Upload
antonio-albert
View
217
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
1/90
Professor Eric H. Cline
THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
A HISTORY OF
A NCIENT ISRAEL :FROM THE P ATRIARCHS
THROUGH THE R OMANS
COURSE GUIDE
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
2/90
Recorded Books™ is a trademark of
Recorded Books, LLC. All rights reserved.
A History of Ancient Israel:From the Patriarchs Through the Romans
Professor Eric H. ClineThe George Washington University
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
3/90
A History of Ancient Israel:
From the Patriarchs Through the Romans
Professor Eric H. Cline
Executive Producer
John J. Alexander
Executive Editor
Donna F. Carnahan
RECORDING
Producer - David Markowitz
Director - Matthew Cavnar
COURSE GUIDE
Editor - James Gallagher
Design - Edward White
Lecture content ©2006 by Eric H. ClineCourse guide ©2006 by Recorded Books, LLC
72006 by Recorded Books, LLC
Cover image: King David brings the Ark of the Covenant to Jersusalem © Clipart.com
#UT078 ISBN: 978-1-4193-8872-9
All beliefs and opinions expressed in this audio/video program and accompanying course guide
are those of the author and not of Recorded Books, LLC, or its employees.
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
4/90
Course Syllabus
A History of Ancient Israel:
From the Patriarchs Through the Romans
About Your Professor...................................................................................................4
Introduction...................................................................................................................5
Lecture 1 Abraham and the Patriarchs..................................................................6
Lecture 2 The Exodus and Egypt ........................................................................13
Lecture 3 The Conquest of Canaan: Israelites, Philistines,
and Phoenicians ..................................................................................20
Lecture 4 King David in History and Tradition .....................................................25
Lecture 5 King Solomon in History and Tradition ................................................31
Lecture 6 Excursus: The Ark of the Covenant.....................................................37
Lecture 7 The Kingdom of Israel and the Omride Dynasty .................................42
Lecture 8 The Kingdom of Judah Until the Time of Sennacherib .......................48
Lecture 9 Neo-Babylonians and the End of the Kingdom of Judah ....................54
Lecture 10 Persians and Greeks in Judea ............................................................61
Lecture 11 The Coming of the Romans and Christianity ......................................66
Lecture 12 Excursus: Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls.....................................71
Lecture 13 From the First Jewish Revolt and the Destruction of
Jerusalem to Bar Kochba and the
Second Jewish Rebellion ....................................................................77
Lecture 14 Excursus: Masada, What Really Happened?......................................82
Course Materials ........................................................................................................87
3
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
5/90
4
P h o t o c o u r t e s y o f E r i c H .
C l i n e
About Your Professor
Eric H. Cline
Dr. Eric H. Cline, a former Fulbright scholar, is chair of the Department of
Classical and Semitic Languages and Literatures at The George Washington
University in Washington, D.C., where he holds a joint appointment as an
associate professor in both the Classics/Semitics Department and the
Anthropology Department.
A prolific researcher, Dr. Cline is the author or editor of seven books and
has more than seventy articles and book reviews to his credit. His books
include The Battles of Armageddon: Megiddo and the Jezreel Valley from the
Bronze Age to the Nuclear Age, which received the 2001 Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) Publication Award for Best Popular Book on
Archaeology; Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel;
Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: International Trade and the Late Bronze Age
Aegean; Amenhotep III: Perspectives on His Reign (coeditor); The Aegean
and the Orient in the Second Millennium BC; Thutmose III: A New Biography ;
and a book for young adults entitled The Ancient Egyptian World ( coauthor
with Jill Rubalcaba).
Professor Cline received the Morton Bender Award for Teaching at The
George Washington University in 2004 and the Archaeological Institute of America’s National Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award for 2005. He
currently teaches a wide variety of courses, including Troy and the Trojan
War, History of Ancient Greece, History of Rome, and Art and Archaeology of
the Aegean Bronze Age.
Professor Cline has lectured at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington,
D.C., the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Skirball Museum
in Los Angeles. His research has been featured in the Washington Post, the
New York Times, US News & World Report, the London Daily Telegraph, the
London Mirror, and many other publications around the world.
In addition, Professor Cline has been featured on numerous radio and
television broadcasts, such as the BBC World Services, National Public
Radio, the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic Channel, and the
History Channel.
Dr. Cline is married, with two children, two cats, and varying numbers of fish.
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
6/90
Introduction
Israel conjures up myriad associations for peoples of all cultures and reli-
gious backgrounds. Inextricably associated with the world’s three most promi-nent religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), Israel is steeped in history
and conflict, much of which is known through the tales of biblical figures such
as Moses, David, Solomon, and, of course, Jesus Christ.
But how much of the Bible can be relied upon as accurate history? And how
much of the biblical record can be verified through archaeology? Esteemed
professor, researcher, and author Eric H. Cline of The George Washington
University addresses these and other questions in this fascinating series
of lectures.
A History of Ancient Israel follows the course of Israel’s history from
Abraham and the Patriarchs through the Exodus, Exile, and two great Jewish
rebellions, encompassing a rich history that increases one’s understanding of
Israel’s place in the world today. In addition to this storied region’s tumultuous
past, Professor Cline delves into such compelling digressions as lectures on
the Ark of the Covenant, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and controversy surrounding
the fabled mass suicide at Masada.
©
C l i p a r t . c
o m
5
King David brings the Ark of
the Covenant to Jersusalem
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
7/90
ny attempt to teach the history of ancient Israel depends
primarily on the biblical record. Some say the Bible is a
completely accurate and adequate account. Others view it
as a collection of folk tales and miracle stories. The biblicalwriters themselves did not claim to base their work on fac-
tual records, because they were not as concerned with
what actually happened as with conveying the Word of God. On the other
hand, there is a lot of information in the Bible that can be correlated with
independent sources.
The Holy Land
The land of ancient Israel and Judah was known before the Israelites got
there as the land of Canaan, which is what the Egyptians called it. Thisregion is a coastal corridor, positioned between great empires for most of its
history. To the north were the empires in ancient Mesopotamia, modern-day
Iraq and northern Syria, which housed the Assyrians and the Babylonians
throughout time, and the Hittites, who dwelled in Turkey. To the south were
©
R e c o r d e d B o o k s ,
L L C
L E C T U R E O N E
The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Hershel Shanks’s (ed.)
Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple
(chapter 1: “The Patriarchal Age: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”).
Lecture 1:
Abraham and the Patriarchs
6
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
8/90
the Egyptians, not only
King Tut and the people
of the New Kingdom, but
Egyptians from even ear-
lier. Later came the
Greeks and the Romansfrom Egypt and else-
where in the ancient
Near East, so ancient
Israel was many times
caught between two
powers.
This area is frequently
referred to as the Holy
Land. That designationcovers the modern states
of Israel and Jordan, for
the most part, but the borders change dramatically over the course of the his-
tory of this region. The Mediterranean is always the western boundary, but
the eastern boundary is more indeterminate. Sometimes it lies on the Jordan
River, and sometimes it lies further east, where the region gives way to
desert. Down south is the Sinai, which historically formed a barrier to settle-
ment. To the north is difficult hill country, where modern-day Israel now gives
way to modern-day Lebanon.East to west, this region is divided into five different zones, mostly by topog-
raphy and climate. The westernmost is the Coastal Plain, next to the
Mediterranean Sea. The plain itself is broken up into the Plain of Sharon, the
Plain of Dor, the Plain of Acco, and the Plain of Phoenicia.
Eastward, the second zone is the so-called Western Hills. These foothills,
known as the Shephelah, rise up from the Coastal Plain to the central ridge
of the country. They were heavily wooded in antiquity and heavily settled.
The higher ground, just above these, is known as the Hill Country. This is
where ancient Israel and Judah is located, and this is where the classic trinityof Mediterranean food is found: wheat, olives, and vines. Along the summit
line of this ridge are important towns from the Bronze Age and Iron Age (for
example, Hebron, Jerusalem, Shechem, Beth-shean). The highest peak
along these hills is about four thousand feet above sea level.
