Transcript
Transcript
(307) Joshua vs. Judges: How Did the Walls of Jericho Tumble Down? - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgaGPdrY5h4
Transcript:
(00:00) Our topic tonight is Joshua versus Judges. And the question, how did the walls of Jericho tumble down is one of a questions that we will address. We will in this lecture explore the narratives that the book of Joshua and the book of Judges from the Hebrew Bible uh present. And we will look into uh what do we know about these books about their context of composition.
(00:43) So we will look at the history especially of this site where of Jericho where this very dramatic uh event takes place in the book of Joshua. We will also uh just compare the two accounts that a lot of readers uh because one book comes right after another in the Hebrew Bible. Uh many readers assume well after Joshua next we uh have the events of Judges without realizing it doesn't fit the chronology and it also doesn't all the details of these two accounts don't fit together.
(01:21) So why would the biblical uh authors, the redactors, the the people who compiled all these books into what we know as the Bible? Why did they preserve these two seemingly contradictory accounts? We will look at the especially at what modern archaeology can tell us about all these all the sites that the Bible mentions and try to address the question the eternal question of historicity.
(01:54) What did really happen? Is any of this actually a historical event? Now, if you're like me, this is a fascinating topic, but there's more. Why does Joshua judges history and archaeology matter? Well, it matters because first of all, there's hundreds of millions of people, even billions around the world for whom these are sacred texts.
(02:26) people who continue to read uh these texts looking for spiritual guidance uh for some truth about ourselves, about God. And um sometimes uh as always, if you're not trained in theology and biblical scholarship, you might arrive to conclusions that are quite inaccurate. And so biblical literacy is is essential for anyone who who tries to understand the Bible, what the Bible really means, how to use the Bible as a a way of just guiding your life today.
(03:08) But there's more than that in unfortunately religion and archaeology have been misused uh in this area in the holy land. It has been weaponized. It has been used for purposes that have nothing to do with academic research and also purposes that flatly contradict all the teachings of these religions Islam, Judaism and Christianity. And the result is people today are suffering while uh some interests that have nothing to do with academia are guiding the interpretation of what the archaeological record and what the you know historical knowledge presents.
(03:59) For example, uh the one of the pioneers, not the first one, well, one of the pioneers of the discipline of archaeology in the Holy Land is Yael Yadin, who became very famous because in 1955 he excavated the site of Hazor that we will mention later in this lecture. But before he became an archaeologist, he was the chief of staff of Israel's army.
(04:36) He uh had a very literal understanding of the Bible. He thought the Bible was his contained history. And he went to all these sites in in Israel in Palestine to prove that this or that account in the Bible actually happened. And he would go on finding sites and just looking at the Bible to interpret what he was finding on the ground at all these sites.
(05:09) Now archaeology has evolved a lot since then uh since the times of Iadin and at the time there was a clear purpose at this is a time when after the horrors of the Holocaust in Europe a lot of uh Jewish people are settling in this land. people who have no connection to the land and who have different identities coming from different countries and people like Yadin are trying to create a connection to the land and a cohesive identity for all these people.
(05:46) And this is not something that like these interests in archaeology are not only things of the past. Even very legitimate archaeologists today like Ysef Garfinkl who became very famous in the field because of his excavations at Kirbet Kafa which we will also mention in this lecture. As I said he's a legitimate archaeology. He does amazing archaeology.
(06:18) But in um in a recent interview with a New Yorker, uh Garfinkl said that Israeli archaeologists have two huge uh weights. One, the Bible is a religious manuscript. So there's a lot of people who believe that the Bible is the word of God or something sacred. And two, the other weight is the current political situation in Israel Palestine.
(06:44) and he adds this can stand in the way of objectivity. So what does he mean? What is uh Garfin trying to say? Well, first of all, excavations would not happen without money. Excavations depend on funding on donors and on sponsors. Usually all these stakeholders uh don't have academic uh interest. A lot of times they do, but there's also non-academic interest involved.
(07:16) For example, there's scionist groups, there evangelical groups with their whole agenda who are funding some of these excavations in Israel Palestine. And for example, uh under uh Benjamin Netanyahu, there's an organization called Elad that became the main sponsor of archaeological excavations in East Jerusalem.
(07:41) Now, if you never heard about Elad, uh this is an organization that in the ' 90s began to buy and seize Palestinian homes around the city of David. So the city of David in uh East Jerusalem, there's a lot of very important archaeology going on, but a lot of people had this same organization has been uh working to displace people Palestinians since the 90s.
(08:16) So this is why you can see how archaeology, religion, political interest and the suffering of people today, not only Palestinians but also Israelis are all uh just entangled with these topics. And that's why I think it does matter to learn about it. Ultimately the goal is how do we interpret the archaeological record responsibly critically the despite all these uh many interests that are alien to the discipline.
(08:51) So let's first look at the book of Joshua at what the Bible says at the account. Uh the book starts so after the death of Moses with God's commissioning to Joshua to lead the Israelites that are remember coming uh from Exodus from from Exodus from Egypt and that have wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.
(09:19) Now it's time to enter the land that I am giving to them to the Israelites, says God. Uh the one of the first things that happen in this account is spies are sent to see what's going on at the city of Jericho. Jericho is the first stop. This is going to be where the Israelites first hit the land of the Canaanites. uh the spies return with the report that the people of Jericho, these Canaanites living in Jericho are afraid.
(09:55) So, here's one of the most interesting parts of the not only the book of Joshua, but I think the whole Bible, this this account of of Jericho and how the walls according to the Bible came down. Yahweh says to Joshua, "You shall march around the city all the warriors circling the city once. Thus you shall do for six days with seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams horns before the ark, the ark of the covenant.
(10:25) On the seventh day, you shall march around the city seven times, the priests blowing the trumpets. When they make a long blast with the ram's horn as soon as you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout and the wall of the city will fall down flat and all the people shall charge straight ahead.
(10:54) So this is the first time that the book of Joshua introduces this master plan to take the city of Jericho that uh the book tells us is heavily fortified because the Canaanites, these Canaanite people are living there. And what follows is a series of repetitions in the text. This thing that God just told Joshua now is repeated once again in the text almost verbade him.
