Jericho
Deep in the Syro-African rift valley, at almost 900 feet below sea level, lies this Palestinian Arab city, the Biblical “city of palm trees” (Deuteronomy 34:1-3). It owes its long existence in part to an excellent spring (4.4 cubic meters per minute). At one time purified by the prophet Elisha (2 Kings 2:19-22), the spring lies just east of the tell. About nine thousand years ago a flooding wadi passed nearby, depositing silt each winter, thus replenishing the soil.
The combination of water, fertile ground and high heat makes it possible to grow tropical plants here. Today one sees papaya, mango, bananas and citrus, including pomelo. In the Roman period, the Jewish inhabitants grew spices and perfumes, including the balsam shrub, from which they manufactured a perfume of great aphrodisiac power whose secret, for better or worse, has been lost. The Hasmonean, followed by Herod, were eager to grow these plants, so they harnessed additional springs in the river beds to the west, leading the waters onto the plain. They thus turned the city into a garden which, Josephus tells us, was eight miles long and more than one wide. Jericho must have been an aromatic place: its Arabic name, ariha, means “scent.”
In addition to its natural graces, the city also had a good commercial position on the southernmost of the three major link roads between the international trunks. Of all the links, this Gezer-Jericho road permitted the quickest access to the King’s Highway at Heshbon 20 miles east. The city also sat on a north-south route stretching down the Jordan Valley. And once Jerusalem was established as a capital, anyone coming from the east would likely approach it through Jericho
— as Jesus did (Luke 19:1).
Charisma and Baptism at the Jordan: A Typology
The Bible records three moments at the Jordan river when charismatic authority gets transferred from one leader to another.
1. There is the transfer from Moses to Joshua. Moses is a hard act to follow. Yet God performs for Joshua, at the point of entry to the Promised Land, a miracle very like the one He had performed for Moses at the point of departure from Egypt:
2. Several centuries later we find a transfer of charismatic authority from Elijah to Elisha. Again, the water of the Jordan is stopped:
3. If we now travel about 800 years forward, we again find a transfer of authority at the Jordan. The place is the same: near Jericho. For Matthew 3:1 and 3:6 locate the Baptist in the desert of Judea — at the Jordan River. (Cf. John 3:23, although we are not sure where Aenon was.) Since the desert of Judea was bounded in the north by Jericho (then an irrigated oasis eight miles long) this would have had to be somewhere on the short stretch between Jericho and the Dead Sea. John the Baptist had a movement behind him. He was enough of a celebrity to receive a paragraph in Josephus. (See An ancient source on John the Baptist). (That is why the Church preserved Josephus’ works.) But like Moses and Elijah before him, the mantle was to be given to another. And as with them, this happened at the Jordan (Matthew 3:16-17):
After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.”
Here it is not the waters that part, but rather the heavens.
After this John is arrested and imprisoned at Machaerus, a Herodian fortress on the eastern side of the Dead Sea. But Jesus, taking over from him, does not immediately go up to Galilee to start his public mission. Rather, he is led by the spirit into the desert, where he spends forty days and nights without food or water. (The Mount of Temptation)
The Mount of Temptation
After baptizing Jesus, John is arrested. Jesus, taking over from him, does not immediately go up to Galilee to start his public mission. Rather, he is led by the spirit into the desert, where the devil tempts him.
Standing on Tell es-Sultan and looking west, we see a cliff. A monastery is built into it. This is Qarantal (“the forty”), the Monastery of the Temptation. In its present form it dates to 1887. Byzantine monks first founded a monastery here, which they named “Dakun,” after the earlier Hasmonean fortress here, called “Dok” (Aramaic for “viewing point”). In the chapel near the altar is a rounded piece of the bedrock, resembling a loaf of bread. It was this, perhaps, that attracted the tradition of Matthew 4:1.
Six Greek Orthodox monks live in the monastery today. As the name implies, the view is grand. One might see “all the kingdoms of the world.” Check the opening hours before you climb. The monastery requires modest dress.
