Megiddo, a tell in northern Israel about 30 km south-east of Haifa, was an important city-state. Excavations have unearthed 26 layers of ruins, indicating a long period of settlement. (Photos: Patterns of Evidence)
With Part 4 of our video series on “The David Rohl Lectures,” we come to our final installment looking at this extraordinary resource. This segment from David’s lectures ventures into an era of history beyond the timeframe seen in the film Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus; the time of Israel’s kings David and Solomon. With his usual clear and penetrating style, David points out intriguing finds at the city of Megiddo that match the biblical account.
One of the major challenges to David Rohl’s Middle Bronze Age Exodus Theory is that it would require a shifting of centuries for the dates assigned to the archaeological levels in Canaan. The claim is made that if the dates for the Late Bronze and Iron Ages were moved forward by a factor of 300 years or so, it would have a detrimental effect on the evidence that has been designated as biblical within the standard view for the time of Israel’s first kings. A prime example are the Solomonic gates found at Megiddo.
The Bible in 1 Kings 9:15 reads,
And this is the account of the forced labor that King Solomon drafted to build the house of the LORD and his own house and the Millo and the wall of Jerusalem and Hazor and Megiddo and Gezer.
When excavators in Israel noticed that there were city gates that had the same construction style at Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer (seemingly in line with the biblical description), they were all assigned dates in the 10th century BC to fit with the time of Solomon’s reign.
Since the middle of the 20th century, visitors to the ancient site of Megiddo have been told that the remains of an Iron Age gate system there belonged to King Solomon. But as seen in this clip, a closer examination of this construction throws that conclusion into question. Additionally, archaeologists have noted the general poverty and lack of signs of a flourishing international trade in this level of Israel’s history. This is the opposite of the Bible’s description of Solomon’s reign. According to the Bible, Solomon sought out master craftsmen from Phoenicia to assist in his building projects. However, Phoenicia at the time of the Iron Age Megiddo gate, had an absence of monumental stone buildings with no sign of the high craftsmanship that Solomon admired. These factors, once again, contribute to the high degree of skepticism about the validity of this period of biblical history.
Could the conventional thinking be off for this period as well? A look at the remains from an earlier period at Megiddo helps point the way to a different conclusion consistent with the pattern seen in our first film. Look for this portion of history to be covered in a future installment of Patterns of Evidence. Until then, we hope you enjoy this final segment from David Rohl.
In this video series we look deeper into David’s proposals which he presents in The David Rohl Lectures. Read the full series of articles here.
