a history of ancient israel_eric h cline

8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline

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Professor Eric H. Cline

THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

A HISTORY OF

A NCIENT ISRAEL :FROM THE P ATRIARCHS

THROUGH THE R OMANS

COURSE GUIDE


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A History of Ancient Israel:From the Patriarchs Through the Romans

Professor Eric H. ClineThe George Washington University


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A History of Ancient Israel:

From the Patriarchs Through the Romans

Professor Eric H. Cline

Executive Producer

John J. Alexander

Executive Editor

Donna F. Carnahan

RECORDING

Producer - David Markowitz

Director - Matthew Cavnar

COURSE GUIDE

Editor - James Gallagher

Design - Edward White

Lecture content ©2006 by Eric H. ClineCourse guide ©2006 by Recorded Books, LLC

72006 by Recorded Books, LLC

Cover image: King David brings the Ark of the Covenant to Jersusalem © Clipart.com

#UT078 ISBN: 978-1-4193-8872-9

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are those of the author and not of Recorded Books, LLC, or its employees.


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Course Syllabus

A History of Ancient Israel:

From the Patriarchs Through the Romans

About Your Professor...................................................................................................4

Introduction...................................................................................................................5

Lecture 1 Abraham and the Patriarchs..................................................................6

Lecture 2 The Exodus and Egypt ........................................................................13

Lecture 3 The Conquest of Canaan: Israelites, Philistines,

and Phoenicians ..................................................................................20

Lecture 4 King David in History and Tradition .....................................................25

Lecture 5 King Solomon in History and Tradition ................................................31

Lecture 6 Excursus: The Ark of the Covenant.....................................................37

Lecture 7 The Kingdom of Israel and the Omride Dynasty .................................42

Lecture 8 The Kingdom of Judah Until the Time of Sennacherib .......................48

Lecture 9 Neo-Babylonians and the End of the Kingdom of Judah ....................54

Lecture 10 Persians and Greeks in Judea ............................................................61

Lecture 11 The Coming of the Romans and Christianity ......................................66

Lecture 12 Excursus: Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls.....................................71

Lecture 13 From the First Jewish Revolt and the Destruction of

Jerusalem to Bar Kochba and the

Second Jewish Rebellion ....................................................................77

Lecture 14 Excursus: Masada, What Really Happened?......................................82

Course Materials ........................................................................................................87

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P h o t o c o u r t e s y o f E r i c H .

C l i n e

About Your Professor

Eric H. Cline

Dr. Eric H. Cline, a former Fulbright scholar, is chair of the Department of

Classical and Semitic Languages and Literatures at The George Washington

University in Washington, D.C., where he holds a joint appointment as an

associate professor in both the Classics/Semitics Department and the

Anthropology Department.

A prolific researcher, Dr. Cline is the author or editor of seven books and

has more than seventy articles and book reviews to his credit. His books

include The Battles of Armageddon: Megiddo and the Jezreel Valley from the

Bronze Age to the Nuclear Age, which received the 2001 Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) Publication Award for Best Popular Book on

Archaeology; Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel;

Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: International Trade and the Late Bronze Age

Aegean; Amenhotep III: Perspectives on His Reign (coeditor); The Aegean

and the Orient in the Second Millennium BC; Thutmose III: A New Biography ;

and a book for young adults entitled The Ancient Egyptian World ( coauthor

with Jill Rubalcaba).

Professor Cline received the Morton Bender Award for Teaching at The

George Washington University in 2004 and the Archaeological Institute of America’s National Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award for 2005. He

currently teaches a wide variety of courses, including Troy and the Trojan

War, History of Ancient Greece, History of Rome, and Art and Archaeology of

the Aegean Bronze Age.

Professor Cline has lectured at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington,

D.C., the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Skirball Museum

in Los Angeles. His research has been featured in the Washington Post, the

New York Times, US News & World Report, the London Daily Telegraph, the

London Mirror, and many other publications around the world.

In addition, Professor Cline has been featured on numerous radio and

television broadcasts, such as the BBC World Services, National Public

Radio, the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic Channel, and the

History Channel.

Dr. Cline is married, with two children, two cats, and varying numbers of fish.


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Introduction

Israel conjures up myriad associations for peoples of all cultures and reli-

gious backgrounds. Inextricably associated with the world’s three most promi-nent religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), Israel is steeped in history

and conflict, much of which is known through the tales of biblical figures such

as Moses, David, Solomon, and, of course, Jesus Christ.

But how much of the Bible can be relied upon as accurate history? And how

much of the biblical record can be verified through archaeology? Esteemed

professor, researcher, and author Eric H. Cline of The George Washington

University addresses these and other questions in this fascinating series

of lectures.

A History of Ancient Israel follows the course of Israel’s history from

Abraham and the Patriarchs through the Exodus, Exile, and two great Jewish

rebellions, encompassing a rich history that increases one’s understanding of

Israel’s place in the world today. In addition to this storied region’s tumultuous

past, Professor Cline delves into such compelling digressions as lectures on

the Ark of the Covenant, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and controversy surrounding

the fabled mass suicide at Masada.

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King David brings the Ark of

the Covenant to Jersusalem


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ny attempt to teach the history of ancient Israel depends

primarily on the biblical record. Some say the Bible is a

completely accurate and adequate account. Others view it

as a collection of folk tales and miracle stories. The biblicalwriters themselves did not claim to base their work on fac-

tual records, because they were not as concerned with

what actually happened as with conveying the Word of God. On the other

hand, there is a lot of information in the Bible that can be correlated with

independent sources.

The Holy Land

The land of ancient Israel and Judah was known before the Israelites got

there as the land of Canaan, which is what the Egyptians called it. Thisregion is a coastal corridor, positioned between great empires for most of its

history. To the north were the empires in ancient Mesopotamia, modern-day

Iraq and northern Syria, which housed the Assyrians and the Babylonians

throughout time, and the Hittites, who dwelled in Turkey. To the south were

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L E C T U R E O N E

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Hershel Shanks’s (ed.)

Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple

(chapter 1: “The Patriarchal Age: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”).

Lecture 1:

Abraham and the Patriarchs

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the Egyptians, not only

King Tut and the people

of the New Kingdom, but

Egyptians from even ear-

lier. Later came the

Greeks and the Romansfrom Egypt and else-

where in the ancient

Near East, so ancient

Israel was many times

caught between two

powers.

This area is frequently

referred to as the Holy

Land. That designationcovers the modern states

of Israel and Jordan, for

the most part, but the borders change dramatically over the course of the his-

tory of this region. The Mediterranean is always the western boundary, but

the eastern boundary is more indeterminate. Sometimes it lies on the Jordan

River, and sometimes it lies further east, where the region gives way to

desert. Down south is the Sinai, which historically formed a barrier to settle-

ment. To the north is difficult hill country, where modern-day Israel now gives

way to modern-day Lebanon.East to west, this region is divided into five different zones, mostly by topog-

raphy and climate. The westernmost is the Coastal Plain, next to the

Mediterranean Sea. The plain itself is broken up into the Plain of Sharon, the

Plain of Dor, the Plain of Acco, and the Plain of Phoenicia.

Eastward, the second zone is the so-called Western Hills. These foothills,

known as the Shephelah, rise up from the Coastal Plain to the central ridge

of the country. They were heavily wooded in antiquity and heavily settled.

The higher ground, just above these, is known as the Hill Country. This is

where ancient Israel and Judah is located, and this is where the classic trinityof Mediterranean food is found: wheat, olives, and vines. Along the summit

line of this ridge are important towns from the Bronze Age and Iron Age (for

example, Hebron, Jerusalem, Shechem, Beth-shean). The highest peak

along these hills is about four thousand feet above sea level.

Slightly further east is the Rift Valley, the third zone, one of the deepest

points on the face of the earth. The Rift Valley is a major structural rift that

runs up from East Africa and forms the Red Sea, the Dead Sea, the Jordan

Valley, Lake Tiberias, and Lake Huleh.