Above Qarantal, on top of the cliff, is a wall. Because the first temptation was already located here, the place also attracted the third, in which “the Satan” (meaning, in Hebrew, the adversary) shows Jesus the kingdoms. The Greek Orthodox built this wall in the hope of founding a monastery here, but their money came largely from Russia, and in 1917 it dried up.
The wall, however, sits on the ruins of the Hasmonean (later Herodian) fortress, Dok. Its function was to guard the link road, for beneath it an unbroken ridge leads up toward the central plateau of the hill country. Dok was the scene of a gruesome event during the reign of the Hasmonean, as reported in Josephus.
To the left of Qarantal, we see caves. Here archaeologists found the skeletons of 38 Jewish rebels, all sharing a genetic defect in the teeth (hence probably relatives) who had taken refuge in the caves at the end of the Bar Kokhba revolt. The Romans probably built a fire in the mouth of the cave and smoked them to death.
Above these caves are the antennas of Israel’s army, performing the same guard duty as the ancient fortress. In the words of George Adam Smith, “History does not repeat itself without explaining itself, and the explanation is usually geographical.”
Second Testament Jericho
According to Josephus, the Jericho of his day was a huge garden, eight miles long and more than one wide, irrigated by Elisha’s spring. In fact, the Hasmonean and Herod brought water from many springs, because under the tropical conditions, they could grow the costliest spices and perfumes, especially balsam (Josephus, War, IV 8.3). For this reason Cleopatra of Egypt coveted Jericho, doing all she could to get it from Herod. Eventually she succeeded, and he had to lease it back from her until her suicide in 31 BC.
Heading south from Tell es-Sultan, we take a brief look at one of the three surviving fig sycamores in Jericho (Zacchaeus! Luke 19:1-8). We then continue south. Crossing a riverbed (Wadi Qilt), we make the next right. We are now following the line of the old Roman road toward Jerusalem, with the riverbed on our right. After a kilometer, we see a small mound before us and pull off to the right in front of it. This was part of Herod’s winter palace. A bridge crossed the river to the main part of the palace on the other side, the outlines of which are clearly visible.
Here Herod died, at the age of 69, in 4 BC. Josephus tells the story.
Beneath the palace, in 1998, archaeologist Ehud Netzer found remains of the earliest synagogue yet discovered; it was built between 75 and 50 BC and was destroyed in the earthquake of 31 BC.) Today the water of Wadi Qilt is led to the fields before it reaches this point, but Herod had the river flowing through his palace.
(Note: The ascent westward from here is hazardous, a two-way street. Drive with care — and not at all when it’s wet.)
Before Herod’s time, this area was the royal quarter of the Hasmonean. North of the palace, near the foot of the cliff, is a small excavated hill. It was the palace-turned-villa of Alexandra, mother of Mariamne, whom Herod fiercely loved. Alexandra had a 17-year-old son named Jonathan Aristobolus. She got Mariamne to pressure Herod to appoint him High Priest. As soon as he had done so, however, Herod rued the decision. For Jonathan soon proved very popular (he had the blood of the freedom-fighting Hasmoneans in his veins) and for the last hundred years the high priest had also been king. Herod, on the other hand, was a “mere” Edomite, whose paternal grandfather had converted to Judaism, and his fellow Jews considered him a collaborator with Rome.
Fearing a coup, Herod decided to cut his losses. The event occurred at a large swimming pool, still visible just east of the villa (one must visit by foot in order to see it). It was here that young Jonathan’s troubles ended and Herod’s began. See Josephus (Antiquities).
The Jericho Road
On leaving Jericho, Jesus healed the blind Bartimaeus. (Mark 10:46-51)
Heading south from Tell es-Sultan, we cross a riverbed (Wadi Qilt) and make the next right. We are now following the line of the old Roman road toward Jerusalem, with the wadi on our right. After one kilometer we shall spot, across the river, Herod’s winter palace. (See Second Testament Jericho.)
(Note: The ascent is hazardous, a two-way street. Drive with care — and not at all when it’s wet.)
When Jesus climbed this road toward Jerusalem in 30 CE, he did not see palaces. All had burned down in the brief revolt that followed Herod’s death.
