There's a reason that people still talk about him today. Yeah. If he was a two-dimensional character, it would be it. I mean, it would be just another name in the Bible. He's not.
Think about this. Trying to prove the story of King David through the archaeological findings is an incredibly complex and hard endeavor because archaeology is dealing with small puzzle pieces being pulled out of the ground and then trying to get a big picture out of them. But King David was 3,000 years ago and getting a full picture, a full story out of the archaeological findings is nothing short of an incredible archaeological feat. But today we get to spend time with the incredible people on the ground who are pulling out with new technology and research this incredible story of this man, King David.
And through their work, we're going to get a better understanding of who this man really is and how his story and the story of the Bible connect to what we're finding on the ground today. In the past, people believed that 100% of the biblical narrative is pure history. In the early 1980s... came a different approach and nothing is history. People look at the Bible and say, none of what is written here happened in real life.
Exactly. You're holding the Bible in your hand. It's another layer of proof.
And for anyone who doubts and anyone who says, eh, I'm not sure about your narrative, here it is. King David was not just a mythological figure. There was a kingdom. There were 45 cities. We have inscription.
We have administration. Why is David today this huge? figure.
He sees himself as not I'm the king, I'm the best. Rather, I am the function that intermediates between what God wants and what the people need. We're driving towards the Elah Valley, which is to the southwest of Jerusalem, to meet with Professor Yossi Garfinkel, who is one of the best known archaeologists, specifically when it comes to the time. of the early Israelite kingdom. And the site we're going to visit with him, Chibet Kaifa, is considered to be one of the most meaningful discoveries about the early Israelite kingdom.
What a climb! How's it going Yossi? Hi Mati, welcome to Hirbet Kayafa. Good to see you.
So we're in the middle of Hirbet Kayafa. This is why this site was built here. If you look at the road, even today you can see every person and every car going in the valley. It's a very strategic location.
So this is really the passport control of the Kingdom of Judah toward Gat. Chilbet Kaifa is just outside of Jerusalem and a stone's throw away from where David slew Goliath. My intuition, my instinct told me that this location must be a very important place. But I had no idea if it would be 10th century or 9th or 8th or 7th.
We didn't know that it's so early as King David. When Galfenkin uncovered this site, it helped put to rest decades of scholarly debate. about who King David was and if he even existed.
But to understand the significance of his discovery, first you have to understand the history of this debate. Okay, so how do you know that David was a historical figure? How do you know that Julius Caesar was a historical figure?
So you need to have historical documents telling you about these figures. In the case of David, we have the biblical narrative. And indeed, for generations and generations, people accepted the biblical tradition as representing historical memories. The big debate started in the early 1980s when people said the Bible is a mythological story. And then you cannot use the Bible to prove David.
And what you need is historical sources outside of the Bible. And the big revolution was in 1993 when the Tel Dan Stila was found. What specifically is found? They're digging in Tel Dan and they find an inscription.
What does it say? Okay, the inscription was written in Aramaic. In this inscription, the Aramaic kings say, I killed 70 kings.
I killed a king from Israel and a king from the house of David. House of David, a dynasty created by David. It seems sort of like a trivial, like mentioning this guy just says, and by the way, this other king. But what it does is it connects the dots through history, saying obviously, like when this was written, there was no debate over whether there was a dynasty of the King David. You cannot argue anymore that David is not a historical figure.
When the Tel Dan Stele was discovered, it sealed the deal once and for all. King David existed. But the debate didn't end there. The skeptics shifted their argument to say, sure, he may have existed, but was he truly who the Bible claims he was?
The idea was that there was somebody called David, but he was just like one of the judges. That in the time of David, in Judah, there was no kingdom and no fortified cities and no inscriptions. Just like one of the... The judge is in the sense of what? The scope of his rule and influence?
Yeah, just a small leader, living in a tent in a small village called Jerusalem. And here came Chibit Kayafa. In 2007, I started excavations in this site.
Where we're sitting right now? Just now, exactly. Everything that was found here, the city wall, the gate, the houses, the pottery, the animal bones, everything is exactly from the time of David. When people are asking me, what is the most important discovery in Chibit Kayafa? I'm saying the olive pits.
We sent olive pits for hydrocarbon testing in Oxford University and the big surprise was that the dating of this city is 1000 BC. The olive pits came at the time of David. We have a fortified city in Judah from the time of King David.
What we see here are private houses. You can see the small stones. It was incredible to walk around the city of Chilbet Kaifa.
You have five cities like this. All of them are in Judah. as Professor Garfinkel showed me what makes this site so unique. In this house here, we found a famous... This specific one?
Yeah, in the corner, we found a jar with an inscription on it. Ishmael, son of Beda. And the name Ishmael is exactly the name of Saul's son who ruled after him.
So we are walking out through the southern gate of Chirbet Kayafa. I'm sure that when King David came from Jerusalem to visit the place, he entered the city through this gate. So we are literally now here on the footsteps of King David. There's not many places in the world you could say that. Maybe it's the only place in the world that you can 100% sure that you are walking on the footsteps of King David.
Shalom and welcome back to our studio here in Jerusalem. It's amazing to see how God, 3,000 years later, still provides us evidence that the Word of God, Mati, is real. I agree 100%.
We're living in an incredible time. I mean, think about it. 20 years ago, if you said King David is exactly as he's described in the Bible, people would laugh at you.
And today, the archaeological evidence is overwhelming. The same time, the same extent of the kingdom, the same, you know, everything. and all of that is coming out of the ground. All of that is being discovered with archaeology. You see, Mati, for us as believers in the Messiah, the evidence of King David is crucial.
