Regarding me a few days ago thinking I had read the Bible say David was a son a Saul, I think that I had misread a verse while skimming quickly through the book of 1 Samuel. 1 Samuel 16:20 (NASB - Updated Edition) says "Jesse ... to Saul by David his son." The reference to "his son" is speaking of the son Jesse, but perhaps it could be argued that the Deuteronomist modified that verse to have it say (or seem to say) that David was the son of Jesse instead of Saul.
HowTheBibleWasCreated, is there a verse in the Bible which says, or implies, that David was the son (not the Son-Law) of Saul? If so, what verse is it?
Thanks for mentioning that Eupolemus wrote that David was the son of Saul. That was new information to me. Today I searched for details about that and the following are some things I found.
http://graceandknowledge.faithweb.com/Eupolemus.html says: 'Moving
on to what Eupolemus had to say about the reign of Saul’s successor David, it
is noteworthy that Eupolemus calls David the “son” of King Saul rather than
“son-in-law.” A later manuscript of Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica, shows an alternate reading here of
“son-in-law,” but that is most likely a scribal gloss that brought Eupolemus’
text back into explicit accordance with biblical history. It is possible that
when Eupolemus called David the son of Saul, he only meant that David was
Saul’s successor and had a familial relationship with him (along the lines of
Daniel 5:13, where Nebuchadnezzar is said to be the “father” of his descendant
and successor Belshazzar son of Nabonidus – cf. Baruch 1:11). Another
hypothesis is that it was Polyhistor who mistakenly called David the son of
Saul as he quickly scanned Eupolemus to make an epitome of his text. However,
Wacholder proposed (pages 130-131) that Eupolemus may have intentionally
altered the relationship of David and Saul in order to elide the historical
accounts of David’s rivalry with Saul and Saul’s son Ishbosheth. As we shall
see, Eupolemus adopted a rather free approach to interpreting and relating
Israel’s history.'
https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/eupolemus says: "Fragment 2 is the longest single remnant of a Greco-Jewish text prior to *Philo. The reigns of Joshua, Samuel, and Saul and his son (sic) David are all mentioned briefly."
https://thebiblicalreview.wordpress.com/tag/hellenistic/ seems to be the web page you found about what Eupolemus wrote. I notice that it says in the part the following:
'Eupolemus was a Jewish-hellenistic historian in the 2nd century BCE. and wrote work entitled On the Kings in Judea. The only surviving fragments are from Alexander Polyhistor’s On the Jews, preserved by Clement of Alexandria (c. CE 150-216) and Eusebius of Caesarea (c. CE 260-340).
...
Fragment 2 historiographically traces the lineage of prophets and kings
in the early Judean monarchy. Eupolemus traces it as follows:
- Moses: Prophesied for 40 years
- Joshua son of Nun: Prophesied for 30 years and established a sacred tabernacle at Shiloh.
- Samuel: Prophetic reign is not given a period of time.
- Saul: By the will of God, Samuel chooses Saul to be king, and Saul rules for 21 years, then dies.
- David: According to Polyhistor, David son of Saul becomes king, subdues the region through warfare, and dies.
- Solomon: Reigns and builds the temple until the end of Fragment 2.
Historiography and Re-appropriation
Anybody who knows their Bible 101
recognizes that this history of the Judean kings is highly idealized.
Already the Deuteronomistic Historian [1] and Chronicle each have unique
trajectories and historiographical aims. Each re-appropriates the
narrative of the emergence of the ancient Israelite monarchy for their
own aims. Eupolemus’s Fragment 2 contributes to an alternative
approaches to ancient Israel’s history written for a unique audience.
Based on this idea, I wonder what happens if we choose to understand David as Saul’s son not a scribal error [2].
...
2] “Eupolemus”, tranlsation and commentary by F. Fallon, ed. James Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha vol.
2 (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1983), 861-872, Fragment 2, n. g,
comments that the “error in identifying David as Saul’s son is probably
due to a misunderstanding by Alexander Plyhistory. MS B has corrected
the error to son-in-law”.'
