David, King of Israel, and Caleb in Biblical Memory" is a marvelous work of scholarship and popular writing. The text is crisp and clear, accessible to lay people but with plenty of new insights for scholars in the field.
Any new book about David confronts a question: Why read it? Many earlier books explore the David stories from the viewpoint of archaeology, biography, and Bible study. Everyone knows the story of David and Goliath. Hasn't the subject already been done to death?
The answer is that Wright's book isn't just about David. It uses the David stories as a springboard to examine social and political issues that the stories raise. It proposes a new way to analyze the Bible and understand its composition. Finally, it offers a lively narrative that will hold the interest of lay readers as well as scholars.
As befits a book for a general audience, "David" retraces what is already known about its subject. Much of that material will be familiar to academic students of the Bible. Scholars agree, for example, that ancient editors combined multiple source documents to produce the Bible text we have today. Less known perhaps, someone other than David probably slew Goliath, if he existed: Marc Brettler mentions this in his book How to Read the Bible.
Where Wright's book excels - and sometimes startles - is with its insights about David, his story, the social goals that generated the text, and what they illustrate about human society in any era, ancient or modern.
Conventional wisdom sees two main strands in the Book of Samuel: the older "Ark Narrative" and the later [Davidic] "Succession Narrative." Wright divides the material differently, finding a "History of David's Reign/Rise" and a "History of Saul's Reign/Rise" by grouping passages that refer only to one or the other. The grouping generates two coherent stories, one about David and the other about Saul.
So grouped, the David story corresponds closely to earlier legends of the Hebrew warlord Jepthah and the Turkish warlord Idrimi. It deals only with David's activities in Judah. Nothing about his interactions with Saul or his kingship of Israel is required to complete the story.
That implies two surprising conclusions. First, it suggests that the David and Saul stories were originally independent. Later editors combined them and wrote new material about interactions between David and Saul. Second, it implies that contrary to received opinion, stories about David's kingship of Israel are not among the oldest parts of the Bible: instead, they were created later to provide supportive foundation myths.
Wright extends the documentary model by focusing on the social and political reasons for the editors' decisions. As he says, their decisions were "firmly rooted in the common social activities by which political communities negotiate belonging and status." This leads to new ways of looking at the David stories, with obvious implications for modern society.
The book pays special attention to war commemoration, by which societies use war stories to foster social cohesion, to legitimize the authority of some groups, and to cast aspersions on other groups: "The biblical writers appealed to memories of wartime contributions and sacrifice as they treated issues of belonging ... The ubiquity of war in the Bible must be appreciated in view of its authors' larger political project ... to fashion a collective identity." Wright notes that the same principle applies today, as women, gays, and minorities try to show their own "belonging" through military service.
In summary, "David" is a delightful book that manages to be clear and accessible without neglecting good scholarship. General readers will enjoy its portrait of David and its political insights. Serious students of the Bible will find its new perspectives on the material a good starting point for their own thinking.
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