Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

Dear John,

There is a wealth of problems that you have sent that would take me a long
time to adequately deal with. Let me try with a few.

>>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.  

I really can't understand the importance that a datum fit what the biblical
stories mention. Is it, well they got this one bit right, so all the rest
must basically be right as well? Although I wouldn't want to vouch for any
accuracy in the Epic of Gilgamesh, there was a king called Gilgamesh and
Lebanon did furnish cedar. Am I forced by your apparent logic to conclude
the veracity of things that I wouldn't normally accept?

>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:

Why not say an exodus that happened in 1650 so as to deal with the Jericho
data which you have not represented well (as you have depended on outdated
information such as that of Garstang). Remember that Kenyon showed that
after the middle bronze remains the inhabitation at Jericho was drastically
reduced and the same Kenyon criticised the findings of Garstang, showing
the wall he found that had fallen showing the "truth" of the Bible to have
been from the early bronze. Garstang also, according to Kenyon, had
misdated pottery from the 16th century BCE two centuries too late. Kenyon
showed that the middle bronze tombs were untouched, indicating a lack of
inhabitation later. Kenyon's discoveries at tell el-Sultan have been born
out with the findings of the middle bronze wall last year (Nigro &
Marchetti) that shows that the site did not continue to be occupied after
the middle bronze.

So if one is to redate the exodus, perhaps we could make the date even more
convenient.

Your arguments regarding the datings based on the manipulation of who lived
when is far from convincing. Two generations after Abraham those sites that
he visited in the Negev didn't exist any more as shown by the fact that
Jacob didn't visit them! Then there's the tree of Moreh that sprouts into a
city in two generations. (I find it difficult to believe that this sort of
thought is seriously proposed.)

>Bethel and Ai - I think David Livingston has shown conclusively that
>Bethel should be located at Bireh, not Beitin

Albright was digging in the wrong place! It's a shame that it isn't as
conclusive as you would like it to have been. Ahlstrom's 1993 tome (Hist.
of Anc. Pal.) shows no interest at all in relocating Bethel. I wonder, is
it necessary either to relocate a patriarch in time or a site in position
because it doesn't fulfill one's presuppositions? (Actually both a
relocated Bethel and a relocated Ai have already been proposed on this list.)

>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.

(And they still don't despite having Garstang taken out of the closet! see
above.)

>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.  

The walls of Jericho put all this theorising to rest. Jericho was abandoned
before the late bronze period, with few traces of anything later.

>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?  

Let me return to the Philistines who according to the biblical accounts
were in Palestine for centuries before the conquest. We know that the
Philistines arrived in the twelfth century so the Hebrews arrived later.
The conquest doesn't reflect events that happened in the period indicated.
Jericho was not occupied at the relevant time. Ai had been a ruin for
centuries (despite the few trying to relocate it). The Philistines had
taken Beth-Shean and were in the Jordan valley after the time given to the
conquest. The world of Joshua is not the world of the fourteenth/thirteen
centuries.

>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).  

The faulty logic here is that Gibeon was supposed to have been a large
city. Your texts explicitly states it as such. If et-Tell is so much larger
than Gibeon then the information about the size of Gibeon is wrong. It
doesn't matter if you relocate Ai, as the biblical Gibeon doesn't reflect
the reality of the situation in the epoch. All you do is stretch your slim
possibility to be too thin, for trying to salvage the Ai situation you show
another problem.

>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.

As far as I know the fall of Hazor has been connected to the arrival of the
Philistines.

>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.

John, you are the one who finds detailed accuracy in the report of the
conquest of Jericho. That accuracy is clearly not seen by those people
working in the field today. As a matter of fact, Nigro has said that the
find of the walls intact dating to the middle bronze with no successive
walls (and no successive inhabitation) puts an end to the speculation
regarding Joshua's conquest of the city.

There is a pattern of lack of historicity in the "early" traditions of the
OT/HB. No scope for an exodus as portrayed, no scope for a conquest as
portrayed. It would really be interested to see just how these traditions
developed.


Ian