Page "History of Jerusalem" Paragraph 8

According to the Bible, the Israelite history of the city began in c. 1000 BCE, with King David's sack of Jerusalem, following which Jerusalem became the City of David and capital of the United Kingdom of Israel.

According to the Books of Samuel, the Jebusites managed to resist attempts by the Israelites to capture the city, and by the time of King David were mocking such attempts, claiming that even the blind and lame could defeat the Israelite army.

Nevertheless, the masoretic text for the Books of Samuel states that David managed to capture the city by stealth, sending his forces through a " water shaft " and attacking the city from the inside.

Archaeologists now view this as implausible as the Gihon spring – the only known location from which water shafts lead into the city – is now known to have been heavily defended ( and hence an attack via this route would have been obvious rather than secretive ).

The older Septuagint text, however, suggests that rather than by a water shaft, David's forces defeated the Jebusites by using daggers rather than through the water tunnels coming through the Gihon spring.