Lecture 2, Summary Overview
In fact many scholars now believe that the Exodus, if it ever occurred,
occurred not in the way that is described in the Bible, but as a much
smaller event, that is perhaps as a small number of people leaving Egypt
wandering perhaps to some extent in the desert eventually entering the
land of Canaan and joining up in Canaan with other people.
n this lecture, we’ll continue talking about the arrival ofthe Israelite tribes
in Canaan and their settlement there, how these events are described in
the Hebrew Bible, and to what degree those descriptions are corroborated
or not by archaeological evidence.
The Canaanites settled in Canaan at the beginning of the Bronze Age,
roughly around 3000 B.C. With time, their villages grew into towns and, in
some cases, large fortified cities. By the late Bronze Age the 14th and 13th
centuries B.C.-Canaan consisted of fortified city-states. It’s precisely during
this period that the Israelite Exodus from Egypt supposedly took place. In the
last lecture, we talked quite extensively about the degree to which the Hebrew
Bible can be used as a reliable source of information. To what extent is the
account of the Exodus corroborated by archaeology?
The problem is that, if there was an exodus from Egypt, this is the sort of
event that would leave little if any traces in the archaeological record. The
Exodus involved people wandering around in a nomadic or semi-nomadic
fashion through the desert. They were not building settlements or cities or
leaving the kind of remains that would be traceable in the archaeological
record.
However, we do have an important piece of information about the early
Israelites that comes from the time the Exodus would’ve taken place.
This is a large standing stone called the Merneptah stele, named after
an Egyptian pharaoh, Merneptah, and commemorating his victories.
On the Merneptah stele is a reference to Israel as a people: “Israel
is laid waste, his seed is not.” This reference in no way corroborates
the biblical story of the Exodus, but it indicates the existence of a
people called Israel at the time they would have arrived in the land
of Canaan.
In around 1200 B.C., the system of city-states in Canaan collapsed. At this
time, many peoples were moving about the eastern Mediterranean world,
and cities and kingdoms were destroyed. This collapse coincided with the
Israelite tribes’ entry into Canaan and settlement in the hilly center of the
country. At exactly the same time, other peoples also moved into the area,
such as the Moabites and the Philistines, who settled more arable and richer
parts of Canaan and became enemies of Israel.
Archaeological evidence sometimes supports the biblical account of the
settlement and sometimes does not. For Jericho, there isn’t evidence at
this time of walls that could collapse, but there is evidence of destruction
by fire at the site of the northern Canaanite city Hazor. Archaeology
alone, however, cannot tell us who destroyed that city.
The Hebrew Bible indicates that violence did not end with the settlement;
indeed, the Bible is filled with stories about wars and battles, especially
between the Philistines and the Israelites. In these accounts appear
important iigures, such as Samson, Saul, David, and Goliath. It is Saul’s
death in a battle with the Philistines that enables David to become the
next king and leads to the creation of a united kingdom under David and his
son Solomon.
Important Terms
Merneptah stele: Monumental stone inscription of the pharaoh Merneptah,
which contains the lirst reference to the people “Israel” (1209 B.C.).
Moabites: Iron Age inhabitants of the area south of Ammon and north
of Edom.
Philistines: People of Aegean origin who settled the southern coast of
Palestine in the early Iron Age.
Questions to Consider
1. To what extent does archaeology support the biblical account of the
early Israelite settlement in Canaan, and what does archaeology tell us
about the nature of that settlement?
2. Why does it (or should it) matter whether archaeology supports the
biblical accotmt of any event?
Lecture 2-Transcript
The Arrival of the Israelites
In our last lecture, we talked about the original inhabitants of ancient
Palestine, the Canaanites, and we also talked about to what extent the Hebrew
Bible is a reliable source of information about the history of the Holy Land.
In this lecture, I’d like to pick up and talk about the arrival of the Israelite
tribes in Canaan and their settlement in the land of Canaan, and also talk
about the events as described in the Hebrew Bible and to what degree those
events are corroborated or not by archaeological evidence.
The Canaanites settled in Canaan in the land of Israel in the Bronze Age,
at the beginning of the Bronze Age, roughly around 3000 B.C. During the
course of the Bronze Age, their settlements, their villages, grew into towns
and some of them grew into large fortified cities so that by the late Bronze
Age, by let’s say the l4th and 13th centuries B.C. Canaan consisted of a series
of fortified city-states, many of which were often at war with each other.
