[Editor's Note: XXX James Patrick Holding is a phony name
used by Robert Turkel, who
began using it while he was still working as a librarian at Lake
Correctional Institute near
Clermont, Florida. I have long suspected that Turkel had a dishonest
motive for using this
phony name, but I won't recount now my reasons for suspecting this.
Here, I just want to
inform readers that Brett Palmer used Turkel's "penname" throughout the
article below,
because he told me, as he also said in a footnote at the end of his
article, that he wanted
to focus on the issue of the biblical record of Jericho's destruction
and not on irrelevant
matters pertaining to Turkel's name. Readers will see that Palmer was
very civil throughout
his reply to Turkel, so despite my policy of using Turkel's real name,
I am allowing this
article to be posted here. If Turkel replies to it in his usual
sarcastic, insulting way, I
will edit the article to remove his "penname" and replace it with his
real one, and I will
not allow future articles that reference him to be published unless his
real name is used.
If Turkel wants to conduct himself civilly, I will gladly reciprocate,
but if he wants to
give us just more of the same, I will be glad to show him that I have
some talent for
sarcasm too.]
“ The conquest of Jericho in Joshua 2 and 6 is not only one of the best known and most loved stories of the Old Testament, it is also central to the whole argument about the reliability and accuracy of the account of the exodus from Egypt and the conquest of Canaan.” So wrote Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Colman M. Mockler Distinguished Professor of Old Testament and president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. [1] According to Dr. Kaiser (and I must agree with him), if the conquest of Jericho did not happen as described in the Bible, the historical reliability and accuracy of the account of the exodus from Egypt and the conquest of Canaan could be called into question.
Jericho was a walled town located slightly northwest of the Dead Sea in what is today the West Bank of modern Israel. According to the Bible’s story, Jericho was the first city Joshua and the invading Hebrews attacked following their release from Egyptian bondage in their military campaign for the conquest of the Promised Land [2]. According to one biblical chronology, [3] the Hebrews left Egypt sometime around 1440 BCE. They wandered the Sinai wilderness for 40 years according to the story until they began their military blitzkrieg in c. 1400 BCE. The siege of Jericho is dramatic involving spies, a prostitute and miracles. As the Hebrews prepared to take the city, they were instructed by their deity to march around the walls of Jericho once a day for seven days and seven times on the seventh day. The deity instructed the Hebrew priests to blow rams’ horns in unison on the seventh day and for the Hebrew people to “shout with a great shout” (Joshua 6:4-5), the effect of which brought the walls of the city tumbling down, exposing the inhabitants to a murderous rampage. This onslaught of Jericho was the opening volley of a series of attacks by the Hebrews upon cities in the land of Canaan, the land the Israelite deity is claimed to have promised to his chosen people. The fall of Jericho is famous for both its initial stand in the conquest narrative and also for its description of the miraculous destruction of its walls. For if the walls did not tumble, the Israelite force did not stand a chance against the impregnable city of Jericho.
Proving the destruction of Jericho’s walls would help substantiate the biblical story of the conquest of Canaan and provide peripheral confirmation for the exodus. The Jericho story is pivotal in transitioning the Bible’s narrative from the exodus out of Egypt to the subjugation of the Promised Land and the establishment of the Israelite nation. If the story of Jericho’s destruction is proven by the archaeological record to be false, as Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., observed, the whole argument about the reliability and accuracy of the account of the exodus and the conquest of Canaan gets called into question.
Archaeologists have researched the believed site of Jericho since Charles Warren first surveyed the area in 1868. After many hands with picks and shovels dug through the site, Kathleen Kenyon in 1952-1958 gave the most detailed and currently accepted date for the destruction of Jericho, a date which is at odds with the biblical tale. According to biblical chronology considered above in note 3, Jericho should have been destroyed by Joshua sometime around 1400 BCE. Kenyon’s findings however, place the date for Jericho’s destruction at c. 1550 BCE, far too early for Joshua’s conquest as described in the biblical narrative. Kenyon’s work has stood as mainstream scholarship since her dates were proposed. However, in an article that attempts to support the biblical story of the destruction of Jericho, internet Christian apologist James Patrick Holding [4] presents a series of “up-to-date” archaeological “discoveries” which he believes helps confirm the miraculous tale, overturning the mainstream views of Kathleen Kenyon and the rest of the archaeological community.
Mr. Holding begins his article by retelling the story regarding the discovery of the ancient—and once-believed mythical—city of Troy. Mr. Holding wishes to draw a parallel between the two cities, Troy and Jericho, arguing that just as Troy was once believed to have been the product of an overactive, yet highly creative, imagination but was soon discovered to have been a real place, so with Jericho. Mr. Holding rightly points out that the destruction layer [5] at Troy was misidentified early in its discovery but was soon “found” and placed upon the map of historical landmarks. He also notes that Troy’s “first discovery” was misled by overexuberance but was tempered by later discoveries and a more sober analysis of the data. He comments that “enthusiasm” in archaeology “can lead to erroneous excess.” Such excess can oftentimes find itself labeled “cult archaeology,” such as the search for Noah’s Ark or the reworking of standard ancient chronologies in order to line history up with a religious ideology. I could not agree with his statement more strongly. One needs to consider carefully the evidence for an archaeological claim before a final (even tentative) judgment can be made regarding its support of an ancient legendary story.
Mr. Holding tries to argue that Jericho follows in Troy’s footsteps by noting that while the physical remains of Troy once lay hidden beneath centuries of debris, its description remained vivid in the pages of Homer’s Iliad. He equates this with Jericho’s archaeological silence contrasted against its vivid description in the Bible. Troy’s discovery was led by its mention in an ancient book, and Mr. Holding argues that the Bible cannot be rejected as a source from which to begin the search for Jericho. And, indeed, ancient books can lead modern researchers to great finds. Mr. Holding expresses concern, however, toward skeptical reactions to the lack of verifiable historical data related to the biblical story of Jericho. He writes:
The standard skeptical line here more or less follows the lead of Hoppe [Hopp.WBA, 6]:
Unfortunately some people maintain that one goal of archaeology is to verify the historical data provided by the Bible. But archaeology does no [sic] ‘prove’ the Bible; it only proves one interpretation of the Bible - an interpretation often formulated apart from any archaeological data. The truth of the Bible as a religious book cannot be proven or disproven by archaeology. The Bible’s message is to be accepted by faith.
Laying aside for a moment the problematic Bultmannian assertions here (i.e., accepting the Bible's message only by “faith” [improperly defined] without regard for history), let’s rework this a bit and see how it sounds:
Unfortunately some people maintain that one goal of archaeology is to verify the historical data provided by the Iliad. But archaeology does not ‘prove’ the Iliad; it only proves one interpretation of the Iliad - an interpretation often formulated apart from any archaeological data. The truth of the Iliad as a religious book cannot be proven or disproven by archaeology. The Iliad’s message is to be accepted by faith.
It sounds a bit silly, doesn’t it?
I don’t agree that Mr. Holding’s reworked statement “sounds a bit silly” at all when taken in context. First of all, the Iliad is not a “religious book” in the same manner that the Bible is a religious book. However, if it were, Hoppe’s statement that archaeology alone cannot prove or disprove any religious truth of the Iliad is quite valid. It is exactly the same case with the Bible. Even if certain archaeological finds were to uncover certain physical artifacts mentioned in the Bible (for instance, the exact tomb referred to in the gospels as the one within which Jesus was buried), these physical artifacts would in no way prove the truth of the Bible (for instance, the saving grace of Christ’s resurrection.) Therefore, Hoppe’s conclusion remains steadfast: Even if archaeology could verify some historical data of the Bible (e. g., tomb) the Bible’s message (e. g., salvation) would still need to be accepted by faith. The historical data uncovered by archaeology simply does very little to buttress the religious message of some sacred book.
Mr. Holding notes that skeptics have not made mention of Troy as a mythical location since its discovery and positive identification. He writes, “…now that the matter is mostly settled, we do not hear a peep out of the skeptics.” But, why would we? If the matter of Troy is now “mostly settled,” why would anyone “peep” about it, as Mr. Holding puts it, unless it came from a fringe group of unbelievers who maintain Troy was a figment of an ancient author’s imagination? The only ones who would make a “peep” would be those who might claim the city uncovered really wasn’t the Troy of Homer’s epic, that it was misidentified, or that the chronology of Greek history needed to be reworked so that the discovery didn’t really line up with the story of Troy. The larger archaeological community, of course, would dismiss such advocates, and only a tiny minority of like-minded believers would accept their ideas. We would be justified in rejecting their claims.
