Searching for a King: Israel's United Kingdom: the Complete Series

[Music] [Music] [Music] I've been a student of the Bible for a long time studying and searching for the truth as a Bible teacher in the United States I've been asked if Israel's United Kingdom really existed were the first kings of Israel real are the biblical narratives of events like David and Goliath accurate my name is Jeremy D Hutt and I've met up with Barry Brit now a seasoned traveler and close friend he's been to Israel close to a dozen times and he'll be my guide on our journey through this country we're going to talk to experts in the field of archaeology and examine the geography comparing everything to what the Bible says we're going to be able to visit a number of places that have bearing on the United Kingdom I think we should begin our journey where the Scriptures begin the story of the United Kingdom begins at Shiloh [Music] [Music] [Music] did Shiloh exist was it a real place does it match the location of the biblical text does the function of the city serve the same function that it did in biblical text was it a holy site where sacrifices offered there those are all questions that I think can be helped by the study of archaeology back in the 1980s Israel Finkelstein led an Israeli dig here and you can see the work that they did exposing the big fortification wall that surrounds the entire perimeter what we have done is take his work and on the other side of us the work that the Danish did in the 1920s and 1930s and we're connecting the two now the tabernacle supposedly was here for several hundred years do you have any places here at the site where you think it stood it's all about the Michigan which is the presence of God and I think it answers that most basic of all human questions like how do I connect with God the tabernacle gives us a way to do that and this is why it's so critically important and in the center of it is the Ark of the Covenant these are the main ideas was the tabernacle on the northern platform outside the city wall was it on the summit the apex of the tell number three it could have been on the southern approach there's four churches on the southern approach where the Christians seem to really like the idea of the tabernacle being there because they're building their churches there on that spot may have also been functional it's very flat and could have fit over there now I've introduced a fourth possibility and that's that the tabernacle may have been mobile at Shiloh it was not in one spot by its very nature its mobile right they are slaughtering a large volume of animals certain times of the year if you've got the tabernacle set up say down here and the wind is blowing this direction it's just gonna be unbearably the tabernacle is moving around Shiloh so it's not that one side is sacred maybe the whole site is sacred and are you finding evidence for israelite presence on this site during the Iron Age when samuel was supposed to have been here oh absolutely we've got abundant evidence of that you see a transition here from the amorite who denied but in the hill country there amirite s-- actually that we're living here in some ways you can see that a different ethnic group or a different theological persuasion has come in do we see a shift in the material culture do we have Hebrew inscriptions and writing yes we do so there's no doubt that in the period of the tabernacle that there were Israelites at Shiloh [Music] we're just inside this five-and-a-half meter wide perimeter wall that went all the way around the side and what we have are storage rooms that are built against this what we're after is an understanding of the stratification of our site and you can see the separation where we've got a lot of tumbled crumbly grayish material into a brownish reddish soil down to about right here so that's about a ten inch spread now we know we're changing time periods something definite happened right here we're reading the ball what we believe is that this represents the iron age right here this is the period of the tabernacle at Shiloh we've got late bronze middle bronze underneath this layer and Hellenistic and Roman above this layer kind of trim the box so that you get a better look at it when I do we're gonna lose this piece so now we can get a good look at that that's been worked hasn't it that is so clearly man-made it's pumice so put it in our fines bucket right there as we trowel through there's a nice piece of pottery looks like a rim so this is a whole mouth vessel this looks like it's from the Iron Age probably iron too now here's a bone what type of animal bones are you finding here and in what quantities we found two to three times the quantity of animal bone here at Shiloh and Season one then we have found at our other excavations and I think that's we've got good reason for that we have an ancient text the Bible that indicates that there was a cultic site that operated a sacrificial system here there was a massive five Issa our bone deposit an area D over here on the east only bones from the biblical sacrificial system within that bone deposit and interestingly we get about 1% pig bone in the prehistoric period it's 4% and then when you move into the Israelite period its 1% that's a significant drop and so again that's an ethnic indicator that there's a change in who's living at the site or at least their value systems or their cultic understandings have changed so the bones are very interesting kids okaythat's charred pottery that's good we've got the naked eye of the trained volunteer then we have a metal detectorists checking now we're checking a third time then it's going to go through wet sifting for a fourth time we found that when we dry sifted things many times you could have something as important as a scarab that still looks like a clod of dirt and when you wash it with a hose wow you you realize the things that you've been missing maybe we're gonna have markings on here yeah we're already seeing grits we could have Hebrew lettering on here you can already see look at the difference between the pottery that we've washed and what we haven't washed so it's popping sometimes we're wanting to do analysis so I want to double-check everything before we publish it so we'll take something like this for example and when we get in the lab we'll look at it under a microscope and I have a feeling I'm seeing part of a Hebrew letter there but I'm not not sure it could be a random marking so I want to get it under a microscope so let's pull out these pieces and when we're in the lab we'll analyze them more closely and see exactly what we've got the development of the central place of worship for the Israelites through the United Monarchy is an important thing to follow and I think the text implies the Shiloh was actually destroyed by the Philistines after the death of Eli and his sons and the loss of the Ark the central place of worship started there and then it moved I was thrilled just to go to the site [Music] [Music] it's got nose of a lab near Jerusalem it's in an undisclosed location a number of these labs have artifacts that are valuable or they may be politically or religiously sensitive and so they don't like to advertise exactly where these labs are located [Music] I was pretty unique here in Israel you find a space that's available you get good lighting you've got tables together a microscope water or perhaps some chemicals and brushes and tools and this is the way that we were some of these artifacts that we excavated then we're able to look at them under magnification and see some things that we couldn't have on the field obviously I know one of the things that really caught your attention was this jar looking to see if there are any markings that we missed any lettering anything that's intentional around the rim and I'm also looking at the size of the inclusions and that's exactly what we would expect so we would pretty confidently date that then to iron to maybe once every season we get a whole vessel and we get about 2,000 broken pieces a day when it has writing on it assured becomes an austere con and now it is elevated and important for a whole nother level this also caught our eye it's pumice why did it catch our eye because it's not native does she law I mean somebody brought this from up north where we have the volcanic material up in the Golan it's clearly man-made it's clearly worked and it is kind of exciting sometimes when you look under here you'll end up seeing a letter or a little bit of gold that's embedded that you didn't expect to see that gives you a clue that's an interesting piece now the bone analysis that Shiloh is critically important because we're dealing with the biblical sacrificial system what you were saying at the site earlier was that that percentage is consistent with an Israelite occupation that you signed that percentage of pig bone go down to 1% well when you're moving from say an amirite control culture to an Israelite culture you see a significant drop in the percentage of pork that they're consuming so we're not talking about fairy tales here we're talking about real people real places and really vents notice now under magnification we can see ridges and lines and all kinds of things when I sit with our zoo archaeologist I'm just fascinated the things that that she's seeing there that I wasn't okay yeah see if you can see that collagen there when you've got that collagen you're able to do radiocarbon testing on that that's right once it's all been preserved and it's been analyzed and you want to hang on it for a while where does it go we have a storage unit at the Israeli Antiquities Authority that's devoted to our material every one of these has an object number assigned to it so when we want to go back and retrieve it for further study we can easily get it out so I hope you have high expectations and no matter how high they are they're gonna be exceeded [Music] [Music] so this is one of my favorite places guys because you can see that it's floor-to-ceiling artifacts and it's super organized how big is this place oh this is the size of a couple of football fields Wow [Music] just think back to the famous Indiana Jones scene where the story there are another covenant welcome to that warehouse [Music] in archeological terms when we're talking about the United Kingdom we're talking about what we would call iron one or the transition between iron one and iron two this entire section is iron one material which would be roughly from about twelve hundred to one thousand and what the period of the judges would like in that transition from say Samuel and to saw what was the material culture like this is it this is what we would call a colored rim jar very typically Istra light you find one of these for example inside a four-room house with an absence of pig bones and now we've we've got ethnic indicators that we're dealing with a different material culture than had preceded them the pottery is somewhat static at the beginning because remember God had told