To our west yawns the canyon of Wadi Qilt, guarded by two fortresses. There is the cone of Cypros on the south bank. (Cypros was Herod’s mother; this may have been the Hasmonean fortress, Threx.) On the north is the half-cone of Taurus. In the region east of Jerusalem, this wadi is the only natural opening in the cliff along the Jordan Valley.
In First Testament times, before there was an aqueduct along the bank of the wadi, people would take the upper, easier road (the one we are on) in winter and spring, drinking from the cisterns. In summer and autumn, they would stay in the canyon, drinking from the springs and resting in the shade. The Hasmonean put in the first aqueduct from springs to the west. Then there was always water available on this upper road, and it became the only one.
In the face of the north bank, as we drive, we can see the caves of Byzantine monks. We come to a large gate and continue about 200 yards. Here we stop and climb to a cross, from which we can see St. George’s monastery, nestled in the northern cliff face. To its left and ours, a functioning aqueduct (1945) crosses the wadi, bringing water to the fields around Jericho.
St. George’s shares a number of traits with Qarantal. It is Greek Orthodox. It too contains just a few monks today. In its present form it dates from the nineteenth century, but with traces of Crusader and Byzantine predecessors. Although founded by Syrian monks in the fifth century AD, the monastery takes its name from a great teacher, George of Kosiba, who lived and taught here in the sixth and seventh centuries, dying seven years after the Persian conquest of 614.
This is a good place to consider the road on which we are driving. We can measure the 13 miles from Jerusalem to Jericho, because to the west we can see a tower on Mt. Scopus overlooking the city beyond, while on the right we can see the wall of Dok. Surrounded by desert, this was a dangerous road. Outlaws could get control of the watering places. An army might come to try and bring order (think of Saul chasing David) but it could not long endure on limited water supplies. (The exception was Masada). Once the army went back to the city, the outlaws returned to their posts. (In the nineteenth century, pilgrims had to travel in groups from Jerusalem to the Jordan, paying protection money to the Beduin.) It is not a coincidence, then, that Jesus sets the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37) on this road.
Jericho: The Oldest City Yet Discovered
Today we climb seventy feet to the top of Jericho’s tell, but unlike other ancient cities in the land, Jericho was not founded on a hill. The whole mound consists of cities. Dame Kathleen Kenyon, digging here from 1952 through 1958, expected indeed to find a natural hill. Yet the deeper she went, the more cities she found. By the time she reached the level of the plain, she was back in what is known as the Neolithic period. Since this preceded the invention of pottery (5000 BC), she had to use carbon dating. Testing samples of burnt grain from houses built against a stone tower, she put the age of the city at more than 9000 years (3000 older than any other known city).
The tower had been adjacent to mud-brick houses, 12 – 18 feet in diameter, on the pattern of round tents. The floors were bedded with stone, topped by clay plaster. The residents kept groups of jawless skulls beside them in the house, burying the headless bodies under the floor. Perhaps this was a form of ancestor worship: once there is a house to bequeath, the beneficiaries venerate those who bequeathed it.
After ascending the tell, we can look down on the Neolithic tower. Its function isn’t clear: a defensive tower would project beyond the city wall, but this did not. Below we can see its entrance. On the inside, twenty steps lead to the top, which shows no trace of a defensive barrier. Since the town was so low, this may have been a watchtower — not just to warn against an enemy, but to guard the crops against thieves or animals.
On the tower’s west side, Kenyon discovered a succession of massive protective walls, rebuilt several times. They may have circled the town for defense, or their function may have been to ward off silt from a wadi on the west.
The tower has not been reconstructed. Although modest compared with the pyramids, it pre-dates them by as much time as separates us from them: 4500 years. It is the oldest public structure known. Its existence implies a number of things. First, people had the means and leisure to build such a thing. It was the age of horticulture (farming with a flint hoe). The largest hunting and gathering societies, in the best environments, never number more than a few hundred people (Lenski, p. 98), but this city covered ten acres, room for a thousand or more. Nor would hunters have had the leisure to build this structure, which required the import of 1600 cubic meters of stone. It reflects “the existence of social organization and central authority which could recruit, for the first time in human history, the necessary means and manpower for such building operations.” (Mazar, p. 42.)
