by fulltimestudent 3 Replies latest jw friends
This overview is from DW News*, A German Public Broadcasting Service. I thought it may be interesting to know that early Jerusalem was not as large as some have thought.
https://www.dw.com/en/ancient-jerusalem-smaller-than-believed/a-54671258?fbclid=IwAR3svOEx_h_2yRu0T-wNMnvWeyuJOxaCTz-jgglGmdR16vcjoAhvL_e8ow4
*DW is a German public international broadcaster funded by the German federal tax budget.
While we always have to be careful not to embrace each new conclusion made by archeologists (remember these people are sometimes out to make a name for themselves by proving the previous generation or a rival wrong), we should never be so naive as to believe that the Hebrew Bible narrative ever draws a picture far from mythos, even when it reports on history.
The First Temple (Solomon's Temple) was definitely not as grand or colossal as the narrative found in the Tanakh, and neither was the Davidic dynasty. The worship of YHVH seems to have always been competing with other national favorite deities, even though worship of YHVH had been made the state religion under the Davidic monarchy. A state religion that did not find full footing until after the Babylonian captivity would never have had a shrine or monarchy or state or capital as grand as written in its mythology.
Being of Jewish stock, I find myself startled again and again how little non-Jews really know about Jewish history. They see it through Jewish mythology--and as a Jewess, I can say without disrespect to my people or Judaism (because Judaism teaches this)--mythology is what the Hebrew Bible is. It teaches truths as in ethics, but not facts as in reporting on history. It is teaching what the Jews learned from history and not the history of the Jews.
The only time Jerusalem was massive was when the Herodians made it so. The great building projects of Herod, and the production of Herod's Temple was the momentous Jerusalem everyone remembers. The construction of the Bible was always looking backward, always trying to make the past bigger than Jerusalem under the Hasmoneans or Herodians. So David's Jerusalem was written to be bigger and better--but it probably wasn't.
Again, be careful. As a Jew I read so much from Jewish newspapers, and there is always another scientist or archeologist discovering this or that disproving this latest discovery or that latest finding--it's endless. It takes about 10-50 years after a finding before it becomes established as a proper theory.
The logistics of maintaining the sizes claimed is improbable. No trucks, airplanes, freezers, water, privies- the list goes on.
Look at modern armies, or relatively late campaigns, even the civil war. Or look at the refugees right now
Thank you for your perspective carmichael, and for your caveat about how we should view the discoveries and pronouncements of Archaeologists ! it is very true what you say, and of course Historians are a similar group, often wanting to make a name with a new theory, and more often than not, inventing stories based upon very little actual fact, so yes ! we need to be cautious.
But when discoveries and new perspectives fit a consensus arrived at by Scholars over many decades, we can be reasonably sure we are not that far away from the truth. I think your summary is a very fair one, and one I wish Evangelical Christians and others like the J.W's would take on board.
