The Historicity of David

Dan McClellan Saul was like, "Hey, love what you're doing down there. Keep up the good work."

Dan Beecher "Love your work. Huge fan."

Dan McClellan But in the story, it gets turned into David played the harp and soothed the savage beast.

Dan Beecher Right?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Another point in the gay column. I'm sorry.

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things, Dan?

Dan Beecher Man, things are good. I'm out here combating misinformation like a dang superhero on your T-shirt or something.

Dan McClellan It's the Amazing Spider-Man today. Those of you who are listening to us through the listening channels- Yeah ... don't get to see that, but you'll have to imagine.

Dan Beecher You're rather famous for it. You got two things you're famous for. There's the sort of the Bible scholar thing, and that's like, whatever. Okay, that's fine. And then there's this T-shirt thing that you do.

Dan McClellan It is a thing that I do. It's nice though, because when I go speak at universities, give lectures and named lectures, they're like, "This is the Dr. So-and-So lecture," and I show up in a Thing T-shirt, and I'm like, "Is this okay?" And they're always like, "Absolutely. That's what we wanted you to do."

Dan Beecher And your institution can't fire you for it- ... because this is it. This is the only institution you got.

Dan McClellan Yeah, this is as institutional as I get.

Dan Beecher So- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan we have a great show on deck, don't we?

Dan Beecher Yeah. Speaking of heroes, last week we did a thing called Biblical Heroes, question mark, and- Yeah.

Dan McClellan It was like, "Is Enrique Iglesias really a hero?"

Dan Beecher Yeah. It turns out he very much is. So we've got some more question mark heroes here. But interestingly, our first chapter and verse, our first segment, is going to involve lady heroes, which I think is awesome.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And our second half of the show is going to be a Histories Mysteries, where we discuss David, by popular demand. Historicity has come up a few times from listeners.

Dan McClellan Yeah. They want to know, is this real?

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan What is historical about the story of ye old King David?

Dan Beecher The biblical figure, one of the most important figures in the Bible.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Constantly mentioned thereafter, and so we'll get to the bottom of it.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher And by the end of the show, you will know definitively the historicity of David.

Dan McClellan More or less.

Dan Beecher I'm making that promise on Dan's behalf. But first, let's dive into a chapter and verse.

Dan McClellan All right. What are we looking at?

Dan Beecher So this is from the Book of Judges, and we're looking at Judges chapters four and five- Okay ... which are both sort of the same thing, but in different form.

Dan McClellan Yeah. We've got a bit of a historical narrative going on with our judge. Well, it's actually about Deborah and Barak.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan And then we've got the famous Song of Deborah in Judges chapter five, which is some poetry that some scholars think may be among the oldest poetry in all the Bible. This might be really, really old.

Dan Beecher Wow.

Dan McClellan Okay. There is disagreement about that, but- What isn't there disagreement about?

Dan Beecher I think our listeners have gotten to the point where they understand that basically everything that we say, there's disagreement about it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Absolutely. So yeah, dive in a little bit.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, let's set the table a little bit- The chapter heading ... regarding Judges.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Because the Book of Judges is a collection of a bunch of stories about people who judged in Israel.

Dan Beecher Right. We talked about Samson last week.

Dan McClellan Talked about Samson, yeah.

Dan Beecher Who was one of these judges.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And we get this, and it's kind of like just these serial stories where the narrator is like, "And there was no king in the land. Everybody did what was right in their own eyes, and God just was annoyed. So God brought this people to harass them." And then God was like, "Hmm, maybe I'm not so annoyed." And so God raises up a judge, and this is basically a warlord.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan This is the person who is fighting back in the absence of a king and kind of a centralized authority. And this period in the history of ancient Israel is, the Book of Judges comes from much later than the time periods they narrate. But there are probably some historical memories preserved in some of these stories from a period before the rise of an actual state, when it really was just a bunch of scattered tribes just trying to survive off the land, and they occasionally have to defend themselves against the Philistines. Those are the main ones that are the enemies here. We're going to see there are some Canaanites who are the villains, and basically, they band together under this chieftain, this warlord, who's going to defend them against the people who are encroaching on their territory. And then as soon as that threat is gone, everything goes back to the way it was.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So it's kind of a weird little seasonal, we're briefly a type of kingdom, and then we're not, and then we're briefly a type of kingdom. So they're not kings, they're judges, but one of these is Deborah. And so at the beginning of chapter four, the Israelites are again doing what was evil.