This period of the late Bronze Age is, in fact, a very interesting period around
the eastern Mediterranean because during this period there were a series
of powerful kingdoms and empires around the eastern Mediterranean. For
example, in Greece we have the Mycenean kingdoms, which in some respects
are analogous to what we have in Canaan in the sense that the Mycenean
kingdoms were a series of separate independent fortified kingdoms which
often were at war with each other and were not united under the rule of a
single monarch or king.
In Anatolia, that is the area of Asia Minor, modern Turkey, we have a
powerful kingdom that is called the Hittite kingdom or the Hittite Empire.
In Egypt the late Bronze Age is the period of the New Kingdom. So literally
in the late Bronze Age, the eastern Mediterranean is ringed by a series of
powerful kingdoms and city-states. Not only that, but these various kingdoms
and city-states were in contact with each other.
We know for example that they traded extensively with each other because
various kinds of pottery and other examples of archaeological artifacts
have been found imported and exported fiom various places around the
Mediterranean. For example, at Tel Dan a Mycenean chariot krater, that is a
large sort of a vase used for mixing wine and water that was imported from
Mycenean Greece, was found and presumably was acquired by somebody
with a lot of money who lived at Tel Dan, a Canaanite city-state in the very
northern part of Canaan.
We also know that these city-states and kingdoms were in contact with each
other because we have actual examples of correspondence of letters that their
kings and rulers sent back and forth to each other. Some of the most famous
and important examples of these are texts that were fotmd in Egypt and these
texts interestingly are written not in hieroglyphs, not in the native script of
Egypt, but are written in cuneiform on little clay tablets.
What exactly is cuneiform? Cuneiform, which probably is not as familiar to
most people as hieroglyphs, is a script that is a kind of an alphabet that was
made by taking a sharpened reed, that reed was sharpened so that the tip was
wedge-shaped, and then making impressions with the wedge-shaped tip into
a soft clay tablet. And the impressions formed by the tip make the symbols in
this script which is called cuneiform. In fact, cuneiform comes from the Latin
word cuneus, which means wedge, because the symbols are wedge-shaped.
Cuneiform actually refers not to the language, but to the alphabet or script.
And by that I mean it refers to the actual letters rather than the language
that the script was written in. An analogous example would be today we
write different languages, English, German, French, Spanish, Latin, in
the same alphabet, in the same script, but they’re different languages. So
different languages in antiquity were written using cuneiform script and in
the late Bronze Age cuneiform was used for all of the correspondence, the
intemational correspondence between these kingdoms and empires around
the eastern Mediterranean. So one of the things that we have surviving,
especially from Egypt, are examples of cuneifonn tablets which represent
the correspondence between these various kings and empires.
It’s precisely during this period, that is during the late Bronze Age, the 14th,
l3th centuries B.C., that the Israelite Exodus from Egypt supposedly took
place, and last time we talked quite extensively about to what degree can the
Hebrew Bible be used as a reliable source of information. The Exodus is a
really good place to sort of look at this as an example of using the Hebrew
Bible. Most people know about the Exodus and want to know what do we
know about it archaeologically?
Well this is really a million dollar question. We have of course the description
ofthe Exodus in the Hebrew Bible beginning with the plague that the Hebrew
God, the Lord of Israel, sent to attack the Egyptians ending of course with
the deaths of all of the firstborn and the relevant passage reads, “At midnight
the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn
of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the prisoner who was in
the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock.” So of course not only
are firstborn children killed, but event the firstborn of animals are killed
by this plague. “Pharaoh arose in the night, he and all his officials and all
the Egyptians; and there was a loud cry in Egypt, for there was not a house
without someone dead.”
Imagine the scenario; then he summoned Moses and Aaron, so the pharaoh
summons Moses and Aaron in the night, and said, ‘Rise up, go away from my
people, both you and the Israelites! Go, worship the Lord, as you said. Take
your flocks and your herds, as you said, and be gone. And bring a blessing on
me too’ !” So the pharaoh literally sends the Israelites out as a result of this
final plague of the killing of the firstborn.
