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July 19, 2006

Early Reports from Gezer Excavation

A new series of excavations under the leadership of Steven M. Ortiz of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and Sam Wolff of the Israel Antiquities Authority completed their first season a couple of weeks ago and very preliminary, popular reports are beginning to come in. The two most complete (and they are very sketchy) is an article in the Baptist Press and an interview with Steven Ortiz on the The Book and The Spade website. Unfortunately, I could no longer find Ortiz' interview free on the website.

Somewhat predictably, Jim West thinks the Baptist Press piece is "overblown" and Joe Cathey, who was part of the excavation team, does not.

I am always skeptical of early press reports. In general they are overblown and often do not capture enough information to make meaningful judgments on the real nature of the finds. This article contains precious little information about what was actually found. As far as I can tell, the following is all that the article actually says about the findings.

This year's excavations have revealed more than 40 meters of a massive fortification system associated with the six-chambered gate common in the building projects of King Solomon. Solomon’s extensive building projects are recorded in the biblical account of his activities throughout his kingdom and at his capital city of Jerusalem (1 Kings 9:15-17).

In addition to this large fortification system, two major destructions tentatively dated to the Egyptian pharaohs of Merneptah and Siamun were exposed. . . .

While parts of the large fortification system have been exposed by previous excavations, several new discoveries were obtained this season. The first was a major rebuilding of the part of the city near the fortification. Some time in the eighth century B.C. a large pillared building and a second unit consisting of several storage rooms were constructed directly abutting the 10th-century B.C. fortification. The pillared building was six and a half meters by four meters and the second unit of rooms covered an area seven meters in length.

Ortiz' interview had some additional detail but was still superficial as well it should have been.

The concern that Jim raises is over the interpretive element of this report. He is specifically concerned about the reference to what is sometimes called the "Solomonic gate" and the reference to Solomonic building projects in general. So let's address that. This structure was partially exposed by Macalister in the early 1900s. Macalister thought it was a Maccabean Castle. Bill Dever more completely and competently excavated it in late 1960's (before I participated in the Gezer project). Primarily on ceramic evidence, Dever dates the structure in the 10th century BCE. But, already in 1958, Yadin suggested it was the result of Solomon's fortification efforts. However, some, such as Finkelstein, would date this horizon to the ninth century. There is little doubt that the structure is a gate and an Iron Age II gate at that. As I understand it, one of the goals of the renewed excavation is to try to straighten out these chronological issues by studying the associated casemate wall mentioned in the article. But the real argument is over who built it. Or more to the point, can we ever tell who built it?

Now what do I think of all this? First, I think one should always be very cautious in making claims based on literary witnesses whose final form was fashioned hundreds of years after the events they purport to describe. That doesn't mean that we can or should say nothing. And while I look forward to seeing a lot more detail, particularly from the founding of the casemate wall, based on what I know now, my own view is that this wall and gate is a tenth century structure and that the Hebrew Bible associates this time frame with building activity which it attributes to one King Solomon. I'm sure this formulation of my opinion will not be very satisfying to anyone except me.

I am concern about one thing that I remember Oritz saying during the interview for The Book and The Spade that did disturb me. If my memory is correct, and it may not be, at one point Oritz said, "We were going for Solomon." I don't remember how this tied into the immediate context of the discussion. But, I can hardly imagine any context where such a statement would be appropriate. I hope their goal was to better understand the Iron Age stratigraphy of the site. "Going for Solomon" is too narrow of a goal and could well prejudice the results.

I want to discuss another issue. That's the nature of argumentation in this kind of discussion. Joe Cathy says, "Well Jim, if it isn't Solomonic then who built the gate and more importantly for what purpose?" This statement has two elements, each of them problematic. The first rests on an agreement from ignorance. Since we don't know of any other possibilities we might as well agree on Solomon. Well to whom would we attribute it if the Hebrew Bible didn't associate building activity in this time frame to Solomon? There are many ways that the Hebrew Bible could be wrong about this. They range from the possibility, which I doubt, that the stories of the kings of Israel and Judah where woven out of whole cloth, to the far more likely, but not certain, possibility that the chronology of their reigns were confounded with the passage of time, to any number of other possibilities with varying degrees of probability. Heck, it might turn out that Finkelstein is correct about the 9th century construction of the fortifications and that we also find some inscriptional material that demonstrates that a Solomon reigned in the area in the 9th rather than the 10th century! I don't think this very likely but it would add spice to an already overheated discussion. The second part of Joe's question is trivial and in my view only confuses the issues. This gateway and associated wall were build for defensive purposes whoever was the builder.

I may have more to say on all this later.

Posted by Duane Smith at July 19, 2006 10:13 AM | Read more on Archaeology |

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Posted by: Joe Cathey at July 19, 2006 11:38 AM

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