Deus Artefacta: Timeline of the United Kingdom

United Monarchy

With the discovery of the Tel Dan stele in 1993,[1] the extreme minimalist view of Ussishkin and others was challenged, since the phrase “house of David”[2] (Heb. bytdwd), was identified as part of the inscription.[3] David’s reign has now also been identified on line 31 of the Mesha Stele.[4] Amihai Mazar described the implications of this discovery: “It means that about 140 years after the presumed end of David’s reign, in the region David was well-known as founder of the dynasty that ruled a kingdom centered in Jerusalem.”[5]

In spite of these significant discoveries some scholars insisted that the inscription only proved that Judah existed and they continued to deny that David was an historical figure.[6]

Some, like Israel Finkelstein, from Tel Aviv University, while not denying David and Solomon as historical figures, challenged their biblical portrayal. For Finkelstein, David is not a powerful king ruling a large kingdom, but instead little more than a tribal chief, ruling over a small tribe of bandits.[7] Amihai Mazar explains how Finkelstein arrived at this popular view:

Israel Finkelstein has suggested lowering the chronology of archaeological assemblages in Israel that were traditionally attributed to the twelfth to tenth centuries by seventy-five to one hundred years. This wholesale lowering of dates results in the removal of archaeological assemblages from the tenth century that have served for about half a century of scholarship as the bases for the archaeological portrait or paradigm of Solomon’s kingdom. This suggested “low Chronology”[8] supposedly supports the replacement of this paradigm by a new one, . . . according to which the kingdom of David and Solomon either did not exist or comprised at best a small local entity.[9]

The popular deconstruction of the biblical view of David and Solomon, involving low chronology, has led to a heated debate.[10] However, there is evidence of the prominence of the City of David in the tenth to nineth cent. BC (Iron 2A) that has been verified by several recent discoveries.

[1] While this inscription was widely debated, Grabbe maintains that “it is now widely regarded (a) as genuine and (b) as referring to the Davidic dynasty and the Aramaic kingdom of Damascus.” Grabbe, Ahab Agonistes, 333.

[2] Kitchen also points out the possible mention of the “highland/heights of David” in the Sheshonq Relief. Kenneth A. Kitchen, “A Possible Mention of David in the Late Tenth Century BCE, and Deity *Dod as Dead as the Dodo,” JSOT, no. 76 (1997): 39–41.

[3] Anson Rainey has commented that “[Philip] Davies and his ‘deconstructionists’ [Thomas L. Thompson] can safely be ignored by everyone seriously interested in Biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies.” Rainey, “The ‘House of David’ and the House of the Deconstructionists,” 47; Avraham Biran and Joseph Naveh, “An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan,” IEJ 43, no. 2/3 (January 1, 1993): 81–98; “The Tel Dan Inscription: A New Fragment,” IEJ 45, no. 1 (January 1, 1995): 1–18; Millard, “The Tell Dan Stele,” 2:161–62; George Athas, The Tel Dan Inscription: A Reappraisal and a New Introduction, JSOTSup 360 (New York: Bloomsbury, 2006); Hallvard Hagelia, Tel Dan Inscription: A Critical Investigation of Recent Research on Its Palaeography & Philology, Studia Semitica Upsaliensia 22 (Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2006).

[4] LeMaire, “‘House of David’ Restored in Moabite Inscription,” 30–37; Rainey, “The ‘House of David’ and the House of the Deconstructionists,” 47; Eveline J. Van Der Steen and Klaas A. D. Smelik, “King Mesha and the Tribe of Dibon,” JSOT 32, no. 2 (2007): 139–62.

[5] Amihai Mazar, “Archaeology and the Biblical Narrative: The Case of the United Monarchy,” in One God - One Cult - One Nation: Archaeological and Biblical Perspectives, ed. Reinhard Gregor Kratz and Hermann Spieckermann, BZAW 405 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 30.

[6] Niels Peter Lemche, The Old Testament between Theology and History: A Critical Survey (Louisville, KY: Westminster/Knox, 2008), 115.

[7] Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (New York: Free Press, 2007), 50–53.

[8] Israel Finkelstein, “The Date of the Philistine Settlement in Canaan,” Tel Aviv 22 (1995): 213–39; “The Archaeology of the United Monarchy: An Alternative View,” Levant 28, no. 1 (January 1996): 177–87.

[9] Amihai Mazar, “The Search for David and Solomon: An Archaeological Perspective,” in The Quest for the Historical Israel, ed. Israel Finkelstein and Brian B. Schmidt, Archaeology and Biblical Studies 17 (Atlanta: SBL, 2007), 119–20; Seters, The Biblical Saga of King David, xii.

[10] On the debate over the high and low chronology see: Israel Finkelstein, “Philistine Chronology: High, Middle or Low?,” in Mediterranean Peoples in Transition, 13th to 10th Centuries BC, ed. Ephraim Stern, Seymour Gitin, and Amihai Mazar (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1998), 140–47; “Hazor and the North in the Iron Age: A Low Chronology Perspective,” OR 314 (1999): 55–70; Amnon Ben-Tor, “Hazor and the Chronology of Northern Israel: A Reply to Israel Finkelstein,” OR 317 (2000): 9–16; Ernst Axel Knauf, “The Low Chronology and How Not to Deal with It,” BN 101 (2000): 56–63; “Low and Lower? New Data on Early Iron Age Chronology from Beth Shean, Tel Rehov and Dor,” BN 112 (2002): 21–27; Amihai Mazar, “The Debate over the Chronology of the Iron Age in the Southern Levant,” in The Bible and Radiocarbon Dating: Archaeology, Text and Science, ed. Thomas E. Levy and Thomas Higham (London: Routledge, 2014), 15–30; Lester L. Grabbe, Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? (New York: Bloomsbury, 2008), 12–16; Amihai Mazar, “The Spade and the Text: The Interaction between Archaeology and Israelite History Relating to the Tenth-Ninth Centuries BCE,” in Understanding the History of Ancient Israel, ed. H. G. M. Williamson, Proceedings of the British Academy 143 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 143–71.