Shocking Revelations About the Virgin Mary in the Bible

The Gospels barely mention Mary. They get her name wrong. They show Jesus being rude to her. And they make us question if she was even a virgin.

The worship of Mary has taken over Catholicism. But there’s a surprisingly scant amount of appearances by her in the New Testament — and those that are there can be problematic.

The figure of the Virgin Mary holds a place of honor in Christian theology and devotion, where she’s revered as the mother of Jesus and an embodiment of purity and divinity. And for Catholics, she’s essentially a goddess in her own right — and some would argue, perhaps more revered than Jesus himself.

However, a closer examination of the biblical texts reveals a series of astonishing revelations that challenge commonly held beliefs about Mary. In her book Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary, Marina Warner presents a compelling analysis of the Gospel accounts, shedding light on the limited mentions of Mary, discrepancies in her portrayal and even doubts about her virginity. Published in 1976, Warner’s research continues to shock almost 50 years later.

“The amount of historical information about the Virgin is negligible. Her birth, her death, her appearance, her age are never mentioned.

Of the four declared dogmas about the Virgin Mary — her divine motherhood, her virginity, her immaculate conception and her assumption into heaven — only the first can unequivocally be traced to Scripture.”

— Maria Warner, "Alone of All Her Sex"

The Annunciation by Paolo de Matteis, 1712

There’s a lot of beliefs about Mary that don’t come from the Bible. But one story that does is the Angel Gabriel telling her she’ll get pregnant by the Holy Spirit and will give birth to the Son of God.

1. Mary is hardly mentioned in the Gospels.

“The amount of historical information about the Virgin is negligible,” Warner writes. “Her birth, her death, her appearance, her age are never mentioned.” 

Warner explains that “the sum total of the Virgin’s appearances in the New Testament is startlingly small plunder on which to build the great riches of Mariology,” the part of Christian theology devoted to Mary. “Of the four declared dogmas about the Virgin Mary — her divine motherhood, her virginity, her immaculate conception and her assumption into heaven — only the first can unequivocally be traced to Scripture,” Warner continues.

The Immaculate Conception by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, 1769

The idea that Mary was born without sin like the rest of us can’t be found anywhere in the New Testament.

In the Bible, the Angel Gabriel appears to Mary of Nazareth. At first she’s troubled and confused, but Gabriel prophesizes Jesus’ birth, to which Mary answers (“her most precious speech in Mariology,” Warner states), “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” (Luke 1:34). 

Gabriel explains, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:38).

The Annunciation, from an illuminated manuscript created at Gladzor Monastery in Armenia by Toros Taronatsi in 1323

Strangely enough, though, the Gospel writers can’t even get her name right: She’s called Mariám 12 times and Maria seven times, according to Warner. 

Only Luke hits the major moments in what has become our understanding of the Virgin Mary. Even so, in Luke’s Gospel, Mary speaks a mere four times. 

In Matthew, she is silent. After the account of Jesus’ birth, Matthew mentions Mary only one more time.

Mark has a single mention of Mary (and it’s hardly flattering as you’ll see). 

John’s Gospel was written after the other three, “and it differs so considerably from them that for a time even its inclusion in the canon was at risk,” Warner writes. In it, the mother of Jesus is never mentioned by name, and it doesn’t repeat any of the incidents concerning her from the other Gospels. 

Christ Crucified With the Virgin, Saint John and Mary Magdalene by Anthony van Dyck, 1619

Jesus wanted to make sure Mary and John viewed each other as family — and then he was able to die.

She’s shown, perhaps, in the best light in John at the Crucifixion. As Jesus is dying on the cross, he sees his mother and “the disciple standing by, whom he loved” (i.e., John) and calls out, “Mother behold thy son!” and “Son behold thy mother!” John takes Mary into his home from that time on, the Gospel says. And Jesus, “knowing that all things were now accomplished,” drank vinegar and hyssop, and said, “It is finished” — “and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost” (John 19:26-30). 

The Marriage at Cana by Marten de Vos, 1597

Jesus is snippy with Mary at the event where he turns water into wine — a biblical passage that makes many a Catholic cringe.

2. Jesus is surprisingly rude to his mother.

In Mark’s recounting, Jesus has been preaching and attracting crowds, but his friends decide he has lost his mind, and his charisma is the work of the Devil (Mark 3:21). They call upon Jesus’ mother and brethren for help. Jesus asks, “Who is my mother or my brethren?” Then, looking around at those who have gathered to hear him, he declares, “Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and my mother” (Mark 3: 34-5). “Thus Jesus rebuffs his earthly family to embrace the larger family of his spiritual fellowship,” Warner writes. 

Matthew and Luke feature the same story — but by the time Luke tells it, he’s defending Mary and the rest of the family, stating that they “could not come at him for the press” of the crowd (Luke 8:19). 

The episode is paralleled later in Luke. A woman in a crowd calls out, “Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked.” Jesus states, “Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it” (Luke 11:7-8). “Mary is not necessarily excluded from Jesus’ reply, but it certainly rings harshly,” Warner writes, adding, “The Catholic Church has consistently overlooked the hard-heartedness in Jesus’ words.”

John tells of the miracle at Cana, one of two conversations between Jesus and his mother (John 2:3-5):

Mother: They have no wine.

Jesus: Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.

Mother [to the servants]: Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it. 

Jesus goes on to turn water into wine. “Mary, apparently rebuffed quite brutally by her son, understands that he will nevertheless perform a miracle,” Warner explains. 

The Marriage of the Virgin by Giotto, 1306

The big question is: Did Joseph and Mary have sex after she gave birth? It’s the most likely explanation for Jesus’ brothers and sisters.

3. Her very virginity is at question.

For many Christians, it’s unfathomable to imagine that the Virgin Mary, whose moniker is tied to her purity, might be the result of a poor translation. “[A]s for her virginity,” Warner writes, “the evangelists, far from asserting it, raise a number of doubts.” 

Of all the Gospels, only Matthew makes a clear statement about the virgin birth. He says that Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost before Mary and Joseph “came together” (Matthew 7:20). 

But Matthew’s writer was using the Greek Septuagint translation of the Bible, where the Hebrew word “almah,” meaning a young girl of marriageable age, became “parthenos” in Greek — a word that carries a strong connotation of virginity.

Catholics “hold (not as an article of faith, but as a cherished and ancient belief) that Mary was virgo intacta post partum, that by special privilege of God she, who was spared sex, was preserved also through childbirth in her full bodily integrity,” Warner explains. Which, one has to imagine, means her hymen was intact. 

But Matthew’s language seems to suggest that Mary and Joseph had sex after the birth of Jesus: “Then Joseph … took unto him his wife: and knew her not till she had brought forth her first born son” (Matthew 1:24-5). Yes, that’s “knew” in the biblical sense. It’s basically saying Joseph and Mary didn’t have sex until after Jesus was born. But they did eventually do so — Mary didn’t remain a virgin. 

The Presentation of Christ in the Temple by Hans Holbein the Elder, 1501

If Mary was so pure, why did she have to undergo a period of cleansing before she could present Jesus in the temple?

Also problematic: Mary gives birth to Jesus and enters the temple only after the time for her purification has elapsed. Under Mosaic law, a woman must be cleansed of the impurity incurred at childbirth. But why would that be necessary if Mary was, miraculously, still a virgin?

A 16th century Russian icon of James the Just, one of Jesus’ siblings

And then there’s the issue of Jesus’ siblings, mentioned in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Some early thinkers of the Greek church came up with a solution that has no proof in the Bible: Joseph was a widower, and those children were from an earlier marriage. 

