Wednesday Bible Study: Architectural Digest

Chapter 7 describes Solomon ' s palace, which as I noted before is 4 times bigger than the Temple and takes almost twice as long to build. Make what you will of that. While the First Temple probably existed, the lack of archaeological evidence for it is not surprising since the Temple Mount cannot be excavated. However, no such excuse exists for this structure. Remains of a defensive city wall from about 1,000 BC have been found in Jerusalem, but this is not evidence for the existence of the palace as some people want to claim. In fact there is no archaeological evidence for the existence of a king Solomon; there are no inscriptions or writings with his name other than this book. The only apparent reason for reciting all these grandiose details of the palace is the reason animating all of the story of Solomon so far: to aggrandize his person and kingdom to the point of absurdity. The 700 wives and 300 concubines, including a marriage to Pharaoh ' s daughter; the ridiculous numbers of horses and chariots and men under arms; the preposterous tribute paid to him; all of this is to create a myth of a glorious national past. I ' m not sure of the motivation for this since it makes the present seem shabby and, as we shall see, Solomon will abandon Yahweh and all of this will be destroyed. Some people make mockery of Solomon ' s " sea " -- really a big water tank -- being 10 cubits in diameter and 30 in circumference, therefore pi=3. I ' ll excuse the founding error. Appar...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs