[17][18]: 59–61  This model placed the biblical kingdom in Iron Age I, suggesting that it was not functioning as a country under centralized governance but rather as tribal chiefdom over a small polity in Judah, disconnected from the north's Israelite tribes.

[23] Recent archaeological discoveries by Israeli archaeologists Eilat Mazar and Yosef Garfinkel in Jerusalem and Khirbet Qeiyafa, respectively, seem to support the existence of the United Monarchy, but the dating and identifications are not universally accepted.

Current scholarly consensus allows for a historical Solomon, but regards his reign as king over Israel and Judah in the 10th century BCE as uncertain and the biblical portrayal of his apparent empire's opulence as most probably an anachronistic exaggeration.

Finkelstein wrote that "Accepting the Low Chronology means stripping the United Monarchy of monumental buildings, including ashlar masonry and proto-Ionic capitals"[28][29] According to Finkelstein and Neil Silberman, the authors of The Bible Unearthed, ideas of a united monarchy is not accurate history but "creative expressions of a powerful religious reform movement" that are possibly "based on certain historical kernels.

Finkelstein's Low Chronology and views about the monarchy have received strong criticism from other scholars, including Amnon Ben-Tor, William G. Dever, Kenneth Kitchen, Doron Ben-Ami, Raz Kletter and Lawrence Stager.

[33] Though Amélie Kuhrt acknowledges 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," she concludes, "Against this must be set the evidence for substantial development and growth at several sites, which is plausibly related to the tenth century.

"[20] Kenneth Kitchen (University of Liverpool) reaches a similar conclusion, arguing that "the physical archaeology of tenth-century Canaan is consistent with the former existence of a unified state on its terrain.

The Israel Antiquities Authority stated, "The excavations at Khirbat Qeiyafa reveal an urban society that existed in Judah already in the late eleventh century BCE.

The professor leading the dig, Aren Maeir, estimated that Gath was as much as four times the size of contemporary Jerusalem, which cast doubt that David's kingdom could have been as powerful as described in the Bible.

[43] In his book, The Forgotten Kingdom (2016), Israel Finkelstein considered that Saul, originally from the Benjamin territory, had gained power in his natal Gibeon region around the 10th century BCE and that he conquered Jerusalem in the south and Shechem to the north, creating a polity dangerous to Egypt's geopolitical intentions.

[44] In an article on the Biblical Archaeology Review, William G. Dever strongly criticized Finkelstein's theory, calling it full of "numerous errors, misrepresentations, over-simplifications and contradictions."

Dever noted that Finkelstein proposes that Saul ruled a polity extending as far north as Jezreel and as far south as Hebron and reaching a border with Gath, with a capital located in Gibeon rather than Jerusalem.

Dever went as far as to dismiss Finkelstein's theory as "a product of his fantasy, stemmed by his obsession to prove that Saul, David and Solomon were not real kings and that the United Monarchy is an invention of a Judahite-biased biblical writer."

[47][48] In 2018, archaeologist Avraham Faust announced that his excavations at Tel 'Eton (believed to be the biblical Eglon) had uncovered an elite house (which he referred to as "the governor's residency"), whose foundations were dated by carbon-14 analysis in the late 11th–10th century BCE, the time usually ascribed to Saul, David and Solomon.

The anti-monarchical source describes Samuel, having thoroughly routed the Philistines, as begrudgingly accepting the people's demand for a ruler and appointing Saul by cleromancy.

[66] Some modern archaeologists, however, believe that the two distinct cultures and geographic entities of Judah and Israel continued uninterrupted, and if a political union between them existed, it might have had no practical effect on their relationship.

[6] In the biblical account, David embarks on successful military campaigns against the enemies of Judah and Israel and defeats such regional entities as the Philistines to secure his borders.

[68] Like David's Palace, Solomon's temple is designed and built with the assistance of Tyrian architects, skilled labourers, money, jewels, cedar and other goods obtained in exchange for land ceded to Tyre.

Yigael Yadin later concluded that the stables that had been believed to have served Solomon's vast collection of horses were built by King Ahab in the 9th century BCE.

[73][74][75] Most biblical scholars follow either of the older chronologies established by American archaeologists William F. Albright and Edwin R. Thiele or the newer one by Israeli historian Gershon Galil.