The Tel Dan Inscription: A Reappraisal and a New Interpretation.

The Tel Dan Inscription: A Reappraisal and a New Interpretation. By George Athas (Sheffield Academic, $165). This revised doctoral dissertation (University of Sydney) is devoted to a brief three-piece Aramaic inscription discovered in 1993 and 1994 that has stimulated a rousing controversy in the scholarly world because of its mention of "the house of David," the first reference to David and his dynasty outside the Bible. A common, mainstream interpretation has Hazael of Damascus as the author of the inscription, in which he seems to claim credit for killing Jehoram king of Israel and Ahaziah of Judah. It is dated ca. 840 B.C.E. A. takes issue with all of these positions and arranges the three pieces of the inscription in a radically different manner (the second and third pieces are placed below rather than to the left of the first piece). He dates the inscription to the beginning of the eighth century and concludes that it records a coalition of Jehoahaz of Israel and Joash of BaytDawid against Bar Hadad II of Damascus, the son of Hazael. Bayt-Dawid (House of David), in this reading, refers not to the Davidic dynasty or the dynastic name of the kingdom of Judah  but to the city of David. In his judgment Jerusalem in the early eighth century was only a small city-state and not the capital of the wider regional state of Judah. This 331-page volume provides detailed epigraphical, paleographical, archaeological, philological, and historical analyses that seem to echo the Copenhagen International Seminar (often branded as "minimalist"). This is a very important--and expensive--word, but clearly not the last word on this inscription. RWK