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Date:         Sun, 24 Jan 1993 23:09:06 EST
From:         "Spawn of a Jewish Carpenter (Cindy Smith)" <cms@DRAGON.COM>
Subject: Re: Some notes on Joshua and Jericho

13 January 1993

Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings.  There was a 600 year gap between the
events told in these books and their writing down.  They occurred in:

        1250 B.C.

but were written in:

        640 B.C.

The four books were finished around Israel's extreme necessity.
Leviticus was written after the Babylonian Exile.  This is based on
the altar descriptions, which are cultically sophisticated.  They
wrote the history 600 years removed to save the people.  It bonds you.
It preserves them in and for the future.

 Ai.  7000 men.  Army of 4000.

 You must do these things to be in recovery.  Joshua 24:14.  They are
not optional.

 Chapter:  The Promised Land in Anderson's OT.  Page 133.

20 January 1993

 2 Kings written in 587 B.C.  King Zedekiah -- his sons were killed
before his eyes, he was blinded, and then led in chains to Babylon.
The Babylonian Exile.

 This is a meditative history.  Restoration under Ezrah-Nehemiah.

 The events of Joshua occurred in 1260 B.C.  Book of JOSHUA a
religious creed.  Here I take my stand.

Inconsistencies:  Too much blood, even of my enemies
                  vengeance
                  God commanding the violence
                  historical errors

1.  The reason for the dark times is our apostasy.  We have not been
    faithful.

2.  God let them go to be with the enemy.

3.  Help

4.  God responds.

Joshua 6:  Raise the war cry.  The weapons:  the Liturgy.  Priests
blowing the shofar.  The ban.  Not a shred of literalcy to Joshua.

Speeches:  God    1:2-9
           Joshua 1:10-15
           Us     1:16-18

7 Days around Jericho == 7 Days of Creation

Warfare imagery was the "costume" of 600 years previous.

command
execute

INSERTION INTO NOTES.  BEGIN.

  The Anchor Bible Dictionary, under the heading JERICHO, says in the
section under Late Bronze Age Jericho:

        The meager remains of LB Jericho, therefore, suggest that the
        settlement was relatively small and fairly poor (however, for
        a recent reevaluation of these remains, see Wood 1990).  As
        Bienkowski (1986: 124) has shown, a study of the settlement
        patterns of the LB sites in Canaan shows that only eight of
        the seventy-six known settlements were fortified.  This
        decline in the fortunes of Jericho and other sites in Canaan
        is the direct result of the establishment of the Egyptian
        18th Dyn. and the expulsion of the Kyksos into Palestine
        (Kenyon 1973:  555-56).

        10.  Iron Age (ca. 1200-587 B.C.).  After Jericho was
        abandoned during the early part of LB IIb, it was not
        thought to be reoccupied to any great extent until the
        7th century B.C.  However, a recent study of the pottery
        from the German excavations by the Weipperts (1976:  105-48)
        has revealed the presence of both Iron Age I and II forms.
        Garstang's "Cremation Pit" (Tomb 11) also may be dated
        to Iron Age I (1933: 36 and fig. 11) and the late
        10th century B.C.  (Tushingham 1965:487).  The biblical
        account in 1 Kgs 16:34 suggests that the site was first
        reoccupied and fortified by Hiel the Bethelite during the
        time of Ahab (early 9th century B.C.).

 Under the heading JOSHUA, it says:

        According to a widely held thesis, the entire block of
        material from Joshua through 2 Kings in the Hebrew Bible
        was composed by an individual or a school, the
        Deuteronomistic Historian(s) (Dtr), who lived in the late
        7th to middle 6th century B.C. (Noth NDH; cf. Cross CMHE,
        274-89) and utilized a variety of sources, of varying
        historical value.  Some tradition critics have concluded
        that the sources for Joshua 2-9 belonged to the genre of
        etiological sagas and have minimal historical value (Atl
        KISchr, 176-92; Noth Josua HAT, 11-12; Fohrer 1968:
        200-201).  In any case it is frequently questioned whether the
        Ephraimite Joshua would likely have been a central figure in
        events leading to occupation of Benjaminite territory
        (Joshua 2-9).  Some historians (e.g., Alt KISchr, 176-92);
        Gottwald 1979:  153) theorize that Joshua established a
        reputation as a warrior in the battle of Beth-horon
        (Josh 10:1-15), a site on Ephraimite soil.  This reputation,
        plus his decisive role in the Shechem assembly (Joshua 24)
        led to his name's being incorporated into other stories of
        neighboring regions.  Noth (Josua HAT, 61, 139) acknowledge
        Joshua's role in the Shechem assembly but believed that
        the original hero of the battle of Beth-horon was a
        now-unknown Benjaminite hero whom Joshua displaced as the
        account was transmitted.   Another (Weinfeld 1988:329-32) is
        that it was Joshua's settlement of Timnath-serah (Josh 19:50)
        that established his military reputation and eventually led
        to a magnified role.  Yet another theory is that virtually
        the entire body of Joshua material is fiction created by Dtr
        and even later writers (Van Seters 1983:  322-37).

