Jerusalem: City of Faith and Fury

It was stunning and very confusing to see a series of legendary accounts treated by actual grown-up scholarly talking heads as if they were real history. There is no extra-biblical evidence for a Saul, David, Solomon and all the other characters like Goliath (fairy tale of the brave little giant killer motif) and Uriah (Bellerophonic letter motif). While those tales are epic and entertaining, they should not have been treated as bona fide historical events, which constitutes an insult to the intelligence of the viewers. Israel Finkelstein, chairman of the Archaeology Department at Tel Aviv University, and biblical archaeologist Neil Asher Silberman have written a scholarly opus entitled "The Bible Unearthed." They show that during the early tenth century, Judah and Jerusalem were under populated centers incapable of supporting a Davidic empire; therefore, at best, David and his heirs were no more than local chieftains. The talking heads should have made it clear that the historicity of those events is sketchy at best. Instead, they made us watch a mini-biblical epic featuring lust, rape and the sadism of Solomon.