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 King
David Versus Israel: How a Hebrew Tyrant Hated by the Israelites Became a
Biblical Hero
BOOK REVIEWS
Library Journal
Green Bay Press-Gazette
Bookloons
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Library Journal:
Attorney, author, and president of the Biblical Archeology Society of New
York, Greenberg (101 Myths of the Bible)
offers an alternative portrait of King David by analyzing Bible stories and
drawing on historical research. Comparing various significant episodes in
the biblical account of David's life, Greenberg lays out the evidence,
showing how these contradictory, altered, invented, redacted, and rearranged
accounts were responsible for falsely casting David into the part of a
religious reformer and thinker who developed the basic principles of Jewish
worship. Placing these texts into their
historical, political, and geographical setting, Greenberg is able to
separate much historical fact from biblical fiction, showing, for
instance, that Goliath of the popular David and Goliath story was actually
killed by a Philistine [this should read Israelite] warrior Elhanan.
Greenberg shows David to be an ambitious mercenary, ruthless politician,
unjust tyrant, and military imperialist. The work
contains maps, timelines, glossaries, and comparison text, making it a
comprehensive account of King David. Greenberg's comparative
analyses of the Bible stories are supplemented by archaeological and
historical writings, but the lack of bibliography suggests that some of it
was also based on personal belief. Like his
earlier book, this one may anger some more conservative readers.
Recommended for larger religious collections.
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Green Bay Press-Gazette
Jean Peerenboom Column: Writer shows a different side of
Bible's King David
Gary Greenberg will make you think. He might
even make you angry.
In his latest book, “The Sins of King David”
(Sourcebooks, $24.95), he paints a portrait of a ruthless, deceitful,
corrupt leader who was a traitor to Israel. David was a tyrant and a
murderer, he says.
Throughout the Old Testament, David is seen as a
beloved figure, an icon. He’s been portrayed as a pious and humble man, a
goodly king whose heart was with the Lord, a monarch who composed lyrical
poetry, divine music, defeated a giant and warded off the enemies of the
ancient Israelites.
Greenberg argues that much of that is myth. He says
that enough of the original story remains buried in the text to show David’s
true colors. For example, he said, “David was a horrible leader. Although he
was apparently quite charismatic, people appear to love him on a personal
level much like they do Bill Clinton. But David was obsessed with power and
the trappings of power. He wanted to be the boss and didn’t like anything
that didn’t go his way. He was anti-democratic. He tried to impose his view
on everybody.
“There was a rebellion against David while he was on
the throne. One of the many charges against him was that he wasn’t providing
for justice. That wasn’t his concern. He wanted to be in charge. He
centralized power, where Israel had been decentralized with individual
rights and private property,” Greenberg said.
David needed “lots of money to build buildings and wage
war. He established procedures for confiscating wealth and property for the
king’s use to subsidize his activities. There were religious clashes between
the majority views of the religious priesthood in Israel and the centralized
priesthood in Jerusalem.”
Using the second book of Samuel, Greenberg also finds a
different story about the killing of the giant Goliath. “It describes the
killing by someone else,” he said. “One of David’s military heroes kills
Goliath.” He quotes 2 Samuel 21:19: “Elhanan, son of Jaare-oregim, the
Bethlehemite, killed Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like
a weaver’s beam.”
Greenberg believes the story was changed when it was
translated into Greek to make the story more consistent with earlier
versions in the Bible. “The evidence is that the story was cobbled together
and inserted into the David story,” he said.
He became interested in the David story while doing
work on biblical history and topics for earlier books. “As I was doing that
research, I became more engaged in the David story,” he said.
“Second, I thought there was something really important
in the David story. There was political conflict between the north and south
of David’s group and Israel. Based on the fact that David won out and became
the dominant group, it had a major effect on the politics of Western
civilization and the appearance of Christianity. If the other group had won,
it would have been politics based on more decentralization and
individualism,” he said.
Greenberg is a lawyer by profession, though he has had
a longtime interest in biblical history and the question of when history and
myth intersect. “As a kid, I was interested in Norse, Greek and other myths.
Sometimes myths are about real events and sometimes history is about
mythological events.”
The author is a New York City attorney and president of
the Biblical Archaeology Society of New York. He is the author of several
books about ancient Egypt and “The Moses Mystery: The African Origins of the
Jewish People.” His next project is a book on Egyptian chronology.
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BOOKLOONS:
In The Sins of King David
(Sourcebooks, hardcover), Greenberg examines the Bible's conflicting stories
about David -- one told by his allies, the other by his enemies -- and
offers a new version of events. A blending of both Biblical accounts, the
book questions the common image of David (as a pious and courageous man,
"history's first renaissance man," a diplomat and a military strategist of
uncommon gifts), offers compelling new evidence that changes our perceptions
-- turns David, in essence, from a mythological
figure into a living, breathing human being. Greenberg's not out
to offend anyone; he just wants us to understand that the Biblical record of
history is deeply contradictory, and heavily laced with myth and feats of
great impossibility.
– David Pitt,
www.bookloons.com.
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