Few modern Biblical archaeology discoveries have caused as much excitement as the Tel Dan inscription—writing on a ninth-century B.C. stone slab (or stela) that furnished the first historical evidence of King David from the Bible.

Over the eighties, a group of scholars who came to be labelled “minimalists”, for their shared view that there’s precious little in the “historical” books that’s historically accurate, arose between the biblical archeologists and historians. In their eyes the historical value of the biblical texts was… minimal.

Here’s an example of the sort of thing that was being written about such central characters as Saul and David in the early 1990s:

…the narratives of Saul and David… serve no evident purpose at this point in the history of the kingdoms of Palestine. Who would need persuading of what by such fictions?

Philip R. Davies, In Search of Ancient Israel, 2nd edition, Bloomsbury, 2015 (originally, 1992)

David, in the eyes of the minimalists, was a “fiction”.

The Tel Dan inscription, or “House of David” inscription, was discovered in 1993 at the site of Tel Dan in northern Israel in an excavation directed by Israeli archaeologist Avraham Biran.

It is the first written archeological findings we possess outside of the Bible of the existence of the House of David. It is all the more valuable in that it dates from barely 150 years after David took the throne.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Tel Dan stele, 9th century BCE, basalt, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem/Israel Antiquities Authority (photograph by Meidad Suchowolski).