However, Mr. Holding’s attempt to draw a parallel between Troy’s archaeological discovery and vindication of Homer’s mention of this city in antiquity and Jericho is a bit strained precisely because Jericho’s location-–unlike Troy’s—-has not been in dispute. Troy was a city mentioned in an ancient tale of great heroes and an epic battle that lasted ten years. For centuries its location was unknown and thus the fantastic tale of its destruction was considered a myth. The same was not true for Jericho. Jericho’s claim to historicity benefited from the general acceptance of the Bible’s authority throughout most of the Bible’s own history. Skeptics of Jericho were fewer and farther between than skeptics of Homer’s epic. As Kenneth Kitchen writes, “Of its [Jericho’s] location, at Tell es-Sultan, near the modern village (Er-Riha) that still bears its name, there is no doubt.” (p.187)
Mondern skeptics, however, reject the historical claims regarding Jericho’s destruction as narrated in the Bible precisely because the date Kenyon gives for the destruction of Jericho’s walls does not line up with the traditional biblical date for the conquest of Canaan. It is not that Jericho cannot be identified as was once the skeptical objection to the historicity of Troy, it is because the archaeological data does not support the biblical assertions regarding that city.
Mr. Holding does acknowledge that:
Archaeology cannot prove that God knocked down the walls of Jericho, any more than it can prove that Zeus and Poseidon had a hand in the Trojan War; but archaeology can tell us whether the events reported in our texts could have happened - and that is really all that can be asked.
Of course, even if city remains can be recovered, do these remains confirm details of the stories involving these cities? Homer's Iliad tells us that the war was fought over the kidnapping of a Greek king's wife. Did the Greeks battle a ten-year war over one woman? For what reason did the war rage? Troy supposedly fell when the Greeks built a wooden horse, filled it with soldiers, and managed to have it rolled inside Troy's wall. While not part of the Iliad, is such a story nonetheless history? As Mr. Holding observes, archaeology could never prove some of these stories true nor is it meant to. Unearthing Jericho and providing archaeological evidence that its walls fell at the time the Bible claims they fell would not confirm that it was Yahweh who toppled the stones. But if the reason to pursue archaeological confirmation of historical claims made in the Bible is not to buttress the theological assertions made upon these historical foundations, why discover if Jericho’s walls really did exist in the first place and, if they did, when they may have fallen? Why would an apologist like Mr. Holding even care what the archaeological record had to say in regard to Jericho unless that archaeological record helped confirm his theological beliefs?
Creating the historical setting into which the biblical story of Jericho’s destruction is placed, Mr. Holding provides a chart of the historic periods as given in modern archaeology:
The conventional chronology for this time period and place is:
- Middle Bronze Age 1 2150-2000 BC
- 2A 2000-1750
- 2B 1750-1550
- Late Bronze Age 1 1550-1400
- 2A 1400-1300
- 2B 1300-1200
Now while it is not often explained in context of such charts, no archaeologist actually asserts that at exactly the stroke of midnight on January 1, 1549 BC, all of the villages and towns of the region suddenly threw out all of their Middle Bronze Age Stuff and bought the brand-new, never-before-seen Late Bronze Age Stuff. There is bound to be overlap; no doubt some folks kept their Middle Bronze Age stuff around after 1550. So we can't always fix an exact date on ruins, just a general date.
I am certain that “some folks” likely did keep some products of one era into the next. However, such products would not have survived in usable condition over a century nor would they have included pottery or other breakable material or weapons made of inferior metals when more effective models were available. Styles also change from era to era and people tend to follow whatever is fashionable at any given time, discarding their “dated” items. For instance, we don’t find many Victorian utensils being used in 21st century homes. I suspect that Mr. Holding is trying here to insinuate that material discoveries at Jericho which help archaeologists date the site to 1550 BCE may have been held over by their owners, passed down for over a century, to be finally discarded and buried in a much later era (perhaps, c. 1400 BCE?). He is stretching credibility if this is what he is suggesting.
I also disagree with Mr. Holding’s chronology given above, even if ever so slightly. Later in Mr. Holding’s article, as we will see below, he quotes from an expert in Israeli archaeology who published an article in the September/October 1990 issue of the Biblical Archaeology Review. I am not certain where Mr. Holding pulled his chronology from above, but according to a chart in that issue of BAR from which Mr. Holding quotes, the chronological terms are given as such:
The article in BAR showcases two opposing scholars on the data drawn from archaeological digs at Jericho (the site is known by its modern name: Tell es-Sultan). There is a note in the article that one of the scholars “does not differentiate between Middle Bronze II and III; he calls the entire period from 1800-1550 B.C. Middle Bronze II.” (ibid) I will be following this chronology in my article as it has the backing of these scholars. I cannot imagine that Mr. Holding would disagree with it too strongly as one of his own quoted experts, introduced below, has relied upon it.
Mr. Holding’s article continues:
The standard argument, however, runs like this: Joshua was in the Late Bronze Age; there was no Jericho, except maybe a small village, in the Late Bronze Age; hence the account in the Bible is fictional. This is the point of view held by many scholars today [Chars.WAF, 4, 93, 110n].
Newer developments, however, suggest that Joshua's Jericho is to be identified with another level of the Tell es-Sultan site entirely - one dated to the Middle Bronze Age, which indeed, it was earlier suggested might have been the city that the Book of Joshua had in mind [Hopp.WBA, 7]. Part of the problem is that Garstang and Kenyon went along with the standard presumption that the Exodus took place c. 1200 BC.
It is unclear where Mr. Holding took this information regarding Garstang’s and Kenyon’s presumptions regarding the dating of the biblical Exodus. Flatly contradicting what Mr. Holding represents above, Kenyon’s own written work reveals that she did not begin her research at Jericho with the presumption that the Exodus “took place c. 1200 BC.” As a matter of fact, she appears to have not had any presumptions of when the Exodus took place. She did, however, assume at the outset that her work would confirm the biblical account and from her writings it seems she was quite depressed that this didn’t happen. Kenyon wrote in Digging Up Jericho:
If the Biblical computation that the entry into Palestine took place 440 years before the foundation of the Temple in Jerusalem by Solomon in 960 B.C. is accepted, we should expect to find Jericho destroyed about 1400 B.C. If the views of scholars who attempt to reconcile the description of events in Egyptian history are accepted, a date of c. 1260 B.C. is to be expected. (p. 259)
From her writings, Kenyon didn’t have any preconceived notion at all when to expect the fall of Jericho to have occurred. In her book she simply recounts the two most popular views (at least in the 1950’s) for dating the possible destruction. As far as what her evidence revealed in relation to these two methods of dating, she commented:
As concerns the date of the destruction of Jericho by the Israelites, all that can be said is that the latest Bronze Age occupation should, in my view, be dated to the third quarter of the fourteenth century B.C. This is a date which suits neither the school of scholars which would date the entry of the Israelites into Palestine to c. 1400 B.C. nor the school which prefers a date of c. 1260 B.C. (p. 262)
As for Garstang, he appears to have believed that one should look for the archaeological facts first and then examine what the Bible claims to see if the literary and material evidence agree. He wrote in chapter VII of his book The Story of Jericho, regarding the date of the Exodus and the subsequent destruction of Jericho after having detailed in the previous pages the archaeological research he had undertaken on the Jericho site:
In the Bible unfortunately there is no direct indication of the date at which Jericho was destroyed by Joshua, but we possess a clear lead to it in the statement made in I Kings, vi, I:
“In the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel…he began to build the house of the Lord.”
