Dan

Most pastors die because of isolation.

Remember that tribe in northern Israel? They lived in a town called Laish.

And when they were attacked by the Danites, they came to grief because...

They lived in isolation.

I think that has a big question mark on it.

I try to focus on artifacts where even the secular archaeologists would go, yes, we can argue about the interpretation, but yes, that a stele or stone inscription was found in Tel Dan in the early 1990s, and it says House of David on And this confirms the existence of David and the Davidic dynasty.

Like that's not that that would be attested to by by Christian and secular archaeologists alike.

Dinesh, what do you think in terms of, you know, I've been in I've been to Israel myself there earlier this year.

You know you could have had your pick of any assignment this summer.

I know for a fact that Tel Dan was considering you for site director.

You would have been the youngest site director in the region, but you came here.

No, I'm not keeping tabs on you.

End footnote.

Its principal source is at Tel el-Kadi, where it rises out of a basaltic mound whose summit is crowned by the ruins of Laish.

Footnote.

This source is mentioned by Josephus as being that of the little Jordan.

Footnote.

Pahira is probably Safed, Kart Nizanu, the flowery city, the Kartha of Zabulon, and Bikerot, the Birotha of Josephus, near Merom.

Meroma and Lauisa, Laissa, have been identified with Merom and Laish.

End footnote.

So prior to 1990, interestingly enough, you couldn't do it.

But then the Tel Dan steli, the Tel Dan inscription comes out.

And it's very credible because it's not even written by the Israelites.

It's written by Hazael of Aram, the Syrian king, boasting about his victories over the house of David.

And that led to a lot of scholars saying, well, King David is a mythical figure.

And then in the early 90s, at a place called Tel Dan, they found the Tel Dan steel, which mentions the house of David.

The first time that David's name is mentioned outside of the context of the Bible is and from then everyone was like okay david existed and since then the debate has been was he this sort of relatively powerful ruler as the bible suggests or was he more like a sort of village chief and that debate goes on and that's fine you know there's loads we're not

Did he fell Goliath with a single stone? Did he fell Goliath with

In contrast, the maximalist position says that while the Bible may or may not be the word of God, it has a lot of credible historical information and so we can use it to do our archaeological research.

And so the minimalists had a lot of influence over the years until 1993 when they discovered King David's name in a monumental inscription found at Tel Dan, this location in northern Israel named after the tribe of Dan.

It's a site you can visit today.

But this stone stele, as it's called, a big monument with an inscription, and it referred to the house of David.

So it was this foreign king who claimed to invade the city of Dan, and he killed the kings of Israel and Judah.

But the king of Judah, he refers to as from the house of David.

So the significance there is the phrase house of David refers to David's dynasty, right? It indicates he wasn't just...

Are there any other findings that point to King David's existence? Well, we have found a number

The area we are in is Tel Hebron.

Tel, you might recognize from things like Tel Aviv or Tel Dan.

Tel simply is the name of a city that was built on top of another city.

So when one civilization built a city, it was destroyed or whatever happened to them, and then another group shows up and puts some dirt over it and builds another, and so on and so on.