Revised Editions

GIANT KILLER--Elmer Davis--John Day ($2.50).

MOSES--Louis Untermeyer--Harcourt Brace ($2.50).

Debunking has been of recent years the profitable pastime of biographers, and the relentless preoccupation of Bible scholars. Poaching on the preserves of both, a novelist now spins an entertaining yarn to debunk David, and a poet resorts to prose to do something of the sort for Moses.

Himself a Jew, Poet Untermeyer understood the tragedy of Jewish exile in Egypt, understood the something-more-than-Jew which enabled Moses to organize the return to Palestine. This something more Untermeyer fixes at 50% Egyptian blood, combined with upbringing at the sophisticated Egyptian court. The bulrush theory is but a myth concocted for publicity purposes when the Pharaoh's daughter found herself with child of a passionate Semitic lover.

His non-Jewish half gave Moses dispassionate insight into Hebrew nature--thus he chose not to enter Canaan knowing that it was the promised land only as long as it remained a promise. (The Bible claims, on the contrary, that Jehovah forbade him enter because he had sinned with a foreign light of love.) Untermeyer notes radical differences between Joshua's matter-of-fact record, and Nath's beautified narrative: Joshua itemizes the miraculous God-sent path through the Red Sea as matter of calculated tides and wind.

Untermeyer's interpretation is shrewd, and his language masterly; but unconvincing his modernized conversation in the mouths of prince and prophet.

Elmer Davis, on the other hand, is sufficiently master of the art of human speech to reconstruct the converse of garrulous though ancient Hebrews. It seems that David didn't kill the giant after all. Coming by lucky chance upon dead Goliath, he was clever enough to cut off the giant's head, and claim a superhuman victory. His whole career glittered with similar shrewd opportunism, alternating with cowardly lapses which the loyal Joab covered. Joab did all the killing, David got all the credit.

Giant Killer is eminently good reading for its new slant on a familiar story, and for its dramatic elaboration of scrimmages in love and war.