If you've read 1 Samuel, you've read them all.

Book: 1 Samuel

Synopsis: Samuel was a prophet, priest, and judge. He led Israel for a while before the Hebrews began demanding a king for themselves like the other nations had in what is possibly the first instance of keeping up with Joneses. God told Samuel to make Saul king. He did so but Saul kind of sucked as a king. God was all, "Saul sucks." And Samuel was all, "I know!" So Samuel told Saul that God rejected him as king and then Samuel anointed this other guy, David (yes, that David), to succeed Saul as king. Then, for some reason, Saul stayed king while David rose up the ranks by slaying Goliath and being a better military leader than Saul. This made Saul jealous and he tried to kill David, but David was too wily for that and Saul only succeeded in driving David out of town. While on the lam, David had two chances to kill Saul but he spared Saul's life each time because he's such a nice guy. After the second time, Saul stopped pursuing David and then Saul took his own life after being wounded in battle. Also, somewhere in there Samuel dies. That's pretty much where it ends.

Most Famous Story from 1 Samuel: David and Goliath.

My General Take: It's a slow read until David steps into the picture. Before that, it's a mostly innocuous book about Samuel becoming a prophet, the Ark getting stolen and returned by the Philistines, and Saul being chosen and rejected as king. David's story, however, is pretty juicy stuff (including a potentially homoerotic relationship with Saul's son Jonathan), if you can get beyond the archaic syntax. Which is probably why NBC based their show "Kings" on it (well, sans the homoerotic stuff. I think. I never watched it.). There are also some morals woven in, such as don't judge a book by its cover (sort of) and forgive those that have wronged you (sort of). But, taking it all in and then stepping back, it came across to me as an attempt to blend different word-of-mouth stories/tall tales about Samuel, Saul, and David into one cohesive narrative with modest results. Some of the stories were probably based on some real events and some were possibly created by Samuel, Saul, David, and/or other people to serve as political propaganda. It's hard to say for sure, and we probably can't know for sure, because all we have to go by is this one book. There aren't any other primary sources to verify this information and it's this inherently partisan sourcing that only pushes me further towards a skeptic viewpoint.

More Specifically: 1 SM 3 There is a point early in 1 Samuel where a young Samuel thinks he hears Eli calling for him three separate times and so he races to Eli each time only to have Eli tell him to bugger off. Until the third time when Eli realizes it must be the Lord calling to Samuel, so he sends Samuel back and tells him to listen to the Lord. I see two things wrong with this. The first is that this is the Lord we're talking about. I have a hard time picturing the Lord calling to Samuel and then just watching Samuel run out of the room three times in a row without saying anything. As if the Lord is incapable of saying, "No! No! Stop running! Stop! It's not Eli, it's me! The Lord!" Or why not just start out with, "Do not move, Samuel, for it is I, the Lord! ....I had to say 'Do not move' just now because I knew, what with being omnipotent and all, that you were going to think it was actually Eli calling to you. But no, it's me! Anyway, we need to talk."? The second thing is that people accidentally hear their name being called all the time. We even sometimes feel phantom vibrations from our cell phones. The difference is that now no one tells you, "Hey! Maybe God is trying to send you a text message!" That's because in modern times we're aware of the fact that the brain is capable of playing tricks on itself, so when we realize no one was actually calling us and we're just lonely, pathetic, and unwanted, we simply go back to our rooms and cry ourselves to sleep (right? that's what everyone does....right?). Opposite of that, in a culture where hearing the voice of God isn't only considered a possibility, it's encouraged, maybe you go back to your room and think you're a prophet. At which point you're either hallucinating and continue hearing voices or you want to be a prophet so bad that you convince yourself you're hearing voices. Or, possibly, you are hearing the voice of God, but then you gotta wonder why he didn't just say so in the first place.

1 SM 9:8-10 I just thought this was a funny exchange.

The servant answered Saul again, "Here, I have with me a quarter of a shekel of silver, and I will give it to the man of God to tell us our way." ... And Saul said to his servant, "Well said; come, let us go."

Yes, servant. Very well said, indeed!

1 SM 9:2 Saul is described as being very handsome and tall and it is Saul whom the Lord tells Samuel to choose for a king (or maybe Samuel ascribed the Lord's voice to his own feelings). When Saul turns out to be a bad king and Samuel starts looking for a replacement king, Samuel tells himself the Lord tells Samuel not to focus on outward appearances. This is a perfectly fine rule of thumb, and Samuel the Lord chooses David out of a group of brothers, of which David is the youngest/smallest, and David ends up being a great king. At which point we all learn that outward appearances aren't important! Except that for some reason it's necessary to point out to us that David has beautiful eyes and his handsome right before Samuel the Lord chooses him. In that case, being tall isn't important as long as you aren't an uggo.

1 SM 15:27-28 This moment, when Saul accidentally rips Samuels robe and Samuel talks about the Lord ripping Israel from Saul's hands, is a lot like something you'd read in a fictional or allegorical story. Don't you think?

