The Sins of King David: A New History

Rating:
Summary: Good Popularization of Bible research
Review: The Sins of King David: A New History by Gary Greenberg (Sourcebooks) An important radable popularization of recent biblical criticism and historical reconstruction. Throughout the Old Testament there has been no more popular name, no more beloved biblical figure, no greater icon than King David. Through the millennia he has been portrayed as a pious and humble man, a goodly king whose heart was with the Lord, a monarch who composed lyrical poetry, divine music, defeated a giant and warded off the enemies of the ancient Israelites.
The Sins of King David creates a different and altogether fascinating and thrilling portrait of the man. Gary Greenberg shows King David for what he really was-deceitful and corrupt, a tyrant and a murderer. From the slaughter of seven sons of Saul, whom he hung, and the death of Goliath, whom he did not slay, to the murder of one of his most loyal lieutenants, whose wife he seduced, he was not the man that history has embraced.

Follow King David and his subjects, successors and usurpers on a fantastic journey of discovery, and trace this unusual story through the written clues unearthed in one of the most holy texts.
The Bible offers two contradictory stories of David, one written by his allies, and the other by his adversaries. Only in the last century have scholars belonging to the Literary-Critical school of biblical analysis taken a fresh look at those conflicting stories, attempting to unravel the written skeins that weave through the biblical texts. This book is the fruit of those scholars' works, and the author's own endeavor, in which he attempts to portray David as the people of his time saw him and actually knew him.