The Early Kingdom of Judah in Light of Radiometric Dating

The early 1980s saw the rise of the so-called minimalist school in the fields of biblical research and biblical archaeology. The researchers of this school pointed to two major weaknesses in these fields:These two insights cannot be taken away from scholars of the minimalist school and are their main contributions to our field. But many researchers went further, adopting a deconstructive approach claiming that the biblical traditions are mainly literary inventions with no underlying historical reality. In an abundance of articles and books, these scholars have proposed the rejection of many traditions just because they are written in the Bible. To mention only a few cases, it has been claimed that the kingdom of Israel was founded before the kingdom of Judah, that David is a mythological figure, that no temple was built in Jerusalem in the days of Solomon, and that Rehoboam did not fortify cities in Judah. Instead of establishing whether there is a historical background for this or that biblical tradition, the possibility was completely ruled out in advance. A clear shift had taken place here: rather than simple errors resulting from circular reasoning, an imaginary reality was created out of nothing. The only goal now was to contradict as many biblical traditions as possible. While this approach rejected the biblical traditions as ancient myths, all it offered instead was an abundance of modern myths. In other words, the scholars committed the sin of which they accused the writers of the Bible.A prominent representative of this school was I. Finkelstein (1996), who extended the discussion to the chronological aspect and proposed a low chronology for the Iron Age. In his opinion, David was “a raggedy upstart akin to Pancho Villa, and his legion of followers more like 500 people with sticks in their hands shouting and cursing and spitting—not the stuff of great armies of chariots described in the text” (Draper 2010), despite the fact that not a single chariot is mentioned in the biblical tradition about David. Similarly, he claimed that “in the late eighth century Judah experienced a dramatic transformation from a sparsely settled tribal territory ruled from a small highland village, into a bureaucratic state, with a dense population and a large, fortified and elaborate capital” (Finkelstein and Silberman 2006: 279).Finkelstein asserted that the Iron Age I, which is generally accepted to have ended around 1000 BC, in fact lasted until about 925 BC. Therefore, he proposed a new dating for three archaeological phenomena:Chronological assumptions can be tested by using the carbon-14 dating method, which provides objective scientific results that are not based on historical considerations. The use of his method has created a “radiometric revolution” in dating archaeological levels. The first comprehensive study of the issue under discussion here was carried out by a team of researchers led by I. Sharon, who tested about 400 samples from different Iron Age II sites. The title of the article presenting the results clearly points to the conclusions: “Report on the First Stage of the Iron Age Dating Project in Israel: Supporting a Low Chronology” (Sharon et al. 2007).But the results supporting the low chronology began to crumble when radiometric results arrived from Khirbet Qeiyafa, a fortified city in the Judean Shephelah. At this site a typical Judean city plan was revealed, with a casemate city wall and dwellings adjacent to the wall (Garfinkel and Ganor 2009; Garfinkel, Ganor, and Hasel 2012; Garfinkel, Kreimerman, and Zilberg 2016). The date of this city, based on about 30 radiometric dates, is the beginning of the tenth century BC, or 1000–970 BC (Garfinkel et al. 2012, 2015).Later, Finkelstein himself radiometrically dated the end of the last Canaanite city of Megiddo, resulting in a date around 1000 BC. He also dated the destruction of Shiloh, a prominent Iron Age I site, which according to prior consensus took place in the middle of the eleventh century, to around 1050 BC (Finkelstein and Piasetzky 2007, published in 2008). These destructions, which according to the low chronology were the result of Shishak’s campaign in 925 BC, were actually much older.Why then did it appear that the first radiometric project supports the low chronology? The answer is that all of the 400 samples tested in Sharon’s project were taken from sites in the kingdom of Israel, and no dates were obtained from early phases of the kingdom of Judah. In fact, this study shows that significant urbanization in the kingdom of Israel began in the ninth century BC, precisely in accordance with the biblical tradition, which knows that the kingdom of Judah arose well before the kingdom of Israel. The methodological error of this study was its disregard of the regional aspect and the projection of conclusions from sites in the kingdom of Israel onto sites in the kingdom of Judah.Urban planning like that of Khirbet Qeiyafa was identified at Tell en-Naṣbeh and Beth Shemesh in Judah (Garfinkel 2023). Tel Beth Shemesh has been excavated by three different expeditions over the years. The most recent expedition established a new numbering for the sequence of settlements. On the basis of radiometric dating, their Level 4, the pottery of which is similar to that of the fortified city of Khirbet Qeiyafa, dates from the tenth century BC (Bunimovitz and Lederman 2016: 159–245; Bunimovitz et al. 2019). The excavators, however, understood Level 4 as a Canaanite village continuing the traditions of the Iron Age I. By doing so they overlooked the results of the expedition of 1928–1932, which uncovered in this level a casemate city wall with dwellings adjacent to the wall (Grant and Wright 1938: pl. V:1; 1939: 24; Avigad 1954: 113–14, 117; Albright 1960: 122; Wright 1970: 80; Shiloh 1978: 40, fig. 4). Hence, it is clear that at the beginning of the tenth century BC the kingdom of Judah constructed fortified urban centers on the borders of the kingdom, in locations where a major route leads toward Jerusalem (Garfinkel 2023).The tenth century BC is also well represented in the copper mines that were excavated at Faynan and Timna in the Arabah (Levy et al. 2008; Levy, Najjar, and Ben-Yosef 2014; Ben-Yosef 2016). The biblical traditions knew of