Then of course what happens is that the Israelites leave; there’s the whole
episode with the parting of the Red Sea, and the Israelites then spend the next
40 years wandering around in the desert before they actually enter Canaan,
and it is during this time of wandering in the desert that they encamp at the
foot of Mt. Sinai and receive the Torah Hom God. This event is described in
quite a bit of detail in the Hebrew Bible, and it is a seminal formative point for
the ancient Israelites. To what extent is this corroborated by archaeology?
The answer is that well really not at all, at least not to any degree that all
scholars agree upon. The problem is that if there was an exodus from Egypt,
and that’s a question that I’ll come back to, if there was an exodus from
Egypt, this is the sort of event that would leave little if any traces in the
archaeological record. What you have to imagine then are people sort of
wondering around in a kind of nomadic or semi-nomadic fashion through
the desert. They are not building cities as they go along; they’re not building
settlements; they’re not leaving the kind of remains that really would be
traceable in the archaeological record.
So archaeology actually is not a discipline that is well-equipped to answer
the question of whether the Exodus took place, and if it took place does it
correspond with the accotmt described in the Hebrew Bible. In fact many
scholars now believe that the Exodus, if it ever occurred, occurred not in
the way that is described in the Bible, but as a much smaller event, that is
perhaps as a small ntunber of people leaving Egypt wandering perhaps to
some extent in the desert eventually entering the land of Canaan and joining
up in Canaan with other people who were already there or who had come
from other places; and these groups then form into what become known as
the Israelite tribes.
In other words, if there was an Exodus then most scholars believe that it
occurred not in the way that it is described in the Hebrew Bible, but on a
much smaller scale, on a much more modest scale, and in a way that did
not leave really any remains that we can identify with certainty in the
archaeological record. The news isn’t all bad actually. We do have a very
important piece of information about the early Israelites that comes from just
about the time the Exodus would’ve taken place.
This is a stele that is a large standing stone called the Memeptah Stele, which
comes from Egypt. It’s called the Memeptah Stele because it’s named after
an Egyptian pharaoh, Merneptah. This is a kind of a stele that was often set
up by rulers in antiquity, a kind of a stone that was often set up by rulers in
antiquity to commemorate a victory. The Hont of the stone slab is can/ed in
relief with figures depicting the pharaoh and gods and other figures, and then
most of the face of the stone is carved with a lengthy inscription in which
Memeptah describes his victories over various peoples.
Most of the victories described in the Memeptah Stele have nothing to do
with ancient Israel. In fact most of the victories commemorated by this stele
are about victories over the Libyans in North Africa. There is a line in the
Memeptah Stele which refers to Merneptah’s conquest and destruction of
several towns in Canaan, including Gezer and Ashkelon, and then there is
a reference to Israel and the way that this reference appears in the Egyptian
hieroglyphic script is such that it is clear that Israel here is being referred to
not as a town, not as a country, but as a people, specifically the relevant line
says, “Israel is laid waste, his seed is not.”
What’s so important about this is that this is the earliest reference that we
have to Israel, and specifically here Israel as a people, and it dates to just
about the time that the Exodus supposedly occurred and this stele is from
Egypt. In other words it suggests that there was a people who were identified
as Israel at the very end of the late Bronze Age. This in no way corroborates
the biblical story of the Exodus, it doesn’t mean that there was an Exodus or
there was not an Exodus, but it is important because it indicates already by
the late Bronze Age, by the end of the late Bronze Age, the existence of a
people named Israel and so that actually helps set the stage for the arrival of
the Israelites in the land of Canaan.
The late Bronze Age then was a time of large kingdoms and empires around
the Mediterranean, around the eastern Mediterranean, which were in contact
with each other, which corresponded with each other, which traded with each
other, sometimes went to war with each other, and in around 1200 B.C. this
entire system collapsed. All of these kingdoms and empires simply dissolve,
the Mycenean kingdoms in Greece, the Hittites, the new kingdom in Egypt,
and also the Canaanite city-states.
