Nick Kollerstrom The Unz Review July 18, 2023

Untrue stories exist at each end of Jewish historys three thousand years fictional, fabricated and of immense magnitude. We may start in the tenth century BCE, where archaeologists have after diligent study found no trace of King Solomon, his Temple or his empire. Half a century of intensive excavation of the Holy Land has now reached that conclusion. The alleged mighty empire of David and Solomon, stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates on the basis of which the modern state of Israel was formed did not exist. Meanwhile the Bible makes no mention of the great empire of Egypt, which really did in that period stretch from the Nile to the Euphrates. These things must be relegated to storyland, like Moses parting the Red Sea. Experts were finally attaining this negative conclusion as the new millennium dawned, e.g.

• Mythic Past, Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel, Thomas Thompson, 1999
• David and Solomon, In search of the Bibles sacred Kings, Israel Finklestein and N.A. Silberman, 2006
• The Quest for the Historical Israel, Finklestein and A. Mazar, 2007
• The Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand, 2009
• Palestine, a Four Thousand Year History, Nur Masala, 2018.

Moses, Wikipedia assures us, is just a myth. The Exodus, traditionally the basis of Jewish self-identity and the most-told narrative in the western world,[1] spawns great conferences which tend to end up with the same threefold negation:

• no evidence for the Children of Israel in Egypt or escaping therefrom,
• no evidence of their trekking across the Sinai desert
• no evidence of them storming into Canaan and conquering the locals.

In modern times, Jews were given land in Palestine and called it Israel. Inspired by a great hope, their conviction was that archaeology would validate their epic history, as it had unfolded through past millennia. They went to work with a trowel in one hand and the Bible in the other but received a big shock. The Holy Land did indeed reveal to them centuries of devout monotheism during the time recorded by their ancient scriptures but, it was a reverence for the Goddess, as shown by the thousands of figurines dug up everywhere in Judea where they excavated. They were all similar with head, torso and large naked breasts.[2] Nor could any trace be discerned of a fierce invasion of Canaan by the Children of Israel as their texts averred, plus the odd record of their Jehovah-god had him with a partner, his Asherath.

It was discovered that, in the tenth century BCE there had been an intensive drought....

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