Ancient World

Israel Finkelstein

Israel Finkelstein (Hebrew: ישראל פינקלשטיין; born March 29, 1949) is an Israeli archaeologist, professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University and the head of the School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures at the University of Haifa. Finkelstein is active in the archaeology of the Levant and is an applicant of archaeological data in reconstructing biblical history. Finkelstein is the current excavator of Megiddo, a key site for the study of the Bronze and Iron Ages in the Levant. Finkelstein's fieldwork in northern Israel and the West Bank, as well as his development of the "Low Chronology", upended prior archaeological assessments by showing that the Kingdom of Israel was substantially larger and more prosperous when it coexisted alongside the Kingdom of Judah. Finkelstein has used these insights to challenge the biblical narrative that David and Solomon ruled a united monarchy of Israel and Judah from Jerusalem in the 10th century BCE. Finkelstein is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities an associé étranger of the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2005, he won the Dan David Prize for his study of the history of Israel in the 10th and 9th centuries BCE. In 2009, he was named chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, and in 2010, received a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Lausanne. He is a member of the selection committee of the Shanghai Archaeology Forum, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Among Finkelstein's books are The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts (2001) and David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (2006), co-written with Neil Asher Silberman. Also he wrote the textbooks on the emergence of Ancient Israel, titled The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (1988); on the archaeology and history of the arid zones of the Levant, titled Living on the Fringe (1995); and on the Northern Kingdom of Israel, titled The Forgotten Kingdom (2013).

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See also

• ▸Colin Renfrew
• ▸Carson, California
• ▸András Mócsy

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