1 SM 15:32-33 After Samuel the Lord tells Saul to destroy the nation of Amalek and everything in it, Saul, for some reason, spares the life of Agag, the king of Amalek. This is what makes Samuel the Lord angry enough to tear Israel from Saul's hands. After telling Saul this, Samuel asks him to bring Agag forward and then Samuel hacks him to pieces, which is pretty gruesome. But what I really want to talk about is a weird translation the ESV Bible uses. When Agag comes into the room, the ESV Bible has that he comes in "cheerfully" and says, "Surely the bitterness of death is past." Yet the ESV Bible annotates the word "cheerfully" and points out that the Hebrew word might actually be "haltingly." Now, I'm no expert on Hebrew or translating or Biblical whatever, but it seems to me that "haltingly" is almost definitely the more accurate word of choice in this situation. Having Agag come in "cheerfully" while seeking reassurance that he isn't going to be killed and then hacking him to pieces is almost comical.

1 SM 16:14-23 When Saul and David meet for the first time, it's because Saul is tormented by a harmful spirit from the Lord and only David's excellent skills on the lyre can soothe him. What's interesting to point out is that Saul learns about David and David's father Jesse throughout all of this and Saul likes David so much that he makes him his armor-bearer and sends messengers to Jesse to ask that David be allowed to remain in Saul's service. After this initial meeting, David goes and slays Goliath. Now here's where things get a little strange for me. When Saul sees this he says to Abner, the commander of the army, "Abner, whose son is this youth?" And Abner has no idea. So Saul orders him to find out and Abner brings David to Saul, at which point Saul says, "Whose son are you, young man?" And David tells him he's the son of Jesse. What. The. Hell. Didn't they already meet? Doesn't Saul already know who David is and that he's Jesse's son? Is it just me or does this sound like a bad attempt to combine two stories about how David came into Saul's inner circle?

1 SM 18:10-11 After Saul becomes jealous of David's fame as a military leader, Saul again is bothered by a harmful spirit from God. Meanwhile, David is playing his lyre, though now it's as if it's just something he does to pass the time. Saul has his spear in his hand and attempts to pin David to the wall with it but David evades him. Then, almost the exact same scene happens again a little later.

That's not the only story that gets repeated like that. There are two versions of David sparing Saul's life. Once here, and again here. While both of those versions have their differences, there are some key similarities:

1. Under hard to imagine circumstances, David has a chance to kill Saul.
2. David's men want to kill Saul.
3. David won't let them since Saul was anointed by God.
4. David stealthily takes something of Saul's.
5. David calls out to Saul after this happens.
6. Saul says, "Is this your voice, my son David?"
7. David compares himself to a flea in regards to how insignificant a threat he is to Saul.
8. Saul sees good things for David in the future.

Personally, I think this suggests the possibility that there were a few different stories about David floating around Israel and either they were put together in one book simply to preserve them or someone thought, "Hey! What if they both happened!? Oh! That sounds awesome!," and then wrote them down in one story. It's also possible that all these things actually did happen, but we have more evidence that different versions of urban legends/tall tales can exist over time than we do of these events actually happening.

1 SM 28 There's a brief story about Saul using a medium to conjure up the soul/spirit/whatever of Samuel. I thought that was really odd because I always thought that a soul either went to heaven or hell and I didn't think it could come back from either one of them. Also, wouldn't this story lend support to the idea of mediums? I asked some Christian friends and got a few different interpretations of what exactly is happening here, which tells me that this really was all just pieced together over centuries of different, and far removed from us, ideas about the supernatural realm.

Lastly, I'll cover real quick the potentially homoerotic stuff involving David. There is, as you can imagine, a large amount of debate over the issue so I'll just present some of the details and let you make your own decisions.

David was a gay:

1. 1 SM 18:1-3 Jonathan's soul is knit to David's soul. Jonathan loves David as his own soul. Jonathan and David make a covenant.
2. 1 SM 19:1 Jonathan delighted much in David.
3. 1 SM 20:3 David finds favor in Jonathan's eyes.
4. 1 SM 20:17 Jonathan makes David swear again by his love for him.
5. 1 SM 20:30 Saul is angry at Jonathan over his ties to David saying, "You son of a perverse, rebellious woman, do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame, and to the shame of your mother's nakedness?" (the key here is that Saul references his mother's nakedness possibly suggesting a negative sexual nuance)
6. 1 SM 20:41 After it's obvious David must flee to save his life, Jonathan and David kiss each other and weep together, with David weeping the most.
7. 1 SM 23:17 Jonathan swears that David will be king of Israel and that he will be next to him. Then they make another covenant.

David was not a gay:

1. 1 SM 16:21 Saul also loved David.
2. 1 SM 18:27 David obtained the foreskins of 200 Philistines in order to marry Saul's daughter Michal (we'll ignore that he obtained twice the amount of foreskins that he was asked to get and also that it was the request for foreskins that pleased him). However, while it is mentioned that Michal loved David, it is never mentioned that he loves her.
3. 1 SM 25:39-40 David takes a woman named Abigail as his wife.
4. 1 SM 25:43 David took another woman named Ahinoam to be his wife at the same time.

Obviously it's unclear. And obviously platonic kissing between men, especially in that region, isn't uncommon today. Nor is use of the word love. Still, there is another piece of evidence that doesn't show up until 2 Samuel, but I guess you'll have to read my next blog to hear about that.

I'll leave you with a cool article about Michelangelo's David and why his penis was disproportionately small.

-Nikko

Understanding the Skeptic: The Question (That's the final Understanding the Skeptic post. I really REALLY need to catch up. Unless Lane decides to pick up another book. Well, either way, I need to catch up.)