Dan Beecher In the sight of Adonai after the judge Ehud had died Which is basically, that's just the setup for all of these- Yeah ... as you say. All of these stories kind of start with that, and there's a lot of little stories and little things that are thrown in in Judges. I read the chapter before this- Mm-hmm ... hoping it would provide me with some context. It did not.

Dan McClellan But I did- You didn't like the Ehud story?

Dan Beecher No, it was a fine story. It just didn't give me any context for the Deborah story.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But what's interesting is that the chapter before this ends with a single verse that says, "After him came Shamgar son of Anath, who killed 600 of the Philistines with an ox goad. He too delivered Israel."

Dan McClellan But that's- And scene ...

Dan Beecher the whole story.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher That was... Yeah, he didn't get a whole big old long thing like- Yeah ... Samson did.

Dan McClellan I mean, yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Deborah gets two chapters. Samson gets, I think, three or four.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And yeah, there are major judges, and then there are minor judges.

Dan Beecher I'm going to say, Shamgar, killing 600 Philistines with an ox goad is a pretty... It's not 1,000 with a jawbone of an ass, but it's still pretty- That's no small shakes, I'm just going to say.

Dan McClellan Anyway. All I think of is the old Mickey Mouse cartoon where he kills seven flies with one swat, and then he opens up his windows and says, "I killed seven with one blow." And they all think he's talking about seven giants, and they're like- Right ... "Oh, well, there's a giant who's harassing us.

Dan Beecher Go-" Right ...

Dan McClellan "take on the giant."

Dan Beecher We'll talk about taking on giants later on.

Dan McClellan Yeah, that's a different story.

Dan Beecher But- So ... Deborah is an... So, the lead-in to the Deborah story is nothing. There is no lead-in to it.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher There's just a guy killing people with an ox goad, and then we jump directly into the Israelites doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord.

Dan McClellan Right. And so they sold them into the hand of King Jabin or Jabin- Mm-hmm ... of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor, and Hazor is a, well, now it's just ruins. But used to be a good-sized city just north of the Sea of Galilee. You can go visit there.

Dan Beecher Oh, cool.

Dan McClellan And the commander of Jabin's army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth Haggoyim, which probably means Harosheth of the Gentiles or of the Nations- Right ... rather than just another part of the name. And then the Israelites cried out to Adonai for help, because these folks had a bunch of chariots, and they had been oppressing the Israelites for some 20 years.

Dan Beecher And- Chariots will help, man.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Apparently, that's some high-tech warring stuff, so.

Dan McClellan Well, that's actually something that a lot of scholars think the invasion of the Sea Peoples, which happened around 1200 BCE, which is what caused these people known as the Philistines to occupy the coastal area. That's what brought them there. They probably brought chariots with them and introduced that technology- Hmm ... into the region. If not them, then it would've been the Egyptians from the south. But these regions, the chariots wouldn't have been incredibly helpful in these mountains and everything like that- Right ... that they're fighting in, so. And I think in Judges 19, that's one of the things that... Is it Judges 19, or? There's a story about how it seems to be saying that God was unable to deliver some folks because- Right ...

Dan Beecher they had chariots Because they had chariots, and God- Yeah. What's God going to do?

Dan McClellan It's like, "It's a little rich for my blood."

Dan Beecher Whoa. You didn't tell me they had chariots.

Dan McClellan What's going on?

Dan Beecher All right. We get Deborah is introduced. It says, "At that time, Deborah, a prophet, wife of Lappidoth." At least that's what it says in the NRSV.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher I did read that that is not the only possible translation of that moment, that Lappid or Lappidoth might mean, it might not have been a person, but a description of Deborah as being a woman of fire or lightning or something like that.

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah? I don't know that I've looked that up, but Lappidot- That's what Wikipedia said, so- That's what Wikipedia says?

Dan Beecher Okay. What it says in Wikipedia is Lappid translates as torch or lightning, and therefore the phrase- Oh, look at, there we go.

Dan McClellan Lappid.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Oh, look. Which could be, the guy could be named after the- Right ...

Dan Beecher notion of...