In other words, according to the Israelites’ own traditions, the period of their history from the time they left Egypt until the fourth year of Solomon’s reign (known from other sources to have fallen about 967 B.C.) covered 480 years. Now the figure 480 is a round one, based on the method of measuring broad intervals by periods of forty years, much as we might use the word "generation." Though probably not giving us an exact figure it may be assumed to aim at accuracy within the broad margin of 20 years on each side: it will indicate, then, in this case something between 461 and 499 years. This figure includes both the duration of the Exodus from Egypt and the sojourn of the Israelites in the wilderness prior to their entry into the Promised Land, the latter again being estimated on the same basis at 40 years. The date of the destruction of Jericho would thus fall about 440 years before 967 B.C., i. e., about 1407 B.C., not earlier than 1426 nor later than 1385 B.C. (pp. 134-135)
Garstang then goes on to conclude that this biblical dating lines up with his archaeological finds. It would appear from their own published works, neither Kenyon nor Garstang “went along with the standard presumption that the Exodus took place c. 1200 BC” as Mr. Holding mysteriously asserts above.
As best as I can determine, Mr. Holding may have used the source he mentions above as a place to find “an excavation history” of Jericho, John Bartlett’s Jericho. Perhaps this is where he pulled the notion that Garstang and Kenyon assumed the Exodus to have occurred c. 1200 BCE. However, Barlett’s book only states (p. 34-36) that Garstang and Kenyon’s conclusions following their research caused certain historians of their day to debate the date of the Exodus and subsequent conquest of Canaan. Neither Garstang nor Kenyon wrote that they entered their ventures with any dates for these activities firmly in mind.
Recalling that Mr. Holding believed the two leading archaeologists of the Jericho site assumed the Exodus took place c. 1200 BCE, he believed that Garstang and Kenyon made this assumption, “based primarily on the assumed anachronism stating that the Israelites labored in Ramesses (Ex. 1:11).” However, it seems clear that Mr. Holding did not consult the actual works written by the two archaeologists he is offering to represent. If he had, he would not have arrived at this conclusion regarding Kenyon and Garstang’s “assumed anachronisms.” Kenyon’s book makes no mention of the city of “Ramesses,” much less as a landmark for dating the Exodus and the subsequent destruction of Jericho. Garstang’s book actually negates Rameses II as the pharaoh of the Exodus. As Garstang discusses the Egyptian record as it lines up with the Bible and his conclusions regarding Jericho, Garstang wrote:
After the death of Akhenaton, in whose reign the collapse of the Empire became complete, the authority of the Pharaohs was immediately and vigorously re-established by his three successors; and following these Seti I (1314-1305 B.C.) is known to have suppressed revolts in southern Canaan and the Jordan valley itself, while his successor Rameses II (the Great, 1292-1225 B.C.) raised the prestige of Egypt to a height which it had not known since Thothmes III. It is in fact quite clear from the Egyptian records that we cannot place the successful invasion of Canaan by Joshua in any part of this second period: and it is therefore all the more significant that the name of Israel is to be found on a monument of Rameses’ successor Merneptah (c. 1220 B.C.). (pp. 143-144)
Therefore, since by the time of Rameses II, Egypt’s power had been reestablished in the region (and his immediate successor made reference to Israel as an established nation already—-not one struggling with natives to settle the land), Garstang concluded that the Exodus and conquest of Canaan could not have occurred during Rameses’ reign (1292-1225 BCE) or later, in direct contradiction to what Mr. Holding is asserting above.
Mr. Holding continued regarding what he perceived were Garstang and Kenyon’s assumptions about when the Exodus took place:
and that the city was named after Ramesses II, as well as the standard assumption that the Israelites did not invade Palestine, but engaged in gradual settlement.
These two assumptions (that Kenyon and Garstang operated under the false notion that the Exodus occurred c. 1200 B.C. and that they also assumed “the Israelites did not invade Palestine, but engaged in gradual settlement”) are mutually exclusive conclusions and I’m curious as to why Mr. Holding doesn’t notice this. If the “standard assumption” is “that the Israelites did not invade Palestine, but engaged in gradual settlement,” that would negate any exodus from having taken place from which the released slaves would have come from a 40-year desert wandering expedition to conquer Jericho and the rest of the Promised Land by military might. In other words, if one 'presumes' a gradual settlement of Canaan, he can't give an era for the biblical exodus and then calculate a specific date for the destruction of Jericho. A gradual settlement of the Promised Land eliminates the need for a military campaign against the natives of Canaan beginning with a siege on the prized city of Jericho.
The OT, however, indicates a timeline that puts the Exodus at c. 1447 BC.
Again, it is unclear to me why Mr. Holding is making these assumptions regarding Garstang and Kenyon’s preconceptions but it is very important to note for the remainder of this critique that Mr. Holding is making his own positive claim that the biblical Exodus occurred, according to Old Testament chronology, at roughly 1447 BCE (see note 3). It is important to keep this date in mind. And recall, if the Hebrews did not immediately attack the Promised Land at the stroke of midnight on the exact day ending their 40 years of wandering, but perhaps stayed off a while planning strategy, that would push the date for the conquest beyond 1407-6 BCE to 1405, 1404, 1403, etc. [6]
Mr. Holding further notes:
The OT timeline was assumed inaccurate based on the presumption of gradual settlement, and on the naming of the city - overlooking the obvious solution that the city name was a later scribal gloss intended to take the place of a city name that no longer existed, much as "Dan" is named in Genesis although that city did not exist at the time described.
Contrary to Mr. Holding’s assertion, the “OT timeline” was not based upon the assumption of gradual settlement at all. The timeline of the Exodus and Conquest was based upon the destruction levels at various sites found throughout Palestine. When it became clear that there were no destruction levels dating c.1400 BCE at any of the sites allegedly taken by Joshua’s armies, certain “archaeologists”, such as Albright, decided that since there were destruction levels at some of these sites at the end of the 13th century BCE, then those sites must have fallen to Joshua and his Hebrew army. The gradual settlement hypothesis doesn’t need an exact date for the Exodus.
Nonetheless, is Mr. Holding suggesting that the name of a city, in this case “Ramesses,” was introduced by a scribe into the Book of Exodus to replace a different site name that had been given in the original text? If so, what was the name of the original city and where was it located? (In order to claim that there was a “scribal gloss” in the current text that covered some original material, one would need to produce that original material in order to substantiate his or her case. Otherwise, one could more simply explain the phenomenon of a more current place name being given to a site in a narrative set in a more ancient time as evidence that the story was actually penned in the time of the current place name. It could be equally argued that the story was written in “Age Z” but narrated to have occurred in “Age X.” Alternatively, writers in one era can easily take archaic place names and set their stories within the times these names were either current or last known.) In addition, since the Bible names Pithom as the other city the pharaoh of the Exodus had built by the Hebrew slaves, what was its “original” name (or did the scribe not “gloss over” this one)?
Pithom means “the house of Atum” and was only used as the name of a city in the Saite period (7th century BCE). Although the name was known before the Saite period as the name of temples and temple estates, the name never had any connection with cities (Lemche, N. P. and Society for Promoting Christian, K. [1999] The Israelites in history and tradition, SPCK : Westminster John Knox Press, London ; Louisville, Ky. p.398). Thus, the archaeological evidence does not support either of the two cities in Exodus 1:11 as ever being occupied, or even existing, at the same time, with one part of the reference appearing to belong to the 2nd millennium BCE and the other to the 1st millenium BCE (Miller, J. D. and Hayes, J. H. (1986) A History of Ancient Israel and Judah, SCM Press, London, p.68).
The historical city built by Rameses II was given the original name “Pi-Ramesse,” or “House of Ramesses” (modern Qantir). Is this the city the biblical author had in mind for the one built by the Hebrew slaves, the one Mr. Holding believes was later named “Ramesses” by the glossing hand of a later scribe? If so, what original name for this site is Mr. Holding suggesting the biblical scribe “glossed over” in the Exodus narrative? You see, the name Pi-Ramesse existed for roughly 150 years after the city was built. Rameses II reigned from 1292-1225 BCE as mentioned earlier. The name of the city was changed to Tanis c. 1100 BCE, when the site was actually moved some 30 kilometers south [7] Therefore, if the naming of the city was a “scribal gloss,” then the scribe doing the glossing must have been familiar with the original name, Pi-Ramesse or a variant thereof. If Mr. Holding is suggesting that the Exodus took place c. 1447 BCE, what was the original name of the city that the name “Rameses” replaced? If there was any scribal glossing going on and the city of Pi-Rameses was being identified with an earlier city name, the gloss would have had to occur sometime between the reign of Rameses II and 1100BCE. Is this what Mr. Holding is suggesting? This has direct bearing on when the story of the Exodus was written.
