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B.A.
ANCIENT HISTORY AND EGYPTOLOGY Essay
Question: What
problems are raised by the Biblical account of the Israelite settlement? Essay
written by David Rohl (1st Year Ancient History/Egyptology). Submitted
to Amelie Kuhrt on 19th January 1988.
The
lack of archaeological evidence for the Israelite Conquest of 'the promised
land' has, in the past few years, added more fuel to the division within
biblical scholarship over the historical veracity of the early books of the Old
Testament. This facet of an often heated debate has narrowed itself down to a
single fundamental question: how much faith should researchers place in the
biblical narratives themselves when developing an archaeo-history for the beginnings
of the nation of Israel? The
two principal schools of thought, based on the one hand on the theories of
Albright [1] and on the other those of Alt [2] and Noth [3], were originally
developed within a framework of a textual analysis of the biblical narratives.
However, recent archaeological findings have added weight to the ahistorical
interpretation of Joshua as espoused by the German school and undermined
Albright's contention that the Conquest narratives were founded upon an actual
historical invasion of Palestine by the Israelites. In
spite of the swing in scholarly opinion towards the view of an aetiological
Exodus and Conquest, it seems hard to accept that these stories should merely
be assigned a place alongside the other mythologies of the ancient world. With
Moses' covenant on Mount Sinai, they form the basic tenets of Hebrew history –
the very foundations of its faith – and to deprive a nation of its historical
origins and its very raison d'etre is not a step that should be too readily
taken without first pursuing all other options to their fullest extent. The
Exodus and Conquest narratives, in their detail and strategical logic, possess
an atmosphere of reality which cannot be lightly dismissed. Modern biblical
scholarship might do well, therefore, to consider re-addressing itself to the
issue of finding the early history of the Hebrews in the archaeology of the
Levant rather than pursuing theories based solely on an ahistorical biblical
narrative for Exodus and Conquest.
In
order to deal with this idea more fully it is first necessary to focus on the
problems associated with the Late Bronze Age stratigraphical evidence. This can
be succinctly achieved by looking at the two major cities of the Conquest
narratives and assessing their archaeological difficulties. Jericho The
site of Tell es-Sultan has seen three major excavations – all of which
confirmed the lack of occupation levels for the Late Bronze Age. The
biblical historian's perspective on the archaeological evidence from Jericho is
summed up by de Vaux: “Excavations
carried out at Jericho have shown that Israelites who arrived at the end of the
thirteenth century B.C. could not have taken Jericho for the simple reason that
the town was not inhabited at that time. The Middle Bronze town had been
destroyed round about 1550 and had then been abandoned.” [4] Kenyon
in her detailed excavation report was forced, precisely because of the absence
of remains, to speculate that any town or city occupying the tell at the time
of the Conquest must have been washed away by rain: “Nothing
later survives in this whole north-western sector of the upper part of the
tell. Though evidence from the tombs and from Site A proves that there was a
break in occupation at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, it is very probable
that, when the site was reoccupied, probably soon after 1400 B.C., the great
encircling bank of the Middle Bronze Age was the basis of the defences of the
L.B. town. Any evidence has been destroyed by erosion, even at the highest
surviving point of the M.B. circuit.” [5] Ai In
1927, Albright identified the mound of Khirbet et-Tell with the fortified town
of Ai of the Conquest narratives. Until recently this identification had remained
unchallenged in spite of the fact that the tell was abandoned at the end of the
Early Bronze Age c. 2400 and not reoccupied until the Iron Age – and then only
as a short-lived village settlement. His principal reason for the
identification was based on et-Tell's proximity to the town of Bethel (modern
Beitin) as described in the Old Testament – but more on this later. In
1935 the Rothschild Foundation undertook the excavation of the Iron Age village
located on the top of the tell and failed to turn up any Middle or Late Bronze
Age buildings or material. Callaway summarised the season's work as follows: “A
large area of the Iron Age village was cleared inside contour 850, confirming
beyond doubt that the Iron Age I houses were built upon the ruins of the Early
Bronze Age III city with no intervening occupation strata.” [6] Given
the archaeological circumstances, de Vaux was compelled to accept that 'The
story of the capture of Ai, ... is a pure aetiology, without any basis in
history' [7]. All
these findings, at Jericho, Ai and other sites, are based on one primary
assumption – that the Exodus and Conquest took place at the end of the Bronze
Age c. 1290 to 1220. The
basis of the Late Bronze Exodus date To
make any sort of judgement on the currently accepted date for the Exodus we
must first deal with the arguments for rejecting the Old Testament chronology
as given in 1 Kings 6:1: “And
it came to pass 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, ... that he began to build the house of the Lord.” The
biblical Exodus date of 1447 Based
on Thiele's chronology, the sacking of the Temple of Jerusalem by Pharaoh
Shishak, dated to Year 5 of Rehoboam, took place in 925 BC [8]. The beginning
of Solomon's reign, therefore, began 45 years earlier in 970 and his Year 4
fell in 967. A period of 480 years for Judges and the Sinai wanderings brings
us to a date of 1447 for the Exodus and approximately 1407 for the Conquest.
