Ark Twain

In my previous article, I made some (hopefully) educated estimations that allowed me to calculate how heavy the fabled Ark of the Covenant would have been had it been constructed according to the instructions in Exodus chapter 25. That exercise clarified some issues for me.

His Ark is Bigger than is Right

First, my estimated weight of 165 kg (362 lbs) for the ark leads me to conclude it would have been too heavy to be carried by four men. While soldiers sometimes carry backpacks of over 100 lbs of equipment needed for special missions, that weight is being distributed across both shoulders. Levites carrying the ark would have all that weight coming down on one shoulder, greatly reducing the amount they could comfortably carry.

Second, the estimated weight of the chest and the lid are about equal, so the center of gravity would sit at the point where the lid meets the chest. This would be the most balanced place to locate the rings for the carrying poles, yet the instructions in Exodus state that the rings should be attached to the feet of the chest. Underneath the ark next to the feet would be the strongest area to place the poles but it would also make the ark top-heavy and prone to tipping over.

Third, the ark’s purpose was to hold the stone tablets on which were written the Ten Commandments. 1 Kings 8:9 insists that “There was nothing in the ark except the two stone tablets that Moses had placed in it at Horeb.” But the ark’s dimensions are much larger than needed to accomplish that goal.

One of the six pairs of tablet props made for 1956 film The Ten Commandments sold for $60,000 at an auction in 2012. The lettering is in an early Canaanite script practiced in the late Bronze Age.

Take Two Tablets…

The Bible does not provide us dimensions for the two stone tablets, but does tell us that Moses carried it “in his hand” as he climbed up and down the mountain of God (Sinai or Horeb, depending on the tradition). The size of the stone tablets would be limited to what Moses could comfortably carry while climbing a mountain.

The dimensions of the prop tablets from the classic movie The Ten Commandments starring Charlton Heston were 23.5 x 12 x 1.25”. The props were made of fiberglass. Had they been made of actual stone, they would have weighed something like 15 kg (32 lb) each.  Quite a load for poor old Moses to schlep up and down the mountain twice!

But even with such oversized tablets, there’s more than enough room in the ark with the dimensions given in Exodus 25 (2.5 x 1.5 x 1.5 cubits). You could lay the tablets side by side on the gold-covered floor of the ark and they would take up only half the floor space. And there would be 2.5 feet of wasted space above the tablets.

An ark properly built for such movie-size stone tablets would be much, much smaller. By stacking the tablets on top of each other, you could reduce the footprint to something like 27 x 14” (roughly, a half-cubit by quarter-cubit) and only 3” height. More reasonable dimensions for the stone tablets would yield an even-smaller ark.

A cedar and ebony chest (33 x 24 x 25") found in King Tut's tomb has similarities to the ark as described in Exodus 25. The width is roughly equal to the height, it has a cornice around its opening, and carrying poles slide through metal rings near the chest's feet. The poles are retractable!

The “Other” Ark

To these observations, we can mention that the source of Exodus 25 is the Priestly narrative (P), typically dated to the exilic period (6^th-5^th century BCE), after Jerusalem and its Temple had been destroyed. Many scholars have cited this as reason alone to doubt that the ark ever existed at all.

While it is definitely possible that the Ark and Tabernacle never existed, the detailed descriptions in Exodus could imply that the author was familiar with the items, knew they no longer existed, but wanted to preserve their memory so that one day they might be recreated. But even if we accept this as a possibility, it doesn’t mean that the ark from Exodus 25 originally existed in the form described.

The ark is also mentioned in other parts of the Bible outside of those attributed to the Priestly writer. Deuteronomy comes from a different source tradition. Signified as “D”, this source is typically dated towards the last years of the Kingdom of Judah (7^th-6^th century BCE). Moses says in Deut 10:1-3:

At that time Yhwh said to me, “Carve out two tablets of stone like the former ones, and come up to me on the mountain, and make an ark of wood. I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets, which you smashed, and you shall put them in the ark.” So I made an ark of acacia wood, cut two tablets of stone like the former ones, and went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hand. 

In this older tradition, the ark is a simple chest of acacia wood – no gold cladding, solid gold lid or angels.

But the purpose of the ark was not solely to store the tablets of the covenant, but also for religious processions. Many ancient (and modern) cultures carry sacred relics or images in religious procession. These images would be placed on or in a box that would be carried on poles. Not allowed to use graven images, the tablets of the covenant were a substitute for an image of Yahweh. Such an object intended for public display would be larger and more resplendent than a simple wooden chest.

