This book argues that the Jewish kingdom of the Bible was real, as were its first three kings, Saul, David, and Solomon – even if the biblical stories distort their actions to glorify them. Combining fresh archaeological evidence with astute readings of key texts, the authors offer a compelling reconstruction of this fascinating ancient polity.
Saul, David, and Solomon are dominant figures in the Hebrew Bible, rulers of an expanding Israelite polity before it dissolved into two separate kingdoms. Saul's paranoid jealousy, David's killing the Philistine champion Goliath with a slingshot, and Solomon's meeting the Queen of Sheba are familiar stories to many people, but what is the truth behind the texts? While scholars long believed these three monarchs to have been historical personalities, over the past three decades many have questioned the historicity of this United Monarchy, some doubting even the existence of its founding fathers. This book robustly argues that the Israelite kingdom of the Bible was a real mini-empire, and that Saul, David, and Solomon were kings of consequence – even if the biblical stories reimagine their lives to glorify and vilify them. Combining fresh archaeological evidence with astute readings of key texts, the authors offer a compelling reconstruction of this fascinating ancient polity which, though it lasted less than a hundred years, has bequeathed a remarkable religious and cultural legacy to the western world. Written in a clear and engaging style, this book will be of interest to scholars and general audiences alike.
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Using archaeological finds, critical Bible analysis, and ethnographic data, the book reconstructs the formation of the Bible's United Monarchy.
Part A. The United Monarchy in the Bible and Contemporary Scholarship:
1. Israel's united monarchy: the biblical story;
2. Untangling the threads of
the biblical account with literary critical scholarship;
3. Deconstructing
(and reconstructing) the United Monarchy as historical: passing the baton to
archaeology; Excursus 3.1. Biblical timeline, philistines, radiocarbon
dating, and the united monarchy: the rise and fall of the low chronology;
Part B. The Archaeology of the Tenth Century BCE:
4. Abandoned rural villages
and the beginning of highlands fortifications;
5. Ceramic repertoire and
social change in Philistia and Israel;
6. Resettling the Shephelah; Excursus
6.1. The architecture of power and the longitudinal four-space house;
7. What
happened to Philistia in the tenth century?;
8. Building in the swamps of the
Sharon plain; Excursus 8.1. Israelite expansion and the disappearance of
temples; Excursus 8.2. On the dating of the Sharon sites;
9. The Beersheba
valley, the settlement of the Negev highlands, and the copper mines of Edom;
10. Edom, Moab, Ammon and the Gilead: a brief overview of the Transjordan;
Excursus 10.1. Israelites or not? The highland polity and the changing faces
of identity;
11. The cities and villages of the northern valleys;
12. The
Galilee and the Phoenicians; Excursus 12.1. The second wave of abandonment:
The fingerprints of the highland polity; Part C. A New Paradigm;
13. The
(re)appearance of Solomon: the archaeology of the united monarchy;
14.
David's empire? The highland polity in historical and anthropological
perspect;
15. From tribe to empire to state: synthesis of archaeological,
anthropological, and biblical data;
16. Israel's highland polity: an attempt
at history; Afterword.
Avraham Faust is Professor of Archaeology at Bar Ilan University. He directs the excavations at Tel 'Eton, and 'The National Knowledge Center on the History and Heritage of Jerusalem'. His 250 publications include Israel's Ethnogenesis, which won three book awards, The Archaeology of Israelite Society, Judah in the Neo-Babylonian Period, and The Neo-Assyrian Empire in the Southwest. Zev Farber is Research Fellow at the Kogod Center, Shalom Hartman Institute. He is senior editor at TheTorah.com and the author of Images of Joshua in the Bible and their Reception.
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