Meditation 522
The Bible is analogous to the King Arthur story
by: Dan Shanefield
To open a discussion on this article, please use the contact page to provide your comments.
The stories of the Old Testament, such as the ones about King Solomon, are analogous to the King Arthur story of old England. Regarding the Bible; the Egyptians and Assyrians, who went through Israel/Palestine several times to fight each other, could not have missed the big Biblical cities and temples of Solomon, had those things really existed. The Egyptians and Assyrians did record amazingly-many details of battles fought and taxes demanded, etc. However, Israel was clearly reported as just an arid, poor place with few people. Some idols of Baal and El and fertility godesses have been found in Israel and carbon-14 dated from that period, but no great temple or city ruins have been discovered by archeologists, in spite of great effort. Much later than the mythical Solomon of around 1000 BC, Israel's population did grow, under King Josiah in 620 BC, but he got killed --- and recorded --- by the Egyptians.
So the stories of great Jewish civilizations there are just myths, like the fiction about King Arthur of England (who also had some supernatural powers) --- just compilations of lesser unwritten stories collected from professional story tellers, and later combined into a single (great!) written epic. Many other cultures have similar great stories, compiled from lesser myths, but 100% fiction. (There never was even any single great person who was actually real, similar to King Arthur --- he was a composite of lesser real peoples' characteristics.) All just fiction, though talent-laden, quite-good fiction.
By the way, as anyone bothering to read this probably knows already, there never was a Camelot in ancient England either, just like there never was a King Solomon's prosperous city or great bejeweled temple. All folklore made into well-written fiction.