Freethought Nation

To most Israelis it is axiomatic that the celebrations for the 3,000th anniversary of the conquest of Jerusalem by King David mark a real and tangible event; but this is far from certain. The biblical account of the capture of the city is the only one we have, and in the opinion of most modern scholars, the Bible is not an entirely reliable historical document. Corroborating evidence is required, and some indeed exists; but it is not conclusive. When all the available information has been assembled, the most that can be said is that there was probably an Israelite ruler called David, who made Jerusalem his capital sometime in the tenth century bce. However, the precise date cannot be determined, and consequently there is no way of knowing exactly when the anniversary falls.

There is plenty of evidence for the existence of ancient Jerusalem. Excavations in the City of David, today the village of Silwan, just south of the Old City walls, show that the site has been continuously occupied for some 5,000 years. Closer to David's purported time, excavations directed by the late Prof. Yigal Shiloh, uncovered a monumental 20 metre stepped structure, and dated it to the 12th-10th century bce. This could have been the foundation of the Jebusite stronghold, captured and subsequently expanded by David.

In addition to the archaeological evidence, Jerusalem appears in several ancient documents, apart from the Bible. The earliest known reference dates to 1900 bce in the so-called "Execration Texts." The names of the enemies of the Egyptian ruler were inscribed on pottery, which was then smashed in the hope of bringing destruction upon them. Jerusalem at that time was apparently an enemy of Egypt, as indicated by letters written on clay tablets found in the ruins of Amarna, the palace of the reforming Pharaoh Akhnetan. In one of them, dating to the 14th century bce, Abdu-Heba, the king of Jerusalem, writes pledging his loyalty to the Egyptian ruler.

Until very recently, there was no evidence outside the Bible for the existence of King David. There are no references to him in Egyptian, Syrian or Assyrian documents of the time, and the many archaeological digs in the City of David failed to turn up so much as a mention of his name. Then, on July 21, 1993, a team of archaeologists led by Prof. Avraham Biran, excavating Tel Dan in the northern Galilee, found a triangular piece of basalt rock, measuring 23 x 36 cm. inscribed in Aramaic. It was subsequently identified as part of a victory pillar erected by the king of Syria and later smashed by an Israelite ruler. The inscription, which dates to the ninth century bce, that is to say, about a century after David was thought to have ruled Israel, includes the words Beit David ("House" or "Dynasty" of David"). It is the first near-contemporaneous reference to David ever found. It is not conclusive; but it does strongly indicate that a king called David established a dynasty in Israel during the relevant period.

(http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/20 ... %20Reality)

King David was a nebbish
And Exodus never happened and the walls of Jericho did not come a-tumbling down. How archaeologists are shaking Israel to its biblical foundations.

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By Laura Miller

Feb. 7, 2001 | Arguing among themselves about the meanings of objects like pottery shards, animal bones and the foundations of long-ruined buildings is something archaeologists usually do in the privacy of their own profession. But when the argument is about who wrote the Bible, why it was written and what, if any, of the historical events described in the Old Testament are true -- and when the archaeologist's excavations are conducted on some of the most contested land in the world, the Middle East -- the tempest is almost guaranteed to boil over the rim of the teapot. No one knows this better than Israel Finkelstein, chairman of the Archaeology Department at Tel Aviv University, who, with archaeology historian and journalist Neil Asher Silberman, has just published a book called "The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Text."

"The Bible Unearthed" is the latest salvo fired in a pitched battle between those who consider the Old Testament to contain plenty of reliable historical facts, and those who, at the opposite extreme, say it's pure mythology. The debate reached the general population of Israel, sending what one journalist called a "shiver" down the nation's "collective spine," in late 1999, when another archaeologist from Tel Aviv University, Ze'ev Herzog, wrote a cover story for the weekend magazine of the national daily newspaper, Ha'aretz. In the essay, Herzog laid out many of the theories Finkelstein and Silberman present in their book: "the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land [of Canaan] in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the twelve tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is the fact that the united kingdom of David and Solomon, described in the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom." The new theories envision this modest chiefdom as based in a Jerusalem that was essentially a cow town, not the glorious capital of an empire.

Although, as Herzog notes, some of these findings have been accepted by the majority of biblical scholars and archaeologists for years and even decades, they are just now making a dent in the awareness of the Israeli public -- a very painful dent. They challenge many of the Old Testament stories central to Israeli beliefs about their own national character and destiny, stories that have influenced much of Western culture as well. The tales of the patriarchs -- Abraham, Isaac and Joseph among others -- were the first to go when biblical scholars found those passages rife with anachronisms and other inconsistencies. The story of Exodus, one of the most powerful epics of enslavement, courage and liberation in human history, also slipped from history to legend when archaeologists could no longer ignore the lack of corroborating contemporary Egyptian accounts and the absence of evidence of large encampments in the Sinai Peninsula ("the wilderness" where Moses brought the Israelites after leading them through the parted Red Sea).