Slightly further east is the Rift Valley, the third zone, one of the deepest
points on the face of the earth. The Rift Valley is a major structural rift that
runs up from East Africa and forms the Red Sea, the Dead Sea, the Jordan
Valley, Lake Tiberias, and Lake Huleh.
Continuing east is the fourth zone, known as the Eastern Hills, which are
high and rugged. These are where the Moabites, the Ammonites, and others
mentioned in the Hebrew Bible lived.
Beyond the Eastern Hills is the fifth zone, the desert of Syria, Jordan, and
Arabia. This formed the eastern border of the area for much of its history.
Frequently, the eastern border was at the Jordan River, rather than the
desert, but this is as far as this course will extend geographically.
7
©
R e c o r d e d B o o k s ,
L L C ; B a c k g r o u n d : ©
N A S A
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
9/90
L E C T U R E O N E
8
Early History
The biblical books of Genesis through 2 Kings provide a continuous account
of Israelite and Judean history from their earliest times until the fall of
Jerusalem in 586 BCE. Genesis through Joshua tell about the origins of the
Israelites and how they came to possess the land of Canaan. The story
begins with the Creation in Genesis. By the end of the Book of Joshua, thepeople are at rest in the Land of Promise.
The Hebrew Bible is the only ancient source that directly addresses the
question of Israelite origins. After the Great Flood, which Noah survived in his
ark, the descendants of Noah’s three sons began to multiply. They migrated
to the land of Shinar, which is believed to be in lower Mesopotamia, the land
of Iraq today. There they began to construct a great tower that was supposed
to reach the heavens. To stop the project, God ordained diversity, hence the
Tower of Babel. Not able to understand each other anymore, the descen-
dants of Noah’s three sons scattered to different parts of the world.
Among the distant descendants of Shem in the ninth generation is a tent
dweller named Abraham. Abraham’s father had left Ur of the Chaldees to
migrate to the land of Canaan, but rather than migrating immediately,
Abraham’s father settled in the vicinity of a place called Haran in Upper
Mesopotamia. It was only after his father’s death that Abraham migrated from
Haran to Canaan, where he lived as a sojourner in the land; that is, he resist-
ed integration into local society. God promised Abraham that someday the
whole land would belong to his descendants and that they would be great in
number, so eventually he made a permanent camp near Hebron and had twosons. The older son was
Ishmael, and he became
the father of the desert folk,
but his favorite and the only
son of his wife Sarah was
Isaac, born when Abraham
was one hundred years old
and Sarah ninety.
In the meantime, Lot,
Abraham’s nephew, settled
in one of the cities of the
plains, in the vicinity of the
Dead Sea. He barely
escaped with his two
daughters when God
destroyed several of the
cities with fire and brim-
stone. It was during this
time that Lot’s wife was
turned into a pillar of salt,
while they were escaping
from Sodom and Gomorrah.
Lot’s daughters gave birth
to two sons, who became
©
C l i p a r t . c
o m
Lot’s wife is turned into a pillar of salt after looking back on
the burning Sodom and Gomorrah.
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
10/90
9
the ancestors of the Ammonites and the Moabites. After Sarah died,
Abraham remarried and had additional children, the ancestors of various
Arabic tribes. Abraham himself died at the age of 175. Before he died, he
obtained a wife for his son Isaac, and Isaac then went on to have children of
his own.
Abraham and His Descendants
If Abraham’s father took the journey from Ur in Mesopotamia up to Haran
near modern Turkey, he would have followed the course of the Euphrates
River, which was a known international trade route at that time, and it is quite
possible that he settled down in a region in either north Syria or south
Turkey. There are villages in the region today that still look much as they did
four thousand years ago. Abraham also fits into some of the general migra-
tions during this time period. It is quite conceivable that Abraham’s and his
father’s movements should be seen in the light of these major migrations,
which take place at the beginning of the second millennium BCE.
Abraham’s descendants then migrated into the land of Egypt. This falls into
the general historical era of the Hyksos, a group of people who ruled Egypt
from 1720 to 1550 BCE. Abraham himself fits well into what was happening
during the early second millennium BCE, that is, a breakdown of powerful
city-states that had flourished during the third millennium (disruptions
occurred in Egypt and in Mesopotamia). Some of the disruptions of urban life
that took place in the early second millennium have been attributed to a
group called the Amorites, and they begin to be mentioned in textual docu-ments of the Mesopotamian city-states.
Building on the Evidence
In the 1930s, William F. Albright, one of the most famous historians studying
ancient Israel, built upon the artifactual and documentary evidence. Using
texts from later Amorite states of the Middle Bronze Age, Albright and other
scholars formulated what is known as the Amorite hypothesis, which states
that the Hebrew Patriarchs entered the area of Canaan as a part of wide-
spread Amorite movements that disrupted the whole region during the early
second millennium BCE. They said that the patriarchal narratives told in the
Hebrew Bible should be seen accordingly, that is, against the background of
early Amorite society.
An early second millennium date for Abraham and Isaac and Jacob essen-
tially agrees with the chronology found in the early Hebrew Bible, that is, in
1 Kings 6.1, which says that the Exodus took place about 480 years before
Solomon’s Temple was built. In Exodus 12, the Israelites stayed in Egypt for
about 430 years. This means that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob would have
been roaming around the ancient Near East sometime during the nineteenthcentury BCE, that is, the beginning of the second millennium, because
Solomon’s Temple was built about the year 960. If 480 years are added to
get to the Exodus, and then another 430 years as the length of time the
Israelites stayed in Egypt, the year would be 1870 BCE. This was during the
time when the Amorites were moving around the ancient Near East, and it
also would allow the Hebrews to be placed in Egypt during the so-called
Hyksos period, when Egypt was ruled by foreigners. The stories of
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
11/90
L E C T U R E O N E
10
Abraham’s migration from Mesopotamia to Canaan, and then the later migra-
tions of Jacob into Egypt, make sense when viewed against the political con-
ditions of the early second millennium BCE and the geographical migrations
taking place at that time. Moreover, the names of the Patriarchs and some of
the customs that are reflected in the Hebrew Bible are quite similar to those
that are mentioned in second millennium Mesopotamian texts, such as writ-ings from the cities of Mari and Nuzi.
There are a number of problems with the Amorite hypothesis. One is the
idea that the disruption of urban life in Canaan at the end of the Early Bronze
Age and the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age was the result of wide-
spread Amorite movements. This is by no means universally accepted by all
archaeologists and historians, so to say that Abraham was part of this
Amorite movement is to stack one hypothesis upon another. Moreover, the
Amorite hypothesis creates problems for the associated genealogical data;
for example, Genesis 15 assumes a four-generation stay in Egypt, andMoses is identified as a fourth-generation descendant of Jacob (Jacob to Levi
to Amram to Moses). If the genealogical data is to fit with the chronological
data, each generation has to last an average of one hundred years. Usually,
a generation lasts thirty years, so these people must have lived an awfully
long time if the genealogy is to be squared with the chronology.
A second argument against the Amorite hypothesis is that the parallels
between biblical names and customs and those that are known from biblical
texts become less impressive in light of the fact that the names and customs
involved are not confined to the second millennium, but are characteristic of the first millennium as well. If the Hebrew Bible is not written down until the
eighth or even the seventh century BCE, then all kinds of things might not be
accurate. So some historians and archaeologists say that the parallels are
actually relatively useless for pinpointing a particular period and calling it the
Patriarchal Age.
Finally, the biblical tradition never associates the Patriarchs with the
Amorites, but rather with the Arameans. So the Amorite hypothesis should be
called the Aramean hypothesis, but it’s not, because they’re not wandering
around just yet. And some of the other groups mentioned in these biblical tra-ditions cannot be placed in an early second millennium BCE context. They are
going to come later in the second millennium or even in the first millennium.
Possibilities for the Patriarchs
What are the possibilities then, in looking at Abraham and the Patriarchs?
One possibility is that the Amorite hypothesis is correct and that Abraham
and the Patriarchs date to the early years of the Middle Bronze Age.
