The City Where David Killed Goliath

Photo: Khirbet Qeiyafa

Gwen Ackerman has written an article on Khirbet Qeiyafa, “a walled city over a plain where the Bible claims David killed Goliath.” The article was published on Bloomberg.com. The following is an excerpt from the article:

The remains of a walled city over a plain where the Bible claims David killed Goliath; a pottery shard bearing script that experts claim is the oldest Hebrew text ever found; an ancient water tunnel.

Do these support Scripture's story of King David and his empire? It depends on who you ask. Recent archeological finds have reopened the debate on David and Solomon, whose reigns almost 3,000 years ago as chronicled in the Bible left so little physical proof that scholars like Neil Asher Silberman, a University of Massachusetts historian, question biblical accuracy.

Hebrew University professor Yosef Garfinkel, in an interview, said his findings amid the ruins of a fortified city in Khirbet Qeiyafa, a five-acre site 20 miles west of Jerusalem, support the biblical portrayal of David as a ruler of a kingdom strong enough to field an army. The findings, the most important of which were a second city gate and the shard, dispute claims by some scholars that David was a chieftain of a largely illiterate tribe.

The remnants might be the most important archaeological find about David since 1993 when a piece of basalt rock bearing an Assyrian king's inscription about a Davidic dynasty was found in Tel Dan in northern Israel.

To read the article, visit Bloomberg.com.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Archaeology, David, Goliath, Khirbet Qeiyafa

Proof of Bible’s King David?

The National Geographic has provided a video that shows the ostracon found in the Valley of Elah. National Geographic asks the question: “Does the discovery prove the Bible’s story of King David?

Watch the video by clicking here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tag: David, Goliath

The Oldest Hebrew Text

Photo: Archeologist Yossi Garfinkel displays a ceramic shard bearing a Hebrew inscription at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Garfinkel says the ceramic shard containing five lines of faded characters written 3,000 years ago at the time of the Old Testament's King David, was found in the ruins of an ancient fortified town south of Jerusalem and is the oldest Hebrew inscription ever discovered, according to Garfinkel.

Archaeology again may contribute to our understanding of Israelite history. Archeologists have found an ostraca with writings that dates back to 3,000 B.C., the period when David was king. According to the news report, the words “judge,” “slave,” and “king” appear on the five lines of texts. The written material was found on a site called Elah Fortress. The Valley of Elah was the place where Israel fought against the Philistines and David killed Goliath (1 Samuel 17:2).

Because of the importance of the finding, I am posting in its entirety the news report published by Reuters. According to the press release, the article was written by Ari Rabinovitch and edited by Sami Aboudi.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Archaeologists in Israel said on Thursday they had unearthed the oldest Hebrew text ever found, while excavating a fortress city overlooking a valley where the Bible says David slew Goliath.

Experts have not yet been able to decipher fully the five lines of text written in black ink on a shard of pottery dug up at a five-acre (two-hectare) archaeological site called Elah Fortress, or Khirbet Qeiyafa.

The Bible says David, later to become the famed Jewish king, killed Goliath, a Philistine warrior, in a battle in the Valley of Elah, now the site of wineries and an Israeli satellite station.

Archaeologists at Hebrew University said carbon dating of artifacts found at the fortress site, about 20 km (12 miles) southwest of Jerusalem, indicate the Hebrew inscription was written some 3,000 years ago, predating the Dead Sea Scrolls by 1,000 years.

They have been able to make out some of its words, including "judge," "slave" and "king."

Yosef Garfinkel, the lead archaeologist at the site, said the findings could shed significant light on the period of King David's rule over the Israelites.

"The chronology and geography of Khirbet Qeiyafa create a unique meeting point between the mythology, history, historiography and archaeology of King David," Garfinkel said.

It is amazing the kind of information archaeology can provide in clarifying the past. So far, the five lines of text have not been translated. However, if the words “judge” and “king” are correct, the ostraca may be a reference to the late period of the judges or the early years of the monarchy.

I just hope that archaeologists and epigraphers provide a translation of the text as soon as possible. This finding may radically transform our understanding of the early history of Israel.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Archaeology, David, Elah, Goliath, King, Philistines, Yosef Garfinkel

David and Goliath as Metaphors

The Wikipedia defines a metaphor as follows:

Metaphor (from the Greek: metapherin) is language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects. In the simplest case, this takes the form: "The [first subject] is a [second subject]." More generally, a metaphor is a rhetorical trope that describes a first subject as being or equal to a second subject in some way.

Then, the same article describes a mixed metaphor as follows:

A mixed metaphor is one that leaps from one identification to a second identification that is inconsistent with the first one. Example: "He stepped up to the plate and grabbed the bull by the horns," where two commonly used metaphoric grounds for highlighting the concept of "taking action" are confused to create a nonsensical image.

Some times people use the language of the Old Testament in speeches to illustrate what they are trying to communicate to a group of people. Once in a while, people use the language of the Old Testament in a way that creates mixed metaphors. Take for example, the case of Mayor Dennis Donohue of Salinas, California, a city in which I lived for three years. Speaking to a group of people at their annual faith community luncheon, the Mayor told those attending the luncheon “that he sees the city as David from the Old Testament, up against the Goliath of gangs and other challenges.”

I think this is a good example of a mixed metaphor. David and Goliath are people while the city is a political entity and gangs are a group of individuals. I am quite sure the Mayor’s illustration described to his audience the great challenge the city is facing, however, in my view, he used two items that are equals (two individuals) to illustrate two items that are not equal (a city and a group of people).

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: David, Goliath, Metaphors