KING SOLOMON - FACT OR FICTION

johnconan

KING SOLOMON: FACT OR FICTION
by Sidney Woolf

Whoever wrote the First Book of the Kings and the Second Book of the Chronicles could not foresee the detailed verification potential of modern archaeology.

The city of King Solomon in Jerusalem is thought to be on the slope leading down from what is now the Al Aqsa mosque. Israeli archaeologists have been desperately excavating the site for many decades yet not one iota of evidence of the existence of King Solomon has been found. No mention of his name has been found on any tablet, inscription, tax record or pot decoration.

Anyone who has visited Egypt will have seen widespread evidence of a monarch who reigned three hundred years before Solomon, Pharaoh Rameses II, yet of King Solomon who ruled over a vast empire and army (1 Kings 4, 21-26 and 1 Kings 9, 17-23, 2 Chronicles 9, 25-26) there is no trace. All the vassal peoples who paid taxes to him have left not a single record of account or inscription. Not one of the soldiers of his conquering army left a sword, helmet or shield.

Professor Yadin抯 two volume work "The Art Of Warfare In Biblical Lands" (International Publishing Co. Ltd., Jerusalem 1963) has ample illustrated examples of discovered contemporary armour and weapons from other lands, but one looks in vain for a single item from the Solomonic empire.

Search through Israel抯 museums and you will find no evidence from the empire although there are ample artefacts marked "Canaan" or "Philistine". It is inconceivable that if Solomon and his empire had existed in reality not a trace of them could be found from all the archaeological "digs" throughout Israel.

Who then created this fiction, when and why? Many Hebrews of the Babylonian captivity, 586 BCE rose to leading positions in Babylon, became established and wealthy. They had no wish to return to the harsh life of a deserted and derelict land. The Hebrew people were facing the greatest threat ever: total annihilation by assimilation, and their land had been entered by armed hostile tribes.

A young guard of "Zionist" activists grew up, just as they did recently in the former Soviet Union. In order to attract people to the idea of returning they had to create a glorious past, military conquests and a rich empire. Hence the symbol of Solomon.

Most of the books of the Old Testament, except Nehemiah, were probably written during the same period for the same purpose - becoming the hoax of the millennia.

It is no coincidence that the writers created Abraham as going from Babylon (Ur of the Chaldees) to Canaan, which is precisely the journey they were convincing the Hebrews to undertake.

The Exodus story was to demonstrate that even fleeing from slavery, enduring forty years with their only food being provided by God, and facing powerful armies, the Hebrews triumphed and re-established their state.

How much easier their re-establishing would be now!


source: http://www.sidneywoolf.com/

[ Last edited by  johnconan at 5-8-2007 12:58 PM ]

ganisara

interesting fact about solomon...or was he Nabi Sulaiman?the man
who speaks to any form of life.....?and why one of the sea species(crustacean family)was named after his foot....?

johnconan

Originally posted by ganisara at 1-8-2007 05:21 PM
interesting fact about solomon...or was he Nabi Sulaiman?the man
who speaks to any form of life.....?and why one of the sea species(crustacean family)was named after his foot....?

same person...

persoalannya adakah bangsa Yahudi cuba mereka-reka kewujudan David = Daud dan Solomon = Sulaiman dan adakah kerajaan yg dikatakan amat besar hanya sekadar kisah rekaan semata-mata utk mengagungkan bangsa sendiri setelah bangun dari penghambaan?

johnconan

King David and King Solomon: History or Myth?



Contents Updated: Monday, October 11, 1999

    * David appears in Egypt?
    * The Lack of Sure Evidence
    * David as Legend
    * Semantics of David
    * Whose House?
    * David's Empire?
    * Solomon
    * Was Solomon a God?
    * More Aspects of the Myth
    * Who Wrote It?

David appears in Egypt?
King David, the killer of Goliath, the Philistine giant, and founder of the Jewish state, is such a part of our own mythology of the western world after 2000 years of enforced reading of the Hebrew scriptures we have in the Christian Old Testament, that it might surprise people to know that the main evidence we have that he ever lived is

johnconan

Kitchen explains that the mention of the "Heights of David" makes sense in the Sheshonq list of toponyms. Before he became king, David was a fugitive active in this area. He fled from King Saul and was joined by his fellow tribesmen and fugitives until he had a force of 400 men. His first stop was at Philistine Gath, whose ruler he would later serve. From Gath, David went to Mizpeh of Moab. From there he returned to Judah, by which time his force had increased to 600 men. He roamed about in the wilderness of Ziph, including the Hill of Hachilah, in the wilderness of Maon, in the wilderness and heights of Engedi, near the Dead Sea, and in the Arabah, the valley south of the Dead Sea, always escaping from Saul's men. Finally, David made an alliance with the Philistine king of Gath, who gave David the city of Ziklag (1 Samuel 21-30). No one knows were Ziklag was, but it must be near the Negev if not in it.

The eleven rows of Sheshonq's list of conquests is divided into three main sections, differentiated geographically. The apparent reference to David occurs in the second block of rows which are sites in south Judah and the Negev. Another name in this row is "the Terrain of Tilwan (or Tilon)." So "the Heights of David" seems to follow this structure. However, for a long time scholars thought they also saw a "field of Abraham" in the list but that is now rejected. Interpretations are far from certain.

Nevertheless, Kitchen thinks it is not surprising that a place in this region would be named the "Heights of David," given David's importance and his association with the place. Kitchen concludes:

    I do not claim certainty, but there is at least a high degree of probability. David here is nothing too spectacular.

David as Legend
That then is a summary of the latest and earlier bits of archaeological evidence for the existence of king David. Because the saga of David occurs in the Holy Book it has rarely been understood as anything less than true history, but the curious lack of concrete evidence for such an amazing soldier casts doubt upon its historical truth.

The situation is quite like that of Jesus梕veryone believes it is true yet the evidence amounts to some books written by people with a keen interest in propagating the truth of the myth. Indeed the bible is full of similar myths unsupported by historical or archaeological evidence that no "scholars" bother to question because they are committed religionists, bound by their own faith, fears and paymasters.

There is no unequivocal evidence outside the scriptures for Moses and the events of Mount Sinai where he received the Ten Commandments; none even for the flight from Egypt by the Israelites; none for a battle of Jericho where the walls came tumbling down because any town there at the time had no walls; indeed none for the military conquest of Canaan.

Not that David is necessarily purely mythical. He is possibly a legend rather than a myth, but either way, his exploits are much larger than his life. This is typical of myth and legend. No one knows who king Arthur was, yet volumes of astonishing mythology have been built around this romantic figure. The same applies to William Tell and Robin Hood, both likely to be entirely mythical figures of romantic legend. If there is a real man at the core of any of these myths, he has been quite hidden by all that has accreted about him.

Isn't it likely that David is the same? Possibly some Hebrew bandit, got a local name for himself and songs were written about him. Over the years the songs and the exploits grew and the central figure achieved god-like proportions. Perhaps, he began as a god, then became personified, just as the Hebrew Almighty God was also much more human in the ancient stories than the more refined Ormuzd figure of the post-exilic Jewish Priesthood.

Hershel Shanks in Biblical Archaeology Review tells us that few scholars take seriously the suggestion by Philip Davies that dwd in the Dan stele should be read Dood, referring to a hitherto unknown deity. Kenneth Kitchen, the discoverer of the putative Egyptian reference to the Heights of David treats the suggestion in the bent scholar's typically puerile manner:

    Surely the time has now come to celebrate Dod's funeral梡ermanently! There is not one scintilla of respectable, explicit evidence for his/her/its existence anywhere in the biblical and ancient Near Eastern world. No ancient king ever calls himself beloved of Dod; no temple of Dod has ever been found, and clearly identified as such by first-hand inscriptions. We have no hymns to Dod, no offering-lists for Dod, no published rituals in any ancient language for Dod, no statues of Dod, no altars, vessels, nor any other ritual piece or votive object dedicated to Dod as a clear deity. Why? Because he/she/it never existed in antiquity ... Dod is a dud deity, as dead as the Dodo梥o let's dump him/her/it in well-deserved oblivion, now and henceforth!

Doubtless this is the attempt of a clever man to be funny, but in truth it shows him up as a fool. Davies's proposal is not stupid and is probably the true explanation of the legend of David, and everything that Kitchen says to disparage Dod can be applied to David if the scriptures are taken to be romance not history.

Kitchen takes advantage of the silly sound of Dod, which we will inevitably pronounce with a short vowel, like the surname of another puerile comedian from Liverpool called Ken. The vowel represented by w is long, an oo sound, doubtless the reason we call it double u which is uu pronounced oo. We find it in English in words like who which is pronounced oo, or in woman which is really the same word as human or ooman (cf Italian Uomo). So, the word dwd is not dod but dood.

Kitchen is a great Egyptologist and knows of no temple to the god, Dood, anywhere in the ancient near east, evidently giving no thought to the possibility that the Israelites or Canaanites who wrote about their hero or god, Dood, might have been pronouncing in their own fashion the name of a god known by a different pronunciation elsewhere. Since the scene is not far from Egypt and the area, as Kitchen points out, was often under Egyptian occupation, perhaps the god, Dood, was originally Egyptian.

The Egyptian god who immediately springs to mind with a similar name is, in Greek form, Thoth or originally Djehuty. The th is close in pronunciation to d and the Egyptian tells us it is hard rather than soft as the Greek suggests. We pronounce the vowel short but the Egyption tells us it was long梙u. The final consonant, from the Egyptian, is less lisped than the Greek suggests. It was probably pronounced as "jude" or "dude." Doubtless this is how "Dwd" was pronounced, and the country of "Dwd" would have been Judah. In Egypt, Thoth is often depicted as a scribe, perhaps leading to the idea that David was a cultured man who wrote psalms.

Thoth is also associated with the moon. perhaps Dood was also, so that Dood and Solomon represent the sun and the moon. And, yes, there is very little concrete evidence of a magnificent Hebrew king called Solomon, either. Both David and Solomon reigned for 40 years, but no one will deny that 40 is a magic number in the Hebrew mythology, indeed, in the mythology of the ancient near east. This alone shows that both these monarchs were being magnified in their legends, just as Arthur and Robin Hood were.

[ Last edited by  johnconan at 2-8-2007 01:15 PM ]

johnconan

Semantics of David
Kitchen identifies Dood with dwt on his Amun temple wall and elsewhere. Is it significant or merely a coincidence that the Egyptian for Divine was dwat. The identification of these two words with David, virtually cries out that David was originally a god.

It will be no accident that David and Divine look to have the same root. We are talking about a time in history when the Indo-Europeans had rampaged all around effecting everyone from Ireland to India. One of the marks they made everywhere was in language梩hey originally spoke Sanskrit, and this is the root language of many of the languages of this area until today.

Divine comes from the Sanskrit daiva, in Persian daeva or deva, originally meaning a shining one and therefore a god. Zoroaster made the devas into devils in the interests of monotheism, raising Ormuzd to the position of the Almighty God. The Hindus have devatas which also are gods or lesser gods梥pirits and divyas which are supernatural powers.

Deva is related to the Sanskrit word dyaus which the Greeks propnounced as zeus and the Italians as deus or Jupiter because Dyaus Pitar was the Sanskrit God the Father.

No doubt our scholarly friends will tell us that the Hebrews were not Aryans but Semites, speaking quite a different language. Of course, the Semitic languages are different from the Indo-European group but many words were exchanged between the two groups at this time, especially in the ancient near east where the two sets of peoples had come into contact and rivalry.

The similarity between David and divine is reflected elsewhere in Hebrew. Davak means devoted to God and, in the related Semitic language, Arabic, Du'a or da'wa is to pray. Indeed, in Yiddish, davven is also to pray.

Kitchen makes a joke about the beloved of Dod presumably because it sounds daft and he knows that, in Hebrew, Dood (David) means beloved or lover. Who would be more beloved than your god or national hero? Or perhaps David began as a fertility god and was therefore literally a lover.

It is our habit to call our god by the name God. If dood originally was a Hebrew word for a god, perhaps the Hebrews of the time gave the name to their own national god. There were many gods in the world then and in Palestine too, as the scriptures repeatedly tell us, although the mindless monotheists cannot understand it. The god who came to be the god of the Jews and eventually the Christians was probably not the god of the Exodus, who was represented by the image of a bull, or a serpent or a smoking pillar.

Perhaps one of the gods they took from the period of Egyptian colonization, they called Thoth, but pronounced dood and later gave heroic deeds, or perhaps Dood was a god they met on the way, or when they arrived in Canaan. The Canaanities had a god they called Hadad, meaning "The Loved One." Wherever, he came from Dood was, to judge by semantics, a god, and the fact that he was reduced to the hero of a national saga, does not prove otherwise. Kitchen should stop joking and do his job properly, looking for the identity of Dood in other nations. When he finds him, he will have the answer to his fatuous questions about temples, shrines and so on devoted to Dood. The very word devoted might be proof that Dood was a widespread name for God in ancient times. Many such words precede their supposed derivation.

That his deeds were magnified in typical epic fashion is proved even in the scriptures themselves. David's greatest heroic deed was killing the Philistine champion, Goliath. Or was it? the Holy Book itself does not know. 2 Samuel tells us it was Elhanan who killed the giant. Common sense, but not absurd belief, should convince us that someone has attributed Elhanan's deed to David, the hero. That is how legends grow. Legendary deeds are never transferred to lesser men!

Incidentally, while Kitchen is joking about Dod being as dead as a dud dodo or whatever it was, does he realise that One of David's 30 champions was called Dodo, doubtless a variant or diminutive of Dood? I suppose we must assume that a scholar like him must know, but he sounds as though he did not. That's a hazard for clever people trying to be funny.

Monarchy
The Persians were intent on setting up a theocracy but there had been a period of monarchy in Israel and the administrator-priests had to explain it within their theocratic historical framework. If God's people wanted a king then they should have a king to teach them a lesson. Saul's history was written as a warning that a theocracy should not want kings. The institution of the monarchy in 1 Samuel chapters 7-13 was shown as a blasphemy against God leading to innumerable punishments, the overthrow of the monarchy and "Exile" (if there ever was one). Only the saviour of the Jews, Cyrus, allowed righteous Jews to "return" to their homeland!

Saul is depicted as a bad king, incompetent and disobedient to God. He reigned only two years according to 1 Samuel 13:1, and then God replaced him with his own choice. God designates David as king and the Merlin of the time, Samuel, anointed him.

johnconan

David and Solomon
Caetano Minette de Tillesse thought that the stories of the accession of David and Solomon served the purpose of unifying the disparate tribes of Israel. The author thinks the histories are genuinely tenth century BC because no later editor could have had the aim of uniting an already united kingdom. That is plainly false. The kingdom was not united after the "return" as the Bible makes clear and the Persian administrators had a purpose in using a historical romance to give a basis to unity. The later Hellenistic editors had even more reason at the time of the setting up of the independent Judah by the Hasmonaeans. The core of the romance might be a tenth century romance but the style alone is sufficient to show that it has been edited by a refined editor at a much later date. The obvious times were during the priesthood of the "second" temple and more especially during Hasmonaean times.

The stories of Solomon's and David's accessions, from 1 Sam 4:1b to 1 Kings 8, are strictly parallel to one another. The story of the Ark is the framework of both histories. These romances are reminiscent of the Arthurian legends in which the heroes are replaced by David and Solomon, Samuel is Merlin and the Ark is the Holy Grail.

The accession of David starts with the disaster of the Ark of Israel being taken by the Philistines. The Ark of the God of War, "the Lord of hosts," cannot save Israel from its enemies. The symbolism is that the foreign aggressors have usurped the god of Israel. The tide of history was to nationhood (1 Sam 8:5) but God was the proper king of Israel and he instructs Samuel to make it clear what hardships having a king will mean to them (1 Sam 8;7-8). Kingship is here tied to apostasy and that is what the Maccabees claimed to be fighting. All of this is expressed in terms of some early story of tribal nomads determining to be a people.

While the tenth century core might have had some substance, the later editors had their own purpose. The country had to be unified but the priests wanted a theocracy so that they were the real rulers, and the kings were disparaged. The fate of Israel was bracketed between the loss of the Ark to the Philistines for lack of a king, and the fall of the City to the Babylonians through the faults of the kings. "Exile" was blamed on the wrongs of the kings so that the priests could rule from the temple. It suited the Persians, of course, who preferred priests to princes, and the later Maccabees assumed the priesthood anyway. The Deuteronomic editor plainly mixed the bitter experience of the historic kingship into chapters 8 and 12 of 1 Samuel, and the Maccabaean editor slotted in the rebellious family in this story, over 1000 years earlier in history, calling him Phinehas instead of Mattathias.

Saul's reign was a failed attempt at kingship that ended in disaster for Israel (1 Sam 31). But the Merlin-like kingmaker, Samuel, had already anointed David, in the name of God, to replace Saul as king to deliver Israel from its enemies. David was crowned, conquered Jerusalem and brought the Ark to Zion. The successful king had to be the choice of the priestly god, Yehouah, although the barely united people of the time worshipped their own different gods, in fact.

The priests inadvertantly made a rod for their own backs. They wrote that David brought the Ark of God into the temple to give the legitimacy of God to priestly endeavours in the second temple. The Ark was the safeguard of Israel but David became the protector and saviour of the Ark. The first king approved by God, and supposedly the head of the dynasty, became a god himself梚f he was not already梕xpected to return as the Messiah and save Israel anew.

The return of the Ark to Jerusalem justified David's accession as king and the basis of the temple priesthood. Where the story of David's accession ends, the story of Solomon's accession begins. David left the Ark in a tent in Jerusalem, presumably because God lived with his people in a tent while the Israelites were in the wilderness. But the priests wanted to justify their temple and so a tent was not suitable for the Ark of God. Just as David had been divinely chosen through the prophet Samuel, so Solomon was chosen through the prophet Nathan to complete David's work by housing the Ark in a solid and immoveable building. 1 Kings 8:15-20 notes explicitly that all is now completed as "prophesied".

The accession of David is disturbed by the struggles of Saul and David and the accession of Solomon is disturbed by the revolt of Absalom, which forced David to flee, just as he had fled from Saul. Both cases end in a battle (1 Sam 31; 2 Sam 18) in which Saul and Absalom die, opening the way for the accession of David and Solomon respectively. Note the name Absalom who had to die!

Obviously, the events of David's accession are duplicated in the accession of Solomon. This should be sufficient to prove that we are not dealing with history here but romance.

Whose House?
The priests were interested in creating the idea that the House of God was the temple and not the House (dynasty) of David. The "prophecy" (2 Sam 7), David's prayer (2 Sam 8) and Solomon's prayer (1 Kings 8) all play on the word "House".

In 2 Samuel 7, "house" initially means temple (which David had the "intention" of building). But Nathan says that David will not build this "house", but that the Lord would build a "house" (descendant, dynasty) for him. This descendant (Solomon) will build the house (temple) for God. David's prayer (2 Sam 8) uses the very same word "house" seven times, now with the meaning of descendance (Solomon), and 1 Kings 8 also uses the same word with the meaning of the temple, which David could not build but which Solomon carried on to its completion.

So the word "house" is used: eight times in 2 Samuel 7; seven times in 2 Samuel 8; and eight times in 1 Kings 8, where it has the two meanings: the temple which should be built, and the descendant who would build the temple. The priests wanted to sow doubt in the minds of a people who considered themselves of the House of David (probably a memory of when David was their local god) and make them think that the new god, Yehouah, always meant the "house" to have been the temple. Even more so, they wanted to confuse the use of the name of the city which previously had been Beth Salem.

The stories of the accession of David and Solomon were composed with an overt apologetic aim梩o justify the setting up of the second temple priesthood as the will of God, and later the justification for the free state of the Hasmonaeans. God who used to reside in a tent now lived in the temple. The earlier Hebrew gods or heroes, David and Solomon, became the heroes of the saga and the founders of the Jewish state and its temple. The aim was to justify the temple but it succeeded so well that it gave credence to the make-believe history and David and Solomon began to be seen as real people in an Israelite Golden Age that never existed.

johnconan

David's Empire?
Solomon had an empire from Sinai to the Euphrates (1 Kg 4:21; Gen 15:18; Dt 1:7,11:24; Joshua 1:4; 2 Sam 8:3; 1 Chron 18:3), a meaningful area, giving him immense wealth, and a reputation for wisdom. (By a coincidence, it is the precise area of the Assyrian and then Persian province of "Beyond the River," Abarnahara. See below.) The empire was built by his father, David, and crumbled suddenly, for such a power, five years after he died when the Egyptian Pharaoh Shishak invaded Judah and captured it (2 Chron 12). Nevertheless, it had lasted for about 70 years and must have made its mark.

With his power and wealth Solomon built the temple (1 Kings 6), the Royal Palace (1 Kings 7:2-12), the walls of Jerusalem, the Millo (an unknown structure) (1 Kings 9:15,11:27), royal cities at Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer (1 Kings 9:15,17), store cities and cities for his horsemen and chariots (1 Kings 9:19). Solomon had 1400 chariots, 12,000 horsemen and had 40,000 stables for his horses (1 Kings 4:26;10:26). This was a substantial army and could only have been maintained by a substantial population and economy.

The dreamer's history of Israel, mainly a paraphrase of the bible with a commentary, was written by John Bright. This famous Christian historian thiks that Israel became a "ranking power of the contemporary world" "within a century." The hill country of Judah simply never could have had a sufficient population to support armies to conquer the whole of the Levant. Biblicists like to point to the weakness of Egypt and Assyria at the time, but these were massive countries compared with Israel and even in a weakened state could hardly have tolerated, without mention, upstarts forming incipient empires on their borders.

Had he been talking about Persia, he would have been believable. Persia could draw upon the large population (2.5 to 4 million, according to C McEvedy and R Jones in Atlas of World Population History) of the Iranian plateau and the skills in metallurgy of its peoples. The Israelites had a tiny population (55,000 on the West Bank in 1000 BC, according to I Finkelstein, and no more than 250,000 in the whole of Palestine, according to McEvedy and Jones) and no natural advantages. Bright seriously thinks that an impoverished, depopulated colony of Egypt could compete with Egypt (5 million) and Assyria (2 million). No serious historian could contemplate it, even supposing those great powers were in temporary decline as the apologists have to claim. Historians not besotted by the Holy Ghost must smell a rat, but for believers the rat is in the Holy Book so has the odour of sanctity.

The kingdom of David could never have even conquered the north of Canaan which was far more populated with more sophisticated people. If the empire of David was built by alliances and treaties rather than by warfare, it still fails to convince. Alliances were built under the threat of arms or through some perceived advantage, but what was it that made the nations to the north want to form alliances under the suzerainty of the feeble Israelites?

J M Miller and J Hayes (A History of Ancient Judah and Israel) of biblical historians only in 1986 begin to suspect something is phony about the biblical account of early Israel. They criticise the narratives of David and Solomon's reigns, describing them as "folk legend," "not to be read as historical record." It is an advance even if otherwise they paraphrase the bible as much as any other "biblical historian." Separately, Miller has admitted that there is no evidence for the monarchies of David and Solomon outside the bible, so everything that is written or speculated about these monarchs depends entirely on the bible.

Solomon is supposed to have married the daughter of a pharaoh, a privilege that was denied to the powerful kings of the Hittites. Moreover, no Egyptian record of this magnificent liaison has ever been found.

In the whole of the area supposedly covered by the kingdom of these mighty monarchs extant remains of it are "very poor." Kathleen Kenyon says that "the archaeological evidence is meagre in the extreme." The Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian and Hittite peoples in the ancient Near East left evidence of their empires including tablets or papyri, art and inscriptions on buildings and monuments. Yet the empire of David and Solomon is not mentioned in any Ancient Near Eastern source. Monumental reliefs and statues, palaces, ivories, jewelry and all the normal signs of the sophistication required to run an empire are lacking.

E Leach (E Leach and D A Laycock Eds, Structuralist Interpretation of Biblical Myth) says:

    There is no archaeological evidence for the existence of these heroes or for the occurrence of any of the events with which they were associated. If it were not for the sacredness of these stories, their historicity would certainly be rejected.

Leach also spots that we have in many of these biblical traditions, conflicts that reflect competing factions in the Persian period, expressed as a mythical allegorical history.

Nothing can be unequivocally attributed to Solomon, nor is there any trace of a great culture that he developed. Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer have been widely excavated and palaces, temples and fortifications have been found, but none mention Solomon and the important buildings seem to be dated before his supposed time and after. Cartouches of the Eighteenth Dynasty Pharaoh, Amenhotep III, were common in deposits where seals of Solomon might have been expected.

The Davidic empire seems to be modelled on great empires of the Ancient Near east, notably the neo-Assyrian or neo-Babylonian, showing that the whole was composed after those empires died, when they were incorporated into the empire of the Medes and Persians. In its sudden emergence from a poor hill country after the wanderings of its people, the empire of David is a bijou image of the swift emergence of the Persian empire in the sixth century BC, after the Persians had wandered for several hundred years. The Persians had migrated, like the Israelites into their ultimate homeland on an arid plateau, and then had quickly become an empire through the military skill of Cyrus the Great, whom David parallels in his similar deeds. David is shown as an Israelite Cyrus defeating neighbouring Goliaths. Furthermore, the empire's extent is the precise extent of the Persian satrapy of Abarnahara.

The expression used to delineate the north eastern boundary of the Empire of David (1 Kings 4:21,24) is the expression, Eber-ha-Nahar, "The Shores of the River" (Euphrates), used by the Assyrians from the seventh century onwards (perhaps earlier) and then by the Persians梐s Abarnahara. Since there seems little reason why the Assyrians should have been involved in writing the Jewish scriptures, the conclusion is that the words came from Persian writers. It was therefore written from the fifth century BC. The absence of any references in ancient near eastern annals to such supposedly great kings as David and Solomon makes this fifth century work begin to look like deliberate myth-making.

The Philistines of the scriptures seem to be of the same culture as the Israelites of Canaan and seem to speak the same Semitic language as no suggestions occur of problems of understanding, interpretation or translation. They also worship Dagon, a corn god, considered by the Canaanites as a son of Baal. Since the Philistines were among the "Peoples of the Sea" who only occupied the coastal area from about the time of Rameses II when the Israelites too were moving into Canaan, they can hardly have had linguistic and cultural identity or even similarities with the hordes of escaping slaves.

By the time of the Persians 700 years later, the Philistines had been culturally assimilated into the regional culture of the Semitic Canaanites. Furthermore, the original Sea People at the time of Rameses were essentially mercenary soldiers, not settlers, selling themselves to the Pharaohs for their military skills. The Egyptian texts depict relationships between Philistines and Egyptians as mainly peaceful, as would be expected if they were allies. Doubtless, it is because they were allies of the Egyptians that the Persians showed the Philistines as the enemies of the Israelites. The episode of David and Goliath (1 Sam 17) is revealed as of Persian provenance from its vocabulary.

David conquers Jerusalem and brings the Ark there having retrieved it from the Philistines who had captured it but suffered so much misfortune as a consequence that they had abandoned it. David's kingdom however is shown as friendly with the Phoenicians, who were allies of the Persians in the fifth century and the suppliers of their sailors and navies.

johnconan

Solomon

The early part of Iron Age II is thought to represent the "GoldenAge" of the 10th century kings David and solomon梱et its material cultureis of a surprisingly low level.

Peter James

The evidence for the empire of Solomon is deceptively abundant. It is abundantin the Jewish scriptures and nowhere else! Yet, biblicist archaeologists,who would be struck off the register if they were doctors, have "doctored"so much archaeological evidence that religious punters today think Solomonis a well established historical figure. You will often meet expressionslike "a wall of the time of Solomon" as if there was no doubt about itbecause the name Solomon was scratched on every brick. What these "scholars"mean is a wall dated to the tenth century BC when they believe that Solomonlived!Donald Redford, an author and leading authority on the era, writes infrustration at the absence of anything to verify the biblical stories:

Such topics as the foreign policy of David and Solomon, Solomon'strade in horses or his marriage to Pharaoh's daughter must remain themesfor midrash and fictional treatment.

Philip Davies (In Search of Ancient Israel) discounts any possibilityof匸indent]卆 Davidic empire administered from Jerusalem

johnconan

Was Solomon a God?
So, the temple to Solomon did exist, but it was a Pagan temple toa Pagan god! El-Amarna letters 74 and 290 mention "Bit-NIN.IB," at firstsight a reference to Assyria (House of Nineveh), but Professor Jules Lewy,an Assyriologist, said it was better read as Bit Shulman梩he House of Solomon!The king of Damascus had commanded his chiefs, in letter 74, to attackthe king of Jerusalem, ordering them to "assemble in Bit Shulman." It mustbe near Jerusalem or even in it, if the plot was an assassination not afield attack.In letter 290, the king of Jerusalem complained to the Pharaoh thatthe Apiru were invading the land, adding:

卆nd now, in addition, the capital of the country of Jerusalem梚tsname is Bit Shulman梩he king抯 city, has broken away匸/indent]Towns in the ancient near east were often called after the ruling god (orvice versa). Lewy concluded that Jerusalem was also known at that timeby the name "Temple of Shulman"

johnconan

Who Wrote It?
According to  V Harris (Ancient Literacy) widespread literacydoes not happen by accident but requires central commitment and investment,usually by government, and the setting up of a complex social network ofsupport. Such a social structure would be needed to allow any substantialand accurate reporting of history such as emerged even in Greece only inthe fifth century BC, with Herodotus and Thucidydes, yet the Israeliteso-called Court Historian of Kings supposedly lived in 1000 BC ina society that has left no visible trace! It shows it is fiction梐 romancewritten much later, and not by the natives.The fault of all apologists, puzzled by a fictional history that isfar from glorious, containing many incidents derogating the people andtheir kings, is that they take the history to be the work of the Jews themselves,and expect it to be laudatory. People, especially in those days, do notpresent critical histories of themselves. Jews and Christians have to realize,though, that stories written by a conqueror about a subject people neednot be laudatory. They were written as propaganda to shame the people ofCanaan into behaving the way the Persians wanted. The history thereforeshowed the immense potential the people had if only they would behave inthe right way!
They had been introduced to the universal God of Heaven in a uniquelyprivileged way in the distant past but their subsequent history showedthem as consistently apostatizing against this great god. The god reactedby having to punish them repeatedly, culminating in having them deportedto distant parts of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. But the greatand generous god was giving them another chance through the action of hisearthly agent, the Persian king, who was returning deported people to theirrightful homes and restoring the proper worship of their gods. They weregod's saviours of people and restorers of gods.
The native people naturally began totally unfamiliar with this new notionof a god and will have thoroughly opposed it. So, they were shown as unrepententsinners, opposed not to the Persians but to the God of Heaven, who wouldpunish them accordingly. Among the remnants of history and the romances,the "returners" told a story of the pure religion revealed by God as beingcorrupted by contact with the Canaanite religions. Stories like those ofDavid and Solomon, and the adulterated history of the divided monarchy,were meant to hammer home the message of potential greatness constantlyrejected through ungodly behaviour. Even their greatest kings finshed upapostates. Many lesser ones were thoroughly wicked.
J Hughes (Secrets of the Times: Myth and History in Biblical Chronology)says that the stories of Judges and Samuel are fiction writtento give a 1000 year background to the Jewish province set up by the Persians.
Historians know that genealogies are often unreliable because thosewho commission them are more interested in claims in the present ratherthan any past actuality. In short, they are often produced to justify thepresent. That is just as true of Egyptian genealogies as it is for thegenealogies given in the gospels. Actual blood relationships in the pastare subordinated to present needs, to prove a legitimate claim for example.It is no less remarkable that native Canaanite chroniclers suddenly developeda preference for accurate genealogies than it is that they inexplicablyevolved an ethical religion. Both were imposed from outside.
In the history of the monarchies, good and apostate kings alternate,a device meant to show that previous generations had repeatedly come backfrom error and apostasy to the true God, so that this generation couldfeel good about returning to the fold as others did before them. They werethe remnant, the few Israelites who remained true and pure while othersstayed with their idols. The supporters of the new religion and those whorepented their apostasy were justified against those who refused to abandontheir age old gods and goddesses.
In these stories the king is also divine, though commentators will rarelyobserve upon it. The only proper king was the Shahanshah, a manifestationof God on earth. In Psalms 45:7, the king is addressed as God! In1 Kings 21:11-14, those who blaspheme "God and the king" are put to death.In 2 Samuel 23:17, Elyon the Canaanite high god elevated the king (David)above men. The king has the attributes of a fertility god in Psalms72:6-7,16. He is a priest-king, Melchizedek, in charge of the cult as wellas the country!
Plainly in the Hellenistic period, and notably in the Maccabaean period,these stories were being reworked again to render the Jews and their kingsmuch better people than they were shown as by the Persian administrators.David and Solomon in Chronicles seem much more saintly than in Samueland Kings.

johnconan

source:
King David and King Solomon: History or Myth?