Book Review: Shaul and Binyamin by Ben Tzion Luria

I thought I would do something a bit different this time, and perhaps I'll do this again from time to time, which is give my thoughts on a Tanach-related book I've read. Earlier this week, I finished chipping my way through Shaul and Binyamin by Ben Tzion Luria. I thought it was an interesting book, however, it's got one major downside that I'll address shortly.

First of all, the upsides: Luria had a fascinating way of breaking down Tanach verses and reading between the lines. He has many fantastic chiddushim in the book and I think it's well-worth reading, even if one - such as myself - doesn't agree 100% with all of his ideas. One of the things I liked best is right in the first chapter: He explains why logically researchers should accept Chazalic traditions about Tanachic events and uses for evidence the Talmudic traditions of the genealogies of certain famous figures from the time. This was an issue that had bothered me since I read Malchut Beit David by Yaakov Liwer, who explained why these traditions aren't trustworthy. Now Luria, though not mentioning Liwer's position, explains why they are trustworthy. That put my mind to rest on that subject.

Another thing I liked was how Luria really covered just about every person from Binyamin and the House of Shaul - again, attentiveness to details often overlooked by others. In Luria's view, so what if so and so a person only got one verse in the Tanach? Much can still be gleaned from that one verse and therefore, is worthy of study.

I also liked that I came out of the book with an idea on the meaning of Ivtzan's name, as I wrote previously. Furthermore, he explains the meaning of the name Be'erah, which will be useful as I approach slowly but surely the end of my big genealogy project and can get back to working on my name-meanings essay.

Yet another fascinating thing was how much effort he put into redesigning the tribe's geographical territory in Eretz Yisrael, once again nitpicking little details and putting everything together to show that Binyamin had a much larger "estate" than most people think.

Now to what I didn't like:

There are several small things that I simply couldn't agree with, for example, when describing Binyamin's territory, he cut off large portions of land from places that I believe in fact belonged to other tribes. And there are other things I didn't like, but my biggest problem was the bottom line of his book:

Shaul was a hero to his tribe and nation, and David, while also doing some good, was mostly a political hack, motivated by all the wrong reasons and agendas and an anti-Shaulic, pro-Davidic narrative was pushed by an equally politically-motivated, propaganda-based Judean author who wrote Shmuel and Chronicles.

Don't get me wrong, I'm okay with defending Shaul. I think he gets a lot of flack for...having a mental illness. After losing his connection with Hashem, he fell into a harsh depression. Prophecy can be described as being on an unimaginable spiritual high, far higher, far purer and far more meaningful than any yeshiva's Purim party or, l'havdil, any mushroom could get you to. Shaul was a prophet and he lost all of that - that's a major major fall, and eventually, paranoia set in: He feared the crown would be taken from him. And it seemed that he lived for Am Yisrael. If someone less-worthy, or someone who couldn't quite see the grand vision of a mighty Am Yisrael would take over, it might end up being cataclysmic! So one can understand him and even empathize with him.

But I am absolutely not okay with what Luria did to David. He completely demeaned him. According to Luria, accounts of Kings David and Shaul in Shmuel and Chronicles can only be taken with a grain of salt and if one wants the truth, then one can only find it by nearly constantly reading between the lines. That is unacceptable. The Tanach was written by prophets, motivated by one thing in particular: Making a kiddush Hashem in the world. That includes spreading the truth, the Torat Emet.

Luria makes out David to have been so fearful of Shaul's family taking the crown from him, that:

a. He made a pact with the Givonite enemies of Binyamin and later sent Shaul's sons to be slaughtered by them in cold blood.

b. When his wife Michal was sent to be wed to another man, thus cutting away David from a royal marriage, he decided to make a pact with the king of Geshur, and in return married his daughter, Ma'achah, thus returning to royal son-in-law status.

c. Fearing further Binyaminite insurrections after the death of Shaul, he cut off significant portions of their land and gave them to Yehudites and kohanim.

d. He broke his oath to Yehonatan by mistreating Mefiboshet (this is actually pretty true, but my grievance is that in Tanach this is not listed as one of his sins, so simply putting this as a Davidic sin is not simple at all).

e. The scribe who wrote Shmuel and Chronicles put Shaul in a mostly negative light for fear of descendants of Binyamin overthrowing the Davidic dynasty; supposedly thus attempting to re-write history.

f. a Davidic scribe, likely directed by David himself, fabricated the story of Pilegesh Ba'Giv'ah (the concubine at Gibeah) as propaganda to hide further atrocities committed by David during his seven-year rule in Chevron.

g. Other things that don't come to mind at the moment.

Sure David wasn't perfect, but to simply say that the reason that the Tanach doesn't consider most of these events as sins simply because of an agenda-pushing scribe is...unacceptable in my eyes. No commentator, to my knowledge, even the ones who disagree with various Talmudic commentaries on the life of David, go to such a length to make every single turn in David's life as an act of partial or pure evil. Yes, the skeptic can always say: That's because they were motivated by XYZ religious reasons. But the counter-skeptic can reply: And how do you know you aren't motivated by ABC anti-religious reasons? Especially in Luria's case, who seems to have held Chazal and rabbinic commentators in high regard, even if he himself wasn't religious - could one really believe that all of these people were so blinded to the truth?

Therefore, I don't think there was some hidden vast conspiratorial political scheme hidden within the pages of Shmuel and the Shaulic and Davidic portions of Chronicles. What I do think is that Luria raises many many excellent questions, but not all of his answers are satisfying to the average Orthodox Jewish individual and we must continuing pursuing answers to these questions elsewhere.

Book rating: 7/10.