I was sent this page by a believer who claims it confirms the historicity of King David.
http://www.geocities.com/...ns/Forum/5499/bom/KingDavid.html
The 'evidence' in question is as follows:
In recent years, two steles (large stones with writing on them) have been found. The more famous of the two is the Tel Dan Stele, and the other is the Moabite Stone. They were written by enemies of Israel in the 9th century BC and include the phrase: "House of David." In essence, it is strong evidence of the historicity of David by extraneous sources.
This is a very misleading paragraph, and displays a complete ignorance of the subject matter.
We have here four sentences, and these four sentences include at least seven inaccurate claims. I got bored when i got to number seven, I am sure I could find more but why bother?
1. The most blatant misrepresentation is that both these insciptions were found 'recently.' True enough, the Tel Dan Stele was found in the early 1990's, but when was the Moabite Stone found? Would it surprise you to know that it was found 135 years ago! The Moabite Stone, or Mesha Stele was found at Dibon (Dhiban) in
1868
2. The Tel Dan Stele is not in fact ONE inscription. It is an amalgamation of three different fragments, one found in 1993 the other two found in 1994, 11 months later. There is still some debate into whether these three fragments have been joined together correctly.
3. As to which one is more famous, well that also is debatable, one of the inscriptions has a 126 year start on the other one and has been studied by many more scholars. So this is purely a personal, unsupported claim.
4. Both of these insciptions DO NOT contain phrase 'House of David.' Yes the Tel Dan Stele contains 'a' phrase 'bytdwd', but it is highly unlikely that it is referring to a dynasty. The phrase 'bytdwd' in the Tel Dan Stele does not have a word divider between the 'byt' and the 'dwd', which means that it is more likely to be a place name rather than a dynastic name for Judah.
5. The Moabite Stone does not contain the phrase 'House of David' either. This phrase has to be made up by inserting missing letters into the inscription, so technically, we dont know what it says. It has never been demonstrated that the Moabite Stone explicitly mentions the House of David.
6. The Tel Dan Stele may not even have been written in the 9th century BCE. Dating the stele was based partly on the writing found on a cup that was found in the level below where the stele was found. The cup may be better dated to the late 8th century BCE.
7. Finally, to claim that this is strong evidence to the historicity of King David shows that the author of this piece knows diddly about archaeology. Even if these inscriptions were accurate, they are not contemporaneous with David. The Tel Dan Stele may be as much as 200 years after David was said to have lived. If they are accurate they only record the fact that someone BELIEVED that they were part of King David's Dynasty. They do not confirm David's existence at all.
I am not sure what to make of this piece of 'scholarship.' It is from a free website of course, and not from an educational establishment. It is very poorly referenced, and simply accepts things at face value, and not even accurate face value at that. I do not know if this guy is blatantly lying or simply hasn't studied the inscriptions in question, of course, he may not want to investigate them in case it shatters his fantasy.
But the problem is, these misconceptions are rife on the Net, genuine people are being misled by nonsense like this, just as people are being misled over the evolution debate.
Needless to say, I replied to the person who supplied this reference, I sent a detailed, well referenced reply, that detailed the problems with taking these sources as reliable references to King David. I am sure you can guess the outcome, yup, a few Bible verses and a 'you believe what you want I will stick with God's Word'
Ah well, it passed a few hours, and hopefully maybe it has planted a seed in his head.
Brian.
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