Athas, Setting The Record Straight What Are We Making of The Tel Dan Inscription? Journal of Semitic Studies 2006

Journal of Semitic Studies LI/2 Autumn 2006 doi:10.1093/jss/fgl001 WHAT ARE WE MAKING OF THE DANof INSCRIPTION? The author.
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SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: WHAT ARE WE MAKING OF THE TEL DAN INSCRIPTION?
GEORGE ATHAS
SYDNEY
Abstract
Contrary to the review by Victor Sasson, the author's treatment of the Tel Dan Inscription is not a new Minimized reading of the fragments. A closer reading of his arguments reveals that he actually argues against the Minimizers. The Tel Dan Inscription provides us with good evidence for the historicity of David which is in line with biblical testimony, and suggests the reliability of the biblical record. Furthermore, we need to read the Bible more carefully to avoid false expectations about what we are looking for in archaeology. In relation to the inscription, context demands that the word should not be understood as a dynastic label for Judah, but rather as a toponym for Jerusalem as a city-state. Sasson also misunderstands the nuances of the words and in the inscription. The author's own position is then summarized in ten points, including a reconstruction of the text.
I. Introductory Remarks Few would disagree that the Tel Dan Inscription is the most significant inscription found in recent years for the study of Levantine history. My monograph on the inscription (The Tel Dan Inscription: A Reappraisal and a New Interpretation1) has met with some scathing responses from William Schniedewind,2 Nadav Naaman3 and Victor Sasson4 scholars for whom I have the utmost respect. Some of their comments, however, are disconcerting for they appear to have
1 Copenhagen International Seminar, 12; JSOTSupp Series, 360, Sheffield 2003. 2 RBL 2004, 8891. 3 Naamans review appeared on the RBL website (www.bookreviews.org) in 2004, and will be forthcoming in print in RBL 2005. 4 Victor Sasson, The Tell Dan Aramaic Inscription: The Problems of a New Minimized Reading, JSS 50:1 (2005), 2334.
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WHAT ARE WE MAKING OF THE TEL DAN INSCRIPTION?
misunderstood some of my arguments regarding the inscription and occasionally portray me arguing the opposite of my case. I hope here to address some of the issues which Victor Sasson in particular raises, and also to clarify my own position.5 II. Minimizing Issues Victor Sassons review of my work was particularly scathing, criticizing it as a new minimized reading of the Tel Dan Inscription.6 Sasson relegates me to the camp of the Minimizers (also known as Minimalists or Revisionists), something at which I am quite surprised.7 By Minimizers, he means scholars who largely reject the value of the Hebrew Bible for historical reconstruction, a position which he himself does not hold and nor do I. Like Sasson, I remain convinced that the Bible can and should be used for the purposes of historical reconstruction. Its reliability vis--vis the archaeological record is impressive, and overwhelmingly suggests that if we do not use the Bible in historical reconstruction, we are turning a blind eye to a veritable goldmine of history. This is not an about-face position that I am taking up, but one which I have consistently held, and which I believe investigation into the Tel Dan Inscription supports. On reading Sassons article, however, one would think I was arguing the exact opposite. I believe the reason for Sassons misunderstanding has to do with the minimizing issues I was addressing. The Tel Dan Inscription polarized the scholarly community into those who believed it supported the biblical accounts, and those who believed it did not. My initial desire was to investigate both sides of the argument, using the Tel Dan Inscription as a case-study. Sasson, however, implies that my motive was to prop up the case of the Minimizers, of whom I had apparently become an ardent supporter.8 Quite to the contrary, I believe the Tel Dan Inscription tips the scales firmly away from the position of the Minimizers, and a close reading of my arguments testifies to this. In the end, I concentrated on the inscription itself rather than the polarized academy beI will give only a brief comment on Naamans review at the end of this article. Note the sub-title of Sassons article: The Problems of a New Minimized Reading. 7 Cf. Schniedewinds claim that my work shows the marked influence of the Copenhagen International Seminar; see RBL 2004, 88. 8 Sasson, The Tell Dan Aramaic Inscription, 24.
6 5
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hind it, because there were so many loose ends to do with the inscription itself. When I had the opportunity to see the fragments myself, I found discrepancies between it and the published photographs, and these details needed to be addressed before I could consider the two scholarly camps. As work progressed, it became evident to me that those who wished to minimize the importance of the Bible had a lot to answer for. Thus, in framing my argument, I essentially began with the issues as Minimizers see them, and tried to show how we could no longer sustain these positions. I am sorry that Sasson and others have misunderstood these minimizing assertions as my own. For example, on p. 299 of my work one will find the following statement: The temporal gulf between the early Iron Age and the setting down of the traditions in writing makes the biblical record an unknown quantity at best and a pure fabrication at worst. Sasson believes that this is a summary of my own position.9 However, if one pays attention to the sustained argument in which this statement appears, one will see that this is in fact not my own position, but rather a summary of the position of such scholars as Philip Davies, Niels Peter Lemche