Archaeology and The Old Testament 2

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Archaeology
and the
Old Testament
by MERRILL F. UNGER
Dr. Wilbur M. Smith describes this

up-to-date volume as “. . . not only in-
forming but actually fascinating. Every
Bible student who desires to know the
very best that has been written about the
historical narratives of the Old Testament,
and who wishes that somehow he could
find gathered together the wonderful ar-
chaeological confirmations for these rec-
ords, will want to have in his library Ar-
chaeology and the Old Testament.”
The Ministry calls this “. . . one of the
best modern textbooks on the study of
Biblical archaeology.”
Westminster Theological Journal calls
it “. . . lucid and interesting, enabling one
to obtain an overall picture of the world
and peoples of the Old Testament to-
gether with their contemporaries.”
Bible institutes and seminaries as well
as Christian colleges will find this vital
and valuable work up-to-date and perti-
nent to their studies.
Zondervan
-” Archaeology and the Old Testament

No. 10932
Minek Sea SACRE S MOUNTAINS
ARMENIA
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Me ARtRaT ge
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BEWISTUN
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2022 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/archaeologyoldteOQ000merr
K or Nie.
THIS BOOK-BEL ONGSTO

“PAUL L.YEUN
Archaeology and the

Old Testament
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ARCHAEOLOGY
AND THE
OLD TESTAMENT
A COMPANION VOLUME TO
Archaeology and the New Testament
by
MERRILL F. UNGER, Tu.D., PD.
Professor of Old Testament
Dallas Theological Seminary
Author of
Introductory Guide to the Old Testament
ZONDERVAN PUBLISHING HOUSE

GRAND RAPIDS MICHIGAN
ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT
Copyright 1954 by
Zondervan Publishing House
Grand Rapids, Michigan
First printing...... 1954

Second printing... .1959
Third printing..... 1962
Fourth printing... .1964
Fifth printing ..... 1965
Sixth printing ...-. 1966
Seventh printing... . 1967
Printed in the United States of America

To My WIFE
Esme AILEEN
oa
>
eas 28,
CONTENTS
THE Roe OF ARCHEOLOGY IN THE Stupy OF
PEE ACItIy L RETAREGITE G2 oc e8s ayo ae ee oe

1. The Meaning of the Old Testament ...............00.00.000.
2. The Contributions of Archeology to the Study
of the Old Testament
in® Tue BispricaL AND BaByLONIAN ACCOUNT OF
SERRA ELON 7c al deh rs a a Oe
1. The Discovery of the Creation Tablets ....................
2. The Babylonian Account of Creation ..........0.0..0...05.
3. Comparison of the Biblical and the Babylonian
HNGOOU IEie oes aE
ee ene tas
4. Explanation of the Biblical Parallels
Il. Primitive TRADITIONS AND BrBLicaAL BEGINNINGS ........

1. Primitive Traditions and the Fall
IV. Tue Froop In SuMERIAN AND BABYLONIAN

BUDA GETTIN ee a Ne, sa A, Me eae OS el
1. The Flood and the Sumerian King List ..........0.........
2. The Sumerian Account of the Flood ........................
3. The Babylonian Account of the Flood ....................
Tue BreticAL AND BABYLONIAN ACCOUNT OF THE

|
eleceyeynee tiense A Diet,0 aia Net ON eI POO
(Peel em Resemp ances ime ae creas hehe ee
me Lem TH CTTCESE poser eek sod et oie Se. ee en eee
ie Explanation -oF the SimmMarites ao. Gin Wiacittin be
VI. Tue TaBLe oF THE NATIONS AND THE JAPHETIC

12 SETER ee, ole MSR Re rm en oe
1. The Prophecy of the Moral and Spiritual History
Eat OMEHORS Mite ch chen cui iam esopus cneitea-casts hatha)
Die NG) AYRES agNO CIONS acca-ch dade tirnanas Pcs vigsinsndt aio dtcseemss
CONTENTS
VII. HAMITES AND EARLIEST EMPIRE ooi.s.ccccaccceeeecscerseseeeeene

1. “he -Hlamitie: Nationso .s.sc .-es
ccascterceeccnens ooncone
2. Hamitic Imperial Power ..........-:::csceseessesseseneeneneesenee
3 @©ther Hamitics Nations wocete rere tc ee ee ee
VUI. SEMITES AND: DABEL. BUILDERS s2.ctreace- ee

12 he SemitictiINationse ses eet s eee
ease
DF They Babelu Builders psc ccc eee oe eae eee
- JIABRAHANE AND. FITS GAGE cocci

ee ae
1. Abraham in the Frame of Contemporary History ........
QaeAbrahambat laraneandeine @anaaneee sree eee
‘Tue Hisrorierry or ‘rie PATRIARCHS 255.2...

a
1. Critical View of the Patriarchal Narratives ................
2. The Patriarchal Narratives and Recent Archeo-
lopical-aDiscovertes: 3. .:c0itnint
cveenn eae secio ees
OS ISKAET S*SOJOLIRNGIN CYP I0c) tt. g80 onaneee

