King David: A Biography by Steven L. McKenzie

King David: A Biography Reviews

• 
  Greg

  This is a short monograph for a middle-brow audience that attempts a historic reconstruction of the life of king David from the biblical sources. It is written for a non-specialist audience with just the right amount of footnotes to other sources and is not overly technical. It is a middle-of-the-road reconstruction and contrasts with its near-contemporary work by Baruch Halpern, David's Secret Demons, also on king David, which brings much more extra-biblical evidence to bear and is much more speculative, but also written with much more verve. If one were to read both, start with this one to get the scholarly consensus presented, then read David's Secret Demons.
• 
  Micah

  This is definitely popular history. Not as bad a genre as true crime, maybe, or god forbid, narrative romantic non-fiction, but...
  
  Okay.
  
  This is my problem with popular history: There's a lot of this book that's pure speculation, fueled by the author's apparent self satisfaction at creating a portrait of King David as a sort of ruthless-yet-pathetic prototype for contemporary middle-eastern strongmen. If most of its conclusions are undeniably compelling - and they are - those that aren't sometimes go as far as to be at odds with the author's own methodology, forcing him to throw out historically credible chunks of biblical text and evidence in order to conform it to the narrative he's crafting.
  
  That said the book is actually pretty darn good. Or at least compulsively readable, which has to count for something. McKenzie can write. He can convey an idea clearly and concisely. In fact, he's done an admirable job at trying to cut through a lot of mythmaking and historical embellishment in an attempt to suss out the "realistically plausible" David. He's even mostly succeeded.
  
  The book's also short, thank god. I love short books. I'm a busy man.
  
  I plowed through this one in a few hours, instead of sleeping, and, as opposed to a lot of the books I've read recently, I don't want that time back.
• 
  jordan

  McKenzie offers a fun and popularized account of the life of David. However, the text he produces, far from being scholarly, often reads a bit like a tabloid account of King David. Deconstructing the book of Samuel, a Herculean and important task, has been accomplished elsewhere by serious scholars who offer very deep reconstructions of this most fascinating and contradictory character. Readers looking to explore the subject would do well to look for Professor B. Halpern's seminal work, "David's Secret Demons." While not as breezy in style, the book goes far deeper in uncovering its subject and will offer the reader far more food for thought. Therefore, if looking for an easy read, pick up McKenzie, but those with a serious interest in King David should put the time and effort into a more serious work. Please, take a look at Halpern; you won't regret it.
• 
  Nathan

  What can we know about David from a purely historical perspective? The answer: not much.
  
  While a very readable introduction to the historical David, this "biography" showcases our culture's endless obsession with a hermeneutic of suspicion. In the end, the quest for the historical David is too fraught with problems (our sources are simply too far removed) and should be abandoned. Research into the literary dimensions of the David cycle is, in my opinion, much more fruitful and exciting.
• 
  A.K. Klemm

  I want to read something more historically scholarly in nature, that doesn't contradict the Bible merely for the sake of contradicting the bible. Claims that something was stated so frequently that a reader must assume the opposite is true is nonsense and lazy logic. I love reading historical context and deeper cultural insights, but I got tired of this book mostly just quoting the bible merely so the author could say that the bible must have been falsified. It made something I was excited about reading very tedious. The entire book's purpose seems to be to argue the thesis that David was a manipulator and all the stories in the Bible are merely propaganda for his political career. The author only teases you with any actual archeological evidence, because there just aren't many sources for David's existence outside of the Old Testament. I think, overall, MacKenzie has missed the mark entirely. The story of King David is about how all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But God is merciful and full of grace. As flawed as David was, Yahweh still loved him and called him a man after His own heart... Why? Because in all his failings, David always looks back to God and says "Now what? How do I handle this in a way that brings You glory?" Even after he has sinned in grievous and horrific ways, he returns to God and repents.
• 
  Mohammed Khateeb Kamran

  All the information we have about the life of David is from the Bible which is itself an unreliable source. The author attempts to deconstruct the story from the Bible and present it in a coherent and realistic manner. The end result is a portrait that is quite different from the commonly known one. What is the truth about the events which are presented in the Bible is a question that is impossible to answer as there is no other source about them. My main criticism is that the author does not give much detail about the Hebrew society about that time and does not compare David's kingship to other middle eastern kings as he claims David was like the others.
• 
  Billie Pritchett

  Historian Steven McKenzie's King David: A Biography is a highly speculative work about the man over whom the Hebrew Bible spills the most ink, David, who the Bible claims was a man after God's own heart. The portrait McKenzie paints of David is a person of upper class who ingratiated himself with Saul, whether through the magic of music or military prowess or both, and then through shrewd maneuverings positioned himself to take Judah and then Israel, consolidating his power in Jerusalem and establishing a proper kingdom, however small, for the Israelites.
  
  I have no beef with McKenzie's portrait. Surely the Biblical account of David as being blameless for the deaths of Saul and his cohort is more defensive than historical and plenty of rationalizations must be made to turn what appears to be political jockeying to being responsive to Saul's aggression or merely a matter of right place, right time. What I have more of a problem with is that this isn't much of a good book and a more accurate, historical account of David you can get in brief from
  Introduction to the Bible by historian Christine Hayes. Compare that succinct summation there to this overly drawn, repetitive reconstruction. Often, the experience of reading McKenzie's David biography felt like watching someone try to get blood out of a turnip.
• 
  Sarah

  A bit slow at first, but a fascinating insight into the way historical information can be pulled from biblical texts. The right amount of story, history and acknowledgement of literary and artistic significance. The bibliography alone is astounding and McKenzie clearly knows his topic. I only doubt the infallibility of the apologetic inference method he employs on multiple counts. What if the subject of the apology is truly innocent?
• 
  Livi Riddle

  mid
• 
  Dale Rosenberg

  The author looks at the David story in the Bible and combining that with knowledge from other sources, attempts to discern what is true and what is embellishment or myth. An interesting exercise but, for me, anyway, ultimately unconvincing.