Jericho City IV and the Disagreement of Dr. Kenyon and Dr. Wood

Submitted to BIBL 471-B02 LUO A religious discussion of the true location of the Jericho from the Biblical Scriptures of Joshua

LIBERTY UNIVERSITY ONLINE

 

 

JERICHO CITY IV AND THE DISAGREEMENT OF DR. KENYON AND DR. WOOD

 

 

A PAPER SUBMITTED TO

THE DEPARTMENT OF RELIGION

TOWARDS COMPLETION OF BIBL 471-B02 LUO

BACHELORS OF RELIGION

 

 

BY

ERIC FOURNIER

 

LYNCHBURG, VA

FEBUARY, 2013

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

KENYON

TWO WALLS

SCARABS

CARBON DATING

CONCLUSION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

The city of Jericho did in fact fall in the dates provided by Garstang in the 1930’s and this paper will show how Kenyon’s techniques, though methodological, were flawed in her dating of Jericho.  The truth of the fall of the city of Jericho and its conquering by Biblical hero Joshua up until the 1950’s had never been questioned.  Garstang earlier in the century had conducted archaeological digs at the site of City IV, Jericho, and had found evidences such as pottery shards, scarabs, lower usage of cemetery plots, and a line of burnt rubble in the soil.  He unquestionably dated the fall of the city to around the early 1400’s B.C.  Then Kenyon in the 1950’s began to reopen dig sites and methodologically disproved Garstang, she used pottery and carbon dating as her main arguments against Garstang’s finds.  Ultimately Dr. Wood would reopen the case for Jericho and began his research starting with the pottery shards which Garstang had recovered, along with the scarabs, and argued that Kenyon had been digging in a poor part of the city, away from where any major evidences could be found because the people in the poorer sections could not afford the types of pottery that were common to found among the site where Garstang had dug.  Unfortunately for Garstang and Kenyon the carbon dating machine that had been used to date the charcoaled wood had been out of calibration, “The British Museum found that their radiocarbon measurement apparatus had gone out of calibration for a period of time, and thus had yielded incorrect dates during that period,”  1 the museum was also forced to retract many other dates.  What is deeply unfortunate for Wood’s and Garstang’s case against Kenyon is the recalibrated machine gave a, “… corrected date for the charcoal sample from City IV… to be consistent with Kenyon’s ca. 1550 B. C. date for the City IV destruction.” 2  Even though the carbon dating does set a different date then the Biblical timeline believed by most scholars, the carbon dating itself is not enough to disprove the dating of City IV of early 1400’s B.C.  In fact, with all evidences combined, Garstang’s and Wood’s dating of the fall of Jericho to the early 1400’s B.C. is in fact the correct dating.  The usage of pottery shards, varying areas of the plots of excavation, and the scarabs found in the burial plots do in fact prove Kenyon to be incorrect about her dating; plus her lack of taking into account the evidences brought forth by Garstang in his original excavation will show that there is sufficient evidence to prove a 1400 B.C time line of the destruction of Jericho.

KENYON

            Kenyon’s view that the destruction of Jericho came at a later date of 1550 B.C. made, “many scholars to conclude that no Conquest had taken place at all!” 3  This has caused four different views to come through: the Peaceful Infiltration, the Peasant Revolt, the Transition Theory, and the Imagination Theory.  Despite Kenyon’s finds scholars have to turn to, “Hazor in the north, and Jericho, and Ai in the south.” 4 Kenyon based the results of her finds, “based… on what she did not find �" that is Cypriote pottery.”  5  One major critique of Kenyon’s work that some scholars use to refute her findings is that there was pottery available to her to use for her findings and that she flat out ignored those findings, “even at the beginning of her excavation at Jericho.  Instead Kenyon chose to emphasize the imported wares in reaching her chronological conclusions. (wood, 1990),” 6  It is deeply saddening that Kenyon passed away before her final publication of her excavation, the conclusions that are being discussed come from a popular book of her field work.  It is in, “the final publication of Kenyon’s work revealed that there were serious oversights or flaw in Kenyon’s methodology.” 7  Another major reason that scholars believe Kenyon’s work may be flawed is that she chose to excavate an area that, “was a very poor area of the city (Kenyon wrote “The picture given… is that of of simple villagers.  (‘There is no suggestion at all of luxury…’), and in a poor area one would not expect to find expensive painted pottery.” 8  It is her very own lack of using evidences already provide, though her methodology was beyond reproach in meticulous record keeping of her own finds, her own findings were lacking in evidence that could be used to either prove or disprove the dating of the fall of Jericho.