Ark Evolution

Suggested only as a hypothesis, the early Israelites could have employed the concept of the portable shrine. If Levites had a semi-monopoly on cultic practices and if Levites hailed from Egypt, the portable shrine would have been built along the Egyptian models they were familiar with. Containing a statue or maybe even stone tablets, it probably would have been smaller than the ark described in Exodus. Built of wood, maybe covered in thin gold foil rather than sheets of gold plate.

Once all cultic practices were centralized in Jerusalem and there was no longer a need to keep the chest portable, a new container may have been built to take its place. Much as the Temple replaced the Tabernacle, a new golden ark would have replaced the old wooden book box. Perhaps the old, sacred chest may even have been placed inside of the golden ark.

If the golden ark as described in Exodus 25 really existed and held an older, smaller wooden ark, that would explain why it is so much larger than needed to hold two stone tablets. The extra size and weight would not be an issue if the golden ark was intended to have its permanent home in the Jerusalem temple and would never be moved.

The Weight of Mystery

In the popular 1981 action film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones battled Nazis seeking the lost Ark of the Covenant. As described in the Bible, the Ark was a gold-covered box of acacia wood with a lid of solid gold, built as a container for two stone tablets on which were written the Ten Commandments. It was carried ahead of the people during the days in the wilderness when the Hebrews were en-route from Egypt to Canaan. But when it wasn’t in-transit, it sat in the inner sanctum of the Tabernacle and, later, the Temple in Jerusalem.

A Seemingly Simple Question

The instructions for how the Ark was to be constructed are provided in Exodus 25:10-22. A few weeks ago I was reading a commentary on Exodus and, thinking about the slab of gold forming the lid and all the other gold used in its construction, I had a very simple question: How much would it have weighed? Could it have been easily carried by four men?

It seems like it should be easy to calculate an answer. We know the density of acacia wood (0.54 g/cm³) and gold (19.3 g/cm³). Exodus 25:10-22 provides dimensions for the Ark’s length (2.5 cubits), width and height (both 1.5 cubits). But how long is a cubit?

A cubit is the distance between elbow and fingertips and the definition varies in different cultures and time periods (anywhere from 17.5 to 20.8 inches). A commonly-cited value is 18 inches (45.7 cm).

My thinking is that the Hebrew artisans who built the Ark for Moses would have learned their craft in Egypt. We know the length of the ancient Egyptian cubit from measuring rods discovered in New Kingdom tombs that are roughly contemporary to the time the Exodus is supposed to have taken place. The Egyptian cubit is about 52.4 cm so I’ll use that as the base measurement. This gives me 131 cm (51.6”) for the length and 79 cm (31”) for the width and height.

I am now able to calculate the surface area but to calculate the volume I’ll need to know the thickness of the wooden walls and Exodus doesn’t provide that measurement. Neither does it tells us the thickness of the solid gold lid nor the dimensions of the cherubim atop the lid.

Scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. You can actually purchase a kit (http://goldenarmor.com/arkhomepage/) that allows you to build a replica of the prop from the movie

Feast of the Assumptions

What have others come up with in estimating the missing dimensions? A simple Google search for “how heavy was the ark of the covenant” returned wildly varying answers.

WarrenMyers is one of the first results that pops up in Google, which is unfortunate because his assumptions are unsupported and his math is questionable. For example, he assumes the walls are 2” thick but calculates the wooden part of the Ark weighs only 25 lbs (based on Myers’ assumptions my math says the wood should weigh over 240 lbs). He estimates 104 lbs for the cherubim and guesses 1/32 inch (0.8 mm) for the thickness of the gold plating, eventually determining a total weight of 615 lbs.

Another of the top hits, JacquesGauvin uses some ridiculous assumptions. He assumes 3” thick walls, making the wood portion 413 lbs. His carrying poles are 6” diameter, more like fence posts. His cherubim are 1000 lbs. He guesses 0.125” (3.2 mm) for the thickness of the gold plating. His Ark finally weighs in at a whopping 4763 lbs. That’s more than twice the weight of all the gold Exodus 38:24 says was used in construction of the entire Tabernacle!

These two examples illustrate a couple of points: 1) unconstrained assumptions can vary wildly and 2) gold is the major determining factor in the weight. In Gauvin’s example, even if the weight of the acacia wood is reduced to almost nothing, you would still have an Ark weighing in excess of two tons due simply to the amount of gold used in his estimates.