Because if David didn't exist, Yeshua cannot claim to be the son of David. Yeah. All the promises of the Bible, they all stand on the fact that David existed as he's described. And archaeology is showing us exactly that. Archaeology is proving today, right behind us in the city of David.
It's down here. Yeah, it's proving to us that... that that person existed in the same way.
And everything comes from that. So what do you say, Samuel? Let's go deeper into the character of King David.
Let's continue watching. We're headed towards the city of David. It's the most significant archaeological site, definitely outside of the walls of the old city in Jerusalem. And we're about to meet with Franny Kaplan, who's a tour guide who's going to help us connect the dots between the character of King David that we read about in the Bible and the physical city in which he lives.
in which he established his kingdom. Hey, Franny. How's it going? It's going well.
Welcome. Nice to see you. Nice to see you, too. We've been talking around the archaeological evidence. Let's break down this character.
Who is this David guy that we read about in the Bible? He's almost this mystical. and mythical character in the scriptures and even today. But he was a real person. Story of David.
It's like all of that into like this. Okay, so here we go. He starts in the Valley of Elah as a young shepherd.
Goes out to meet his brothers, becomes the... that kills Goliath. After that, the people of Judah say, we want him. But there's still Saul. So we have a whole time period where he's being chased by Saul, this love-hate relationship with Saul.
Finally, Saul dies. The second that Saul dies, he's anointed as king. After that, the people of Israel say, wait a second, we want you to be king over everything.
And he says, okay, I'm going to be the king of everyone. And creates the first capital of Israel. Right here.
Conquers Jerusalem. Right here. Literally right here. So this is the... famous Palace of David.
I have to be honest it doesn't look incredibly palestine in its nature. I know I know just wait we'll uncover it all. The City of David is the perfect place to talk about King David because it's where he spent much of his life and established his kingdom. This site has been around for over a hundred and fifty years and it houses not only King David's history but that of the subsequent Kings after him. Finally we're here at the lookout of City of David.
Right. So we're actually standing outside the Old City, which always is something like, wait a second, the city of David, we're talking about Jerusalem. Shouldn't it be inside? Yeah, that's what people thought. Up until 150 years ago, anyone who would come looking for David would go into the walls of the Old City.
The old city to where the Temple Mount was, that was seen as Jerusalem. So we're here on this tiny hilltop right outside, and what we're uncovering in these past 150 years is pretty much all of the biblical evidence that this was the city of David. What are the main things that happened in this place? First of all, we have David's palace.
We want to think about where most of Psalms would have been written. It's here, and these are the views that David is seeing. We look at the hills that surround Jerusalem, and one of the famous descriptions that David... writes about Jerusalem is Jerusalem mountains surround you as God surrounds his people in Psalms. And you think, wow, that's Jerusalem.
If that's Jerusalem up there, then mountains don't really surround it. But suddenly, wait a second, David stood here and wrote Psalms and mountains do surround this tiny little hilltop. So it's literally one-to-one. When we read in the Bible times, we read about the city of David, we read about all of those passages.
That all happens here. He first comes here. It's a Jebusite city. That's the first time we see the city of David. All throughout that he builds his house, it's mentioned that it's in the city of David.
Even when David dies, he's buried in Ir Davi, the city of David. But the first time is right here where it says, And the king went to Jerusalem with his men. That's this.
Down in the valley over there. Down in the valley over here. He's looking up at these massive cliffs, and there are walls at the top.
He says to his men, whoever's brave enough to infiltrate the water system, climb up the tunnel behind enemy lines, open up the gates for me. He's gonna be the head of my army. And that's what they do.
And that's what they do. Yoav ben Surya, Joab climbs up, city falls, Jerusalem's born, and 3,000 years later we find it in the same way. Yeah. Why is David today this huge figure? I mean, we see his sin, right?
David sins with Bathsheba, and right away he judges himself. With a very severe and harsh punishment, which he pays for, he doesn't run away from it. It's like David has this balance, like he's very, very systematically doing what needs to be done. If that means Goliath, after that, reigning over the people in Judah. After that, Jerusalem needs to be a city.
After that, I have to build my house. After that, I have to protect the people. It's like mission after mission.
He's very goal-oriented. And then one second in the Bible, we see that he stops, and that's when he sins. It's like his eyes are for a second. not on the mark of where he wants to be going, and he fails. And I think that's so relevant.
Like when we're not, you know, in our space, then we suddenly, we get confused, we mess up. And that sin, he pays for it. Throughout the end of his days, he buries four of his sons.
He's chased out of the city by Absalom. He creates this idea of how to properly do repentance. It's interesting, in the Bible, we have this kind of duality between the farmer and the shepherd.
The very external, the one who works the land, and the one that's kind of more spiritual with the sheep, you know, talking to God. And David really kind of embodies both of those sides, where he has the poet and the shepherd, and he's the humility, and he's on a cloud with God. But at the same time, he's a warrior, he's a politician, a leader of a nation, and he embodies both of them.
And I think that that's one of the reasons why they say that the Messiah is supposed to come from David. It's supposed to be this balance of both. Although he was deeply flawed, King David was granted the responsibility of ruling over God's people because he sought after God's heart. And by journeying through the archaeological evidence he left behind, we're able to better understand the Bible as God breathed and undeniably true throughout the ages. He was the first person that united an area that was controlled by four or five Canaanite city-states, and now it was controlled by one person.
He created the first national state in the Levant. This is the greatness of David. A figure. beyond time, whether it's the city that he left us, which is one of the centers of the world, whether it's the writings that he left, and maybe even the idea of what man can obtain. With the help of God.
The help of God. Yeah. Hey, I'm Mati Shoshani, and thank you for watching the TBN Israel YouTube channel. We hope this video gave you greater understanding of Israel and the people. If you haven't already, subscribe to our channel.
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