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David

Thou Art the Man! – King David and Judge Kavanaugh

October 3, 2018
by Peter Feinman
The Shining City on a Hill: Commentary on Reagan by Bryan Caplan

The American Civil Religion posits that we are a city on a hill. At this point both political parties have abandoned that idea. The longtime staple of presidential politics and the America culture has been banished from public discourse. It died with the death of John McCain. We no longer aspire to a leadership role in human history.

But besides the city on a hill vision, there is a second line: the eyes of the world are upon us. Even though we choose not to lead, because of our size and might we still serve as an example to the world. Sometimes this influence is referred to as soft power. It means besides Coke and McDonalds, American cultural values and practices also ae known, in one form or another, around the world. So even as we forsake a political leadership role, the eyes of the world are still upon us.

Recently and still ongoing we have had two such examples of this phenomenon: the appearance of the President of the United States at the United Nations and the confirmation hearings of Judge Kavanaugh.

UNITED NATIONS

At the United Nations, the President of the United States spoke as if he were on Fox News. He spoke as if he were at one of his professional wrestling arena rallies. He spoke as if he were still in Trumpietown. But he had ventured outside of his comfort zone. He was speaking to an audience he has routinely insulted. He has insulted people based on their race. He has insulted people based on their religion. He has insulted people based on their cosmopolitanism. And he has launched economic war against many of them while withdrawing from providing American leadership.

Their reaction to his speech was exactly what you should expect: they laughed. They did not laugh with him, they laughed at him. In his surprised response that he was not expecting that reaction, he then did what he rarely does in his life – he told the truth. He really was surprised. He soon recovered and said they were laughing with him and they were just having fun with each other. Perhaps this “interpretation” was what inspired Kavanaugh to give his interpretation of being a member of the Renate” alumni.

Senate Judiciary Committee: Do You Have the Right Stuff to go into the Arena?

The story of David and Nathan is one of the most dramatic in the Hebrew Bible. Even as one reads the words, one can see the figures in one’s mind. There is no mention of Nathan extending his arm in the direction of David, yet we see it. There is no mention of Nathan pointing a finger at David, yet we see it. There is no mention of David’s physical reaction to the words and gestures of Nathan, yet we see it. Only when Nathan is telling his parable, does the storyteller mention an emotion, the anger of David. The story teller leaves it to our imagination to visualize David’s appearance after Nathan’s exclamation.

This story exemplifies the oral nature of biblical storytelling. It cries out for a physical performance. Undoubtedly, that was how most Israelites originally experienced the story – not read silently alone but as a public display. The op-ed pieces of yesteryear were performed in ancient Israel long before Saturday Night Live existed.

One key ingredient in the story is frequently overlooked. It is not the historicity of the story but its believability. There is no sense in the story that it lacks validity. The story is not one of science fiction, fantasy, or even dreams. It is a presented as a real world event that the audience easily could believe as true. There is no surprise in the display of truth to power. There is no sense that it defies all credulity that someone could call the king to task. There is no astonishment about the actions of Nathan. The only uncertainty is in the reaction of the accused.

That credibility extends beyond the prophet denouncing the action of the king to his face. Just as Nathan’s declaration garners no surprise, neither does David’s reaction. The king’s repentance is presented in just as routine a manner as Nathan’s charge. As far as the audience is concerned, it is expected that a prophet would call a king to task. It is equally expected that the king would respond positively when he heard the words of the prophet and repent his wrongdoings.

The contrast between yesterday and today is remarkable. In Nathan’s words, we see the uniqueness of his actions in the ancient Near East.  No one can imagine anyone delivering truth to power in ancient Assyria. No one can imagine anyone delivering truth to power in ancient Babylon. No one can imagine anyone delivering truth to power in ancient Egypt. Actually we can in Egypt. It was delivered by Moses and commemorated in a holiday still celebrated to this very day.

