I don't know why simple concepts are so hard for you sometimes? I don't have a "list". Historians do not believe myths are real. Not Islam and not Christianity. They are legends with fictional characters and the stories demonstrate that in many ways.
Theologians in EVERY religion study the theology and assume it's real.
Every religion has a long list of theologians who will say their religion is the true word of God. Islam, Christianity, Judaism.......
But historians look at the big picture and do not make assumptions, they investigate evidence. In that respect Islam and Christianity are both equally as unlikely to be anything but myths.
This "9 to 1" is nonsense because you listed only theologians? You could list 100 theologians, of course they think their religion is real be it Islam, Christianity, Hinduism.... they take it on faith and that's it?
So a theologian is not a good representation of weather something is true or not. An Islamic theologian will tell you God spoke to Muhammad and Christianity is wrong.
A Christian theologian will say th eopposite.
But all historians know there is no actual good evidence for any of them. There are many lines of evidence that they are made up stories however. Many.
Well first it isn't uncommon for writers to set myths in real places and deities among real kings. It was done in Hinduism and probably all mythology. The Greek epics are believed to have featured some real wars and leaders.
There might have been a King David. Odd that you ignore all the other archaeology about the OT however? So you are ok with just finds that confirm things and all the others you sweep under the rug?
Q: The Bible describes it as a glorious kingdom stretching from Egypt to Mesopotamia. Does archeology back up these descriptions?
Dever: The stories of Solomon are larger than life. According to the stories, Solomon imported 100,000 workers from what is now Lebanon. Well, the whole population of Israel probably wasn't 100,000 in the 10th century. Everything Solomon touched turned to gold. In the minds of the biblical writers, of course, David and Solomon are ideal kings chosen by Yahweh. So they glorify them.
Now, archeology can't either prove or disprove the stories. But I think most archeologists today would argue that the United Monarchy was not much more than a kind of hill-country chiefdom. It was very small-scale.
"
Q: Does archeology in Jerusalem itself reveal anything about the Kingdom of David and Solomon?
Dever: We haven't had much of an opportunity to excavate in Jerusalem. It's a living city, not an archeological site. But we have a growing collection of evidence—monumental buildings that most of us would date to the 10th century, including the new so-called Palace of David. Having seen it with the excavator, it is certainly monumental. Whether it's a palace or an administrative center or a combination of both or a kind of citadel remains to be seen.
"
William Dever
Or these views from Biblical archaeology related to King David:
"
Of the evidence in question, John Haralson Hayes and James Maxwell Miller wrote in 2006: "If one is not convinced in advance by the biblical profile, then there is nothing in the archaeological evidence itself to suggest that much of consequence was going on in Palestine during the tenth century BCE, and certainly nothing to suggest that Jerusalem was a great political and cultural center."
[138] This echoed the 1995 conclusion of
Amélie Kuhrt, who noted that "there are no royal inscriptions from the time of the united monarchy (indeed very little written material altogether), and not a single contemporary reference to either David or Solomon," while noting, "against this must be set the evidence for substantial development and growth at several sites, which is plausibly related to the tenth century."
[139]
In 2007,
Israel Finkelstein and
Neil Asher Silberman stated that the archaeological evidence shows that Judah was sparsely inhabited and Jerusalem no more than a small village. The evidence suggested that David ruled only as a chieftain over an area which cannot be described as a state or as a kingdom, but more as a chiefdom, much smaller and always overshadowed by the older and more powerful
kingdom of Israel to the north.
[140] They posited that Israel and Judah were not
monotheistic at the time, and that later seventh-century redactors sought to portray a past golden age of a united, monotheistic monarchy in order to serve contemporary needs.
[141] They noted a lack of archeological evidence for David's military campaigns and a relative underdevelopment of Jerusalem, the capital of Judah, compared to a more developed and urbanized Samaria, capital of Israel during the 9th century BCE.
[142][143][144]
In 2014,
Amihai Mazar wrote that the
United Monarchy of the 10th century BCE can be described as a "state in development".
[145] He has also compared David to
Labaya, a Caananite warlord living during the time of Pharaoh
Akhenaten. While Mazar believes that David reigned over Israel during the 11th century BCE, he argues that much of the Biblical text is “literary-legendary nature”.
[146] According to William G. Dever, the reigns of
Saul, David and
Solomon are reasonably well attested, but "most archeologists today would argue that the United Monarchy was not much more than a kind of hill-country chiefdom".[
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[147][
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[148][149]
Lester L. Grabbe wrote in 2017 that: "The main question is what kind of settlement Jerusalem was in Iron IIA: was it a minor settlement, perhaps a large village or possibly a citadel but not a city, or was it the capital of a flourishing – or at least an emerging – state? Assessments differ considerably …"
[150] Isaac Kalimi wrote in 2018 that: "No contemporaneous extra-biblical source offers any account of the political situation in Israel and Judah during the tenth century BCE, and as we have seen, the archaeological remains themselves cannot provide any unambiguous evidence of events."
[12]