Talk:David and Jonathan

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This page was voted on for deletion at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Jonathan and David on 17 Jan 2005. The consensus was to keep it. (9 keep, 3 merge, 0 delete.) dbenbenn | talk 21:39, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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[edit] Factual Accuracy a Non-Issue

This article doesn't state that any of the three interpretations is correct, but rather offers them each as a various way of reading 1 and 2 Samuel. We might find one of these interpretations more compelling than the others, and it is relevant to note where the bulk of Biblical scholarship weighs in on the issue, but concerns about the "accuracy" of the Romantic and the Erotic sections is misplaced. Neither section is making factual claims about the relationship between David and Jonathan, but rather each is interpreting the story and various Biblical passages from an explicitly one-sided POV. The Platonic section does this, as well. Any decision about the best or most accurate interpretation is left to the reader. This seems entirely appropriate given the disagreement inherent in the issue.

[edit] Romantic & Erotic

"unless I am mistaken, the debate here is not whether or not D & J were in love - it clear on all sides that they were in love. The question is simply whether their love was chaste or erotic. To my eye, the quick description of the story simply points out the principal elements of the biblical account, and does not lean one way or the other on the erotic aspect."

I think the primary question is whether the love between David and Jonathan was romantic or platonic. Certainly, two people can have a romantic but chaste relationship. I have found it argued more often that the relationship between J&D was romantic and MAY have been physical, rather than that it was definately sexual. Likewise, it isn't "clear on all sides they were in love"; not everyone agrees that the love was romantic. Queerudite 01:27, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

See discussion below about how being in love is not necessarily sexual, but is nonetheless "being in love". Haiduc 03:08, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Great Emphasis?

"great emphasis is placed upon David's beauty and youth, and upon the effect that his beauty has upon those he encounters, Saul and Jonathan."

What is the great emphasis? Do you have passages to back it up. It mentions his beauty when he meets Saul, not when he meets Jonathan; so it seems pretty tangential to the topic of this article. And I'm not convinced that it connotes "great emphasis".

The "great emphasis" is in the various biblical passages which repeatedly point out David's youth and beauty, ad nauseam (Samuel, passim). Haiduc 03:10, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hebrew word

"The Hebrew word in the passage, 'ahabah, is typically translated elsewhere as love in the context of a marriage or sexual desire."

Can you point out what passages specifically? I've heard others claim the word in the passage can only be translated as friendship. Queerudite 01:27, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

I was not the source of this statement, I first came across it in the caption (by now edited out) to the David and Jonathan miniature in the Homosexuality article. I think it was Apollomelos' contribution. Haiduc 03:13, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

As for "typically translated elsewhere," I would not make such an unqualified suggestion. Relying on Strong’s lexicon (Hebrew word #160), 'ahabah (אהבה) occurs 40 times across 37 versus. As in English, this word can express many forms of devotion, affection, or attraction (but the Hebrew term as used in the Old Testament does not encompass the English sense of loving an activity or inanimate object).
Roughly half of the instances of this word in the Old Testament express G-d’s love for creation.
All of the remaining uses involve a human being expressing love for other human beings. This group is also subdivided roughly in half by the object of the love. Slightly more than half of the time, the object is collective (e.g., a king’s love for his people, the love of humanity, an emotion without a specific object [love is better than hate].). The other half of the non-divine usages describes love between two individuals. Outside of the story of David and Jonathan, all of these references clearly involve [heterosexual] romance or [heterosexual] sex. (N.B. there is one reference that involves the emotion that drove one man to rape his half sister, but for the purposes of this discussion, I’ll lump that into the sex category.)
Here are the occurrences of 'ahabah (n.f. form of the root verb) describing an emotion held by one person for another person:
Gen 29:20 (Jacob laboring to marry Rachel); 1Sa 20:17, 1Sa 20:17, 2Sa 1:26 (David and Jonathan); 2Sa 13:15 (Amnon contrasting his post coital disgust with the emotion that led to the rape of Tamar); Pro 5:19 (a rather steamy allegory involving body parts, breasts and whatnot); Sgs 2:4 et seq. (a romantic poem, again allegorical, in which the word appears ten times over nine verses).
There are also a couple of instances of a masculine noun variant, 'ahab (אהב), always in the plural and unambiguously romantic /erotic, i.e. "lovers" in the English sense. With only two references in the text I would hesitate to generalize about its usage here but in other vaguely contemporaneous texts the masculine plural form often has a pejorative sexual overtone.
The root verb ‘ahab (אהב) occurs more than 200 times and includes the usual range of divine/human applications, including familial relations with no suggestion of a romantic or erotic context. Wonderbreadsf 00:28, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Title question

