Rijsagi? No, I have no idea where you’re getting this. Of course there are modern villages in the area (not this rijsagi or whatnot): the presence of modern villages in our so very densy populated times does not address the idea that sites are never abandoned. Need I go find some book on Spanish history to find records of Roman cities abandoned? Sure, some are repopulated later, but that does not mean they were continously inhabited. (Unless you count the odd shephard passing through, but then this is such an idiosyncratic and meaningless definition of populated as to void the question.)
The old Enclyclopedia brittanica. Note, the site is a 'vital" one, ie it has a reason for being there- in this case, water. So, there is a village there now, called Rijsagi, which has been there for a long time. You have an oasis, in the desert- there was a large city, even a capital there. The city was destroyed, and no longer being the capital- there was no longer a reason for a big city. But there is still a good site for habitation. Thus, Rijsagi sprung up on the old site, plus 5 other villages around the oasis.
Note, there is a spring at Jericho- from what I can see there has been one for 10000+ years. The area is arid, Thus, at Jericho, there will be, and has been, habitation, as long as the spring flows- and humans need water.
If the Conquest is largely myth, then Joshua himself is likely largely myth as well. Joshua’s curse on anyone who re-builds Jericho would simply be another mythical detail, added to the whole story much, much later.
Ah, its not rijsagi, its rissani. I was just there on a tour 2 years ago. This line of argument seems silly since you’ve now reduced continual inhabitation of a city to continual usage of water resources. In my book, not the same thing.
Context please?
It osund as if the professor is beginning from the myth and attempting to offer a possible explanation, not beginning from the evidence and drawing a conclusion. Certainly his uncertainty regarding the number of floods involved argues that he is not beginning from clear evidence in the stratigraphic record. I know that none of the site reports I have read for Ur, Lagash, Uruk, etc. have mentioned periods of total abandonment after sever flooding.
You have indeed found one quote (without citation or link) which seems to agree with your statement. That is hardly evidence. Even “well known Archeologists” can make mistakes, be guilty of hyperbole, or allow personal belief to bias their conclusions. This is the reason that arguments from authority are considered fallacious.
I have never seen evidence presented for flooding in Mesopotamia so severe as to “drown the whole habitable land”. Since Professor Wooley stopped publishing new material long ago (being dead and all), I doubt that his opinion is based upon startling new results.
In other words, your initial claim is still a gross exageration unsupported by the evidence.
Given that you grossly misinterpreted her quote the first time, I think I’ll wait until you actually come up with a cite for this before I buy it. 
That’s a big claim; not only are you saying that the quote means the opposite of what it appears to, but that the very site you link to in support got it all wrong too.
I really do want accounts from archeologists, not secondhand sources. Show me some respected archeologists (with recent work, preferrably) who date Exodus at 1440 BC and think Joshua could have really conquered Jericho. I find it odd that Biblical Archeological Society did not even whisper about this theory. Every firsthand cite I’ve seen–and quoted in this thread–dates Exodus at about 1260BC and says that Jericho was abandoned when Joshua found it.
Cite? Again, I have not seen this alternate theory mentioned. I would like some evidence.
Yeah, and Moses must have really parted the Red Sea and had God kill all the firstborns, despite no evidence of this. After all, how could they make stuff up and not have people point out that the whole story was bogus?
Sorry, I think you’ll have to do better than that. Joshua’s conquest comes shortly after Moses turning sticks into snakes; given the evidence availiable for both premises, I’m not likely to accept “well, they couldn’t get away with making this sort of stuff up!” as a good reason to believe either one.
Whoah, hey now- don’t you think it’s a little inappropriate for you to be pointing out that DITWD is using fallacious arguments? I mean, who died and made you moderator? 
-Ben
Heh. Look what I found, re Asimov’s Guide to the Bible:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-r-bible.html
“…More serious, in view of the author’s concern for historical background, is his almost complete neglect of the whole field of Biblical archeology, which has contributed so much in the past generation toward a more adequate understanding of the world of the Bible. His account of the siege of Jericho, for example, is completely vitiated by his apparent ignorance of the British excavations of a decade ago which proved that the so-called “walls of Jericho” are actually a thousand years older than the time of Joshua, and his description of the nearby city of Ai takes no account of the excavations conducted on the site more than thirty years ago which proved that it was already a heap of ruins many centuries before the date of the Israelite conquest. One has the right to expect something better than this in a book professing to deal with the Bible as a part of secular history and which costs as much as this does…” Mr. Dentan, professor of Old Testament at the General Theological Seminary and author of “The Knowledge of God in Ancient Israel.”
