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DID DAVID REALLY EXIST

David, the young shepherd

David is one the greatest figures in the Bible. The founder and king of the first and largest Jewish kingdom, he was called the “Shepherd King” because of his humble origins.The rule of David and Solomon are described in the Old Testament Books: Samuel, Kings and Chronicle. David’s story in told from I Samuel 16 through I Kings 2. [Source: Robert Draper, National Geographic, December 2010]

Some scholars believe that much of the Old Testament was written in David’s time and that his story was sanitized and his shortcomings were edited to give his rule legitimacy. Other scholars argue that David was a tribal chieftain not a great king and that at best the Jewish kingdom was a modest tribal domain. What is more they say David was not a flawed but heroic leader but a bandit, double crosser and scoundrel who achieved success through ruthlessness and deceit. There has been speculation that David was not even a Jew. One passage of the Bible list the name of David’s bodyguards. Many of them have non-Hebrew names.

A lot of time and energy has been spent trying to find proof that David really existed and place him a certain time and location but thus far such evidence has been hard to find. Direct archaeological evidence of the existence of the Kingdom of David and David's conquest of Jerusalem was said to have been discovered in 1993 by archaeologists with Jerusalem’s Hebrew Union College. Near the Syrian border in northern Israel, archaeologists discovered a 9th century B.C. inscription on a piece basalt at an ancient mound called Tel Dan (See Below). The inscription referred to the "House of David" and the "King of Israel." It was heralded as the first evidence outside the Bible of David’s existence. Critics claim the inscription may have been misread and David was a common name. French archaeologists also assert there are references to David on Moabite Stone, a basalt slab with inscription found in 1868 in the ruins of biblical Didon.

Based on his work at Megiddo, archaeologist Israel Finklestein concluded that there was no unified Israelite state under David. He said that archaeological evidence suggests that Judah and Israel remained separate, neighboring states and they were not united under David. Other discoveries are more friendly to the pro-David view. Khirbet Qeiyafa, Located about 30 kilometers (19 miles) southwest of Jerusalem, is an ancient city that flourished almost 3,000 years ago. It consists of a six-acre (2.3 hectares) settlement surrounded by casemate city wall with two gates. Some researchers claim it is the biblical city of Sha'arayim. The site may also have played an important role during Israel's "United Monarchy" period and, in July 2013, researchers announced they had identified a structure more than 10,000 square feet (1,000 square meters) in size as a palace that may have been used by King David . [Source: Owen Jarus, Live Science, September 30, 2013]

Websites and Resources: Virtual Jewish Library jewishvirtuallibrary.org/index ; Judaism101 jewfaq.org ; torah.org torah.org ; Chabad,org chabad.org/library/bible ; Bible and Biblical History: ; Biblical Archaeology Society biblicalarchaeology.org ; Bible History Online bible-history.com Bible Gateway and the New International Version (NIV) of The Bible biblegateway.com ; King James Version of the Bible gutenberg.org/ebooks ; Jewish History: Jewish History Timeline jewishhistory.org.il/history Jewish History Resource Center dinur.org ; Center for Jewish History cjh.org ; Jewish History.org jewishhistory.org ; Internet Jewish History Sourcebook sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Christianity: BBC on Christianity bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity ; Christian Classics Ethereal Library www.ccel.org ; Sacred Texts website sacred-texts.com ;

Tel Dan Inscription

The Tel Dan Inscription (9th-7th century B.C.) is an Aramaic inscription discovered in 1993 which some scholars say is first extrabiblical evidence for the House of David. Believed to be a Victory Stele, this basalt stele consists of several fragments, including: Frag. A (32 centimeters high, 22 centimeters wide); Frag. B1 (20 centimeters high, 14 centimeters wide); Frag. B2 (10 centimeters high, 9 centimeters wide). Currently located in the Israel Museum, it consists of 13 lines of writing (B1 + B2: 8 lines of writing). The inscription was found in Tel Dan, Galilee in July 21, 1993 (Frag. A) and June 20, 1994 (Frag. B1 and B2) by Avraham Biran.

Tel Dan inscription

The Tel Dan Inscription reads:
FRAGMENT A
. . .] TŠR . c[. . . 1
. . .] [. . .
. . .]. 'BY . YS[Q . . . 2
. . .] my father[. . .
WYŠKB . 'BY . YHK . 'L[. . . . 3
[. . .
R'L . QDM . 'RQ . '?BY[. . . . 4. [. . .
'NH . WYKH . HDD . QDMY [. . . 5. [. . .
Y . MLKY . W'QTL . [ML . . . 6. [. . .
KB . Q'LPY . PRŠ . [. . . 7. [. . .
MLK . YŠR'L . WQ[. . . 8. [. . .
K . BYTDWD . W'ŠM . [. . . 9. [. . .
YT . 'RQ . HM . L[. . . 10. [. . .
'HRN . WLH [. . . 11. [. . .
LK . cL . YŠ[. . . 12. [. . .
MSR . cL[. . . . 13. [. . .

