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  • From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Jericho
  • Date: Sat, 22 May 2004 16:55:55 -0500

Dear Herman,

I agree with the information you cited. I think a 1400 B.C. destruction for Jericho is what the Bible teaches.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard

The following was taken from site http://www.watchmanmag.com/0103/010311.htm


In the cases of Abraham, Moses, and the Exodus, the point is that no direct
archaeological evidence has yet been found to prove any of these. In typical
fashion, "most scholars" agree that these things never happened, simply because
there has not been found any direct proof of their existence outside of the
Bible! This is nothing new; for generations, scholars have consistently refused
to believe anything the Bible says until such time as some extra-biblical
evidence forces them to admit that it happened. And even then they insist that the
details of the biblical account are full of errors, whether or not they have
any evidence to back up their assertions. But the claims Time makes regarding
Jericho are somewhat bolder. In this instance, the claim is that the
archaeological evidence actually contradicts the scriptural record:
"Historians generally agree that Joshua's conquest would have taken place in
the thirteenth century B.C. But British researcher Kathleen Kenyon, who
excavated at Jericho for six years, found no evidence of destruction at that time."
(page 68, center column)
This is interesting on at least two levels. First, if there is no
archaeological evidence of Joshua's campaign, and indeed historians don't even believe it
ever occurred, how can they all agree on when it would have happened?
Secondly, it is interesting that this article, which repeatedly claims to be talking
about new discoveries, cites Kathleen Kenyon's research. Dame Kenyon excavated
in Jericho from 1952 to 1958, and she died in 1978.
Kathleen Kenyon concluded that Jericho's walls fell around 1550 B.C., some
150 years before the Bible has Joshua coming to the city. According to an
article by Dr. Bryant Wood in the March/April 1990 issue of Biblical Archaeology
Review, her conclusion was apparently based solely on the lack of pottery from
Cyprus in her sites. It seems that certain Cyprian pottery was common in the
1400's B.C., and since she didn't find any, she decided that the city must have
been uninhabited during that time. But John Garstang, who excavated at Jericho
from 1930 to 1936, had discovered some of this very pottery! Moreover, some of
the local pottery which Dame Kenyon did find is unique to the period
1400-1450 B.C., when she said the city was unoccupied. So, the ceramic evidence
actually confirms that the city was occupied until approximately 1400 B.C.
In addition to the ceramic evidence, there is much more archaeological
evidence to show that the walls of Jericho fell somewhere around 1400 B.C. For a
discussion of this evidence, see Dr. Wood's article noted above. As to the Bible,
I Kings 6:1 states that King Solomon began building the temple in Jerusalem
in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel had come
out of the land of Egypt. Construction of the temple began in 966 B.C., so this
places the exodus from Egypt at 1446 B.C. When we consider the forty years of
wandering in the wilderness, this puts Joshua at Jericho pretty close to 1400
B.C. Furthermore, in spite of the fact that the authors cite Dame Kenyon's
conclusions, the time line on pages 66-67 of the Time article shows the
destruction of Jericho at 1400 B.C.! If you ask me, things are looking pretty good for
the biblical account so far as the date is concerned, "most historians"
notwithstanding.




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