David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition
Page 31
Weill, Raymond
Western (Wailing) Wall
Williamson, Hugh
wisdom literature
Wisdom of Solomon
Wojcik, Jan
Woodhead, John
Yadin, Yigael
Yehud
borders of
description of
dual system of rule in
exiles’ return to
hostility between Samaria and
Yehudim
Yemen
Zadokite priests
Zechariah
Zephaniah
Zertal, Adam
Zerubbabel
Ziklag
Zion, Mount
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Israel Finkelstein is a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University. He is a leading figure in the archaeology of the Levant and the laureate of the 2005 Dan David Prize in the Past Dimension—Archaeology. Finkelstein served for many years as the Director of the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University and is the co-Director of the Megiddo Expedition.
Neil Asher Silberman is an author and historian who has published widely on the archaeology of the Near East. He also serves as the director of the Ename Center for Public Archaeology and Heritage Presentation in Belgium, consulting and working on international projects in public interpretation and heritage policy.
* The circumstances of the initial compilation of the Deuteronomistic History will be described in Chapter 6.
* In this book we will use the geographical terms “Judah” and “Judahite” to refer to the situation beginning in the presumed time of David in the Early Iron Age (tenth century BCE) and ending with the destruction of the kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. The more general term “Judean highlands,” derived from the Greek and Latin geographical terminology, will be used to describe this highland territory in all other periods.
* This event seems to be remembered, as a vivid memory and a sobering lesson, in an oracle of the prophet Amos (6:2).
* The original text is apparently 1 Samuel 30: 26. As we will see in a subsequent chapter, the list of towns which follow was apparently added much later, to serve the kingdom of Judah’s expanded territorial goals.
* For a more detailed description of the debate over the Early Iron Age remains in Jerusalem, see Appendix 2.
* The reason why the Shishak invasion was linked in the Deuteronomistic History to the reign of Rehoboam may be more theological than historical. It is a vivid example of the Deuteronomistic principle of sin and divine retribution, since Rehoboam permitted idolatry and was punished by a foreign assault on his land. The biblical author living in the late seventh century BCE could have known about this distant event from several possible sources, such as an inscribed hieroglyphic stele still standing somewhere north of Jerusalem (like the one found at Megiddo); from local oral traditions; or from migrant Judahites who lived in the late seventh century in the Delta, near Tanis, capital of Sheshonq I, where his monuments and historical achievements were still remembered.
* There is one possible, vague memory in the heroic tales of 2 Samuel 23, a mention in passing that Benaiah the son of Jehoiada “slew an Egyptian” (verse 21.)
* Although 2 Samuel 8, which describes some of David’s wars, is not usually considered part of the “Court History,” nonetheless, since military triumphs are an important element of David’s biblical image, we include it in our discussion of royal traditions of the Davidic dynasty.
* For more detail on the archaeological search for the monuments of David’s Jerusalem, see Appendix 2.
* The importance of the Tel Dan inscription and its mention of the “House of David” is discussed in Appendix 1.
* This does not suggest, however, that a more modest temple and palace built by the earlier highland chiefs of Judah did not stand there before.
* For a basic discussion of the evidence for David’s historical existence, see Appendix 1.
* Knauf particularly stressed the central role played in ancient Near Eastern courts by stories expressing the viewpoint of the queen mother, whose main political challenge was to maintain the primacy of her line in the struggle for succession to the throne.
* It is contained in the final chapter of what scholars describe as the “Ark Narrative,” the story of the wandering of the Ark from Shiloh to captivity in Philistine cities, and back to Kiriath-jearim and finally Jerusalem—1 Samuel 6–7: 1; 2 Samuel 6.
* Baruch Halpern explained this story as a sophisticated work of propaganda by the supporters of Solomon, aimed to counter rumors that he was not the son of David, and thus not of royal Davidic blood. We would argue that even if the story were old, it assumed its present form only much later in Judah’s history.
* Though the name is spelled this way in the Revised Standard Version of the Hebrew Bible, his name is properly Jehoram; he reigned as king of Judah, according to the traditional biblical chronology, 851–843 BCE. Likewise Joash’s name is properly spelled “Jehoash.” (See chart on p. 18.)
