In this lesson, David Capoccia finishes sampling archaeology from the judges period and begins examining important archaeological finds from the time of Israel’s kings. Specifically, David Capoccia examines: the temple of Shechem described in Judges 9, the Tel Dan Stele, the Mesha Stele, and the fortress city of Khirbet Qeiyafa. The latter finds are especially important for confirming the historicity and power of the united monarchy under David and Solomon.
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okay well we’re going to look at one more piece of archeology from the judges period today and then we’ll take a look at some archeology related to Israel’s Kings we’ve already gotten to and we’re getting more into a section of biblical archeology in which the evidence becomes quite specific and abundant I really would love to just show you all of it but I can’t I can only show you a sample of what’s been discovered after all this is a survey course still I trust that you will be encouraged and that you also get a better sense of the time periods that the Bible describes as we look at these pieces of archeology here’s an outline of the main topics today we’re going to look at the Temple of shechem mentioned in judges 9 archaeological evidence for that the tel dance deal the Misha steel and kerbit kefa a fortress City from the time of David or David and Solomon just to help you a little bit I mentioned a rough chronology last week for understanding the Old Testament timeline the period that we’re talking about just to remind you has these dates judges period be somewhere from about 1450 or 1400 to 1100 BC and then we have the monarchy under Saul David and Solomon that is the United monarchy from about 1100 to 975 BC then you remember the kingdom splits we have a Northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah the Kingdom of Israel lasts from 975 to about 721 BC when the Assyrians take the northern kingdom into captivity the kings of Judah though continue to rule till about 588 BC when the final wave of captives is taken into Babylon and the temple in Jerusalem is destroyed you’ll remember that the Babylonians actually invaded Jerusalem several times so that was that’s the last wave so keep that chronology in mind as we look at these pieces let’s pray now Lord God you are the master you are the king of History you are the great God who has revealed himself not only to the people of Israel but to us thank you Lord for grafting Us in Lord I pray that you would encourage us as we look at at just how your history the scriptures is reflected in in more places and God give me the ability to explain in Jesus name amen we start today with shechem is a city mentioned in the Bible a number of times it’s mentioned in Genesis one famous instance with Genesis is was with Jacob’s sons Jacob’s sons Slaughter all the men of shechem all the Canaanite men of shechem after the prince of shechem had deflowered their sister so it was that City that that all happened to the city appears again in Joshua Joshua before his death charges the people to get rid of their idols and to serve the Lord faithfully and he’s in shechem when he does this let’s actually take a look at it open your Bibles to Joshua 24.
we’re going to look at verses 25 to 27 this will give us some background on some archeology I’m about to show you Joshua 24 verses 20 25-27 Joshua is charging the people to serve the Lord and they agree now here’s verse 25.
so Joshua made a covenant with the people that day and made for them a statute and an ordinance in shechem and Joshua Joshua wrote these words in the book of The Law of God and he took a large Stone and set it up there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord Joshua said to all the people behold this Stone shall be for a witness against us for it has heard all the words of the Lord which he spoke to us thus it shall be for a witness against you so that you do not deny your God so what was the witness of the Covenant that Israel had made according to Joshua the stone Big Rock this big rock he sets it up and he says this is a witness it heard all the words of the Covenant that we just talked about and now a few turn away from God it will be a witness against you you’ll remember you’ll remember we had this Covenant right here when you look at the stone what happens though after Joshua and his generation die what do the people do between that’s right it did not know the Lord another generation came that did not know the Lord and they turn away from the Lord and then begin acting like the people in the land thus begins one of the many cycles of rebellion judgment repentance and then Deliverance in the Book of Judges of the judges you may remember one judged one judge by the name of Gideon also called jeru bail Gideon delivers Israel dies and then Israel turns back again from following the Lord now listen to what judges 8 333 says then it came about as soon as Gideon was dead that the sons of Israel again played the Harlot with the Bales and made Baal bereth their God and made Baal beareth they’re gone now some of you may know what does the term Baal actually mean if you don’t know it means Lord master or husband so this name or I’ll give you the other word this is Baal beareth is their God bereth is the Hebrew word for Covenant so the people are turning to a god that they call Lord of the Covenant the lord of the Covenant but it’s not the true God so this happens after Gideon’s death now Gideon’s son one of his sons he had many sons one of his sons by a concubine was by the name of abimelech and he soon tries to make himself King over Israel and he wants to rule from shechem he asked for some money from his relatives in shechem to pay for an army look at judges 9 verses 4 to 6. so this is the book right after Joshua just turn right over judges nine and look at verses four to six abimelech Gideon’s son asks for some money from his relatives verse 4.
