Look things up
The people the pages name, from the Bible and from the study of it, and where each one turns up.
Shepherd, outlaw, king of Israel · King about 1010–970 BC
The youngest son of Jesse of Bethlehem, king of Judah at Hebron and then of all Israel at Jerusalem. His story runs from 1 Samuel 16 to 1 Kings 2, and Chronicles tells his reign again.
Outside the Bible An Aramaic inscription from Tel Dan, carved in the 800s BC, names the king of Judah as king of “the house of David.”
The deep dive on DavidTurns up on
David’s father
A man of Bethlehem, the grandson of Ruth and Boaz (Ruth 4:17). Samuel gives him eight sons with David the youngest (1 Samuel 17:12–14); Chronicles lists seven, with David the seventh (1 Chronicles 2:13–15).
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Israel’s first king
A Benjaminite anointed king by Samuel (1 Samuel 9–10). David played the harp at his court and later fled from him. He died in battle with the Philistines on Mount Gilboa, along with three of his sons, Jonathan among them (1 Samuel 31).
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Commander of Saul’s army
Saul’s kinsman, the son of Ner (1 Samuel 14:50). After Saul’s death he made Saul’s son Ishbosheth king, then went over to David, and was killed by David’s commander Joab (2 Samuel 2–3).
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A warrior from Bethlehem
In 2 Samuel 21:19 he kills Goliath of Gath; in 1 Chronicles 20:5, Goliath’s brother Lahmi. An Elhanan son of Dodo, of Bethlehem, is also among David’s Thirty (2 Samuel 23:24).
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Leader of the Exodus
The prophet who led Israel out of Egypt and received the law at Sinai. Jewish and Christian tradition long credited him with the first five books of the Bible, the Torah.
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The man from Uz
A righteous man whose losses, and his long argument with three friends and with God, fill the book of Job. The book gives no date; the plan reads it among the patriarchs, on Days 4 to 12.
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Jewish historian · AD 37 – about 100
A Jewish priest and general who wrote, in Rome, the history of the Jewish war with Rome and the Jewish Antiquities, a history of his people from creation to the eve of the war, finished in AD 93–94; its first half retells the Bible.
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German biblical scholar · 1844–1918
His Prolegomena to the History of Israel (1878; retitled 1883) made classic the documentary hypothesis: the first books of the Bible woven from older sources, now usually called J, E, D and P.
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Assyriologist at the British Museum · 1840–1876
A self-taught reader of cuneiform who in 1872 found a flood story on a tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh from Nineveh, and announced it to the Society of Biblical Archaeology that December.
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Textual scholar, Hebrew University of Jerusalem · Born 1941
For two decades, until 2009, editor-in-chief of the official Dead Sea Scrolls publication project. He reads the shorter Greek of 1 Samuel 17–18 as one of two versions of David’s story that the Hebrew weaves together.
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Archaeologist, Bar-Ilan University
Directed the excavations at Tell es-Safi, biblical Gath, from 1996 to 2021.
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Archaeologist, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Excavated Khirbet Qeiyafa, above the valley of Elah, with Saar Ganor from 2007 to 2013, and reads it as a fortified city of David’s kingdom.
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Archaeologist, Tel Aviv University and University of Haifa · Born 1949
Best known for the “low chronology,” which dates many buildings once credited to David and Solomon about a century later, to the 800s BC, and so pictures their kingdom as smaller.
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