The other possibility is that Abraham and the Patriarchs date to a little bit
later in the Middle Bronze Age, maybe into the seventeenth or the sixteenth
centuries BCE. This is definitely a possibility, though it cannot be corroborat-
ed. The third possibility is that Abraham and the Patriarchs date to the Early
Iron Age, that is, the early years of the first millennium, and that the writers of
the Hebrew Bible simply placed them more than a thousand years earlier to
concoct a made-up history of ancient Israel.
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
12/90
11
The fourth hypothesis is that there were no Patriarchs, that Abraham and
Isaac never existed. They were simply made up to illustrate particular stories
and were part of an invented history. How does one choose between these
hypotheses? The Amorite hypothesis is a likely one, because the movements
of Abraham and his descendants are most possible in the early years of the
second millennium BCE. Also, Abraham and his father must have been mov-ing around Mesopotamia in the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries BCE in
order to get Jacob and the Israelites down into Egypt by the seventeenth cen-
tury BCE and make everything else fit. The early second millennium may be
the best time for Abraham and the Patriarchs, but there is no archaeological
evidence that Abraham and the Patriarchs ever actually existed. That’s not to
say that they did not, however, because absence of evidence does not mean
evidence of absence.
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
13/90
1. How does the breakdown of city-states in the early second millennium
BCE match with the proposed migration schedule for Abraham?
2. What are some of the problems with the Amorite hypothesis?
Shanks, Hershel, ed. Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman
Destruction of the Temple. 2nd rev. ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1999.
Finkelstein, Israel, and Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed:
Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred
Texts. New York: The Free Press, 2001.Geoghegan, Jeffrey C., and Michael M. Homan. The Bible for Dummies. New
York: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2003.
Mazar, Amihai. Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10,000–586 BCE . New
York: Doubleday, 1992.
Rast, Walter E. Through the Ages in Palestinian Archaeology: An Introductory
Handbook . Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992.
Questions
Suggested Reading
FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING
Other Books of Interest
L E C T U R E O N E
12
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
14/90
he story of the Exodus is filled with problems and ques-
tions similar to some of those concerning the Patriarchs.
After Sarah died at the age of 127, Abraham remarried and
had additional offspring by his second wife and by several
concubines. These became the ancestors of various Arabic
tribes. Before Abraham died, he chose a wife for his son
Isaac from their kinsmen. Isaac married Rebecca and settled near Beer-
sheba, in the southern part of the territory, and Isaac and Rebecca gave birth
to twins, Esau and Jacob.
Out of Egypt
Esau became the ancestor of the Edomites, while Jacob fathered twelve
sons by his Aramean wives and concubines, and these twelve sons becamethe ancestors of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
One of Jacob’s sons, Joseph, was sold as a slave by his brothers and was
carried off into Egypt. While he was in prison there, Joseph displayed his abil-
ity to interpret dreams, gained his freedom, and eventually became the chief
administrative officer over Egypt, second only to the Pharaoh. Meanwhile,
there was a famine in Canaan that forced Jacob and his family to emigrate to
Egypt in search of food. Joseph arranged for them to settle in a place called
Goshen, and in Egypt, the families of the twelve brothers multiplied into the
Twelve Tribes.
Eventually, a Pharaoh came into power who knew not Joseph, and he
reduced the Hebrews to slavery. God commanded Moses (who, although a
Hebrew, had grown up in the Pharaoh’s court after being rescued as a baby
from the Nile) to lead the people out of Egypt and back to the land that God
had promised Abraham.
The escape from Egypt by Moses and the Hebrews is surrounded by spec-
tacular miracles, including the Ten Plagues that God sent upon Egypt. After
each of the plagues, the Pharaoh agreed to allow the Hebrews to leave, butthen God would harden the Pharaoh’s heart so that he’d change his mind
and thus invite another plague upon his land. These plagues included blood,
frogs, lice, flies, pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and the slaying of
the firstborn.
When the Hebrews did finally manage to leave Egypt, the Pharaoh, his heart
having been hardened once again, assembled his army and chased the peo-
The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Hershel Shanks’s (ed.)
Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple
(chapter 2: “Israel in Egypt: The Egyptian Sojourn and the Exodus”).
Lecture 2:
The Exodus and Egypt
13
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
15/90
L E C T U R E T W O
14
ple as far as the Red Sea. God parted the waters and allowed the Hebrews
to cross on dry land, but when the Pharaoh and his army followed, God
caused the waters to return and destroyed the Egyptian army. The story in
the Hebrew Bible is told in a number of different ways. A couple of different
sources seem to have been combined in antiquity within the account of
Exodus. Scholars today refer to the strands within the Hebrew Bible as theYawist, the Elohist, and the Priestly sources. These refer to the characters in
the stories or the people who wrote them down.
Forty Years in the Desert
The Hebrews made their journey to Canaan in stages. God sent a pillar of
cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to indicate when they should move
their camp and where they should pitch their tents. Along the way, he fed
them with quail and manna in the wilderness. After three months, the people
reached a mountain in the wilderness of Sinai. They remained encamped at
the foot of the mountain, while Moses climbed the mountain several times
and spoke to God directly. Up there, along with seeing a burning bush, he
received from God extensive legal and cultic instructions and regulations.
These laws, instructions, and regulations were put into practice with the
understanding that they were to be followed by the people from that time on.
And indeed, these are the laws that have governed the Jewish people ever
since, and even had an impact upon Christianity and Islam. These are not
only the famous Ten Commandments, which are unique in history, but also
more than six hundred other laws found in the Hebrew Bible, which deter-
mine, among other things, how one remains kosher and which are still fol-lowed by people today. The Hebrews were still encamped at the mountain
when they celebrated the first Passover, that is, the anniversary of the
escape from Egypt.
On the twentieth day of the second month of the second year, the cloud that
God had sent was taken up, and it was time for the people to move on. They
set out again and eventually came to a place called Kadesh in the southwest
of the Negev. From there, they sent out twelve spies to explore the Promised
Land. The spies returned with glowing reports about the land’s fertility and its
produce (the land of milk and honey), but they also warned that the cities
were too strong to be conquered and that the land was inhabited by giants.
While they were still wandering around, Moses died in the region now called
Transjordan, east of Israel, and Joshua assumed leadership of the people.
He began preparations for an invasion of the western part of Canaan. The
crossing of the Jordan River and the conquest of Jericho were essentially rit-
ual operations surrounded by miracles—and at the same time were quite
good military operations.
Moses and the Hebrews, soon to be named the Israelites, wandered aroundthe region for forty years. Did they go on a northern route, up near the coast?
Did they go on a middle route across the Sinai, or did they go far down south?
These routes are all possible, and yet the northern route is most likely out of
the picture, because the Egyptians had a series of forts across this route. The
middle route is probably out too, going across the middle of the Sinai, because
it is in the middle of the desert. It’s really only the very southern route, going
almost all the way to Sharm El Sheikh, that makes the most sense for where
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
16/90
15
the Hebrews, or Israelites, could have been for forty years. So most archaeol-
ogists and historians assume that Moses and the Hebrews wandered around
the very southern part of the Sinai for much of these forty years.
Holes in the Desert
How much of this biblical story can be believed, and how much has beencorroborated by archaeology or other sources? In brief, there is the biblical
narrative and little else. It may be a matter of faith to believe that the Exodus
and everything else took place as the Bible describes it. On the other hand,
even if the Israelites camped in the desert for forty years, little can be expect-
ed to be found in the desert through archaeology.
If they were camping, they would have used tents with post holes, rather
than permanent structures, and so an archaeologist is not going to find
houses and walls and remains of permanent structures, but rather simply
holes in the ground in which the tent pegs had once been placed, and thoseare almost impossible to find. But again, absence of evidence is not evi-
dence of absence.
However, there are other difficulties with using the biblical narrative for
historical reconstruction: the number forty and multiples of forty are in evi-
dence throughout the Book of Genesis through 2 Kings. Forty is a sacred
number, but it also may simply represent a generation.
