"I think they have recently found some evidence that David and Solomon may have actually existed."
The Tel Dan Stele celebrates the defeat of the kings of Israel and Judah by the king of Damascus. As the article points out, this tells us almost nothing about whether an actual "David even existed. "David" is an old Cannaanite god and the inscription is challenged in myriad ways from the aspects of partial forgery...and certainly of interpretation. One thing is clear--it does NOT support any of the wild nonsense of the bible and in fact refutes it...as does the weight of all the archeology over the years in spite of the best efforts of Christian apologists and pretend scholars to "apologise" the facts into supportive argument. LOL!
Even (especially) the Jewish archeologists know the "evidence" proves the bible is mythology. That is why almost half of Israel citizens (where the archeological research is going on) are secular.
"In Jewish Sacred Literature that was later included in the Old Testament of the Christians, we are introduced to King David of the United Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and his successor and son, King Solomon. For millennia these individuals have been accepted as historical figures of great import, yet more and more their actual existence (at least as portrayed) is being questioned. We can name all of the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, we have monuments that they had created, documents of their actions, treaties they signed, mention of them by other nations and their tombs (sometimes their corpses too). We know the names of the Kings of Persia (the King of Kings), as with the Egyptians we have the monuments, documents, etc. We can repeat this with every ancient state in that area, even small city states such as Ugarit and Tyre, but when it comes to the illustrious King David and his even more venerated son Solomon, not a single shred of evidence. Not one monument, not one egotistical carving declaring that either King defeated an enemy or dedicated something to YHWH, not one document (Israelite, Babylonian, Egyptian, Assyrian, Hittite or other nation) mentions either King. Even Hiram of Tyre, supposedly a good buddy of Solomon, never mentions ol’ Sol at all. When it comes to evidence of either King, as the saying goes, the silence is deafening! It’s almost as if they never existed!
Christians scurry around attempting to prove the existence of these individuals with such things as the Bytdwd inscription and the Dawat inscription of Egypt. There are several problems with the authenticity of the Bytdwd inscription, that I will not address here, that tend to be epigraphist and translation problems and then there is the problem that the last letter before a break is continued down the side of the break, indicative of a forgery. The last I heard on that was that it was being investigated. The problem with the Dawat inscription is that even creative translation can not make the inscription h(y)dbtdwt read as the heights of David as the Christians would want it to. Christians love to state that lack of evidence is not evidence of lack, a rather ridiculous saying at best. Actually lack of evidence is nearly always lack of existence, especially after an exhaustive search for evidence of existence.
The very existence of the United Kingdom now seems to be on very shaky ground also. All archaeological and contemporary historical evidence shows the state of Israel came into being around the early 9th century BCE followed by the formation of the state of Judah in the mid 8th century BCE. There is no mention anywhere (except in the Bible) of Kingdom of Israel, be it an independent state or part of a United Kingdom, prior to the 9th century BCE. Many Christians will wildly wave their hands at this and start babbling about the Merneptah Stele. There are two scholarly debates going on about this stela. The first concerns whether or not Merneptah actually campaigned in Canaan; the existence of a stela by his predecessor Ramesses II, about the Battle of Qadesh, indicates firm control of the Levant. This calls into question why Merneptah would have to campaign there. The second debate surrounds “Israel”. As the stela mentions just one line about Israel it is difficult for scholars to draw any information at all about Israel. The stela does point out that Israel, at this stage, refers to a people since a determinative for "country" is absent regarding Israel (whereas the other areas had a determinative for "country" applied to them). There is the thought also that at the time of Merneptah, the “Israelites” would still be wandering in the desert, not yet entering the “Promised Land”.