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings are an American phenomenon. The televising of these hearings to the world is part of the soft power of this country. The eyes of the world are upon us as we publicly debate whether or not to confirm an individual to the highest court in the land. Should the court be an independent judiciary? What is the answer in China? What is the answer in Russia? What is the answer in Turkey? What is the answer in Iran? What is the answer in Venezuela? What is the answer is so many countries throughout the world?

In David’s response we see the not only the uniqueness of Israel in the ancient Near East but to today. In the followup of the accusation levied at the Senate Judiciary Committee against Judge Kavanaugh, no one expects any change to occur in the behavior of the one charged. No one expects Kavanaugh to conduct an investigation into his own life, to ask his friends and classmates if he rely drank so much, if he really blacked out so often, if he really could have done what he is charged with doing. Unlike with David, there will be no change in behavior. He will not rise to the occasion. He will not be a profile in courage. He will not face the truth of his adolescent life that he thought he had left behind. Certainly a President who still is an adolescent himself will not encourage him to do so.

In the previous post, I referred to the possibility of the situation spiraling out of control. The Republicans have attempted to prevent such a collapse by limiting the scope and time of the investigation. But the challenge to do so is magnified by the number of venues available to people to speak out now. While some of the voices defy credulity and seem like a con job, too many others seem true. Those expressions will not be contained by the artificial constraints imposed on the investigation. The Republicans are in a superb position to alienate a huge swath of the American voting population for years to come. Of course, having a fifth Republican legislator on the Supreme Court may make jeopardizing the Republican position in the other two arms of the government worth the price.

Whatever happens, it will be seen around the world because the eyes of the world are still upon us.

Thou Art the Man! – King David and the Senate Judiciary Committee

October 1, 2018
by Peter Feinman
Thou art the man! All roads with you lead to Putin! (A picture is worth a thousand words and that is how along this blog is)

The story of David and Nathan is one of the most dramatic in the Hebrew Bible. Even as one reads the words, one can see the figures in one’s mind. There is no mention of Nathan extending his arm in the direction of David, yet we see it. There is no mention of Nathan pointing a finger at David, yet we see it. There is no mention of David’s physical reaction to the words and gestures of Nathan, yet we see it. Only when Nathan is telling his parable, does the storyteller mention an emotion, the anger of David. The story teller leaves it to our imagination to visualize David’s appearance after Nathan’s exclamation.

This story exemplifies the oral nature of biblical storytelling. It cries out for a physical performance. Undoubtedly, that was how most Israelites originally experienced the story – not read silently alone but as a public display. The op-ed pieces of yesteryear were performed in ancient Israel.

One key ingredient in the story is frequently overlooked. It is not the historicity of the story but its believability. There is no sense in the story that it lacks validity. The story is not one of science fiction, fantasy, or even dreams. It is a presented as a real world event that the audience easily could believe as true. There is no surprise in the display of truth to power. There is no sense that it defies all credulity that someone could call the king to task. There is no astonishment about the actions of Nathan. The only uncertainty is in the reaction of the accused.

That credibility extends beyond the prophet denouncing the action of the king to his face. Just as Nathan’s declaration garners no surprise, neither does David’s reaction. The king’s repentance is presented in just as routine a manner as Nathan’s charge. As far as the audience is concerned, it is expected that a prophet would call a king to task. It is equally expected that the king would respond positively when he heard the words of the prophet and repent his wrongdoings.

In ancient Israel, the word of someone sent by the Lord trumped the power of the king. Part of the uniqueness of ancient Israel was the belief that an individual, or at least a prophet, could confront the king. Can you imagine someone standing before Sargon the Great and bellowing “Thou art the man!”? How about before Hammurabi? Sargon II? How about before Pharaoh? With Pharaoh, it actually is easier to imagine. There is a major story from the ancient Near East precisely involving a person sent by the Lord to exclaim “Thou art the man!” The person is Moses, the prophet of prophets in the biblical tradition.

