When I was in Bible college,
my professor told us a story. He summarized, that
back in the Middle Ages, monks used to debate about Aristotle
and philosophy and theology. One time he said the topic was
how many teeth were in a horse's mouth. They got out all sorts of books. The debate went on for 13 days. About that time a neophyte,
a new monk, looked out the window and said,
as my professor put it, "See, here is a horse. Shall we not count its teeth?" And they threw him out
of the monastery for disagreeing with Aristotle and the church fathers! The moral of the story was,
you can debate all you want, but it is better to go
look at the evidence --straight from the horse's mouth. I wanted to go deeper. I wanted to find the origin of this story. But it turns out that
nobody seems to know where this story came from! Some have listed the author as
Francis Bacon or Roger Bacon, or... from a chronicle of
an ancient monastery, or even from an original story
about a priest, a philosopher, and an Arab. But I found no evidence of any of those. Instead, the earliest references I found
date back to 1901. One is the 2nd volume of a textbook
on the psychology of love printed in Paris, and the other a machinist's journal
in Washington DC. And they are word-for-word identical. So back to the moral to the story:
it is better to go look at the evidence for ourselves,
than to simply believe what people say. I've heard a lot of stories about Jericho
and what happened there under Joshua. Were there chariot races on the walls? Does science support the biblical story? What did archaeologists find, after all? Lots of people (including professors)
give conflicting reports. Would you like to look at
what I found out when I checked the facts about
Jericho's destruction for myself? Hi, I'm David Daniels
from Chick Publications. I've written a new tract. And I just needed Fred to draw
a single picture of what Jericho looked like
when it was destroyed. But you know me. I wanted to do it right. So I got out all the biblical archaeology
books and magazines I could, and I looked online
for newer discoveries and analyses. And of course,
I had to use Google Earth, as well. We are so privileged these days! It's wonderful
to use all these resources. And there were
a number of articles online, where people did
some really decent research. So I didn't come up with all this. I'm just telling you what I found
when I put other people's findings together. Take a look at Jericho. Looking to the North,
you can see that it is a hill on pretty flat land,
close to mountains and hills to the west. The mountains go
900 feet above Jericho, which is just 200 feet above sea level. 5 1/2 miles away, the Jordan River
is 500 feet lower, 1,200 feet below sea level. If you cut a slice
through the mountains, Jerusalem is up at about 2,500 feet
above sea level. Jericho is 700 feet below sea level. The water table goes down
nearly 3,000 feet to the hill of Jericho. So they have a spring and
a constant water supply. That's why ancient peoples
made Jericho their first walled city. They wanted to protect
that water supply. We're looking at Jericho
overlaid on a modern photograph. Jericho is 525 feet at it widest, and
about 1500 feet at its longest, facing from northeast to southwest. That's about 12 acres total. But how big is that? Let's think of it in terms of
football fields. One football field, without end zones,
is 100 yards by 50 yards, or 300 by 150 feet. Jericho covered the space of
11.6 football fields. It could have held a population of
about 2,500 people. Out in an isolated location,
with a small population, you want to make good friends,
and have a BIG wall. Whoever controls the water,
controls lives. So how big was the wall? Thankfully, a lot of people have dug in,
all around and partway through Jericho, to answer that. I have to tell you,
most drawings of Jericho are wrong, in one way or another. The wall had two levels,
an outer level of the wall and an inner wall
that connected on the west side. There's a modern road
that cuts into what was the outer wall, right here, because they took that spring
and made it into a reservoir. So to make way for that road,
they destroyed a lot of the east side of Jericho The inner wall was further up the hill,
and twice as thick as the outer wall. The inner, upper level was for the elite,
the ruling people, the rich. The outer, lower level was for
the working class, the poorer people. The walls of the buildings here
are thinner than in the upper level, and very close together. Most of the lower housing
was between the walls. But some has been found
on the wall itself. The Bible says Rahab lived on the wall. It's not easy to get into this city,
if you don't go by the gate. Take a look. Surrounding the city
was a defensive ditch, according to Kathleen Kenyon. No one disagrees. It could have held water. So to attack this city,
you'd have to go down 10-15 feet into a ditch. On the inside of this ditch
on the city-side, there was a steep retaining wall,
12-15 feet high. Then in places there was
another steep slope. They took that step slope and
plastered it, to make it slippery, This is the base of the walls, and this is the plastered side,
to make it slippery, rising another 35 feet. This is a cut-away view. See how the plaster
seeped down into the ground? Then came the first,
outer mudbrick wall. It was 6 feet thick, and 20-26 feet high. There were houses built onto the wall
