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| Artwork showing Jonathan giving David a sword. Image source. |
I've been reading this really amazing book, "Text, Image, & Otherness in Children's Bibles," which is a collection of academic papers which discuss children's bibles. One of the papers is called "No Greater Love: Jonathan and His Friendship with David in Text, Tradition, and Contemporary Children's Literature," by Cynthia M. Rogers and Danna Nolan Fewell. This paper makes a lot of excellent points, so let's talk about it.
First of all, if you're not familiar with the story of David and Jonathan, here's an overview (this is from the book of 1 Samuel in the bible): This is about David, as in King David, widely seen as the best king in the bible, and a role model of how to devote your life to God. David as in David and Goliath. We meet David when the prophet Samuel is sent by God to anoint David and proclaim that he will be the next king. At that time, though, David was a nobody, and Saul was the king. Saul had a son named Jonathan. David gets noticed by Saul- David kills Goliath, David plays music for Saul, David is a leader in the army, David marries Saul's daughter Michal. And Jonathan becomes best friends with David. Jonathan gives him a bunch of gifts. Later, when Saul wants to kill David, Jonathan takes David's side and helps him escape. Then David is on the run for a while, and we don't hear much about Jonathan, and eventually Saul and Jonathan are both killed in battle, and David becomes the next king.
(Some people say that David and Jonathan were a gay couple. I personally don't believe that, but I'm glad there are queer Christians exploring that interpretation. I mean, how could there not be, when 2 Samuel 1:26 says, "Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women"? The fanfiction practically writes itself.)
The story of David and Jonathan is one of those bible stories that you commonly see in children's bibles, and it's framed as a nice moral lesson to teach kids about friendship. Be a good friend, like Jonathan. Jonathan was a role model of friendship. That's what we teach little kids about Jonathan.
The "No Greater Love" chapter by Rogers and Fewell makes the point that Jonathan is often treated as a side character, while David is the main character of the story. Jonathan is seen as significant only because of his connection to David and to Saul- he is caught in the middle- but what about Jonathan as a person himself, outside of his friendship with David? I like how this paper examines 1 Samuel 13-14, which contains a story about Saul and Jonathan but not David. Check out this quote (p 141):
But despite the narrator's valiant efforts to push David into the spotlight, Jonathan's exploits in 1 Sam 13-14 challenge the centripetal force of David's personality. Jonathan is the protagonist for a day. Time slows to accommodate his feats and to allow an unobstructed view of the ways in which he relates to political oppressors, to fellow soldiers, to his father, and to God. This brief portrait presents a young leader who fights oppressors because they are oppressors, who (unlike David) doesn't calculate personal gain (cf. 17:24-27, 30), who (unlike David or Saul) doesn't ask his troops to do anything he's not willing to do himself (cf. 22:17-19; 2 Sam 11), who (unlike David or Saul) has earned and can rely upon the support and protection of his followers (cf. 1 Sam 22:7-8; 23:12; 2 Sam 15-17). He is a son whose loyalty to his father also accommodates correction, critique, and confrontation; he is a religious person who values, but does not bank on, divine favor and who, moreover, is not paralyzed by divine silence. The stubborn memory of his heroism casts a critical shadow over David's character and reign, suggesting an ancient community politically divided and theologically mixed.
Love this! Love to see Jonathan as more than just a role model of friendship. More than just a side character to David, the main character.
This chapter of "Text, Image, & Otherness" talks about how maybe Jonathan and David didn't really have a healthy friendship. Yeah, wait a second, in all the children's bible stories that feature Jonathan and David, the story is all about what Jonathan did for David, and nothing about what David did for Jonathan. Well, that's why those children's bibles say that Jonathan is the role model of friendship, and they don't say David is. But, uh, maybe you shouldn't give so much to a friend who doesn't give back? Maybe that could be an important lesson to teach kids too?
Also, there are political dimensions to this, obviously. There was a prophecy that David would be the next king, meanwhile Jonathan here is King Saul's oldest son- typically you would expect that Jonathan would be the next king. I don't remember any children's books I've read that mentioned this. Later, when I got older, I came across the idea that, hey wouldn't Jonathan have expected he would be the next king, and he was giving that up for David? I realized that Jonathan's devotion to David was more of a big deal than I had thought. But, still, I didn't really think Jonathan was "giving up" his chance to be king. God had already said David would be the next king, so there was never any possibility that Jonathan could be king. Right? I mean obviously we all believe God's promises come true, right? Jonathan would have believed that too, right? So Jonathan knew it was a foregone conclusion that David would be king and he himself would not, right? I mean, I was kinda naive back then.
Here, look at this quote from p 135:
Cartoonlike characters have become popular in Bibles and Bible stories developed for very young children. The Beginner's Bible: Timeless Bible Stories strives to be age-friendly with colorful drawings of Jonathan and David (Henley 1993-2005, 188). By 2005 gender inclusiveness dictates that Michal also join the childhood chums (182; fig. 6.5). In this cartoon world, friendship simply happens, enhanced by goodwill and generosity. The relational triad of Michal, Jonathan, and David is devoid of any dynamics that smack of personal or political advancement on the part of David, or personal or political naïveté on the parts of Michal and Jonathan. The little girl Michal never grows up to become David's angry and abandoned wife, and young Jonathan's highly suggestive gifts of armor and clothing are nothing more than thoughtful tokens upon which the friendship is built.
