Possible Biblical parallels
The writings may coincide with certain events recorded in the Old Testament:
2 Kings 8:7-15 tells how, before Hazael became king of Aram, his predecessor was ill and finally died in his bed:
7 Now Elisha came to Damascus. Ben-hadad the king of Syria was sick. And when it was told him, "The man of God has come here," 8the king said to Hazael, "Take a present with you and go to meet the man of God, and inquire of the LORD through him, saying, 'Shall I recover from this sickness?'" 9 So Hazael went to meet him, and took a present with him, all kinds of goods of Damascus, forty camel loads. When he came and stood before him, he said, "Your son Ben-hadad king of Syria has sent me to you, saying, 'Shall I recover from this sickness?'" 10 And Elisha said to him, "Go, say to him, 'You shall certainly recover,' but the LORD has shown me that he shall certainly die." 11 And he fixed his gaze and stared at him, until he was embarrassed. And the man of God wept. 12 And Hazael said, "Why does my lord weep?" He answered, "Because I know the evil that you will do to the people of Israel. You will set on fire their fortresses, and you will kill their young men with the sword and dash in pieces their little ones and rip open their pregnant women." 13 And Hazael said, "What is your servant, who is but a dog, that he should do this great thing?" Elisha answered, "The LORD has shown me that you are to be king over Syria." 14 Then he departed from Elisha and came to his master, who said to him, "What did Elisha say to you?" And he answered, "He told me that you would certainly recover." 15 But the next day he took the bed cloth and dipped it in water and spread it over his face, till he died. And Hazael became king in his place.
2 Kings 8:28 and 2 Kings 9:15-16 record that, after being injured in fighting in Ramoth Gilead, Joram of Israel 'was laid up' in Jezreel:
28 And he went with Joram the son of Ahab to the war against Hazael king of Syria in Ramothgilead; and the Syrians wounded Joram.
15 But king Joram was returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds which the Syrians had given him, when he fought with Hazael king of Syria.) And Jehu said, If it be your minds, then let none go forth nor escape out of the city to go to tell it in Jezreel. 16 So Jehu rode in a chariot, and went to Jezreel; for Joram lay there. And Ahaziah king of Judah was come down to see Joram.
Dispute over the phrase
"House of David"
Due to the mention of both "Israel" and the "House of David", the Tel Dan Stele is often quoted as supporting evidence for the Bible. However, critics have suggested other readings of ביתדוד, usually based on the fact that the written form "DWD" can be rendered both as David and as Dod (Hebrew for "beloved") or related forms. In 1999, Biran, who, for 27 years, led the excavation team, responded to such criticism by saying:
"(The)consonants are clear—bet, yod, tav, dalet, vav, dalet. Anybody who sees this can only think that it’s Beth David, House of David. It also clearly mentions “king of Israel”; nobody can deny this... It was written by an Aramean king who says he killed the king of Israel and killed the king of the House of David, the king of Judah. Those who deny there was a David take the consonants dalet, vav, dalet and say the D and the V and the D represent the word dod, “uncle” or “lover”; or even doad, which is a big vessel." [9]In ancient Hebrew, to separate words, a word divider represented by a dot would be placed between the letters. For example, the phrase "House of David" would be written as בית•דוד. However, in the Tel Dan Stele we find the phrase ביתדוד, which does not have a word divider. Anson Rainey, defending the reading of "House of David", writes that "a word divider between two components in such a construction is often omitted, especially if the combination is a well-established proper name." Gary Rendsburg provides additional evidence for Rainey's point and points out that the phrase Bit + X is the Aramaean, Assyrian, and Babylonian way of referring to an Aramaean state. (Note: in this pattern, Bit is equivalent to BYT, "house of", and X is usually the name of the person who was regarded as the founder of a dynasty.) Rendsburg adds, "One might even venture that the Assyrian designation Bit-Humri "house of Omri" for the kingdom of Israel reached Assyrian scribes through Aramaean mediation." (Omri was a king of Israel who reigned 844-873 B.C. and founded a dynasty that ruled it through the reigns of four kings. During their reigns, Israel came into military conflict with Assyria. Assyrian records mention King Ahab, Omri's son, as "Ahab the Israelite" who fought against Assyria.)
George Athas proposes that the three extant fragments of the inscription have been placed in a wrong configuration. He argues that Fragment A (the largest) should be placed well above Fragments B1 and B2 (which fit together). He also suggests that ביתדוד is actually a reference to Jerusalem, arguing that it is the Aramaic equivalent of "City of David". He also provides evidence for the authenticity of the fragments (called into question by some, such as Russell Gmirkin), and downdates the inscription, proposing that the author is not Hazael, as is popularly touted, but rather his son Bar Hadad. Athas attempted to date the inscription to the early 8th century BCE, and credit it to Bar Hadad rather than his father Hazael.[6] Athas' view has been criticised by many[7] because the original excavators of Tel Dan argued for a date in the mid-ninth century BCE. However, Athas argued that the date suggested by the excavators needs to be revised in light of the fuller archaeological context. This, he argued, was only revealed more fully in the years following the discovery of the inscriptional fragments when the entire area had been excavated. Suriano attributed the stele to a point late in Hazael’s career based on apologetic motifs that suggest the inscription was made at the time his son (Bar Hadad) was appointed heir and successor.[8] The various conflicting views demonstrate that a consensus has yet to be achieved.
A minority view is that DWD is the Hebrew rendering of Thoth (pronounced, according to the Ancient Greeks, as Toot - as in Tutmose), thus the expression might refer to a temple of Thoth. The Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen points out that there is no known temple of Thoth in the area. Others believe that ביתדוד refers to an unknown geographic location.
