TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/030590/0305300.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 3.5 KB | 83 lines

                                                                                SCIENCE, Page 59

Score One for the Bible


Fresh clues support the story of Joshua at the walls of Jericho


    "So the people shouted when the priests blew the trumpets.
And it happened when the people heard the sound of the trumpet,
and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell
down flat. Then the people went up into the city, every man
straight before him, and they took the city."

     -- Joshua 6:20


    It is one of the most dramatic events chronicled in the Old
Testament, but for generations scholars have debated whether
the Israelites' assault on Jericho was fact or myth. Over the
past three decades, the consensus has gone against the biblical
version. The late British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon
established in the 1950s that while the ancient city was indeed
destroyed, it happened around 1550 B.C., some 150 years before
Joshua could have shown up.

    But archaeologist Bryant Wood, writing in the March/April
issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, claims that Kenyon was
wrong. Based on a re-evaluation of her research, which was
published in detail only recently, Wood says that the city's
walls could have come tumbling down at just the right time to
match the biblical account. While that does not prove that the
event happened, it does give plausibility to the Old Testament
version.

    Kenyon's dating of Jericho's destruction was based largely
on the fact that she failed to find a type of decorative
pottery, imported from Cyprus, that was popular in the region
around 1400 B.C. Its absence, she reasoned, meant that the city
had long since become uninhabited. But Wood, an ancient-pottery
expert now at the University of Toronto, argues that Kenyon's
excavations were made in a poorer part of the city, where the
expensive imported pottery would have been absent in any case.
And he says that other pottery, dug up in Jericho in the 1930s,
was common in 1400 B.C.

    Except for the disputed dating, Kenyon's discoveries at
Jericho were largely consistent with the Bible story. For one
thing, she found that the city's walls had fallen in a way
suggestive of sudden collapse. Many scholars think the
destruction was caused by an earthquake, which could also
account for a temporary damming of the Jordan River described
in the Bible. Moreover, Kenyon found bushels of grain on the
site. That is consistent with the Bible's assertions that
Jericho was conquered quickly. If the city had capitulated
after a long siege, the grain would have been used up.

    A thick layer of soot at the site, which according to
radioactive carbon-14 dating was laid down about 1400 B.C.,
supports the biblical idea that the city was burned, not simply
conquered. Finally, Egyptian amulets found in Jericho graves
can be dated to around 1400 B.C. as well. Says Wood: "It looks
to me as though the biblical stories are correct."

    Other experts find little fault with Wood's archaeology, but
they are more skeptical about his linking of the evidence with
biblical events. The most serious sticking point: few scholars
think Joshua and his fellows entered the land of Canaan as
early as 1400 B.C. Most bethe Israelites came about 200 years
later, and then not as military conquerors but as a wave of
immigrants. So the scholarly disputes over Joshua's military
feats are likely to continue. In matters of faith, science can
never provide the ultimate answers.


By Michael D. Lemonick. Reported by Katherine L. Mihok/New York.