Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ruthy & Baruch" <alster AT comandcom.com>]

Shalom to all!

Here and there we hear (most recently on this list from Prof. Lemche) the
common opinions concerning the conquest of Ai in Josh. 7-8:

1.  Ai is located at a-Tell.
2.  a-Tell was abandoned many years before Joshua's supposed conquest.
3.  Therefore, the story in Joshua is fictional.

However, there is at least one great difference between a-Tell and the Ai
narrative that puts this theory in doubt: the size of Ai according to
Joshua.  Both in chap. 7, and in chap. 9, Ai is referred to as a small
city, smaller than Gibeon or Jericho.  However, a-Tell is one of the
largest tells in Israel.  So we cannot say that a later writer used the
conquest story to explain the ancient ruin.

This leaves two possibilities:

1.  Ai is not a-Tell.  I'm not familiar with all the scholarly work written
on the subject, but among the scholars living here (north of Jerusalem, not
far from a-Tell), there are a few opinions where Ai should be (each scholar
thinks it's near the town he lives in!  :-) ), the best-known being Rabbi
Yoel Bin-Nun's location of Ai at Khirbet Marjameh.  Unlike the a-Tell area,
there is enough room there to hold a very large army as the one described
in Joshua.

2.  Ai was a small city built on the ruins of a-Tell.  This would explain
the name of Ai (meaning "ruins"), the size of the city in Joshua, and the
lack of evidence of any settlement at the time of conquest (much of the
Tell has not been excavated).  I was told this was the opinion of I.M.
Grintz, although I have not read his article.

This does not, of course, prove the accuracy or early dating of the
conquest narratives.  However, I believe I have shown that the opposite
cannot be proven from the archaeological finds at a-Tell.

Kol Tuv,
Baruch Alster
Kochav Ya`akov, Israel