FRAGMENTS B1 + B2
. . .] WGZ[R . . . 1. . . .] [. . .
. . .]LHMH . B'[. . . 2. . . .] [. . .
. . .] . WYcL . MLKY. [. . . 3. . . .] [. . .
. . .] HMLK . HDD [. . . 4. . . .] the king Hadad [. . .
. . .]'PK . M[N] . ŠB[. . . 5. . . .] [. . .
. . .] . 'SRY . '[. . . 6. . . .] [. . .
. . .]RM . BR . [. . . 7. . . .]ram son of [. . .
. . .]YHW . BR[. . . 8. . . .]-yahu son of [. . .

Mesha Stele, (Moabite Stone)

The Mesha Stele, also known as the Moabite Stone, is one-meter-tall black basalt monument dated to around 840 B.C. containing a significant Canaanite inscription in the name of King Mesha of Moab (a kingdom located in modern Jordan). Mesha tells how Chemosh, the god of Moab, had been angry with his people and had allowed them to be subjugated to the Kingdom of Israel, but at length, Chemosh returned and assisted Mesha to throw off the yoke of Israel and restore the lands of Moab. Mesha also describes his many building projects. It is written in a variant of the Phoenician alphabet, closely related to the Paleo-Hebrew script. [Source: Wikipedia]

enigmatic phrase "Davidic altar-hearth" in the Mesha stele

Chanan Tigay wrote in Smithsonian magazine. The Mesha Stele bears a 34-line inscription in Moabite, a language closely related to ancient Hebrew — the longest such engraving ever found in the area of modern-day Israel and Jordan. In 1868, an amateur archaeologist named Charles Clermont-Ganneau was serving as a translator for the French Consulate in Jerusalem when he heard about this mysterious inscribed monument lying exposed in the sands of Dhiban, east of the Jordan River. No one had yet deciphered its inscription, and Clermont-Ganneau dispatched three Arab emissaries to the site with special instructions. They laid wet paper over the stone and tapped it gently into the engraved letters, which created a mirror-image impression of the markings on the paper, what’s known as a “squeeze” copy. [Source: Chanan Tigay, Smithsonian magazine, January-February 2023]

But Clermont-Ganneau had misread the delicate political balance among rival Bedouin clans, sending members of one tribe into the territory of another — and with designs on a valuable relic no less. The Bedouin grew wary of their visitors’ intentions. Angry words turned threatening. Fearing for his life, the party’s leader made a break for it and was stabbed in the leg with a spear. Another man leaped into the hole where the stone lay and yanked up the wet paper copy, accidentally tearing it to pieces. He shoved the torn fragments into his robe and took off on his horse, finally delivering the shredded squeeze to Clermont-Ganneau.

Afterward, the amateur archaeologist, who would become an eminent scholar and a member of the Institut de France, tried to negotiate with the Bedouin to acquire the stone, but his interest, coupled with offers from other international bidders, further irked the tribesmen; they built a bonfire around the stone and repeatedly doused it with cold water until it broke apart. Then they scattered the pieces. Clermont-Ganneau, relying on the tattered squeeze, did his best to transcribe and translate the stele’s inscription. The result had profound implications for our understanding of biblical history.

The stone, Clermont-Ganneau found, held a victory inscription written in the name of King Mesha of Moab, who ruled in the ninth century B.C. in what is now Jordan. The text describes his blood-soaked victory against the neighboring kingdom of Israel, and the story it told turned out to match parts of the Hebrew Bible, in particular events described in the Book of Kings. It was the first contemporaneous account of a biblical story ever discovered outside the Bible itself — evidence that at least some of the Bible’s stories had actually taken place.

In time, Clermont-Ganneau collected 57 shards from the stele and, returning to France, made plaster casts of each — including the one Langlois now held in his hand — rearranging them like puzzle pieces as he worked out where each of the fragments fit. Then, satisfied he’d solved the puzzle, he “rebuilt” the stele with the original pieces he’d collected and a black filler that he inscribed with his transcription. But large sections of the original monument were still missing or in extremely poor condition. Thus certain mysteries about the text persist to this day — and scholars have been trying to produce an authoritative transcription ever since.

