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Originally Posted by Thor
This is not what she's saying at all, the existence of David is a pretty well established idea in archeology, but more so the depth of his rule. She's arguing along side with many religious scholars that David's empire was at most a chiefdom which was later scribed to sound more impressive as the Jews were needing all the help they could get being inspired after the destruction of their temple mount and the exile from Jerusalem.
I think what's happened more recently in the last 10-30 years in archeology is that more and more it looks as if a lot of exaggeration is done in order to give the Jewish people a greater divine background and examples of that is surely the exodus from Egypt which is now pretty well considered a tale to inspire the people of the age, and was likely tied to a small group fleeing Egypt and settling in the hills of Canaanite country to tell stories of their great exodus, their one true God Yahweh who they encountered in yahoo and attributed for their salvation.
TC could hopefully give us his insight, I'm way to early on in my readings to give any trustworthy accounts, just what I've read/seen briefly in my last month of delving seriously into biblical history  |
It seems to me that she went over the (very) slim and questionable amount of evidence alluding to David's existence and the existence of his "empire," and that, whether it's a well-established idea in archaeology or not, considering the slim amount of evidence on his historicity, viewing all of it with a healthy dose of skepticism seems like a more than prudent thing to do.