To summarize, there is a singular lack of evidence, archaeological and historical for David, Solomon or the United Kingdom. A lack that is highlighted by the myriad of evidence available for kings and nations that were supposedly less famous and the myriad of evidence for the individuals of the “king lists” of Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Persia, Tyre, etc and for the very nations and city states that they ruled. As with nations today, these various states of the ancient world maintained a diplomatic service that communicated with their counterparts of other nations. The dry climate of Egypt preserved the archives of the Egyptian diplomatic corps and the use of clay as a medium for inscription (baked afterwards into stone-like consistency) preserved the archives of the other ancient nations. In none of the archives excavated in all of the ancient sites, not one missive to or from David or Solomon, men that supposedly controlled an empire to rival that of their western, southern, and eastern neighbors, nor was there any addressed to (nor from) any ruler of Israel until the 9th century BCE. There is a faint possibility that the OT is glamorizing and enhancing the legend of a “Robber Baron” of a small hill country city state (possibly centered on Jerusalem), just as the Robin Hood legend of the Danelaw glamorized a robber of ancient England. Solomon seems to actually have been an Assyrian King. King Shalmaneser V (the name actually means Solomon) who sacked Samaria and sent the Israelites into captivity. Shalmaneser V is known as a great warrior and a very wise king. Evidentially the post-exilic priests of YHWH borrowed this Assyrian king as their model for the biblical Solomon. Until there is more than mere coincidental evidence of either David, Solomon or the United Kingdom, they must remain denizens of the Jewish post-exilic mythology."
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Bible, as History, Flunks New Archaeological Tests; Hotly Debated Studies Cast Doubt on Many Familiar Stories
By GUSTAV NIEBUHR
The Bible's account of King David is so well known that even people who rarely crack the Good Book probably have an idea of his greatness.
David, Scripture says, was such a superb military leader that he not only captured Jerusalem but also went on to make it the seat of an empire, uniting the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Thus began a glorious era, later amplified by his son King Solomon, whose influence extended from the borders of Egypt to the Euphrates River. Afterward, decline set in.
Yet what if the Bible's account doesn't fit the evidence in the ground? What if David's Jerusalem was really a rural backwater -- and the greatness of Israel and Judah lay far in the future?
Lately, such assertions are coming from some authorities on Israel's archaeology, who speak from the perspective of recent finds from excavations into the ancient past. ''The way I understand the finds, there is no evidence whatsoever for a great, united monarchy which ruled from Jerusalem over large territories,'' said Israel Finkelstein, the director of the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University. King David's Jerusalem, he added, ''was no more than a poor village at the time.''
Statements like these have earned Mr. Finkelstein -- who is leading excavations at Megiddo, a vitally important site for biblical archaeology in northern Israel -- a reputation as a fascinating but controversial scholar. His reports from Megiddo that some structures attributed to Solomon were actually built after his reign have touched off fierce debate in Israel.
Within a larger context, what he says reflects a striking shift now under way in how a number of archaeologists understand Israel's past. Their interpretations challenge some of the Bible's best-known stories, like Joshua's conquest of Canaan. Other finds have turned up new information that supplements Scripture, like what happened to Jerusalem after it was captured by the Babylonians 2,600 years ago.
In an interview by e-mail from the Megiddo site, Mr. Finkelstein said that not long ago, ''biblical history dictated the course of research and archaeology was used in order to 'prove' the biblical narrative.'' In that way, he said, archaeology took a back seat as a discipline.
''I think that it is time to put archaeology in the front line,'' said Mr. Finkelstein, the co-author with Neil Asher Silberman of ''The Bible Unearthed,'' to be published in January by The Free Press.
His reference to past practices can be illustrated by a remark by Yigael Yadin, an Israeli general who turned to archaeology and who once spoke of going into the field with a spade in one hand and the Bible in the other.
Many archaeologists, both before and after the founding of the modern state of Israel, shared a similar approach: seeking direct evidence for biblical stories. This outlook was shaped either by their religious convictions or their nationalist views, said Amy Dockser Marcus, the author of ''The View From Nebo'' (Little Brown), a wide-ranging and engaging book that describes in detail the shift in archaeology taking place in Israel. The problem with that outlook, she said, is that ''you can't help but go in and look at material and interpret material in a certain way.'' And that, she added, ''led to certain mistakes.''
