Traces of the ancient kingdom of Israel occasionally emerge from the dust of the Holy Land. These discoveries are immediately and inevitably followed by fierce controversies among archaeologists. As amateur spectators, Christians are eyewitnesses to these debates and, in one way or another, their faith is shaped by them.
The historical reality of the Jewish kings David and Solomon was assessed in the December 2010 issue of National Geographic. “Was the Kingdom of David and Solomon a glorious empire—or just a little cow town?” That’s the question Robert Draper begins with, and the answer once again confirms the archaeological controversy on the subject: “It depends on which archaeologist you ask.” According to the Bible, King David reigned for 40 years (1 Kings 2:11), during which time he prevailed over the neighbouring tribes. Solomon was a more distinguished king than his father. The gold, silver and flocks he amassed, the harem of hundreds of wives and concubines, and the fact that the first wife was the daughter of the Egyptian Pharaoh are some of the biblical details that suggest that the kingdom they ruled was no small affair.
But critics of the Bible, a significant number of archaeologists and others, ask a legitimate question. Where are the remains of the kingdoms of David and Solomon? How can it be that from such a mighty kingdom not even a few inscriptions have survived to prove, if not the glory of which the Bible speaks, at least the historical existence of the kingdom?
While the Bible claims that David and Solomon built the kingdom of Israel into a powerful and prestigious empire stretching from the Mediterranean to the Jordan and from Damascus to the Negev, archaeologists have searched for decades without finding any conclusive evidence that David and Solomon ever built anything. (Robert Draper, “Kings of Controversy”, National Geographic, December 2010)
The divided kingdom of…archaeologists
One of the most critical voices against the idea that David and Solomon were important kings in the 10th century BC is that of archaeologist Israel Finkelstein. In his view, David was more likely to have been a local outlaw who over time became a legendary figure. Jews should give up the biblical tales of David and Solomon, just as the Greeks gave up the stories of Theseus and Agamemnon. “There was no united monarchy of Israel in the way that the Bible describes it,”[1] Finkelstein and Neil Asher Sielberman write. “The archaeological discoveries of recent decades have clearly shown how far from the glamorous biblical portraits the actual world of David and Solomon was.”[2] But what is so “clear” to Finkelstein and Sielberman is to other archaeologists merely a theory that can be disputed.
There are two main trends in biblical archaeology, maximalism and minimalism. While maximalist archaeologists dig with the Bible in hand, convinced that the book presents historical dates, characters and events, minimalists argue that archaeological discoveries do not confirm the events described in the Bible. The theory that David and Solomon are merely fictional characters, comparable to Achilles or King Arthur, is typical of the minimalist movement. In fact, the 10th century BC is at the centre of the controversy between the two archaeological groups. “The United Monarchy is a creation of a later period, a mythical Golden Age that was necessary to restore national pride after the Exile,”[3] the minimalists argue.
The archaeologist Thomas Davis speaks of the danger of “ideological archaeology,” where archaeological data is interpreted to fit with information in the Bible. This is not honest research, and so “we must look inside ourselves, approach archaeology with humility and not with arrogance, and be constantly alert to our own subjectivity.”[4] For a while it seemed that everything was stacked against the maximalists accused of subjectivism, since there was not a single mention of extra-biblical evidence for the existence of King David. Then, in 1993, the international press announced a shocking discovery…
“The House of David”
Avraham Biran,[5] an archaeologist at the Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Institute of Religion, discovered an inscription at the archaeological site of Tel Dan in northern Israel. The discovery was made on 21 July 1993. Written in early Aramaic, the inscription on the Tel Dan slab celebrates the victory of a king of Damascus over an Israelite emperor. Biran and Dr Joseph Naveh, a scholar of ancient Semitic languages at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, identified a surprising expression in the text of the stela: “House of David.” The minimalist Finkelstein himself was forced to admit that “the Tel Dan inscription provides an independent witness to the historical existence of a dynasty founded by a ruler named David, from just a few generations after the era in which he presumably lived.”[6] Some of the radical minimalists were so dismayed by the discovery of the Tel Dan inscription that they claimed it was a forgery.[7] After years of silence, a name has emerged from under the sand: David.