them you're gonna live in houses you didn't build if you're gonna occupy cities you did not construct they really don't know a whole lot about pottery making at this point so when they come in let's say around the Year 1400 the pottery types don't really change much until around the Year 1200 so those first couple of centuries they're very homogenous with the Canaanite amirite culture that makes sense they're learning from they're learning right how to make pottery well one of the reasons I appreciate coming to a place like this and looking at this and learning about it is because quite frankly I don't know that much about Prada and so there's a separation between what I know and what I need to know and I think in doing so we understand the context of the way those verses are written and the people of the time for most people when they hear pottery or the study of pottery they would just naturally think that has got to be so boring digging up the broken ceramics out of the dirt it's got to be all the same and what you've shown us is it's not no it's not shows the development of a culture artistic expression and it's fascinating one of the greatest things about my job is that I have learned something new every day yeah and yes I'm an expert but all that has done is given me the ability to understand how much I don't know so that then I can add to it I just had this strong desire to understand their culture then and there in the settings so that I can peel the whole thing back and reevaluate what I believed and why I believed it set it in a context and go from there I think there's a resurgence in that I think that there even the the generation coming behind us there's a strong desire for that information you mentioned that you can attempt to triangulate a time period by using several different methods what are those methods okay so we look at pottery coins because when you have a new person in power it'll say year three of and then we also can use scarabs the Latin word Scarabus means beetle and so what we have are each one of these in the shape of a beetle look at that what you have is each Pharaoh when he comes to power he creates his own iconography for that administration so we have very good dates in Egypt and no future Pharaoh ever uses that same iconography so when we can get a scarab in a clear archaeological context we can use it to date everything else all of these scarabs would have had gold on it so at some point that before these scarabs were discarded somebody pulled the gold off awful but this when it got left behind so you can see how beautiful this would have been we do get them bought down into the iron age at kerbin omekata we found one from the iron ii period santak scarab which was the first one ever found here in israel so it's pretty significant so there are a very very valuable means of dating there's a school of thought that increasingly doesn't believe that the United Monarchy existed they think that the stories of Saul and David and Solomon our propaganda pieces for an Israel government with all the time that you've spent researching and digging in Israel what do you think about that theory well we have two schools of thought we have the minimalists which are saying well they existed but it wasn't exactly what the Bible described then we have another group myth assists that are just total deniers that it didn't even happen at all we have found the opposite we have found in the material culture if the Bible says that there was a river we can find the river if there was a mountain a city was in a certain place we find just many many synchronism x' that passes the smell test it's what you would expect to see from the literary description that you have and so we have found just a lot of direct synchronism between the archaeological data in the mid look affects the time that you've spent researching and digging and exploring the physical material is that it's reinforced ear faith right I was a Christian before I began excavating so it did not bring me to faith but it never scared me to examine the tough questions sometimes we do have questions where we scratch our heads but in archaeology we say that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence just because something happened let's say a city was burned and we can't find evidence of it well a lot of things could have happened to that burn wind and rain and future peoples go scrape the foundations clean we've only excavated about 5% of the land of the Bible 95% is still underground and so when we do have some sort of gap between what we expected when we read the text and what we find in the culture you think there might be some clues than the other 95 percent potential there our direct goal is not to prove the Bible or to bring people to Christ but in the process is there an apologetic function of archaeology you better believe there in US and it comes across all the time I think it was important to start with the archaeological piece just the sheer volume of what they're finding in the material culture and archaeological sites that attest to synchronism from the material culture in the Bible I wish everyone could feel what I felt as I walked into that site and to feel just the weight and the enormity of there is so much here and such a great percentage of it it speaks to a United Monarchy and the biblical text being validated there's a lot more to do but I think this was a great first step in trying to answer this question I think it's important to talk about Israel's enemies especially the Philistines they're mentioned all through first and second Samuel Israel's enemies play a key role in the nation demanding a king they wanted a ruler that would go out and fight their battles for them like the other nations have that is a part of the catalyst for them prompting Samuel to go to the Lord and find somebody for them during the reigns of Saul David and Solomon we read about a number of nations that they had battles with but the one that keeps creeping up every couple of chapters are the Philistines we are in one of the Philistine cities this is the city of Ashdod now these ruins around us are actually from Crusader times so they're much later than the time of the United Kingdom do we know where the Iron Age Ashdod was yes a lot of those ruins are about a mile inland this was one of the five cities of the Palestine pentapolis Ashdod Ashkelon and Gaza are right here very close to the coast Gath and ekron are about 8 or 9 miles inland on the eastern side of the coastal plain as we read through the book of 1st Samuel the really first interaction we have with them comes with a battle between the Israelites and the Philistines a few miles north of here the Israelites lost the first battle and so they thought they would take their good luck charm as the Ark of the Covenant into battle with them well unfortunately the Philistines captured the ark and brought it to the city of Ashdod now that did not go well for them it didn't when the Ark of the Covenant the Lord's mercy seat is brought into Dagon's temple and when the Philistines come in the next day dag on this stone statue is on its face in front of the Ark of the Covenant and so you have their Idol in a position of worship and adoration in front of God's mercy seat and they prop him back up and don't make a whole lot about it until the next day when he's down again but his head has been removed and his hands have been removed and they're lying on the threshold of his temple God has humiliated he has defeated what these people are worship once the citizens of Ashdod got tired of that they sent the Ark of the Covenant over to gas and then you stay there for a little while and they sent it to ekron and at that point the Felicity uns made the decision we need to send this back to the Israelites and they sent it up the sorek valley it is so gorgeous right here just beyond here as you move east it's still very fertile why would the Philistines want to continue heading east into the Jordan Rift Valley well like any nation at that time they want to expand their borders and they want to control more people and of course if they were able to conquer the Israelites they would use them as slaves for their own good not only do we know where a lot of the major events took place on the Israel side of things but even their enemies they're historically grounded in routing we know where their locations work the best way to understand the full relationship between the Philistines and the Israelites is to not only know the people but also know the geography and probably the best way to do that is to get above it [Music] [Music] I think to understand a lot of Big Time of the United Kingdom I think it's important to understand the geography as well and of course there's really not a better place to do that then from the air so what we're gonna do Jeremy's we're gonna hit the spell uh which was an area between the coastal plains in the hill country was the border area between the Melissa teens who lived in the coastal plain and the Israelites which lived up in the hill country there was not very many ways of getting from the Mediterranean Sea for instance up to Jerusalem to those small valleys in this Fela were extremely important whoever controlled the valley have trolled the access that's exactly right and that just jumps out at you when you see from this perspective we're looking west down down the sorek valley the Philistines after running to return the ark back to the Israelites put it on to milk cows on a cart up this valley the citizens the best image saw the park coming down the valley and went down there guided just south of the sorek valley we're coming up on the Gila Valley yeah it's raining down here in the Gila Valley not able to do ela right now I'm right now okay we're approaching the Old City of Jerusalem and we're flying almost directly over the City of David right now which shows the original Champy site City the David Joab Concord Wow Wow oh I see it over the rock of course sitting on top of the Temple Mount it's amazing to see the landscape change the topography tape so quickly this land is so small I mean it's only 40 50 miles wide and you know about 150 miles from that to bear Sheva but the difference is in elevation and contours of the land is quite striking try for these a valley yes okay they the valley goes from east to west you can see the entire battlefield right here the Felicity's were on the hill up this side of the valley the Israelites were on the opposite side on that hill you can see the path there below us with the brook running through the valley this is a brook that David would have picked up his five smooth stones when he went out to fight against Goliath this is a beautiful beautiful view of the Gila Valley that's an incredible perspective right there this famous battle took place yeah okay in just a minute we're gonna come up on ancient gas and of course was the hometown of Goliath it's kind of a rhyme to think about that Goliath as a young boy may have played in