Jericho

Introduction to the Site

Jericho is one of the most interesting archaeological sites in Palestine. The Jericho of the Old Testament period before the Hellenistic is called Tell es-Sultan and is located in the Jordan valley approximately 16 km (10 miles) northwest of the northern bank of Dead Sea and 825 ft below sea level. The ancient city of Jericho grew around a spring called 'Ain es-Sultan or Elisha's Fountain. This ancient location is about 2 km (1.24 miles) from the modern city of Jericho. The Jericho of the Hellenistic, New Testament, and Islamic periods was located on the nearby mounds of Tulul Abu el-'Alayiq, 2 km west of modern er-Riha. Jericho has been settled and resettled numerous times, because it has a good water supply, a favorable climate, and the land is fertile. Tell es-Sultan was occupied on and off throughout the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages and during the Babylonian/Persian era to the Byzantine times. The Hasmonean kings, those descended from Mattathias, Judas Maccabeus's (Judah Maccabee's) father, and the Herodian kings had impressive palaces near Jericho, where the winters are milder than in Jerusalem. Additionally Jericho is a strategically important site providing "access to the heartland of Canaan" (Wood 45). This would explain why the Israelites made the conquest of Jericho there first priority, when conquering Palestine (Joshua 1-6) and why Bacchides built a fortress at Jericho (1 Macc 9:50).

Introduction to the Biblical Accounts concerning Jericho

The ancient city of Jericho (Tell es-Sultan) is mentioned several times in the Old Testament. The Israelites camped across from Jericho (Num 22:1; 26:3). The best known Old Testament story concerning the city is the story of the conquest of Jericho, the first Israelite conquest within Palestine (Joshua 2-6). In this story Joshua, who has succeed Moses as the leader of the Israelites, sends out spies to reconnoiter the land, especially the city of Jericho. A harlot named Rahab hides the spies from Jericho's soldiers and tells them how to escape. To repay her kindness, the spies promise that Rahab and her family will be spared during the destruction of Jericho (Joshua 2). After the spies return, Joshua has the people of Israel follow the Ark of the Covenant across the Jordan. As soon as the soles of the priests carrying the ark touched the waters of the Jordan, the waters stopped, and the people were able to cross the Jordan on dry land, just as had happened with Moses (Joshua 3). Once in the land, Joshua circumcises all the men of Israel at the command of the LORD, and the men of Israel rest and recuperate (Joshua 5). After the men of Israel had fully recuperated, Joshua commands the army of Israel to walk around the city of Jericho, following seven priests with rams' horn trumpets and the Ark of the Covenant one time every day for six days. On the seventh day, instead of circling the city one time they circle it seven times. After the priests have blown the trumpets, Joshua orders the people to shout. The people then shout as the trumpets are blown again, and the wall around Jericho falls down "flat," allowing the Israelites to walk "up into the city." The Israelites killed all the people of Jericho except Rahab and her family and burnt the city to the ground (Joshua 6). Jericho at Tell es-Sultan is mentioned a few other times in the Old Testament.

The city of Jericho at Tulul Abu el-'Alayiq is mentioned a few times in the First Book of Maccabees. This Jericho is one place where Bacchides, one of the leaders of the Maccabees' enemies, built a fortress (1 Macc 9:50). Ptolemy was governor of the plain of Jericho and Jericho was where he massacred Simon and his sons (1 Mac 16:11-17). The Book of Sirach mentions rose plants as a plant associated with Jericho (Sirach 24:14). In the New Testament Jericho is mentioned as the place, where Jesus healed two blind men (Matt 20:29-34) and as the home of Zacchaeus, the short tax collector who climbed a tree to get a view of Jesus (Luke 19:1-10).

History of Archaeological Investigation and Evaluation

Jericho was the second site in the Holy Land to be excavated; only Jerusalem was excavated earlier (Wood 47). There had always existed an interest in this city. The first preliminary excavations of Jericho were conducted by Charles Warren, a British engineer, in 1868, but two German archaeologists Ernst Sellin and Carl Watzinger carried out the first scientific excavations at Jericho from 1907-1909 and conducted excavations again in 1911. They excavated at both Tell es-Sultan and Tulul Abu el-'Alayiq. They collected a lot of valuable information that is still useful. Their original interpretation of the data they collected at Tell es-Sultan seemed to confirmed the conquest narrative of the Book of Joshua, but they later reinterpreted the evidence and came to the conclusion that the site had been unoccupied, when the conquest would have occurred.

