THE MOVING SHADOW

No less than three accounts are provided by biblical authors regarding the unusual sign that God gave Hezekiah to assure him that his life would be extended. Isaiah had first announced to the king that his life was near its end, but when Hezekiah pleaded for a reprieve, Isaiah returned and told him that God had heard his prayer and would add another 15 years to his life. As a sign confirming this prediction, Yahweh invited Hezekiah to decide whether the shadow on the time-marker would move forward or backward, and Hezekiah chose backward. The details of the story are recounted both by Isaiah and the compiler of the Kings record (Isa. 38:1-8; 2 Kgs. 20:1-11), while the account in the Chroniclers’ History is very abbreviated (2 Chr. 32:24). That the accounts in Isaiah and 2 Kings are for the most part verbatim in the Hebrew text has convinced most scholars that one account is dependent on the other (Isaiah is likely the earlier one).

There are, however, some lingering questions about the incident. First, there is the nature of the time-instrument itself. The Masoretic Text of both Isaiah and 2 Kings describes it as a marker with “steps”, which suggests that the instrument was some sort of device that cast shadows on a wall as the sun moved through its daily course. The great Isaiah scroll recovered from the first cave at Qumran, however (1QIsa^a), describes it as “the upper dial of Ahaz”. This description presumes that the instrument was inherited by Hezekiah and might very well have been of Assyrian origin due to Ahaz’ fascination with Assyrian devices (cf. 2 Kg. 16:10-18). Either way, Hezekiah’s remark that he wanted the shadow to move backward, since it was too simple to have the shadow move forward, seems a bit strange. From a modern point of view, whether the shadow moved forward or backward seems sufficiently miraculous by all definitions!

So how did the shadow move? We can immediately dismiss the legendary story that scientists at the Goodard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, using a sophisticated computer program, discovered a missing 40 minutes in the astronomical record. The scientists at Goddard have repeatedly disclaimed this story outright, but nonetheless, it has been floating around for decades in one form or another. A version of it was first published as far back as 1936 by Harry Rimmer, who in turn cited an otherwise unknown 1890s source. It was picked up by a gullible Harold Hill and repeated in a new and improved version in his 1974 book, How to Live Like a King’s Kid. Now, with the advent of the internet, it is still making the rounds, albeit in an updated fashion (see the debunking at www.snopes.com/religion/lostday.asp). A much more plausible explanation is that the moving shadow was related to a total solar eclipse (a total solar eclipse is when the moon completely blocks the sun, creating a short period of darkness). We know, for instance, that just such an eclipse occurred in 702 BC, the 16^th year before Hezekiah would eventually die (you can find it online at NASA’s Five Millennium Catalog of Solar Eclipses), and unlike the story by Harold Hill, this one is not bogus.

Solar eclipses can create strange visual phenomena. If a “steps” device in Hezekiah’s court was shrouded in darkness for a short period and then restored to daylight, the shadow might very well have seemed to go backward. A solar eclipse seems a more likely explanation than some disruption of the planet’s daily revolution. Such total solar eclipses are rare (the last one in America extending coast-to-coast was in 1918, but Hawaii had one in 1991 and some of the western states saw one in 1979). Indeed, should you be interested, you’ll be able to see another on August 21, 2017, and it will be from coast to coast, its path of totality extending from Lincoln City, Oregon to Charleston, South Carolina, passing through Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia. Darkness will last longest at Carbondale, Illinois (a few seconds beyond 2.5 minutes).

At the end of the day (to use a rather loaded metaphor in the present context), I suppose the real question concerns the legitimacy of biblical prophecy more than celestial disruption. The moving shadow was a predicted sign to Hezekiah, and Isaiah was to be regarded as a true prophet. If you can believe in a God who knows the future, then it was not hard for him to inform Hezekiah that the steps of the shadow would move backward. Was this the result of a total solar eclipse? There is no way to know for certain, of course, but in my mind this is a satisfactory explanation.

