Most people in Israel think that the conquest of Jerusalem by King David is an undeniable historic fact! The problem is that nothing could be further from the truth!’
‘So you are sure that King David did not exist?’
‘I didn’t say that. It is possible that such a person existed and that Jerusalem was his capital in the tenth century BC, however there is absolutely no proof other that what is written in the Bible and as I have explained the Bible is nothing more than a collection of legends to exalt the nation.’
‘The evidence of Jerusalem’s existence at that time is in no doubt, but it was nothing more than a small unimportant town compared to the great cities of Egypt and Mesopotamia at that time, and it could have been the stronghold of David, who in that case was a mere kinglet and not the mighty conqueror described in the Bible.’
The Amarna letters made a vague reference to Jerusalem in the 13th century BC, though there is no references to a King David in any other Egyptian, Syrian or Assyrian documents of that time, and in addition to that the numerous archaeological excavations in Jerusalem failed to turn up so much as a mention of his name.
The only archaeological evidence is an inscription on a piece of basalt, which has been identified as part of a victory column erected by the King of Syria that dates from the ninth century BC. It says beit David, the word beit means house, so it could be interpreted as the house of David, but it does not necessarily refer to a King of that name.
Briefly the Bible is a collection of books that recounts the history of the Jews as seen by the Jews, part of which is based on fact and part on legend, in no way can it be considered as a historical document, however a good many facts from the third or fourth century BC onwards are confirmed by archaeological evidence and other contemporary written sources. It is a history designed as a cohesive instrument by the ancient Jewish leaders to justify the existence of the Jewish state, the beliefs of the Jewish people and their sacred laws. The book defined the laws and the divine right of kings and high priests appointed by God to ensure his word was obeyed, it was the fundamental legitimacy of rulers. The ultimate compilation of the Bible, a master work unique in the history of man, by unknown scholars based on a mass of pre-existing documents that have not come down to us. The Bible constitutes for the Jews the legitimacy and rights of the Jewish people to the Promised Land as the Chosen People, to the detriment of all other tribes who lived in those lands at that time.’
‘What do you mean by pre-existing documents?’
‘It is impossible to think that the Bible was written in one inspired moment, its very structure indicates this was not the case. The Old Testament is made up of thirty-nine books, written at different times by different writers over a period of several hundred years.
‘What was the origin of these books?’
‘First of all the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic, whose forms and dialects changed over the centuries. Aramaic had become the language of the Jews from the late fifth century BC century onward, though in the Temple scriptures were read in Hebrew followed by a translation in Aramaic. The Gemara, which is part of the Talmud, was entirely written in Aramaic and as is often the case for ancient translations, the translator was at times led to explain the sense of a word, lost or transformed, so as to adapt it to contemporary circumstances, to render it comprehensible and coherent with the whole of the original text. At times these translations show that the original Hebrew had been transformed, or had disappeared.’
‘Where does Aramaic come from?’
‘Aramaic is a Semitic language, it is different from other Semitic languages such as Akkadian and Phoenician, but is similar in vocabulary and pronunciation to Hebrew. However, they are both distinct languages in both their form and pronunciation. It is the root language of Hebrew, Arabic, and the alphabet for Greek, Farsi, Georgian and Turkish. Aramaic replaced Akkadian, the oldest Semitic language, around 1000BC. The Aramaic script was derived from the Phoenician alphabet. After the Assyrians adopted the language of the Aramaeans, Aramaic became the lingua franca of Mesopotamia and the whole Middle East.
Two major dialects exist, Western and Eastern, the Eastern is called Syriac that is a dialect. Parts of the Bible were also written in Aramaic.
‘I see.’
‘But, as far as the New Testament is concerned it was written in Greek, which was introduced by Alexander the Great during the Hellenistic period and continued to be used until 500AD. But speaking of Greeks we should examine how written history came into being. History written in the form of literary prose as factual or supposedly factual events had only just been invented by the ancient Greeks in the form we know it today. There was Herodotus with his Histories in the middle of the 5th century BC and then Thucydides who wrote the history of the Peloponnese Wars towards the end of 4th century BC, the work of the former was still filled with fantastic accounts and legends of distant and legendary lands with monstrous peoples, whilst Thucydides wrote a precise account of the Wars in exactly the same manner as we write today and with great detail.’
‘Were there any non-Greeks who wrote on Israel?’
