Jericho: Story of the Israelites
The story of Jericho is found in the Bible in Joshua 6, which tells of how the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years and then come to the land of Canaan. The Israelites come to the city of Jericho, a walled city, and they march around the walls once each day for six days. On the seventh day, the Israelites encircled the city seven times, and on the past time, the priests blew the trumpets, at which point the walls fell flat and opened the city to conquest. The Israelites then set the rest of the city on fire (a story told well by Wheeler, 1958). In modern times, Archaeologists have been seeking evidence for these events and have found much evidence at archaeological sites. The story says that three of the walls fell, while the fourth wall, the one to the north, remained standing. This is also the site of Rahab's house, which stands because it was against the north wall. Archaeologists have found a site with these characteristics, including evidence of a fire and a pile of bricks thought to be the remains of the fallen walls. Still, numerous issues remain to be debated, including the proper date for these events, whether this is the correct site or not, details about structures found, and other m
This is important, since the two highest walls on the inner and outer line had been considered to represent a double wall, and had been ascribed to the Late Bronze Age, and to be probably the wall destroyed by the Israelites under Joshua. The history of Israel has always been conditioned by the soil on which that history took place, and the geography of Palestine is a vital element in that history (Noth, 1958, p. This disparity also suggests some of the issues involved in dating the destruction of the city by the Israelites or by any other means. Some of the text is vague as to time, so trying to match the archaeological record to the text is difficult. The immigration model is probably the most likely and does not preclude either the destruction noted by the conquest model or the revolutions of the revolt model, though the immigration model would not see these events as determinant and would instead only see them as part of the larger process of immigration and assimilation. The primary arguments center around certain models of the conquest. This approach holds that the formation of Israel involved a coalition of many groups with separate prehistories and cultural backgrounds. There is typological evidence for a distinctive Iron Age culture in highland Canaan that would accord well with the hypothesis of a tribalizing confederacy of lower-class Canaanites combined with exodus refugees who took over the name of Israel.
Common topics in this essay:
Hebrew Bible,
Iron Age,
Age Kenyon,
Exodus Israelites,
Canaan Israelites,
Israelites Judaites,
Canaanites Israelites,
Bronze Age,
Israel Palestine,
Alt German,
bronze age,
conquest model,
century bc,
late bronze,
revolt model,
biblical account,
middle bronze,
peaceful infiltration,
late bronze age,
israelite conquest,
evidence found,
middle bronze age,
peaceful infiltration model,
noth 1958 pp,
fourteenth century bc,
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Acceptance Essays