All this is in accord with the biblical data. These
dates have been considered an impossibility on a number of grounds, the most
strongly voiced of which was that the Exodus must have taken place following
the building of the 19th Dynasty capital of Egypt around the time of Ramesses
II. Exodus
1:11 tells us that the Israelites '... built for Pharaoh treasure cities,
Pithom and Raamses'. Thus the argument goes that, as the city of Pi-Ramesse
was constructed in the main by Ramesses II, this king must have been the
Pharaoh of the Oppression. The beginning of Ramesses II's reign is normally
dated to 1290 BC. However,
Genesis 47:11, relates that, some 300 years earlier, Joseph had given his
father and brethren '... the best of the land, in the land of Rameses, as
Pharaoh had commanded.' Clearly, there was no king Ramesses before Ramesses I
of the 19th Dynasty and so this reference to a location associated with the
name Ramesses in Joseph's time must be the anachronistic addition of a later
biblical scribe. Another
obvious anachronism, this time associated with the period of Bondage, is the
references in Psalm 78 to the Israelites working 'in the land of Egypt, in the
field of Zoan'. As the city of Tanis was not built until the 21st Dynasty (c.
1070) the name of Zoan could not have been applied to the Eastern Delta until a
long time after the Israelites had left Egypt. Why is
it then that biblical scholars use the 'evidence' of Exodus 1:11 to date the
departure of the Israelites from Egypt (and are happy to accept Ramesses II as
the Pharaoh of the Oppression) whilst, at the same time, arguing that the other
references to Ramesses are anachronistic? A
second argument against the biblical date postulates that the period of 480
years of 1 Kings 6:1 is a suspicious figure because it is divisible by 12 and
by 40 – two commonly used numbers in the Old Testament. This is true, but it
hardly follows that a total of over 100 years should be taken off this figure
on the grounds that in reality it represents 12 generations of 25 years. This
theory is based on three assumptions for which there is no evidence: 1. That the period of 480 years is a concocted number and does not represent an absolute interval of lapsed time. 2. That it in fact represents 12 generations of 40 years. 3.
