The letter was written in the king's court in Jerusalem in the 14th century BC and is the first proof of the existence of a kingdom in Jerusalem at that time
The fracture was discovered during archaeological excavations in Ofel in Jerusalem, which are being conducted under the leadership of Dr. Eilat Mazar on behalf of the Institute of Archeology of the Hebrew University. The size of the fragment is 2.0 x 2.8 cm, its thickness is about one centimeter and it forms part of the central left margins of a rectangular panel. The shape of the tablet matches the shape of other tin tablets discovered in the ancient Near East and which were used to write documents and letters in the Late Bronze Age.
"Despite the small size of the fragment and the small number of signs, it is clearly evident that it is written in cuneiform, a script of ancient Mesopotamia and in the Akkadian language, which was used as an international communication language throughout the ancient Near East in those days," says Prof. Wayne Horowitz, an Assyriology expert from the Hebrew University's Institute of Archeology partner for research.
The results of the decipherment of Prof. Horowitz and Dr. Takeyoshi Oshima from the University of Leipzig for the cuneiform script that appears on the tablet indicate that the tablet was prepared by a very high-ranking scribe in the royal court at that time. "The scribe who wrote the tablet was an excellent and skilled professional like Pharaoh's scribes" says Prof. Horowitz. "The quality of the text and a comparison with tablets from the same period that were discovered in the ancient Middle East suggest that the fragment is part of a letter that was probably written by a scribe of a king in Jerusalem in the 14th century."
From the findings it can be assumed that the tablet is part of an exchange of letters between kings, most likely between the king of Jerusalem, possibly Abed Heba, and Pharaoh Amenhotep IV. From the research of Prof. Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University, he found that King Abd Haba's letters were found in the Jerusalem area. An examination conducted by Prof. Goren of the clay composition of the tablet fragment also indicates that its origin is from the Jerusalem area and the composition of the fragment does not match the clay compositions of documents written in Egypt or other kingdoms of the period. From this it can be concluded that the found fragment is the archival copy of a letter written in Jerusalem and probably sent to the king of Egypt.
"The fragment of the tablet is faithful testimony to the status of Jerusalem as a central city of the kingdom, as it is depicted in the letters to Amarna" says Dr. Mazar. "In this position, Jerusalem in the Late Bronze Age continues the position of the city from the first half of the second millennium BC as a very important kingdom city in the central mountain mentioned in Egyptian documents from the period."
"There are researchers who claim that Jerusalem was not inhabited during the Late Bronze Age and that the city of King Abd Haba should be looked for elsewhere," says Dr. Mazar. "However, the fragment of the tablet that was discovered is the first swallow that testifies to the existence of a royal archive in Jerusalem and with the letters to Amarna they testify to the existence of a royal court in Jerusalem during this period." Furthermore, according to Dr. Mazar, it can be assumed that Jerusalem's existence as a royal city during this period can also shed light on its position in later generations, when it was chosen as the capital of the kingdom during the reign of King David in the tenth century BC.
The fragment of the tablet was found in a soil fill below the floor level of a large tower from the tenth century BC. The fracture was exposed during wet screening of the soil fill that was done at the screening site in Emek Zurim managed by Dr. Gabi Barkai and Tzachi Zweig.
The full study is published today, July 12, in the Israel Exploration Journal. The excavations at Ofel and their publicity were financed by Daniel Mintz and Meredith Barkman from New York, who also finance the preservation and preparation of the site for public visits by the Antiquities Authority, in cooperation with the Nature and Parks Authority and the East Jerusalem Development Company.
37 תגובות
The one who knew the truth was Atlia. In her last moments she shouted "lie lie", but was immediately silenced so as not to spoil the plan. The biblical writer also planted hints for this when he put in her mouth the words "Kesh Kesh" which are nothing more than letters of what she said.
Athaliah could not know for sure if Yehoash was indeed her grandson who survived the massacre or if he was the son of Yehoida the priest. However, she knew very well what had happened in her family two generations before, because she was in the know.
I looked a little at the scriptures and indeed in Kings the whole story of the "Yhorim" is a bit vague, especially since all the passages of the prophet Elisha are told there in the middle. On the other hand, it doesn't work out for me that a writer would dare to introduce such a drastic change to a story that didn't happen that long ago and that people surely remembered and knew. As if suddenly something will claim that there were two Herzels.