But is this the only archaeological evidence of David, his son Solomon, and the kingdom the Bible says they founded? In fact, there is another ancient document called the Moabite Stone (or The Mesha Stele). Discovered in 1868 in modern-day Jordan, the Moabite Stele speaks of King Mesha of Moab (mentioned in the Bible in 2 Kings 3:4). French scholar André Lemaire announced in 1994 that he had deciphered the phrase “House of David” on line 31 of the inscription. But there was no shortage of voices contradicting Lemaire’s conclusion.
Mrs Mazar’s theory
According to the Bible, “Hiram king of Tyre sent envoys to David, along with cedar logs and carpenters and stonemasons, and they built a palace for David” (2 Samuel 5:11). In 2005, Eilat Mazar began digging in the oldest part of Jerusalem in search of the remains of King David’s palace. The site he chose was based on a hunch of his own. Mazar based his search on verse 17 of the book of 2 Samuel, which describes King David descending from the residence built by Hiram’s craftsmen into a fortress or citadel. This was, of course, the fortress David had previously conquered (mentioned in 2 Samuel 5:7).
With the help of the Shalem Centre and the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mazar discovered an ancient stone structure with very thick walls. Mazar also found pottery from the 10th century BC above the structure and pottery from the 11th century BC below the stone structure. His conclusion is that these walls were built sometime in the 10th century, around the time that David, according to the Bible, built a palace in Jerusalem. That this was no ordinary residence was also suggested to him by the discovery of an ivory handle. “Most people didn’t have ivory at that time,”[8] says Mazar. In his opinion, “the archaeological remains square perfectly with the Biblical description that tells us David went down from there to the citadel“. Mazar believes that, in light of his discovery, Jerusalem in the time of David and Solomon was monumental, just as the Bible describes it.
King Solomon’s gates
Much has been made of the six-chambered city gates attributed to Solomon. These are the gates of the ancient cities of Hazor, Gezer, Megiddo, Beth Shemesh, Ashdod and Lachish. These are the evidence of a distinct process of centralisation and urbanisation, which corresponds to the biblical information about the development of the kingdom during Solomon’s reign. According to the Bible, Solomon fortified Jerusalem and the cities of Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer (1 Kings 9:15, 16). In the summer of 1971, Professor Yigael Yadin discovered the gate of the city of Gezer. Based on the idea that the biblical text represents reality, Yadin predicted that similar gates would be discovered at Hazor and Megiddo. The prediction proved correct, and the similarities could not be attributed to mere coincidence. Yadin was right: there was a common design to which these fortifications were built, and for thousands of years the Bible has given the name of the man behind the design—King Solomon.
Faith does not depend on archaeology
The preservation of the remains of ancient empires is a serious matter, and archaeological research requires rigour, patience, and honesty. David and Solomon may have signed dozens or hundreds of documents. Perhaps their deeds were recorded in the documents of the time. But three millennia lie between the time of the United Monarchy and the present. The turbulent history of Israel, the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar II, the post-exilic reconstruction and that from the time of Herod the Great, the destruction of the Jewish capital by the Romans and the traces left by the Muslims and the Crusaders partly explain the lack of documents. Ancient inscriptions should not be confused with today’s digital documents. They were rare and not easily reproduced.
There are archaeologists who say that David and Solomon did not exist. But this is based on a lack of evidence. The history of archaeology shows that other biblical events, places, and people whose existence was once disputed have eventually come to light.
Controversies among archaeologists give the unsuspecting reader the false idea that the veracity of the Bible depends on archaeological excavations. Even some Christians, as spectators of the debate between the various archaeological factions, become dependent on their verdicts and the strength of their arguments. However, faith in God is not subordinate to archaeology, and the life of a Christian need not be like an electrocardiogram, oscillating according to what the archaeologist’s trowel has found. The story of David and Solomon, as recorded in the books of the Bible, may be confirmed by archaeology, but it does not depend on it.