* The list of targeted liquidations of northern figures is painfully long: David is indirectly linked to the death of Abner, the loyal general of Saul (2 Samuel 3: 27); to the killing and then beheading of Ish-bosheth, the son of Saul (2 Samuel 4: 7); to the hanging of seven other members of the house of Saul (2 Samuel 21: 7–9); and the beheading of the northern rebel Sheba the son of Bichri (2 Samuel 20: 22).
* For more on the evidence for horse breeding and trading at Israelite Megiddo, see chapter 5.
* Despite the legendary stories of the exile of the “Ten Lost Tribes” of Israel in this period, we cannot be sure that Sargon’s claim of deporting almost 30,000 Israelites after the fall of Samaria is accurate. In the eighth century BCE the population of the northern kingdom living west of the Jordan can be estimated at about 225,000. Even if we were to take Sargon’s figure of 27,290 Israelite exiles at face value and add to it the 13,500 Israelites claimed by Tiglath-pileser III to have been deported from the Galilee, the overwhelming majority of the rural Israelite population was not deported. Many undoubtedly remained in their ancient villages in the immediate wake of the conquest and continued to cultivate their land.
* The discovery of this major episode in Jerusalem’s history is due to the excavations of Nahman Avigad in the Jewish Quarter in the 1970s and more recent excavations by Ronnie Reich and Eli Shukron in the City of David.
* Two personal seals of officials of the Judahite king Uzziah (785–733 BCE) were discovered in the nineteenth century, but they are isolated examples of official writing in Judah, probably heavily influenced by the extensive literacy in the court of Uzziah’s contemporary King Jereboam II of the northern kingdom (784–748 BCE).
* Israeli archaeologist Adam Zertal has attempted to reconstruct the settlement pattern of the seventh century BCE (to differentiate from the eighth) in northern Samaria according to a few pottery types and has argued for a significant decline in the number of sites after the fall of the north. Yet most of these types can also be found in the eighth century BCE. His main—probably only—criterion was a type of decorated bowl that he linked to the Cuthean deportees who were settled by the Assyrians in the region. Without dealing with the question if this identification is valid, the presence or absence of a single pottery type in survey sites (some of which produce a limited number of sherds) can be random and misleading. We believe that Zertal’s interpretation of the situation in the seventh century is therefore based on very shaky grounds.
* RELEASSED FROM IMPRISONMENT IN BABYLON IN 561 BCE.
* For more detail about the stratigraphy and archaeological arguments concerning the dismantling of shrines in Judah in this period, see Appendix 5.
* The distinctly Assyrian-era description of Solomon’s time could equally fit the conditions in Judah during the reign of Josiah (639–609 BCE), during which (as we will see in the next chapter) the Deuteronomistic History was compiled. Yet the decidedly negative image of Solomon in 1 Kings 11, reflec
ting the distinctive ideology of Deuteronomy, seems to be a critique of an already-existing description of Solomon’s cosmopolitan reign.
* For more details on the debate over the historical reliability of the great Solomonic building activities, see Appendix 3.
* The role of Israel in the eighth-century horse business is elsewhere recorded in the biblical tradition, though with a decidedly negative twist. The eighth-century prophet Amos refers to the horses of Israel (4: 10), and Isaiah—who prophesied in the days of Jeroboam II—condemns “those who go down to Egypt for help and rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong” (31: 1). The northern prophet Hosea, who also lived in the eighth century BCE, seems to hint at the special horse relationship between Israel and Assyria in declaring that “Assyria shall not save us, we will not ride upon horses” (14: 3). And the horse business with Egypt is condemned by Deuteronomy 17: 16: “Only he must not multiply horses for himself, or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to multiply horses.” We will see at the end of this chapter that the Solomonic tradition would also eventually be subject to this criticism.
* Beyond the Solomonic tradition, Sheba figures prominently in the oracles of the seventh-and sixth-century BCE Judahite prophets. Isaiah predicts that a “multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense” (60: 6). Jeremiah angrily asks, “To what purpose does frankincense come to me from Sheba?” (6: 20) and Ezekiel charges Tyre that the “traders of Sheba and Raamah traded with you; they exchanged for your wares the best of all kinds of spices, and all precious stones, and gold” (27: 22).