Scientific Wild-Ass Guesses

A more thoughtful exercise is taken by ElihuSchatz. I found his Jewish Bible Quarterly article well after I had already started working through the issues on my own and was pleasantly surprised to see that Schatz had also identified gold as the key factor. Schatz’s Ark weighs in at 183 lbs mainly because his gold overlay is only 0.2 mm thick. But unlike the wild guesses of Myers and Gauvin, Schatz arrived at this thickness through deduction.

Exodus 38:24 tells us that 29 talents and 730 shekels of gold were used in the construction of the Tabernacle. This includes not only the Ark, but also an incense altar, table, lampstand, and the walls of the Tabernacle.A talent was 3000 shekels and archaeological evidence tells us a shekel weighed 11.3 g. In modern measures, 994 kg (2187 lbs) of gold were used for all the items in the Tabernacle.

Schatz writes (p. 116), “I calculated the total weight of the gold for all the vessels [in the tabernacle], and had to use a thickness for the gold overlay of 0.02 centimeters in order to approximate the value.” He cites the calculations made in his commentary (in Hebrew) on the book of Exodus, so I’m not able to see how he arrived at his conclusion but independently I had run some numbers on my own and arrived at the same figure. I originally was concerned that it might be too thin and would scrape off, but subsequent research told me that 0.02 cm (0.2 mm) is twice the thickness of the side of an aluminum can, so it seems that a gold overlay of that thickness would be durable.

I do have quibbles about some of Schatz’s other assumptions. For example, he estimates the walls of the Ark were 1.0 cm thick. This seems too flimsy and 2.0 cm would be more realistic. An article from the Metropolitan Museum of Art references (p. 130) an ancient Egyptian royal coffin from 2680 BCE “made of plywood, the six layers arranged with the grain running in alternate directions for strength and to prevent warping.” Each of the six layers was an eighth of an inch thick, giving a total thickness of ¾” (1.9 cm).

Also questionable is Schatz’s assertion that a 1-mm layer of gold for the cover “would have sufficient structural strength” (p. 117) to hold up his 25-kg (55 lb) cherubim. Gold has about the same elasticity of aluminum. A 1-mm piece of gold the size of a stick of chewing gum could be easily bent in your hands, so I have my doubts about its structural integrity. The inner coffin in King Tut’s tomb is made of solid gold with a thickness of 2.5-3.0 mm. My reasoning is that the ancient Egyptian goldsmiths knew what they were doing, so 3 mm seems a more realistic estimate for the thickness of the Ark’s cover.

On the bright side, I consider Schatz’s estimate of 25 kg for the two cherubim realistic. I base this on the fact that King Tut’s famous gold mask is 54 cm tall and 39 cm wide and weighs 10 kg. For comparison, the angels on the Raiders prop are 16.5” (42 cm) long and 8.75” (22 cm) tall. I think the cherubim may have been standing figures instead of crouching as in the angels from Raiders. The cherubim may also have been bigger than what the moviemakers had in mind. No one knows. But I think an estimate of 25 kg for the two cherubim puts us in the right neighborhood.

Multiple views of King Tut's gold death mask.

Putting it All Together

To arrive at an estimate for the weight of the Ark, I need to determine the weight of the acacia wood used to construct the chest, add the weight of the gold overlay, then the estimates for the solid-gold cover and cherubim. There’s also supposed to be a gold molding around the edges and rings to hold the carrying poles, but those comprise only a minor fraction of the total weight. Considering all the estimations and approximations, we can only hope to be in ballpark range for the total weight anyway.

The weight of the acacia wood using my preferred 2-cm thickness comes out to be 47 kg and the gold overlay of 0.2-mm thickness is 33 kg. The weight of the solid gold lid is 60 kg and the cherubim 25 kg. Almost half the weight is in the chest and the other half in its cover. The center of gravity would be around the point where the lid comes in contact with the chest.

The total weight using my estimations is 165 kg (362 lbs) and more than 70% of that weight (118 kg) comes from the gold. Four men could lift it but couldn’t be expected to carry it very far for very long.

Using a shorter cubit (such as the 18” cubit) dramatically reduces the estimate to 131 kg (289 lbs). Decreasing the thickness of the gold overlay to 0.1 mm further reduces the weight to 119 kg (261 lbs). Using 2.5 mm for the thickness of the cover marginally reduces the estimated weight to 111 kg (244 lbs).