What happens? We’re not sure. It’s a complex world and there are probably
many different reasons for this collapse. So there’s probably not one single
thing that happened, but it is clear that one of the things that happens in about
1200 is that large ntunbers of people move around the eastern Mediterranean,
whether these people were invaders who came from other areas and caused
the destruction of these kingdoms and empires or whether at least some of
them are refugees who are natives of these kingdoms, who are then displaced
and start to wander arormd, probably actually some of both of that.
It is then in this period around 1200 that we have the arrival of the Dorians
in Greece for example. It is precisely in this period that the Israelite tribes
then enter Canaan and settle down. In about 1200 then the Israelite tribes
enter Canaan and settle in the center of the country. In exactly the same
time we also have other peoples in the area who either are there all along
and somehow coalesce and acquire national identities, or like the Israelites,
arrive from other places or maybe some of them arrive from other places and
settle down.
We hear about these peoples from the Hebrew Bible, and these peoples
include the Ammonites, the biblical Ammonites, who lived in the area of
Ammon, that is the area around the modern city of Amman in Jordan, to the
south of them the Moabites living in the biblical kingdom of Moab which is
just to the south of the area of the Ammonites, to the south of the Moabites,
that is at the southeastern end ofthe Dead Sea, the biblical kingdom of Edom
with the inhabitants called the Edomites. What happens to the Canaanites
when all of these peoples come in and the Israelites come in and settle in the
country? What happens to the native Canaanite population?
Some of them probably continue to live in the country and get absorbed
with the Israelite settlement, but some of those native Canaanites continue
to live in the area to the north of Canaan, the area of modern Lebanon, that
area then becomes known as Phoenicia, and the inhabitants become known
as Phoencians, and we’l1 be talking more about the Phoenicians because
they’re very important in relation to the Israelites. Yet another people who
enter the area of Canaan and settle down after about 1200 are the Philistines
who settle the area of the southern coastal plane and who we also will be
talking a lot more about.
First a little bit about these Phoenicians. Who are the Phoenicians? The
Phoenicians were the descendents of the Canaanites, they were the Iron
Age inhabitants of the area of modern Lebanon. Phoenicia was not a unified
country. In other words, it consisted of a series of independent city-states,
and because of the very mountainous interior, most of these city-states were
located along the coast and faced outward to the Mediterranean Sea rather
than inland, in other words the ancient Phoenicians were known among other
things as traitors on the Mediterranean Sea.
Many of these ancient Phoenician cities are well known to us today. For
example, Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, and Beirut, all of those are examples of
ancient Phoenician city-states. In fact, the ancient Phoenicians did not call
themselves Phoenicians. The word “Phoenician” actually comes from the
Greeks; the Greeks called them Phoenicians lumping them all together. But
they didn’t call themselves that, they instead were residents or natives of the
individual city-states. You would refer to an individual as being a native of
the city-state of Tyre or Sidon or Beirut.
Notice that Phoenicia is just to the north of Canaan. Eventually this territory
after 1200, this area of Canaan, is then settled by various peoples with the
Israelites settling the interior of the country, not the coast but the interior.
The Israelite tribes settled the interior ofthe country running in sort of a strip
from Galilee through the center of the country and down into the northern
Negev Desert.
This was very hostile territory. It was not the best part of the country. The
reason why it wasn’t the best part of the country is because it was hilly,
mountainous, hard for agriculture, not really a very friendly and hospitable
area, but that is the area where the Israelite tribes settled.
What do we know about the settlement of the Israelite tribes in Canaan?
Again we go back to our biblical accounts. If you read the biblical accomrts
about the Israelite settlement, it sounds as though there was a series of wars
between the Israelites and the Canaanites; that is, it sounds like from the
biblical account it was not a peaceful settlement, but rather a settlement
that was accompanied by a lot of conquest and destruction. Ahh the million
dollar question again is: To what extent is the biblical accotmt home out by
archaeological evidence or not?
Well the answer is that it’s mixed. The picture is mixed. It’s not unequivocal.
There are places where the biblical account seems to be borne out by
archaeological remains and yet there are other cases where it seems to be
squarely contradicted by the archaeological remains. I want to show you just
a couple of examples of these.
Let’s start with perhaps the most famous example of a biblical town that
supposedly is conquered by the Israelites, and that is Jericho. Everybody
is familiar with the story of the Walls of Jericho. Let’s take a look at what
the passage in Joshua says. “So the people shouted, and the trtunpets were
blown. As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpets, they raised a
great shout, and the wall fell down flat, so that the people charged straight
ahead into the city and captured it.”
