Jonathan Kirsch

What a book! Just finished reading THE SHORT STRANGE LIFE OF HERSCHEL GRYNSZPAN: A BOY AVENGER, A NAZI DIPLOMAT, AND A MURDER IN PARIS by Jonathan Kirsch about an important event in history that has been ignored until Kirsch brings it back to dramatic life with all of its mysterious turns and twists that read like a page-turning novel.

What a book! Just finished reading THE SHORT STRANGE LIFE OF HERSCHEL GRYNSZPAN by @[1306572901:2048:Jonathan Kirsch] about an important event in history that h...… (meer)

A better subtitle would be "The imaginary life of the man who ruled Israel," since most of the book consists of the author's speculations and fanciful additions to the Biblical text.

The author's objective was a desire to prove that David was "a real mensch" but the Israelite God & his prophets were frauds. This desire made him more interested in pushing his narrative than in either accuracy or consistency.*
The book has a semblance of scholarship, but consists mostly of assertions and contortions.

Kirsch may have thought he was just making current biblical scholarship accessible to the lay public, but without some citation more detailed than "this is an interpolation from a later source" and "this may have been an original folktale" he makes a mishmash of both the scriptures and the literary criticism.

In addition, he appears to be grossly ignorant of anthropological parallels to David's time (for instance, the Welsh Chronicles for tribal infighting) and misstates or ignores any interpretations of history, the scriptural account, character and behavior that either don't agree with his, or present a view other than the straw-man arguments he "demolishes" -- generally with sarcasm rather than proofs.

*cf The prophet Nathan is described on page 167 as "one of those cranky old men," when he presents the "case" of the rich man and the poor man in order to make David self-indict himself for adultery with Bathsheba & murder of her husband, as told in 2 Sam 12.

Kirtsch says that Nathan "suddenly confronted" David, as if they had never met. However, on page 144, David had previously consulted Nathan about building a House for God and was counseled that this was not God's will (2 Sam 7).… (meer)