What is more plausible in my opinion is that if David's dynasty became extinct it happened precisely after that when Athaliah managed to kill all the heirs and suddenly after several years "emerged" an "heir and continuation of the dynasty" Yehoash. I guess even if he wasn't, maybe the supporters of the house of David and the writers of the Bible claimed that he was from the house of David, but we will probably never know.
R.H.:
Neither have I come across this thesis before, nor in my other theses. I study the Bible from the (possible) point of view of its writers and mainly while analyzing the motives for their writing. These are a number of priestly families. The motive of the priests of Jerusalem was to present the line of David as lasting forever thanks to a divine promise.
Evidently, Yehoram demanded that the priests of Jerusalem present him as Jehoshaphat's legitimate son and forced his demand with threats. They surrendered and did as he said but planted opposite hints in the text. Two generations later, when the dynasty was revived through Joash, the scribes preferred to leave Jehoram in the place he occupied for himself in David's genealogy.
jubilee,
Indeed an interesting and thought-provoking thesis and I don't remember coming across it before.
When did the House of David dynasty die out? The Bible tells about Yehoash ben Ahaziah who was saved in an almost experimental way and from whom the dynasty continued. However, the Bible also gives many hints that Yoash's (supposedly) grandfather, Yehoram, was not from the line of David. The Tel Dan inscription reports the destruction of Beth David in a description that corresponds to the biblical account of the killing of King Ahaziah of Judah and all his brothers (XNUMX Kings, XNUMX, XNUMX-XNUMX).
The priests of Jerusalem had a strong motive to present the line of the house of David as alive to the world (for example, Debuhi XNUMX, XNUMX, XNUMX). A different version of the stone-engraved inscription was later found at Tel Dan, and in order to continue to maintain the dynasty without contradicting the Tel Dan inscription, the priests of Jerusalem invented Yehoash as a very sheltered from fire.
However, the Book of Chronicles abounds with hints that already after Jehoshaphat the house of David became extinct. Jehoshaphat married him a wife from the house of Ahab, king of Israel (Debuhi XNUMX:XNUMX:XNUMX). Jehoram, king of Judah, is presented as the son of Jehoshaphat who rightfully ascended the throne but murdered all his brothers even though they were happy in their lot and did not threaten his rule. Ahaziah son of Ahab, king of Israel two years before you, died childless, and his place was taken by Jehoram in the second year of Jehoram son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah (XNUMX Kings, XNUMX, XNUMX). Jehoram the king of Israel was killed by Jehu a few months after the death of Jehoram the king of Judah. It turns out that Jehoram king of Judah and Jehoram king of Israel reigned in their respective countries at the same time, which brings up something new because both were actually one person. When King Jehoram of Judah died, "they did not make a cremation for him with him as his ancestors cremated" (Debuhi XNUMX:XNUMX, XNUMX) and they did not bury him in the tombs of the kings (ibid., verse XNUMX). In the same chapter in Debi, shortly after the murder of Jehoshaphat's sons by their "brother" Yehoram, the writer states, "Yahweh did not forbear to corrupt the house of David for the sake of the covenant which he made to David and when he said to give Nir to him and to his sons forever" (ibid., verse XNUMX).
Unlike the story of the destruction of the House of David at the hands of Jehu, which is recorded in legislation on a stone and requires special efforts to re-establish the lineage, there is no external documentation for the destruction of the sons of Jehoshaphat by Jehoshaphat, and for that reason it was sufficient to present Jehoram, the king of Judah and Israel, as two different people, and that Jehoram, the murderer of the sons of Jehoshaphat, is the son of David is strictly legal.
Complete,
Your view on the subject is very emotional and therefore this debate is doomed to failure. This is not a matter of liking or disliking, liking or not liking, but of pure logic. With the exception of the religious, no one has an interest here in the point of whether the land was conquered by a storm from the desert or whether the people developed here in the land. I don't think our right to the land or our connection to it will be compromised whether there was a great Davidic kingdom or not. The fact that our forefathers lived here, created the Bible, spoke the language we correspond in and established moral rules that are still valid in part to this day is enough for me to feel that this is the place of the Jewish people. In addition, if an inscription is found tomorrow that proves the existence of a united kingdom, I will gladly change my mind.