Dan McClellan But Lappidot would be, sounds like it would be plural, and so that could be an abstract plural, an abstraction.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan So a woman of lightning-ness.

Dan Beecher Of light.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher So yeah. So anyway, but I think most scholars, and since you didn't even know that that existed, I think it's safe to say that probably- No, I didn't.

Dan McClellan I had not looked at that.

Dan Beecher Most scholars probably think that it's just she's the wife of Lappidot.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And she's judging under a palm between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim. So this is the northern hill country, and this idea of judging under a palm, we see this a handful of times. Even Saul was by his favorite tree when he's ruling, so.

Dan Beecher That's interesting. Do we have a sense of why that is? Because a lot of the imagery of the Buddha is under a tree and stuff.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Do we have, is there a reason why- Ancient peoples of Asia are into their wise people being under trees?

Dan McClellan There's got to be some symbolism associated with life or with authority or something like that. There were trees that could be associated with certain deities, and the date palm could be associated with a goddess.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan So, there could be some of that kind of stuff lurking in the background, but I don't know of any special significance- Okay ... associated with this particular one. And is this a date palm? I think this is, yeah- Yeah, I think so ... a date palm.

Dan Beecher Oh, here's a question that I have also, or rather, one thing we shouldn't do is gloss over the fact that there's a woman who's declared a prophet and- Mm-hmm ... is the judge, is the warlord of this moment. That sounds unusual to me.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Am I wrong? It seems like that's not something that... That was very unexpected to me.

Dan McClellan Well, they certainly don't lead you in. They're not like, "Get a load of this."

Dan Beecher No. It's given no extra oomph in any way.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And you know this happens elsewhere, like when King Josiah finds the book of the law in the temple, they take it to Huldah the prophetess, and she's the one who tells the king what to do. And so every now and then you just have women showing up in positions of power and authority, and the text doesn't seem to treat it as anything unusual. Of course, anyone who's reading the text closely recognizes it is quite unusual for- Right ... for these texts. But whether this is a literary creation or just a feature of this time period, I don't know. I think both kind of have ways that they make sense to me.

Dan Beecher But- I mean- ...

Dan McClellan they're there ...

Dan Beecher no matter what, I find it remarkable that it's treated as unremarkable.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher The fact that this woman was given all of this power and authority, and there's no ink spilled to question her authority or her power or- Yeah ... or her ability as a prophet or anything like that. It's as assumed to be true as any of the men.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And we don't really get much questioning until we get to the pseudo Paul and 1 Timothy and- Oh, okay ... our interpolation in 1 Corinthians 14. That's when the claws come out. So they're going to go hang out around Mount Tabor, and they're going to try to draw Sisera and the enemy out to meet them there. And we've got this weird thing where Deborah summons Barak, and he shows up, and she tells him what the plan's going to be.

Dan Beecher And Barak is just an army general of some sort or something.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And he says in verse eight, "If you will go with me, I will go. But if you will not go with me, I will not go."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Kind of a weird thing. And she's like- You can- ... "Oh, I'm going to go with you, definitely."

Dan Beecher But- He's like, "I'm not going if you don't come, this is over. There's no way, man. No way."

Dan McClellan And she says, "I will surely go with you. Nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "For the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman." So we do have- Which- ... a bit of a tip of the hat to the fact that it is unusual that a woman- Right ... is stepping into this role. But this is not about Deborah.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan This is about somebody else.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I assumed it was about Deborah when she said that. I assumed that she was sort of obliquely referring to herself, but she wasn't. I also think that that's a weird thing to say to a guy who was just right then showing reticence about going at all. To be like, "And also, you're not going to get any glory. Some other lady's going to get all the glory. So have fun."

Dan McClellan And Barak is just like, "Okay."

Dan Beecher "All right. We'll just go then." And he gathers up his 10,000 men or whatever it was.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And armies from other neighboring tribes, I guess.

Dan McClellan Yeah. This is something that was pretty common at the time. When you had to go to war, you wanted to get all your friends involved- Yeah ... so that you had as much power behind you as possible. And Sisera shows up, they get the 900 chariots there, and 10,000 warriors are following Barak. And then it just says, "The Lord threw Sisera and all his chariots and all his army into a panic- ... before Barak." So Sisera falls off of his chariot and- Yeah ... I'm thinking of El Guapo at the end falling off his horse. "You stupid horse." And Barak pursues the chariots and the army, and they're going chasing after him, and then Sisera, he has fled away on foot. And he makes it to the tent of Jael, Adonai is El.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Or is God. Wife of Heber the Kenite.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan There was peace between this Canaanite and Heber the Kenite.