As you can see, small changes in the variables can increase or decrease the estimated weight by 33% or more. You can come up with various reasons to tweak the numbers to get the weight of the Ark (and its contents) down to 180 lbs, and it might work if you only consider the Ark in isolation, but any of these tweaks will affect how much gold you end up using for all the Tabernacle items. Reducing the length of the cubit, for example, reduces the surface area of not only the Ark but all the other Tabernacle items and the amount of gold that would be needed to cover them.

Now that I have an idea how much the Ark could have weighed, in my next article I will discuss some observations I drew from this analysis and examine the question as to whether the Ark ever existed at all.

Echoes of Egypt

In the last few articles, I’ve reviewed the archaeological evidence that the Israelites emerged from the existing Canaanite population. There was no military conquest in which migrating Israelites displaced an indigenous Canaanite people as recounted in the biblical book of Joshua. The only thing that seems to set “Israelites” apart from “Canaanites” is their distinctive style of house and a lack of pig bones in their garbage dumps.

Examining the source traditions that make up the Bible, the Elohist (E) and Priestly (P) traditions insist that the divine name of Yahweh was revealed in Egypt. While the deity may have been known under the Canaanite name of El in the past, his real name is Yahweh. The worship of Yahweh as the chief deity is another distinctive belief of the Israelites.

Is there any evidence that a small group of people may have migrated from Egypt to Canaan, bringing with them some of their religious traditions, including a belief in a god named Yahweh?

Egyptian Names

The exodus and wilderness narratives mention several individuals with names that seem to be Egyptian in origin: Hur, Phinehas, Merari, Mushi, and of course Moses.

As odd as it may seem, one of the most frequently-mentioned names in the OT is not Hebrew in origin. The name Moses derives from the Egyptian mose, “is born.” We see it frequently in the names of the Egyptian pharaohs like Thutmose (“Thoth is born”) and Ramesses (“Ra is born”). In the case of Moses, the name of the Egyptian deity was lost.

Hur was the companion and assistant of Moses and Aaron. His name derives from the Egyptian god, Horus. Phinehas was the grandson of Aaron. His name derives from the Egyptian words meaning “the southerner.” Merari was the third son of Levi and Mushi was his son. The name Merari derives from the Egyptian words meaning “to love.” Mushi has the same derivation as Moses.

To be clear, Egyptian names alone mean nothing. Someone composing the stories centuries later could have made up Egyptian names to provide verisimilitude to the story. But when it comes to Moses, it does not seem as though the tradition realized his name was Egyptian in origin.

In the story of Moses being rescued from a basket (Ex2:3b-10), the Pharoah’s daughter called him Moses (Hebrew mosheh) “because I drew (Hebrew, mashah) him from the water.” She’s making a pun on the name as though it were of Hebrew origin, not a shortened form of an Egyptian name. It’s as though she is saying, “I’ll name him ‘Drew’ because I drew him from the water,” not realizing that “Drew” is a shortened form of the name “Andrew”.

The evidence suggests the name of Moses was handed down in the tradition but not its Egyptian origin. Those who later wrote it down came up with a Hebrew derivation for the name. This militates against the idea that Egyptian names were created to provide local color to the story.

Pharaoh’s daughter finding baby Moses by Konstantin Flavitsky (1830–1866) 

Egyptian Artifacts

Seven chapters in Exodus (25-31) provide the blueprint for the Tabernacle and its furnishings and six chapters (35-40) describe how those instructions were followed in its construction. As the Bible relates it, the Tabernacle was the center of Israelite religion in the pre-monarchial days just as the Temple was central to worship in the days of Solomon and beyond.

As befitting a people on the move, the Tabernacle was essentially a fancy tent with the Ark of the Covenant in its inner sanctum. As Moses and his people left one campsite, they would disassemble the Tabernacle and carry its furnishings (the Ark, lampstand, altar, etc.) to the next campsite where they would then reassemble it until it was time to move again. Once the Israelites reached Canaan, the Tabernacle was eventually established at Shiloh until David had the Ark moved to Jerusalem.

Just as the Exodus is questioned as historical fact, biblical scholars and archaeologists have doubted if such a Tabernacle ever existed. Some think it was the Priestly author’s idea for a scale model of the Jerusalem Temple adapted for desert wanderings. Others have found parallels in tent shrines built by neighboring people.

