Sam Harris

I remember in ancient history class in high school studying the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Hittites, the Persians, etc. Strangely enough, we never covered the Israelites and their great empire under David and Solomon. In fact, it seemed like Israel was always a province of one empire or another.

Do fundies ever specify when this great Israelite empire was supposed to be?

I work as an ed. tech for a student with Asbergers syndrome.  Last school year, he studied those ancient civilizations too, including the Israelites. No mention of David and Solomon, but they did discuss the region where the Hebrew religion first started and the legend of Abraham and Moses. The teacher said that the bible can be used as historical reference in certain things, but for the most part it’s a book based on the Hebrew religion and faith.

I went back and checked my notes on the lectures and I don’t have a lot, but it says that Judaism was the first monotheistic religion. But I don’t think that’s the case. I think monotheism started by an ancient Egyptian king.

David’s empire wasn’t.

” “the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land [of Canaan] in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the twelve tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is the fact that the united kingdom of David and Solomon, described in the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom.” The new theories envision this modest chiefdom as based in a Jerusalem that was essentially a cow town, not the glorious capital of an empire.” Ze’ev Herzog, archaeologist from Tel Aviv University

http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2001/02/07/solomon/index.html

See also:

Finkelstein, I. and Silberman, N.A. 2006. David and Solomon, In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition. New York.

Finkelstein, I. and Silberman, N.A. 2001. The Bible Unearthed, Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origins of Its Sacred Texts. New York.

NobleSavage - 20 August 2007 09:51 AM

I remember in ancient history class in high school studying the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Hittites, the Persians, etc. Strangely enough, we never covered the Israelites and their great empire under David and Solomon. In fact, it seemed like Israel was always a province of one empire or another.

Do fundies ever specify when this great Israelite empire was supposed to be?

Pretty much everyone I’ve read places the united kingdom, whatever it was, from about 1000 BCE to 920 BCE (give or take a decade), with David and Solomon each reigning about 40 years. It came to an end under Solomon’s son Rehoboam, and when Pharaoh Shishonk sacked Jerusalem, whatever glory there was departed.