Ancient Near Eastern Texts and the Earliest Biblical Writings (4 of 4)

Encoding the Covenant Law in the Bible (Part 4 of 4)

            The compilation of written law codes in the ancient Near East is well known. Several Hittite treaties have clauses requiring their periodic reading in public, and the same would be true of what Moses wrote (cf. 31:24). In the treaty between Suppiluliumas and Kurtiwaza, for instance, the code was to be read “at regular intervals.”[7] The precise extent of what Moses actually wrote is debated. It is unnecessary to suppose that he wrote the entirety of the Torah as we now have it (especially the account of his own death), but it is equally unnecessary to suppose that everything was recorded later from oral tradition, as some scholars have suggested (or was made up later and does not even date back to Moses). Linguistically, we have only sparse indications of the state of the Hebrew language at this early period, and whatever form Moses used, it may well have needed updating later. Indeed, the Hebrew text of Moses’ song contains more than a dozen hapax legomena as well as some complicated syntax which remain as challenges for any translator. However one wants to speculate on exactly what Moses wrote, the text clearly indicates that he wrote some form of the covenant law and delivered it to the priests and elders for safekeeping and periodic reading. There was to be a public reading every seven years during the Festival of Booths “at the place God would choose” (cf. 15:1ff.; 16:13-15).

There are even some passages describing Moses as writing, such as, Dt. 31:9, which refers to an unspecified section of law codes, Dt. 31:19, 22, (referring to chapter 32), and 31:24ff. (probably referring to the Decalogue). Such references suggest that portions were written out as smaller segments prior to the compilation of the whole. The rabbinical custom of referring to everything in the Pentateuch as the words of Moses, of course, was adopted by the writers of the New Testament, but this convenience of speech does not necessarily support the view that Moses personally penned the entire corpus. One can only speculate how long elements in Deuteronomy and other books in the Pentateuch may have been preserved as oral tradition before being codified. A generation later, Joshua is commanded to obey the “book of the law” (Jos. 1:7-8), a reference that seems to refer to the contents of Deuteronomy 5-26 or 5-30. Joshua is familiar with the law code that altars were not to be fashioned using an iron tool (Jos. 8:31; Dt. 27:5), and indeed, the whole ceremony in the Shechem Pass is based on the anticipation of this ceremony as described in Deuteronomy (Jos. 8:30-35; Dt. 27). Even later, Joshua is said to have drawn up decrees and laws which then were recorded in the “Book of the Law of God”, so apparently Joshua, also, had a hand in the composition of the Torah (cf. Jos. 24:25-26). Even later references also cite the “Book of the Law,” expressions that clearly seem to refer to at least portions of Deuteronomy (cf. 2 Kg. 14:6//2 Chr. 25:4; Dt. 24:16). Certainly some of the prophets knew of law codes that were preserved in Deuteronomy (cf. Hos. 5:10//Dt. 19:14; Am. 8:5 and Mic. 6:10ff.//Dt. 25:13ff.; Am. 4:4//Dt. 14:28; Hos. 4:4ff.//Dt. 17:12), but whether all these things were an oral memory or reference to a written code is unclear.

These, then, are some of the factors that must be considered when assessing the earliest written documents in the Bible. As Christians, we believe that God superintended this production, which is what we mean by the term inspiration. At the same time, these biblical texts bear the stamp of history so that it can be fairly said that this is the Word of God in the words of humans.

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[7] ANET (1969), p. 205.

Ancient Near Eastern Texts and the Earliest Biblical Writings (3 of 4)

Law Codes

            Along with literary writings, many of the political writings uncovered from the ancient world have proven relevant to our understanding of the Old Testament.  Among these, law codes in particular have provided links between the Bible and the ancient Near Eastern world.  Two of the more well-known examples are the Nuzi texts and the Code of Hammurabi which bear special relevance to the Patriarchal and Mosaic periods of Israelite history respectively.