the gila Brook which was the same Brook that David chose stones that of the later guilty oh this is been an adventure I know I like this [Music] it was so helpful to meet Scott and to go to an actual archeological dig and see how the archeological process works then to go to the IAA warehouse and seeing everything they've got things I loved how organized that place was there's just so much there that I think speaks to the period of the judges leading up to the United Kingdom and seeing Ashdod and realize that not just the Israelites left a footprint here in the land but even the enemies that they fought the Philistines left footprints and all of those cities the plane ride gave a perspective just like you said that you really needed to get above and see how the valleys moved to see which way the roads went all of that together axes evidence that corroborates the first several chapters our first Samuel as the period of Judges winds down the United Kingdom history transitions from the judges to the Kings where Samuel supposedly anoints this Benjamite named Saul is there any evidence that points to the existence of the kings of Israel specifically yeah I believe there is I can think of three or four places that you will enjoy going to in fact one of them is the location of one of the most famous stories in the Bible [Music] [Music] [Music] for israel Gilgal became a significant location but it's not something that we know exactly where it is we know that it was northeast of Jericho somewhere probably three to five miles there was another Gilgal that was especially associated with Elijah and Elijah that probably was not this same location it was probably up in the hill country among the things that they remember from this location is there was the original landing point when they crossed the Jordan River which sits about two or three miles to our East this was where they camp for a long time the word Gilgal literally means a circle of stones and a lot of times those were used in religious practices and some people speculate since it was a place of circular stones someplace that was more of a sacrificial site it makes sense that we might not have as much to find to imagine Moses being on the other side on Mount Nebo looking in and to imagine all of those Israelites crossing the Jordan across a dry riverbed and setting up memorial stones that came from the bottom of the riverbed you understand what a historical National Monument just the spot would have been and so it makes sense that the place of primary sacrifice for their first King was at that spot Samuel would rotate between Rama and Mizpah and Bethel and Gilgal as he did his yearly duties Saul was told by Samuel that there was gonna come a time in which he was going to need to meet him here and to wait on him so the same you could offer sacrifice Saul waited and waited and waited and when Samuel didn't come quick enough for Saul he went ahead and offered a sacrifice at that sacrifice samuel proclaimed something very strong against Saul Samuel actually told Saul that he was going to take the kingdom away from his family and he was going to look for a man after God's own heart I think there are personal lessons that we can all learn from solve and the mistakes that he made where we get ahead of God whether out of fear or desperation we don't wait and so we act out on our own and try to solve our problems in ways other than what God has instructed later in Saul's life Samuel had given him the instruction to utterly destroy the Amalekites when Samuel arrived here at Gilgal Saul had saved King Agag and a number of the best cattle this did not sit well with Samuel well he had disobeyed God's instruction and he'd failed to finish the battle and Samuel actually picks up a sword and he's the one who kills King Agag at Gilgal on the spot and it was at this point when Samuel Insull parted ways it mentioned in the Bible that the same we'll never saw Saul again and it was a dramatic parting I mean when Samuel explained to him that the kingdom had been removed from him and that God was going to be looking for somebody else Saul clung to him tore his robe Samuel used as an object lesson just like you've torn my robe God's torn the kingdom away from I think it's fitting when we're talking about song to come to a place like Gilgal where we're not exactly sure where it is because there were some things that he did for the kingdom that were positive he was the first national ruler he was the first one to try to take the military out and to transition from the judges to a king but in a lot of ways his kingship was temporary and so just like Gilgal we're not exactly sure where that was that's kind of salt my personal opinion is that the text indicates he was always ill suited to be a ruler and it seems to hint that God gave them the ruler they deserved they had rejected him and God was going to give them a leader that was suited to helping them learn that they needed to rely on him things really didn't start to progress until you get to David [Music] after God rejected Saul at Gilgal God sent Samuel to anoint somebody else a man after his own heart and he sent him to the home of Jesse the Bethany light so someone that lived in Bethlehem saimin was afraid that Saul would hunt him down when he found out that he was going to anoint another King God actually gave Samuel a cover story of going down and offering the sacrifice with this family they went through seven of Jesse's sons didn't find the right one and Jesse ends like explaining that he's got one more son who's out in the field taking care of the sheep and that's exactly where they found David David would have been out in an area just like this I'm seeing these little paths cutting through the field what are those well those are actually past caused by the sheep as they walk through here Shepherds still bring their sheep to these hillsides even today this is not what I would have pictured a field to look like we often have the idea of hashed your land and where you would take the sheep to graze as being nice and lush and green but we're in the hill country of Judah and this is the area where people would have been [Music] I don't think it's an overstatement to talk about how formative David's time was as a shepherd as a young man you know he references the lessons he learned taking care of his sheep and defending them when he's explained to saw look God took care of me fighting off a lion and a bear he's gonna take care of me as I go out and fight this Philistine he refers to David as the Shepherd of Israel how he took him from shepherding sheep to shepherd his people and it's interesting too that once you get to the New Testament that Jesus pulls that imagery to talk about himself and he says I am The Good Shepherd of course a good Shepherd just like David would have been would know how to take care of his sheep who know how to provide for them and protect them we've seen them responding to their Shepherd's call you know he'll whistle he'll click he'll have an instruction and they turn and they pay attention taking care of animals is not always glamorous job you know it's smelly you can get dirty you're out in the open it was that kind of responsibility that God used to get David ready for leading the kingdom the occupation of a shepherd hasn't changed from David's time to now same countries same hillside the same type of pastures same trails the Bible knows what it's talking about as it describes this millennia old occupation that was so formative it just really helped to visualize that it makes it come alive [Music] [Music] [Music] after Saul was rejected by God and Samuel you try to imagine how much turmoil he must have felt trying to figure out when his time as king of Israel would be over Samuel in secret anoints David but he hasn't been installed as a king yet Saul is trying to fight these battles with the Philistines wondering when he's going to be replaced and that brings us to one of the most famous stories in all of the Old Testament as we walk beside a brook in the Valley of Elah [Music] if I were to ask someone tell me the story of David and Goliath they would tell me that there was this giant he came and fought against the Israelites and it was a wonderful opportunity to show the faith of David and they would be exactly right that's the right story but the Bible tells it a little bit differently the Bible scopes it in geography and first Samuel 17 it starts off and says now the Philistines gathered their armies for battle and so they were gathered at soca' which belongs to Judah and sokka is located just along that Ridge over there on the eastern end of the valley and they encamped between soca' and Isaiah now as ekeus it's just around the corner here so we are in between soca Anna's Iike said solid and the men of Israel were gathered and it camped in the valley of elah and drew up a lot of battle against the Philistines the Felicity stood on the mountain on one side that mountain over there and Israel stood on the mountain on the other side with a valley in between them and that's how the Bible sets up this story then it introduces the main characters of the story well then later on we know that when David finally went down to battle with Goliath he didn't use any of Saul's armor or his sword but he crosses a brook and picks up five smooth stones right and of course we just crossed the brook ourselves right here below us so we would have come down from the Israelite camp cross that brook and then gone down into the valley that's exactly right then David came out here and faced the Giant and I believe at that point he gives one of the most moving speeches that's in all of the Bible in 1st Samuel 17 after Goliath has taunted him it says in verse 45 then David said to the Philistine you come to me with a sword and a spear and a javelin but I come to you in the name I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts the god of the armies of Israel whom you have defied this day the Lord will deliver you into my hand and I will strike you down and cut off your head I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air to the beasts of the earth that all the Earth may know that there is a God in Israel that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear for the battle is the Lord's and He will give you into our hand such a beautiful speech and of course we know that as soon as he finished that he took one of those stones put in his sling and killed Goliath it's obvious reading that and sharing that is a very emotional thing does it hit you more to read that here in the valley there's something about coming to this exact location and rereading it again when I read this passage I often think about my own life and there are times in my life I wish I had the faith to stand up to things that trouble me and things that taunt me in life it's obvious that David was able to face this person who was much bigger than him but he knew where his faith was and he knew based on past experiences with God that he was