David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (31 page)

Biblical scholars have long debated the historicity of the Bible’s description of the reform of the Temple cult that took place during the reign of Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:3–4; 2 Chronicles 29–31). Literary studies of the texts—especially regarding the relationship between the differing narratives in Kings and Chronicles, their similarity to descriptions of the later cult reform of Josiah, and to the Deuteronomic laws requiring the eradication of pagan Canaanite cult objects—have not led to a decisive answer about the historical nature of the reported religious reform. Yet important archaeological evidence about possible changes in cultic practice during the monarchic period has come from the two southern sites of Arad and Beer-sheba and from the site of Lachish in the Shephelah (all three excavated by Yohanan Aharoni), where evidence for regional Judahite cult activity has been found.

A Judahite sanctuary with altar and open courtyard was discovered in the Iron Age fortress of Arad, yet its dating has long been a matter of dispute. Aharoni dated its construction to the tenth century
BCE
and suggested that it went out of use in two stages: the large altar was removed in the late eighth century
BCE
, in the course of Hezekiah’s cult reform (Stratum VIII), and the shrine was closed and dismantled a century later, in the time of Josiah (Stratum VI), thus closely fitting the biblical description of the two most famous cult reforms in the history of Judah. The Arad excavation team later revised this historical reconstruction, suggesting that while the complex was built in the tenth century
BCE
, both the altar and the shrine were removed in the days of Hezekiah. The historian Nadav Na’aman proposed that the shrine continued to be in use throughout the time of Hezekiah.

In the course of the preparation of the Arad finds for final publication, one of the expedition members, Zeev Herzog, revised the stratigraphy and chronology of the Arad sanctuary. In his opinion the sanctuary had
not
been founded in the tenth century
BCE
and continued in use over three centuries, but had functioned only for a short period of time in the eighth century
BCE
(Strata X–IX). According to Herzog, both altar and shrine were dismantled at the same time—in the late eighth century—and buried under a one-meter fill. Thus the fort of the very late eighth century
BCE
(StratumVIII)—the one conquered by Sennacherib in 701
BCE
—did not have a sanctuary. It had presumably been removed in the course of Hezekiah’s cult reforms.

Herzog presented clear evidence for his interpretation: walls and floors of Stratum VIII of the late eighth century were built over the sanctuary after it had gone out of use; the pottery on the floors dates to the eighth, rather than the seventh century
BCE
, and the Strata VII—VI floors in the vicinity of the sanctuary are two meters higher than the floor of the sanctuary of the shrine. Without ignoring the methodological problems related to the dig at Arad and the immense difficulties in interpreting the stratigraphy of the site, it seems to us that Herzog’s reconstruction is the most convincing and suggests an intentional change in cultic ritual at Arad during the reign of Hezekiah, in the years before Sennacherib’s attack in 701
BCE
.

The finds from Beer-sheba and Lachish seem to support this interpretation. At Beer-sheba, a large horned altar built of ashlar blocks was dismantled, with its stones buried in the city’s fortification ramparts and reused in the pillared storehouses built in the late eighth century
BCE
(Stratum II). Aharoni suggested that the altar originally stood in a sanctuary. Since no such building was discovered at the site, he proposed that it had been completely and intentionally eradicated during the construction of the buildings of Stratum II. Thus Aharoni interpreted this evidence as supporting the biblical description of Hezekiah’s cult reform, since the Beer-sheba sanctuary was supposedly destroyed and the stones of its altar buried and reused early in Hezekiah’s reign.

The biblical historian Nadav Na’aman raised objections against Aharoni’s interpretation, mainly concerning the original place of the altar. Yet regardless of the question of the location of the sanctuary, the finds at Beer-sheba seem to parallel those at Arad. An altar that had functioned in the eighth century (Stratum III) was dismantled at the very end of the century (Stratum II). This would have taken place during Hezekiah’s reign, since Stratum II was destroyed during the campaign of Sennacherib in 701
BCE
.

Lachish also provided evidence of changes of cult practice in the late eighth century
BCE
. Although Aharoni interpreted a stone altar and cult vessels as evidence of a Judahite sanctuary from the tenth century
BCE
, David Ussishkin recently reexamined the results of Aharoni’s excavations and came to utterly different conclusions. According to his analysis, the cult objects linked by Aharoni to a hypothesized tenth-century sanctuary were actually deposited in a pit that was sealed by the construction of a vast late-eighth-century courtyard (Level III). He dated the vessels themselves to the ninth and early eighth centuries
BCE
(Level IV) and suggested that the sanctuary from which they had come went out of use sometime in the eighth century
BCE
and the pit into which they were dumped was covered by structures built during Hezekiah’s reign.

