Joshua’s campaign of conquest starts at Jericho, the Israelites already having defeated kingdoms on the other side of the Jordan. Previously, Og, the king of Bashan, a giant, was destroyed along with his people. It seems that it is important to remember the words “and also after that” of Genesis 6:4 to understand what type of thing might be going on here.

 

Flavius Josephus, the noted Jewish historian of the first century A.D., described the giants as having "bodies so large and countenances so entirely different from other men that they were surprising to the sight and terrible to the hearing." And he adds that in his day, the bones of the giants were still on display.

 

I would add that there are so many reports of giants being found in graves representing a civilized people that these can not be wholly discounted and, based on the evidence alone, regardless of your interpretation of it, has to bring questions into mind of what reason people have for denying the Bible account that there were populations of giants active in the days of Moses and Joshua. Remains have been found all over the world in grave sites and other places of people, sometimes in groups, of 7 feet tall to as much as 12 feet tall. Even if you discount 90% of these accounts as myth or fabrication to make a buck, the remaining 10% would make you think that more investigation would be enlightening. Quoting from one source about giants; “In 1936 Larson Kohl, the German paleontologist and anthropologist, found the bones of gigantic men on the shore of Lake Elyasi in Central Africa. Other giant skeletons were later found in Hava, the Transvaal and China. The evidence for the existence of giants is incontrovertible. "A scientifically assured fact," says Dr. Louis Burkhalter. “ Burkhalter was writing in 1950, but, of course, being the good scientist, he believed that giants were the result of mutations caused by the solar emission of infra-red rays. This seemed more plausible to him than the Bible account, even though 99% of all mutations kill the organism mutated. Unfortunately, this is the line of thought made famous by Harvard Paleontologist, Jay Gould, in his “Hopeful Monster” theory of what he called “Punctuated Equilibrium” where evolution made rapid changes due to sudden mutations.

 

The story of Joshua brings up some of the most intriguing questions for secular historians and archaeologists. The archaeological history of Jericho contains evidence that it was an ancient city by the time Joshua arrived. The city-states of Palestine and Syria were so wealthy by then that they had invited conquest by Egypt. At the time of Joshua, Durant reports, as does the Bible, that Jericho “was a well-walled city, ruled by kings acknowledging the suzerainty of Egypt; the tombs of these kings, excavated by the Garstang Expedition, contained hundreds of vases, funerary offerings, and other objects

 

 

 

 

indicating a settled life at Jericho in the time of the Hyksos domination, and a fairly developed civilization in the days of Hatshepshut and Thutmose III”. Then Durant makes one of those wonderful statements of his that reveal the weakness of traditional histories alongside of the authority of the Bible. He goes on to say, “It becomes apparent that the different dates at which we begin the history of divers peoples are merely the marks of our ignorance.” Ussher dates the destruction of Jericho to 1451BC. Joshua and the Israelites cross the Jordan, the males are circumcised, and Joshua has his encounter with the captain of the host of the Lord who gives the answer that everyone who goes to war should read over and over again. When asked if he was on Joshua’s side or the enemies he answers, in 21^st century English, “neither, but as captain of the Lord’s host have I come”.

 

The Dictionary of the Ancient Near East reports that after the destruction by fire the city is not rebuilt for many centuries. Joshua 6:24 says, “and they burnt the city with fire”. As mentioned before, John Garstang’s expedition of 1930-1936 uncovered the burnt layer of the city (it had been destroyed and rebuilt many times throughout ancient history) and dated it to about 1400BC coinciding with the time of Joshua. However, the famous celebrity, Kathleen Kenyon, would come along in 1952 and insist the destruction occurred about 1550BC, stating that there was no Jericho inhabited in Joshua’s time. But, detailed reports of her findings weren’t published until 1981, after her death. It was discovered by University of Toronto Professor, Bryant Wood, that she had  made her decision based not on what she had found but on what she hadn’t found. Since a certain type of imported pottery that had been found in other cities wasn’t present in Jericho she claimed it wasn’t inhabited at the time of Joshua. This represents the typical anti-Biblical bigotry and narrowmindedness of the celebrities of secular oriented archaeology and history. She excavated in what would have been the poorest section of Jericho where the affording of such a luxury would have been impossible anyway. The fact is that other, less famous, but equally qualified, scholars have clearly refuted her work and her statements and yet, the common college or high school textbook will undoubtedly mimic her flawed results as if they were established fact overlooking completely the work of others such as Garstang and Wood. This mindset is found in the teaching of evolution as well. As a parallel to help you understand what you are up against in defending God’s word, recently in Ohio, an effort has been made to permit the teaching of evolutionary theory as long as arguments against it, not religious but scientific from scientific peer reviewed journals, were also presented to help the students think critically. This was not an effort by creationists to overthrow the government religion of evolution or to even introduce intelligent design but merely to show that there are two sides to the question, even among agnostic scientists like Michael Denton. However, there were those who still tried to challenge the policy that would permit the religion of evolution to be challenged at all. The battle is always for your mind.

