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In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition
Free Press
February 2006
352 pages
ISBN: 0743243625
Hardcover
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Historical
The exploding number of discoveries of biblical archaeology
-- artifacts and texts found at hundreds of sites populated
in the ancient Near East -- have shed powerful beams of
light on the characters and peoples in the Bible. Most of
the resulting public controversies have focused on whether
or not the history in the Bible is true. Yet ultimately,
there are two larger questions that matter more: exactly how
did the Bible evolve into its final form, over the
centuries-long process of its compilation, and what does
that history tell us about the traditions we have inherited
and that still stamp our memories? In David and Solomon, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher
Silberman, leading archaeologists and authors who have done
a great deal to uncover and understand the breathtaking
findings of their field, focus on the first two great kings
of the Bible as a lens through which we can see the
evolution of the entire biblical era. The Bible's chapters
and verses on David and his son were written in stages, over
many hundreds of years, by authors living in very different
circumstances. Thanks to a combination of textual analysis
and archaeology, we now know a great deal about which parts
of the story were written in which era, and why those
particular societies might have added to the legend
precisely as they did. In short, David and Solomon offers a
guide to a thousand years of ancient civilization and the
evolution of a tradition of kingly leadership that held sway
throughout the West for much of our history. The earliest folklore and verses about David depict a bandit
leader, hiding in the mountains, leading a small gang of
traveling raiders (which fits what we know of the ninth
century B.C.E.). That bandit may well be the "true" David.
In later periods, authors added images of David as a poet,
as the founder of a great dynasty, as a political
in-fighter, and (perhaps most famously) as a sinner. All of
these images made sense for the authors who created them,
and a similar evolution of Solomon from the builder of the
Temple, to expander of his empire, to wise sage, to rich
trader similarly reflects the successive stages of history
up to the time of Jesus. Ultimately, David and Solomon came
to embody a tradition of divinely inspired kings and even
messiahs, the forerunners of Jesus and of the great kings of
Europe throughout the Middle Ages. David and Solomon shows how the stories built around two men
reflect the very roots of the western tradition and explains
a great deal of why the Bible appears as it does.
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