The Story of King David (1 & 2 Samuel) Michelangelo. David, detail (marble), 1504. Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence. with Dr. Bill Creasy Copyright © 2021 by Logos Educational Corporation All rights reserved. No part of this course—audio, video, photography, maps, timelines or other media—may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval devices without permission in writing or a licensing agreement from the copyright holder. Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner. 2 The Story of King David (1 & 2 Samuel) Traditional Authors: Samuel, Nathan and Gad Traditional Date Written: c. 1050-970 B.C. Period Covered: c. 1050-970 B.C. Introduction Originally, 1 & 2 Samuel were one unified literary work. The division into two books derives from the Greek and Latin traditions of the text, not the Hebrew. Like all the books of the Hebrew Scriptures, 1 & 2 Samuel were written on scrolls of rather limited physical length, no more than about 27-30 feet, and because the story is too long to fit on one scroll, the narrative was split roughly at midpoint, at the death of Saul, the major character in the story’s first half. In the Greek Septuagint, 1 Samuel is titled basileion a’, or 1 Kingdoms, since the Books of Samuel and Kings are grouped together in the Greek tradition as 1-4 Kingdoms, a grouping preserved in St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate and transmitted into English through the sixteenth-century Roman Catholic Douay-Rheims translation. The title “Samuel” doubtless arose from the fact that Samuel is the leading character at the beginning of the story, although it creates the odd problem that he dies by the end of 1 Samuel and he is not mentioned in 2 Samuel! Attributing traditional authorship to Samuel, Nathan and Gad derives from 1 Chronicles 29: 29-30—“As for the events of King David’s reign, from beginning to end, they are written in the records of Samuel the seer, the records of Nathan the prophet and the records of Gad the seer, together with the details of his reign and power, and the circumstances that surrounded him and Israel and the kingdoms of all the other lands.” The textual history of 1 & 2 Samuel is exceedingly complex, and establishing a critical text of the story is mind-bogglingly difficult. The Hebrew “received text” for most books of Hebrew Scripture is referred to as the Masoretic text, because it is based on the textual tradition of Jewish scholars known as the Masoretes. The primary manuscript is Ms. B 19A, copied in A.D. 1008 and housed in the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg. Unfortunately, the text of 1 & 2 Samuel in this manuscript is in very poor condition, with countless copying errors and glaring omissions. To establish a complete critical text, then, textual scholars must draw upon other ancient manuscripts, in particular: • Codex Vaticanus—a fourth-century A.D. Greek manuscript that seems to have escaped the systematic revisions of other Greek manuscripts and that provides a direct link to an older, fuller Greek text than that of the Masoretic text. 3 • Codex Alexandrinus—a Greek manuscript from the same period that shows systematic revision toward the developing Masoretic text. • Lucianic Manuscripts—later than Codex Vaticanus or Alexandrinus, they demonstrate further revisions toward the Masoretic text, but they also provide a valuable witness to texts in the Old Palestinian tradition, which may be compared profitably to the Masoretic text and the Old Greek texts, establishing one stratum in the developing Masoretic tradition. • Old Latin Translations—from the second and third centuries A.D., which often reflect original readings from the Old Greek tradition, which are not in the Masoretic text. • Archaic Samuel Scroll (4QSamb)—from Cave IV at Qumran, provides original readings not present in any later manuscripts. • Larger Samuel Scroll (4QSama)—from Cave IV at Qumran, a later manuscript than 4QSamb, which shares many of the same readings, but has a fuller text, it also provides expanded readings that then appear in later manuscripts. A Samuel fragment from Cave IV at Qumran (4QSamb). The text is 1 Samuel 23: 9-13. 4 Using the Masoretic text and augmenting it with readings from the above manuscripts—as well as others—results in a critical Hebrew edition of 1 & 2 Samuel, published in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1997), edited by K. Elliger and W. Rudolph. This is the Hebrew text from which all credible modern translations are made. I mention the textual issues in 1 & 2 Samuel for two reasons: first, to illustrate the extraordinarily complex work that must be done to produce the English text that we take for granted in our Bibles; and second, to deepen our appreciation of the text’s subtleties and nuances. Reading the David Story In King David, the Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel, Jonathan Kirsch observes: At the heart of the Book of Samuel, where the story of David is first told, we find a work of genius that anticipates the romantic lyricism and tragic grandeur of Shakespeare, the political wile of Machiavelli, and the modern psychological insight of Freud. And, just as much as Shakespeare or Machiavelli or Freud, the frank depiction of David in the pages of the Bible has defined what it means to be a human being: King David is “a symbol of the complexity and ambiguity of human experience itself.”1 No two-dimensional pious character, David “played exquisitely, he fought heroically, he loved titanically,” as historian Abram Leon Sachar notes. “Withal he was a profoundly simple being, cheerful, despondent, selfish, generous, sinning one moment, repenting the next, the most human character of the Bible.”2 Like everyone else, from Samuel to Saul to Jonathan—to God himself—when we encounter David we are charmed by him, and we fall under his spell. As a work of literature, the David story is one of the most complex and subtle narratives in the Bible, and it is among the greatest stories in world literature. When we approach it, we do well to bring all of our critical reading skills, sharply honed. To understand any literary work, we have to answer several questions in the course of our reading: What is happening in the story? Why is it happening? What connects the present event to the preceding and following actions? What are the characters’ motives? How do they view their fellow characters? What are the cultural and social norms that govern the world of the narrative? The answers given by each 1 Jonathan Kirsch, King David, the Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel (New York: Ballantine Books, 2000), pp. 1-2. 2 Abram Leon Sachar, A History of the Jews, rev. ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), p. 34. 5 reader enable him or her to reconstruct the reality devised by the text and to make sense of the world represented in it.3 Yet, a close look at a story often reveals how few answers the text explicitly provides. In most instances, the reader provides the answers, some temporary, partial or tentative, others wholly and completely. The act of reading fills in the gaps created by the narrative itself. This “gap-filling” may involve simply arranging textual information in a linear sequence, or it may be more complex, demanding that the reader develop an intricate network of associations, laboriously, hesitantly and with constant modifications as additional information is disclosed at later stages in the story. The placement of the gaps and their size are a direct function of the narrator, who chooses what to tell the reader, when to tell it, how much to reveal and in what sequence. Take for instance, the story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22. After the intricate and complex story leading up to Isaac’s long-anticipated birth, we read in Genesis 22: 1-2— Sometime later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied.” Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.” As readers, we know that God makes a covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12: 2-3, in which he says, “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you . and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” We also know that the blessing will be transmitted through Isaac, not Ishmael, for when Sarah demands that Hagar and Ishmael be sent away, God says, “Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned” (Genesis 21: 12). We can only imagine, then, Abraham’s shock when God tells him to sacrifice Isaac, and we can only stand puzzled— along with Abraham—at God’s motive for issuing such a command. Then, in the next two verses we read, “Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about” (Genesis 22: 3-4).