Why don't you watch or listen along to the documentary (singular) and answer your own questions for yourself. Then discuss the answers you've found in either the free downloadable e-book that I've posted, or the documentary program I've posted about the book. You can hardly discuss that which you have neither read, watched, or even listened to. What does Hector Avalos have to do with this book and documentary? Is he a part of it?? Do you even know???

"I wrote to frustrate Biblical Minimalists, then I became one of them."

Biblical Archaeology Review (March / April 2007) p.54.

Yes, Dever. He is of course one of the main topics during the Hector Avalos Ph.D (and credentials up the yin yang), lecture that you brought up from the other thread. Let's post it here too then if you insist on going in this direction on this thread:
Hector Avalos

Dever, being of the believer position, came into the Solomon's Gates issue with extreme zeal. And as time went on, and as the other identical gates in pagan towns were discovered over a wide range of time periods and so on and so forth, Dever's position began to change more and more. This was actually one of the funniest points made in the Avalos lecture. Dever, in time, basically came over to the minimalist camp. Watch from 20:00 forward. Especially @ 26:00 into the lecture. Dever was pushed way, way back. Read the quote!


Thanks for name dropping BTW.

Dever was pushed way, way back. Read the quote!

Yes, Dever. He is of course one of the main topics during the Hector Avalos Ph.D (and credentials up the yin yang), lecture that you brought up from the other thread. Let's post it here too then if you insist on going in this direction on this thread:
Hector Avalos

Dever, being of the believer position, came into the Solomon's Gates issue with extreme zeal. And as time went on, and as the other identical gates in pagan towns were discovered over a wide range of time periods and so on and so forth, Dever's position began to change more and more. This was actually one of the funniest points made in the Avalos lecture. Dever, in time, basically came over to the minimalist camp. Watch from 20:00 forward. Especially @ 26:00 into the lecture. Dever was pushed way, way back. Read the quote!


Thanks for name dropping BTW.

I've posted plenty of information that clearly shows that at best, even if David and Solomon were even historical at some point, there was no great kingdom at that point. These gates do not verify such a conclusion, rather that is the wishful thinking of biblical archaeologists grasping at any possible straw to try and gain some ground in favor of taking the bible literally. And Avalos covered that very thoroughly in the first lecture. Finkelstein is clear and correct - there's no firm history until around the 7th century BCE...

Dever's position is an evolving one and has always has been. I have to give the credit for being scientific about it all and changing his views according to new evidence. He has become a minimalist in that he openly confesses that a minimum amount of the biblical writings are factual historical documentation. The rest simply is not, and he argues - like Finkelstein - that the writers didn't intend for it to be.

NARRATOR: For over a hundred years, archaeologists have searched Jerusalem for evidence of the Kingdom of David, but excavating here is contentious because Jerusalem is sacred to today's three monotheistic religions.

JOAN R. BRANHAM (Providence College): For Christians, Jesus comes in his final week to worship at the Jerusalem temple. He's crucified, he's buried, he's resurrected in the city of Jerusalem. For Islam, it is the site where Mohammed comes in a sacred night journey; and, today, the Dome of the Rock marks that spot. In Judaism the stories of the Hebrew Bible, of Solomon, of David, of the temples of Jerusalem, all of these take place, of course, in Jerusalem. So Jerusalem is a symbol of sacred space today, important for all three traditions.

NARRATOR: Despite the difficulties, Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar went digging in the most ancient part of Jerusalem, today called the City of David.

EILAT MAZAR: We started excavations here, because we wanted to check and to examine the possibility that the remains of King David's palace are here.

NARRATOR: But because this area has been fought over, destroyed and rebuilt over thousands of years, it was a long shot that any biblical remains would survive. But then...

EILAT MAZAR: Large walls started to appear, three meter wide, five meter wide. And then we saw that it goes all directions. It goes from east, 30 meters to the west, and we don't see the end of it yet.

NARRATOR: Such huge walls can only be part of a massive building, and Mazar believes her excavations, to date, represent only 20 percent of its total size.

