- published: 01 Jul 2016
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David (/ˈdeɪvɪd/; Hebrew: דָּוִד, Modern David, Tiberian Dāwîḏ;ISO 259-3 Dawid; Arabic: داوُد Dāwūd; Syriac: ܕܘܝܕ Dawid; Ancient Greek: Δαυίδ; Latin: Davidus, David; Strong's: Daveed) was, according to the Books of Samuel, the second king of the United Kingdom of Israel, and according to the New Testament, an ancestor of Jesus. His life is conventionally dated to c. 1040 – 970 BCE, his reign over Judah c. 1010–970 BCE.
The Books of Samuel, 1 Kings, and 1 Chronicles are the only Old Testament sources of information on David, although the Tel Dan Stele (dated c. 850–835 BCE) contains the phrase בית דוד (bytdwd), read as "House of David", which many scholars confirm to be a likely plausible match to the existence in the mid-9th century BCE of a Judean royal dynasty called the House of David.
Depicted as a valorous warrior of great renown, and a poet and musician credited for composing much of the psalms contained in the Book of Psalms, King David is widely viewed as a righteous and effective king in battle and civil justice. He is described as a man after God's own heart in 1 Samuel 13:14 and Acts 13:22.
David Shayler (born 24 December 1965) is a British journalist and former MI5 officer. Shayler was prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act 1989 for passing secret documents to the Mail on Sunday in August 1997 that alleged that MI5 was paranoid about socialists, and that it had previously investigated Labour Party ministers Peter Mandelson, Jack Straw and Harriet Harman.
Shayler was born in Middlesbrough, England; when he was 10 his family left the northeast. He attended John Hampden Grammar School in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire whose head teacher, according to Shayler himself, once described him as "a born rebel who sails close to the wind ... and suffers neither fools nor their arguments gladly". He later attended the University of Dundee starting in 1984 where he was editor of the student newspaper Annasach and was responsible for publishing extracts of the book Spycatcher by another former MI5 officer Peter Wright (banned in Britain at the time). He graduated with a 2:1 degree in English (2nd class honours upper division) in July 1989. After leaving university he worked as a journalist at The Sunday Times newspaper although his employment was terminated six months later.