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Posted on 05/11/2012 8:54:41 AM PDT by robowombat
Artifacts from King David's Time Confirm Bible
By Julie Stahl CBN News Mideast Correspondent Friday, May 11, 2012
JERUSALEM, Israel -- Was the Bible's King David man or myth? That's the question Israeli archeologists are answering with new archeological finds. Their discoveries also shed light on how the first Jewish temple was built.
Khirbet Qeiyafa is in the Elah Valley. Not far from here the Bible says David killed the giant, Goliath.
"We don't know much about the history, the politics really and about urbanization in the time of David," archaeologist Prof. Yosef Garfinkel of the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem told CBN News. "From the Bible we don't know it. And here in Khirbet Qeiyafa for the first time, we have a fortified city from the time of King David."
About 20 miles outside Jerusalem, Khirbet Qeiyafa was a border city in the Kingdom of Judah -- not too far from Goliath's hometown of Gath. Carbon dating shows it existed from 1020 to 980 BC, around the time of King David.
Garfinkel, who worked together with the Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist and co-director at the site Saar Ganor, said they excavated dozens of rooms. He believes three of them were used for religious purposes.
"The infrastructure is different, you have (an) isolated room in (the) building while in Canaanite and pagan (structures), you have real temples," Garfinkel said.
But that's not all. Garfinkel presented religious artifacts at a press conference in Jerusalem.
"We have two boxes -- one made from pottery and the other made from stone and they were used for keeping symbols of God," he told journalists.
The portable shrines were shaped like temples and confirm the biblical description found in the Old Testament book of First Kings. That describes the architectural style in Solomon's Temple and shows that style existed even before Solomon.
The site contained no statues or pig bones. That means the people who lived here followed the biblical commandment not to eat pork or keep graven images -- unlike their Canaanite or Philistine neighbors.
Earlier archaeologists also found the oldest Hebrew inscription at the site.
"OK, so the ethnicity of the city is like Judah," he said.
So why are these discoveries important? Garfinkel says it disproves the argument of some scholars who say the Bible was written 800 years after King David, with no connection to real history.
"This is, I think, the strength of our argument -- that we have historical memories imbedded in the Hebrew Bible, and people cannot say David and Solomon are mythological figures. They were actually human beings," he said.
Garfinkel says the Bible and archaeology have to work together.
Outside the bible, there hasn’t been much evidence of a King David as other writings from Egypt/Syria from that time period have not mentioned King David.So many skeptics thought it was fable to the point where they thought bible was wwritten 800 years past this period. Finally in 1993, there was an archeology find and writing on wall, “House of David”. Now with this current find, it beginning to look like there was a King David and skpetics are werong.
The world is more sure of the existence of Adolf Hitler (yimach shemo vezikhro!) than it is of (lehavdil 'elef 'alfey 'alafim havdalot!!!) the existence of HaShem.
Rabid secularists who want to make out that the entirety of Jewish and Christian Scripture is mythology.
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for later read ............................ FRegards
You’re welcome! Happy Mother’s Day to your other half!
It may seem that hopeless sometimes; but really, truly, it's not so. Worldwide, people believe there is a God. We are fortunate to have a complex description and relationship with the only highest God, who made us His own to lead the world to salvation. Hence, insecurity and spite in other quarters.
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