But on the other hand, a reasonable person cannot accept the scriptures in utter poverty when contradictions with archeology are revealed. I personally do not agree with many things that "Habibi" said, such as for example that Moses is Josiah. However, regarding the occupation of the land and the United Kingdom, in light of what I have read in them and in others, I get the impression that they are right (and again, true to the findings to date and in light of many surveys in the mountains of Judea, Samaria and the Galilee).
By the way, none of the sources you provided really deal with the problem of the lack of findings, except for the well-worn statement "from the lack of findings, nothing can be concluded, as in the joke about the one who found nothing and concluded that the Israelites were talking on a cell phone."
R.H.
The source is indeed fraught with problems (which also became clear to me after reading carefully that it supports a theory close to that of Emanuel Velikovsky), perhaps no less problems than Finkelstein's theory of Silverman. Its advantage is that it points out the shortcomings of the accepted dates.
Here you have two less problematic sources that refer specifically (albeit with much mercy, in my opinion) to the denialist theories of your favorite.
2.htm http://www.notes.co.il/eshed/67534.asp
http://www.daat.co.il/daat/kitveyet/taleley/haim
Complete,
I am very happy about the discussion with you since I do not really know what I am talking about. I was particularly impressed by the article you referred to that skips over 1000 years and rapes the inscriptions and archaeological findings in order to fit the Bible. Excellent science indeed. First mark the goal - the Bible is right and then adjust the findings.
Astronomical anchors are unreliable. Carbon 14 is bullshit.
http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/ancient-egypt-radiocarbon-dating.html
How can they be true? After all, they contradict what is written in the Bible.
All Egyptian history is based on Mathon? Alas if that were the case.
Yair found at least one error in your article, I found a few more but what do I know?
Shlomo, there is nothing to be done, the twists and turns won't help. There is no evidence of the conquest of the land by Joshua and there is no evidence of a great kingdom under the control of the king you are named after.
Yair
I found the article in question online an hour before I sent the link to R.H. Because it seemed to me that he didn't really know what he was talking about, and I wanted him to at least have basic concepts. He wrote about the dating of the Egyptians and the Eastern kingdoms with such confidence, as if it were the dating of the events of the second half of the 20th century in England and Scotland. The article is valuable in that it points out some of the many limitations that historians and archaeologists have in the dating of the ancient Middle East. I haven't bothered to go into what the authors are trying to say in a positive way, but given the hostel you may be right (when I have time I will dig deeper). All I'm trying to say is that if there is a source that tries to give an orderly dating, it would be much more responsible for any serious historian to refer to that source as a point of reference. And what to do? Despite all the limitations, the dating attempts in the Bible are much more orderly, even over time, than those of the Egyptians (whose dating is mainly based on Mathon who tried to bring order to the chaos only in the third century BC) and of the Assyrians whose dating of the earlier periods is earlier, including the parallel ones For the period of the United Kingdom, very damaged.
Complete,
I read the article you referred to on the 24th. On the internet level this is a fine article. At least one error I found there that relies on an important archaeologist who stopped working 50 years ago.
This is an indoctrinating article, which tries to convince its readers that actually the archaeologists do not know what they are talking about, and we will sort them out.
A few years ago I went to hear a lecture by a doctor named Kapah who tried to prove that there is no evolution. He took the dubious words of people with doctorates in all kinds of professions and pasted them together. He convinced all the cap-wearers, but when I pointed out to him that he did not try to deal with any positive claim of the theory, he ended his lecture.
This is what the article you linked does, and it is better not to trust it anymore, despite its many sources.
Complete,
1) The debate here is not about semantics Empire or not Empire The Kingdom of Solomon is described as a regional power with amazing construction enterprises, with visitors from foreign countries and trade with distant countries. There are no findings for all of this.
2) Regarding the dating, we are repeating ourselves a bit. Conspiracy is relying exclusively on a written book and ignoring the field. The writings of Ben-Matitiyahu are also controversial which can be decided according to findings from the field. And of course findings from the field precede any dispute.