Dan Beecher And before we go on, I just want to- Yeah ... make it clear. Sisera fleeing, he's the only guy that made it alive. His entire army was destroyed by Barak.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And he's running away on his own. I also want to point out that every time I had to read the word Kenite- Mm-hmm ... all I could think of was Ryan Gosling in the Barbie movie because- ... Kenites got to have that Kenergy. That's all there is to it.

Dan McClellan So- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher Sisera is defeated already, but- Yeah ... he himself has not got got.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So he has fled to- His boss's wife's tent, which I thought was a little bit like, woo.

Dan McClellan Well, yeah, at least a comrade's wife's tent. And Jael comes out to meet him, says, "Turn aside, my lord, turn aside to me. Have-" Yeah, what does that mean?

Dan Beecher "...

Dan McClellan no fear." Turn aside. Oh, it's just, come on in.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan You're on a journey in a certain direction. Turn off the road.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan Take the exit, stop in- Okay ... to the tent. And it says she covered him with a rug. Hope it wasn't a very heavy rug. And then he asked for a little water. He's a little parched. So, she gets him some milk and gives him a drink, and tucks him back into his rug.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And he's like, "Just keep a lookout. I'm going to get a little shut-eye here."

Dan Beecher If anybody comes, tell them I ain't here.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And, so she grabs a tent peg and a hammer and just goes and basically nails his head to the ground.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Right through the temple.

Dan Beecher And it's explicit. It's funny because it skips over a lot of details, but does not skip over any details with this tent peg and hammer. Literally, "went softly." She, Jael, wife of Heber, took the tent peg and took a hammer in her hand, we had to know that it was in her hand- Mm-hmm ... and went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple until it went down into the ground.

Dan McClellan Yep. That is- You got to aim past the target. That's the trick.

Dan Beecher That's the key.

Dan McClellan Yeah. In martial arts, to break the board, you got to aim past the board. That's the trick. So she was- Homegirl knew how to drive a stake, man. Yeah, she had the fundamentals down.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And so, he was lying- Because you're only going to get only one shot at that one.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher If it's a glancing blow, you're in trouble.

Dan McClellan Yeah. He was lying fast asleep from weariness, and he died.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Aw.

Dan Beecher Yep. So Jael gets the glory on that one, and- Which is funny because she wasn't even part of the whole real battle, but she killed the final boss, I guess.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and Barak shows up at the tent, and you can see him run into the tent, and he's like, "I got you now. I'm going to get the glory." And then she opens the door, and he's like, "Oh."

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan "I bet you killed him already, huh?"

Dan Beecher I mean, Barak was told.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher He knew this was coming.

Dan McClellan And then we've got the Song of Deborah immediately after that, which tells- Yeah ... the same story over again.

Dan Beecher But- We go to Judges 5, and it's suddenly a poem, and it's like, whoa.

Dan McClellan Yeah. But there's some interesting features of this poem that a lot of people may not notice. And one of the things that the poem includes is Shamgar. I don't know if you noticed that. You mentioned that Shamgar, the one who killed 600 Philistines with an oxgoad- Right ... right at the end of chapter three.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan If you go into the song, verse six, it says, "In the days of Shamgar, son of Anath, in the days of Jael, caravans ceased and travelers kept to the byways." So they're kind of describing a Wild West scenario where- Yeah ... it wasn't safe to be out on the roads because there were brigands about.