Continuing east is the fourth zone, known as the Eastern Hills, which are

high and rugged. These are where the Moabites, the Ammonites, and others

mentioned in the Hebrew Bible lived.

Beyond the Eastern Hills is the fifth zone, the desert of Syria, Jordan, and

Arabia. This formed the eastern border of the area for much of its history.

Frequently, the eastern border was at the Jordan River, rather than the

desert, but this is as far as this course will extend geographically.

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L E C T U R E O N E

8

Early History

The biblical books of Genesis through 2 Kings provide a continuous account

of Israelite and Judean history from their earliest times until the fall of

Jerusalem in 586 BCE. Genesis through Joshua tell about the origins of the

Israelites and how they came to possess the land of Canaan. The story

begins with the Creation in Genesis. By the end of the Book of Joshua, thepeople are at rest in the Land of Promise.

The Hebrew Bible is the only ancient source that directly addresses the

question of Israelite origins. After the Great Flood, which Noah survived in his

ark, the descendants of Noah’s three sons began to multiply. They migrated

to the land of Shinar, which is believed to be in lower Mesopotamia, the land

of Iraq today. There they began to construct a great tower that was supposed

to reach the heavens. To stop the project, God ordained diversity, hence the

Tower of Babel. Not able to understand each other anymore, the descen-

dants of Noah’s three sons scattered to different parts of the world.

Among the distant descendants of Shem in the ninth generation is a tent

dweller named Abraham. Abraham’s father had left Ur of the Chaldees to

migrate to the land of Canaan, but rather than migrating immediately,

Abraham’s father settled in the vicinity of a place called Haran in Upper

Mesopotamia. It was only after his father’s death that Abraham migrated from

Haran to Canaan, where he lived as a sojourner in the land; that is, he resist-

ed integration into local society. God promised Abraham that someday the

whole land would belong to his descendants and that they would be great in

number, so eventually he made a permanent camp near Hebron and had twosons. The older son was

Ishmael, and he became

the father of the desert folk,

but his favorite and the only

son of his wife Sarah was

Isaac, born when Abraham

was one hundred years old

and Sarah ninety.

In the meantime, Lot,

Abraham’s nephew, settled

in one of the cities of the

plains, in the vicinity of the

Dead Sea. He barely

escaped with his two

daughters when God

destroyed several of the

cities with fire and brim-

stone. It was during this

time that Lot’s wife was

turned into a pillar of salt,

while they were escaping

from Sodom and Gomorrah.

Lot’s daughters gave birth

to two sons, who became

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Lot’s wife is turned into a pillar of salt after looking back on

the burning Sodom and Gomorrah.


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9

the ancestors of the Ammonites and the Moabites. After Sarah died,

Abraham remarried and had additional children, the ancestors of various

Arabic tribes. Abraham himself died at the age of 175. Before he died, he

obtained a wife for his son Isaac, and Isaac then went on to have children of

his own.

Abraham and His Descendants

If Abraham’s father took the journey from Ur in Mesopotamia up to Haran

near modern Turkey, he would have followed the course of the Euphrates

River, which was a known international trade route at that time, and it is quite

possible that he settled down in a region in either north Syria or south

Turkey. There are villages in the region today that still look much as they did

four thousand years ago. Abraham also fits into some of the general migra-

tions during this time period. It is quite conceivable that Abraham’s and his

father’s movements should be seen in the light of these major migrations,

which take place at the beginning of the second millennium BCE.

Abraham’s descendants then migrated into the land of Egypt. This falls into

the general historical era of the Hyksos, a group of people who ruled Egypt

from 1720 to 1550 BCE. Abraham himself fits well into what was happening

during the early second millennium BCE, that is, a breakdown of powerful

city-states that had flourished during the third millennium (disruptions

occurred in Egypt and in Mesopotamia). Some of the disruptions of urban life

that took place in the early second millennium have been attributed to a

group called the Amorites, and they begin to be mentioned in textual docu-ments of the Mesopotamian city-states.

Building on the Evidence

In the 1930s, William F. Albright, one of the most famous historians studying

ancient Israel, built upon the artifactual and documentary evidence. Using

texts from later Amorite states of the Middle Bronze Age, Albright and other

scholars formulated what is known as the Amorite hypothesis, which states

that the Hebrew Patriarchs entered the area of Canaan as a part of wide-

spread Amorite movements that disrupted the whole region during the early

second millennium BCE. They said that the patriarchal narratives told in the

Hebrew Bible should be seen accordingly, that is, against the background of

early Amorite society.

An early second millennium date for Abraham and Isaac and Jacob essen-

tially agrees with the chronology found in the early Hebrew Bible, that is, in

1 Kings 6.1, which says that the Exodus took place about 480 years before

Solomon’s Temple was built. In Exodus 12, the Israelites stayed in Egypt for

about 430 years. This means that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob would have

been roaming around the ancient Near East sometime during the nineteenthcentury BCE, that is, the beginning of the second millennium, because

Solomon’s Temple was built about the year 960. If 480 years are added to

get to the Exodus, and then another 430 years as the length of time the

Israelites stayed in Egypt, the year would be 1870 BCE. This was during the

time when the Amorites were moving around the ancient Near East, and it

also would allow the Hebrews to be placed in Egypt during the so-called

Hyksos period, when Egypt was ruled by foreigners. The stories of


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L E C T U R E O N E

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Abraham’s migration from Mesopotamia to Canaan, and then the later migra-

tions of Jacob into Egypt, make sense when viewed against the political con-

ditions of the early second millennium BCE and the geographical migrations

taking place at that time. Moreover, the names of the Patriarchs and some of

the customs that are reflected in the Hebrew Bible are quite similar to those

that are mentioned in second millennium Mesopotamian texts, such as writ-ings from the cities of Mari and Nuzi.

There are a number of problems with the Amorite hypothesis. One is the

idea that the disruption of urban life in Canaan at the end of the Early Bronze

Age and the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age was the result of wide-

spread Amorite movements. This is by no means universally accepted by all

archaeologists and historians, so to say that Abraham was part of this

Amorite movement is to stack one hypothesis upon another. Moreover, the

Amorite hypothesis creates problems for the associated genealogical data;

for example, Genesis 15 assumes a four-generation stay in Egypt, andMoses is identified as a fourth-generation descendant of Jacob (Jacob to Levi

to Amram to Moses). If the genealogical data is to fit with the chronological

data, each generation has to last an average of one hundred years. Usually,

a generation lasts thirty years, so these people must have lived an awfully

long time if the genealogy is to be squared with the chronology.

A second argument against the Amorite hypothesis is that the parallels

between biblical names and customs and those that are known from biblical

texts become less impressive in light of the fact that the names and customs

involved are not confined to the second millennium, but are characteristic of the first millennium as well. If the Hebrew Bible is not written down until the

eighth or even the seventh century BCE, then all kinds of things might not be

accurate. So some historians and archaeologists say that the parallels are

actually relatively useless for pinpointing a particular period and calling it the

Patriarchal Age.

Finally, the biblical tradition never associates the Patriarchs with the

Amorites, but rather with the Arameans. So the Amorite hypothesis should be

called the Aramean hypothesis, but it’s not, because they’re not wandering

around just yet. And some of the other groups mentioned in these biblical tra-ditions cannot be placed in an early second millennium BCE context. They are

going to come later in the second millennium or even in the first millennium.

Possibilities for the Patriarchs

What are the possibilities then, in looking at Abraham and the Patriarchs?

One possibility is that the Amorite hypothesis is correct and that Abraham

and the Patriarchs date to the early years of the Middle Bronze Age.

