Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Robert Vining <rvining AT log.on.ca>]

Re: Comments of George Athas,  Jonathan Safren,  and  Moshe Shulman
under the subject heading,   "Tel Dan Inscription", Dec.28/99.

George Athas observes, that the TDI, "might hint at the possibility of a
"David" person.''
                                                            "might refer
to a "David" figure in a round about
way"
"may well point to "David" (or some such personage)"

Jonathan Safren comments, "Somehow I get the impression that some
scholars, in their attempt to cast doubt at all costs and for all
reasons, scholarly or otherwise, the historical existence of a King
David, are ignoring the pertinent  parallels and analogies."

Moshe Shulman notes that, "The Tel Dan Inscription increases the
plausibility of the view that David existed, and that the historical
content of the Bible is "reliable" in some degree, and reduces the
plausibility of the view that David and the Davidic kingdom was
non-existent".

*********

While GA is vague,   JS & MS are hopeful,  about an historical David.
Oh,  this elusive David.  Would that we could be more  sure about him.
Is he a solid historical figure whose life story is narrated in the
Bible?  Or,  is  he a character skillfully drawn by the biblical
writer(s)?   Or, perhaps, a combination, i.e.   a  somewhat literary
figure, but  based and modeled,  more or less,  on the life of  a real
person?

Offered for discussion are the speculations of an author who has some
interesting thoughts about this shadowy figure, this "David" person, or
personage. David Rosenberg, in, "The Book of David" theorizes  David's
father to be Jesse; his mother an aboriginal slave woman.  As the son of
a slave,  Jesse rejects David, sending him out apart from his brothers;
to tend sheep, rather than to be schooled like his siblings, as
suggested by  the biblical record. But,  beloved of his outcast mother,
and beloved of Yahweh. At the knee of his  unnamed mother,  David hears
shamanistic songs; from his peers,  he hears indigenous poetry.   These
songs, this poetry resonated  and deeply influenced the young boy, who
later transformed them into psalms.  The account of this  ancestral
heritage, and early childhood, may well be found in the beginning part
of the Book of David written by S (as well as other "lost" literature),
but will be suppressed by later redactors, for whom the repression of
aboriginal roots became an obsession.  The Holy Land is an indigenous
people concept.  The Promised Land myth is a cover story constructed by
later "historians"-the deadening Deuteronomists and others-who were
determined that the great Hebrew renaissance authors and poets would be
forgotten. These suppressors will offer a new  tradition. Instead of
emphasizing roots to the land,  they will substitute a new tradition
about coming in and conquering the land.*

Rosenberg envisions a golden age in Israelite history;  now quite lost,
difficult to recover. A time when a coterie of truly great literary
giants of Shakespearian stature did their work.  They were  first of all
readers, well read in the extant literature.  They were translators of
the archaic cuneiform and pictograms  into  archaic Hebrew.  It was in
this new language they composed their literary masterpieces.  Above all
they were authors; meaning imaginative creators of new literature; not
handers-down of old, or reworked traditions.  They were conscious of
their aboriginal roots to the land, and of their  literary strategies.
They knew what they were doing.

But, they will be squelched. This is a major thesis of Rosenberg.
"Repressed", "true tradition pushed aside", "libraries lost",
"sublimated", "lost culture", "expunged", "hiding", "screened out",
"discarding", "erasing", "editing", "to bury", "to veil",
"purification"(purging), "authors disappearing into another culture"-
are some of the terms  he uses to express the tragedy perpetrated by the
priestly writers who would rewrite the history of Israel from a limited,
distorted religious perspective. The culmination of this activity is
what Rosenberg considers, "A  Sublime Burial of the Past" (a title of
one of his chapters). His two favorite words, occurring again and again
to designate this denied heritage,  are  "aboriginal" and  "indigenous".

If this process occurred,  one of the implications is  that an important
part of the  "David"  person's life  would  be  its' casualty.
Especially hidden would be his  mother,  along with his early life among
the "outcasts",  evidence for which barely survives in the approved
record.
-------
*Rosenberg  cites  favorably (p.49),  Moshe Weinfeld,  (Israeli scholar,
especially of the Deuteronomic school of authors and editors)  in the,
"The Promise of the Land",  as supporting this proposition.

Robert Vining, Owen Sound, Ontario    rvining AT log.on.ca