going to be the victor here as with anybody if God's on their side I think everybody who reads the story of David and Goliath feels that way though there are moments where we wish we had demonstrated the faith of David and overcoming obstacles and trusting in God not just having faith in general but trusting that God would deliver us and that he would respond and in the development of the context of First Samuel and the United Kingdom you've got this incredible transition happening between Saul and David you have the king who's giving his garments his armor to somebody else you've got David who ends up using a shepherd's sling as his weapon of choice but it was Saul's tribe the Benjamites that were renowned for their accuracy with a sling so David's using Saul's tribes weapon to take down this giant it should have been Saul down there but he didn't do it the writer of 1st Samuel is establishing David as Saul's replacement he's the next anointed he's the next king and to be here it's not just another story it's not just another myth it fits the geography of the land and he puts so much attention and detail into that to help us establish that every culture lion eise's its heroes they glorify and exaggerate facts it's easy to think and I know that there are skeptics who do they read the David and Goliath story and think well that's just so made-up but with what Barry pointed out it's so rooted in accurate geography even subtle details in this quest for was this real did it actually happen it fits the history of the period between the Philistines the Israelites the entire world is familiar with the David and Goliath story from a literary perspective it's powerful because in David's speech he emphasizes he already knows that people are going to hear about the next couple of minutes for the rest of history and he wants them to understand something about God from it not something about him the reason that Goliath went down was because God helped David do that and the God of Israel the Yahweh of Israel was the true and living God walking around here in the valley is a really neat way to experience it but there's also other vantage points as well I want to take you to a hillside with Israelite ring camp there's a site up there called curb at Chiappa they've done some recent excavation work there from the time of David and I think from there we can get a much better visual image of the entire area although it's a little bit more difficult to get to [Music] imagine five people right climb her y'all fight is that the road we're going up oh man that is so beautiful [Music] one of the reasons why we wanted to come up here was to see this beautiful view of the ELA Valley the Philistines of course would have been on that side the Israelites on this side and you can see how the whole battle would have happened right here in front of you if you can imagine for 40 days Goliath coming out of those hills and standing right down there they could have easily heard him David goes down and slays Goliath the Philistines have officially lost but then the Israelites rush down the side to follow David and they chase the Philistines toward Gath they do and it says that they fell on the way to shot arene the question is where is shot Eirene we're not 100% sure but the worst shot ARIMA in Hebrew means two gates when they dug here at kur both Chiappa this city actually has two gates and so it's probable that the place where the Philistines were killed were along this road between quor'toth Chiappa and Gath what other value is there to coming up here besides just the view a lot of the things they found here are unique and they're unique to the time of King David and they're unique to Judy in cities for instance come on into this room right here let me show you something all of these cities had case-mate walls and what you have here are a double set of walls that surround the entire part of the city but you'll see this gap here in the middle well this gap could be used as an extra room or storage room however in the event that they were attacked they could fill this with even personal lives but debris and everything and that would give me a huge thick wall to protect them so what you're saying is is this type of wall built during David's reign there are so many things they found here that are dated to that period in the Iron Age that this is evidence that David was a ruler of more than just a tribal area that he was Amon early it wasn't just that he was ruling from Jerusalem their cities walled cities fortified cities outside of where he was living that's exactly like what we read in the Bible to stand on top of this city and overlooking one of his greatest moments of victory there was a wheat field and there was a vineyard there was an olive grove to see the Sun moving across that it just felt so so grand that was pretty special when you read about David being pursued by Saul and he moves from place to place to place but the force of her wrath or over to Moab to ask the King there to keep his parents of safe he's a fugitive trying to stay one step ahead of them but this is a decade-long pursuit there's a lot that happens in between David killing Goliath and him hiding out in cave Saul sent soldiers after him a couple different times he fled to the priests at nob he hid out in Gath Goliath's hometown and eventually he goes to the cave of a dalam if he were to go from gas to the cave of adoulin which is what he did he would have had to walk through the valley of elah I wonder what went through his mind I mean just prior to this that was the location where he had been praised because of what he did and now he's on the run the caves of know I'm sitting a fairly remote part of the country I think that's probably one of the reasons why he came out here who knew that he would be at least temporarily secluded from King Saul and his men and that were chasing him Wow this is incredible it is so much larger in here than I expected there are caves hitting off in that direction there's caves heading off in this direction I can see light down here so there must be another opening down there somewhere this is the perfect place for David to hide he's up high he could easily go outside this cave he could see for miles around him a natural fortified location how deep does this cave system go you know I have no idea you won't go find out [Music] [Music] it looks like the walls have been built up and reinforced all right they may have been filled in this may have been more open during the time of David Oh surely to fit all those people that's right David's time here at the cave of adul 'm was very short I'm the only couple of verses in first samuel 22 that mentioned that even though it's mentioned so briefly obviously it makes sense why he came here look at how much this opens up in here this is huge now there's a bat flying around over there another tunnel leading out there are little nooks and crannies all over the place [Music] there's a place for a millstone a small millstone Hey look over here Wow it looks like an entrance how did does it go it looks like the wall used to continue around maybe it's been backfilled but the cave continues on on the other side [Music] there's his room after room [Music] look at this Oh [Music] it was surreal to think about this being the spot where David hid out and to wonder which of these entrances was the one that he used every day which of these places was the place where he slept and to think about this cavern being filled up with the people that had come to him with the soldiers his mighty men could four hundred people really have met up with David and hid out here once you got into the cave system it could easily house as many people as the text says that came and United with David here it felt like we had gone through a time warp back to that day and you might see David walking around at any moment [Music] you [Music] after David left a dolmen hit his parents in Moab he kept moving around that's right we are on the edge of the Judean wilderness this part of the country only gets about four to five inches of rain per year so it been very important for David and his men to find water which is why they came here to the streams of him Getty I would never imagine being in a place so arid as the Judean wilderness and then seeing a waterfall with a stream like this gurgling through it's a beautiful place of course you can see even here in the middle of the summer water still comes through here [Music] take a look at this place this is very similar to the caves of the Dunham's in the fact that it's remote in addition that he had a layer of protection here he would be able to see when people are coming the most important thing of course is the water as you walk around this area you can see for miles this is the only place where water is and so water continually funnels through the wilderness of Judea into this narrow valley that comes through and gety during the rainy times of the year the water can be actually much higher than we are right now in fact you can see some of the markings and stuff on the wall where the water has been up that high during the wet season again Barrie has taken us to a place that the Bible describes David going to during Saul's pursuit of him and it's not some random place it makes sense that he went there and it makes sense why he went there it's a real place and you can walk up that canyon yourself it was at in Getty that Saul heard David was there he brings his troops down and he needs to take care of some business goes into a cave it just happens to be the cave where David and his men are hiding he had the peer pressure of his soldiers saying God has given you a moment God has provided an opportunity for you to eliminate the opposition and David goes as far as to cut the Kings robe just the corner of it and then guilt overcomes him and he goes out after Saul leaves the cave to let him know look your life was in my hands I could have removed you if I wanted to for 10 years David was on the run trying to keep from being killed by Saul and it would have been so tempting to cut all of that short by eliminating him in that cave he knew this was his opportunity to get back its salt but I appreciate David's attitude and whole thing through all of this he recognized that Saul was the king it was a king chosen by God David was a man after God's own heart he had honor for the King even though he was in the situation that he was in [Music] reading through first Samuel you start to see some really strong contrasts between who God allowed to be king first with who he throws up to be king second and I think this final battle at Mount Gilboa is the pinnacle of that at approximately the same time you have two battles going on you've got the battle here in the valley and then you've got David whose family has just been kidnapped from Ziklag and they both have to make a decision how do we figure out what we're going to do and Saul tries to communicate with the Lord but the Lord's not responding to him anymore David