Are ya sure ya want to be quoting this guy about Jericho, Daniel?
See the quote from a link I posted earlier:
Apparently even the good professor himself did not continue to maintain there is evidence of any flood covering all of Mesopotamia.
Umm, Gaudere, i did not quote Asimov about Jericho. Asimovs book, altho quite good on the Bible scholarship area (his main source is the Anchor Bible- THE Annotated Bible) is quite out of date re Archeology. Then again, so is Dame kenyon. So, what do you want? Modern Archeological research that shows that a there was some sort of jericho there, or quotations from Kenyon, which show SHe was not opposed to that idea? For every quote/sorce that shows that there could have been a Biblical jericho, where will be one that says there was not. The last quote you mention, about the “walls of Jericho being a 1000 years too old” is very old news now. It referes to Kenyons early finding that the Paleolithic city of Jericho, once thought to be the jericho of the Bible- was not. No one is argueing nowadays that it was- that was based on digs from the 1920’s. But, everyone agree there were many MORE jerichos. Whether or not there was A jericho there at the right time is still being disputed. The problem i found with the infidels site, is that they took Kenyons work that discredited the 1920s theory that the Paleolithic city was the jericho of legend, and extrapolated that to show that since A city of jericho was destroyed far too early- thereby there was NO town there, later to be destroyed. ie, Jericho ws never rebuilt after being destroyed that 1st time. The sources i have posted show that is incorrect. NO, I repeat NO Archeologists have even said or indicated this. there were layers upon layers of habitation there. Is one of these the Jericho of Joshua? Experts disagree- there is poor evidence.
Spiritus: You ask for sources. I give you 2 sources. Others give more. Then you say I am “argueing from authority”. :rolleyes: So what then do you want from a source, if the source can not be 'an authority"? Perhaps you do not like my sources. Fine- where are yours? “back it up, Big Boy”.
ben- when you start coming up with your damn cites then you can add your two cents. Right now you’re about a penny & a half short. You made a great big deal about me not coming up with cites. Then i did. Then you did not like them as they were not primary sources. Then i came up with primary sources. Now- these primary sources are disputed- yes. But- i have asked YOU, three times now, to come up with some, any- but preferably the kind of wonderful, original indesputable, written on plates of gold sources like you demanded from me. You have come up with NADA. Can’t do it, eh? Weasel.
That’s correct. However, when he is shown to be so horribly weak in biblical archeology (that was in fact currect at the time he published, I believe), I’m going to be a bit skeptical about some of his other claims.
And if so, shouldn’t Asimov have known this, if it was such “old news”? Asimov’s book was published in 1968, I believe, and Kenyon disproved that “old news” in the 50s. I’d figure Asimov could have run across a major work like hers within 10 years or so after it was published if he’s writing a book on the subject.
Um, preferrably both; I’m not sure what evidence there is of any occupation of Jericho during Joshua’s supposed conquest besides perhaps a few wanderers. Re Kenyon, I’ve been digging up stuff on her, and I simply can’t find a shred of evidence that supports that she believed Joshua’s conquest was really a solid theory, and plenty that say she utterly discredited the traditional Joshua-conquest model. I cannot accept that Infidels was wrong to quote to support the belief that Joshua never really conquered anything, since everyone else and their little brother dopes the same thing; at the very worst, you could show that nearly everyone else has grieveously misquoted her. I personally doubt that every other site is misrepresenting her views.
http://www.varchive.org/ce/jericho.htm
“It is a sad fact”, wrote Miss Kenyon, “that of the town walls of the Late Bronze Age, within which period the attack by the Israelites must fall by any dating, not a trace remains. . . . 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.[…] A tragic note is heard in Kenyon’s report. She intended to discover the truthfulness of the written record.”
…And you did say first “Next, note that Kenyon, like most historians, was not willing to accept the 1260BC date of the Exodus- such date is gravely in doubt, not to mention the “40 years” period. Some suggest perhaps 1170. This is why she is pointing out a discrepency between the dates.” This does not jive at all with her quote here.
