Truth
Biblical Archaeology
Abstract
Even under the best of supervision, mass tourism degrades and often permanently damages archaeological sites, which by definition constitute unique and irreplaceable cultural resources.William G Dever
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Sunday, December 17, 2000
Jericho
There are Christian organizations today that are worse than Albright ever was. An organization called Associates for Biblical Research, whose director is a man called Dr Bryant Wood, actually takes tourists to dig in search of biblical proof. Well, he calls them volunteers, but they have to pay for the experience. He sticks to the old date for the conquest of Canaan, presumably based on the inerrant bible, yet seems not to notice that the Philistines whom Moses had to avoid when crossing the Sinai, were not around in 1400 BC. Wood cannot get his mind round reassigning dates to archaeological sites, as Finkelstein and Usshikin have done at Megiddo, or the fact that archaeology has found no evidence of Saul, David and Solomon, or anything much before them, yet he describes himself as “one of the leading experts on the archaeology of Jericho”. He had this to say about an Italian inspection at Jericho:
It matters little what the Italian archaeologists did not find in their month-long dig. The evidence is already in. Three major expeditions to the site over the past 90 years uncovered abundant evidence to support the biblical account
In 1997, two Italian archaeologists conducted a limited excavation at Jericho under the auspices of the Palestinian Department of Archaeology, excavating for a month on the fringes of the great archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon’s trenches. Theirs was the first foreign expedition in the Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank since self-rule in 1994. They found no evidence for a destruction from the Iron Age, supposedly the time of Joshua.
Wood’s organization declared the Italian excavation was conducted to disprove the biblical account of Joshua’s capture of the city, denigrating the objectivity of the Italians and the Palestinians, and implying that only proof of the bible should be published. It is crackpots like Wood who lack objectivity, but he has the delusion of all Christians that their lies will help them into a balmy place. That is what they call “Christian Truth”, but meanwhile the plain and simple truth suffers.
Wood personally examined the site of the Italian excavation. The Italians had uncovered the stone outer revetment wall at the base of the tell. Wood’s ABR declares:
Not only did the Italians find the same evidence uncovered in the earlier excavations, it fits the Biblical story perfectly! The Italian excavation actually uncovered most of the critical evidence relating to the Biblical story.
Kathleen Kenyon
This is an utter lie except in so far as the evidence was unclear until Kenyon clarified it, concluding the opposite of Wood. John Garstang and Kathleen Kenyon both dug at Tell es-Sultan—ancient Jericho—for six seasons, l930-1936 and 1952-1958 respectively, and earlier a German excavation directed by Ernst Sellin and Carl Watzinger dug for three. Kenyon concluded that the city was destroyed by fire, but not in 1200 BC when scholars traditionally dated the invasion by Joshua described in the bible. Jericho had been destroyed at the end of the Middle Bronze Age about 1550 BC. There was no city for Joshua to conquer so the biblical account could not be true.
Wood claims to have proved Kathleen Kenyon wrong in her excavation and assessment of Jericho. He examined Kenyon’s files and also noted that Garstang had recorded lots of Late Bronze pottery that Kenyon said did not exist at Jericho. Wood carbon-dated a piece of charcoal and found it came from 1410 plus or minus 40 years BC. He noted that Kenyon’s stratigraphy had 20 phases in a mere 100 years. Garstang had found a continuous sequence of Egyptian scarabs at the site showing active use until about 1400 BC. Wood pronounced:
Despite the fact that the area where the wall once stood is gone there is evidence that this wall came tumbling down and in the words of the Biblical account in Joshua “fell down flat”. The pottery stratigraphic considerations, scarab data, and a Carbon-14 date all point to a destruction of the city around Late Bronze I, about 1400 BC.
Before the Christians get that glazed look and contented smile, they should note that Wood offers no evidence at all that proves what he claims—the biblical story. He says there is evidence even though the area where the wall stood is gone, but he does not tell us what it is. He also presumes that the Joshua invasion was in 1400 BC when biblicists for years have said it was about 1200 BC.
He tells us nothing about the piece of wood he dated, but C-14 dates are notoriously unreliable unless carried out with meticulous care, and that particularly means care in selecting and identifying the fragments of carbonaceous material. The charcoal must be related to the site but Wood does not tell us what it was. It might have been a stick from a Bedouin fire, for all we know, and since Wood is so determined in his undisguised prejudice, how can we be sure that other bits of charcoal did not yield different dates, but he has suppressed them?
In fact, the date that Wood cited has been retracted by the British Museum who did the work, along with a whole batch of dates done around the same time because their instruments were wrongly calibrated. The proper date supports Kenyon’s chronology. In 1995, Hendrik J Bruins and Johannes van der Plicht published results from high-precision radiocarbon measurements made on eighteen samples from Jericho. Six of these samples were charred cereal grains—dateable to the year—from the supposed Jericho destruction layer. The outcome was support for Kenyon, and refutation of Wood.
As for the dates of Garstang’s scarabs, Kenyon showed that Garstang was inaccurate. Finally, though Kenyon was a Christian she was not a loony one like Wood, but was devoted to report what she found, not what she wanted to find. Who would you believe?
