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Using evidence mainly garnered from bones, archaeology tells us that camels were not domesticated as beasts of burden until around 1200 BCE. Nor were they used in that capacity in the Palestine region until 1000 BCE. Furthermore, camel caravans carrying "spices and balm and myrrh" did not flourish until after 800 BCE and as a component of the Arabian trade that flourished in the Assyrian empire in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE.
From the new archaeological approaches also came the data about the life style of populations of the hill country that constituted both the northern kingdom (Israel), centered on Shechem, and the southern kingdom (Judah), centered on Jerusalem. Evidence for the period in which Saul, David, and Solomon became rulers showed that Judah, for example, remained relatively empty of permanent population right up to the time of David and Solomon, with no major urban centers and with no pronounced hierarchy of hamlets, villages, and towns. At best, Jerusalem was really only a tiny village.
Thus the fabulous stories of the grandeur of David's city, Jerusalem, and of Solomon's temple, supposedly in the tenth century BCE, just do not hold up. Judah, in this period, was composed of about 20 small villages and a few thousand inhabitants. So it is highly unlikely that such a sparsely inhabited region and a small village that was Jerusalem could have become the center of a great empire stretching from Gaza in the south, to Syria in the north, and the Euphrates river in the west (1 Kings 5:4).
Besides the absence of any evidence for David's grand conquests, no trace of Solomon's fabulous temple in Jerusalem has ever been identified--not in Jerusalem or in any place outside of Jerusalem.
So, contrary to these new studies providing an authentic historical biblical background as a basis for legitimizing Israel's claim upon newly captured lands, the opposite occurred. The accumulated evidence demonstrated that the biblical stories arose as the result of desperate efforts by a group of authors to provide a glorious history upon which a new nation could be founded.
However, according to the new archaeologists, production of this written record did not occur during the Babylonian captivity of 586--440 BCE (as proposed by some Christian investigators), but preceded the captivity by fifty years or more. And the conclusions made about the history of Israel were vastly different from that of biblical history:
"The emergence of early Israel was an outcome of the collapse of the Canaanite culture, not its cause. And most of the Israelites did not come from outside Canaan--they emerged from within it.
"There was no mass exodus from Egypt. There was no violent conquest of Canaan. Most of the people who formed early Israel were local people--the same people whom we see in the highlands throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages.
"The early Israelites were--irony of ironies--themselves originally Canaanites."
What can the Urantia Papers and their readers do to soften the blow for Christians who witness the collapse of their belief system? For that matter, how will Urantia Book readers who take a relatively fundamentalist view of the Papers cope? These Papers treat Moses, the Exodus, the time in the wilderness, Moses' death and the takeover by Joshua as reasonably close to the biblical account. Modern archaeology says it did not happen.
Likewise with David and Solomon. Although downplaying David from the biblical account, the Papers allow that Solomon had enormous power and wealth. Modern archaeology says the kingdom of Judah was at its lowest ebb at this time and estimates its population as about 5000 scattered among 20 tiny villages. Jerusalem as a major city did not exist. And neither did Solomon's fabled temple and palace.
No area on Earth compares with this tiny part of the world for the intensity of study already carried out. And it appears that even Christian archaeologists and biblical experts have achieved consensus with the Israelis, agreeing that they have got it right for the major details.
It is possible that the Urantia Papers were specifically designed to help humanity through the troublesome times that lie ahead. Certainly their presentation of Jesus and his revelation of the nature of God is light years ahead of anything else. But whether the Papers will help others to cope with impending change depends on us, their readers.
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