Page "Solomon" Paragraph 49

According to Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman, authors of The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, at the time of the kingdoms of David and Solomon, Jerusalem was populated by only few hundred residents or less, which is insufficient for an empire stretching from the Euphrates to Eilath.

According to The Bible Unearthed, archaeological evidence suggests that the kingdom of Israel at the time of Solomon was little more than a small city state, and so it is implausible that Solomon received tribute as large as 666 talents of gold per year.

Although both Finkelstein and Silberman accept that David and Solomon were real kings of Judah about the 10th century BC, they claim that the earliest independent reference to the Kingdom of Israel is about 890 BC, and for Judah about 750 BC.

They suggest that due to religious prejudice, the authors of the Bible suppressed the achievements of the Omrides ( whom the Hebrew Bible describes as being polytheist ), and instead pushed them back to a supposed golden age of Judaism and monotheists, and devotees of YHWH.

Some Biblical minimalists like Thomas L. Thompson go further, arguing that Jerusalem only became a city and capable of being a state capital in the mid-seventh century.

Likewise, Finkelstein and others consider the claimed size of Solomon's temple implausible.