That the actual length of a generation is really 25 years or less. It is
on the basis of this calculation and the references to Pi- This
hypothesis, however, ignores Judges 11:26 which provides the information that
300 years had lapsed since the arrival of the Israelites in Transjordan to the
time of Jephthah. The Judge Jephthah is almost unanimously dated to c. 1100 BC
and so this passage again confirms the biblical date of c. 1400 for the
Conquest. Another
argument against a 1447 Exodus date is that it falls within the reign of the
powerful pharoah Thutmose III. This is all very fine until we look at the
1290-70 alternative which occurs in the vigorous early years of Ramesses II –
perhaps the most powerful of all the kings of ancient Egypt. A criticism
applied to one date must surely be applied to the alternative also. Rowley's
remarks are typical of the prejudice in favour of a Ramesside date for the
Exodus: “Whatever
view is taken of the date of the Exodus, there can be no doubt that the descent
into Egypt preceded the reign of Rameses I, and that the Biblical reference to
the settlement of Jacob and his family "in the land of Rameses" at
the time of their entry is an anachronism. ... it is sometimes suggested that
the Israelite forced labour may have been employed during its [Pi-Ramesse's]
pre-Ramesside history. ... if the name [of Pi-Ramesse] were an anachronism, we
should expect the contemporary name at the time of the composition of the
narrative to be employed. But Albright notes that Tanis was called Pi-Ramesse
for about 200 years only, and this makes it improbable that the tradition could
arise if it were spurious.” [9] Needless
to say the identification of Pi-Ramesse with Tanis is almost universally
rejected following the work of the Austrian mission at Tell ed-Daba over the
last decade [10], but the Late Bronze Age date for the Oppression is now too
well entrenched for the questioning of the original arguments to make very much
difference. However,
given the weakness of the reasons for favouring a non-anachronistic Exodus
1:11, it is surely quite feasible that both Old Testament mentions of the
land/city of Ramesses in these passages were included by the later biblical
redactor in the same way that a modern historian would state that 'the Romans
stationed a garrison at York' when in fact they actually stationed a garrison
at Eboracum. In other words, one of the two cities in the Delta built by the
Israelites was, at the time of the scribe's writing, known as Pi-Ramesse (even
in its then abandoned state) and no longer by its earlier name of Avaris. The
problem of Ai in detail As has
hopefully been shown, the difficulties biblical scholars have had with the
Conquest narrative and its relationship to the archaeological evidence seems at
least partly based on their acceptance of the theory that Joshua's campaign
took place at the end of the Bronze Age – a date which is in direct
contradiction to the 1 Kings 6:1 Exodus date of 1447. Thus the majority,
perhaps subconsciously, regard the Conquest tradition as ahistorical simply
because they fail to accept the biblical data that we do possess for the period
of the Exodus and then proceed to argue that the archaeological evidence for
the Conquest (or lack of it) confirms this belief. This is surely a
circularity. Perhaps, therefore, what we should be doing is looking in a
different time period to find the evidence for Joshua's campaign. However,
before we attempt to locate Joshua in the archaeological record we must firstly
return to the region of Palestine described in the initial section of the
Conquest narrative in order to put forward the alternative sites for both
Bethel and Ai as recently proposed by Bimson and Livingston [11]. The
border between the tribes of Joseph and Benjamin “And
the lot of the children of Joseph fell from Jordan by Jericho, unto the water
of Jericho on the east, to the wilderness that goeth up from Jericho throughout
passeth along unto the borders of Archi to Ataroth.” [Joshua 16:1-2] “...
and the border went up to the side of Jericho on the north side, and went up
through the mountains westward; and the goings out thereof were at the
wilderness of Bethaven. And the border went over from thence toward Luz, ...”
[Joshua 18:12-13] The
eastern part of the boundary between Benjamin and Ephraim (of Joseph) seems to
have followed the track which led from Jericho up the 'way of the wilderness
(of Bethaven)' to Bethel/Luz. In 1 Samuel 13:18 this route is referred to as
'the way of the border' and was also eventually to become the boundary between
the kingdoms of Israel and Judah after the schism. Is it
therefore possible to determine precisely where the border ran? If so, does it
give any clues as to the location and identity of the ancient town of
Bethel/Luz which was a major marker on that boundary line and is the principal
clue to the location of the problematical Ai? Can we be so sure that modern
Beitin is ancient Bethel as Albright and others have taken for granted? To
attempt to answer these questions it will be necessary to briefly look at
evidence from a later period of Israelite history. Clues
to the invasion route of Joshua's army In the
time of Saul, the Philistines tried to prevent the Hebrew king from returning
to the hill country of Benjamin, after his campaign in Transjordan, by
occupying both Geba and Michmash. These two strongholds guarded the Wadi
Suwenit (one on either side) and the very presence of fortresses at these
locations testifies to the importance of this access route onto the plateau.
