Biblical Hebrew Forum

[John Ronning <ronning AT ilink.nis.za>]

Ian wrote (to Peter):

>You might like to get back on track however, instead of being sidelined
>into considering only evidence for a pre-exilic maintenance of records.
>This is ultimately irrelevant for your hopeful defence of nomadic >people in 
>the bronze age maintaining written traditions.

In the spirit of "getting back on track," the following. 

Just how the Bronze Age traditions could have been written down is to me
only a matter of curiosity, though I would note that Genesis 15 follows
the form of the "covenant of grant" which was elsewhere written down in
cuneiform in the second millenium (of necessity since it functioned as a
deed to the land granted by the suzerein to his faithful servant).

>From the Early Bronze Age and before:  
Gen 2:11-12.  "The name of the first [river of Eden] is Pishon; it flows
[or flowed] around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.  And
the gold of that land is good; the bdellium and the onyx stone are
there."

As I mentioned before, a river was recently rediscovered which fits the
biblical data.  It started in the Hijaz mountains of western Saudi
Arabia (one of the previously proposed locations of Havilah because of
the prevelance of bdellium and precious stones there), near the "cradle
of gold," an ancient gold mine that currently produces more than five
tons of gold a year.  The river has been dry since sometime in the
period 3500-2000, and geologists looking for it (to explain how granite
and basalt pebbles got to Kuwait) needed satelite photography to find it
(more than 200 miles of it is buried in sand).  (Reference - BAR
July/August 1996, pp. 52ff.)

I think it's at least plausible to suggest that such minutiae was handed
down in written form. This example is relevant to your recent question,
"It [OT/HB] may in fact refer to events that happened long before, but
is there any way of ever knowing?"

Turning to the middle bronze age; if one wanted to see if the
patriarchal traditions were fabricated by people who knew nothing of the 
archaeological realities of the Bronze age, one could look at the cities
said to be visited by the patriarchs, and check their itinerary with
what is known from archaeology.  Many have done so, concluding that
there is no good match in either the Middle Bronze I (MB I), or MB II. 
But then again, the biblical chronology would suggest that the
patriarchal period spans two archaeological periods (Abraham almost
entirely in MB I, Isaac starting in MB I before Abraham's death,
then MB II starting around the time of Abraham's death, and Jacob in MB
II for his travels after returning from Aram), so it is something of a
"bait and switch" type argument (not that this is being done
intentionally by  archaeologists) to say (1) the data of the patriarchal
narratives does not fit either MBI or MBII (or EBIII or IV, or LB I),
therefore (2) there is no such thing (historically) as the patriarchal
era.

Checking the patriarchal itinerary combined with the patriarchal
chronology given in Genesis and using the circa 1450 date for the exodus
does give a better match of the archaeological data than just looking in
either MB I or MB II:

Shechem: Abraham visits the "site" of Shechem, to the "Oak of Moreh." 
It's not called a city here (Gen 12:6), whereas when Jacob comes to
Shechem it's apparently a quite new city (we are apparently to infer
from Gen 33:18-19 that Hamor named Shechem after his son [cf. Gen
4:17]).  The biblical chronology would put the date about 1900 BC, which
would be MB IIA, the period in which excavators say Shechem began as a
city (Abraham would have visited the "site" in MB I).  Lucky guess, or
written tradition?  Maybe the opinion of archaeologists will change, so
one city doesn't prove anything.  But Dothan is also in this category
(having MB IIA remains but not MB I remains, said to be visited by
Jacob's generation [actually here his sons] but not by Abraham). 
Succoth (if = Tell Deir `Alla) has MB IIA remains but no
evidence of a city (it is not said to be a city when Jacob was there).

On the other hand, Abraham is said to have stayed in the Negev region
(20:1; 24:62), which had quite a large number of unwalled settlements
during the MB I period (including Kadesh, Gen 14:7; 16:14; 20:1), but no
remains have been found at all from MB II.  Jacob is never said to have
gone to live in the Negev, while Isaac is said to have lived in
Beer-la-xay-roi after the death of Abraham but then he moves out of the
Negev.  Reason?  Possibly the famine mentioned in Genesis 26 not only
resulted in Isaac moving to Gerar but in the general abandonment of
Negev settlements.

Gerar - said to be visited by both Abraham (MB I) and Isaac (MB II) has
been excavated (if correctly located) and found to have been occupied
throughout the bronze and iron ages.

Beersheba - no bronze age remains, but (1) the only reference to
Beersheba as a city is from the time of the later reader (26:33); (2)
there is no need to identify the iron age well with the well dug by
Abraham and redug by Isaac; (3) remains from other periods (LB remains
would be expected from the fact that Beersheba is listed in Josh 15:28
and 19:2) may be under the modern town Beersheba.

Bethel and Ai - I think David Livingston has shown conclusively that
Bethel should be located at Bireh, not Beitin (which is probably
Beth-Awen), based on his study of Roman mile markers and Eusebius'
descritption of Bethel's location.  Beitin has some MB I pottery (when
Abraham passed by Bethel), and was a city in MB IIA (when Jacob visited
Bethel, specifically called a city then).  Bireh has not been excavated.
Ai (ha`ay, "the ruins") need not have been occupied in Abraham's day to
serve as a landmark (et Tell's destruction is dated to ~2400 BC).

