A Battle of Biblical Proportions

The ancient tales present glorious scenes of a united monarchy of Israel familiar to every Bible reader: King David, so brave that he slew a giant. Solomon, so wise that he ruled a vast empire and built the first Jerusalem temple. But 3,000 years after the great monarchs are thought to have lived, their epic stories are at the center of a vitriolic debate today over how much is actually history.

On one side are most archeologists and modern biblical scholars, who believe that the Bible contains historical truth--although exactly how much is a matter of decided disagreement. On the other side is a small but emergent group of scholars who are gaining increasing public attention for their provocative views that the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Old Testament, is all or mostly fiction.

Based mostly in Europe, the revisionists have recently been joined in their skepticism by such well-respected Israeli archeologists as Israel Finkelstein and Ze’ev Herzog at Tel Aviv University. While these Israelis do not deny the existence of David and Solomon as some Europeans do, they argue that tales of a vast united kingdom are exaggerations and that the rulers were at best local tribal chieftains.

The controversy will be aired in Los Angeles beginning Monday, when the California Museum of Ancient Art presents the first of a four-part lecture series, “The Archeology of Ancient Israel.” William Dever, one of North America’s leading archeologists, will kick off the series with a lecture rebutting the revisionists and presenting the archeological evidence for the biblical portrait of David and Solomon.

“The revisionists have become ideologues who repeat their astounding claims without any evidence,” said Dever, a professor of Near Eastern archeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona. “They are dangerous because they are dishonest, and they’re not going to go away.”

Finkelstein calls the attacks on him “an orchestrated attempt, when people have no ammunition, to disqualify my scientific observations with name-calling.”

Herzog defends the revisionist positions as a willingness to analyze the evidence uncolored by any religious agenda to prove the Bible’s historical veracity. “It is part of a scientific revolution, and younger scholars are more willing to accept revolution than older ones,” he said.

Devout believers who view the Bible as the literal word of God may be aghast at any suggestion that the Good Book is not entirely historical. But Dever expressed concern that revisionist challenges to the Bible’s historical veracity will only build, buoyed by the recent publication of the first popular book on the subject, “The Bible Unearthed” by Finkelstein and archeological journalist Neil Asher Silberman.

The book argues that the Hebrew Bible is a collection of ancient memories, fragmentary histories and rewritten legends. When it comes to the united monarchy, supposed archeological evidence for it is “no more than wishful thinking,” the authors say.

The book has hit the top of archeological bestseller lists, is a selection for four book-of-the-month clubs and has inspired television documentaries now in the works by at least three national media organizations.

Although many scholars have questioned the Bible’s veracity for decades, the foundation for the latest revisionist challenge to ancient Israel’s history emerged in 1992. That’s when Philip R. Davies of the University of Sheffield in Britain published a provocative book, “In Search of ‘Ancient Israel,’ ” that argued that the Hebrew Bible was composed long after the fact and contains no real history.

Finkelstein, director of Tel Aviv University’s Institute of Archeology, said he valued the work of Davies and others for stimulating the field with challenging questions.

“Even if they are wrong, the questions they raise are not only right but positive because it has made us think again,” he said. The work has been resoundingly rejected by mainstream scholars and has deeply disturbed many people.

Jerome Berman, executive director of the ancient art museum, likened the revisionists to Holocaust deniers who are discounting a century of archeological evidence to try to erase Israel’s ancient past.

At least some of the revisionists appear to have political agendas, Dever said, evident in such works as the 1996 book by Keith Whitelam of the University of Stirling in Scotland, “The Invention of Ancient Israel: the Silencing of Palestinian History.” Those who raise questions about the biblical stories have been attacked for supporting enemies of Israel, but Finkelstein called such charges “absolutely appalling.”

“I think there is room enough for all of us to be in the field and have scientific debates,” he said.

Herschel Shan, editor of Biblical Archeological Review, dismisses the revisionists as a tiny group of scholars whose minimal influence is already starting to wane. But Dever is less sanguine. He wants to sound the alarm that their views are having an impact, creating a “storm of controversy” in the scholarly literature, national professional meetings and on the Internet.

