Is there anything in Israeli soil that confirms with certainty that the glorious stories of the Bible are true? No. In fact, for the period before 800 BC, there is an ugly contradiction between our written sources and the finds. What can you do as an archaeologist in such a case?
The sources, collected in the Bible, describe the glorious kingdom of Kings David and Solomon, which later split into two smaller states:Israel to the north and Judah to the south. Archaeologically, nothing of that glorious kingdom has yet been identified with certainty. There is an inscription that proves David existed, but you would expect from a great kingdom as described in the Bible that you dig up a note, dating it as "in the sixth year of King David." Every square meter in Israel has now been turned over a hundred times, and there is simply no such note.
You can now do two things. One methodical choice is known as maximalism:you assume that the texts are reliable unless you have archaeological evidence to the contrary (the reliability of the text is maximum). This is the approach that Jan Blokker and his sons took in their biblical history Once upon a time there was a God. The other method is called minimalism:you assume that the texts are not reliable, unless you find archaeological confirmation (the reliability of the text is minimal).
Biblical clues
What does this mean in concrete terms? Much revolves around whether we can construct an archaeological chronology that matches the story of the Bible. In practice, this mainly revolves around two sub-questions:
- Is there evidence for the Entry? According to the Bible, the entry of the people of Israel into the Promised Land was accompanied by great destruction. do we find traces of this in the right cities at the right time?
- Is there evidence of monumental architecture at the time of King David and Solomon?
It is therefore always a matter of comparing the biblical and archaeological chronology. If they match twice, then the maximalists are right. If both questions are answered with no, then it becomes difficult to read the stories about David and Solomon any other than as legends.
The relevant biblical chronology is found in Books 1 and 2 Kings, which describe the history of Judah and Israel. The reigns of the rulers are also listed, and by adding them together and taking into account some co-regents, we can determine that the unitary kingdom of King Solomon around 930 BC. has fallen apart.
Five years after Solomon's death, the Egyptian pharaoh Shoshenq invaded Judah and Israel (1 Kings 14.25-28). Since Shoshenq did indeed rule roughly during this time, we have a rough confirmation of the year 930, which will be crucial for our further argument.
The Bible gives further chronological clues. One is that King Solomon reigned for forty years (1 Kings 11.42); another is that he completed the temple of Jerusalem in his fourth regnal year, which was 480 years after the Exodus (1 Ki. 6.1); and finally the fugitives wandered in the desert for forty years. In schedule:
930 Origin of the two kingdoms931 Death of Solomon967 Temple building970 Beginning of the reign of Solomon1407 Entry1447 BC. Exodus
However, since the area, then called Canaan, was demonstrably subject to Egypt around 1400, the Entry cannot have occurred around that time. For a long time the solution has been sought in the assumption that the Entry in fact took place at the beginning of the twelfth century BC. There are also indications for this in non-Biblical texts.
An Entry in the first quarter of the twelfth century is a very reasonable hypothesis, and the discussion now focuses on two questions:
- Is there evidence for the Entry? In other words:do we find traces of destruction in the right cities in the first half of the twelfth century?
- Is there evidence of monumental architecture at the time of King David and Solomon? In other words:are there monumental remains from before 930?
Although there are books with titles like Und die Bibel hat but straight, the development of Israel's archeology has particularly challenged this assumption. Illustrative is the recently completed excavation south of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem found the remains of a large building with remarkably heavy foundations.
This large stone structure is located in the place referred to in the Bible as that of the palace of David and Solomon. But is it also the palace of those kings, or was it built later and did the author of the relevant Bible passage erroneously call it that?
Dating pottery
To answer that question, look at the pottery found. This category of finds is easy to date because ancient potters followed certain fashions. It now appears that the Jerusalem pottery belongs to a type known as Iron IIa.
The catalog consulted by Mazar dates this type of pottery after about 1000-980 BC ("high chronology"), which means that the large stone structure may have been there as early as the time of King Solomon. That's how it is on the explanation boards on the spot – but with a comment that 'other scholars contest this view ’.
To understand the criticism we have to look at dating of the 14 C method. According to the already mentioned archaeologist Israel Finkelstein, the Iron IIa no longer started somewhere between 1000 and 980, but around 900 ("low chronology").
This means that buildings like those in Jerusalem could not have been built by Solomon, whose reign ended around 930. Perhaps a later ruler built the large stone structure. In any case, the attribution to Solomon proves that the authors of that part of the Bible knew little about the past and that minimalism is the smarter method.
How can we know how old the pottery found really is? Both parties agree that 14 C-dating is the best way to calibrate pottery chronology. 14 C-dating can only be applied to organic material. So you can date grain remains found near pottery, although we have to keep in mind that the grain and pottery are not necessarily the same age. After all, the pottery could have been years old before the grain was put in it.
So the timing of Iron IIa's start is extremely important, but the problem is also extremely complex. This is also recognized from all sides, and both camps also give in to each other. Although the researchers fundamentally disagree, they are in dialogue with each other.
Adherents of the high chronology now recognize that the 1000-980 limit can also be a generation later, so around 970-950; conversely, the followers of the low chronology have also moved up a bit, and now come to 930.
Two tops
How is it possible that the C-14 method does not provide a definitive answer? Finkelstein explains in an article how he thinks the fork is in the stem. Contrary to what the name suggests, 14 C dates no dates. They are probabilities. If you have several datable finds, you can combine the probabilities.
