Historical Reference to the House of David?

Taken from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel_Dan_Stele

The Tel Dan Stele is a black basalt stele erected by an Aramaean king in northernmost Israel, containing an Aramaic inscription to commemorate his victory over the ancient Hebrews. Although the name of the author does not seem to appear on the available fragments, it is most likely a king of neighboring Aram Damascus. Language, time, and location make it plausible that the author was Hazael or his son, Bar Hadad II/III, who were kings of Damascus, and enemies of the kingdom of Israel. The stele was discovered at Tel Dan, previously named Tell el-Qadi, a mound where a city once stood at the northern tip of Israel. Fragment A was discovered in 1993, and fragments B1 and B2, which fit together, were discovered in 1994. In the broken part of the stone below the smooth writing surface, there is a possible "internal" fit between fragment A and the assembled fragments B1/B2, but it is uncertain and disputed. If the fit is correct, then the pieces were originally side by side.
The inscription has been dated to the 9th or 8th centuries BCE. The 8th-century limit is determined by a destruction layer caused by a well-documented Assyrian conquest in 733/732 BCE. Because that destruction layer was above the layer in which the stele fragments were found, it is clear that it took place after the stele had been erected, then broken into pieces which were later used in a construction project at Tel Dan, presumably by Hebrew builders. It is difficult to discern how long before that Assyrian conquest these earlier events took place.
The period of Aramean Supremacy and military conquest as depicted in the Tel Dan Stele against the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel was dated to ca. 841 - 798 BCE in correspondence the beginning of the reign of Jehu, King of Israel (841-814 BCE), until the end of the reign of Jehoahaz, King of Israel (814/813-798 BCE). This also corresponds to the end of the reigns of both Achazyahu (Ahaziah), King of Judah of the House of David (843 - 842 BCE) and the reign of Yoram (Joram), King of Israel (851 - 842 BCE). This chronology was based on the posthumously published work of Yohanan Aharoni (Tel Aviv University) and Michael Avi-Yonah, in collaboration with Anson F. Rainey and Ze'ev Safrai.[1] This dating of Aramean military supremacy over the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel was published in 1993 before the discovery of the Tel Dan Stele, thus, not reflecting any bias as to the dating of either the stele nor the Aramean conquest in the Southern Levant.[2]
Only portions of the inscription remain, but it has generated much excitement among those interested in Biblical archaeology. Attention is concentrated on the letters 'ביתדוד', which is identical to the Hebrew for "house of David", although another reading would be as a place name such as Bethdod (the BYT syllable meaning 'house' as in Bethlehem and the last syllable DWD meaning possible 'beloved', 'kettle', or 'uncle' being found in Ashdod [3]. If the reading is correct, it is the first time that the name "David" has been recognized at any archaeological site. Like the Mesha stele, the Tel Dan Stele seems typical of a memorial intended as a sort of military propaganda, which boasts of Hazael's or his son's victories. (Some epigraphers think that the phrase "house of David" also appears in a partly broken line in the Mesha Stele.)

Historical References to King Solomon

The Šulmán Temple in Jerusalem

by

Immanuel Velikovsky

In the el-Amarna letters No. 74 and 290 there is reference to a place read (by Knudtzon) Bet-NIN.IB. In Ages in Chaos, following Knudtzon, I understood that the reference was to Assyria (House of Nineveh).(1) I was unaware of an article by the eminent Assyriologist, Professor Jules Lewy, printed in the Journal of Biblical Literature under the title: “The Šulmán Temple in Jerusalem.”(2)

From a certain passage in letter No. 290, written by the king of Jerusalem to the Pharaoh, Lewy concluded that this city was known at that time also by the name “Temple of Šulmán.” Actually, Lewy read the ideogram that had much puzzled the researchers before him.(3) After complaining that the land was falling to the invading bands (habiru), the king of Jerusalem wrote: “. . . and now, in addition, the capital of the country of Jerusalem — its name is Bit Šulmáni —, the king’s city, has broken away . . .”(4) Beth Šulmán in Hebrew, as Professor Lewy correctly translated, is Temple of Šulmán. But, of course, writing in 1940, Lewy could not surmise that the edifice was the Temple of Solomon and therefore made the supposition that it was a place of worship (in Canaanite times) of a god found in Akkadian sources as Shelmi, Shulmanu, or Salamu.