The origin story of Israel in history and celebrated to this very day involves an individual confronting a person in power. Time and time again, the Israelite tradition told the story the prophet challenging the power of the king in the name of the Lord. Such occurrences were not isolated incidents but part of an ongoing pattern:

Samuel against Saul
Nathan against David
Ahijah against Rehoboam and Jeroboam
Elijah against Omri and Jezebel.

The independence of the prophet reaches a point where a king can even make of fun of it while not ignoring it:

1 Kings 22:8 And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the LORD, Micaiah the son of Imlah; but I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil.”

So how is that Israel was so different? Was it something in the water? Did the landscape or ecology render Israel different? Did Canaanite kings act the same way only we do not have their stories? The obvious answer is “no.” The difference is a cultural one that needs to be understood within Israel’s history. Can you imagine Russia or China televising to the world a direct challenge to a nominee of the political leader of those countries? The idea is absurd. On the other hand, the United States was born in a declaration levied against a king who was compared to a Pharaoh. Truth to power is in the American DNA.

What about ancient Israel? What is it in the history and culture of ancient Israel whereby a prophet could challenge a king and a king was expected to adhere to the word of God expressed through this non-royal person?

One important consideration is the first expression of the “Thou art the man!’ syndrome. In order to challenge someone’s abuse of power there needs to be someone in power. The time from Merneptah to monarchy was two hundred years. During that time Israel did not have a king. To say that Israel had no king, no taxes, no corvée, also means no one was in a position to abuse power. Once the monarchy started, so did the challenges to the king, to the person in power.

Did the sudden appearance of the monarchy in Israel give rise to the prophetic tradition of challenging the person in power?

Or was the tradition of challenging the person in power always part of the Israelite tradition from its beginning? Was it simply dormant until such time as a person was in a position to abuse power?

As noted according to the biblical account, Israel’s origin in the Exodus derived from an individual challenging a king for an abuse of power…and that person himself was challenged in the wilderness after the departure from Egypt by the very people he led.

And as with the story of Nathan and David, the idea itself of Moses challenging Pharaoh is presented as a believable part of the story. It is not a miracle that he stood before Pharaoh. It is presented to the audience as something which could occur. But how in the real world could anyone do that? There is nothing in the Egyptian cultural construct that suggests such a challenge was possible. The Egyptian tradition despised the hot head, it did not make a hero of one who waxed hot with anger before king. When Sinuhe returned to Egypt from the land of Canaan is was to be reunited with Pharaoh so he could die and be buried as an Egyptian. That was the Egyptian ideal. Israel’s version was quite different. It was legitimate to challenge the authority of the king who had abused his power.

Once you realize that the Levites were Hyksos, it makes it a lot easier to understand Israel’s origins in defiance of Pharaoh and how that tradition of truth to power became part of the Israelite DNA. The origin of the Israelite tradition of truth to power exclaimed by a prophet to a king occurred with the origin of Israel when it left Egypt.

Historical David and Goliath: Lessons from the Utah Senate Race

April 25, 2018
by Peter Feinman
David Slaying Goliath by Peter Paul Rubens (The Norton Simon Foundation )

What can we learn about the story of David and Goliath from the Utah Senate race? Since the original story was political in nature, biblical scholars should not limit themselves to archaeology or literature when investigating the story but should examine the application of the story in the political arena as well. As it turns out recent events in the Utah Senate race shed light on the purposes of the composition of the original story of David and Goliath in the first place.

The incident occurred on April 21, 2018, at the Republican state convention. The purpose of the convention was to select a nominee to replace retiring Senator Orin Hatch. Under the rules, a candidate needed to secure 60% of the vote to eliminate the need for a primary. The prohibitive favorite was former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a savior of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in Utah.

In the first round, none of the 12 candidates received the necessary 60%. In the second round, two candidates exceeded the lower 40& threshold. Romney received 49.12% of the vote. But he trailed Congressional Representative Mike Kennedy who emerged in the lead with 50.88%. As a result there will be a primary on June 26.

Kennedy has framed the race as a David vs. Goliath contest. He is familiar enough with the story to know that in a David and Goliath contest it is better to be David than Goliath. It is interesting to observe how often users of the metaphor view themselves as losers to the big guy, not realizing that Goliath had his head handed to him.

Both candidates referred to the David and Goliath metaphor. As reported in the New York Times:

Romney rejected the notion that he was Goliath. “I’m not Goliath, Washington DC is Goliath,” Romney said, introducing himself to the 4,000 delegates as a “neighbor,” a person of faith, and someone who helped rescue the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games.

Kennedy, who also is a physician and an attorney, also invoked David and Goliath in his nominating speech. “I started with David and Goliath, but not for the reason you might think,” he said, alluding to Romney. “In this battle you are David, firm in your fight for liberty. Goliath is Washington DC — intimidating but beatable. And I, I am your stone ready to be flung at the foes of liberty who seek to oppress us,” he said, to cheers. “Working together we will defeat the Goliaths in Washington and restore our government where it belongs.”

I am not sure if anyone ever identified with the stone before. Regardless, both contestants used the David and Goliath metaphor in their political battle for power.

Putting aside the merit of these claims, I suggest the usage today exactly matches that of the original story three thousand years ago. “David and Goliath” in its inception was not meant as literal history. Nor was it derived from folk or mythic traditions. Instead it was written as a political story where there were two contestants in the battle for power and only one would emerge victorious.

Who were the contestants? What was the battle? And who composed the story?

To begin with, the story is not about biological and historical Goliath. That individual had been killed by one of David’s men.

2 Samuel 21:19 And there was again war with the Philistines at Gob; and Elhanan the son of Jaareoregim, the Bethlehemite, slew Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.

Even though Dwight D. Eisenhower did not kill any Nazis on D-Day, American historians recognize that he was the commanding officer and he gets overall credit. Similarly, in ancient times, David garnered the credit for triumphs over Philistine warriors even when one of his warriors did the actual killing.

Furthermore, it seems unlikely that Goliath was even mentioned by name in the original story. He appears only two times in that story: I Sam. 17:4 and 23. He also is mentioned by name in connection with the sword war trophy in a later incident: I Sam. 21:9 and 22:10. By contrast on 17 occasions, the narrator, David, and Saul in I Sam. 17 refer to David’s opponent as the/this Philistine sometimes with the added the pejorative “uncircumcised.” It is reasonable to conclude that the unnamed Philistine warrior was named in some editorial process and originally he was unnamed.

I suggest that this unnamed figure is due to the metaphorical use of the character. Such unnamed figures appear periodically in biblical stories like Jephthah’s daughter (Judges 11), the Bethlehemite concubine (Judges 19), and Poipthar’s or the master’s wife (Genesis 39). These characters both male and female should be viewed symbolically. They are not historical individuals but are representatives of a people much like Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty. So whereas these modern figures represent We the People, in ancient Israelite storytelling they might represent the Israelite people themselves or a foreign foe like the Philistines. The story of David and Goliath is not about a specific battle, it is about David’s prowess as a warrior against the Philistines…in contrast to whom?

The storyteller reveals his hand in the very choice of David as the champion of Israel against the Philistines. Couldn’t a story have been told about Saul as the hero? Not if he already had died during a battle against the Philistines at Mount Gilboa (I Sam. 31:6). Couldn’t a story have been told about Jonathan as the hero against the Philistines as he had been in the story of the battle at Michmash (I Sam. 14)? Not if he already had died along with his father in the same battle (I Sam. 31:2). Couldn’t a story have been told about Ishbaal/Ishbosheth, the surviving son of Saul, as the hero? That would be as believable as a story of Lot triumphing over the kings from East instead of the warrior of Hebron being the one who triumphed.

The author discloses his anti-Benjaminite bias in other ways. For example, David famously dispatches the Philistine warrior with his sling and some smooth stones.