(11:26) Now Joshua goes and tells the people what God told Joshua. Then once again another repetition the text tells us yes. So after Joshua tells the people now the people go and do exactly as Joshua told them. And just in case you didn't get it, once again the text gives us this account of this detailed recipe what we have to do step by step so that the walls fall down through divine intervention and repeating this six times over six days until finally on the seventh day once again we get the same story.
(12:06) the people do as uh God commanded. And the climax of the story and I would say I would argue of the whole book of Joshua is that the walls uh by divine intervention after this this ritualistic uh this it is a ritual uh what what's going on here fall down and then the Israelites charge enter the city and then they devote it to destruction ction by the edge of the sword all in the city both men and women young and old ox and sheep and donkeys so this is a total destruction and that's why I say is ritual this is a sacrifice this is the same this is a burning uh everything as
(12:55) you would as if you were doing an an offering on an altar and you just burn the whole offering this is a similar concept here you can't take part of that lamb that you just sacrificed. You have to burn it all because it belongs not to you. It belongs to God.
(13:20) God gave you this city and God wants you to burn everything and and kill everyone in the city. So this is what the book says. Uh and after that Joshua curses the city so that it's never uh rebuilt in the future. And these repetitions and other elements of this story are typical of what of a genre called the lit the epic poetry which comes from oral tradition. It's very ancient and it has these kind of repetitions. It has metrics.
(13:54) It it sometimes it's it's a very musical kind of text. Um, it often contains a long story in the form of a poem talking about a distant past beyond our memory. And often there's these great characters, heroes that face great challenges and are constantly giving these great lengthy speeches. There's divine interventions.
(14:25) And often one of the main goals of literature like this is to establish to build group identity. And this is something that we get for example all the way back to the epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish in the Sumer and and later Mesopotamian uh uh empires cultures. We also get that uh from ancient Greece like the stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey have this this same kinds of structure similar structures and even later on much later.
(15:01) So you can see the the time span from the epic of Gilgamesh thousands of years before the Bible uh a couple thousands of years before the Bible is composed to the Eniad which is this Roman epic poem that is much later. It's almost on the um on our era. Now, the book of Joshua doesn't end when the walls fall.
(15:32) The the conquest continues. Sometimes things don't go well. Sometimes people don't behave as as God as Yahweh uh commands. And so that's when the the campaign fails. Uh and so in the case of AI uh people have to kill uh Ahan because uh because he took loot from from the city.
(15:59) And so after people kill this um disobedient uh Israelite, then finally God conceds uh God grants victory to to the armies of Joshua. And there's several other uh dramatic points like the sun and the moon standing still over the city of Gibon. There's many more military campaigns where not one person survived where everyone is destroyed.
(16:36) And just like if you remember the story of of Exodus when uh we read that God hardens the heart of Pharaoh. So in the story the story tells us that God uh is actually uh just making Pharaoh uh just continue to imprison the Israelites in Exodus. So in in a similar way here, Yahweh tells us Joshua made the enemies of the Israelite stubborn enough to continue fighting against Israel so that he could claim them all for destruction without mercy.
(17:12) Now the aftermath is although this is a very swift conquest is almost complete but not quite. There's quite a few areas that are still after uh all these violent campaigns in uh possession um of Canaanite nations. And one of them is that little green path of land that you see uh the Jezrael Valley because there Joshua tells us the Canaanites have uh iron chariots.
(17:55) So apparently you can count on God to destroy uh great fortifications, but there's nothing God can do uh at least in Joshua against iron chariots. And so the Canaanites stay in the valley of Jezrael. But other other uh otherwise uh the the complate uh the the conquest is pretty complete and the book ends with a distribution.
(18:20) And it's a very detailed distribution of the land among the tribes. And then right after turn the page of the Bible, book of Judges. Immediately you learn, okay, something doesn't add up here. Because turns out that even though Joshua tells us about all this destruction and some Canaanite um nations were displaced and some other nations were enslaved.
(18:54) Whereas immediately in Judges we learn that no apparently Israelites and Canaanites are living together as one people. And in fact, some Israelites are marrying uh these Canaanite women and even of course serving their gods, which is a pretty bad idea according to both Judges and Joshua.
(19:26) Basically, what Judges presents starts with the tribal campaigns. Each tribe um continues their conflict with the local populations with the Canaanites that were already living in the land after Joshua's death. Uh many Canaanite groups remain in the areas and some of these groups like the Jebusites, uh Amorites, uh Hittites are names that we can identify.
(19:57) There's other other names of Canaanite nations that are not it's it's not quite clear who these people are in the Bible. And what follows are also a cycle of the judges which is a cyclical pattern that presents a new theology which we identify as the Deuteronomistic theology. We'll talk about that in a second. And this is what judges does until at the end it presents well a rather bleak picture.
(20:26) Things start going worse and worse and worse and then eventually we need something different here. We can't continue like this is proposing the book of judges. This theology deuteronomistic theology is quite simple. Israel's sins, God hands them over to their enemies. God uses the enemies of Israel to punish Israel for Israel's sins.
(20:54) Now, Israel repents, cries out, and God offers deliverance, sending a judge, a new judge, and then once again relapse, happens, and once again Israel sins. So this is the cycle that is repeated once and again in the book of judges. And this is why the refrain four times in the book we hear in those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in their own eyes.
(21:30) Which, as we will see in a moment, this is something that really fits the agenda of a king like for example, King Josiah, who scholars believe was in the king of Judah at the time these stories were beginning to be compiled. Just quickly, uh, if you never heard of the Deuteronomistic theology, the the word Deuteronomist, Deuteronomistic, uh, both Joshua and Judges belong to a part of the Bible that is known as the Deuteronomistic history that includes in addition the books of Samuel and Kings.
(22:19) Um, one of the things that is presented in this uh in these books is an answer to the problem of evil. Why do bad things happen to us? And what the deuteronomistic school is proposing is uh that the Israel's Israelites suffer when they abandon worship of their god and turn to foreign gods.
(22:53) And that's that's this is one of the things that is very emphasized especially in the book of Deuteronomy but also in the book of judges. As I mentioned, there's this cycle of judges and we have a sequence of judges starting with Athonial who is the best judge and ending at least in the book of uh judges with Samson which is the last judge that the book talks about and is by far the worst, the dumbest.
(23:26) Um, and we'll see that in a second. And so these judges remember are are not like judges today. These are heroes. These are uh chiefs of uh the tribes. One of the judges for example is Deborah. And yes a woman uh can be judge and she is also a prophetus. But by far I would say the most famous one and most interesting is Samson because Samson is the last judge that uh we read about in this book.
