King David

Since the creation of cinema, there have always been movies adapted from books. Everyone knows that when doing this there must be certain concessions that are needed. One cannot possibly include every little detail of a book in a movie script. There are also times where a books version of an event may be "boring," so the screen writer events of stylizes the passage to make it more appealing to an audience. There have also been times where a screen writer has altogether made up a scene as well. In the movie King David all of these scenarios have taken place.

The first part of the movie that I shall look at is the story of David and Goliath. There is a major discrepancy of how this epic battle actually came to fruition. First and foremost, in the movie, David is depicted as traveling with Saul and his army to the valley of Elah (King David). The actual bible passage describes something extremely different. In the bible, it is told to us that David was with his father Jesse at the time of the battle at the valley of Elah. Jesse instructs David to go visit his three oldest brothers and to bring them rations. It was during this trip that David found his brothers and was greeted by the mighty Philistine. This account is different as well. In the movie version we see a soldier run down from the Philistine encampment and holler to the Israelites that Goliath has challenged them to a fight. The bible actually tells us that Goliath himself and not a soldier is the one who calls forth this challenge. There is also a major part of this story left out of the movie, but I believe to be an important part of this story. The part in question is that there was trepidation by his brothers as well as Saul himself as to whether David was fit to fight Goliath (New Revised Standard Version, 1Sam. 17.31-37). Saul claims that David is but a youth and this Philistine has been a warrior since his youth. After David's rebuttal, Saul ends up clothing David in armor, but David refuses this protection because he cannot move comfortably in it (New Revised Standard Version, 1Sam. 17.38-40). This is another important scene that is depicted in the bible, but not in the movie. The last major discrepance is that of the actual confrontation between Goliath and David. In the movie it is shown that David needs a couple of attempts of stone throwing to kill Goliath (King David). This event in the bible shows that David killed Goliath with one stone