The Birth of Christ by Meister von Hohenfurth, circa 1350

Rethinking the Virgin Mary

Warner’s groundbreaking work Alone of All Her Sex challenges conventional beliefs surrounding the Virgin Mary, drawing attention to the limited scriptural references, Jesus’ puzzlingly brusque behavior to his mother and the ambiguity surrounding her virginity. These shocking revelations prompt a reevaluation of deeply ingrained perceptions and invite further exploration of the complex figure at the heart of the Christian and Catholic faiths. –Wally

---

CLICK HERE: When Did Jesus Become God? 5 Startling Findings in the Gospels

Who Really Wrote the New Testament?

Many, if not most, of the Scriptures were written by people falsely claiming to be the apostles or other leaders of the early Christian church, says biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman. That means a lot of books of the Bible are actually forgeries.

The book of Mark, like the rest of the Gospels, was written anonymously. Why, then, do we believe they were products of the men that bear their names?

If your answer to any conundrum is, “It’s one of God’s miracles,” then this article is not for you. I seek the truth in facts — fully admitting that as we gain more and more knowledge, our previous beliefs can shift. 

I don’t subscribe to the school of thought that blind faith can solve any mystery. I think about what is scientifically feasible, what archaeology and history research reveals, and base my judgments from there. Virgins do not give birth; men are not raised from the dead; and illiterate peasants do not write well-argued religious tracts.

“Most of the apostles were illiterate and could not in fact write.

They could not have left an authoritative writing if their souls depended on it.”

— Bart D. Ehrman, “Forged”

All that being said, this post is not about my beliefs. These are the findings of Bart D. Ehrman in his 2011 work, Forged: Writing in the Name of God — Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. 

“Most of the apostles were illiterate and could not in fact write,” Ehrman declares. “They could not have left an authoritative writing if their souls depended on it.” 

Bart D. Ehrman was once an evangelical Christian who took everything in the Bible literally. Now he’s a biblical scholar whose works, like Forged, offer shocking truths about the supposed word of God.

So who wrote the New Testament, then? Most of the texts were composed by people with extensive schooling — that is, undoubtedly, members of the upper class elite.

Why would someone lie about writing these works? “Quite simply, it was to get a hearing for their views,” Ehrman explains. “If you were an unknown person, but had something really important to say and wanted people to hear you — not so they could praise you, but so they could learn the truth — one way to make that happen was to pretend you were someone else, a well-known author, a famous figure, an authority.”

Here are four shocking revelations about who actually wrote the New Testament (or, perhaps I should say who didn’t write it):

Peter and Paul had differing views of Christianity, but both were chosen as the “authors” of forged books in the Bible to lend authority to the writings.

1. Ancient writers forged writings to address infighting among early Christian groups.

Many people think of Christianity as always having been a well-defined, cohesive religion — as if the books of the New Testament were handed down from on high like the tablets of the 10 Commandments Moses received. But the truth is, the fledgling religion was a big old mess for hundreds of years.

“Christians in the early centuries of the church were in constant conflict and felt under attack from all sides,” Ehrman writes. “They were at odds with Jews, who considered their views to be an aberrant and upstart perversion of the ancestral traditions of Israel. They were at odds with pagan peoples and governments, who considered them a secretive and unauthorized religion that posed a danger to the state. And they were virulently at odds with each other, as different Christian teachers and groups argued that they and they alone had a corner on the truth and other Christian teachers and groups flat-out misunderstood the truths that Christ had proclaimed during his time on earth.” 

So, numerous writers turned to forgery to give more weight to their arguments — and nowhere was that more prevalent than among varying factions of early Christians. Those works favored by church leaders centuries after Jesus were chosen to become the New Testament. Those that were deemed heretical (such as, say, the Gnostic Gospel of Judas), were not only left out but hunted down and destroyed in an effort to totally obliterate their teachings.

The book of Jude was written too late to have been authored by Jesus’ brother.

The New Testament book of Jude, for example, claims to be written by Jesus’ brother. But the author is talking about false teachers (which he strangely calls “waterless souls” and “fruitless trees, twice dead, uprooted”) who have infiltrated the religion and need to be rooted out — something that didn't happen until much later than Jude’s lifetime.

James was the head of the first Christian church, but couldn’t have written the book of the New Testament that bears his name.

And the book of James was supposedly penned by another of Jesus’ brothers, this one the head of the first Christian church, in Jerusalem. But not only was this book written after James’ death, the author is fluent in Greek and its rhetoric. Even if the timing worked out, the historical James, Ehrman says, was an Aramaic-speaking peasant who almost certainly never learned to read.

The New Testament itself declares that Peter was illiterate — so how the heck could he have written all those Bible books?

2. Peter was an illiterate fisherman who died years before 1 and 2 Peter were written.

Like the book of James, the book of 1 Peter was written by someone who was very well educated, spoke Greek and practiced rhetoric. 

What do we know of Peter from the Bible? He was a fisherman from the town of Capernaum in Galilee. Archeological and historical records reveal that “Peter’s town was a backwoods Jewish village made up of hand-to-mouth laborers who did not have an education,” Ehrman writes. “Everyone spoke Aramic. Nothing suggests that anyone could speak Greek. Nothing suggests that anyone in town could write. As a lower-class fisherman, Peter would have started work as a young boy and never attended school.”

In fact, in Acts 4:13, Peter and his companion John are described as agrammatoi, a Greek word meaning “unlettered” — that is, illiterate.

There’s also the issue of timing. Tradition holds that Peter was martyred in Rome under Nero in 64 CE. But the author of 1 Peter alludes to Rome as “Babylon” — that is, the destroyer of Jerusalem and the Temple. The Romans didn’t destroy Jerusalem until 70 CE, six years after Peter died. 

Peter, like all of the apostles, believed that Jesus’ Second Coming would take place during his lifetime.

In addition, the author of 2 Peter comes up with a defense as to why Jesus hasn’t returned as the Messiah. To God, “one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years are as one day.” So time is relative and just be patient.

But such an argument wouldn’t have been necessary for a disciple writing so soon after Jesus’ crucifixion. The Second Coming was predicted “within this generation” (Mark 13:30) and before the disciples “tasted death” (Mark 9:1). At the time Peter lived, Jesus could have still been right on schedule.

Paul actually did write some of the books of the New Testament — well, seven of the 13 attributed to him.

3. Good news! More than half of the letters attributed to Paul in the New Testament are authentic.

That means, of course, that six of the 13 are forgeries, though. Almost all biblical scholars agree that these seven letters were indeed written by the apostle Paul: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon. 

In the other books of the Bible attributed to Paul, there are words and phrases and writing styles not found in those that have been verified. And there are points made about Paul’s religious philosophy that just don’t jibe with what we know about his beliefs. For instance, the man was anti-marriage (even though he himself got hitched). In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul preaches that people should remain single. Why worry about procreation when the Rapture is going to happen any day?

But in the Pastorals (as 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus are referred to), “Paul” is insisting that church leaders be married. Side note: Why has this not become an argument to end the tradition of priests being celibate?

Scholars agree that at least a couple of the letters Paul wrote while under house arrest in Rome were actually penned by him.

Which brings us to another problem of timing: When Paul was alive, there weren’t any church leaders. His view was that every Christian was endowed with a supernatural gift (healing, say, or speaking in tongues) and all were equal: “In Christ there is neither slave nor free, neither male nor female,” he declares in Galatians 3:28.

Paul believed Jesus’ Second Coming would happen unexpectedly, “like a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2), and he would be around to experience it. It wasn’t until a generation or more later, when people were still waiting, that some found it necessary to think more long term and offer up excuses. 

“The author of 2 Thessalonians, claiming to be Paul, argues that the end is not, in fact, coming right away,” Ehrman explains. “There will be some kind of political or religious uprising and rebellion, and an Antichrist-like figure will appear who will take his seat in the Temple of Jerusalem and declare himself to be God.” 

