Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

Dear Peter,

This series of posts is a little light on content, isn't it?

>Ian wrote:
>
>"Jericho was destroyed in the first half of the sixteenth century BCE, 
>totally abandoned for over a century, then there was a small 
>settlement on the site from 1400-1325 then nothing until the eleventh 
>century."

Peter asked:

>Maybe my memory is faulty, but I thought I remember a claim that 
>Jericho was uninhabited from the 16th to the 11th century. Have we 
>seen a shift of position?

I was sticking to Kenyon in the above paragraph, which is the most
favourable scenario for the literalist reading. Ahlstrom renders it more
directly: "the fact that such cities as Ai, Gibeon, and Jericho in
Cisjordan and Heshbon in Transjordan did not exist in the thirteenth
century BCE makes the conquest model unacceptable." (Hist. of Anc. Pal, p343)

>Suppose for the moment that we accept the above. Why was the 
>settlement abandoned in 1325? (How accurate is that date anyway?) 

Kenyon was trying to explain how there were a few traces of disturbance in
some of the tombs, which caused Garstang to misinterpret the data. (A
settlement indicates a human presence, not a town.)

It seems that there was a minimal presence on the site for some of the
period indicated above.

>Could that have been because of the Israelite conquest? Also, how 
>small was the settlement? Were the inhabitants living within the 
>remaining (but perhaps rickety!) walls of the previous settlement, or 

The walls were the MB walls.

>did they build their own walls? The real conservatives might not like 
>the following theory any more than I expect Ian will, but how about it 
>anyway: perhaps what the Israelites really conquered was an abandoned 
>city in whose ruins a few semi-nomads were living, whose walls were so 
>shaky that a trumpet blast was enough to bring them down!

Wishful...

Or, perhaps, amusing.


Ian