7. Adapted from JPS and AB.
8. Adapted from JPS and AB.
9. McCarter, II Samuel, 406, citing Josephus (Ant. 7.239) and the Talmud (Sotah 9b).
10. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
11. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
12. The word conventionally translated as “darts” may, in fact, refer to sharpened sticks of wood that Joab used to strike Absalom.
13. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
14. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
15. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
16. Adapted from NEB.
17. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
18. D. M. Gunn, “Narrative Patterns and Oral Tradition in Judges and Samuel,” Vetus Testamentum 24, no. 3 (July 1974), 296.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AN ANGEL AT THE THRESHING-FLOOR
1. Adapted from JPS, NEB, and AB.
2. The biblical text suggests that Joab tipped the scabbard that he wore at his hip and caused the sword to fall to the ground as if by accident. Then he bent down, picked up the sword, but neglected to replace it in the scabbard. Thus did Joab “conceal his treachery,” as the New English Bible renders the difficult text, and the sword remained in his hand when he embraced Amasa. (2 Sam. 20:9)
3. McCarter, II Samuel, 1984, 430.
4. Chapter 21 of the Second Book of Samuel records several incidents that apparently occurred much earlier in David's reign, including the slaughter of seven sons of King Saul by the Gibeonites and a series of skirmishes with the Philistines. Here, for example, the Bible reports that it was a man named Elhanan, rather than young David, who “slew Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam.” (2 Sam. 21:19) Scholarship suggests that these passages were among “a miscellany of unrelated items” collected by one of the biblical editors and deposited in this chapter. “Attempts to determine the reason for its present position,” observes P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., “will probably not succeed.” McCarter, II Samuel, 451.
5. Dahood, Psalms I, 1–50, 104. McCarter concedes the “high antiquity” of the passage, portions of which may date back to the supposed lifetime of David in the tenth century B.C.E., but he cautions against claims of “Davidic authorship” of the psalm itself. McCarter, II Samuel, 473, 475.
6. Bloom and Rosenberg, Book of J, 38.
7. Artur Weiser, The Psalms: A Commentary, trans. H. Hartwell (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962), 187.
8. Robert Alter, The David Story (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 336.
9. David M. Howard, Jr., “David (Person),” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 2, 44.
10. Bible scholarship no longer takes these or any other biblical head counts very seriously. If the Hebrew word conventionally translated as “thousands” is understood to be a military unit numbering 5 to 14 men, as one scholar has proposed, the number of draft-age men would be no greater than 18,220 men and as few as 6,500.
11. McCarter, II Samuel, 511, citing (and criticizing) W. Fuss, H. Schmid, and K. Rupprecht.
12. See, for example, Judges 6:37 and 2 Samuel 6:6.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HEAT
1. Alter, David Story, 363.
2. Adapted from NEB.
3. Alter, David Story, 366.
4. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
5. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
6. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
7. A mule, rather than an ass or a horse, was apparently the preferred mount for royalty in ancient Israel, even though the Bible prohibits the crossbreeding of horse and ass that produces a mule. (Lev. 19:19) The conflict between holy law and day-to-day practice is another bit of evidence that the law codes of the Bible may have been compiled after the supposed lifetime of David and the authorship of his biblical life story.
8. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
9. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
10. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
11. Adapted from JPS.
12. Alter, David Story, 374.
13. “Let not his hoar head go down to the grave in peace” is how the same phrase is rendered in the King James Version. The Hebrew word generally translated as “grave” is sheol, a term that is used in the Bible to refer to the place where one goes when he or she dies. In that sense, sheol seems to refer to the “underworld” or the “abode of the dead” rather than the grave where a corpse is buried. The word sheol is translated as “Hades” in the Septuagint, but sheol in the Hebrew Bible is not equivalent to the Christian notion of hell as the realm of the Devil or the place where sinners are punished.
14. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
15. Adapted from JPS.
16. Adapted from JPS (emphasis added).
17. Angelo S. Rappoport, Ancient Israel (London: Senate, 1995), vol. 3, 11.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE QUALITY OF LIGHT AT TEL DAN
1. JPS, 1084, f.n. e.
2. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
3. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 237.
4. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
5. Joel Rosenberg, King and Kin, 187.
6. Joel Rosenberg, King and Kin, 188.
7. Quoted in Joel Rosenberg, King and Kin, 100.
8. See John M. Berridge, “Jehoiachin (Person),” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 3, 662.
9. Most versions of the Bible refer only to Zedekiah's imprisonment, but the Septuagint reports his confinement in “the house of the mill” (Jer. 52:11), where, according to Robert Althann, “he would have had to perform the degrading task of grinding with a hand-mill.” Robert Althann, “Zedekiah (Person),” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 6, 1070.
