“House of David” Is There!

Home > Magazines > BAR > March/April 1995

BAR recently published an article by Philip R. Davies in which he claims that the now famous six letters of the Tel Dan inscription, bytdwd, do not mean “the House of David” after all.a The tone and content of the article are an impassioned bashing of those “Biblical Maximizers” who read into archaeological finds what is supposedly not there—in this case, a reference to the famed king of ancient Israel. In a book entitled In Search of ‘Ancient Israel,’ written prior to the discovery of the Tel Dan inscription, Davies argues that most of Israel’s history prior to the Babylonian […]

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Footnotes

Philip R. Davies, “‘House of David’ Built on Sand,” BAR 20:04.

Anson Rainey, “The ‘House of David’ and the House of the Deconstructionists,” BAR 20:06.

Endnotes

Baruch Halpern in an article circulated on the Internet, p. 17, critiquing Philip R. Davies’s In Search of ‘Ancient Israel’ (Sheffield, England: JSOT Press, 1992).

1 Kings 12:19, 20 and 26; 13:2; 14:8; 2 Kings 17:21; Isaiah 7:2, 13; 22:22; Jeremiah 21:12; Zechariah 12:7, 8, 10 and 12, etc.

André Lemaire, prior to the discovery of the Dan inscription, and using the reconstruction of a letter recommended by others, believes he has found another reference to “house of David,” which Davies only mentions in a footnote as implausible, without giving any justification. André Lemaire, “‘House of David’ Restored in Moabite Inscription,” BAR 20:03.