Dever recounted one 1996 Society of Biblical Literature meeting where a leading revisionist, Thomas L. Thompson of Copenhagen, triumphantly announced that there was no ancient Israel or Judaism until the second century. Thompson’s remarks were greeted with applause, Dever said, drowning out his protests.

“Everywhere I go, I find young Bible scholars taken in by their nonsense, and I’m just appalled,” said Dever, who has taken them on directly in his new book, “What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?” The book, published this week, will be available for signing at the lecture.

Waging War Over David and Solomon

The time of David and Solomon in the 10th century BC has emerged as the raging battleground between the two sides. For earlier periods, many archeologists have given up trying to find material evidence supporting such stories as the Creation, the Flood, the Exodus and Joshua’s conquests--and even Dever believes that they are at best a mix of myth and probably unrecoverable history. (Some researchers continue to search for evidence and have recently reported findings of an ancient, cataclysmic flood in the Black Sea, for instance, or coral-encrusted remains of what they believe are chariot wheels of a pharaoh’s vanquished army in the Red Sea.)

The later periods are indisputably historical because of clear-cut archeological evidence and corroboration in nonbiblical records. Beginning with King Ahab, who lived around 850 BC, a century after David and Solomon, the Israeli kings are consistently mentioned in Mesopotamian and other Near Eastern records, according to Steven Feldman, managing editor of Biblical Archeology Review.

The middle period between the two has become what Finkelstein called “the last bastion” of scholarly dispute. “What we have with the united monarchy is enough evidence to make it plausible but not quite enough to make it convincing,” Feldman said. “It is just ambiguous enough to leave room for doubt.”

In his lecture and slide presentation Monday, Dever said he intends to discuss the revisionists and detail the evidence supporting the united monarchy. Among other things, he said, three massive and similar entry gates excavated at the ancient biblical sites at Gezer, Hazor and Megiddo dated to Solomon’s time support biblical stories of his vast central bureaucracy and building programs.

Finkelstein, however, argued that the gates cannot be tied to Solomon because similar structures have been found outside his territory and after his reign, and that his own analysis indicates that they were built at different times at least a century later.

Solomon’s temple, which some revisionists regard as fiction, will most probably never be found, since it is believed to lie directly under the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic holy site known by Jews as the Temple Mount. But Dever said that the temple’s every detail as described in the Bible can be corroborated through the discovery of sites with similar features in Syria and elsewhere.

In the second lecture, on May 21, William M. Schniedewind, chairman of UCLA’s department of Near Eastern languages and cultures, will explore how the discovery of ancient inscriptions has shed light on Israel’s past. The most famous is the 1993 discovery at Tel Dan in northern Galilee of a 9th century BC inscription that refers to the “House of David” and ‘King of Israel.” The inscription created a sensation as the first extrabiblical reference to David and proof of his existence, but some revisionists have refused to accept that view and argue the inscription could be read as a place-name.

Other lectures will feature Lawrence Geraty of La Sierra University in Riverside, who will speak about a possible Israeli tribe at Tell ‘Umayri east of the Jordan River, and John Monson of Wheaton College in Illinois, who will detail how an ancient temple at ‘Ain Dara in northern Syria shares several common features with descriptions of Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem.

The California Museum of Ancient Art, founded in 1983 with a focus on Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Levant, has sponsored 130 lectures on everything from the Dead Sea Scrolls to women of the ancient world to ancient Egypt. The upcoming lecture series will focus on the period of 1200 to 600 BC.

“The three kings of the united monarchy--Saul, David and Solomon--are the people that formed the state that produced the Bible,” Berman said. “Certainly for any Christian, Jew or Muslim, it is important to know how this lineage started and how these rulers came about.”

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The first lecture will be held Monday from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, 3663 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. Full series is $52 for museum members, $64 for nonmembers; single tickets are $15 for members, $18 for nonmembers. (818) 762-5500.