David (/ˈdeɪvɪd/; Biblical Hebrew: דָּוִד, romanized: Dāwīḏ, "beloved one") was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the third king of the United Kingdom of Israel. Historians of the Ancient Near East agree that David probably lived c. 1000 BCE, but little more is known about him as a historical figure.
According to Jewish works such as the Seder Olam Rabbah, Seder Olam Zutta, and Sefer ha-Qabbalah (all written over a thousand years later), David ascended the throne as the king of Judah in 885 BCE. The Tel Dan stele, an Aramaic-inscribed stone erected by a king of Aram-Damascus in the late 9th/early 8th centuries BCE to commemorate a victory over two enemy kings, contains the phrase bytdwd (𐤁𐤉𐤕𐤃𐤅𐤃), which is translated as "House of David" by most scholars. The Mesha stele, erected by King Mesha of Moab in the 9th century BCE, may also refer to the "House of David", although this is disputed. Apart from this, all that is known of David comes from biblical literature, the historicity of which has been extensively challenged,[10] and there is little detail about David that is concrete and undisputed.