10. Herod the Great was followed to the throne by his grandson and great-grandson, Agrippa I and Agrippa II, each of whom might have plausibly claimed to be king over the Jews. The title bestowed upon them by the Roman emperor was “Great King, Friend of Caesar, Pious and Friend of the Romans.”
11. See Akenson, Surpassing Wonder, 363–364.
12. Intriguingly, Matthew traces the lineage of Jesus through Solomon, while Luke identifies a different son of David as the forebear of Jesus, presumably to avoid linking Jesus with a king who is shown in the Bible to dabble with pagan gods and goddesses under the influence of his many foreign wives!
13. “INRI,” an acronym that appears on the placard over the head of Jesus in depictions of the crucifixion, stands for the Latin phrase that is rendered as “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”
14. Armstrong, Jerusalem, 153.
15. Akenson, Surpassing Wonder, 193.
16. Weizman recalled his colorful remark during a filmed interview that appears in a 1999 documentary, The 50 Years War: Israel and the Arabs, produced by WGBH Boston and Brian Lapping Associates and distributed by PBS Home Video. But Weizman does not mention King David in his published memoir, On Eagles' Wings, where he quotes himself as telling Prime Minister Levi Eshkol: “The armed forces are ready and prepared for war. If you give the order, Jewish history will remember you as a great leader. If you don't, it will never forgive you!” Ezer Weizman, On Eagles' Wings (New York: Berkeley Publishing, 1976), 209.
17. Armstrong, Jerusalem, 408. “The minister, however, did not actually recommend this course of action, since Jewish law stated that only the messiah would be permitted to build the Third Temple.”
The purchase (2 Sam. 24:24) is described in chapter 14 of the present book.
18. “Palestinian Archaeologists Uncover Canaanite Dwellings,” Biblical Archaeology Review, (November/December 1998), p. 25.
19. Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), 51.
20. Akenson, Surpassing Wonder, 40; 424, n. 45.
21. Alter, Art of Biblical Narrative, 35.
22. Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old Testament, 357.
23. “To regard this scandalization of the monarchy as originating in the Solomonic period,” writes John Van Seters, another leading revisionist in Bible scholarship, “is to my mind entirely incredible.” Van Sete
rs, Abraham in History and Tradition, 151.
24. Gershom Scholem, “Magen David,” in Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 11, 695.
25. Gottwald, Tribes of Yahweh, 380–381.
26. Akenson, Surpassing Wonder, 521. The quoted phrases appear in the title of a chart; capitalization has been omitted.
27. Thomas L. Thompson, The Mythic Past (Basic Books, 1999), 164.
28. Thompson, Mythic Past, 45.
29. Magnus Magnusson, Archaeology of the Bible (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977), 155–156.
30. Magnusson, Archaeology of the Bible, 134.
31. “David's Jerusalem, Fiction or Reality?” in Biblical Archaeology Review (July/August 1998): 25.
32. Margaret Steiner, “It's Not There,” in Biblical Archaeology Review (July/August 1998): 26.
33. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity, 292.
34. Avraham Biran and Joseph Naveh, “An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan,” Israel Exploration Journal 43, nos. 2–3 (1993): 84.
35. Biran and Naveh, “Aramaic Stele,” 87. “Since the preserved letters in each line comprise only a small part of the text, any reconstruction is very tentative.”
36. Biran and Naveh, “The Tel Dan Inscription,” Israel Exploration Journal 45, no. 1 (1995): 13 (emphasis added).
37. David Noel Freedman and Jeffrey C. Geoghegan, “ ‘House of David’ Is There?”, Biblical Archaeology Review 21, no. 2 (March/April 1995), 79.
38. Thomas L. Thompson, Mythic Past, 203–204.
39. Akenson, Surpassing Wonder, 45–46.
40. Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, vol. 4, 101, 103, citing, inter alia, Sukkah 26b, Baba Batra 17a.
41. Cited in Brueggemann, “David and His Theologian,” 156, n. 1.
42. As rendered into English in The New Mahzor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (Mahzor Haddash), eds. Sidney Greenberg and Jonathan D. Levine (Bridgeport, Conn.: Prayer Book Press, 1978), 557.
APPENDIX
THE BIBLICAL BIOGRAPHERS OF DAVID
1. Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old Testament, 357.
2. Bloom and Rosenberg, Book of J, 19.
3. Joel Rosenberg, King and Kin, xiii.
4. Brueggemann, “David and His Theologian,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 30, no. 2 (April 1968): 156.