Does the Meshe Stele Offer Proof of the Existence of David?

Langlois was also called in to study the Meshe Stele. Tigay wrote in Smithsonian magazine. The end of line 31 has proved particularly thorny. Paleographers have proposed various readings for this badly damaged verse. Part of the original inscription remains, and part is Clermont-Ganneau’s reconstruction. What’s visible is the letter bet, then a gap about two letters long, where the stone was destroyed, followed by two more letters, a vav and then, less clearly, a dalet.

In 1992, André Lemaire, Langlois’ mentor at the Sorbonne, suggested that the verse mentioned “Beit David,” the House of David — an apparent reference to the Bible’s most famous monarch. If the reading was correct, the Mesha Stele did not just offer corroborating evidence for events described in the Book of Kings; it also provided perhaps the most compelling evidence yet for King David as a historical figure, whose existence would have been recorded by none other than Israel’s Moabite enemies. The following year, a stele uncovered in Israel also seemed to mention the House of David, lending Lemaire’s theory further credence.

David

Over the next decade, some scholars adopted Lemaire’s reconstruction, but not everyone was convinced. A few years ago, Langlois, along with a group of American biblical scholars and Lemaire, visited the Louvre, where the reconstructed stele has been on display for more than a century. They took dozens of high-resolution digital photographs of the monument while shining light on certain sections from a wide variety of angles, a technique known as Reflectance Transformation Imaging, or RTI. The Americans were working on a project about the development of the Hebrew alphabet; Langlois thought the images might allow him to weigh in on the King David controversy. But watching the photographs on a computer screen in the moments they were taken, Langlois didn’t see anything of note. “I was not very hopeful, frankly — especially regarding the Beit David line. It was so sad. I thought, ‘The stone is definitively broken, and the inscription is gone.’”

It took several weeks to process the digital images. When they arrived, Langlois began playing with the light settings on his computer, then layered the images on top of each other using a texture-mapping software to create a single, interactive, 3D image — probably the most accurate rendering of the Mesha Stele ever made.And when he turned his attention to line 31, something tiny jumped off the screen: a small dot. “I’d been looking at this specific part of the stone for days, the image was imprinted in my eyes,” he told me. “If you have this mental image, and then something new shows up that wasn’t there before, there’s some kind of shock — it’s like you don’t believe what you see.”

In some ancient Semitic inscriptions, including elsewhere on the Mesha Stele, a small engraved dot signified the end of a word. “So now these missing letters have to end with vav and dalet,” he told me, naming the last two letters of the Hebrew spelling of “David.” Langlois reread the scholarly literature to see if anyone had written about the dot — but, he said, no one had. Then, using the pencil on his iPad Pro to imitate the monument’s script, he tested every reconstruction previously proposed for line 31. Taking into account the meaning of the sentences that come before and after this line, as well as traces of other letters visible on RTI renderings the group had made of Clermont-Ganneau’s squeeze copy, Langlois concluded that his teacher was right: The damaged line of the Mesha Stele did, almost certainly, refer to King David. “I really tried hard to come up with another reading,” Langlois told me. “But all of the other readings don’t make any sense.”

In the sometimes contentious world of biblical archaeology, the finding was hailed by some scholars and rejected by others. Short of locating the missing pieces of the stele miraculously intact, there may be no way to definitively prove the reading one way or another. For many people, though, Langlois’ evidence was as close as we might get to resolving the debate.

Oldest Hebrew Text Ever Found at a David-Era Fortress

In 2008, archaeologists announced that they had discovered what they say is the oldest Hebrew text ever found, at a site they believe was King David's front line fortress in the war against Philistines. The site overlooks the Elah Valley, where the young David slew Goliath. The discovery comes from a 3,000-year-old pottery shard with five lines of text found during excavations of the Elah Fortress, the oldest known biblical-period fortress, which dates to the tenth century B.C. It is the most important archaeological discovery in Israel since the Dead Sea Scrolls, according to lead researcher Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University's Institute of Archaeology.

