Another View: Could the Edomites Have Wielded an Army to Fight David?

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Those who say “no,” led by Israel’s most quoted archaeologist, Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, argue that in David’s time Edom was not a state capable of mobilizing an army. Not until centuries later did Edom (or Judah, for that matter) become a state. Therefore, they reason, the Biblical story of David and his Edomite wars must be fiction, a story created centuries later by Judahites who wanted to give themselves a glorious past.

This line of argument was contested in a path-breaking BAR article by archaeologists Thomas E. Levy of the University of California, San Diego, and Mohammad Najjar of Jordan’s Department of Antiquities.^a They have discovered a massive Edomite copper smelting facility at a site called Khirbat en-Nahas in the lowlands just east of the Aravah Valley, about 30 miles south of the Dead Sea, that could only have been operated by a complex society like a state. In short, in this new understanding of Edomite society, an Edomite army was easily imaginable, even likely. This gave a new reality to the Biblical account of David’s Edomite wars.

The BAR article received major coverage in The New York Times and elsewhere around the world.

But that is not the end of the story.

In an article in the archaeological journal Tel Aviv, Finkelstein now argues that Levy and Najjar had it all wrong. Edom did not emerge as a state, he argues, “earlier than the broadly accepted date of the eighth century B.C.E.” Finkelstein concedes that copper was smelted at Nahas in David’s time, but “the rift valley south of the Dead Sea was not part of the settled lands.” Sites like Nahas were simply industrial centers that had little, if any, connection to the “few small, poor villages of the Edomite highlands.” Instead, the copper-production facilities adjacent to the copper mines in the lowlands operated as part of the society of the Beersheba Valley west of the Aravah (Rift Valley), with the site of Tel Masos at its center. That is where the copper from Nahas was shipped. Tel Masos served, in Finkelstein’s words, as “the gateway of the desert trade to the settled lands.”

Moreover, Levy and Najjar badly misdated the huge fortress at Nahas (240 feet on each side). It was constructed, says Finkelstein, not in the late 11th or early 10th century B.C.E. (David’s time), but “after the 9th century B.C.E.” Finkelstein took “a close look at the aerial photo and plan” of the fortress, which “seem to show that the fort was built on top of the site, cutting into piles of copper industry waste” (italics in original). In Finkelstein’s view, the fort was built at a time when the smelting facility at Nahas “was no longer active and the main production effort shifted to neighboring sites.”

In short, excavations at Nahas “do not provide evidence for early, tenth century B.C.E. state formation in Edom … [The Bible’s] description of David’s campaign there [in Edom] (2 Samuel 8:13–14) should be seen as an anachronism, reflecting the realities and goals of the time of the compilation of the [Biblical] texts [centuries later].”

In a reply in the same journal, Levy and Najjar 067come out swinging: Finkelstein’s “critique … is riddled with misinterpretations of the data from our excavations … [H]e ignores … the corpus of our previously published research … [H]e seems to be trying to force our data into his preconceived ‘low’ chronological model.” Finkelstein is famous for his proposed “low chronology” that down-dates Biblical-period archaeological strata by as much as a hundred years. Among other things, his “low chronology” removes all the massive building previously attributed to Solomon and assigns it to a later king. Thus far, however, he has failed to enlist support for his “low chronology” from any major senior scholar or archaeologist—Israeli or American.

Levy and Najjar charge that Finkelstein’s article is not the only place where he “misrepresents” their research. He also does it in his highly successful popular book (with Neil Silberman), titled David and Solomon.^b Levy and Najjar note that in the book, although their excavation is described, Finkelstein does not even cite their publications. “There is a disturbing trend in Finkelstein’s recent work to ignore data or simply force it into his model,” say Levy and Najjar. Here they refer to Finkelstein’s effort to force the data to support his argument that copper production at Nahas was controlled from the Beersheba Valley with its center at Tel Masos.

Finkelstein fails, according to Levy and Najjar, to understand the nature of ancient states that scholars sometimes refer to as “archaic states.” “We must build social and historical models that are rooted in nomadic pastoral social systems,” contend Levy and Najjar. They note that at a nearby cemetery (in Wadi Fidan), archaeologists have discovered over 3,500 graves from the Iron Age. This does not look like an area that has not been settled. The cemetery plus the smelting facility and the huge fort reflect a “super-chiefdom,” if not a state—that is, a complex society.

Those who say “no,” led by Israel’s most quoted archaeologist, Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, argue that in David’s time Edom was not a state capable of mobilizing an army. Not until centuries later did Edom (or Judah, for that matter) become a state. Therefore, they reason, the Biblical story of David and his Edomite wars must be fiction, a story created centuries later by Judahites who wanted to give themselves a glorious past. This line of argument was contested in a path-breaking BAR article by archaeologists Thomas E. Levy of the University of California, San Diego, and […]