The Legacy of Solomon
Page 63
‘King David was Israel’s founder, our patron saint if you like, you see his name everywhere, the King David Hotel, the most prestigious in Israel is just over there,’ he said causally pointing to the grey stone building. However, the fact is that there is absolutely no proof of his existence outside of the Bible in view of a total absence of clear archaeological evidence.’
‘Like King Arthur.’
‘Quite so.’
‘Yet he is believed to be a warrior, a conqueror, anointed by God…whatever that means.’
‘The Hebrew University is rumoured to have discovered his palace.’
‘They speculate that it’s the remains of a palace, but there is nothing to say it is where King David lived.’
‘It is pretty well described in the Bible where if I remember rightly the Phoenician King Hiram helped him to build it using cedar and stone.’
‘One of the questions is why the site is outside of the ancient Jebusite city walls, which was in fact very small only about nine acres in size, too small for the huge palace described in the Bible.’
‘The problem is the Bible always exegetes or meforshim, which means commentators or interpreters.’
‘To be fair, what was big in early biblical times would be very small by later standards.’
‘They argue that since the city conquered by King David was from the Jebusites was too small, he built his palace and other buildings outside of the city walls, where it was nevertheless protect by the two valleys that flanked it to the east and west with the citadel and the old city to the south.’
‘This was supported by British archaeologist, Dr. Kathleen Kenyon, who discovered a 4th century BC wall to north of the citadel, built on a much older structure that belongs to the late Canaanite or early Israelite period.’
‘Up until this discovery not even simple pottery shards from this period have been found it’s unlikely that any conclusive evidence will ever be found.’
‘Jerusalem is pretty big, they can’t have looked everywhere.’
‘True, but Jerusalem is the most explored site in the world, for almost two centuries enlightened amateurs and archaeologists have explored and excavated almost every nook and cranny. The result is that most serious archaeologists believe that if David existed he was just a small local chieftain and Jerusalem just a small unimportant village.’
‘Being objective however, it is certainly a major discovery and the first of a major building from the early Israelite period in Jerusalem.’
‘In the Bible, the book of Samuel, recounts that David conquered the Jebusite city of Jerusalem around the beginning of the tenth century BC, and spared it making it the capital of his kingdom.’
In early 2005, with the backing of the Shalem Centre, the Hebrew University, and the City of David Foundation, Mazar commenced new excavations on the site discovering a section of wall about thirty meters long with a corner indicating it was part of a large building. Potter shards were found in the wall dating to the 11th century BC meaning that the wall was constructed at this date.
Two other walls perpendicular to the first date were built a century later according to pottery dating indicating the building was still in use. The structure was built on bedrock meaning that on that spot there was no earlier constructions.
The archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon found a Phoenician decorative stone column head in 1963 on the same site dating to the same period and in the early 1980s, Yigael Shiloh discovered the stepped support structure.
It was here that Mazar discovered a clay bulla, bearing the name of Yehuchal Ben Shelemiah, from the time of King Zedekiah who is mentioned in the bible, which she described as something of a miracle.
‘One of our problems is that trained, scientific, archaeologists are constantly presented with the most bizarre ideas of romantics and religious fanatics who come-up with the most sensational theories about the Solomon and Temple and just about everything else mentioned in the Bible.’
‘Yes, not forgetting Zionists and Palestinian nationalists, plus every imaginable kind of political motivation, local and foreign.’
‘The unified monarchy, invented at the end of the Judean period, appears to be nothing more than the figment of imagination in the minds of those who take the Bible to be the revealed truth.
If we examine the evidence in the Bible, on the one hand we have a detailed description of a Phoenician-style built by David on a mountain, and on the other we have a structure of the Phoenician style dating from the same time period also situated on the summit of a mountain in Jerusalem.’
‘So the maximalists consider the possibility of this happening by chance to be extremely small?’
‘In my mind there evidence is very skimpy and not good science.’
63
An Incident at the Wall