The Philistines 'were astride the strategically vital pass that led to the
Hebrew-dominated highlands' precisely because they new that this was a natural
route for any invading/returning army from the east [12]. It is suggested here,
therefore, that the Wadi Suwenit delineates the eastern part of the 'way of the
boarder' rather than the mountain spur immediately to its north which sustains
a routeway only with difficulty. This is partially confirmed by the usual
placement of Bethaven (Joshua 18:12-13) within the Wadi Suwenit between Geba
and Michmash [13]. This
indeed would also have been the most likely route that Joshua would have taken
on his assault of Ai four centuries earlier and it is only because of Ai's
identification with et-Tell that scholars have described the Israelite army as
ascending via the unlikely route of the Wadi el Asas further to the north. Bireh At the
head of the Wadi Suwenit stands the large modern town of Ramallah, directly
astride the main north/south route between Jerusalem and Nablus (Shechem) [14].
Clearly, this strategic position would have been of great importance throughout
the history of the region and not least at the time of the Conquest. The oldest
part of the town of Ramallah is centred upon the village of Bireh. A recent
surface survey has established that there was a thriving MBA town at this site,
no evidence of an LBA occupation, and then a re-emergence of the town in the
Iron Age. Kallai
has strongly argued that the natural border between Ephraim and Benjamin must
have followed the line of the 'Way of Beth-horon' and then along the Wadi
Suwenit down to Jericho [15]. Bireh would then have straddled the border at the
point where it crossed the main north/south highway. This is precisely where
the town of Bethel is located in the biblical references. Eusebius
in his Onomasticon [16] adds the clinching evidence for the location of Bethel.
He states that the town lies approximately 12 miles from Jerusalem, on the
highway to Nablus. The Roman mile measured 1618 yards rather than the modern
1760. Thus the distance in modern terms is 11.03 miles – almost precisely the
same distance as Bireh lies from Jerusalem today [17]. The
site of Beitin, which is usually identified as Bethel, does not fulfill the
requirements as it is too far north of Jerusalem (over 15 Roman miles = 14
English miles) to agree with Eusebius' location [18]. It is
proposed here, therefore, that the ancient town of Bethel should be relocated
at Bireh rather than at Beitin and that the site of Ai should be sought within
the vicinity and to the east of Bireh/Ramallah, as described in the Book of
Joshua. Khirbet
Nisya As
Bimson and Livingston have argued, if Joshua's men had taken the route up the
Wadi Suwenit they would have reached the high plateau at the head of the valley
immediately in front of the tell of Khirbet Nisya. Recent excavations at this
site by Livingston have produced large quantities of MB pottery suggesting that
there was a significant town at this spot during the Middle Bronze Age. The
tell lies less than half a mile directly south-east of Bireh just as Ai was
situated to the east of Bethel. In between
the two ancient towns lies the mountain of Jebel et-Tawil which could be the
high place of Abraham's first altar to Yahweh. Genesis 12:8 tells us that this
hill lay east of Luz and between Luz and Ai. The 'Shebarim' ('the breaks') of
Joshua 7:5 might refer to the narrow opening in the jagged cliffs, less than a
mile from Nisya, which affords passage to 'the descent' into the Wadi Suwenit
and the 'wilderness of Bethaven'. All this fits the description found in Joshua
with a far greater degree of accuracy than either of the sites of Beitin or
et-Tell.
It has
already been suggested that all the difficulties associated with a Conquest at
the end of the Late Bronze Age should perhaps give us good cause to examine the
possibility of a Conquest date in an earlier period – that is around the date
given by the biblical text itself. A
Middle Bronze Age date for the Exodus At
first glance there would appear to be no indication of a destruction phase
around 1407 BC as this date is assumed to fall within the era of Late Bronze I.