Mr. Holding continues:
The 1447 BC date puts Joshua closer to the Middle Bronze Age, but still in the LBA - by the conventional chronology - by about 100 years.
I must admit, I am not sure what Mr. Holding is trying to say here. As he just stated, the exodus occurred in 1447 BCE, not Joshua’s conquest of Jericho. As I detailed above, you need to add the 40 years of wandering to the date of the exodus to get to the date Joshua would have led the Hebrews into the Promised Land. That “puts Joshua” c. 1400 BCE. Instead of “about 100 years,” the figure needs to be extended to “about 150 years.” Perhaps a reprint of the standard chronology will help clear up the confusion:
As the reader can see, 1400 BCE would place Joshua at the cusp of LBI and LBIIA, nowhere near MBA by a minimum of 150 years.
Mr. Holding begins to build his case:
Can the gap be closed to have Joshua conquering the MBA city? According to at least two authors, it can.
The first author, Bryant G. Wood, published his analysis in 1990 [WoodB.Jer].
I will deal with Bryant Wood’s analysis in a moment, but I wanted to familiarize myself with Mr. Wood as this was the first I had ever heard of him. When I did an internet search for references regarding him I turned up many hits with his name connected to an organization known as the Associates for Biblical Research. According to their website:
Dr. Bryant Wood, director of the Associates for Biblical Research, has reexamined and reevaluated the excavated evidence from Jericho to better correlate that data with the Biblical story of Joshua's conquest as contained in the inspired Scriptures of the Old Testament (Joshua 6).
Such a statement took me by surprise. It claimed Dr. Wood “reexamined and reevaluated the excavated evidence from Jericho to better correlate that data with the Biblical story.” Why wouldn’t Dr. Wood “reexamine and reevaluate” the excavated evidence from Jericho simply to substantiate or revise the current theory regarding Jericho? Why “reexamined and reevaluated the excavated evidence from Jericho” with the sole intent “to better correlate that data with the Biblical story”? Now, I’m fully aware that Dr. Wood likely did not write this blurb about his work and might take exception to this summary. However, as director for the Associates for Biblical Research, I was curious as to just what this organization on the whole represented. After all, as director of an institution this institution should reflect his views and vice versa.
I discovered that the Associates for Biblical Research refer to themselves as a Christian “ministry.” I found such an admission odd because, on average, organizations dedicated purely to the scientific pursuit of archaeology do not refer to themselves as a Christian “ministry.” But, of course, the Associates specifically do not dedicate themselves to the pure pursuit of scientific knowledge but only to the a pursuit to “better correlate that [scientific] data with the Biblical Story.” Such an admission makes me suspicious that whatever the ABR produces may not be wholly objective, scientifically speaking. In addition, the organization claims to keep abreast of all the latest research in the field of biblical archaeology, but do so from a “biblical perspective.” In my experience, “biblical perspective” assumes biblical inerrancy and this assumption is borne out by the Associates for Biblical Research’s first “Statement of Faith” found on their webpage. It reads:
We believe in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the verbally inspired Word of God, and inerrant in the original writings, and that they are of supreme and final authority in faith and life. (emphasis mine)
I learned also that ABR is involved in the creation/evolution “debate,” siding with the creationists’ view of human origins. These facts should make one wary of what motivates Bryant Wood to produce the claims he is making regarding Jericho. His is not a scientific endeavor but a religious one. As they state in their “Philosophy of Ministry”:
ABR is unique in its mission as an evangelical organization founded for the purpose of research and fieldwork in Biblical archaeology, in order to demonstrate the historical reliability and accuracy of the Scriptures and to propagate the Christian faith. Its mission is based on the conviction that the Bible is the Word of God and, therefore, infallible, inerrant and authoritative in its original writings (the autographs).
Mr. Holding’s own article continues:
We are unable to do full justice to his [Bryant Wood’s] arguments here; suffice to say that, based on several factors (ceramic data, scarab evidence, radiocarbon dating, and stratigraphical considerations)
Mr. Holding quickly lists in parentheses the “several factors” that Dr. Wood used to reach his conclusion but fails to note any of them in detail. He claims to be restrained but does not explain why. This may have been done for brevity’s sake (he did say “we” were “unable to do full justice to his [Wood’s] arguments here,”) or it may have been done because Mr. Holding did not understand what all these factors really mean to his case.
Mr. Holding writes that Dr. Wood’s conclusions are that:
…the MBA city is indeed the one that fell to Joshua (though he credits an earthquake, and not God, with the destruction). Needless to say, Wood's analysis was attacked almost at once, but he defended his view more than adequately.
The agreed upon date for the destruction of Jericho by most mainstream archaeologists is c. 1550 BCE (the MBA II), based on Kenyon’s work. For the biblical story to be historically accurate, the city would have had to have fallen c. 1400 BCE (LBA 1 or IIA). Wood’s article (as it appeared in the March/April 1990 edition of Biblical Archaeology Review, pp. 22-27), scantily summarized by Mr. Holding, states that the MBA city of Jericho (the one that was fortified) endured beyond 1550 BCE into the LBA when Joshua destroyed it. The MBA city was the same as discovered by Kenyon, but its destruction occurred in the LBA according to Wood, aligning its destruction with the biblical tale of Jericho.
I’m at a bit of a loss as to why Mr. Holding did not elaborate on how Dr. Wood was attacked by his critics or how he “defended his view more than adequately.” What this really boils down to is that this is Mr. Holding’s interpretation of the debate results and nothing more. For Mr. Holding, it is clear, Dr. Wood’s conclusions were enough to convince him of their validity. He lists “several factors” in Dr. Wood’s article that led him to believe that a later date for Jericho’s destruction was more accurate than the one published by Kenyon. Among those factors were ceramic and stratigraphic data, scarab evidence and radiocarbon dating. Research missing from Mr. Holding’s article, however, disputes many of Dr. Wood’s findings.
For example, Dr. Wood’s discussion of wheel and hand production (p. 48) is erroneous. Pat McGovern [8] and Piotr Bienkowski (who authored the rebuttal article to Dr. Wood’s original piece from the March/April 1990 BAR) have both argued that Late Bronze pottery was handmade, as opposed to wheel-manufacture during the Middle Bronze. Dr. Bienkowski [9] compared Middle Bronze with Late Bronze II tomb groups at Jericho, and found that the MB pottery was wheel made, while the LB pottery was hand made and heavier. Dr. Bienkowski then studied the Middle Bronze Age pottery from the tell--the pottery Dr. Wood attempted to redate--and found that it was without exception wheel made.
In 1989, Piotr Bienkowski published a paper in the journal Levant [10] in which he argued that there were no clear stratigraphic or ceramic criteria to distinguish the final phase of the Middle Bronze Age. To date, no one has been able to argue that point successfully. Instead of clear diagnostic differences in pottery, what seems to present itself is slow change in the overall assemblages over time, with slow addition of new forms, which makes it extremely difficult to state where the MB finished and where LB I begins. Essentially, what archaeologists in the field have to do is compare whole assemblages of pottery in order to judge their date, rather than relying on a few ‘diagnostic’ pots, as Dr. Wood did for his thesis.
But as Dr. Wood himself points out, the scarab evidence on its own carries no weight.
Dr. Weinstein had stated this same finding in his article’s footnote. He wrote:
Summing up his assessment of Dr. Wood’s article, Dr. Weinstein observed:
Concerning subsequent occupation at Jericho, Rohl makes the following statement:
This is incorrect. The next mention of Jericho following Joshua’s destruction is in Judges 3, where we are told that Eglon, king of Moab, took possession of the "City of Palms" and built a palace there. The City of Palms, of course, is none other than Jericho (Dt 34:3; 2 Chr 28:15). Rohl makes a connection between the LB IIA "Middle Building" at Jericho, excavated by John Garstang in 1933, and David’s seclusion of the Israelite delegation at Jericho recorded in 2 Samuel 10:5.
The Bible does not tell us what, if anything, was at Jericho in David’s day. Garstang’s Middle Building, on the other hand, exactly fits the description of Eglon’s palace in Judges 3 using the conventional chronology. It was an isolated palatial structure with no corresponding town. There was evidence of wealth (expensive imported pottery), and administrative activities (an inscribed clay tablet). The Middle Building was constructed toward the end of the 14th century BC by the conventional chronology, which matches the time period of the Judges 3 account according to Biblical chronology. It was occupied for only a short period of time and abandoned, paralleling the Biblical description of an 18-year oppression by Eglon and the subsequent rout of the Moabites by Ehud and the Israelites.
