by David Warmflash

Created on: July 07, 2009   Last Updated: July 13, 2009

As a source of "truth" the Bible is about as reliable as the Iliad. Comparing its writings with other data that are drawn from archaeology and other fields, employing linguistic analysis to date and comparing its various texts, we can get an image of life, society, and certain events of the time period of the writers. The Bible is both history and myth, the way the Iliad is history and myth.

In the case of the latter, we know that the city of Troy existed (it has been excavated and apparently sat within the sway of the Hittite Empire) and that it fought wars against the Mycenean Greeks. While this basic premise of the Iliad is supported by science, few people would conclude on this basis that it is true that the gods and goddesses of Olympus took an interest in the war, took sides, or that it all started because a Troyan prince gave a golden apple to Aphrodite, goddess of love, shunning Hera's power and Athena' s wisdom.

Strangely, though, on account of excavations and inscriptions suggesting that the Bible preserves kernals of historical truth, some today have concluded that every biblical fable, from talking snakes to the claim that David and Solomon ruled an enormous empire are based on true events.

Indeed, in recent years, archaeologists and historians of the ancient Near East have been debating the question of whether or not there was a united kingdom of David and Solomon at all. This is not to say that the existence of certain later kings; 9th-8th century BCE, Samarian kings mentioned in the Bible, including Ahab son of Omri, his son Yoram, Yehu and Yoash, and Judahite kings Hezekiah and Yohahaz are mentioned in the texts of neigboring nations.

As far as the Solomonic kingdom goes, however, it is looking as though it was not so grand. Instead, it appears Solomon may have been some kind of tribal chieftain in the southern extreme of what would become the Kingdom of Israel and that David may have been a mercenary employed by a powerful Philistine city-state.

Nevertheless, the descriptions given of the organization and affairs of Solomon's reign, which the writers of the text preserved in the biblical Book of Kings, portray an age of peace, wisdom, and architectural accomplishments, which seems to fit perfectly with another kingdom that was just as much Israelite, though quite a bit more historical. This was the kingdom of Omri, who ruled Israel during the ninth century B.C.E., not from Jerusalem but from Samaria, in the north.

Apparently, Israel as

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