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

Rosenberg, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0609802259 ISBN 13: 9780609802250

Publisher: Three Rivers Press, 1998

Synopsis

In 1990, David Rosenberg and Harold Bloom published the audacious New York Times best-seller 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.

Our ancestors read the Bible sure of its authors, of whom King David was perhaps most beloved. The Book of David illuminates the original story of David 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, often called the Court Historian or Western Civilization's first novelist, 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. 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.

About this title

Review:

Award-winning writer and translator David Rosenberg's Book of David is both repellent and attractive. The commentary section, twice the size of the translation section, is unattractive in its combative tone and hasty dismissals of nearly all prior Biblical scholarship, yet the translation section invites the reader into a world of intellectual vigor and poetic organicism. Through an intriguing and often fanciful reevaluation of the writer of Psalms and the books of Samuel, Rosenberg depicts David as a cultured aborigine hearkening back to the true organic roots of Judaism. Because Rosenberg "had to transform the imagery ... in translation to remain true to the vitality of the original," the psalms come off as gorgeous paeans to nature--and look nothing like the psalms you've read before. Rosenberg, a curious mix of intellectual hatchet man and poet, deserves to be read, if not always listened to.

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 Hardcover edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: Three Rivers Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0609802259
• ISBN 13: 9780609802250
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288