Ancient Hebrew Poetry

The End of the Low Chronology: Khirbet Qeiyafa Update

Student archaeologist Owen Chesnut summarizes Garfinkel’s ASOR presentation in Boston and the Q & A period following. Go here and here. Thank you, Owen! Tom Levey rightly remarks that we need more than four C-14 dates before it is known for sure that Iron IIA began around the beginning of the 10th century, such that the low chronology is definitively proven wrong. It has to be admitted however that Finkelstein’s low chronology (and Sharon's ultra-low chronology) looks increasingly improbable.

In The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, Yossi Garfinkel and Saar Ganor’s full argument for Khirbet Qeiyafa=Sha‛arayim [consistently misspelled in the JHS article] is now available: go here.

Based on findings published therein, it is also increasingly improbable that Khirbet Qeiyafa was a Philistine site. Here is a key graph:

Khirbet Qeiyafa = Shaaraim

That is the identification Garfinkel will present at an ASOR session in Boston on Thursday. The evidence is suggestive. Go here. (HT: Jim Davila). Go here for more interesting details.

If correct, the identification accomplishes three things:

Garfinkel to Positively Identify Khirbet Qeiyafa at ASOR in Boston

That’s the word. Go here for a discussion of the site’s identification based on information available to all. Yossi, of course, will be drawing from unpublished finds in his ASOR presentation. You will want to arrive early at the presentation should you want to hear it sitting down.

UPDATE: Yossi informs me that a JHS article positively identifying the site, based no more on "speculation," but actual "finds," will appear very soon, perhaps within the week. Stay tuned.

The Mini-Max Debate Heats Up: In Search of the Ancient Name of Khirbet Qeiyafa

In Search of the Ancient Name of Khirbet Qeiyafa; that’s the title of a just-published essay by Nadav Na’aman in the online Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 8 (2008), Article 21. Go here. As articles of this quality demonstrate, JHS is securing a place for itself among the top tier of journals in the field.

The essay steps right in to the thick of the debate highlighted here: is the hill-country site of Beth Shemesh levels II-IV an Israelite site, as Bunimovitz and Lederman (2006) contend, given the absence of evidence of pig consumption and the non-attestation of coastal ceramic assemblages associated with lowland Philistine sites? By extension, is the hill-country site of Khirbet Qeiyafa an Israelite site, with the same absence of evidence of pig consumption and non-attestation of coastal ceramic assemblages? Is the fortified site of Khirbet Qeiyafa on the presumed western edge of the Davidic realm an index of the strength of the kingdom of David at its peak, whether Philistine or Israelite, and if Israelite, a telling sign of the kingdom's capability of self-defense against the Philistine city-states? Is the as-yet-unpublished ostracon discovered in situ an index of literacy among 10^th cent bce Israelites?

Key Background Information on the Kh. Qeiyafa Inscription

In a guest post over at Jim West’s place, Barnea Selevan of Foundation Stone, a financial sponsor of the ongoing excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, notes the following:

The point many miss is that the huge city itself [Khirbet Qeiyafa] is mute testament to a polity, to a government. Dating of the pottery has a huge consensus that it is the 10th century even without the olive pits [dated by C-14 to 1050-970 BCE]. Israel [Finkelstein, a famous low chronologist whose hypotheses minimalists like Jim West treat as manna from heaven] said, maybe it is Philistine? At an earlier session, excavators fresh from a summer of digging of Gath, Ashkelon, Timna; and earlier excavators of Ekron Timna and Lachish, agreed one after another, as Sy Gitin  [HUC-JIR] said, “this is not a coastal assemblage!” While Zvi [Lederman] and Shlomo [Bunimovitz] of TA  [Tel Aviv University] digging Bet Shemesh, nearby and also in Judah, said, “This is like our Level II to IV, early Iron Age.”

The above evidence is the reason the inscription is so important, regardless of what the inscription says, though the fact that it includes phrases and words like אל תעש , עבד, שפט and מלך is telling.

The End of Minimalism as We Know It

That’s how important the finds from Khirbet Qeiyafa appear to be: as announcing the end of minimalism as we know it. That is, the C-14 dates, pottery, inscription, and other data so far alluded to in news accounts are strong prima facie evidence in favor of the high chronology, the essential historicity of the reigns of David and Solomon, and a relatively high degree of literacy at that date.