22 NADAV NA’AMAN suggest that tenth-century Jerusalem was in fact a small marginal town3. As the fifth-fourth centuries BCE were also a period of great decline, there are similar disputes over the scope and population of the city rebuilt by the Returnees. Thus, for example, some schol- ars dismiss the historicity of the account of the wall built by Ne- hemiah and on the basis of the archaeological evidence alone assign it to the Hellenistic period 4, whereas others suggest that enough fifth-fourth archaeological evidence exists to substantiate the biblical description 5. The date of the archaeological strata and the interpretation of the evidence unearthed in the excavations of the City of David are beyond the scope of this article. I focus instead on the way biblical authors described the building operations carried out in Jerusalem and the implications of these descriptions for the discussion of the history of the city. Texts and archaeology should be interpreted in- dependently of each other and only then be compared. Although the biblical descriptions of Jerusalem have been discussed many times in the past, I believe that these discussions do not exhaust the potential value of the sources. In what follows, I will first examine the biblical accounts of building projects carried out in Jerusalem in the time of David and Solomon and then analyze the construction accounts from the Per- sian period. Through this discussion, I will attempt to evaluate the Its Near Eastern Context. A Tribute to Nadav Na’aman (eds. Y. AMIT – E. BEN ZVI – I. FINKELSTEIN – O. LIPSCHITS) (Winona Lake, IN 2006) 257-265; O. KEEL, Die Geschichte Jerusalems und die Enstehung des Monotheismus (Göttingen 2007) I, 122-125; A. FAUST, “The Large Stone Structure in the City of David: A Reexamination”, ZDPV 126 (2010) 117-122. 3 M. STEINER, “The Evidence from Kenyon’s Excavations in Jerusalem: A Re- sponse Essay”, Jerusalem in Bible and Archaeology. The First Temple Period (eds. A.G. VAUGHN – A.E. KILLEBREW) (Atlanta, GA 2003) 347-363; D. USSISHKIN, “Solomon’s Jerusalem: The Text and the Facts on the Ground”, Jerusalem in Bible and Archaeology, 103-115; I. FINKELSTEIN – Z. HERZOG – L. SINGER-AVITZ – D. USSISHKIN, “Has King David’s Palace Been Found”, Tel Aviv 34 (2007) 142- 164; I. FINKELSTEIN, “The ‘Large Stone Structure’ in Jerusalem: Reality versus Yearning”, ZDPV 127 (2011) 1-11, with earlier literature. 4 I. FINKELSTEIN, “Jerusalem in the Persian (and Early Hellenistic) Period and the Wall of Nehemiah”, JSOT 32 (2008) 501-520; idem, “Persian Period Jerusalem and Yehud: A Rejoinder”, JHS 9 (2009) Article 24. 5 O. LIPSCHITS, “Persian Period Finds from Jerusalem: Facts and Inter- pretations”, JHS 9 (2009) Article 20; E. MAZAR, “The Wall that Nehemiah Built”, BAR 35/2 (2009) 24–33, 66; idem, Palace of King David, 72-76.