(24:06) The next we will have the very last judge will be Samuel. That's in the book of Samuel. So not in this book. Samson has a providential uh story of birth. An angel appears to Samson's parents and this is where the author of the gospel of Luke gets this story of the enunciation the miraculous conception of Mary and also in the apocry apocryphal infasy gospel of James takes on this motif also uh Samuel is um is a Nazerite Samuel is dedicated to God by their parents.
(24:50) In Azerite, one of the main uh things that he uh the main prohibitions as a Nazerite is he cannot cut his hair. So his hair is long and he becomes a kind of aesthetic, right? But the the hair element is very important because in addition to to all these things, he's good with lions. He can tear uh lions apart with their his bare hands. He's witty. He he likes riddles. He tricks the Philistines.
(25:19) The Philistines are their um his enemies. Um he does crazy rather funny things like he he set um the tales of foxes on fire and just let them loose on the Philistine fields and that way he just burns all their fields and then just in case kills all the Philistines. So a very brave, very dangerous uh guy this Samson.
(25:46) But after this he fell in love with a woman in the valley of Sarak whose name was Delilah says Judges and everything goes downhill from that point. Uh this is a region Sak between at the at the border between the Philistine and Israelite territories. Although she's not a Philistine, the Bible doesn't say what she is.
(26:10) She definitely helps the Philistines. And Judges tells us that she asks Samson, "So, what makes your strength so great?" And Samson, he lies several times. He doesn't want to say it. Um, he gets in trouble. Delilah denounces him, "You're a liar." But then finally, he tells her the truth.
(26:40) If I if my head were shaved, then my strength would leave me. Of course, after that, he falls asleep. She brings someone and they shave his head uh his his hair and he began to weaken and his strength left him and finally he ends up living a miserable life of slavery with the Philistines. But he is redeemed because at the end uh he destroys with his uh strength once he recovered his hair.
(27:14) He destroys the temple of Dagon, the Philistine god and in the process killing once again a lot of Philistines. So to sum up, we have these two accounts in one Jericho and Joshua. Jericho is destroyed. Jericho was a great city and now Jo Joshua with the help of God destroyed it. Whereas Judges just barely mentions Jericho and it never says that Jericho was destroyed.
(27:50) In Joshua, we have a swift and almost complete conquest. And this conquest includes u exterminations. includes an enslavement, displacement of people of the local populations. Whereas judges presents a totally different picture where uh there's ongoing conflict because the Canaanites are still there and some of them are very powerful.
(28:24) Another city, a very famous city is Hazor that is destroyed in the book of Joshua. Whereas in Judges when when we continue reading about Hassor, this is still a very important uh power, a very powerful city uh in the north of of Israel. And yet Judges never says that Hazor is destroyed. Uh in Joshua, each tribe receives a very detailed land described in detail.
(29:00) This is your land goes from here to there to there to there and then and so on for each tribe. Whereas there's none of that in judges because the Canaanites are still in the land. And finally, another detail is everyone follows Joshua. All tribes follow Joshua. He's the one leader. Whereas judges is all about tribal leaders. There's there's no unity in judges.
(29:25) It presents in a way judges the rather chaotic circumstance of lacking central government. So let's look a little bit at now that we have the story according to the Bible according to these two books and a story that is contradictory what can we tell what can history tell us about Jericho so let's go back in time Jericho is the oldest settlement in the Levant is one of the first places where uh we see human populations settling and this is before uh humans developed agriculture.
(30:13) uh even before uh pottery uh the people living here the Nufian culture is called they were already uh sedentary in small groups but they started uh settling in this area first most of the year and eventually we see permanent occupation going back to 9,000 BCE and important remains like the tower of ba of not of Babylon of cher Jericho uh who that still remains on this site that is dated to uh 8,000 B.CE.
(30:56) And also there's a defensive wall that goes all the way to prehistory. Uh the city peaked the its golden age was at the end of what is called the middle bronze age. So around 1500 BCE when it enjoyed a very good cultural connection and trade with Egypt and Syria. But the city at this time at its peak it was destroyed and it never recovered.
(31:30) It was apparently was abandoned uh for the next 300 years all the way through uh the the late Bronze Age. The Bronze Age collapse was uninhabited. There's no layers of destruction. There's no new uh there's no new walls um that that we see in the archaeological record for Jericho. Jericho looks like this today.
(31:55) It looks like a like a pile of rubble, like a mound. This is why this is called this is a tell tel es sultan the the mound of the sultan. Um and so you can see in this area people settled probably originally in in a like there was a minimal elevation of the land. This is a land that is fertile that is close to the Jordan close to springs is a very good place.
(32:22) It's uh it's warm. It's it's the uh lowest uh city in the world. Uh it's below sea level. And over the course of thousands and thousands of years, layers of occupation were piling up until this mound formed. So this is what a tell is. Uh it looks like this. Although these are these remains, most of them are later than the period that we're studying today.
(32:54) Some structures that we find in Jericho today are from uh like things like the the the palace of of Herod at this site. Um the archaeology here started in the 20th century with a German Austrian team who um confirmed their their conclusion was that yes the this site matches the Bible and they uh their the conclusion of this team was yes Joshua the account of the walls coming down as in Joshua matches what we see in the archaeological record.
(33:36) Uh a little bit later, two decades later, another team also uh dated this site a little bit earlier, but still concluding that yes, this the archaeology of the site supports the book of Joshua. Meaning, in other words, what Joshua tells us really happened in history. This is a historical event. This is what is sometimes called biblical archaeology that goes in line with is with biblical maximalism.
(34:16) Why? Because these early archaeologists were going to these sites and basically their whole agenda was to prove the Bible was to prove that the Bible the events of the Bible really happened. So they excavated. They found a a site in the place where well you're looking for Jericho. You're looking for uh remains of a wall because the Bible says there should be Jericho should be there.
(34:42) A wall should be there. Once when you find something then you say oh that confirms the Bible. That methodology is biblical archaeology usually in line with biblical maximalis and maximalist interpretations assigning a high degree of historicity to the biblical accounts. But then a little bit later, Kathleen Keenon uh came to the site and her team dated the the the layer of destruction to 1550 B.CE.
