Figments of Chronological Debates

When R. A. S. Macalister began the first excavations at Tell el-Jezari in 1902, he was, as the saying goes, holding a trowel in one hand and the Hebrew Bible in the other. And so have all other excavators of the site ever since, including those of the Tandy expedition that led the current study on the chronology of the site discussed in this Forum. This is perfectly acceptable, of course, especially when the motivation to shed light on various aspects of the holy book—from its composition history to the reality behind its historical narratives and the lives of its authors—is explicitly stated and the discussion is rooted in the unearthed data. This is, in fact, the essence of biblical archaeology, a discipline whose research questions stem from the interface between the Bible and archaeology and in which Tell el-Jezari, or biblical Gezer, has played a major role.It is true that many scholars have not been comfortable with the use of the designation biblical archaeology to describe their work, among them was (and to some degree still is) William Dever, one of the excavators of Tell el-Jezari (as part of the Hebrew Union College [HUC] expedition). About 50 years ago and under the influence of the New Archaeology, Dever began advocating for the use of a more “neutral” term, such as “Syro-Palestinian archaeology,” to “secularize” the discipline and rebrand it as an objective and “scientific” research field (Dever 1981, 2003; see also Thomas 2023). However, while Syro-Palestinian archaeology or Levantine archaeology and alike are fine broad terms to describe the archaeology of a specific region, they all fail to capture the core of what biblical archaeologists are really interested in, which is indeed to better understand the Bible and associated topics. Conservative and critical scholars alike are motivated by the Bible when they design both their field work and the accompanying laboratory investigations.The contribution by L. C. Webster, S. Wolff, and S. Ortiz to this Forum discussion is based on the results of laboratory investigations that have yielded the first high-precision radiocarbon dating for biblical Gezer after more than a century of research (see Webster et al. 2023). The study covers a formative period in the history of the site, spanning the Late Bronze and early Iron Ages, from the thirteenth to the ninth centuries BCE. Methodologically, the study is an exemplar of the use of radiocarbon dating in a stratigraphic site: the significant sample size, the selection of short-lived materials from excellent contexts, and the application of Bayesian analysis resulted in a robust dating that will be hard to challenge. However, there is no doubt that it will be challenged, and this is because the new data have implications to what is probably the most contentious debate in biblical archaeology, the high vs. low chronology of the early Iron Age (Mazar 2005).For almost 30 years now this debate has been central to biblical archaeology, involving intense research and hundreds of publications by various teams. Research grants have supported projects dedicated specifically to address this issue (e.g., Sharon et al. 2007), numerous conferences have been held to discuss it (e.g., Levy and Higham 2005), and efforts have been made by scientists to improve interpretations of raw radiocarbon results to facilitate resolution (Manning et al. 2018). The phenomenal scholarly interest in this debate, which is by far the most researched chronological issue in “Syro-Palestinian archaeology,” cannot be understood without its biblical context. The interest in what is a rather technical issue—the absolute dating of the transition between the Iron I and Iron IIA—is related first and foremost to its ostensible implications for the historical understanding of the Hebrew Bible and specifically the united monarchy. The low chronology, first proposed by Finkelstein (1996), is considered the ultimate evidence for the ahistoricity of the biblical description of a grand unified kingdom ruled from Jerusalem at the time of King David and King Solomon.When one understands what is at stake, it becomes easy to understand the fierceness of the debate and its divisive role among critical and conservative scholars. The prevailing assumption is that the historicity of the united monarchy is contingent upon the discovery of monumental architecture from that era and, similarly, that the absence of such remains necessarily indicates that no such monarchy ever existed and that hence the biblical stories about the glorious David and Solomon are, for the most part if not entirely, fictitious. This key aspect—the existence of stone monuments, including strong walls with impressive gates—is in accord with the glorification of that period by scholars of all persuasions, even in contradiction to the biblical text itself. Critical scholars refer, for