Perhaps the best comparison for the Tabernacle as described in Exodus may be the battle tent of the Pharaoh Ramesses. Both feature the main tent situated inside a courtyard. The battle tent is divided between a larger reception area and the inner sanctum where the Pharaoh resides. This matches the Tabernacle with its larger Holy area and the inner Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant, the footstool of YHWH resides. The 2:1 proportions between the inner and outer sanctums are roughly the same in both.

The Ark, too, has an Egyptian parallel in the sacred bark, a ritual object resembling a boat, usually carried on poles by priests in procession. Its main purpose was to transport gods and mummies.

A Tribe Called Levi

Looking back on the evidence so far, a pattern begins to emerge. References to Egypt as the location where God revealed his name as YHWH only come from the E and P sources, both of them of Levite origin. Of the individuals mentioned with Egyptian names, the Bible tells us most belonged to the tribe of Levi. The Tabernacle and Ark are strongly tied to cultic practices which could only be undertaken by members of the tribe of Levi.

Could it be that a small group who escaped from Egypt became known as the tribe of Levi?

References to the Levites in the Bible are not consistent and somewhat confusing, but two points stand out: the Levites were not given a territory of their own in Canaan and were the only tribe allowed to serve as priests. These are not unrelated.

Outside the urban economy of the Canaanite city-states, there was little opportunity for artisans, craftsmen, and so on. Most of the residents of the Canaanite hill country needed land to grow food for subsistence. If an incoming group from Egypt arrived after territory had already been doled out to various clans and tribes, they would have found themselves landless and in need of a way to make a living. Serving as priests of the central sanctuary of Shiloh and at local shrines throughout the countryside would have sufficed.

These Egyptian refugees would accommodate their religious beliefs and practices to those of the indigenous Canaanite population. The god Yahweh that they had worshipped in Egypt (and perhaps earlier if they were originally from Midian) would be recast as another name for the Canaanite god El who the locals already worshipped. As the official teachers of religion, the Levites could instruct the Israelites in the Egyptian practice of circumcision, the kind treatment of slaves, and tales of the plagues.

Because they were resident aliens, perhaps it is not surprising that the Levite sources in the Bible commands 52 times that resident aliens are not to be mistreated “because we were once aliens in Egypt.”

Out of Egypt, I am Called Yahweh

Previous articles have discussed evidence for multiple sources in the creation and flood stories. In the final version of these stories that appears in our bibles, the Bible’s editor (called the “redactor”) sometimes keeps the sources intact (as in the two separate creation tales) and other times interweaves them (as in the combined flood story). Scholars can identify the separate strands based on terminology, consistent themes, and narrative flow. One of the themes that sets one source apart from the other is when God’s name is revealed.

What’s in a Name?

According to the source known as the “Yahwist” or “J”, God revealed his name around the time of Adam’s grandson:

To Seth also a son was born, and he named him Enosh. At that time people began to invoke the name of YHWH.” (Gen 4:26)

Thereafter, the J source exclusively uses the name YHWH (usually translated as “the Lord” in modern bibles) in narration. That is why this source was named the “Yahwist.” Ancient Hebrew consisted of only consonants, so we don’t know for sure exactly how it was pronounced, but scholars believe it would have been “Yah-WEH” (accent on last syllable).

Other sources – the “Elohist” (E) and “Priestly” (P) – hold that the divine name YHWH was first revealed to Moses. Before Moses, God was known to the ancestors under different names. For example, in the P account of the covenant with Abram, we read,

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, YHWH appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am El Shaddai.” (Gen 17:1)

The P source explains in this verse that Abram only knows the deity by the name El Shaddai (“God Almighty” in most English translations). But when YHWH speaks to Moses, the text reads:

God also spoke to Moses and said to him: “I am YHWH. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but by my name ‘YHWH’ I did not make myself known to them.” (Ex 6:2-3)

These verses are taken from the P version of the call of Moses (Ex 6:2-12). God’s commission to Moses to lead his people out of Egypt is a “triplet,” a story recounted in three sources: P, J, and E. The P version is isolated and intact, but the J and E versions are combined in an earlier passage (Ex 3:1-4:23). The E source predominates in this longer passage:

But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘YHWH, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ (Ex 3:13-15)

There’s a lot going on in this passage that doesn’t concern us at this point. The key thing to note is that, as in the P version, the ancestors knew the deity under different names but God first reveals his true name to Moses. Both E and P agree on this point: the name YHWH only came into use after the exodus from Egypt.

