“House of David” Built on Sand: The Sins of the Biblical Maximizers - The BAS Library
Login
Home > Magazines > BAR > July/August 1994

“House of David” Built on Sand: The Sins of the Biblical Maximizers

By Philip R. Davies

A recent BAR article trumpets the discovery of a new inscription found at Tel Dan that allegedly mentions the name “David” and refers to the kingdom of Judah as the “House of David.”a On this basis it is suggested that Biblical scholars ignore the theories of the “Biblical minimizers,”b—that is, those of us who stubbornly insist that Biblical stories, like any other ancient accounts, ought to be verified before being accorded the status of facts. As it turns out, neither claim made for the Tel Dan inscription—that it contains the name “David” and that it contains the term the “House […]

Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.

Join the BAS Library!

Already a library member? Log in here.

Institution user? Log in with your IP address or Username

Footnotes

1.

“‘David’ Found at Dan,” BAR 20:02.

2.

See the introduction to the article cited above.

3.

André Lemaire, “‘House of David’ Restored in Moabite Inscription,” BAR 20:03, has, implausibly in my view, conjucturally restored a reference to “House of David” elsewhere in this inscription.

Endnotes

1.

Avraham Biran and Joseph Naveh, “An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan,” Israel Exploration Journal 43 (1993), pp. 81–98.

2.

See the Assyrian inscriptions in James B. Pritchard, ed. Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 280–281, 284–285.

3.

But even in the Mesha stele, the place-names Beth-diblathaim and Beth-baalmeon are written as two words, not one.

4.

The caption on page 38 of the article in BAR reads “New Inscription May Illuminate Biblical Events,” highlighting the possibility that the text of the article, for all its wishful invocation of the Bible, in fact ultimately denies.

5.

The probable answer to this question is given in an article by E.A. Knauf, T. Romer and A. de Pury, which also contains further criticisms of Biran’s and Naveh’s interpretation of the Dan inscription, to appear in a forthcoming issue of Biblische Notizen