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DAVID and SOLOMON: DID THE KINGDOM EXIST?
Anonymous
(Investigator 214, 2024 January)
A 3000-YEAR TREND
The kingdom of David and his son Solomon, portrayed in the Bible as
powerful and glorious, has since the 1990s been regarded by top
archaeologists as myth!
Now, a new study, reported in the esteemed journal PLOS One (11/2023), implies that Solomon's kingdom "may have existed after all." Such a reversal is not a one-off. The Bible condemns idolatry and predicted the demise of the ancient gods, and turned out correct. The Bible proving correct over critics is a trend that's gone on for 3000 years!
THE PROBLEM
The Kingdom of David and Solomon around 1000 BCE, which the Bible
presents as great and glorious, has apparently left no archaeological
remains! Like the Nazi military base on the Moon it apparently never
existed!
Important in the debate is Gezer, a Canaanite city (Joshua 10:33) 30km west of Jerusalem, which archaeologists have excavated since 1902. After 1000 BCE an Egyptian Pharoah, according to the Bible, ousted the Canaanites from Gezer and gave the city to Solomon as a dowry when he married Pharoah's daughter. Solomon rebuilt Gezer, Megiddo and other towns. (I Kings 9:15-17)
SIX-CHAMBERED GATES
Gezer Stratum 8 (eighth archaeological layer from the top) includes the
remains of a large administrative building, a casement wall, and
six-chambered city gate.
In the 1960s Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin noted six-chambered gates at Gezer in southwest Israel, and also at Megiddo, Hazor and other cities in northern Israel. Yadin interpreted these Iron Age structures as indicating a powerful state that included all Israel from north to south, and attributed their construction to Solomon based on 1 Kings 9:15. Gezer was destroyed apparently by Pharoah Shishak in the 10th century BC. The invasion is historical, and also mentioned in I Kings 14:25-26. However, in the 1990s Professor Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University concluded from pottery studies and radiocarbon dating at Megiddo and Hazor that the six-chambered city gates, as well as several palaces, buildings and other structures, were built in the 9th century BCE, in the reign of King Omri about a century after Solomon. Their destruction was therefore wrought during an invasion by Hazael, king of Damascus, about 830 BCE (Draper 2010) and not during the earlier invasion of Pharoah Shishak. This new understanding became popular, but left no evidence for the historicity of a powerful kingdom ruled by Solomon.
The First Nine Rulers of Israel and Judah (Dates provisional)
Finally, in the last few years, radiocarbon dating has hammered the
final nail into the coffin of the Solomonic mirage... Almost all the
samples produced dates lower, that is later, than the widely
accepted dates of the conquests of David and the united monarchy of King Solomon... Thus the conventional view on the archaeology of the united monarchy was wrong by almost a century.
David's existence was archaeologically confirmed in 1993 by the
discovery at Tel Dan in northern Israel of a black basalt stele
inscribed "House of David". But, according to Finkelstein, there
was no impressive kingdom: "Jerusalem was little more than a
hill-country village ... David himself a raggedy upstart..." (Draper
2010) It seemed that the Bible had mythologized minor local chieftains
into rulers of a great nation. There was no archaeology to suggest
otherwise.
NEW EVIDENCE
Recently the structures at Gezer have again been dated to the 10th
century BCE by a radiocarbon study of the Gezer ruins by researchers
from Lipscomb University (Tennessee) and the Israel Antiquities
Authority, and published in the journal PLOS One. The construction of
six-chambered gates were apparently not limited to Omri's reign, but
extended well over a century.
The researchers collected organic materials such as charred seeds from
various layers at Gezer spanning 1300 to 900 B.C.E to see whether
radiocarbon dated archaeological finds could be synchronized with
events mentioned in Egyptian and Assyrian records and the Bible.
For example, they found that the fiery devastation of Gezer Stratum 12, wrought by Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah who boasted about it on the famous Israel Stele (c.1208 BCE), is supported by radiocarbon samples dated about 1200 BCE. The new radiocarbon dates from Gezer Stratum 8 indicated it was built in the first half of the 10th century BCE – in Solomon's lifetime.
In other words the pre-1990s view — that Pharoah Shishak destroyed
Gezer in the 10th century BCE — could be true again, implying that the
impressive archaeological remains at Gezer indicate the rule of a
powerful king a few decades earlier.
CONCLUSION:
The new study is not proof that Solomon ruled an empire as described in
the Bible, but it means that the biblical scenario cannot be ruled out.
The 3000-year trend has not definitely stopped.
REFERENCES:
Ariel David, 2023 Haaretz Newspaper https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2023-11-15/ty-article/david-and-solomons-biblical-kingdom-may-have -existed-after-all-new-study-suggests/ Draper, R. David and Solomon, National Geographic, December 2010, 66-90 Finkelstein, I. & Silberman, N.A. 2006 David And Solomon, Free Press, p. 281 Webster, L.C. et all, The chronology of Gezer from the end of the Late Bronze Age to Iron Age II: A meeting point for radiocarbon, archaeology, egyptology and the Bible, PLOS One, November 15,2023, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0293119 |
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