Could this be a clue that refugees from Egypt brought the worship of YHWH with them to Canaan?

Charlton Heston as Moses learns the name of God in the burning bush scene from Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 version of The Ten Commandments.

The Midianite Connection

In my last article, we saw that archaeology revealed the early Israelites were Canaanites, speaking a Canaanite dialect and practicing the Canaanite religion. In that religion, the main god was known as “El” (as in El Shaddai). Of the hundreds of city names in Canaan, many include the name El (for example, Beth-el, for “house of God”) but none include the name YHWH. Yet the worship of YHWH eventually became synonymous with Israel (etymology uncertain, perhaps means “God rules”).

How did Canaanites go from worshipping El to YHWH? Let’s go back to Exodus 3-4 and the commission of Moses. Other than Moses being told God’s true name, we also have the indication of where this occurred:

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. (Ex 3:1)

Both J and E tie Moses to Midian, even going so far to say that Moses’ father-in-law was a Midianite priest. Both also locate God’s mountain (called Sinai in J and Horeb in E) in or near Midian. It is reasonable then to look for the origins of the cult of YHWH in Midian. (Midian was located east of the Gulf of Aqaba, south of present-day Jordan, in what would now be the extreme northwest corner of Saudi Arabia.)

We also have Egyptian texts from the 14th-13th centuries BCE that mention semi-nomads called the “Shasu of yhw3” who were located in the general vicinity of Midian. Egyptologists derive the name “Shasu” from an Egyptian verb meaning “to wander.” The Egyptian hieroglyphs transliterated as “yhw3” would probably have been pronounced “Yahu” and is strangely similar to the name of Israel’s God, YHWH. It may have been a place name or it could have been their patron god.

The pieces seem to fit together. Let’s say you have a small group who escape from Egypt – perhaps captured Canaanites or Midianites who had been enslaved – and, on their way to eventually settling in the hill country of Canaan, they pass through Midian. When they finally arrive in the central hill country, they bring with them their story of deliverance from Egypt and attribute their freedom to the god they followed in Midian, who they now call Yahweh.

Certainly the Midianite connection is strong, but so are the Egyptian connections. There are Egyptian details in the story that may go back to the original story told by those who escaped Egypt. We’ll look at those in the next article.

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.

Absence of Exodus

The one event from the Bible for which we should be able to find ample evidence in extra-biblical sources is the exodus from Egypt. According to the biblical account, various plagues wracked the nation of Egypt over the course of several months. This was then followed by the exit of 600,000 men and their families (estimated population of over 2 million) from Egypt. When the pharaoh attempted to stop them with a squadron of 600 chariots, they were drowned in the Red Sea. The 2 million people wandered the desert for 40 years before finally settling in the land of Canaan after defeating the indigenous population in a series of battles.

Surely, events on such a scale should have left a record in either Egyptian texts or archaeological strata that would allow us to assign them to an appropriate point in world history.

Getting the Date Right

According to the Bible (1 Kgs 6:1), work on Solomon’s Temple began in the 480th year since the Exodus. Since we know that date with some degree of confidence, a simple calculation would give us 1447 BCE for the date of the exodus. But that places the exodus during the reign of Thutmose III when Egypt was at the height of its powers and Canaan was firmly under his control. Egypt’s power over Canaan only began to weaken in the 13th century BCE.

The Bible also provides a clue that suggests the 15th century is not the right era. Ex 1:11 reports that the enslaved Hebrews were forced to construct the supply cities of “Pithom and Rameses.” Most experts identify the biblical city of “Rameses” as the old Hyksos capital of Avaris (modern-day Tell ed-Dab’a). The city was destroyed in 1530 BCE and long abandoned until it was rebuilt as the royal city of Pi-ramesse during the reign of Ramesses II (1279-1213 BCE). The construction referenced in Ex 1:11, therefore, could only have taken place in the 13th century.

We also can’t look at Egypt in isolation, but have to consider what happened in Canaan once the Israelites arrive. All the experts agree that a major break in the archaeological record indicating a shift from an urban “Canaanite” to a rural “Israelite” culture occurred at the end of the Bronze Age, ca. 1250-1150 BCE. If a large number of people suddenly settled in Canaan from elsewhere, it could only have happened in this period.

