By Catherine Hezser

 

In the popular imagination the biblical King David is seen as a murderer who committed adultery with Bathsheva, the wife of his army general Uriah, and brought about her husband’s death at the front line. This episode is already marked out in the Bible as the one sin that David committed before God (see 1 Kings 15:5: “David did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, and turned not aside from anything that He commanded him all the days of his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite”). The story of the transgression, as told in 2 Samuel 11, is followed by the prophet Nathan’s rebuke, David’s repentance, and God’s mercy upon him, along with God’s punishment (2 Sam. 12:13-14).

Michelangelo’s David. (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/%27David%27_by_Michelangelo_Fir_JBU002.jpg)

 

But rather than delving into David’s sin, both rabbis and patristic writers use him as an example of human pleading and God’s forgiveness. If David, who has done so many good deeds, is deserving of God’s mercy, how much more so ordinary people who lack his righteousness (Sifre Deuteronomy 26; cf. 1 Clement 17:5). Rabbis and church fathers claimed David as their ancestor and ethical role model, who could teach their own generation humility.

David anointed king by Samuel, Dura Europos Synagogue. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dura-Europos_synagogue#/media/File:Dura_Synagogue_WC3_David_anointed_by_Samuel.jpg)

 

David, king of Israel. Dura Europos Synagogue. (https://fracademic.com/pictures/frwiki/68/DuraSyn_Centre_sup_David_King.jpg)

 

Some Christian writers’ appropriation of David served to separate him from Judaism. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries C.E. authors such as Justin Martyr and Tertullian present David as a prophet who allegedly predicted Jesus as the Davidic Messiah. As a prophet of Christ he must be without sin. The christological association serves as a motivation to create a white-washed image. At the same time David is distinguished from the majority of Jews who did not become Christian believers. In Tertullian’s treatise The Shows (De Spectaculis) David is said to have warned against “the assembly of the impious,” that is, Tertullian’s Jewish contemporaries who refused to become Christians.

In late antiquity, both church fathers and rabbis laid claim to David as one of their most important ancestors. David became a heavily contested figure used to legitimize diverse beliefs and lifestyles. The New Testament gospels already present Jesus as the “son of David”. The assumption of David’s ancestry served to underline the claim that Jesus was the expected Messiah.

Although church fathers such as Eusebius of Caesarea (4th c. C.E.) knew that Davidic kingship came to an end with the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century B.C.E., Eusebius maintained that with Jesus “that very throne of David, as though renewed from its degradation and fall, was restored in the divine kingdom of our saviour” (Demonstratio Evangelica 7.3). Eusebius was aware of the Jewish rejection of this line of argumentation. He maintained that the biblical prophecy of an ever-lasting king of Davidic descent could not apply to Solomon or any other mortal ruler but only to Jesus as the son of God. Rabbis, on the other hand, claimed Davidic descent for Hillel the Elder, who may have been a contemporary of Jesus, and for the Palestinian patriarchs and Babylonian exilarchs of late antiquity. They thereby countered Christian claims that the Davidic lineage culminated in and ended with Jesus.

Both rabbis and church fathers were entangled in the question of matrilineal or patrilineal descent from David. Some church fathers argued that Jesus was a descendent of David through Mary (Justin Martyr), others through Joseph (gospels). Lineage through Joseph was complicated by the belief in Jesus’ conception through the Holy Spirit. Therefore some church fathers chose Mary as an alternative. Similarly controversial among rabbis was the Davidic descent of the Palestinian patriarch Rabbi Yehudah ha-Nasi and the Babylonian exilarch Rav Huna. A discussion in the Talmud Yerushalmi juxtaposes the two leaders and links heritage to social hierarchy (Talmud Yerushalmi Ketuvot 12:3, 35a). Perhaps rabbis were aware of the Christian disagreement about Jesus’ descent. In both cases ideology seems to have been prevailed over logic.