(35:22) And she found nothing that indicated that there was a city or walls in, 1200 B.CE E when supposedly Joshua was running around circling the the walls of the city and modern uh archaeology, modern uh technology in uh archaeology like uh more advanced radiocarbon dating that that we have now are have confirmed this uh that the layers in fact go back to 1550 B.
(35:58) CE CE as Kathleen Kenyan proposed. So this is what is often called Neareastern archaeology in line with a methodology called biblical minimalism. Biblical minimalism means you assign a low degree of historicity to the biblical account. So when you find something on the ground, when you're excavating and you find something, you cannot jump to a conclusion like these early archaeologists, you cannot just say, "Oh, this is what the Bible talks about." You need to do more research.
(36:38) You need to just make sure you know, you date your layers of occupation properly. And this is where archaeology gets fun. You thought archaeology was dry and boring, but it actually is it's not easy being an archaeologist. You can make a lot of enemies. Uh one of the maximalist as we saw is uh was Yigel Yadin. And one of the pioneers of this minimalist camp, biblical minimalism is Israeli archaeologist Israel Finkelstein.
(37:18) um who first proposed the idea that no we just cannot we cannot use the Bible to interpret the uh the archaeological record. We need more evidence and he made a lot of enemies of course and he continues to make enemies today. One of the questions that was a quintessential question for maximalists and now really for everyone who approaches the Bible to when you read the Bible, one of the first things, the 101 that you should do is what is the context of this text? So for example, the book of Joshua, what is the context of composition? What is uh what time
(38:03) period is are these stories supposed to be set on? Who composed it? What was the agenda of these authors? Who was the audience of these authors? It is an anonymous work, the book of Joshua. And um it is as we said part of the Deuteronomistic history timeline. The book of Joshua describe events that should have taken place at the end of the bronze age in this period at this sharp period of um destruction and collapse of urban uh life that we call the Bronze Age collapse that happened approximately 1,200 uh BCE. E
(39:01) and this is when many cities of of this region Ashkalon, Hazor, Biblo, Kadesh, Ugarit and many cities of Greece and of the Hittite Empire and Cyprus as well uh fell to invaders and migratory uh waves. Um Egypt describes uh some of these peoples as the sea peoples. Uh this is the time when the Philistines coming from the Aian settle in in the area.
(39:37) Now the Bronze Age collapse 1200 B.CE. However, this is although this is when Joshua supposedly is running around and conquering all these Canaanite cities, modern scholars agree that the earliest date of possible date of composition of the book of Joshua is during the kingdom of Judah, which is much later.
(40:12) There's at least 500 years of a gap between the context of composition and when the story is set. And there's good reason to believe that the book of Joshua continued to be edited by redactors all the way into the Persian period after the exiles from Babylon returned to Judah. And this is a gap as well. This is a gap from when the book was first composed. And of course there might be older stories that are being compiled into this book by the Deuteronom Deuteronomist authors most likely during the kingdom of King Josiah of Judah.
(41:02) And at this point there's one audience, one author, but the this book continues to be edited even into um the Persian period 150 years later at least the the book continues to be redacted by different authors for a different audience. So this is the Deuteronomist uh authors are they have an agenda.
(41:38) They want to support uh David's uh not David's the the house of David but King Josiah as their legitimate king. They want to claim the all the heroes of the north like like Joshua. and they also want to uh promote this Deuteronomistic uh theology. Whereas this is a different uh when we get to the Persian era, we we're talking about people coming back from uh from Babylon.
(42:10) There's no no longer a king of Israel of Judah and Judah is under Persian uh control. So this is a different audience with different interests with different needs. Uh although I mentioned that Joshua doesn't really expand spell out the Deuteronomistic theology in the way that Joshua the judges does. Still we can see the Deuteronomistic agenda in this book because it promotes centralization. One king, one God is what this book proposes.
(42:53) And as we mentioned uh a very different audience returning from Babylon uh with new authors with new redactors are adding to this text. And there are interesting parallels and there are like for example the same number of exiles who return with Ezra to Yehood the the Persian province uh is the same number of troops who cross the Jordan to fight in Jericho. And we also have a parallel of this leadership model.
(43:26) We have Joshua and Eleazar the priest. And then in the book of Ezra, we have Ezra and Nehemiah as this duet, this duet of political or military authority and then the priestly authority. And there's other interesting parallels like the distribution the detailed distribution of land that happens in the book of Joshua echoes the land grants that uh the the kings of Persia uh were giving to all these people who were returning to to different satropies of the empire.
(44:06) One of the things if this book of Joshua as we see is not necessarily history and the book means different things from different different uh audiences for different authors then one of the things that the book is addressing are questions questions of origin.
(44:36) One of these is where do we come from as a people as a group? ethnogenesis is uh like what studies these origin myths. So where do we come from? There's usually two ways of answering this question and people like the Greeks and the Egyptians were proposing that we are from here and this is what they told themselves. Whereas people like the Romans or like the Inca people of South America, they understood themselves as coming from someone else. The Romans were coming from Troy.
(45:08) The Inca people were coming from a from a different valley. And in this group we also uh have the people of Israel because remember the story of Israel as a as a nation starts with Abraham. Up until Abraham we have like Adam and Noah. This is universal. This concerns all humanity. But starting with Abraham we are talking about Israel.
(45:34) And Abraham doesn't start in the land. He comes from the east and goes back and forth to Egypt and and back to the land and so do uh his successors. And in addition to the where we come from, something that uh origin um origin tales uh are concerned with is where do things places come from? Names.
(46:05) So these are ethologies. The book of Joshua is full of ethologies. We have Joshua 4:9 telling us for example the stones are still there today. Joshua chapter 5 verse 9. So Joshua named the place Gildal the name is still has today. For this reason that place is still called the valley of aor today and so on. So there's ruins. The book of Joshua gives an explanation.
(46:38) There's a name. The Book of Joshua gives an explanation. There's a pile of rubble and there's remains of a pretty impressive walls. The book of Joshua offers an origin myth for what the Israelites are finding in the land centuries later. And the interpretation of of sacred texts doesn't stop in ancient times.
(47:10) As you know, you probably know this tune. The uh Joshua fit the battle of Jericho. God knows that Joshua fit the battle of Jericho. Jericho. Jericho. Joshua fit the battle of Jericho. And the walls came tumbling down. And as Yolanda Smith from Yale Divinity University uh Divinity uh school, she says, "Identifying closely with the children of Israel and the Exodus story, the slaves, the African-American slaves in the United States embraced the vision of God as their deliverer of the oppressed.