they gave him 70 pieces of silver from the house of bail bereth with which abimelech hired worthless and Reckless fellows and they followed him then he went to his father’s house at ofra and killed his brothers the sons of jeru Bale 70 men on one stone but jotham the youngest son of jeru bell Bale was left before he hid himself all the men of shechem and all Beth Miller assembled together and they went and made abimelech King by the oak of the pillar which was in shechem so what atrocity does abimelech commit here he does some killing whom does he kill he kills all of his brothers he wants to make himself King he doesn’t want anybody else to have a claim to the throne so he kills all of his brothers except the youngest who gets away where is abimelech made King shechem but where specifically by the oak of the pillar that description should sound familiar to you this was the same site where something else happened where Joshua made the Covenant right with the people of Israel don’t turn away from the Lord your God at the same pillar abimelech is making himself King now notice the phrase that appears in the verses that we read the house of Baal bereth this whole chapter talks about this structure in various ways is apparently a temple structure in the city of the city of shechem but it’s later on in this chapter called a tower so it’s likely that those two terms are talking about the same thing there’s a tower in shechem there’s a temple in shechem it’s actually a temple Tower or a fortress Temple a quite large Fortress Temple that is featured throughout this chapter though bimalek tries to make himself King things don’t work out well for him or his co-conspirators and an act of retributive judgment God causes the people of shechem to be destroyed by abimelech himself look down towards the end of the chapter verses 46 to 49.
so this is chapter nine of Judges verses 46 to 49.
when all the leaders of the Tower of shechem heard of it that is that they heard of their defeat against abimelech they entered the inner chamber of the Temple of el bereth it was told abimelech that all the leaders of the Tower of shechem were gathered together so abimelech went up to mount Zalman and he and all the people who were with him and abimelech or and all the people who are with him and abibilic Took an Ax in his hand and cut down a branch from the trees and lifted it and laid it on his shoulder then he said to the people who were with him what you’ve seen me do hurry and do likewise all the people also cut down each won his branch and followed abimelech and they put them on the inner chamber and set the inner chamber on fire over those inside so that all the men of the Tower of shechem also died about a thousand men and women so the people of shechem seeing that their Warriors had been defeated by abimelech’s hired men they took shelter in their Fortress Temple but they all perish why Bim like destroys it how does he do that he sets it on fire he gets some wood Stacks it up and sets it on fire so the temple was destroyed and all the people inside were killed now why am I telling you all this well because here’s the temple there’s the Temple of Baal bereth you see the ruins of ancient shechem are right next to and underneath the modern city of Nablus in the northern part of the West Bank Israelites are not Israelites Israelis still call Nablus by the name of shechem this large Temple was uncovered on the Acropolis of ancient shechem outside of the Temple of Jerusalem this is the largest temple yet uncovered in the land of Canaan its length and width are 70 feet by 86.3 feet how tall was it we can’t say for sure because we only have the ruined bottom portion of the temple however the foundations of this Temple are 17 feet thick so the building likely supported several stories of mudbrick and Timber the Bible therefore rightly refers to this Temple as a tower structure archaeologists date the construction of the temple to around 1700 to 1600 BC and the destruction of the temple to around 1200 to 1100 BC which would be right in the period of the judges here’s a description of the Temple’s layout from an article from Dr Bryant wood I think I mentioned his name before he’s an archaeologist with Associates for biblical research here’s how he describes the temple I’ll show you a picture of the plan on the East Two Towers containing stairwells to the upper stories flank the entrance inside two rows of columns three in each row divided the space into a Nave and two side aisles in front of the temple was a courtyard with a large Earthen and stone altar about 17 or seven seven feet by five and a half feet and one feet high 21 feet from the temple entrance an enormous Limestone Stila or masaba stood 6.6 feet further to the southeast it is 4.8 foot wide 1.4 foot thick and although broken 4.8 foot high there’s a picture of it an enormous Stone from ancient shechem near the temple that stone is likely what it’s the stone of the Covenant that Joshua set up with the people of Israel the same Stone by which abimelech was crowned King if abimelech and these people of shechem they had this Temple they had the stone right in front of it where better place to be Crown King then next to this great Stone and in front of the Great temple the Gate of the city which is mentioned in judges 9 though we didn’t read about it was also discovered along with evidence of the city’s destruction just as judges 9 says here’s a description from one of the excavators at shechem Lawrence tombs the Iron Age one city underwent violent destruction which obliterated its buildings and left the sight a Wilderness of ruins at the time of its destruction the culture of the city was fully developed iron one that is from the Iron Age one the end of the iron one city is almost certainly to be attributed to its capture by abimelech the city was apparently abandoned for about a hundred years after its destruction and then rebuilt some time during the monarchy period there you have it we read about it in