 

   

 

 

Back to Joshua, I have read that there was found an inscription in Phoenician/Canaanite found in Southern Ireland that implied that the writer represented a colony of refugees from “that robber, Joshua”. However, I have been unable to confirm its authenticity so file it away somewhere as a maybe.

 

The cities of Palestine were wealthy, being situated on a great north south trade route along the coast of the Eastern Mediterranean. The word for Canaanite often was synonymous with “merchant” according to Snell’s “Life in the Ancient Near East”. Apparently, they were small city-states ruled by a king who we wouldn’t call much more than a mayor these days, however, with the command of a king and the ability to call men to war. War was not their usual occupation, trading was, but even so they were mighty as evidenced by Deuteronomy 9:1. They could band together to fight, as they did in these chapters of the Bible, but depended upon their Egyptian masters for protection. Of course, with Egypt in temporary disarray due to the catastrophic death of the pharaoh and a small army, this protection was not at hand.

 

The city of Ai, which Joshua destroys is commonly thought to be located at the archaeological ruins at Et-Tell. Once again, many traditional scholars insist that Ai wasn’t anything but a ruin when they insist on dating Joshua’s identification with it, completely dismissing the Biblical statements of its destruction. Once again, we find a complete reliance of finding certain types of pottery at a site to determine its age, a system which can hardly be considered conclusive. There are other archaeologists who disagree with identifying Ai with Et-Tell and locate it at some other place. Durant’s admonitions about our ignorance go unheeded. Stick with the Bible and let other, less discerning people, compare pottery types, I would say.

 

With regard to the giant hailstones of Joshua 10:11, traditional science denies this as even a possibility in spite of the fact that over the last five to ten years the reports of huge blocks of ice called megacycrometers, hailstones a hundred times larger than normal, have been reported frequently. Dr. Martinez-Frias of the Planetary Geological Laboratory in Madrid, Spain, showed in 2002 that many of these reports of hailstones are, indeed, hailstones rather than frozen chunks of airplane waste as reported by the media. Once again, we find a denial of the Bible’s account to even be scientifically irrelevant although I would not need Dr. Martinez-Frias help for me to believe what God has said.

 

One of the most controversial accounts in the Bible, next to the parting of the Red Sea, and the Resurrection is the so-called “long day of Joshua” reported in chapter 10, verses 12-14. I have read many articles about what a catastrophe it would have been for the earth to stop spinning or for any such unusual occurrence to have happened in astronomy and have also read false stories about a supposed NASA scientist who discovered the long day in history. There are reports of a long sunset about this time in Chinese literature, as well. The speculation and argument is endless. Whether the Chinese king

 

 

 

Yao refers to it in his fear of the earth catching fire, whether the Latin poet, Ovid, is referring to the Phaeton, the Canaanite prince, and his lost day, is speaking of this day, whether the god-man Bacchus, in the Orphic hymns, stopping the day  is a reference to it, or the Indian reference to the pious cries of Arjouan over the death of Krishna, or the holy Buddhist, Matanga, stopping the sun is, or even if the numerous Mexican and Peruvian legends are is irrelevant, if interesting. I believe the Bible account. This brings to mind the age old argument of what revolves around what; whether we live in a heliocentric, or sun centered solar system, as Copernicus insisted, or a geocentric or earth centered system as Tycho Brahe tried to prove, or finally whether that matters at all as motion is relative to the observer, as Fred Hoyle insisted.

 

You will discover if you study more that traditional scholars will either deny there ever was a Joshua or they will claim that the Canaanites cities were overcome by a slow infiltration of foreigners, perhaps Israelites, or they will talk about successive waves of invasion, all due to their insistence upon making dogmatic statements based on incomplete evidence and knowledge plus their need to deny the Bible record.

 

Ussher has Moses’ death in 1451BC, as well as the destruction of Jericho and the coalition of forces led by the king of Jerusalem against Joshua. His campaigns are detailed in the book that bears his name and he dies, in Ussher’s chronology, in 1443BC. Many historians give a much later date of the early 1200’s BC for the events of Exodus and Joshua, just so you are familiar with different trains of thought on that.

 

Israel had peace in the land it was conquering but almost immediately fell into apostasy and the disasters that occurred in the book of Judges with men and women who were rulers and deliverers being raised up to defend Israel making their appearance. During this period, as Ussher quotes Julius Africanus, a king Belus ruled Assyria. Then, his son, who called himself Ninus, founded the Assyrian empire which continued for 520 years.

The period of the judges ends with Samuel as Saul is anointed king in 1095BC with David succeeding him in 1055BC. Solomon begins building the temple in 1013BC. Israel is at the height of its worldly glory under the reign of Solomon.