The other possibility is that Abraham and the Patriarchs date to a little bit

later in the Middle Bronze Age, maybe into the seventeenth or the sixteenth

centuries BCE. This is definitely a possibility, though it cannot be corroborat-

ed. The third possibility is that Abraham and the Patriarchs date to the Early

Iron Age, that is, the early years of the first millennium, and that the writers of

the Hebrew Bible simply placed them more than a thousand years earlier to

concoct a made-up history of ancient Israel.


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The fourth hypothesis is that there were no Patriarchs, that Abraham and

Isaac never existed. They were simply made up to illustrate particular stories

and were part of an invented history. How does one choose between these

hypotheses? The Amorite hypothesis is a likely one, because the movements

of Abraham and his descendants are most possible in the early years of the

second millennium BCE. Also, Abraham and his father must have been mov-ing around Mesopotamia in the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries BCE in

order to get Jacob and the Israelites down into Egypt by the seventeenth cen-

tury BCE and make everything else fit. The early second millennium may be

the best time for Abraham and the Patriarchs, but there is no archaeological

evidence that Abraham and the Patriarchs ever actually existed. That’s not to

say that they did not, however, because absence of evidence does not mean

evidence of absence.


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1. How does the breakdown of city-states in the early second millennium

BCE match with the proposed migration schedule for Abraham?

2. What are some of the problems with the Amorite hypothesis?

Shanks, Hershel, ed. Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman

Destruction of the Temple. 2nd rev. ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ:

Prentice Hall, 1999.

Finkelstein, Israel, and Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed:

Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred

Texts. New York: The Free Press, 2001.Geoghegan, Jeffrey C., and Michael M. Homan. The Bible for Dummies. New

York: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2003.

Mazar, Amihai. Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10,000–586 BCE . New

York: Doubleday, 1992.

Rast, Walter E. Through the Ages in Palestinian Archaeology: An Introductory

Handbook . Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992.

Questions

Suggested Reading

FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING

Other Books of Interest

L E C T U R E O N E

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he story of the Exodus is filled with problems and ques-

tions similar to some of those concerning the Patriarchs.

After Sarah died at the age of 127, Abraham remarried and

had additional offspring by his second wife and by several

concubines. These became the ancestors of various Arabic

tribes. Before Abraham died, he chose a wife for his son

Isaac from their kinsmen. Isaac married Rebecca and settled near Beer-

sheba, in the southern part of the territory, and Isaac and Rebecca gave birth

to twins, Esau and Jacob.

Out of Egypt

Esau became the ancestor of the Edomites, while Jacob fathered twelve

sons by his Aramean wives and concubines, and these twelve sons becamethe ancestors of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

One of Jacob’s sons, Joseph, was sold as a slave by his brothers and was

carried off into Egypt. While he was in prison there, Joseph displayed his abil-

ity to interpret dreams, gained his freedom, and eventually became the chief

administrative officer over Egypt, second only to the Pharaoh. Meanwhile,

there was a famine in Canaan that forced Jacob and his family to emigrate to

Egypt in search of food. Joseph arranged for them to settle in a place called

Goshen, and in Egypt, the families of the twelve brothers multiplied into the

Twelve Tribes.

Eventually, a Pharaoh came into power who knew not Joseph, and he

reduced the Hebrews to slavery. God commanded Moses (who, although a

Hebrew, had grown up in the Pharaoh’s court after being rescued as a baby

from the Nile) to lead the people out of Egypt and back to the land that God

had promised Abraham.

The escape from Egypt by Moses and the Hebrews is surrounded by spec-

tacular miracles, including the Ten Plagues that God sent upon Egypt. After

each of the plagues, the Pharaoh agreed to allow the Hebrews to leave, butthen God would harden the Pharaoh’s heart so that he’d change his mind

and thus invite another plague upon his land. These plagues included blood,

frogs, lice, flies, pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and the slaying of

the firstborn.

When the Hebrews did finally manage to leave Egypt, the Pharaoh, his heart

having been hardened once again, assembled his army and chased the peo-



(chapter 2: “Israel in Egypt: The Egyptian Sojourn and the Exodus”).

Lecture 2:

The Exodus and Egypt

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L E C T U R E T W O

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ple as far as the Red Sea. God parted the waters and allowed the Hebrews

to cross on dry land, but when the Pharaoh and his army followed, God

caused the waters to return and destroyed the Egyptian army. The story in

the Hebrew Bible is told in a number of different ways. A couple of different

sources seem to have been combined in antiquity within the account of

Exodus. Scholars today refer to the strands within the Hebrew Bible as theYawist, the Elohist, and the Priestly sources. These refer to the characters in

the stories or the people who wrote them down.

Forty Years in the Desert

The Hebrews made their journey to Canaan in stages. God sent a pillar of

cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to indicate when they should move

their camp and where they should pitch their tents. Along the way, he fed

them with quail and manna in the wilderness. After three months, the people

reached a mountain in the wilderness of Sinai. They remained encamped at

the foot of the mountain, while Moses climbed the mountain several times

and spoke to God directly. Up there, along with seeing a burning bush, he

received from God extensive legal and cultic instructions and regulations.

These laws, instructions, and regulations were put into practice with the

understanding that they were to be followed by the people from that time on.

And indeed, these are the laws that have governed the Jewish people ever

since, and even had an impact upon Christianity and Islam. These are not

only the famous Ten Commandments, which are unique in history, but also

more than six hundred other laws found in the Hebrew Bible, which deter-

mine, among other things, how one remains kosher and which are still fol-lowed by people today. The Hebrews were still encamped at the mountain

when they celebrated the first Passover, that is, the anniversary of the

escape from Egypt.

On the twentieth day of the second month of the second year, the cloud that

God had sent was taken up, and it was time for the people to move on. They

set out again and eventually came to a place called Kadesh in the southwest

of the Negev. From there, they sent out twelve spies to explore the Promised

Land. The spies returned with glowing reports about the land’s fertility and its

produce (the land of milk and honey), but they also warned that the cities

were too strong to be conquered and that the land was inhabited by giants.

While they were still wandering around, Moses died in the region now called

Transjordan, east of Israel, and Joshua assumed leadership of the people.

He began preparations for an invasion of the western part of Canaan. The

crossing of the Jordan River and the conquest of Jericho were essentially rit-

ual operations surrounded by miracles—and at the same time were quite

good military operations.

Moses and the Hebrews, soon to be named the Israelites, wandered aroundthe region for forty years. Did they go on a northern route, up near the coast?

Did they go on a middle route across the Sinai, or did they go far down south?

These routes are all possible, and yet the northern route is most likely out of

the picture, because the Egyptians had a series of forts across this route. The

middle route is probably out too, going across the middle of the Sinai, because

it is in the middle of the desert. It’s really only the very southern route, going

almost all the way to Sharm El Sheikh, that makes the most sense for where


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the Hebrews, or Israelites, could have been for forty years. So most archaeol-

ogists and historians assume that Moses and the Hebrews wandered around

the very southern part of the Sinai for much of these forty years.

Holes in the Desert

How much of this biblical story can be believed, and how much has beencorroborated by archaeology or other sources? In brief, there is the biblical

narrative and little else. It may be a matter of faith to believe that the Exodus

and everything else took place as the Bible describes it. On the other hand,

even if the Israelites camped in the desert for forty years, little can be expect-

ed to be found in the desert through archaeology.

If they were camping, they would have used tents with post holes, rather

than permanent structures, and so an archaeologist is not going to find

houses and walls and remains of permanent structures, but rather simply

holes in the ground in which the tent pegs had once been placed, and thoseare almost impossible to find. But again, absence of evidence is not evi-

dence of absence.

However, there are other difficulties with using the biblical narrative for

historical reconstruction: the number forty and multiples of forty are in evi-

dence throughout the Book of Genesis through 2 Kings. Forty is a sacred

number, but it also may simply represent a generation.

