McKenzie, Steven L. King David: A Biography. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

The first part of King David attempts to answer two questions: 1) “Do sources outside of the Bible indicate that David really existed?” and 2) “How may the Bible be used to reconstruct David’s life?” (10).  Although one might surmise that someone as famous and powerful as King David would be greatly attested in the “thousands of ancient documents from hundreds of sites throughout the Middle East” that have been excavated in last two centuries, the truth is that “there is little concrete information about David outside of the Bible” (10).  To be fair, however, the time period in which our author places the rule of the Davidic Kingdom (ca. 1000 B.C.E.) is known as a “dark age” because there is relatively few records from this period of Mesopotamian history than for other historical time periods (10).  “The relative paucity of documents from this period may help to explain why no mention of David was found for such a long time” (11).

Before the summer of 1993 scholars could claim there was not a shred of historical evidence for the historical David outside the Bible.  However, this is no longer true.  Three artifacts have since been discovered that appear to confirm the historicity of King David: 1) the Tel Dan Stele, 2) The Mesha Stele (11-18), and 3) The Shoshenq Relief.  The Tel Dan Stele is simply an inscribed monument (or “stele”) found in the ancient ruins of the city of Dan in northern Israel.  This monument was crafted from a very expensive stone and “was most likely the work of a king,” “clear and elegantly inscribed” (11).  Thought to have been erected by an Aramaic King in ancient Syria sometime before 800 B.C.E., the monument makes reference to “Jehoram son of Ahab, King of Israel” and “Ahaziahu son of Jehoram, king of the House of David” (12).  Both Kings are biblically attested (2 Kgs 9-10) and the language of the “House of David” also parallels the biblical language about the Davidic Kingdom (1 Sam 20:16; 2 Sam 3:1, 6, 1 Kgs 12:19, 26, 2 Kgs 17:21; 2 Chr 10:19; 21:7; Neh 12:37; Ps 122:5; Is 7:2, 13; 16:5; 22:2; Jer 21:12; Zech 12:7-12; 13:1).

The Mesha Stele was a Moabite Stone found in 1868 among the ruins of Dibon (the ancient capital of Moab) that also makes mention of “the house [of Da]vid.”  Even though this monument is “less certain” than the Tel Dan Stele because it is broken and the full phrase is only partially visible, it apparently “would refer to the nation of Judah or its royal family” (14).  The Mesha stele and the Tel Dan inscription together “seem to accord with the Bible’s depiction of David as the founder of the nation and dynasty of Judah—‘the house of David’” (15).

The third discovery known as the Shoshenq Relief hails Pharaoh Shoshenq’s raid into Palestine in 925 B.C.E. in a carving on the temple of Amun in Thebes.  In the context of a list of places that Shosenq claims to have captured in southern Judah and the Negev (the stronghold of the Davidic Kingdom) a phrase appears that the British Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen renders “highland/heights of David” (15).  The reference in this third piece of historical evidence is more disputable and may not refer to King David at all, though some have understood it that way.  In light of the three aforementioned discoveries, the claim that there is no certain reference to David in history is a distortion of the facts (16).  In addition to these inscriptions, there are also archeological sites that are possibly linked to David (17).  This leads the author to conclude:

Archaeology has not yet proved David’s historical existence.  But it has not disproved it either.  The evidence is interpreted differently by different people.  The assumption that David was a real person remains a viable and defensible one.  The references to his name in inscriptions add some weight to this assumption, as do the “Solomonic” cities (23).