 

Turning back to secular historians, who date the reign of Tiglath-Pilesor I over Assyria from 1116 to 1093BC, leading that country to be a dominant force in the Middle East for over five centuries. The mainland Greeks, called Achaeans take to the sea and the siege and destruction of Troy supposedly takes place in 1184BC although this is controversial. It is also about this time, from 1100BC onward that we are told the the Greek peoples began to form the identity by which we know them today from our investigations of their written history.

 

 

 

 

In India, the Aryan invasions have produced after 1400BC a new Hindu civilization in the Ganges river valley. The great Hindu religious epic, the Rig Veda, is composed against this backdrop and the time is known as the Vedic period.

 

Historical China has emerged after 1600BC.

 

The Olmecs are in Mexico and the Chavin Culture is in the Andes Mountains of Peru. There is still a great deal of migration in the South Pacific, going from west to east.

 

In this general time period, in Egypt, we have what may be the pharaoh who succeeded the one killed by God in the Red Sea, Thutmose III with his aunt, Hatshepshut helping him rule, then Amenhotep III, who Durant says lived a life of worldly luxury before cashing in his chips. His son, Amenhotep IV was destined to be known as Akhenaton or Ikhnaton, who demanded that Egypt stop worshipping its many gods and worship only one. I believe that this was a natural reaction to the disaster of the Egyptian experience with God the creator in regard to the plagues of Moses and the Red Sea catastrophe.

 

Egyptian religion didn’t have much to say about morality. It had more in common with the Vatican religion of the Dark Ages. Even the famed “Book of the Dead”, which was no more than scraps of funerary paper and prayers found inside coffins taught only that charms blessed by the clergy would overcome all obstacles that the dead would encounter on the way to salvation, as Durant says. The priests sold charms, mumbled chants and incantations, and practiced magic rather than promoting personal morality.

 

Ikhnaton had just become pharaoh when he began to revolt against the established religion and the practices of its priests, much like a Buddha revolted against the irrelevance of Hindu ritual and Martin Luther rebelled against the excesses of the Catholic church.

 

Durant tells us that in the great temple of Karnak there was a large harem, supposedly concubines of the great god, Amon, sort of like nuns but in reality, were often merely for the amusement of the clergy. Ikhnaton rebelled against these excesses. He announced that there was but one god – Aton. As Akbar did in India thousands of years later he saw all divinity in the sun. No one knows if he took this idea from the Canaanites where the god, Aton, was another form of Adonis, who if you connect the mythologies still winds up being a form of Satan, giver of knowledge. In a religious fervor Amenhotep IV changed his name to Ikhnaton, meaning “Aton is satisfied”. He composed hymns to Aton. He recognized that there was a God above all nations but unfortunately for him, he identified this god as being the sun itself. See here Satan’s genius in perverting the worship of the true God and counterfeiting all that is truth and mixing it with enough error to send men and women reeling drunkenly into Hell on a wave of religious ecstasy. Calling the sun,

 

 

 

 

 

the “Lord of love”, and the tender caregiver who “creates the man-child in woman” and “fills the two lands of Egypt with love” he created in it a tender but counterfeit god the father, who rules all of Egypt and for the first time, rather than being only a god of Egypt, the Egyptians were forced to worship a god of all the world.

 

Ikhnaton had all the names of other gods erased from monuments, closed temples, dispossessed the wealthy priesthood, moved his capital. Artwork was created to validate his vision of the godhead. Innovations in art were made during Ikhnaton’s reign such as greater realism and emotion in depictions of people, along with exaggeration of some features and curvilinear contouring of the bodies. This was known as the Amarna period after his capital at Tell al-Amarna, which he moved from Thebes to get away from traditional priestly corruption. Rather than produce an heir he remained faithful to his wife, Nefretiti, who produced seven daughters but no son to succeed him. He refused to come to the aid of tributaries in Syria being invaded and destroyed. He loathed to send Egyptian sons to die on alien land. The Egyptian treasury, which depended on foreign tribute for its great wealth, began to dry up. Durant tells us that almost in a moment Egypt ceased to be an empire and had shrunken back into a small state. The colonies revolted and he died, broken, at around the age of 30. His son in law was Tutankhamen, the famous King Tut.

 

If I might go back to Thutmose III for a moment, it is said that non-Biblical history’s first recorded battle took place under his reign as an alliance of Canaanite kings were defeated under him at Megiddo where you know it as the place of Armageddon. Traditional dating places this event during the time that the Israelites were wandering in the desert. The only record we have of this battle is Egyptian. Perhaps, God used this to weaken the Canaanite kingdoms, force them under Egyptian suzerainty, and then raised up the deceived Ikhnaton to deny them any aid when the Israelites invaded. Who can say? All four dates given by traditional historians put it within the general time frame of Israelite wanderings. I have read 1457BC, 1469BC, 1479BC, and 1482BC as dates for this battle. Joshua conquers Megiddo in Joshua 12:21.