            The Nuzi texts consist of about 20,000 clay tablets inscribed by a people called the Hurrians who lived in the Zagros mountains around the 15^th century BC.  The texts consist primarily of private and public legal documents which, while not particularly interesting to read, are very helpful for understanding the social customs of the period.  In many cases, the social conditions and customs described in the Nuzi tablets parallel those described in the Patriarchal period of the Old Testament (i.e., the period of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob).  For example, the laws of inheritance at Nuzi held that a double-portion of a father’s estate was to be given to the eldest son.  In addition, the eldest son held the right to sell his double-portion if he so chose (cf. Jacob and Esau, Gen. 25:29-34).  The laws of inheritance at Nuzi also indicate that if a man had no son to be his heir he could adopt an heir of his choice (cf. Abraham and Eliezer, Gen. 15:1-3) or produce an heir through his wife’s maidservant (cf. Abraham and Hagar, Gen:16:1-4). The Nuzi texts also contain regulations concerning the possession of household gods (Gen. 31:19) as well as the practice of conferring oral blessings on others (cf. the blessing of Isaac, Gen. 27:1-40; the blessing of Jacob, Gen. 49:1-28).  Parallels such as these have provoked a good deal of speculation and debate among scholars with regard to the historical setting of the Patriarchal narratives.

            Another ancient Near Eastern law code called the Code of Hammurabi was inscribed on a pillar by the great Babylonian king Hammurabi sometime around the 18^th century BC.  As with the Nuzi texts, there are various parallels between the Code of Hammurabi and the Old Testament.  The first and, perhaps, most striking of these is Hammurabi’s claim to have been given the code by Shamash (i.e. the sun-god) on a mountaintop (cf. Exodus 19:20).  The Code of Hammurabi also contains various structural similarities to the Law of Moses as contained in Exodus 20-23, although nothing resembling the Ten Commandments is found in either the Code of Hammurabi or any other ancient Near Eastern law code for that matter.  In both codes, the principle of Lex Talionis (i.e. “an eye for and eye, a tooth for a tooth”, cf. Ex. 21:24; Lv. 24:20; Dt. 19:21) provides the basic framework for the concept of justice and, in addition, many of the specific case laws are remarkably similar. These include punishments for striking one’s parents (cf. Exodus 21:15), assaulting a pregnant woman (Exodus 21:22), failing to restrain a goring ox (Exodus 21:28-32), theft (Exodus 22:1), and adultery (Exodus 22:16).  As with other ancient Near Eastern texts, the significance of these similarities is debated among scholars who arrive at different conclusions.

 

Summary

            While this brief introduction to ancient Near Eastern texts is far from exhaustive, it does provide a taste of what scholars are doing when comparing the Bible to other ancient Near Eastern texts.  The four texts dealt with above constitute only a small portion of what ancient Near Eastern literature has to offer the field of Biblical studies, but they are certainly among the most complete and relevant in the field.  Some other texts frequently addressed in relation to the Bible include: the Sumerian King List (describes ten rulers from before the flood with reigns lasting from 18,000-40,000 years), the Legend of Adapa (Mesopotamian legend mentioning the tree of life), the Amarna Letters (letters written from Palestine requesting Egypt’s aid against a group of people called the Hapiru—possibly Hebrews), the Baal Cycle of Myths (Canaanite mythology about the god Baal), the Ur-Nammu Law Code, the Lipit-Ishtar Law Code, the Hittite Law Code, and the Eshnunna Law Code.

            The relationship between these ancient Near Eastern texts and the text of the Bible have intrigued scholars for many years. One thing generally agreed upon is that of these ancient texts, the biblical texts were composed later than the Mesopotamian texts by even the earliest possible date for the exodus. Hence, one cannot argue that the Mesopotamians borrowed from the Bible. The inverse is possible, of course. The authors of the Bible may have borrowed ideas from the Mesopotamian texts, and in fact, most historical-critical scholars arrive at such a conclusion. Still, at least two other reasonable possibilities exist. One is that there was a common stock of ancient oral tradition that was older than and lay behind both the biblical and Mesopotamian materials. The other is that the Genesis accounts of the creation and flood may be apologetic material aimed at correcting the false cosmogonies of Mesopotamia. Either of these hypotheses would account for the linguistic links and literary parallels between the various texts.

