What is the history of the Star of David?

Answer 1

1) The true origin of the Star of David, more properly called "the Shield of David" is unknown, though there are many legends.

2) In all honesty, the Star of David is little more than a simple hexagram made from 2 equilateral triangles of the same size yet pointed in opposite directions. It is most probable that hundreds, if not thousands,, of different people were merrily decorating their homes and possessions with this very symbol long before David and the 12 tribes of Israel ever existed. Because of this, no one will ever know for sure which prehistoric human being 'created' this naturally occurring geometric figure (snowflakes, white lilies, and pomegranates) but it most certainly was NOT King David.

So, the legends surrounding the so-called 'Star of David' have basically nothing to do with the identity of who invented this six-pointed hexagram. It is assumed that many different groups of people scattered throughout the world were already familiar with the symbol long before a young King David chose it to be his personal insignia (and then later as his royal family Coat of Arms).

With all this in mind, it would be safe to say that no one knows who 'created' the basic form of the hexagram and its distant origins will always remain shrouded in mystery. But when it comes to the fairly specific history of just one specific hexagram known as the the 'Star of David', one may state with confidence that it was none other than King David himself, which was then carried on by his son Solomon (Seal of Solomon) and so forth.

Answer 2

It may have been King David, who according to the Jewish tradition composed Psalms, invented the concept of the Shield of David. In Chapter 18:3 King David prays to the Lord, using the word shield - and that's when the concept of the Shield of David entered our world.

How was the above mentioned concept attached to the 6-pointes star is another question. The "star of David" is a non-Hebrew translation of the Hebrew words for Shield of David,in which no star is mentioned, and how did that happen is another question.

A link can be found below for more information.

Answer

The shape referred to as the star or shield of David is an ancient symbol used by many different cultures and no one knows who actually invented it. Jews used the symbol and call it the 'Magen David' which means 'Star of David' because it's believed that Kind David's shield was in that shape.

Answer 3

The precise origin of the use of the hexagram as a Jewish symbol remains unknown, but it apparently emerged in the context of medieval Jewish protective amulets (segulot). One understanding is that the symbol represents the 12/13 months of the lunisolar calendar that keeps seasons synchronized with the lunar cycle, in distinction from the lunar calendar (common to the Islamic culture) in which seasons drift. The Jewish Encyclopedia cites a 12th-century Karaite document as the earliest Jewish literary source to mention the symbol.

The hexagram does appear occasionally in Jewish contexts since antiquity, apparently as a decorative motif. For example, in Israel, there is a stone bearing a hexagram from the arch of a 3-4th century synagogue in the Galilee. Originally, the hexagram may have been employed as an architectural ornament on synagogues, as it is, for example, on the cathedrals of Brandenburg and Stendal, and on the Marktkirche at Hanover. A pentagram in this form is found on the ancient synagogue at Tell Hum. In the synagogues, perhaps, it was associated with the mezuzah.

The use of the hexagram in a Jewish context as a possibly meaningful symbol may occur as early as the 11th century, in the decoration of the carpet page of the famous Tanakh manuscript, the Leningrad Codex dated 1008. Similarly, the symbol illuminates a medieval Tanakh manuscript dated 1307 belonging to Rabbi Yosef bar Yehuda ben Marvas from Toledo, Spain. A Siddur dated 1512 from Prague displays a large hexagram on the cover with the phrase, "... He will merit to bestow a bountiful gift on anyone who grasps the Shield of David."

The name 'Shield of David' was used by at least the 11th century as a title of the God of Israel, independent of the use of the symbol. The phrase occurs independently as a Divine title in the Siddur, the traditional Jewish prayer book, where it poetically refers to the Divine protection of ancient King David and the anticipated restoration of his dynastic house, perhaps based on Psalm 18, which is attributed to David, and in which God is compared to a shield (v. 31 and v. 36). The term occurs at the end of the "Samkhaynu/Gladden us" blessing, which is recited after the reading of the Haftara portion on Saturday and holidays.

The earliest known text related to Judaism which mentions a sign called the "Shield of David" is Eshkol Ha-Kofer by the Karaite Judah Hadassi, in the mid-12th century CE:

"Seven names of angels precede the mezuzah: Michael, Gabriel, etc. ... Tetragrammaton protect you! And likewise the sign, called the 'Shield of David', is placed beside the name of each angel."[6]

This book is of Karaite, and not of Rabbinic Jewish origin; and that it does not describe the shape of the sign in any way.

A Shield of David has been noted on a Jewish tombstone in Taranto, Apulia in Southern Italy, which may date as early as the third century CE. The Jews of Apulia were noted for their scholarship in Kabbalah, which has been connected to the use of the Star of David.

Medieval Kabbalistic grimoires show hexagrams among the tables of segulot, but without identifying them as "Shield of David".