and Thomas L. Thompson. It is, in fact, a position I argue against. My own position is that there are definite historical kernels in the Bible that cannot readily be dismissed, and that the biblical records are an integral part in reconstructing the history of Syria-Palestine.10 Thus, while some archaeologists and historians suggest that the United Monarchy is dead and buried, I believe both archaeology and the biblical records are in accord, implying that the United Monarchy is most certainly alive and buried in the earth of Syria-Palestine. The United Monarchy perhaps does not look as lustrous in material terms as we expected it to, but the Tel Dan Inscription (along with other factors) suggests that it was a reality. Furthermore, if we would simply look at the biblical records more closely, we would see that they also do not portray the Jerusalem of the United Monarchy as a massive metropolis. Both David and Solomon engaged in building activities, but these did not constitute a metropolis of colossal proportions, though they may have impressed the few inhabitants of Jerusalem at the time. As such, when we look for the United Monarchy in archaeology, we are not actually looking for a grandiose and lustrous empire. On the contrary, the biblical record suggests, along with the artefactual remains, that the lustre of
9 10
Sasson, The Tell Dan Aramaic Inscription, 29. Athas, The Tel Dan Inscription, 316f.
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the United Monarchy lay more in its ideology or theology than in its economics. Any material prosperity it had was so short-lived in early Iron II that it has left hardly any mark on the archaeological record. To go looking for such lustre, therefore, is to look for the wrong thing. In considering the archaeological record of Jerusalem from early Iron II, Naaman asked the question whether Jerusalem was a cow town or a royal capital.11 The answer the Bible gives is both, and Naamans own analysis supported this. As David Merling aptly puts it, A city (or king) was what the ancients considered a city/king, not what modern readers interpret.12 Gabriel Barkays comments are also very pertinent at this point:
We tend to define cities as large sites, well fortified, where the building density is greater than in sites termed villages. In biblical times, however, any place built by royal initiative or housing a representative of the central authority, even a small site or isolated fort, was called a city (ir).13
This rings particularly true for the United Monarchy, and the biblical record supports it. David did not conquer a bustling metropolis in Jerusalem, but rather a small fort ( )which he renamed after himself and around which he constructed a few buildings (2 Sam. 5:9). This implies that, to begin with, there was not very much in the way of infrastructure at Jerusalem. In addition, Solomon, although he experienced a period of prosperity, was struggling to keep his kingdom together and was in ruinous debt when he died. His son, Rehoboam, suffered the loss of most of his kingdom and the confiscation of all his wealth by Shishak (1 Kgs 14:26). Jerusalem was home to a royal family whose early wealth consisted more in its ideological store than its material acquisitions or economic success. Sasson asks whether in c. 800 BCE the king of Aram-Damascus would make a reference by name to such a small feudal estate as the one of Jerusalem.14 The answer is most certainly yes, for this small feudal estate in Jerusalem was an actual historical entity with at least some standing on the international scene. The Tel Dan Inscription
Nadav Naaman, Cow Town or Royal Capital? Evidence for Iron Age Jerusalem, BAR 23:4 (1997), 437, 67. 12 David Merling, The Relationship between Archaeology and the Bible: Expectations and Reality, in James K. Hoffmeier and Alan Millard (eds), The Future of Biblical Archaeology: Reassessing Methodologies and Assumptions, (Grand Rapids 2004), 2942 (esp. p. 36). 13 Gabriel Barkay, The Iron Age II-III, in Amnon Ben-Tor (ed.), The Archaeology of Ancient Israel (trans. R. Greenberg; New Haven 1992), 30273 (esp. p. 329). 14 Sasson, The Tell Dan Aramaic Inscription, 31.
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11
testifies to this fact. Although the archaeological remains of Jerusalem from this era are meagre, this is not evidence of Jerusalems obscurity or lack of standing in international politics. Naamans brief analysis mentioned previously considers how Jerusalems paucity of artefactual remains from Late Bronze II (fourteenththirteenth centuries BCE) does not preclude the fact that Jerusalem was still a noticeable political entity on the international stage at that time, for the Amarna corpus demonstrates that it was.15 We appear to have a similar situation in early Iron II. What is it that demands we see Jerusalem as a major conurbation before Hezekiahs day? If it is merely our own expectations, then we must put them to rest, for neither the biblical nor the archaeological records hint at such a polis. Jerusalems importance in early Iron II stemmed from its Davidic theology more than anything else.16 So what do the Tel Dan fragments tell us about David? They are solid evidence for the historicity of David, but they are not proof. In order to understand this, we have to make a basic distinction between evidence and proof. Evidence is something which may be submitted in support of a particular case, but which does not necessarily prove the case. At best, evidence can give 99% surety. Proof , however, is something which provides 100% surety, and which cannot logically be argued against. The Tel Dan Inscription is not unequivocal proof for the historicity of David or the reliability of the Bible. It is, however, solid evidence which must form part of a cumulative body of evidence. This body of evidence suggests that David was indeed an historical figure and that the Bible must play a key role in historical investigation. In other words, while we have not found Davids corpse in a clearly marked tomb, the Tel Dan Inscription presents us with something of a trail pointing firmly in Davids direction. And this trail seems to follow the same path that the biblical records do. Thus it is unlikely that David was a purely fictional character. While Minimizers prefer to be agnostic on the historicity
