The Bible's First Kings

Saul, David, and Solomon are among the most influential—and most contested—figures in the Hebrew Bible. The biblical narratives portray them as rulers of an expanding Israelite polity that eventually divided into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Yet how much of these accounts reflects historical reality? Did the United Monarchy truly exist, and what can archaeology tell us about Israel’s earliest kings?

In The Bible’s First Kings: Uncovering the Story of Saul, David, and Solomon (Cambridge UP, 2025), archaeologist Avraham Faust and biblical scholar Zev I. Farber enter one of the most vigorously debated areas of biblical scholarship. Against the growing skepticism surrounding the historicity of the United Monarchy, they argue that Saul, David, and Solomon were real rulers of consequence and that the early Israelite kingdom developed into a regional “mini-empire”—even if the biblical authors later reshaped the memories of these kings in order to glorify, criticize, or vilify them.

Combining recent archaeological discoveries with close and critical readings of Samuel and Kings, Faust and Farber reconstruct the rise, development, and collapse of this short-lived ancient polity. Their study examines settlement patterns, fortifications, demographic change, relations between Israelites and Philistines, copper production in Edom and Timna, and the complex relationship between material evidence, historical memory, and biblical narrative.

In this interview, Professor Avraham Faust discusses what archaeology can—and cannot—tell us about Saul, David, and Solomon; why the scholarly consensus concerning the United Monarchy has changed so dramatically; how biblical traditions preserve genuine historical memories while also reshaping the past; and why a kingdom that lasted for less than a century left such an extraordinary religious and cultural legacy.

The interview was conducted by Željko Stanojević of the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature, with invaluable assistance from his colleague Mila Lekić. The Institute publishes the Diamond Open Access European Hebrew Journal and organizes the EHJ International Scholarly Online Conference 2026, at which Professor Faust will present “The Archaeology of the Return to Zion and the Achaemenid Economic Revolution.”