An archaeologist in Israel claims to have found the ancient site where the Bible's King David captured a citadel in Jerusalem, the Associated Press reported.
Eli Shukron, who has been excavating the 3,800-year-old "Spring Citadel" site for some 20 years, says there is evidence that the celebrated king conquered the citadel, matching up precisely to how it is told in the Bible.
"This is the citadel of King David, this is the Citadel of Zion, and this is what King David took from the Jebusites," Shukron, who used to work for Israel's Antiquities Authority, told the AP. "The whole site we can compare to the Bible perfectly."
Excavated evidence supporting Shukron's claim includes a narrow shaft for carrying spring water to a carved pool. In the second Book of Samuel, King David is able to find a way past the citadel's walls by entering it through a water shaft.
But several critics doubt Shukron and other archaeologists' ability to identify real locations of sites from the Bible, the AP reported.
Kind David, for instance, is regarded in Judaism as the one who established Jerusalem as the religion's holy city. However, with the exception of a written reference to David found in the north, hard evidence of the king's existence has been hard to come by.
"The connection between archaeology and the Bible has become very, very problematic in recent years," Ronny Reich, who collaborated with Shukron at the site until 2008, told the AP.
If it really is the citadel site, then more shards of pottery dating back to King David's reign in the 10th century B.C. should have been found, Reich said. Only two pieces of pottery dating near that time period were found.
As the debate about the site's origins continues, the Spring Citadel remains one of the most popular tourist sites in Jerusalem, drawing 500,000 visitors in 2013, the AP reported.
