The Conquest Defeated

Biblical archaeology began about 150 years ago with the goal of proving the veracity of the biblical stories. The adage is that these early pioneering scholars had the Bible in one hand and a spade in the other. And the early discoveries indeed seemed to verify events described in the Bible. But as a fuller picture emerged, confidence in the Bible as a reliable guide to history was shaken to its foundations.

Digging up the Past

Let’s begin with a brief lesson on how the science of archaeology works. In ancient times, when a city was rebuilt after having been destroyed by war or natural disaster, the inhabitants would construct new buildings atop the ruins of the old. Over time, these layers would build up into something resembling an artificial hill. Scientists realized they could dig down through the layers and, the deeper they dug, the further back in time they could go.

What the archaeologists lacked, however, were the proper reference points. For example, they could identify the various levels – or strata – of the ruins of a city, but unless they had inscriptions or texts that were datable, they would have no idea how much time passed between the city in level 2 and the one in level 3. The invention of radiocarbon dating provided a method for establishing a fixed date, but it required finding organic material like wood or grain.

The major breakthrough was the discovery that pottery provided a fairly accurate clock for establishing dates. Unlike inscriptions or organic material, pottery fragments were plentiful at excavation sites. Scientists were able to create a relative sequence of pottery styles from oldest to youngest and then plug in any absolute dates provided by radiocarbon testing of organic material. Since pottery styles changed frequently enough, a well-trained archaeologist could identify the date of any strata based on the pot shards found within it.

The Missing Conquest

Naturally, the first sites to be excavated were cities mentioned in the Bible, cities like Megiddo, Shechem, and Jericho. Jericho is well-known from the Book of Joshua where, forty years after the exodus, Joshua led the Israelites in a systematic campaign of genocide against the Canaanites. First on their list of conquests was the walled city of Jericho (Joshua 6) where, after the walls came down, the entire population was put to the sword and the city destroyed. This was followed by the destruction of the city of Ai (Joshua 7-8). Seeing what happened at Jericho and Ai, the people of Gibeon made a treaty with the Israelites (Joshua 9) to avoid the destruction of their town.

Digging at ancient Jericho in the 1930s, John Garstang found destroyed mudbrick city walls that he attributed to the battle mentioned in the Book of Joshua. He dated the level to 1400 BCE, fifty years or so after the traditional date for the exodus.

In the 1950s Kathleen Kenyon re-visited the site with more refined techniques and was able to date the destruction of Garstang’s wall to 1560 BCE, a century and a half earlier. Not only that, but she discovered that the city had remained unoccupied for several centuries after its destruction. Not only was Jericho unoccupied during the traditional 15th century date for the exodus and conquest, but also for the currently accepted 13th century date as well.

Kathleen Kenyon discovered the remains of 23 cities at Jericho, the earliest dating back to the 8^th millennium BCE, making Jericho the oldest city in the world. At the 9000-year old stratum, Kenyon unearthed this circular tower built of stone and mud. (Photo by author, 1993)

Jericho is not the only such case. Archaeological evidence at the site of Ai shows that it was unoccupied from the 15th century BCE to the 12th. At Gibeon, no remains at the site were found earlier than the 8th century BCE. In short, at Ai there was no occupied city in the 13th century for Joshua to destroy and at Gibeon no city had yet been built to surrender to Joshua.

And on it goes. Joshua 12 lists the kings of 31 cities defeated by the invading Israelites. With only a few exceptions (e.g., Hazor, Bethel), the cities were either not occupied or not destroyed in the 13th century. Of the few cities that were destroyed, there is no evidence of who destroyed the city.

The Israelites were Canaanites

Just as we saw with the exodus, the scientific data does not square with the biblical accounts. But whereas with the exodus the problem primarily was the absence of evidence supporting the Bible, in the case of the conquest of Canaan, the evidence contradicts the Bible.

Indeed, the Bible itself is inconsistent when it comes to the conquest. For example, Joshua 12:10 says the king of Jerusalem was defeated by Joshua and the Israelites. But the Book of Judges begins with the death of Joshua and describes how the people of Judah fought against Jerusalem and took the city (Judges 1:8). Then again, 2 Sam 5:6-9 describes how David took the city of Jerusalem from the Jebusites. The Bible provides three different stories naming three different conquerors of the same city.

The traditional “conquest” model as portrayed in the Book of Joshua has been dismissed by all but fundamentalists. What, then, can archaeology tell us about the formation of Israel?

The facts on (and underneath) the ground show rapidly-growing communities in the hill country during the 13th to 12th centuries. The material culture (architecture, pottery, etc.) of these open villages were in continuity with the Canaanite material culture of the walled cities of the lowlands. The Hebrew language is essentially a Canaanite dialect and worship of Canaanite gods continued for centuries in Israel. Had an invading people defeated and supplanted the indigenous one, you would expect to see a sharp break in the culture from what went before. Also, you would expect the invaders to take the best lands in the lowlands, not the poorer land of the hill country.

The prevailing explanation today is that the early Israelites were Canaanites who had resettled from the lowland cities to the rural highlands. Archaeology can’t provide the reason for the move – perhaps to escape warfare or high taxation – but the theory does explain the continuity of architecture, pottery, language, religion, etc. If the refugees fled the cities for political or economic reasons (the kings seizing the resources of the poor), it could explain the strong resistance to a king cited in biblical passages such as 1 Sam 8:10-18.

Perhaps at some point, a group of migrants settled in the area, bringing with them their story of having escaped persecution in Egypt and their worship of the god Yahweh as well. The origin story and religion slowly caught on, providing a national identity to a people who became known as Israel. We’ll go into this theory in more detail in the next article.