Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

As you might expect I see very little hope at all for a historical David.
There is no physical evidence for a united kingdom, so while David may
modelled on some historical character, the circumstances in the biblical
account come across as not in any sense trustworthy. What does seem to be
born out by our far far incomplete data is that Israel was an earlier
political entity with power in the region, while Judah was a later player
who came to the fore with the waning of Israel's star, and especially with
the eclipse of Israel at the hands of the Assyrians was there a reduction
of constraint to the north allowing Judah to become the main man. Besides
David and Solomon the only good guys in the Judah camp that Ben Sira can
talk about are those post-Israel.

At the same time the actual writing of the Davidic traditions reflect no
known chronicle writing of the period which those traditions are supposed
to refer to. 

As I said in a previous post, the Tel Dan inscription has a long way to go.
While George has already accepted its authenticity, such authenticity has
not as yet been established and we are living in the world of the Piltdown
Man, Schliemann's treasure of Priam or for that matter Cyril Burt's child
psychology statistics. Burt's was rigging the data in the direction he
thought it should go in order to get state funding (if I remember
correctly). Piltdown Man was an attempt to discredit evolutionary studies
and Schliemann's seems only to have been personal esteem. We could add to
this the Turin Shroud and all the other relics manufactured in the middle
ages to dupe the common person. (You can still find the hand of John the
Baptist in Istanbul's Topkapi Museum!) The Tel Dan inscription comes along
at such a convenient time, ie when strong inroads against the historicity
of David had been made. It has the hallmark of a pious fraud, although it
may not be.


Cheers,


Ian