What do we have in terms of archaeological remains at Jericho? Excavations
have been carried out at Jericho and indeed the Bronze Age Canaanite city
of Jericho was fortilied by a wall. That’s no problem, right? Well, actually
there is a problem here because archaeological excavations also indicate
that that city wall at Jericho had fallen out of use, had been abandoned by
the late Bronze Age. It turns out that by the late Bronze Age, by the time
the Israelites arrive, Jericho was just a small town or a village that had no
fortification wall at all.
If there is no fortification wall, it means there’s no wall that could’ve come
tumbling down. So this is a case where the archaeological evidence seems
to squarely contradict the biblical account. We have other cases where the
archaeological evidence actually seems to bear out the biblical account, for
example, at the site of Hazor, that very large, very important Canaanite city
in the very northern part of the country. Here we have a description of the
Israelites coming and destroying Hazor.
"Joshua turned back at that time, and took Hazor, and struck itsSo here we have a very clear description of the Israelites coming in under
king down with the sword. Before that time Hazor was the head of
all those kingdoms. And they put to the sword all who were in it,
utterly destroying them; there was no one left who breathed, and
he burned Hazor with fire. And all the towns of those kings, and
all their kings, Joshua took, and struck them with the edge of the
sword, utterly destroying them, as Moses the sen/ant of the Lord
had commanded. But Israel burned none of the towns that stood on
mounds except Hazor, which Joshua did burn."
Joshua and destroying Hazor and burning it with tire. Hazor has been
excavated and there are remains at Hazor of a level where there is a clear
destruction by tire. The excavators of Hazor believe that that level with
the destruction by fire is, in fact, the level of the Israelite destruction that’s
described in the Hebrew Bible.
What’s the problem? Not everybody agrees, because we’re in a period that
is prehistoric, a period when our dating of archaeological remains is not
precise enough to allow for the fact that Well it could be that that level that
is identiiied with the level of the Israelite destruction at Hazor, could be that
that level in fact should be associated with the Israelite destruction and dates
to the right period, but it also could be that well our dates need to wiggle a
bit and it could be a little earlier; it could be a little later. So there’s a problem
of dating first of all.
There’s an even more important problem because even if the level at Hazor
that’s been identiiied by the excavators as being the level associated with
the Israelite destruction, even if it’s the right time period, archaeology
alone cannot tell us who destroyed that level. It cannot tell us who set that
tire. Different peoples could have set that tire, there could’ve been internal
fighting. There could’ve been fighting between various city-states. It didn’t
have to be the Israelites who caused that fire, that destruction. It could
even be an accidental internal iire or it could be an earthquake event that
overturned oil lamps and caused a tire.
In other words, destruction like that can be caused by any one of a number
of factors. The only way to identify that destruction with the Israelites is to
rely on the biblical accotmt, and there are scholars who say well it’s a little
bit early here to be relying on the biblical account. So the most we can say
is well there appears to be a destruction at Hazor that may correspond with
what’s described in the biblical account, but maybe not.
This actually brings up the whole question of the nature of the Israelite
settlement in Canaan because if you read the biblical accotmt, it sounds like it
was violent and accompanied by lots of destruction, but many archaeologists
now think that that’s not the case. Many archaeologists now think that, in
fact, the Israelite settlement was a much more peaceful event, that there were
various peoples who came in, infiltrated, settled down and mingled with
natives who were already in the country and that this then forms the basis of
what later become known as the Israelite tribes.
If we look at the area of the Israelite settlement and, in fact, we have
archaeological remains in the central hill country of houses and villages
associated with prestnnably these early Israelites, whoever they are, whether
they’re some natives and some people who come in from outside, we do have
villages that we can describe as early Israelite, and these houses and villages
are characterized by their simplicity, by a relatively low standard of living,
by the fact that we don’t have a well-developed hierarchy here, that is that we
don’t seem to have people who are much wealthier and people who are much
poorer, but rather everybody is living at the same kind of socioeconomic
level. In other words, in fact, it actually does somewhat correspond with what
we read in the Bible as the period of the Judges. There’s no king yet. There’s
no real elite yet. It’s just these settlers who are living in simple villages in
this very harsh environment.
