There doesn't seem to be much of anything actually substantiating King David's existence. Has this changed as of late? I know it's very important to modern-day Israeli historiography.
Actually it is rather more important to Christianity. Jesus as the Messiah is predicated on his lineage from King David.
This is why the New Testament commences with proving Jesus's direct lineage from King David. Without it, Jesus is not the Messiah, and Christianity is baseless.
Cyrus was the Messiah, too, but nobody pretends he was descended from King David. In any case, Jesus fails most of the Messianic criteria of Second Temple Judaism. Early Christians had to significantly revise their concept of Messiah to get Jesus to fit. Indeed, the NT makes light of the fact that Jesus was not the Messiah the Jews were expecting, although it implies they were wrong.
In any case, the basis of Christianity is that Jesus was God incarnate, died for the sins of the world, rose from the dead, and will come again to judge the living and the dead. Some early Christian polemic about interpretation of then-centries-old prophesy isn't core to that. It's a problem for fundamentalism, but that's an entirely separate issue.
I don't agree. It seems that Israeli archaeology is focused on the premise of being there first, above all else. It doesn't seem that Christians are heavily involved in Israel's archaeological program either.