Ancient Near Eastern Texts and the Earliest Biblical Writings (2 or 4)

Creation Texts

            One of the most important literary themes in the ancient Near East was cosmogony (i.e., the story of how things came into being).  Among the cosmogonies of the ancient Near East, the earliest and most enduring were produced by those cultures to whom we owe the invention of writing, Mesopotamia and Egypt. The Mesopotamian cosmogony, in particular, bears a number of resemblances to the creation account found in Genesis 1 and continues to be a subject of perennial interest to scholars and archaeologists.

            The Mesopotamian cosmogony, Enuma Elish or “when on high”, originated in ancient Babylonia probably sometime around 1800 BC.  The story tells how the world was created by the gods of fresh water and salt water, Apsu and Tiamat, and how through their union the other gods and goddesses were born.  Almost immediately, however, discord arose between the primordial gods and their descendants, and Apsu and Tiamat decided to kill off their offspring.  Upon discovering this, one of the lesser gods, Ea, killed Apsu, while another god, Marduk, was chosen to lead the others in war against Tiamat.  Marduk, the god of storm, eventually defeated Tiamat with weapons of thunder, lightening, and wind, and took his place as king among the gods.  Marduk then attended to the task of creation.  Out of one half of Tiamat’s body he made the earth, and out of the other half he made the heavens. Out of the blood of one of Tiamat’s appointees, Marduk appointed Ea to fashion human beings… “savage man I will create, and he shall be charged with the service of the gods, that they might be at ease!”4.  Finally, Marduk appointed different roles to the gods, set the cosmos in order, and celebrated with a divine banquet.

While the theological differences between Enuma Elish and the Biblical account of creation are obvious enough, there are nevertheless numerous parallels.  The larger part of these are purely linguistic in nature, but the most striking, and the one for which Enuma Elish is the most famous, concerns the order of creation.  In both accounts, the creation of the universe occurs in discrete phases, with the gods or God resting on the last.  Furthermore, the details of each specific phase of creation are identical: the first involving the creation of light; the second, the dome of the sky; the third, the creation of dry land, and so on. The strength of this parallel has led to an unending debate among scholars concerning the precise nature of the relationship between Enuma Elish and Genesis chapter 1. Scholarly opinion ranges from the view that there is no close relationship between the two5 to the view that the latter is directly dependant upon the former6.

 

Flood Texts

            Interestingly, more than 200 flood texts have survived from cultures around the world. The earliest flood texts come from Mesopotamia and Egypt and record the occurrence of a world-wide deluge parallel to the one spoken about in Genesis 6-9.  Of the two, the Mesopotamian account is again the one that bears the closest resemblance to the story in the Bible.

            The Mesopotamian flood story is actually only one part of a much larger literary work called the Epic of Gilgamesh.  The work was written somewhere in the vicinity of ancient Babylonia by no later than the end of the Early Bronze Age (ca. 2000 BC).  In the epic, the story tells how the hero king and semi-divine being, Gilgamesh, overworks his subjects to such an extent that the gods endeavor to divert his attention by creating for him a companion, Enkidu, of equal strength and ambition. Quick to become friends, Gilgamesh and Enkidu embark on a series of successful heroic adventures.  Eventually, Enkidu dies prompting Gilgamesh to undertake the greatest and most challenging quest of all—the search for eternal life.  In his quest, Gilgamesh searches to the ends of the earth to find the legendary Utnapishtim, who alone among humans is said to have attained eternal life.  When Gilgamesh finally finds Utnapishtim, Utnapishtim recounts to Gilgamesh the story of the great flood and how he alone among humans survived and was granted the gift of eternal life by the gods.  As for Gilgamesh, however, Utnapishtim remarks that he can expect no such gift from the gods.  However, Utnapishtim does tell Gilgamesh of a secret plant hidden at the bottom of the sea which, if one eats it, can rejuvenate the life of one that has grown old.  Thereupon, Gilgamesh recovers this plant and attempts to return home with it, but is deceived by a serpent who eats it while he is bathing in a pool.  At long last, Gilgamesh despairs of his search for eternal life and endeavors to take joy in the work of his hands.

