Initial thoughts on Van Seters' "The Biblical Saga of King David"

Van Seters traces an original story and a later expansion of the story of David's rise to power and reign. The original account he ascribes to the Deuteronomist (Dtr) and places its composition at the end of the monarchy. (Though he argues that even if Dtr is was composed later, it still precedes the other account.) The expansion of the narrative he labels the David Saga (DS). This text, which is effectively 1 Sam 16:14-1 Kings 2 as we have it, takes the original Dtr account of David and radically subverts the themes within it.

Van Seters claims that the Dtr account of David functions as the center of the larger Dtr corpus. The establishment of the iconic king is necessary for Dtr in order to link the traditions of the north/Israel (Moses, the judges, etc.) with the Judahite tradition of David. Thus, David function to unite the kingdom and established an archetype for the ideal king.

In the DS account, the author subverts nearly all of the main parts of Dtr's ideology. David is portrayed as manipulative with a number of key characters in the narrative. Yet at the same time, David is constantly manipulated by Joab, among others. In the end, the very prophet who condemns David in his adultery with Bathsheba manipulates David's choice of heir. David and his family are shown breaking law after law (murder, adultery, incest-rape, theft, etc.) while the Dtr account claims that David was the king par excelance. By the end of the narrative, DS is subverting the very nature of the monarchy (Saul does no better than David, nor Solomon).

Van Seters places the composition of DS in the late Persian era. The court and military portrayed in it match Persian culture. With the end of exile, there would have been many political questions being asked. DS poses the question: Do we really want a monarchy? Van Seters points to Chronicles as the response to DS, in which the monarchy is presented as much more palatable.

Van Seters labels the genre of the account by Dtr as historiography. He calls DS a saga. In the case of Dtr, he claims it was an attempt to de-mythologize the past of Israel-Judah. For DS, the sagas he compares it to are the Icelandic sagas, specifically Njal's Saga. Sagas were used to create serious entertainment from history. Historiographical works were often used as sources. Feast, violence, and feuds are just some of the hallmarks of these sagas. All of these items are found in DS. However, like Njal's Saga, DS uses these ironically to remove the nostalgic veneer from the past.

Engaging White's terminology, I would label the Dtr account of David as a Conservative Romance with a Mechanistic argument: change occurs at YHWH's decree, David emerges victorious and establishes an utopian (or proto-utopian) kingdom.  The DS account is then an Anarchist* Satire with a Formist argument and heavy use of irony: David, the "perfect king," abuses royal and religious power, which is something every king does. The Anarchist designation is a bit arbitrary. DS mostly critiques the Dtr account. DS paints change as the arbitrary outcome from the personal machinations of political actors. As Van Seters has defined it, DS does not present how change should happen nor the society it envisions as ideal. It shows the possibility of abrupt change, but its argument is mostly aimed turning away from a particular vision, rather than presenting its own.