"David's Palace" in Jerusalem

Gil Ronen wrote in israelnationalnews.com: “The text is written in ink on a pottery shard (ostracon). It is made up of five lines of text in Proto-Canaanite characters separated by lines. The writing on the shard seems to be a letter sent from one person to another and archaeologists have still not deciphered it completely. Preliminary analysis shows that it contains the words "king" (melech), "judge" (shofet), and "eved" (slave), and that the terms may be parts of names, as in "Achimelech" or "Evedel" (lit. "King's brother," "Servant of God"). Carbon-14 dating of olive pits as well as chemical analysis of the pottery found at the site shows conclusively that it dates from between 1,000 and 975 B.C.E – the time of King David's reign. The writing predates the Dead Sea Scrolls by about 1,000 years. . [Source: Gil Ronen, .israelnationalnews.com +++]

Mati Milstein wote in National Geographic News, “His team believes the text may provide evidence for a real-life King David and his vast kingdom, the existence of which has been long doubted by scholars. The exact nature of the text— believed to be Hebrew written in Proto-Canaanite script, a type of early alphabet—has yet to be determined, but a number of root words have already been translated, including "judge," "slave," and "king." [Source: Mati Milstein, National Geographic News, November 3, 2008 ^^^]

“The newfound Hebrew text has also added new evidence of Judean rule, since key words indicate the text is most likely Hebrew. Garfinkel believes the Elah site and newfound writing could provide historic evidence of the United Monarchy in the tenth century B.C. That's when King David is said to have united Judea and Israel, establishing a large kingdom that stretched between the Nile River in present-day Egypt and the Euphrates in Iraq, according to the Bible. Though most researchers don't believe this kingdom existed, evidence from the site and pottery shard seems to support the idea of a strong central administration based in nearby Jerusalem, as detailed in the Bible, Garfinkel said. "There is a big debate if the biblical tradition is accurate history or mythology written hundreds of years later … But this is the first time in the archaeology of Israel we have evidence that in the time of King David such heavily fortified cities were built." ^^^

“The ancient text may also shed light on the evolution of the world's alphabetic languages. "This is the first time that we have a Proto-Canaanite inscription dated in [the context of] an archaeological site from the tenth century B.C.," Garfinkel said. "This is a major contribution to the understanding of writing in the world." The evolution of alphabetic scripts, which had their origins in Proto-Canaanite some 3,700 years ago, was one of humankind's greatest intellectual achievements, experts say. "This allowed everyone to read and write. Before this, Sumerian scripts and Egyptian hieroglyphs were very complicated writing techniques … only trained scribes could read and write in the ancient Near East," Garfinkel said. ^^^

“Tel Aviv University archaeologist Israel Finkelstein, who is not involved in the Elah excavations, agreed the site is very important, but has significant concerns with Garfinkel's interpretations of the findings. Immediately drawing ties between the site and the Kingdom of Judea is a mistake, he said—and it might well have been Philistine in origin. Also, due to the small number of samples, the carbon-14 dating of the site is also not as precise as it should be, he added. "We need to wait for more samples. It's not enough to date the site based on two [olive pits]," he said. He also expressed doubts about the centerpiece of Garfinkel's findings—the text. "I am prepared to predict that it will be very difficult to determine whether the text is, in fact, Hebrew. There will be evidence indicating various possibilities," he said. "In the nature of its discovery, this [piece of pottery] is also not unusual. There is a group of late Proto-Canaanite [pottery shards] from the same chronological phase that have been found in various sites on the coastal plain—none of them were discovered in Judea proper." ^^^

20120503-David Jerusalem Eastern_Hill_and_the_Kidron_Valley.jpg

David's Jerusalem: Eastern Hill and the Kidron Valley

David-Era Fortress Where Oldest Hebrew Text Ever Was Found

The fortress is located southwest of Jerusalem on what was the border between the Israelite-run Kingdom of Judea and the coastal Philistine territories. The Philistines settled the southern coast of Palestine around the same time as the Israelites in the 12th century B.C. Mati Milstein wrote in National Geographic News, “The fortress is located southwest of Jerusalem on what was the border between the Israelite-run Kingdom of Judea and the coastal Philistine territories. Philistines, who possibly came from Crete, settled the southern coast of Palestine around the same time as the Israelites in the 12th century B.C. During the biblical period, the Elah Valley was the main point of passage between the two territories. It's not known whether the Judeans or the Philistines controlled the strategic fortress overlooking the Elah Valley, which was surrounded by nearly 3,000-foot-long (700-meter-long) fortifications built of massive stones. [Source: Mati Milstein, National Geographic News, November 3, 2008]

But Garfinkel believes the site was most likely the westernmost outpost maintained by the Kingdom of Judea, which controlled land in southwest Asia and Palestine and was a predecessor to the Kingdom of Israel. For instance, pottery at the fortress is similar to that found at other Israelite sites, and there are no pig remains—an indicator that often distinguishes Israelite from Philistine sites.