Naaman, Cow Town or Royal Capital?, 45. This is one of the reasons I believe Devers assertion that theology is ill-suited to a productive investigation of ancient Israels history to be unjustified. If the theology was so foundational to the existence of Jerusalems political structures, theology can become a valuable investigative tool when used appropriately. While some of Devers comments are warranted, he seems to drive an unnecessary wedge between history and theology, creating a false dichotomy in the process. See William G. Dever, Philology, Theology, and Archaeology: What Kind of History of Israel Do We Want, and What is Possible?, in Neil Asher Silberman and David Small (eds), The Archaeology of Israel: Constructing the Past, Interpreting the Present, (JSOTSupp Series, 237, Sheffield 1997), 290310 (esp. pp. 2947).
16 15
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issue in the absence of proof, I believe there is sufficient evidence to see David as a real human being in Iron Age Israel. We must keep in mind that the Tel Dan Inscription is not direct evidence for David, for it is not about David himself. Nevertheless, it presents an historical situation which the biblical record can corroborate. On this I am sure Sasson and I are actually in agreement. Sasson also criticizes me for contending that the Hellenistic era is the milieu for the biblical narratives about the kings of Israel and Judah. Again, this is not actually my contention at all. He quotes p. 307 of my book, in which I state, [Thomas L.] Thompson may well be correct in his suggestion that the Hellenistic era is the milieu belying the biblical narratives of the kings. However, Sasson does not appear willing to consider the wider context in which this statement appears, asserting that however I deal with Thompsons claim is of no concern to us at this point.17 This does not seem quite fair. The sentence he quotes appears in the midst of an argument in which I claim that the Tel Dan Inscription affirms that there are many definitive points of contact between the biblical documents and history known from archaeological sources. As a result of these points of contact, any chronological gap between the actual historical events and their setting down in writing loses its significance for questioning the reliability of the Bible. In other words, we cannot appeal to a chronological gap as proof of the unreliability of the Bible, for the Tel Dan Inscription and other artefactual evidence suggests the Bible is reliable. And what is more, that reliability becomes even more remarkable if the biblical documents were originally written in the Hellenistic era, as Thompson claims, for the time lapse between event and documentation has not destroyed the reliability of the documentation. This speaks against Thompsons claims that continuity in historical records and historical knowledge has been repeatedly broken.18 Is Thompson right in arguing that the Hellenistic era lies behind the biblical accounts of the kings? The very least we can say is that even if the documents themselves were written in the Hellenistic era, we should not seek the referents of the royal characters in the Hellenistic era. In other words, the biblical kings and the events in which the Bible portrays them are not mere ciphers for actual people or events in the Hellenistic era. Rather, they provide a reliable portrayal
Sasson, The Tell Dan Aramaic Inscription, 33. Thomas L. Thompson, House of David: An Eponymic Referent to Yahweh as Godfather, SJOT 9 (1995), 5975 (esp. p. 74).
18 17
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of people and events in the Iron Age and their referents should be sought in that era. Thus, even if Thompson is correct about a Hellenistic date, and I do not believe he is, his claim that this necessarily makes the Bible unreliable and that the documents are really about the Hasmoneans is not thereby justified. What I suggest is that one of the sources for the biblical accounts was probably the royal compound of Jerusalem which David originally captured and renamed (i.e., the City of David), because numerous Judaean kings were buried in it over a number a centuries. It would have been a veritable historical capsule.19 We can presume that this compound was destroyed in the Babylonian invasion of 586 BCE (cf. 2 Kgs 25:9). Thus, in my opinion, the composition of the relevant biblical documents was likely to have started before the Exile, and was completed some time after Jehoiachins release from prison at Babylon in c. 561 BCE (cf. 2 Kgs 25:2730). III. The Foundations of the House of David (Bayt-Dawid) Undoubtedly the most controversial aspect of the Tel Dan Inscription is the lexeme in line A9 (i.e., Fragment A, line 9). Sasson claims that I dismiss the analyses of scholars who conclude that it refers to the Davidic dynasty and, therefore, to the kingdom of Judah.20 However, this is not entirely accurate. Scholars are correct in pointing out that state entities were often known by dynastic labels in the ancient world. In evidence they proffer the famous example of Israel, which is often referred to in Assyrian records as Bit umri (House of Omri), after Omri, the founder of an Israelite dynasty.21 On analogy, it is surmised that should be translated as House of David, and must thereby be a reference to the kingdom of Judah as a state entity. This reasoning would certainly be plausible were it not for the fact that the word in the Tel Dan Inscription appears to be preceded by the word ( ][king of). If we scan all the occurrences outside the Tel Dan Inscription in which state entities are called by a dynastic label, we will find no instance in which someone is referred to as the king of a dynastic label. For example, no Israelite king is referred to in Assyrian records by the phrase sar Bit umri (king of the House of Omri). This is not surprising, though, because a king
