Solomon’s offspring are barely mentioned. ibid.
There is little historical evidence that Solomon ever existed. ibid.
Not one shred of evidence has been unearthed to support the existence of either Solomon’s palace or temple. ibid.
Solomon is intensely drawn to Sheba. ibid.
A fourteen-year-old Jewish peasant girl, a virgin named Mary, is said to have miraculously given birth to the saviour of her people. There is scant evidence of Mary’s remarkable life. Mysteries of the Bible s4e10: Mary of Nazareth
According to the Infancy Gospel [of James] Mary’s conception in her mother’s womb is physically ordinary. But God makes a special provision: Mary will be born without ordinary sin. ibid.
Instead of being overwhelmed by the stunning impact of Gabriel’s words, that she would bear the Son of God out of wedlock, Mary responds to this momentous prediction with a single telling question: How can this be? ibid.
Once more an angel intervenes on Mary’s behalf: this night he speaks to Joseph in a dream. ibid.
Was Jesus born in Bethlehem or in Nazareth? ibid.
Historians have never found a shred of evidence that a Roman census was conducted precisely at the time the Christian Bible records Jesus’ birth. ibid.
Is it possible that Mary and Joseph were never married at all? ibid.
Mysteriously, the Christian Bible provides no details whatsoever about her days spent in Egypt with her husband and the infant Jesus. ibid.
Why have the Ten Commandments survived with such impact to the present? Mysteries of the Bible s4e11: Ten Commandments s4e11
Moses had not ascended Sinai. ibid.
Archaeologists have failed to find any evidence that an ancient people ever stopped here. ibid.
How could they worship a golden calf after all they had come to know about God? ibid.
Here a dream was born. A dream as old as this promised land. And here the Bible says the dream will become a reality. Here the Messiah will appear. Mysteries of the Bible s5e1: Messiah
The birthplace of not just one but a number of messiahs. ibid.
Lust, greed, jealousy. Despite its nuanced portraits of all too human women the Bible draws a mysterious line between the villains and the heroines. Mysteries of the Bible s5e2: Heroines of the Bible
Did Jesus ask Judas to hand him over for trial so that scripture could be fulfilled? Mysteries of the Bible: Judas s5e3: The Ultimate Betrayal
Every December in households all over the world people of the Jewish faith gather to celebrate the joyous holiday of Hannoucca. Yet few realise that the foundations of this celebration are rooted in bloody violence. It eruped here in an obscure Judaean village over two thousand years ago … From this confrontation would arise the greatest military leader in Jewish history: Judah Maccabee. Mysteries of the Bible s5e4: Maccabees
He came out of the desert preaching redemption and repentance. Mysteries of the Bible s5e5: John the Baptist
He was venerated above all other prophets. ibid.
John the Baptist mysteriously disappears from the Biblical texts until he is an adult. ibid.
Was he considered a rival messiah? ibid.
His teachings were in the Apocalyptic tradition. ibid.
His cousin from Nazareth – Jesus. ibid.
What made the promise of a coming messiah so relevant at the time? ibid.
Throughout the Hebrew Bible it is by miracles that God makes Himself known to his chosen people. Mysteries of the Bible s5e6: Magic & Miracles
Why is Moses, perhaps the greatest worker of miracles in the Hebrew Bible, punished by God for miraculously drawing water from a rock? ibid.
Why is Magic forbidden? And what is the distinction between Magic and Miracle? Why did the time of miracles draw to an end? ibid.
All scholars agree about the Sea of Reeds. ibid.
For what seems a minor transgression Moses will suffer a terrible punishment. ibid.
King Saul bows down before the apparition. ibid.
Why didn’t Saul withdraw to fight another day? ibid.
The Witch of Endor has intrigued readers of the Bible. ibid.
The people of Israel persist in the practise of forbidden magic. ibid.
A spectacular contest between Magic and Miracle: Baal v Elijah. ibid.
Nowhere in this miraculous book of miracles – Hebrew Bible – does the word miracle occur. ibid.
Ancient Palestine: about a thousand years before Jesus. The Israelites maintain an uneasy truce with the Philistines. Mysteries of the Bible s5e7: Samson & Delilah
In all the three cities mentioned in the Bible as rebuilt by Solomon – I repeat, Gezer, Megiddo and Hazor – identical fortifications and gates were found. Yigael Yadin 1972
cf.
So Yadin started from a point where he accepts the Biblical texts, the Biblical testimony, as fully historical. Professor Israel Finkelstein, Tel Aviv University
Yadin’s dating was wrong. Israel Finkelstein
There was no mass Exodus from Egypt. There was no violent conquest of Canaan. Most of the people who formed early Israel were local people - the same people whom we see in the highlands throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. The early Israelites were – irony of ironies – themselves originally Canaanites!
The conquest of Canaan by Joshua could not have happened in the way described in the Bible. Most of the towns he is supposed to have conquered either weren’t inhabited, didn’t exist or were conquered at wildly different times.
Jerusalem, which was supposed to have become the capital of the great unified empire of King David (he of David and Goliath fame), appears to have been tiny and only sparsely inhabited in the relevant period. Many of the great monuments of ancient Israel attributed on the authority of the Old Testament to King Solomon were of a later date. Finkelstein and Silberman, The Bible Unearthed
Whereas archaeology tells us something which is the opposite. According to the archaeology the rise of early Israel is an outcome of the collapse of Canaanite society, not the reason for that collapse. Israel Finkelstein
Biblical archaeology doesn’t work. Is wrong. Israel Finkelstein
There’s no archaeological evidence for the simple reason that we cannot excavate on the Temple Mount. Israel Finkelstein
There are a few pottery shells from the tenth century on the ground, a wall here and there maybe, but nothing monumental. We are left with no archaeological evidence for the Temple of Solomon. Israel Finkelstein
The Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land [of Canaan] in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the twelve tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is the fact that the united kingdom of David and Solomon, described in the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom. Professor Ze’ev Herzog
Are the stories in the Hebrew Bible true in any sense? They are true in some sense and not in others. In other words the Biblical writers want to expand upon events, to shed light on their meaning. William Dever, archaeologist
There was no evidence of armed conflict in most of these site. At the same time it was discovered that most the large Canaanite towns that were supposed to have been destroyed by these Israelites were either not destroyed at all or destroyed by others. William Dever
There was no ancient Israel. Israel is an intellectual construct. In other words these people were not re-thinking their past, they were inventing their past. They had no past. So the Bible is a myth, a foundation myth told to legitimate a people who had no legitimacy. William G Dever, University of Arizona
The Israelites did not like the Canaanite system. And they defined themselves in contrast to that system. By not using decorated pottery, by not using imported pottery, they developed an ideology of simplicity which marked the difference between them and the Egyptian Canaanite system. Avraham Faust, Bar-Ilan University
They spread the idea of a God who represented freedom, freedom for people to keep the fruits of their own labour. This was a message that was so powerful that it brought people together and gave them a new kind of identity. Carol Meyers, Duke University