(47:52) " And even today many people and this is in line with uh the um liberation theology readings. The book of Joshua offers um a view of how we can overcome great obstacles through a a great obstacle through faith. So even in modern times uh people continue to reinterpret the value of this book and unfortunately it just doesn't stop there and um there's sometimes the book is used in the opposite way.
(48:35) The book is used for a purpose that has nothing to do with anything that the original authors intended. The original authors did not intend to write a historic account. The original authors intended many things as we saw including creating and reinforcing group identity, proposing theology and uh just giving uh legitimacy to the the monarchy in Judah and later on giving the exiles meaning as they are returning to a land many of which had never seen.
(49:12) The maximalist and the minimalist controversy continues today. Um archaeologists like Yseph Garfinkel that I mentioned at the beginning of this lecture. So fits more comfortably in the maximalist side. Although he is no Yale Yadin. Uh Ysef Garfinkl is is a is an amazing archaeologist. He's a legitimate archaeologist.
(49:47) He does amazing job, but he leans toward a more um high degree of historicity of the biblical account compared to uh Finkelstein and actually the apparently the two of them don't get along at all and they say all sorts of horrible things about each other and their work and their conclusion. It's a fun and dangerous discipline to be part of. I love it.
(50:17) Garingel just quickly is known for this site called in Israel called Kirbet Kafa. Uh this is uh in the Elah Valley which is where um it's near where the the account of David and Golath takes place. And what's exciting about this site is what that um it's it's not a tell like Jericho. It's a kerbet which just means a ruin.
(50:53) And that's because the site was only occupied for a very short period of time. There's uh unlike Jericho, it doesn't have all these very complex many layers of of occupation. And so it simplifies the archaeology and also it when uh when they dated the the site turns out it goes back to around the year 1000 BCE. Now this is in this is south west of Jerusalem. So it would have been in the territory of the kingdom of Judah.
(51:30) Finkelstein has proposed in many works that there was nothing like that in in the kingdom of Judah that the great cities uh were only in the northern kingdom of Israel Samaria. But now this discovery is exciting because apparently uh it supports what in archaeology is called the high chronology. Maximalist like Garfinkel support the high chronology, minimalist like Finkelstein support the low chronology.
(52:13) Now in normal language the most important thing that that means is archaeologists and scholars like like Garfinkle in the maximalist camp support the view that there was a great united monarchy an empire under David and and Solomon and sites like Kirbed Kafa support this thesis because It shows that there were cities there were cities with with storage with with scribes in this area.
(52:46) Whereas minimalists like Vinkelstein proposed no there was never such a thing. This is just a literary creation. It's a legend. The two kingdoms developed separately. And of course the temptation when we find one archaeological evidence that that proves that well it's not exactly what vinkelstein says.
(53:14) Finkelstein at some point became a like a pretty I wouldn't say a radical minimalist but he his his position was there was there was absolutely no such things. Now this disproves this um conclusion of Finkelstein. Apparently we're still there's a little bit of debate still but some people are tempted to extend these findings to everything Bible. Okay.
(53:44) So this means that maybe there's something that we will find that will prove that the book of Joshua has a core of historicity and that these accounts are actually not a literary creation of the post exilic uh period like some minimalists propose. No, the fact that we have in Judah a city that is only only 200 about 200 years after the conquests of Joshua supposedly happened.
(54:18) Well, it gives people the idea that oral tradition may have survived because now we're talking about only about two centuries of separation as opposed to five centuries of separation between uh the the time the story supposedly happened and the time the story was written down. One of the sites that gets a lot of maximalists excited is the site of Hazor, the site that Yayadin explored back in 1955.
(54:57) Uh what's what gets Maximalist excited is that uh Joshua says that Hazor burned uh in in fire that Joshua burned Hazor with fire and you know there's mentions in uh Josh Joshua there's mentions on Judges there's other mentions later in the books of Kings but basically what archaeology at this site is telling as that there is a layer of destruction in the sight of Hazor which was a very important city in this northern region close to the Sea of Galilee.
(55:38) It was a very fortified very powerful Canaanite city and there is a layer of destruction that actually fits the narrative of Joshua. And so a lot of maximalists say see this proves that the story of Joshua that the account of the book of Joshua has a core of historicity which that is not what um that's not how archaeology really works anymore.
(56:11) That's biblical archaeology. That's imposing the Bible on the things you find on the ground as opposed to uh asking critical questions. Well, was Hazor destroyed by Joshua? How do you know it wasn't destroyed by by Egypt? Remember, Egypt had um until this time period, the the late Bronze Age, Egypt was in control of this land.
(56:43) It could have been the sea peoples that destroyed uh cities like Ugarit, like Biblo, like Ashcolon. It could have been a revolt, civil war. There's many, many reasons to many other possible explanations that are way more plausible than Joshua. And this city is also uh gets maximalists excited because of this debate on uh the dating of some later structures that some assign to the kingdom of Solomon that's the maximalists and some uh associate with the kingdoms of the Omray dynasty of this it's one of the first important kings of the northern kingdom of Israel with capital in Samaria. So minimalists
(57:36) and maximalists don't agree on how to interpret the data. Part of the problem is it is not so simple to date these layers. Layers um there's there's always a a a gap. There's always room for interpretation, but also as we saw, there's a lot of interests. So, how do we interpret the archaeological record? Although modern archaeology is is a well-developed legitimate uh field that relies on methodologies uh that um are critical analysis science uh and it's a multid-disciplinary effort really it's it's very difficult to come to conclusions. Sometimes you have to
(58:30) come to an informed conclusion and that's when things are begin to uh things like personal bias uh begin to get into the this play against the critical analysis of archaeology. We all have a personal bias. If you ask me, I more I feel more comfortable with the minimalist approach to the Bible.
(59:03) And why is that? It's not that I don't want the Bible to be historical. The Bible is what it is. But I believe that the Bible is not useful as a history book, but as a as a spiritual book, as a theological book, not as a historical or scientific compendium of some sort. So that that's my bias.
(59:28) I don't I don't care about the historicity if if you first it's it would it's great when it turns out yes we we can prove that certain accounts of the Bible are historical and that's fantastic and that's exciting but my bias is not that and there's a lot of political and religious interests as we saw there's organizations uh scientists evangelical interests in the US, funding expeditions and funding is what makes archaeology happen ultimately.
