruch Halpern. Excerpted by permission.
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