Tel Dan Stele - Interpretation and Disputes - "House of David"

"House of David"

The Tel Dan stele has found favour among those who wish to defend the biblical version of Israel's ancient past. Its significance for this argument lies particularly in lines 8 and 9, which mention a "king of Israel" and a "house of David". The latter is generally understood by scholars to refer to the ruling dynasty of Judah. However, although the "king of Israel" is generally accepted, the rendering of the phrase bytdwd as "house of David" is disputed by some, in part because it appears without a word-divider between the two parts.

The significance of this fact, if any, is unclear – the majority of scholars argue that the author simply thought of "House of David" as a single word – but some have argued that "dwd" could be a name for a god ("beloved"), or could mean "uncle" (a word with a rather wider meaning in ancient times than it has today), or that the whole phrase might be a name for Jerusalem (so that the author might be claiming to have killed the son of the king of Jerusalem rather than the son of the king from the "house of David".

Other possible meanings have been suggested: it may be a place-name, or the name of a god, or an epithet. Lawrence J. Mykytiuk argues against the possibility that the term bytdwd could refer to the name of a god, cultic object, epithet or a place and concludes that in line with ancient Aramaic and Assyrian patterns for geopolitical terms, the phrase "House of David" refers to a Davidic dynasty or to the land ruled by a Davidic dynasty. But even if (as seems likely) the correct translation is "House of David", Francesca Stavrakopoulou argues that it does not logically support the assumption that the Bible's David was an historical figure.