the scriptures and here it is the city the stone the temple questions about shechem pretty amazing now let’s move on to the time of the Kings of Israel the period of the Kings God was Israel’s king during the judges period in fact Gideon when they tried to make him King he’s like no God is your king don’t try and make me King but after many cycles of rebellion and repentance the demand among the Israelites for a human King like the kings of all the nations around them became widespread among the people God granted the request of the Israelites the faithless Israelites for a human King and he gave them Saul but Saul was not a good King after Saul God gave the kingship to David and to all of David’s descendants but did David really exist May a member from the first lesson that I’ve already talked about this a little bit many minimalist archaeologists dismissed the notion that David was a real king of Israel and that his dynasty was a real Dynasty the skeptic said that David was just some ideal ruler some legendary ruler like King Arthur used to inspire and unite the people of Israel they needed some sort of culture to unite themselves around so they made up this great king after all the minimalists said why haven’t we found any evidence outside the Bible confirming David to be a real person why does he appear no other records he must have been a myth well a number of discoveries have shown that to be false completely false there are two major discoveries that we have to talk about when it comes to David I’ve already mentioned them both to you but we’re going to explore them a little bit more this morning in a little bit different way than I did in the first lesson they are the tel Dan steel and the Misha Steel here’s the tel Dan steel again and steel was found in 1993 in 19 oh I think I wrote the wrong information on this slide 1993 not 1903 by avrum biren at Tel Dan in Northern Israel with more pieces found in 1994. so relatively recent the pieces were found repurposed into a structure of a later ancient building so the stone was originally made this Monument Stone this steel and then somebody broke it and they tried to use it in another building originally the stone monument stood by itself Stone’s inscription is an Aramaic it comes from the king of Syria which we can identify as haziel based on the scriptures he ruled sometime between 900 and 700 BC in this inscription King Hazel boasts of his military accomplished accomplishments against Israel if you were here in the first lesson you’ve seen this text but let me show it to you again and read it my father went up against him when he fought and my father lay down he went to his ancestors and the king of Israel entered previously in my father’s land and hey Dad made me a king and hey Dad went in front of me and I departed from the seventh of my kingdom and I slew 70 Kings to harness thousands of Chariots and thousands of Horsemen I killed Jerome son of aab king of Israel and I killed ahaziu son of jehoram King of the House of David and I set their towns into ruins and turned their land into a destruction and jihu ruled over Israel and I laid Siege upon we talked previously about how the details of this inscription line up with what the Old Testament history books say about Johor azahaya or ahaziah and jehu or jihu but what is the most significant aspect of this deal the phrase House of David the phrase House of David the letters in Aramaic are displayed there I don’t know exactly how I would say it but the Hebrew it would be Beth David or House of David if the steel designates a real king as being from the house or line of David then that clearly confirms David was a real person he is no myth if there’s a real king who comes from his house but some minimalists cry foul this we haven’t talked about before they say this can’t be referring to David or the House of David well why do they say that because there are no dots between these two words between Beth and David you see dots work like word spacers and Aramaic just like we leave spaces blank spaces and in between our words when we write when we write sentences the error the Aramaic languages uses dots between different words if there are no spaces the Skeptics argue then Beth David is all one word which means it can’t mean House of David as in the Dynasty and instead must refer to a location house David which must be the name of some City somewhere based on the legend of David well if that sounds like a logical stretch to you in order to dismiss evidence that’s because it is here are a few reasons why we don’t need to question whether this phrase really means the dynasty of David yes okay bait dawood Okay in Arabic nice okay so similar there House of David in Arabic as well here’s why we can be confident that in Aramaic this does mean House of David the dynasty first while it’s true there are no word spacers present here you don’t need to put spaces all the time between words and Aramaic we see in other Aramaic inscriptions that phrases with multiple words will sometimes not include the spacers phrases like House of horon or Balaam son of bayor they don’t have spaces between them but they’re clearly more than one word second spacers are more likely to be emitted if the phrase is a commonly used one or a well-established phrase the phrase House of David would have been in use for at least 150 years before this deal was commissioned so there’s good reason to think that the spacers in House of David were omitted because it was a very common phrase third there’s no evidence of a place named Beth David in the Bible or any ancient near Eastern text so why make that assumption oh it must be a location have you ever found a location named Beth David on the other hand there are many examples of this phrase being used to describe the dynasty of David in the Bible so there are no examples of a city named Beth David but there are many examples of a dynasty being referred to as Beth David so I think the proper way to interpret this is pretty