Dan Beecher And so- If you're not careful, you're going to get killed with an oxgoad. It's dangerous out there.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And, we have this story about just basically how things are, they're causing trouble in the neighborhood.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Until we have in verse 12, "Awake, awake, Deborah. Awake, awake, utter a song. Arise, Barak, lead away your captives, O son of Abinoam." And one gets the sense that this poem is a lot older than the narrative, and so the narrative may have been constructed in light of the poem because Barak doesn't really have much of a role in the story. We have a bunch of people who are mentioned. They basically say, "All right, everybody who's for the Lord, for Adonai, come to battle against Sisera, the Canaanite." And it rattles off a bunch of names. "From Ephraim, they set out into the valley following you. Benjamin, with your kin. From Machir, marched down the commanders, and from Zebulon, those who bear the marshal staff." And we get a bunch of tribes, and most of them are the 12 tribes of Israel.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan But not all of them are here.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Because it lists those who came, and then it condemns those who didn't.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan But it doesn't mention Judah at all.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And some of the tribes have different names, like Machir is a different one, and Manasseh. They did not come to help. "To the help of the Lord. To the help of the Lord against the mighty." So one theory is that this may be poetry that's preserved from an earlier period before they settled on what the 12 tribes were going to be- Huh ... and what their names were going to be. That this is preserved from an earlier time. And it doesn't have the southern tribes.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Or it doesn't have Judah, and so maybe this is when Israel just referred to the Kingdom of Israel in the northern hill country. So there's a lot of debate about what all this means, but I think it's fascinating to think of this poem, at least the list of tribes, as a preservation of the earliest tribes of Israel before they went mainstream- Yeah ... and we get the 12 tribes that we know today.

Dan Beecher It does occur to me. I don't know what historians and academics say about this, but it seems very possible to me That oral histories were passed down in song and poetry- Oh, yeah.

Dan McClellan Absolutely ...

Dan Beecher for a long time, and that maybe that's the origin of many of these stories. We just don't have the songs that were the origin of these things.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher As you suggested, that this song predates the story, and then the story was just a reworking of the information contained in the song to make sense of it.

Dan McClellan I think that makes sense to me, just because the narrative contains much more detail.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And I think we've discussed it before, but you don't have historical narrative prose in alphabetic languages like Hebrew until the late ninth century BCE. And so prior to that, all the texts are either short little missives, or they are poetry.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And so, yeah, absolutely. The stories from prior to the rise of narrative prose would've been structured around poetry, because that's one of the ways to give structure to something in a way that makes it easier to remember.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Makes it sticky. Makes it catchy.

Dan McClellan Right. So whether it's meter or whether it's rhyme or whatever it is, that's one of the ways to help remember it. Whereas narrative prose, it's the fact that it's being committed to text that facilitates its later access. It's not something- Right ... that you've got to memorize. So poetry frequently is earlier than the narrative.

Dan Beecher And you mentioned time periods. One thing we didn't touch on is when is this story of Deborah meant to have taken place, and what time period do we think the text is from?

Dan McClellan So, the Book of Judges is not incredibly clear on time periods. It kind of is jumping regionally and chronologically around. But, in general, it would've been between 1200 BCE and Saul toward the end of the 11th century BCE. So, you've got around a 200-year span.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan But the reality is that most of these stories probably come from the ninth or the eighth century BCE. But this poem, The Song of Deborah, could come from before that. Possibly as early as around 1000 BCE.

Dan Beecher So, when this text was written, or especially not so much the poem, but chapter four rather than chapter five, that was likely written in, you say the 800s BCE, or?

Dan McClellan The ninth or the eighth century. More than likely, the eighth century. So that would be the 700s BCE.

Dan Beecher Okay. 700s, but about the 11th or 12th century. Is that what you said? Now I've lost the plot.

Dan McClellan 13th? It's probably looking back toward historical memories from much earlier, but- Okay ... probably not any further than around 1000 BCE.

Dan Beecher Okay. And are there any other texts, we'll be talking more about this, but are there any other non-biblical texts that affirm any of this story, or is this story- Oh, no ... basically, it's just here, and there's no way to verify any kind of historicity with this?

Dan McClellan There are some ways that people will track down place names. Like in one of the stories of David, it's like he got the booty and he split up the booty, and the booty went to the people from this town and this town and this town and this town and this town. And if you go dig into a lot of archeological stuff, you will find that those towns weren't inhabited in the time when David was supposed to be alive, but they were all inhabited in the 750s BCE or something like that. So you might be able to say, "So it sounds like this story, at least, was written in no earlier than this time period."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Okay. But apart from that kind of stuff, there's not really much that we can do. But there are some other fascinating things I wanted to point out in here. One of the things that I really enjoy is the fact that in verse 20, it says, "The stars fought from heaven. From their courses, they fought against Sisera."