19 20
Athas, The Tel Dan Inscription, 306. Sasson, The Tell Dan Aramaic Inscription, 29. 21 The best exemplar is Shalmaneser IIIs Black Obelisk.
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does not rule a dynasty he rules a kingdom, a specific area of land. Thus, it is not that the word itself cannot be a dynastic label in some other context. Rather, when preceded by the word , it is highly unlikely to be a dynastic label. This all suggests that is not actually a dynastic label, but rather a toponym that is, it refers to a place which a king ruled, rather than a political institution which ruled a certain place. This does not mean that the place had no political institution. On the contrary, the fact that this place rates a mention in the Tel Dan Inscription suggests that there was a political entity there, and one which could form a political alliance with the kingdom of Israel. However, in the Tel Dan Inscription, the political institution is marked by the word ][, and the word marks the domain held by this political institution. When we come to identify where exactly this place was, Jerusalem appears to be the outstanding candidate. The word can easily be identified as the Aramaic equivalent of the Hebrew label (City of David). It therefore refers not to a region, but to a specific city. Thus, contrary to Sassons reading of my conclusion, I believe we can read as House of David so long as we recognize it as a toponym for Jerusalem, rather than a dynastic label for Judah. We might even translate it as Davidstead.22 It is actually quite difficult to see all of Judah being named , for we have no other evidence that the region was ever called this. Yet, contrary to Schniedewinds contentions, we do have evidence in the biblical account of Jerusalem being named after David (2 Sam. 5:9).23 This leads us to view Jerusalem at the time the Tel Dan Inscription was written (c. 800 BCE) as a city-state rather than a regional state. It is appropriate, then, to ask how much of the surrounding countryside Jerusalem ruled in c. 800 BCE. To frame an answer to this, it is useful to compare the use of Bayt-Dawid and Judah as labels for Jerusalems domain. Sennacheribs account of his campaign against Hezekiah a century later reveals that by 701 BCE Jerusalem ruled a good deal of the region, and Hezekiahs state was known by the name of this region: Judah. The earlier use of the label BaytDawid instead of Judah in the Tel Dan Inscription suggests that the domain of the Davidic dynasty was probably somewhat smaller in
22 Stead is a word of Germanic origin, originally meaning place or city (cf. Germans Stadt), and is used in compound words like homestead. This seems to be the closest English equivalent to the connotation of in the Aramaic label . 23 Schniedewind, RBL 2004, 90.
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800 BCE, restricted perhaps to the environs around Jerusalem itself. This would fit well with the central importance of Jerusalem from the time of David onwards, as well as the political climate of the late ninth century BCE when Hazael of Damascus was keeping most others in the southern Levant quite humble. This does not, however, mean that the royal family residing in Jerusalem did not make ideological claims to ruling more territory than they actually did. To see that such claims would not have been out of the ordinary, we may turn to Ps. 2:8 as evidence, in which Yahweh tells the king in Zion, Ask of me and I will make the nations your own estate, the ends of the earth as your own possession. Also Ps. 72:8 says of the king, May he dominate from sea to sea, from the River to the ends of the earth. The frontiers of the Promised Land also come to mind as a claim for sovereignty over all territory between the Wadi of Egypt (Wadi El-Arish) and the Euphrates (Gen. 15:18; cf. 1 Kgs 8:65). And then there is the lesser extent of the land stretching from Dan to Beersheba (cf. 2 Sam. 3:10). Thus, it may well be that in c. 800 BCE Jerusalem claimed dominion over all of Judah (if not more), even if it did not actually have dominion over all of Judah. In any case, such a claim to regional sovereignty is effectively denied by the Damascene author of the Tel Dan Inscription who portrays Israels southern neighbour as a city-state, rather than a regional state. Damascuss supremacy before this time does suggest that this may not have been mere propaganda, but that there was some substance behind it. However, the eclipse of Damascuss power in the early eighth century BCE turned the tide, and Jerusalem was soon able to realize regional sovereignty throughout Judah. IV. A Plot against Land In arguing for the identification of Bayt-Dawid as Jerusalem, I take as evidence the phrase .( their land) in line A10. The author of the Tel Dan Inscription, whom I identify as Bar Hadad II, son of Hazael, views the land of Israel and Bayt-Dawid as essentially one terrain, for he uses the singular noun ( land) to refer to it. It is not hard to see how an outsider would view the central highlands of Palestine between the Jezreel Valley and the Negev as one terrain, no matter how many state entities it was home to; it is one unit of terrain. Sasson, however, charges me with downsizing both Israel and Judah to little, insignificant plots of ground.24 He has unfortunately
24
Sasson, The Tell Dan Aramaic Inscription, 31.