Underneath the level of the tower, Kenyon found a sequence of packed floors, on which hunters and gatherers had erected straw huts. Beneath them was the very first structure here: a mud platform with depressions around it (meant perhaps to hold cultic offerings), which she dated to 10,000 years ago. She also turned up a series of tools from the earliest level up through the time of the Neolithic town (on display at the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem). Studying them, one can trace the transition to agriculture: from the kind of flint that is suited for cutting grain stalks one by one (wild grain) to a sickle-type suited for cutting several together (cultivated). (When and where did people start farming?)
In the first period (“A”) of Neolithic Jericho, there were three major phases of cities, each maintaining the same urban culture for roughly a thousand years. According to the Italian expedition now digging at the site, a mud brick house cannot be relied on after twenty years: one must build a new one. The mud of dismantled houses became the ground on which the next group built, until the level rose 25 feet and buried the tower.
At the level of 6000 BC, a change appears. The houses become rectangular. People continue to keep skulls in their living rooms, but they fill out the features of some with clay, putting sea shells in for eyes and restoring the color with paint.
In one of the houses of this period (“Neolithic B”), there was a niche in a wall, with a flat stone at the bottom. Nearby Kenyon found a carefully hewn basalt pillar 17 inches high. With the flat stone as a base, it fit the niche precisely. Here then is a very early example of the masseba, or standing stone . (See Dan.)
From about 5000 BC (when pottery was invented), the settlement at Jericho dwindled to insignificance, reviving around 3200. The new culture was different, with distinctive pottery. People buried their dead in the slopes outside the city. Kenyon located their city wall, which was rebuilt at least seventeen times till destruction came around 2350 BC.
And now we approach the millennium of a city whose walls came a’tumblin’ down.
Logistics for a visit to the tell:
Nature Reserves and National Parks (Main office: 02/500-5444)
Opening hours:
April 1 through September 30, from 8.00 – 17.00. (Entrance until 16.00)*
October 1 through March 31, from 8.00 – 16.00. (Entrance until 15.00)*
Joshua’s Jericho?
A new culture springs up abruptly at Jericho in the first part of the second millennium BC. This is the time when the horse is domesticated, allowing for widespread trade and warfare. Accordingly, the many finds from Jericho’s graves show an Egyptian connection.
Since we are deep in the Syro-African rift, the area is subject to earthquake. At some stage, around the 17th century BC, a gas arose and destroyed decay-causing bacteria in one of the family graves. Some organic materials survived, including wooden furniture and boxes. (The contents of the grave have been moved to the Rockefeller Museum, where they are displayed as found.) The style seems very similar to that of Egypt, though simpler.
It was a time when people from this part of the Levant were settling in the Nile delta. They eventually took it over — and were dubbed by the Egyptians “Hyksos,” foreign rulers. Hundreds of “Hyksos scarabs” were also found in the Jericho graves.
The city of this time included between ten and twelve acres, though a large part consisted of ramparts. Its wall extended eastward (beyond the modern road) to include the spring. (A section of the tell was removed to construct the reservoir and the road.) Because of the new technology of war (horses and chariots), this wall was also more massive than earlier ones. Thanks to a recent excavation, we can view it today on the south side of the tell, as well as the north. Its outermost section is a retaining wall of large stones rising about fifteen feet. Then comes a glacis, sloping up at 35 degrees, to a line about 30 feet above the top of the outer wall. Upon this bulwark stood yet another wall, 16 feet thick and of undetermined height (for only the stone foundations remain). The whole complex was 68 feet thick. It must have made an impression.
According to Kenyon, this city was destroyed (along with many others in the country) when the Egyptians established control in Canaan after driving out the Hyksos — an event usually dated to 1550 BC, long before the time of Joshua. She finds no city at Jericho again until the 11th century, well after the time of Joshua.
