Endnote 3 – Learning More About Israel? Or Israel?

Among the book’s many other distortions, I can list here only a few: (1) Finkelstein claims carbon-14 dates have corrected the dates of Ramses III (p. 24). Actually they are exactly the same. (2) Finkelstein claims Shechem was destroyed at the end of the Late Bronze Age (p. 22). The excavators have emphasized that it was not. (3) Finkelstein claims that Tell Keisan, Tel Kinrot, Tel Reḥov, Yokneam and Dor were all “Canaanite city-states” (p. 30). But “city-state” is never defined, and at least two that are so claimed are Phoenician, one is probably Aramaic, and none would actually qualify as a city-state. (4) Finkelstein claims that there are dozens, even hundreds, of carbon-14 dates supporting the “low chronology” (p. 33); in the latest Megiddo report (Megiddo IV), there are three published for the pivotal Stratum VA/IVB, and if anything they support the conventional chronology. (5) Finkelstein claims that Jerusalem in the tenth century B.C.E. was a poor village with no monumental architecture (p. 43). Even Finkelstein’s colleague Nadav Na’aman disagrees with him, as nearly all archaeologists do. (6) Finkelstein radically challenges conventional dates by putting the Iron I/IIA transition in the second half of the tenth century B.C.E. (p. 64). That’s scarcely later than most, and even earlier than Amihai Mazar’s “modified” conventional chronology. Finkelstein claims that Hazor X was destroyed in the late ninth century (840–800 B.C.E.), as confirmed by carbon-14 dates (pp. 75, 122). But no evidence is cited for this, and excavator Amnon Ben-Tor disagrees. (8) Finkelstein claims that those scholars who see Jerusalem as an early state capital are “desperate,” Bible-based people (p. 80). That tells us who is really desperate. (9) For the view that the Field III city gate at Gezer dates to the ninth century B.C.E., Finkelstein cites me (William G. Dever et al., “Further Excavations at Gezer, 1967–1971,” Biblical Archaeologist 34 [1971], p. 103). I never said anything of the sort—quite the opposite. (10) Finkelstein says that Megiddo in the ninth century B.C.E. was “set aside for breeding and training horses” for chariotry (pp. 113; 133–135). Some of his own staff members (and others) dispute the famous “stables” in Megiddo IV. (11) Finkelstein claims that Tel Masos near Beersheba was the center of a far-flung “desert polity” in the tenth century B.C.E. (p. 126). But the relevant Stratum II follows a massive destruction of the walled town, and the scant remains consist of only a few tattered houses. There hardly seems any point in continuing. Finkelstein simply does not care much about facts, as many have long since concluded.