when he gets to Ziklag he appeals to God and says should I pursue these attackers and so you've got this contrast here's this final downfall of Saul as a king and simultaneously David after 10 years of running is raised up to serve as this new king who's going to expand and stabilize Israel the battle that is described in 1st Samuel mentions a lot of different geographical locations Saul died right here this is where the end of his life happened and one of the things I love about the Bible is the geographical accuracy and you can actually see that here it mentions at the end of 1st Samuel the Philistines were encamped at UNAM which sits at the base of the hill of Moreh across the valley the Israelites were encamped over here on Gilboa and the night before Saul wanted to talk to a medium over an indoor indoor is just on the eastern side of the hill of Moreh if you think about that he went over there at night in disguise but he had to go around the Philistine army just to get there to look down on the valley and have the battle drawn out this is where people moved and this is where Saul went at night and snuck around the army and then came back around you can sense his desperation what king would do that the king is the the high target in any battle but he's willing to risk himself at night before the battle starts to try to get someone to tell him what's going to happen even though samuel is already told him the battle ensued and that battle took place somewhere between here and the hill of Moreh Saul was moving back this way so as the Philistines are defeating the Israelites the Israelites are retreating or maybe trying to get to high ground coming and moving up Mount Gilboa Saul takes an arrow and then he falls on his sword and then an Amalekite is coming along Sault asks him to kill him before the Philistines find him and that's how he dies and so it all just continues moving this way then his body as well as the body of his three sons were taken two bets John and those bodies were hung on the wall of the bet John it was an Israelite city but it was occupied by the Philistines they had worked their way that far into the valley and the citizens of jabish Gilead found out about it and they came from jabish Gili which is about 30 miles in that direction took the bodies down took him over to jabish burned the bodies and then buried the bones I think the author of First Samuel and relating the history of the death of Saul really wants us to feel the tragedy of what had happened you know Saul was selected in a moment of rebellion on the part of Israel they were rejecting the judges they were rejecting Samuel as a prophet and they wanted a king to fight their battles they wanted a king like the other nations and so God gave them what they wanted not necessarily what they needed from the get-go I saw was pretty unimpressive to see him just so tragically fail and fall here it's chilling to sit in this spot and to think about that when we talk about geography and all of the places in the biblical narrative that seems to fit and to back up what the story says coming to these places and seeing where they are and seeing the movement all of that reinforces the reliability of the text after David got the news Sall dying on Mount Gilboa he ends up being installed as king he's been chased for over a decade and so there's a part of him that's probably elated that finally he's getting to do what God set him apart to do they're setting up some permanent roots but at the same time it came at a terrible cost his father-in-law the Lord's first anointed and his best friend Jonathan have lost their life you see that heartbreak when you read his beautiful song mourning the loss of the Lord's anointed you see that conflict in him just before he moves to heaven [Music] now heparin is actually in the West Bank and so the situation down there isn't quite as stable as where we have been and so we'll just have to see what it's like when we get down there [Music] [Music] just pull right over here there are two people that are just indispensable to us traveling over here one of them is our driver baozi is just spectacular and the the second is Gus our guide and they jumped out and spoke to some of the kids in the yard in the front of the house and they said yeah you can come use our side yard and so we went around trying to get our perspective and while he's doing that the wife of the family sent housing out with a platter to serve us hot team they just brought us hot tea from inside the house it smells delicious thank you for the hospitality here is amazing so kind people are so kind everywhere oh it's good sweet yeah I'm not really a big fan of hot tea but this is this is really good on the way here we talked to our guide and our drivers both of them advised us against going into Hebron and that's fine yeah I mean we can see the city of Hebron from this standpoint we see it up there on the hill it's over 200 thousand people it's one of the largest cities in the West Bank the transition to a centralized government really accelerates here I mean he moves into Hebron and probably moves about a thousand people into the city they didn't all fit some of them had to move into the surrounding areas it's interesting - when David asked God where do you want me to go God specifically says go up to Hebron and I don't know if you noticed as we drove here we're really up in the hills hepburn is over 3,000 feet in elevation and so it's one of the highest cities along the central mountain range from the excavations that they've done they found evidence of possible Israelite occupation during iron age they seem to have found a lot of foot traffic that would have gone through the the main square they're indicating that there had been an increased presence of people caller grim jars that are associated with that period of time they've found the possible remains of David's residence but it's underneath the building and they haven't been able to dig that up so there are some significant things that heparin as far as the development of the United Kingdom goes Saul the first king made his hometown Gibeah of Benjamin his capital David chose to make his first capital Hebron in Judah but not all of the tribes acknowledged him initially as king and so it makes sense you see him choose a more neutral central location in Jerusalem and it's right on the border of Benjamin and Judah you see him thinking through this is more than just my tribe I'm a ruler over all the tribes something that you hear people say a lot as you travel around Israel is everything is political there are a lot of conflicting ideas about how things should go what belongs to whom but the reality was you know we brought up this hillside there was this Palestinian family and they welcomed us right onto their property so what we thought was just gonna be a quick stop ended up being this very hospitable visit by some folks who did not know us until we pulled up in their driveway so on a day-to-day basis there are just so many people from different ethnicities and religious backgrounds that do get along and they do make it work and they just try to be very respectful of each other in their differences [Music] [Music] seen both and getting in the caves of a dolmen you get the sense that David selected his hiding places from saw very intentionally they gave him some type of advantage or provided some type of very needed resource in each place and the view from adul and was just incredible that's right in both lectures are so remote that gave him kind of a strategic advantage as well and then being on Mount Gilboa the text is very specific about Saul's movement that night to stand on the top of the mountain and have you point out the exact same places you could see them all from that one spot and to know that that was the spot where the Bible describes him dying the accuracy of the Bible in a lot of stories especially that one is so important and then to go to Hebron where after David gets the news of Saul's death after all this time of waiting he finally becomes king and establishes his government there and to realize everything that's been found there they believe that there's evidence of a central government beginning there and just so many people thriving that fits David and his first seven and half years as king so much of the text is devoted to David there's so much more that describes his reign surely there's more there's more evidence out there for David well there is in fact we know that David eventually moves his capital from Hebron to Jerusalem now once we get to Jerusalem there'll be a number of things inside the city I think you'll really enjoy in fact the story of how David conquered the city is really really interesting [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] after ruling for seven years in Hebron David decided to move his capital to the city of Jerusalem the problem was was that the Jebusites were here and so he needed a way to enter the city and capture it he issued a challenge to his men and he challenged them to go up the water shaft the word in Hebrew is seen or sometimes it's translated as pipe because he knew that would be an entrance into the city and if they couldn't get someone in there they maybe I have a chance of capturing the city Joab volunteered for that and was able to successfully get in [Music] you for a long time we didn't understand exactly what that meant in the Bible but in 1867 a British explorer by the name of Charles Warren came to this land looking for different biblical archaeological sites and he found this shaft and he actually climbed up this shaft and discovered this whole tunnel system under here and he proposed that this was probably the way that the citizens of the Jebusite City came to retrieve their water and so he proposed that this is the pipe the water shaft the sanur that is mentioned in Scripture how do we know that this could be that shaft this may not have been the exact way that the people retrieved their water at the time but this is the way Charles Warren came up there are one or two other shafts in this area that Joab could have come up but it would've been something very similar to this that would have given him access inside the city so it still fits the story whether it was this shaft or another shaft there was something just like this that Joab would have come up to help capture the Jebusite city that's right why would David ask Joab were one of his men to come up a water shaft in order to help capture a city well the city of Jerusalem the ancient Jebusite city sat on a little Peninsula of land that was surrounded by the Kidron Hinnom and central valleys so it was very defensible it was very hard to attack the city I think that's one of the reasons why David wanted the city there was gonna have to be something secret to happen and as you can see it wouldn't be very easy to get here only one man could come up here you couldn't pull a whole army and so probably Joab came up a shaft like this then was able to open the door and