King David featured in National Geographic

King David and King Solomon have made the cover story of the December issue of National Geographic. In a rare show of fair reporting on this subject, the feature story outlines the ongoing battle for the historical legitimacy of the biblical account of Israel’s nascent kings. Robert Draper writes:

In no other part of the world does archaeology so closely resemble a contact sport. Eilat Mazar is one of the reasons why. Her announcement in 2005 that she believed she had unearthed the palace of King David amounted to a ringing defense of an old-school proposition under assault for more than a quarter century—namely, that the Bible’s depiction of the empire established under David and continued by his son Solomon is historically accurate.

King David’s palace is just one of three discoveries over the past five years that Draper highlights that have snatched back the sacred text out of the hands of biblical minimalists and scholars, such as Tel Aviv University professor Israel Finkelstein.

During David’s time, as Finkelstein casts it, Jerusalem was little more than a “hill-country village,” David himself a raggedy upstart akin to Pancho Villa, and his legion of followers more like “500 people with sticks in their hands shouting and cursing and spitting—not the stuff of great armies of chariots described in the text.”Of course we’re not looking at the palace of David!” Finkelstein roars at the very mention of Mazar’s discovery. “I mean, come on. I respect her efforts. I like her—very nice lady. But this interpretation is—how to say it?—a bit naive.”Now it is Finkelstein’s theory that is under siege. On the heels of Mazar’s claim to have discovered King David’s palace, two other archaeologists have unveiled remarkable finds.

Firstly, excavations by Yosef Garfinkel of Khirbet Qeiyafa, a fortress city on the very edge of the Judean hill country, revealed a 10th-century outer wall with adjoining buildings and gateways. Perched on a hill overlooking the famed Elah Valley, the discovery of the fortified town on the border of David’s kingdom proves the monarch’s power extended far beyond the capital.

He also found an ancient tray for baking pita bread, along with hundreds of bones from cattle, goats, sheep, and fish—but no pig bones. In other words, Judaeans, rather than Philistines, must have lived (or at least dined) here. Because Garfinkel’s excavation team also uncovered a very rare find—a clay pottery sherd with writing that appears to be a proto-Canaanite script with verbs characteristic of Hebrew—the conclusion to him seemed obvious: Here was a 10th-century b.c. complex Judaean society of the sort that low chronologists like Finkelstein claimed did not exist.

Secondly, Draper discusses the recent excavations in neighboring Jordan of a massive copper mine. As we have reported before, this site could very well be the site where Solomon imported his copper and brass for the temple construction. Recent radiocarbon dating of the site has put it squarely during the reign of the early kings of Israel. Draper continues:

Levy’s copper mines may not be as sexy as King David’s palace or the perch overlooking the battle of David and Goliath. But Levy’s excavation work spans more time and area than those of Eilat Mazar and Yosef Garfinkel, with far more extensive use of radiocarbon analysis to determine the age of his site’s stratigraphic layers. “All scholars dealing with Edom in the last two generations claimed that Edom didn’t exist as a state before the eighth century b.c.,” says Amihai Mazar. “But Levy’s radiocarbon dates have their own story, and that story is related to the tenth to ninth century b.c., and no one can claim that they’re incorrect.”

The story includes quotes from the usual cabal of nay-saying archaeologists who resent the Bible being presented as an accurate historical document for early Israelite history. Unsurprisingly, their “evidences” are mostly ad hominem attacks on the archaeologists or those who sponsor their excavations rather than at the science.

Such biblical minimalists have long used arguments of silence, or lack of archaeological evidence, as their main defense against the existence of David and Solomon. If the discoveries of the past five years are anything to go on, they might need to re-work their strategy.