Why has this title been changed form "David and Jonathan" (which returns 55k hits on Yahoo) to the less common "Jonathan and David" which returns half that number? Haiduc 23:20, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Removed the last paragraph

I removed the last paragraph entirely, because it was vague, slightly hard to follow, and seemingly nonsensical. Witness this sentence: "Some early translations of other passages mention David and Jonathan kissing with David becoming sexually aroused." WHAT translations? WHAT passages? Moreover, why reference translations when we have access to the Hebrew text.

[edit] This article seems problematic

A couple of points: 1) the summary of the story is highly weighted towards the "they were lovers" perspective - saying that Jonathan "fell in love" with David on first sight, and so forth. This is not an NPOV presentation of the story. 2) the analysis on the "they were lovers" front has some dubious claims. It says that "some theologians" believe they were lovers, and, to support this, quotes...a fourteenth century life of Edward II of England. Furthermore, it does a lot of close reading of the Biblical account, but with no context - so it simply states straight out, for example, that it would be highly unusual for one man to be naked in front of another, with absolutely no proof of this. I'm going to put a POV marker on the article for now. john k 20:21, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

John, you are splitting hairs on "falling in love" since the biblical quote is rendered in full in the article showing that Jonathan, immediately upon seeing and hearing the boy, loved him with his whole soul. As for the rest, I think you are on firm ground, the piece needs a lot of work. Haiduc 22:11, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I agree with John. I changed "fell in love" to "was immediately struck with", which can be interpreted variably and is more neutral in tone. Also, since the "highly unusual for one man to be naked in front of another" part was removed, your POV concerns have been addressed and I'm going to remove the POV tag. Incidentally, does this sort of nudity happen anywhere else in the Bible, what is the socio-historical context? If you can provide such context, please do. Queerudite 01:05, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

It does give the whole quote, but also gives a (possibly tendentious) gloss on text that it then quotes. I think this is a problem. Why not just give the Biblical quote and let people draw their own conclusion? BTW, is there any convention as to which version of the Bible to quote for wikipedia? john k 22:23, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If you look at similiar wikipedia articles Christian views of homosexuality, Christian views of women, etc., passages are almost always supplied with additional context. Plus, just quoting the passages without filling in the gaps somewhat, would be lengthy and rather dull for a wikipedia entry. Queerudite 01:05, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
If your philosophy was followed religiously, all academic writing would grind to a halt. Falling in love does not presume a sexual relationship, but it does consist of a sudden and overwhelming rush of emotion, as described in the texts. I do not think there is a convention, I assume that people use translations as they see fit, to illustrate whatever point they are discussing. Haiduc 23:36, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Furthermore, in this article, [1], Jeramy Townsley, a PhD candidate at Berkeley, presents the topic in the same terms. Haiduc 11:30, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
Academic writing is not bound by the strictures of POV. The summary of the story is supposed to give a neutral account of the story, in order to facilitate explication of the two points of view. If you want to say in the "romantic interpretation" section that some scholars think this description indicates that Jonathan and David fell in love. The way it is done now is begging the question. To "fall in love" with someone is different than "to love someone as his own soul," or whatever the translation says exactly. A parent might come to love their child with their whole heart, but we wouldn't normally describe this as "falling in love," because that term implies romantic love. As to translations, it seems to me that if we are trying to determine the meaning of the Biblical passage, we should be sure to use a translation that is trying to hold closely to the original Hebrew meaning. The New King James, whose purpose seems to be to hew as closely as possible to the King James, but to correct its most glaring errors, would seem a poor choice. I would add that many of the less literal translations give "Jonathan loved him as himself." rather than "as his own soul." We can't simply presume the truth of the controversial position that the article is trying to discuss in what is supposed to be a neutral summary. john k 14:05, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
All wikipedia is a gloss, but it needs to be an honest and accurate gloss, representing all sides in the discussion. As for the love issue, I see it differently. In the "romantic" interpretation the sense is not that they "fell in love," instead of "just being friends," but that their love is of an erotic nature. (Actually, this discussion illustrates the problem with the term "romantic," which can be used for either erotic or chaste love, as in "romantic friendship". It needs to go.) But to return to the topic - unless I am mistaken, the debate here is not whether or not D & J were in love - it clear on all sides that they were in love. The question is simply whether their love was chaste or erotic. To my eye, the quick description of the story simply points out the principal elements of the biblical account, and does not lean one way or the other on the erotic aspect. If the biblical account itself is strongly focused on beauty and youth, and on powerful emotions, is out of our hands. As for choosing a translation, what do you recommend? Haiduc 15:05, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me that we are implying a modern understanding of emotional relationships depicted in the Bible. "Falling in love" has a specific modern connotation that isn't necessarily present in the text. In modern meanings, for instance, you can't "fall in love" with your brother (which would be, I would imagine, the kind of relationship that most traditional Christians would impute to David and Jonathan). Can you love your brother "as your own soul"? I don't know - it seems potentially plausible, but would depend on an actual knowledge of ancient Hebrew that I certainly do not have. As to translations, I'm not sure - the problem with Biblical translations is that the purpose of most of them is not to translate the meaning of the Hebrew and Greek in the most accurate way possible, but to provide a tool for evangelization or for modern ideas about religion. It's also to find anything useful, on the web, at least, about what scholars think about the relationship - most sites that discuss this issue are going to be sites that are trying to promote the view that they were lovers, so it's hard, again, to find neutral scholarship. john k 22:16, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

