Bøger af Israel Finkelstein

For the first time, the true history of ancient Israel as revealed through recent archaeological discoveries- and a controversial new take on when, why and how the Bible was written.

With contributions by Vronwy Hankey, Alexandru Lupu, Salo (Shiomo) Heliwing and Yitzhak Adjeman, Nil Liphschitz and Yoav Waisel, Raphael Giveon, Baruch Rosen and Aaron DemskyManuscript Editor Irene Aranne

The exciting field of biblical archaeology has revolutionized our understanding of the Bible - and no one has done more to popularise this vast store of knowledge than Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman, who revealed what we now know about when and why the Bible was first written in THE BIBLE UNEARTHED. Now, with DAVID AND SOLOMON, they do nothing less than help us to understand the sacred kings and founding fathers of western civilization. David and his son Solomon are famous in the Bible for their warrior prowess, legendary loves, wisdom, poetry, conquests, and ambitious building programmes. Yet thanks to archaeology's astonishing finds, we now know that most of these stories are myths. Finkelstein and Silberman show us that the historical David was a bandit leader in a tiny back-water called Jerusalem, and how - through wars, conquests and epic tragedies like the exile of the Jews in the centuries before Christ and the later Roman conquest - David and his successor were reshaped into mighty kings and even messiahs, symbols of hope to Jews and Christians alike in times of strife and despair and models for the great kings of Europe. A landmark work of research and lucid scholarship by two brilliant luminaries, DAVID AND SOLOMON recasts the very genesis of western history in a whole new light.

The author responds to criticism against his prior publications, when his conclusions were based foremost on the relevant archaeological findings. It is a debate between methodologies used by archaeology and the assumptions of textual analysis within biblical scholarship.