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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1745 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 17, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm finally done with Christie's And Then There Were None. Didn't have much preamble, it just goes straight into it. Seems like a book written to an audience already very familiar with her work. It was enjoyable enough, and the characters worked. I've more or less given up on the desire to figure out who the killer is beforehand in these kinds of books, and I find that it is pleasant to read them like that. I'm afraid that the only other thing which I can say is that my favourite character died.

Going to give another stab at Sayers' Whose Body?

Retrying Joel Baden's The Historical David from the start.

I started to rewatch Kings to torture myself about that what-if, and thought it'd make a good companion (since the show basically plays the legend straight).

I read that a couple years ago. It’s a great book that applies the historicist logic. I tend to be a maximalist and give the benefit of the doubt to tradition, accepting the historical-critical method; but that isn’t the dominant position in Biblical studies as I understand it; it’s considered “conservative.” To me it shouldn’t be beyond the perch to presume historicity for at least some of the figures, even if you think they’re highly mythologized; but built off a core of tradition. Not a lot of people know we have zero direct historical evidence for King Josiah in the OT, despite historians confidently concluding he existed. Anyway, JB’s multiple interviews on Mythvision is always interesting.

As a layman I think David is usually where both more conservative and more skeptical scholars can agree we can start looking for historicity. Some others push it till the Omrides but I think it's hard to argue that the mythicist side wouldn't have used the lack of anything like a stele as an argument so what's good for the goose and all that.

I guess I'm more of a mainstreamer here: things like the Exodus and Patriarchs seem like a total mess historically. Even if you grant there is some historic core you'll never agree on what it is. David's time seems like a good enough point to say the figures in the Bible have slipped out of myth.

I have seen some of Baden's interviews online, and read his Composition of the Pentateuch which is why I picked up the book. It's early days but I tend to lean towards what I think is Baden's own conclusion: there's a lot more explaining things in a more flattering light in David's legend than you'd expect if he didn't exist.

Which makes a good contrast with the show.

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