Albright
is long gone (he died in 1971), and all of his achievements have been undermined.
The archaeological research for the historicity of the events in question has
been all but abandoned. A revolution in viewing the Bible has indeed come, as
we shall see in the following chapters, but hardly in the form that Albright envisioned
. . . A generation or so ago, the temple in Jerusalem, described in great
detail in 1 Kings 6-8, loomed large in our imagination. That is because it was
thought to be unique, and therefore poorly appreciated as a real structure with
believable furnishings. There were no parallels elsewhere in the ancient Near
East, and certainly nothing like this in Israel.
Today
that has all changed. We know of two dozen or more similar temples from all
over the ancient East, particularly in Syria. They are constructed on the same
plan. They are rectangular buildings with a single doorway and three rooms,
arranged in a straight line, focused on an altar on the back wall of the
innermost room. Some have a portico-like entrance that may have two supporting
columns. That is precisely what the biblical description of Solomon’s temple
looks like.
One
recently excavated temple at Ain Dara in northern Syria, dated to the ninth to
eighth century BCE, provides at least a dozen almost exact parallels to the
Solomonic temple in Jerusalem. It features a tripartite plan, two columns flanking
the entrance, a backroom altar, side halls, triple-recessed windows, and winged
cherubs (human-headed lions or bulls). The decorations include latticework and
twisted-rope designs. All these elements are described in detail in the Bible.
Elsewhere
there are many parallels. The portable wheeled bronze braziers used in the
Jerusalem temple to provide heat and light have nearly identical Phoenician
parallels in Cyprus. Their decorations include birds, bulls, cherubs, flowers,
and chain-like motifs, and the wheels are spoked. That accords almost exactly
with descriptions in the Bible of such braziers.
Most
of the temples are in essence royal chapels, monumental buildings constructed
by the palace and situated nearby, serviced by the official priesthood. That is
what the Jerusalem temple was. Although it becomes a symbol of national status—of
the people of Israel—few had ever seen it. Probably none had ever entered the temple,
since only the king and high priest were permitted, and in the inner chamber
only the high priest.
The
intricate details in the biblical description are difficult to grasp, because
some of the Hebrew terms are rare, and a few occur only here. The reason for the
obscure language is undoubtedly the fact that the biblical authors were writing
some two or three centuries after the construction of the building. They
probably had earlier sources but the technical terms for the construction and
the furnishings would have been unfamiliar to them. After all, they were not
architects, masons, or artisans. If the biblical tradition is taken seriously,
that Solomon imported the design and the workers from Phoenicia, then the
biblical writers were working with foreign concepts and a remote dialect.
Finally,
the temple they knew had no doubt been altered considerably over time, so the
writers were compelled to extrapolate—and of course, to exaggerate. They did the
best they could, given the circumstances.
So,
there was a real temple in Jerusalem, as elsewhere in the Levant. Solomon’s
temple was just not quite as grandiose as it seems. And it was not unique after
all, that makes it all the more believable. What made it different was the
theological concept and the national sense of identity it represented. Archaeology
can only speculate about such matters. (William G. Dever, Has Archaeology
Buried the Bible? [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2020], 3, 84-86)
