The Historicity of David

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

This is Michael Medved. Otto von Bismarck, the Chancellor of Germany, once said that God offers special protection to drunkards, lost dogs, children and the United States of America.

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Dan McClellan (0:30)

Saul was like, hey, love what you're doing down there. Keep up the good work.

Dan Beecher (0:35)

Love your work.

Dan McClellan (0:37)

But in the story, it gets turned into, David played the harp and soothed the savage beast. Right?

Yeah.

Dan Beecher (0:45)

Another point in the gay column. I'm sorry.

Dan McClellan (0:53)

Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher (0:55)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan (0:56)

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things, Dan?

Dan Beecher (1:09)

Man, things are good. I'm out here combatting misinformation like a dang superhero on your T-shirt or something.

Dan McClellan (1:17)

It's the amazing Spider-Man today. Those of you who are listening to us through the listening channels don't get to see that.

Dan Beecher (1:26)

You're rather famous for it.

You got two things you're famous for. There's the sort of the Bible scholar thing, and that's like, whatever, okay, that's fine. And then there's this T-shirt thing that you do.

Dan McClellan (1:41)

It is a thing that I do.

It's nice, though, because when I go speak at universities, I give lectures and like named lectures, they're like, this is the doctor so and so lecture. And I show up in a thing T-shirt and I'm like, is this OK? And they're always like, absolutely. That's what we wanted you to do.

Dan Beecher (1:58)

And and your institution can't fire you for it because because this is it. This is the only institution you got.

Dan McClellan (2:05)

Yeah, this is as institutional as I get. So yeah, we have a great show on deck, don't we?

Dan Beecher (2:12)

Yeah, speaking of heroes, you know, last week we did a thing called Biblical heroes?

SPEAKER_5 (2:18)

Question mark. And yeah, it was like, is Enrique Iglesias really a hero?

Dan Beecher (2:25)

Yeah, it turns out he it turns out he very much is.

But so we've got some more question mark heroes here. But interestingly, our first chapter in verse, our first segment is going to involve lady heroes, which I think is awesome.

Dan McClellan (2:40)

Yeah.

Dan Beecher (2:41)

And the second, our second half of the show is going to be a history's mysteries where we discuss David by popular demand. Historicity has come up a few times from from listeners.

Dan McClellan (2:56)

So, yeah, they want to know, is is this real?

Dan Beecher (3:00)

Yeah.

Dan McClellan (3:01)

What is historical about the story of ye old King David?

Dan Beecher (3:06)

So the biblical figure, the one of the most important figures in the Bible, constantly mentioned thereafter. And so we'll we'll we'll get to the to the bottom of it. And by the end of the show, you will know definitively the historicity of David.

Dan McClellan (3:24)

More or less.

Dan Beecher (3:25)

I'm making that promise on Dan's behalf. But first, let's dive into a chapter and verse.

Dan McClellan (3:34)

All right, what are we looking at?

Dan Beecher (3:37)

So this is from the Book of Judges. And we're looking at Judges chapters four and five, which are both sort of the same thing, but in different form.

Dan McClellan (3:51)

We've got a bit of a historical narrative going on with with our judge. Well, it's actually about Deborah and Barack. And then we've got the famous song of Deborah in Judges chapter five, which is some poetry that some scholars think may be among the oldest poetry in all the Bible. This might be really, really old.

There is disagreement about that.

Dan Beecher (4:19)

What isn't there disagreement about? I think our listeners have gotten to the point where they understand that like basically everything that we say, there's disagreement about it.

Dan McClellan (4:27)

Yeah, absolutely.

Dan Beecher (4:30)

So yeah, dive in a little bit. Yeah.

Dan McClellan (4:33)

Well, let's set the table a little bit regarding Judges.

Dan Beecher (4:36)

Okay.

Dan McClellan (4:37)

Because the Book of Judges is a collection of a bunch of stories about people who judged in Israel. Right.

Dan Beecher (4:44)

We talked about Samson last week.

Dan McClellan (4:47)

Talked about Samson, yeah.