There were forty years of wandering in the desert. The interval from the

Exodus down to Solomon’s building of the Temple is recorded as 480 years,

which is simply forty times twelve, so that could just be twelve generations.The time from the building of Solomon’s Temple until the time that the exiles

returned from Babylon in 539 is given as another 480 years. In other words,

Solomon’s Temple was built at the midpoint between the Exodus and the

return from Babylon, with 480 years, or twelve generations, on either side of

Solomon’s Temple. This is enough to make one a little suspicious.

Some of the other difficulties with using the biblical narrative also deal with

numbers. Exodus 12.37–38 says that the people of Israel journeyed from

Ramses to Succoth. The biblical account states that there were six hundred

thousand men on foot, plus women and children. A mixed multitude also went

with them, as did many cattle. This means that altogether there would have

been about two and a half million people, for most of the men would have

had wives, and most of the couples would have had two children, which

makes 2.4 million people. The mixed multitude would probably add another

hundred thousand people, which explains how the figure of at least 2.5 mil-

lion people leaving Egypt was calculated. However, there is no way the

Egyptians would have had that many slaves. And if they had, there would

have been a revolt even earlier.

Moreover, if 2.5 million people did leave Egypt, and they marched ten

across, those numbers would have formed a line about 150 miles long. If

Moses did part the Red Sea, it would have had to have been held apart for

eight or nine days before all the Hebrews managed to get through. Then

there are the logistics of organizing such a group and sustaining it for forty

years of wandering in the wilderness, as well as the fact that the Bible says

there were only two midwives to care for the women.


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All of this raises

enormous questions

for any historian who

wants to use this

information as it is

recorded. But per-haps there are sim-

ply a few too many

zeroes. If, rather

than having six hun-

dred thousand

Hebrews of fighting

age leave Egypt,

there were only sixty

thousand, or six

thousand, or perhaps even six hundred, it would make a great deal more

sense, and the wandering and the two midwives would be resolved a

bit more.

However, there are additional questions raised by the biblical narrative. Did

the Hebrews flee Egypt without the Pharaoh’s knowledge, in great haste and

without preparation, or was the departure deliberate, with the Hebrews orga-

nized as an armed military force? How exactly were they able to leave Egypt,

and who was the Pharaoh who knew not Joseph? What was happening on

the international political scene at the time of the Exodus, and when did theExodus actually take place? Also, what were the social and political circum-

stances among the Canaanites at the time of Joshua that allowed him to con-

quer Canaan?

These sorts of questions are basic to modern historians’ interest, but are

incidental to the theological message that the people compiling Genesis

through 2 Kings wished to convey. The ancient writers, mostly because it

wasn’t central to their interests or concerns, often failed to report precisely

the type of information considered crucial by modern historians.

Other Questions

There are other, perhaps even more crucial, problems. Abraham, Isaac,

Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Joshua are not mentioned in any nonbiblical

records. Nor is there any reference to an Israelite stay in Egypt, the Exodus,

or the conquest of Canaan in any ancient source contemporary with the time

these events occurred. Furthermore, with one exception, there is no mention

of Israel or the Israelites in extrabiblical sources before the ninth century

BCE, well after the time of David and Solomon. This mention of Israel is in

the so-called Merneptah stele, which dates to 1207 BCE, the fifth year of Pharaoh Merneptah of Egypt. So the Exodus had to have taken place by this

time, but how much earlier did it take place?

Dating the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt is difficult. A variety of biblical, histori-

cal, and archaeological data needs to be taken into account. Most scholars

argue for either an early date, about the year 1450 BCE, or a later date,

about the year 1250 BCE. The early date tends to be held by scholars who

rely heavily on the Bible. The later date tends to be held by scholars who give L E C T U R E T W O

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more weight to the archaeological evidence. Arguments for the early date

point to Kings 6.1, which says that the Exodus took place 480 years before

Solomon began to build the Temple in Jerusalem. Solomon began to build

the Temple in Jerusalem in the fourth year of his reign. Because Solomon’s

reign is about 970 to 930 BCE, this would then place the Exodus about 1450

BCE, that is, during the reign of King Thutmose III.There are a number of letters from Egypt that date to about a hundred years

after this, about 1350 BCE, which document a period of social chaos in

Canaan that is caused by a group called the Habiru. The name sounds suspi-

ciously similar to the name Hebrews, and if this is the case, then this would

represent extrabiblical evidence and an approximate date for an Israelite

invasion of Canaan sometime before 1350 BCE.

However, Thutmose III was the greatest conqueror that Egypt ever had, and

under him the Egyptians were in firm control of both Egypt and Canaan.

There is little archaeological evidence that he would have allowed theHebrews to leave Egypt during his reign, and in fact, there is little archaeolog-

ical data anywhere to support a date for the Exodus about 1450 BCE.

Moreover, it is now doubted by scholars that the Habiru are the Hebrews, or

at least that they are not the invading Israelites led by Moses and Joshua.

Basically, they seem to have been a social class on the outskirts of society

rather than a given set of people.

A Later Date for the Exodus

As for the arguments for a later date for the Exodus, the people followingthis line of argument say that the 480 years mentioned in 1 Kings is simply a

symbolic number (that is, twelve generations of forty years each) and can be

safely ignored. They also point to the fact that the cities of Pithom and

Ramses in the Nile Delta region of Egypt, which were supposedly built by the

Hebrews, were in fact founded by the Egyptian King Seti I in about the year

1304 and were completed by Ramses II, who ruled from 1290 to 1224. So if

the Hebrew slaves built the cities of Pithom and Ramses, they would still be

in Egypt until about 1250 BCE.

Moreover, archaeological evidence from various sites in Canaan may sup-port a thirteenth-century date for the conquest, because a number of these

cities were destroyed sometime during the thirteenth century, which would fit

quite well with the coming of Joshua and the Israelites. Additional arguments

for the later date of 1250 BCE for the Exodus point to the Merneptah stele,

which mentions Israel, in the year 1207 BCE. Historians and archaeologists

say that if the Israelites had entered Canaan around 1450 BCE, there should

be other mentions of Israel before the year 1207 BCE, but there are not.

Therefore, there would be more than two hundred years when Israel is not

mentioned. If, however, the Exodus took place at 1250 BCE and theIsraelites wandered for forty years, then having Israel mentioned by

Merneptah in the year 1207 is actually perfect.

If the Exodus took place at 1250 BCE, one could count back 430 years,

which is what Exodus 12 says was the length of time that the Hebrews were

in Egypt during their period of servitude. Counting back from 1250 BCE

would put the Hebrews in Egypt during the so-called Hyksos period, from


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about 1720 to 1550 BCE, when Egypt was ruled by foreigners from the

region of Canaan for nearly two hundred years. This fits well with the time of

Jacob and Joseph’s experiences in Egypt.

This is not to say that the later date of 1250 BCE is completely convincing,

because it’s not clear from the archaeological record that the cities of Lachish

and Hazor were destroyed simultaneously or even by a common enemy.Indeed, it can’t be established that those cities were destroyed by military

action as opposed to acts of Nature.

There is, however, a third possibility. Perhaps the Exodus was a process

rather than an event. It might have taken place over several centuries, from

1450 BCE until 1250 BCE. It is, of course, eminently possible that there were

people leaving Egypt and heading for Canaan over the course of two hun-

dred years, in a series of small groups rather than in one large group, but

even this cannot be proven one way or the other.


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1. Why is it difficult to find archaeological proof of the Hebrews’ supposed

forty-year stay in the desert?

2. What problems exist with the number of Israelites that the Bible claims left

Egypt during the Exodus?




Dever, William G. What Did the Biblical Writers Know & When Did They

Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient

Israel. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001.Feiler, Bruce S. Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five

Books of Moses. New York: William Morrow, 2001.

Finkelstein, Israel, and Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed:

Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred

Texts. New York: The Free Press, 2001.

