The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at the Turn of the Millennium.

• Author: Ahituu, Shmuel
• Position: Review

The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at the Turn of the Millennium. Edited by LOWELL K. HANDY. Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East, vol. 11. Leiden: E. J. BRILL, 1997. Pp. xx + 539, 2 maps. $115.

This collection of papers and essays reflects the chaotic and confused state of biblical studies at the turn of the millennium, their influence on the study of the archaeology of Israel, and the counter-influence of archaeology on biblical studies. Scholarship is thus entangled in circular argumentation, of which one can locate neither the beginning nor the end. The papers and essays here can be divided roughly into two groups: descriptive and polemic. The more objective ones are the descriptive articles, those describing the ancient Near East around the tenth century B.C.E. They illustrate the background for the plausible emergence of the Davidic-Solomonic kingdom.

K. A. Kitchen in "Egypt and East Africa" (pp. 106-26) and "Sheba and Arabia" (pp. 127-54), describes in much detail the political situation in Egypt after the decline of the Twentieth Dynasty, the political-economic situation in southern Arabia, and the role of northwestern Arabian queens. Kitchen is convinced that the situation in Egypt--including the short revival under Shishak-and the conditions in Arabia, are reflected in the biblical description of the historical Kingdom of Solomon and the events following his death. Even if one does not accept all of Kitchen's conclusions, one cannot help admiring his mastery of the evidence, following his argumentation closely, and enjoying his sarcasm.

S. W. Holloway is not so decisive in his defense of the historicity of Solomon and his kingdom. However, his description of "Assyria and Babylonia in the Tenth Century B.C.E." (pp. 202-16) does lend strength to the plausibility of the emergence of the kingdom of David and Solomon. Between 1200 and 900 Mesopotamia was hot and arid, and suffered from infiltration by nomadic Aramaic tribes, and the collapse of the Mesopotamian empires. In such a vacuum, created by the decline of the Great Powers--the Mesopotamian empires and Egypt--the emergence of a new political entity in Palestine was both possible and logical.

The editor of the volume, L. K. Handy, supplies an overview of the "Phoenicians in the Tenth Century: A Sketch of an Outline" (pp. 154-66), which is quite sufficient to show how little we know of Phoenicia in this period. The epigraphic evidence is very meager--a common...