The author of this piece is none other than Bryant Wood, the archaeologist Mr. Holding told us earlier also helped prove the historical reliability of the Old Testament account of Jericho’s destruction. I found it most odd to discover that the first of Mr. Holding’s proofs of biblical reliability actually debunks his second. It is very unclear to me how, if as Mr. Holding dramatizes, Dr. Wood “kicked open” the door to confirmation of the conquest of Jericho how Rohl could have come along and then ripped that door from its “very hinges.” When these two evidences contradict one another, it would appear that the door is actually in the middle of a tug-o-war between two opinions that have been roundly rejected by the larger scholarly community. [11]
Regardless of their work, however, the Middle Bronze Jericho appealed to by Wood and Rohl provides striking correlation with the Joshuan conquest account.
The mud-brick wall that had been the city's primary defense, which in its original state was made [sic] the city rather like "a great medieval castle" [Bims.RExC, 128], had in some places quite literally collapsed outward [see Bart.Jer, 85], providing a primitive ramp up into the city.
Mr. Holding further notes the archaeological remains of the Jericho c. 1550 BCE:
Josh. 6:24 Then they burned the whole city and everything in it...
While the remains are accurately described, Joshua’s Hebrew army would not have been present to have been responsible for them. Lacking such evidence as would corroborate the biblical story, scholars are left to speculate on less sensational causes for such archaeological remains. For example, suggestions that a rather common earthquake [12]destroyed the city walls of Jericho c. 1550 BCE is offered by many, including Dr. Wood.
In Mr. Holding’s article, he seems confident in drawing a parallel between the discovery of Troy and that of Jericho. As I pointed out before, Troy’s very existence was under dispute because no one had ever uncovered and identified its remains until the mid-1800’s. The same was not true of Jericho. In this sense, Mr. Holding’s parallel was less than appropriate. Making his parallel even less applicable, are the archaeological explanations for each city’s destruction layers as they relate to the ancient stories penned regarding their demise. Each city site, that of Troy and Jericho, consist of multiple layers of occupation, dating back to the Neolithic period. Each site has evidence of cities of various sizes and of various defensive fortifications (or the lack thereof). In the case of Jericho its last occupied period was identified to have occurred in c. 1550 BCE after which, according to Near East archaeologist Kenneth Kitchen, the ruins lay barren for about 200 years [13]. It is from this layer (c. 1550 BCE) that the fallen defensive walls and burned city interior are described. It is this destruction that is said to have been caused by an earthquake.
Similarly, Troy had many occupation levels that archaeologists have uncovered and used to identify the various inhabitants of the area over the years. According to Brian Rose [14], Professor of Classical Archaeology, University of Cincinnati, who is involved in the current excavations on-going in Troy, the sixth settlement level of the city was damaged severely, apparently by earthquake, in c. 1275 BCE. Seismic activity is fairly common in the region, as it is throughout the Middle East. Homer’s Troy was supposedly sacked sometime “during the first quarter of the 12th century B.C.,” according to ancient sources. This destruction layer is too early-—like that of Jerciho’s destruction layer—-to line up with the ancient tale. Troy was reoccupied, according to archaeologists, following the c. 1275 BCE destruction, with evidence that the surrounding countryside dwellers moved inside Troy’s walls. According to Rose, this seventh occupation level shows evidence that...
[t]he interior of the citadel became crowded with houses, some with party walls, and enormous storage vessels or pithoi were sunk in the floors of the houses. Security was clearly more of a concern than it had been, and the residents attempted to bring enough provisions so that they would be able to subsist within the protection of the walls for a longer period of time. This settlement, which was the seventh, was destroyed by an attack ca. 1200 B.C. The destruction level is nearly 5 ft. high in some places, and contains burned timbers, parts of human skeletons, arrowheads, and piles of sling stones that were intended to have been used in the attack. [14](emphasis mine)
Unlike the remains of Jericho’s destruction c. 1550 BCE, Troy’s c. 1200 BCE destruction layer shows evidence of a military battle. The “burned timbers” alone are not sufficient enough to speculate on a military siege of the city. Other accompanying artifacts help archaeologists determine the cause of the city’s demise. Mr. Holding’s attempt to link the burned remains of Jericho with the narrative of Joshua 6:24 is wishful as is his desire to link Troy’s archaeology with that of Kenyon’s Jericho. Sometimes the natural causes for events are a little less spectacular than the theologically driven explanations, but that is nonetheless the typical solution.
Mr. Holding describes other remains found in Jericho that he believes correspond with descriptions of its destruction found in the Old Testament narratives.
Also found were "large storage jars filled to the brim with carbonized grain" [ibid., 304; see also Bart.Jer, 88] - consistent not only with the burning, but with this assertion:
Josh. 3:15 Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest...The Israelites crossed the Jordan at harvest time - and it seems they arrived at Jericho just as the harvest had been taken in!
The storage jars were indeed likely filled because of a recent harvest, but the burned ruins are explained as the result of an earthquake by knowledgeable archaeologists, not a Hebrew invasion. Unless evidence that positively identifies ruins at Jericho consistent with a military battle (including such artifacts as spearheads, shields, discarded broken armor and the like as were found in level seven Troy) can be uncovered, a more natural explanation remains the most valid and consistency with the biblical narrative is left in the outer wings.
The city in question is also characterized by a "large number of multiple-burial tombs" [Bienk.JerLBA, 126; Bart.Jer, 89], averaging 20 burials each (the most held by any one tomb was 40) with a total of approximately 1150 burials. These deaths are linked with plague for the most part, which fits the OT data of a plague in Numbers 22-24 nicely.
Because plagues were likely common events in the ancient world, a world devoid of modern medicinal and hygiene practices, the fact there are tombs evidencing mass burials does not confirm the Bible’s account. Mr. Holding does not tell us from what era these tombs are dated, by the way. However, Kenneth Kitchen does:
[Jericho] was obviously very prosperous in the Middle Bronze Age (early second millennium), as the spectacular finds from that period’s tombs bear witness. (p. 187, emphasis mine)
Mr. Holding continues:
[Bims.RExC, 131] Bartlett [ibid., 93] sums up the data thus:
The end of MB Jericho was violent, as is shown by the burnt ruins of the final level of MB buildings on the southeast side of the tell. The ruined walls are covered by a layer of burnt debris one meter thick washed down from higher up the slope. This layer shows clearly that the higher buildings were burned, and that a considerable period of erosion followed the destruction of the site.
It is not clear how this conclusion sums up the Jericho data in favor of a Joshuan conquest, however. Where, in Bartlett’s summation for example, does he credit this violent end for Jericho to Joshua and his marauding Hebrews? Could the burned ruins have been caused by some other factor? Is it more reasonable to assume that the destruction seen in the remains came from some natural phenomenon than from some supernatural one?
Finally, in accordance with Joshua 6:19, where it is recorded that the Israelites took the vessels of silver, gold, brass and iron from the city, there was very little gold found at the site, although this has been interpreted along with other evidence to mean that the city had a low standard of living. [Bienk.Jer., 127]
Another of Mr. Holding’s points is lost upon me. He notes that there was “very little gold” found at the site (which corresponds with a biblical passage indicating that “vessels of silver, gold, brass and iron” had been removed from Jericho by Joshua and his army) but then explains this absence as having been due to a “low standard of living” (which doesn’t correspond to a biblical passage). Which is it? Was there little gold, silver, brass and iron because Joshua and his army took it as the spoils of war or because the inhabitants of Jericho had a low standard of living and so would not have possessed such luxuries? Or, could it be that, like many ancient sites, such materials had been carried out when the original occupants vacated the site or it was looted long after the residents had left? No one knows exactly, so mentioning this lack of materials does not buttress the biblical story of Joshua’s conquest of Jericho any more than it verifies that Jericho’s inhabitants perhaps found such luxuries an offense to their deity.