and others inside, between the walls. There was another plastered slope
in parts, as well. Then came the second mudbrick wall. The bottom was 46 feet
above the valley floor, it was 12 feet thick and
it rose another 20-26 feet. That means you have to make it up
over 70 feet total, to get over the top of the wall,
to take the city! That was nearly impossible for man. But nothing is impossible for God. The walls were
an obstacle to God's people, so God removed the walls. And here's the beauty of it:
they fell down and outward, over the slippery steep plastered slope,
and over the retaining wall, into the ditch. God made a way. Or more specifically, a ramp! They literally were able walk straight up
from where they were, just like the Bible says. The whole city fell. But how do we know when it fell? There have been various expeditions. German archaeologists
Ernst Sellin and Carl Watzinger explored Jericho in 1907-09 and 1911. They covered a large part
of the north side. They didn't know about dating pottery,
but their theory was that Jericho wasn't inhabited at all
between 1550 BC and 1200 BC. British archaeologist John Garstang
wasn't satisfied with their methods. So he explored Jericho from 1930-36. He examined part of
the double upper city wall, as well as a large area on the east
and toward the south. So this right here
is Garstang's area. His methods were more advanced
than Sellin and Watzinger's. The pottery, as well as scarabs
found in the graves by Jericho gave him the date of about 1400 BC
when the walls came down, just like the date you get
when you take the Bible literally. In October 1941 Garstang wrote: "Both [biblical tradition
and our excavations] indicate indeed the same reign (that of Amenhetep III);
and the central figure of 1400 is the nearest approximation
to the date that evidence can support." Garstang asked Kathleen Kenyon,
an up-and-coming fellow British archaeologist,
to review his work and bring his findings up to date. But that's not what she did. Kathleen Kenyon explored Jericho
from 1952-58. She carefully cut into the retaining wall
and outer wall on the north, west and south,
so we could see their layers. Then she dug two 26 x 26-foot squares
on the east, north of Garstang's dig, for her main work. Then she stated her conclusions. She died before she fully published
her findings. And you know what? She never did check Garstang's work,
like he asked her to. She just went her own way and
ignored some pretty important facts, then died before she could
fully publish her findings. But Kenyon publicly stated repeatedly
that she had found no evidence whatsoever of any people
living in Jericho between 1550 and 1200 BC,
like Sellin and Watzinger said. After that, most scientists
just wrote off Jericho and using the Bible for archaeology. They trusted Kenyon
more than the Bible and believed that the Bible was nothing more
than religious folklore and incompatible with
"modern archaeological findings." As a result, more than
a generation of archaeologists largely dismissed the Bible,
saying it wasn't an accurate record of historical events. Then came Bryant Wood. In the 1980s, Bryant G. Wood,
an expert in pottery, examined the finds of all the previous researchers,
especially their pottery. I'll get back to this. But first, let me tell you
two really cool facts. 1) First the walls fell,
then the city was burnt. Kenyon herself admitted this. She wrote: "The destruction was complete. Walls and floors were blackened
or reddened by fire, and every room was filled
with fallen bricks, timbers, and household utensils;
in most rooms the fallen debris was heavily burnt,
but the collapse of the walls of the eastern rooms
seems to have taken place before they were affected by the fire." The walls fell,
then the city was burnt, just like in the book of Joshua. In Joshua 6:20 the walls fell. Then four verses later: Joshua 6:24 "And they
burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein..." 2) The walls fell down and out. That's why there are fallen mudbricks
all the way down in the ditch at the bottom of the retaining wall. Amazingly, it was
Kathleen Kenyon herself who proved this,
when she dug around the north, west and south retaining walls! The walls, crumbling and falling,
covered all the slippery, steep slope, all the way down. As I said, God provided a ramp,
so they could walk straight in. Kenyon admitted
the mudbrick in the ditch came from the wall on top. This is just like in the book of Joshua. Joshua 6:20 "So the people shouted
when the priests blew with the trumpets:
and it came to pass, when the people
heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout,
that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city,
every man straight before him, and they took the city." But the big question is
"When did this happen?" According to Kenyon,
Joshua would have had no trouble with Jericho,
because there wasn't a city, so there wasn't a city wall, either. Now I'll tell you about Bryant G. Wood. He spent his time doing
stratigraphic pottery analysis. This means he found remains
in layers in the ground from ancient cities
that were known to be destroyed at a certain time. That means the pottery
was from that time or before. So as more of these
datable historical layers were found, it became obvious
which styles of pottery were made at which times in history. You could date a layer