How could the same Paul declare in 1 Thessalonians that Jesus’ return would happen soon and suddenly, and then in 2 Thessalonians renege on that and state that a whole series of events had to take place first? 

And in Ephesians, there’s also an issue with Paul’s biography. The writer includes himself as someone who, before meeting Jesus, was guilty of “doing the will of the flesh and senses.” But that doesn’t fit with the man who says, in undisputed letters, he had been “blameless” when it came to the “righteousness of the law” (Philippians 3:4-5).

An angel is said to have whispered the words of the Gospel to St. Matthew. But it turns out there’s evidence Matthew didn’t actually write the book of the Bible named for him.

4. One-third of the authors of the books of the New Testament — including the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — were actually anonymous. 

In fact, those texts remained anonymous for about a century. It wasn’t until around 180-185 CE that the Gospels were definitely named for the first time, by a church father and heresy hunter named Irenaeus. 

And how did those authors get chosen? To lend the Gospels authority (and help assure they made the cut when choosing what would go into the New Testament), the writers were declared to be two disciples and two close associates of disciples. 

Matthew, for instance, was a Jew, and tradition held that he had written a Gospel. So the first was assigned to him since it was deemed the most “Jewish.” 

Church leaders ascribed authors of the Gospels about 100 years after they were written — anonymously, no less. There’s no evidence Mark actually wrote the book that bears his name, for example.

The second Gospel was determined to be by Mark on the scantest of evidence; he seems to have been chosen because of his connection to Peter. 

When you hear the reasons the Gospels were assigned authors, like the book of Luke, you’ll realize how flimsy the evidence really is.

The author of Luke also wrote the book of Acts, where he proclaims to be a companion of Paul’s. “Because Acts stresses that Christianity succeeded principally among Gentiles, the author himself may have been a Gentile,” Ehrman writes. “Since there was thought to be a Gentile named Luke among Paul’s companions, he was assigned the Third Gospel.” So it goes.

John, the son of Zebedee, was assigned the Gospel with his name by process of elimination.

John, meanwhile, was supposed to be written by “the Beloved Disciple” it mentions (John 20: 20-24). In early tradition, the closest apostles to Jesus were Peter, James and John. Peter was named elsewhere in the book, and James had already been martyred. So that left John, the son Zebedee, as the author of the fourth Gospel.

Not the most convincing of evidence — but the Gospels couldn’t remain anonymous if they were going to become part of the Bible.

But wait — there’s more. In addition, Ehrman writes, “The anonymous book of Hebrews was assigned to Paul, even though numbers of early Christian scholars realized that Paul did not write it, as scholars today agree. And three short anonymous writings with some similarities to the Fourth Gospel were assigned to the same author, and so were called 1, 2 and 3 John. None of these books claims to be written by the authors to whom they were ultimately assigned.”

---

For biblical literalists, this evidence must be disturbing. Not only does it show that the New Testament contains lies, it makes us question the very beliefs at the core of what we know as Christianity. 

That’s something to take up with God — or, perhaps, Ehrman. As he writes, “The use of deception to promote the truth may well be considered one of the most unsettling ironies of the early Christian traditions.” –Wally

---

King Josiah and the Formation of Jewish Law

Revised stories of the patriarchs proved powerful propaganda, and Deuteronomy presented the moral code of early Judaism — with a surprising amount of human rights. 

The penultimate king of Judah, Josiah is held up as the best of the best. We have him to thank for the Judaism practiced today.

King Josiah receives more superlatives of awesomeness than any other figure in the Old Testament. And with heavy hitters like Moses, David and Joshua, that’s saying something. 

“Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him,” gushes 2 Kings 23:25.

Not too bad for a kid who was crowned in 639 BCE at the tender age of 8, after his father, Amon, was assassinated in a coup, having reigned only a year.

King Josiah oversees a ritual sacrifice in this illustration from an Egyptian manuscript.

Of course, it turns that the early books of the Old Testament were written in the 7th century BCE, when Josiah ruled the kingdom of Judah. The writings were planned specifically to bolster his vision of a unified Israel, where everyone abandoned all other deities to worship only YHWH (aka Yahweh, or God), according to Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. 

The book of Law that King Josiah discovered in the Temple was, most likely, the original book of Deuteronomy. We’re not sure why this prompted him to tear his robe, though.

Finding the Book of Law

In the 18th year of Josiah’s reign, 622 BCE, the king commanded his high priest to renovate the Temple. During the work, a new book of Law turned up. 

“That book, identified by most scholars as an original form of the book of Deuteronomy, sparked a revolution in ritual and a complete reformation of Israelite identity,” Finkelstein and Silberman explain. “This was the formative moment in the crystallization of the biblical tradition as we now know it.”

King Josiah has the idols of Baal destroyed (and the priests killed) in this illustration by Gustave Doré.

According to Josiah and other hardcore monotheists, there was a lot of work to be done (and undone). 

The new book of Law “suddenly and shockingly revealed that the traditional practice of the cult of YHWH in Judah had been wrong,” the authors continue. 

Pagan practices were taking place even within the confines of the Temple itself. Josiah had all the iconography of Baal removed, along with anything used to worship the sun, moon and stars, and had it all burned. He also broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes (!!!). 

That was just the beginning. Josiah marched northward, smashing stone altars to other gods and killing their priests. 

The frontispiece to the book of Deuteronomy in the Nuremberg Bible

A Revolution in Human Rights

The new Law wasn’t all just destruction and death, though.

Josiah made Passover an official holy day, which linked him with Moses, who was involved in the holiday’s gruesome origin. 

More than this, “Deuteronomy calls for the protection of the individual, for the defense of what we would call today human rights and human dignity,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. “Its laws offer an unprecedented concern for the weak and helpless.” 

For example, Deuteronomy 15:7-8 states, “If there is among you a poor man … you shall open your hand to him, and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be.” Imagine if that were still in practice today.

Joseph’s awful brothers sold him into slavery. He was born too soon — thanks to the book of Deuteronomy, his servitude would only have lasted six years.

In addition, Josiah’s law gave inheritance rights to wives, instructed farmers to give tithes to the poor every third year, protected resident aliens from discrimination and freed slaves after six years of servitude. 

The Death of King Josiah by Francesco Conti, who lived 1681-1760

Josiah’s Lasting Legacy

Was Josiah successful in his campaign of religious centralization? Perhaps not on as broad a scale as he would have liked. Evidence suggests that he “failed to stop the veneration of graven images, since figurines of a standing woman supporting her breast with her hands (generally identified with the goddess Asherah) have been found in abundance within private dwelling compounds at all major late-seventh century sites in Judah,” explain Finkelstein and Silberman. 

One god just wasn’t enough for the ancient Judahites — many a household had figurines of the goddess Asherah like this one.

In 610 BCE, the new pharaoh, Necho II, launched a military expedition, allying with Egypt’s old foes the Assyrians to battle an even greater threat: the Babylonian Empire.

No one is quite sure why Josiah joined the fray against Egypt. Whatever the reason, it was a decision that led to his death. 2 Kings 23:29 glosses over the loss of the greatest king of Judah as if the writer were embarrassed: “In his days Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt went up to the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates. King Josiah went to meet him; and Pharaoh Necho slew him at Megiddo, when he saw him.”

Pharaoh Necho II, who killed King Josiah. The Old Testament glosses over this event, as if the writers were embarrassed and wanted to downplay it.