The finds at Arad, Beer-sheba, and Lachish thus seem to point to a similar picture: all three sites show evidence for the existence of Judahite sanctuaries in the eighth century
BCE
, but in all three the sanctuaries fell into disuse before the end of the eighth century. In other words, in all three the city that was destroyed by Sennacherib in 701 did not have a shrine, which suggests that a cult reform did indeed occur throughout Judah in the time of Hezekiah.

In addition to the seventh-century
BCE
Greek realities hidden in the story of the duel between David and Goliath, other details in the depiction of the Philistines in the Deuteronomistic History point to the same historical and cultural context.

THE LORDS OF THE PHILISTINES

The first is the use of the term
seranim
for the leaders of the Philistines (for example, 1 Samuel 5:8, 11; 6:4, 12, 16; 7:7)—an unusual term that is translated as “rulers” or “lords.” In some cases the Bible speaks about five
seranim,
and in one place ( Joshua 13:3), it specifically refers to a league of five Philistine cities, which scholars have labeled as the “Philistine Pentapolis.” The term
seren/seranim
does not have a Semitic derivation and therefore is presumed to have been a Philistine word that was adopted into Hebrew. Scholars have usually connected it etymologically with the Greek word
tyrannos,
meaning “tyrant,” which first appears in the seventh century
BCE
.
Tyrannos
was probably derived from the older Anatolian word,
tarwanis,
meaning “governor,” which was later introduced into Greek.

However, there is a problem in this presumed chain of transmission since the biblical term
seren
has traditionally been dated to the Iron I period, several centuries
before
the appearance of the Greek
tyrannos.
Yet if we date the biblical use of the word
seren
in the seventh century
BCE
when the Deuteronomistic History was compiled, the problem is resolved: the title
tyrannos
developed in western Asia Minor in the seventh century
BCE
and the Hebrew form
seren
was derived from it and was incorporated into the Deuteronomistic History. It may not be a coincidence that the first ruler to be referred to as
tyrannos
in Greek literature was Gyges king of Lydia, who, according to Assyrian texts, sent mercenaries to Egypt.

The Philistines’ city league also poses a problem. “Early” Philistine accounts in the Bible (for instance Joshua 13:3 and 1 Samuel 6:17) refer to a political organization of five Philistine cities: Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron. While this manner of organization is not typical in the ancient Near East, federations—or leagues of tribes or cities—are fairly common in the Aegean world, beginning in the archaic period (c. 700–480
BCE
). By the seventh century
BCE
, they had already become a widespread phenomenon in Greece and western Asia Minor.

CHERETHITES AND PELETHITES

The Bible mentions the Cherethites and Pelethites as special mercenary units in the time of David—units that were distinct from the regular army corps and that were totally loyal to the king, even in times of crisis (1 Samuel 30:14; 2 Samuel 8:18; 2 Samuel 15:18). Some scholars have identified the Cherethites as a group of Sea People and associated them with Crete, since, according to a verse in Amos (9:7), the Philistines came from Caphtor, or Crete. The Pelethites have usually been identified with the Philistines, with the Hebrew
peleti
seen as a corruption of
pelisti
—Philistine.

But Cherethites and Pelethites do not appear among the groups of Sea People in the Egyptian sources, and in light of the modest nature of the tenth-century highland polity of Judah, it is highly unlikely that the stories about Aegean mercenary troops in the service of David can be accepted as reliable historical testimony.

However, in contrast to the situation in David’s time, the phenomenon of Greek mercenaries was well known in the region, especially in Philistia and possibly also in the Judahite Negev, in the seventh century
BCE
. Crete—the probable land of origin of the Cherethites—was a major source of mercenaries in the Hellenistic world. The demographic and economic realities lying behind this phenomenon must have been quite similar in the archaic period. Therefore, the biblical description of Cherethites as mercenary troops in the time of David may have been an anachronistic feature drawn from firsthand experience with Cretan mercenaries in the seventh century
BCE
.

For the Pelethites, we should go back to the suggestion of the American scholar William Foxwell Albright, who noted the similarity of this name to the “later” Greek term
pelte,
meaning “light shield.” But instead of understanding this term in an Iron I context, we should once again turn to the realities of the seventh century
BCE
. The word may indeed have originated from the Greek
pelte,
or perhaps from the medium-armed Greek warriors known as
peltastai.
The peltasts are mentioned for the first time by the Greek historian Thucydides, in the fifth century
BCE
, and are shown in Greek vase paintings as early as the sixth century
BCE
. They may well have appeared somewhat earlier.