clear it must mean the dynasty or House of David the teldan Steel Man represents the first confirmation when it was discovered in 1993 represents the first confirmation of David’s historicity outside the Bible before I move on from tell Dan I’m going to briefly show you something else you may remember that the city of Dan was unique among the cities of Israel after the kingdoms divided what was present in Dan after the reign of jeroboam Dwayne one of the golden calves you remember jeroboam he was really afraid that the the people if they were allowed or if they went the people of Northern the northern king of Israel if they went to Jerusalem to worship they might defect they might no longer serve jeroboam so he decided he would set up new places for them to worship God and he set up two cities and two golden calves in these cities or two golden calves in two cities and one of them was Dan now we don’t have the golden calf but archaeologists have uncovered a high place and tell Dan which is probably where the golden calf was situated there is a large Stone Podium at the highest point of the tell of the the hill of ruins you see that Podium there in the right side of that picture on the left there’s also cultic implements a small horned altar an incense holder and incense shovels dated to about the 8th Century BC so that would be after the Kingdom’s divided excavators also uncovered one of the horns of the main altar which allowed them to get some idea about how big the altar was at this site you can see a little metal Square in the middle of this Stone enclosure that would be how big the original altar was probably about 10 feet tall may not look that big but we don’t have a human for scale you may be able to see some stairs on the left side and there’s also another set of stairs on the right side that would be how the priest would actually walk up to the Altar and use it so this was a big altar so this would have been used by idolatrous Israelites during the time of the divided Kingdom that’s all we’ll say about the altar questions about the teldan steel or this altar drug and Matt in the inscription right I killed ahaziu son of johoram King of that King of the House of David right yeah yeah that’s a great comment Steve if we just go back to the inscription doesn’t the context show you that it’s referring to a dynasty yeah that makes a lot of sense but they would say oh but it could also refer to just the king of a location he was the king of Beth David he was the king of that location somewhere in Israel so that’s what they would say a minimalist other questions yes Amanda well that’s a great question magdeb how can they tell that there was destruction prior to a site being built on again it all has to do with the strata also do with the layers so this is something I didn’t really appreciate but it’s something that I keep reading about today when something gets destroyed well we can clear the rubble relatively easily we get a bulldozer or something like that but in ancient times it was a lot of work to try and clear a ruined City so they wouldn’t do it they would just build on top of it and so that’s how you get these ancient cities that have multiple layers of occupation even cities that were destroyed when you investigate them and then the chronology roughly goes backwards you see more recent occupation and then this layer of Destruction Ash debris other things that are evidence of Destruction and then there’s another layer of occupation below so what that tells an archaeologist is they say okay there were people who lived here at a certain time there was a destruction and then people came back and lived here later and they can tell or they can estimate how long it was before people occupied the site Again by looking at what items are present within that next layer this is one of the reasons why the Sodom location was so remarkable to tell alham is because you have one layer which was middle Bronze Age if I remember correctly it has items and implements from that time there’s a layer of Destruction and then you have Iron Age indicators which means that centuries had gone by before people decided to live at that site again and build on that site which makes sense if that is indeed the city of Sodom because it would have been a ruined landscape for many years that’s a great question Magda yes Dwayne yeah it looks like it’s been cut that’s a great comment Dwayne that stone that we looked at with shechemy didn’t look like a natural stone wasn’t a natural stone I didn’t read anything specifically talking about that but I would guess that it had been fashioned in some way that had been cut and set up or something like that other questions Okay so we’ve looked at the tailed and steel very important for not only the period of the monarchy but for David identifying and confirming the historicity of David the other important inscription related to David’s authenticity is the Misha steel also called The moabite Stone it was discovered by fa Klein in 1868 and he bought it from the locals for about four hundred dollars apparently though there was some trouble in completing the transaction that locals had argued over who really owned it I guess who was really going to sell it and so they broke it apart they shattered it and the stone would have been lost however the archaeologist had made an impression of the Stone before it was destroyed so I collected all the pieces and put it back together based on the impression which is great because otherwise we would have lost all this information it had been so hard to figure it out again put back together and later translated this Stone was an ancient d-bond which is located near modern D Bond today in Jordan it’s made of Basalt originally three feet tall two feet wide and it is the longest ancient Monumental inscription in Jordan It Was Written in the moabite language using Phoenician letters archaeologists dated to the 9th century BC so again after the splitting of Israel’s kingdoms like the