The Tel Dan Stele

The National Geographic has provided a video that discusses the Tel Dan Stele and its relevance in attesting to the existence of the House of David.  National Geographic asks the question: “Does the discovery prove the Bible’s story of King David?

According to the Wikipedia, the Tel Dan Stele is a fragmentary stele containing a Canaanite inscription. The Tel Dan Stele dates to 9th century BCE. The significance of The Tel Dan Stele is because it contains an extra-biblical archeological reference to the house of David.

The stele contains several lines of Aramaic, closely related to Hebrew. The inscription details that an individual killed Jehoram of Israel, the son of Ahab and king of the house of David. These writings corroborate passages from the Bible, as the Second Book of Kings mentions that Jehoram, also Joram, is the son of an Israelite king, Ahab, by his Phoenician wife, Jezebel. Applying a Biblical viewpoint to the inscription, the likely candidate for having erected the stele is Hazael, an Aramean king (whose language would have thus been Aramaic) who is mentioned in Second Book of Kings as having conquered the Land of Israel, though he was unable to take Jerusalem.

Watch the video by clicking here. NOTE: The video is no longer available

Claude Mariottini
Emeritus Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

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