There were forty years of wandering in the desert. The interval from the
Exodus down to Solomon’s building of the Temple is recorded as 480 years,
which is simply forty times twelve, so that could just be twelve generations.The time from the building of Solomon’s Temple until the time that the exiles
returned from Babylon in 539 is given as another 480 years. In other words,
Solomon’s Temple was built at the midpoint between the Exodus and the
return from Babylon, with 480 years, or twelve generations, on either side of
Solomon’s Temple. This is enough to make one a little suspicious.
Some of the other difficulties with using the biblical narrative also deal with
numbers. Exodus 12.37–38 says that the people of Israel journeyed from
Ramses to Succoth. The biblical account states that there were six hundred
thousand men on foot, plus women and children. A mixed multitude also went
with them, as did many cattle. This means that altogether there would have
been about two and a half million people, for most of the men would have
had wives, and most of the couples would have had two children, which
makes 2.4 million people. The mixed multitude would probably add another
hundred thousand people, which explains how the figure of at least 2.5 mil-
lion people leaving Egypt was calculated. However, there is no way the
Egyptians would have had that many slaves. And if they had, there would
have been a revolt even earlier.
Moreover, if 2.5 million people did leave Egypt, and they marched ten
across, those numbers would have formed a line about 150 miles long. If
Moses did part the Red Sea, it would have had to have been held apart for
eight or nine days before all the Hebrews managed to get through. Then
there are the logistics of organizing such a group and sustaining it for forty
years of wandering in the wilderness, as well as the fact that the Bible says
there were only two midwives to care for the women.
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
17/90
All of this raises
enormous questions
for any historian who
wants to use this
information as it is
recorded. But per-haps there are sim-
ply a few too many
zeroes. If, rather
than having six hun-
dred thousand
Hebrews of fighting
age leave Egypt,
there were only sixty
thousand, or six
thousand, or perhaps even six hundred, it would make a great deal more
sense, and the wandering and the two midwives would be resolved a
bit more.
However, there are additional questions raised by the biblical narrative. Did
the Hebrews flee Egypt without the Pharaoh’s knowledge, in great haste and
without preparation, or was the departure deliberate, with the Hebrews orga-
nized as an armed military force? How exactly were they able to leave Egypt,
and who was the Pharaoh who knew not Joseph? What was happening on
the international political scene at the time of the Exodus, and when did theExodus actually take place? Also, what were the social and political circum-
stances among the Canaanites at the time of Joshua that allowed him to con-
quer Canaan?
These sorts of questions are basic to modern historians’ interest, but are
incidental to the theological message that the people compiling Genesis
through 2 Kings wished to convey. The ancient writers, mostly because it
wasn’t central to their interests or concerns, often failed to report precisely
the type of information considered crucial by modern historians.
Other Questions
There are other, perhaps even more crucial, problems. Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Joshua are not mentioned in any nonbiblical
records. Nor is there any reference to an Israelite stay in Egypt, the Exodus,
or the conquest of Canaan in any ancient source contemporary with the time
these events occurred. Furthermore, with one exception, there is no mention
of Israel or the Israelites in extrabiblical sources before the ninth century
BCE, well after the time of David and Solomon. This mention of Israel is in
the so-called Merneptah stele, which dates to 1207 BCE, the fifth year of Pharaoh Merneptah of Egypt. So the Exodus had to have taken place by this
time, but how much earlier did it take place?
Dating the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt is difficult. A variety of biblical, histori-
cal, and archaeological data needs to be taken into account. Most scholars
argue for either an early date, about the year 1450 BCE, or a later date,
about the year 1250 BCE. The early date tends to be held by scholars who
rely heavily on the Bible. The later date tends to be held by scholars who give L E C T U R E T W O
16
©
R e c o r d e d B o o k s ,
L L C ; B a c k g r o u n d : ©
N A S A
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
18/90
17
more weight to the archaeological evidence. Arguments for the early date
point to Kings 6.1, which says that the Exodus took place 480 years before
Solomon began to build the Temple in Jerusalem. Solomon began to build
the Temple in Jerusalem in the fourth year of his reign. Because Solomon’s
reign is about 970 to 930 BCE, this would then place the Exodus about 1450
BCE, that is, during the reign of King Thutmose III.There are a number of letters from Egypt that date to about a hundred years
after this, about 1350 BCE, which document a period of social chaos in
Canaan that is caused by a group called the Habiru. The name sounds suspi-
ciously similar to the name Hebrews, and if this is the case, then this would
represent extrabiblical evidence and an approximate date for an Israelite
invasion of Canaan sometime before 1350 BCE.
However, Thutmose III was the greatest conqueror that Egypt ever had, and
under him the Egyptians were in firm control of both Egypt and Canaan.
There is little archaeological evidence that he would have allowed theHebrews to leave Egypt during his reign, and in fact, there is little archaeolog-
ical data anywhere to support a date for the Exodus about 1450 BCE.
Moreover, it is now doubted by scholars that the Habiru are the Hebrews, or
at least that they are not the invading Israelites led by Moses and Joshua.
Basically, they seem to have been a social class on the outskirts of society
rather than a given set of people.
A Later Date for the Exodus
As for the arguments for a later date for the Exodus, the people followingthis line of argument say that the 480 years mentioned in 1 Kings is simply a
symbolic number (that is, twelve generations of forty years each) and can be
safely ignored. They also point to the fact that the cities of Pithom and
Ramses in the Nile Delta region of Egypt, which were supposedly built by the
Hebrews, were in fact founded by the Egyptian King Seti I in about the year
1304 and were completed by Ramses II, who ruled from 1290 to 1224. So if
the Hebrew slaves built the cities of Pithom and Ramses, they would still be
in Egypt until about 1250 BCE.
Moreover, archaeological evidence from various sites in Canaan may sup-port a thirteenth-century date for the conquest, because a number of these
cities were destroyed sometime during the thirteenth century, which would fit
quite well with the coming of Joshua and the Israelites. Additional arguments
for the later date of 1250 BCE for the Exodus point to the Merneptah stele,
which mentions Israel, in the year 1207 BCE. Historians and archaeologists
say that if the Israelites had entered Canaan around 1450 BCE, there should
be other mentions of Israel before the year 1207 BCE, but there are not.
Therefore, there would be more than two hundred years when Israel is not
mentioned. If, however, the Exodus took place at 1250 BCE and theIsraelites wandered for forty years, then having Israel mentioned by
Merneptah in the year 1207 is actually perfect.
If the Exodus took place at 1250 BCE, one could count back 430 years,
which is what Exodus 12 says was the length of time that the Hebrews were
in Egypt during their period of servitude. Counting back from 1250 BCE
would put the Hebrews in Egypt during the so-called Hyksos period, from
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
19/90
L E C T U R E T W O
18
about 1720 to 1550 BCE, when Egypt was ruled by foreigners from the
region of Canaan for nearly two hundred years. This fits well with the time of
Jacob and Joseph’s experiences in Egypt.
This is not to say that the later date of 1250 BCE is completely convincing,
because it’s not clear from the archaeological record that the cities of Lachish
and Hazor were destroyed simultaneously or even by a common enemy.Indeed, it can’t be established that those cities were destroyed by military
action as opposed to acts of Nature.
There is, however, a third possibility. Perhaps the Exodus was a process
rather than an event. It might have taken place over several centuries, from
1450 BCE until 1250 BCE. It is, of course, eminently possible that there were
people leaving Egypt and heading for Canaan over the course of two hun-
dred years, in a series of small groups rather than in one large group, but
even this cannot be proven one way or the other.
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
20/90
1. Why is it difficult to find archaeological proof of the Hebrews’ supposed
forty-year stay in the desert?
2. What problems exist with the number of Israelites that the Bible claims left
Egypt during the Exodus?
Shanks, Hershel, ed. Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman
Destruction of the Temple. 2nd rev. ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1999.
Dever, William G. What Did the Biblical Writers Know & When Did They
Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient
Israel. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001.Feiler, Bruce S. Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five
Books of Moses. New York: William Morrow, 2001.
Finkelstein, Israel, and Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed:
Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred
Texts. New York: The Free Press, 2001.
Marcus, Amy D. The View from Nebo: How Archaeology Is Rewriting the
Bible and Reshaping the Middle East. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 2000.