“…Watzinger and Kenyon believed the destruction occurred in 1550 B.C. In other words, if the later date is accurate, Joshua arrived at a previously destroyed Jericho.”
http://www.inholyland.net/cities/jericho/talsultan.htm
"Jericho is also famous for its destruction by the invading Israelite tribes around 1200BC as described in the Old Testament. Excavations, however, have shown no evidence of this story. […]
“The superior methods and expertise of Dame Kathleen Kenyon had found that Garstang’s wall dated to another era altogether and couldn’t possibly have been standing in Joshua’s time. In fact, during the era that was being ascribed to Joshua and his conquest of the land of Israel, Jericho didn’t even have a wall. It probably didn’t even have any residents. Kenyon began to use the superior technique of digging in squares of 5 metres each, leaving walls of debris between each square. This allowed her to view the stratification of the ruins she was digging and how each successive phase of occupation was built over the preceding phase. With this technique, Kenyon was able to date the various strata more accurately than her predecessor, Garstang. Yet, with this more accurate technique, the famous walls of Jericho were lost. […] …Kenyon was telling us that there was no Jericho for Joshua to conquer.”
http://stocktonuu.inreach.com/faith_knowledge.html
“…one of the greatest disappointments to Biblicists was Kathleen Kenyon’s dig at Jericho. Carefully described, a model for all future digs, Kenyon did indeed find remains of the walls which had surrounded Jericho. But she could find no evidence of any walls that had been destroyed during the 13th to 15th centuries B.C., the time ascribed to Joshua.
That, combined with the inability of archaeologists to locate most of the rest of the cities allegedly destroyed by Joshua or to find destruction dated to the time of Joshua at those cities they did locate, caused the archaeologists to re-evaluate the nature of the Hebrew incursion into Canaan and, more importantly, how Jewish religion developed.”
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/archive/1995/951218/cover.html
"Archaeology tells a more complicated tale. Historians generally agree that Joshua’s conquest would have taken place in the 13th century B.C. But British researcher Kathleen Kenyon, who excavated at Jericho for six years, found no evidence of destruction at that time. Indeed, says Dead Sea Scrolls curator emeritus Broshi, “the city was deserted from the beginning of the 15th century until the 11th century B.C.” So was Ai, say Broshi and others. And so, according to archaeological surveys, was most of the land surrounding the cities. Says Broshi: “The central hill regions of Judea and Samaria were practically uninhabited. The Israelites didn’t have to kill and burn to settle.
Just because most scholars no longer accept Joshua’s war of conquest, though, doesn’t mean the question is settled by any means. Conservatives have plenty of ideas about how the tide could swing back to a more biblical interpretation…”
Except you’re not giving me firsthand, respected archeologists for cites. Given what I have read, I doubt that Joshua’s conquest is a theory that is taken very seriously; nebuli quoted the SBS as saying 80% of archeologists no longer accepted the Joshua-conquest model. If you want me to take it seriously, I’d like some sources beyond a few lines from a second-hand reference not availiable online.
TWO secondhand popular works says there was a town there at the right date for Joshua to conquer it, one by using a date that I think is not widely accepted by serious archeologists. I’d hardly say you proved anything, given the firsthand cites I’ve given by legitimate archeologists.
Hm, lemme check the Infidels site:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/james_still/reliability.html
"Indeed, an excellent example of this is with John Garstung’s excavation of Tell es-Sultan (the biblical Jericho) in which he found that the walls had been flattened exactly as the biblical account described. Later, Kathleen Kenyon’s work revealed that Garstung had made many embarrassing mistakes in his enthusiasm to prove Joshua’s Conquest of Canaan.
[…]
The controversy raged on until Kathleen Kenyon returned yet again to the site in 1955 to apply a more exacting type of systematic archaeology (called the “Wheeler-Kenyon method”) that is now used regularly throughout the field. Kenyon argued that Garstung had excavated the wrong wall and mistakenly thought that the Early Bronze Age foundations were instead the Late Bronze Age walls of the time of Joshua’s Conquest. Jericho was destroyed, not in the Late Bronze Age, but rather nine hundred years earlier in the Early Bronze Age sometime around 2400 BCE. The site was a small village during the Late Bronze Age when Joshua was said to have crossed the Jordan River, making Tell es-Sultan’s conquest unnecessary…"
I don’t suppose you noticed that Infidels supports the “small-village-no-real-conquest-necessary” theory, same as you do? Or were you too busy damning them for their bias and “misquoting”?
