by
Damien F. Mackey
Introduction
Israeli archaeologist, Israel Finkelstein, is quoted as saying in a recent National Geographic article, “Kings of Controversy” by Robert Draper (David and Solomon, December 2010, p. 85): “Now Solomon. I think I destroyed Solomon, so to speak. Sorry for that!” What Finkelstein ought to be “sorry” for, however, is not the wise King Solomon - who continues to exist as a real historical and archaeological entity, despite the confused utterances of the current crop of Israeli archaeologists - but for Finkelstein’s own folly in clinging to a hopelessly out-dated and bankrupt archaeological system that causes him to point every time to the wrong stratigraphical level for Israel’s Old Testament history (e.g. Exodus/Conquest; David and Solomon). Seemingly ignorant of the cosmopolitan Late Bronze Age and the 18th dynasty era of Egypt, which revisionists have now shown conclusively to have been contemporaneous with King Solomon (with the biblical King Shishak now clearly identified as pharaoh Thutmose III himself), Finkelstein and his colleagues persist with the old Sothic-based chronology of c. 1900 (together with F. Champollion’s now completely discredited identification of Shishak with Shoshenq I), which forces them to deny to Solomon and the Queen of Sheba their rightful c. C10th BC existence, relegating them instead to the impoverished Iron Age era of Israel. Thus Finkelstein (ibid., pp. 85-86):
But take Solomon, dissect it [sic]. Take the great visit of the Queen of Sheba – an Arabian queen coming to visit, bringing all sorts of exotic commodities to Jerusalem. This is a story which is an impossibility to think about before 732 B.C., before the beginning of Arabian trade under Assyrian domination. Take the story of Solomon as the great, you know, trainer in horses and chariots and big armies and so on. The world behind Solomon is the world of the Assyrian century.
But take Solomon, dissect it [sic]. Take the great visit of the Queen of Sheba – an Arabian queen coming to visit, bringing all sorts of exotic commodities to Jerusalem. This is a story which is an impossibility to think about before 732 B.C., before the beginning of Arabian trade under Assyrian domination. Take the story of Solomon as the great, you know, trainer in horses and chariots and big armies and so on. The world behind Solomon is the world of the Assyrian century.
But the Queen of Sheba was not “an Arabian queen”. She was, as Josephus clearly tells, ‘a ruler of Egypt and Ethiopia’. She was Queen Hatshepsut of the 18th dynasty, whose throne name, Makera (Maat-ka-re), can easily be seen in her name according to Ethiopian legend, Makeda. Her famous Punt expedition reveals this queen to have been one well capable of “bringing all sorts of exotic commodities …”. One does not have to descend to the C8th BC Assyrian era - and hence well out of Solomon’s chronological range - to discover this sort of luxurious and cosmopolitan scenario. Two El Amarna letters of the 18th Egyptian dynasty era actually refer to the “House of Solomon” (Bît Šulman), but historians - in typical Finkelsteinian fashion - have to dismiss this as long pre-dating Solomon. This evidence, amongst much else, should have led them to question their chronology.
The Tell Dan reference to the “House of David” usually receives grudging acceptance from archaeologists. Strangely - and I would say quite inconsistently - Finkelstein does accept that David was a C10th BC entity (despite his famous son Solomon’s being relegated to oblivion). Thus he says (Ibid., p. 85):
David, for example, is a historical figure. He did live in the tenth century B.C. I accept the descriptions of David as some sort of leader of an upheaval group, troublemakers who lived on the margins of society. But not the golden city of Jerusalem, not the description of a great empire in the time of Solomon.
This muddle-headed archaeologist can then say that this ‘David’ - a marginal troublemaker bearing absolutely no resemblance to the biblical King David in all his complexity and greatness - is, for him, “everything”. “If you want me to say it simplistically [which is about all that Finkelstein is capable of, apparently], I’m proud that this nobody from nowhere became the center of Western tradition”.
Draper, in his concluding sentence, will call Finkelstein “David’s dethroner”, when quoting Finkelstein, who says: “So for me, David is not a plaque on the wall, not even merely a leader of a tenth-century band. [Contrary to what he had just said] No. Much more than that”.
Does Draper suspect that Finkelstein perhaps imagines that he has now dethroned both David and Solomon? Does he presume to have obliterated them and to have taken over their throne? The King is a Fink!
Whatever Finkelstein himself might imagine, David and Solomon were real C10th BC kings. And they were, quite unlike Finkelstein, greatly endowed with wisdom.
The Tell Dan reference to the “House of David” usually receives grudging acceptance from archaeologists. Strangely - and I would say quite inconsistently - Finkelstein does accept that David was a C10th BC entity (despite his famous son Solomon’s being relegated to oblivion). Thus he says (Ibid., p. 85):
David, for example, is a historical figure. He did live in the tenth century B.C. I accept the descriptions of David as some sort of leader of an upheaval group, troublemakers who lived on the margins of society. But not the golden city of Jerusalem, not the description of a great empire in the time of Solomon.
This muddle-headed archaeologist can then say that this ‘David’ - a marginal troublemaker bearing absolutely no resemblance to the biblical King David in all his complexity and greatness - is, for him, “everything”. “If you want me to say it simplistically [which is about all that Finkelstein is capable of, apparently], I’m proud that this nobody from nowhere became the center of Western tradition”.
Draper, in his concluding sentence, will call Finkelstein “David’s dethroner”, when quoting Finkelstein, who says: “So for me, David is not a plaque on the wall, not even merely a leader of a tenth-century band. [Contrary to what he had just said] No. Much more than that”.
Does Draper suspect that Finkelstein perhaps imagines that he has now dethroned both David and Solomon? Does he presume to have obliterated them and to have taken over their throne? The King is a Fink!
Whatever Finkelstein himself might imagine, David and Solomon were real C10th BC kings. And they were, quite unlike Finkelstein, greatly endowed with wisdom.