Marcus, Amy D. The View from Nebo: How Archaeology Is Rewriting the

Bible and Reshaping the Middle East. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 2000.

Miller, J. Maxwell, and John H. Hayes. A History of Ancient Israel and Judah.Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1986.

Questions

Suggested Reading



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srael is mentioned in the Merneptah stele, in the fifth year

of Pharaoh Merneptah of Egypt, about 1207 BCE. In this

inscription, Merneptah says that Israel has been laid to

waste. In this same year, in another set of inscriptions,Merneptah mentioned the invasion of the Sea Peoples,

who conquered most of the countries of the Mediterranean

at this time. The Mycenaeans and Minoans of Greece were conquered by

them. The Hittites of Turkey were conquered by them. Even Cyprus was con-

quered, as were the peoples of Canaan. It was only the Egyptians under

Merneptah, and then his successor Ramses III, who were able to stand up to

the Sea Peoples.

The Invasion of the Sea PeoplesDid the invasion of the Sea Peoples allow the Israelites to eventually take

over the land of Canaan? The Exodus took place (most likely) by 1250 BCE

at the absolute latest, and may, in fact, have been a process that took place

over a period of two hundred years. If the Israelites wandered in the desert

from 1250 to about 1210 BCE, and then conquered the land of Canaan by

1207 (the time of Merneptah’s inscription), this coincides with the time that

the Sea Peoples took over Canaan as well.

The Sea Peoples pillaged and then departed the region (until they were later

resettled in the area by the Egyptians). Some think the Sea Peoples left theCanaanite city-states in smoking ruins, allowing the Israelites to take over ter-

ritory that they would not otherwise have been able to conquer. This would

contradict the biblical story of Joshua’s conquest, which credits Joshua and

the Israelites for conquering the region—but then again, does it?

Who Conquered Canaan?

The Book of Joshua tells of Joshua’s conquest of Canaan. This is after Moses

died, in Transjordan, within sight of the Promised Land. Joshua took over, and

it is under his command that the Israelites conquered Canaan. Joshua 12 liststhirty-one kings who were conquered by Joshua. At the same time, the Book of

Judges says, “[B]ut the people of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites, who

dwelt in Jerusalem. So the Jebusites have dwelt with the people of Benjamin to

this day”—and says that other tribes did not drive out inhabitants from other vil-

lages they shared, such as the inhabitants of Megiddo, and that the Canaanites

continued to dwell there. “When Israel grew strong, they put the Canaanites to

forced labor, but did not utterly drive them out.”



(chapter 3: “The Settlement in Canaan: The Period of the Judges”).

Lecture 3:

The Conquest of Canaan:

Israelites, Philistines, and Phoenicians

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Obviously, there are two tales, one in which Joshua and the Israelites were

able to conquer the land of Canaan completely and another account in which

they conquered the land, but did not absolutely kill and suppress everyone.

Both the biblical accounts and the archaeological accounts leave enough

contradictions and negative evidence that an advocate of a military conquest

has to accept that theory on faith. On the other hand, recent archaeologicalresearch and information offers several possibilities in addition to military con-

quest. William F. Albright of Johns Hopkins University was one of the original

proponents of the theory that the conquest took place as told in the Bible.

However, Albrecht Alt suggested that semi-nomadic Israelites peacefully infil-

trated unoccupied areas of the Hill Country, gradually built settlements, and

became sedentary; that is, they became tied to the land and only later dis-

placed the Canaanites in the cities. Alt thought that the military encounters

only took place after the Israelites began expanding out of these central high-

lands, so then would follow the conquest put forth by Albright.The third suggestion is what’s known as the Revolting Peasants hypothesis,

or the Peasants’ Rebellion. This was put forth by George Mendenhall and

Norman Gottwald, who suggested that Israel emerged from a melting pot of

Canaanite culture in a revolutionary social movement among peoples who

were already in Canaan, and that this revolt might have begun in Transjordan

to the east and then spread westward across the Jordan to the West Bank

and beyond. The model for this was taken from Habiru inscriptions that say

that they rebelled against the Egyptians about a century earlier. Here was

basically an alliance of disenfranchised elements of Canaanite society goingup against established society. In this case, the so-called conquest of

Canaan is not so much a conquest as an internal revolution led by population

elements that were already there. There was no unified military campaign

conducted by forces from the outside, and there was no mass killing of the

inhabitants of the land. The problem with the Peasants’ Revolt hypothesis is

that there is no supporting evidence from archaeology or other texts.

The fourth possibility suggests that the Canaanites and the Israelites were

one and the same people; that is, the Israelites were part of the Canaanites,

and they simply took over. The story of the invasion was then made up bylater biblical writers.

The Phoenicians

However the Israelite conquest of Canaan took place, when the Israelites

ended up in Canaan, they came into contact with the Phoenicians and the

Philistines. In fact, the first king of Israel, Saul, was killed in a battle against

the Philistines.

The Phoenicians are basically the latter-day inhabitants of the Syrian coastal

area. The names for both Canaanites and Phoenicians are derived from

words that mean purple. The land of Phoenicia is where Lebanon is today.

The political and economic centers of Phoenicia were the cities of Tyre and

Sidon and Arvad, as well as Beirut and Byblos. Some of these cities were

already major Canaanite centers by the Bronze Age, and some, like Beirut,

remain inhabited today.

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The civilization of Phoenicia is a conglomeration of different elements. This

region of the Lebanese and Syrian coasts has always been a meeting place

of Europe and Asia. However, the main contribution of the Phoenicians is

undoubtedly the invention of the alphabet, which was taken by the Greeks

and Romans throughout Europe.

The Phoenicians were remarkable merchants and traders. They sailed frommodern-day Lebanon to Crete and Greece, to Italy and Sicily, to North Africa,

and even founded the city of Carthage. They sailed as far as Spain, and to

Sardinia and areas in between. The name Phoenician means purple, and

their name implies that they were merchants of purple dye, as were the

Canaanites before them.

The tenth century is the golden age of Phoenician wealth and power, and it

was during this period that the Phoenicians interacted with the Israelites and

the earliest kings of Israel down to the time of David and Solomon.

The Philistines

The history of the Philistines is known mostly from the Bible, Egyptian

records, and archaeological finds. The Philistines are first mentioned in the

Egyptian inscriptions about the Sea Peoples, where they are known as the

Peleset. According to Egyptian sources during the time of Merneptah and

Ramses III, at the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the twelfth centuries

BCE, the Peleset are defeated by the Egyptians and settled in Philistia in the

southern part of Canaan. They named the land Palashtu, from which the

name Palestine eventually came.The Philistines ruled in small city-states and seemed to have had a military

advantage over the local Israelites, because they had chariots and knew how

to forge iron. During the period of the Judges, the Philistines exercised a defi-

nite superiority over the Israelites, and it was not until the time of Saul and

David that there was a shift toward Israelite advantage.

The five cities of the Philistines (Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath)

are all in the Coastal Plain, on the far western side of the region of Israel, or

in the neighboring foothills, the Shephelah region. In addition, there are small-

er sites (a site in Tel Aviv, for example).

Philistine pottery owes quite a bit to Mycennean pottery from Greece and to

native Canaanite styles. And Philistine pottery seems to have a particular

preference for birds, particularly birds looking backwards.

The Phoenicians and the Philistines interacted with the early Israelites dur-

ing the period when the Israelites became a monarchy. The first kings of

Israel came along during the time of Saul, David, and Solomon.

Saul’s Rise to Power The Bible contains what are known as the Samuel-Shiloh stories, in 1

Samuel. Samuel lived at a temple in Shiloh, which was run by an old priest

named Eli and his two sons. Samuel was the last of the Judges, the spokes-

men for God. The people of Israel wanted a monarchy, and Samuel was

asked to anoint Israel’s first king. Samuel said it was not a good idea, but the

people of Israel wanted it, and so the period of Judges gave way to the peri-


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od of the first kings. Samuel opposed the institution of the monarchy and

warned the people of the many ways that future kings would take advantage

of them, but then, following divine guidance, he is reported to have selected

Saul. Samuel then explained the rights and duties of kingship and wrote

these in a book.

