Joel Baden, the Historical David: the real life of an invented hero

"Even when the biblical authors take it upon themselves to depict events from the past, it is not what we call history today. It is, rather, ideology expressed in the historiographical genre. Not a word of the David story -- and perhaps the entire Bible -- is intended solely to describe things as they truly were. Much of the Bible was written so long after the events it describes that there was no possibility for its authors to access the objective past. The story of the Exodus may have some kernel of truth to it -- we cannot state definitively that it is wholly fictional. But the biblical description of the Exodus uses the distant past to make a point about the present. The David story is different in that the past it describes was barely past at all. Its audience had lived through David's reign -- indeed, his reign was not yet finished when the story was composed. There was no need merely to tell the Israelites of David's time their own story. What was necessary was to reshape their conceptions of their story. ... It is possible, then, to look at the results of David's actions -- a nation, a holy city, and, in the Bible, the basis of the Judeo-Christian religions -- and conclude that these ends are more valuable than the means by which they were achieved. This view is especially tempting since we continue to live under the influence of David's accomplishments. But this also makes it susceptible to charges of cultural egocentrism. In a thousand years, if the Judeo-Christian traditions have fallen victim to the same fate as almost every other religion in history and disappeared, will historians still consider David's actions justifiable? Even today, what might a person outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition think of David? We need not be proud of him merely because we are part of the culture he helped to create. ... If the historical David didn't strike us as problematic, it would speak rather badly of our cultural growth in the intervening millennia. The more we can see that David is not like us, but is deeply different, the more we can recognize how far we have come. An appreciation of history allows us to see ourselves more clearly."

 

(Joel Baden, the Historical David: the real life of an invented hero, 254-55, 262, 265)