King Saul
A Novel
John C. Holbert
King Saul
A Novel
Copyright © 2014 John C. Holbert. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
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isbn 13: 978-1-62564-667-5
eisbn 13: 978-1-63087-221-2
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To Diana, who has now for 44 years been
companion, co-worker, wife, mother, lover, and friend
through all that a life can fling up, dredge up, offer up
to a pair of seekers after truth. She has been there
even when I at times have nearly fallen off
the edge of things, including this time
of attempted novel writing. Here it is, my love.
I hope it bears a tiny shred of what you
have meant to me for so, so long.
Foreword
We are not always able to put ourselves in the place of someone from the past;
but we always try to do so. Since our attempts are never rewarded (or tested) by the eventual appearance of the person in question, they proliferate boundlessly, nourished in their own unfulfilled hopes. We recapitulate what we already know or think we know, changing the sequence, hoping that somewhere in all of these facts
a sudden illumination will offer itself, an inspiration be given us.1
Though the above quotation comes from a biography of a very well known historical character, the author’s obvious humility in the face of such a famous person struck me as indicative of my own feelings as I sought to write a fictional life of Israel’s first king. I certainly do not expect Saul to rise up and praise or bless what I have done—though Samuel’s reappearance from the dead in the story does give one pause—nor have I awaited some “sudden illumination” to allow me to rearrange the “facts” in ways that will offer a new and uniquely inspired telling of Saul’s story. Of course, the “facts” come from only one place, the Bible, and more specifically the book of 1st Samuel found in it. Such facts are literary facts only; whether or not they are fully or partially or not at all “facts” in the historical sense I leave to the battles among the biblical scholars, who always seem ready to enter the metaphorical ring, academic fists raised, ever anxious to strike a blow for their particular views on these matters. I choose not to don my trunks and join them. Saul’s story for me has been and continues to be just that—a story.
I have written this novel of King Saul, based on the Bible’s account of his life, because I have long experienced it as glorious and rare and strange. And I have been consistently disappointed by those biblical scholars who have not heard its richness and rareness and strangeness, but instead have reduced it to a crude propaganda wherein Saul is monster and Samuel is godly and David is godly beyond all telling. They seem to have swallowed whole the simplistic foolishness of the biblical author of Chronicles who summarily dismissed Saul by saying that he died “for his unfaithfulness; he was unfaithful to YHWH in that he did not keep the command of YHWH; besides he had consulted a medium, seeking guidance, and did not seek guidance from YHWH. That is why YHWH killed him and turned the kingdom over to David, son of Jesse” (1 Chron 10:13–14). (Reader Note: I will throughout my story use the consonants YHWH when referring to the God of Israel whose name was later in their history deemed too holy for pronouncing out loud. You may, if you wish, try to pronounce out loud those letters, but I fear for your teeth and tongue if you do.)
I find this Chronicles reading chilling, a kind of Saul horror story. And too pat to be at all believable, either historically or literarily. Any even half-baked reading of the story found in 1st and 2nd Samuel ought to engender hoots of derisive laughter at the knuckle-head who wrote that claptrap. But amazingly, that absurd reading has been very influential when assessments of Saul and David are made. It appears that the actual story of the Samuel books, so marvelously rendered, so meticulously fashioned, has, until quite recently, rarely been taken with any seriousness by readers, religious or otherwise.
Fortunately, this has begun to change. Several scholars of the last two decades of the last century, have taken the actual story of the Bible with great seriousness. Each of these scholars of course has heard with their own ears the myriad subtleties that story brings forth, and has rearranged those discoveries to suit their own hearing which is at it should be in the world of scholarship. I have learned much from them, and I commend them to you if you are looking for that sort of thing, namely careful scholarship, finely delivered, with genuine literary sensitivity.
Other artistic efforts have been called forth by the story. For the music lover, you should get a copy of the wonderful and deeply moving opera, “Saul and David,” by Carl Nielsen, perhaps Denmark’s greatest composer. (I would recommend the CD on the Chandos label; I am still anxiously awaiting a promised DVD from a Danish National Opera production.) Though the opera is more than one hundred years old, it offers a remarkable reading of the character of Saul, not all of which matches my own. Still, his great aria at his death is well worth pondering. I have in fact borrowed and paraphrased a bit of it to place in the mouth of my Saul as he dies on Gilboa. Of the librettist of the opera I know little or nothing, but his reading of the story is plausible and highly dramatic, operatic in the very best way.
I, though a scholar of some gifts, albeit none to match those of the aforementioned writers, have finally decided that “that sort of thing,” careful scholarship, finely delivered, is not enough for me. However fine the scholarship about the story, it is not the story. So I have concocted my own story, based squarely on the Bible’s story, but imbued with whatever imagination and literary skill I possess. I have read and reread the biblical account in the ancient language, and I have followed the story’s own shape in nearly every case in my own retelling, with an exception or two for my story’s clarity. And, of course, I have taken liberties aplenty and have followed where the characters have lead on more than a few occasions. It was, however, let me be clear, my intention to tell Saul’s story again, but to tell it new and to tell it “slant,” as Emily Dickensen so memorably put it. I wanted to tell the story to get it out of the hands of preachers (though, God knows, I am one!) and scholars and back into the hands of real people who are ever thirsty for another great tale with which to shape their lives, practice their living, and learn more about themselves and others and the world they inhabit. Of course, if preachers and scholars care to become real people, they are most welcome to read the novel, too!
I want you, the reader, to hear this old story, not a sermon, not a morality play, not a bowl of religious pabulum, consigned to the boredom of a Sunday sanctuary, or to one’s rocking chair old age.
This is hardly the only way to tell the story; if it were, it would not be worth telling in the first place. I can only hope that you enjoy the reading of it half as much as I enjoyed the telling. King Saul and his prophetic anointer, Samuel, and his chief rival David are each characters that have never died, though all three are quite dead indeed, and have been in their graves for nearly three millennia. But because they still are very much alive in their story, they remain worth hearing from. I can only hope that I have given them fresh voice once again.
John C. Holbert