The Read and Learn Bible (American Bible Society 2005) also uses cartoon illustrations to target children ages five to eight. Its chapter from 1 Sam 18-19, entitled "David's Friend," describes Jonathan's role in protecting David, but it keeps central David's character, safety, and reputation. David's social prominence is explained by the comment "God was with David," which may suggest to young readers that popularity is a sign of God's favor, and doing whatever is necessary to befriend the popular is a service to God. Missing is any emphasis on the mutuality and give-and-take of friendship. Rather, the lesson appears to be an endorsement of unidirectional care while questions of reciprocal responsibility, interpersonal relations, complicating circumstances are left unexplored. In a similar vein, The Adventure Bible (Richards) includes an application box entitled "Let's Live It!": "SHOWING FRIENDSHIP: Read about the friendship of David and Jonathan in 1 Samuel 20:1-42. After reading the story, name three ways that Jonathan showed his friendship with David. Name three ways you can be a friend to someone" (1984, 335).
And I also love this quote from p 137-138:
If the Jonathan and David story is to serve as the model lesson on friendship, we must ask how children's biblical literature constructs both the biblical text and biblical messages about friendship. In a world of peer pressure, bullies, queen bees, wannabees, cliques, clubs, and gangs of all types, what do these renditions of the Jonathan and David story communicate? Are there no limits to loyalty in friendship? Is unquestioning trust always a good thing? Are some friends more deserving of devotion than others? Is popularity a sign of divine favor? Is it appropriate to ignore familial responsibilities, to repress one's own interests and talents, to sacrifice one's physical wellbeing or one's own future for the sake of a friend? Should an attachment to someone else be an individual's defining identity marker? Is true friendship possible only with those who share our theological, political, and social views?
We would be the last to suggest that teaching children to value friendship and to act in friendly ways is misguided. Moreover, as educators, we understand the importance of pitching biblical study at developmentally appropriate levels. Nevertheless, we wonder if this tendency to reduce both the biblical text and the notion of friendship underestimates the moral, social, and political challenges that even young children face (see Coles 1997; Davis 2001; Parker 2003, 2006) and inhibits more mature ways of reading the Bible once they become older. Both verbal ideas and visual images can leave firm imprints in early childhood that are often difficult to augment or change as children become able to handle more complex ideas (Stein 2009).
Yes, this is absolutely right. Children's experiences of navigating friendships are much more complicated than "Jonathan was a good friend because he gave David his robe and his sword; be like Jonathan." Let's not treat children like they're incapable of understanding that friendship is not that simple. And that sometimes people act like they're your friends, but they are using or manipulating you- was David using and manipulating Jonathan?
The thing is... as a child I was presented with this framework where each bible story has a nice moral lesson to teach us- and then when I grew up, I continued to view the bible with that framework. I "knew" that the story of David and Jonathan was a lesson about friendship- children's bibles present only the very basic broad strokes of it, and as an adult you learn more of the details and nuances, but still it's a lesson about friendship. Right? Occasionally someone tells me I shouldn't criticize children's bibles for being oversimplified, because we need to simplify stories for children, but that's not my actual issue- my issue is, do we expect children to eventually grow up and wonder "did David take advantage of Jonathan?" Which is a question you should ask, as an adult reading this story. But to get there, children have to rebel against the interpretation they've heard all their lives. It's not a matter of learning a simplified version, and then later finding out the actual story is more complicated than what you would have been able to understand as a child. We're actually teaching kids something that is not right. The story is NOT a nice model of friendship. That's not what it is. We just pretend it is, because we think the point of bible stories is to teach kids moral lessons. But that's not what the bible is.
When I was evangelical, I really believed that every bible passage has something to teach me, that I can apply to my life. Even the boring passages, like the detailed instructions about how to burn offerings- those passages teach us that God pays attention to details, and it's very important to get those things right, and we should follow God's rules exactly. Yes, really, I really thought every passage had a lesson I could apply to my life. Why did I think that? ... Well, that's a very evangelical belief. We believed that the bible isn't like other pieces of writing. The bible is living and active. The words of the bible are powerful, God-breathed. The word of God does not return void.
We believed we should sit down every day and read the bible, and those few minutes of reading and praying would make us into better people, make us closer to God, simply because it was exposure to the spiritual power of the bible. (With some caveats like "it won't work if you have the wrong attitude" etc.)
I no longer believe each bible passage has an explicit lesson to teach us. I think we can learn the bible and experience the bible; we can find concepts that have always been true of human nature- good ones like friendship, but also bad ones like politically-motivated manipulation. It's not about "this is what you should do" or "this is what you should not do"... it's living and active. We bring our own experiences and our own cultural ideas to the bible, and we see the characters and stories through those lenses, and find things that are meaningful to us. And so we can't say the conclusions we draw are automatically true since they come from the bible, like evangelicals believe. It's not about "believing the bible" or not "believing the bible", it's not about winning arguments- it's about making it into something meaningful for you.
So I'm glad Rogers and Fewell are pointing out that maybe David and Jonathan's friendship wasn't good for Jonathan. Pointing out all the questions we should be asking when we read this story- was Jonathan too naive? did David use him? should Jonathan have fought for his own claim to the throne? It's not as simple as "Jonathan is a role model of friendship." And children's actual real-world experiences with friendship aren't that simple either.
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Related:
"Text, Image, & Otherness in Children's Bibles" (I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH)
Michal wasn't here for David's worship, and now neither am I
Why did I think David was the good guy in the story of Abigail?
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