gstafleu

In their book The Bible Unearthed, Finkelstein and Silberman conclude that there likely was a Historical David. They base this on an inscription that mentions a House of David. In this thread I assume that they got that right, and I want to bypass any discussion about the validity of the find and the conclusion, in other words we assume that yes, there was an HD.

After this good news for a possible HD camp Finkelstein and Silberman then go on to show that all of the legend that the bible presents about this David was just that: legend. There was no United Kingdom that fell apart due to the generalized badness of its people, rather there was the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and the insignificant pastoral Southern Kingdom of Judah, where at one point this David was an otherwise undistinguished (if only because Judah was itself rather undistinguished) king. Again, let us bypass discussion about this conclusion, and assume that it is correct.

We now have an Historical David who has none of the attributes--except for name and kingship--of the David of the bible. No united kingdom, no expansion over surrounding lands, no temple building, no falling apart of the united kingdom. (Finkelstein and Silberman draw, not surprisingly, a similar conclusion about David's son Solomon. For our purposes we can conflate the two simply because in both cases we have insignificant Kings whose only correspondence with the biblical stories is their name.) The question now is: what good does this Historical David do anybody?

This HD obviously doesn't do anything for the believers, who need a full-fledged David, not some leader of goat herds. Nor does it do something for the non-believing student of religion: here, again, the full-fledged David is the object of interest, and whether he was given the handily available name of an existing but otherwise unimportant king on the one hand, or, on the other hand, was given some other name like, say, Yoshua, is at best of remote interest to the student.

The group of people who do attach importance, beyond that of historical detail, to the Historical David, thus form a group who have infused something that has no intrinsic value of its own with a meaning that is only defined within the confines of the group. As such I submit that these people could be seen as members of a "Historical David cult."

Gerard Stafleu

Doug Shaver

Practically none, I suppose.

There are people for whom it seems important to believe that all myths and legends have some basis, however trivial, in historical fact. Those people can get a lot of milesage out of confirmation of a historical King David.

Chris Weimer

There is some importance, however, in those who just want to know what most likely happened, regardless of how you feel about the religious associations.

gstafleu

[QUOTE=Doug Shaver;4534494]True, but where does that mileage lead them? Either to to a fantasy realm where the historical core holds an unrealistic importance, or back to where you started: the place where the myth is what it is all about. So either you're off into never-never land, or you're on a round-trip. Now round-trips can be fun, but in the end they don't get you very far .

Gerard Stafleu

dog-on

[QUOTE=gstafleu;4534743]Then again, unless you are actually permanently re-locating, I would hope that all your trips are round. :Cheeky:

gstafleu

Agreed, but it is at best a detail, a footnote, which is what I tried to formulate as "at best of remote interest to the student." The myth, and its effect on the people, is what is of primary importance: the myth is how the people in question sees itself and represents itself to others, so clearly it must have important historical consequences. When it comes to historical research, obviously the origins of the myth are of importance. But given the relatively small, if not non-existent, influence of the "historical core" on the myth, that point is, as said, not much more than an historical footnote. The historical questions of interest, it seems to me, should focus on the myth: whence did it come, how was it changed from its origins and so on. The "historical core" has little to contribute in that area.

Gerard Stafleu

andrewcriddle

To Finkelstein and Silberman accept (at least as probable) that Solomon built a temple for Yahweh in Jerusalem ?

Andrew Criddle

gstafleu

I'm recalling by hand here, but what F&S say is that at the time of David and Solomon the kingdom of Judah was essentially an insignificant rural one of which nothing is really known, including their religion. I'm not sure if I'm straying into my own ideas now or if I'm still on the F&S path, but I'd say it is by no means a given that the primary religion of Judah at that time was a form of Yawehism. It may well have been Baal and Ishtar (or Asherah as I think she was called then).

F&S see both the southern kingdom of Judah and the northern of Israel as essentially rural cousins of Canaan, be it the northern part more developed (due to better geography) then the southern part. They don't really see the Jewish religion as we usually think of it developing before the time of Josiah, sometime in the 7th century BCE. IIRC, that is, I apologize if I got things wrong.

Gerard Stafleu

gstafleu

To add to the above (a few more details are coming back ), F&S reject the idea that there was a united kingdom under David and Solomon. At that time both the Southern and the Northern kingdom were more like rural provinces of Canaan, which was developed more to the point that the united kingdom is in legend. Then the Northern Kingdom, Israel, got to be important for a while, but they were then pummeled by, I think, the Assyrians.

It is after that (7C BCE) that the Southern Kingdom saw its chance to establish a united kingdom, including Judah and Israel, by assimilating the ruins of the north. To help in that process they came up with a whole set of legends that said that there used to be a united kingdom that fell apart because it was not following the ways of Yahweh, Yahweh being the then-deity (7C BCE) of the south of course. So the legend served to (a) make everyone a Yawehist and (b) to unite south and north in the process. What the religion of Judah at the time of that rural leader called David was is probably unknown.

So far my fallible memory, maybe someone who has read to book more recently can help out with more details.

Gerard Stafleu

Chris Weimer

This is, after all, your opinion.