In the early eighties, a few years after Kenyon’s death, her detailed reports were published. Bryant G. Wood took a new look at her findings and re-evaluated them in the Biblical Archaeology Review (March-April 1990). The city with the impressive ramparts, he holds, endured all through the Middle Bronze Age (2100-1550 BC) and was destroyed in a period called Late Bronze IIA: about 1400 BC.
Wood’s revision caused a stir, because it appeared to bring the city of massive walls two centuries closer to Joshua and the Israelites — indeed, to the date that a chronology based purely on the Bible would suggest. Yet most archaeologists do not accept Wood’s re-dating. (Why not?) Apart from that, they discern no trace of Israel in the land as early as 1400 BC.
In the 1980’s, Israeli archaeologists carried out surface surveys in the hill country between the Jezreel Valley and Beersheba. They found 248 sites in the Middle Bronze Age (2100-1550 BC), then a sudden drop to a mere 29 in the Late Bronze (1550-1200 BC) followed by an upsurge to 254 in Iron Age I (1200-1000 BC). These iron-age settlements were mostly small. They “possessed an overall material culture that led directly on into the true, full-blown Iron Age culture of the Israelite Monarchy” (Dever).
Using the pottery and architectural styles of the Late Bronze period, it is impossible to distinguish the Israelites from other ethnic groups. One thing, however, does seem to work: the study of animal bones. At Ashkelon, Ekron and Timna (of the Shephelah), three Philistine sites, between 8% and 18% of the animal bones belonged to pigs. These were popular at other lowlands sites as well. At Heshbon in the highlands of Transjordan, an Ammonite site, 5% of the bones belonged to pigs. At Ebal and Raddana, two Israelite sites, the percentage of pig bones was zero, and at Shilo, 0.1 (someone noshing on the sly). “(Pigs) disappear from the faunal assemblages of the hill country… The faunal assemblages of Iron II [1000-586 BC — SL] reflect the same traits.” (Finkelstein, p. 206.) citing B. Hesse, pp. 217-218. Conclusion: the Israelites first settled in the central highlands in Iron Age I, the start of which is usually dated to 1200 BC.
Thus, even if Middle Bronze Jericho lasted till 1400 BC, as Wood maintains, we would still have a problem of two centuries. To eliminate them would require a major revision of archaeological analysis at several sites. The motive for such a revision would have to be a new chronology. Future work in radiocarbon dating and the counting of tree rings may supply such a motive, but so far it has not.
We cannot yet assert, then, that a city existed here when the Israelites arrived. On the other hand, where would the Biblical story have come from? Scholars often claim that it was an “etiological” saga: some Israelite, seeing the impressive remains of walls, made the story up to explain them. But this doesn’t work. No Israelite saw ruins here. He or she saw a living Iron Age town on a hill of mud.
When did what walls fall?
The Archaeological Debate Over Jericho
In the first half of the second millennium BC, Jericho encompassed ten or twelve acres, though much consisted of ramparts. According to Kathleen Kenyon, this city was destroyed (along with many others in the country) when the Egyptians established control in Canaan after driving out the Hyksos — an event usually dated to 1550 BC, long before the time of Joshua. She finds no city at Jericho again until the 11th century, well after the time of Joshua.
In the early eighties, a few years after Kenyon’s death, her detailed reports were published. Bryant G. Wood took a new look at her findings and re-evaluated them in the Biblical Archaeology Review (March-April 1990). The city with the impressive ramparts, he holds, endured all through the Middle Bronze Age (2100-1550 BC) and was destroyed in a period called Late Bronze IIA: about 1400 BC.
There are problems with all but one of Wood’s arguments. I shall outline them here and mention the difficulties.
1. Bryant Wood says: Kenyon asserted that there was no city here in the Late Bronze period (1550-1200 BC) because she found no imported Cypriot pottery, such as characterizes the LB finds from tombs at Megiddo. On the other hand, both she and her predecessor, Garstang, did find lots of ordinary pots which are typical of the Late Bronze. It appears, moreover, that Garstang did find Cypriot ware, though he did not recognize it as such. Even without this, however, the absence of a certain kind of pot proves nothing. Unlike Megiddo, Jericho was not a big wealthy city on a major trade route, so it would not have had such pots. Besides, Kenyon dug in what seems to have been a poor section, where people would not have had expensive, imported vessels.