        A different group of scholars has argued that etiology can be
        shown not to have been a controlling motive in the Conquest
        stories and that the testimony of archaeological evidence
        generally confirms the historicity of these narratives
        (cf. Albright 1963:  24-34).  Consequently, while
        acknowledging that the settlement in Canaan was more
        complicated that the account in Joshua implies, they have
        credited to Joshua a historical role which is much closer
        to that reported in the OT (cf. IDB 2:546-48; BHI, 129-43;
        de Vaux EHI, 593-680; Boling and Wright Joshua AB, 72; but
        see 212 and 243-44).

Elsewhere, in section 2 of the Joshua, Book of section, it says:

        It is a credible conclusion that nearly one-fourth of the book
        of Joshua reflects the story-telling and liturgical
        reenactment of "conquest" at a Gilgal sanctuary, which
        continued to flourish (2 Kgs 2:1; 4--38) long after the
        legitimating role had been taken over by royal sanctuaries:
        Jerusalem in the S, Bethel and Dan in the N.  Thereafter
        Gilgal is denounced by prophets from both the N and the S
        (Hos 4:15; 9:15; 12:11; Amos 4:14; 5:15).

        It is possible to make out broad lines of the "ritual
        conquest" formerly celebrated at Gilgal, as worked out
        originally by Kraus (1951) and others (esp. Soggin 1966),
        later appropriated in the Jerusalem cultus and postmonarchic
        circles (Cross CMHE, 103-11):

        1.  The people sanctify themselves as for a divinely
            sanctioned war, or to approach a sanctuary (Josh 3:5).

        2.  The covenant ark, throne of the deity and war palladium,
            is carried in solemn procession ( = battle array ) to the
            Gilgal sanctuary.

        3.  The Jordan, temporarily dammed, plays the role of the
            Red Sea.

        4.  Twelve stones are set up at the sanctuary (cf. Exod 24:4),
            symbolic of the covenanted tribes.

        5.  The fighting force is circumcised and the Passover
            celebrated.

        6.  The angelic general of Yahweh's army appears at the holy
            place.

 In the section on "Archaeology and Social World," the author asserts
that "energy spent in debating the pertinence of archaeology for
interpretation of Joshua (Wright JOSHUA AB, 74-80) is as nothing
compared to the pace of exploration and excavation on both sides of
the Jordan in the same period (Boling 1988).  Here it will be better
to reserve judgment about what archaeology can and cannot do, while
describing what archaeologists have found that may be pertinent."

        The site of Jericho (Tell es-Sultan), once a strongly
        fortified city with an urban tradition going back to a
        Pre-Pottery Neolithic era, appears to have been little, if
        anything, more than the residence of a local strongman at a
        defunct town site in the 14th century, with no surviving
        evidence of occupation in the 13th century.  A variation on
        the theory that Jericho was scene of a "ritual conquest"
        combines evidence from archaeology and medical history
        (Hulse 1971), readint the story of Jericho as the ritual
        cursing of a disease-ridden oasis.  If so, the unique
        treatment of Jericho as manifesting public health policy
        will make sense, as well as the execution of Achan and
        family together with contaminated objects in an effort at
        control of pestilential disease (Bolin, JOSHUA AB, 214-15;
        1983).  There are indications that the "ban" (Hebrew herem)
        improbably generalized to virtually genocidal proportions by
        the Deuteronomistic Historians, originated in such ad hoc
        degrees (Meyers 1978).  For yet another possible explanation
        of the gap between narrative and strata at Jericho, see below.

