A Dig Into Jerusalem's Past Fuels Present-Day Debates

"That is why you are seeing this interpretation, to counter that momentum against it," said Finkelstein, co-author of the book "The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts."

"It's an important find, and I'm not underestimating it," he said. "But from what she has found to the palace of David is a big distance."

The Bible as Record

For two centuries, historians in Germany, the United States and Israel have debated the value of the Bible as an authentic record of events. Biblical archaeology emerged as a way to explore the Old Testament through discoveries on the ground. It attracted renowned scholars and adventurers to the Holy Land, but also a number of evangelical Christians and religious Jews who appeared intent on proving the Bible true.

Those who draw on the Bible, such as Mazar, argue that it should play a central role in archaeological discovery because it is the only document from that time. But in recent decades the most accepted view has been that the Bible is more myth than history, particularly its books recounting events that happened centuries earlier, like those relating to David.

The Bible's rich account of David's life has made him one of its most identifiable figures. Slayer of Goliath, a pious and treacherous king, author of psalms, David consolidated the northern kingdom of Israel and Judah around the year 1000 B.C. into a single political state under his rule. After defeating the Jebusites, he made his capital in Jerusalem, at the time a walled settlement of about a dozen acres.

Although excavations in the West Bank have produced important finds dating to that time, Jerusalem has yielded relatively little evidence of its importance, and rapid development has overwhelmed much of the city's rich buried history.

"This place was always thought of as being a lost cause," said Amihai Mazar, a renowned Hebrew University archaeologist and Eilat's second cousin, who is working closely with her. "Now we see there is a chance for new evidence."

Eilat Mazar, 49, hails from Israel's archaeological elite. Her grandfather, Benjamin Mazar, headed excavations in the 1960s and '70s of the earthen platform Jews refer to as the Temple Mount, which they believe to be the site of the first and second Jewish temples. Muslims also hold the site sacred as the Noble Sanctuary, from which they believe Muhammad ascended to heaven.

Mazar, a widowed mother of four, is an ebullient presence in sturdy shoes and slacks, her blond, wind-blown hair falling over the tops of her gold-rim glasses as she walks the perimeter of her dig. "I excavate with the Bible in one hand," she said during a recent tour of the site, fenced off and mostly covered in preparation for the rainy season. "But I do not give up even the least bit of technical excavation or research."

Her quest began with an essay she wrote for a 1997 edition of the Biblical Archaeology Review. Mazar stated that a "careful examination of the Biblical text combined with sometimes unnoticed results of modern archaeological excavations in Jerusalem enable us, I believe, to locate the site of King David's palace."

She essentially drew a map to the palace using the Bible and two nearby excavations carried out by the British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon and the Israeli archeologist Yigal Shilo, who was once her mentor. Digging in the 1960s, Kenyon found massive stone walls near a rough-hewn, stepped structure running up the side of the valley. On the valley floor, Kenyon uncovered Phoenician capitals -- the tops of columns -- that suggested a monumental building may have stood above.

David's palace, according to the Bible, was built by workers sent to him by the Phoenician king, Hiram of Tyre. Mazar also used passages from the Books of Samuel to trace David's steps to a site adjacent to Kenyon's excavation.