3) Just one more finding. The tombstone of Pharaoh Shishak that describes a plundering campaign in Israel and Judea and lists dozens of places and property that was looted. For some reason, surprisingly, he forgets to mention the highlight of his journey (according to the Bible) the sacking of Jerusalem by Rehoboam. Maybe because Jerusalem was then only a small village that did not justify even the small foray to it? Think about it.
4) I still haven't heard your learned opinion what is the great interest of Pickelstein and Silverman in saying that the kingdom of David and Solomon was small. Note that the debate is not even about its existence which is accepted by all but about its size and importance in the eyes of the surrounding kingdoms.
R.H.
A. The word "empire" to describe the kingdom of David and Solomon is irrelevant because it is taken from a much later period. According to what is written in the Bible, this is a small regional kingdom, which several small kings in its vicinity raised a tax for it as was customary at that time. From what is written in the Bible itself, it is clear that it was not particularly strong: David's days were followed by rebellions in the east, and in Solomon's days, the king of Edom in the east and the king of Aram in the north rebelled against him, and he even had problems with the tax payments from the tribes of Israel, as is clear from Jeroboam's passage.
B. I'm tired of repeating myself in dating matters. I have already explained that the attribution of the construction plants in Megiddo, Hazor, Gezer to the time of Omri-Ahab is possible only after the trick of Finkelstein and Silverman who moved the time of David and Solomon back a hundred years. Prof. Michael Coogan of Stonehill College wrote about this trick, "After a while, Finkelstein and Silverman's recovery almost resembles a conspiracy theory: think of the Da Vinci Code or the identification of Shakespeare as Edward de Vere. Like these and other imaginary scenarios like them, Finkelstein and Silverman's reconstruction relies on a highly selective and tendentious use of evidence. In my opinion, he is not convincing."
And that's putting it mildly, in my opinion.
I recommend that you read a simple and multi-source article on the dating of the ancient Mahatma:
http://daat.ac.il/daat/tanach/maamarim/hatanach2-2.htm
Complete,
OK, I don't know you and I don't know what your adherence to the Bible is.
As you are clear, there are things in the Bible that did not happen (at least to anyone who believes in a rational world). For example, Paradise, Noah (which if there was anything it was a local flood and not a global flood) the ten plagues and more.
On the other hand, many things that are told in the Bible have been verified. Misha was, Ahab was an Egyptian is accurately described (for example, the ceremony of Joseph's embalming).
The question arises where the border between imagination and reality passes. There are no aces here for discoveries that contradict the Bible, there is simply a whole pack of cards that is missing - evidence of the empire during the time of David and Solomon. I assume David was if many years later the House of David is mentioned. Solomon was also because the temple existed and I assume that the tradition of who built it could not have been invented. However, there is no evidence of an empire and this is probably a trending "Eastern imagination" that came to say in the time of Josiah - let's return the crown to its old age as it was then in the days of the united kingdom of David and Solomon.
You didn't answer me, if the ruins are Solomon's, where are the ruins of Beit Omari?
Regarding the dating question, then again - if we know what years Sennacherib lived in the light of the Assyrian chronicles which are dated according to astronomical events, then we also know when Hezekiah lived. The Bible mentions the years of the reign of every king from David to Hezekiah (assuming that the Bible is right, it is right, isn't it?) and therefore it is possible to date when Solomon lived and look for remains of fortified cities and splendor as described. And what a shame they are not found.
R.H
A. Uncle or aunt (yes aunt, admit the mistake and thank you for the correction. This is what happens when you trust the memory) I still haven't understood how the Misha tombstone or the inscription at Tel Dan help you accurately date the time of David. I'll be happy to know.
B. I don't understand where you got the idea about my absolute devotion to what is written in the Bible and this is after I have already bothered and explained to you why such devotion is not possible at all, in light of the multitude of versions. Even regarding the dating there are at least two versions, if we count from the creation onwards, or, let's say, from the building of the first temple backwards. There are even two different versions of the creation, some versions regarding the coronation of Saul and some versions regarding the coronation of David, and on and on. Which in my opinion only proves the reliability of the Bible as a collection of historical documents, because just as nowadays there are differences of opinion between historians or journalists regarding current events or those that occurred in the recent past (and any decent scientist will bring the different versions and not sweep under the carpet what is not It's convenient for him), there were already then. How, then, can I be so pious, as you attribute to me?
third. In any case, a decisive fact is that no archaeological discovery has yet been discovered that contradicts what is written in the Bible. If there was, we would probably already know about her, wouldn't we? Or maybe you happen to be hiding an ace up your sleeve? It's time to pull it out.
