David is the hero of the Hebrew Bible: the great warrior, the great poet, the king against whom all others are measured, the “man after God’s own heart.”

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From Goliath to the Psalms, David’s name and story have inspired generations, and continue to be deeply embedded in modern culture. Even his failings are held up as proof of his humanity: after all, what is a hero without a tragic flaw (or two)?

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But how much of this story is true? What can we know about David, and how, at a distance of three thousand years, can we know it?

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Everything we know about David comes from the Bible. So how we understand David is really a question of how we understand the biblical text. The narrative of David’s life is often read as if it is history—but what if it’s something else?

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Recognizing how the biblical authors worked, and what they were trying to achieve, opens up the ancient world of literature, politics, and theology, revealing not a simple history of David’s life but rather a complex narrative with various competing layers, and somewhere under all of those, perhaps, we can catch a glimpse of who David might have been in real life.