The nearest period which is characterised by large scale destructions is that
at the end of the Middle Bronze Age (MBIIC) which, until recently, had been
thought to be dated to around 1550 BC. This was evidently too remote in time to
be considered as a candidate for the Conquest, falling nearly 150 years too
early and being associated by scholars with the expulsion of the Hyksos by
Ahmose at the beginning of the 18th Dynasty. However,
within the last few years, new research into the dating of the Middle Bronze
era has led to the proposal of a substantial lowering of the MBIIC destruction
phase which now brings it within range of the biblical Conquest date. A
new date for the end of MBIIC The
excavation work of the Austrian mission under Dr Manfred Bietak at Tell ed-Daba
has proved to be vital for the dating of the Middle Bronze Age. As the
excavator states: “Palestine
chronology is dependent on Egyptian absolute chronology. Therefore, it would be
methodologically wrong to date the Tell el-Dab'a sequence according to the
Palestinian dates in order to find its proper setting within the Egyptian
framework. It is far more reliable to obtain absolute dates from the Tell
el-Dab'a sequence from Egyptian material excavated at that site within the MB
sequence.” [19] Tell
ed-Daba has been fairly conclusively shown to be both the 19th Dynasty city of
Pi-Ramesses and the Hyksos capital of Avaris and so Bietak's dating for the
Middle Bronze Age is crucial for identifying the period of the MBIIC
destructions in Palestine. Through
his excavation results, Bietak has now lowered the end of MBIIB to 1550 [20]
and, in doing so, has therefore brought the MBIIC destructions down to c. 1450
– well into the 18th Dynasty. This is further sup-ported by the recent
discovery of considerable quantities of small 18th-Dynasty artifacts at Tell
ed-Daba found within the MBIIC phase [21]. Following apparently extensive and detailed analyses of pottery from MB Jericho, Wood has also recently shown that the destruction of the city did not in fact take place at the end of MBIIC at all but sometime during the LBI period [22]. This has now been shown to be the case at other towns associated with the Conquest narrative and suggests the possibility of a second destruction phase in the Levant after that of MBIIC. The
MBIIC destructions might therefore be associated with Thutmose III and the
secondary, localised destructions of Jericho and the highland tells could, in
the light of these findings, be attributed to the incomming Israelites c. 1400. To test this hypothesis an analysis of the archaeological sites mentioned in the Joshua narrative might prove informative. The following chart gives the biblical information and compares it to the archaeology of both Middle and Late Bronze Age termini. As can be seen, the result of this exercise shows that the MB/LBI archaeology matches the biblical data on ten occasions whilst the LB corresponds in only three instances with a dubious fourth normally ruled out on date. Comparative chart of the archaeology for the two Conquest dates
Summary By
combining the theories of Bimson and Livingston on the location of Ai and
taking the biblical date for the Exodus as an authentic, if perhaps 'rounded'
date, it has been possible to link the Conquest narrative to those
archaeological sites which have recently been shown to have suffered
destruction during the 18th Dynasty. The
work of Bietak and Wood has brought to light the possibility that the dates of
the Middle Bronze Age and Late Bronze I should be revised and it is these
findings which enable this hypothesis to be made. The evidence together appears
to provide a way out of the impass brought about by the Late Bronze Age Exodus
date and provides the hope that both biblical narrative and Palestinian
archaeology may be finally brought together to form a harmonious whole. Notes
and References 1. W.
F. Albright: 'The Israelite Conquest of Canaan' in Bulletin of the American
Schools of Oriental Research, Volume 74, (1939), pp. 11-23. 2. A.
Alt: 'The Settlement of the Israelites in Palestine', Essays on Old Testament
History and Religion (trans.) (New York 1967), pp. 173-221. 3. M.
Noth: The History of Israel (London 1958), pp. 68-84. 4. R.
de Vaux: The Early History of Israel, Volume II, (London 1978), p. 610. 5. K.