EILAT MAZAR: Such a huge structure shows centralization and capability of construction. It can be only royal structure.

NARRATOR: This huge complex may be evidence of a kingdom, but is it David's kingdom? For these walls to be David's palace, they would have to date to his lifetime, around 1000 B.C.
The problem is stone walls can never be dated on their own. Biblical archaeologists date ruins based on the pottery they find associated with those ruins. Pottery dating is based on two ideas: pottery styles evolve uniformly over time, and the further down you dig, the further back in time you go. If pottery style A comes from the lowest stratum, then it is earlier than pottery style B that comes from the stratum above it.

By analyzing pottery from well-stratified sites, excavators are able to create what they call a relative chronology. But this chronology is floating in time, without any fixed dates. To anchor this chronology William Foxwell Albright, considered the father of biblical archaeology, used events mentioned in both the Bible and Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts to assign dates to pottery styles.

Albright's chronology, slightly modified, is what Mazar uses to date her massive building and what most archaeologists use today.

EILAT MAZAR: What we found is a typical 10th century pottery, meaning bowls with hand burnish you can see from inside, together with an import, a beautiful black-on-red juglet. What is so important is that this is a 10th century typical juglet.

NARRATOR: So has Mazar discovered the Palace of David? She adds up the evidence. The building is huge, it is located in a prominent place in the oldest part of Jerusalem, and the pottery, according to Albright's chronology, dates to the 10th century B.C., the time of David. Mazar believes she has indeed found the Palace of David.

But that evidence and, indeed, the kingdom itself rest on the dates associated with fragments of pottery, and some critics argue the system for dating that pottery relies too heavily on the Bible.

ISRAEL FINKELSTEIN: Archaeologists in the past did not rely too heavily on the Bible, they relied only on the Bible. We have a problem in dating. How do you date in archaeology? You need an anchor from outside.

NARRATOR: Today, there is a more scientific method to anchor pottery to firm dates, radiocarbon dating. It is a specialty of Elisabetta Boaretto of the Weizmann Institute.

ELISABETTA BOARETTO (Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel): The first step is, of course, in the field, which relates this sample material like olive pits or seeds or charcoal to the archaeological context.

NARRATOR: If an olive seed is found at the same layer as a piece of pottery, the carbon in the seed can be used to date the pottery.

When the seed dies, its radioactive carbon-14 decays at a consistent rate over time. By measuring the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12, Boaretto can determine the age of the olive seed, which, in turn, can be used to date the pottery.

Boaretto has meticulously collected and analyzed hundreds of samples from over 20 sites throughout Israel. Her carbon samples date the pottery that Albright and most archaeologists associate with the time of David and Solomon to around 75 years later.

For events so long ago, this may seem like a trivial difference, but if Boaretto is right, Mazar's Palace of David and Tappy's ancient Hebrew alphabet have to be re-dated. This places them in the time of the lesser-known kings Omri, Ahab, and his despised wife Jezebel, all worshippers of the Canaanite god Baal.

With no writing or monumental building, suddenly the Kingdom of David and Solomon is far less glorious than the Bible describes.

ISRAEL FINKELSTEIN: So David and Solomon did not rule over a big territory. It was a small chiefdom, if you wish, with just a few settlements, very poor, the population was limited, there was no manpower for big conquest, and so on and so forth.

NARRATOR: This would make David a petty warlord ruling over a chiefdom, and his royal capital, Jerusalem, nothing more than a cow town.

ISRAEL FINKELSTEIN: These are the results of the radiocarbon dating. He or she who decides to ignore these results, I treat them as if arguing that the world is flat, that the Earth is flat. And I cannot argue anymore.

NARRATOR: But it's not so simple. Other teams collected radiocarbon samples following the same meticulous methodology. According to their results, Mazar's palace and Tappy's alphabet can date to the 10th century, the time of David and Solomon.

How can this discrepancy be explained? The problem is that these radiocarbon dates have a margin of error of plus- or minus-30 years, about the difference between the two sides.

