Kings of Controversy

Nowhere in the world is archaeology as tied to politics as it is in Israel. Different factions have a stake in determining where the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel were ruled from, and how powerful its leaders were. At the heart of the matter is King David.
He has persisted for three millennia—an omnipresence in art, folklore, churches, and census rolls. To Muslims, he is Daoud, the venerated emperor and servant of Allah. To Christians, he is the natural and spiritual ancestor of Jesus, who thereby inherits David's messianic mantle. To the Jews, he is the father of Israel—the shepherd king anointed by God—and they in turn are his descendants and God's Chosen People. That he might be something lesser, or a myth altogether, is to many unthinkable.

"Our claim to being one of the senior nations in the world, to being a real player in civilization's realm of ideas, is that we wrote this book of books, the Bible," says Daniel Polisar, president of the Shalem Center, the Israeli research institute that helped fund Eilat Mazar's excavation work. "You take David and his kingdom out of the book, and you have a different book. The narrative is no longer a historical work, but a work of fiction. And then the rest of the Bible is just a propagandistic effort to create something that never was. And if you can't find the evidence for it, then it probably didn't happen. That's why the stakes are so high."

National Geographic looks at competing theories about the archaeological finds in Israel and the few hard facts that we have about them. Link

(Image credit: Greg Girard)

It is time for everyone to just drop it and move on with the future. The world has been mired in this nonsense for far to long. There is so much more of importance in the world RIGHT NOW to be worrying about this mythologigal crap.
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It's time for everyone, including wpdunn71901, to just drop it and move on with more important things. The world has been mired in this nonsense for far too long. There is so much more of importance in the world right now to be spitting and crabbing about poor spelling; especially when we now know wpdunn71901 is too non-intellectual to think anyone who doesn't care for the linked article could be anything other than an atheist. But who am I to complain? I'm making sport of some dope who can't think clearly.
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Yeah, I misspelled a word. It happens. I'm reasonably sure you could still get what I was saying. It is time for the world to actually concentrate on important issues, not divisive ideologies. People are far too concerned with things that, when you get down to it, are quite trivial. And you've actually helped prove my point,wpdunn71901.
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Wow. You're so right, there are so many things we need to ''move on'' from. The man-made global warming trope is way ready for us to move on from. As is the whole Man-is-killing-the-Earth meme. Also, I think that maybe it's time to move on from it's-okay-to-have-sex-with-a-million-people-in-your-lifetime. Oh, and how about we move on from it's-fine-to-have-children-without-being-able-or-willing-to-provide-a-real-home-for-them thing... Now, THAT's one idea that's way beyond it's expiration date...
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As far as I'm concerned, the "Old Testament" is the story of David. He is a real character, someone who really existed. He just lives in those stories. That's why he is so fascinating to us, thousands of years later.

Did he 'really exist'? I think he did.
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It wouldn't be the first time one or more individuals had been portrayed in stories as heroes in various mythologies. You can't prove Jesus, or David, or Heracles actually did exist, but what is known is that someone of that lifetime inspired people to write those stories and build them as legends.
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