King David

I decided to do this post because I keep seeing King David on “historical figures who never actually existed” lists. Even today, you’ll find plenty of nonbeliever sites claiming that biblical figures like King David, Moses, and Abraham have zero archeological evidence.

But it’s another instance where you can tell someone is being willfully ignorant. I wanted to link to a bunch of my sources I used when researching this topic, but unfortunately for some reason there’s a pay wall for most of it. Just google P. Kyle McCarter “The Historical King David”. If you can find the full thing without paying, you’re a better researcher than I am. I can find bits and pieces, but the most popular part is;

“The Bible is our only source of information about David.  No ancient inscription mentions him.  No archaeological discovery can be securely linked to him. . . .We cannot assume, therefore, that a statement about David in a given part of the Bible derives from an early source.  The David of Chronicles, for example, is the idealized David of the second Commonwealth, not the David of history.”

I took that specific quote from this page. It’s a Christian source which explains that archeological evidence has been found in northern Israel. An inscription which talks about the “House of David”.

Here is a non-Christian source which talks about the same thing, and also discusses more recent discoveries which prove that King David is a historical figure and not a fictional character. The non-Christian site linked above also includes the entire story of David (and as a sidenote, is a great site if you’re an ancient history buff).

So regardless what skeptics would have you believe, there is plenty of evidence to prove that King David really did, in fact, exist.