tailed and steel this steel records the military triumphs of the king of Moab by the name of Misha over Israel Over the king of Israel actually Misha is mentioned in the Bible we’ll say more about that in a moment let’s actually read through the whole steal I think it’ll give you a good sense or more of a sense of the time period of The Divided kingdoms five sections I am Misha son of chimashiyati the king of Moab the Demonite my father had reigned over Moab for 30 years and I reigned after my father and I made this high place for chimash and carco because he has delivered me from all Kings and because he has made me triumph over all my enemies as for Omri the king of Israel and he humbled Moab for many years for chimash was angry with his land and the sun reigned in his place and he also said I will oppress Moab in my days he said so but I triumphed over him and over his house and Israel has perished it has perished forever and Omri took possession of the whole land of Madiba and he lived there in his days and half the days of his son 40 years but chimash restored it in my days and I built Bale Mayon and I built a water reservoir in it and I built kiryaten and the men of GAD lived in the land of adderat from ancient times and the king of Israel built adirot for himself and I fought against the city and captured it and I killed all the people of the city as a sacrifice for chimash and from Moab and I brought back the fire Hearth of his uncle from there and I brought it before the face of chimash and kiriat and I made the men of Sharon lived there as well as the man of mahared and shimash said to me go take Nebo from Israel and I went in the night and fought against it from the Daybreak until midday and I took it and I killed the whole population seven thousand male subjects and aliens and female subjects aliens and servant girls for I had them devoted to Destruction for the God ashtar chimash and from there I took the vessels of Yahweh and I presented them before the face of chimash and the king of Israel had built yahas yahas then he stated throughout his campaign against me and chimash drove him away before my face and I took 200 men of Moab all first class Warriors and I led it up to yahas and I have taken it in order to add it to Debon I have built cargo the wall of the woods and the wall of the Citadel and I built its Gates and I’ve built its towers and I built the house of The King and I have made the double reservoir for the spring and innermost part of the city now the innermost part of the city had no cistern in cargo and I said to all the people each of you shall make a cistern in this house and I cut the moat for carco by using Israelite captives I have built ever and I constructed the Military Road in Arnon I have built Beth beymont for it had been destroyed I built Beezer for it lay in Ruins and the men of d-bon stood in battle formation for all dibon were in subject and subjection and I am the king over the hundreds in the towns which I have added to the land and I built Beth Madiba and Beth de blotten and Beth Bale Mayon and I brought there flocks of the land and the House of David dwelt and then Chima said to me go down fight against who are then I went down and shimash restored it in my days okay a lot mentioned in this Steel like I said the longest inscription found in Jordan but I hope you’re getting more of a flavor of the times of Israel’s Kings it’s a time where Israel and its neighbors were losing and gaining territory the neighbors putting to death the people of Israel as sacrifices to their God we hear Misha speak about doing that should have noticed though some people in places that are mentioned in the bible well for some of them what was it Omri yeah who else yeah the men of God what are the names from the Bible we have God’s name mentioned Yahweh is mentioned Moab Israel Debon Arnon madaba error Gad Yahweh Misha amri and David we see multiple confirmations of the Bible in this deal but Chief among them is the phrase House of David now again it’s a minimalist object and they say well we don’t know if it says House of David because part of that phrase is missing on the inscription and notice in the translation the first part of David is in Brackets meaning it’s been inferred translated into English the letters of the descript the inscription would be B there’s a blank and then WD further inspection reveals traces of a t next to the B we don’t have the full letter but it looks like there is a t right next to it so it would have read BT blank w d with most of the letters present and because of the Steel’s context some interpreters infer then a d for the blank so it would be BT DWD or Beth David House of David oh why is the spell slightly differently than the tell Dan steal where’s the why well Skeptics bring this up too as a way to reject this evidence on behalf of David however the Misha steel actually uses the word house several times sometimes spelling it BT another time spelling it BYT so apparently two spellings were acceptable there was a variant therefore what we see here in this steel among other things is confirmation of the historicity of King David well what about Omri and omri’s Son mentioned here which would have been Ahab does the info presented about them in this steel line up with the Bible it’s a little difficult to say certainly Omri and Omri Sun Ahab are historical and they’re described in the Bible but the Bible does not give us any descriptions about armories or ahab’s Wars with Moab we don’t hear about any of the wars of Omri and we only hear about ahab’s wars with Aram that is Syria it is likely that both Omri and Ahab fought against Moab at various times from the Misha steel it sounds like Omri had subjugated Moab and after omri’s death against Ahab Misha rose up against Ahab Ahab must have eventually overpowered Moab because we do read in the Bible after ahab’s death that Moab again Rebels under King Misha Misha’s name is specifically mentioned Second Kings chapter 3 Verses 4 to 6.