M. Kenyon: Excavations at Jericho, Volume III, (London 1981), p. 375. 6. M.
Avi-Yonah (ed.): Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land,
Volume I, (London 1975), p. 38. 7. R.
de Vaux: The Early History of Israel, op. cit., p. 676. 8. E.
R. Thiele: The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, (Michigan 1983), p. 80. 9. H.
H. Rowley: From Joseph to Joshua, (London 1948), p. 31. 10.
For a summary of the excavation work see M. Bietak: Avaris and Piramesse,
(London 1979). 11. J.
J. Bimson & D. Livingston: 'Redating the Exodus' in Biblical Archaeololgy
Review, Sept/Oct 1987, pp. 40-68. 12. J.
L. Gardner (ed.): Atlas of the Bible, (New York 1981), p. 90. 13. J.
Rogerson: The New Atlas of the Bible, (London 1985), p. 163. 14. Y.
Aharoni: The Land of the Bible, (London 1966), p. 55. 15. Z.
Kallai: 'Kateph', Israel Exploration Journal, Volume 15, (1965), p. 178. 16. E.
Klostermann: Eusebius: Das Onomasticon der biblischen Ortsnamen, (Hildesheim
1966), pp. 5-7. Text translated by Basil Stein. 17.
Palestine Exploration Fund: 1:100,000 Survey of Palestine, (December 1944),
Sheet 10 – Jerusalem. 18. R.
Gonen: Biblical Holy Places: an illustrated guide, (London 1987), p. 53. 19. M.
Bietak: 'Problems of the Middle Bronze Age Chronology: New Evidence from Egypt'
in American Journal of Archaeology, Volume 88, (1984), p. 472. 20. M.
Bietak: Avaris op. cit., p. 232-235. 21.
Personal communication – Tell ed-Daba 1986. 22. B.
G. Wood: 'Jericho Revisited: The Archaeology and History of Jericho in the Late
Bronze Age'. Lecture delivered to the Near East Archaeological Society
Symposium entitled Who was the Pharaoh of the Exodus? held in Memphis Tennessee
in 1987 (publication forthcoming). Bibliography 1.
Aharoni Y.: The Archaeology of the Land of Israel, (SCM Press, London 1982). 2.
Aharoni Y.: The Land of the Bible, (Burns & Oates, London 1966). 3.
Amiran R.: Ancient Pottery of the Holy Land, (Massada Press, Jerusalem 1969). 4.
Avi-Yonah M. (ed.): Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy
Land, Volumes I (Ai) and II (Jericho), (Oxford University Press, London 1975
& 1976). 5.
Bietak M.: Avaris and Piramesse, (Oxford University Press, London 1979). 6.
Bietak M.: 'Problems of Middle Bronze Age Chronology: New Evidence from Egypt'
in American Journal of Archaeology Volume 88, (1984), pp. 471-485. 7.
Bimson J. J.: Redating the Exodus and Conquest, (JSOT, Sheffield 1978). 8.
Bimson J. J. & Livingston D.: 'Redating the Exodus' in Biblical
Archaeololgy Review, Sept/Oct 1987, pp. 40-68. 9. de
Vaux R.: The Early History of Israel, Volume II, (Darton, Longman & Todd,
London 1978). 10.
Gardner J. L. (ed.): Atlas of the Bible, (The Reader's Digest Association Inc.,
New York 1981). 11.
Gonen R.: Biblical Holy Places: an illustrated guide, (A. & C. Black,
London 1987]. 12.
Grollenberg L. H.: Atlas of the Bible, (London 1956). 13.
The Holy Bible – Authorised King James Version. 14.
Kenyon K. M.: Excavations at Jericho, Volume III (British School of Archaeology
in Jerusalem, London 1981). 15.
Klostermann E.: Eusebius: Das Onomasticon der biblischen Ortsnamen, (Georg
Olms, Hildesheim 1966). 16.
Rogerson J.: The New Atlas of the Bible, (Macdonald & Co, London 1985). 17.
Rowley H. H.: From Joseph to Joshua, (Oxford University Press, London 1948). |
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