Wanna take it up with the Biblical Archeological Society for “misquoting” and bad research as well? Here we go again:
“…the excavations of Jericho and Ai indicate there were no cities here at the time Joshua was supposed to have conquered them.”
“…the conclusion that there is no factual basis for the biblical story about the conquest by Israelite tribes in a military campaign led by Joshua was bolstered.”
“Repeated excavations by various expeditions at Jericho and Ai, the two cities whose conquest is described in the greatest detail in the Book of Joshua, have proved very disappointing. Despite the excavators’ efforts, it emerged that in the late part of the 13th century BCE, at the end of the Late Bronze Age, which is the agreed period for the conquest, there were no cities in either tell, and of course no walls that could have been toppled.”
“The notion of the Conquest of the Land in the Book of Joshua is an epic, no more…”
Even the guy who was arguing strenously for the validity of the Bible in that site thought the Joshua-finds-abandoned-city was plausible:
“Moreover, there was a destruction of Jericho that comports in extraordinary detail with the description of the Israelite conquest of the city, down to the time of year and the fallen walls. But it occurred before the supposed date of the Israelite appearance on the scene. Did the Israelites somehow later take credit for this earlier destruction of Jericho? That’s quite possible.”
Look, Daniel, show me where I’m wrong and I’ll accept that Joshua’s conquest is accepted as a viable theory by archeologists. But right now, you haven’t provided the evidence to overcome what I’ve read so far, since you refuse to provide good cites. Hell, I’m not even sure what you’re arguing anymore. From what I have seen, there was no “city” there to conquer; the archeologists range from “abandoned” to “few hermits hanging around” to “tiny village”. 80% of archeologists don’t accept the Joshua conquests, and you blame Infidels for actually saying there was no real conquest. ::shrug:: There is NO archeological evidence to support the biblical account, from what I’ve seen (and you certainly haven’t provided any to help me out here) ; the weight of evidence seems to favor a fairly peaceful occupation of the territory.
And quite frankly, I think your beef with the Kenyon references at the Infidels site looks rather silly right now. First, you grossly misinterpreted her quote (that was suspiciously truncated in your quoting, IMHO), then you claim Infidels is misinterpreting her because they don’t bring up a theory that she says has the “wrong” date and has no evidence, then we find out that Infidels actually supports your favorite theory. Sheesh. There may be a blinding bias around here, but I don’t think it’s at the Infidels site…
[Edited by Gaudere on 12-05-2000 at 01:23 PM]
Daniel, when I asked you for more information on Biblical archaeology for purposes of my own education, you replied that it was inappropriate- indeed, “puerile”- of me to ask for such information unless I disagreed with you. You have also claimed that if you make fallacious arguments, I must not point them out and correct you unless I either disagee with your conclusion or am a moderator. These two arguments of yours are so transparently self-serving that I cannot imagine any sane adult agreeing with them, and I cannot imagine your support of them bringing you anything but, perhaps, a brief sense of vindication at the cost of much public embarassment.
I admit that I was too harsh earlier, but that harshness was born of frustration. I asked you for more information, and felt, as I have felt several times in the past, rightly or wrongly, that you were being evasive. More recently, I ridiculed those of your arguments which I describe above, because I felt that they invited ridicule. I apologize; had I kept my temper, I could have dealt with the situation more constructively.
The current situation is that you have demanded that I play a vindictive game with you. You have demanded that I argue for certain positions with which, as it happens, you already agree. They are positions that I have no particular interest in discussing. They are positions which you yourself clearly have no interest in discussing, and even less interest in refuting, except to the extent that they would give you an opportunity to try to attack me. Christians are taught to turn the other cheek, and yet when I fail to go out of my way to create, at your request, an opportunity for you to attack me, tailor made to your specifications, you rant angrily and continue to demand that I go through the motions of what everyone present would recognize as a hollow charade.
