TESTING BIBLE "HISTORY", JOSEPH AND JERICHO
"Biblical archaeology has helped to bury the Bible, and archaeologists know it"
Hector Avalos in The End of Biblical Studies. Let us look at those who say
there is no evidence that the Bible reported anything incorrectly.
This is a study of David M. Rohl’s volume, A Test of Time, The Bible from
Myth to History.
He claims that the tomb of Joseph – the Joseph of Genesis – was found in Tell
ed-Daba, Egypt in 1987.
There was no body in it. The Bible says that Joseph was taken away by Moses.
A statue was found and it was decided that this was a religious statue of Joseph
to which sacrifices and prayers were made. The head was badly disfigured due to
desecration.
The statue is of a vizier – which was Joseph’s role. He holds a throw-stick
which shows he was a foreigner. Joseph was not a native of Egypt but Israel.
And the man wears a coat of many colours like Joseph’s famous coat.
Now there is no evidence that this man was Joseph. The image of the statue in
the book shows a coat of four colours not many. And Joseph would not be wearing
that coat of many colours for he got it when he was a boy and was kidnapped in
it and it was wrenched off dipped in animal blood and taken back to his father
to make him think Joseph was dead.
There is just a part of the alleged throw-stick in the right shoulder of the
statue meaning that it could be anything else. The coffin of Ramesses II shows a
strange prominent strip sticking out of his headdress which makes interpretation
difficult for the alleged stick on the statue. And the statue is unusual with a
mushroom style of red hair.
If the Egyptians really honoured and preserved Joseph’s statue would they have
let Moses take the body? The grave was certainly robbed making it clear that the
only way the body got out was by being stolen but not by Israel who would have
been the first suspects which would have meant that the body would have been
recovered by the Egyptians.
The Bible says that Joshua and his men circled the walled city of Jericho with
the Ark and they miraculously fell. The book of Joshua, however, does not say
that it was the kind of miracle that makes blood come out of a communion wafer.
But the result of the miracle was the merciless slaughter of the citizens
including children.
A curse from the Lord was evilly put on the person who would rebuild the city by
God through Joshua. It was promised that the person’s firstborn son would die
where the foundations would be and his youngest son would be buried where the
gates are.
On page 301, we read that it was found that the wall had collapsed in places in
1907 by Professor Garstang. It was a mud brick wall. But in 1952 it was found by
Dame Kenyon that this wall belong to the Early Bronze age. Because of this it
was thought that the falling walls story was untrue for it was believed that the
walls fell before Israel would have appeared there in the Late Bronze age. The
scholars put the Israelite Conquest in the Late Bronze Age but Kenyon proved
that there was no big city of Jericho in that time. Rohl solves these problems
with a new chronology that he proposes. He says that the Conquest took place in
the Middle Bronze Age and says that Kenyon’s research for that period supports
the historicity of the falling walls story of Joshua.
But later we read that weathering has left only a little of the Middle Bronze
Age wall to go on (page 303). There was a slope built along the wall so if the
wall fell it would have tumbled down the slope into the trench. Kenyon found
reddish earth that she assumed must have been was what was left of the wall. And
there was evidence that the city had been burned.
Joshua 3:15 says that the attack took place during harvest time and Garstang
found jars of grain in the ruins. There was no evidence of wounding from the
skeletons which Rohl thinks may have been due to a plague spread by the
Israelites (Numbers 25).
Why were no Israelite artefacts found? They must have put some of the people to
the sword so there would have been something left.
The walls could have fell on their own when they disintegrated into earth for
they were weak by nature.
Where are the blackened bones?
Where are the skeletons that would have been the signs of people slain in
battle?
Israel would not have removed the corpses for the Law forbade that – corpses,
pagan ones especially - were thought to be dirty.
And people keep grain all year around.
The people of Jericho could have been struck by plague and thoroughly
incinerated the dead – the skeletons were just buried by the people were not
infected - and then they burned the city. The fire caused the wall to collapse.
This is the most reasonable hypothesis and explains why there are not many
bones. Bodies are hard to burn so if they do not exist then it shows that
special attention was taken to disposing of them. The odds are stacked against
the Bible’s story of what happened.