 "Below" the author asserts that "while the battle of Jericho is
mostly liturgical....the story of [Ai] The Ruin is entirely
etiological."  Later the author says, "The possible correlations
between narrative claims and excavated strata thus appear minimal.  On
the other hand, the idioms 'put to the sword' or 'put under the ban'
(herem), using formulaically in the material, may not mean total
destruction, if the purpose was the elimination royal opposition in
order to take over habitable towns and if the herem was originally an
ad hoc decree regarding the taking of booty or protection against
epidemic and the like."

END OF CITATIONS FROM ANCHOR BIBLE DICTIONARY.

The Anchor Bible Commentary from the book of Joshua says:

        No traces of a fortification wall have been found at Tell
        es-Sultan (the only known candidate for Old Testament Jericho)
        which might have collapsed late in the Bronze Age or early in
        Iron I (that is, somewhere in the late thirteenth to
        mid-twelfth centuries B.C.) to admit the Bene Israel.  By
        that time Jericho was already a city that was many millennia
        old, with a history of human habitation, reflecting a high
        level of social organization in an early (pre-pottery) phase
        of the Neolithic or New Stone Age....

        When in the following Middle Bronze period Jericho revived, it
        was provided at last with an elaborate fortification system.
        Near the foot of the tell was a stone retaining wall, which
        supported a sloping surface heavily packed with hard lime
        plaster (see the line drawing for both features), which in
        turn was surmounted by a screening wall on its summit.  In
        such a system it is only the upper screening wall that is
        capable of collapse.

        It is not beyond the realm of possibility that it was the
        destruction of the MB fortification at Jericho that lies at
        the basis of a number of details in Joshua 6....

        What is clear from extensive excavations at Tell es-Sultan and
        from the substantial probes at every known candidate for a
        nearby Gilgal is that the LB occupation of the area around the
        oasis was extremely sparse!  Especially in the post-Amarna
        period, conditions at the southern end of the Jordan valley
        seem to have reverted to something like those preceeding the
        Neolitic development of the oasis, except for the scattered
        concentrations of 'wealth' represented by a handful of LB
        tombs excavated by John Garstang.  On the mount itself the
        scant evidence points to something which might at most have
        been the unfortified hangout of a local strongman.  It is
        likely therefore that the story owes much to older accounts
        among the Hebrews of violent reduction of a walled town.

        But why would Jericho have been considered to be worth the
        effort, especially if the region were as depressed as the
        archaeological evidence suggests?  It is not quite accurate
        to say that Jericho commands the approaches to the central
        highlands.  "There are a number of routes" which invaders
        could take without being blocked by forces based at Jericho,
        unless those forces were superior in number, "and this is
        not suggested by the account (McKenzie, THE WORLD OF THE
        JUDGES, 47).

        And, finally, there is the curse.  Why go to the trouble to
        capture a townsite that is not going to be settled?  Is it
        possible, since the cursing at Jericho is the culmination of
        the chapter, that it was from the outset the goal of the
        expedition and is thus the key to the whole story?

        this cursing of a captured city is unique in the Old
        Testament, but it is not unknown elsewhere.  Examples have
        been collected by S. Gevirtz, "Jericho and Shechem:  A
        Religion-Literary Aspect of City Destructionm," VT 13 (1963)
        52-62.  He concludes that there is a relationship between
        this prohibition of resettlement in the destroyed town and
        the act of consecrating it.  What is lacking in this
        interpretation, however, is any clue to a motivational factor
        for singling out this particular place for such a purpose.

        In view of all this, a recently published medical approach to
        the tradition deserves serious attention.

        Schistosomiasis is caused by a blood fluke parasite whose
        intermediate host, a species of snail (Bulinus truncatus), has
        been found in excavations at Tell es-Sultan.  This host
        organism is known to thrive best in water that is contaminated
        during usage by human beings, a process for which the single
        Jericho spring at the foot of the tell is unusually well
        situated.  Moreover, genito-urinary schistosomiasis causes
        dramatic external signs of which an informant such as Rahab
        would presumably know quite a lot.  Its debilitating effects
        in attitudes of defeatism and despair (leaving
        "fortifications" in dilapidated disrepair?) and especially in
        reduced fertility follow quite naturally.

