A World-Historic Find in Jerusalem. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, February 2010. Also here.
In Arabic, Jerusalem is Jewish. By Simcha Jacobovici. The Times of Israel, August 14, 2013.
Tobin:
The
greatest threat to the hopes of those who think parts of Jerusalem should be
off-limits to Jews comes not when Jewish-owned buildings go up in the city, but
rather when Jews start digging into the ground of East Jerusalem. Because the
more the history of the city is uncovered, the less credible becomes the charge
that Jews are alien colonists in what the media sometimes wrongly refer to as
“traditionally Palestinian” or “Arab” Jerusalem.
That’s
the upshot from the release of an amazing archeological dig conducted just
outside Jerusalem’s Old City. The excavations conducted by archeologist Eilat
Mazar in the Ophel area revealed a section of an ancient city wall of
Jerusalem. According to the press release from the Hebrew University, under
whose auspices the project was carried out, the dig uncovered the wall as well
as an inner gatehouse for entry into the royal quarter of the ancient city and
an additional royal structure adjacent to the gatehouse as well as a corner
tower. While ancient buildings are not uncommon in the city, the significance
of this discovery is the fact that these edifices can be dated to the 10th
century before the Common Era — the time of King Solomon, credited by the Bible
for the construction of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. Pottery found at the
lowest levels of the dig is dated to this era.
Even
more telling is the fact that bullae — seal impressions — with Hebrew names
were found, as well as seal impressions on jar handles inscribed with the words
“to the king,” which means they were employed by the Israelite state in that
time. Inscriptions on the jars, which Mazar says are the largest ever found in
Jerusalem, showed them to be the property of a royal official.
Daniel
Mintz and Meredith Berkman funded the dig. They are a New York couple whose
funding is supporting both the dig and the preservation of the site for public
viewing as part of the national park that exists around the Old City walls. You
can view pictures of the site here.
The
significance of this extraordinary find is that it provides new proof of the
existence and power of the Davidic monarchy, the Israelite state that it led,
and the more than 3,000-year-old Jewish presence in Jerusalem. These new
discoveries, along with those of a previous dig in a different area of the city
of David, contradict contrary Palestinian claims that the Jews have no claim to
the area. They also debunk the assertions of some Israeli archeologists who
have sought to portray the kingdom of David and Solomon as an insignificant
tribal group and not the regional empire that the Bible speaks about. Indeed,
Mazar believes that the strength and the form of construction required to build
these structures correlates with biblical passages that speak of Solomon’s
building of a royal palace and of the Temple with the assistance of master
builders from Phoenicia (modern-day Lebanon). Moreover, contrary to those who
speak of the Jewish presence in the city as a passing phase in ancient times,
the discovery of Jewish seals, which speak directly of an Israelite state,
proves that what Mazar has found are not the remains of a Jebusite fort
conquered by the Jews but rather of a great city built by David and his son
Solomon.
While
finding ancient Jewish artifacts as well as the traces of Solomon’s city in
Jerusalem may seem nothing out of the ordinary, for the last century and a
half, a great many academics and intellectuals have attempted to put down the
existence of the ancient Jewish kingdom — which has always served as a symbol
of Jewish nationhood — as a religiously inspired fiction. This deconstruction
of both biblical literature and history has sought to undermine the very idea
of the historical truth about ancient Israel, as well as the notion that Jewish
nationhood had its roots in the past. This has been put to use by anti-Zionists
and Arabs who have thought that if they could destroy the idea of King David’s
existence as a historic figure, they could delegitimize modern Israel. Thus,
Palestinian propagandists and the Palestinian Authority itself, which has
steadfastly denied any Jewish connection to the Old City, the Temple Mount, or
even the Western Wall, have copied revisionist scholarly work doubting Jewish
history and incorporated that work into their negotiating position about the
city’s future. The Muslim religious authority that controls the site of the
Temple Mount has vandalized the area, destroying a treasure trove of
antiquities in the ancient place because its officials fear that any find
revealing the Jewish origins of the place will undermine their fallacious
claims that seek to portray Jews as foreign occupiers in their own ancient
capital.
It
serves the purposes of the enemies of modern Israel to pretend that there is no
such thing as biblical history or an ancient kingdom of Israel. But what Eilat
Mazar and her colleagues have done is to illustrate once again just how deep
the roots of Jewish Jerusalem run. Three thousand years.
