We have the biblical account of the military campaigns of Joshua and how he miraculously destroyed Jericho. So QED claims this is not able to checked "even in principle" and AB claims all scientists do is "denounce" such claims. Well, their both flat our wrong. And William G. Dever proves their claims just ain't true:
Dever wrote:The Conquest of the Land West of the Jordan: Theories and Facts
Biblical Accounts
After Moses' death his former right-hand man Joshua commences the military campaigns that, according to the biblical account, culminate in the conquest of the heartland of Canaan west of the Jordan. (....) (Dever 2003: 37)
We have already discussed the general character of the "Deuteronomistic history" (that is, Deuteronomy through II Kings) of which Joshua is a critical component. We noted that mainstream scholars date the composition and first editing of this great national epic toward the end of the Israelite Monarchy, probably during the reign of Josiah (640-609 B.C.). (....) (Dever 2003: 38)
The book of Joshua has long been controversial. Even a superficial reading reveals it to be an extraordinarily chauvinistic work, glorifying the military exploits of a ruthless, brilliant general who makes Patton look like a teddy bear. Joshua carries out a systematic campaign against the civilians of Canaan-- men, women, and children--that amounts to genocide. Consider the case of Jericho: all its inhabitants were slaughtered except one--Rahab the prostitute, who had been an informer. And the first unsuccessful attempt to take 'Ai, up in the hills, is explained by the failure of the Israelites to "devote" the entire city to Yahweh--its inhabitants and all the spoils of war--in a holocaust or "burnt offering" (the custom of herem; see Josh. 7). Achan, one of the offenders, is stoned to death along with his children and even his animals. Then, when a second attack is successful, the entire population of 12,000 is butchered, even the fleeing survivors. (Dever 2003: 38)
And so it goes in Joshua's campaigns throughout the entire land. "Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites (Josh. 9:1) are annihilated. Only the Shechemites are spared, possibly because of old tribal alliances dating back to Patriarchal times (Gen. 12:4-9); and the Gibeonites, who however are enslaved as "hewers of wood and carriers of water" (Josh. 9:22-27). By the end of the story, Joshua had defeated the whole land, the hill country and the Negev and the lowlands and the slopes and all their kings; he left no one remaining, but destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord of Israel commanded. (Josh. 10:40; cf. 11:23)
Is this literary hyperbole? Or did these horrifying events really happen, just as recounted? And what sensitive modern reader can condone genocide--"ethnic cleansing"--on a grand scale? Because that appears to be what is going on here. These are stories that we might well hope have no basis in fact. Why not just excise them from the Bible, as unworthy of its grand themes? How did they every get into the Canon, or collection of Holy Writ, in the first place?
The Book of Joshua: "Historicized Fiction"?
Many scholars would indeed reject the book of Joshua not (I regret to say) on moral grounds, but on the ground that the work is of little historical value. One of today's leading Israeli biblical historians and a relatively moderate critical scholar, Nadav Na'aman of Tel Aviv University, puts it this way.
The comprehensive conquest saga in the Book of Joshua is a fictive literary composition aimed at presenting the occupation of the entire Land of Israel, initiated and guided by the Lord and carried out by the twelve tribes under Joshua. Military events that took place in the course of the later history of Israel were used by the author as models for his narratives. These military episodes were entirely adapted to the new environment, so that in no case can we trace a direct literary relationship between the story/tradition and its literary reflection. (1994: 280-81)
Na'aman concludes that the "conquest stories" of the book of Joshua make only a "minor contribution" to the early history of Israel. Among the few possibly early, authentic narratives are the brief anecdotes concerning the subjugation of sites in the south: Hebron, Debir, Hormah, Bethel, and Dan. Conversely, the authors and editors betray their "ignorance of the history of the northern tribes." Na'aman concludes: "The biblical conquest description ... save for its underlying very thin foundation, has only a tenuous contact with historical reality" (1994: 281).
More conservative biblical scholars, along with evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, as well as Orthodox Jews, pick up the book of Joshua and read it uncritically, quite literally (sometimes even a bit gleefully; the underdog triumphs for once). (Dever 2003: 39-40)
(....) But what archeological evidence is there for each of these viewpoints? We need to examine the material culture data and the historical-cultural context that it provides to see to what degree Joshua looks "real," without drawing any conclusions in advance about its historicity, or (insofar as possible) holding any theological preconceptions about what the book "should" mean. (Dever 2003: 41)
(....) The oldest model for attempting to reconstruct "what really happened" in the Israelite conquest of Canaan overall is drawn, not suprisingly, directly from the book of Joshua. This view has been espoused not only by recent conservative scholars ..., but also by some of the giants of mainstream scholarship of the past.