intensive copper smelting activity during this period, and an echo of this activity is found in the traditions about King Solomon (1 Kgs 7:46). However, the Bible does not claim that King Solomon operated copper mines, a romantic fiction based on the popular book King Solomon’s Mines published nearly 150 years ago (Haggard 1885). Instead, the excavators suggest that the mining was the work of local Edomites (Ben-Yosef 2021), and it is more likely that the copper reached Jerusalem by trade relations. It would have been much cheaper to pay for the final products as they arrived in the kingdom than to send expeditions to remote regions and deal with production and transportation.Recently, radiometric dates have been published from Gezer as well. This site housed an important Canaanite city in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, and a central city in the Iron Age. Gezer is a clear example of the connection between archaeology and the Bible, because the city is mentioned many times in the biblical tradition. Thus, the book of 1 Kings preserves a tradition that King Solomon built Gezer. Is this tradition a reliable one that preserves historical memory? From a literary point of view, it should be noted that the historiography of the ancient Near East knows two types of kings: the warrior king and the builder king. In the Bible, David is presented as a warrior king and Solomon as a builder king (Garfinkel and Pietsch 2021: 291–92).First Kings 9:15 portrays King Solomon as an active builder: “And this is the account of the forced labor which King Solomon levied to build the house of the Lord and his own house and the Millo and the wall of Jerusalem and Hazor and Megiddo and Gezer” (1 Kgs 9:15 RSV). He is also said to be the builder of lower Beth-Horon, Baalath, and Tamar, as well as unnamed garrison cities, chariot cities, cavalry cities, and various other projects in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and throughout his domain (1 Kgs 9:17–19). While in the past the traditions about the days of Solomon were understood as historically reliable, minimalist scholars saw them as mere legend (Wightman 1990; Knoppers 1997).It seems to me that Solomon’s activities can be divided into two major categories: those in the nearby territory of Judah and those in more remote regions. Solomon did indeed build public constructions in Jerusalem, as indicated by an image of an elaborate building uncovered at Khirbet Qeiyafa, dated to the early tenth century BC, which features architectural elements that are mentioned in the biblical descriptions of Solomon’s palace and temple (Garfinkel and Mumcuoglu 2013, 2016, 2019; Mumcuoglu and Garfinkel 2021). But did Solomon’s construction activities reach areas beyond Judah?In archaeological research, much attention has been paid to the biblical references to the cities of Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. It was Y. Yadin (1958) who proposed that the six-chambered gates uncovered in these three cities were built by Solomon. Later, it was suggested that these three gates were built by kings of the kingdom of Israel, either Ahab or Jeroboam II (Finkelstein 1996; Knauf and Guillaume 2016). While different datings of this city list have been proposed (tenth, ninth, or eighth century BC), the historicity of the list itself was not questioned. Recently, it has been suggested that the list should be seen as reflecting major Late Bronze Age Canaanite cities (Garfinkel and Pietsch 2021: 293–96). In any case, it is essential to date the construction of each gate independently and only then to see if they were all built at the same time.If we examine the construction activities of the kings of Judah in the tenth century BC, it becomes apparent that the kingdom was concentrated on the Jerusalem-Hebron mountains and the northern Shephelah. Lachish was built only toward the end of the tenth century BC, in the days of Rehoboam, while Arad and Beersheba became fortified sites only in the mid-ninth century BC (Garfinkel et al. 2019; Garfinkel 2023; Kang, Chang, and Garfinkel 2023). Did Judah fortify Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer before Lachish, Arad, or Beersheba?The recent radiometric datings from Tel Gezer indicate that the six-chambered gate was constructed in the mid-tenth century BC, in the days of Solomon (Webster et al. 2023). Gezer has a strategic location in the Ayalon Valley, on the main road to Jerusalem (Dever 1998: 17–19; Ortiz and Wolff 2017, 2021). This location fits well into the pattern observed at Khirbet Qeiyafa, Beth Shemesh, Tell en-Naṣbeh, and Khirbet ed-Dawwara (Garfinkel 2023: 100–102). All of these sites are located no more than a day’s walk from Jerusalem, and they were deliberately positioned to guard strategic routes leading into the kingdom: Khirbet Qeiyafa controlled the Elah Valley, Beth Shemesh controlled the Soreq Valley, and Tell en-Naṣbeh controlled the road to Jerusalem from the north.In terms of urban planning, the six-chambered gate at Gezer is connected to a casemate city wall, and there are structures that abut the city wall (Ortiz and Wolff 2017: 78–91; 2021: 226–33). This is the typical construction of Judahite cities in the Iron Age, known from five other sites: Tell en-Naṣbeh, Beth Shemesh, Khirbet Qeiyafa, Tell Beth Mirsim, and Beersheba (Garfinkel, Kreimerman, and Zilberg 2016: 205–7).Nevertheless, the casemate city wall of Gezer is poorly preserved and was uncovered only in areas near the gate (Ortiz and Wolff 2017: fig. 23; 2021: fig. 6). What was the area encircled by this city wall? Herzog (1997: fig. 5.17) suggested that it was a rather small city, perhaps only a citadel. It is also possible that the construction of the casemate wall was never finished, as it is suddenly interrupted.The recent radiometric dates from the tenth century BC show that Judah was already a flourishing kingdom in this period, although it was still rather small before the construction of the fortified centers of Arad and Beersheba. The pattern that we observe includes fortified cities on the borders in locations where major routes led to Jerusalem. The ninth century BC is beyond the scope of our presentation, but radiometric datings from Jerusalem indicate that monumental buildings were erected there during this period (Regev et al. 2017, 2024).