(1:00:08) And when you sit with your donors, with your sponsors, they expect something. And so, as Garfinkl said, sometimes all these different interests play against your better judgment as a scientist, as an archaeologist. So how and how this matters today? Why should uh we care? Uh I see daily not only on social media but also in media outlets that I read that I respect. I see how archaeology is weaponized.
(1:00:53) that the findings of archaeology are twisted and are um there's a lot of journalists and even archaeological teams who make conclusions that the archaeological record doesn't really support. And this is how they manipulate the the public perception, the the perception of uh people not only in Israel and Palestine but in in Europe and around the world, North America.
(1:01:32) And it influences the way we see something that is causing a lot of suffering today, which is the conflict in Gaza. there's suffering especially to the people the Palestine Palestinian people but also to the Israeli people. So this constant manipulation of of what we find in the archaeological record this constant manipulation of religion of the Bible is also causing a lot of damage in Israel.
(1:02:00) There's a lot of reports of young Israelis who have been drafted to the army who are having just tremendous uh mental health crisis and in some cases suicide. So why this is important is because I believe that biblical literacy and also literacy on how to interpret all the all the new knowledge that is emerging constantly about the Bible and about the context and about the history and the archaeology of all these wonderful intriguing sites that informs how we use the Bible responsibly and that is my take on the
(1:02:46) story of Joshua and Judges. Thank you so much. And now I will see if I can answer your questions. I am not John Hamer, so I will see what I can answer. And if not, I promise if I skip your question, I will look it up and I'll get back to you. Um and actually we will have um I don't know if John John is uh helping us with our questions in the chat and you might be able to remind us John when the next let there be answer is and we will we will address some of those questions uh in in in that session.
(1:03:38) Okay. First of all, I want to thank uh those of you who have offered uh support in the chat. Thank you so much, JM and Fire Everliving for supporting the channel with your super chats. And I'm going to go first to the question by David Lore. Could it be David says uh could it be said the Jews of Judea didn't actually practice the worshiping of Yahweh until after the Assyrian conquest of Israel.
(1:04:17) It could be said that some uh people in Judea did uh worship multiple gods. And one of the reasons that we know about this is that there's a lot of concern in in these deuteronomic texts like the book of Deuteronomy, like the the book of Judges and Joshua and and the whole Deuteronomic history all the way into Kings about proper worship and the fact that the books are uh concerned about idolatry and worship of foreign gods and they don't want um Israelite men to or Judahite men to marry uh these foreign women because then they end up worshiping other gods. Well, that that shows that actually something like that was very much
(1:05:10) happening. uh this uh I wouldn't think that we would have all these uh this theology emerging at this time of the kingdom of Judah especially toward the end of king the end of the kingdom of Judah with Josiah and and and his successors if that was not an issue in Judah if everyone was worshiping Yahweh alone and we also have uh accounts later on like in the book of Jeremiah where um the we learn that exiles uh from uh it's it's from the book of um exiles from from Israel not not not from Judah but people were people of the land who were supposedly worshiping uh Yahweh
(1:06:04) were also worshiping the queen of heaven and other deities uh in the book of Josiah, the book of kings. We we read how uh people worshiped the Mesopotamian god Tamuz uh Damuzi uh Adonis were worshiping this uh fertility god at the gates of the Jerusalem temple. So it it's clear that the religious landscape of of Judah pre-exilic was was very complex.
(1:06:40) People were and there's in the archaeological record there's of course plenty of these asher uh figurines uh asher poles uh that that we find. So people were actually not this was not a not even a monolatry or like a more like a look what what is called like a heenotheistic um kind of approach to religion knowing that you have a national god.
(1:07:14) This is a god that protects you but there's other gods and sometimes just in case you worship them. Okay let's continue. Owen Wall says, "What does the archaeology say about when the two books were written originally?" My feeling is Joshua probably came later and was written during the Babylonian exile, like the Moses story. And there's reasons to believe that.
(1:07:49) And I guess if you if that's what you believe then you side more with the minimalist interpretations. Now I think we do have reason to believe that uh as many scholars propose this the the narrative of of Joshua fits the Deuteronomic uh theology, the Deuteronomic agenda. Um, and I think if you're thinking of Okay, so the the book of Judges more likely comes from from the kingdom of the the time period of the kingdom of Judah, uh, especially after the fall of of Samaria, of the king of the capital of the kingdom of Israel in 722 B.CEE. And so this period that goes all the way
(1:08:35) up to 586 uh B.CE CE when uh Nebuchadessor destroys the Jerusalem temple. This is a time period where uh we do see a lot of u developments in Jerusalem. There's more like more population. Uh there's there's scribes. There's more uh literature going on here. And so this is fertile ground for uh stories to be written down.
(1:09:08) Um, and so I I do think that there's many parts of the story of like like this epic uh the epic parts of of the book of Joshua contain certain metrics that sound very ancient. Now I haven't looked at at analysis of the language itself. Sometimes the language varies. Sometimes the language betrays the date of composition.
(1:09:36) I'm going to have to look into that. But if you look just at the literary devices that at least some of the parts of the book of of Joshua use when um when describing especially the the the ritual of circling Jericho. There are certain motifs of repetition. Sometimes you repeat the same thing twice um or sometimes three times.
(1:10:08) that is very typical of Canaanite uh epic stories like the Bal cycle um and other stories that we get from Ugarit. Uh you see that in some of the oldest psalms you see, you know, just for example, and I'm just making this up. Uh Yahweh uh provided sustenance. Uh Yahweh is my provider and then something else and it's always like duplets like that and you wonder why why does it say it twice. So this same kind of literary device is used in many parts of the book of Joshua.
(1:10:47) Now I don't know if that's intentional to make it sound old or if it actually is really old. That's that's an interesting thing to uh research for next lecture. How do bib biblical literalists try to reconcile the contradictions between Joshua and Judges? Asks fire ever living. And I just want to make a clarification like biblical maximalists uh today are not the same as these maximalists that 100 years ago were running around proving that uh this stone and this wall are actually the the the stables of Solomon at uh Hassor or Megiddo.