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taken my understanding of the word in line A4, and imposed it upon the occurrence of in line A10, thus committing an error of nuance transfer. While a word might have a variety of nuances within its semantic range, it is usually only one of those nuances that is implied in a given context. Furthermore, it would be wrong to assume that every time a particular word occurred in the same piece of writing it had precisely the same nuance on each occasion. Sasson, though, has either made this assumption himself, or thinks that I have, or else he has failed to appreciate my reconstruction of line A4. Let me explain. Sasson appears to understand in line A4 as referring to a land in the sense of a kingdom, and that the author is referring to the land of his father, using the phrase .. This has been the view since Biran and Naveh first published Fragment A.25 However, Sasson does not consider the discovery of a lamed protruding from the lacuna between the aleph and beth near the end of line A4.26 This extra letter means that the letters immediately following in line A4 are not ( my father), but rather . This, I suggest, is part of the name of the deity El-Baytel (or El Bethel) a manifestation of El in the form of an aniconic maebah (or bethel-stone).27 This completely changes the context in which the word occurs. We can no longer see line A4 as referring to the land of the authors father, for the context is not geopolitical, but rather cultic. The beginning of line A4, which preserves the letters , was originally thought to be part of a reference to ( Israel).28 The shift in context which the discovery of the lamed brings suggests that the reconstruction ( hearth) is more appropriate.29 The following word should then be taken adjectivally as ancient, and not adverbially as previously. The author no longer appears to be talking about Israels former incursions into the land of his father, but about rituals carried out on the ancient hearth of El-Baytel, seemingly in memory of his deceased father (Hazael). In this context, takes on the nuance of a small plot of ground on which such an ancient hearth stood.
25 Avraham Biran and Joseph Naveh, An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan, IEJ 43 (1993), 8198 (esp. pp. 87, 90, 92); The Tel Dan Inscription: Another Fragment, IEJ 45 (1995), 118 (esp. pp. 1214). 26 I discuss this discovery in some detail in Athas, Tel Dan Inscription, 557. 27 For a fuller discussion of El in the form of a bethel-stone, see Athas, Tel Dan Inscription, 30915. 28 Biran and Naveh, An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan, 87, 90, 92. 29 Cf. the use of in line 12 of the Mesha Stele.
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This does not mean that because in line A4 refers to a plot of ground, the same word necessarily has the same nuance in line A10. As I state in regard to the of line A4, The word here must be understood in the sense of a plot of ground30 (italics added here), but there in line A10 it has a different nuance as the different context requires. There, in line A10, the author has moved on to discuss his encounters with the kings of Israel and Bayt-Dawid (Jerusalem). It is a military context in which takes on the sense of territory or land. V. Killing Propaganda Sasson rightly recognizes that the Tel Dan Inscription is a piece of propaganda. In this regard, he correctly suggests that the author makes certain boasts. In my reading of the inscriptions text, I propose that line A6 includes the phrase, and I would slay a king.31 Sasson, though, dismisses my translation of the word as and I would slay. He remarks that this translation is weak rather than boastful, and reveals an inability to deal with language and texts.32 Unfortunately, he has misunderstood the nuance of the word would in my translation. He has wrongly taken it as a subjunctive (or, as he incorrectly calls it, optative)33, when I state that it should be viewed as an habitual imperfect.34 The author is not talking about hypothetical wars in the future, as Sasson thinks I am arguing, but rather about a reiterative action in the past. In other words, the author claims that his regular method of dealing with enemy kings is to slay them, implying that he had done so on multiple occasions in the past. This is certainly more forceful than the boast and I killed a king, which implies that he had killed on only one previous occasion. Reading an habitual imperfect would surely be more effective at instilling fear and obedience35 than reading a waw consecutive form that implies a one-off event. An habitual imperfect implies that any king who stands up to the author will inevitably be slain, while the latter implies merely that he might be the unlucky one who gets killed.
30 31
