Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

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.