“In his days Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt went up to the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates. King Josiah went to meet him; and Pharaoh Necho slew him at Megiddo, when he saw him.” (2 Kings 23:29)

“One thing is clear. The Deuteronomistic historian, who saw Josiah as a divinely anointed messiah destined to redeem Judah and lead it to glory was clearly at a loss to explain how such a historical catastrophe could occur and left only a curt, enigmatic reference to Josiah’s death,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. “Decades of spiritual revival and visionary hopes seemingly collapsed overnight. Josiah was dead and the people of Israel were again enslaved by Egypt.”

By 597 BCE, all the cities of Judah had been crushed under the Babylonian assault, culminating with the defeat of Jerusalem, which was burned to the ground. The Babylonian ruler, Nebuchadnezzar, looted the Temple and deported all but the poorest inhabitants of Judah. 

The Babylonians, led by King Nebuchadnezzar, defeated Judah, enslaved its people and burned Jerusalem to the ground.

Judah’s last king, Zedekiah, was captured. He had to watch the Babylonians slaughter his sons before he was blinded.

Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, didn’t fare so well. Tragedy of Zedekiah by Charles Monnet, 1750

Nebuchadnezzar had Zedekiah blinded — only after the king of Judah had watched his sons get slaughtered.

Nevertheless, there was a power in Josiah’s movement. His revisionist history and rallying cry have become parts of the most popular book on the planet. And the laws of Deuteronomy found within “served as the foundation for a universal social code and system of community values that endure — even today,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. –Wally 

The True Story of the Assyrian Conquest of Judah

The Old Testament says that good King Hezekiah fended off the Assyrian army at Jerusalem, but his triumph was undone by bad King Manasseh. Archaeology proves otherwise.

Instead of scurrying home in defeat, did the Assyrians actually successfully conquer Jerusalem?

It just doesn’t seem fair that the fate of an entire kingdom would be dependent upon its king’s behavior — namely whether or not he worshiped other gods besides YHWH (Yahweh). 

But that’s exactly what happens throughout the Old Testament. In general, the kingdom of Judah fared much better than its northern neighbor, Israel, which was ultimately laid to waste by Assyria.

“A contemporary record explains how Sennacherib laid siege to city after city throughout Judah, conquering them with ramps and battering rams.

He captured King Hezekiah and kept him “like a bird in a cage.” ”

The Bible tells us that King Hezekiah defeated the Assyrians with divine intervention. But archaeological evidence from the time suggests otherwise.

Hezekiah and the Miraculous Defeat of Assyria

With King Sargon II of Assyria dead since 705 BCE, Hezekiah (who reigned from 727-698 BCE) decided it was time to rebel, entering a coalition backed by Egypt. Of course, that prompted the new ruler of Assyria, Sennacherib, to gather his formidable army and march upon Judah. 

The book of 2 Kings in the Bible tells the story of a miraculous defeat: The Angel of the Lord went forth, slaying 185,000 soldiers in the Assyrian camp. Needless to say, that frightened King Sennacherib enough that he scurried home — only to be murdered by two of his sons. 

After his supposed defeat, the Assyrian ruler Sennacherib was killed by two of his own sons.

For some reason, Hezekiah’s son and successor, Manasseh (698-642 BCE), isn’t impressed enough with the power of Yahweh to insist upon sole worship of the deity. He makes a theological about-face, and even goes so far as to burn his son as an offering to one of the local gods, practice soothsaying and augury, and deal with mediums and wizards. (Sounds like fun to me — except for the human sacrifice bit.)

The evil King Manasseh had to repent for his sins in the Old Testament — but historical evidence doesn’t jibe with the Bible’s version of events.

Archaeology Tells a Different Story

Were the Assyrians defeated during their invasion of Judah? If the story in the Old Testament seems almost too fantastical to believe, that’s because it probably is. Archaeological evidence — granted, some from the Assyrian point of view — tells another version.

A contemporary record explains how Sennacherib laid siege to city after city throughout Judah, conquering them with ramps and battering rams. He captured King Hezekiah and kept him prisoner in his palace, “like a bird in a cage,” while the Assyrian army plundered his land. 

So who’s telling the truth? The authors of the Bible or the Assyrian historians?

Bad news for biblical literalists: “The devastation of the Judahite cities can be seen in almost every mound excavated in the Judean hinterland,” write Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts.

Sennacherib, the ruler of Assyria at the time of Hezekiah and Manasseh

Manasseh and Assyria

Perhaps Manasseh is remembered so poorly because he actually became one of Assyria’s most loyal vassal states — despite the prosperity it brought. 

“[A] seventh century text reporting tribute given by south Levantine states to the Assyrian king indicates that Judah’s tribute was considerably smaller than that paid by the neighboring, poorer Assyrian vassals Ammon and Moab,” write Finkelstein and Silverman.

Manasseh was said to be captured and marched to Assyria in chains — including one through his nose. But a contemporary record says it was Hezekiah who was captured and kept “like a bird in a cage.”

In another document, Manasseh is reported as giving gifts to the Assyrian king and helping him conquer Egypt. And while this certainly would have displeased anyone who wanted a free, unified kingdom of Israel, Manasseh’s long reign of 55 years was a peaceful time for Judah. 

The Defeat of Sennacherib by Peter Paul Rubens, 17th century

“For all the Bible’s talk of Hezekiah’s piety and YHWH’s saving intervention, Assyria was the only victor,” Finkelstein and Silverman write.  “Sennacherib fully achieved his goals: he broke the resistance of Judah and subjugated it. Hezekiah had inherited a prosperous state, and Sennacherib destroyed it.”

The author of the books of Kings seems to have hoped that by the time he wrote his version of the account, people would have forgotten what actually had happened. For centuries, this is what people have believed — until archeological evidence has come along to prove them wrong. –Wally

The (Belated) Rise of Jerusalem and the Jewish Religion

Despite the stories of the Old Testament, the kingdom of Judah did not rise to power or become a monotheistic center until much later than the reigns of King David and Solomon.

Within one generation, thanks, in part, to an influx of refugees from Israel, Jerusalem swelled as a city, and its Temple became the center of the budding Jewish religion.

The Bible makes it very easy to determine which of the kings of ancient Judah were sinful and which were not. Those who are described as doing “what was right in the eyes of the Lord” typically had nice long reigns and avoided defeat in the many skirmishes of the time.

“Most shockingly, an inscription from Sinai refers to the goddess Asherah as the consort of Yahweh!

It seems God originally had a wife!”

We three kings: The rulers of Israel were judged good or bad in the Bible, and it seemed as if the traits skipped generations. Here’s Ahaz (bad), Hezekiah (good) and Manasses (bad).

It’s almost as if a king who had the misfortune of losing a war was later recast as someone despicable. Take Ahaz, who was accused of burning his son as an offering to a pagan god and, heaven forbid, burning incense in high places and under every green tree (2 Kings: 16:2-4). 

There King Ahaz goes again, worshipping other gods than YHWH. This one likes tasty babies as offerings.

Much of the Old Testament deals with the comparison of sinful Israel in the north and the sometimes good, sometimes bad kingdom of Judah in the south.

“Despite Judah’s prominence in the Bible, however, there is no archaeological indication until the eighth century BCE that this small and rather isolated highland area, surrounded by arid steppe land on both east and south, possessed any particular importance,” write Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts.

A model of ancient Jerusalem, which didn’t rise as a power until the late 8th century BCE, after Israel fell to the Babylonians

The Rise of Jerusalem

It wasn’t until the fall of Israel in the late 8th century BCE, that Judah was finally in a position to prosper. 

“The royal citadel of Jerusalem was transformed in a single generation from the seat of a rather insignificant local dynasty into the political and religious nerve center of a regional power — both because of dramatic internal developments and because thousands of refugees from the conquered kingdom of Israel fled to the south,” the authors explain. 

