Finkelstein is minimalist, someone who detests the very idea of God and who strives mightily to debunk each and every statement in the Bible.
Alas for the minimalists, pretty much every other week some archaeologist uncovers yet another proof that the Bible is true. It has really been a very discouraging few decades for them, hasn’t it?
Not that mere proof has stopped Finkelstein and his ilk …
David and Solomon were fictional characters,…
Sorry to resurrect an older thread, but I recently finished this book and it was quite intriguing to me. I would like to know how others are struggling with the great consequences indicated by this text.
The above respondent opines that Finkelstein and his fellow minimalist ideologues assert that David and Solomon are fictional characters. This may be, but it was not asserted in the book, or those statements have been revised out of the current edition. Contradistinctively, Finkelstein & Silberman state that the current, very thorough assessment of Judaean archaeology from the period to which David and Solomon are dated strongly indicate that Biblical assertions of a fully developed monarchy, with bureaucratic support such as delegation to ministers of the crown for certain tasks, e.g., tax collecting, et al, cannot be derived from the archeological evidence. Neither the building structures of the era or the population indicated for Judaea in that time frame indicate that the Southern, Judean Kingdom had the population necessary for a kingdom, especially that of a united kingdom. Rather, the evidence indicates the Judean leaders were on the scale of “chieftains” with small bands of warriors rather than armies.
However, archeological findings from the era of the time of David strongly indicate the Northern Kingdom headquartered in Samaria had the population density to sustain active male recruitment into an army of the size needed for a kingdom, along with stables to house horses, the building structural finds indicating such a kingdom with palaces existed, with the building space necessary to house a bureaucracy appropriate to that era in the middle east.
The Southern kingdom did not attain the population and wealth required to support a monarchy until the Assyrian empire devastated the north and drove the population into Judea. At this point, the temple hierarchy in Jerusalem worked overtime to assimilate the northern refugees by appropriating their stories of the northern kingdom, but with a view asserting the claim of the Southern kings, namely Josiah, for the northern territories.
Thus, what we have in the Bible is the re-working of stories to show David and Solomon as the great kings of “all Israel” when the evidence shows that never happened. That the kings of Israel were the dominant and wealthy monarchs and the people of the northern kingdom were numerous, industrious, and wealthy. The latter proving to be their Achilles heal, attracting the attention, and avarice, of the Assyrian empire of the east, which would not allow an independent kingdom in Israel with that kind of wealth.
What we have in the Bible, is literal invention of David as a great king, when in reality he was a chieftain who was quite skilled in fighting Philistines, no small feat in itself.
Further, the Jerusalem temple hierarchy literally invented history, more accurately to be described as a myth, in order to assert the claims of King Josiah over the northern territories, and that this is now discernible as the “The Documentary Hypothesis” first discovered, or posited, by Wellhausen.
Further, the temple hierarchy asserts the special character of Josiah as the chosen one, the one foretold to unite Israel, a special Messiah, and yet, in lieu of his sudden unexpected death at the hands of the Egyptian Pharaoah, the Jerusalem temple hierarchy was then forced to re-work the story of the Messiah Josiah, King of Israel, into one of the suffering servant, who would be killed. Prophecy after the fact.
Of course, these assertions, if true, have momentous consequences for people of faith, like myself.
I am strongly inclined to accept this presentation of the archeological finds as presented in The Bible Unearthed. And if this presentation is a thorough and comprehensive display of the archeological appropriate to the era in question, then I am forced to consider the veracity of the claims of some who assert the myth of Israel is indeed a myth and not grounded in history, and the consequences which this has for my faith as a Catholic.
History is literally being teased out of the ground because the evidence indicates the record as conveyed in the Hebrew sacred writings are compromised as an historical record. What we are looking at in the Old Testament, is not a record of the Deity intervening with people of faith, rather, it is the assertion of the Judean monarchy through the Jerusalem temple priesthood, utilizing their elite and unique literacy, to assert the claim of the Judean crown to the land of Israel which had been devastated by Assyria. Furthermore, as Silberman and Finkelstein assert, these claims only arose with Josiah, with further editing in the post exilic period.
And with that, please allow me to briefly introduce myself.
I am a former Baptist minister who attained a Master of Divinity degree from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at Louisville, Kentucky in 1985. So I have had more than a few theology, Biblical language, philosophy and archeology courses. Then I became a Catholic in the early 1990s and had to be retrained for another occupation. Nevertheless, my theological education is cherished by me, though I wish I could have had more exposure to Thomas Aquinas, but no Baptist seminary is going to include Aquinas in Systematic theology!
I await your thoughts.
I can’t even seem to be able to cite a single reknowned Catholic Historian! “But I am just someone who loves to read a lot”, you may argue. but that’s not all! You are born with a natural gift to defend the truth from fact! 
I think you should honestly consider that possibility. 
) Busy to the point that I’m currently trying to take another break from the forums.
) to turn into a sort of “Let’s get Patrick to write a book” or “Patrick’s soapbox” 
, so a final word. While I do feel, that CAF, while for the most part very beneficial (I hope I’ve been of help to people; they sure have helped me a lot for the five to six years I’ve been here 
), can at times eat into my time and turn into an addiction. Which is why I’m struggling to get away from it, even if only momentarily, and focus on what I should really be doing, in real life; to phrase it in a pseudo-Buddhist way, it’s becoming too much of an attachment.
), and answering problems, many of which I also have. Let’s just say that there was never a day that I thought that I was a liar, a pot calling the kettle black. 