you can turn there if you like second Kings chapter 3 verses four to six now Misha king of Moab was a sheep reader and he used to pay the king of Israel one hundred thousand lambs and the wool of 100 000 Rams but when Ahab died the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel and King johoram went out of Samaria at that time and mustered all Israel to fill in some of the details here what happens with Misha and the Kings of Israel johoram the northern King allies with Judas King Jehoshaphat and they together face Moab before the battle Jehoshaphat seeks out Elijah’s counsel and Elisha gives them a message from the Lord telling them to dig trenches with which God would fill with Mo with water and accomplish a mighty victory the moabat army moabite army in the morning mistakes the water in the trenches for blood and they think that the two armies of Israel have turned against each other the episode culminates in Misha participating in an ultimate Act of devotion and Desperation to chimash his God look at the end of chapter 3 in Second Kings verses 23 to 27.
the moabite Army sees the water then they said this is blood the Kings have surely fought together and they have slain one another now therefore Moab to the spoil but when they came to the camp of Israel the Israelites arose and struck the moabites so that they fled before them and they went forward into the land slaughtering the moabites thus they destroyed the cities and each one threw a stone on every piece of good land and filled it so they stopped all the Springs of water and felled all the good trees until insef only they left its Stones however the Slingers went about it and struck it when the king of Moab saw the battle was too Fierce for him he took with him 700 men who drew swords to break through to the king of Edom but they could not then he took his oldest son who was to reign in his place and offered him as a burnt offering on the wall and there came great wrath against Israel and they departed from him and returned to their own land so this steel the one that we read about the Misha steel must have been written before all this because Moab gets pretty devastated by the Israelites but Israel did not ultimately subjugate Misha and his kingdom Misha sacrifices his own son to inspire his men to fight but back to our main topic we’ve got not one but two inscriptions from two different nations making reference to the House of David showing David was a historical person before we move on questions about the Misha Steel yes Steve this one is written in the moabite language which as far as I know is only called the moabite language but it was using Phoenician letters so yeah two different languages other questions there is some crossover between the languages though like the the phrase Beth David can be recognized in both because there’s a similarity in in the way that both those languages represent that word right yeah since I can’t read the mobile language I’ll just have to go with the English equivalents but BYT DWD or btdwd something like that and whatever equivalent in moabite language other questions okay one more thing that I’d like to talk to you about today the minimalist I see this evidence and they persist they say okay so David might have been a real person so Solomon might have been a real person but they were just tribal Chieftains certainly we’re not powerful Kings dominating the region maybe their descendants became prominent maybe they had centralized kingdoms but there certainly was no centralized or urbanized power in Israel during David’s or Solomon’s time what the Bible says about that is not true well on the contrary many City ruins in Israel dated to the Reigns of David and Solomon show large buildings and extensive fortifications impossible to create without a strong and organized Kingdom to obtain and direct the labor we’re going to look at one such example of a city that can only been built by a strong Kingdom this is kirbit kiafa also known as the ELA Fortress this is another recent discovery Kirby Chiappa was Unearthed in 2007 by Joseph garfinkel he and his team found a fortified City near the valley of ela not too far from Jerusalem on its west side is situated between Jerusalem and the Philistine city of gath probably used as some kind of buffer fortification by the way there’s a news item recently about a new archaeological discovery about Gap and if you guys saw that but it’s pretty cool this city this city Kirby kefa is also located near another Israelite City by the name of kirbit gudraya or known as gudara in the Bible so this video was near Ancient godera group at comprised about six acres and had an estimated population of about 600. this was a fortress City archaeologists date the site to around 1025 to 975 BC due to the pottery and carbon dating of the olive pits found in the city so this means the city was probably built and used