KING SOLOMON: FACT OR FICTION

By Sidney Woolf

Millions of people have died in the Middle East and the Western World through killing each other over fiction.

Whoever wrote the First Book of the Kings and the Second Book of the Chronicles could not foresee the detailed verification potential of modern archaeology.

The city of King Solomon in Jerusalem is thought to be on the slope leading down from what is now the Al Aqsa mosque. Israeli archaeologists have been desperately excavating the site for many decades yet not one iota of evidence of the existence of King Solomon has been found. No mention of his name has been found on any tablet, inscription, tax record or pot decoration.

Anyone who has visited Egypt will have seen widespread evidence of a monarch who reigned three hundred years before Solomon, Pharaoh Rameses II, yet of King Solomon who ruled over a vast empire and army (1 Kings 4, 21-26 and 1 Kings 9, 17-23, 2 Chronicles 9, 25-26) there is no trace. All the vassal peoples who paid taxes to him have left not a single record of account or inscription. Not one of the soldiers of his conquering army left a sword, helmet or shield.

Professor Yadin’s two volume work "The Art Of Warfare In Biblical Lands" (International Publishing Co. Ltd., Jerusalem 1963) has ample illustrated examples of discovered contemporary armour and weapons from other lands, but one looks in vain for a single item from the Solomonic empire.

Search through Israel’s museums and you will find no evidence from the empire although there are ample artefacts marked "Canaan" or "Philistine". It is inconceivable that if Solomon and his empire had existed in reality not a trace of them could be found from all the archaeological "digs" throughout Israel.

Who then created this fiction, when and why? Many Hebrews of the Babylonian captivity, 586 BCE rose to leading positions in Babylon, became established and wealthy. They had no wish to return to the harsh life of a deserted and derelict land. The Hebrew people were facing the greatest threat ever: total annihilation by assimilation, and their land had been entered by armed hostile tribes.

A young guard of "Zionist" activists grew up, just as they did recently in the former Soviet Union. In order to attract people to the idea of returning they had to create a glorious past, military conquests and a rich empire. Hence the symbol of Solomon.

The books of the Old Testament, except Nehemiah, were written during the same period for the same purpose - becoming the hoax of the millennia.

It is no coincidence that the writers created Abraham as going from Babylon (Ur of the Chaldees) to Canaan, which is precisely the journey they were convincing the Hebrews to undertake.

The Exodus story was to demonstrate that even fleeing from slavery, enduring forty years with their only food being provided by God, and facing powerful armies, the Hebrews triumphed and re-established their state.

How much easier their re-establishing would be now!

The problem would have arisen of Babylonian mixed union parents and offspring being ostracized in the return to the state. The story of Ruth and Boaz was inserted to allay such fears.

The books of the Old Testament could not have been written during the era of the Kings, before the Babylonian captivity, as the invidious comparison of the weak king with the former power of Solomon would have resulted in the execution of the writers. Furthermore, to forecast long before the captivity and the resulting large settlement of Hebrews in Ur, that Abraham, the fictitious founder of the nation, will come from there of all places, would have made the authors remarkable fortune tellers.

There are only three possibilities for the writing of the Torah and associated books: 1. They were written by god; 2. They were written by humans inspired by god; 3. They were written by humans. If they were written or inspired by the omniscient god there would be light-years, galaxies, supernovae, black holes, and not the fairy tales in Genesis.

The writers created an  omnipotent god that demanded subservience but also attended to the wants and emotions of every human being. This is the object of the story of Abraham and Isaac. Such a god has been so attractive for thousands of years to humans fearful of a lonely, cold,empty universe.

The custom was for small captive nations to be assimilated into the population of the captors and disappear from history, as happened to the Philistines. By writing these books of the Old Testament the authors convinced sufficient numbers of the Hebrews to prevent this happening to them. Although intended only for contemporary compatriots these writings by genius Hebrews have inluenced belief for thousands of years after their time. They also preserved an influential Hebrew community in Babylon.

There are many human interest, romantic and sexual stories in the books by authors who evidently loved to write. Academic proof and disproof are not possible as there are no extant relevant original documents. The latter may have been deliberately destroyed to increase the god belief factor.

Millions of people have died in the Middle East and the Western World through killing each other over fiction.