New suburbs developed, which were enclosed within a defensive wall. The city of Jerusalem grew from a mere 12 acres to 150, and its population increased from 1,000 to 15,000 — all in the span of a generation.

The ruins of the citadel and Tower of David

The rest of Judah, including its agricultural hinterland, also experienced rapid growth. Where there were once only a few villages and modest towns, about 300 settlements of all sizes popped up. The population of the region grew from 30,000 or so to around 120,000.

Long after the reign of Kind David, Israelites worshipped multiple deities — fertility goddesses like these were particularly popular.

Yahweh: One God of Many 

Despite the Bible’s claim that the worship of YHWH (aka Yahweh, or, you know, capital-G God) was, for the most part, the norm from the reign of King David on, archaeological evidence shows that there were numerous instances of other gods being worshiped throughout the time of the kingdom of Judah. Clay figurines, incense altars, libation vessels and offering stands throughout the region reveal that people worshiped a variety of fertility deities as well as their ancestors — and certainly not just Yahweh. 

It must come as a surprise to most people that Judaism, one of the first monotheistic religions — Pharaoh Akhenaten previously decreed the worship of a single deity for a brief time in Ancient Egypt — actually started out as polytheistic. 

“[T]he great sins of Ahaz and the other evil kings of Judah should not be seen as exceptional in any way,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. “These rulers merely allowed the rural traditions to go unhampered. They and many of their subjects expressed their devotion to YHWH in rites performed at countless tombs, shrines and high places throughout the kingdom, with the occasional and subsidiary worship of other gods.”

Judahites at the time treated hilltops as holy sites, burning incense there to honor the sun, moon and stars.

“[T]he clearest archaeological evidence of the popularity of this type of worship throughout the kingdom is the discovery of hundreds of figurines of naked fertility goddesses at every late monarchic site in Judah,” write Finkelstein and Silverman.

The goddess Asherah, as carved on an ivory box from around 1300 BCE found in Syria, was once worshipped as the wife of Yahweh, the Jewish and Christian God!

Most shockingly, there’s an inscription from northeastern Sinai that refers to the goddess Asherah as the consort of Yahweh! Could God originally have had a wife?!

In the late 8th century BCE, Jerusalem grew rapidly in size (from 12 to 150 acres) and population (1,000 to 15,000 residents).

The Birth of Judaism

Despite the perception that the Israelites were monotheistic long before this time, it wasn’t until Jerusalem was a booming metropolis that we at last had the rise of the exclusive worship of Yahweh at the city’s impressive Temple. 

The true monotheism of the Judeo-Christian tradition most likely began in the 8th century BCE — 200 years after the Bible claims. Part of this movement to worship YHWH alone was born of a new political aim: the unification of Israel. Coming out of this, the religious establishment decreed the “proper” way to worship — not just at the Temple but throughout rural Judah as well. 

“It is easy to see why the biblical authors were so upset by idolatry,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. “It was a symbol of chaotic social diversity; the leaders of the clans in the outlying areas conducted their own systems of economics, politics and social relations — without administration or control by the court in Jerusalem.”

Perhaps it’s cynical to suggest that Judaism (and by extension, Christianity) arose because of a desire to consolidate power and economic control — but heavens knows it wouldn’t be the first time a religion was guilty of that. –Wally

Israel Finkelstein (top) and Neil Asher Silberman, authors of The Bible Unearthed

The Fall of Israel in the Old Testament Explained

The Bible states that the kings of Israel sinned greatly. But Israel fell because it was just too attractive to the Assyrians. 

At first the Assyrians ignored Samaria, then the capital of Israel, thinking it was too isolated. But eventually they attacked it and conquered the city, along with rest of the kingdom.

If you believe the Old Testament, the kingdom of Israel suffered and ultimately fell because its rulers and people just couldn’t be monogamous with the god Yahweh. (They also supposedly burned their sons and daughters as offerings and practiced divination and sorcery, among other sins.) 

But, looking at the archaeological record, “Israel’s greatest misfortune — and the cause of its destruction and the exile of many of its people — was that as an independent kingdom living in the shadow of a great empire, it succeeded too well,” write Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts.

Yes, Israel fell because of jealousy — not God’s but the Assyrians’. 

“Israel — with its rich resources and productive population — was an incomparably more attractive target than poor and inaccessible Judah,” the authors explain. 

Israel’s prosperity sparked Assyria’s envy. The minute the Israelites considered a revolt, the Assyrians launched an attack.

Assyria’s Bitch: The Complaints of the Prophets Amos and Hosea

For a time, Israel was a subservient vassal to Assyria, paying tribute to maintain peace. 

This age of prosperity began around 800 BCE and greatly upset two biblical prophets, Amos and Hosea. They abhorred Israel’s dependence upon Assyria and its economic disparity between the ruling elite and the poor. Amos railed against those who slept on beds of ivory, chilled out on couches, ate lamb and calves, sang songs while playing the harp, drank wine from bowls, anointed themselves with fine oils and built houses of hewn stone, amongst other egregious transgressions. 

The prophet Amos railed against the rich and their exploitation of the poor.

His contemporary Hosea didn’t appreciate deals made with Assyria or the export of oil to Egypt. 

Hosea, another prophet, ridiculed allegiances with Assyria and Egypt.

This condemnation of a wealthy lifestyle and foreign influence on the Israelite way of life would greatly influence the Old Testament’s stodgy philosophy.

The Assyrian monarch Tiglath-pileser III, who conquered Israel

The Decline and Fall of the Israelite Kingdom

A new Assyrian king, Tiglath-pileser III, also known as Pul in the Bible, began a campaign to conquer and annex the region, deporting its residents at his whim.

Israel at this time had been subject to the assassinations of four kings in 15 years. A military officer named Pekah joined with King Rezin of Damascus to attempt a united resistance against Assyria. 

The plan backfired. Tiglath-pileser III conquered and/or destroyed city after city, executing Rezin and bringing Israel to its knees. Ironically, the one city that was spared Assyria’s wrath was Samaria, which happened to be the capital of Israel. Why? Tiglath-pileser felt it was too “isolated,” as he boasted on a monumental inscription. 

A man named Hoshea assassinated Pehkah, becoming what would be the last king of Israel. In the time between the death of Tiglath-pileser and the succession of Shalmaneser V to the Assyrian throne, Hoshea devised a plan. He asked the lords of the Egyptian delta for help and, in the meantime, stopped paying tribute to Assyria. It didn’t turn out well.

Shalmaneser instantly marched upon Samaria, laying siege to the city. Either he or his successor, Sargon II, who came to the throne in 722 BCE, finally bested Samaria’s defenses. Many Israelites, possibly the aristocracy and artisans, were deported deep into Assyrian territory, while people from other conquered countries were brought to repopulate Samaria. 

The kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians, its cities conquered and its people deported.

“It was all over,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. “Two stormy centuries had come to a catastrophic end. The proud northern kingdom and a significant part of its population were lost to history.” –Wally

The Forgotten History of King Ahab, Jezebel and the Omride Dynasty

The Old Testament maligns these rulers, glossing over the fact that they founded the first Israelite kingdom — not David and Solomon. 

Vilified in the Bible, King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, as seen in this painting by Frederic Leighton, circa 1863, were among the first rulers of Israel as a true kingdom.

King Solomon, son of the legendary giant-killer David, has long been held up as a founder of the first Israelite kingdom. Historical and archeological evidence, though, shows that this wasn’t the case. 

King Solomon has been given credit for many of the impressive building projects that actually happened during the Omride Dynasty.

