Dear Editor,
Chris Sinkinson’s piece on archaeological finds relevant to King David (en May 2026, p. 25, online version here) is accompanied by a cropped photo of Michelangelo’s David. With regard to the latter, may I quote some comments by Francis Schaeffer (How Should We Then Live?, chapter 3): “Michelangelo took a piece of marble so flawed that no one thought it could be used, and out of it he carved this overwhelming statue. But let us notice that the David was not the Jewish David of the Bible. David was simply a title. Michelangelo knew his Judaism, and in the statue the figure is not circumcised. We are not to think of this as the Biblical David but as the humanist ideal ...
“In this statue we have man waiting with confidence in his own strength for the future. Even the disproportionate size of the hands says man is powerful. This statue is idealistic and romantic ... Humanism was standing in its proud self ...
“But there are signs that by the end of his life Michelangelo saw that humanism was not enough...”
Thank you for 40 years of en!
Yours sincerely,
Philip Duce
Formerly Senior Commissioning Editor at Inter-Varsity Press. Wigston