In patristic texts David is most often presented as a prophet who predicted Jesus as the coming Messiah. The question then arose how Jesus could be both the “son” of David and the prophesied Messiah, whom David allegedly considered superior to himself (cf. Matthew 22:41-46). How could he be of human ancestry and a super-human figure at one and the same time? Early Christians could not simply apply the biblical expectation of a Davidic king-Messiah to Jesus. Jesus was a rural preacher of humble origins rather than an aristocrat and royal contender, after all. The solution was to, on the one hand, claim that Jesus was of Davidic descent by, at the same time, arguing for his superiority over David. Thus, the Epistle of Barnabas argues that unlike David, Jesus “is not the son of man but the son of God… Behold, David calls him Lord and the son of God” (12:10).

Obviously, rabbis would not agree with such allegations. One strategy was to hold up the biblical belief in a future king-Messiah. In the rabbinic Midrash Genesis Rabbah a verse from Genesis 49:10 (“The scepter shall not depart from Judah…”) is applied to the king Messiah of the world-to-come (98:8). At the same time Jews are presented as superior to Gentiles, including Christians, in messianic times because they are already knowledgeable and observant of the Torah.

The second strategy was to ‘rabbinize’ David and present him as the ideal rabbinic forefather. This scheme is especially prominent in the Babylonian Talmud, where David is presented as a Torah sage. For this to happen, the rabbinic movement had to be extended backwards into monarchic times. While the Bible featured the prophet Nathan as David’s moral teacher, in the Talmud David has to defend himself before a rabbinic court. For his sin against Bathsheva and Uriah, David is said to have received a threefold punishment: “For six months David was afflicted with sara’at, and the Shekhinah left him, and the sanhedrin abandoned him” (b. Sanhedrin 107a).

One of the reasons for this Babylonian transformation of David in the 5th to 7th centuries C.E. could have been the loss of hope in the imminent arrival of a Davidic king Messiah who would redeem Jews from foreign dominion. Echatological ideas linked to David may also have been downplayed because of the Christian emphasis on Jesus’ second coming. In any case, rabbis were engaged in reclaiming the biblical ancestor for Judaism and turned him into a model Jew with whom they could identify.

The image of David was also contested in Jewish and Christian art of late antiquity. Interestingly, both Jews and Christians presented David in the guise of Orpheus the harp player. In a Jewish context these images appear in a wall painting in the Dura Europos synagogue (3rd c. C.E.) and on the mosaic floor of the Gaza synagogue (early 6th c. C.E.).

David playing the harp, Dura Europos Synagogue. (https://www.talivirtualmidrash.org.il/dura-europos-synagogue-david-as-orpheus-det-reredos/)

 

 

King David as Orpheus in a synagogue mosaic from Gaza. (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/King_David_as_Orpheus_in_a_synagogue_mosaic_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)

 

In Gaza this scene appears alongside David’s anointment and enthronement. In a Christian context the Orpheus typology appears in a catacomb painting in Rome (early 4th c. C.E.). The musician may represent Christ as a saviour figure.

Orpheus with animals. Roman mosaic, from Building A of the Piazza della Vittoria in Palermo. (http://art.lostonsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Palermo-Museo-Arqueol%C3%B3gico-Regional-Mosaico-de-Orfeo-rodeado-por-los-animales-Siglo-III-d.-C..jpg)

 

Orpheus adorned in Roman battle attire playing a lyre from the walls of the Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter. (https://azbukari.org/%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BA%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%BE-%D0%B4%D0%BE-%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B0-%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%B8-%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%BA-%D0%B1%D1%8A%D0%BB%D0%B3%D0%B0%D1%80/)

 

Aware of such typological identifications, some church fathers tried to raise awareness of the differences between Orpheus and David/Christ. Clement of Alexandria (2nd to 3rd c. C.E.) called Orpheus a “deceiver” who used music and poetry to seduce and destruct human beings (Exhortation to the Heathen). By contrast, David “exhorted to the truth and dissuaded from idols” (ibid.). David and Christ are “rescued” from a too close association with the Graeco-Roman mythical hero.

 

Catherine Hezser is professor of Jewish Studies at SOAS, University of London.

For a more detailed discussion see Catherine Hezser, “The Contested Image of King David in Rabbinic and Patristic Literature and Art of Late Antiquity”, forthcoming in: Construction of Ancient Judaism(s) Jens Schröter, ed. TSAJ, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.