The
minimalists’ and the semi-minimalists’ views suffered a blow from the 9th century
BCE extra-Biblical royal inscription mentioning בית דוד (the house/dynasty of
David). Ben-Hadad (or was it Hazael?), King of Aram, and Mesha, King of Moab,
refer in their inscriptions to the king of Israel of the Omride house as being
connected with the “house of David.” Indeed, the Book of Kings informs us that
especially at that time, there was effective cooperation and good relations
between the Omride house and Jehoshaphat of the house of David. Therefore, the
whole notion that David was remembered by oral tradition as a “tribal chieftain”
does not hold water. Ami Mazar and many others refute the revisionists’
approach as well as the “low chronology” and its conclusions as suggested by
Finkelstein and others.
Moreover,
new epigraphic findings confirm that archaeology is still far from being able
to conclude the scope of royal polity, scribal schools and literacy of the 10th
Century BCE based on epigraphic evidence gathered hitherto. Archaeology
provided and will provide surprises for many years to come. In recent years,
indeed, Tel Zayit and Khirbet Qeiyafa provided new evidence to scribal practice
in the 10th century BCE. Other sites, including Jerusalem and even Philistia
yielded small inscriptions from the time of the United Kingdom. We may add that
inscriptions found in Syria and South Turkey which, in mentioning Taita the
King of Palestin, shed light on the “dark age” of that region and proved the reliability
of the Book of Samuel regarding David’s interests in this region . . . Moreover,
the scanty evidence of inscriptions of the 10th Century BCE is not a result of
comprehensive illiteracy or a “dark age”, as suggested by some scholars. But it
is due to the perishable quality of the materials used by the ancient scribes
in Israel as well as the repeated historical cycle of destruction and rebuilding
of biblical sites, which eroded the preservation of ancient inscriptions of the
10th century BCE. These are some of the main causes why archaeologists have
found only a very small percentage of inscriptions hitherto that have miraculously
survived. (Moshe Garsiel, The Book of Samuel: Studies in History,
Historiography, Theology and Poetics Combined, Part one—The Story and History
of David and His Kingdom [Jerusalem: Rubin Mass Ltd., 2018], 21-22)