BTW, here's an interesting anti-article: [2]. On the other hand, it appears to come from a conservative Christian website, and I'd prefer not to have to choose between conservative christian and gay revisionist views. Nevertheless, I think it brings up some decent points. john k 22:26, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for that link. I actually agree with him - the argument that David will become son in law through two, with Jonathan being the first, is pretty pathetic and perhaps just a tad dishonest. Reading the KJV pretty much put that to rest for me, from a contextual point of view, and Holding has a good argument by quoting David's comments to the servants. But I find it interesting that Holding does not engage other, more problematic, passages.
As a side note, Holding's comments on Townsley's "emotive language" argument actually support my view that we are looking at a loving relationship no matter how you cut it. I agree with him that Rihbany's description of "intimate friendship" is the model which should guide us. People can love people even when they do not go to bed with them. Which brings us to your refutation of the non-sexual use of falling in love. First of all, it is not fair for you to choose as example a relationship where the two partners have known each other all their lives. The sense of "falling in love" is that it happens with someone new. Which opens the door to an interesting counterexample: when adoptees meet their natural siblings (or parents) for the first time they frequently experience overwhelming feelings of falling in love. It seems that you have to have spent a certain early formative period in the company of your immediate family in order to be immunized against falling in love in non-adaptive ways. So you can fall in love with your brother after all.
But, more to the point: I cannot speak about the Biblical incidence of "falling in love," I am not a Biblical scholar. But it is not a modern phenomenon. It can be found in many example in Greek mythology, which can be argued to have arisen contemporaneously with Biblical goings-on. Haiduc 01:49, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the response. I think your comments generally make a lot of sense, and I mostly agree with you in terms of the substance. That said, I still think that the term "falling in love" is so strongly associated with romantic/sexual love that it would be best to avoid using the term. I understand that arguably, the feelings can be compared, and the example of adoptees meeting natural siblings and parents is an interesting one, but I still think that the primary use of "to fall in love" implies a sexual kind of love, which should be avoided. Does that make sense? john k 01:38, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I get your point. The only problem is that in trying to convey that something really powerful and sudden came over Jonathan, anything short of that phrase short-changes the story. How about this: We say that J fell in love with D, but mention in the same breath that there is a debate about the nature of that love, "see xzy." And we know it was love - David said so. (As an aside, I had an amusing couple of moments exploring the kinds of things people fall in love with. As per Yahoo: with countries - 7890, books - 989, cars - 740, babies - 142 (That was a surprise - more cars than babies?!), and goats - only three.) Haiduc 02:33, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Some changes

Made these changes:

  • David's being brought to play the lyre to Saul wasn't previous to his slaying of Goliath, it's a separate story - presumably stories about 2 originally separate heroes were conflated under David's name.
  • Jonathan was't a general in Saul's army - he was about David's age, and nowhere does the Bbile say he held military command (he's ultimately killed fighting the Philistines beside Saul, but even then it doesn't say he was a commander).
1 Samuel 14 implies that Jonathan held some sort of military command, I think. john k 05:10, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Whoops. 1 Samuel 13 says Jonathan had 'command over a thousand' at Michmash, and won a battle. Which makes him older than I'd assumed, too - but I wonder what the relative ages of the three were? I still get rather confused as to how old David is meant to be at various points - when he defeats Goliath he's evidently too young to be with Saul's army, but not so young as to sent home immediately. Maybe the Caravaggio painting(s) are correct - about 15. PiCo 23:20, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
  • "...thou hast chosen the son of Jesse [David] to thine own confusion, and unto the confusion of thy mother's nakedness." I think this is the KJV. And I think modern translations (I use the RSV) say "shame" instead of "confusion", which makes a little more sense. Interesting also that in Genesis a very similar phrase is used when Ham sees Noah naked - but what it means exactly, no-one knows. I haven't changed this, but I think a more modern Bible translation should be used throughout. (It would get rid of that "until David exceeded", which would be to the good).
I would suggest that, in general, for Bible quotations we should use the Revised Standard Version as the default, since it is usually in clear English, and tends to have less of an agenda than other translations. john k 05:11, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Romantic section

There are a number of points that need to be addressed in these few paragraphs.

1. "Other scholars, however, interpret the love between David and Jonathan as more intimate than friendship." Which scholars? Are there many?

2. "The relationship between the two men is addressed with the same words and emphasis as loving mixed-sex relationships in the Hebrew Testament". This needs examples.

3. "Throughout the passages, David and Jonathan consistently affirm and reaffirm their love and devotion to each other. Jonathan is willing to betray his father, family, wealth, and traditions for David". This is argumentitive.

4. "At their first meeting, Jonathan strips himself before the youth, handing him his clothing, remaining naked before him". There is no indication that Jonathon was naked. A couple of commentaries on the verse:

  • Jamieson, Faucett & Brown Commentary: To receive any part of the dress which had been worn by a sovereign, or his eldest son and heir, is deemed, in the East, the highest honor which can be conferred on a subject (see on Est_6:8). The girdle, being connected with the sword and the bow, may be considered as being part of the military dress, and great value is attached to it in the East.
  • Adam Clarke Commentary: Presents of clothes or rich robes, in token of respect and friendship, are frequent in the East. And how frequently arms and clothing were presented by warriors to each other in token of friendship, may be seen in Homer and other ancient writers.
  • Treasury of Scripture Knowledge: Presents of clothes or rich robes, as tokens of respect or friendship, are frequent in the East. Gen 41:42; Est 6:8, Est 6:9; Isa 61:10; Luk 15:22.

5. "Brother" was often used as a term of romantic, even erotic, affection in ancient Mediterranean societies. For instance, "brother" is used to indicate long-term homosexual relationships in [x, y, z] Maybe so, but not in the Bible.

6. Furthermore, social customs in the ancient Mediterranean basin, did not preclude extramarital homoerotic relationships. See point 5. BenC7 00:38, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Applicability of Jewish law

Just a brief note that the law-code of Deuteronomy dates from some 400 years after David's time - David lived c.1000 BC, D was written in the reign of king Josiah, about 600 BC. (See Documentary Hypothesis). We have no way of knowing what rules and attitudes prevailed in David's time, although Saul certainly seems to show contempt for his son's erlationship, and David himself places a curse on one of his followers which includes the phrase that his descendants will never lack "one who holds the spindle," presumably a reference to effeminancy. But the main point is, it's anachronistic to apply Deuteronomy to the David/Jonathan story.PiCo 02:06, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

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