        If the reason for the prohibition of Yahwist settlement there
        was in fact knowledge of high infant mortality, the terms of
        the poetic "curse" suddenly make sense, as do the remarks
        made to Elisha at Jericho in 2 Kgs 2:19, "Behold, the
        situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord sees, but the
        water is bad and the land is unfruitful" (RSV).  Is it mere
        coincidence that there is a four-hundred-year gap in
        settlement at Jericho, must where geography, historical
        movements, and climatological conditions in the Middle Bronze
        and LateBronze ages might have all converged for the
        flourishing of this disease whose etiology is clear?  For
        a complete statement of the proposal, although it perhaps
        seeks to explain too many details, see E. V. Hulse, "Joshua's
        Curse and the Abandonment of Ancient Jericho:  Schistosomiasis
        as a Possible Medical Explanation," Medical History 15 (1971)
        376-386.

        The possibility that Jericho was in fact known to be such an
        unhealthy place sets the whole manner of its "capture," and
        the narrative pecularities of cahp. 6, in an entirely new
        light.  It is not stated in the text, nor is it clearly
        implied, that the marching around the city for six days and
        the shouting and horn-blowing are related to the collapse of
        the walls.  Rather, the tradition may perhaps more plausibly
        have originated in a series of protective ritual exercises
        which were accompanied or soon followed by an unexpected
        seismic event.  The solemn procession around the city would
        indeed be providentially "Israel's participation in the
        manifestation of the power of Yahweh" (McKenzie, THE WORLD OF
        THE JUDGES, 52).

        The story of the river crossing suggests that this was a
        period of such seismic tremors.  All of this would then, very
        properly, be interprreted in such a way as to establish
        The Circle as an especially holy place, developing its own
        liturgy but without much permanent settlement.  The
        celebration there was seasonal, a spring New Year
        covenant-renewal feast.

 In his INTRODUCTION to the Book of Joshua, the author of the Anchor
Bible Commentary, G. Ernest Wright, says:

        With regard to Biblical events....it cannot be overstressed
        that archaeological data are ambiguous.  Fragmentary ruins,
        preserving only a tiny fraction of the full picture of
        ancient life, cannot speak without someone asking questions
        of them.  And the kind of questions asked are part and
        parcel of the naswers "heard" because of predispositions on
        the part of the questioner.  Archaeology can prove very little
        about anything without minds stored with a wide-ranging
        variety of information which carefully begin to ask questions
        of the remains in order to discover what they mean.  It is
        all too easy for lack of information and imagination to gain
        less than the remains can supply, or for fertile imaginations
        to suppose that the ancient trash heaps tell one more than a
        very controlled mind can believe they do.  It is small wonder,
        then, that disagreement and debate arise.  A destruction layer
        in the ruins does not tell us the identity of the people
        involved.  Indeed, we know that certain black soot and charcoal
        layers do not necessarily mean destruction.  An accidental fire
        in one part of the twon or city, certain industrial pursuits,
        or even an earthquake may be the answer.

        Yet the nature of the remains does not mean that archaeology
        is useless.  It simply means that ancient cultural and
        political horizons and sequences can only be reconstructed
        by hypothesis from every kind of critically sifted evidence
        available.  At some points more data are available than at
        others.  Hence historical reconstructions have varying degrees
        of probability.  In studying antiquity it is important to
        recall that models and hypotheses are the primary means by
        which reconstruction is possible after the basic critical
        work is done.  And, furthermore, it takes a great deal of
        humility to say frankly what the physical sciences have had
        also to say; predispositin of minds at any one period frame
        the type of questions asked of the material and become a
        part of the "answers" we suppose we have obtained from our
        investigations.  Final proof of anything ancient must be
        confined to such questions as how pottery was made, what
        rock was used, what food and fauna were present, etc.
        Certainly that proof does not extend to the validity of the
        religious claims the Bible would place upon us, and we must
        remember that the Bible is not a mine for scientifically
        grounded certainties about anything.  It is instead a
        literature that places before us one of history's major
        religious options.