Gil Ronen wrote in israelnationalnews.com: “The site where the shard was found is known as Khirbet Kheyafa, but Rabbi Barnea Selava "The local Bedouins refer to it as… are you sitting down?... Khirbet Daudi - David's ruins." n of the Foundation Stone organization says that "the local Bedouins refer to it as… are you sitting down?... Khirbet Daoud." The word khirbeh in Arabic refers to a ruin and Daudi is Arabic for David. Also known as the Elah Fortress because of its location at the Elah Valley near Beit Shemesh, archaeologists believe the fortress controlled a strategic point overlooking the main route connecting Pleshet and the Judean lowland with the mountainous region and the central cities of Jerusalem and Hevron. [Source: Gil Ronen, .israelnationalnews.com +++]

“The ancient point of settlement covers more than four acres and is surrounded by a 700 meter long wall. Archaeologists believe that 200,000 tons of rock were mined in order to build it. The wall contains a massive and ornate gate built from hewn rock. According to Selavan, there was some debate among archeologists as to whether the fortress was the Jewish front line against the Philistines or the opposite – the Philistines' front line against the Jews. However, there is now widespread agreement that the site was Jewish: there are no pig bones and chemical analysis (petrography) of the ceramics found there shows that the structure was Jewish, not the Philistine's.” +++

Discovery of David’s Palace? — and Its Political Implications

In 2005, Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar announced that she found the ruins of a major public building, dated to the 10th century B.C., in East Jerusalem that she claimed was King David’s Palace. Sponsored by a neoconservative research organization and bankrolled by an American investment banker, she based her claim on the building’s location in relation to description the Bible, the discovery of pottery shards dated to the time of David and Solomon and a government seal with the name of an official mentioned in the book of Jeremiah.

Many scholars greeted Mazar’s discovery as a significant find but were skeptical about it being David’s palace. According to Samuel II, Chapter 5, a palace was built for David after an important battle by Hiram, the king of Tyre, and was uphill from the Fortress of Zion that David conquered from the Jebusites. Many Israeli archaeologists think the structure that Mazar found is more likely the Fortress of Zion.

Palestinians argue that the notion of Jewish origin in Jerusalem is a religious myth used to justify occupation and colonialism. Some claim the work of Israeli archaeologists is “to fit historical evidence into a biblical context.” Hani Nur el-fin, a professor at Al Quds University, told the New York Times: “The link between historical evidence and the biblical narration, written much later, is largely missing. There’s a kind of fiction about the 19th century. The try to link whatever they find to the biblical narration. They have a button and they want to make a suit out of it.”

Draper wrote: It doesn't really look like a building — just some low stone walls abutting an ancient terraced retaining wall 60 feet high. On a northern escarpment of the ancient city overlooking Jerusalem's Kidron Valley, Israeli archaeologist David Ilan of Hebrew Union College doubts that Mazar has found King David's palace. "My gut tells me this is an eighth- or ninth-century building," he says, constructed a hundred years or more after Solomon died in 930 B.C. More broadly, critics question Mazar's motives. They note that her excavation work was underwritten by two organizations — the City of David Foundation and the Shalem Center — dedicated to the assertion of Israel's territorial rights. And they scoff at Mazar's allegiance to the antiquated methods of her archaeological forebears, such as her grandfather, who unapologetically worked with a trowel in one hand and the Bible in the other. [Source: Robert Draper, National Geographic, December 2010]

Mazars purported discovery carries particular resonance in Israel, where the story of David and Solomon is interwoven with the Jews' historical claims to biblical Zion. Unsurprisingly, this agenda does not sit well with the Jerusalem residents who happen to be Palestinian. Many excavations take place in the eastern part of the city, where their families have dwelled for generations but stand to be displaced if such projects morph into Israeli settlement claims. From the Palestinian perspective, the scurrying for archaeological evidence to justify a people's sense of belonging misses the point. As East Jerusalem resident and archaeology professor Hani Nur el-Din says, "When I see Palestinian women making the traditional pottery from the early Bronze Age, when I smell the taboon bread baked in the same tradition as the fourth or fifth millennium B.C., this is the cultural DNA. In Palestine there's no written document, no historicity — but still, it's history." [Source: Robert Draper, National Geographic, December 2010]

Image Sources: Wikimedia, Commons, Schnorr von Carolsfeld Bible in Bildern, 1860

Text Sources: Internet Jewish History Sourcebook sourcebooks.fordham.edu “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “ Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions” edited by R.C. Zaehner (Barnes & Noble Books, 1959); “Old Testament Life and Literature” by Gerald A. Larue, New International Version (NIV) of The Bible, biblegateway.com; Wikipedia, Live Science, Archaeology magazine, National Geographic, BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Times of London, The New Yorker, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, and various books and other publications.

Last updated March 2024