(1:11:36) uh biblical maximalists are a lot of them today are legitimate archaeologists. Um sometimes it would be a little unfair to say okay this is a maximalist like is Garfinkill a maximalist? Well I think there's a spectrum and I think um at both ends of the spectrum we have these two scholars like Finkelstein and Garfinill.
(1:12:05) Um but yeah, there's there's different positions. That's why they don't get along. Now, in terms of the the the inconsistencies, what you have to look at is not necessarily uh the historicity concerns, uh but more about so why did the redactors preserve both accounts if they're contradictory? And my answer to that is that even biblical authors were not so concerned with history the way we are concerned with history that if the two accounts don't match then we say we have a problem. Biblical authors ancient authors were more interested in what the
(1:12:47) story meant and the theology that the story is proposing. And these are in a way both Joshua and uh and judges have different theological value. Uh, in a way Joshua is the continuation of this very spiritual story of the Exodus that has um that ends it starts dramatically in Egypt and ends dramatically with Joshua and then that brings resolution to that story. Joshua proposes a different thing.
(1:13:28) Um, I think the the main contradiction is in our modern mind trying to see things as if the authors had intended to write modern history which they didn't. And I'm not aware of modern maximalists as Garfinkl having uh like legitimate archaeologists like Garfinkkel having any any problems with um with with these contradictions.
(1:14:02) I do see for example in in in in the theological camp uh evangelical theologians often come up with very elaborate ways of fitting these two things together even though they don't in in very creative ways. I wish I I had an example right now but that's that's more of an evangelical theology kind of thing to do than an archaeology thing to do. Okay, Kasumi Reena asks, "Are there only maximalists and minimalists? Do they not have common sense archaeologists who don't just deal in absolutes?" And as I just mentioned, there's a spectrum.
(1:14:42) And I think sometimes it's unfair to to use these labels casually. Uh but I don't mean it uh poratively. Um I I even I think sometimes I find like findings like u an intentions like like Garfinkl who really wants to prove that there was a a great um uh kingdom in Judah much earlier than what Finkelstein proposed.
(1:15:17) I I find uh that enthusiasm uh refreshing and I it it challenges it uh it challenges my own uh understanding and it makes me want to learn more about all these new uh findings and all these new uh techniques. These people have a lot of common sense. Uh but as I mentioned before, sometimes the problem is uh you have to uh give something to the people who funded your expedition or you're probably not going to get any funding anymore.
(1:15:53) And that is the sad reality of many of these archaeological expeditions that these are very costly. Um and um so I I do think that like if you if you read uh I haven't read uh Garfinkel. I haven't read his uh his report. I just read I read about it. I read a lot about Finkelestein. I think he has a lot of common sense. He seems to be a very jolly fellow with a lot of common sense.
(1:16:24) But yes, he you have to understand where he comes from. He comes from an era in the in the 70s where no one was doing what he was doing and he had to go against a whole system to propose new uh more honest ways of doing archaeology in the Middle East in in in the Holy Land. Okay.
(1:16:52) Owen Wall also asks, "Do you think that the Jews exiled in Babylon actually literally believed these stories themselves subjectively at the time or do you think it was myth to them and just lost in us?" And again, I think these are modern categories. I think people didn't have a a the same concept, the same uh threshold that we see between literary creation and uh history or or myth, sacred story, stories of origin.
(1:17:29) uh I do believe this is a concern of the modern mind because now we know that there's a difference and also we know now that there's a difference between uh thanks to the scientific revolution we know what the limits where the threshold of of of physics of the real world is and we we look at these accounts and say well that is supernatural and so we say this is actually not something that happened in history because these things like God miraculously destroying the walls the great walls of a city doesn't we don't have any actual evidence that that ever happened in history and so we cannot
(1:18:12) prove we cannot assume historicity there well they didn't have that they didn't have this this separation between natural and supernatural we have right now uh the Jews was exiled in in Babylon. Again, it's like not everyone was the same. And I think there's a lot of there's a lot of them who who actually uh I wouldn't say believed um that everything was history the way we do.
(1:18:49) They definitely believed that they were this this people that God had granted them this land and that they had this history together and that um there was this uh this history of of of migration from Egypt and east and west uh and it's only for us uh moderns who really really struggle to fit that that cog uh we I would say we impose our own modern cognitive dissonance on ancient people who didn't think the way we do. Okay. Uh let's see next.
(1:19:28) Are there Owl asks are there any similar archaeological clues about the fallen tower of Babel or is that story completely allegorical? Um in so the accounts of of the tower of Babel, a lot of a lot of people even a lot of scholars try to um try to link that to specific uh constructions uh big construction enterprises going on in Babylon.
(1:20:12) Uh while the Israeli exiles were there, um there was this ziggurats all over these uh these great cities of of of Babylon, these elevated platforms in an otherwise uh flat land uh that would have been quite impressive that they that you would often have a temple on top. So these are massive structures. Um, and it is possible that that inspired this this myth of the Tower of Babel.
(1:20:46) I don't know if there's any um any archaeological site in in in Babylon or nearby that has been identified as a tower as the tower of Babel. where there would have been throughout this land of Mesopotamia things that look like the tower of of Babel. But it is once again um the tower of babel is is another u origin myth. It's an ethological myth.
(1:21:22) Uh and this fits in a part of the Bible that is like even evangelical theologians call the primeval story which um very very few theologians I don't know if any like Bible scholar but definitely most theologians even very conservative theologians will acknowledge that this is it's all legend it's all myth it's this is not history. However, the the sharp divide starts with with the story of Abraham.
(1:21:53) That's when a lot of biblical scholars and theologians try to find try to trace where Abraham came from and the city that he was uh this the cities and the peoples that he was finding and and so there is an effort starting with Abraham but all the way up to the tower of Babel uh Adam the flood Cain and Abel all these things is almost unanimously by at least trained theologians and scholars. Uh this is uh mythical legendary tales.
(1:22:37) Okay, we have another question. Ninhoteep. If the Exodus is largely considered ahistorical, is there any room for an historical Joshua in the reconstructed uh record? Um I so I think um first of all we have to remember there's uh no evidence that either um the the Exodus or this uh just grandiose campaign ever of Joshua ever happened.
(1:23:28) uh the there's for example for uh for the Exodus there's absolutely no mention of of something like that happening in Egyptian records um Egyptians Egyptian records are pretty extensive and they don't mention something like that that would have been pretty important there's there's nothing nothing has been found in the in the land of Sinai where supposedly these people were um wondering for 40 years.