‘Yes there was Hecataeus of Abdera, he wrote Aegytiaki and Peri Ioudaïon, that’s means On the Jews, around 315-320BC for Ptolemy Sotor, the first Greek ruler of Egypt. Then there was Megasthenes who wrote Indika on India a memoir of Alexander the Greats conquests went as far as the Indus.’
‘But they were Greeks!’
‘Yes, Hecataeus of Abdera was a Greek historian who lived in the 4th century BC. He was a member of Ptolemy Soter’s expedition to Syria, and he sailed up the Nile with him as far as Thebes. If you remember after Alexander’s death his empire was divided up, Ptolemy founding a Greek dynasty in Egypt,’ he said with a slightly condescending smile.
‘What I meant was, were there non-Greeks?’
‘Well there was of course Josephus, a Romanised Jew, who quoted Hecataeus in his works. Some scholars believe that he used the work of a Jewish writer, using a pseudonym, so there is some confusion. But apart from Hecataeus there was Berose, a Hellenised Babylonian, who wrote the history of Mesopotamia, Babyloniaka, and by doing so created the history of the nation with its traditions, thus establishing beyond doubt for its people, as well as its neighbours, the historic legitimacy of the nation’s sovereign and his ancestors.’
‘I see, so the Bible was a history amongst others of that time. I suppose it survived because the Jews survived?’
‘You’ve got it! That’s the general idea. Until relatively recently, the Bible was considered by Christians and Jews as the word of God, untouchable. It was only in the 19th century that scholars began to look at the biblical texts differently, studying its linguistic structure and analysing its contents. They commenced by trying to situate its texts within an archaeological, historical and geographical context.
‘Quite so,’ said Ziv, ‘and outside religious circles, most lay specialists agree that the compilation and editing of Bible’s different parts began in the seventh century BC. That’s to say about three centuries after the time of King David.’
‘Are their documents of this period?’
‘King David’s!’ he said smiling.
‘No…I mean from the seventh century as you mentioned.’
‘No, the earliest actual material evidence we have are the Dead Sea Scrolls, and these dates to the second century BC at the earliest.”
‘Oh!’
‘Quite, so let me continue my story. By the seventh century, David's legendary kingdom had split into two; there was Israel to the north, which had been invaded and destroyed by the Assyrians, and Judah to the south that had survived the Assyrian attack.
‘In Egypt, in the middle of the third century BC, under the Hellenistic dynasty, the Bible flourished amongst the Hellenised Jews in Alexandria; it was called sepher ha-Torah, the book of law. It must be remembered that after Alexander and the division of his Empire, the Jews found themselves in a world ruled by Greeks and where Greek had become t
he spoken language of this Greek world, Israel included.’
‘So the Torah is the Bible?’
‘Yes, it was also called The Book of the Law of Moses and was then composed of the first five books of the Bible as we know it today. It was not simply a book of law, but a history of the Jewish people to be read and meditated.’
‘I see.’
‘Good, now take the Book of Deuteronomy for example, it was compiled by scribes and recounts the history of Israel from the conquest of the Canaanites by Joshua to the destruction of the Temple in 587BC by the Babylonians. It was no doubt based on oral tradition and it is possible that documents that may have existed at that time, however there is little other evidence to back this up.’
‘It’s complicated with all of these books.'
‘It’s much more complicated than you can imagine. The foundation of Jewish traditions is based on Rabbinic texts, that's o say the entire gamut of rabbinic writing accumulated throughout the history of the Jewish religion. The texts are composed of the Sifrut Hazal or The Literature of our Sages, which includes the Talmud, the Midrash and related writings.'
‘Where do they come from?’
Ziv told them how the earliest writing was the oral law, composed of the Mishnah and the Tosefta, which were in turn compiled from early materials pre-dating 200AD, then followed by the two Talmuds, Jerusalem Talmud 450AD and the Babylonian Talmud 600AD. The Midrash was a method of interpreting biblical texts and referred to a compilation of Midrashic teachings, in the form of legal, exegetical or homiletical commentaries on the Bible.
Then came the Jewish law with the Halakha that includes, the Major Codes of Jewish Law, the Mishnah Torah, the Arba'ah Turim, the Shulhan Arukh and their commentaries and finally the Responsa literature.
In addition there were the texts on Jewish thought and ethics including the Kabbalah, the Aggada, the works of Hasidic Judaism, Jewish ethics and the Mussar Movement, as well as Jewish liturgy.
