King David?

Historical Minimalism and the United Monarchy



Much of today’s debate regarding the Bible's historicity can be observed, generally speaking, as taking place between two ideologically driven camps: the maximalists, represented in part by the writings of William Dever, and minimalists, popularized recently by the author Philip Davies (you can read the exchanges between the two scholars here). Biblical minimalism rejects a history of Israel based solely upon the writings in the Old Testament, and seeks to devise a historical chronology principally from the archaeological record.

Opinions differ among the minimalists about when ancient scribes wrote the bible—from the Persian to the Hellenistic period. (1)

Maximalists, on the other hand, are unfairly narrowed into their camp through comparison, not, as is generally the case, by the similarity of their arguments. Though division exists, most scholars (despite their persuasion) agree on a limited set of data, primary being the existence of some later redactor, usually called the Deuteronomistic historian.

To begin, I must confess that in researching this I’ve found myself getting pulled deeper and deeper into a world of faulty science, political motivation, and religious conviction. Believers see evidence where there is none, and skeptics deny evidence when it is clearly present. The debate, which I will define in greater detail shortly, has become somewhat manic presently, with both parties standing furtively on their mutual turf.

The Bible sits atop a cavernous pile of historically important documents. It is, for 33% of the humanity, quite literally the word of God. Biblical stories have influenced western culture for over two thousand years, helping shape our morality and law, our cultures, our internal beliefs and spiritual lives. Questioning this history should be undertaken with great care. Archaeology, literally meaning the study of the ancient word/discourse, should be playing arbiter, as it is scientific and therefore open to criticism and closed to dogma (ideally). But laced through the work of popular archaeologists are ideological bridges that piece together otherwise separate and, honestly, not very convincing facts.

Take away the bible and the ancient Hebrews would today be nearly smudged from the annals of history, so little evidence exists. We would know nothing of Moses, of the Exodus, of David and Solomon and the united monarchy, because there isn’t a record in the earth, such as a grand tomb with etchings, that so clearly defines them.

The position of the minimalists would be that the Iron Age united monarchy of David and Solomon was a literary augmentation of some priests or scribes, writing at a later date. The opposition reacts that the evidence is there, naturally influenced by their faith of it being there. Noting the increasing hostility between minimalist assertions and fundamentalist distillation is author and archaeologist Israel Finkelstein. Writing for the Smithsonian Magazine, Jennifer Wallace in her celebrated article Shifting Ground in the Holy Land notes that Finkelstein “occupies the middle ground between the literalists and the minimalists.” She shows how he

cites the fact – now accepted by most archaeologists – that many of the cities Joshua is supposed to have sacked in the late 13th century B.C. had ceased to exist by that time. Hazor was destroyed in the middle of that century, Ai was abandoned before 2000 B.C. Even Jericho, where Joshua is said to have brought the walls tumbling down by circling the city seven times with blaring trumpets, was destroyed in 1500 B.C. Now controlled by the Palestinian Authority, the Jericho site consists of crumbling pits and trenches that testify to a century of fruitless digging.

Wallace stresses that “more and more archaeologists have accepted the idea that the Joshua invasion as it is described in the Bible was never really a historical event. But they disagree about the exact nature and origins of those who built the ancient hilltop settlements on the West Bank.” (2)

Finkelstein and coauthor Neil Asher Silberman published a book last year (2006) entitled David and Solomon. It details what archaeological evidence exists presently for their united kingdom. In Appendix 1 they introduce the reader to the recent discovery of a stone inscription at the archaeological site Tel Dan. The inscription, reading in part “king of Israel, and [I] killed [Ahaz]iahu son of [Jehoram Kin-], g of the House of David (3)," appears to be the first mention of the House of David in the Archaeological record, and so has the community of historiographers entering a new round of biblical fencing. “In short,” write the authors, “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.” (4) Though disputed, this is at least some evidentiary record of a kingdom that the Israelites believed, recorded even, had existed. But the Solomon empire? The city of David itself, or early Jerusalem, during this period in history?

Finkelstein becomes pragmatic here. During the span between the sixteenth and eighth centuries, “Jerusalem shows no archaeological signs of having been a great city or the capital of a vast monarchy. The evidence clearly suggests that it was little more than a village…Jerusalem, through those intervening centuries—including the time of David and Solomon—was probably never more than a small, relatively poor, unfortified hill country town, no larger than three or four acres in size.”(5) So what of the evidence? Is a scribble on the walls at Tel Dan going to once and for all establish the reality of a Monarchy and great Solomon empire?

Barry Bandstra in his academic work Reading The Old Testament observes that because of the inscription at Tel Dan, “the existence of a ruling force connected to the figure of David cannot be called into question. The issue then becomes why the biblical portrayal of the united monarchy of David and Solomon took shape the way it did.”(6) Bandstra develops an argument for the editors need to place strong leadership in his compiled histories. The Deuteronomistic historian, an exiled Judean in Babylon, must have “thought that reexamining the period of the development of kingship might prove some answers to these pressing questions, and additionally might provide some needed instruction for any new leaders that might arise.”(7) Despite meager archaeological finds, the historian/redactor is all we have presently (in literary history) and as such does not complete the story for modern historiographers.

According to Dever, notwithstanding a century-old hunt in modern Israel, “Palestinian and Biblical archaeology have been surprisingly silent regarding the United Monarchy.”(8) This confession, albeit coming previous to the discovery of the inscriptions at Tel Dan, should, for any archaeologist worth his trowel, be the defining point. Until further evidence is discovered that points conclusively to such a kingdom, one has to assume that the Deuteronomistic historian elaborated the account for political, and wholly present (remember the exile) reasons.

For believers and nonbelievers alike, the scientific method should be mutually shared turf. That no overwhelming evidence remains of a united kingdom during the 11th and 10th centuries BCE should be recognized, because it isn’t politics or religion that makes it so, only research. Tel Dan seems to support the actual existence of an historical figure called David, but does nothing to validate his empire being as vast as the Bible makes it out to be.

Because of its [insert litany here] significance, a great deal of exaggeration exists in substantiating the Bibles historical accuracy. The world of Biblical archaeology is a tempting but acrid environment, and this brief look into that environment has made me a little less hopeful in the process of archaeological substantiation. I would like to believe that we would withhold judgment until evidence is discovered, but for billions of Christians and Jews, the evidence is the book itself. That unfortunately does not make it true, only more difficult to find where the truth lies.

Footnotes:

(1) Finkelstein, Silberman, David and Solomon (New York, 2006), p. 261.
(2) Wallace, Jennifer, as cited here.
(3) Finkelstein, David and Solomon (New York, 2006), p. 265.
(4) Ibid, p. 266.
(5) Ibid, p. 274.
(6) Bandstra, Reading The Old Testament (Toronto, 2004), p. 266.
(7) Ibid, p. 266.
(8) Dever, Recent Archaeological Discoveries and Biblical Research (Seattle, 1990), p. 88.

Reese

Fair use of above material.

This essay was written recently for a class in Biblical Studies, and as such is somewhat pointed in its aim. I would recommend researching the above bibliography for the more convoluted story.