The stories of Saul in the Bible are the primary source of information aboutSaul’s rise to power, but they are probably a mixture of folk memory and leg-

end intertwined with a kernel of actual truth. When Saul came to the throne,

he immediately had to deal with the Philistines, and it seems that much of

Saul’s reign was a fight against the Philistines in an attempt to establish his

own kingdom.

Saul vs. the Philistines

Saul believed that his kingdom needed to expand. The Philistines saw the

expansion of the Israelites as detrimental to their existence, so for much of Saul’s reign, there were ongoing battles between the Israelites and the

Philistines. This was probably somewhere in the eleventh or into the tenth

centuries BCE. There is little extrabiblical evidence, but David must emerge

by the year 1000 BCE, so Saul should be placed a couple of decades

before that.

Saul’s final battle against the Philistines took place in the Jezreel Valley, in

the north of Israel, near Megiddo, the biblical Armageddon. The Philistines

considered this area crucial, and they wanted to encircle and capture the

heart of Saul’s kingdom. The Philistines already held Beth-shan to the east of the Jezreel Valley and the Coastal Plain to the west. If they won the Jezreel

Valley, they would cut Saul’s kingdom into two parts and separate the

Israelites in Galilee and the Jezreel Valley from the rest of the Israelite tribes.

Saul, therefore, had no choice but to fight the Philistines for control of the

valley. The story of the battle is told in 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles.

There are as yet no contemporary extrabiblical sources to confirm these

accounts, but in Saul’s case, at least, the story is repeated with some embell-

ishment about a thousand years later by Josephus, the Jewish general turned

Roman historian, in his book The Antiquities of the Jews.

The Valley of Jezreel was extremely important in antiquity. The Via Maris,

the Way of the Sea, went right through the valley. Megiddo is in the middle of

the valley. The Jordan River is to the east and the Mediterranean Sea is to

the west. Anybody who wanted to invade this area had to go through the

Jezreel Valley, so there have been no fewer than thirty-four battles fought in

the last four thousand years in this single valley. It is one of the bloodiest

places on earth. It is not surprising that the author of the Book of Revelation

placed one of the final battles between good and evil at Megiddo, near where

Saul fought his last battle.

During this battle, Saul was killed, along with his son Jonathan and several

other sons. The Philistines won the battle. David became king upon the death

of Saul, whose head was cut off and whose body was hung up on the wall at

Beth-shan. And with that, the first era of the Israelite monarchy came to an

end. David assumed the throne, and there followed the period referred to as

the United Monarchy, the golden age of Israel.


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1. What is the Revolting Peasants hypothesis?

2. Why did the Philistines consider the Jezreel Valley to be such a crucial

area to control?




Cline, Eric H. The Battles of Armageddon: Megiddo and the Jezreel Valley

from the Bronze Age to the Nuclear Age. Ann Arbor, MI: University of

Michigan Press, 2002.

Questions

Suggested Reading




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ing David is one of the most beloved figures in the Hebrew

Bible. He’s also one of the most enigmatic. Much has been

published about him in recent times.

Questions About the House of David

David founded a dynasty that was destined to rule from

Jerusalem for the next four hundred years. Even after Jerusalem fell to the

Babylonians in 586 BCE, ending the long line of Davidic Kings, many of the

people of Jerusalem and Judah continued to hope for a return to the days of

the House of David. So it’s not surprising that David received so much atten-

tion in the biblical materials or that there was an obvious effort to present him

in a favorable light.

The Hebrew Bible devotes forty-two chapters to David and portrays him asGod’s chosen, the true and righteous king. Then there is a second extended

biblical account in Chronicles that begins its history of Judah with David and

devotes twenty chapters to his reign. Finally, David is associated by tradition

with the Book of Psalms, where thirteen of the individual psalms are con-

nected with particular moments in his career.

A number of basic questions face anyone trying to study David’s reign and

the period of the United Monarchy. Can archaeology or other sources shed

light on the transition that took place in Israelite society? Does archaeology

actually indicate that a mighty kingdom existed, such as was described in the

biblical sources? To what extent are the elaborate commercial and political

relations described in the Bible actually reflected in the archaeological

remains? Unfortunately, the extrabiblical evidence is sparse, often controver-

sial, and does not provide unequivocal answers to these questions.

David’s History

The story of David reads like a modern soap opera: plenty of sex, violence,

and struggles for power. David, before being anointed king by Samuel, fought

famously with Goliath. Samuel met with David’s father, Jesse, who brought all

of his sons to see Samuel. Samuel asked if all of Jesse’s sons were actually

there. One was not and had to be called in, namely David, who was tending

the flock.

David started out as a minstrel for Saul during Saul’s melancholy period, but

was rapidly promoted to armor bearer. He then had his first successes as a

young warrior and commander, so that the women sang that Saul had slain



(chapter 4: “The United Monarchy: Saul, David, and Solomon”).

Lecture 4:

King David in History and Tradition

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thousands, but that David had slain ten thousands. There was the famous

friendship between Saul’s son Jonathan and David, which eventually led to

the mistrust of Saul as Saul became increasingly unstable. There was a quar-

rel, after which Saul tried to kill David. David ran away and returned to Judah,

his homeland. He became a mercenary, leading his own troops.

David lived as a warrior, a kind of a bandit, an outlaw who was toleratedrather than admired. He operated in large part with Saul pursuing him. David

even entered into the service of the Philistines, albeit temporarily. After Saul

was killed, David became king, and his kingdom assumed a different charac-

ter from that of Saul’s. Saul came from a tradition of charismatic leaders, but

he didn’t have a permanent foundation among the tribes. He had no real resi-

dence, and no effective administration. David, on the other hand, obtained a

residence and a very effective administration. But he wasn’t necessarily a

charismatic leader in terms of ruling from God, by God, and of God. He was a

warrior, supported by his troops, independent of the tribes, and he becameking over the territory. He ruled over a nation, which was limited, and yet was

going to expand quite fast.

David first ruled from Hebron, for about seven years. He had expanded his

territory to the north, and in expanding to the north, he decided that the city of

Hebron was no longer suitable for his capital. He wanted a city that was polit-

ically and geographically neutral and one that was relatively isolated.

Jerusalem itself is high up in the Hill Country, but it was not at the crossroads

of any great trade routes. It was geographically separated from most of

David’s territory. From his new capital, David could rule both north and south,so the formulation of his kingdom seems to be David’s foremost achievement.

David’s capture of Jerusalem from the Jebusites, somewhere around the year

1000 BCE, may be among the ten most important conflicts in Jerusalem’s

history—and there have been more than one hundred battles fought for con-

trol of Jerusalem over the past four thousand years.

The Capture of Jerusalem

David’s capture of Jerusalem is what brought Judaism to the city and began

the long association of the city with three of the great religions of the world:Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In about 1000 BCE, the Jebusites controlled

the city. The city was protected on three sides by deep ravines, so it was only

from the north that David could capture the city.

The text of 2 Samuel presents a number of different difficulties in translation,

especially with the Hebrew word “tsinnor.” In the King James Version, this is

translated as “gutter,” but in the Revised Standard Version, “tsinnor” means a

water shaft, and the implication is that David’s soldiers, in particular his right-

hand man Joab, climbed some sort of water shaft from near the Gihon Spring

and thereby entered the city.

