David, Saul, and God: Rediscovering an Ancient Story

by Paul Borgman

The biblical story of King David and his conflict with King Saul (1 and 2 Samuel) is one of the most colorful and perennially popular in the Hebrew Bible. In recent years, this story has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention, much of it devoted to showing that David was a far less heroic character than appears on the surface. Indeed, more than one has painted David as a despicable tyrant. Paul Borgman provides a counter-reading to these studies, through an attentive reading of the narrative patterns of the text. He focuses on one of the key features of ancient Hebrew narrative poetics -- repeated patterns -- taking special note of even the small variations each time a pattern recurs. He argues that such "hearing cues" would have alerted an ancient audience to the answers to such questions as "Who is David?" and "What is so wrong with Saul?" The narrative insists on such questions, says Borgman, slowly disclosing answers through patterns of repeated scenarios and dominant
motifs that yield, finally, the supreme work of storytelling in ancient literature. Borgman concludes with a comparison with Homer's storytelling technique, demontrating that the David story is indeed a masterpiece and David (as Baruch Halpern has said) "the first truly modern human."

Genres: Religion

335 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2008

Reviews

[Porter Sprigg · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s a helpful comparison of David and Saul with a lot of insight into Hebrew literary structures.

At times it’s difficult to trace the argument and it’s not the type of difficult that makes you want to try harder to understand but the type of difficult which makes you want to stop reading. I finished the first half in a week and then finished the second half in two months, mostly because of my struggle to sustain the attention required to understand.

[Randy Mccracken · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading Paul Borgman’s David, Saul, & God, I felt like I often do after devouring a satisfying meal. It is definitely one of the best books that I have read on 1&2 Samuel. Borgman’s careful attentiveness to the repetitive patterns in the books of Samuel, as a way of unlocking its understanding of David, Saul, & God, is refreshing and insightful. Borgman contends that uncovering and solving the questions posed by the story of 1&2 Samuel “depends on close attention to the dozen or so broad patterns (he actually enumerates 11) of repetition governing the narrative’s progress” (p. 3). Borgman makes the helpful suggestion that, “The story’s modern audience often misses answers to the central questions driving the drama of David’s story because the text is read in a straightforward manner, rather than in the circular way demanded by the ancient text’s dependence on patterns of repetition. That is, recognizing a developing pattern requires a remembering of what has gone before, a circling-back action of the mind” (p. 4, emphasis mine). Readers would do well to heed Borgman on this point, not only regarding David’s story, but Old Testament narrative in general.
The remainder of the review can be found at: http://www.biblestudywithrandy.com/20...

[Carl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grounded, challenging, and singular in approach.

[jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This treatment of David, Saul, and God proved to be an essential and very insightful narrative sensitive reading of 1 and 2 Samuel.