I always like to go through the narrative of David’s call to kingship as found in 1 Samuel. Right off the bat, we see three different narratives:
- He is chosen and anointed king by Samuel (1 Samuel 16.1-13).
- David is chosen due to his musical skill in healing King Saul’s depression (1 Samuel 16.14-23).
- He slays the mighty warrior Goliath, thus proving his favor with God (1 Kings 17).
Right away, a careful reading of these events shows us that there are certainly layers to these stories and that they cannot all be completely accurate, at least not as they have come down to us historically. For example, a careful reading of 1 Samuel 17 will reveal that Saul has no clue who David is when he kills Goliath, even though in the previous chapter David spends time healing Saul of his depression!
Bruce Metzger and Michael Coogan put it this way:
There is general agreement that the final form of the work (David’s story in 1-2 Samuel) belongs to the period of the exile (586-540 BCE). On the other hand, dates for individual component units of the work vary from near the time of the events depicted to the time of final completion, a span of some 500 years. (Bruce Metzger and Michael Coogan, The Oxford Companion to the Bible, p. 153)
In other words, what we have here in these accounts are stories that have been collected, told (orally!), and retold over hundreds of years. It is likely that over time these accounts have been blended, and repackaged by those in charge to accentuate truths that were beneficial at the time.
Joel Baden has written a book about the complexities of David, his court history, and the way that these accounts were written for specific purposes and by whom. I include two very important chapters (5-6) of The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero as an example of the messiness of the text here.
Here are the slides that we cover in class when we teach 1-2 Samuel.