Miller, J. Maxwell, and John H. Hayes. A History of Ancient Israel and Judah.Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1986.
Questions
Suggested Reading
FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING
Other Books of Interest
19
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
21/90
srael is mentioned in the Merneptah stele, in the fifth year
of Pharaoh Merneptah of Egypt, about 1207 BCE. In this
inscription, Merneptah says that Israel has been laid to
waste. In this same year, in another set of inscriptions,Merneptah mentioned the invasion of the Sea Peoples,
who conquered most of the countries of the Mediterranean
at this time. The Mycenaeans and Minoans of Greece were conquered by
them. The Hittites of Turkey were conquered by them. Even Cyprus was con-
quered, as were the peoples of Canaan. It was only the Egyptians under
Merneptah, and then his successor Ramses III, who were able to stand up to
the Sea Peoples.
The Invasion of the Sea PeoplesDid the invasion of the Sea Peoples allow the Israelites to eventually take
over the land of Canaan? The Exodus took place (most likely) by 1250 BCE
at the absolute latest, and may, in fact, have been a process that took place
over a period of two hundred years. If the Israelites wandered in the desert
from 1250 to about 1210 BCE, and then conquered the land of Canaan by
1207 (the time of Merneptah’s inscription), this coincides with the time that
the Sea Peoples took over Canaan as well.
The Sea Peoples pillaged and then departed the region (until they were later
resettled in the area by the Egyptians). Some think the Sea Peoples left theCanaanite city-states in smoking ruins, allowing the Israelites to take over ter-
ritory that they would not otherwise have been able to conquer. This would
contradict the biblical story of Joshua’s conquest, which credits Joshua and
the Israelites for conquering the region—but then again, does it?
Who Conquered Canaan?
The Book of Joshua tells of Joshua’s conquest of Canaan. This is after Moses
died, in Transjordan, within sight of the Promised Land. Joshua took over, and
it is under his command that the Israelites conquered Canaan. Joshua 12 liststhirty-one kings who were conquered by Joshua. At the same time, the Book of
Judges says, “[B]ut the people of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites, who
dwelt in Jerusalem. So the Jebusites have dwelt with the people of Benjamin to
this day”—and says that other tribes did not drive out inhabitants from other vil-
lages they shared, such as the inhabitants of Megiddo, and that the Canaanites
continued to dwell there. “When Israel grew strong, they put the Canaanites to
forced labor, but did not utterly drive them out.”
The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Hershel Shanks’s (ed.)
Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple
(chapter 3: “The Settlement in Canaan: The Period of the Judges”).
Lecture 3:
The Conquest of Canaan:
Israelites, Philistines, and Phoenicians
L E C T U R E T H R E E
20
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
22/90
Obviously, there are two tales, one in which Joshua and the Israelites were
able to conquer the land of Canaan completely and another account in which
they conquered the land, but did not absolutely kill and suppress everyone.
Both the biblical accounts and the archaeological accounts leave enough
contradictions and negative evidence that an advocate of a military conquest
has to accept that theory on faith. On the other hand, recent archaeologicalresearch and information offers several possibilities in addition to military con-
quest. William F. Albright of Johns Hopkins University was one of the original
proponents of the theory that the conquest took place as told in the Bible.
However, Albrecht Alt suggested that semi-nomadic Israelites peacefully infil-
trated unoccupied areas of the Hill Country, gradually built settlements, and
became sedentary; that is, they became tied to the land and only later dis-
placed the Canaanites in the cities. Alt thought that the military encounters
only took place after the Israelites began expanding out of these central high-
lands, so then would follow the conquest put forth by Albright.The third suggestion is what’s known as the Revolting Peasants hypothesis,
or the Peasants’ Rebellion. This was put forth by George Mendenhall and
Norman Gottwald, who suggested that Israel emerged from a melting pot of
Canaanite culture in a revolutionary social movement among peoples who
were already in Canaan, and that this revolt might have begun in Transjordan
to the east and then spread westward across the Jordan to the West Bank
and beyond. The model for this was taken from Habiru inscriptions that say
that they rebelled against the Egyptians about a century earlier. Here was
basically an alliance of disenfranchised elements of Canaanite society goingup against established society. In this case, the so-called conquest of
Canaan is not so much a conquest as an internal revolution led by population
elements that were already there. There was no unified military campaign
conducted by forces from the outside, and there was no mass killing of the
inhabitants of the land. The problem with the Peasants’ Revolt hypothesis is
that there is no supporting evidence from archaeology or other texts.
The fourth possibility suggests that the Canaanites and the Israelites were
one and the same people; that is, the Israelites were part of the Canaanites,
and they simply took over. The story of the invasion was then made up bylater biblical writers.
The Phoenicians
However the Israelite conquest of Canaan took place, when the Israelites
ended up in Canaan, they came into contact with the Phoenicians and the
Philistines. In fact, the first king of Israel, Saul, was killed in a battle against
the Philistines.
The Phoenicians are basically the latter-day inhabitants of the Syrian coastal
area. The names for both Canaanites and Phoenicians are derived from
words that mean purple. The land of Phoenicia is where Lebanon is today.
The political and economic centers of Phoenicia were the cities of Tyre and
Sidon and Arvad, as well as Beirut and Byblos. Some of these cities were
already major Canaanite centers by the Bronze Age, and some, like Beirut,
remain inhabited today.
21
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
23/90
L E C T U R E T H R E E
22
The civilization of Phoenicia is a conglomeration of different elements. This
region of the Lebanese and Syrian coasts has always been a meeting place
of Europe and Asia. However, the main contribution of the Phoenicians is
undoubtedly the invention of the alphabet, which was taken by the Greeks
and Romans throughout Europe.
The Phoenicians were remarkable merchants and traders. They sailed frommodern-day Lebanon to Crete and Greece, to Italy and Sicily, to North Africa,
and even founded the city of Carthage. They sailed as far as Spain, and to
Sardinia and areas in between. The name Phoenician means purple, and
their name implies that they were merchants of purple dye, as were the
Canaanites before them.
The tenth century is the golden age of Phoenician wealth and power, and it
was during this period that the Phoenicians interacted with the Israelites and
the earliest kings of Israel down to the time of David and Solomon.
The Philistines
The history of the Philistines is known mostly from the Bible, Egyptian
records, and archaeological finds. The Philistines are first mentioned in the
Egyptian inscriptions about the Sea Peoples, where they are known as the
Peleset. According to Egyptian sources during the time of Merneptah and
Ramses III, at the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the twelfth centuries
BCE, the Peleset are defeated by the Egyptians and settled in Philistia in the
southern part of Canaan. They named the land Palashtu, from which the
name Palestine eventually came.The Philistines ruled in small city-states and seemed to have had a military
advantage over the local Israelites, because they had chariots and knew how
to forge iron. During the period of the Judges, the Philistines exercised a defi-
nite superiority over the Israelites, and it was not until the time of Saul and
David that there was a shift toward Israelite advantage.
The five cities of the Philistines (Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath)
are all in the Coastal Plain, on the far western side of the region of Israel, or
in the neighboring foothills, the Shephelah region. In addition, there are small-
er sites (a site in Tel Aviv, for example).
Philistine pottery owes quite a bit to Mycennean pottery from Greece and to
native Canaanite styles. And Philistine pottery seems to have a particular
preference for birds, particularly birds looking backwards.
The Phoenicians and the Philistines interacted with the early Israelites dur-
ing the period when the Israelites became a monarchy. The first kings of
Israel came along during the time of Saul, David, and Solomon.
Saul’s Rise to Power The Bible contains what are known as the Samuel-Shiloh stories, in 1
Samuel. Samuel lived at a temple in Shiloh, which was run by an old priest
named Eli and his two sons. Samuel was the last of the Judges, the spokes-
men for God. The people of Israel wanted a monarchy, and Samuel was
asked to anoint Israel’s first king. Samuel said it was not a good idea, but the
people of Israel wanted it, and so the period of Judges gave way to the peri-
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
24/90
23
od of the first kings. Samuel opposed the institution of the monarchy and
warned the people of the many ways that future kings would take advantage
of them, but then, following divine guidance, he is reported to have selected
Saul. Samuel then explained the rights and duties of kingship and wrote
these in a book.
