King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) by Jonathan Kirsch Read Free Book Online

lives, not a true one.” 10

WHO
REALLY
KILLED GOLIATH?
    As familiar as the story of David and Goliath may be, a careful reading of the biblical text reveals that it is riddled with flaws and inconsistencies that are “in contradiction both with what goes before,” as the founder of modern Bible scholarship, Julius Wellhausen, put it, “and with what follows.” 31 Between the theological flourishes and the “folkloric embellishments,” the hard facts ofDavid's life seem to disappear in the passages that are best known to Bible readers.
    Thus, although the Book of Samuel first introduces David as “a mighty man of valor, a man of war” who has been summoned by Saul from the household of Jesse and recruited for a lifetime of royal service as a weapons bearer and court musician (1 Sam. 16:18), David makes his second appearance as a country bumpkin and a total stranger to King Saul. “Whose son is this lad?” asks the bewildered Saul when he encounters David on the battlefield, and his general, Abner, replies with equal bafflement: “As thy soul liveth, O king, I cannot tell.” (1 Sam. 17:55) 32 Then Saul is shown to recruit David a second time for royal service: “And Saul took him that day, and would let him go no more home to his father's house.” (1 Sam. 18:2)
    Another example of the confusion in the biblical text involves what actually happened to the severed head of Goliath, a large and rather unwieldy relic of David's miraculous victory. David is described as bringing the head as a prize of war to Jerusalem (1 Sam. 17:54)—but at this point in the biblical narrative Jerusalem still belonged to the native-dwelling tribe called the Jebusites, and the day when David would conquer Jerusalem by force of arms was still many years off. (2 Sam. 5:6–9) By then, Goliath's head seems to have disappeared; only his sword is preserved in a shrine of Yahweh as a war trophy. (1 Sam. 21:10)
    Finally, the biblical account of David's single most famous exploit is undermined by a troubling line of biblical verse in the Second Book of Samuel, where a man called Elhanan is credited with the slaying of Goliath in a campaign against the Philistines that took place when Saul was long dead and David was king of Israel. As if to confirm the identity of the Philistine warrior who was slain by Elhanan, the biblical author assures us that he is, in fact, referring to Goliath, “the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam.” (2 Sam. 21:19)
    Much ingenuity has been brought to bear in solving the mystery of who killed Goliath, and the effort begins within the pages of the Bible. The author of Chronicles, whose self-appointed missionwas to clean up the ancient text of Samuel several centuries after it was composed, insisted that the Philistine warrior whom Elhanan fought and killed was the
brother
of the famous Goliath, “the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam,” and not Goliath himself. (1 Chron. 20:5) The ancient rabbis proposed a neat solution to the problem by suggesting that Elhanan and David were one and the same man: “The two names belong to the same person: David was called Elhanan, ‘he to whom God was gracious.’ ” 33
    Some modern scholars have sided with the pious commentators in suggesting that David and Elhanan were the same man, although their reasoning is slightly different—perhaps, they suggest, “David” is the throne name adopted by the man called Elhanan when he ascended to kingship, just as a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church will take a new and honorific name when he is raised to the papacy. 34 Others are willing to entertain the idea that Elhanan
did
slay Goliath, and “the deed of a lesser warrior has been transferred to David” by some royal biographer who sought to glorify the king. 35
    A very simple and compelling solution is available. Here again, the various biblical sources—or was it the imagination of the bards and chroniclers who came long before the biblical