Yair,
Right, thank you.
Arel Doda, not Doda
By the way, Arel Duda on Misha's tombstone is David's hero and not King David. The warriors of Moab were also referred to in the Bible as Moabites (for example in the stories of the heroism of Benyahu ben Yehoida). Misha claims that he succeeded in arresting one of the heroes of the House of David.
Complete,
Dodges won't help. After all, it is clear that you first believe in the Bible and only then treat it objectively, therefore even an address that completely contradicts the Bible will be received with contempt by you. Sennacherib is not dated according to the Bible, but according to Assyrian chronicles, therefore according to which we also know when Hezekiah lived.
And I will come back again, from this we can calculate when David and Solomon lived and wonder and wonder in Judah we do not see any evidence of an empire in this period.
In the light of Misha and Shalmaneser's tombstone, the house of Omari and Ahab was extremely powerful. And if the huge and magnificent buildings are from Solomon's period according to your "shifting" (which by the way what exactly is it based on?) then where are the ruins of Beit Omari? Did Solomon build Samaria? If not, how is it that the extensive construction in Samaria and Megiddo date from that period? Oh right carbon 14 is bullshit.
And finally, you didn't answer me, what is the interest of anyone today in denying the greatness of the kingdom of David and Solomon?
R.H
The inscription at Tel Dan and Misheva's gravestone are dated according to the characters and events from the Bible mentioned in them, and next to the accepted dates of the Bible, which are known not to be the accepted dates of Finkelstein and Silverman. As I have already said, the ruins, the stables, etc. correspond "exactly", according to you, to the period of Omri and Ahab only on the condition that the periods are moved according to the convenience of the mover. As for what happened during Josiah's time, I already read it at Finkelstein Co. and even then I was not convinced.
And I was also happy to learn about your hypotheses, your assumptions, your opinions and your information about the origin of our people.
Can the Misha tombstone and the Dan inscription and especially the Sennacherib stele be dated? So is it possible according to the Bible to know when David and Solomon were? In these layers there is no evidence of a single empire that stretches from the entrance of Hamath to Gaza.
On the other hand, the ruins of Samaria and Megiddo were found with the stables attributed to Solomon precisely during the time of Omri and Ahab who are mentioned in the Assyrian inscriptions as powerful kings.
Now, if we think about who and when wrote the Bible and assume that it was done during the time of Josiah when the Assyrians retreated and the Babylonians had not yet arrived and ambitions of expansion began in Judah to the former war zones of Israel. What is truer than inventing a mythology of a united people and returning a crown to its former glory?
I myself tend to accept Knohl's version that the origin of the people of Israel is a synthesis of a group that came from the north from the region of Iraq and brought the stories of the ancestors and the god "El" or "God" together with a local group and the Levites who came from Egypt and brought the stories of the Exodus from Egypt and the desert god G-d and together The nation was created. For example, the tribe of Dan was annexed to it, which was probably one of the tribes of the Philistines.
The synthesis itself happened only in the later period after the retreat of the Assyrians and the mixing of refugees from Israel into Judah.
R.H.,
On Misha's tombstone appears the phrase "Aral Duda", probably King David. It dates back to the 9th century BC. The phrase "House of David" appears in the Tel Dan inscription. It dates from the 9th to the 7th century BC. Therefore, all that can be learned from Misha's tombstone is that there was such a king, David, and from what is written in Tel Dan - that he had a dynasty. But nothing can be learned from these inscriptions about the exact date. All historians and archaeologists who acknowledge its existence agree that it predates the 9th century. The main concern of archaeologists and historians such as Finkelstein and Silverman is to undermine the credibility of the Bible, and they are particularly annoyed by the possibility that already 3000 years ago there existed here a united kingdom of all the tribes of Israel. No sane "religious person" who knows the Bible will claim that what is told in it is "truth to the truth without a trace of historical error", because he knows that the Bible itself has different versions regarding different historical events, which is completely understandable in light of the fact that this is not a book she wrote What a conspiratorial cult of priests for ideological needs, but in a large collection of documents written in different periods by different writers.
