
In Search of King David’s Lost Empire - diodorus
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/29/in-search-of-king-davids-lost-empire
======
InfiniteRand
When you deal with ancient history you’re going to end up with at least some
imaginings to connect the data points into a narrative of some sort. That
narrative will almost certainly be wrong in some significant way given the
future discoveries not yet seen.

Moreover measuring which imagining is more true requires speculative criteria
building speculation on top of speculation.

I get religious belief, I am very religious, but to hold that an assortment of
artifacts, which are still being discovered, unevenly spread by luck and
chance, to hold that that proves or disproves a narrative is a leap of faith.

But aside from all that, there’s a common pattern in historical research when
there is a looming central question at the center of a field, historiography
swings one way heavily, then swings the other way as the excesses of the
previous generation are denounced, then there is an attempt to meet in the
middle, again denouncing past excesses, then the middle is seen as too wish-
washy and full of false equivalence and historiography swings hard in one
direction again.

For other examples of this see the history of the Cold War, history of world
war 2, history of the US Civil War etc.

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sam_goody
_yawn_

Choose your opinions, present them as fact. Back them up with nothing.

I worked on a dig in Israel. It was interesting.

Among other things I learnt about archeology, history, facts, opinions, and
bias, is that that most what is in popular press is grounded in belief, not
fact.

And that Finklestein is not respected by his peers. This article doesn't make
me think any higher of him.

~~~
coliveira
Finklestein's peers are mostly paid to establish the truth of biblical
stories. That's why they don't like him.

~~~
Alex3917
If you look at all the religious megaliths we have today, like the Vatican or
whatever, the reasons those exist is because they were built using several
hundred or even thousand years of accrued wealth. (And a significant amount of
'reappropriated' building materials.) If the second temple really was built in
586 BCE, does it make any sense whatsoever that that could have been built
with only 3 generations or so of accrued intergenerational wealth? That just
doesn't seem plausible. Even assuming the bible is 100% made up, common sense
suggests the longer biblical timeline is probably closer to the truth.

If they'd instead stumbled into Dubai-style wealth from these copper mines or
whatever only a few decades earlier, surely that would have been written down
somewhere.

~~~
coliveira
You're assuming that veracity of stories about the grandiosity of Salomon's
temple. There is no evidence to demonstrate that there was a fantastic,
wealthy temple built by Solomon. If there was one, it could have been a simple
temple fit to a small town built by the new rulers of the Israelite tribes.

~~~
Alex3917
> You're assuming that veracity of stories about the grandiosity of Salomon's
> temple.

I was talking about the temple mount, which you can still visit today. Didn't
realize it wasn't finished until 500 years later though, so not sure to what
extent my argument still holds.

~~~
verbify
The remaining Western wall of the Temple mount today was rebuilt by Herod
almost 1000 years later (20 BCE). You can tell by the distinctive stone-
dressing - the border around the stone known as Herodian masonry. You can also
see this feature on the cave of the patriarchs.

------
Jedd
> In the long war over how to reconcile the Bible with historical fact, the
> story of David stands at ground zero.

I'd suggest the historicity of Jesus is a more profound question. Absent
David, you could still try to lay claim to significant tracts of the various
interpretations. For decades I'd assumed the historical record (outside the
bible) was exhaustive, clear, and undisputed -- but beyond the deity aspect,
there's some genuine doubt over the historical Jesus. [0]

Apropos TFA - I can recommend Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou's excellent BBC
3-episode series from 2011 called 'Bible's Buried Secrets', though I think
there was a similar named US series at some point. In any case, one episode is
dedicated to the question of 'Did King David's empire exist?' \- I won't spoil
the surprise of her conclusions.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus)
[1]
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zp3j3](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zp3j3)

------
wisemanwillhear
There is an interesting book I read in college that address the timeline
problem called "Centuries of Darkness: A Challenge to the Conventional
Chronology of Old World Archaeology" by Peter James. He makes an argument for
why the timelines of some of the ancient cultures in that region are messed
up.

[https://books.google.com/books/about/Centuries_of_Darkness.h...](https://books.google.com/books/about/Centuries_of_Darkness.html?id=WhEaAAAAYAAJ&source=kp_book_description)

------
empath75
Biblical archeology is hopelessly compromised as a field. The people most
interested in pursuing it and funding it are the people least interested in
discovering the truth, rather than confirming their own beliefs.

~~~
NateEag
I think if that were true there would not be enough controversy in the field
to write an article like this.

I know the Old Testament reasonably well and I think the majority of the
researchers the article quotes deny a literal reading of it in one way or
another.

~~~
Jedd
> I know the Old Testament reasonably well and I think the majority of the
> researchers the article quotes deny a literal reading of it in one way or
> another.

I suspect that still aligns with GP's point -- people are generally partisan
on this subject, one way or another.

~~~
NateEag
Being partisan does not guarantee you are dishonest.

Everyone has biases, but that doesn't mean we're all incapable of feeling or
finding truth.

The GP said clearly that the field is broken due to everyone preferring to
shore up their worldviews rather than follow the evidence.

People disagreeing with the Biblical narrative sounds like the opposite to me.

~~~
Jedd
Agree that partisan does not correlate to honesty.

I think the claim, and I agree with it, is that partisanship will affect where
you look, how you look, and what you do with contradictory information.

Are you suggesting disagreement with 'the biblical narrative' indicates
partisanship, or the lack of? (Or, rather, referring back to original wording
- an indication of shoring up a worldview?)

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badrabbit
[https://outline.com/uPscMz](https://outline.com/uPscMz)

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MintelIE
There doesn't seem to be much of anything actually substantiating King David's
existence. Has this changed as of late? I know it's very important to modern-
day Israeli historiography.

~~~
aryehof
Actually it is _rather_ more important to Christianity. Jesus as the Messiah
is predicated on his lineage from King David.

This is why the New Testament commences with _proving_ Jesus's direct lineage
from King David. Without it, Jesus is not the Messiah, and Christianity is
baseless.

~~~
wl
Cyrus was the Messiah, too, but nobody pretends he was descended from King
David. In any case, Jesus fails most of the Messianic criteria of Second
Temple Judaism. Early Christians had to significantly revise their concept of
Messiah to get Jesus to fit. Indeed, the NT makes light of the fact that Jesus
was not the Messiah the Jews were expecting, although it implies they were
wrong.

In any case, the basis of Christianity is that Jesus was God incarnate, died
for the sins of the world, rose from the dead, and will come again to judge
the living and the dead. Some early Christian polemic about interpretation of
then-centries-old prophesy isn't core to that. It's a problem for
fundamentalism, but that's an entirely separate issue.

