David in History and in the Hebrew Bible

David, next to Moses, is one of the most studied biblical characters.1 The problem is, however, that this important figure has no clear extra-biblical reference, which makes reconstructing the historical David and his kingdom a difficult, if not an impossible, task. A short paper such as this cannot exhaustively examine scholarly literature on David, nor every mention of the son of Jesse in biblical literature. Therefore, this article’s objective is solely to review extra-biblical sources, as well as selected biblical traditions related to this figure, to see whether at all, and if so, to what extent, they can be considered reliable historical sources, and on this basis to offer some general observations on the historical David.