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Pavel Shrago, Tel Aviv University

ISRAEL FINKELSTEIN, professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, is the leading proponent of the so-called “Low Chronology,” which lowers the date of archaeological remains formerly assigned to the time of David and Solomon, including the monumental six-chamber gate from Megiddo, by a hundred years—from the tenth century B.C.E. to the ninth century B.C.E. Finkelstein’s chronological scheme, which leaves very little archaeological evidence for a centralized state in the tenth century, has often been used to bolster the minimalist claim that the Biblical David and Solomon were more legendary than real.