“Most Jews and Christians don’t want to hear that the first kingdom of Israel wasn’t founded by David or Solomon but by the supposedly devious sinners Ahab and Jezebel. ”

A true kingdom — featuring monumental building projects, a professional army and bureaucracy — didn’t appear on the ancient Near East scene until the early 9th century BCE, during what’s known as the Omride Dynasty. 

This won’t sit well with biblical literalists, given that the most famous figures from this line are King Ahab and his notorious wife, Jezebel, a demonized princess from Phoenicia. 

Jezebel, in an 1896 painting by John Liston Byam Shaw, wouldn’t be the first woman to get a bad rap in the Bible. (Incidentally, she was originally painted nude, but the work wasn’t selling, so Byam Shaw added clothes.)

Ahab and Jezebel’s Bad Rap

The most famous (or should I say “infamous”?) Omride couple, King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, are accused of “repeatedly committing some of the greatest biblical sins: introducing the cult of foreign gods into the land of Israel, murdering faithful priests and prophets of YHWH, unjustly confiscating the property of their subjects, and violating Israel’s sacred traditions with arrogant impunity,” explain Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origins of Its Sacred Texts. 

Judging by the evidence, the authors of the Bible could instead have said that Ahab was “a mighty king who first brought the kingdom of Israel to prominence on the world stage and that his marriage to the daughter of the Phoenician king Ethbaal was a brilliant stroke of international diplomacy,” the authors write. “They might have said that the Omrides built magnificent cities to serve as administrative centers of their expanding kingdom.”

Part of their success was certainly due to the fact that they had one of the most powerful armies in the region. 

Omri, the founder of the dynasty, and his son Ahab weren’t particularly pious and did act brutally on occasion. “But the same could be said of virtually every other monarch of the ancient Near East,“ say Finkelstein and Silberman. 

King Omri founded the first powerful Israelite dynasty — sorry, King David!

Israel vs. Judah: The North vs. the South

The Bible tells us that the Israelite kingdom of Judah developed in the south, home to the city of Jerusalem. But it was actually the northern region of Israel that progressed faster.

“Judah was always the most remote part of the hill country, isolated by topographical and climatic barriers,“ write Finkelstein and Silberman. “By contrast, the northern part of the highlands consisted of a patchwork of fertile valleys nestled between adjoining hilly slopes.”

That northern region, Israel, was a more productive area, allowing for grain growing as well as the cultivation of olive orchards and vineyards. With the specialization of oil and wine, some villages turned to trade to get the grain and animal products they needed.

“The result was increasing complexity of the northern highland societies and, eventually, the crystallization of something like a state,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. “Export trade to the people of the lowlands and, more important, to the markets in the great cities of Egypt and the ports of the Phoenician coast pushed things still further.“

King David didn’t rule over a powerful kingdom — he was a mere hill country chieftain.

A Look at the Evidence 

The story of Ahab and Jezebel’s bad behavior was written over 200 years after their deaths. “The biblical narrative is so thoroughly filled with inconsistencies and anachronisms, and so obviously influenced by the theology of the seventh century BCE writers, that it must be considered more of a historical novel than an accurate historical chronicle,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. 

In the 9th century BCE, we finally have firsthand testimonies of events and personalities from the Old Testament in the records of the Assyrians and other neighboring powers. Omri is mentioned in the Mesha stele, found in 1868 in Jordan, at the site of biblical Dibon, the capital of the kingdom of Moab. 

Most famously, the Monolith Inscription, discovered in the 1840s at the ancient Syrian site of Nimrud, mentions how fierce an enemy Ahab was. 

The archaeological evidence shows that Omri and his court arrived at Samaria, what would become their capital city, around 880 BCE. The remains of an impressive palace have been unearthed there. 

“For visitors, traders and official emissaries arriving at Samaria, the visual impression of the Omrides’ royal city must have been stunning,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. “Its elevated platform and huge, elaborate palace bespoke wealth, power and prestige.”

The cities of Megiddo, Hazor and Jezreel followed. The architectural styles all follow certain patterns and were built during Omride rule — and not a century before by King Solomon, as had been previously supposed. 

The Monolith of Shalmaneser III mentions a battle the Assyrian army fought against “Ahab the Israelite.”

On top of this, there’s the pottery. You'd be amazed by how much archaeologists can learn from broken pots. They’re all distinct in their way and help pinpoint dates and populations in the various layers of ancient sites. The shards of pottery at these and other locations can be used as a clear dating indicator for the Omride period. 

In a battle with the king of Aram, Ahab disguised himself — but was slain by a stray arrow.

Israel’s Forgotten First Kingdom

I’m sure most Jews and Christians don’t want to hear that the first kingdom of Israel wasn’t founded by David or Solomon but by the supposedly devious sinners Ahab and Jezebel. But that’s what happens when you don’t take the Bible as the gospel truth (so to speak) and look to architectural and historical evidence to corroborate (or, as the case may be, disprove) the ancient stories. 

Ahab coveted a garden, but when its owner, Naboth, refused to sell it, Jezebel had him stoned to death. The prophet Elijah shows up to curse the couple.

Looking with an open mind and trusting in science — two admittedly rare qualities when dealing with religion — we learn “that David and Solomon were, in political terms, little more than hill country chieftains, who in administrative reach remained on a fairly local level, restricted to the hill country,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. 

The supposedly sinful Jezebel is thrown from the palace to her death.

For those with whom the evidence doesn’t sit well, take heart in the prophecy of Elijah, described in the Old Testament book of 1 Kings, which supposedly came to pass: Jezebel was thrown from an upper window of the palace, with only her skull, feet and palms remaining. The rest had been eaten by stray dogs. –Wally

As prophesied by Elijah, dogs tore apart and ate most of the corpse of Queen Jezebel. Queen Jezabel Being Punished by Jehu by Andrea Celesti, from the second half of the 17th century

Did King David and King Solomon Really Exist?

Shocking evidence answers this question as well as whether David was a successful warrior king and Solomon built his legendary temple and palace. 

Historical evidence reveals that the legendary kings of Israel, David and Solomon, actually existed.

They’re the first two legendary kings of Israel: David, who as a youth defeated the Philistine giant Goliath with a single stone from his slingshot, and Solomon, gifted with otherworldly wisdom and wealth. (Okay, so there was one king before them, Saul — but God was already planning his replacement when Saul committed suicide after the Philistines killed his sons.)

The City of David, thought to be the original site of Jerusalem, is now Wadi Hilweh, a predominantly Palestinian neighborhood.

“The actual extent of the Davidic ‘empire’ is hotly debated,” write Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. “Digging in Jerusalem has failed to produce evidence that it was a great city in David or Solomon’s time. And the monuments ascribed to Solomon are now most plausibly connected with other kings. Thus a reconsideration of evidence has enormous implications.”

“A shard of a monument sent shockwaves throughout the world of biblical scholarship — and provided the oldest proof of a biblical patriarch: namely, the legendary King David.”

We’ve seen that the first books of the Old Testament, the Jewish Torah, fudged the facts: There wasn’t a mass Exodus out of Egypt. There wasn’t a conquest of Canaan by God’s Chosen People. So how about David and Solomon — are they a myth as well?

Michelangelo’s iconic statue of David

King David: What’s the Proof He Existed?

“David and Solomon are such central religious icons to both Judaism and Christianity that the recent assertions of radical biblical critics that King David is ‘no more a historical figure than King Arthur,’ have been greeted in many religious and scholarly circles with outrage and disdain,” Finkelstein and Silberman write.

At first, things didn’t look good: “for all their reported wealth and power, neither David nor Solomon is mentioned in a single known Egyptian or Mesopotamian text,” the authors continue. 

Was King David, who, as a mere boy, killed the giant Goliath with a single blow, just a myth? David und Goliath by Osmar Schindler, 1888

But often it only takes one single archeological artifact to revolutionize our version of history. We see this constantly in Egypt, where a scrap of papyrus or engraving on a statue completely alters our understanding of a pharaoh’s reign. 

