Enormous Two-Storey House from King David’s Time Found in Israel

The remains of a huge building have been found in the Shephelah area (above). Image courtesy of Maglanis, CC BY-SA 3.0.



Joel Kontinen

Archaeologists have excavated a huge two-storey house in the Shephelah area in the Judean Hills, not far from Jerusalem.

“The archaeologists who excavated the house, at a site now called Tel Eton, in Israel, said in an article published online March 13 in the journal Radiocarbon that the date, design and size of the house indicates that a strong organized government existed at Tel Eton around 3,000 years ago. They added that this government may be the United Monarchy,” Live Science explains.

The United Monarchy refers to the reigns of David and Solomon before the kingdom split into two (Judah, the area in and around Jerusalem, and the northern kingdom known as Israel).

“Excavated between 2006 and 2015, the two-story house is constructed partly of ashlar stones. The ground floor is about 2,500 square feet (230 square meters) in size, putting it among the largest 1 percent of buildings that existed in the region around 3,000 years ago, Avraham Faust, an archaeology professor at Bar-Ilan University who leads excavations at Tel Eton, told Live Science.”

This is not the only archaeological evidence we have of King David. A few years ago, some sceptics still doubted his historicity. But then archaeologists found a 9th century B.C. inscription with the text House of David in Tel Dan in northern Galilee.

Some other recent discoveries, for instance excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, likewise confirm the existence of the United Monarchy.

We should not be surprised, as the Bible records history accurately. (See examples here, here and here.)

Source:

Jarus, Owen. 2018. Does This 3,000-Year-Old House Confirm King David's Lost Biblical Kingdom? Live Science (3 May).

More Archaeological Evidence for the United Monarchy of David and Solomon

These ruins probably hail from King David’s time (ca. 1000 BC). Image courtesy of MathKnight, CC BY-SA 2.5.



Joel Kontinen

Archaeologists known as Biblical minimalists tend to believe that the Bible is historically more or less unreliable.

They have argued that Israel’s monarchs David and Solomon either were not historical figures or did not reign over the area described in the Bible.

Recently, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a longish article on this issue. Philippe Bohstrom takes a look at recent archaeological discoveries in Israel that probably hail from the Davidic era.

He discusses a vast copper mining operation that produced over 100,000 tons of slag and says this suggests a strong central government at a time when Egypt was in decline and Edom and Philistia had yet to rise.

“Supporting Timna's massive mining operations, therefore, required long-distance trade, or in other words, complex economic activity involving a bureaucratic apparatus. Archaeologists have indeed found evidence of imports from afar (and cloth) dating to the time of David and Solomon. Next to 5-meter high fortification walls, the archaeologists found slingstones, a variety of seeds, fish bones, and donkey bones and dung preserved well enough to be analyzed: it shows the draught animals at Timna ate hay and pomace, the pulp from pressing grapes, olives and suchlike, imported from the Mediterranean coast, more than 200 km afar,” he writes.

He goes on to mention other discoveries, such as the ruins of King David's Palace that Hebrew University professor Eilat Mazar found in 2005.

Bohstrom is not a biblical apologist and does not have an axe to grind. He does, however, ask why it is easier for some sceptics to believe that Agamemnon and other Homeric kings were historical figures but biblical characters were not, given that there is more evidence for the historicity of the latter.

Archaeology confirms biblical history, people, buildings, places and even catastrophes such as earthquakes.

Statues, coins, ossuaries (bone boxes) and seal impressions show names mentioned in the Bible.

Source:

Bohstrom, Philippe. 2017. Did David and Solomon's United Monarchy Exist? Vast Ancient Mining Operation May Hold Answers. Haaretz (21 November).