The Book of David: A New Story of the Spiritual Warrior and Leader Who Shaped Our Inner Consciousness - Hardcover

Rosenberg, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517708000 ISBN 13: 9780517708002

Publisher: Harmony, 1997

Synopsis

In 1990, David Rosenberg and Harold Bloom published the audacious New York Times bestseller The Book of J, which identified one of the earliest writers of the Bible to be a woman. Now David Rosenberg returns with The Book of David, which redefines the meaning of spirituality in our time. In this book, another great writer, often called the Court Historian or Western civilization's first novelist, is given back to us, and in place of conventional myths we find inspired images of who we are today.

Our ancestors read the Bible sure of its authors, of whom King David was perhaps most beloved. Now the original story of David is lifted out of the surrounding material so that it becomes, once again, our founding narrative of spiritual consciousness. Based on an exhilarating translation that uncovers the original sources, we behold a radiant writer who stands behind King David, creating the way we talk to and think about God. His sublime creation reinvents our idea of the spiritual warrior as well as the original language of spirituality.

Seven years in the making, The Book of David starts where the conventional tales leave off, discarding the "David and Goliath"  stereotype and providing a startling, mature figure of David. Three thousand years later, David steps forward from the pages of this book in a new form, an intimate story in which we are allowed to see ourselves mirrored in his flaws, appetites, and strengths. David becomes a leader in whom we are able to recognize the leaders we are and the leaders we choose. The Book of David will transform the way readers view themselves, their society, and their religion. It is unique in all that it contains: biography and novel, history and poetry, critique and guide, and, above all, a fountain of inspiration.

Praise for THE BOOK OF DAVID

"The immediacy--the sense of contingency and danger--is undeniable, and it carries the thrill of vertigo. This is so because of Rosenberg's translation. As one reads, one imagines the writer smiling to herself, then pressing down on her scroll. It weds Rosenberg's translation to the veiled, suppressed subjectivity of the reader, and frees it. "
--Greil Marcus

"[The imaginative mastery behind the Bible] emerges in Rosenberg's version as it does not in King James. What we are likeliest to miss when we read previous translations is given back to us by Rosenberg."
--Harold Bloom

About this title

About the Author

David Rosenberg is the leading translator of biblical poetry and poetic prose in our time. He received the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize for 1992, the first major literary award for a biblical translation. The former editor-in-chief of the Jewish Publication Society, Rosenberg's poetry and essays have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, Harper's, The Paris Review, Five Fingers Review, and in the recent cutting-edge anthology Primary Trouble. Rosenberg has also created a bond between writers today and the Bible's writers in three unique anthologies he conceived and edited: Congregation (1987), Communion (1996), and Genesis: As It Is Written (1996)

From the Inside Flap

id Rosenberg and Harold Bloom published the audacious New York Times bestseller The Book of J, which identified one of the earliest writers of the Bible to be a woman. Now David Rosenberg returns with The Book of David, which redefines the meaning of spirituality in our time. In this book, another great writer, often called the Court Historian or Western civilization's first novelist, is given back to us, and in place of conventional myths we find inspired images of who we are today.

Our ancestors read the Bible sure of its authors, of whom King David was perhaps most beloved. Now the original story of David is lifted out of the surrounding material so that it becomes, once again, our founding narrative of spiritual consciousness. Based on an exhilarating translation that uncovers the original sources, we behold a radiant writer who stands behind King David, creating the way we talk to and think about God. His sublime creation reinvents our idea of the spiritual warrior as well as the ori

Reviews

Like The Book of J, on which Rosenberg collaborated with Harold Bloom, this is a highly speculative theory about a biblical author--here, of the novella-like section on King David in 2 Samuel--plus a very free adaptation of that biblical narrative. Poet and critic Rosenberg hypothesizes that the author of the Davidic narrative was ``S,'' a member of the royal court during the end of the tenth century b.c., a ``companion'' of J's and also an ``aboriginal'' who was revising the poems and narrative of an earlier Canaanite culture. The problem is that Rosenberg never specifies what the aboriginal culture consisted of or how it interacted with the civilizations that migrated to Canaan. For that matter, he provides not a shred of evidence for his thesis from Hebrew or other ancient Middle Eastern texts. Further, his perspective on David's character and relationships is highly romanticized, utterly distorting the text, as in the claim that ``David and Bathsheva demonstrate an intimacy based on equality.'' Really? The biblical narrative plainly states that David lusts after Bathsheva, has her brought by his men to his court, and arranges for her husband to be killed so that he may possess her. As for Rosenberg's poetic and prose adaptations, they too often are clumsy, as in his rendering of 2 Samuel 13:2: ``Amnon is sick with a mess of feelings for his sister Tamar--she is a virgin besides- -and it is a forbidding task to imagine what to do with her.'' Finally, there is a long, tiresome, and often esoteric appendix, mainly written by Rhonda Rosenberg (the author's wife), condemning such biblical scholars as Richard Friedman and Robert Alter. Both Rosenbergs are so focused on pseudo-scholarly speculation, creative flights of fancy, and polemics, that for pages on end they almost entirely lose contact with the beguiling, ever-contemporary narrative that the author of the David story, whoever he was, offers. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harmony
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0517708000
• ISBN 13: 9780517708002
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272