Fifteen Eighty Four

Kings Saul, David, and Solomon are some of the most famous biblical figures. Stories about Solomon’s wealth and wisdom have become proverbial in the cultures dominated by Abrahamic religions, and David’s defeat of Goliath is a metaphor so powerful and pervasive, it is still used by hit tv shows and bestselling books. But who were these people, if they even existed at all?

In the 1990s, based on minimalistic trends in biblical studies and a new theoretical reconstruction of the Iron Age timeline in ancient Israel, many scholars believed that these kings either never existed or were rulers of a limited polity centered only in the Judean highlands. Not only tales like the visit of the queen of Sheba or David’s conquest up to the Euphrates were doubted, but the very existence of Israel’s United Monarchy – as the kingdom of David and Solomon is commonly called – was questioned. Recent archaeological discoveries, however, show that the United Monarchy was written off too precipitously.

In The Bible’s First Kings, we lay out the physical evidence for this polity, the reasons for its formation, and how it developed and then fell over half a century. As we follow the material trail left to us in the 3,000-year-old remains, and combine this with a source/redaction critical approach to the biblical text of Samuel and Kings, a clear picture emerges.

Archaeologically, the people who lived in the highlands of ancient Israel in the 11^th century – commonly identified as the Israelites – were not a political entity, but a collection of small subsistence farming villages. Suddenly, in the 10^th century, the villages in the Samarian and Judean highlands were largely abandoned, and in their place, fortified, more central sites are built. In the following decades, many sites in the surrounding valleys are abandoned and destroyed, and this process spread even to more remote areas in Transjordan and the Galilee. At the same time, a formalized form of a particular house style, known as the Longitudinal Four-Space (Four-Room) House was being built throughout the country, and this was accompanied by drastic transformations in ceramic form and in the nature of the ceramic assemblage. These changes are clear indications for the formation of the United Monarchy, and its later expansion.

Combined with the historical information available, we offer the following reconstruction.

The Philistines were Israel’s neighbors, living in large cities in the nearby coastal plain, and dominating the area from Gaza in the south to near Jaffa in the north. Being of Aegean origins, they maintained various foreign traits, like high pork consumption, a unique decorated pottery, and the use of hearths, that separated them from the Israelites and the Canaanites. The Philistines initially consolidated their hegemony in the southern coastal plain, and in the 11^th century they began to raid the highlands in an attempt to extend their domination inland. While the sparsely populated region of Judah was easily subdued, the Samarian Highlands, starting with Benjamin in the south, join forces to push back the invaders. This, we argue, is the precipitant cause for Israel forming as a polity and is the history behind what the Bible describes as the reign of King Saul.

Finding themselves newly powerful in the region, Israel’s next king, David, a former brigand leader turned soldier of fortune, takes the army north, south, east, and west, extending Israel’s reach in the territory, and even collecting tribute from beyond. Like other conqueror figures, such as Shaka Zulu or Genghis Khan, David’s genius was in military conquest and coalition building. In his wake, David left destroyed cities such as Tel Qasile, Kinrot, Megiddo and Yokneam, many of which were rebuilt, along with many new projects in peripheral regions such as the Sharon and the Negev, by his son, King Solomon.

Like many empires, large and small, Israel’s United Monarchy does not last beyond two generations, deteriorating probably during the reign of Solomon, and collapsing after his death. Nevertheless, the kingdom of David and Solomon left an indelible mark not only in the region, where it continued for centuries divided into the polities of Israel and Judah, but in Western imagination and consciousness. In The Bible’s First Kings, we take you on a tour of this empire from its inception to its demise, and sift through the biblical and archaeological data thoroughly and in great detail, but always with an eye on the bigger picture of this remarkable and formative period, that has never ceased to fascinate authors and readers from the time it formed to our times, three thousand years later.

The Bible’s First Kings by
Avraham Faust and Zev I. Farber