Problems with Wood’s argument: Cypriot pottery was imported to the land in the Middle Bronze period, but its import became massive in the Late Bronze Age. Since Kenyon’s time, archaeologists have found it not just at Megiddo, but at many of the other 29 sites they identify as Late Bronze – in the Jordan Valley as well. The same is true for Mycenean pottery. The import of both stopped abruptly at the end of the Late Bronze, before 1200 BC. On the other hand, the local pottery of the Middle Bronze period evolved very gradually into the Late Bronze, and it is hard to distinguish between them. Cypriot and Mycenean ware, therefore, constitute a clear and firm ceramic indicator for the existence of a city in the Late Bronze Age. (See Mazar, pp. 218, 261- 264.)
Wood might answer: the presence of such ware may positively indicate the existence of an LB city, but its absence does not indicate its non-existence.
2. Wood says: In a cemetery just northwest of the tell, Garstang found scarabs with the names of pharaohs from the Late Bronze period.
Problem: He found three scarabs and a seal. Since such items were passed through the generations as heirlooms, they could have been laid in the grave in the Iron Age. Also, during times of pastoral nomadism, people sometimes buried their dead near tells that were not in use. (Mazar, p. 279.)
3. Wood says: “One Carbon-14 sample was taken from a piece of charcoal found in the destruction debris of the final Bronze Age city. It was dated to 1410 B.C.E. plus or minus 40 years.” (Wood, p. 53)
Problems: The British Museum later re-dated this sample to about 1550 BC. In 1995, when methods of radiocarbon dating had become more efficient, Hendrik J. Bruins and Johannes van der Plicht conducted C-14 tests on eighteen samples from this same destruction layer at Jericho. They did this not in order to refute Wood, but “as a contribution toward the establishment of an independent radiocarbon chronology of Near Eastern archaeology.” (Radiocarbon Vol. 37, Number 2, 1995.) They included six samples consisting of charred cereal grains (more reliable for dating than wood, which might have been used over a long period). The samples, it turned out, had lived and died in the 16th century BC. This confirmed Kenyon’s dating.
Since the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere varies at different times, raw C-14 dates are calibrated to actual dates by checking the C-14 in trees when their rings can serve as an independent indicator. Wood cites studies showing regional differences among trees with respect to the quantity of C-14 at given times. Since there is not enough data from local trees to calibrate raw C-14 dates, Wood refuses to accept the above findings for Jericho. (For more, see dating.)
Wood has made further arguments:
If Jericho was destroyed in 1550 BC, who would have done the deed? This was the time when the Egyptians drove the Hyksos out. It does not make sense that the fleeing Hyksos would have destroyed the town. As for the Egyptians, their records show them pursuing the Hyksos only as far as Sharuhen, a city in the Negev. Moreover, the Egyptians preferred to attack before the harvest, taking the crops for their troops and laying siege to the cities. In the destruction layer of the last Bronze Age Jericho, however, Kenyon made an unusual find: storage jars containing six bushels of grain.
Problem: Since Kenyon’s dig at Jericho, archaeologists have found evidence of numerous destructions throughout the country, all dated to around 1550 BC. (To name just some of the better-known cities that fell: Hebron, Shiloh, Jerusalem, Gezer, Aphek — in addition to Sharuhen.) The destroyers may have been local people, taking advantage of the collapse of Hyksos control. Or they may have been, pace Wood, the Egyptians, who established control over Canaan during the next hundred years. (See Mazar, pp. 226-27.)
Wood: Archaeologists divide the Middle Bronze Age into three sub-periods. The last (III) is normally dated from 1650 to 1550 BC, when Kenyon says the city was destroyed. At Jericho she found 20 architectural phases within this hundred-year stretch, including three major and twelve minor destructions. That seems rather much for a century. It does not seem too much if the city lasted 250 years — till 1400.
Problems: None. This argument remains standing, but it may not suffice to support Wood’s thesis.