Posted on 04/23/2012 6:45:30 AM PDT by NYer
In 2008 I first ran a story about a major archaeological discovery at Khirbet Qeiyafa. The Israeli Antiquities Authority is releasing the preliminary report of the finds at Khirbet Qeiyafa.
As I explained then, the findings are challenging skeptical scholars' claims.
As I explained then, according to skeptical scholars the accounts of the kingdoms of David and Solomon are myths--essentially the Israelite equivalent of Arthurian legends of Camelot and the Roundtable.
In short, in their view, it was simply fabricated. After Israel's Babylonian exile, the Jewish leaders invented these stories. The Israelites simply "idealized" their past; the Davidic traditions are little more than imaginary political propaganda.
Perhaps, such scholars might concede, there were some tribal leagues and small villages, but certainly no significant civilization amounting to a kingdom.
The report of what has been found at Khirbet Qeiyafa is calling such skepticism into doubt.
The Iron Age city had impressive architectural and material finds:
1. A town plan characteristic of the Kingdom of Judah that is also known from other sites, e.g., Bet Shemesh, Tell en-Nasbeh, Tell Beit Mirsim and Be’er Sheva‘. A casemate wall was built at all of these sites and the city’s houses next to it incorporated the casemates as one of the dwelling’s rooms. This model is not known from any Canaanite, Philistine or Kingdom of Israel site.
2. Massive fortification of the site, including the use of stones that weigh up to eight tons apiece.
3. Two gates. To date, no Iron Age cities with two gates were found in either Israel or Judah.
4. An open space for a gate plaza was left near each gate. In Area C an area was left open parallel to three casemates and in Area D, the area was parallel to four casemates.
5. The city’s houses were contiguous and built very close together.
6. Some 500 jar handles bearing a single finger print, or sometimes two or three, were found. Marking jar handles is characteristic of the Kingdom of Judah and it seems this practice has already begun in the early Iron Age IIA.
7. A profusion of bronze and iron objects were found. The iron objects included three swords, about twenty daggers, arrowheads and two spearheads. The bronze items included an axe, arrowheads, rings and a small bowl.
You can read the whole report here.8. Trade and imported objects. Ashdod ware, which was imported from the coastal plain, was found at the site. Basalt vessels were brought from a distance of more than 100 km and clay juglets from Cyprus and two alabaster vessels from Egypt were discovered.
The excavations at Khirbat Qeiyafa clearly reveal an urban society that existed in Judah already in the late eleventh century BCE. It can no longer be argued that the Kingdom of Judah developed only in the late eighth century BCE or at some other later date.
Can you read the Old Testament and come away thinking it was Israel “idealizing” their past? If so, they did a really bad job of sugarcoating things to make themselves look good. However, they were excellent at making predictions/prophecies.
Note: gratuitous use of straw man “some skeptical scholars”. In what, the 17th Century?
There has been almost continual archeological excavations going on in the Middle East since the 19th Century, probably a bit earlier, the vast majority of which was done by either religious scholars investigating religious archaeology, or secular scholars investigating secular archeology. While there was considerable overlap, there was very little interest in “debunking” as compared to confirming what had been written, which was not an easy task.
The French campaign in Egypt and Syria under Napoleon Bonaparte (1798–1801) caused an explosion in Egyptology (including the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, the first great breakthrough in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics), that was to a great extent driven by religious scholar archeologists looking for traces of the Hebrews in Egypt as well as creating a Pharaonic timetable in hopes they could have some idea of when this all took place.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a single scholar in archeology who for a moment thought that the Davidic and Solomonic kingdoms were mythical. While nothing remains of the 1st Temple (Solomon) but its dimensions, there seems to be few doubts that the 2nd Temple was accurate to the 1st, excepting the additional features added by Herod the Great.
Thanks for posting. BFLV
Just to tick them off, I refer to CE and BCE as “Christian Era” and “Before Christian Era.”
Good one. I'll have to remember that. (Though I will continue to use B.C. and A.D.)
Of the historians of the Enlightenment, the only ones who are reliable are Hume and Gibbons. Hume was a political conservative and Gibbons was a first rate scholar who grudgingly let the evidence speak for itself, which is why his tone is so ironical. The rest were like Voltaire, propogandists, and faux scholars. Voltaire, whose idol was Newton, had a high school student’s knowledge of physics. His historical technique was methodical doubt. So he begins by doubting the value of everything and then twisting the evidence to fit his conclusions. He despised everything medieval because of his hatred for the Church,and despite his love of England, refused to see that its institutions were all rooted in medieval practice. Burke rejected the French Revolution because took the historical picture and touched it up, adding warts to what it disliked and removing them from those things it did like.
Speaking of, the more we dig into Washington story, the more he seems alive and a truly heroic figure. They have made several movies about the winter campaign in New Jersey, and none of them capture the true story. If they showed what really happened the movie critics would pan it. At Princeton, for instance, he rallies the troops and gets them into line to receive the British attack. he sat there as unmoving as a statue and bullets came whizzing around. The troops took one look at him and forgot themselves and turned back British regulars.
Anyway, our world has little respect for the truth.
Good! Did you do the animation?
One of Washington’s great secrets was that his true forte was as a spymaster. He had an impressive network of spies, many of whom were women, and many whose identities are still unknown, either because that information is lost, or just as likely, because they were so connected to the crown that it would still be an embarrassment today.
Only one of his spies, Nathan Hale, was ever captured, and as one historian noted, Washington must have had a bad hangover on the day he recruited him. After being captured, he basically demanded that he be tried and executed, instead of being sent back to Britain where he likely would have gotten a few years in prison. And to make matters worse, because he was executed, the Americans had to respond by hanging a known British spy, John André, four years later.
John André, to make matters worse, was a very charitable and amiable individual, who though he had worked with Benedict Arnold in his treachery, was beloved by those who knew him. Among whom the consensus was that he was hung because they had to hang somebody.
Finkelstein (advisor to Nat'l Geographic) often talks about the possibility.
The new Mt Vernon Museum has wax representations of Washington at different ages, pictures of which ought to make their way into the text books but probably won’t. years ago, afdter reading Flexner”s biography, I commented to a college that they ought to have the aging President Washington played by John Wayne. He laughed, and Wayne was such a famous face that he would have had to work past that. But with the right script, Wayne could have pulled it off, I think. Certainly after he had been slowed by cancer. But it would take an out-size actor to capture the man.
Finkelstein has his reputation invested in this theory. One can make up a lot of stuff if the places under investigation have remains three thousand years ago, and no one says that David’s kingdom had many monumental structures
Finkelstein has his reputation invested in this theory. One can make up a lot of stuff if the places under investigation have remains three thousand years ago, and no one says that David’s kingdom had many monumental structures
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Thanks NYer. |
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