Why would we go far to China? I wouldn't be posting here and tweeting if Finkelstein and Silverman's books contained the slightest evidence for their thesis. I searched and didn't find it. There simply isn't. It's all speculation based on assumptions that for their part rest on chicken's knees, and that's at best.
Complete,
It's not that accurate what you say. Determining the findings is not done only by carbon 14. There are several anchors from which you can tap. For example, Misha's tombstone, Dan's inscription and Sennacherib's stele that mention personalities appearing in the Bible. From which the reigns of Solomon and David can be calculated backwards according to what is written in the Bible. And when you do that, you don't find signs of an empire in the period in question.
I don't know what the political opinions of Finkelstein or Silverman are and it doesn't seem to me either.
What does it matter to anyone, whatever the smolny Ocher of Israel may be, whether there was an empire during the time of David and Solomon or not? After all, there is no debate that there was a house of David and there is no debate that the Jewish people came out of Judah (despite Zend's nonsense).
My feeling is quite the opposite. The religious are the ones who first start from the assumption that the Bible is true to the truth without a margin of historical error and now let's adjust all the findings to this assumption. That is, first the arrows are shot and then the target is drawn. On the other hand, research should be objective. The Bible must be considered, the reasons why it was written, when it was written and by whom it was written, and from that draw conclusions as to what is true and what is probably not true in light of the additional findings.
After all, if the whole story of a book describing a reality before 3000 in the face of contradictory findings at several points happened in China, you would not at all argue that in the case of contradictions, archeology comes first because the book (or any book) is biased.
to R.H.
"The thesis of Finkelstein and others" (his main writing partner is Neil Asher Silverman) is not based on findings in the field, but on their ideological tendencies, and this is completely transparent to anyone who reads their two books. To support their strange thesis (which only those who share their ideology accept) they had to push back (to the dawn of history) the period of David and Solomon's reign, and stretch forward (to our time) the age of those found in the field (relying on carbon 14 testing has a margin of error extensive in time), to ignore all the findings that do not fit their perception, and to accuse their opponents of the same crime they are guilty of - that is, of lying to the wanted person. Therefore, this has nothing to do with what is found on the ground, but only political and religious matters. And the whole thing does not belong so much to "postmodernism".
To a point:
According to all my tests, the main reason, if not the only reason, for the tendency of the new historians and their ilk after the exodus from Egypt to the time of Ramses II or after him (the 13th century BC and after), is their highly selective and seemingly innocent reliance on the verse in the book of Exodus that attributes to the Israelites The construction of the city of Ramses: as if it was a completely new city built for the first time in the days of Ramses II. But the truth is that although Ramses II carried out construction projects there, he was not the first. In the same place, for hundreds of years, the important city of Everis was found, which served as the capital of the Hyksos. So where did the name Ramses come from? From the same place from which quite a few anachronisms concerning the names of places appearing in the Bible emerged. The question why precisely at this point these historians from the denialist school chose to rely completely on the text in the Bible has a simple answer: because it fits their theses, that in fact there was no exodus from Egypt at all, because there were no Israelites living there at all, and it is certainly unlikely that a strong king Like Ramses II, he would allow a group of slaves to flee his country, what's more, his skull was found, so it is unlikely that he drowned in the sea with his chariots.
thanks for the correction. I accept that Akkadian was at that time the LINGUA-FRANCA in the entire Middle East. However, like other dominant languages, it would not have gained this status if it were not for the control of the Chaldeans (Akkadians) in the region during that period or a period that preceded it.
If I'm not mistaken, the Egyptians did not use the Khartoum script for letter mail, but the Hieratic script.
Akkadian was the LINGUA-FRANCA throughout the Middle East, so it is no wonder that the Egyptians also exchanged letters in Akkadian.
Cuneiform script and the Akkadian language are suitable for Mesopotamian rule and not necessarily for Egyptian rule that probably used the Khartoum script.
From later continuous documentation, from the eighth century BC onwards, we learn that the land of Canaan changed hands between Egypt and Mesopotamia several times. Under Babylonian and Persian rule, Judah was an important Safar province. But under Egyptian rule it was not even used as a transit station anywhere. This may explain the cycle of the city's rise and fall and fit Finkelstein's thesis that in the period before Hezekiah, Jerusalem was a sparsely populated village, even though in ancient times it was an important royal city.