Athas, The Tel Dan Inscription, 211. Athas, The Tel Dan Inscription, 193, 214. 32 Sasson, The Tell Dan Aramaic Inscription, 28. 33 Sasson, The Tell Dan Aramaic Inscription, 29. 34 Athas, The Tel Dan Inscription, 213. 35 Sasson, The Tell Dan Aramaic Inscription, 28 (italics his).
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Alas, Sasson is obliged to understand as and I killed because of his insistence that the waw consecutive is present in Aramaic. Of this I am still not convinced. Its supposed use is so rare and random that a convincing grammatico-syntactic explanation for it is yet to appear. Furthermore, in the context of the Tel Dan Inscription, it makes the authors boast seem rather inadequate something which goes against the genre of monumental lapidary inscriptions. To insist on the presence of waw consecutive in Aramaic is, I believe, trying to read Aramaic with Hebrew spectacles, and it does not seem to pay off. I do not see why we need to revert to such a haphazard scenario when there are perfectly good explanations available from the categories already known in Aramaic, namely a copulative waw and the imperfect (or prefixed) conjugation. VI. Setting the Record Straight So let us set the record straight. What am I claiming about the Tel Dan Inscription? Since there seems to be so much misunderstanding, let me summarize my conclusions from the book:36 1. The archaeological context in which the three Tel Dan fragments were found became clearer as excavations at Tel Dans Iron Age gate continued after their discovery in 1993 and 1994.37 The stratigraphy discernible from the excavations shows that all three fragments date to the same era, c. 800 BCE. 2. Epigraphic analysis of how the letters were carved into the rock and palaeographic analysis of the letter forms demonstrates that all three fragments belong to the same stele. 3. Markings on the non-written surfaces of the fragments are not accidental engravings, but rather scratches sustained in the course of the destruction of the original stele. Furthermore, the erosion on the surface of the fragments, particularly Fragment A, reveals that the fragments are indeed authentic, and not forgeries.
Some of these points have already been mentioned in the discussion above. It should also be noted that these following points are a summary of the conclusions. Readers should consult my monograph for the details of the arguments which lead to these conclusions. 37 See Avraham Biran, Two Bronze Plaques and the Huot of Dan, IEJ 49 (1999), 4354.
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36
4. The published photographs of the fragments unintentionally mask certain details, such as an extra letter and other markings which significantly alter the reading of the text proposed by Biran and Naveh. 5. The text proposed by Biran and Naveh38 does not physically fit the configuration of the fragments that they suggest. 6. The epigraphic and textual considerations above suggest that Fragment B (i.e., B1 + B2) does not sit to the immediate left of Fragment A, but rather should be placed some way below it.39 7. The author of the Tel Dan Inscription was Bar Hadad II, the son of Hazael. At the time of the steles production (c. 796 BCE), Bar Hadads influence was waning in the face of Israels rising power under Jehoash (or Joash). The Damascene king was struggling to keep the territories which his father, Hazael, had conquered in the southern Levant. He produced the stele to dissuade those in Dan and the surrounding region from rebelling against him or defecting to Jehoash. In the text, he portrays himself as the able successor to his illustrious father, Hazael, who had etched out a small empire in the Levant. However, the stele was too little, too late, as Jehoash finally did break Damascuss hegemony over traditionally Israelite territories. When Jehoash defeated Bar Hadad for the third and final time, he had Bar Hadads stele demolished and recycled as building material in new constructions at Dans city gate. 8. This interpretation of the text denies the previous reconstruction in which the author of the Tel Dan Inscription was understood to be Hazael taking the credit for Jehus coup in Israel. 9. The word is not a dynastic label for Judah, but rather a toponym referring to Jerusalem as a city-state. It is the Aramaic parallel to the Hebrew ( City of David). 10. Based on observation of the fragments themselves (and not merely the photographs), I suggest the following reconstruction of the Tel Dan fragments:40
See Biran and Naveh, The Tel Dan Inscription: Another Fragment, 1213. Contra G. Galil, A Re-arrangement of the Fragments of the Tel Dan Inscription and the Relations Between Israel and Aram, IEQ 133 (2001), 1621. 40 A detailed analysis of this reconstruction can be found in chapter 6 of my book, The Tel Dan Inscription.
39 38
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Fragment A: Transcription
[ ..[ ].] [ ] ][][ [ .] [ . ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ .] [] [ ..] [ ] [. ] Fragment A: Translation