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And so the stars are the heavenly bodies, the host of the heavens, and the host of the heavens just means the armies of the heavens. And here, they're actually functioning precisely as Adonai's armies, because they are- Okay ... they're in their courses. They're doing what they're supposed to be doing, but because they are divine beings and they are God's army, they are also capable of being deployed in battle. And so they fight against Sisera.

Dan Beecher Well, that would explain the confusion- Yeah ... that Sisera's army experienced. If they're getting laser beamed from the stars, that would- Yeah.

Dan McClellan ...

Dan Beecher that would explain why they went into a panic.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And then we have The Curse of Meroz. It says, "Says the angel of the Lord," which is probably a later part of the text, "Curse bitterly its inhabitants, because they did not come to the help of the Lord."

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And there's a theory about the rise of the nation of Israel that initially, we have a reference to Israel in the Merneptah Stele from around 1208, 1210 BCE, and it refers to Israel using a determinative for a people. So it's not a city state, it's not a kingdom, it's not a nation, it's just a people. And there's a theory that, well, there are a variety of theories associated with this, but the one that I think makes the most sense to me is that these were really just a bunch of scattered tribes, and if somebody came to cause trouble from outside, they banded together And they're like, "All right. We're going to become this little confederation," or amphictyony, if you want to borrow a term from further west in the Mediterranean. And if you were part of that organization, if they raised the banner, you had to go fight, and somebody would take up position as the head chief, the head warlord or whatever. And it sounds like some of these folks didn't come to the battle.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan They named the tribes that did, and they named the tribes that didn't, and the tribes that didn't got shamed for it. But one theory- Got put on blast. Yeah, got put on blast. One theory is that this was a seasonal thing, it was a situationally emergent thing, and then at some point, they just decided, "We need to stay together, and so and so is going to take up the throne as king." And then you've got the nation of Israel.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then, centuries later, we get the story about how, oh, Abraham gave birth to Isaac, who gave birth to Jacob, and Jacob gave birth to all of the tribes that are now confederated, and so we're all part of the same family.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so, that is probably all a later fictional literary creation from these tribes that originally probably were not genetically related, but just happened to occupy the same northern hill country.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher So, yeah. There you go. One of the parts that stuck out to me in the song, we're about to move on, but I just- Yeah ... they're talking about the spoils of the war.

Dan McClellan And we got Jael. Jael takes care of Sisera in the poem as well.

Dan Beecher Yes. That's right. So, we- So, all of the main plot points line up.

Dan McClellan Yep.

Dan Beecher And then just in case you were worried that this wasn't a sexist part of the book- ... because there were these women heroes, it does say that in the spoils of the war, "And are they not finding and dividing the spoil? A woman or two for every man." So, one of the spoils of war is women for everybody, and then the rest are dyed and embroidered clothes. So, those are the things of value, I guess. So, there you go. That's the story of Deborah. Very interesting stuff.

Dan McClellan Oh, hang on a second.

Dan Beecher Uh-oh.

Dan McClellan I'm looking at the context of this. "Out of the window she peered. The mother of Sisera gazed through the lattice. Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why tarry the hoofbeats of his chariots? Her wisest ladies make answer.

Dan Beecher Indeed, she answers the question herself. Are they not finding and dividing the spoil? A woman or two for every man.

Dan McClellan Spoil of dyed stuffs for Sisera. Spoil of dyed stuffs embroidered, two pieces of dyed work embroidered for my neck as spoil."

Dan Beecher This is Sisera's mom- Oh, I had missed that ...

Dan McClellan saying, "Why is Sisera taking so long? Dinner's getting cold."

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And then goes, "Oh, he's on the war path. He's raping and pillaging.

Dan Beecher He's-" He's gathering his women.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher A woman or two.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher There you go. And then- So, that's actually a disappointment. We don't know if women were divvied or not.

Dan McClellan That's just Sisera's mom just daydreaming about him- Okay ... coming back with a bunch of extra virgins.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Too bad he's a tent peg now.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher He dead.

Dan McClellan And then she says, "So perish all your enemies, O Adonai, but may your friends be like the sun as it rises in its might." I don't think I have taken note of who is doing the talking there before.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But that's such a poetic way to end this. It's like we got the battle, we got Jael nailing his head into the ground, and then it pans to- Cut to ... I'm thinking of a little Etruscan estate on the hillside, and she's looking- Yeah ... out the window, and the curtains are flapping in the breeze, and she's going, "You're-" And she's dreaming about all of the embroidered stuffs that she's going to get- Yeah.

