[anapikoros]

I only posted that particular one because it was at a site you believe credible. However, I can if you wish also point to a few others who support the view that BYTDWD refers to a place name or other ideas just as credible as the House of David one.

There's even a school of thought that the Tel Dan inscription is an epigraphic forgery - but that's another interesting story alltogether

What is indesputable however is that the Stele is about 150-250 year later than Davids time. Even the museum that houses the stone considers the reference to BYTDWD as a longshot.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your reply!

If you have links to the school of thought you mentioned, I’d appreciate them.

It does not alarm me at all that the Tel Dan Stele is 150-250 years later than David’s time – since it was referring to a conquest within the “House of David.” I looked at the museum site to find anything to support your remarks about their position, but couldn’t find anything.

I did find this good summary of 3 archeological references to the House of David. For the discussion:

BAR, January/February 1999, David in Egypt?

“A leading Egyptologist has recently suggested that the name of the Biblical king David may appear in a tenth-century B.C.E. Egyptian inscription. If correct, this mention of David dates a hundred years earlier than the mention of the "House of David" in the now-famous stele from Tel Dan and fewer than 50 years after the great king's death! According to Egyptologist Kenneth A. Kitchen of the University of Liverpool, in England, "David" is the probable reading of one name in a hieroglyphic list carved on the exterior south wall of the great Temple of Amun in Karnak, Upper Egypt.

This is the third possible mention of David in ancient inscriptions. The clearest reference is in the much-heralded Tel Dan inscription from the ninth century B.C.E., which refers to the "House of David" (bytdwd, or Beit David). Carved in Aramaic on what appears to be a victory stele celebrating the victory of an Aramean king over Judah and Israel, this inscription was found in 1993 by Israeli archaeologist Avraham Biran.

The eminent French paleographer André Lemaire has also detected a reference to the House of David in the long-known but still not completely deciphered Mesha Stele (also called the Moabite Stone), which is contemporaneous with the Tel Dan Stele, although this reference to the "House" is based on an unclear reading, and the reading of "David" is based on a highly probable reconstruction of the initial letter of the name.

I'm pinging a few others who are following this discussion...