Free David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition by Israel Finkelstein, Neil Asher Silberman Page A

or twenty-two years, the century made by the calculation of forty plus forty plus twenty could be considerably reduced. It is also possible that Saul and David’s reigns overlapped. If we follow this line of thought, Saul, David, and Solomon would all have lived sometime in the tenth century BCE . We can safely say no more than that. This chronological change might not seem to be so important, but as we will see later in this chapter, the literal acceptance of the biblical dates has led generations of archaeologists and historians to misinterpret the evidence about the early history of Judah and Israel.
    How large was Saul’s kingdom? Despite the biblical claim that Saul was king of all Israel, the text is not completely precise on the extent of the territory that he ruled. Of course we must be extremely careful when we use the terms “king” and “kingdom.” For just as Rembrandt depicted Saul as an Oriental despot and medieval artists portrayed David and Solomon as contemporary European monarchs, the biblical authors, living centuries after the time of Saul, David, and Solomon, described them in royal terms appropriate to their own eras. Yet leaving aside for the time being the question of the nature of Saul’s kingship, the biblical text clearly localizes the traditions about him.
    We are told that Saul was a Benjaminite by birth, and much of the described activity of his reign takes place in his tribal territory and the area immediately to its north. The places most prominent in the Saul stories—Ramah, Mizpah, Geba, Michmash, and Gibeon—are all located in the Benjaminite highlands immediately to the north of Jerusalem. Saul’s fateful search for the lost asses of his father (1 Samuel 9) takes him slightly farther north—from Benjamin, to the land of Shalishah, to the land of Sha’alim, and to the land of Zuph in the hill country of Ephraim. It is an area of isolated highland villages, extending north from Judah into the richer and more fertile hill country west of the Jordan.
    After his anointment by the prophet Samuel, Saul’s activity extends to the hill country east of the Jordan, with his rescue of the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead. This area seems to have become an integral part of the territory associated with Saul and his family. After the death of Saul and his sons at the hands of the Philistines, it is the people of Jabesh who come to rescue their bodies and bury them “under the tamarisk tree in Jabesh” (1 Samuel 31:11–13). Even more significant is the fact that Saul’s heir, Ish-bosheth, was brought to the town of Mahanaim in the same region and was proclaimed “king over Gilead and the Ashurites and Jezreel and Ephraim and Benjamin and all Israel” (2 Samuel 2:9). “Gilead” refers to the northern part of the Transjordanian plateau, in which the towns of Mahanaim and Jabesh-gilead were located. All the other terms refer to the central hill country west of the Jordan, reaching to the Jezreel Valley in the north. This combination of peoples and areas on both sides of the Jordan River does not correspond to any later territorial unit in the history of Israel. Indeed the biblical description of Saul’s territorial legacy does not apply the geographic terms used for these regions in late monarchic times.
    So how can we summarize the biblical evidence? Although the text declares that Saul was king of “all Israel,” his activities were restricted to the northern highlands to the west of the Jordan, with an extension across the Jordan to Gilead to the east. It is important to note that the biblical narrative records no independent actions taken by Saul anywhere in the highlands of Judah. All of the detailed descriptions of the settlements south and southwest of Jerusalem are contained exclusively in the stories connected with Saul’s pursuit of David or in the exploits of David alone. Saul, then, apparently did not rule over all Israel. The memories embedded in the Bible seem to suggest