(A1) (A2) (A3) (A4) (A5) (A6) (A7) (A8) (A9) (A10) (A11) (A12) (A13)
(A1) (A2) (A3) (A4) (A5) (A6) (A7) (A8) (A9) (A10) (A11) (A12) (A13)
[..] you will rule ov[er]..] [and because of the p]iou[s act]s of my father, may he go up [] and my father will repose. May he go to [at every] ancient [h]earth on ground of El-Bay[telam] I, so Hadad would go before me [the day-] -s of my reign, and I would slay a kin[g] and [thousands of cha-] -riots and thousands of horsemen [] the king of Israel, and [I] killed [himkin-] -g of Bayt-Dawid. And the name of [] their land to [] another and to [Jehoash r-] -eigned over Is[rael I laid] siege to [Samaria] Fragment B: Transcription [..] [ ...] []][ [][ ] [][? ] [][ ] [][ ] [...] [ ..] [][ ] Fragment B: Translation
(B1) (B2) (B3) (B4) (B5) (B6) (B7) (B8)
(B1) (B2)
[..] and (?) cut [..] [..in] his [f ]ighting against A[?..]
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WHAT ARE WE MAKING OF THE TEL DAN INSCRIPTION? (B3) (B4) (B5) (B6) (B7) (B8)
[.](?). But my king, [Hadad,] would come [.] [..] Hadad made m[e] king [..] [...b]raver than seve[n kings...] [..?]ty captured m[en..] [..?]ram son of [..] [..Amaz]iah son of [Joash..]
VII. Concluding Remarks My aim in dealing with the Tel Dan Inscription was to attempt a fresh examination of the fragments, addressing the minute details in the hope of seeing the wider picture with higher resolution. Of course, scholars are entitled to disagree with my conclusions, but they should do so on the basis of an appreciation for the argument and the finer details of the analysis. Sasson takes issue with my treatment of the inscription and key peripheral matters on the basis of an anti-Minimizing stance. However, this is a stance I share with him on the basis of the historical evidence. Had Sasson read the arguments more closely, he would have seen that we actually have much more in common than not, and that for the most part it is not me he is actually arguing against.41 Regrettably, he seems to have been led by the unhelpful passion which I had hoped would diminish with a wider investigation into the fragments.42 The same might be said for Nadav Naaman, whose comments do not reveal an affinity with my argument. Naaman bases much of his critique on the published photographs when a basic tenet of my analysis is that the published photographs unintentionally mask key details. When taken into consideration, these key details seriously damage the original interpretation of the fragments. As such, his comments must be appraised against the failure to take this key element into consideration. Like Sasson, I hope that discussion of the Tel Dan Inscription continues. However, let us hope that it continues with less vitriol and more rational consideration of the data and proposed theories, for it is evidently a find of tremendous worth which deserves our best attentions and intentions.
41 It should be noted that Sasson and I do actually disagree on whether waw consecutive exists in Aramaic (see comments above). 42 Athas, The Tel Dan Inscription, 319.
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Athas, Setting The Record Straight What Are We Making of The Tel Dan Inscription? Journal of Semitic Studies 2006

