Was the OT written to fit the story of David?
Offline Biblical errancy isn't the ideal place for this question, but I'll give it a shot here, anyway. I recently ran across the conjecture that Biblical events going all the way back to Genesis were tweaked or even fully created to prepare the reader/hearer for the exploits of King David, who in this line of thinking is the central figure of the ancient Hebrew religion, kind of like the Hebrew Gilgamesh. In support of this hypothesis, it is suggested that all of the stories describing sons lower in the birthing order being more successful than their elder brothers is meant to remove the oddness of David, being the baby brother in his own family, being selected to replace Saul. This story does repeat several times in the stories of the patriarchs: Isaac is selected over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau and Joseph over his ten older brothers. Furthermore, there are stories of the patriarchs deceiving people and engaging in sexual dalliances, all of which are at least similar to David's exploits, and could potentially serve as some kind of apologetic ammunition. I'll admit to finding this idea very compelling, and I'd like to know if the scholars have much to say on the subject.
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It seems to have been a common theme from the time. The Egyptian Tale of Two Brothere has the youngest son becoming Pharoh before the eldest, for instance. Then again, that tale seems to be a prototype for the Osiris/Horus story as well.
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Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
And Zeus is the youngest of the first six Olympians yet king of the gods, but commonality of the story aside, the question remains.
"The whole conception of God is a conception derived from ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men."
--Bertrand Russell
It's an intriguing question. I have absolutely no idea what the answer is.
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Might I impose an answer; yet only on speculation. Where ever and when ever an Indo-European tribe migrated to a new area there was suddenly a story of two brothers in conflict. Dharam & Veer (India 2200 BCE) Cain & Able (1800 BCE) Castor & Pollex (Greece 1200) Romulus & Rhemus (Rome 800BCE) Dana & Darien (my brothers 1980's CE +).
The one conclusion I come to is that the Indo-European tribes that migrated out of what we call the Russian Steppe had a tribal legion about two brothers in conflict and passed it on to the area they settled in.
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I think it likely that the David myth was just the latest in a long tradition of youngest son success stories. In the same light, the OT wasn't written to justify Jesus. The authors and later apologists had to do a lot of stretching of credibility in order to make OT ' prophecy ' fit Jesus. In many cases they had to ignore entire chapters of supporting context in order to pretend that a specific line was messianic prophecy. Were they going to write a back story for David, surely they would have went back and edited it to make Jesus fit.
Regardless as to how the story was written though, the authors had to possess a lot of moral ambiguity to call David a hero.
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
The idea of the youngest son is a mythic way of expressing the idea that the ways of the world are in some way wrong, or insufficient, or that people have lost their way. The youngest son comes along, deals with the ways of the world, overcomes them, and champions the new way.
It can be used both to advocate for change, and to advocate for tradition. The point is rhetorical. The 'ways of the world' are the system you're trying to change, and the 'youngest son' is the hero that represents the system you're proposing. If you see that society is losing touch with tradition, then you portray the 'ways of the world' as decadent and chaotic; the 'youngest son' then represents tradition and comes to 'restore'. If you see that society is stuck in its outdated ways, then you protray the 'ways of the world' as rigid, corrupt, and dying; the 'youngest son' then represents change and comes to 'overthrow'.
It's really just a way of making a rhetorical point.
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Maybe some aspects, but ultimately your theory doesn't work out. The Pentateuch and the historical books were mainly based off the Babylonian Exile and the history of polytheism/ henotheism of the Judean and Israelite monarchies. The Psalms were written partly as lamentations over the exile. Chronicles was essentially a rewriting of Kings in the 4th-3rd centuries. Ezra added a lot to the Pentateuch, and the later books such as Daniel were written specifically about the Babylonians (at least the first six chapters). The book of 1 Enoch (in some Orthodox bibles) was about the wars between Seleucid and Ptolemy after the death of Alexander. Furthermore, there are parts of Genesis that actually match up with the 1700-1600's BCE (Kenneth Kitchen has a great article about it). So essentially, the OT was written over a really really really long time, and there was no one specific reason for writing it all.
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As DamnDirtyApe noted in his original post, nobody in this thread has made any specific assertions of an inconsistency in the Bible. I hope you guys will post non-inconsistency threads in a more appropriate forum.
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