THIS NOBODY FROM A LITTLE COW TOWN

David and Jonathan - just good friends.

Within the CIA there is said to be a 'Jewish' faction and a 'Catholic' faction, among others.

The December 2010 edition of National Geographic magazine (David & Solomon Controversy - National Geographic Magazine) suggests that:

The Kingdom of David was quite possibly "just a little cow town."

But, it all "depends on which archaeologist you ask."

What does this tell us about the National Geographic, which is said to be an asset of the CIA.

In National Geographic, Robert Draper writes:

"While the Bible says David and Solomon built the kingdom of Israel into a powerful and prestigious empire stretching from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, from Damascus to the Negev, there's a slight problem - namely, that despite decades of searching, archaeologists had found no solid evidence that David or Solomon ever built anything."

Had found no solid evidence?

According to National geographic, Eilat Mazar works for two organizations "dedicated to the assertion of Israel's territorial rights."

In 2005, Eilat Mazar claimed she might have found the ruined remains of King David's palace.

According to National Geographic, Israeli archaeologist David Ilan of Hebrew Union College is among the many who doubt that Mazar has in fact found King David's palace.

"My gut tells me this is an eighth- or ninth-century building," he says, constructed a hundred years or more after Solomon died in 930 B.C.

National Geographic quotes Israel Finklestein.

Tel Aviv University's Israel Finkelstein is among those who point out that the so-called "Solomonic" buildings, excavated at Hazor, Gezer, and Megiddo, were constructed well after David and Solomon's time.

According to Finkelstein, King David's Jerusalem was little more than a "hill-country village."

David's kingdom would consist of "500 people with sticks in their hands shouting and cursing and spitting."

Most Israelis apparently were Khazars who converted to the Jewish religion. The Palestinians are the people most likely to have links to the Kingdom of David.

National Geographic has awarded grants to two archaeologists, Yosef Garfinkel and Thomas Levy.

National Geographic reports that, in the Elah Valley, where David allegedly slew Goliath, Hebrew University professor Yosef Garfinkel claims to have found the remains of a 'city' dating to the time that David reigned.

University of California, San Diego professor Thomas Levy has been excavating a 'copper-smelting operation', in an area linked to David's alleged enemies, the Edomites.

Levy dates one period of copper production to the tenth century B.C.

This was when, according to the Bible, the Edomites lived in the area.

But, scholars like Finkelstein state that Edom did not emerge until two centuries later.

Levy and Garfinkel support their claims with data including pottery remnants and radiocarbon dating of olive and date pits found at the sites.

David killed Goliath?

"Maybe Goliath never existed," Garfinkel tells National Geographic.

Garfinkel learnt about a nine foot high megalithic wall and began digging in 2008.

He found buildings which carbon-14 analysis dated to around 1000 B.C. He found bones from cattle, goats, sheep, and fish - but no pig bones.

This suggested Judaeans may have lived here.

A clay pottery object was found with writing that appears to be a proto-Canaanite script.

This suggested a tenth-century B.C. complex Judaean society of the sort which Finkelstein claimed did not exist.

If the Kingdom of David existed it was a very tiny place.

According to National Geographic, Yossi Garfinkel originally announced his conclusions "despite the fact that he had only four olive pits on which to base his dating, a single inscription of a highly ambiguous nature, and a mere 5 percent of his site excavated."

According to archaeologist David Ilan, "Yossi has an agenda - partly ideological, but also personal. He's a very smart and ambitious guy. Finkelstein's the big gorilla, and the young bucks think he's got a monopoly over biblical archaeology. So they want to dethrone him."

King David is important to Moslems, who call him Daoud, and to Jews and Christians.

Daniel Polisar is president of the Shalem Center, the Israeli research institute that helped fund Eilat Mazar's excavation work.

National Geographic quotes Polisar as saying: "You take David and his kingdom out of the book, and you have a different book.

"The narrative is no longer a historical work, but a work of fiction. And then the rest of the Bible is just a propagandistic effort to create something that never was. And if you can't find the evidence for it, then it probably didn't happen. That's why the stakes are so high."