Bibliography
A NOTE ON BIBLES AND BIBLICAL USAGE
When quoting from various English translations of the Bible, I have used abbreviations in the text to identify the sources. These abbreviations are given in the list below, along with the full title and bibliographical information for the various Bibles. Following the abbreviations list is a list of the other versions of the Bible that I have consulted. Where no specific source is given in the text or an endnote, the quotation is taken from the 1961 edition of the Jewish Publication Society's The Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text.
Among the many translations I consulted, the most ambitious and illuminating is P. Kyle McCarter, Jr.'s superb translation of the First and Second Books of Samuel in the Anchor Bible series. McCarter brings to bear in his translation both a poet's grasp of language and a scholar's mastery of Bible scholarship—he offers a fresh and sometimes surprising rendering of the familiar biblical text along with extensive notes and commentary, and his scholarship is unprecedented and unparalleled. Thus, for example, McCarter offers a translation that gives much richer and more provocative meanings to even the most familiar passages, and he is able to provide alternate readings of the sometimes obscure passages by expertly comparing the Masoretic Text, the Septuagint and other ancient translations, the “rewritten Bible” of Josephus, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and then summing up the differences in a line or two of deft commentary.
Now and then I have taken the liberty of modifying some aspects of the quoted biblical text without using brackets or ellipses to indicate the changes. As a general rule, I have not indicated minor and inconsequential changes in capitalization or punctuation or the deletion of words and phrases from a quoted passage when the deleted material does not alter the meaning of the text. In many passages I have modernized the archaic language of the King James Version—changing “thou” to “you,” for example—but in other passages I have retained the archaisms in order to suggest the solemnity or formality of the occasion reported in the Bible. Wherever I have changed the biblical text more extensively—or where I have combined words and phrases from more than one Bible translation—I use the phrase “adapted from” and I identify the sources in an endnote.
God is given a great many names, titles, and honorifics in the biblical text, including “Elohim,” which means, literally, “gods” and is conventionally translated as “God,” and the Hebrew consonants corresponding to YHWH, generally understood to be the personal name of God and rendered as “Yahweh” in scholarly translations. By a long and sacred tradition in Judaism, the personal name of God is not to be written outside the scrolls of the Torah and is never to be spoken out loud. For that reason, YHWH is replaced with the euphemism “the Lord” in all Jewish translations and many Christian translations intended for religious rather than scholarly use.
Scholars, however, prefer the more straightforward practice of transliterating the personal name of God as “YHWH” or “Yahweh.” Thus, the Anchor Bible always renders the name of God as “Yahweh” rather than using the traditional substitute, and, by contrast, the Bible translations published by the Jewish Publication Society never use the word “Yahweh.” I have generally adopted the usage of the Bible that I am quoting, although I have taken the liberty of using “Yahweh” when the context suggests that the God of Israel is being contrasted to or distinguished from the other gods and goddesses known to the ancient world.
BIBLES CITED IN THE TEXT OR ENDNOTES, WITH ABBREVIATIONS
AB
Cogan Mordechai Hayim Tadmor trans., intro., and commentary. II Kings Anchor Bible vol. 11 New York Doubleday 1988
Dahood Mitchell trans., intro., and notes. Psalms I, 1–50. Anchor Bible vol 16 Garden City, N.Y. Doubleday 1966
Ford J. Massyngberde trans., intro., and commentary. Revelation Anchor Bible vol. 38 Garden City, N.Y. Doubleday 1975
McCarter P. Kyle Jr., trans., intro., and commentary. I Samuel Anchor Bible vol. 8 Garden City, N.Y. Doubleday 1980
McCarter P. Kyle Jr., trans., intro., and commentary. II Samuel. Anchor Bible vol. 9 Garden City, N.Y. Doubleday 1984
Myers Jacob M. trans., intro., and commentary. I Chronicles Anchor Bible vol. 12 New York Doubleday 1965
Speiser E. A. trans., intro., and notes. Genesis Anchor Bible vol. 1(orig. pub. 1962).Garden City, N.Y. Doubleday 1987
JPS
The Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text Philadelphia Jewish Publication Society 1917; 1961
KJV
Scofield C. I., ed. The Scofield Reference Bible (Authorized King James Version). New York Oxford University Press 1917; 1945
NEB
The New English Bible with the Apocrypha 2d ed. New York Oxford University Press 1970
New JPS Tanakh, The Holy Scriptures: The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text Philadelphia Jewish Publication Society 1985
Other Bibles
The Complete Parallel Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books New York Oxford University Press 1993
Hertz J. H., ed. The Pentateuch and Haftorahs 2d ed. London Soncino Press 1981
The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments in the King James Version Nashville Thomas Nelson 1985
May Herbert G. Bruce M. Metzger, eds. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: Revised Standard Version. New York Oxford University Press 1993
Metzger Bruce M. Roland E. Murphy, eds. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha New York Oxford University Press 1994
King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) Page 37
