If you look at all the religious megaliths we have today, like the Vatican or whatever, the reasons those exist is because they were built using several hundred or even thousand years of accrued wealth. (And a significant amount of 'reappropriated' building materials.) If the second temple really was built in 586 BCE, does it make any sense whatsoever that that could have been built with only 3 generations or so of accrued intergenerational wealth? That just doesn't seem plausible. Even assuming the bible is 100% made up, common sense suggests the longer biblical timeline is probably closer to the truth.

If they'd instead stumbled into Dubai-style wealth from these copper mines or whatever only a few decades earlier, surely that would have been written down somewhere.

You're assuming that veracity of stories about the grandiosity of Salomon's temple. There is no evidence to demonstrate that there was a fantastic, wealthy temple built by Solomon. If there was one, it could have been a simple temple fit to a small town built by the new rulers of the Israelite tribes.

> You're assuming that veracity of stories about the grandiosity of Salomon's temple.

I was talking about the temple mount, which you can still visit today. Didn't realize it wasn't finished until 500 years later though, so not sure to what extent my argument still holds.

The remaining Western wall of the Temple mount today was rebuilt by Herod almost 1000 years later (20 BCE). You can tell by the distinctive stone-dressing - the border around the stone known as Herodian masonry. You can also see this feature on the cave of the patriarchs.

But to be fair, the Second temple wasn't that impressive until Herod expanded it in the 1st century bc.

Good point, forgot about that heh.

There is a MUCH greater desire to disprove the Bible than to prove it.

Aside from the fame and financial interest, the personal belief of almost everyone I met is anti religious. (With the exception of Vindl Jones, but his interests are ... not archeology)

I therefor would be much more suspect of a claim disproving than proving the Biblical narative. But in either case, check the facts, not the names.

source: worked in the field, in Israel, for a period.

No way, religious organizations all over the world pay for anything related to archeological "findings" related to biblical stories. It may even be true that people working in the field are not religious themselves, but financial incentives don't need that to operate. Suddenly a little figment becomes a piece of "Solomon vast empire", instead of just the remains of a small village in the middle of nowhere.

It's more like 'Minimalism ended up the same position we had before it* , Finklestein's research programme was a bust and he can't admit that'.

* Basically: We have no archeological evidence for Exodus and conquest. In fact, what we have doesn't seem to match conquest at all. However, once monarchy and actual government sets in (around David's time), we get bookkeeping and the record is accurate once one takes into account the significant authorial slant.

There's no contemporary evidence for the reign of David or Solomon. The best you get is a reference to the "House of David" (Tel Dan Stele) ~150 years later and the Biblical account in Kings, which claims to be a redaction made ~450 years after the fact of royal annals that are now lost. That's not nothing, but there's still plenty of room for doubt. Especially considering the stratigraphy at Megiddo and what we should see there but don't.

In these periods, our evidence will always be patchy, and given error margins even "contemporary evidence" aren't necessarily contemporary. Ultimately, we need to find the most plausible accounts.

So what's your suggested alternative account? How does one get all those references in a way anywhere as likely as the original theory? We have zero cases of "House of David" referring to anything else, and "House of" was a typical geopolitical term. We do have direct evidence the Kings summations have basis in fact for later periods, but for earlier period the author isn't really redacting the royal annals despite him saying he did?

Minimalism presented itself as based on the science, but it can't coast anymore on absence of evidence. To be credible it ultimately needs to explain what we have without taking leaps of logic equaling those of the literalists, or it would appear to be a political movement rather than a scientific one.

Solomon is depicted in the Biblical accounts as fabulously wealthy and a prolific builder. That should have left a mark in the archeological record. 1 Kings 9:15-19 suggests we look at Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer, Lower Beth-horon, and Baalath. Some of those sites are impractical to excavate or unknown. Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer, and Beth-horon have been excavated and have uncovered little that can be plausibly attributed to Solomon. And given the almost irresponsibly extensive excavation done by the University of Chicago at Megiddo in particular, that's surprising. There's plenty there from earlier and later periods. At some point, the lack of evidence that should be there is evidence (though hardly conclusive) of absence.

What's my suggested account? I don't know. Perhaps David and Solomon existed but their reigns were exaggerated for political and/or nationalistic reasons. Perhaps they were invented out of whole cloth for similar reasons. What I'm more certain of is that the Biblical account here is questionable in a way it isn't in later periods.

The Biblical story hardly paints David and Solomon in a positive light. Solomon is portrayed as very oppressive, and David gets a whole bunch of crimes, in particular being this close to treason. In whose interest is that?

The Judaen Kingdom should have known basic information about its history, lying from whole cloth or portraying its founders in that light isn't very useful to them. Everyone else who comes to rule that area later is made to be illegitimate (by implication) and it's not in the interests of the religious classes either (usually not big on rebellion, except the Hasmonean which never claimed to be descended from David and had their own text).

I think reading Kings as a ancient text with all the typical flaws for the time is the right way to go about it, and the only way we can piece together the evidence (for now, barring some new discovery). Many ancient texts give absurdly inflated counts for armies engaged in battle, but we usually don't follow that by "battle never happened".

> In these periods, our evidence will always be patchy

That's not the case for well established civilizations in the Middle East. We know a lot of archeological information about big cities and empires of the time. The "empire" of David and Solomon is just not one of these historical cases. The only place that mentions a wealthy empire run at David's time are the stories conceived by Israelites hundreds of years later.

Take a super-ultra-maximalist version of Solomon's reign and draw it on a map. The "Empire" we get is small compared to known ME empires, and half of that size is because such a version could go up to Tadmor (Palmyra). If we apply a more realistic (IMHO) version, we get something tiny by Imperial standards.

In the same token, even a straight reading of the text should never give us the term "Empire" regarding David. His Kingdom fights against the very close neighbours and often wins, but is prone to drought and civil war. Even winning fights against close neighbours isn't much of an indication of Empire - when the US wants something from Mexico, it doesn't have to fight for it.

So I agree with you, but I think half of the exaggeration is due to more modern readings and (in this case) strawmen invented by people looking for something to knock down - the only person referring to "David's Empire" in the linked text is... Finklestein.