The stories of Saul in the Bible are the primary source of information aboutSaul’s rise to power, but they are probably a mixture of folk memory and leg-
end intertwined with a kernel of actual truth. When Saul came to the throne,
he immediately had to deal with the Philistines, and it seems that much of
Saul’s reign was a fight against the Philistines in an attempt to establish his
own kingdom.
Saul vs. the Philistines
Saul believed that his kingdom needed to expand. The Philistines saw the
expansion of the Israelites as detrimental to their existence, so for much of Saul’s reign, there were ongoing battles between the Israelites and the
Philistines. This was probably somewhere in the eleventh or into the tenth
centuries BCE. There is little extrabiblical evidence, but David must emerge
by the year 1000 BCE, so Saul should be placed a couple of decades
before that.
Saul’s final battle against the Philistines took place in the Jezreel Valley, in
the north of Israel, near Megiddo, the biblical Armageddon. The Philistines
considered this area crucial, and they wanted to encircle and capture the
heart of Saul’s kingdom. The Philistines already held Beth-shan to the east of the Jezreel Valley and the Coastal Plain to the west. If they won the Jezreel
Valley, they would cut Saul’s kingdom into two parts and separate the
Israelites in Galilee and the Jezreel Valley from the rest of the Israelite tribes.
Saul, therefore, had no choice but to fight the Philistines for control of the
valley. The story of the battle is told in 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles.
There are as yet no contemporary extrabiblical sources to confirm these
accounts, but in Saul’s case, at least, the story is repeated with some embell-
ishment about a thousand years later by Josephus, the Jewish general turned
Roman historian, in his book The Antiquities of the Jews.
The Valley of Jezreel was extremely important in antiquity. The Via Maris,
the Way of the Sea, went right through the valley. Megiddo is in the middle of
the valley. The Jordan River is to the east and the Mediterranean Sea is to
the west. Anybody who wanted to invade this area had to go through the
Jezreel Valley, so there have been no fewer than thirty-four battles fought in
the last four thousand years in this single valley. It is one of the bloodiest
places on earth. It is not surprising that the author of the Book of Revelation
placed one of the final battles between good and evil at Megiddo, near where
Saul fought his last battle.
During this battle, Saul was killed, along with his son Jonathan and several
other sons. The Philistines won the battle. David became king upon the death
of Saul, whose head was cut off and whose body was hung up on the wall at
Beth-shan. And with that, the first era of the Israelite monarchy came to an
end. David assumed the throne, and there followed the period referred to as
the United Monarchy, the golden age of Israel.
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
25/90
1. What is the Revolting Peasants hypothesis?
2. Why did the Philistines consider the Jezreel Valley to be such a crucial
area to control?
Shanks, Hershel, ed. Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman
Destruction of the Temple. 2nd rev. ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1999.
Cline, Eric H. The Battles of Armageddon: Megiddo and the Jezreel Valley
from the Bronze Age to the Nuclear Age. Ann Arbor, MI: University of
Michigan Press, 2002.
Questions
Suggested Reading
FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING
Other Books of Interest
L E C T U R E T H R E E
24
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
26/90
ing David is one of the most beloved figures in the Hebrew
Bible. He’s also one of the most enigmatic. Much has been
published about him in recent times.
Questions About the House of David
David founded a dynasty that was destined to rule from
Jerusalem for the next four hundred years. Even after Jerusalem fell to the
Babylonians in 586 BCE, ending the long line of Davidic Kings, many of the
people of Jerusalem and Judah continued to hope for a return to the days of
the House of David. So it’s not surprising that David received so much atten-
tion in the biblical materials or that there was an obvious effort to present him
in a favorable light.
The Hebrew Bible devotes forty-two chapters to David and portrays him asGod’s chosen, the true and righteous king. Then there is a second extended
biblical account in Chronicles that begins its history of Judah with David and
devotes twenty chapters to his reign. Finally, David is associated by tradition
with the Book of Psalms, where thirteen of the individual psalms are con-
nected with particular moments in his career.
A number of basic questions face anyone trying to study David’s reign and
the period of the United Monarchy. Can archaeology or other sources shed
light on the transition that took place in Israelite society? Does archaeology
actually indicate that a mighty kingdom existed, such as was described in the
biblical sources? To what extent are the elaborate commercial and political
relations described in the Bible actually reflected in the archaeological
remains? Unfortunately, the extrabiblical evidence is sparse, often controver-
sial, and does not provide unequivocal answers to these questions.
David’s History
The story of David reads like a modern soap opera: plenty of sex, violence,
and struggles for power. David, before being anointed king by Samuel, fought
famously with Goliath. Samuel met with David’s father, Jesse, who brought all
of his sons to see Samuel. Samuel asked if all of Jesse’s sons were actually
there. One was not and had to be called in, namely David, who was tending
the flock.
David started out as a minstrel for Saul during Saul’s melancholy period, but
was rapidly promoted to armor bearer. He then had his first successes as a
young warrior and commander, so that the women sang that Saul had slain
The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Hershel Shanks’s (ed.)
Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple
(chapter 4: “The United Monarchy: Saul, David, and Solomon”).
Lecture 4:
King David in History and Tradition
25
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
27/90
L E C T U R E F O U R
26
thousands, but that David had slain ten thousands. There was the famous
friendship between Saul’s son Jonathan and David, which eventually led to
the mistrust of Saul as Saul became increasingly unstable. There was a quar-
rel, after which Saul tried to kill David. David ran away and returned to Judah,
his homeland. He became a mercenary, leading his own troops.
David lived as a warrior, a kind of a bandit, an outlaw who was toleratedrather than admired. He operated in large part with Saul pursuing him. David
even entered into the service of the Philistines, albeit temporarily. After Saul
was killed, David became king, and his kingdom assumed a different charac-
ter from that of Saul’s. Saul came from a tradition of charismatic leaders, but
he didn’t have a permanent foundation among the tribes. He had no real resi-
dence, and no effective administration. David, on the other hand, obtained a
residence and a very effective administration. But he wasn’t necessarily a
charismatic leader in terms of ruling from God, by God, and of God. He was a
warrior, supported by his troops, independent of the tribes, and he becameking over the territory. He ruled over a nation, which was limited, and yet was
going to expand quite fast.
David first ruled from Hebron, for about seven years. He had expanded his
territory to the north, and in expanding to the north, he decided that the city of
Hebron was no longer suitable for his capital. He wanted a city that was polit-
ically and geographically neutral and one that was relatively isolated.
Jerusalem itself is high up in the Hill Country, but it was not at the crossroads
of any great trade routes. It was geographically separated from most of
David’s territory. From his new capital, David could rule both north and south,so the formulation of his kingdom seems to be David’s foremost achievement.
David’s capture of Jerusalem from the Jebusites, somewhere around the year
1000 BCE, may be among the ten most important conflicts in Jerusalem’s
history—and there have been more than one hundred battles fought for con-
trol of Jerusalem over the past four thousand years.
The Capture of Jerusalem
David’s capture of Jerusalem is what brought Judaism to the city and began
the long association of the city with three of the great religions of the world:Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In about 1000 BCE, the Jebusites controlled
the city. The city was protected on three sides by deep ravines, so it was only
from the north that David could capture the city.
The text of 2 Samuel presents a number of different difficulties in translation,
especially with the Hebrew word “tsinnor.” In the King James Version, this is
translated as “gutter,” but in the Revised Standard Version, “tsinnor” means a
water shaft, and the implication is that David’s soldiers, in particular his right-
hand man Joab, climbed some sort of water shaft from near the Gihon Spring
and thereby entered the city.
