Jonathan Kirsch - King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel

Engaging Dramatic Thought-provoking.

Columbus Dispatch

Excellent This spotlights one of the most commanding figures of the Bible, one who was exalted as a man after God's own heart.

Oklahoman

Surviving accounts of ancient Israel's King David contain the stuff of epics and blockbuster novels. Kirsch takes advantage of this in [his] biography. [King David has] enduring literary and psychological appeal.

Booklist

This book welcomes a wide audience to a scandalous, violent, and surprisingly familiar ancient Israel, and both educates and entertains.

Publishers Weekly

There's no question that in Kirsch's hands, the Bible is more exciting than a Saturday night B-movie special.

Beliefnet.com

Moses

Popular biblical interpreter Jonathan Kirsch goes to work on the Exodus story, by turns weaving and unraveling the narrative like an exegetical Penelope.

The New Yorker

[A] probing study Unlike the familiar, granite image of Moses, Kirsch sees a man torn by fits of violence, prone to arguing with God, marked by physical handicaps, reluctant to be a savior.

Los Angeles Times

The Harlot by the Side of the Road

Fascinating [An] insightful study of the Scripture stories your rabbi, priest, or pastor rarely talk about.

San Francisco Chronicle

The Bible was written for adults, not for children, and some of its stories may well be said to have been written for adults only. That is the message of Kirsch's well-pondered commentary and the best argument for why these episodes, so often passed over in blushing silence, deserve to be talked about out loud and (once or twice, anyway) even cheered.

J ACK M ILES
Author of God: A Biography

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Appendix

A Reader's Guide

Like everyone else, from Samuel, Saul, and Jonathan down to the present, Yahweh is charmed by David.

H AROLD B LOOM , T HE B OOK OF J

S omething crucial in human history begins with the biblical figure of King David. He is the original alpha male, the kind of man whose virile ambition always drives him to the head of the pack. He is the first superstar, a figure so compelling that the Bible may have originated as his royal biography. He is an authentic sex symbol, a ruggedly handsome fellow who inspires passion in both men and women, a passion expressed sometimes as hero worship and sometimes as carnal longing. He is the quintessential winner, as one Bible scholar puts it, and the biblical life story of David has always shaped what we expect of ourselves and, even more so, of the men and women who lead us.

At the heart of the Book of Samuel, where the story of David is first told, we find a work of genius that anticipates the romantic lyricism and tragic grandeur of Shakespeare, the political wile of Machiavelli, and the modern psychological insight of Freud. And, just as much as Shakespeare or Machiavelli or Freud, the frank depiction of David in the pages of the Bible has

He played exquisitely, he fought heroically, he loved titani-cally, observes historian Abram Leon Sachar. Withal he was a profoundly simple being, cheerful, despondent, selfish, generous, sinning one moment, repenting the next, the most human character of the Bible.

Above all, David illustrates the fundamental truth that the sacred and the profane may find full expression in a single human life, and his biography preserves the earliest evidence of the neurotic double bind that is hardwired into human nature and tugs each of us in different directions at once. Against every effort of Bible-waving moralizers who seek to make us better than we areor to make us feel bad about the way we arethe biblical account of David is there to acknowledge and even to affirm what men and women really feel and really do.

Indeed, the single most surprising fact about David is the rawness with which he is depicted in the Bible. David is shown to be a liar and a trickster, as when, threatened by an enemy king, he feigns madness to save his own life. He is an outlaw and an extortionist, as when he uses the threat of violence to solicit a gift from a rich man with a beautiful wife and ends up with both the bounty and the woman. He is an exhibitionist, as when he performs a ritual dance in such spiritual frenzy that his tunic flies up and reveals his genitalia to the crowd. He is even a voyeur, a seducer, and a murderer, as when he peeps at the naked Bathsheba, recruits her for sexual service in the royal bedchamber, and then contrives to kill her husband when she is inconveniently impregnated with a bastard. David, whose very name means beloved, attracts both men and women, inspiring sometimes a pristine love but more often a frankly carnal one. Some Bible critics, in fact, insist that David's famous declaration of love for his friend Jonathana love passing the love of womenought to be understood as an expression of his bisexuality.

All of these episodes are reported in the Bible bluntly and honestly, and sometimes with a touch of titillation. If the writing One of the overlooked secrets of the Bible is its earthiness and ribaldry, and nowhere are these qualities more extravagantly on display than in the biography of David.

At Forest Lawn, a cemetery in Southern California, mourners and tourists alike are invited to gaze upon a reproduction of Michelangelo's famous statue of David, faithful in every detail except one: David's genitalia are covered with a marble fig leaf. But the original statue itself is unfaithful to the truth as recorded in the BibleMichelangelo, apparently paying more attention to his model than to the Bible, depicts the greatest king of Israel as un-circumcised!