DAVID [FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS]. The most important recent developments in the study of the biblical king David have to do both with the degree of historicity of the Bible's account and with new textual material. Fueled by a more skeptical approach to biblical historiography and by new interpretations of the archaeological evidence, in recent years some scholars have come to question the historicity of the entire united monarchy of Israel (the biblical reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon). Nonetheless, the fragments of the Tel Dan inscription discovered in 1993 and 1995 seem to contain the first and only early mention so far of David outside the Bible.

The Bible's account of the united monarchy of Israel in 1-2 Samuel and 1 Kings (part of the so-called Deuteronomistic history) is no longer accepted by many scholars as accurate documentation about the tenth century BCE, but instead as an idealized...