For instance, the legendary Orientalist William Foxwell Albright, the "Father of Biblical Archeology," defended the "conquest model" from the 1920s until his death in 1971. Some quotations from his magnum opus, From the Stone Age to Christianity (1940), will suffice. (Dever 2003: 41)
Archeological excavation and exploration are throwing increasing light on the character of the earliest Israelite occupation (of Canaan), about 1200 B.C. (1940: 279)
The Israelites ... proceeded without loss of time to destroy and occupy Canaanite towns all over the country. (1940: 278)
And it seems that Albright was not bothered all that much about genocide, for he concludes:
It was fortunate for the future of monotheism that the Israelites of the Conquest were a wild folk, endowed with primitive energy and ruthless will to exist, since the resulting decimation of the Canaanites prevented the complete fusion of the two kindred folk which would almost inevitably have depressed Yahwistic standards to a point where recovery was impossible. Thus the Canaanites, with their orgiastic nature-worship, their cult of fertility in the form of serpent symbols and sensuous nudity, and their gross mythology, were replaced by Israel, with its pastoral simplicity and purity of life, its lofty monotheism, and its severe code of ethics. (1940: 281)
(....) For many, the conquest model had in its favor the fact that it took the biblical account (in Joshua, though not in Judges) seriously, if naively. And the archeological evidence known up until the 1960s from such sites as Bethel, Debir, Lachish, and Hazor seemed to corroborate at least some sort of pan-military campaigns by foreign invaders in Canaan in the late 13th-early 12th centuries.... (Dever 2003: 44)
By the late 1960s, however, the assault or conquest model was assaulted itself. And the threat came from the same quarter that once staunchly upheld the theory--archeology. We have already noted the absence not only of destruction levels at Dibon and Heshbon in Transjordan, but also any possible occupational context for such. This evidence was known already in the late 1960s, but it was often ignored or rationalized away by scholars still anxious to salvage something of the traditional theory. (Dever 2003: 44-45)
Another crushing blow to the conquest model came from the excavations of the great British archeologist Dame Kathleen Kenyon at Jericho between 1955 and 1958. Another British archeologist, John Garstang, had already dug there in the 1920s, sponsored by an evangelical foundation, the Wellcome-Marston Trust. He brought to light a massive destruction of mud brick city walls that he confidently dated to the 15th century B.C. As a result, he announced triumphantly that he had found the very walls that Joshua and his men had brought tumbling down (dating the Exodus, of course, ca. 1446 B.C., as was fashionable at the time). (Dever 2003: 45)
Kenyon, however, equipped with far superior modern methods, and proclaiming herself unencumbered by any "biblical baggage" (so she once told me in Jerusalem), proved that while this destruction indeed dated to ca. 1500 B.C., it was part of the now well-attested Egyptian campaigns in the course of expelling the Asiatic "Hyksos" from Egypt at the beginning of the 18th Dynasty. Moreover, Kenyon showed beyond doubt that in the mid-late 13th century B.C.--the time period now required for any Israelite "conquest"--Jericho lay completely abandoned. There is not so much as a Late Bronze II potsherd of that period on the entire site. This seems a blow to the biblical account indeed. (Nevertheless, I always reassure those who need it that here we have a stupendous "miracle": Joshua destroyed a site that was not even there!) .... Simply put, archeology tells us that the biblical story of the fall of Jericho, miraculous elements aside, cannot have been founded on genuine historical sources. It seems invented out of whole cloth. (Dever 2003: 45-47)
The next site on the Israelite itinerary across the Jordan and up into the central hill country is 'Ai, about ten miles north/northeast of Jerusalem. It was extensively excavated in 1933-35 by a French Jewish archeologist, Mlle. Judith Marquet-Krause. She brought to light a massively fortified Early Bronze Age city-state, with monumental temples and palaces, all destroyed sometime around 2200 B.C. After scant reoccupation in the early 2nd millennium B.C., 'Ai appears to have been entirely deserted from ca. 1500 B.C. until sometime in the in the early 12th century B.C. Thus it would have been nothing more than ruins in the late 13th century B.C., -- that is, at the time of the alleged Israelite conquest. (Dever 2003: 47)
(....) Between 1965 and 1972 Joseph Callaway, an American archeologist and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professor who had studied method with Kenyon, reopened the investigation. And he confirmed Marquet-Krause's results beyond doubt. To his credit, he acknowledged the excavations of 'Ai as a major blow to the "conquest theory." He put it this way in 1985:
For many years, the primary source for the understanding of the settlement of the first Israelites was the Hebrew Bible, but every reconstruction based upon biblical traditions has floundered on the evidence from archeological remains.... (Now) the primary source has to be archeological remains. (1985: 72)
Moreover, Callaway--a southern gentleman of great moral character--took early retirement from his very conservative seminary rather than risk being the cause of theological embarrassment. (Dever 2003: 47-48)
[And so it goes the same for Joshua's account of Gibeon, which the archeological evidence proves was little more than fiction at the times of the claimed destruction. And other sites have had to be reinterpreted in light of fresh evidence that were once thought to corroborate the biblical accounts of Joshua.]
And Pritchard found 56 broken jar handles inscribed "Gibeon" in Hebrew in a deep water system of the 8th-7th century B.C. The fact that this water system is probably the same one that is mentioned in 2 Samuel 2:13 suggests that the book of Joshua belongs to the 8th-7th century B.C., when the Gibeon known to the biblical writers really did exist. (Dever 2003: 49)
(....) Albright and others were once fond of citing the massive Late Bronze Age destruction of Lachish, after which it was abandoned for as long as two centuries. Albright dated the relevant destruction to ca. 1225 B.C. But large-scale excavations carried out by Israeli archeologists in 1973-87 have proven that the destruction in question took place perhaps as late as 1170 B.C., as shown by an inscribed bronze bearing the cartouche of Ramses III (ca. 1198-1166 B.C.). That is some fifty years too late for our commander-in-chief Joshua--unless he was leading troops into battle well into his eighties. The evidence, published in 1983, has not, however, attracted much attention. (Dever 2003: 49-50)
-- Dever, William G. Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? Cambridge: Wm. B. Eardmans Publishing Co.; 2003; pp. 37-50.
Dever in principle and in good old hard archeological evidence proved Joshua didn't miraculously destroy Jericho, and he didn't just out of hand dismiss the story in the Bible, but honestly and methodically, and scientifically, set out to answer it.