allow the army in so it was a very defensible position some people have described this spot as the true foundation for the nation of Israel and for the city of Jerusalem itself you know most people look at the Temple Mount and they think that's Jerusalem well it became that especially during the days of King Herod but when you come back to the United Kingdom solved it a little bit but David really coalesced the the nation around him it's incredible it sends chills down your spine to think about this marks the beginning of that and it all started with Joab coming up a shaft like this and capturing the city I don't think you can overstate the importance of going down to Warren shaft or even the discovery of it there are so many battles in so many cities that are conquered in Canaan by the Israelites but to have one that's so uniquely conquered where you climb up through a water shaft you know archaeology plays such an important role in helping us understand how legitimate the biblical text is and how accurate the biblical text is in this spot from the Gihon spring there was water than the city accessed through these tunnels to have that detail and then to have a place like that found that fits the description it was just invaluable [Music] going underground and exploring the shaft that Warren found and thinking about Joab going up and helping David conquer the city I think about going back to our conversation with Scott and thinking about the development of weaponry in 1st Samuel the text specifies that the Philistines kept the Israelites from working with metals that there was no blacksmith in Israel and if they even wanted to sharpen their farm implements they had to go to the Philistines to get that done that makes sense with the rest of what we read and for Samuel where it really emphasizes the weapons that Goliath uses or the shortage of weaponry at one point only Saul and Jonathan are the ones with weapons you can see the development of arrow tips spear heads things that are coming out of that layer of archaeology we Scott put forward the possibility that during David's time where he was hiding out with the Philistines he actually figured out or discovered that technology and brought it with it and you start to see that become more prolific during the time of the United Kingdom is there extra biblical evidence for the existence of David and his kingdom evidence outside of the biblical text well honestly there's not a lot however in 1993 and 94 a couple of archaeologists who were digging up a tel dan found three pieces of stone that when they put it together it seems to have been written by King Hosea from a ram and he's describing a battle in which he is defeated the kings of Israel and Judah however he doesn't refer to juda-as juda-as the house of David now when do they date this about 150 to 200 years after King David lived so the value of this is that there's a foreign king who has defeated the southern kingdom of Judah centuries after David actually lived but he still refers to the kingdom as the house of David that would be evidence that David was more than just a city leader or a tribal leader that he had authority over a much larger area from his vantage point he sees the whole kingdom of Judah as being David's family and he has no reason to try to substantiate whether David exists or not he's just stating what he knows to be true it's exactly that that Kingdom was referred to by the house of David I think it'd be beneficial for us to return to the City of David just within the last couple of decades that they've done some great archaeological work there and they think they have uncovered part of King David's Palace the current modern Jerusalem just sprawls all over these hills across these valleys most people when they enter the city they have this picture of this bird's-eye view from the Mount of Olives looking down and you see the Temple Mount but that wasn't there with the City of David you're talking less than 3,000 people and so really with the City of David you have this seed of Israel starting as a nation and growing out from its capital [Music] we are in the City of David the true location of the ancient biblical Jerusalem and you can see around us the tourists coming just exploring again this place it's a very place we are standing in the palace area up to 150 years ago we didn't know where the city was everybody thought that the ancient biblical Jerusalem lies within the confines of the old city it's only when Charles Warren by accident came and he discovered the place that he realized but listen this is the actual location of the ancient city archaeologically how do you establish that this was the palace how do we know that we cannot say honor for saying that this is the palace how archaeology works unless you find something that is written David was here right you cannot say that a lot massage she came and she said to us guys I think that this is the location of the Palace of King David and we need to dig down and we say to her but we did dig down she said you didn't dig deep enough and we said her okay we are willing to go but you have to tell us why and she said to us 60 years ago a woman named Kathleen Kenyon found a Capitol broken into in a landslide and that Capitol Definition sound finishes the modern-day Lebanon it dates back 3,000 years and when I opened my Bible she said I read about a king he ran off tyre and he came and he helped David to both his house Solomon to build his house and to ultimately to build the house of God the second thing is we found houses built into the walls of the ancient city dating back to the first Temple period and that means that we are very close to some kind of city they are here within those houses we found furniture and that furniture dates back 3,000 years the third reason is the city itself relies between two valleys we have the Kidron Valley you guys can see it on that sign at the back of me another between these valleys we have this city situated very difficult to take the city so difficult that the Jebusite King said not gonna happen a lot massage she said on the north side it is level it you're gonna have to put something here to keep the city safe she came with her Bible in hand and kept reading it and referring to it and looking for reference points and kept finding those reference points as she dug I think that's very important if you want to find the Bible or what's written in the Bible you have to go to the bus right well I'm very grateful for her approach so what we very grateful what's going on currently around this side full-time excavations going on all the time and we started the project with the name Jerusalem Watch and through that people can actually support the excavation team you can become part of getting the buckets on the ground so that we can absolutely expose the complete blueprint of the city through walls [Music] so we have a big bolding right how do we say that it's the palace in 2005 we found a very important seal three years later we also found another seal and these two seals are very very important two seals that appears in the same book in the Bible Jeremiah in the same chapter in the same verse back-to-back to each other Gedaliah been Paschal u-haul bench enemy all written in the Bible written on the seals so that tells us that we are in the governmental area of that time the time of King David dates back 3,000 years the time of these guys 2,800 years and we know that in that time this was the governmental seat of the city itself how does it make you feel to stand in a place like this where such an important point in Israel's history happens this city brings the Bible to life 360 degrees the City of David Jerusalem itself leads in the fact that there is unequivocal proof that there is a connection to the Bible [Music] in front of us we can see a wall it's this wall that led us to find the place here and we can get a better vantage one of the palace area if we go to that side [Music] when you see the size of the wall as you can imagine how difficult that must have been for people to try to come and capture the city and you understand why David would have sent Joab up through the water shaft to get inside correct if you go down this even go down more to the Kidron Valley over there and that's why the city was so difficult to take the City of David is such a great location strategically you have the military fortifications he's up high he's surrounded by mountains and when you talk about Iron Age cities they're developing the fortifications they're developing the fortified cities you're getting more cities with walls they're becoming less and less nomadic as a people you can see a house built into the wall itself these houses that we found date back to the first temple period this house belonged to a hen we know that because it was written in pottery that we found this man Arkell was a very important person in the government as well firstly his house is very close to the palace secondly you can see his garage where he parked his donkeys you can see two pillars over there with holes inside of the pillars and that's where we fastened the donkeys but more than that we found an ancient toilet and for people like me in those days you had to run a little bit further than your house to do certain things I feel had it's a luxury you know the luxury of that inside his house seeing houses both into the wall itself we are reminded of the story of David and Bathsheba when it says when the time comes when Kings go out and fight the man has to be out of the city they have to go and fight and the woman come outside Bathsheba was taking a bath and now we can see where he was standing and how this whole story played itself out talking about David and Bathsheba is a hard thing to do when you contrast David with Saul he's just so starkly different he's so much closer to God he's the one described as a man after God's own heart and then you get this incident where he chooses to take another man's wife to the point that to cover it up he's willing to send that man into battle and have everyone step back so that he dies so he has a valid reason to marry this widow so that he can adopt his unborn child you know that just seems so out of character for David but the truth is it highlights that he was a real man and he made mistakes in many ways he's more relatable he also repented of those things there were real-life consequences when he was confronted as opposed to Saul he repents and he responds he doesn't make excuses he takes responsibility he's such a model for how to respond when your sin catches you and when you're found out [Music] we are reminded of the story when epsilon was chasing his father when he wanted the throne when he wanted to rule it says in the Bible that David had to come out with the whole party he brought the ark out and then he sent him back and they walked through the valley over there and he went up the Mount of Olives if you look across from where we're standing in the village over there in the bedrock you can