Mr. Holding writes that, “In conclusion, it must be said that we have here indeed, thus far, an interesting parallel to Schliemann's Troy.” After further examination of Mr. Holding’s data, we actually have no interesting parallel between Schliemann’s Troy and the biblical Jericho for precisely the reasons outlined above. Jericho’s location was never a serious skeptical objection to its historicity as was the case with Troy. The seventh occupational layer of Troy which aligns with the assumed date of Homer’s battle shows archaeological evidence of a military siege, [15] unlike the destruction layer of Jericho which is dated to have occurred at least 150 years before the Bible places Joshua and the Hebrew army on the eve of the Promised Land’s conquest. Mr. Holding is satisfied that such a comparison can be made, however, and concludes his article.
It remains to be seen whether the interpretations of Wood and Rohl will stand.
The fact is, Rohl’s “New Chronology” fell flat on the Egyptology community. Mr. Holding’s only hope, as he mentions elsewhere, is “to wait for the current generation of Egyptologists to die out before the new chronology gains wide acceptance.” Mr. Holding appears to be under the impression that the world of Egyptology has some sort of conspiracy set up against Mr. Rohl and that it will take the death of these conspirators to unfetter Rohl from the chains that have been hoisted upon him. In this respect, Mr. Holding does not appear to be far removed from the conspiracy hunters who claim that the U.S. government is hiding aliens somewhere in Roswell, New Mexico, or from those who maintain that mainstream biologists are hunkered together in some sort of blood-bond to support evolution despite the “overwhelming evidence” that the earth is only 6,000 years old.
Mr. Holding hints above that his source, John Bimson, is in agreement with Rohl. However, Bimson’s reordering of the standard chronology has been debunked as well. In fact, if Mr. Holding had been a careful reader, he would have noted one expert’s refutation in another of the sources he consulted for his article. Pages 128-130 of Piotr Bienkowski’s 1986 book, Jericho in the Late Bronze Age, deals with Bimson’s assertions from his 1978 book, Redating the Exodus and Conquest referred to by Mr. Holding in his bracketed note above. Additionally, in a more up-to-date article (1988) from Bimson published in Rohl’s “Journal of the Ancient Chronology,” he mentioned the lack of 18th dynasty levels at Tell el-Dab’a. The current researcher, Bietak, has now found considerable amount of ceramics up until the late 18th dynasty. This can be checked in Bietak’s latest reports such as one delivered at the 8th International Congress of Egyptologists in Cairo (2000). As mentioned by Callaway above, Bimson’s work, along with Wood’s and Rohl’s, has been dismissed by mainstream biblical scholars and archaeologists.[16]
On the western side of the lower Jordan were the plains of Jericho; in their midst stood the oasis city of Jericho, possibly the oldest city on earth and certainly the oldest walled town known to us so far.... The great problem for the Israelites, who were inexperienced in siegecraft and devoid of any siege train, was, of course, the capture of the town, secured as it was behind its walls, towers and battlements (p. 25).
This is simply question begging and, in fact, is not backed up by physical evidence. The truth is, it is physical evidence which supports a slow “conquest” of Palestine from within the country and not of a lightning strike conquest as given in the Book of Joshua. It doesn’t matter that the event described in Joshua could have happened (which is the substance of Herzog and Gichon’s book) but did it happen? Archaeological evidence says no. [17]
Nonetheless, Mr. Holding continues his “update":
The recruiting of Rahab as an intelligence source is in line with using residents of cities, especially prostitutes (or innkeepers, as Rahab may have been) as sources, for their easy access to the careless talk of guests.
I have to wonder if the reason Rahab is getting her image remade here is because she is identified in Jesus’ genealogy. Mr. Holding makes reference of Herzog and Gichon’s explanation indirectly, so I thought I would take a deeper look into what they were claiming. First of all, zonah does indeed mean, “to commit adultery” or “fornication,” “a harlot,” “a whore,” according to Strong’s, so the word in Joshua isn’t really under dispute. However, that “verb from which it is derived, zan,” means much more than simply “to feed and to provide with victuals.” According to Strong’s, the word origin for zonah comes from a primitive root meaning “highly-fed and therefore wanton.” Besides, are Herzog and Gichon trying to argue that the “inspired” writers of the New Testament got Rahab’s profession wrong when they wrote of her as a “harlot”? See Hebrews 11:31 and James 2:25. In each of these cases the Greek word translated into the English as “harlot” is porne, which means “a woman who sells her body for sexual uses.” Its word origin is from the Greek pornos, which refers to “a man who prostitutes his body to another’s lust for hire.” (It’s fairly evident which English word pornos gave rise to.) The root here simply means, “to sell.” By the logic indicated above, we might just assume that the New Testament writers who referred to Rahab as a “harlot” really intended to convey the image of a businesswoman in charge of an inn where loose talk was overheard. I’m not sure how that would fly when the New Testament passages are considered in context, however, for James 2:25 surely implies that Rahab’s “work” was not above table and therefore was indeed something to be ashamed of, for it says:
And in the same way was not also Rahab the harlot justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way?
If her conduct was merely that of a inn keeper, why does the New Testament author imply that she was “justified” (a word meaning in the Greek “to render righteous or such he ought to be”) not by her faith but by her actions? From what was she being “justified?” Clearly, even early Christians were devising apologetics to explain away Rahab’s less than respectable behavior since she appeared in the genealogies of Jesus.
Since Mr. Holding does not return to Herzog and Gichon’s book in his article, I will leave it here as well. But I want to reiterate (since I did, in fact read their whole scenario for explaining the military tactics of Joshua’s attack on Jericho from their book) that their entire work is based on the assumption that what the Bible is reporting is historically accurate or at least plausible. I could not find explicit statement in Herzog and Gichon’s book that they take the Bible literally, but they do admit that their application of “modern military thinking and understanding” to the biblical stories also apply to war, in general (pg. 9). I wonder if these same tactics could apply to the stories of Homer (or any other legendary stories of military battles) to find out if they, too, smacked of “modern military thinking and understanding”? And if they did, what would this prove? At best they would only provide evidence that those who wrote the stories had the same military understandings as those exhibited by Herzog and Gichon (but neither of these men fought the wars of Joshua, either!).
Mr. Holding continues:
Josh. 3:14-17 speaks of an earthquake causing the Jordan to be blocked. As recently as 1927 the same thing happened when a cliff collapsed and blocked the river for 2 1/2 hours. In 1267 a similar blockage for 16 hours allowed a Muslim sultan to build a bridge's foundations. [46-7]
Earthquakes are fairly commonplace in the Near East (see note 12). Checking the USGS webpage “Earthquake Hazards Program” I found six earthquakes in the region in a single week’s time ending January 31, 2005. Noting earthquakes separated by nearly 700 years (1267-1927) that block a river really isn’t saying much. However, following the biblical narrative, I do not see mention in Joshua 3:14-17 that it was an earthquake which caused “the Jordan to be blocked.” Here are the passages referred to:
When the people set out from their tents to cross over the Jordan, the priests bearing the ark of the covenant were in front of the people. Now the Jordan overflows all its banks throughout the time of harvest. So when those who bore the ark had come to the Jordan, and the feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped in the edge of the water, the waters flowing from above stood still, rising up in a single heap far off at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan, while those flowing toward the sea of the Arabah, the Dead Sea, were wholly cut off. Then the people crossed over opposite Jericho. While all Israel were crossing over on dry ground, the priests who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan, until the entire nation finished crossing over the Jordon.
The above passage does not mention an earthquake that dammed up the Jordan in order to allow the Hebrews to cross toward Jericho. The event is described in wholly supernatural terms (note what I placed in boldface type above). It is more likely that, instead of an earthquake, the author(s) of Joshua simply reused the motif of bodies of water splitting in two under divine direction or supernatural influence to allow clear passage of the Hebrews, a motif that was clearly presented in the story of the Exodus and the Red Sea. It is a metaphor describing the passage from a region of captivity to one of freedom. The people leave Egypt and enter the desert via parted water, and then they leave the desert and enter the Promised Land via parted water.
Mr. Holding’s mention of earthquakes that have happened in more modern times does nothing to add to the historical reliability of the story since it cannot be determined that “in c. 1407 BCE, in the Jericho valley, scientists have discovered remnants of an earthquake that shook the area and caused the waters of the Jordan river to ‘stand in a single heap,’ allowing anyone who may have been trying to cross the river at the time clear access from one side to the other.” His anecdotal notes are interesting from a geological standpoint, but don’t further the “updated” evidence that the Bible’s story of Jericho’s destruction is historically on target.