example, to the “glorious empire of David and Solomon” (Finkelstein and Silberman 2002: 3), a description that invokes the neighboring empires of Assyria and Egypt, building a straw man to then destroy with the “disappointing” archaeology of the period (see Keimer 2021). Conservative scholars, appreciative of the possibility that this era was the birth of “Western civilization,” also tend to exalt the days of David and Solomon beyond what the Bible itself allows, imposing a grandiose historical reconstruction on what was probably a rather modest story. Thus, for everyone involved, postulating a historical united monarchy is not an option without corresponding archaeological stone monuments.Gezer has played a major role in the search of the necessary monumentality of the united monarchy, displaying, like Megiddo and Hazor, a monumental, six-chambered gate that was initially dated to the tenth century BCE and connected with the building activities of King Solomon in these three cities as described in 1 Kgs 9:15 (Yadin 1970). One of the main consequences of the low chronology was the downdating of Megiddo’s gate (and corresponding Strata VA–IVB) to the ninth century BCE, and based on typological considerations the same has been argued for the gates at Hazor (Strata X–IX) and Gezer (Stratum VIII) (Finkelstein 2000). This has left the “Solomonic” cities, now Strata VB, XII–XI, X–IX, in Megiddo, Hazor, and Gezer respectively, without any impressive stone monuments, and thus, by the common logic of our field, also without Solomon.Thus it is not surprising that, from all the results of the new radiocarbon study at Gezer, the leaders of the Tandy expedition chose to highlight the absolute dating of Stratum 8, with its Bit Hilani style structure (“administrative center”), a casemate wall, and its equation with Stratum VIII of the HUC expedition and its six-chambered gate. They provide their own summary of the study in Biblical Archaeology Review under the title “Solomon’s Powerplay: Gezer’s Royal Complex Confirmed” (Ortiz and Wolff 2024), choosing words that do not leave room for doubt about the Bible-driven motivation of their research and their methodological approach. Ortiz and Wolff follow the prevailing practice that ties Solomon with monumental construction endeavors that, after decades of research and debates, already have a specific, fixed shape in archaeology and imagination. See, for example, their assertion that Solomon “fortified the royal cities of Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer” (Ortiz and Wolff 2024: 43), which is based on 1 Kgs 9:15. However, the verse itself does not specifically mention fortifications but rather refers to general construction activities, which may not even involve monumental structures. This sense is clear in most English translations (“. . . to build the house of the Lord, and his own house, and Millo, and the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, and Megiddo, and Gezer” [KJV]), and the Hebrew is unequivocal: לבנות את בית יהוה ואת ביתו ואת המלוא ואת חומת ירושלם ואת חצר ואת מגדו ואת גזר. The fact that, in the same verse, Jerusalem’s wall is mentioned while the walls of the other cities are not makes it clear that walls were not the focus of Solomon’s building activities in Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. One should also remember that all these places were Canaanite cities that existed, if not thrived, before Solomon. Given the significance of simply controlling these strategically crucial sites, some renovation work and other construction activities by the king would have been something worth commemorating even if those works were not remarkable (in fact, exaggerations are quite expected from the court’s scribes in such cases, see Thomas 2022).That we now have in our collective minds an association between monumental six-chambered gates and Solomon is only the outcome of prolonged debates that are so old that we have forgotten to question our basic assumptions regarding the reality of the period under investigation. This has begun to change in recent years, with publications that address epistemological questions, especially regarding the prevailing methodology for reconstructing historical narratives based on archaeological remains. In “The Architectural Bias in Current Biblical Archaeology” (Ben-Yosef 2019) and “Complexity Without Monumentality in Biblical Times” (Ben-Yosef and Thomas 2024), we highlight the need to abandon simplistic neo-evolutionary models for understanding the ancient Israelite society in favor of a more nuanced approach that takes into consideration its tribal and nomadic background. While typically a departure from this background in favor of sedentism and bureaucratic state organization is considered a prerequisite to the establishment of a monarchy, we demonstrate not only that it was unnecessary but also that the accurate way to