during Solomon’s reign well what’s so striking about this city the size of the fortifications massive fortified walls two giant four-chambered Gates and their book popular Handbook of archeology in the Bible one of the books I’m using for this curriculum Norman and Geisler remark about the gates quote some of the huge stone ashlars that comprise the construction of the four chambered gate complex of the city weigh an extraordinary five tons five ton Stones being used as part of these City gates to cut transport and builds with stones these size you need a certain level of technological sophistication and state organization there is no way a weak tribal Chieftain could build a city like this but wait someone says maybe it’s not an Israelite City maybe it’s near gath maybe it was a Philistine city or a Canaanite City and that’s why it’s so advanced well this is not likely for one the style of the pottery and the architectural features found in the city resemble other Israelite cities other cities like geyser and hatsur so there’s that similarity also traces of the city diet found at the archaeological site are consistent with Israelite cities not Philistine cities Philistine cities often featured Pig and dog bones since they ate both sorry dog lovers Israelite cities though typically only showed signs of bread vegetables olives grain fish lamb and beef so on the basis of the pottery the architecture and the diet indicated by the uncovered archeology we can say that this is an Israelite City and it was built by Solomon now is this city mentioned in the bible curb it kiafa possibly the debate is unsettled as to which city it may refer to because kerbet kefa is near Ancient godera which we’ve definitely see in the Bible some think Cuba is ancient netaine netim and gadar were two administrative cities built by Solomon according to First Chronicles 4 23. I’ll just mention that verse to you which says referring to certain people these were the potters and the inhabitants of nettaim and gadera they lived there with the King for his work okay the site was near godera the Net’s name is mentioned near gadera maybe this isn’t a team others whoever think that Kirby chiapha is the biblical mentioned in first Samuel 17 52.
here’s the verse the men of Israel and Judah arose and shouted and pursued the Philistines as far as the valley and to the gates of ekron and the slain Philistines lay along the way to sha’alem even to gath and ekron so shahram was near gath why well not only on the way to gath but Kirby kiafa liked the name or no I’ll say it like this shiamim has a meaning it means two gates it was rare for cities at that time to have more than one gate so a city with two gates would be unique and might be named after its two gates its unique feature well Kirby kefa has two gates so it could have been the name or it could have been the city therefore named two gates so the debate is not quite settled yet as to what city what Israelite City Cuba chiafa was but let’s not miss the big point an Israelite City from the reign of Solomon shows that the Kingdom of Israel was technologically Adept urbanized and centralized therefore not only were David and Solomon real but the Kingdom of Israel during their Reigns was strong and influential just as the Bible says it is just the Bible says they were questions about cubic kiafa I’m loving these names by the way this is where we’ll stop today next week we’ll finish talking about the time of Israel and Judas Kings focusing on the many pieces of archaeological evidence in Jerusalem especially those related to King Hezekiah we see a lot of specific confirmations of people and events talked about in the Bible oh yes Dwayne that’s a good question what kind of Technology could move such large Stones I don’t know specifically so I can’t really answer your question but certainly we see evidence of this type of construction in Solomon’s Reign not only in Cuba but these other Fortress cities let me see big Stones being used other questions okay next week we’ll look more into the monarchy period let’s close in prayer right now Lord God your word is true Lord there are so many who have raised attacks against it but you will always be Vindicated O Lord you have promised that heaven and earth will pass away but your world your word will not pass away God it is amazing to see that it is no fairy tale that we’ve constructed for ourselves it’s no separate world that you describe in the Bible it is the world it is reality or we don’t need these archaeological confirmations to believe it but Lord we do see them and we say God your word is true you are amazing you have been Sovereign over history we see remnants of History still today we see evidence of your faithful ones we see evidence of those who Rose against you but you are sovereign over them all you will be victorious we’ll bless the rest of the service today in Jesus name amen