To continue with the revelations of actual archaeology, Finklestein is getting into the question of King Saul.
As background, in his earlier book, he noted that at 3 different times throughout the Bronze Age down to the Iron Age, the same sort of dynamic had occurred wherein the coastal and agrarian city states collapsed and the nomadic peoples of the interior were forced to settle down to grow the grain that they could no longer trade to acquire. In all 3 occasions, the area split into a northern and southern region with the northern being, by far, the more populous and prosperous area. The third time it happened at the end of the Late Bronze Age, those northern nomads became the Israelites, and the southern nomads became the Judahites. They were never 'one people.'
Thus, while David was scampering around the southern hills, the area to the north of Jerusalem began to coalesce around the town of Gibeon and their leader could well have been someone named Saul or at least a recognizable facsimile because there was conflict with the Philistines. All of the "priests annointing Saul" crap was added later by the priests to make themselves look important.
Nonetheless, Saul was untimately defeated by the Philistines but the next blow to hit the area did not come from them but from the Egyptians. Pharoah Sheshonq I (known as Shishak in the bible) campaigned there around 925 BC. Sheshonq, in the accounting of his campaign on the walls of the Temple of Amun at Karnak, lists the towns and cities he smashed
including Megiddo on the northern coast road and Gibeon along with many others, however, as Finklestein says:
The bible, for its part, knows only one target for Shishak's campaign. In the terse report of 1 Kings 14:25-26, the pharoah's only mentioned objective is to attack Jerusalem, the capital of the Davidic dynasty. At this point in the Deuteronomistic History, Jerusalem has been a powerful and prosperous capital for about 80 years. David had reigned there as king of all Israel and had established a great empire. His son Solomon succeeded him and greatly embellished the capital city, constructing an elaborate palace and temple complex. Since Solomon's wealth was legendary it is little wonder that the bible reported Shishak's great haul of temple booty from his attack on Jerusalem including "the shields of gold which Solomon had made."
Biblical scholars have long considered the Shishak invasion mentioned in 1 Kings to be the earliest event described in the bible that is supported by an extrabiblical text. Yet Jerusalem-target of the pharoah's march into the highlands-does not appear on Sheshonq's Karnak list.
How can this be? Finklestein goes on to say:
At the time of the Sheshonq campaign Judah was still a marginal and isolated chiefdom in the southern highlands. Its poor material culture leaves no room to imagine great wealth in the temple-certainly not wealth large enough to appease an Egyptian pharoah's appetitie. From the archaeological evidence we must come to a conclusion that undermines the historical credibility of this specific biblical narrative. The reason that Jerusalem (or any other Judahite town or even village) does not appear on the Karnak inscription is surely that the southern highlands were irrelevant to Shishak's goals.
To summarize, when the bible was finally written down some centuries after the events, the authors, continuing to blame Solomon's son, Rehoboam for the breakup of their fictional United Monarchy, invented an attack by an outside power (a motif they would use extensively in later stories) to punish Rehoboam for his ineptitude.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
-- George Carlin
