Inveni David: Inexpert Reflections
It being Year B in the Revised Common Lectionary, we've been getting highlights of the career of David in (one version of) the OT lesson.
The David (and Solomonic) material in 2 Samuel is ... interesting. There is a modern archaeological school which would deny any historicity at all to David. (Up until the discovery of the Tel Dan Stele in the 1990s there was no archaeological evidence even for the "House of David" contemporary with its existence.) More moderate archaeologists, while entirely willing to grant that David and Solomon may very well have existed, have identified serious disconnects between the archaeological record and the building programmes associated with the two. At the same time, there is also a school of textual study which would identify the core of the narrative with a contemporary or near-contemporary "Court Historian", and sees it as a development of historical writing independent of Herodotus. ("Near-contemporary" might mean that the narrative was first assembled under Solomon or one of his immediate successors, (much of the narrative can be seen as either indicating why Solomon's own line of descent is firm (the Bathsheba story, while negative as regards David's ethical character, establishes Solomon as the child of a formalized marriage) or why the other potential lines are not attractive (the Michal and Absolom stories)).
For any part of the narrative, there are at least four possibilities: it goes back to an original source within living memory of the events; it was assembled later based on oral recollections; it is a composition dating from early in the monarchical period; it is a late composition by the Deuteronomistic school (which assembled the current books of Samuel and Kings). In any of these cases except the last, there is the certainty that the text was chosen, shaped and probably enhanced[1] by the Deuteronomist[s].
Any given text may reflect multiple reasons for being shaped as it is.
The items that caught my attention involved the anointings of David. There are actually two referred to: one which looks as though it came out of a standard chronicle ("So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron; and King David made a covenant with them at Hebron before the LORD, and they anointed David king over Israel. David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years. At Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months; and at Jerusalem he reigned over all Israel and Judah thirty-three years.") and one, more famous, in which Samuel anoints David as a young man, long before he came to prominence as a military leader, which definitely does not read like a standard chronicle.
For the Deuteronomist, the story of Samuel's anointing of David served a straightforward purpose: it validates the line of David in general with a direct link to the pre-monarchical prophets, and it makes the Davidic line's claim to the throne dependent on Yahweh (and implicitly on the Yahwist cultus) only. (The following narrative makes it clear that whatever sacral claim David could make, it was also very much driven by his success as a military leader.) This theme is reinforced by the authority of Nathan to rebuke David (in the Bathsheba episode) -- and note that Nathan is one of the anointers of Solomon when he gains the kingship. This is the flip side of denying success to later kings who were known to have been polytheistic or at least tolerant of multiple cults, or even supportive of modes of worship which were not centred on the Temple in Jerusalem.
The original context of the story is a more interesting question. Even assuming a relatively high degree of historicity in the core David narrative, it's hard to see David, or even Solomon, wanting to push a narrative which cedes the power of making and unmaking kings entirely to the Yahwistic cultus, and (like the Goliath story, which is equally likely to be a story either composed for or transferred from another figure (Elhanan) to David -- in the Goliath story the differences between the Septuagint and Masoretic texts show the process continuing after the composition of the Books of Samuel) it is not connected at all directly to the court narrative from David's/Solomon's own day. David would have been far more likely to stress memes along the lines of "Saul hath slain his thousands and David his ten thousands" rather than an early anointing by Samuel as a basis for ruling. Its only function would be to defend against a continuing claim by the party that supported Saul regarding David's legitimacy -- Samuel bestowed Saul's legitimacy and he then took it away; but as David seems to have been careful to eliminate claimants from Saul's family to the throne (while disavowing responsibility for the actual killing), and as he had a perfectly good sacral claim based on his anointing at Hebron, that is also not very convincing.
A few generations later, however, it may have been convenient for the post-Rehoboam Kings of Judah as a way of improving their claim over against Israel to publicise, or circulate in an official capacity, the story with a possibly folkloric origin. (Certainly there is a folkloric element to this anointing which is kept secret by Samuel because he is afraid of Saul being later produced as a validation of David's legitimacy.) And it was always in the interest of the Yahwistic cultus to provide a narrative which gave primacy to their authority.
Original context for these stories will have been reformulated during the Deuteronomistic composition: bits scraped off, other bits attached.
For what it's worth, the Psalms form an independent witness that the anointing of David was a cultic focus to some degree ("I have found David my servant: with my holy oil have I anointed him"), although the dating of the psalm is uncertain: there is some disagreement over whether it should be considered pre or post-exilic. It later, of course, became an even more major focus, as it is at the root of the post-exilic development of the figure of a messiah of the House of David.
[1]Certainly much of the text describing Solomonic building has to have been added much later and assigns him construction which took place much later than Solomon; there is no reason to believe that the David story is any less enhanced by later redaction.