You would have hoped that the combined probabilities would have resulted in a probability distribution with one, preferably clear top, indicating exactly when Iron IIa started. But, as if the devil is playing along, the end result has two tops.
This picture explains a lot. For starters, it appears that the high chronology adherents were right in moving from 1000-980 to 970. The date they chose for the transition is consistent with the top left of this scheme. It also appears that the followers of the low chronology were right when they moved from 900 to 930. That corresponds to the top right of this diagram.
And you could say that the right apex is slightly more likely than the left - ergo, the low chronology is the most plausible, buildings like the large stone structure date from after Solomon, the Biblical attribution to him is incorrect and the minimalists have the better arguments.
There are all kinds of technical snags to this analysis, but for now we'll leave it there that the supporters of the low chronology and the minimalists are in favor, even if it is not convincing and the last word has not yet been said. /P>
Chaos and Sea Peoples
What about evidence for the Entry? As mentioned, the biblical chronology, with an entry around 1400, is impossible to defend because the Egyptian pharaoh also ruled Canaan at that time. Hebrew slaves are unlikely to have run away from Egypt to settle elsewhere in the Egyptian Empire. The solution was to move the Entry to the moment when the Egyptian authority began to wane.
This was first suggested by W.F. Albright, the father of what was then called "biblical archaeology." At the time of Pharaoh Ramesses III (r. 1184-1152), Egypt was attacked by the so-called Sea Peoples, some of whom came by water and others by land. Their arrival would have been the cause of major changes.
Ramesses claims to have defeated them in 1175. However, he might have won a battle, the reasoning was, but one of the groups of wandering marauders nevertheless secured land in Canaan. These Peleset are better known as Philistines and eventually gave their name to Palestine. The fall of the Egyptian rule led to chaos and created space for new nomadic peoples, such as the Hebrews, to settle as farmers in the mountain country.
Her elegance makes this reading appealing, but there are some pitfalls and traps. For starters, there is little evidence of the violent destruction of the cities mentioned in the Bible. Certainly, collapsed walls have been found in Jericho, but by the time the Hebrews would have taken the city, those walls had already been there for a century or so.
A second problem is that once the Hebrews settled in the area, you would expect changes in material culture. Those are missing. For example, the settlements in the hill country have the same type of pottery as the ancient cities ruled by the Egyptians.
Something quite different seems to have happened:the Egyptian cities were abandoned in the second half of the twelfth century. The coastal area was released and was taken over by the Philistines. Their arrival is therefore not the cause of the chaos, but the result of it. It is also interesting to see what happened in the mountain country.
There, after the middle of the twelfth century, the number of known farming settlements increased sharply. Some will be farmers who once lived in the Egyptian-ruled cities, some will be nomads who started growing their own grain now that they could no longer buy it in the city.
The maximalist, who accepts the story from the written texts unless there is archaeological evidence to the contrary, now really gets into trouble. In any case, he had to date the Entry several centuries later than the Bible suggests, but even the idea of taking the Bible story out of its chronological context and placing it in the chaos that the Sea Peoples had caused is not tenable because the Sea Peoples did not cause chaos. Cities have been destroyed, but they are – except for one – not the cities mentioned in the Bible.
Hazor
Yet the minimalist cannot yet claim victory. One city seems to have been destroyed at the right time. That is Hazor, and that is not the least city. The pharaoh seems to have regarded the king of Hazor as his viceroy in Canaan, the head of the other city-states. This is also stated in the Bible (Joshua 11:10-11). About 30,000 people must have lived there.
The city of Hazor has been completely destroyed. The palace's vast supply of olive oil and its cedar roof must have caused such a massive fire that the bricks of the walls became rock hard, leaving the burnt walls still about five feet high. The next inhabitants were nomads, who did not build houses but dug wells to dump waste and store supplies.
The attentive reader will now recognize the archaeological problem already discussed:the pit itself lies in the Late Bronze Age stratum, but the objects are younger. How much younger is hard to say. We do not know how much time has passed between the fire and the arrival of the nomads.
Recently, grain remains were found in Hazor, organic material datable according to the 14 C method. It was dated to 1300 BC and the archaeologists involved take that as proof that the destruction took place during the Entry of the people of Israel, exactly as the Old Testament prescribes.
But that's really nonsense. The Bible dates the event a century earlier and archaeologically there is only a place for the Entry after 1150. A date around 1300 can be anything, but no Entry. The destruction of Hazor in 1300 BC. ±50, will have to have a different explanation.
- The city may have been taken by the inhabitants of another Bronze Age city, such as Megiddo or Beth Shean. The Amarna letters contain references to unrest, although Egyptian power is untouched.
- A Hittite army may have broken through to the south.
- An Egyptian army wanted to restore order. Pharaohs like Horemheb (around 1300) and Ramses II (after 1279) are possible candidates.
- And then there's the dead simple explanation that we're dealing with an ordinary city fire, of which there were a dime in the pre-industrial world and for which you need no enemies at all.
Thus, the destruction of Hazor in no way resembles evidence that an Entry has taken place.
All in all, it seems that minimalism (the lyrics are unreliable unless you find archaeological evidence) is the better approach to Israel's archeology. The low chronology for the transition from Iron I to Iron IIa is more appropriate than the high, so that some monumental buildings that were conceived as evidence of King Solomon's glorious empire disappear from view. Also, despite a long search, the Entry is still not to be found in the soil archive.