Hebron - said to be home for three generations of patriarchs - is
problematic for both the patriarchal and conquest periods,
since it has only MB II remains until the iron age (thus excluding
Abraham and Joshua).  It is pictured as a major city in Joshua 10, and
should have been at least a small city by the time of Genesis 23 (where
it is said to have a gate; before that it is only associated with the
"Oaks of Mamre").  Of interest, however (for the conquest period), is
that Hebron is listed along with some of the same satellites listed in
Josh 15:52-54 in a map list of palestinian cities from the time of
Raamses II, so evidently it was an LB city (a major one with satelites)
even though such hasn't been found.  For the patriarchal period, it
could be that the MB II Hebron actually started right at the end of MB I
(Abraham sat at its gate about 2030 BC according to biblical chronology,
which is pretty close to the currently accepted start of MB II in 2000
BC) but that no MB I remains have been found.  Also relevant is that the
cutoff between one period and another may be phased rather than
instantaneous and happens at different sites at different times.

Ashteroth-Qarnayim is mentioned in the time of Abraham (14:5); two
suggested sites both have MB I remains, not MB II.

There are a number of other place names in the patriarchal narratives
which have not been definitely located, so can't be discussed here, but
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that there seems to be a
pattern that cities said to exist in the time of Abraham (but not Jacob)
turn out to have MB I remains, whereas sites said to be visited by Jacob
(but not Abraham) turn out to have MB II remains, which is not what we
would expect if these stories were just guess-work.  Also, such
incidental details would be less likely to be preserved than the main
point of the narratives (i.e. the things that are happening at these
places), and the accuracy of detail over the centuries is best accounted
for by assuming a written tradition. (Is there a better explanation?)


Turning to the Late Bronze age, and your remark:
>The Joshua tales don't fit into the archaeological evidence.

The most well known of "the Joshua tales" fits into the archaeological
evidence in the following respects:
- Kenyon found a large quantity of mudbricks outside the stone revetment
wall, and made the logical deduction that they were once part of the
city's wall.  The fallen walls would have formed a ready made ramp for
the Israelites to "go up" into the city (Josh 6:20).

- the city was burned (Josh 6:24)

- large quantities of grain were found by both Garstang and Kenyon,
consistent with the prohibition of looting anything from the city except
its silver, gold, bronze, and iron, which were to be "put into the
treasury of the house of the Lord" (Josh 6:24).  The large quantity of
grain also implies the following:

- the destruction occurred after harvest (Josh 4:19; 5:12)

- the siege was short (Josh 6:15)

Garstang obtained a radio-carbon date for charcoal remains of 1410+-40
years (which would agree with the 480 year period mentioned in 1 Kings
6:1).  Kenyon ignored this (and other features of Garstang's report, and
her own finding of late bronze age pottery) and dated the destruction to
about 1550.  Her main reason seems to be the absence of a certain kind
of pottery in her finds, which had already been found by Garstang (i.e.
she evidently didn't read Garstang's report).

Wouldn't the logical conclusion be that these details were handed down
in the written tradition of the conquerors?  Is there a more likely
explanation?  Did the exiled Israelites send a delegation of
proto-Israeli archaeologists from Babylon to dig up Jericho to lend
credibility (2500 years later) to their conquest story they were making
up?

Ai was also said to be destroyed and burned.  The excavator of et-Tell
remarked about how much time and money had been expended, only to prove
that the story in Joshua wasn't true (et-Tell wasn't occupied in the
Middle or Late Bronze periods).  If he had read his Bible he wouldn't
have wasted time looking for Joshua's Ai at et-Tell since et-Tell is
more than twice as big as Jericho, whereas Ai is implied to be smaller
than Jericho (Josh 7:3), and explicitly said to be smaller than Gibeon
(10:2).  Contrary to what you said before, there are other possible
(small) sites nearby.  The most promising of these has yielded LB I
remains, including a gate as we would expect from Joshua 8.

Hazor is the only other city said to have been burnt by Joshua, and it
was indeed destroyed in a huge conflagration, ascribed by the excavator
to the Israelites, since the conquerors also destroyed or defaced the
idols of all religious persuasions.  As far as I know, he hasn't set a
date for this conflagration.

There are numerous problems with other cities mentioned in the conquest
accounts (both Joshua and Numbers), as archaeologists have not found
Late Bronze remains at a number of cities where they "should" be
according to Joshua and Numbers.  I've already mentioned Hebron, where
LB I remains are lacking (but Ramses II put it on his map).  There's an
even bigger problem with Dibon (Num 33:45).  There are no archaeological
remains from before the 9th century.  But, Thutmosis III put it on his
map-list (~1450 BC), in a similar sequence as found in Numbers 33, and
Ramses II claimed to have captured it.  So the "non-existence" of LB I
cities mentioned in Joshua has an analogy with the Egyptian records,
suggesting there may be another explanation to the apparent
contradiction than wholesale fabrication of history (one might also
mention Jerusalem, where there are few LB remains, yet it must have been
an important city (with a scribal center) according to the Amarna
letters.

Bimson noted that there is a much better fit between Joshua and the
Middle Bronze II sites, and suggested that MB IIC extended down to about
1420 BC.  His suggestion has been treated with anything from pure scorn
(e.g. Baruch Halpern), to matter-of-factual disagreement (Manfred
Bietek: "One has to admit that the difference between MB IIC and LB IA
is only minor. . . . I do ... see some logic in their theory, which
deserves much thought and should not be dismissed altogether" [BAR
Jul/Aug '88, 54]).  

At any rate, even if most of what is described in Joshua didn't happen,
you would still have to explain the detailed accuracy of the report of
the conquest of Jericho since your position is that the details could
not have been handed down in written form.



Yours,

John Ronning