Joshua Did Not Win the Battle of Jericho
Scholars have figured out when the story about the Jews heroic retaking of Canaan was written. It was written about 600 years after it was supposed to have happened. Thus, the story was not written from eye witness reports. Nor was it written by those who had personally known eye witnesses. It is religious propaganda.
In Joshua 10:40 we learn Joshua defeated to whole land of Canaan. In Deuteronomy 13:1 we learn the Lord said the Canaanites still held lots of the country. In the Book of Joshua the Jews took the city of Hazor and put a sword through every resident. In Judges, Hazor still belongs to the Canaanites. There are several cities mentioned in the "battle" for Canaan which archaeologists say did not exist at the time. They may well have existed 600 years later and that is why they are included in the tale.
The inconsistencies in the Bible itself and archaeological evidence concludes the Jews did not come from some location in the desert and heroically defeat the Canaanites. This was accepted in a 1950's book I have by a historian. The case has been reconfirmed since then.
How, then, did the Israelites occupy Canaan? The prevailing view has been they were indigenous to the area, some may have traveled to other countries and returned, but mostly they never left.
Why was the tale of Jericho written if it did not happen? We can speculate it was written to persuade Jews to stay with the one god instead of the other gods around at the time. Also, it may have been a patriotic piece to keep people loyal to the Jewish leadership.
Even more impressive, so the story goes, Joshua commanded the sun to stand still while God’s chosen people completed the slaughter and hostile take over of the promised land. I guess some Bible inerrancy folks are still looking for astronomical evidence of Josh’s long day. A gruesome tale indeed. Although, “Joshua fought the Battle of Jericho” was a fun Sunday school song. In my book it's a distant second to “Who Did Swallow Jonah?”. After all the interpretations, editions, revisions, and versions, the telling of the tall tales in the B-I-B-L-E, noisy and lossy when they were written, are still being auto-tuned on the pulpit today.
ReplyDelete"..are still being auto-tuned on the pulpit today." I looked up "Catholic answers, Joshua" and sure enough, the Catholic Church sees the seven day battle for Jericho as a historical event. What was the "god" thinking when he put such a false story in the Bible--knowing full well, since he knows everything, the city of Jericho did not exist.
DeleteUnlikely as it seems, there is some concrete scientific study of the subject - https://www.scribd.com/document/157931387/Do-Roman-Catholics-KnOw-about-the-Walls-of-Jericho
ReplyDeleteIn the end, any scientific explanation will not satisfy some people while people of faith look past the scientific to the spiritual. In the case of the crucified Christ rising from the dead, there is no scientific explanation. In the case of Jericho, there are plausible scientific theories of acoustic and mechanical resonance.
Matt--So, the sound of the trumpets could have brought down the walls of Jericho? That might be a far fetched explanation were it not for archaeology. Excavations found that some cities in the region at that time had walls, some did not. Jericho was one the cities where there is not evidence of walls. The only material for wall back then was stone. Stones stay in about the same place forever. No stones there. Oh, the stones from the walls that were there were moved back out into the desert by later people of Jericho? Sure. The later people of Jericho were neater than those of the cities where to wall materials can still be found. Good try. Look, the government of Israel is a political institution like that of the U.S. It has been paying for people to look for evidence confirming Moses and Joshua. They have not found any. If they thought the trumpet explanation had any validity they would have glopped onto it. They have not.
ReplyDeleteI don't have all the answers. Having visited Israel twice over the past 30 years, I can speak to what I have seen. I did visit Jericho and the place considered to be the old Jericho. The old Jericho was not impressive and certainly held no viewable evidence of a wall collapse from 1400 B.C. Nonetheless, I defer to experts. The New York Times, in 1990, published an article backing up the Bible's claims of the tumbled Jericho wall - https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/22/world/believers-score-in-battle-over-the-battle-of-jericho.html
DeleteYou can believe the Bible. You can believe the New York Times. You can believe your eyes.
There are plenty of photos of the alleged Jericho city walls. I won't bother linking those sites.
Acoustic waves can shatter things. Think wine glasses and high pitches. Can stone, brick or mortar walls from 1400 B.C. be shattered and tumbled? Remember, it only need to tumble enough to allow the assault on the inhabitants of Jericho.