Eddie,
As far as I understand, the thesis of Finkelstein and others is not based only on Jerusalem, where of course it is very problematic to dig, but on surveys that were carried out in all of Judea, Samaria and the Galilee, in which evidence was found of small and undeveloped settlements during this period, and only in the following periods, after the Assyrian conquest, do we begin to see flourishing and prosperity in Judea.
The large construction sites that were called by Yigal Yedin and others "Gates of Solomon" were found to be more suitable for the house of Omri and Ahab, who is also mentioned in Assyrian inscriptions as a very powerful king.
All these together led to the conclusion that the kingdoms of David and Solomon were smaller than what is commonly thought.
There is no political, religious or as you call it postmodern interest here. Just findings in the field.
Precisely from your quotes, and from the article it appears that it sits very well with the Bible...
You don't want to believe in the correctness of the Bible, that's your right, but that doesn't mean you should try to distort reality to fit your worldview.
To Ziv and all the other friends,
Do not fall into the trap of selective reading. For the sake of my 1st response, clarification and focus, I will suggest that you re-read three quotes from the article, - and I highly recommend holding on and reading them in their entirety - to the end:
1.
"The scribe who wrote the tablet was an excellent and skilled professional like Pharaoh's scribes" says Prof. Horowitz.
2.
"The fragment of the tablet is faithful testimony to the status of Jerusalem as a central city of the kingdom, as it is depicted in the letters to Amarna" says Dr. Mazar. "In this position, Jerusalem in the Late Bronze Age continues the position of the city from the first half of the second millennium BC as a very important kingdom city in the central mountain mentioned in Egyptian documents from the period."
3.
"There are researchers who claim that Jerusalem was not inhabited during the Late Bronze Age and that the city of King Abd Haba should be looked for elsewhere," says Dr. Mazar. "However, the fragment of the tablet that was discovered is the first swallow that testifies to the existence of a royal archive in Jerusalem, and together with the letters to Amarna, they testify to the existence of a royal court in Jerusalem during this period." Moreover, according to Dr. Mazar, it can be assumed that the existence of Jerusalem as a royal city during this period can also shed light on its status in later generations, when it was chosen as the capital of the kingdom during the reign of King David in the tenth century BC."
- It turns out, therefore, that there is a basis for assuming that Jerusalem was not marginal in the 14th century, and certainly not in the 10th century. Other, 'postmodernist' assertions cannot be decisive from a research point of view, beyond the fact that they do not agree with what is being told in your book. comprando?
So now please go back to response 1, and check what is so absurd about it.
point, Daniel,
The 14th century is before the occupation and the settlements and the ultra-Orthodox and the monotheists and connected to it together is heaven
The discovery of a fragment of a routine letter sent in a correspondence that is on the verge of banality does not yet confirm stories about a huge empire that ruled from the Euphrates to the Nile, so please relax and take the interesting and exciting find in itself (by virtue of being so ancient and its geographical association with our region) in the proper proportions.
Point - I also think...
The 14th century is before the Exodus, isn't it?
to Eddie,
It doesn't really mean anything.
The accepted post-modernist view (what a contradiction in one sentence is really an oxymoron:) ) does not claim that there was no settlement in the Jerusalem area, but rather talks about the size and character of the settlement, a king of a small village is still a king, but he is not a ruler of both banks of the Jordan etc...
What they found proves that there was a king/slave who did live in the area and communicated with his king.
This actually strengthens the fact of the Egyptians' control of the region, which is not mentioned in the Book of Revelation and conflicts with the idea of mass Hebrews/former slaves of Egyptians taking control of Izerim under its control without any response.
Discoveries like this prove, and will prove even more in the future - how lost the postmodernist approaches are regarding Jerusalem before the period of the monarchy.
I am convinced that if archaeological research could be conducted freely in Jerusalem - we would come to insights that fit nicely with the material narrated by you.
The scandalous point of departure, which says that credibility should be denied from written reports in the Bible only because of the total archaeological information we have 'today', when it is clear that the potential archaeological finds may be much greater than what we actually have - it is time for you to pass away.