In the Renaissance Period, in the 16th-century Land of Israel, the book Ets Khayim conveys the Kabbalah of Ha-Ari (Rabbi Isaac Luria) who arranges the traditional items on the seder plate for Passover into two triangles, where they explicitly correspond to Jewish mystical concepts. The six sfirot of the masculine Zer Anpin correspond to the six items on the seder plate, while the seventh sfira being the feminine Malkhut corresponds to the plate itself.

However, these seder-plate triangles are parallel, one above the other, and do not actually form a hexagram,.

According to G.S. Oegema (1996)

Isaac Luria provided the Shield of David with a further mystical meaning. In his book Etz Chayim he teaches that the elements of the plate for the Seder evening have to be placed in the order of the hexagram: above the three sefirot "Crown", "Wisdom", and "Insight", below the other seven.

Similarly, M. Costa wrote that M. Gudemann and other researchers in the 1920s claimed that Isaac Luria was influential in turning the Star of David into a national Jewish emblem by teaching that the elements of the plate for the Seder evening have to be placed in the order of the hexagram Gershom Scholem (1990) disagrees with this view, arguing that Isaac Luria talked about parallel triangles one beneath the other and not about the hexagram.

The Star of David at least since the 20th century remains associated with the number seven and thus with the Menorah, and popular accounts associate it with he six directions of space plus the center (under the influence of the description of space found in the Sefer Yetsira: Up, Down, East, West, South, North, and Center), or the Six Sefirot of the Male (Zeir Anpin) united with the Seventh Sefirot of the Female (Nukva).

In 1354, King of Bohemia Charles IV prescribed for the Jews of Prague a red flag with both David's shield and Solomon's seal, while the red flag with which the Jews met King Matthias of Hungary in the 15th century showed two pentagrams with two golden stars. The pentagram, therefore, may also have been used among the Jews as early as the year 1073.

In 1460, the Jews of Ofen (Budapest, Hungary) received King Matthias Corvinus with a red flag on which were two Shields of David and two stars. In the first Hebrew prayer book, printed in Prague in 1512, a large Shield of David appears on the cover. In the colophon is written: "Each man beneath his flag according to the house of their fathers... and he will merit to bestow a bountiful gift on anyone who grasps the Shield of David." In 1592, Mordechai Maizel was allowed to affix "a flag of King David, similar to that located on the Main Synagogue" on his synagogue in Prague. In 1648, the Jews of Prague were again allowed a flag, in acknowledgment of their part in defending the city against the Swedes. On a red background was a yellow Shield of David, in the center of which was a Swedish star.

In the 17th century, the Shield of David as the hexagram began to represent the Jewish community generally, when the Jewish quarter of Vienna was formally distinguished from the rest of the city by a boundary stone having the hexagram on one side and the Christian cross on the other. By the 18th century, the Shield appeared to represent the Jewish people in both secular (politics) and religious (synagogue) contexts. The Star of David can be found on the tombstones of religious Jews in Europe since the 18th century. Following Jewish emancipation after the French Revolution, Jewish communities chose the Star of David to represent themselves, comparable to the cross used by most Christians. Then in the 19th century, it began to signify the Jewish people internationally, when the early Zionist movement adopted it as the symbol of the Jewish people, after the Dreyfus affair in France in the 19th century. From here, other Jewish community organizations adopted it too.

A Star of David, often yellow-colored, was used by the Nazis during the Holocaust as a method of identifying Jews. After the German invasion of Poland in 1939 there were initially different local decrees forcing Jews to wear a distinct sign - in the General Government e.g. a white armband with a blue Star of David on it, in the Warthegau a yellow badge in the form of a Star of David on the left side of the breast and on the back. If a Jew was found without wearing the star in public, they could be subjected to severe punishment. The requirement to wear the Star of David with the word Jude (German for Jew) inscribed was then extended to all Jews over the age of 6 in the Reich and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (by a decree issued on September 1, 1941 signed by Reinhard Heydrich ) and was gradually introduced in other German-occupied areas.

The flag of Israel, depicting a blue Star of David on a white background, between two horizontal blue stripes was adopted on October 28, 1948, five months after the country's establishment. The origins of the flag's design date from the First Zionist Congress in 1897; the flag has subsequently been known as the "flag of Zion".

Answer 4

Given the fact that the Star of David is simply a hexagram (one of the most basic shapes in geometry), one can say with a fair amount of confidence that humans have been drawing this symbol for various reasons for the past 10,000 years at least. No one has ever claimed that the Biblical character David (1040-970 BC) was the first person in history to ever make use of the symbol. In fact, there''s a strong possibility that David became acquainted with the symbol due to the fact it was already well-known and in use at about the same time he chose it to be his royal emblem. If you are asking when the hexagram was created then the answer would be at least 10,000 years ago. On the other hand, if the question is when was the specific hexagram known as the Star of David 'created' then the answer is sometime between the years 1020 to 1000 BC during the first few decades of King David's reign.

Answer 5

The Jews, Christians, and Muslims used the Star of David.

Answer 6

It originated from when the Maccabees were fighting the Romans and David had the symbol of the star on his shield