An old scientific article claiming the religious youth are less altruistic than atheist/secular youth has been retracted. The results are actually the opposite, by a wide margin. It seems the authors got caught, rather than made mistake. Their less than apologetic apology - sorry if you were offended - is also a telling sign of an antagonism by the authors.
DeleteWe probably won't see this in the Washington Post, New York Times or Fargo Forum.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/science-journal-retracts-study-claiming-religious-upbringing-makes-kids-less-generous
Matt; "The New York Times published an article backing up the Bible's claim of the tumbled Jericho wall.." The article did not claim there is evidence of Joshua's battle bringing down the walls. It has now been 30 years since that piece was published and there remains no evidence of the battle described in the Bible.
DeleteWhat? No response to the retracted claim. Why are atheists so cheap with the needy?
Delete"What? No response to the retracted claim. Why are atheists so cheap with the needy?" Please explain whatever it is you are referring to. I'm unable to read you mind.
ReplyDeleteLook at my October 1, 2019 2:47 claim and follow the link.
DeleteMatt: Christian kids are just as altruistic as atheist kids. Ok, whatever. We don't have good statistics about altruism. What percentage of income do people give? Is it to maintain a church or organization or does it go to less advantaged people? Churches do good works. So do atheists. We have a couple of quite large fund drives in our local atheist group. The leaders find the most down and out school districts in the state to give money too. It has given washer-dryers to a couple of homeless places. There is a national atheist benevolent group that collects money from across the country and from all the national atheist groups. Do atheists give more to benevelant groups than Christians? I don't know.
DeleteDon't believe in scientific studies? Tsk tsk. It's tough to lose those scientific arguments. Even tougher when the scientist has to retract his original conclusions because he, well, cheated.
ReplyDeleteI keep having to ask you, WHAT ARE YOU REFERRING TO?? Is this about "Christian Archaeology" or the donation story??
DeleteMatt--I looked back several posts and see that you must have been referring to a 1990's article where a professor(s) claimed to have found religious children around the world were less likely to donate than non religious people. Then someone examined the data and found a coding error and the conclusion was incorrect. I'm glad that error was found and acknowledged. You are angry because the error was not given enough publicity. I am equally angry about a puffed up Catholic I debated in Fargo several years ago. His name is Ryan P Anderson and he is still appearing on news shows as a talking head. He is a fraud. He was going around the country giving talks and promoting his phony book. He claimed a social scientist had found children of gay parents were less successful, academically and socially, than children of straight parents. What he did not mention in his book or talks was that the researcher had admitted in the same journal a month or two later his sample or parents and children skewed the results. The real variable was stable relationship in parents, not gay versus straight. The researcher claims knew the sample was not valid but did not have the time or money to get a valid sample. This error was given no publicity and this guy, Anderson, waltzes on in his career of hate. He and the coauthors were all lawyers or studying law, not one social scientist among the four.
ReplyDeleteInstead of shifting to a different subject, which no one can verify,
DeleteThe fact about the 1990s study on altruism goes WAY beyond what you refer to as a "coding error". Any reputable researcher LOOKS at the data as it comes in to see if (a) passes a sanity check, and (b) bears out somewhat similar to data from that same source on a different sampling period or to a different source.
It's like checking to see if 2 2-digit numbers when added together either make a 2 or 3 digit number. If it makes anything but a 2 or 3 digit number, it is a big mistake.
Assuming he had other researchers on the project, someone should have questioned it as well.
My conclusion is that the researcher was either incompetent or a fraud; neither of which is good.
The left is not curious about studies and results that don't go their way. For example, Mueller's report had no smoking gun so either (a) Mueller is a fraud, or (b) he didn't present evidence against Trump for some reason. Regardless, we aren't curious enough so let's move on to impeachment; either Trump, Kavanaugh or both. Never mind about border security, drug prices, or anything else to do with actually running a government or legislating, just continue to whine about Trump's 2016 victory.
unknown "The left is not concerned about studies and results that don't go their way." That is exactly the experience I have had with the right. I gave an example.
ReplyDelete