the real nature of the biblical characters, and we have no way of examining how accurately they are represented in biblical narrative. Although we can judge whether a particular character is convincing as a human being, we cannot know whether he or she is an accurate representation of a specific historical person. We cannot tell, for example, if the way David is portrayed in the book of Samuel and at the beginning of the book of Kings, is a more or less faithful description of David as he really
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