Much later came the works of the Geonim the Rabbis of Sura and Pumbeditha, in Babylon from 650AD to 1250AD. The works of the Rishonim – early medieval rabbis – from 1250AD to 1550AD, are composed of commentaries on the Bible and Talmud, including works of famous rabbis such as Rashi, Nissim of Gerona and Maimonides. The rabbinical texts from 1550AD onwards were known as the Acharonim.
He went on to explain how in recent times extensive archaeological surveys had been carried out on the West Bank by serious archaeologists mostly from Tel Aviv University’s Institute of Archaeology and the results of their work showed that around 1200BC semi-nomadic tribes from the bordering Arabian Peninsula to the east began to settle in the hill country of Canaan. At the same time others arrived from the south fleeing the Egyptians, who were pacifying the northern border regions, and from the north-west pushed inland by the arrival of the Sea Peoples on the coastal region.
The consequence was a very mixed population, which was however mostly Canaanite. Over the centuries this mixed population grew and blended into a single people with common language forced to defend its towns and villages against the encroaching Sea Peoples or Philistines who sought to expand their coastal territory.
This evidence fits in with the remains of Bronze and Iron Ages settlements found beneath the City of David, situated on the low, narrow, ridge of rock to south of the Temple Mount and the Old City. The bedrock on which the City is built is composed of hard limestone rock, known to geologists as a karst, this formation contains natural caves and tunnels that trap rainwater, which gradually flows down to lower levels through the natural fissures and channels in the rock finally flowing into the open in the form of springs. To the east of the City the Gihon Spring, the city’s only natural source of water, surfaces in the Kedron Valley.
The spring was no doubt a key factor in the choice of this site by Jerusalem's first inhabitants around 1000BC. During the winter months rain caused the spring to overflow forming a stream that watered the Kedron Valley and provided a source of irrigation for the settlers’ vegetable gardens.
The only problem was the Gihon spring lay outside of the city walls, making the city vulnerable during times of war, therefore during the reign of King Hezekiah of Judah the spring was covered with a vault and a tunnel was built to carry water to the Siloam Pool in the Tyropoeon Valley. Hezekiah’s tunnel was cut into the rock towards the end of 8th century BC, as indicated by an inscription, in paleo-Hebrew script, cut into the rock near the exit.
Hezekiah’s Tunnel was the best-dated Iron-Age biblical structure in Jerusalem because the lime deposits in the plaster used for sealing on the walls of the tunnel were analysed and found to include bone, charcoal, ash, wood and plant fragments. Radiocarbon-dating by Oxford University fixed the age of the wood at between 822-796BC, and plant samples at 790-760BC and 690-540BC and together with a radioisotope estimate of an ancient stalactite on the tunnel's ceiling gave a date of around 700BC, which fits in with the time of King Hezekiah.
Then there were the huge vaults called Solomon’s Stables, built against the mountains to support the buildings built on top of them, which have been transformed into a mosque.
More recently, in the 1990s, excavations were carried out along the outer Western Wall and after the removal of much debris, a street running along the wall was uncovered, it was ten metres wide and was paved with stones, there were also the remains of shops that opened onto the street. Across from Robinson’s Arch a pier that once supported it was uncovered.
Three water storage and distribution systems supplied by the waters of the Gihon spring were cut into the rock beneath the City of David forming one of the most complex and advanced systems of any known from biblical cities.
However, a shaft known as Warren’s Shaft was the earliest subterranean water system, its entrance was located in the middle of the eastern slope of the City of David, inside of the city's walls. It was a subterranean tunnel cut into the rock with a shaft at its end, which led down to the waters of the Gihon Spring and where water could be drawn from the spring within the safety of the city’s walls. Warren’s Shaft was open to visitors and Hezekiah's Tunnel be also be visited, walking through the water that flows to the Pool of Siloam.
A study carried out at the beginning of the 1980s, established that the shaft and most of the tunnel were in fact natural karstic fissures in the rock that the builders of the system had used, to making it possible to have a subterranean passage from the city to the spring.
‘Tell me about the recent work in excavations in Jerusalem?’
‘Between 1961 and 1985 four major excavations have been made in Jerusalem, the problem is that not very much information has ever been published. Most of the discoveries come from Late Bronze Age tombs.
‘Tombs?’