 

While the Olmecs in Mexico were constructing pyramids, stone monuments, and realistic looking human figures at this time, the dye known as Tyrian purple was being invented by the Phoenicians, and the Peruvians were depicting the jaguar, constrictor snake, and the condor and eagle as the main focus of their temple art.

 

The ancient Hindus derive the first modern sedative and hypertensive from the root of the Rawolfia Serpentina plant. They also become the first to perform successful skin grafting and plastic surgery of the nose. The Chinese devise a working calendar and began

 

 

 

 

 

calculating using decimals. The Hitites develop a practical method of smelting iron, ushering in a technological revolution of sorts, and more easily made iron eventually replaces bronze as the dominant metal, an innovation which makes it to Europe by the end of this period.

 

Throughout modern history secular archaeologists and historians have expressed doubt that King David was a real historical person but more like King Arthur, as Philip Davies reported in Biblical Archaeology Review in 1994. However, in 1993 a fragment of a monument was found at the site of the ancient Israelite city of Dan that mentioned David and his dynasty dating to about 100 years after David's death. As Biblical Archaeology Review reports: "Avraham Biran and his team of archaeologists found a remarkable inscription from the 9th century (B.C.) that refers both to the 'House of David' and to the 'King of Israel.' This is the first time that the name David has been found in any ancient inscription outside the Bible. That the inscription refers not simply to a 'David' but to the House of David, the dynasty of the great Israelite king, is even more remarkable" (March-April, 1994, p. 26).

Then another mention of King David was found in a monument of about the same time. It is called the Moabite Stone or the Mesha Stela. Discovered in 1868, unfortunately it was broken into pieces and it has taken much time and effort to piece together the original words. In 1995 scholar Andre Lemaire finally put it all together and discovered the words "House of David." In line 31 of the Moabite Stone are the words "... the sheep of the land. And the house (of Da)vid dwelt in Horonen" (Biblical Archaeology Review, May-June, 1994, p. 33).

The article continues: "The recent discovery at Tel Dan of a fragment of a stela containing a reference to the 'House of David' (that is, the dynasty of David) is indeed sensational and deserves all the publicity it has received. The Aramaic inscription, dated to the ninth century (B.C.), was originally part of a victory monument erected at Dan, apparently by an enemy of both the 'King of Israel' (also referred to in the fragment) and the '(King of the) House of David.' The inscription easily establishes the importance of Israel and Judah on the international scene at this time-no doubt to the chagrin of those modern scholars who maintain that nothing in the Bible before the Babylonian exile can lay claim to any historical accuracy ... Nearly two years before the discovery of the Tel Dan fragment, I (Lemaire) concluded that the Mesha stela contains a reference to the 'House of David.' Now the Tel Dan fragment tends to support this conclusion" (ibid., pp. 31, 32).

 

 

 

Slowly, as more excavations bring to light new material, the biblical record continues to gain solid historical backing. So far, archaeology has confirmed the existence of the following kings of Israel and Judah: Omri, Ahab, Jeroboam II, Jehu, Pekah, Hoshea, Ahaz, Hezekiah and Manasseh. Now David is also placed in this growing list of historically confirmed kings and no longer viewed as a myth.

Not being able to find overwhelming evidence of King Solomon’s reign or of the temple he built disturbs a great many secular scholars. Due to what Durant refers to as their ignorance they then begin to make claims that Solomon, too, was legendary, as was the temple he built. However, this quote I found of interest regarding such conclusions;

“However, other scholars note that there are other blank spots in Jerusalem's archaeological record during periods when the city is known to have been occupied, and they caution against reading too much into a lack of evidence. Ronny Reich, an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority, notes, for example, that excavations near the Gihon spring outside the present Old City have turned up "no pottery, nothing" from the Byzantine era–roughly A.D. 330-1450. "Does that mean there were no people in Jerusalem?" Reich asks. "Of course not. How do you explain it? You can't."[J.L. Sheler, `News from the Holy Land']”

If nothing else, I hope that what I am saying will help you to understand that you can trust the Biblical record, knowing that science might one day catch up to the Bible. But traditional archaeology and history are woefully inadequate as a base upon which to build your faith. Science, as much as it has accomplished in the way of communication and transportation plus medicine for the very few, is characterized more by what it does not know than what it does. Our knowledge of the past learned from looking for remnants of its ancient characters is limited, at best, and no reason for you to doubt anything in God’s word.

Now, we are approaching a time when historical records slowly become more sure of themselves and the numbers of documents and artifacts available to us increase. There is still much controversy but also more information outside of the Bible account.

Israel has reached the peak of its glory.