The David (and Solomonic) material in 2 Samuel is ... interesting. There is a modern archaeological school which would deny any historicity at all to David. (Up until the discovery of the Tel Dan Stele in the 1990s there was no archaeological evidence even for the "House of David" contemporary with its existence.) More moderate archaeologists, while entirely willing to grant that David and Solomon may very well have existed, have identified serious disconnects between the archaeological record and the building programmes associated with the two. At the same time, there is also a school of textual study which would identify the core of the narrative with a contemporary or near-contemporary "Court Historian", and sees it as a development of historical writing independent of Herodotus. ("Near-contemporary" might mean that the narrative was first assembled under Solomon or one of his immediate successors, (much of the narrative can be seen as either indicating why Solomon's own line of descent is firm (the Bathsheba story, while negative as regards David's ethical character, establishes Solomon as the child of a formalized marriage) or why the other potential lines are not attractive (the Michal and Absolom stories)).
For any part of the narrative, there are at least four possibilities: it goes back to an original source within living memory of the events; it was assembled later based on oral recollections; it is a composition dating from early in the monarchical period; it is a late composition by the Deuteronomistic school (which assembled the current books of Samuel and Kings). In any of these cases except the last, there is the certainty that the text was chosen, shaped and probably enhanced[1] by the Deuteronomist[s].
Any given text may reflect multiple reasons for being shaped as it is.
The items that caught my attention involved the anointings of David. There are actually two referred to: one which looks as though it came out of a standard chronicle ("So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron; and King David made a covenant with them at Hebron before the LORD, and they anointed David king over Israel. David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years. At Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months; and at Jerusalem he reigned over all Israel and Judah thirty-three years.") and one, more famous, in which Samuel anoints David as a young man, long before he came to prominence as a military leader, which definitely does not read like a standard chronicle.
For the Deuteronomist, the story of Samuel's anointing of David served a straightforward purpose: it validates the line of David in general with a direct link to the pre-monarchical prophets, and it makes the Davidic line's claim to the throne dependent on Yahweh (and implicitly on the Yahwist cultus) only. (The following narrative makes it clear that whatever sacral claim David could make, it was also very much driven by his success as a military leader.) This theme is reinforced by the authority of Nathan to rebuke David (in the Bathsheba episode) -- and note that Nathan is one of the anointers of Solomon when he gains the kingship. This is the flip side of denying success to later kings who were known to have been polytheistic or at least tolerant of multiple cults, or even supportive of modes of worship which were not centred on the Temple in Jerusalem.
The original context of the story is a more interesting question. Even assuming a relatively high degree of historicity in the core David narrative, it's hard to see David, or even Solomon, wanting to push a narrative which cedes the power of making and unmaking kings entirely to the Yahwistic cultus, and (like the Goliath story, which is equally likely to be a story either composed for or transferred from another figure (Elhanan) to David -- in the Goliath story the differences between the Septuagint and Masoretic texts show the process continuing after the composition of the Books of Samuel) it is not connected at all directly to the court narrative from David's/Solomon's own day. David would have been far more likely to stress memes along the lines of "Saul hath slain his thousands and David his ten thousands" rather than an early anointing by Samuel as a basis for ruling. Its only function would be to defend against a continuing claim by the party that supported Saul regarding David's legitimacy -- Samuel bestowed Saul's legitimacy and he then took it away; but as David seems to have been careful to eliminate claimants from Saul's family to the throne (while disavowing responsibility for the actual killing), and as he had a perfectly good sacral claim based on his anointing at Hebron, that is also not very convincing.
A few generations later, however, it may have been convenient for the post-Rehoboam Kings of Judah as a way of improving their claim over against Israel to publicise, or circulate in an official capacity, the story with a possibly folkloric origin. (Certainly there is a folkloric element to this anointing which is kept secret by Samuel because he is afraid of Saul being later produced as a validation of David's legitimacy.) And it was always in the interest of the Yahwistic cultus to provide a narrative which gave primacy to their authority.
Original context for these stories will have been reformulated during the Deuteronomistic composition: bits scraped off, other bits attached.
For what it's worth, the Psalms form an independent witness that the anointing of David was a cultic focus to some degree ("I have found David my servant: with my holy oil have I anointed him"), although the dating of the psalm is uncertain: there is some disagreement over whether it should be considered pre or post-exilic. It later, of course, became an even more major focus, as it is at the root of the post-exilic development of the figure of a messiah of the House of David.
[1]Certainly much of the text describing Solomonic building has to have been added much later and assigns him construction which took place much later than Solomon; there is no reason to believe that the David story is any less enhanced by later redaction.