1 Samuel 17:49 And David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone, and slung it, and struck the Philistine on his forehead; the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the ground. 50 So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and struck the Philistine, and killed him; there was no sword in the hand of David.

According to the author, David’s prowess was with a weapon attributed to the tribe of Benjamin.

1 Chronicles 12:2 They were bowmen, and could shoot arrows and sling stones with either the right or the left hand; they were Benjaminites, Saul’s kinsmen.

Judges 20:14 And the Benjaminites came together out of the cities to Gibeah, to go out to battle against the people of Israel. 15 And the Benjaminites mustered out of their cities on that day twenty-six thousand men that drew the sword, besides the inhabitants of Gibeah, who mustered seven hundred picked men. 16 Among all these were seven hundred picked men who were left-handed; every one could sling a stone at a hair, and not miss.

So not only was a Benjaminite not the hero against the Philistines while Saul the Benjaminite was king, the hero appropriated a Benjaminite weapon to affect his victory. While today we focus on the iconic theme of the young lad vanquishing his larger-than-life and heavily armored foe with mere stones and his faith in the Lord, we overlook that he is doing what a Benjaminite warrior should have been doing and doing so with Benjaminite weapon. Were there really no Benjaminites present who knew how to use the sling? The story is doubly insulting to Benjamin.  Plus the storyteller in the name of David gets to proclaim before his audience:

1 Samuel 17:45 Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin; but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.

This story is great theater.

The anti-Benjamin bias isn’t done yet. The story is set a site that should be a symbol of Benjamin excellence and success. The story occurs in the Valley of Elah. A recent archaeological discovery has revealed a massive and short-lived fortification at precisely that location dated to precisely the time of the Saul/David transition. The site of Khirbet Qeiyafa even has an inscription with the name Ishbaal, the rival of David who ended up being murdered in his sleep but still was alternate choice to David at the time of this story.

The exact date and builder of Khirbet Qeiyafa remains disputed. The original story of David and Goliath contributes to the discussion to determine the chronology. The deliberate omission in the story of the fortification at the site where the story takes place is a deliberate slight to Saul and its Benjaminite builders and Ishbaal. The audience knew what was missing from the story: a Benjaminite hero at a Benjaminite fortress deploying a Benjaminite weapon. The audience knew what message the author delivered. Long before the phrases of having the right stuff to go into the arena had become part of the American cultural heritage, a political storyteller had employed those exact images to assert that one person, David, had the right stuff to go into the arena and be commander in chief of the covenant people. The story is true in that the author genuinely believed its message. The story is true in that David was superior to choice to Ishbaal. And the story delivered the same message to the Philistines as to its Israelite audience that is was morning in Israel. A new day had dawned.

For readers of the previous posts, it should be no surprise that massacre-survivor Abiathar now was having his revenge on the Saulides and the Benjaminites in the composition and proclaiming of this story throughout the land. The father of the alphabet prose narrative expertly wielded this new weapon in the battle for power after the Philistine victory at Mount Gilboa. Three thousand years before the Utah Senate hopefuls deployed the David and Goliath imagery in their quest for power, Abiathar had done so in behalf of David’s rise to power. Turns out, he was a pretty good storyteller.

The J Documentary Hypothesis offers another interpretation of Israelite history and the composition of the Hebrew Bible than do the Documentary Hypothesis and the scribal school Persian-fixated interpretations. It provides a fuller historical reconstruction than do the other approaches, one that is more accurate, more vibrant, more accessible, more relevant, more entertaining, and more exciting. Tenth century BCE Israel is the best documented century of the ancient Near East for the quantity of writing, quality of writing, and diversity of views. David and Goliath is another example of that writing.

 

Massacre Survivor David Hogg and the Origin of Biblical Prose Narrative Writing

Archaeologists Confirm Ancient Famine: Déjà Vu Joseph All Over Again

Were the Levites Hyksos? – No! That Would Mean Having to Take the Exodus Seriously as a Secular Event in History