However, the New English Bible translates “tsinnor” as grappling iron, and
others translate “tsinnor” as ladder or other meanings. Recent archaeology
conducted in the vicinity of the Gihon Spring, on the eastern side of
Jerusalem, has shown that the Canaanites built fortifications, towers, and
walls to protect the Gihon Spring, the only water source for Jerusalem. These
constructions would have been already eight hundred years old by the time
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
28/90
27
A satellite view of modern Jerusalem showing areas of the city during the time of David and
the Jebosites
David came along, and they are perhaps the tsinnor that allowed Joab to
climb up through the water system and enter the middle of Jerusalem around
midnight. He and his men would have killed the guards at the gate and
opened the gates to Jerusalem. Then David and his men would have
marched in. Thus Jebusite Jerusalem became Israelite Jerusalem.
At this time, Jerusalem lay only on the easternmost of two spurs of land run-ning side by side. It was this eastern ridge that David captured. Over time,
Solomon would expand up to the north on that ridge, and then, over the cen-
turies, the city would expand to the west, gradually filling in the ravine to the
middle and taking over the western ridge as well.
Once he captured the city, David promptly brought the Ark of the Covenant
there. He put it in a tabernacle and danced around it, then got in trouble for
doing so. Eventually, the Ark was moved on top of the rock on which
Abraham supposedly was going to sacrifice Isaac. This is the rock that today
is inside the Dome of the Rock, and which lay inside Solomon’s Temple.Indeed, Solomon built his Temple, among other reasons, specifically to
house the Ark of the Covenant. Bringing the Ark to Jerusalem made the city
not only David’s political capital, but also the religious capital for both David
and, later, Solomon.
Archaeology has been unable to pinpoint structures that definitely belong to
David’s Jerusalem, aside from recent claims by Eilat Mazar to have discov-
ered David’s palace. There is not much that can be conclusively said to date
to the tenth century in Jerusalem, and so there has been an ongoing debate
about the size and extent of David’s Jerusalem, and his entire kingdom, for that matter. So far there is no archaeological evidence that Jerusalem was
©
E r i c H .
C l i n e ; B a c k g r o u n d : N A
S A
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
29/90
L E C T U R E F O U R
L E C T U R E
28
anything more than a modest highland village during the time of David and
Solomon. It is true that there is little evidence for what Jerusalem looked like
in the tenth century BCE, but many see the downgrading of David and
Solomon as rather ominous, as part of a political agenda that gives ammuni-
tion to people who might be anti-Israel or anti-Semitic.
The other aspect that David’s capture of Jerusalem has given rise to is thepolitical ramifications. Indeed, the original battle fought between David and
the Jebusites three thousand years ago for control of Jerusalem is still being
fought today, mostly because the modern Israelis claim to be descendants
from the Israelites and the modern Palestinians claim to be descendants of
the Canaanites and the Philistines. So the modern political and physical bat-
tles between Israelis and Palestinians echo the original battle between David
and the Jebusites.
Once David captured the city, he fell in love with the famous Bathsheba after
seeing her bathing. The union of David and Bathsheba resulted in the birth of Solomon, who continued his father’s process of expansion of the kingdom
and who ruled over the United Monarchy.
Mentions of David
In 1993 and 1994, three fragments of an inscription in old Aramaic were dis-
covered at the site of Tel Dan, in the north of Israel. If the restoration and
translation of the inscription are correct, it contains the first mention of David,
or rather the House of David, found outside the Bible.
The three fragments mention the House of David as well as the kings of bothIsrael and Judah. It is now clear that the inscription should be dated to about
the year 842 BCE. This is the first time that the name David has been found in
any ancient inscription outside the Bible, and it would therefore be the oldest
extrabiblical reference to Israel apart from the Merneptah stele, which dates to
1207 BCE.
The critical letters in the inscription are the ones that are usually translated
as “House of David.” Some scholars have said that this is not the meaning
and that it means “House of the Uncle,” or “House of the Beloved,” or even
“House of the Kettle,” but these claims are spurious and may be dismissed.
There may be other inscriptions that mention David. There’s the so-called
Mesha stele, which may contain a mention of the king of Israel and the
House of David, but this inscription is broken and much debated. There may
be another mention down in Egypt in a list left by King Shishak (Sheshonq)
of Egypt.
All of these inscriptions have been reinterpreted recently, and so there might
be more mentions of David than thought before. On the other hand, a group
of scholars referred to by others as biblical minimalists (some call them theCopenhagen school) tend to argue that the history of Israel, Judah, David,
and Solomon is all made up.
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
30/90
29
Biblical Minimalism
Biblical minimalists take the view that the Bible is a narrative of mythology
interwoven with some historical elements, and that trying to read the Bible
as a historical text in the modern sense of the term is doomed from the start.
They say this because the Bible is written in a tradition of storytelling and
religious worship, not with the intention of relating facts. They say that theUnited Monarchy and the figures of David and Solomon are legendary and
not historical at all. In short, biblical minimalists say that the Bible is nearly
irrelevant for constructing the history of ancient Palestine and especially of
the ancient Israelites.
Essentially, biblical minimalism arose out of the need to account for the
major discrepancies between the Bible and what archaeologists have dug up
in Israel and Palestine. How much can archaeology prove or corroborate the
biblical account? The arguments about the legitimacy of David and whether
or not he existed are part of this debate, which is one of the most fiercelydebated issues in biblical archaeology.
Biblical stories paint a picture of David in intense detail. On the other hand,
there is no archaeological evidence to prove any of this and, until the finding
of the Tel Dan stele, there was no extrabiblical evidence mentioning David
whatsoever. It is now thought possible, however, that the House of David
may also appear in the Mesha stele, and in Shishak’s inscription as well, so
there is now good evidence that someone named David actually did exist.
But whether it is the biblical David or some other David is still being argued.
It is a topic that continues to generate controversy.
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
31/90
1. Why was David’s capture of Jerusalem one of the ten most important con-
flicts in the city’s history?
2. Where is the first mention of David believed to be found?
Shanks, Hershel, ed. Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman
Destruction of the Temple. 2nd rev. ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1999.
Cline, Eric H. Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel.
Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005.
Finkelstein, Israel, and Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred
Texts. New York: The Free Press, 2001.
———. David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the
Roots of the Western Tradition. New York: The Free Press, 2006.
Halpern, Baruch. David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King.
Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001.
Kirsch, Jonathan. King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel.
New York: Ballantine Books, 2001.McKenzie, Steven L. King David: A Biography. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2000.
Questions
Suggested Reading
FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING
Other Books of Interest
L E C T U R E F O U R
30
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
32/90
ing Solomon is renowned for his wisdom, wealth, and
wives. He’s credited in the Hebrew Bible with ruling over
an empire that stretched from Egypt to the Euphrates.
However, like his father David, Solomon and his accom-plishments have become the subject of recent controversy.
The Epitome of Wise Governance
Solomon’s reign was considered to be the golden age of Israelite and
Judean history, at least from
a casual reading of the bibli-
cal account. His reign lasted
forty years, approximately
970 to 930 BCE, and he wasburied in Jerusalem, the city
of David, which Solomon
expanded magnificently.
In the Book of Chronicles,
the chronicler neutralized
any negative aspects of
Solomon’s reign and elabo-
rated on his role as builder
of the famous Temple inJerusalem and cofounder
with his father David of the
United Monarchy. The Book
of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes,
and the Song of Songs
appear to credit Solomon for
vast amounts of wisdom. So
it’s not surprising that his
reign came to be consideredthe epitome of splendor and
wise governance, not to
mention wealth.
But the biblical text reveals
certain ironies. Wealthy
Solomon developed cash-
flow problems. Powerful
P u b l i c D o m a i n
The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Hershel Shanks’s (ed.)
Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple
(chapter 4: “The United Monarchy: Saul, David, and Solomon”).
Lecture 5:
King Solomon in History and Tradition
Solomon by Gustave Doré, from The Bible and Its Story
Taught by One Thousand Picture Lessons, vol. 7, edited by
Charles F. Horne and Julius A. Bewer, 1908
31
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
33/90
L E C T U R E F I V E
32
Solomon was troubled by adversaries close to home. And wise Solomon
apparently exploited his people through forced labor and other despotic prac-
tices, so that the bulk of his kingdom chose to break away after his death.
