In Search of King David’s Lost Empire
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Moreover measuring which imagining is more true requires speculative criteria building speculation on top of speculation.
I get religious belief, I am very religious, but to hold that an assortment of artifacts, which are still being discovered, unevenly spread by luck and chance, to hold that that proves or disproves a narrative is a leap of faith.
But aside from all that, there’s a common pattern in historical research when there is a looming central question at the center of a field, historiography swings one way heavily, then swings the other way as the excesses of the previous generation are denounced, then there is an attempt to meet in the middle, again denouncing past excesses, then the middle is seen as too wish-washy and full of false equivalence and historiography swings hard in one direction again.
For other examples of this see the history of the Cold War, history of world war 2, history of the US Civil War etc.
Choose your opinions, present them as fact. Back them up with nothing.
I worked on a dig in Israel. It was interesting.
Among other things I learnt about archeology, history, facts, opinions, and bias, is that that most what is in popular press is grounded in belief, not fact.
And that Finklestein is not respected by his peers. This article doesn't make me think any higher of him.
Based on what I hear, many biblical scholars (like many in other fields) are looking to be "edgy" by denying this or that claim and then build entire stories out of thin air based on the consequences of that denial. Meaning, a lot of the biblical scholarship that tries to be "original" ends up suppressing the best explanations in some way simply to get proverbial clicks. Like Reza Aslan.
If they'd instead stumbled into Dubai-style wealth from these copper mines or whatever only a few decades earlier, surely that would have been written down somewhere.
I was talking about the temple mount, which you can still visit today. Didn't realize it wasn't finished until 500 years later though, so not sure to what extent my argument still holds.
* Basically: We have no archeological evidence for Exodus and conquest. In fact, what we have doesn't seem to match conquest at all. However, once monarchy and actual government sets in (around David's time), we get bookkeeping and the record is accurate once one takes into account the significant authorial slant.
So what's your suggested alternative account? How does one get all those references in a way anywhere as likely as the original theory? We have zero cases of "House of David" referring to anything else, and "House of" was a typical geopolitical term. We do have direct evidence the Kings summations have basis in fact for later periods, but for earlier period the author isn't really redacting the royal annals despite him saying he did?
Minimalism presented itself as based on the science, but it can't coast anymore on absence of evidence. To be credible it ultimately needs to explain what we have without taking leaps of logic equaling those of the literalists, or it would appear to be a political movement rather than a scientific one.
What's my suggested account? I don't know. Perhaps David and Solomon existed but their reigns were exaggerated for political and/or nationalistic reasons. Perhaps they were invented out of whole cloth for similar reasons. What I'm more certain of is that the Biblical account here is questionable in a way it isn't in later periods.
The Judaen Kingdom should have known basic information about its history, lying from whole cloth or portraying its founders in that light isn't very useful to them. Everyone else who comes to rule that area later is made to be illegitimate (by implication) and it's not in the interests of the religious classes either (usually not big on rebellion, except the Hasmonean which never claimed to be descended from David and had their own text).
I think reading Kings as a ancient text with all the typical flaws for the time is the right way to go about it, and the only way we can piece together the evidence (for now, barring some new discovery). Many ancient texts give absurdly inflated counts for armies engaged in battle, but we usually don't follow that by "battle never happened".
That's not the case for well established civilizations in the Middle East. We know a lot of archeological information about big cities and empires of the time. The "empire" of David and Solomon is just not one of these historical cases. The only place that mentions a wealthy empire run at David's time are the stories conceived by Israelites hundreds of years later.
In the same token, even a straight reading of the text should never give us the term "Empire" regarding David. His Kingdom fights against the very close neighbours and often wins, but is prone to drought and civil war. Even winning fights against close neighbours isn't much of an indication of Empire - when the US wants something from Mexico, it doesn't have to fight for it.
So I agree with you, but I think half of the exaggeration is due to more modern readings and (in this case) strawmen invented by people looking for something to knock down - the only person referring to "David's Empire" in the linked text is... Finklestein.
Aside from the fame and financial interest, the personal belief of almost everyone I met is anti religious. (With the exception of Vindl Jones, but his interests are ... not archeology)
I therefor would be much more suspect of a claim disproving than proving the Biblical narative. But in either case, check the facts, not the names.
source: worked in the field, in Israel, for a period.
I'd suggest the historicity of Jesus is a more profound question. Absent David, you could still try to lay claim to significant tracts of the various interpretations. For decades I'd assumed the historical record (outside the bible) was exhaustive, clear, and undisputed -- but beyond the deity aspect, there's some genuine doubt over the historical Jesus. [0]
Apropos TFA - I can recommend Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou's excellent BBC 3-episode series from 2011 called 'Bible's Buried Secrets', though I think there was a similar named US series at some point. In any case, one episode is dedicated to the question of 'Did King David's empire exist?' - I won't spoil the surprise of her conclusions.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zp3j3
https://books.google.com/books/about/Centuries_of_Darkness.h...
I know the Old Testament reasonably well and I think the majority of the researchers the article quotes deny a literal reading of it in one way or another.
I suspect that still aligns with GP's point -- people are generally partisan on this subject, one way or another.
Everyone has biases, but that doesn't mean we're all incapable of feeling or finding truth.
The GP said clearly that the field is broken due to everyone preferring to shore up their worldviews rather than follow the evidence.
People disagreeing with the Biblical narrative sounds like the opposite to me.
I think the claim, and I agree with it, is that partisanship will affect where you look, how you look, and what you do with contradictory information.
Are you suggesting disagreement with 'the biblical narrative' indicates partisanship, or the lack of? (Or, rather, referring back to original wording - an indication of shoring up a worldview?)
Obviously not everyone agrees on the Bible's meaning, source, or value. I'd go so far as to say no two people do (like any large document, it is possible to have an infinite variety of interpretations of it).
I'm not sure how that relates to what I wrote.
I'd appreciate a clarification.
That doesn’t imply that their shouldn’t be controversy because obviously people have been killing each other over religious disputes for centuries.
It implies that biblical archeology would be an extension of religious holy wars fought on the pages of journals instead of on the battlefield.
When I said "controversy wouldn't exist", I guess that was unclear.
I meant specifically you wouldn't get people from broadly the same cultural and religious background so strongly disagreeing on how to interpret the evidence, if they were all there just to exercise confirmation bias.
Your point is a good one, and very fair. Sorry for the slow reply.
This is why the New Testament commences with proving Jesus's direct lineage from King David. Without it, Jesus is not the Messiah, and Christianity is baseless.
In any case, the basis of Christianity is that Jesus was God incarnate, died for the sins of the world, rose from the dead, and will come again to judge the living and the dead. Some early Christian polemic about interpretation of then-centries-old prophesy isn't core to that. It's a problem for fundamentalism, but that's an entirely separate issue.