Therefore, the mid-13th century is the era in which we need to situate the biblical stories of exodus.

Missing Evidence

We can’t quite yet call it a day, though. The big events recounted in the Book of Exodus should have left plenty of evidence in both the written and in the archaeological record, but many have searched and found nothing. There are no Egyptian records of a series of plagues that would surely have destroyed the economy and killed thousands. No records of a mass migration of 2 million former slave workers. No record of a major military defeat in a freak tidal wave.

The typical counter-argument is that Egyptians do not record their defeats. True, Egyptians did put a positive spin on things, but we don’t see that, either. Where are the boasts of a pharaoh who forcefully expelled troublesome aliens from his land or bravely rescued his soldiers from a flood? Sure, there could have been Egyptian texts or inscriptions that did not survive, but we have to make judgments based on the evidence we do have.

And there’s no archaeological evidence of the desert wanderings, either. Two million people could not have passed through the Sinai desert and left behind no evidence behind. It’s certainly not because people weren’t motivated to look or looked in the wrong places. Any discoverers of sunken Egyptian chariots or ruins of ancient Israelite desert encampments would have their names written in the history books, but alas! At some point you have to admit that nothing has been found because there’s nothing there to find.

The First Thanksgiving 1621 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1899) shows many common misconceptions such as the outfits worn by the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag.

Where Does That Leave Us?

While many scholars believe the exodus story was invented by the Israelites as their own rags-to-riches tale, there are some biblical clues that some portion of Israel recalled once having lived in Egypt. For example, several of the individuals named in the biblical story of the exodus – Moses, Hophni, Hur, Phinehas – have Egyptian names. The description of the Tabernacle (or Tent of Meeting) has architectural parallels with the war tent of Ramesses II and the Ark of the Covenant has parallels with ritual Egyptian barks. (I hope to go into more detail on this in a future article.) These details could have been invented hundreds of years later to provide Egyptian color to the story, but they could also be relics of memories handed down for hundreds of years.

The prophet Amos wrote in the 8th century BCE, “Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor?” (Amos 9:7) Caphtor is the area of Cypress and Crete and historians agree that the Philistines did arrive in Canaan from there in the 12th century BCE. If Amos knew where Philistines originated 400 years previously, why would we not expect him to know the origins of his own people?

It is not inconceivable that a relatively small group of Semite immigrants left Egypt during the time of Ramesses and settled in the hill country of Canaan, bringing with them tales of having once lived as strangers in an alien land. We would not expect Egyptians to record the departure of a small group nor would we find traces of them in the desert unless we knew exactly where to look. No plagues, no miracle of the sea, just one of many quiet migrations in and out of Egypt.

But if this theory is true, then only a fraction of the people who became Israel would be able to trace their story back to Egypt. How did the entire nation of Israel come to see themselves as having been brought up from the land of Egypt?

Americans can look to Thanksgiving as an example. While very few Americans can trace their ancestry back to one of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower, we teach our children the story of Pilgrims sharing food with Native Americans every Thanksgiving as though it were our story. The Pilgrims’ desire to flee religious persecution in Europe became a central theme in American history and culture.

And what happened once the Egyptian pilgrims arrived in their promised land? We’ll look at the stories of the conquest of Canaan in my next article.

Biblical Dating

No, this article is not about whether or not the Bible says it’s okay to kiss on the first date. (But there will be some discussion of begetting.) Mainly, we’re going to talk about how can we assign a date to events reported in the Bible and if the relative chronology provided by the Scriptures is reliable.

When Was Christ Born?

In my last article I discussed how, in the 17th century, Archbishop James Ussher of Ireland used time indicators in the Bible to develop a biblical chronology covering 4000 years from the creation of the world to the birth of Jesus. Following the thinking of the time, he placed the birth of Jesus in the year 4 BC. How could Jesus be born 4 years “Before Christ”?

Back in antiquity, years were counted from the beginning of the reign of a monarch (e.g., the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar) or some other notable event (e.g., the founding of Rome). In the 6th century CE, a monk named Dionysius Exiguus (Latin for “Dionysius the Humble”) decided that we should count the years from Christ’s birth, not from the reign of the 3rd-century Roman Emperor Diocletian who had been a notorious persecutor of Christians. Therefore, he reckoned years should be dated either “before Christ” or “years of our Lord” (in Latin, anno domini). (There is no Year 0 and his calendar goes from 1 BC to AD 1.)