see that there are tombs we know that that was an ancient cemetery so what do we put together here David writes in Psalm 23 even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil because your rod and your staff they will protect me we also spoke about the hills surrounding Jerusalem where we standing you can see how the hills surround Jerusalem and that he wrote as the hills surround Jerusalem so God surrounds his people so the people that question whether there really was a David or a Solomon you're standing here and you're looking at where they lived and you're looking at where the Bible says so many things took place with great specificity it talks about the routes they took and the places they were and it's easy to realize that's rooted in reality [Music] what on Arina shared about what's going on at the city of David was just fascinating but a huge part of the United Kingdom's story is the temple that David's stockpile for and Solomon ended up building is there anything archaeologically that we can see that connects to that well digging is not allowed on the temple mountain now however a number of years ago an unfortunate event happened but it opened up some really unique opportunities for us [Music] you [Music] what's david and bathsheba learned that as nigel was trying to anoint himself king down in Rogel they put solomon on the king's donkey and brought him down to the gijón spring and what you're looking at below us is the Canaanite pool dates back thirty eight hundred years eight hundred years prior to King David and many archaeologists believe that this is where the water pooled up from the Gihon spring and this is where Solomon was anointed king if you listen you can kind of hear the water still coming out of the Gihon spring as it travels down the tunnel they believe that this pool was in use a long time for the Canaanites and the jebusites before David made Jerusalem his capital because this has been in the same spot for thirty eight hundred years were highly confident that this is the location of where King Solomon was anointed third king of Israel [Music] David was getting old and he had not formally named his successor and one of his sons Adonai decided to take that job on for himself over in first Kings one Adonai J is trying to stage a coup and he and his friends have gone down to a place called n Rogel where is that in this landscape it's located right at the bottom of the hill right down there and that's where Adonai gia had his feast he had priests down there and either in generals for his army and he was trying to proclaim himself as king Nathan and Bathsheba come to David and let him know what's going on his health has been failing he's not as aware of what's going on and when he hears about it he sends Zadok the priest and Nathan and his son Solomon on his donkey down to the Gihon spring where he would be anointed as the next king that's correct now what's interesting about that here all the people had around here this is a very public place and the sound just kind of reverberates through this valley well the Bible tells us that when that occurred they heard the trumpets and the people were cheering and that sound reverberate it down the valley and the party that was going on that an idea that they heard that and a messenger came from this area down to in Rogel and said Solomon has now been appointed the king imagine how a denied you felt when he heard that in the middle of what he was trying to attempt and when he gets that message he rushes back up the hill to where they worshiped and grabbed the horns of the altar trying to keep Solomon from killing him for trying to take his place [Music] Sall was the first anointed king and was finally time to anoint him publicly he was found hiding in the luggage he wasn't really fit and ready to do what God needed him to do when David's anointed that's done pretty privately just with his family and then he has to wait more than a decade before he's publicly anointed and this is the first time in the monarchy where the kingship is being passed from father to son Adonai just trying to supplant that you've got this attempted coup and Solomon is anointed in a rush but still it's public enough that everyone hears and knows that it's happened and so even in the process of their anointings it changes even though you go from Saul to David and David to Solomon and you seem to increase the nation grows it expands it's still not the king that they're looking for they're imperfect men and they make mistakes and even though there's been a prophesied king that's going to come well they're still waiting to see that in the historical record once Solomon became King he pushed the city up the hill so that he built the temple on the very top so with these layers of history you've got the original Gebbie site city that David captured he expands that city to the point where it becomes Mount Zion the City of David but then solomon takes it to a whole new level and the city grows to the point we asked to continue moving up toward Mount Moriah that's right he wanted to put the temple as high as he could in the city to give proper reverence to God the splendor of Solomon's Temple was world-renowned from biblical accounts we don't have that temple remaining and that was destroyed millennia ago King Herod built the second temple that's not even standing anymore so when people talk about how do we know there was a Solomon how do we know that he actually built anything what's left I think we need to talk to people who are authorities on the matter there have been some things found and I think what's really interesting is how those things were found with in recent years there's a project that's been going on in Jerusalem in which they've been able to go through a lot of rubble that's been found underneath the Temple Mount the lead archaeologist dr. mark I lives here in Jerusalem and I think it'd be beneficial we wouldn't talk to him and see what we can learn from him [Music] 1999 as a result of certain political developments there was a criminal act taking place I would call it a an archaeological crime a gigantic fit was that without any scholarly supervision in the southeastern part of Temple Mount under the excuse of an emergency exit [Music] they removed approximately 400 truckloads of Earth's that Earth was dumped in the Kidron Valley from there we moved the soil here [Music] this is the place where the first stage of sifting took place how did you know that the earth had been moved from the Temple Mount we have eyewitnesses that followed the trucks and came a second way of proving it is via the internal contents of the soil for example we have several thousands of gilded wall mosaic desser I which once decorated the Dome of the rock it could come only from the temple man we have even a seal of the Islamic trust of the temple man doctor bark I was able to take us down and explain that they currently processed not only the fill that was brought over from the Temple Mount but they also process and sift material from all sorts of archaeological sites around Israel this is the place where the largest stones are removed from the contents of the soil this is done like this I see every one bucket goes in here yes and here subdivided into three thirds the rest of the space in the bucket is taken by the water okay one-third soil two thirds water how long does it soak several hours in several hours as you know there are people that question whether the first kings of Israel were historical figures or legendary and whether there's anything that we can tie to that period of time and it sounds like that you have found some incredible things listen I made Jerusalem ID for the last 68 years I was not around some 3,000 years ago so I cannot testify for David living here or being here on the other hand if I read the scriptures well there are so many things there which seemed to be a reality I'm dealing with archaeology and dealing with material culture Solomon built an official compound made up of the king's palace the construction of which took 13 years there was the house of the forest of Lebanon the house of Pharaoh's daughters there was the great court there was the other court there was the house of the Lord all that becomes alive when we sift through the material originating in the temple man we have abundance of pottery we have a plethora of other finds from First Temple period the period cannot be denied again I was not an eyewitness I didn't meet them personally but meeting the material culture of their time and meeting the texts I have the feeling as if I should have [Music] Temple Mount is the soul heart and spirit of the Jewish people that is the place of traditionally the binding of issac by Abraham that is the place purchased by David from the last Jebusites ruler of Jerusalem Rovner that is the place where David's son Solomon built the house of the Lord and until this very day all synagogues all around the world directed towards the Temple Mount of Jerusalem if he's also the number one archaeological site in this country and maybe in the world nevertheless was not exposed to the Spade of an archaeologist ever so Jerusalem which is one of the most excavated places upon earth has a black hole all together in these 14 years of shifting we have had over half a million finds a vast majority of it is of course pottery but pottery is dateable we have only again small finds those include jewelry they include the artifacts of ancient warfare they include dice and playing pieces they include coins in abundance about 9% of the dated finds that we have are from First Temple period amazing our general work does not try to prove anything or to disprove anything we are interested in whatever is found we are interested in the facts and the conclusions that we can draw from the facts the difference in this project is nothing is see - it's all been tumbled together that is correct and that is a challenge yeah a sifting project is the closest that we can get to a controlled archaeological excavation at Temple Mount what's the most unique thing that stands out to you that you've found so far they're the people this is amazing children elderly students religious non-religious ultra-religious all kinds and types of people and we have had people from all four corners of the world we have had an incredible number of volunteers they were about a quarter four million people which makes this project into the most exposed archaeological project in the world to look into the eyes of a child who finds a coin which was not touched by somebody for 2,000 years or to look into the eyes of an elderly person who realizes that he touches the sacred soil of the Temple Mount and the excitement of these people that is unparalleled so the greatest discovery of mine was the people [Music] we're not able to go back and uncover Solomon's Temple and who knows if or when we'll be able to actually do any official archaeological work on the Temple Mount but from that discarded dirt the Temple Mount sifting project