(http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/ ... print.html)

"The great King David, from whose lineage Jesus, the Kings of the Jews," was purported to have come, has been much exalted over the centuries. However, even though according to the biblical tale David was well known and "all of the kings of the earth sought his presence" (2 Chron. 9:23), there is no record of David in non-Hebraic sources, such as the histories of Herodotus and Hesiod. Nor are there any archaeological finds to bear out his existence, despite recent claims that a plaque was found bearing the words "house of David," because not only is the plaque's language oblique but bible proponents, among others, have been known to salt sites and fabricate artifacts. As Roberta Harris says in The World of the Bible, "Some of the best known bible stories centre on King David, yet neither history nor archaeology can substantiate any of them."

- Christ Conspiracy, 247

The Mythicist Position:

"Mythicism represents the perspective that many gods, goddesses and other heroes and legendary figures said to possess extraordinary and/or supernatural attributes are not “real people” but are in fact mythological characters. Along with this view comes the recognition that many of these figures personify or symbolize natural phenomena, such as the sun, moon, stars, planets, constellations, etc., constituting what is called “astromythology” or “astrotheology.” As a major example of the mythicist position, it is determined that various biblical characters such as Adam and Eve, Satan, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, King David, Solomon and Jesus Christ, among other entities, in reality represent mythological figures along the same lines as the Egyptian, Sumerian, Phoenician, Indian, Greek, Roman and other godmen, who are all presently accepted as myths, rather than historical figures."

- Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection page 12

http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/c ... egypt.html

Jerusalem: The City of David?

"It's a sacred city to the world but also a place where science and faith sometimes collide. Can archeology prove the Bible? Watch and tell us what you think.

There is no city in the world like Jerusalem, the intersection for three of the world's great religions. Christians believe Jesus worshipped and taught in Jerusalem and was later crucified there. For Muslims, it is home to both the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. Jews consider it to be their ancient capital, first conquered by King David, 3,000 years ago.

At an archeology site known as "The City of David," there is an active search for evidence of King David, as Lesley Stahl reported in her "60 Minutes" story this week. For "60 Minutes Overtime," we dug deeper into the controversial role that archeology can play in proving the Bible.

Does faith require proof? We want to hear what you think. "

Watch Lesley Stahl's full report.

However, even though according to the biblical tale David was well known and "all of the kings of the earth sought his presence" (2 Chron. 9:23)

2 Chronicles 9:23 (King James Version)
23And all the kings of the earth sought the presence of Solomon, to hear his wisdom, that God had put in his heart.

"The great King David, from whose lineage Jesus, the Kings of the Jews," was purported to have come, has been much exalted over the centuries. However, even though according to the biblical tale David was well known and "all of the kings of the earth sought his presence" (2 Chron. 9:23), there is no record of David in non-Hebraic sources, such as the histories of Herodotus and Hesiod. Nor are there any archaeological finds to bear out his existence, despite recent claims that a plaque was found bearing the words "house of David," because not only is the plaque's language oblique but bible proponents, among others, have been known to salt sites and fabricate artifacts. As Roberta Harris says in The World of the Bible, "Some of the best known bible stories centre on King David, yet neither history nor archaeology can substantiate any of them."

- Christ Conspiracy, 247

No, that's definitely Solomon being spoken of in 2 Cron. 9:23. Solomons fame followed behind the fame of his father as the second King of Israel, according to the mythology. And it looks like a verse about Solomon was quoted while talking about David's fame in the CC. I'm not sure how that made it through the editing process but it needs to be corrected for sure.

And that's precisely the case with these books. Murdock has never claimed infallibility for herself or the sources she is quoting. I'm not sure that you've bore any bad news either. If a mistake has been made it's better to locate it than not catch it at all. Especially when there are so many religionists out there trying to look for any little mistake to try and harp on. They have claimed infallibility for the Bible and so they carry the burden of trying to account for the many mistakes throughout the Bible and want to try and combat that by looking for any little mistake in the mythicist works. And they want to approach mythicist works as if they are approaching something like the Bible which claims to be absolute. In the end we have a situation where a few mistakes do nothing to hurt mythicism at all, however a few mistakes in the Bible bring the entire infallible and absolute status down to the ground.

So now I have to go back to the myths of King David to try and locate verses which are in the context of his fame specifically. The verse outlining Solomon's fame is a good one and belongs in the mix as well and the context needs to be one of looking at both David and Solomon's alleged fame verses the lack of any real historical evidence for either of these so called famous 2nd and 3rd kings of Israel.

Touche' touche'. If these guys were such well-known kings, where are the palaces, the coins, and the records?