However, the New English Bible translates “tsinnor” as grappling iron, and

others translate “tsinnor” as ladder or other meanings. Recent archaeology

conducted in the vicinity of the Gihon Spring, on the eastern side of

Jerusalem, has shown that the Canaanites built fortifications, towers, and

walls to protect the Gihon Spring, the only water source for Jerusalem. These

constructions would have been already eight hundred years old by the time


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A satellite view of modern Jerusalem showing areas of the city during the time of David and

the Jebosites

David came along, and they are perhaps the tsinnor that allowed Joab to

climb up through the water system and enter the middle of Jerusalem around

midnight. He and his men would have killed the guards at the gate and

opened the gates to Jerusalem. Then David and his men would have

marched in. Thus Jebusite Jerusalem became Israelite Jerusalem.

At this time, Jerusalem lay only on the easternmost of two spurs of land run-ning side by side. It was this eastern ridge that David captured. Over time,

Solomon would expand up to the north on that ridge, and then, over the cen-

turies, the city would expand to the west, gradually filling in the ravine to the

middle and taking over the western ridge as well.

Once he captured the city, David promptly brought the Ark of the Covenant

there. He put it in a tabernacle and danced around it, then got in trouble for

doing so. Eventually, the Ark was moved on top of the rock on which

Abraham supposedly was going to sacrifice Isaac. This is the rock that today

is inside the Dome of the Rock, and which lay inside Solomon’s Temple.Indeed, Solomon built his Temple, among other reasons, specifically to

house the Ark of the Covenant. Bringing the Ark to Jerusalem made the city

not only David’s political capital, but also the religious capital for both David

and, later, Solomon.

Archaeology has been unable to pinpoint structures that definitely belong to

David’s Jerusalem, aside from recent claims by Eilat Mazar to have discov-

ered David’s palace. There is not much that can be conclusively said to date

to the tenth century in Jerusalem, and so there has been an ongoing debate

about the size and extent of David’s Jerusalem, and his entire kingdom, for that matter. So far there is no archaeological evidence that Jerusalem was

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anything more than a modest highland village during the time of David and

Solomon. It is true that there is little evidence for what Jerusalem looked like

in the tenth century BCE, but many see the downgrading of David and

Solomon as rather ominous, as part of a political agenda that gives ammuni-

tion to people who might be anti-Israel or anti-Semitic.

The other aspect that David’s capture of Jerusalem has given rise to is thepolitical ramifications. Indeed, the original battle fought between David and

the Jebusites three thousand years ago for control of Jerusalem is still being

fought today, mostly because the modern Israelis claim to be descendants

from the Israelites and the modern Palestinians claim to be descendants of

the Canaanites and the Philistines. So the modern political and physical bat-

tles between Israelis and Palestinians echo the original battle between David

and the Jebusites.

Once David captured the city, he fell in love with the famous Bathsheba after

seeing her bathing. The union of David and Bathsheba resulted in the birth of Solomon, who continued his father’s process of expansion of the kingdom

and who ruled over the United Monarchy.

Mentions of David

In 1993 and 1994, three fragments of an inscription in old Aramaic were dis-

covered at the site of Tel Dan, in the north of Israel. If the restoration and

translation of the inscription are correct, it contains the first mention of David,

or rather the House of David, found outside the Bible.

The three fragments mention the House of David as well as the kings of bothIsrael and Judah. It is now clear that the inscription should be dated to about

the year 842 BCE. This is the first time that the name David has been found in

any ancient inscription outside the Bible, and it would therefore be the oldest

extrabiblical reference to Israel apart from the Merneptah stele, which dates to

1207 BCE.

The critical letters in the inscription are the ones that are usually translated

as “House of David.” Some scholars have said that this is not the meaning

and that it means “House of the Uncle,” or “House of the Beloved,” or even

“House of the Kettle,” but these claims are spurious and may be dismissed.

There may be other inscriptions that mention David. There’s the so-called

Mesha stele, which may contain a mention of the king of Israel and the

House of David, but this inscription is broken and much debated. There may

be another mention down in Egypt in a list left by King Shishak (Sheshonq)

of Egypt.

All of these inscriptions have been reinterpreted recently, and so there might

be more mentions of David than thought before. On the other hand, a group

of scholars referred to by others as biblical minimalists (some call them theCopenhagen school) tend to argue that the history of Israel, Judah, David,

and Solomon is all made up.


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Biblical Minimalism

Biblical minimalists take the view that the Bible is a narrative of mythology

interwoven with some historical elements, and that trying to read the Bible

as a historical text in the modern sense of the term is doomed from the start.

They say this because the Bible is written in a tradition of storytelling and

religious worship, not with the intention of relating facts. They say that theUnited Monarchy and the figures of David and Solomon are legendary and

not historical at all. In short, biblical minimalists say that the Bible is nearly

irrelevant for constructing the history of ancient Palestine and especially of

the ancient Israelites.

Essentially, biblical minimalism arose out of the need to account for the

major discrepancies between the Bible and what archaeologists have dug up

in Israel and Palestine. How much can archaeology prove or corroborate the

biblical account? The arguments about the legitimacy of David and whether

or not he existed are part of this debate, which is one of the most fiercelydebated issues in biblical archaeology.

Biblical stories paint a picture of David in intense detail. On the other hand,

there is no archaeological evidence to prove any of this and, until the finding

of the Tel Dan stele, there was no extrabiblical evidence mentioning David

whatsoever. It is now thought possible, however, that the House of David

may also appear in the Mesha stele, and in Shishak’s inscription as well, so

there is now good evidence that someone named David actually did exist.

But whether it is the biblical David or some other David is still being argued.

It is a topic that continues to generate controversy.


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1. Why was David’s capture of Jerusalem one of the ten most important con-

flicts in the city’s history?

2. Where is the first mention of David believed to be found?




Cline, Eric H. Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel.

Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005.

Finkelstein, Israel, and Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred

Texts. New York: The Free Press, 2001.

———. David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the

Roots of the Western Tradition. New York: The Free Press, 2006.

Halpern, Baruch. David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King.

Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001.

Kirsch, Jonathan. King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel.

New York: Ballantine Books, 2001.McKenzie, Steven L. King David: A Biography. New York: Oxford University

Press, 2000.

Questions

Suggested Reading




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ing Solomon is renowned for his wisdom, wealth, and

wives. He’s credited in the Hebrew Bible with ruling over

an empire that stretched from Egypt to the Euphrates.

However, like his father David, Solomon and his accom-plishments have become the subject of recent controversy.

The Epitome of Wise Governance

Solomon’s reign was considered to be the golden age of Israelite and

Judean history, at least from

a casual reading of the bibli-

cal account. His reign lasted

forty years, approximately

970 to 930 BCE, and he wasburied in Jerusalem, the city

of David, which Solomon

expanded magnificently.

In the Book of Chronicles,

the chronicler neutralized

any negative aspects of

Solomon’s reign and elabo-

rated on his role as builder

of the famous Temple inJerusalem and cofounder

with his father David of the

United Monarchy. The Book

of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes,

and the Song of Songs

appear to credit Solomon for

vast amounts of wisdom. So

it’s not surprising that his

reign came to be consideredthe epitome of splendor and

wise governance, not to

mention wealth.

But the biblical text reveals

certain ironies. Wealthy

Solomon developed cash-

flow problems. Powerful

P u b l i c D o m a i n



(chapter 4: “The United Monarchy: Saul, David, and Solomon”).

Lecture 5:

King Solomon in History and Tradition

Solomon by Gustave Doré, from The Bible and Its Story

Taught by One Thousand Picture Lessons, vol. 7, edited by

Charles F. Horne and Julius A. Bewer, 1908

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Solomon was troubled by adversaries close to home. And wise Solomon

apparently exploited his people through forced labor and other despotic prac-

tices, so that the bulk of his kingdom chose to break away after his death.