NARRATOR: Pottery and radiocarbon dating alone cannot determine if the Kingdom of David and Solomon was as large and prosperous as described in the Bible.

Fortunately, the Bible offers clues of other places to dig for evidence of this kingdom. The Bible credits David with conquering the kingdom, but it is Solomon, his son, who is the great builder.

VOICEOVER (Reading from the Bible "Revised Standard Version," First Kings 9:15): This was the purpose of the forced labor which Solomon imposed. It was to build the House of YHWH ... and the wall of Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer.

NARRATOR: Here in Hazor, Amnon Ben-Tor, director of excavations, believes this may be evidence of Solomon's building campaign.

Archaeologists call it a six-chambered gate, a massive entryway, fortified with towers and guard rooms. Ben-Tor's predecessor, Yigal Yadin first uncovered this structure.

AMNON BEN-TOR: It turned out to be a six-chambered gate, and Yadin immediately remembered that a very, very similar gate was excavated at Gezer, and then Chicago University excavated this gate, here at Megiddo.

NARRATOR: Stunned by the similarity of these three gates, Yadin recalled the passage in the Bible.

AMNON BEN-TOR: Here we have a wonderful connection of the biblical passage as it shows up in archaeology.

NARRATOR: Three monumental gates, all based on the same plan, would seem to be powerful evidence not only of prosperity, but also of a central authority. Throughout its history the Israelites had been divided into tribes, then into kingdoms, north and south. The locations of these strikingly similar gates in both regions suggest a single governing authority throughout the land.

But how can we be sure this is the Kingdom of David and Solomon? The answer, once again, lies in Egypt.

DONALD REDFORD: The head-smiting scene, which you see on this wall, commemorates a military campaign conducted by Pharaoh Shishak, or Sheshonk, the founder of Dynasty 22, in Egypt.

NARRATOR: The Egyptian pharaoh Shishak invades Israel, an event the Bible reports and specifically dates to five years after Solomon's death, during the reign of his son, Rehoboam.

VOICEOVER (Reading from the Bible "Revised Standard Version," First Kings 14:25–26): In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, King Shishak of Egypt marched against Jerusalem and carried off the treasures of the House of YHWH and the treasures of the royal palace. He carried off everything.

DONALD REDFORD: The importance of this, in fixing one of the earliest dates, specific dates, in which Egyptian history coincides with biblical history is really startling and has to be taken note of.

NARRATOR: This stunning convergence between the Bible and Egyptian history gives a firm date for the death of Solomon. Shishak's campaign, according to the well-established Egyptian chronology, dates to 925 B.C. And the Bible says Solomon dies five years earlier, which means 930 B.C. This is further evidence that David and Solomon lived in the 10th century, but there's even more hidden in these walls.

These ovals, with their depictions of bound captives and city walls, represent places Pharaoh Shishak conquered in Israel. One of those places is Gezer, where archaeologists find the hallmark of Solomon's building program, a six-chambered gate.

Bill Dever directed the excavations in the late 1960s.

WILLIAM DEVER: We can actually see vivid evidence here of a destruction. Down below, we have the original stones, pretty much in situ, but, if you look in here, you see the stones are badly cracked. You can even see where they're burned from the heat of a huge fire that has been built here. And then, up in here, you see the fire had been so intense that the soft limestone has melted into lime, and it flows down like lava. This is vivid evidence of a destruction, and we would connect that with this well-known raid of Pharaoh Shishak.

NARRATOR: And if the gate was destroyed by Shishak, in 925 B.C., then it must have been built during the lifetime of Solomon, who died just five years earlier.

WILLIAM DEVER: Surely this kind of monumental architecture is evidence of state formation, and if it's in the 10th century, then...Solomon.

NARRATOR: Although a minority of archaeologists continue to disagree, this convergence of the Bible, Egyptian chronology and Solomon's gates is powerful evidence that a great kingdom existed at the time of David and Solomon, spanning all of Israel, north and south, with its capital in Jerusalem.

Nova Transcrip, The Bible's Buried Secrets, pp 16-20.