Almost Jewish?
Many many years ago I read an account in a psychology text book about an experiment in which the participants were shown a film of people passing a ball from one to another. The experiment was intended to show just how unobservant people are and when I read it my lip curled slightly as I contemplated the obvious mental limitations of those with whom I share this planet. I, I had no doubt, would do vastly better - there was no way I could be that unobservant!
If you have not heard or seen this experiment, it is now available on YouTube, so please stop reading NOW and watch the video; it only takes a bit under two minutes.
Click here to watch the video.
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As I say, I had read about the experiment, so when I stumbled across the film clip on YouTube I knew what to expect. I watched it with smug complacency and, sure enough, you couldn't fool me. I saw the gorilla. And then came the final sentence on the video which shredded my smugness: I had completely missed the curtains changing colour! In fact, I had to watch it again, this time concentrating on the curtains, and sure enough they changed colour - and I only just glimpsed the gorilla!
In other words, no matter how smart we think we are, unless we are expecting to see something, it is all too easy to see it - for some value of the word "see" - and completely miss it.
It is our contention here on Digging Up the Past that the Exodus happened, not at the end of Late Bronze, but the end of Early Bronze, and the invading Jews were not the people of Iron Age I but those of Middle Bronze I - sometimes called Intermediate Bronze. Naturally such a radical proposal does not find ready acceptance among conventional scholars and I admit that I resisted it for a long time, but once the idea had been put to me, I then became aware of more and more evidence in its support - a bit like suddenly spotting the gorilla or the curtains.
Take, for example, Kathleen Kenyon's excavations of Jericho, where she demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that the walls which fell down, and which Garstang had identified as the Late Bronze walls overthrown by Joshua, in fact belonged to the last phase of the Early Bronze Age. Her conclusion had to be that the Bible account could not be true.
Professor Garstang believed that he had identified the defences of the period, but additional evidence about the stratification makes it quite clear that these are to be dated to the Early Bronze Age. The excavation of Jericho, therefore, has thrown no light on the walls of Jericho, of which the destruction is so vividly described in the Book of Joshua.
Kathleen Kenyon, Digging Up Jericho, p. 262
In the final chapter, titled "Conclusion," she states:
The elements and the depredations of man have combined to make fragmentary the evidence produced by the excavations of the final stages of the history of Jericho. At just that stage when archaeology should have linked with the written record, archaeology fails us. This is regrettable. There is no question of the archaeology being needed to prove that the Bible is true, but it is needed as a help in interpretation to those older parts of the Old Testament which, from the nature of their sources, as briefly mentioned in the last chapter, cannot be raed as a straightforward record.
Kathleen Kenyon, Digging Up Jericho, p. 266
The discussion in the previous chapter that she mentions was the usual speculations about how and why the Bible is untrustworthy because it was all written down from folk memories long after the events described had happened.
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| A Middle Bronze Age tomb from Jericho reconstructed in the British Museum. |
Earlier in the book there is a chapter titled, "The Tombs of Middle Bronze Age Jericho", in which she goes into considerable detail in describing the tombs from that period. Of the very earliest part of the Middle Bronze there were only a very few tombs, but from MBII onwards there were a large number of tombs, richly furnished and showing a high level of culture and sophistication in the articles that were buried in the tombs. Thanks to some peculiarity - possibly the emission of poisonous gases from fractured rock - the wood had been remarkably preserved from decay and showed beautifully designed tables. Some of them were inlaid with ivory, which argues for a degree of wealth, not only because these people could afford imported ivory, but because they were so prodigal with it that they buried it with their departed loved ones.
In describing these tombs, however, Kenyon makes an extraordinary comparison.
The tombs contained multiple burials used over a long period, in fact probably as family vaults. They are comparable to tombs of the late Jewish period, in which successive burials of members of the family were made in a series of niches running off a central chamber. In the Middle Bronze Age ones, when the space on the floor was full and room was required for a new burial, the earlier bones and their offerings were pushed quite without ceremony to the back and sides of the chamber. If the earlier bodies had completely decayed, the result was a mere jumble of bones, but if the process of decay had not gone so far, some of the bones might still be in articulation when pushed aside. The new burial was then placed in the space so cleared, and the process might be repeated indefinitely.
Kathleen Kenyon, Digging Up Jericho p. 234
Earlier in the book Miss Kenyon explained that the reason why they disturbed the last resting place of the ancient Jerichoans was because burial customs give us an insight into the beliefs held by the people, particularly their beliefs concerning the afterlife. This is undoubtedly true: for example, one indication that a tomb in Britain is a Christian burial is the fact that it is aligned east-west; pagans had no preferred alignment. If, therefore, a group of people have the same or similar religious beliefs at the end of a period as they held at the beginning, we should not be surprised to find that their burial customs are likewise similar.
The people of MBII Jericho constructed tombs that were "comparable to tombs of the late Jewish period" and it is highly likely, therefore, that their beliefs also were "comparable" to those of the late Jewish period.
Of course, this could be just a coincidence, but if, like me, you are open to the idea that the Middle Bronze Age people were actually Jews, then this will be just one more strand in the skein of evidence that supports that idea.
© Kendall K. Down 2014