John Garstang, a British archaeologist, excavated at Jericho next, because he did not agree with the Sellin and Watzinger's findings. His excavation lasted from 1930.1936. His excavation techniques were crude by today's standards, thus the Anchor Bible Dictionary declares "Garstang's stratigraphy and dating is [sic] partially unreliable" (Netzer 725). After concluding his research he came to the conclusion that the conquest narrative did conform the archaeological evidence. His conclusions about Jericho are summarized by the following quotation:

In a word, in all material details and in date the fall of Jericho took place as described in the Biblical narrative. Our demonstration is limited, however to material observations: the wall fell, shaken apparently by an earthquake, and the city was destroyed by fire, about 1400 B.C. These are the basic facts resulting from our investigations. The link with Joshua and the Israelites is only circumstantial but it seems to be solid and without a flaw. (Wood 49) Kathleen Kenyon was the next archaeologist after Garstang to excavate in Jericho. She excavated in Jericho from 1952-1958. She used improved methods of stratigraphy developed in the late 1940's and early 1950's. She found many details which would seem to conform to the Biblical account of the conquest of Jericho. She believed the city had been sieged. The city was strongly fortified as was Jericho in the Biblical account (Joshua 2:5, 7, 15; 6:5, 20). The attack had occurred just after the harvest time (Joshua 2:5, 7, 15). The siege was short as was evidenced by the abundance of food within the city (Joshua 6:1). Had there been a long drawn out siege of the city, the food supply would have been depleted. The walls of the city had been leveled in such a way as to allow invaders to literally walk up into the city (Joshua 6:20). The city was not plundered (Joshua 6:17-18). The city was burned (Joshua 6:24). (Wood 57) However she dated the destroyed city to 1550 B.C. This date is 150 years to early for the city to be the city Joshua's armies destroyed. During the period in which Joshua would have lived, she believed the city to be uninhabited. According to Bryant Wood she dated the city "almost exclusively" by the absence of a type of imported pottery common to the era around 1400 B.C., but he admits, "we must piece together scattered statements in various writings" in order to reach this conclusion (50). She concluded, as had Sellin and Watzinger before her that the Biblical account of the conquest of Jericho was untenable.

Although Bryant Wood had been interested in the question of Jericho, neither he nor any other scholar had access to the information necessary to critically evaluate her conclusions and make an independent assessment of them. The stratigraphic data from the excavation was not published until 1981, and volumes on the pottery excavated from the tell were not published until 1982 and 1983 (Wood 49). In 1990, he was finally able to publish a reevaluation of her work. He challenges her assertion that the city of Jericho was sieged around 1550 B.C. He claims that there is an abundance of local pottery at the site in the sieged layer which she did not evaluate as evidence. He asserts that there are types of local pottery common to time period of 1400 B.C. at the site. He points out that her conclusion about the missing type of imported pottery is "on a very limited excavation area" (50) and suggests that the type of pottery may have been found by Garstang. At the time of Garstang's investigation the significance of this type of pottery as an indicator of a particular era was not known, but Garstang's account does seem to describe it (52). Carbon-14 testing of a sample of charcoal taken from the site, indicated a date of 1410 B.C., plus or minus 40 years. This Radiocarbon date would seem to firmly establish that whatever catastrophic event destroyed the city of Jericho during the Bronze Age it happened in the period around 1400 B.C. and not in the period around 1550 B.C., as Kenyon had maintained (53). Additionally, many scholars believe the destruction of the walls was caused by an earthquake, which could also explain the temporary damning of the Jordan (Joshua 3:16) (Lemonick).

Wood makes a strong case for the accuracy of the Biblical narrative of the destruction of Jericho, but ultimately it only tells us that the events recorded in the Book of Joshua do not disagree with the archaeological record. As Time magazine noted, "Other experts find little fault with Wood's archaeology, but they are more skeptical about his linking of the evidence with Biblical events". Most scholars reject the historicity of Joshua in favor of belief in peaceful conquest. The prevailing belief in academia is that the Israelites came in far later than 1400 B.C., perhaps by two centuries, and they came "not as military conquerors bust as a wave of immigrants" (Lemonick).

Wood's use of Kenyon's observations and data to disprove Kenyon's conclusions shows us how important good methods are in archaeological field work. She did not go out and prove a hypothesis destroying the very evidence in the process, as one could argue earlier archaeologists had done. Instead she recorded the data which she had collected precisely, allowing those that come after her to test her hypotheses and inferences. In this case, we can see that in the future archaeologists will be able to employ new theoretical and practical insights to examine the evidence. This helps to turn archaeology into a real science, in which theories and hypotheses can actually be verified by repeated testing.

Selected Bibliography

Goerwitz, Richard L., "Bible Browser Basic Home Page," http://goon.stg.brown.edu/bible_browser/pbeasy.shtml, Bible Browser.

Lemonick, Michael D., "Score One for the Bible: Fresh Clues Support the Story of Joshua at the walls of Jericho," Time. March 5,1990, p. 59

Netzer, Ehud, "Jericho," vol. 3, p. 723-740,The Anchor Bible Dictionary. New York, NY, USA: Doubleday, 1990.

Statmueller, Michael, Paul Van De Burg, Jana Vande Keift, & Gary Sicard, "Archaeology in the Bible - Jericho," http://www.wartburg.edu/inside/israel/Jericho1.html.

Wood, Bryant, "Jericho," Biblical Archaeology Review. March/April 1990.