House of David from the Tel Dan Stele
by Matt Giwer, © 2005 [Sep]

First we notice how much is missing and either admitted to be missing or with letters and words added.

picture and translation

The following summarizes all the uses of BT in Hebrew and Aramaic.

The word BT in Hebrew or BYT in Aramaic.

The problem with House of David is it wants to use the word house in the British English sense of dynasty. There problem is the oldest example of that usage is from Renaissance Italy. There are no older examples of a usage as dynasty. So if the dynasty meaning had never arose no one would be taking this for House of David.

If you look at the drawing you see it is one word, not two words. Note there are dot separators between the words. So clearly believers are trying to find something in the text which is not there.

But it is from a city of the tribe of Dan is it not? To answer that you have to ask how it was identified as such. Was there something intrinsic to the city? Was there even a mention of the tribe of Dan? No. The "discoverers" referred to the Old Testament as saying that tribe lived in this region and that was the extent of their identification.

That is illogical circular reasoning. Nothing has ever been found at the cite to justify the identification.

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