Life of David [NOOK Book]

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Overview

Poet, warrior, and king, David has loomed large in myth and legend through the centuries, and he continues to haunt our collective imagination, his flaws and inconsistencies making him the most approachable of biblical heroes. Robert Pinsky, former poet laureate of the United States, plumbs the depths of David’s life: his triumphs and his failures, his charm and his cruelty, his divine destiny and his human humiliations. Drawing on the biblical chronicle of David’s life as well as on the later commentaries and the Psalms--traditionally considered to be David’s own words--Pinsky teases apart the many strands of David’s story and reweaves them into a glorious narrative.

Under the clarifying...

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More About This Book

Overview

Poet, warrior, and king, David has loomed large in myth and legend through the centuries, and he continues to haunt our collective imagination, his flaws and inconsistencies making him the most approachable of biblical heroes. Robert Pinsky, former poet laureate of the United States, plumbs the depths of David’s life: his triumphs and his failures, his charm and his cruelty, his divine destiny and his human humiliations. Drawing on the biblical chronicle of David’s life as well as on the later commentaries and the Psalms--traditionally considered to be David’s own words--Pinsky teases apart the many strands of David’s story and reweaves them into a glorious narrative.

Under the clarifying and captivating light of Pinsky’s erudition and imagination, and his mastery of image and expression, King David--both the man and the idea of the man--is brought brilliantly to life.

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble
Religious thinkers and lay readers have been grappling with the image of David ever since biblical times. Former poet laureate Robert Pinsky approaches Israel's greatest king with respect but not idolatry, dismissing the simplistic view of him as a callow shepherd who slew Goliath. With graceful force, he presents this biblical patriarch as a complicated man capable of murder, adultery, and other crimes. The breadth of Pinsky's learning enables him to relate the issues of David's life to Greek literature, Talmudic thought, and even the poetry of Robert Frost.
William Deresiewicz
The Life of David grows increasingly strong as it moves from David's early years to the years of his reign. The evolution from disconnected legends like David's battle with Goliath to the fuller record of a sitting king allows Pinsky to move from the waters of speculation to the solid ground of interpretation. Pinsky's reading of David's mystifyingly disastrous attempt to take a census as the embodiment of everything threatening about his revolutionary transformation of the Jewish people "from a masked, uncataloged, exclusionary, taboo-ridden culture of tribes to a visible, enumerated, inclusive civilization," is a tour de force of historical imagining.
— The New York Times
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From The Critics
Emphasizing biographies of Jewish luminaries but also including books on Jewish themes, the new Jewish Encounters series aims to satisfy the interest in popular and intelligent books on Jewish subjects. The inaugural book in this commendable venture is a well-executed biography of David, written by Pinsky, former poet laureate of the United States. His poetic language is singularly appropriate for recounting the life of the king who is traditionally accepted as the author of the poetic psalms, some of which are included in the narrative. Pinsky's broad scope is reflected in his references to Greek literature, Shakespeare, Dante, Simone Weil, Talmudists and Robert Frost, among others. He acknowledges his indebtedness to Robert Alter, whose definitive book The David Story appeared in 1999, but fails to mention recent biographies by Steven McKenzie, Baruch Halpern and Gary Greenberg. His primary sources are the actual biblical texts that recount David's life. Pinsky dispels the conventional image of David as a simple shepherd who slew Goliath and became Israel's greatest king, depicting him realistically with all his failings as an adulterer, assassin and predator. Pinsky also portrays David's stellar achievements, presenting him as a complex character who deserves to be seen in shades of gray. (Sept. 20) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780307428912
  • Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
  • Publication date: 9/6/2005
  • Sold by: Random House
  • Format: eBook
  • Pages: 224
  • Sales rank: 333,566
  • File size: 248 KB
  • Items ship to U.S, APO/FPO and U.S. Protectorate addresses.

Meet the Author

Robert Pinsky is the author of many books of poetry, including Jersey Rain and The Figured Wheel, and of the award-winning translation The Inferno of Dante. His prose works include The Situation of Poetry and The Sounds of Poetry. He teaches in the graduate creative writing program at Boston University and lives in Massachusetts.
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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 2, 2006

    A fascinating story brilliantly told

    The goal of this book is to understand the complex, paradoxical life of David, not to deconstruct David according to post-modern analysis, biblical hermeneutics, or text-criticism. Pinsky reprises the famous narratives of David -- Goliath, Bathsheba, Saul -- but he spends most of his book writing about David's often tragic relationships with his children. Retold here with fresh drama is the story of his eldest son, Amnon, who rapes his half-sister of Adonijah, who tries to seize the throne and of the king's youngest, Solomon, who is chosen by David over Adonijah. But the emotional highlight of David's story, as told here, is the death of the rebellious Absalom. A fascinating story brilliantly told!

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 9, 2006

    The Life of David

    The life of David is a indepth book that takes us through the scriptures of Davids life and his walk with God.Through this book we learn of the many trials that David had to face in order in becomming the annointed king of Israel. I highly recommend this book to any one who wants to increase there knowledge and understanding in the character of David.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 16, 2010

    No text was provided for this review.

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