* The only extrabiblical support for the existence of a historical Hiram in the time of Solomon comes from the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who quotes the (now lost) works of Dius and Menander of Ephesus, two Hellenistic historians of the second century BCE. The Israeli historian Doron Mendels has labeled the works of these second-century historians “creative historiographies,” which were drawn from existing sources. In the second century BCE the Bible was already known to Hellenistic writers and could have been the source for much of their information, including the legendary association of the two kings.
† For more detail on the reasons for these redatings, see Appendix 4.
* An alternative biblical tradition (Amos 9: 7 and Jeremiah 47: 4) suggests that the Philistines came from Caphtor, a geographical name usually associated with Crete.
† Egyptian texts mention at least two more groups of Sea People—the Sikila and the Sherdani—who settled on the coast of Canaan.
* It is noteworthy that Herodotus (II: 159) mentions that Pharaoh Necho II dedicated in the temple of Apollo in Didyma on the western coast of Asia Minor—not far from Priene—the armor in which he won battles in the Levant.
† INCLUDING COREGENCIES
* Jeremiah (44: 1; 46: 14) speaks about Judahites who lived in the Delta of the Nile. They too could have been in close contact with Greek mercenaries and merchants who established trading colonies there. For more evidence on Greek mercenaries and their possible connection to the David story, see Appendix 6 on the description of Cheretites and Pelethiles as David’s royal bodyguard.
† It is noteworthy that the name Goliath has been compared etymologically to the Lydian (that is, west Asia Minor) name Alyattes. The historical Alyattes, king of Lydia (c. 610–560 BCE), was the great-grandson of Gyges—the monarch who is said to have sent hoplite troops to help Psammetichus I of Egypt.
* Identified with the mound of Beitin, the ancient site lies under modern village structures and has not been systematically excavated. Investigations carried out there beginning in the 1930s revealed extensive Bronze and Iron Age remains.
* The second book of Chronicles reports that Josiah was killed at Megiddo in a battle against Necho, but one should prefer the close-to-contemporary testimony of the book of Kings over the much later, fourth-century BCE account of Chronicles.
* For an estimate of the numbers of exiles, see Appendix 7.
† The prophet Ezekiel, who belonged to the exiled community, reckoned the dates of his oracles by the years of Jehoiachin’s exile (1: 2; 33: 21; 40: 1)—apparently an alternative royal dating formula that suggests continuing allegiance to the exiled king.
* His Davidic lineage is noted in 1 Chronicles 3: 19. His name, meaning “seed of Babylon” in Akkadian, is an indication of how assimilated to Babylonian society the Judahite elite—and even the Davidic aristocracy—had become in just a few decades of exile.
† See Appendix 7 for more details on the numbers of returning Judahite exiles and the size and status of the province of Yehud in the post-exilic period.
* Biblical scholars, such as Hugh Williamson of Oxford University, noted that on many central issues the author of Chronicles presents a different view from that expressed in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. It seems that Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah—though written roughly in the same period—promote different ideologies, though they are not in total opposition to each other. Their authors belonged to the same community of postexilic Jerusalem, but they express different outlooks on Israelite history and on the needs of their own community.
* The name changes again in the Hellenistic period, with the Greek “Ioudaia” and the Latinized “Judea” of the Roman period. These replace the Aramaic “Yehud” of the Persian period, which in turn had replaced the original Hebrew “Yehudah,” or Judah.
† INCLUDING COREGENCIES
* The identity and date of the author of Zechariah 9–14 (Deutero-Zechariah) is debated. Dates for its various chapters range between the seventh and fourth centuries BCE.
* The Bible specifically attributes the building of the capital Samaria to Omri, Ahab’s father (1 Kings 16:24). This is supported by extrabiblical evidence: the Assyrians referred to the northern kingdom as the house of Omri, acknowledging the fact that he was the founder of the capital of Israel.
* One type of these impressions carries, in addition to the name of the province, a personal name and the title “the governor.” The personal names are identified by most scholars as governors of the province of Yehud on behalf of the Persian empire.
† INCLUDING COREGENCIES
† INCLUDING COREGENCIES
† INCLUDING COREGENCIES
* For a brief history of the early archaeological search for David and Solomon and a review of the early theories, see Appendixes 2 and 3.