            As in Enuma Elish, the thematic differences between the Babylonian account of the flood and the Biblical account of the flood are readily apparent.  Nevertheless, some remarkable parallels exist.  For example, in Utnapishtim’s flood narrative, he tells of how, being warned by the gods that a flood was imminent, he built a ship and sealed it with pitch in order to survive (cf. Gen. 6:13-14).  In addition, just like Noah, Utnapishtim kept animals on the ship in order to preserve the various species (cf. Gen. 6:19-21).  Utnapishtim also sent birds out of his ship in order to ascertain whether or not the flood had stopped (cf. Gen. 8:6-12).  When at last the flood had ceased, the ship came to rest on a mountain where, upon exiting his ship, Utnapishtim offered sacrifices to the gods (cf. Gen. 8:20).  As in Enuma Elish, the relationship between the book of Genesis and the Epic of Gilgamesh continues to be a source of scholarly interest and debate.

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4 J. Pritchard, The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures (Princeton: Princeton University, 1958), p. 38.

5 K. Kitchen, The Bible in its World (Downers Grove, IL:  IVP, 1977), p. 26-27.

6 E. Speiser, Genesis [AB] (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964), pp. 9-11.

Ancient Near Eastern Texts and the Earliest Biblical Writings (Part 1 of 4)

The Origin and Development of Writing

            The first indisputable examples of writing appear on clay tablets and were found at the site of Uruk in lower Mesopotamia.  These mark the transition from “prehistoric” to “historic” civilization and are roughly contemporaneous with the onset of the Early Bronze Age (i.e. 3200 BC).  The content of these early texts has proved for the most part to be undecipherable.  However, scholars are generally agreed that the Uruk texts constitute an early written form of the Sumerian language.  Shortly after the appearance of this cuneiform (i.e. “wedge-shaped”) writing in Mesopotamia, writing also appeared in Egypt in the form of hieroglyphics (i.e. “sacred-carvings”)1.  Mesopotamia and Egypt, therefore, are our earliest sources for the study of the written history of humankind.

            From this point of origin, writing went through several stages of historic development in the ancient Near East2.  This development is important to bear in mind since it is easy to fall into the misconception that ancient languages were written with letters, as in our western alphabet.  Sumerian and Egyptian, however, were not written with letters and did not have an alphabet.  In an alphabet, letters consist of symbols written to represent simple sounds, such as, the letters “a” or “b”.  In Sumerian and Egyptian, words were written with symbols representing either whole words, which are called logograms, or whole syllables, which are called syllabograms.  Thus, for example, a single symbol stands for the Sumerian word “dinger” (god), while another symbol stands for the syllable “nig” (which could be used to form any number of words).  This manner of writing is referred to as logo-syllabic writing and is the earliest system known to have been used in the world.  Of the two forms of logo-syllabary just mentioned, cuneiform became the dominant one used throughout the ancient Near East, while the use of hieroglyphics remained almost exclusively within the province of Egypt.

            From this brief introduction, it is easy to see how cumbersome such a system of writing could become.  While modern English writers are able to represent every word in their vocabulary with a 26 letter alphabet, the earliest logo-syllabaries of the Sumerians could contain up to 2000 different symbols, all with different meanings. To complicate matters more, the meanings of most of the symbols varied across time and space so that, eventually, signs could acquire up to five or six possible meanings all of which would have to be determined by the context of their usage.  Hence, literacy in the ancient world was a rare privilege enjoyed only by professional scribes and the elite, well-educated few.  After the conquest of the Sumerians by the Akkadians, logograms began to gradually disappear from regular usage except in a few idiomatic expressions, while written language came to be represented almost entirely in syllabograms. This manner of writing is referred to as syllabic writing and persisted throughout the latter part of the Early Bronze Age and all of the Middle Bronze Age (i.e. 2000-1550 BC).

