One interesting find:

The small ceramic shard unearthed at Tell es-Safi -- the site of the biblical city "Gath of the Philistines" -- contains the earliest Philistine inscription ever discovered, The Jerusalem Post reported Thursday. The inscription mentions two names that are remarkably similar to the name "Goliath."

The discovery is of particular interest since the Bible identifies Gath as Goliath's hometown.

Professor Aren Maeir, chairman of the university's Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, told the Post the odds of the inscription referring to the Goliath of the Bible are "small if non-existent."

Maeir said the find has been dated to some 50 years after the story of David and Goliath was to have taken place. Additionally, Maeir says Goliath was a very popular type of name of that era.

Historically, names have usually become popular after a person with the name rises to a position of greatness.

Next, a second, excerpted from the Washington Post:

Eilat Mazar believes the evidence she has uncovered during months of excavation and biblical comparison points to an extraordinary discovery. She believes she has found the palace of King David....

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....

A building's age is commonly fixed by what Mazar calls a "chronological sandwich," comparing material above and beneath an identifiable stratum to set the range of dates. Even without a floor, Mazar believes she has enough evidence to date the building to the 10th century B.C.

Pottery found in the one-foot layer of fill below the stone walls dates to the 12th and 11th centuries B.C. In one small room above that layer, Mazar discovered 10th-century B.C. pottery free of any material from another period. Amihai Mazar, who has excavated ancient settlements near Bethlehem, said that while scant, the sample was among the finest from that time found in Jerusalem.

"This was not just a house, but a fantastic house," Eilat Mazar said of the remains, which would have stood just outside the city walls at the time. "This would have been an intellectual step for a new king to build his palace here, a statement of his vision to expand the city."

In one room, Mazar also found a bulla, or seal, roughly dating to the 6th century B.C. It bears the words, written in ancient Hebrew, "Jehucal, son of Shelemiah, son of Shevi." The name Jehucal is found at least twice in the Book of Jeremiah. The find suggests the building was used, in one form or another, for centuries. "We're left with the assumption that this is the palace," Mazar said. "It fits so well with the history. We're not forcing it into anything."

Lately I've been told that the bible is little more than a myth, a fiction invented after the Jews returned from captivity in Babylon, meant to give a lost people a (false) sense of history.

People actually believe that.

But so much doesn't add up. How could a fictional document, written for a people who had so lost touch with their history that they readily believed fictions about it -- how could such a document be lucky enough to be right about the name "Goliath" being associated with the City of Gath so many centuries earlier?

How do you take such a fanciful document in hand, and, using it as a guide, zero in on a long-hidden foundation, apparently of a huge house of some sort, which seems to have later been long-used as a palace for Judah's kings? How could it be right -- just by chance, again, I assume -- about the kind of architectural style in the fictional palace they imagined?

I find the arguments from critics even more convincing. Take Israel Finklestein, one of the authors of "The Bible Unearthed", which takes a "minimalist" approach. He claims that the bible is wrong because archaeological evidence seems to show there was no distinctive ancient Jewish culture. (For example, they found people's houses frequently had idols in them.) Finklestein contends these finds do not show a distinctive Jewish culture existing in the region.

Perhaps you, my reader, might not spot the problem immediately, but the bible describes the early Israelites as loving their idols more than YHWH, and conforming to the cultures around them -- especially religiously -- precisely as Finkelstein contends. Examples are plentiful:

They forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. (Judges 2:12)

Even the surrounding cultures are portrayed as having the idea that Israel was a polytheistic culture, who worshipped many different idols:

Meanwhile, the officials of the king of Aram [who had just lost a battle with Israel] advised him, "Their gods are gods of the hills. That is why they were too strong for us." (1 Kings 20:23)

So how does Finkelstein's agreement with the biblical picture become an argument against it? Either I'm missing something, or someone's just not making sense.

And, based on his comments in this article, the latter looks more and more likely:

Prof. Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University's Institute of Archaeology said Mazar's interpretation should be understood as the latest in a series of "messianic eruptions" designed to bolster the image of David as a ruler of an important civilization, an idea that has lost currency in recent years in part because of Finkelstein's writing against it.

"That is why you are seeing this interpretation, to counter that momentum against it," said Finkelstein...

Ah. We think the find is an huge old palace not because of the evidence, but because... um... the archaeologist who found it was trying pull a political or religious stunt? Can people command important archaeological finds into existence just to support their views?

Of course, it should be equally fair to see if it is, rather, Finkelstein who has a vested interest in giving the find an unwarranted interpretation:

He believes all buildings described in the Bible were built more recently than Mazar and others believe, perhaps by a century. The interpretation would mean that Jerusalem developed into a thriving, fortified city well after David and Solomon. But Finkelstein said Mazar's find appeared to show that Jerusalem, while perhaps not important during David's time, began emerging as an important city earlier than he previously believed.

"This is the missing link we have been looking for. It represents the first step in the rise of Jerusalem to prominence in the 9th century," he said. "Why does it have to be the palace of David? Once you bring that in you sound like something of a lunatic."

So he thinks the buildings might have been built a hundred years later than the 10th century -- despite the 11th and 12th century pottery. Good enough. But if errors of a century or are not uncommon -- and might even go the other way around, with Finkelstein being in the wrong -- then why would it be "lunatic" to speculate that a huge house might have possiby have been the palace of a king named "David", as recorded?

The only answer can be because Finkelstein knows it is utterly impossible to have been true, much the same as it would be "lunacy" to claim aliens were living in your refrigerator.

So it seems Finkelstein has chosen his story in advance, and the evidence must be tailored to fit it. If a site contains 11th and 12th century pottery, then, well, it must date to the 9th century. Why? Because there was a law against using any pottery younger than 100 years old? Or because Finkelstein has a bit too much invested to allow any other option?

Seymour Gitin, director of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, said it was too soon to know precisely what Mazar had found. But, he said, "if this can be proven to be 10th century, it demolishes the view of the minimalists," referring to those who dismiss the unified monarchy as a petty kingdom or even as mythical."

Precisely. So Finkelstein obviously must date it to the 9th century, and for the exact reasons he ascribes to his opponents: because he is afraid of the implications otherwise.

In every era, a new group of critics has declared the bible an historical sham. And each time, they end up being roundly disproven. I wouldn't be at all surprised if we saw that little scenario play out yet again.

Indeed, it already seems to have begun: Finkelstein's view of Israel as nothing but a "cow town" before the Babylonian return appears to be undone. No wonder he's fighting to keep it from landing in the 10th century.