So how can we explain the appearance of these archaic Greek elements in the David story? As we have indicated in Chapter 6, the Deuteronomistic historian must have had a clear ideological motivation to depict Goliath as a heavily armed Greek warrior. The same seems to hold true for the Cherethites and Pelethites. In this case, the biblical author may have sought to glorify the figure of David by showing that he—like the great kings of contemporary (seventh-century
BCE
) times—had Greek mercenary troops at his service. This would also have served to legitimize Judah’s political or economic cooperation with Twenty-sixth Dynasty Egypt and its Greek mercenary troops. This was done by “reminding” the people of Judah that foreign mercenaries were the closest military allies of the pious David, the founder of their ruling dynasty.

In the early days of historical research, the notion was common among scholars that the Babylonian exile was almost total and that much of the population of Judah was carried away. According to this idea, Judah was emptied of its population and the countryside was left desolate throughout the exilic period (586–538
BCE
). Moreover, many scholars accepted the biblical description: that the whole aristocracy of Judah—the royal family, the Temple priests, ministers, and high-profile merchants—was carried away, and that the few remaining inhabitants in Judah were poor peasants. It now seems that this was not the case.

The biblical reports on the number of exiles are frankly contradictory. The second book of Kings (24:14) gives the number of exiles in the days of King Jehoiachin (the first Babylonian campaign in 597
BCE
) as ten thousand, while verse 16 in the same chapter counts eight thousand people. The book of Kings does not provide us with the number of exiles after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586
BCE
but it states that following the murder of Gedaliah and the massacre of the Babylonian garrison at Mizpah, “all the people” ran away to Egypt (2 Kings 25:26). Jeremiah recounts a process of three deportations totaling forty-six hundred people (52:28–30). Scholars tended to prefer his numbers because they seem to be less rounded and therefore more precise. We do not know, of course, whether this figure represents the total number of deportees or the heads of the families; in the latter case, the total number of exiles would rise to about twenty thousand. In any event, there is no way to reach an accurate number. We are probably dealing with a total ranging between a few thousand and fifteen or twenty thousand people. The exiles (who probably came mainly from the capital and its surrounding area) comprised between 5 and 20 percent of the population of the Judahite state before the destruction—mainly the aristocracy. These figures indicate that most of the population of Judah, which was largely rural, did not go to exile. This community included not only poor villagers but also artisans, scribes, priests, and prophets. It is noteworthy that an important part of the prophetic work of the time—Haggai and Zechariah—was compiled in Judah.

How many people returned from Babylonia to settle in Jerusalem and other parts of Yehud? What was the overall population of the province of Yehud in the time of the Chronicler? The lists of the returnees from Babylonia reported in Ezra 2:1–67 and Nehemiah 7:6–63, totaling almost fifty thousand people, are of questionable historical value. Some scholars suggest that they represent the several successive waves of exiles who returned to Yehud during the course of the Persian period. Others argue that they reflect the total population of the area, rather than the number of the repatriates alone. Even so, these numbers seem to be considerably inflated.

Where did they settle? The most detailed territorial data on the province of Yehud come from the list of exiles who returned from Babylonia (Ezra 2; Nehemiah 7) and from the list of the builders of the walls of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 3). The southern boundary of Yehud passed immediately to the south of Beth-zur, leaving Hebron—the second most important town in the highlands in monarchic times, the place where David was supposedly crowned, and the location of the tombs of the patriarchs—outside the territory of the province of Yehud. In the north, the border conformed to the late seventh-century border of monarchic Judah, passing to the north of Mizpah and Bethel. In the east, Jericho was included in Yehud. In the west, Yehud may have included the northern Shephelah. Yehud was therefore a small province, which covered mainly the Judean hills, to a distance of about fifteen miles to the north and south of Jerusalem, a total area of less than eight hundred square miles. This was a much smaller territory than even the limited area of the kingdom of Judah in the late seventh century
BCE
, which also controlled the southern Hebron hills, the Beer-sheba Valley, and the Shephelah.

This reconstruction of the boundaries of the province of Yehud from biblical evidence is confirmed by archaeological finds—particularly, distinctive seal impressions found on pottery vessels from the Persian period, written in Aramaic or Hebrew and carrying the name of the province, Yehud. Several hundred examples of such impressed handles are known from excavations and chance finds.
*
In fact, almost all the impressions were found in Jerusalem and in the sites immediately to its north and south. Their overall geographical distribution closely parallels the boundaries of the province of Yehud as described above: from the area of Mizpah in the north to Beth-zur in the south, and from Jericho in the east to Gezer in the west.