TWO WALLS

            Garstang used much more evidence to draw to his conclusion of a dating of about 1400 B.C. for the fire that destroyed the city.  His conclusion came from,

“Comparison of pottery in the destruction level… Scarab series on the tell and in the tombs ends with Amenhotep III… lack of mention of Jericho in the Amarna Letters… Radical decrease in use of the cemetery after 1400 B.C…. Lack of Mycenaean pottery which flourished in the 14^th century B.C. But no in the century B.C.” 9

Of course all of Garstang’s work was not perfect, he was later proved incorrect about a double wall, “The later work of Kathleen Kenyon showed that this double wall dated from a time some 1,000 years earlier.  However, there was another all, made of mud brick, which was associated with Jericho City IV.” 10 Garstang is also credited with uncovering, “portions of four towns which existed there successively since 3000 B.C…. The fourth occupational level, which Garstang called “City D,” proved to be of ‘primary importance.’” 11 Garstang also discovered a cemetery, “where he opened scores of graves that revealed quantities of pottery vessels, considerable jewelry, and about 170 scarabs.” 12

SCARABS

The scarabs bring with them a very important piece of the puzzle because certain types of scarabs were only used during different reigns of certain Pharaoh’s in Egypt.  Most significant of the scarabs were ones which represented Thutmose III (1490-1436 B.C.)… Queen Hat-shep-sut and Tutmose III and another of Amenhotep II.” 13 With the ones that were during Amehotep’s III time period would have fit in perfectly with the timeline of the destruction of Jericho in 1400 rather than in the 1550’s B.C.  What is perfectly amazing is that Garstang called in help in interpreting his findings, he, “called in three of Palestine’s top ranking archaeologists and pottery experts: Pere Vincent, Clarence S. Fisher, and Alan Rowe.” 14  What they each found independently after studying the findings of Garstang was that they confirmed, “the date of 1400 B.C., with the possible alternative of any date not later than 1377 B.C.” 15  Basing the dates that these archaeologists approved from Garstang’s findings and matching it with those of Solomon’s date of 961, it would mathematically match with the 480 years of Israel’s stay in Egypt with their march through the wilderness of 40 years, bring them to conquer Jericho at or around 1397 B.C., effectively confirming Garstang’s date of around 1400 B.C.

 

CARBON DATING

Though almost destructive to Garstang’s and Wood’s case of the later date of 1400 B.C., the failure of the carbon dating machine due to mis-calibration and the date of 1550 being given as the retested date for the charcoaled piece of wood found by Garstang is not sufficient evidence in itself to predate City IV.   Not all archaeologists would agree with this premise, they attack Dr. Woods and call his dating of Jericho as hokum,

“Bienkowski attacked Wood’s arguments and then summarized his assessment of Wood’s claims as follows:  Wood has attempted to redate the destruction of Jericho City IV from the end of the Middle Bronze age (c. 1550 B.C.) to the end of the Late Bronze I (c. 1400 B.C.).  He has put forward four lines of argument to support his conclusions.  Not a single one of these arguments can stand up to scrutiny…” 16

Dr. Wood replied, “Bienkowski’s attempt to explain away the evidence for lowering the date of the destruction of Jericho is misguided and void of substance.  Assertions made without data to back them up are unconvincing…” 17 Settling this dispute scientists set about to use radiocarbon dating as a way to finalize the answer.  Though the charcoal sample proved to disprove Garstang and Wood, cereal grains, “published by Hendrik J. Bruins and Johannes van der Plicht from high precision radiocarbon measurements made on eighteen samples from Jericho… samples were charred cereal grains from the City IV destruction,” 18also disproved Garstang’s and Wood’s conclusion.  In fact Bruins and Plicht published only one sentence about their findings, “Further, the fortified Bronze Age city at Tell es-Sultan [Jericho] was not destroyed by ca. 1400 BC, as Wood (1990) suggested." 19

CONCLUSION

            Though there are some lacks of, and some evidences, such as carbon dating and the lack of sufficient types of pottery shards to be found where Kenyon established her two dig sites, it remains to be clear that Garstang and Wood have provided sufficient evidence to prove their case for a 1400 B.C. approximate date for the destruction of Jericho City IV.  It would have been beneficial to all if Kenyon had lived to publish her findings.  It is her lack of evidences that actually serve to prove Garstang’s date.  The reasoning behind it is as such, Kenyon dug in one of the poorest sections of the city, while Garstang focused on a more enriched area of the Tell, providing him with chances to find much more in way of pottery.  Because Kenyon overlooked Garstang’s findings was her fall in providing an incorrect date of 1550 B.C.

 

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

BIBOGRAPHY

“Biblical Chronologist.org”http://www.biblicalchronologist.org/answers/bryantwood.Php (Accessed 02-13-2013)

 

http://www.conservapedia.com/Jericho_Chronology_dispute (Accessed 02-13-2013)

 

Kirkbride. Thompson Chain Reference Bible: KJV: Red Letter.

 

Price, Randall. The Stones Cry Out: What Archaeology Reveals About the Truth of the Bible. Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House Publishers. 1977

 

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 1 “Biblical Chronologist.org” http://www.biblicalchronologist.org/answers/bryantwood.php

 2 Ibib

 3 Randall, Price. 148

 4 Ibid 149

 5 Ibib 152

 6 http://www.conservapedia.com/Jericho_Chronology_dispute

 7 Ibib

 8 Ibib

 9 Ibib

 10 Ibib

 11 Kirkbride. Thompson Chain Reference Bible: KJV: Red Letter. 1756

 12Ibib 1756

 13Ibib 1757

 14 Ibib 1757

 15 Ibib 1757

 16 “Biblical Chronologist.org” http://www.biblicalchronologist.org/answers/bryantwood.php

 17Ibib

 18  Ibib

19 Ibib