 The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, a Roman Catholic commentary,
gives a similar view:

        This is story, not history, a conclusion reinforced by the
results of excavation at Jericho (Tell es-Sultan, ca. 10 mi. NW of the
confluence of the Jordan and the Dead Sea); see EAEHL 550-64.  The
latest Late Bronze occupation at the site is 14th cent., and there was
no subsequent settlement there until the 9th cent.  In the time of
Joshua, then, no one lived at Jericho.  Why does the city figure so
prominently?  Two reasons may be given.  As far back as the Neolithic
period, Jericho was well fortified, and in that period especialy its
defenses were anomalous.  There may thus have been an ancient folk
tradition about Jericho's walls which underlies the present narrative.
 Furthermore, 1 Kgs 16:34 describes the reconstruction of the city
under Ahiel (Hiel) of Bethel.  This brief notice contains an ancient
poetic fragment, paraphrased in Josh 6:26.  The attribution of the
(re)construction of a city to someone other than the reigning king is
highly unusual, and it may be that Ahiel's activity was a kind of
rebellious succession, disapproved of by the deuteronomistic
historians, and that this event was the motivation both for the
inclusion of the curse pronounced by Joshua in 1 Kgs and for the
central position of Jericho in Josh.  In other words, what the authors
of Josh are saying is that Jericho is doomed unless it is Israelite;
only if the city, like Rahab, acknowledges Yahweh (and his designated
king) can it be saved.

 In Article 7:27, the commentator suggests:  "After [chapter 6 v 2],
the name of the city [of Jericho] is not mentioned again again until
v 25, an indication of a separate tradition, perhaps even originally
independent of Jericho."

REVIEW OF THE FALL COURSE (handout).

Moses as the Liberator                  Exodus 2
        the burning bush                Exodus 3
        The Name of God                 Exodus 4
        the contest with Pharaoh        Exodus 7 -- 1
        The Passover event              Exodus 12:1 -- 36
        The deliverance                 Exodus 12:37 -- 15:21

        The wanderings                  Exodus 15:22 -
        The arrival at Sinai
        The giving of the Commandments  Exodus 19:1 -- 25
        the associated laws             Exodus 20:18

The Book of Leviticus

The Book of Numbers
   called in HB ( IN THE WILDERNESS )

        Departure from Sinai            NM 1:1 -- 10:10
        Journey to Kadesh               NM 10:11 -- 12:16
        Sojourn at Kadesh               NM 13:1 -- 20:21

An abortive attempt to enter Canaan
   from the south                       NM 14:39 -- 45

Detour around EDOM to the eastern
   border                               NM 20:22 -- 36:13

We will skip the Book of Deuteronomy

   it belongs to another group of biblical books as we shall soon see.

THE GREAT STRUGGLE BETWEEN FAITH AND CULTURE.

The grouping of books

        1.  genesis, exodus, leviticus, numbers
        2.  deuteronomy, joshua, leviticus, numbers

 Group #2 are all the work of the Deuteronomist.  A group of
writers/editors responsible for the body of literature from the book
of Deuteronomy through Second Kings.  It details a very szpecific view
concerning the people's views of God, and this view is complicated and
diverse.

 1.  the harsh treatment of Israel by God is due to the grave sins of
the people.  This interpretation of God's dealing with us is given for
the specific purpose -- namely, in order to get the people who are
suffing to change their ways and return to obedience to God's law.

 2.  there is a specific pattern

        a.  apostasy
        b.  punishment in the form of oppression by our enemies
        c.  a cry for help or for conversion
        d.  deliverance/liberation

EG :  DEUTERONOMY, ie second law, but really the "law revisited."
        It is an exhortation from a later period (certainly, when the
        Temple Cult was flourishing) in which the hero speaks in the
        first person, and repeats the law again -- repeats exodus,
        leviticus, numbers -- so that the people would return to
        fidelity and thus avoid the terrible tragedy that fell upon
        arrogant Israel ( the north ) in 721.

 It is a blend of OBLIGATION, PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, AND HOPE.

Now the Book of Joshua.

        The book begins with the crossing of the River Jordan and the
        subsequent destruction of Jericho cc 1 -- 6.

        The narrative continues with the destruction of the south
        region.  cc 7 -- 10.

        A final battle at Hazor in the north completes the narrative.
        cc 11.

        There is a meditative summary of Joshua's career, legacy, and
        accomplishments.  c 12.

        The land is divided.  c 13 -- 22.

        Joshua's farewell.  c 23 -- 24.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU