By Leon Cohen
I am just as interested in biblical archeology as Jonathan Tobin of the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent; and I, too, was fascinated to read of Dr. Eilat Mazar’s recent discovery of a big ancient building in Jerusalem that might have been King David’s palace.
I fully appreciate how archeology bolsters the Jewish people’s claim to the land of Israel and helps to justify the existence of today’s state of Israel.
I also am aware of the pseudo-scholars who seek to discredit the Hebrew Bible’s historical sections more because of anti-Israel, anti-Semitic and pro-Palestinian bias than because of objective assessment of the evidence.
But Tobin’s article here claims too much for Mazar’s discoveries at present and distorts some of the thinking of Israeli archeologists like Israel Finkelstein.
Above all, Tobin appears to underestimate the difficulty of figuring out what really happened in history and to embody what semanticist S. I. Hayakawa called “two-valued orientation” or others have called the “either-or fallacy” — the claim that there are only two alternatives, complete truth or complete falsehood, in evaluating the Bible or any other historical account. In so doing, he mimics the claims of the bigots he denounces.
I don’t know any more about Mazar’s discoveries than Tobin does. I’m sure we’ve both read the same sketchy news accounts about it, rather than the detailed archeological report. But what has been reported so far shows that the find is suggestive, but hardly conclusive.
Obscure character
At issue is whether David really ruled over a huge unified kingdom with Jerusalem as its big urban capital; or whether David was more like a small-scale chieftain and Jerusalem was actually a minor village at his time.
(That some important Israelite named David existed is incontestable to all but the most die-hard anti-ancient Israel bigots ever since the find in 1993 of the Tel Dan inscription with the words “House of David” on it.)
Finkelstein, in the fascinating 2001 book “The Bible Unearthed” that he wrote with Neil Asher Silberman, contends that the archeological evidence so far suggests the minor village.
He also points out how difficult it is to accurately date archeological finds. In fact, he wrote, structures at sites like Meggido that had been attributed to King Solomon, David’s son and successor, have been misdated and actually were built by later, and more prosperous and powerful, kings of Judah.
So to say that the building Mazar found must come from David’s time is a big leap that needs much more supporting evidence. That some earlier Iron Age I pottery lies underneath it gives only general indications of the time of the structure.
Besides, even if Jerusalem had been a minor town, it might still have contained a few big structures — say, a temple plus the chieftain’s palace or a government building or a warehouse.
One should not jump to conclusions either about the find of a “bullah” or clay seal that has on it the name of a person mentioned in the Bible. This person, Jehucal son of Shelemiah, is an obscure character found only twice in the book of Jeremiah (37:3 and 38:1). No real evidence so far supports identifying him as the bullah’s owner, which could refer to someone else with that name.
But what Tobin really misses is that whether David’s Jerusalem was a small village or not is almost beside the point. Even if the Bible’s narrative is not completely accurate in every detail — and according to Finkelstein and others, archeology shows that it is not — it doesn’t have to be.
Certain truths are clearly supported by archeology and reputable historical scholarship: There really were ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah; and the latter really was located around, and had its political and religious capital in, Jerusalem. Judah’s fortunes and relative size and power really did fluctuate between around 1000 and 586 BCE when the Babylonians destroyed it.
And we are Jews and our religion is called Judaism today because in the kingdom of Judah our ancestors began a process of creating and preserving texts that after some centuries of evolution and editing have come down to us as the Hebrew Bible.
That these texts do not perfectly reflect the historical truth shouldn’t be surprising, given that the forms in which we have them were created centuries after the events. Even contemporary accounts of more recent historical events can be puzzling.
One of my favorite historians of the American Civil War, Bruce Catton, once reported how confused he became comparing Union and Confederate officers’ reports of Antietam, written days or weeks after the battle. All these men seemed to be fighting different battles at the same place and time.
But such detail discrepancies don’t make anybody doubt that the battle of Antietam actually happened, given the amount of mutually reinforcing evidence that it did. The Bible should be treated the same way.
Moreover, as good scientists, Finkelstein and others like him would change their theories if new evidence is found showing that they were wrong — such as an authentic ancient bullah with the Hebew words “Dovid melech Yisrael” (David king of Israel) on it. That is how science and real intellectual integrity work.
It is also certain that pro-Palestinian “archeologists” and “historians” would not change their minds even if Mazar’s building turned out really to be David’s palace. That is how propaganda and demagoguery and bigotry work.
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