Thursday, July 21, 2022

Moshe Garsiel on the "House of David" Inscription

  

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)