In her book, Ms. Marcus -- formerly the Middle East correspondent for The Wall Street Journal -- notes that Mr. Yadin believed he had unearthed evidence in the ruins of a place called Hazor that corroborated the biblical account of how that Canaanite city had been destroyed. The Bible says Hazor fell to invading Israelites led by Joshua.
But these days, she said, an increasing number of archaeologists have come to doubt that Joshua's campaign ever took place. Instead, they theorize that the ancient Israelites emerged gradually and peacefully from among the region's general population -- a demographic evolution, not a military invasion. ''And that would explain how their pottery is so similar to the Canaanites', and their architecture, their script,'' Ms. Marcus said.
Mr. Finkelstein makes the same argument: ''Archaeology has shown that early Israel indeed emerged from the local population of late Bronze Canaan.'' In addition, he said, archaeology has turned up no physical remains to support the Bible's story of the Exodus: ''There is no evidence for the wanderings of the Israelites in the Sinai desert.''
Asked how such conclusions have been received in Israel, Mr. Finkelstein replied that they had produced a ''quite strong and negative'' reaction. But the anger, he said, was coming not from strictly Orthodox Jews (''who simply ignore us,'' he said) but from more secular Jews who prize the biblical stories for their symbolic value to modern Israel. ''I think that the young generation -- at least on the liberal side -- will be more open and willing to listen,'' he said.
Still, considerable disagreement exists among archaeologists on how to interpret many recent finds. And the new theories about ancient Israel are emerging against the backdrop of a raging dispute over so-called biblical ''minimalists,'' scholars who argue that biblical accounts of early Israel, including the stories of David and Solomon, have little if any basis in history.
This debate was recently fought out in a lively issue of the Biblical Archaeology Review, a bimonthly magazine published in Washington, in which one of the minimalists, the British scholar Philip Davies, wrote that biblical accounts of early Israel were purely theological, not historical. In response, a major critic of the minimalists, the American archaeologist William Dever, wrote that ample physical evidence pointed to early Israelites living in the region's highlands 3,200 years ago, two centuries before the time of David and Solomon.
But if many archaeologists are far less interested in trying to corroborate the exact biblical accounts of Israel's ancient past than in how the area's ancient history fits into the larger picture of the Middle East, that change of perspective, Ms. Marcus said, reflects an intellectual shift among the people doing the digging. Many current archaeologists, she said, were born in modern Israel and don't need a link to the biblical King David to think of themselves as part of the Israeli nation: ''They see themselves as part of the broader Middle East.''
Yet while archaeology is challenging some of the biblical narrative, it is also adding to it. At Megiddo, Mr. Finkelstein said, he found that the period 2,900 years ago -- the century following the rule of Solomon -- was a far more interesting and powerful time for the Kingdom of Israel than the Bible says. Another tantalizing discovery, in 1993, turned up a stele with an inscription referring to the ''House of David,'' the first real evidence that refers to the biblical king. Still other recent excavations have provided compelling new evidence about the lives of the residents of Jerusalem 2,600 years ago, when they were besieged by the Babylonian army, and about the nearby people of ancient Judah who did not go into exile in Babylon.
Ms. Marcus said that such discoveries illustrate how archaeology can restore information ''left on the cutting room floor,'' as it were, by those who compiled the biblical narrative. ''Archaeology is giving you back all this history,'' she said. ''So archaeology doesn't just deconstruct the Bible, but reconstructs it.''
Photos: Archaeologists working at excavation sites like Megiddo in northern Israel, above, say that no evidence has been found to confirm biblical stories about a united monarchy ruling over a large area from Jerusalem or about the wanderings of the Jews in the desert during the Exodus, depicted in an engraving.
(Above, Richard T. Nowitz; below, Culver Pictures)(pg. B9); At left, a sacred area with an altar among the remains of a temple at the excavation site of Megiddo in northern Israel. Above, a water tunnel built by the Israelites, circa 850 to 750 B.C., at Megiddo. (Photographs by Richard T. Nowitz)(pg. B11)
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