(1:24:01) Some people, some even some scholars like to connect dots very speculatively, like saying, well, you know, the Hebrews uh the the the Israelites are actually the the Habirus that that the um not the Berna Stila, the Amarna letters talk about and or the Shou that were like in the land later that other Egyptian sources mention.
(1:24:28) So there's always just trying to connect Egyptian sources that mention given name that we don't really know what it means with possibly these exiles from Egypt. But there was um if anything this habidus this shoo uh was not an like an ethnical or national designation. These were outcasts and by no means uh a migration the size uh that the Bible claims could have happened without going notice in the archaeological record or uh in most likely Egyptian records.
(1:25:05) And the same is true for for Joshua. I mean is uh a historical Joshua is I would say first of all what most modern scholars propose is that most Israelites actually um are indigenous to the land that this is a land that of course has been uh receiving migrations for thousands of years.
(1:25:40) For 10,000 years, humans have been going through this area uh settling, passing through, trading. So, this is a very busy uh nexus between three continents. And but um but what um the leading uh theory right now is that Israel developed uh out of Canaanite culture during the uh the period called uh the Iron Age one period. So what follows this bronze age collapse when all the the urban cultures of these great Canaanite cities of the valleys of like Hassor like Ugarit like Biblo like Ashkillon all these cities are destroyed by perhaps the sea peoples there's
(1:26:36) there's a power vacuum in this in this area because uh no longer Egypt is able to hold control of this land and we see in the archaeological record that um the population of the hill um country of of Israel Palestine increases in this iron age period roughly between iron age one period this from 1200 BC to 1,00 BC but we don't see a mass migration we there is migration like the this population increase suggests a migration But the material culture is the same is more rudimentary than that of of the Canaanite cities that collapsed. The
(1:27:23) language is almost the same. The script is almost the same. So this is uh all indications, all records, all evidence suggest this is the same people who were developing a new identity. Mustapa says, "Sorry if I already mentioned, but was Jericho mentioned elsewhere, not in Jewish sources like Egypt or somewhere else?" Um, I'm not sure about other sources.
(1:27:59) Um, I would have to look that up to see if Jericho appears in Egyptian or Mesopotamian sources, Hittite sources. Uh it is it's uh it is a real it it was a real city in in the in the middle bronze age. So there's no question uh about that. It's possible that was not important enough like other cities uh like the like the main Canaanite cities uh um that would would generate enough attention for Egyptian or or um Mesopotamian Assyrian scribes to write about. Um but yeah, I don't know. But it's definitely the the archaeological
(1:28:47) record is very clear that there was a city there but the city was gone after 1500 BCE. Um Kasumi Reena also asks what was in Jordan at the same time like before the Nabotian kingdom. Um so this is this this whole region of of of Jordan let's say I I guess you mean like east of the river uh Jordan is you know where we have today the the modern country of of of Jordan was uh originally in the bronze age this was Canaanite line beds Uh um the there's um it it's possible that this was the area um of the peoples in the Bible uh called
(1:29:48) the the Kenites and that's where we get the Kenite hypothesis of the origin of Yahweh. remember there's one hypothesis that says Yahweh actually is was the god of the Kenites and they and that's why the Bible has um and the Medianites also are from this uh from this area uh east and and and south what would eventually become the the kingdoms the iron age kingdoms of Ammon, Moab and Edom who become the arch uh enemies of the kingdom of Judah And but these are iron age kingdoms.
(1:30:28) We the period of Joshua, these kingdom kingdoms did not exist. These were all different Canaanite city states. There wasn't like an empire, a Canaanite empire, but each city controlled a a location. um and some extended into this region but um was also an area of of nomadic uh of nomadic peoples.
(1:30:55) So like the Canaanite cities were for the most part on the coast because they were trade centers and the main trade um the main trade route goes through the coast. The main trade route doesn't go through Jerusalem. That's why Jerusalem was not important until much later until after the fall of the kingdom of Israel. And another thing that allows the development of all these kingdoms, Ammon, Moab, and Edom in the region of of what is today Jordan is the introduction of the camel that didn't exist before. And the camel allows new trade routes through these areas that you know you can't uh traverse uh with
(1:31:39) donkeys which is what people would have had before in the Bronze Age. Thank you Anders and the listister for generous super chat that supports our channel and allows us to continue to create content like this. Uh, and I think Anders also says, "Last week, John said he didn't like the talking Yelli TV and debates.
(1:32:10) Has John ever debated others? I'd love to see John or Leandro debate someone on these topics." And yeah, I was actually talking yesterday with uh one of our uh the director of Encounter World Religions who is one of our our affiliates uh here in Canada about a podcast. He um so we we still don't know the the the format.
(1:32:40) I'm not sure it's going to be necessarily a debate, but a debate every now and then would would probably be as long as it's constructive, I think would would fit um like the would allow us to to learn and to to challenge our assumptions. So, yeah, it's not going to be Yelli, but but it's it's probably a more well cordial debate. Uh Owen Wall also says, "Do you think there's a point to the story of Joshua using the mechanism of a great resonating sound to be the thing that brings down the walls mythologically? I'm trying to I'm trying to think and you probably you help me if if someone has uh has a note there, but I'm trying to
(1:33:29) think of other mythological legendary tales from other parts of the world or the Bible itself where yeah sound is is the final component what actually makes things happen. I I mean, I think about when I when I look at this narrative, I see a ritual. And a ritual usually if um involves not only actions that you do with your body, but it also often involves words.
(1:34:06) You the the priests as as the priest makes the offerings and do all these uh just scripted movements that are part of the ritual. uh there's often something that is said and I think there is here the power is not just necessarily the um the sound itself like all of the sudden everyone shouted and there's like this wave of sound like supersonic weapon like in science fiction that just destroys everything.
(1:34:39) I think it's more about the power of of the of the word of the power of of of saying something. So I I think that it's it's more about uh it it's more related to how what how a ritual would be done and the power of words during ritual. But that's that's my at this point speculation. But that's an interesting thing to research.
(1:35:10) And thank you Zelig for another super chat in support of our channel of our lectures. I think that's it. I think I'm also losing my voice. So I'm going to stop here. And next week uh remember John's going to be back to talk about super exciting topic, Julian the Apostate. Thank you so much. See you then or on Sunday.