Dan Beecher And- ... from when her son comes back a victor ...

Dan McClellan a rather ominous drawing to a close of- Yeah.

Dan Beecher Weird ...

Dan McClellan that narrative.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan I don't know why I never noticed that before. I had not caught that either.

Dan Beecher That's really interesting.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Cool. Well, you live and you learn, and we- You do ... both didn't catch that until just now. I love it. Let's move on to History's Mysteries.

Dan McClellan And who is the mystery guest for today? Well, I guess we already talked about it, it's no mystery anymore.

Dan Beecher We already mentioned David.

Dan McClellan It's David.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But yeah, I mentioned earlier that many people have written in to us to ask us to talk about David, the historicity of David, and also his son Solomon. Maybe we can touch on that a little bit as well.

Dan McClellan A little bit, yeah.

Dan Beecher But yeah, let's start with... Well, you can start wherever you want. I will say that I grew up, and the only thing I knew about David was that he killed a giant, which you ruined for us in a previous episode because- You're welcome ... because that wasn't David, or was it? And then when I actually read some of the book, I learned that he had a very special relationship with a guy named Jonathan. We won't get into that too much, but it does seem very intense.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But there's this whole thing about Saul, who is the king, and all this. Anyway, it's a big, long story. And a lot of time is spent on the rise of David, on David being pursued by Saul, and then eventually David becomes king.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And becomes like kind of the most important king in the history of Israel. Would that be fair to say?

Dan McClellan I think so, because a lot of the prophetic material, a lot of the stuff coming in the exile and after, is all about that longing for the glory days of the Davidic kingdom. And David's dynasty lasts longer than any other dynasty associated with the nations of Israel or Judah.

Dan Beecher So- And he's- ...

Dan McClellan his line is the longest reigning one ...

Dan Beecher and he's kind of credited with, we talked about these scattered tribes and all this stuff. He's kind of credited with consolidating everybody, and he took Jerusalem and then sort of made that home base.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm. And, talk more about sort of the contributions that he made, theoretically Because we're going to get into whether there was a he or not, and- Well, similar to the stuff with the judges, we have Saul, we have David, we have Solomon, and then we get the Jeroboam and the Rehoboam. God identifies somebody who says, "You're my guy," and then, he just can't lose for a little bit, and then it turns out he was a loser the whole time. And so God's like, "You're no longer my guy. This is my guy." So, it happens with Saul, it happens with David, it happens with Solomon, it happens with all of the kings. So, this cyclical thing that we got going on with the judges continues to go on, and there's a sense in which the story kind of bleeds from the judges, at least that the structure of these polities kind of bleeds into what's going on with Saul and David, because basically Saul is just the warlord who happens to be in charge when Israel decides, "Hey, we're just going to stick together as this larger unit rather than break back up into our tribes." So that's probably what happens if Saul is historical, takes the throne. And David, when we look at the narratives that talk about David's rise to the throne, we've got a handful of different things. There are things that are related to Saul, there are things that have nothing to do with Saul, and there are things that are very clearly literary inventions intended to pump David up and just make it seem like he was the chosen one all along.

Dan Beecher Right. Because it is confusing. Because David is not Saul's son- No ... which would be the traditional way that, mode of succession to- Right ... a kingship.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And that's a great point. David was not Saul's son, so why is David king? And so a lot of these stories are kind of intended to spackle over the holes in the story and- Right ... account for how this happened.

Dan Beecher And it feels that way. You can feel that as you're reading- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan the narrative.