Mr. Holding sums up his “updated” evidence:
Finally, critics often ask what good it did for the Israelites to walk around Jericho so much. (Herzog and Gichon note that this is in line with an ancient military strategem [sic]. Another example is offered by the Roman writer Frontinus:
When Gneaus Pompey on one occasion was prevented from crossing a river because the enemy's troops were stationed on the opposite bank, he adopted the device of repeatedly leading his troops out of camp and back again. Then, when the enemy were at last tricked into relaxing their watch on the roads in front of the Roman advance, he made a sudden dash and effected a crossing.
The "seven times around the mulberry bush" was no mere game but a way of getting the Jerichoans relaxed and used to the procession and giving them a sense of false security -- making them that much less prepared for the eventual attack.
Since I personally have no objection to the story’s account of how many times men walked around the “walls” of Jericho, and since Mr. Holding names no skeptic who has leveled this criticism, this becomes a straw man argument that needs very little response. It is the remains of Jericho and when they can be dated that is at issue, not whether or not men could have, would have or might have walked around the walls of Jericho.
So, as this “update” concluded his original article, I shall conclude mine here as well. What I’ve shown is that Mr. Holding’s defense of the biblical story of Jericho finds no support in the mainstream archaeological community. His two best sources cross one another out as both take radically different approaches to “proving” the Bible’s tale true, with one actually criticizing and dismissing the work of the other. If I recall correctly, Farrell Till once wrote something about "any port in a storm" where he points out that apologists will use any excuse that satisfies a particular enquiry even if that particular excuse contradicts another unrelated enquiry. Mr. Holding’s “updated” materials added no evidence to his original assertions. Thus the effort to uncover Joshua’s siege of Jericho remains a fruitless endeavor. Mr. Holding’s equation of Troy with Jericho is no more a parallel than the discovery of a complex of submerged ruins off the coast of Mahabalipuram, in Tamil Nadu, South India--proof that local legends of a once grand series of ancient temples that were swallowed by the sea were true--are parallel with the unusual formations of smooth blocks, crests, and geometric shapes being investigated in the waters of Cabo de San Antonio, off Cuba's coast, as proof of Atlantis’ destruction. Surely something occurred off the coast of Cuba but it is unlikely that these discoveries will confirm Plato’s fanciful tale of a marvelous city as described in his "Timaeus" and "Critias."
Early in Mr. Holding’s article he seemed confident that he could draw a parallel between Troy’s discovery and that of Jericho, seeming to taunt skeptics who doubt Jericho’s destruction as described in the Bible by equating them with skeptics who yesteryear doubted the very existence of Homer’s Troy. He appears to have wished to embarrass the current skeptics of Jericho’s destruction at the hands of Joshua’s army by pointing out that Troy’s skeptics had been embarrassed by its discovery. He had written:
Many [skeptics], however, questioned whether the Book [Iliad] was reliable - some thought it was nothing but myth, that the events as described in it never really happened; they went as far as to nitpick at tiny details in the Book in order to show that the events it described could not possibly have happened.
I wonder which “tiny details” the critics of Homer’s epic “nitpicked”? Surely, in the days prior to Troy’s discovery, skeptics of Homer’s overall story pointed out that the lack of physical evidence of this fabled city as one of their criticisms. Of that there is little doubt. But if Mr. Holding is trying to draw a parallel between long-dead critics of the historicity of Homer’s Troy and today’s skeptics of the Bible’s Jericho, he is stretching far beyond a credible reach indeed. I know of few, if any, modern critics who doubt the location of Canaan’s Jericho. Like modern historians, few doubt the location of historic Troy as they doubt the location of the Bible’s Jericho. However, certain “tiny details” of Homer’s epic and the Bible’s story of Jericho remain points of contention regardless of whether or not the physical location of Troy or Jericho has been found.
Mr. Holding further wrote:
(T)here were those with the desire and the resources to find out whether the Book [Iliad] was true or not...
Finding Troy’s location in a heap of ancient rubble does not uncover the “truth” of the Iliad. The question is simply not that clear-cut. The discovery of Troy does not settle whether Homer’s epic is “true or not.” It merely settles the question of Troy’s existence in antiquity. The thousand ships of the Achaian army, the forty-nine children of Hekuba, the oracle who predicted Paris’ cause as the destruction of Troy, Helen’s abduction, and a multitude of other “tiny details” are still very much sources of skeptical suspicion as are the Biblical claims of Jericho’s destruction by Joshua’s army complete with whores, spies and wall-tumbling rams’ horns. Jericho’s discovery in the rubble of history does not determine whether the Bible is “true or not.” Again, Mr. Holding is reaching farther than what the archaeology will allow.
Mr. Holding acknowledged that archaeology cannot prove the divine aspects of either the story of Troy or of Jericho, but he seems to think that enough of Jericho’s story can be verified to at least entertain the possibility of its destruction via divine intervention (for why else would he, as a Christian apologist employed by his faith in the truth of the divinely revealed scripture, care what archaeology uncovered in the sands of the Middle East unless those discoveries in some fashion helped corroborate the miraculous stories of the holy text?). He wrote:
Archaeology cannot prove that God knocked down the walls of Jericho, any more than it can prove that Zeus and Poseidon had a hand in the Trojan War; but archaeology can tell us whether the events reported in our texts could have happened - and that is really all that can be asked.
What events? That Joshua’s army led the attack on Jericho? Archaeology tells us this likely did not happen. There is no evidence at Jericho of a military siege at the time Mr. Holding believes Joshua’s army came upon the city. What events? That the Hebrew army marched seven times around the city and under Yahweh’s divine aid the walls of the city came tumbling down? Archaeology tells us this did not happen. It was an earthquake that fell the fabled walls of Jericho. What events? That Menelaos convinced Agamemnon to lead the attack on Troy? Archaeology can tell us no such thing. What events? That the war between the Trojans and the Achaians lasted for ten years? Archaeology does not confirm this detail. What events? That it was a group of Achaian soldiers, hidden within a wooden horse pulled inside the city walls of Troy who opened the gates and allowed Agamemnon and his army to sack the city and burn it to the ground? Archaeology cannot confirm this. So, which events does Mr. Holding want archaeology to confirm regarding the biblical story of Jericho’s demise? That Jericho once existed? Done. What good does this do him on his website devoted to defending the veracity of biblical stories? How does the discovery of Jericho help him convince the skeptics who “nitpick at tiny details in the Book in order to show that the events it described could not possibly have happened,” that, indeed, they actually did? This skeptic does not mind that Jericho was uncovered by archaeology. Archaeology does not confirm the biblical story that Jericho fell at the military hands of Joshua’s army. Archaeology does not confirm that any walled city of Jericho existed at the time apologists like Mr. Holding believe the Hebrew horde would have started their invasion of Canaan. Much less, archaeology does not provide any evidence that what walls Jericho did have that fell did so at the hands of a military siege of any kind. The evidence just isn’t there. However, at Troy, there is positive evidence for one of the layers of its destruction to have occurred at the hands of a military siege. The details are lacking, of course, to conclude that this destruction occurred at the hands of Agamemnon and the Achaian army along with their brilliant plan of hiding soldiers in a wooden horse as a deceptive offering to the rather fickle Athena. So why draw any parallel at all between Jericho and Troy?
However, if we were to find evidence at one of Jericho’s destruction layers that correspond more or less with the biblical narrative of a military siege that allowed a parallel with the discoveries at Troy, what would this prove? It would prove that Jericho was sacked and razed in a violent military battle. It would not prove the “truth” of the Bible. It would not provide evidence of Joshua. It would not lend more weight to the notion that Yahweh led an army to conquer the Promised Land. There would be no more weight to these “tiny details” of the biblical narrative than evidence of a military siege at Troy corresponding to Homer’s epic provides weight to such “tiny details” of the Iliad as Paris’ knowledge of Achilles’ vulnerability, the beauty contest between Hera, Athena and Aphrodite or Diomedes’ wounding of Menaleos. Why Mr. Holding’s misguided study of Jericho’s destruction was any interest to him or his readers if it did not help provide evidence of the biblical story’s “tiny details” and “truth of the Book” is a mystery.
NOTES:
Joshua 6:20-21 So the people shouted, and the trumpets were blown. As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people raised a great shout, and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. Then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword. Return to Text.