view the united monarchy is as a polity based on a polymorphous society—a mix of settled and nomadic populations—that maintained some aspects of its nomadic background in its culture (and religion) and political structure. Regardless of the debate about its historicity, if it ever existed, the united monarchy was a kingdom in which tribalism and household-based social relations played a key role, a kingdom that exerted power through real or invented kinship and its political articulation rather than by force or a Weberian-type bureaucracy only. This kind of political organization is familiar throughout ancient Near Eastern polities, but it need not have been on the scale necessitated by ancient Near Eastern empires (Keimer and Thomas 2021).Such a kingdom would necessarily be less archaeologically conspicuous (a fact that helps explain the fixation on the image of a grand “empire” by archaeologists; after all, who would willingly admit—and risk losing funding—that their profession cannot provide decisive answers and clear evidence to some of the most intriguing questions in biblical studies, particularly those concerning the Bible's historicity?). In other words, Gezer could have been part of a tenth-century BCE united monarchy regardless of the dating of the six-chambered gate, the “administrative building,” and even the wall. The new radiocarbon dating, which does put all of these at the first half of the tenth century, adds some information on the reality of the time, though its implications for the debates regarding the historicity of the united monarchy are limited. In particular, the new dating provides nuance to our understanding of the appearance of monumental architecture in key urban centers during this transformative period, demonstrating that it was a rather gradual process. This is evident especially when considering the six-chambered gate at Megiddo (Gate 2156), whose ninth-century dating is considered secure now, although after very long and intricate debates that also included its stratigraphic association and its connection to a city wall (currently it is understood to have initially been erected without a wall; see Adams, Finkelstein, and Levy 2024, and references therein).1As mentioned above, the new dating of Gezer Stratum 8 (HUC VIII)—which is currently based on four samples only—cannot pass unchallenged in the current paradigmatic structure of biblical archaeology. For supporters of the low chronology who also view architectural styles as representative of specific rulers or dynasties (e.g., Finkelstein 2000 for “Omride architecture”), a gradual spread of the six-chambered-gate style over more than a century cannot be accepted, and consequently, the early tenth-century date of Gezer’s gate presents a serious challenge to core observations upon which this chronological scheme was established. I believe the solution lies in abandoning dogmatic approaches and relaxing rigid scholarly concepts, allowing for regional differences (including pottery traditions) and gradual processes, better fitting a period of change across an extensive landscape. In any case, as I have attempted to demonstrate above, there is far less at stake than most scholars previously believed. Therefore, there should be less incentive to invest heavily in dating issues, and research efforts could (and perhaps should) be redirected toward other areas.The new dating demonstrates that the construction activities at Gezer Stratum 8 were synchronous with Khirbet Qeiyafa, a short-lived site with a casemate wall located ca. 20 km to the south of Gezer. Webster, Wolff, and Ortiz in this Forum discussion see this as an indication “that polity expansion in the Shephelah began early,” using architectural features to detect the creation and expansion of a “polity” (namely, the united monarchy, see Ortiz and Wolff 2024).2 This is convincing, although one should add to the geographical and historical reconstructions presented by the Gezer team the polymorphous aspect of the Israelite society at the time. While Gezer, like Jerusalem, Lachish, and other key sites in the hill country and the Shephelah, was an old Canaanite urban center before it was (possibly) annexed by the Israelites, Qeiyafa is a rare case of a site that was established during the days of David, in the late eleventh century BCE. There are many suggestions for the identification of Qeiyafa’s inhabitants (e.g., Garfinkel, Kreimerman, and Zilberg 2016, and references therein), many of which are simply an attempt by scholars of the critical school to circumvent the association of this site with the ancient Israelites (e.g., Na’aman 2017), as by the prevailing paradigm a wall means power and polity (see Webster, Wolff, and Ortiz, this issue), thus lending more credibility to the biblical narrative. For this very reason, the site’s dating has also been questioned (see, e.g., Finkelstein and Piasetzky 