KING DAVID: the Golden Age of Ancient Israel, Vol 1, launches an epic serial novel in 4 volumes. Most comprehensive account yet: the man, the life, the times. From a novelist’s viewpoint, it offers a wealth of new detail. In toto, 900 pp. Brain slice of the early faith frozen In utero. Told in an easy-read style, rich with love, adventure, comic flair and irony. BG influenced by Hebrew scholars like Aharoni, etc. Updated maps. Characters developed include Rizpah, Saul, Abner, Jephthah, Joab, Achish, etc.
All previous adaptations of the biblical accounts of David (Samuel, Chronicles, Kings) took imaginative liberties. They tended to focus on fancied romance and to ignore David’s actual achievements, timeline and surrounding characters. They often pair him with Bathsheba, as of similar ages. But we now suspect he met her in his mid years when she was a teen. The liberties taken in this panoramic series help the story meld into 2 Shakespearian dramas over succession to a throne. And to explain Saul’s manic rage over David.
The pulse is fast. A prime mover of history, David rode the crest of a critical wave of change. He became a different kind of king. In how he gained the throne through merit, protected his people and ended up creating the first durable nation state in the Levant. A far cry from the divine kings all around him. This allowed the first ethical monotheistic religion to enter its formative stage even before its oral traditions had passed into its earliest alphabetic scrolls.
It was an age when people took their ethnicity from the language they spoke. The peoples of Canaan all spoke West Semitic Canaanite, despite their origins, but in different dialects (think JFK and LBJ). The most widespread dialect was Hebrew, in much larger numbers than formerly believed. Especially when we count the 12-Tribes unaffiliated Hebrews.
Vol 1 The Luck Children tells of how young David and his female counterpart, Rizpah, meet in the palace of King Saul as adolescents. Rizpah becomes a concubine in Saul’s second harem; David, a minstrel whom Saul sees as a luck child. In the glumness of the gray castle walls, they bond under the eyes of the palace court, risking their lives in a magnetic secret love.
Saul was in his gravy-licking days as titular ruler, a former donkey herder. Most of the 12 Tribes would not recognize him. He is not too sharp and easily manipulated by Rizpah’s bed strategy to raise her into the queen’s harem. Her risky tryst with David then becomes even more hair raising as David manipulates himself into the frontline warrior ranks, winning fame and wounds through dreams of glory and his danger-daring streak. Until Saul gets the first crushing inkling that he has been cuckolded. During Saul’s near mouth-frothing collapse, David flees.
He ends up in the Judaean desert, a reluctant prince of Israel through a plan-gone-awry marriage he never wanted, to Saul’s youngest daughter. The scene is now set for a later short list to succeed Saul’s vacant throne. It would include the two lovers, long separated by then, but not in their hearts. But at this black moment, he is Joseph in the pit. How he rose again like Joseph is covered in Vols 2 and 3. In Vol 4, as firmly seated king and overachiever, in the blackest of moods at his advancing years and declining appetites, he spies Bathsheba at her sponge bath on the roof of a nearby building in the palace complex housing his chief vizier, the Canaanite Ahitopel. It made him feel young again. But their marriage was anything but happy.
All previous adaptations of the biblical accounts of David (Samuel, Chronicles, Kings) took imaginative liberties. They tended to focus on fancied romance and to ignore David’s actual achievements, timeline and surrounding characters. They often pair him with Bathsheba, as of similar ages. But we now suspect he met her in his mid years when she was a teen. The liberties taken in this panoramic series help the story meld into 2 Shakespearian dramas over succession to a throne. And to explain Saul’s manic rage over David.
The pulse is fast. A prime mover of history, David rode the crest of a critical wave of change. He became a different kind of king. In how he gained the throne through merit, protected his people and ended up creating the first durable nation state in the Levant. A far cry from the divine kings all around him. This allowed the first ethical monotheistic religion to enter its formative stage even before its oral traditions had passed into its earliest alphabetic scrolls.
It was an age when people took their ethnicity from the language they spoke. The peoples of Canaan all spoke West Semitic Canaanite, despite their origins, but in different dialects (think JFK and LBJ). The most widespread dialect was Hebrew, in much larger numbers than formerly believed. Especially when we count the 12-Tribes unaffiliated Hebrews.
Vol 1 The Luck Children tells of how young David and his female counterpart, Rizpah, meet in the palace of King Saul as adolescents. Rizpah becomes a concubine in Saul’s second harem; David, a minstrel whom Saul sees as a luck child. In the glumness of the gray castle walls, they bond under the eyes of the palace court, risking their lives in a magnetic secret love.
Saul was in his gravy-licking days as titular ruler, a former donkey herder. Most of the 12 Tribes would not recognize him. He is not too sharp and easily manipulated by Rizpah’s bed strategy to raise her into the queen’s harem. Her risky tryst with David then becomes even more hair raising as David manipulates himself into the frontline warrior ranks, winning fame and wounds through dreams of glory and his danger-daring streak. Until Saul gets the first crushing inkling that he has been cuckolded. During Saul’s near mouth-frothing collapse, David flees.
He ends up in the Judaean desert, a reluctant prince of Israel through a plan-gone-awry marriage he never wanted, to Saul’s youngest daughter. The scene is now set for a later short list to succeed Saul’s vacant throne. It would include the two lovers, long separated by then, but not in their hearts. But at this black moment, he is Joseph in the pit. How he rose again like Joseph is covered in Vols 2 and 3. In Vol 4, as firmly seated king and overachiever, in the blackest of moods at his advancing years and declining appetites, he spies Bathsheba at her sponge bath on the roof of a nearby building in the palace complex housing his chief vizier, the Canaanite Ahitopel. It made him feel young again. But their marriage was anything but happy.