by the pottery that was in it. While he was working on
his Ph.D. dissertation on Canaanite pottery
of the Late Bronze Age, he went through Garstang's
reports on Jericho from 40 years earlier. The pottery that Garstang found,
was now known to be from the Late Bronze Age I
--1550 to 1400 BC-- the exact time that Kenyon
said was missing from Jericho! Wood published his findings in 1990. Here's what I found interesting. 1) Garstang had found
two-color pottery from the island of Cyprus,
with either red or black geometrical patterns,
called Cypriot bichrome ware. Garstang had no idea of its significance
and had it in his notes, but not set apart. But it turns out that this kind of pottery
was only in use from 1550-1400 BC. 2) Kathleen Kenyon based her dating
on the supposed fact that that very pottery was missing. And yet here it was the whole time,
in Garstang's notes and pictures, that Kenyon had been asked to verify. Didn't she honor her agreement? 3) Kenyon also
didn't investigate Garstang's dig site any further. If she had,
she would have found that Garstang dug down the hill
from a palace, where the more expensive pottery
had slid down. Kenyon's two holes were further north,
in a poor part of the city, with no rich stuff that slid down. So all she found
was poor people's pottery. There are so many pictures
I could show you. But I have to keep this short. 4) The layer of ancient Jericho,
called "City IV," had numerous types of pottery
that the common, poor people used. They were found all over Jericho. But Kenyon strangely ignored it. She only was interested in
the rich Cyprus pottery. But the common pottery
was a kind in use between 1550 and 1400 as well. And one type, #2 here,
the round-sided bowl with internal concentric circles,
was only in use for a short time between 1450 and 1400! Talk about narrowing the date. But there's more. 5) Cities have cemeteries. People often bury things of value
with the dead. Jericho had a cemetery
just to the northwest. In it were specific scarabs
(beetle-shaped amulets with inscriptions)
from the 1800s into the 1400s or late 1300s BC. Did you get that? The 1800s, right down through the 1400s
or late 1300s BC. The ones that were most interesting
were of Thutmose III, Amenhotep III and Hatshepsut, who some say
was the princess who adopted Moses. Those nail the date
as somewhere very close to 1400 BC! Each time something datable
by ordinary means, like destruction layers
and dated artifacts, is checked,
it keeps on giving the same end dates: from 1550 to 1400 BC,
and more specifically, 1450-1400 BC, but not after 1400 BC. I've saved the best for last. Here are five more powerful things
we can know about the destruction that occurred right around 1400 BC. And they all come from one thing
found throughout Jericho: jars of grain. 1) They were full,
so we know what time of year this was: spring, between March and May. They had obviously just had a harvest,
and had filled their pots all over the city. This matches the Bible. Joshua 3:15 "...(for Jordan overfloweth
all his banks all the time of harvest,)" Joshua 5:10 "And the children of Israel
... kept the passover on the 14th day of the month at even
in the plains of Jericho." 2) Egyptians and others
only besieged a city at the last part of the year
before harvest, so the people would starve,
and the Egyptians would take the food right from their harvest
as they surrounded the city. So this wasn't like Egyptian warfare,
at all. 3) The pots were full,
so it wasn't a long siege at all. People who are surrounded
during a siege eat up all their food and die or surrender. So whatever happened didn't take long. This matches the Bible. Joshua 6:15 and 16
15 "And it came to pass on the seventh day, ...
16 And it came to pass at the seventh time,
when the priests blew with the trumpets,
Joshua said unto the people, Shout;
for the LORD hath given you the city." 4) The people who took the city
burned all the grain. But grain was valuable,
first to feed your army. And even if you had your own food,
grain was like money. It was really valuable. 5) There was no reason on earth
to leave full pots of grain, unless you were
commanded not to take it. This matches the Bible. Joshua 6:17-18
17 "And the city shall be accursed, even it, and all that are therein,
to the LORD: only Rahab the harlot shall live,
she and all that are with her in the house,
because she hid the messengers that we sent. 18 And ye, in any wise
keep yourselves from the accursed thing..." Why did I do all this work? Because I have been told
different stories for 38 years now, and I really wanted
to have some answers. But what started it was a single picture
I needed Fred to make for my next tract. It was of the destruction of Jericho. I set it by GPS, photographs, diagrams,
and all that you saw. And because you have been patient,
I'll let you see the end result, including where I think
Rahab's house really was. Here it is: right there.
It would be next to where the gate was, on the north side. The Bible is true. The Bible is trustworthy. The Bible is literally correct
in all it contains, understood properly in its context. And the Bible is the best source
for accuracy about what really happened in history,
how, why, when and where. That's why I trust the King James Bible,
over 400 years tried, tested and proved, Nothing added, nothing taken away. God bless you,
and have a wonderful day.