‘Yes, it quite common to find tombs, but no remains have ever been found of a town or city.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing, no walls, gates or buildings of any kind.’
‘So what about the references in the Amarna letters that de Lussac refers to?’
‘The letters found at Tel Amarna in Egypt, in the ancient capital of Akhenaton, are in fact cuneiform tablets, in total there are about four hundred sent by heads of different Palestinian city-states.’
‘City states?’
‘Yes, there was for example Shechem, Gaza, Beth-Shean and Megiddo.’
‘Ah yes, we visited the Megiddo.’
‘Six of these letters make reference to Urusalim, which was described as a large town protected by a solid wall. The problem is that more than a century of intensive archaeological excavations has uncovered almost nothing from this period.’
‘But the letters are real, they are not legends, so it must have existed.’
‘I don’t know there are three possibilities, first it has not yet been found, second there is nothing left of it, and third it never existed.’
‘How can you be sure of that?’
‘Well several trenches were dug down to the bedrock, but
no buildings were found corresponding to Late Bronze Age Jerusalem, that is before about 1200BC.
‘But it is improbable that the letters referred to a town in the same region with the same name.’
‘As I said I don’t know, perhaps the letters referred to a region, or some kind of a farming community.’
‘So the de Lussac’s reference to Biblical descriptions of Jerusalem as a magnificent city, at the centre of a large and prosperous empire is a myth.’
‘I’m afraid so, your friend de Lussac mixes myth and archaeology to suit his theory, which by the way is not totally illogical.’
‘But what about the terraced system and that high stone wall found by Mazar?’
‘Ah yes, the wall, in my opinion t dates from the tenth century BC, probably the substructure of some kind of fortification.’
‘But such a wall, originally about twenty seven metres high and forty metres long at the top, was not built for a small village?’
‘It is not that big, think of forty metres compared to the present day Haram, it’s rather small. The ancient wall was no doubt designed with earthworks to make it difficult for attackers to climb up the hill to the city.’
‘Was anything else found?’
‘Mazar found several ashlars and a large proto-aeolic capital near the wall, probably from some kind of public building. There was also a quantity of pottery shards confirming the tenth century dating, but no houses.’
‘No houses?’
‘At least not in the excavated area, the houses were probably further away outside, another wall was built later lower down the slope of the hill. The city was perhaps some kind of an administrative centre, but in any case it was very small.’
‘Can you say how many people lived there?’
‘At a guess, probably a couple of thousand.’
‘So it was not a large state?’
‘No, it was certainly no different from the other towns of the period that have been studied in detail such as Megiddo, Hazor, Gezer and Lachish.’
‘In any case there is considerable evidence of increased settlement in the region, so Jerusalem was clearly some kind of small centre.’
‘What happened after?’
‘What we know is that in the late eighth century BC the Assyrians destroyed much of the country including Jerusalem, which had doubtlessly grown in importance. The ruins of the Babylonian destruction can be seen by the thick layer of remains beneath the city today. A considerable quantity of objects has enabled archaeologists to date the construction of the city walls, houses and water systems to the 8th century BC. Therefore we can relatively accurately reconstruction life in the city at that time.’
Nebuchadnezzar had conquered Jerusalem sending it leaders to exile in Babylon. He appointed a vassal king, but the Jews rebelled and the Babylonians totally destroyed the city which had become one of the most important in the region with a population of approximately 10,000 souls.
Beneath the buildings destroyed by the Babylonians remains were found that date from the 10th and 9th centuries BC. But few inscriptions have been discovered from the 10th and the early part of the 9th centuries BC in Israel, and Egyptian and Babylonian sources are silent.
The City of David that lies about one hundred metres to the south of the walled Old City of Jerusalem is simply a name given to it early archaeologists who believed the area was the site of King David's Jerusalem.
Before the arrival of the Hebrews 10th century BC Canaan covered a region from Sidon on the north coast running down to Gaza with the Jordan River as its eastern border. It was no more than a collection of small city-states paying tribute to the Egyptian Pharaoh. The Amarna letters were written in cuneiform on clay tablets in Akkadian, the lingua franca of the region, used by Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt for communication. These tablets – now in the British and Berlin museums – date from the time of Akhenaton, which is to say around 1200BC, and were correspondence from the Egyptian governors in Syria and Palestine, as well as from the rulers of Assyria and Mesopotamia.
51
Muslims