Well, obviously I’m missing something here. What in the world difference does it make, whether the walls were “shoved” down or “fell down”? If someone did in fact manage to prove that the walls were “shoved down”, it still wouldn’t prove that it was Joshua and the Children of Israel who did the shoving.
Short a memorial plaque found on-site that says, “JOSHUA WAS HERE”, you can’t PROVE there even was a man named Joshua, or that he “fit the battle of Jericho”. You have to take the Bible on faith–trying to use archeology to “prove” the Bible is pointless, because you can’t. All you can do is prove that there once was a city named Jericho (which you already knew because it’s been there all this time) and that at some point in the past, its walls either fell down or were shoved down. So what? It doesn’t “prove” that anybody in particular did it.
I was reading the Anthro/Archeo section of Yahoo! and came across this tidbit.
Many archeologists are looking at the J/C Bible for just what is it, poetry, mythology, history, divine inspiration and geneology instead of “The Truth” Enjoy!
You’ve asserted that they took her work out of context, you’ve made assertions about what it would look like in context, but you haven’t given us an in-context quote.
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I understand your explanation fully. In fact, I think you’re correct. But I’d like you to provide a little better documentation than just telling me to go read a pile of books. How many times have I explained this?
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So the site says “we are twisting the truth to meet our own ends?” You assert that the site is “biased,” but all you’ve done is to show that they are promoting a position with which you disagree. You have done nothing to show that their information is unreliable, except to assert that a) they’re wrong, and b) secular humanists can’t be trusted when the Bible is involved. Can’t you provide more than ad hominems?
Look, I’d just like to see some in-context quotes, that’s all. Asimov isn’t an authority on the Bible. Kenyon is. I have a quote from her that says you’re wrong. If you want to prove that I’m wrong, then provide the context.
Well, there is that quote from “the Walls of Jericho”. And Asimov IS (or was) an authority on the Bible, his book is widely accepted and respected. However, Kenyon is NOT a Biblical expert, but she is one of the best known Archaeology authorities on Jericho. No one doubts that the dig she did at Jericho showed that the destruction of the late stoneage city, at it greatest, was tooearly for Joshua.
However, she never says that the city was not rebuilt and destroyed again. You can read Chuchills history, and he says the Allies destroyed Dresden. However, there is a city there now. Does that mean Churchill was wrong? No,it just means that what was destroyed can be rebuilt. Jericho is still on the map, ferkrisake, but your site says that it was destroyed in 2400BC, and implies it was never rebuilt, so Joshua could not have destroyed it again, a 1000 years later. But they don’t quote Kenyon as saying that, as she never did.
But here is another quote, from "Baffling Biblical Questions Answered, Larry Richards: “In particular, recent work by Byrant G. Wood, using well-established methods of pottery analysis supported by carbon 14 dating, have shown that every line of archeological evidence actually supports a violent overthrow of jericho about 1400BC. It is largely the compelling nature of his findings, scrupulously documented that has let many to re-evalute …arguements”.
SORRY about that. Suffice to say, the article was questioning the practice of accepting what the OT said was history and simply finding facts to collaborate it. Implicit with this is the idea of discarding facts that don’t fit your theory/history.
The new way is to find the facts and see if any history matches it, if not, history needs to be re-considered.
“History” as in “an attempt to record an unbiased and accurate accoutn of what really happened” is a very new idea.
Until recently, the best we could hope for was chronicles, which is more like “Things that happened in the past presented so as to make our current king look as good as possible and show that our people are better than everyone else.” If the writer exaggerated the strategic importance of the Battle of Jericho, or stretched a little on how strong the walls were, or neglected to mention the sappers working at the base of the walls while Joshua was parading around blowing trumpets that was standard operating procedure.
I am still wating for College Student to present his thesis. I just hope we haven’t anticipated everything he was going to say.
Oh, and judging by the number of city walls buried in tells across the Near East, the Mighty Fist of God must have been pretty busy. Strange that the pushing of city walls into the ground is only recorded in relation with Jericho. [slight sarcasm off]
It’s humanly possible for the walls to be physically destroyed and torn down. I don’t know of any way it could be humanly possible for walls to be physically shoved into the ground. In other words, it’s pretty obvious something supernatural happened, and that supernatural happening lines up with the Biblical account.
