"House of David"
See also: Davidic lineThe 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.
Read more about this topic: Tel Dan Stele, Interpretation and Disputes
Famous quotes containing the words house of, house and/or david:
“Do not forsake your friend or the friend of your parent; do not go to the house of your kindred in the day of your calamity. Better is a neighbor who is nearby than kindred who are far away.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 27:10.
“Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!”
—Robert Browning (1812–1889)
“He said, truly, that the reason why such greatly superior numbers quailed before him was, as one of his prisoners confessed, because they lacked a cause,—a kind of armor which he and his party never lacked. When the time came, few men were found willing to lay down their lives in defense of what they knew to be wrong; they did not like that this should be their last act in this world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)