And so we have remains of their houses scattered around houses which
reflect a kind of a simple countiy living. Most of the economy is based on
cattle rearing, sheep and goats, so livestock rearing, agriculture. Really that’s
about the basis of the economy. And we also have the kind of pottery that
these people were using in these villages and it goes along with everything
else. It’s a very simple kind of pottery, very little in the way of imports,
very little in the way of line expensive kind of china kinds of pottery, a
lot of storage jars for storing agricultural produce, cooking pots for doing
your cooking.
The Israelites actually got sort of the short end of the stick in the settlement
in the sense that they settled in the part of the country that is the harshest, the
most forbidding, and in many ways the least fertile. The Philistines got the
better part of the country. They settled in the southem coastal plane, and that
area along the coast is not nearly as harsh as those mountains inland.
What do we know about the Philistines? Apparently they were one of
a number of peoples called the Sea Peoples who originally came from
somewhere in the area of the Aegean; that is somewhere in the area of
Greece and the Greek islands. They originally arrived in Egypt and tried to
enter Egypt but were repulsed, were repelled by the Egyptian pharaoh and
were then settled along the southern coastal plane of Palestine.
The Philistines then are just the most famous of these Sea Peoples, and they
then establish a kingdom in the area of the southern coastal plane called
Philistia including a series of tive major cities, Philistine civilization in
contrast to Israelite civilization was an urban culture and they established
a kingdom with major cities including Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ashdod. Notice
that the Philistines settled in an area that is directly adjacent to the area of
the Israelite settlement and so it is not a coincidence, it is not surprising then,
that the Philistines and the Israelites soon came into contact and coniiict with
each other.
In fact, the Hebrew Bible is filled with stories about wars and battles between
the Philistines and the Israelites. In one of these for example, the Philistines
actually take the Ark of the Covenant.
"Now it happened in those days, that the Philistines mustered againstNotice by the way according to the biblical account the patron God, the
Israel for war; and Israel went out to meet the Philistines in battle
and encamped at Ebenezer; while the Philistines encamped at
Aphek. Now the Philistines had captured the ark of God, and
taken it from Ebenezer to Ashdod; then the Philistines took the
ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and placed it
beside Dagon."
patron deity of the Philistines is named Dagon and therefore the temple of
Dagon is called the house of Dagon.
Perhaps one of the most famous episodes related to the Philistines is the story
of how Samson brings down the temple of Dagon with his own bare hands.
Specilically the Hebrew Bible describes Samson in a temple dedicated to
Dagon at Gaza and the way Samson brings down the temple is by taking his
arms between two pillars that supported the roof of the temple and pushing
them out so that the entire roof and therefore the temple collapsed.
Well we don’t have archaeological remains of a Philistine temple at Gaza,
not at least that have been discovered so far. But ftuther north along the
coast at an archaeological site called Tell Qasile excavations brought to life
the remains of a Philistine temple; and very interesting, in the center of this
temple were two pillars, remains of two pillars that are approximately seven
feet apart. So if we want to visualize the kind of temple that Samson brought
down in the biblical story, this Philistine temple at Tell Qasile provides a
good illustration of that.
The wars between the Israelites and the Philistines continued for several
hundred years. In fact, eventually the Israelite tribes united under the role
of a monarch, a king named Saul, and the fighting between the Israelites and
the Philistines continued right through the reign of Saul. So for example,
in the first book of Samuel we read, “There was hard fighting against the
Philistines in the days of Saul.” We also read about David and Goliath, who
was the giant champion of the Philistines fighting David the Israelite with his
sling and David’s victory over Goliath.
Finally we read about the death of Saul and his sons in an important and
decisive battle at the foot of Mount Gilboa where the biblical account says,
“The Philistines fought against Israel; and the men of Israel fled before the
Philistines, and fell slain on Mount Gilboa. Then Saul died, and his three
sons, and his armor-bearer, and all his men, on the same day before.” In other
words Saul loses his life in a battle against the Philistines and it is this event
then which sets the stage for David to become the next kind of the Israelites,
and this then sets the stage for the creation of a united kingdom under the
rule of David and his son Solomon, which we will be talking about next.