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Journal of Semitic Studies LI/2 Autumn 2006 doi:10.1093/jss/fgl001 WHAT ARE WE MAKING OF THE DANof INSCRIPTION? The author.

WHAT ARE WE MAKING OF THE TEL DAN INSCRIPTION?

WHAT ARE WE MAKING OF THE TEL DAN INSCRIPTION?

WHAT ARE WE MAKING OF THE TEL DAN INSCRIPTION?

WHAT ARE WE MAKING OF THE TEL DAN INSCRIPTION?

WHAT ARE WE MAKING OF THE TEL DAN INSCRIPTION?

WHAT ARE WE MAKING OF THE TEL DAN INSCRIPTION?

WHAT ARE WE MAKING OF THE TEL DAN INSCRIPTION?

WHAT ARE WE MAKING OF THE TEL DAN INSCRIPTION?

Sasson, The Tell Dan Aramaic Inscription, 31.

WHAT ARE WE MAKING OF THE TEL DAN INSCRIPTION?

WHAT ARE WE MAKING OF THE TEL DAN INSCRIPTION?

WHAT ARE WE MAKING OF THE TEL DAN INSCRIPTION?

WHAT ARE WE MAKING OF THE TEL DAN INSCRIPTION?

WHAT ARE WE MAKING OF THE TEL DAN INSCRIPTION?

[ ..[ ].] [ ] ][][ [ .] [ . ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ .] [] [ ..] [ ] [. ] Fragment A: Translation

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