Finding a Zen teaching in David and Goliath

A meditation on exegesis

It’s been many years since seminary and my own more or less disciplined dive into the Scriptures.

Even then it was a limited project. I remain innocent of languages beyond English. A dreadful shortcoming for anyone wishing to truly understand any spiritual text from antiquity, from any religion. And also, while I attended a (progressive) Protestant seminary I was preparing for the Unitarian Universalist ministry, and that required only the most basic knowledge of the scriptures. So, I came to possess a small knowledge of the subject, if somewhat more than your average person in our contemporary western culture.

Nonetheless I did come away from that time with an appreciation of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures investigated through the lens of the best of contemporary scholarship. I got a dose of good translations and first rate secondary writing.

Now in my dotage, I find myself returning to these ancient texts of my childhood religion. My primary lens in this project is the deep not knowing of the Zen tradition and my fifty odd years of contemplative practice.

I’m actually not alone in this approach. It’s essentially a nondual hermeneutic. Hermeneutics means the practice of interpretation. Nondual means not two. It is a current that runs through religions. Zen, for anyone involved in the tradition for more than five minutes is a full on expression of that not two.

It turns out there has long been a nondual interpretive tradition within Christianity. Not in the mainstream, but along side it. It was one of the threads of Christian understanding that emerged in that fruitful era between the third and fifth centuries.

This nondual hermeneutic arose along with, I would add, what we today might call normative Christianity in all its dualistic splendor. While not ignoring the majority view that also arose in that time, I’ve found great solace and some deep pointing for my own life within the nondual perspectives first mostly found among the Desert mothers and fathers, as well as among the Neoplatonic theologians.

Critically this along with a kind of universalism, that is a deep confidence of some kind of perennialism among human religions, has been my gate into bridging my Zen life and my natal tradition. I’ve found this critical in my own life. And I see how it might be helpful to others on the several paths of the intimate way.

It is my view that awakening is our natural inheritance. It comes with being human. Along with all the terrible things, this astonishing gift. And, to most fruitfully engage it we need help. The great spiritual traditions offer that help. They are the wisdom of the ancient. Not always right. Of course. They are human products. And so subject to all the issues of our humanity. The traditions offer pointers and lessons. If we have the eyes, the ears.

With all that I find myself considering one of the David stories. First, how it might be deconstructed with integrity. And then, out of that what I find to be a pointing within the wisdom of a nondual Christianity. And with that something to help on the way.

Whether one is Jewish or Christian or not, in our Western culture it’s probably close to impossible to not know the story of David and Goliath. The young warrior who kills the giant. In this case with a slingshot. It is enshrined in 1 Samuel, as verse 17.

All well and good. Except there’s another passage where someone else kills Goliath. In 2 Samuel 21:19, Someone named Elhanan kills the giant. Just to keep it all exciting 1 Chronicles 20:5 fixes this problem by saying no, no, actually Elhanan killed Goliath’s brother, Lahmi.

Scholars without a dog in the hunt suggest what we see here among the cuting and pasting that has been done over generations to create the Pentateuch, the Torah, that is those five critical books the start the Bible, is almost certainly the earliest version of the story, where Elhanan, who is otherwise basically forgotten, actually killed Goliath. Assuming its a true story in some sense. That itself is a challengeable contention. Although that there is an earlier version that has been coopted, tends to support its factuality. Not a done deal, but certainly interesting.

And it’s a great story, within a great tradition. So, as David was becoming important in the forming Jewish self narrative, they simply gave him the story. The Chronicles account tries to clean up the problem of Elhanan. But it doesn’t do a great job of it.

As there is at least one non-scriptural archeological attestation to a “House of David,” most scholars today agree there was a historical David. Most of the history before him is considered mythical by scholars, again, those without a dog in the hunt. David seems a sure bet. That said, the man we know through scriptures has been overtaken by myth. The Goliath story being a dramatic example.

It’s reasonable to assume this is the “true” story.

However, this isn’t the end of the matter.

If we are freed from a bare historical narrative, we might find ourselves invited into the mysteries of the human heart expressed through these ancient stories. And here we see how the story might be engaged. You know, that hermeneutic thing. Deconstruction is one thing. Finding how it has and may yet touch human hearts, is another.

The great late second and early third century theologian, Origen, was among the first to apply allegorical principles to his reading of scriptures. Which, I find, is the great gift for taking the scriptures as a kind of wisdom literature. Here our lives, yours and mine, are found mostly between the lines.

The David and Goliath story and how Origen dealt with it is a pretty good example.

He presents the David of scriptures as a prefiguring of Christ. David’s killing of Goliath sings of the mysteries of Christ overcoming sin, and death. Here Goliath stands in for the devil. In Goliath we see his boasting as spiritual arrogance. I can see it. Totally.

A lot of people have made much of the five smooth stones that David picked up. And Origen is one of them. One can see the five books of the Pentateuch. If you like, the wounds of Christ. Or, or, I guess, and, and I’m much taken with this, the cardinal virtues: faith, hope, love, patience, and humility. Whole books can and have been written on these. And how they play out in this story is compelling. Me, I could see a full on Buddhist midrash, commentary, just focused on those virtues. Again: faith, hope, love, patience, and humility.

Of course, a principle current of the narraative would be the struggle of the human heart through the image of a battle. Here battle as something we all need to do at some point. Battle is an image out of favor in our moment. But is one of great antiquity. Here we marshal up the “weapons” of this battle: faith, and prayer, and some form of confidence in the divine at the heart of it all. I find this compelling. And, okay, worthy of another Buddhist midrash.

What we find in this turn from history and to the realities of our existence as spiritual beings in quest of the divine can be transformative. It gives bones and flesh and blood to the nondual way, our path to insight, and the wisdom of the not two.

I would take Origen’s approach one step further. I’d assume all of this shared scripture of the western way can be read within that not two. And, it can be about me and my engaging the way. Here each of those things are in fact living within me. Are, in part, me. Goliath is me, all of Origen’s Goliath. Me. And, all of Origen’s David, is me.

Me. You. Lots of me around. And its for each of us as something intimate.

Then with that, to look at those problems of the heart with the tools we’ve been given. And maybe more, to notice those tools of faith and prayer, and confidence, or maybe their Zen analogs, in some bottom line place. Here, as what I’m doing. Here, as I return to the pillow in meditation. Here, as I consider my life and my choices in this life.

Faith as a some confidence in the possibility of wisdom. Prayer as the surrender of certainty, and the longing heart, what we sometimes call bodichitta, brought to our presence of the moment as it is. This moment. And in this recognizing the birthing out of hearts in a million million moments, there is some remembrance, and a longing to some ancient return.

And then from this, maybe, to notice how those virtues, if you recall faith, hope, love, patience, and humility, are the path. My path. Yours. They are eternal options.

They are, well, they are faces of God waiting my noticing.

They are my original face.

The face that existed before my parents were born.

Your face from before when your first ancestor’s turned their eyes to the heavens.

And saw.

The image is Abraham Bosse’s David with the Head of Goliath, 1651.