            The earliest examples of consonantal writing begin to appear in Palestine sometime around the beginning of the Late Bronze Age (i.e. 1550 B.C.)3. Next to the invention of writing itself, this is easily the most significant historic development in the history of writing.  The transition to consonantal writing began with the insight that syllables (such as, for example, “nig”) could be broken down into a relatively small group of sounds called consonants (e.g., “n” and “g”) which could be rearranged in various ways to formulate words.  Thus, the Palestinian consonantary, as it is called, could now represent the full range of human language with only 22 symbols, each representing a consonant—an unimaginably efficient system of writing when compared to the 2000 symbols used in the logo-syllabary of the Sumerians! Archaeologists have uncovered numerous attempts at developing this consonantary in Palestine and Sinai in the Late Bronze Age, but the one that eventually caught on and was disseminated to the rest of the Mediterranean world was that of the coastal Phoenicians.  From this point on, literacy and writing grew in proportion to the facility with which it could be carried out.

            The last and most familiar development in ancient Near Eastern writing is the advent of the alphabet, which appeared sometime around 800 BC in Greece.  The Greek alphabet, named after its first two letters “alpha” and “beta”, incorporated all the advantages of the Palestinian consonantary, but it also included within its scope the representation of vowels. This innovation required that a few additional letters be used in the formulation of words, but also overcame a certain amount of ambiguity inherent in the consonantal system due to the absence of vowels. (For example, in a consonantal system of writing, the symbol “blck” could be interpreted as either “black” or “block”.) The Greek system was passed on to the Romans and preserved in Latin, which is the basis of modern western language.

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1 The long-standing debate about whether writing first developed in Mesopotamia or Egypt seems, at present, to be resolved in favor of the former on the basis of the clay tablets discovered at Uruk.  Fresh evidence, however, could easily open this debate again.

2  Traditionally, archaeologists and linguists only recognized three basic systems of writing.  The most recent analyses, however, suggest six systems, four of which are treated here (i.e. logo-syllabic, syllabic, consonantal, and alphabetic).  For a fuller treatment of these four systems as well as abugida and hangul, cf. Peter T. Daniels, “Writing and Writing Systems” Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Neat East, ed. E. Meyers (New York: Oxford University, 1997) 5.352-358.

3 Possibly the earliest example of consonantal writing in ancient Palestine is a fragmentary potsherd from Gezer dated to approximately 1650 BC.  The potsherd is inscribed with only three symbols, the interpretation of which is a matter of debate.

Leviathan

At various times the biblical writers interacted directly with their ancient culture. This was true, for instance, when Paul quoted from the “Hymn to Zeus” (Ac. 17:28) “But you [Zeus] are not dead: you live and abide forever, for in you we live and move and have our being.” In the same passage, Paul also quoted a half-line from the Cretan poet Aratus, which says, “Let us begin with Zeus…for we are also his offspring.” It should be apparent, of course, that Paul does not do this because he is a worshipper of Zeus, but rather, because he wanted a point of contact with his audience, and because, however off the mark he believed Greco-Roman religion to be, it was not always wrong on every point. To paraphrase Cervantes, “All truth is God’s truth.”

This contact with the surrounding culture is perhaps even more thorough-going in the use of mythology in apocalyptic imagery. There were certain stock images in antiquity with which everyone was familiar. Using such imagery immediately employed a known concept which would have been instinctively understood by the earliest listeners. A good example is the imagery of the seven-headed dragon in the Book of Revelation, the creature with a wounded head (Rv. 13:1ff.). This imagery of Yahweh in conflict with a dragon-like creature appears in various places in the Old Testament (e.g., Job 9:13; 26:12-13; Ps. 74:13-14; 89:10; Is. 27:1), and it seems to have been a stock image, for it is found in the literature of Sumer, Babylon, Phoenicia, Canaan and Egypt. Indeed, a visual depiction of the seven-headed monster appears as early as 2600 BC from Sumer incised in a small piece of shell. In this small carving, as in the Book of Revelation, it is fascinating to observe that one of the seven heads of the beast is wounded. One finds this same imagery in ancient literature:

“Because you smote Leviathan, the twisting serpent, (and) made an end of the crooked serpent, the tyrant with seven heads, the skies will become hot (and) will shine.”

                                    Keilalphabetischen Texte aus Ugarit 1.5.I.1

“Surely I lifted up the dragon…[and] smote the crooked serpent, the tyrant with the seven heads.”