And it was a shard of a monument that sent shockwaves throughout the world of biblical scholarship — and provided the oldest proof of a biblical patriarch: namely, the legendary King David.

David holds up the head of the giant Goliath.

In 1993 at the site of Tel Dan in northern Israel, archeologists discovered a fragment of a black basalt monument that dates to around 835 BCE. While it spoke of a horrific defeat of Israel and Judah (which were separate kingdoms at the time) by Hazael, the king of Damascus, amidst his boasting he mentions the House of David. 

The Tel Dan Stele, dating from 835 BCE, mentions defeating the House of David — making it the oldest proof of a biblical patriarch.

This means that David’s dynasty “was known throughout the region; this clearly validates the biblical description of Judahite kings in Jerusalem,” Finkelstein and Silberman write.

David wasn’t actually the best guy. As described in the Bible, he fell in love with another man’s wife and sent him off to the front line of a battle to be killed.

But Was David a Warrior King?

While biblical literalists can be pleased to find evidence that King David did once live and rule in the Levant, they’re sure to be bummed that there’s no way he could have embarked on a military campaign of any sort. 

“There is absolutely no archaeological indication of the wealth, manpower and level of organization that would be required to support large armies — even for brief periods — in the field,” according to Finkelstein and Silberman.

Next thing you know, they’ll be saying David didn’t actually slay the gigantic hero of the Philistine army with a single shot from a slingshot.

A color sketch by Edward Poynter for his 1890 painting The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon

King Solomon: Was He Really a Master Builder?

David’s son Solomon, to whom God gave “wisdom and understanding beyond measure,” is said to have commissioned numerous building projects, including a magnificent temple to YHWH and a nearby palace. The Old Testament, as well as the Nevi’im section of the Hebrew Bible, describes him as fortifying Jerusalem, along with the important provincial cities of Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer. 

Ancient Jerusalem, with Solomon’s Temple at its center (note: probably not drawn to scale)

So some archaeologists and biblical scholars were downright giddy at the discovery of somewhat similar six-chambered gates at Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer. Surely this was a sign of Solomon’s famous public works projects! 

If that is indeed the case, though, I wonder why there isn’t a gate like that at Jerusalem, Solomon’s capital city? 

The six-chambered gate at Gezer was once thought to have been built by Solomon — but it was actually constructed decades after his reign.

It turns out that renewed analysis of the archaeological styles and pottery showed that they dated to the early 9th century BCE. The trouble with that? It happens to be decades after Solomon had died. 

Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem — though it probably wasn’t anything as grand as it’s depicted.

Petitioners came to Solomon for his judgements. He was basically the Judge Judy of his time.

Solomon was said to possess a magic ring that allowed him to control demons and jinn.

Mythic Kings as Propaganda

“The material culture of the highlands in the time of David remained simple,” Finkelstein and Silberman write. “The land was overwhelmingly rural — with no trace of widespread literacy that would be necessary for the functioning of a proper monarchy.” Jerusalem was no more than a typical highland village. Only about 5,000 people lived in the vicinity.

Archeological remains of King David’s palace show that at the time, Jerusalem was a relatively small town.

And even though King David’s deeds have been aggrandized, he must have been a talented ruler who joined his region together. “Such a small and isolated society like this would have been likely to cherish the memory of an extraordinary leader like David as his descendants continued to rule in Jerusalem over the next four hundred years,” the authors say. 

At the time these stories in the Old Testament were written, in the 7th century BCE, Jerusalem had grown into a relatively large city, dominated by the Temple to the God of Israel, with an impressive army and administrative bureaucracy. 

The stories of the powerful King David made for good propaganda at the time of Josiah. David and Goliath by Titian, circa 1544

God gives Solomon his famous wisdom.

Building up the reputation of legendary kings of the past served the current ruler, Josiah. This useful bit of propaganda connected Josiah as an heir of David, the man who was said to have conquered the Promised Land and established an empire. It helped bolster support for Josiah’s “vision of a national renaissance that sought to bring scattered, war-weary people together, to prove to them that they had experienced a stirring history under the direct intervention of God,” according to Finkelstein and Silberman. “The glorious epic of the united monarchy was — like the stories of the patriarchs and the sagas of the Exodus and conquest — a brilliant composition that wove together ancient heroic tales and legends into a coherent and persuasive prophecy for the people of Israel in the seventh century BCE.” 

If they had to fudge the truth to accomplish that, so be it. –Wally

---

OTHER RELIGION POSTS

Did the Old Testament Conquest of Canaan Really Happen?

Archeological evidence shows that the Israelites’ destruction of Jericho and the other cities of the Promised Land was nothing more than propaganda. 

And the walls came tumbling down? Did the city of Jericho fall as it’s depicted in the Bible? The Taking of Jericho by James Tissot, circa 1902

I always felt bad for Moses. He suffered as his people were enslaved by the Egyptians and was instrumental in leading their escape — only to have them wander dejectedly through the desert for 40 years. And then, right as the Israelites were in sight of Canaan, at long last, poor old Moses keels over and dies. He never even got to set foot in the Promised Land. 

It seems like a cruel trick: After leading his people out of slavery and then for 40 years in the desert, Moses gets a glimpse of the Promised Land — but dies before entering it.

Turns out the Israelites most likely didn’t go on to engage in a conquest of Canaan as the Bible says, according to Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in their book The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. 

“Despite the string of fantastical victories described in the Bible, there’s no archeological evidence that the Israelites conquered the cities of Canaan. ”

At the time of the supposed conquest of cities like Canaan, the area was actually sparsely populated with no evidence of warfare.

Despite the string of fantastical victories described in the Old Testament of the Christians (the first five books of which make up the Jewish Torah), there’s simply no archeological evidence that the Israelites conquered the cities of Canaan. 

In fact, at the time the conquest is said to have happened, in the Late Bronze Age, the cities of the region were sparsely populated.

And despite the description of the walls of Jericho miraculously tumbling down at the blowing of some trumpets, the towns of Canaan weren’t fortified. There would be ruins of stone walls from the time — but there simply aren’t any. Makes for a dramatic story, though. 

A map of the Twelve Tribes of Israel from 1320

The First Israelites: A Peaceful, Gradual Expansion

Instead of a lengthy battle campaign in which the Israelites conquered the major cities of Canaan, archeological evidence points to a much more mellow birth of the Israelite people. 

A dense network of about 250 highland villages in central Canaan developed in the span of a few generations around 1200 BCE. Most were no more than an acre in size, home to an average of 100 inhabitants, half of which were adults and half children. 

There certainly wasn’t a strong cultural identity that united these people.

The Ancient Israelites didn’t go on a killing spree throughout Canaan; they arrived peaceably over the course of a few generations.

“In contrast to the culture of the Canaanite cities and villages in the lowlands, the highland villages contained no public buildings, palaces, storehouses or temples,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. “Signs of any sophisticated kind of recordkeeping, such as writing, seals and seal impressions, are almost completely absent. There are almost no luxury items: no imported pottery and almost no jewelry. Indeed, the village houses were all quite similar in size, suggesting that wealth was distributed quite evenly among the families.”

Also conspicuously absent for God’s supposed Chosen People: shrines or any other evidence of their religious beliefs.

The early Israelites seem to have eked out an agricultural existence. Stone-lined pits dug between houses stored grain, and fenced courtyards secured animal herds at night. 

The Fall of Jericho by Tamás Galambos shows the city as a small metropolis. But the reality is that these were small unfortified villages.