Daniel, I suggest that you drop this subject and devote your energies to the more constructive subject of bias in the II site. Thus far the discussion of Kenyon’s work is at an impasse: the only proof you can provide of what you claim to be Kenyon’s true position is a book to which none of us, including yourself, have access. Since you claim that the Internet Infidels have a chronic tendency towards distortion, it should be easy for you to choose another of their essays, with an eye towards choosing one for which you have your evidence readily available. One quote which I would particularly like to see you address is the aforementioned one I provided regarding Exodus.
-Ben
I disagree that it is at an impasse; I think his claim re Infidels and Kenyon is disproven. Remember, he claimed that Kenyon believed there was a village there and Infidels misrepresented her by not mentioning this, yet the Infidels site mentions the village. Now, I have not seen any evidence that Kenyon really believed Joshua conquered a small village, but even if we assume Daniel is correct, he has only shown that the Infidels site supports the same conclusion that he claims Kenyon did. He’s effectively disproved his own claim that Infidels is biased; the only misprepresenting I’ve really seen here has been on his end, both of Kenyon and of Infidels (although I don’t really believe he did either deliberately).
I personally have my doubts about the “small village” still existing at the time of Joshua’s “conquest”, since the evidence I have found deems it unlikely. I am willing to listen to further evidence, however.
Yes, I see what you mean. Nonetheless, I think my point stands (if anything, now more than ever!) DITWD has claimed that II is riddled with lies. The essay on Kenyon is the same one he used in the past when asked for more details. Now, I’d like to see what he has to say about other essays, and in particular I’d like to see how he explains the quote about Exodus.
-Ben
DITWD: 0
Infidels: 1
IMHO, at least so far, etc. Time for round 2! Which person has II perfidiously misrepresented now!
(Although, do you have any idea what a pain in the ass it was to gather all those Kenyon and Jericho cites? I shudder to think of doing this for every person cited in II.)
Yes, but we love you for it. One wonders where David is…
-Ben
You gave one which supported your statement and a second which did not. I let it slide teh first time, but since you brought it up again:
Researchers working… have since found evidence of numerous floods at sites in modern Iraq, some of them showing eveidence of extensive destruction
The above statement in no way supports your claim that "there was a huge flood that drowned the entire (then) known world about the right time for Noah."
So, you have given one source, which I surmised was not representative of solid archaeological research and which
nebuli has kindly shown was recanted by Professor Wooley himself.
You have also shown an inability to identify a statement that actually supports your stated position.
Others? Where? Perhaps I missed them as I missed your first response, but I can recall exactly zero posts by anyone other than yourself claiming to support the idea that the entire known world was drowned by a great flood at about the time of Noah.
No link necessary – just the name of the poster and a brief quote will suffice.
You were arguing from authority. You were not even doing so particularly well.
What I expect from a “source” is the presentation of evidence in a relatively complete context. Conclusions drawn from that evidence are nice, but the evidence is more important. When just a conclusion is offered, particularly when it is quoted briefly and without context, it is impossible to evaluate the opinion on anything except the authority of the author.
That is why it is a logical fallacy.
You use of that technique illustrates quite nicely the dangers of relying upon said fallacy.
My sources for what? Asking you to provide support for an outlandish statement? Okay.
here
and here
and of course here
Back what up? My request that you provide adequate support for your arguments? Or my assertion that the cites you have made are inadequate?
The first requires no support. It is simply a request, though if you refuse or prove unable then it is justifiable for people to draw conclusions from that fact.
The second has been done. Now it has been done twice.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04770a.htm
and
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/dialecticatrans.html
and of course
http://phuakl.tripod.com/pssm/REASON.htm
Note, oh-so-wounded Ben, this is the context of your quote & my response. ie, that it is the job of a MODERATOR, not the great & might Ben, to keep the debates here “clean”.
But, now you say, since i mostly agree with your biblical theories, YOU do not have to back them up. But when I post something that you apparently mostly agree with, you demand cites, and then question the cites. Again- you are a weasle. Fine, I will simply stop discussing things with you- I see that your only goal here is to harrass & annoy me. Well- it worked.
Gaudere- the discussion has been lively- thank you- i will try to find some other sources, including Kenyons book- i guess it is possible i remember it wrong. However, re the “conquest”- no serious biblical scholar, or even me, thinks that it can be taken literally. Even some of the most die hard conservatives will admit that at least the population figures & stuff are not based on what we would call "reality’, but on gematria.
Spiritus- it is nice that YOU think my source is no good. tough noogies.
End of discussion.