Abracadabrah

I create as I speak

Davidica

The Washington Post finally catches up to the past, with a news story on the state of the archaeological dig in Israel on the site tentatively labelled as David's Palace.

It's actually a decent article, to my mind, because it illustrates the built in hypocrisies of those who insist before the place itself is fully excavated that it cannot be David's Palace. Here's one example, of the intellectual mendacity of the minimalist school, who regard much of the Hebrew Bible as myth and tales.

Finkelstein, who is in charge of the excavation in northern Israel where the Bible says the battle of Armageddon took place, visited Mazar's dig a few months ago. The 56-year-old scholar, tall and voluble with a salt-and-pepper beard, has often argued with colleagues whose reliance on the Bible he finds misguided.

He believes all buildings described in the Bible were built more recently than Mazar and others believe, perhaps by a century. The interpretation would mean that Jerusalem developed into a thriving, fortified city well after David and Solomon. But Finkelstein said Mazar's find appeared to show that Jerusalem, while perhaps not important during David's time, began emerging as an important city earlier than he previously believed.

"This is the missing link we have been looking for. It represents the first step in the rise of Jerusalem to prominence in the 9th century," he said. "Why does it have to be the palace of David? Once you bring that in you sound like something of a lunatic."

Seymour Gitin, director of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, said it was too soon to know precisely what Mazar had found. But, he said, "if this can be proven to be 10th century, it demolishes the view of the minimalists," referring to those who dismiss the unified monarchy as a petty kingdom or even as mythical.

Yes, if this can be proven to be true, it does utterly demolish the view of the minimalists. A good reason, therefore, to trivialize into nothingness the opinions of those scholars who hold it could possibly be the Palace of David, before it is proved definitively one way or the other. Yes, the non-minimalists are quite obviously lunatics.

One could never sense from this posture that they feel their entire intellectual position under threat.

And these are the Jewish opponents to the possible finding of David's Palace!

I can't imagine there is a burden of proof high enough to convince ideological Moslem scholars!



Previous posts on the finding of David's Palace:

Revisiting David's Palace
Unlayering History
David's Kingdom

posted by Alcibiades @ 11:12 AM