2010).However, Khirbet Qeiyafa is best understood as a glimpse into a polymorphous Israelite society, whose (semi-)nomadic population was still significant during the eleventh–tenth centuries BCE. This component was present in the landscape of the Judean Mountains and the Shephelah, leaving little traces behind for archaeologists to find. Qeiyafa represents a certain moment in the history of the region in which there was a need for deterrence and defense. As a response to that need, the site was established, with its circular wall and gates (and, notably, with almost no construction in its entire interior space). Likewise, when circumstances changed and the need for deterrence and defense was no longer relevant (probably because the site was no longer on the frontier), it was abandoned.3 The site’s population probably originated in most part from the region’s nomadic clans, and it is likely that they restored their nomadic way of life after the site was abandoned, most likely even keeping some aspects of it during the site’s occupation span.The polymorphous characteristics of the ancient Israelite society make historical reconstructions based on archaeology alone difficult. One has to avoid the simplistic conflation between oscillations in archaeological visibility and changing degrees of social complexity and/or variations in territorial boundaries (Ben-Yosef 2021) and instead consider the visible archaeology as only a fragment of a much bigger picture whose lion’s share is forever lost.4Within this visible archaeology, destruction layers in urban centers are key to historical reconstructions, especially because they can be tied to specific historical or biblical events. The new study by Webster and co-authors addresses four such layers in Gezer, Strata 12B, 10A, 8, and 7 and, based on radiocarbon results, suggests connections to (and disconnections with) specific events that are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and Egyptian sources. A close look at the calibrated but not modeled dates (Webster et al. 2023: fig. 9) reveals that without the Bayesian analysis, the ranges of the various ages are too wide to render any of the study’s suggestions robust. The Bayesian statistics, which impose stratigraphic observations on the radiometric ages, significantly narrow down the age range, allowing the study’s conclusions. However, even with a large sample size, Bayesian modeling, and a perfect calibration curve, radiocarbon dating cannot provide year-resolution ages. In fact, the current study shows that the best we can get is around 30 years, and this is for the 1-sigma results only. Recently, the advantages of archaeomagnetic dating have been highlighted in a series of publications (e.g., Stillinger et al. 2018), with emphasis on its potency in constraining the date of destruction events (Vaknin et al. 2022, 2023). In essence, the method is a powerful tool that can yield significantly narrower age ranges than radiocarbon at times of plateaus in the radiocarbon calibration curve (e.g., Di Chiara et al. 2024). In addition, it can provide direct insights on synchronization between archaeological contexts, in particular destruction layers, which can be an important complement to radiocarbon dating even when the latter is done under the best conditions (Levy et al. 2024).Archaeomagnetic dating is based on cumulative data that are used to the for a specific region and to chronological based on with narrow For the research in the years has resulted in a of data that can already be to chronological questions with significant results et al. 2023). The data we have so far for example, the results of the new chronological study of Gezer, especially in the case of the some decades in which destruction layers with I has been less in biblical archaeology, Webster et al. the possibility that his to the was indeed and that it the destruction of Gezer Stratum A has been by et al. for Stratum and Stratum based on an archaeomagnetic synchronization of the layers and other the from these sites to the one in the destruction of Gezer Stratum 8 will provide important insights regarding the of the recent would the connection to while a would necessarily that the of at one of the are the of Gezer Stratum 7 should be to that from the late ninth-century destruction of Tell which is associated with A would the of the new study in Gezer, which Stratum 7 from changing interpretations of this with significant implications for the early Iron Age chronological the new study of the absolute chronology of Gezer this site with other key sites that provide the dating for the Late Bronze and Iron Age in the such as Megiddo and I have that the historical and biblical implications of the absolute dating of Gezer and other sites are less than I have highlighted the of radiometric with archaeomagnetic dating to robust absolute in biblical if one in Syro-Palestinian archaeology.