                                    Keilalphabetischen Texte aus Ugarit 1.3.III.40-42

In Mesopotamian literature, the defeat of this Leviathan is credited to Anat or Baal in the ancient past. In the Bible, of course, it is credited to Yahweh, not only in the past, but also in “that day”, which is to say, “the day of the LORD”. In the Bible, Leviathan, the threatening monster, seems to be an alternative way of describing Satan himself, the great opposer of God and the prosecutor of God’s people.

Familiarity with the use of such stock images enhances ones understanding and appreciation of the biblical writers and their messages. I suppose some might find it surprising that the Bible contains such references, but this should come as no great surprise. The biblical writers were interested in clear communication, and often, this meant moving from the known to the unknown using elements that already were part of the cultural “working vocabulary” of their audience.

David, Jerusalem, and Biblical Minimalism

In light of the recent post on archaeology and the book of Joshua, I thought I would expand the discussion a bit to focus on the period that I find to be most central in the minimalist-maximalist debate about archaeology and biblical history: the tenth century BCE, the time of the United Kingdom, the reigns of David and Solomon.

First, look at this definition of minimalism and maximalism:

The labels "maximalism" and "minimalism" were coined in the debate about the historical reliability of the Bible. For more than a century, archaeologists have been digging in the Near East, and inevitably, they found contradictions between the archaeological record and the story told in the Bible. This is neither unique nor problematic. Information about Antiquity is always fragmentary, and the scholars studying ancient Rome, Greece, Israel, Egypt, Persia, or Babylonia often have to cope with contradictory evidence. For example, Julius Caesar claims to have subjected the Belgians, but this has so far not been confirmed archaeologically. Although contradictory evidence can be frustrating, it is preferable to having only one source: in that case, we can not establish whether it is correct or not; if the evidence is inconsistent, we can at least evaluate its quality.

When we are dealing with the history of the Jews, there is, after the sixth or fifth century BCE, no real contradiction between the main written source (the Bible) and the archaeological record. No one denies that the Jews returned from their Babylonian Captivity: archaeologists have identified the new villages, although it is not entirely clear when the return took place exactly. Moving backward, the discrepancy increases: in the age of the two kingdoms (Judah and Israel), the Biblical account is sometimes at odds with the results of archaeology, and if we look at the events before, say, king David, the fragmentary nature of our evidence is even more striking.

"Minimalism" and "maximalism" are two principles to cope with this situation. Maximalist scholars assume that the Biblical story is more or less correct, unless archaeologists prove that it is not; minimalists assume that the Biblical story must be read as fiction, unless it can be confirmed archaeologically. "Minimalism" and "maximalism" are, therefore, methods, approaches, or theoretical concepts. (Livius.org)
 

The minimalists are often associated with the University of Copenhagen (in particular, Thomas Thompson and Niels Peter Lemche) although many others like John van Seters, Keith Whitelam, and Philip Davies contribute to this view.

The maximalists are often dubbed "neo-Albrightians" (followers of the famous biblical archaeologist, William Foxwell Albright). The Biblical Archaeological Review represents this view and is the most consistent opponent of the new minimalism, along with archaeologists and writers like William Dever, Iain Provan, and Kenneth Kitchen.

I strongly recommend the following online article that introduces the minimalist-maximalist debate and the main issues at its center.

Three Debates about Bible and Archaeology (Ziony Zevit)

The following online articles might also prove helpful.

Did David and Solomon Exist? (Eric H. Cline)

The Debate over the Chronology of the Iron Age in the Southern Levant (Amihai Mazar)

The United Monarchy Under David and Solomon

Find of Ancient City Could Alter Notions of Biblical David

Has King David's Palace in Jerusalem Been Found? (Israel Finkelstein)

Finally, see these online articles for a broader perspective on the entire debate.

The collected "Essays on Minimalism from Bible and Interpretation" from The Bible and Interpretation web site, featuring articles from many of the major players in the current debate.

 A (Very, Very) Short History of Minimalism: From The Chronicler to the Present (Jim West) which offers a refreshing breath of common sense and historical perspective to the minimalist debate.