There is much proof that the history of Israel has not been a fiction of imagination and that their story had been recorded correctly.

A full copy of the Book of Isaiah was found at Qumran. The Dead Sea scrolls prove that the copyists of biblical manuscripts took great care in making sure that they translated them correctly.

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there is also much proofs that history has been slightly distorted in the writtings as to make ways for changes in religious/political situation at precise time in israelite history.

One such religious rewriting of history is the idea that the israelites had a covenant with a monotheist god from Noah to Abraham to Moses to Solomon. In fact many archeological findings do point in the direction that monotheism in judaism was a fact long after Solomon.

As a result of comparing biblical and inThe Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic
scriptional evidence with the Ugaritic texts, we can see how the worship of other deities lasted for quite a long time in Israel's pantheon.

By Mark S. Smith
Skirball Professor of Bible and Near Eastern Studies
New York University

For decades, scholars have tried to penetrate the Bible's story about Israelite monotheism. According to traditional interpretations of the Bible, monotheism was part of Israel's original covenant with Yahweh on Mount Sinai, and the idolatry subsequently criticized by the prophets was due to Israel's backsliding from its own heritage and history with Yahweh. However, scholars have long noted that beneath this presentation lies a number of questions. Why do the Ten Commandments command that there should be no other gods "before Me" (the Lord), if there are no other gods as claimed by other biblical texts? Why should the Israelites sing at the crossing of the Red Sea that "there is no god like You, O Lord?" (Exodus 15:11). Such passages suggest that Israelites knew about other gods and did not simply reject them. It seems that Israelites may have known of other deities and perhaps various passages suggest that behind the Bible's broader picture of monotheism was a spectrum of polytheisms that centered on the worship of Yahweh as the pantheon's greatest figure.

In the past, the question of Israelite polytheism has been approached by looking for evidence of specific deities worshipped by Israelites in addition to Yahweh. These would include biblical criticisms of the worship of other deities, such as the goddess Asherah in 2 Kings 21 and 23, as well as apparent references to this goddess or at least her symbol in the inscriptions from Kuntillet 'Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom in the eighth century. In the Kuntillet 'Ajrud inscriptions, the symbol is treated respectfully as part of the worship of Yahweh. The gods Resheph and Deber appear in Habakkuk 3:5 as part of the military retinue of Yahweh. Other deities who gain some mention in the Bible include the "hosts of heaven" criticized in 2 Kings 21:5, but mentioned without such criticism in 1 Kings 22:19 and Zephaniah 1:5. Scholars have also noted that the god El is identified with Yahweh in the Bible, again with no criticism. The criticisms of Yahweh's archenemy, the storm god, Baal, also seem to reflect Israelite worship of this god. While many of these deities are not well known from the Bible, they are described sometimes at considerable length in the Ugaritic texts, discovered first in 1928 at the site of Ras Shamra (located on the coast of Syria about 100 miles north of Beirut). As a result of comparing biblical and inscriptional evidence with the Ugaritic texts, we can see how the worship of other deities lasted for quite a long time in Israel down to the Exile in ca. 586.

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What I'm doubtfull about the movement to find historic proofs of facts in the bible is that the positive findings are put on the mediatized/touristic highlights while the rest are trown back to the dark of specialist's knowledge.

 

After Reich and others quelled national concerns, insisting that the discovery in no way contradicts the Biblical narrative, the hullabaloo quickly subsided. I visited Reich later that week at the Gihon spring, where the expansion of a settler home along with a new tourist center parking lot has prompted continual archaeological investigation. When asked about the impact of settlers on archaeology in the village, Reich lamented their destructive presence while recognizing that his own reputation will be built on these recent discoveries. Anyway, the days of nationalist Israeli archaeology are over, he informed me, concluding that scientific method has all but subsumed earlier biases.

Many in the discipline have noted a new breed of Israeli archaeologists distancing themselves from Biblical and Zionist historical narrative, echoing the reversals of the New Historians in their asking of new questions to fill out the gaps in the patchy Israeli historiography. Nadia Abu al-Haj has suggested that this new pluralism might be read for its "otherizing" effect, as the artifacts of "foreign" cultures are more prominently displayed, although often as outside influences enriching the Israeli national fabric.^[6]

Many Israeli archaeologists I spoke with who have worked in the village openly express their dislike of the settlers, taking care to note their warm relations with local Arabs. One senior digger did admit that he would like nothing more than to bulldoze the whole hill, thus preserving Jerusalem's archaeological tel for scientific study. As many local Palestinian residents will tell you, the bulldozers do come, but usually to demolish unlicensed homes. Archaeologists like Ronny Reich would prefer to steer clear of demolitions, settlers, and Tourist Ministry officials alike, proclaiming an objective distance from such ideological conflicts. This professed neutrality, however, ignores the role of archaeology in the service of tourist development, which in the case of Silwan is transforming a living village into a place called "The City of David." The antiquities produced through archaeological research in Silwan are being arranged to narrate the much contested Biblical story of David conquering the Jebusite City. Beyond re-inscribing the village with this new symbolic meaning as "Jewish space," the practice of archaeology is physically reshaping the village, having in several cases paved the legal path for Jewish settlement expansion.

Far across town in his Talbiye home, the architect contracted to design the park revealed to me that the City of David is but a piece of a much larger plan. He unrolled a map of the Old City and its environs, and my eyes tried to take in the hundreds of dots plotted across nine or so neighborhoods. Each dot represents a historic site, he explained, to be incorporated into a large open-air museum stretching south from the citadel, around Mt. Zion and Silwan, north through the Kidron Valley, and up to the Rockefeller Museum. Each area will be designed to represent different historical periods, and I was not surprised to hear that Silwan will serve as the First Temple Period.

I hope that these few angles on Silwan suggest the intricate spectrum of historical narratives projected onto this village. I argue that despite this multifarious legacy, it is the Biblical story of the City of David which Silwan is being shaped to represent. This historical landscaping takes place through the excavation and selective display of archaeological remains. We must pay particular attention to places like Silwan where historical narrative and archaeological practice operate on the front lines of an ongoing struggle. Given the austere political landscape in which Israeli land confiscations and house demolitions consume Palestinian space on a daily basis, it is important for us to be sensitive to other ways in which these erasures occur. The use of archaeological sites to reshape the land into historical landscapes assists Israel in its co-optation of places like Silwan in ways that bulldozers never could.

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