The ABR moans that it is a sad commentary on the state of archaeology in the Holy Land, when the purpose of an excavation at a biblical site is to disprove the bible and disassociate the site with any historical Jewish connection, concluding “that’s why the Associates for Biblical Research is in business”. This proves without a vestige of doubt that these people are dangerous amateurs with no idea of scientific method, let alone rigour, because they do not know that the purpose of science, according to Popper, is to seek to falsify—and that includes seeking to falsify the bible. What they do not like is that the bible is indeed falsified by the evidence—so they try to falsify the evidence!
Yet these people are apparently let loose on valuable historic sites. No wonder biblical archaeologists are always complaining that their sites are too “disturbed” to date accurately.
Anyway, doubtless you will believe tham if you think your immortal soul can already feel the heat, but otherwise take it all as God’s Truth.
Discussion
Not unusually, discussion lists on ANE archaeology get taken over by biblicists like Wood bleating their own form of dishonesty. Some of the contributors object to this. Jack Kilmon wrote of Bryant Wood’s archaeology:
I am uncomfortable with faith-based archaeology that drives a priori assumptions about artifacts and structures before they are even found and based on a non-existent chronology for the conquest of Joshua. Archaeology should be a fact gathering enterprise, not a “prove the scriptures” activity. Find a field full of the bones of the men, women and children murdered by this Bronze Age band of barbarians and we’ll talk. Perhaps the loot pillaged or the cattle and property stolen from the slaughtered inhabitants will prove correct a “scripture” whose verification is the primary motive of this brand of archaeology. Then we will know that the 10 rules God gives Moses did not apply to his “chosen” through the rest of the book. Are they sure this is what they want to show? The next thing you know, we’ll hear of excavations looking for the bones of the talking snake.
A devout biblicist called Doug Petrovich replied in typical style, asking whether it was equally wrong that some archaeologists should have the goal of undermining and casting doubt on the historicity of the biblical text.
When the inevitable step of the interpretation of the evidence is reached, often times the conclusions are driven by an anti-biblical-historicity platform. The amusing part, to me, is that these quite debatable conclusions, which often deliberately express disagreement with the biblical record, are based on faith…
Petrovich illustrated his point by taking a programme made by the History Channel on Sodom and Gomorrah. He claimed the time devoted to various matters could be broken down into 20% to discussing archaeological matters related to prospective sites, 15% to recounting the biblical record of the events, and 65% to debunking the historicity of the biblical record. Petrovich described the programme as pure propaganda because the viewers had no alternative viewpoints to hear, yet he says that a sixth of the programme recounted the biblical story! The biblical acount is the alternative to whatever proper historical reconstruction can be done.
Regarding the points raised by Kilmon, Petrovich notes:
the enormous expense, or even the logistical near-impossibility of finding such a field of bones that goes down to the end of LB I?
And then adds, as if to prove that he is an utterly cracked biblical pot:
In light of your terms, “murdered”, and “Barbarians”, keep in mind that they were merely to carry out the divine imperative… The stolen property, if it survived the annals of times, would have found its way to Babylon or one of the royal Assyrian cities: another facet of divine retribution.
Kilmon replied:
I am uncomfortable with archaeology conducted to prove anything, be it the Genesis myths and hand of Yehouah or the great pumpkin, or to disprove any religious perception. Archaeology as a discipline may straddle the sciences and humanities but its methodologies must be grounded in good science without any agenda other than the gathering of facts concerning past human activities. Archaeology in the Middle East should be conducted abiblically, not anti-biblically. Archaeology uses the scientific methods and cannot be concerned about biblical references or sorting out the myths, exaggerations and religious fiction from the occasional historical reference.
Concerning the paragraph on Sodom: It depends on what you define as the “historicity” of the biblical record. If you mean the supernatural stuff, archaeology cannot and must not consider it. The science of archaeology is about what can be shown and proven in the natural world of human activity. Do these sites represent some historical element to the Sodom and Gomorrah account in Genesis? If so, that is an issue for literary criticism and not archaeology unless and until some epigraphy is found with an inscription that says, “Sodom”. There is no real scientific evidence of these sites being other than two habitations destroyed in the Bronze Age by vulcanism in an area known for its tektonic and volcanic activity.
Let me see. Instructions to steal land, murder entire populations, rape the women, kill the children and infants and steal everything in sight are a “divine imperative?” What happened to that “divine imperative” supposedly written in 10 rules by “fingers of fire” on stone tablets?
Archaeology as a science, cannot be conducted in the schizoid context of biblical myths and legends. If archaeology, at some point in time, confirms the existence and historicity of Joshua and his Canaanite genocide, it can be placed in the history books… In the meantime, archaeology has to be a search for fact, not faith.
And equally, if archaeology reveals facts that refute or even cast doubt on the biblical stories then they should be admitted, and not ignored or swamped in a load of non-factual biblical counter speculation. Biblicists cannot be archaeologists because they will not be subject to the scientific method. Wood and Petrovich prove it.