It has been argued by Thomas L Thompson that, even if it could be shown that the terms "of the house of David" and "of the house of Omri" were used to describe the kings of Judah and Israel at that time, we should not conclude that they saw David and Omri as recent ancestors who had founded dynasties in the modern sense, other interpretations of the term "house of" in this context are possible.
Views of archaeologists
and epigraphersProfessional archaeologists object to these reinterpretations, often noting that they are suggested by Biblical scholars who have no formal qualifications in the relevant fields. In favour of the reading 'House of David', archaeologist Kenneth Kitchen writes in response to the contrary views of Thomas L. Thompson:
'(i) The name "David" may be unusual, but is not unparalleled. Long centuries before, it was borne by a West Semitic chief carpenter in about 1730 B.C. on an Egyptian stela formerly in the collection at Rio de Janeiro. (ii) Dwd is neither the name (which Thompson admits) nor an epithet of a deity. Others are beloved of deities (for which references are legion!), but male deities are not beloved of others, human or divine (only goddesses are beloved of their divine husbands in Egypt). (iii) Mesha's stela is ninth, not eighth, century. (iv) On Mesha's stela dwd(h) is not a divine epithet of YHWH or anyone else.' '(v) Contrary to TLT, "House of X" does mean a dynastic founder, all over the Near East, in the first half of the first millennium B.C.; it was an Aramean usage that passed into Assyrian nomenclature, and examples are common. (vi) Again, the expression, in part of its usage, is like the British "House of Windsor", etc. Such usages were not peculiar to Aram, Assyria, and Judah either: in Egypt, the official title given to the Twelfth Dynasty (Turin Canon) was "Kings of the House (lit. 'Residence') of Ithet-Tawy" = 'the Dynasty of Ithet-Tawy". And the Thirteenth Dynasty was duly entitled "Kings who came after the [House of] King Sehetepibre" (founder of the Twelfth Dynasty). (vii) The charge of forgery is a baseless slur against the Dan expedition, without a particle of foundation in fact.' [10]Also in favour of the reading 'House of David', archaeologist William Dever writes:
'On the "positivist" side of the controversy, regarding the authenticity of the inscription, we now have published opinions by most of the world's leading epigraphers (all of whom are seasoned field workers with much experience in biblical archaeology and none of whom is an academic "biblicist"). in Thompson's sense. Thompson is a professor. IBE, University of Copenhagen. [11] The epigraphers maintain that the inscription means exactly what it says. On the "negativist" side, we have the opinions of Thompson, Lemche, and Cryer of the Copenhagen School. The reader may choose.' [12]Notes
- « 'On the "positivist" side of the controversy, regarding the authenticity of the inscription, we now have published opinions by most of the world's leading epigraphers (none of whom is a "biblicist" in Thompson's sense): the inscription means exactly what it says.' William Dever, 2004, 'What Did The Biblical Authors Know, And When Did They Know It?', pages 128-129
- « Biran, Avraham. "Biblical Dan." Jerusalem, Israel Exploration Society, 1994.
- « Biran, Avraham and Naveh, J. "An Aramaic Stele Fragment From Tel Dan." Israel Exploration Journal 43 (1993).
- « Biran, Avraham and Naveh, J. "A New Fragment." Israel Exploration Journal 45 (1995).
- « Biblical Archaeological Review 20:4 Jul/Aug 1994
- « Athas, G., The Tel Dan Inscription: A Reappaisal and a New Interpretation, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supp 360; CIS 12 (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003).
- « See the reviews by William Schniedewind and Nadav Na’aman in ‘’Review of Biblical Literature’’[1]
- « Suriano, M., “The Apology of Hazael,” 163–176
- « "Biran at Ninety" Biblical Archaeology Review 25:03 Sep/oct 1999.
- « Kenneth Kitchen, 2003, 'On The Reliability Of The Old Testament', pages 452-453
- « Thomas L. Thompson Vitae, University of Copenhagen: On Reading the Bible for History: A Response Retrieved 7/26/2010
- « William Dever, 2004, 'What Did The Biblical Authors Know, And When Did They Know It?', pages 128-129
Further reading
In chronological order:
- Biran, Avraham and Joseph Naveh (1993). "An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan." Israel Exploration Journal 43, pp. 81-98.
- Biran, Avraham and Joseph Naveh (1995). "The Tel Dan Inscription: A New Fragment." Israel Exploration Journal 45, pp. 1-18.
- Rainey, Anson F. (1994). "The 'House of David' and the House of the Deconstructionists." Biblical Archaeological Review, 20/6, p. 47.
- Rendsburg, Gary A. (1995) "On the Writing ביתדוד in the Aramaic Inscription from Tel Dan." Israel Exploration Journal 45, pp. 22-25.
- Thompson, Thomas L (1999) Bible and History: How Writers Create a Past, ISBN 0-465-00622-1, On Reading the Bible for History: A Response
This response is given in reaction to W.G. Dever, What did the biblical writers know and when did they know it? what archaeology can tell us about the reality of ancient Israel (Eerdmans, 2001), p. 30-34, in which Dever discusses my work in the context of what he describes as a current trend of ”revisionism.”
- Schniedewind, William M. (with Bruce Zuckerman) (2001). "A Possible Reconstruction of the Name of Hazael's Father in the Tel Dan Inscription." Israel Exploration Journal 51, pp. 88-91.
- Gmirkin, Russell (2002). "Tools, Slippage, and the Tel Dan Inscription." Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 16 (2).
- Athas, George (2003). The Tel Dan Inscription: A Reappaisal and a New Interpretation. JSOTSupp 360; CIS 12; Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press. ISBN 0-567-04043-7.
- Mykytiuk, Lawrence J. (2004). Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200-539 B.C.E. SBL Academia Biblica series, no. 12. Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature. Pp. 110-132 and 277. ISBN 1-58983-062-8.
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