Despite the biblical stories of conquest after conquest, the evidence shows that these people were actually peaceful. The villages weren’t fortified and showed no signs of burning or other sudden destructions that would indicate an attack. Nor were any weapons discovered during excavations.

The Ancient Israelites surely had a lot that differentiated them from other people in the area, like unique religious practices, right? Nope. Only one thing: an aversion to pork.

The One Defining Characteristic of the Early Israelites 

As mentioned, the remains of these villages offer scant clues as to what set apart the Ancient Israelites. There simply isn't any evidence of religion or culture. But there is one item that’s conspicuously missing from their diet: pig bones. While these were found in neighboring lands, the lack of remains reveals that no pigs were raised in the highlands during the Iron Age, the era of the Israelite monarchies. 

So what made the early Israelites unique? They didn’t eat pork. Th-th-th-that’s all, folks. 

“Half a millennium before the composition of the biblical text, with its detailed laws and dietary regulations, the Israelites chose — for reasons that are not entirely clear — not to eat pork,” Finkelstein and Silberman write. “When modern Jews do the same, they are continuing the oldest archaeologically attested cultural practice of the people of Israel.”

This site, known as the Tower of Jericho, reveals that the conquest of Canaan didn’t happen like the Bible says.

Contrary to the Bible

The archeological evidence just doesn’t support the tales of the Old Testament, the authors argue. In fact, it’s the exact opposite: “the emergence of early Israel was an outcome of the collapse of the Canaanite culture, not its cause,” they write. “And most of the Israelites did not come from outside Canaan — they emerged from within it. There was no mass Exodus from Egypt. There was no violent conquest of Canaan. Most of the people who formed early Israel were local people — the same people whom we see in the highlands throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. The early Israelites were — irony of ironies — themselves originally Canaanites!” –Wally

Did the Exodus Really Happen?

Evidence reveals that the Hyksos were Canaanites — and their story later morphed into the Exodus to serve as a rallying cry against Egypt. 

Could over 600,000 Hebrew slaves revolt and escape their captors in Egypt? Spoiler alert: The Exodus is more folk tale than actual history.

Egyptian pharaohs steadily ruled their empire for thousands of years — except during a foreign occupation that lasted over a century.

An Egyptian historian named Mantheno, who wrote in the 3rd century BCE, “described a massive, brutal invasion of Egypt by foreigners from the east, whom he called Hyksos, an enigmatic Greek form of an Egyptian word that he translated as ‘shepherd kings’ but that actually means ‘rulers of foreign lands,’” write Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. Inscriptions and seals from the time of the invasion have names that are West Semitic, or Canaanite.

“If a great mass of fleeing Israelites had passed through the border fortifications of the pharaonic regime, a record should exist.”

— Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, “The Bible Unearthed”

The Hyksos in this Egyptian painting are depicted as wearing brightly patterned clothes, which Wally much prefers to plain old white skirts.

Were the Hyksos Actually the Hebrews?!

Archaeological excavations in the eastern Nile delta “indicate that the Hyksos ‘invasion’ was a gradual process of immigration from Canaan to Egypt, rather than a lightning military campaign,” the authors write. “The fact that Manetho, writing almost fifteen hundred years later, describes a brutal invasion rather than a gradual, peaceful immigration should probably be understood on the background of his own times, when memories of the invasions of Egypt by the Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians in the seventh and sixth centuries BCE were still painfully fresh in the Egyptian consciousness.”

The biggest clue that the Hyksos were none other than the Hebrews is something else Manetho wrote: He suggests that after the usurpers were driven from Egypt, they founded the city of Jerusalem and built — you guessed it — an important temple there.

Israel gets a brief mention on the Merneptah Stele in a long list of conquered kingdoms.

When Did the Exodus Happen? The Merneptah Stele

If we take the story of the Exodus at face value for now, what evidence is there to provide a date for it? The Ancient Egyptians kept quite a written record, and, when paired with archaeological digs, the expulsion of the Hyksos is typically placed around 1570 BCE. If we go by the Old Testament account that this occurred 480 years after the construction of the Temple, that means the Exodus happened in 1440 BCE. 

But the Bible mentions the Hebrew slaves helping to construct the city of Raames (Exodus 1:11) — a name that’s inconceivable at that time, according to Finkelstein and Silberman. “The first pharaoh named Ramesses came to the throne only in 1320 BCE — more than a century after the traditional biblical date,” they write. “As a result, many scholars have tended to dismiss the literal value of the biblical dating, suggesting that the figure 480 was little more than a symbolic length of time, representing the life spans of twelve generations, each lasting the traditional 40 years.”

The Battle of Kadesh, in which Ramesses II battled the Hittites, as shown on a wall of the Ramesseum, the pharaoh’s mortuary temple

A city named Pi-Ramesses, or the House of Ramesses, was built with the help of Semites in the delta during the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II, who ruled from 1279-1213 BCE. 

What’s more, though, is the famous stele of Merneptah, Ramesses’ son. The inscription is the sole mention of Israel in all of the artifacts from Ancient Egypt. The tribe is part of a list of people who were decimated during a Canaan campaign. Merneptah went so far to exclaim that Israel’s “seed is not!” 

This would mean that if a historical Exodus did indeed take place, it would have occurred in the late 13th century. The evidence doesn’t match up, though.

The Israelites Leaving Egypt by David Roberts, 1828

The Exodus: A Lack of Evidence

It’s highly unlikely that a large group of slaves could have made it out of Egypt at the time, given the guard posts all along its borders, argue Finkelstein and Silberman. “If a great mass of fleeing Israelites had passed through the border fortifications of the pharaonic regime, a record should exist,” they insist.

And if the slaves did somehow get out, there would be archaeological records of the Hebrews as they wandered in the desert. “However, except for the Egyptian forts along the northern coast, not a single campsite or sign of occupation from the time of Ramesses II and his immediate predecessors and successors has ever been identified in Sinai,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. “And it has not been for a lack of trying.”

Numerous excavations haven’t turned up anything: “not even a single sherd, no structure, not a single house, no trace of an ancient encampment,” they continue. “One may argue that a relatively small band of wandering Israelites cannot be expected to leave material remains behind. But modern archaeological techniques are quite capable of tracing even the very meager remains of hunter-gatherers and pastoral nomads all over the world.”

Whether it actually happened or not, the Exodus makes for a great story — especially the dramatic parting of the Red Sea and the drowning of the pursuing Egyptians.

Dating Exodus — a Great Piece of Propaganda?

All of the archeological evidence, including a reference to the kingdom of Edom, which refuses to help Moses, indicates that the Exodus narrative was completed during Ancient Egypt’s Twenty-sixth Dynasty — that is, during the 7th and 6th centuries BCE (shortly after, one would imagine, the stories of Abraham and the other patriarchs told of in Genesis). That’s 600 years after the events were supposed to have taken place!

What was the purpose of the Exodus story, if we put it in context of that time in history? “The great saga of a new beginning and second chance must have resonated in the consciousness of the seventh century’s readers, reminding them of their own difficulties and giving them hope for the future,” Finkelstein and Silberman write. 

Was Exodus written to bolster the agenda of King Josiah of Judah?

Josiah, the young ruler of Judah, sought to escape from the yoke of the newly crowned Pharaoh Necho II, who reigned Ancient Egypt from 610-595 BCE. 

Connecting Josiah’s confrontation with the Egyptian empire to that of Moses and the pharaoh of Exodus, complete with miracle after miracle to demonstrate the Hebrews as Yahweh’s Chosen People, would have been a powerful piece of propaganda. 

“[A]ncient traditions from many different sources were crafted into a single sweeping epic that bolstered Josiah’s political aims,” the authors conclude.

There simply is no evidence that a mass Exodus as described in the Old Testament ever happened. –Wally