Well, much as I liked and respected the late Good Dr. Asimov, he really wasn’t an authority on the Bible. I assume the book you’re referring to is Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, right? I don’t have my copy in front of me, but I definitely recall him saying in his introduction that his intent wasn’t to produce any sort of original scholarship; he was simply taking the consensus of Biblical scholars and presenting it in a handy, readable format. Also, the book was written back in the late '60’s or '70’s–it’s entirely possible that the consensus of scholars has changed on some particular issue–and the Good Doctor, alas, won’t be producing any new revisions of AGttB.
This seems like a strange argument to have to make–after all, I’m an unabashed atheist, as was Dr. A, whereas Daniel is, if not a fundie, certainly more religious than either me or Asimov. However, the fact is you really wouldn’t get very far in a serious, scholarly debate about Biblical history or archaeology by citing Asimov. Asimov’s Guide is widely accepted for what it is, a good basic reference, not as something it never claimed to be.
Take a look at the Encyclopedia Britannica’s description of a tell, which is a very common phenomenon in the Ancient Near East. Cities and towns in that place and time tended, over the generations, to gradually get higher and higher above the surrounding country side, until any really old city–and Jericho is a very old city–wound up sitting on its own man-made hill. (They basically built their houses right on top of the debris from older buildings, rather than mucking out centuries worth of old bricks and potsherds and what-not.) The fact that the walls are still there, upright, buried in the debris of previous centuries, indicates that that particular set of walls never was knocked down, by the Hand of God or battering rams or earthquakes or whatever.
It’s humanly possible for the walls to be physically destroyed and torn down. I don’t know of any way it could be humanly possible for walls to be physically shoved into the ground. In other words, it’s pretty obvious something supernatural happened, and that supernatural happening lines up with the Biblical account.
sigh FoG, it is NOT AT ALL obvious that a supernatural agent was at work here. There could be any number of other explainations for the way the site was found rather than divine intervention. The “tell” phenonmenon mentioned earlier by MEBuckner is a good example. Simply because we don’t have a readily available answer to the condition of a site doesn’t mean the “Hand of God” or some other supernatural phenomenon occured.
This is the main reason “creation science” is held in such poor esteem by the scientific community. Rather than look at all the possible explainations for a phenomenon “creation science” assumes divine intervention without any proof of it.
You ain’t invisible Dr. F., in fact you’re right in my crosshairs.
*“History” as in “an attempt to record an unbiased and accurate accoutn of what really happened” is a very new idea. *
If you’re using “very new” to include the time of, say, Herodotus, or if you mean that using this definition as a more-or-less universal standard for historigraphy is comparatively recent, then we don’t have a quarrel. Otherwise…
IIRC, Jericho is located in a floodplain- deposition of silt around the walls by occasional floods could be another of the explanations for the condition in which the walls were found.
Okay, I’m not an expert on biblical archaeology, but I do have a degree in anthropology and I have been to Jericho. Giving that as a disclaimer, allow me to say:
Jericho is not in a floodplain. It’s in a valley. A very, very, very deep valley as a matter of fact - it’s right on the shores of the Dead Sea, and is at the lowest point on earth. There are lots of deserty mountains and hills in the surrounding area.
Jericho is also the oldest city in the world. It’s ten thousand years old. You could dig on that spot for another ten thousand years and you would still be coming up with walls and potsherds. Arguing about finding “the” walls of Jericho seems rather pointless, because there is so much to find. There are presently walls visible at an archaeological dig, and my tour guide pointed them out as the walls of Jericho, but he’s the tour guide, not an archaeologist, you know? Beside the point but interesting nonetheless: the ancient tel of Jericho is directly facing the Mt. of Beatitudes. Anyway. Scientists can date finds, but I’m not sure how they would match up specific stuff with the Bible, since only god knows how long ago the story of Joshua at Jericho supposedly happened. I doubt any kind of consensus would ever be reached on this.
I’d also like to correct something that was said earlier in this thread. It was mentioned that Jesus was probably a stonemason and not a carpenter because he was from the desert and there were no trees. This is not true. The Galilee is a lush green region with lots of trees and few cacti.
It appears that earlier in this thread I was confused as to which Asimov book on the Bible was being discussed. Sorry 'bout that. (Although I’m still sort of bemused at the notion that Isaac Asimov was a noted Biblical scholar.)