Wealth and Women
Solomon’s reign is among the first where specific ties may possibly be drawnbetween the biblical and archaeological records. In 1 Kings, there is mention of
several cities that Solomon built or fortified, including Jerusalem, Hazor,
Megiddo, and Gezer. Archaeological excavations at these sites have revealed
layers of building and fortification remains that were dated to Solomon’s reign
and which do in fact suggest, both by their large scale and similar design, that
they were centralized (a royal building program, perhaps). So there may have
been material evidence of Solomon’s accomplishments as a builder. On the
other hand, this same evidence shows that his accomplishments were rather
modest when compared with the kings of Egypt or Mesopotamia.
In 1 Kings, Solomon loved many foreign women, including the daughter of a
Pharaoh, as well as Moabite, Ammonite, Ebonite, Sidonian, and Hittite women.
Solomon had seven hundred wives and princesses and three hundred concu-
bines. We are told that these women turned his heart after other gods. He built
sanctuaries to the gods of the Moabites and the Ammonites, respectively, and
therefore God became angry with Solomon and sent adversaries.
Solomon had an abundance of silver and gold. In 1 Kings, the weight of gold
that came to Solomon in one year was 666 talents, besides that which came
from the traders, the traffic of the merchants, and the kings of Arabia andgovernors of the land. King Solomon made two hundred large shields of beat-
en gold and a great ivory throne overlain with the finest gold.
The biblical account from Genesis through 2 Kings serves as the primary
source of information on Solomon, but the presentation in the Hebrew Bible
consists largely of extended descriptions of Solomon’s cultic activities and
sweeping claims about his great wealth, wisdom, and international prestige.
However, the meager information available today simply does not support the
sweeping claims, and biblical minimalists and others claim that the account of
Solomon in the Hebrew Bible bears no relation to the archaeological record.
Solomon inherited a kingdom from David that was not unified by any means.
The fact that he was able to hold it together was one of his many accomplish-
ments. The trend of a Jerusalem-based kingdom reached full development
under Solomon. He was wealthy and powerful by the standards of the early
first millennium BCE, but he should probably be regarded more as a local
ruler of an expanded city-state than as a world-class emperor like Alexander
the Great or Julius Caesar. He engaged in the usual royal pursuits, including
building programs and patronage of literature. Whether he was wise or not
was something to be discussed even in his own day, and like many of the
kings of his day and afterward, Solomon had international contacts, including
the famed visit of the Queen of Sheba (if it actually took place).
A Peaceful King
Solomon is described in the Bible as a peaceful king, and this may well have
been the case. There are no known clashes, military or otherwise, during his
reign. The achievements credited to him lie mostly in the religious, economic,
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
34/90
33
and cultural spheres. He completed the Temple at Jerusalem, erected build-
ings in other cities, and made trade alliances and economic treaties with
neighboring countries. He might not have been as vigorous or creative as
David, but he did piece together the empire.
Solomon had inherited this kingdom from his father David, and he managed
to keep control of it by various diplomatic connections, including through hiswives. At that time, it was common to cement a treaty by having the signers
marry each other’s daughters. A lot of the women in Solomon’s palace may
well have gotten there because of the various peace treaties that he signed
with his neighbors. It’s easy to see foreign politics underlying these mar-
riages, because these are women of the countries with whom Solomon would
have wished to be at peace. In particular, the daughter of the king of Egypt
played a prominent role. She’s mentioned five different times, which may indi-
cate that he wanted to be friends with Egypt. He also cultivated extensive
trade relationships with various countries and sent ships to the land of Ophir to bring back gold, valuable wood, and other luxuries. Because his Israelites
were not seafarers themselves, he was supported in this by the king of Tyre,
from the coast of Lebanon, where the sea-going Phoenicians were located.
Solomon’s Temple
The king of Tyre in 1 Kings put shipwrights and sailors at Solomon’s dis-
posal, and so Solomon had a city constructed for his fleet on the northern
coast of the gulf of Aqaba. Excavations have confirmed that ruins in this
area may indeed be those built by Solomon. The Bible tells us that this iswhen Israel became open to the international world. Great buildings were
erected and literature was collected.
However, this whole development must be seen in fairly modest terms with-
in a small area. It is highly doubtful that the empire stretched from Egypt to
the Euphrates. More likely, it was about the bounds of the modern state of
Israel as it exists now, if even that. This age of Solomon should not be
underestimated, however. Rather, it should be appreciated, because imme-
diately upon his death, violent conflicts broke out and the United Monarchy
split into the Divided Kingdoms.The city with which Solomon’s name is forever linked is the city of Jerusalem,
even though little or nothing of what he built there has actually been identified
by archaeologists. Solomon’s Temple and palace were built to the north of the
Jebusite city, the city David had captured on the southernmost part of this
eastern ridge. Solomon then built up the northern part of that eastern ridge,
which is where the Temple Mount lies today. It was not easy to build there—
Solomon’s workmen, architects, and construction engineers would have been
hard-pressed to build in that area. Nevertheless, the famous Temple of
Solomon was built on this northern part of the eastern ridge, about 750 feetto the north of the Jebusite city, joining the two by a narrow strip. But none of
this has been confirmed by archaeology, in part because this city has been
rebuilt so many times over the last couple of thousand years. The Temple
Mount is today the home of the Dome of the Rock, sacred to Islam, located
on the Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary, as it is known to the Arab
world. This particular area is the center of battles that have been fought for
Jerusalem over the last four thousand years.
8/19/2019 A History of Ancient Israel_Eric H Cline
35/90
L E C T U R E F I V E
34
The Temple Mount was probably already a Canaanite high place back in the
third millennium BCE. There have probably been five thousand years of con-
tinuous religious worship on the Temple Mount, which may make it the oldest
piece of real estate in the world with a continuous religious presence. Here is
the rock on which Abraham was going to sacrifice Isaac and on which
Mohammed ascended to Heaven on his nocturnal journey. There are inden-tations in the rock, which, depending on the story, are either the marks made
by the legs of the Ark of the Covenant or the marks made by Mohammed’s
steed as he leaped up to the heavens—or by the ladder as he climbed up to
the heavens.
Detailed descriptions of Solomon’s Temple are found in the Book of Kings
and 2 Chronicles in the Hebrew Bible and in the firsthand evidence of
Ezekiel. We are told that the Temple was begun in the fourth year of
Solomon’s forty-year-long reign, which was also the four hundred and eighti-
eth year after the Exodus from Egypt. Solomon’s building projects took exact-ly half his reign, twenty years, and during those twenty years, seven years
were devoted to the building of the Temple. One problem here is the pres-
ence of symbolic numbers: four, forty, multiples of forty, and seven, and so it
might be best not to take these numbers literally.
Once Solomon began to build the Temple, Hiram, the king of Tyre, agreed
to supply building materials and skilled workmen. Solomon himself raised
forced labor for the project and hired a bronzesmith from Tyre, who made
bronze fixtures and furnishings for the Temple. When all the work was com-
pleted, Solomon stored in the Temple all the things that David had dedicated:silver, gold, and vessels, including the Ark of the Covenant. There was a ded-
ication ceremony that included the ritual transfer of the Ark into the Temple
and a long prayer by Solomon to reconfirm his promise to David to bless the
Temple with his presence and to forgive the people. Then there were elabo-
rate sacrifices, followed by a great feast. After the people returned to their
homes, God appeared to Solomon and assured him that his prayers would
be answered, depending upon the king’s faithfulness. Solomon gave twenty
cities to Hiram in payment for everything that Hiram had contributed and the
daughter of the Egyptian Pharaoh was moved to her own house. Solomonthen began to make burnt offerings in the Temple three times a year.
Descriptions of the Temple
The Temple itself presents a puzzle. The biblical description is not entirely
clear and could be interpreted in a number of different ways, for the Bible’s
description of the Temple is fairly inexact. The furniture and the utensils are
described in minute details, but the building itself lacks detail except for a
brief notice concerning its windows. However, descriptions of the internal
aspects are described in tremendous detail: the doors to the inner sanctuary,side chambers, and so on.
Solomon’s Temple seems to have been a long-room temple, one that is ori-
ented with the entrance on the short side and the shrine at the opposi