- 2091 B.C.E. Abram’s departure for Canaan
- 1876 B.C.E. The descent of Jacob’s family into Egypt
- 1446 B.C.E. The Exodus from Egypt
- 966 B.C.E. The beginning of Solomon’s Temple (p. 2 italics mine)
At first glance, an answer to this question [“When did the patriarchs live?”] seems to be available from chronological indications in the biblical narrative itself. We are told that Abraham was 75 years old when he set out for Canaan (Genesis 12:4) and 100 when Isaac was born (Genesis 21:5). According to Genesis 25:26, Isaac was 60 years old when Jacob was born. Then, if Jacob was 130 when he descended into Egypt, as we read in Genesis 47:9, the full time the patriarchs spent in Canaan before going to Egypt was 215 years. Subsequently, we are told that the period of slavery in Egypt lasted 430 years (Exodus 12:40), and that the time from the Exodus from Egypt to the beginning of the construction of the Temple in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign was 480 years (1 Kings 6:1). This brings us close to the period where we have secure chronological information: Scholars agree that Solomon died within a decade or so of 930 B.C.E. According to 1 Kings 11:42, he reigned 40 years. It follows that his fourth year, the year work began on the Temple, was about 966 B.C.E. Reckoning backward from this date and using the numbers cited above, we arrive at the [above] scheme (ibid)
After the 40 years wandering in the desert, this would place the conquest of Canaan, and the capture of Jericho, sometime following 1407-6 BCE. Return to Text.
Return to Text.
So, even with the destruction level at Troy showing evidence of a military siege, the details of Homer’s epic are missing from the site and are not likely to be confirmed. Jericho’s destruction layer not only does not contain details of the biblical story, it cannot even be identified to have been caused by a military assault. Return to Text.
That is not to say that Bimson has not packed in a lot of information in Redating. Many scholars acknowledge that he did an excellent job of collecting and presenting sources, but his arguments are extremely weak. Bimson’s book should be recommended only for its bibliography.
Some problems with Redating the Exodus and Conquest include a trivial error found on page 249. Here he mentions that Memphis was Thutmosis III’s capital when it was in actual fact Thebes.
Bimson does not give any serious discussion about the merits or demerits of literary criticism, either. He in fact ignores all the work that relies on literary criticism and dismisses this work solely on the idea that all historical events can be tested by external evidence.
Bimson does not even address any of the archaeological evidence from Heshbon in his book that indicates that there is no evidence that it was occupied in the MBA or LBA.
Bimson also simply claims that Pi-Rameses is an anachronism without really justifying his opinion.
However, one of Bimson’s larger errors is found when he addresses the issue of the date for the Exodus/Conquest suggested by 1 Kings 6:1.
The 480 years of 1 Kings 6:1 has been shortened by supporters of a 13th century date for the Exodus/Conquest narratives to 300 years because they insist that 480 is 12 x 40 years, the common time period allotted to a generation. The 13th century supporters claim that a generation is closer to 25 years, so 12 x 25 is 300 and now this calculation fits with a 13th century conquest. Bimson, however, dismisses this approach by comparing it to the information in the Book of Judges. He specifically accepts the 300 years in Judges 11:26 as being completely reliable and he rejects the periods of rest because there is no way to test their reliability as they are not tied to anyone’s age. Bimson actually states on page 102 in regard to the periods of rest that “they may be completely artificial.” He doesn’t see the contradiction in this approach. He is quite willing to accept that this period may be artificial but doesn’t entertain the possibility that 1 Kings 6:1 could be artificial as well. Bimson simply accepts 1 Kings 6:1 as reliable and gets on with it. He never addresses the problems of the how the period of the Judges can be harmonized with the external data that confirms Egypt as being the dominant force in Palestine. The Israelites are oppressed time and time again by foreigners, yet Egypt is never mentioned as one of these oppressors! Bimson also fails to deal with the fact that no one seems to notice the presence of Israel before the mention of them as a people in the Merneptah Stele dated to around 1205 BCE.
Bimson’s conclusions are also a bit difficult to digest. For example, in his conclusion he fails to mention that Ai cannot be harmonized with any of the two proposed dates, neither can the absence of the states of Moab and Edom, Gibeon and Shechem fit the 15th century date, neither does Heshbon, Arad is just placed elsewhere.
Bimson also falls into the old familiar creationist trap of circular reasoning when he claims that there is no good evidence for Amosis’ campaigns in Palestine at in MB IIC. If the end of the MBA cannot be reliably dated to 1550 BCE, then Bimson is quite happy to just move it to c. 1430 BCE to fit in with his fundamentalist approach. The circular reasoning comes into play when we consider that Bimson actually doesn’t offer any strong arguments for moving the end of the MBA, and to move the end of the MBA to any time other than 1550 BCE would require quite a lot of strong evidence. The only reason Bimson has to move the date here is to have it align with his biblical bias. If we use Bimson’s approach, we could virtually pick any date we wanted to and move the MBA to suit ourselves. This is circular reasoning; Bimson moves the end of the MBA to 1400 to fit the biblical date, and the biblical date is correct because the MBA was 1400 BCE (since Bimson just moved it there). Bimson doesn’t seem to notice that it wouldn’t matter where he moved the end of the MBA, he still has to deal with the campaigns of Amosis, Thutmosis III and Amenhphis III. The 1430 BCE date from Bimson still wouldn’t fit with the biblical information because these pharaohs still dominated Palestine through the end of the MBA and beyond, regardless of when the MBA is dated.
To make matters worse, Bimson even attributes two destructions of Shechem to the Egyptians, conveniently ignoring the fact that if the Egyptians controlled all of Palestine at the time they thus would have been attacking themselves.(Very special thanks to my proofreader, Brain J., for these insights into Bimson’s work). Return to Text.
The Dan David Prize recognizes and encourages innovative and interdisciplinary research that cuts across traditional boundaries and paradigms. It aims to foster universal values of excellence, creativity, justice, democracy and progress and to promote the scientific, technological and humanistic achievements that advance and improve our world.
Also consult William G. Dever’s book, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?, especially page 121. Return to Text.
SOURCES
Bartlett, John (1983) Jericho Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Bienkowski, Piotr (1986) Jericho in the Late Bronze Age Aris & Phillips.
Bienkowski, Piotr (1989) “The Internal Division of Middle Bronze II in Palestine.” Levant 21, pp. 169-179.
Bimson, John J. (1978) Redating the Exodus and Conquest Dept. of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield.
Callaway, Joseph A. (1999) “The Settlement in Canaan: The Period of the Judges.” Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple, pp. 55-89, Biblical Archaeology Society.
Dever, William G. (2001) What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Finkelstein, Israel and Neil Ahser Silberman (2001) The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts Free Press.
Garstang, John (1948) The Story of Jericho, Marshall, Morgan & Scott>
Herzog, Chaim and Mordechai Gichon (2002) Battles of the Bible, Greenhill Books.
Kaiser, Walter C., Jr. (2001) The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable & Relevant? Intervarsity Press.
Kenyon, Kathleen (1957) Digging Up Jericho: The Results of the Jericho Excavations 1952-1956, Ernest Benn.
Kitchen, Kenneth (2003) On the Reliability of the Old Testament, Eerdmans.
McCarter, Kyle P., Jr. (1999) “The Patriarchal Age” Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple, pp. 1-31, Biblical Archaeology Society.
McGovern, Pat (1986) The Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages of Central Transjordan: The Baq'ah Valley Project, 1977-1981. University Museum, Monograph 65, Philadelphia.
Neev, David and K.O. Emery (1995) The Destruction of Sodom, Gomorrah, and Jericho. Geological, Climatological, and Archaeological Background, Oxford University Press.
Van Seters, John (2002) “The Geography of the Exodus.” The Land That I Will Show You: Essays on the History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East in Honour of J. Maxwell Miller. (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series, 343), eds. James Maxwell Miller, et.al., Sheffield Academic Press.
Weinstein, James (1997) “Archaeological Reality.” Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence, eds. Ernest S. Frerichs, et.al., Eisenbrauns.
Wood, Bryant (1990) “Dating Jericho’s Destruction: Bienkowski
is Wrong on All Counts.”
Biblical Archaeology Review September/October 1990, pp. 45-69.