According to national Geographic, the books of the Old Testament telling the story of David and Solomon were probably written at least 300 years after the event.

No other texts from that time exist to back up the story.

National Geographic points out that scholars have failed to provide proof that there really was an Abraham, a Moses, an Exodus or a conquest of Jericho.

Yigael Yadin, an Israeli, uncovered city gates at Hazor in the late 1950s.

He claimed the gates belonged to the tenth-century B.C. empire of Solomon.

Why? Because that was what it said in the First Book of Kings.

The First Book of Kings was added long after Solomon died in 930 B.C.

According to National geographic, unless new evidence emerges, we're left with tenth-century B.C. biblical world that Finkelstein first proposed in a 1996 paper.

That means no large Kingdom of David with fine buildings, but instead a collection of small kingdoms including Philistines, Moabites and Aramaeans.

What about the Palestinians?

East Jerusalem resident and archaeology professor Hani Nur el-Din is quoted by National Geographic as saying, "When I see Palestinian women making the traditional pottery from the early Bronze Age, when I smell the taboon bread baked in the same tradition as the fourth or fifth millennium B.C., this is the cultural DNA. In Palestine there's no written document, no historicity - but still, it's history."

Anyone seen the Kingdom of David?

There is a problem with carbon dating.

National Geographic quotes Eilat mazar as saying: "Carbon-14 doesn't help you solve all this controversy.

"You have the plus or minus" - a margin of error of about 40 years.

"You have different laboratories bringing different interpretations. You have debates about the whole C-14 issue."

Finkelstein says: "Think of the Bible the way you would a stratified archaeological site.

"Some of it was written in the eighth century B.C., some the seventh, and then going all the way to the second B.C. So 600 years of compilation. This doesn't mean that the story doesn't come from antiquity. But the reality presented in the story is a later reality. David, for example, is a historical figure. He did live in the tenth century B.C.

"I accept the descriptions of David as some sort of leader of an upheaval group, troublemakers who lived on the margins of society. But not the golden city of Jerusalem, not the description of a great empire in the time of Solomon. When the authors of the text describe that, they have in their eyes the reality of their own time, the Assyrian Empire.

"Now, Solomon. I think I destroyed Solomon, so to speak. Sorry for that! But take Solomon, dissect it. Take the great visit of the Queen of Sheba—an Arabian queen coming to visit, bringing all sorts of exotic commodities to Jerusalem.

"This is a story which is an impossibility to think about before 732 B.C., before the beginning of Arabian trade under Assyrian domination. Take the story of Solomon as the great, you know, trainer in horses and chariots and big armies and so on. The world behind Solomon is the world of the Assyrian century."

What about Tom Levy's copper mining?

Finkelstein says, "I don't buy that it's from the tenth century B.C. There's no way people lived on this site during production. The fire, the toxic fumes—forget it! Instead, look at the fortress of En Hazeva on our side of the Jordan River, built by the Assyrians on the main road to Edom.

"I see Tom's building as an eighth-century Assyrian fortress parallel to the other one. And look, at the end of the day, his is a marginal site. It's not a stratified city with many eras, like Megiddo and Tel Rehov. Taking a pile of slag and making it the center of the discussion of biblical history—forget it, no way, I reject this absolutely!"

What about Garfinkel's 'city'?

Finkelstein says: "Look, you'll never catch me saying, 'I've found one olive pit at a stratum in Megiddo, and this olive pit - which goes against hundreds of carbon-14 determinations - is going to decide the fate of Western civilization.' "

The writing found at the site? Probably Philistine.

According to National geographic, even if Mazar, Levy and Garfinkel can prove their findings, "this does not a glorious biblical dynasty make."

National geographic quotes Finkelstein as saying: "Look, when I'm doing research, I have to distinguish between the culture of David and the historical David.

"David is extremely important for my cultural identity.... I'm proud that this nobody from nowhere became the center of Western tradition."

The National Geographic does not seem particularly pro-Israel.