The problem is that Dionysius didn’t get the year of Christ’s birth right. Matt 2:1 and Luke 1:5 both agree that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great. Dionysius thought that Herod died 754 years after the founding of Rome (AUC, for ab urbe condita, from the founding of the city), but Herod died in 750 AUC. This mistake was known in Ussher’s day and their best guess was that Jesus was therefore born in 4 BCE. Historians today would estimate that Jesus was born a few years before  the death of Herod (e.g., 7-6 BCE).

It's a well-known fact that back in the 50s, guys could only afford one milkshake.

It’s Written in the Stars

All of which raises the question: How we can date any event in the past to any degree of accuracy? Occasionally, we get lucky. The Babylonians, for example, not only recorded the reigns of kings and dates of battles, but they also recorded astronomical observations. On one astronomical diary for the 37th regnal year of Nebuchadnezzar, there are about thirty precise observations of the moon and planets that allow astronomers to determine the 37th regnal year ran from March/April 568 to March/April 567 BCE. Such dates are called “absolute dates” because we know with mathematical precision when they occurred on our BCE/CE calendar.

From such absolute dates, the relative dates in a chronology can be assigned. For example, with the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar fixed as an absolute date, it can be easily calculated that his 18th year, during which he destroyed Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple was 587/586 BCE. With absolute dates, the entire Babylonian chronology can be recreated. And the same can be done using data from the records of other cultures.

Then, by cross-checking events mentioned in the biblical Books of Kings with known dates in the chronologies of Assyria, Babylonia, and other surrounding kingdoms, scholars can establish with some degree of confidence that the Divided Monarchy (Israel in the north, Judah in the south) began with the death of Solomon in 931/930 BCE.

But that’s the end of the road because if we try to push back before the time of Solomon, it becomes increasingly difficult to find synchronisms between the Bible and historical records from the surrounding nations. We’re left with only the witness of the Bible and its authors were not trying to document events with historical accuracy.

The Lost Generations 

As we saw in my previous article, the Bible records the Exodus occurred after the Israelites had lived 430 years (to the day!) in Egypt. Solomon began construction on the Temple in the 480th year since the Exodus. That’s 910 years to account for. Yet when we look at genealogical lists such as Ruth 4:18-22, there are simply not enough generations.

Gen 46:12 says that Judah, his son Perez, and his grandson Hezron were 3 of the 70 members of Jacob’s family who went down to Egypt. An adult Nahshon was a chieftan of the tribe of Judah (Num 2:3; 7:12) during the desert wanderings. Over 400 years separate Hezron from Nahshon, but only 3 generations.

It’s even crazier for Moses. According to Gen 46:11, Levi and his son Kohath migrated to Egypt with Jacob. But according to Ex 6:18-20, Kohath was Moses’ grandfather and lived to be 133. Amram, Moses’s father, died at age 137. Adding these two ages gives you 270 years. Even if they both fathered children on their deathbed, that’s not enough time to have an 80-year old Moses at the time of the Exodus.

I was curious how fundamentalists handle this and one such solution is the same as that used by Archbishop Ussher: follow the LXX which says the 430 years covers the time the Israelites spent in both Canaan as well as Egypt. This drops the time the Israelites spent solely in Egypt to 215 years and reduces the gap between Moses and his grandfather to a mere 135 years.

This still leaves 480 years from the time of Nahshon to the time of Solomon and only 6 generations separating them. Did each man father his son at the age of 80? Interestingly, 1 Chr 6:3-8 records 10 generations from Aaron (Moses’ brother and brother-in-law of Nahshon) to Zadok (priest of Jerusalem at the time of Solomon). Ten generations covering the same timespan in one genealogy as six generations in a different genealogy suggests that some intermediate ancestors were lost or one (or both) are both fictional.

An Unreliable Witness

Despite the earnest desires of biblical literalists, the time indicators in Scripture are not salvageable as historical data any earlier than the 10th century BCE. And it’s not just the dates but the events themselves. While there are a couple of mentions in extra-biblical inscriptions to a “house of David,” there are no references to a King David or a King Solomon outside of those in the Bible. There are no mentions in Egyptian chronicles of plagues or a mass exodus of Hebrew slaves. Archaeological evidence does not support the conquest story described in the Book of Joshua. All of this leads scholars to question whether any of the events described prior to the Divided Monarchy happened at all.

We will explore these topics further in my next article.