The Historical David | Joel Baden | The Bible for Normal People

Biblical Politics and Apologetics | Shaping the Narrative | Admit and Subvert

Religion, Politics, and Biblical Interpretation

The Tension between the scribal apologists for Kings and Priests vs the challenge of the voices of the Prophets and Visionaries.


The Bible for Normal People:
https://thebiblefornormalpeople.com/

The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero

Joel Baden, a leading expert on the Old Testament, offers a controversial look at the history of King David, the founder of the nation of Israel whose bloodline leads to Jesus, challenging prevailing popular beliefs about his legend in The Historical David.

Baden makes clear that the biblical account of David is an attempt to shape the events of his life politically and theologically. Going beyond the biblical bias, he explores the events that lie behind the David story, events that are grounded in the context of the ancient Near East and continue to inform modern Israel.

The Historical David exposes an ambitious, ruthless, flesh-and-blood man who achieved power by any means necessary, including murder, theft, bribery, sex, deceit, and treason. As Baden makes clear, the historical David stands in opposition not only to the virtuous and heroic legends, but to our very own self-definition as David’s national and religious descendants.

Provocative and enlightening, The Historical David provides the lost truth about David and poses a challenge to us: how do we come to terms with the reality of a celebrated hero who was, in fact, similar to the ambitious power-players of his day?

When centralization and order is injustice. The Judgement of Chaos is soon to follow.
When Scribes Collide | History and Theology

The Wilderness Narratives in the Hebrew Bible: Religion, Politics, and Biblical Interpretation
Erisman's study draws from literary and historical criticism...

through Herrman Gunkel. Erisman reimagines his vision of a literary history grounded in communal experience as a history of responses to political threat before, during, and after the demise of Judah in 586 BCE. She explores creative transformations of genre and offers groundbreaking new readings of key episodes in the wilderness narratives. Offering new answers to old questions

The Bible we have today went through a process of evolution. The text went through Selection and Adaptation. It was a selective and adaptive process. A rolling text with added introductions, conclusions, interpolations, interpretations, variations, and selective compilations.
It had pressures of environment (social and political) that shaped and reshaped it through time. It also had catastrophic events like war and exile that created bottlenecks and creative mixing that added to its evolution and content.
It had political interest from Kings and Priests. It had political resistance from prophets and desert sages and revolutionaries.

Submission vs Resistance
Interpretation and Power
Kings and Priests vs Prophets and Rebels
The Palace vs The Desert
How Politics reshapes and reforms textual meaning
Rolling text
Scribal Variation and interpretation
Interpolation
Selective
Adaptive Theology
Christianity is Process Theology
Biblical theopolitics

#seminary
#biblestudy

Biblical Theopolitics | Submission and Resistance | Angela Erisman #bible #politics #theology #god


Multiple Voices | Scribal battles | Kings and Priests | Rebels and Prophets

The power of the scribe to transform the stories to suit the theological and political dominate narrative.

When History is molded, overwritten, and transformed for the Theological and propaganda purposes of the author.
Biblical Politics, Polemics, Apologetics, Propaganda

Elhanan and Goliath | Biblical Politics and Apologetics #bible #davidandgoliath #religion #houseofdavid

David and Goliath, Elhanan and Goliath
Twins, bible doublets
House of David