has been able to produce and discover some pretty impressive things he was able to show us several pieces that dated back to David's time in a United Kingdom no one would have wanted what happened in 1999 to have happened no one would have wanted that to have been disturbed but it provided you an opportunity to find things like this and after doing that for 14 years what conclusions have you reached about what you have found and how it connects to the Davidic United Monarchy listen I cannot prove through the finds anything I cannot prove that there was David but we have indirect circumstantial evidence there was much activity at that time I'll tell you more than that five years after the death of Solomon in the days of Rehoboam the country was attacked by a shock king of Egypt now why would a shock attack that place if it was a small village that attack is documented in Egyptian sources it would be impossible to assume that five years after Solomon the Bible is historically correct and five years earlier all of it is fantasy and all of that is fiction that is beyond my logic there's another quote from an archaeologist I thought it was interesting that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence I never ever draw any conclusion from absence of material if you draw conclusions from the absence of material you can come to the conclusion that the ancient cavemen spoke on radio telephone because we didn't find the that's anti logical doctor bark hey it has been an honor to be with you thank you for sharing your office and your knowledge with us today the pre veg is mine doctor bark hi is just a wealth of knowledge I mean we could have spent days with him and still not exhausted his knowledge on the topics of archeology and Israel having him explain the significance of what they've found and what it attests to was especially moving I wish everybody who's trying to answer the question was there really a Saul David and Solomon I wish all of them could be in those labs I wish all of them could see those artifacts be brought out I wish all of them could meet the archaeologists that pulled them out of the ground they're there and they're real I think to ignore them is going to hinder anybody's honest search about the reality of United Kingdom [Music] you [Music] one of the things that came out of that period of time was literature and songs music well that brings us here to Qumran Qumran sits on the northwest corner of the Dead Sea you can see the Dead Sea spread out here before us but behind us is the caves of Qumran you can see a couple of the capes here and there are more caves around the corner and throughout these hills in 1946 a Bedouin Shepherd stumbled into one of these caves and found a number of Scrolls and they begin to inspect them and they realized that there were scriptures written on them they found portions of copies of every single book except for Esther the scrolls actually went through a number of different hands but today if you want to you can actually go and see them at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem they have dated a number of these Scrolls to the first second third century BC and so in particular if you think about the time of the United Kingdom these are copies of the originals that were only placed seven or eight hundred years after their originals were written how many Old Testament manuscripts do we have we don't know an exact number but they are in the thousands and some of them are very small but they can use those to piece together a much larger document there are some books though for instance the Isaiah scroll in which we have an entire copy of that book available to us [Music] for a number of authors that we appreciate like Plato and Aristotle we have less than a dozen copies however when it comes to the Hebrew Bible we have thousands of copies of manuscripts and because of that we can have an even greater confidence that what we read today when we open up our Bible is accurate to the original writings and you think about what that should do for people I mean most historians don't question the authenticity of these other ancient works when they have less than a dozen copies but it comes down to the Bible or the ancient Hebrew or even the ancient Greek texts and we have thousands if not tens of thousands of copies that should reinforce or bolster anybody's faith when they come to realize that Qumran isn't a place that you would automatically think about David or Solomon or the United Monarchy but we're told in the Bible Solomon wrote three thousand proverbs a thousand and one songs to go back to what does the text say you need to have a reliable text it's like building a house you need to have an accurate blueprint we can trust what we have it's accurate and it's accurate so many times over and I think that's huge especially for those of us in the West especially for young people college students high school students who in the West are being told no that's not a historical document that's just a legendary document or that's just a cultural document the details are too specific just to be a cultural document we find evidence in the archaeological record that fit what's in that document we have so many copies from independent places around the globe that match if you came to that question can we trust the accuracy of the Bible with an open mind without bias and just looked at it fairly that you'd walk away with the conclusion I can trust what that says these texts were written by the essence essence were Jewish sect and they lived here at Qumran and they had particular rooms in which they wrote a number of these documents that were later stored here in the caves you see the different rooms so this was someone's house yeah be such a stark contrast from one side to the other to be able to see the Judean Hills over here but in the Dead Sea over here water is vital for their survival down here as they collected the rain water it would come down this little trough and fall into this little bitty pool once the pool filled up it would spill over into this larger cistern in doing so it leaves the sediment that was in the water in this smaller pool so the water in the cistern was perfectly clean so it was an ancient filtration system exactly I think it would surprise people to see how many ritual baths and all of the water that that would have required and they would go through a ritual cleansing multiple times per day and so the need for good clean water was important to them and this could be used as a community room you can see the seating all the way around here what this is explaining over here is this would have been for studying and that they found a lot of oil lamps for light in this room the old lamps could be easily set up here on these rocks to light the entire room here why did the essence find such value in preserving these texts well I think they found value for the same reasons that we find value you look at the Song of Solomon 2 song about the love that he has for a woman you look at the Proverbs how often do I open up the Proverbs if I'm having some problem in life I can find something there that I can use today even includes a STIs qohelet the preacher where he's answering this question of is life meaningless or not and he's answering with God and view it's not without God in the picture it really feels like it's meaningless and of course then we can look at the Psalms and we use those same songs today and our praise to God a lot of people have the misconception that the Bible is very flat but with this poetic literature God is trying to evoke emotions he's trying to get an emotional response to truth of the books that we're talking about that David and Solomon contributed to our rich and God included kind of text and it was preserved and those types of writings accomplish that the people who lived during the reign of Saul David and Solomon they were looking for a ruler they knew that even from back in the days of Joseph from Genesis God had promised a ruler that was going to come from the tribe of Judah all of these centuries they've been looking for the Lord's anointed and that's one of the reasons they got so excited when Saul was finally anointed why they celebrated David this man after God's own heart who was by far an improvement over Saul and the continuation of his kingship through Solomon and hopefully down through the line to be on this side of history we recognize that all of those prophecies were pointing to the true king God's son from the tribe of Judah this man who took on flesh that was part of what the people thought they saw in Jesus they had a misconception about his kingdom they didn't understand that it was a spiritual Kingdom but they recognized there's a king here that's what they celebrated during the triumphal entry it's what Pilate asked him about are you really the King of the Jews it's the accusation that went above his cross and so we recognize that Jesus is the prophesied king we've been looking for evidences of the United Kingdom but all of the men from that United Kingdom just for shadowed the true King Jesus having Barry bring me here has been so helpful to think about what's the most accurate best way to answer that question is the United Monarchy something that has historical roots or is it simply a myth or a legend and I think coming here and seeing these places and speaking with these experts hearing their experience it helps increase my faith and trust in the biblical record there's a quote from a book that's currently out of print where the author is trying to help his unbelieving friend wrestle with faith and I think it just sums up this entire trip what he writes is faith is a venture based on evidence evidence adequate enough to justify the decision to leave evidence adequate enough to create hope in the success of levy I would say that my job as an apologist is to encourage responsible leaping I try to show that the leap is not hopeless that you can reach the other side that many have done it before you that the dangers below aren't as great as you think beyond this however the apologist can't go I present the evidence you must decide to leave we have all of this evidence and there's no final proof that is going to convince everybody at the end of the day each of us has to make a decision based on the evidence is that adequate enough to justify the decision to place my faith in what the text says and at the conclusion of all of this personally the answer is yes and I hope that whoever has taken this journey with us would reach the same conclusion [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Appian Media

Views: 223,037

Rating: 4.8059492 out of 5

Keywords: Appian Media, Searching for a King, Israel, King David, David and Goliath, Valley of Elah, Travel, Travel Photography, Biblical Geography, Archeaology, Bible History, Evidence for the Bible, King Saul, King Jesus, Jesus, Christianity

Id: emrNVe_aAyo

Length: 111min 16sec (6676 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 08 2019