Wealth and Women

Solomon’s reign is among the first where specific ties may possibly be drawnbetween the biblical and archaeological records. In 1 Kings, there is mention of

several cities that Solomon built or fortified, including Jerusalem, Hazor,

Megiddo, and Gezer. Archaeological excavations at these sites have revealed

layers of building and fortification remains that were dated to Solomon’s reign

and which do in fact suggest, both by their large scale and similar design, that

they were centralized (a royal building program, perhaps). So there may have

been material evidence of Solomon’s accomplishments as a builder. On the

other hand, this same evidence shows that his accomplishments were rather

modest when compared with the kings of Egypt or Mesopotamia.

In 1 Kings, Solomon loved many foreign women, including the daughter of a

Pharaoh, as well as Moabite, Ammonite, Ebonite, Sidonian, and Hittite women.

Solomon had seven hundred wives and princesses and three hundred concu-

bines. We are told that these women turned his heart after other gods. He built

sanctuaries to the gods of the Moabites and the Ammonites, respectively, and

therefore God became angry with Solomon and sent adversaries.

Solomon had an abundance of silver and gold. In 1 Kings, the weight of gold

that came to Solomon in one year was 666 talents, besides that which came

from the traders, the traffic of the merchants, and the kings of Arabia andgovernors of the land. King Solomon made two hundred large shields of beat-

en gold and a great ivory throne overlain with the finest gold.

The biblical account from Genesis through 2 Kings serves as the primary

source of information on Solomon, but the presentation in the Hebrew Bible

consists largely of extended descriptions of Solomon’s cultic activities and

sweeping claims about his great wealth, wisdom, and international prestige.

However, the meager information available today simply does not support the

sweeping claims, and biblical minimalists and others claim that the account of

Solomon in the Hebrew Bible bears no relation to the archaeological record.

Solomon inherited a kingdom from David that was not unified by any means.

The fact that he was able to hold it together was one of his many accomplish-

ments. The trend of a Jerusalem-based kingdom reached full development

under Solomon. He was wealthy and powerful by the standards of the early

first millennium BCE, but he should probably be regarded more as a local

ruler of an expanded city-state than as a world-class emperor like Alexander

the Great or Julius Caesar. He engaged in the usual royal pursuits, including

building programs and patronage of literature. Whether he was wise or not

was something to be discussed even in his own day, and like many of the

kings of his day and afterward, Solomon had international contacts, including

the famed visit of the Queen of Sheba (if it actually took place).

A Peaceful King

Solomon is described in the Bible as a peaceful king, and this may well have

been the case. There are no known clashes, military or otherwise, during his

reign. The achievements credited to him lie mostly in the religious, economic,


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and cultural spheres. He completed the Temple at Jerusalem, erected build-

ings in other cities, and made trade alliances and economic treaties with

neighboring countries. He might not have been as vigorous or creative as

David, but he did piece together the empire.

Solomon had inherited this kingdom from his father David, and he managed

to keep control of it by various diplomatic connections, including through hiswives. At that time, it was common to cement a treaty by having the signers

marry each other’s daughters. A lot of the women in Solomon’s palace may

well have gotten there because of the various peace treaties that he signed

with his neighbors. It’s easy to see foreign politics underlying these mar-

riages, because these are women of the countries with whom Solomon would

have wished to be at peace. In particular, the daughter of the king of Egypt

played a prominent role. She’s mentioned five different times, which may indi-

cate that he wanted to be friends with Egypt. He also cultivated extensive

trade relationships with various countries and sent ships to the land of Ophir to bring back gold, valuable wood, and other luxuries. Because his Israelites

were not seafarers themselves, he was supported in this by the king of Tyre,

from the coast of Lebanon, where the sea-going Phoenicians were located.

Solomon’s Temple

The king of Tyre in 1 Kings put shipwrights and sailors at Solomon’s dis-

posal, and so Solomon had a city constructed for his fleet on the northern

coast of the gulf of Aqaba. Excavations have confirmed that ruins in this

area may indeed be those built by Solomon. The Bible tells us that this iswhen Israel became open to the international world. Great buildings were

erected and literature was collected.

However, this whole development must be seen in fairly modest terms with-

in a small area. It is highly doubtful that the empire stretched from Egypt to

the Euphrates. More likely, it was about the bounds of the modern state of

Israel as it exists now, if even that. This age of Solomon should not be

underestimated, however. Rather, it should be appreciated, because imme-

diately upon his death, violent conflicts broke out and the United Monarchy

split into the Divided Kingdoms.The city with which Solomon’s name is forever linked is the city of Jerusalem,

even though little or nothing of what he built there has actually been identified

by archaeologists. Solomon’s Temple and palace were built to the north of the

Jebusite city, the city David had captured on the southernmost part of this

eastern ridge. Solomon then built up the northern part of that eastern ridge,

which is where the Temple Mount lies today. It was not easy to build there—

Solomon’s workmen, architects, and construction engineers would have been

hard-pressed to build in that area. Nevertheless, the famous Temple of

Solomon was built on this northern part of the eastern ridge, about 750 feetto the north of the Jebusite city, joining the two by a narrow strip. But none of

this has been confirmed by archaeology, in part because this city has been

rebuilt so many times over the last couple of thousand years. The Temple

Mount is today the home of the Dome of the Rock, sacred to Islam, located

on the Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary, as it is known to the Arab

world. This particular area is the center of battles that have been fought for

Jerusalem over the last four thousand years.


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The Temple Mount was probably already a Canaanite high place back in the

third millennium BCE. There have probably been five thousand years of con-

tinuous religious worship on the Temple Mount, which may make it the oldest

piece of real estate in the world with a continuous religious presence. Here is

the rock on which Abraham was going to sacrifice Isaac and on which

Mohammed ascended to Heaven on his nocturnal journey. There are inden-tations in the rock, which, depending on the story, are either the marks made

by the legs of the Ark of the Covenant or the marks made by Mohammed’s

steed as he leaped up to the heavens—or by the ladder as he climbed up to

the heavens.

Detailed descriptions of Solomon’s Temple are found in the Book of Kings

and 2 Chronicles in the Hebrew Bible and in the firsthand evidence of

Ezekiel. We are told that the Temple was begun in the fourth year of

Solomon’s forty-year-long reign, which was also the four hundred and eighti-

eth year after the Exodus from Egypt. Solomon’s building projects took exact-ly half his reign, twenty years, and during those twenty years, seven years

were devoted to the building of the Temple. One problem here is the pres-

ence of symbolic numbers: four, forty, multiples of forty, and seven, and so it

might be best not to take these numbers literally.

Once Solomon began to build the Temple, Hiram, the king of Tyre, agreed

to supply building materials and skilled workmen. Solomon himself raised

forced labor for the project and hired a bronzesmith from Tyre, who made

bronze fixtures and furnishings for the Temple. When all the work was com-

pleted, Solomon stored in the Temple all the things that David had dedicated:silver, gold, and vessels, including the Ark of the Covenant. There was a ded-

ication ceremony that included the ritual transfer of the Ark into the Temple

and a long prayer by Solomon to reconfirm his promise to David to bless the

Temple with his presence and to forgive the people. Then there were elabo-

rate sacrifices, followed by a great feast. After the people returned to their

homes, God appeared to Solomon and assured him that his prayers would

be answered, depending upon the king’s faithfulness. Solomon gave twenty

cities to Hiram in payment for everything that Hiram had contributed and the

daughter of the Egyptian Pharaoh was moved to her own house. Solomonthen began to make burnt offerings in the Temple three times a year.

Descriptions of the Temple

The Temple itself presents a puzzle. The biblical description is not entirely

clear and could be interpreted in a number of different ways, for the Bible’s

description of the Temple is fairly inexact. The furniture and the utensils are

described in minute details, but the building itself lacks detail except for a

brief notice concerning its windows. However, descriptions of the internal

aspects are described in tremendous detail: the doors to the inner sanctuary,side chambers, and so on.

Solomon’s Temple seems to have been a long-room temple, one that is ori-

ented with the entrance on the short side and the shrine at the opposi

a history of ancient israel_eric h cline

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