Reevaluation and Renewed Readings

Abstract The pericope of David’s heroes is a scholarly junction of textual variation and literary-historical details regarding the military unit of David’s Heroes. This article reevaluates the spectrum of extant textual variants relating to the literary structure of this pericope in its two occurrences, at 2 Sam 23:8–39 and 1 Chr 11:11–47, with emphasis on the question of “warriors of the third rank,” with the aim of arriving at a better understanding of the structure of both the literary pericope and the military unit it describes. The textual reevaluation leads to the conclusion that, contrary to the preferred status of MT -Samuel in leading literary-historical studies, readings extant in other versions are to be preferred, while unique MT -Samuel readings, and the historiographical information they reflect, should be understood as either corruptions, reflections of a secondary tradition, or interpretation.