October 30, 2008--The Battle for Khirbet Qeiyafa
You think the battle between John McCain and Barack Obama is intense? Well, unless you check out the story in today’s New York Times about an archeological dig in Israel of literally biblical proportions you ain’t seen nothing yet. (See article linked below.)
It’s over the disputed history of a 3,000 year-old fortification in the Valley of Elah. A five-acre site just a two-day walk from Jerusalem. Is it, as it’s excavator claims, an outpost of King David’s “kingdom,” with kingdom in quotes because it may turn out to provide evidence that David in fact had a kingdom--which is controversial—or it was it a relatively insignificant place from a time other than when David was supposed to have united Greater Israel?
This is a critical matter since there is very little archeological evidence that David ruled over more than a small part of present-day Israel. If he was more a tribal leader than a major political figure who presided over a kingdom that the Bible says stretched from the Nile to the Euphrates it changes things on the ground in the Holy Land. Among other things, it would suggest that a lot is less holy than ultra-orthodox Jews now claim and would give more sanction to the Palestinian case for a state of their own.
And if David is either further exalted or diminished by the archeological record it would have a profound effect on how Evangelical Christians view the current and future situation in that hotly-contested part of the world because their view of history sees it as leading to a particular version of Armageddon right there. With “right there” to be determined by biblical geography.
Their view of the Final Days sees events unfolding in Greater Israel, and what constitutes Greater Israel is very much what is in dispute. In fact, some critics of the war in Iraq take note of the fact that born-again George W. Bush may have begun that war not just to find weapons of mass destruction or to bring his version of democracy to the region but to secure Greater Israel for Christians so that the events that some claim need to occur to trigger these Final Days have the geographic space in which to do so.
Thus, what’s going on in Khirbet Qeiyafa is much more than a battle between one researcher who claims that the site dates from the 10th century B.C., David’s time, or to a later era, the 9th century B.C., as other archeologists contend. If it is later it is does not support the notion that David presided over a kingdom and as a result perhaps wasn’t a king at all.
I’m far from an expert on biblical exegeses, Middle Eastern archaeology, or millennialist thought—though I do know that many orthodox Jews, and Muslims, are as millennialist-minded as certain Evangelical Christians and that all see the Final Days unfolding in that same compressed piece of real estate. But I wonder about the way the Khirbet Qeiyafa excavators are going about attempting to date the site—which is critical to the argument on both sides.
They are using carbon-14 dating techniques to do so. All organic matter contains some radioactive carbon-14, and since it decays over time in measurable stages it is useful in determining how old a site is or when a geological layer was deposited. At Khirbet Qeiyafa Yosef Garkinkel and his team have found four olive pits and have thus far tested two of them for carbon-14. He claims this yields a 10th century B.C. date for the site.
Ilan Sharon, a radiocarbon expert at Hebrew University, says that using just two olive pits to date a site that is 3,000 or so years old is “working very close to the limits of measurement accuracy.” He says that to zero in on a date from that long ago which is within 50 years of accuracy requires many more olive pits—perhaps hundreds.
I guess this means that all the millennialists out there are hoping that King David hosted a cocktail party at Khirbet Qeiyafa during one of his visits and that among the hors d’oeuvres served there were lots of local olives
It’s over the disputed history of a 3,000 year-old fortification in the Valley of Elah. A five-acre site just a two-day walk from Jerusalem. Is it, as it’s excavator claims, an outpost of King David’s “kingdom,” with kingdom in quotes because it may turn out to provide evidence that David in fact had a kingdom--which is controversial—or it was it a relatively insignificant place from a time other than when David was supposed to have united Greater Israel?
This is a critical matter since there is very little archeological evidence that David ruled over more than a small part of present-day Israel. If he was more a tribal leader than a major political figure who presided over a kingdom that the Bible says stretched from the Nile to the Euphrates it changes things on the ground in the Holy Land. Among other things, it would suggest that a lot is less holy than ultra-orthodox Jews now claim and would give more sanction to the Palestinian case for a state of their own.
And if David is either further exalted or diminished by the archeological record it would have a profound effect on how Evangelical Christians view the current and future situation in that hotly-contested part of the world because their view of history sees it as leading to a particular version of Armageddon right there. With “right there” to be determined by biblical geography.
Their view of the Final Days sees events unfolding in Greater Israel, and what constitutes Greater Israel is very much what is in dispute. In fact, some critics of the war in Iraq take note of the fact that born-again George W. Bush may have begun that war not just to find weapons of mass destruction or to bring his version of democracy to the region but to secure Greater Israel for Christians so that the events that some claim need to occur to trigger these Final Days have the geographic space in which to do so.
Thus, what’s going on in Khirbet Qeiyafa is much more than a battle between one researcher who claims that the site dates from the 10th century B.C., David’s time, or to a later era, the 9th century B.C., as other archeologists contend. If it is later it is does not support the notion that David presided over a kingdom and as a result perhaps wasn’t a king at all.
I’m far from an expert on biblical exegeses, Middle Eastern archaeology, or millennialist thought—though I do know that many orthodox Jews, and Muslims, are as millennialist-minded as certain Evangelical Christians and that all see the Final Days unfolding in that same compressed piece of real estate. But I wonder about the way the Khirbet Qeiyafa excavators are going about attempting to date the site—which is critical to the argument on both sides.
They are using carbon-14 dating techniques to do so. All organic matter contains some radioactive carbon-14, and since it decays over time in measurable stages it is useful in determining how old a site is or when a geological layer was deposited. At Khirbet Qeiyafa Yosef Garkinkel and his team have found four olive pits and have thus far tested two of them for carbon-14. He claims this yields a 10th century B.C. date for the site.
Ilan Sharon, a radiocarbon expert at Hebrew University, says that using just two olive pits to date a site that is 3,000 or so years old is “working very close to the limits of measurement accuracy.” He says that to zero in on a date from that long ago which is within 50 years of accuracy requires many more olive pits—perhaps hundreds.
I guess this means that all the millennialists out there are hoping that King David hosted a cocktail party at Khirbet Qeiyafa during one of his visits and that among the hors d’oeuvres served there were lots of local olives
posted by Steven Zwerling at
10:55 AM
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