Dan Beecher It feels like, "Oh, you're just plugging holes here. You're not actually telling-" And David and Jonathan- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan it's the exact same. Jonathan is Saul's son. Jonathan would be the heir to the throne, but from the instant the two of them are in the same room together, they can't keep their hands off each other.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And Jonathan, this little covenant ritual that they do that some people compare to a marriage, Jonathan gives him all of the symbols of his royalty.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Basically, Jonathan is saying, "You are the rightful heir, not me."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so that's very clearly this literary invention covering the holes, trying to make it seem like David got there through no fault of his own. He wasn't a warlord who just took over.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Jonathan's own son said, "This is the man."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And when it comes to Jonathan and David's relationship, you got a lot of strong feelings on all sides of this, but there are two, I think, decent books that cover the historical David, one by Joel Baden called "The Historical David," and the other by Jacob Wright, who we have had on the show, called- Yeah ... "David King of Israel" and "Caleb in Biblical Memory." And then they both talk about this to some degree, but anciently they didn't have a concept of a homosexual person or a heterosexual person.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Sex was a lot more fluid than that. Just like for someone who may be spending the rest of their life in prison, they might find themselves in a little more fluid orientation than otherwise. And so it wouldn't be entirely unheard of if this was a romantic relationship between David and Jonathan. We don't really think in earliest Israel, they really had a lot of concern for this kind of thing.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan The only concern we get is post-exilic, holiness code, priestly authors who are like, "Everything's supposed to be clean."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "And everybody's got to be clean. We got to purge the land." That's happening centuries down the road, in this little minority group, and so I don't think we have the data to say one way or another that this was or was not a romantic relationship. It's certainly plausible.

Dan Beecher And if- The data is you read the book and you go, "Oh, well- Yeah ... that seems really, really clear."

Dan McClellan Right. Well, yeah, it says that he loves him more than, his love for him exceeded the love of women.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Which could just be hyperbole. But it also could mean the love- Well, and they are con- ... was functioning as that way ...

Dan Beecher constantly praising each other- Yeah ... and hiding behind rocks and giggling.

Dan McClellan I don't know.

Dan Beecher It feels very clear to me. But- But then on the other side of the question, there's also the idea that, yes, in order for this story to work, we need Jonathan's buy-in- Right ... to David in order for him to give up his birthright of the kingdom.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher And so having him that sort of worshipful of this kid who is not even, I don't know, there's no real concept of nobility here, but he's the son of a sheep farmer or something like that.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Jesse is the youngest of eight sons of Jesse, and when you go back in time, if you were the eighth son, nothing was coming to you.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Nobody gives a crap about you.

Dan McClellan Yeah. You either went to join the army or the clergy.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan You had one of those two things, and so, David probably is a warlord, who was operating in the south when, whether it was Philistines or whoever putting pressure on them, David was probably in charge of some groups. And it's actually very close to the story of Jephthah. I don't know if you recall, this is Judges 11. So it starts off that Jephthah was the son of a man and a sex worker.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so Jephthah grew up in this guy's household, but all of this guy's legitimate sons were like, "Hey, we don't like you." "And you're not going to inherit anything." And they end up driving him off, and so he runs off, and he becomes a merc. He becomes the leader of a roving band of social outcasts and misfits. And it says the exact same thing about David.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That he went out, and he attracted all of the misfits and the outcasts, and they became a roving band of mercenaries or warriors. And so he seems to have made a name for himself as a warlord and was probably in charge of the groups that were taking care of fending off the encroachment of the Philistines in the southern territory, and that's probably how he got in good with Saul. Saul was like, "Hey, love what you're doing down there. Keep up the good work."

Dan Beecher Love your work. Huge fan.

Dan McClellan But in the story, it gets turned into, David played the harp and soothed the savage beast.

Dan Beecher Right?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Another point in the gay column. I'm sorry.

Dan McClellan And it's weird. Saul's like, "Who is this young man? I love the cut of his jib."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then he finds out who he is, and then the next chapter, Saul's like, "What are we going to do about this battle with this Philistine?" And David is out there, and he's like, "Who is this young man? I like the cut of his jib."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And you're like, "It's David again. It's still David."

Dan Beecher You already liked his jib.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher His jib is already currently liked. What are you doing?

Dan McClellan You know this man. And then we get the story with Goliath, which has been appropriated- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher from El Hanan.

Dan McClellan And so many of the stories are very clearly just ways for later authors to say, "No. David was legit. He had the right to be king. It wasn't like he just killed all the right people-" Right ... as most kings find their way to the throne.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But yeah. I think the historical David was probably a warlord, somebody who left the family and went off and joined a group of mercenaries and warriors, and they made a name for themselves. And Joel Baden makes an interesting point in his story about the historical David, that the text keeps saying that David just won battle after battle after battle against the Philistines but never discusses any territory changing hands.