The correction of the reading of Knudtzon (who was uncertain of his reading) fits well with the chronological reconstruction of the period. In Ages in Chaos (chapters vi-viii) I deal with the el-Amama letters; there it is shown that the king of Jerusalem whose name is variously read Ebed-Tov, Abdi-Hiba, etc. was King Jehoshaphat (ninth century). It was only to be expected that there would be in some of his letters a reference to the Temple of Solomon.

Also, in el-Amama letter No. 74, the king of Damascus, inciting his subordinate sheiks to attack the king of Jerusalem, commanded them to “assemble in the Temple of Šulmán.”(5)

It was surprising to find in the el-Amama letters written in the fourteenth century that the capital of the land was already known then as Jerusalem (Urusalim) and not, as the Bible claimed for the . pre-Conquest period, Jebus or Salem.(6) Now, in addition, it was found that the city had a temple of Šulmán in it and that the structure was of such importance that its name had been used occasionally for denoting the city itself. (Considering the eminence of the edifice, “the house which king Solomon built for the Lord”,(7) this was only natural.) Yet after the conquest by the Israelites under Joshua ben-Nun, the Temple of Šulmán was not heard of.

Lewy wrote: “Aside from proving the existence of a Šulmán temple in Jerusalem in the first part of the 14th century B.C., this statement of the ruler of the region leaves no doubt that the city was then known not only as Jerusalem, but also as Bet Šulmán.”—“It is significant that it is only this name [Jerusalem] that reappears after the end of the occupation of the city by the Jebusites, which the Šulmán temple, in all probability, did not survive.”

The late Professor W. F. Albright advised me that Lewy’s interpretation cannot be accepted because Šulmán has no sign of divinity accompanying it, as would be proper if it were the name of a god. But this only strengthens my interpretation that the temple of Šulmán means Temple of Solomon.

In the Hebrew Bible the king’s name has no terminal “n”. But in the Septuagint — the oldest translation of the Old Testament — the king’s name is written with a terminal “n”; the Septuagint dates from the third century before the present era. Thus it antedates the extant texts of the Old Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls not excluded.

Solomon built his Temple in the tenth century. In a letter written from Jerusalem in the next (ninth) century, Solomon’s Temple stood a good chance of being mentioned; and so it was.

References

Immanuel Velikovsky, Ages in Chaos, vii: “The Second Siege of Samaria.”

The Journal of Biblical Archaeology 59 (1940), pp. 519 ff.

Cf. Weber in Knudtzon: Die El-Amarna Tafeln, p. 1160 and p. 1343, for the various attempts to read the ideograms for NIN.IB. Lewy solved the problem: “The ideogram dNIN.IB may be pronounced Šulmánu.”

In an article preceding that of Lewy, P. Haupt (Orientalistische Literaturzeitung XVIII, 1915, cols. 71-2) translated the verse in EA 290: “Die Landeshauptstadt Namens Jerusalem, die Stadt des Ninib-Tempels, die Königsstadt.” Replacing Ninib by Shulman or Shalmi, we arrived at the conclusion that the sentence deals with Solomon’s Temple. Latest is an article in Hebrew Eretz-Israel IX (Jerusalem, 1969), by Tadmor and Kalai, who read the ideogram as Beth-Ninurta and locate it in Beth-Horon. This is an error; but they have brought the pertinent literary references together.

The idea that the reference in EA 74 to Beth-Ninurta or Beth-Shulman is to some other place is based on the erroneous location of Sumur on the Syrian coast; in A in C it was shown that Sumur is Samaria, a short distance from Jerusalem.

See A in C, vi: “Jerusalem, Samaria, Jezreel.”

I Kings 6:2

Taken from:

http://www.varchive.org/ce/sultemp.htm

Comment: As the Temple in Jerusalem was never actually referred to as the "House of Solomon":, but e.g. the House of Yahweh, then these references to "House of Solomon" probably refer either to Solomon's kingdom or his palace.