Thread by @MichaelDPress

This sensationalist story and headline badly needs unpacking.
newsweek.com/bible-king-mes…

To set the stage: In 1994, French epigrapher André Lemaire suggested reading an unclear word in line 31 of the stele as btdwd, the "House of David" (influenced by the then-newly discovered Tel Dan Stele).
baslibrary.org/biblical-archa…

For those interested, here's a line drawing of line 31 (by Mark Lidzbarski in 1898), with the word in question highlighted.
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mesh…

Now, Israel Finkelstein, Nadav Na'aman, and Thomas Römer have just published an article in the journal Tel Aviv suggesting that, instead of btdwd, this word might be blk -- the biblical king Balak (Numbers 22-24)
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

The authors "cautiously propose" that the word be read Balak, and then suggest that Balak "may have been a historical figure"
Compare the hedging to the stronger wording of that Newsweek headline. Reading the article, we can see why the authors need to hedge.

All that the authors can say is that we're dealing with a three-consonant word beginning with b, that based on context should be a name!
Based on the geographical context, they suggest it might be Balak.
(Needless to say, this is pretty weak.)

I'm also puzzled why they conclude that Balak might therefore be a historical figure, on analogy w/the mention of Balaam (known from the same Bible episode) in the Deir Alla inscription.
(I don't see why the Deir Alla text means that Balaam was necessarily a historical figure.)

So why is this speculative article starting to gain traction?
Because of a press release marking the release of the academic article . . . by the Taylor & Francis group (publisher of Tel Aviv, the academic journal the article appeared in)!
eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2…

This is really remarkable -- in the last few years of following archaeology of Israel news stories closely, I can't remember seeing a news story based on a publisher's press release before.

In comments to Newsweek, Finkelstein moves from "cautiously proposing" (as in the journal article) that this name is Balak to this "very likely" being his name.

Newsweek then compounds the problem by taking that "very likely" out of context and putting it in the headline, falsely suggesting that someone said Balak was "very likely" a historical figure.
(Also compounding it by putting this Bible speculation under "Tech & Science"!)

Haaretz, meanwhile, puts out a sensationalist headline that states that Balak "was" a historical figure . . . only adding after that the reinterpretation merely "suggests" this.
haaretz.com/archaeology/.p…

From this saga, we can see 1) how the process of sensationalism travels from academic article to press release to news story to headline; and
2) that Israel Finkelstein can historicize the Bible just like a "maximalist".

Haaretz has changed their headline and dialed back the claims a bit:
"may have been", not "was".

A day after the Taylor & Francis Group release, American Friends of Tel Aviv University posted a press release -- clearly based on the same original, but with some additional sections missing from the publisher's version.
aftau.org/news-page-arch…