1. Evidences of Israel’s Sojourn in Egypt .............0.0000.
2) MosesthembDeliverersa saree ree ee eee
XII. vet DATE Orrin: EPxODUGse 4 ie Aree

eee
TS lhe? Biblical Datewiecc cee eee
2.. Objections to: the: Biblical Date wy..ca.ec.04ences
XIII.
ep lae ConouEsT OF THE CANAANITES

1. The Invasion of Canaan WR ae
2. The Date of the Conquest’: 5 s4ch.. Wes cee eee
3. The Extent of the Conquest
. Tue RELIGION OF THE CANAANITES

1. Old and New Sources of Knowledge
2. The Canaanite Pantheon
XVI. Tun: PERiop oF (rHEy)UDGES. yee ee

F.. The, Chronology: of the: Period 2, 2..,.c.0ae eeee
2. The Events of the Period Fixed in the Chronology ....
XVII. IsRAEL ON THE Eve oF THE Monarcny ......................
1. Contrast Between Israel and Adjacent Nations ........
2, Israel’s Neighbors in the Eleventh Cenlturg® Bc 3c...
CoNTENTS
XVUI. BAtG AND THE MONARCHY ~ 2005. 6 fotici nth arcsoncrun

ewe
1. The Early Fortunes of the [CT
(0 Leoa
2. Saul’s Failure as King
XIX. Pere Tete 08 LPAI be cepa Stes nse dead wikeseweeen

De evar SabanYCAchivityiaS, RIMe 4.22.0. csctedeniiheneeees
2. David’s Political and Religious Innovations ................
‘Die EMP Gn SOLOMON "00.2 eae ee

1. The Remarkable Prosperity of the Solomonic Era ....
POS IOHMMES A ODN: rhe ee ers ieee eRe ae
SHISRAEE AND SHE, ARAMARANS: 0CGae eo ee

ity deeselt inders jeropomina Gl 1), sia aeluoncneeis
erate cieece
2. Israel and the Rise of Aramaean Power ................
Seelcraclmand Arai imeCOnuiCtiee inn Teeter tener nee
XXII. [epatd~ AND. “THE DASSYRIANE odds

ee ee
1. Israel and the Decline of Damascus .................cc000eseee-
2. Israel and the Advance of Assyria .....5..0cccccccccun:
$3. Istseliand the Triumph’ of Assyria. .c.....accunne
. JuDAH AND THE HeEypay OF ASSYRIA ............00:::0:cee

1. Hezekiah and Sennacherib’s Western Campaign ........
2. Hezekiah and the Siloam Inscription .................0.
BP Tae VERN S 0 NUTT cece ha ria seerin. commouaane

1. The Decline of the Tebrew Monarchy .:¢...5.0svss-
Oe ed
BE. Wall Or erealety © ses necuan arnre oe toe
IN eT A COMER ae078 Ae ae nn ea Re ARE Oat OP
1. Nebuchadnezzar II and the Jewish Captives ............
2. Later Events in the Neo-Babylonian Empire ............
XXVI. feoire sl
anpen (Pu aSr Agee) oles eases te wen a oti
I. Persia and ‘the Restoration. of Judah ic.08..2.g0.00.eu8
2. Judah and the End of the Old Testament Period ......
SPSTP
ER AfSEEN ABCU)ch© 1A ence aE pL POMC RI nS REE REAPER cH
CEE
Sychce iB Bch6)25,¢ eo ne ev Te ae
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author owes a debt of gratitude to many groups and individuals

for their help in various ways, especially for granting permission to quote
from their copyright materials, to make use of photographs and to repro-
duce objects of archeological interest. Professor G. Ernest Wright of Mc
Cormick Seminary of Chicago was of great assistance in furnishing a large
number of cuts from the Biblical Archeologist and giving permission for their
use. Mr. Lawrence Sinclair, also of McCormick Seminary, sorted these
cuts and made them available for use.
Mr. Jack Cochrane of Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas,
executed the line drawings scattered throughout the book and also drew
the maps and plans and designed the jacket. Mrs. Henderson Fox of Dallas
typed the original manuscript.
Miss Jessie Abbott, reference secretary at the Oriental Institute of
the University of Chicago, supplied a number of the Institute’s photographs
for use. Mr. Ray Cleveland of the Oriental Seminary of the Johns Hopkins
University, acting for Professor W. F. Albright, furnished several of the
photographs from the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research.
Miss Caroline Gordon Dosker, assistant registrar in charge of photographs
at the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania made avail-
able several photographs by permission of the Museum. Mr. Walter Hauser,
curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, also assisted by wise counsel.
Professor John Garstang, president of the British Institute of Ar-
cheology at Ankara, graciously permitted the reproduction of figures and
plates from The Story of Jericho, Monsieur André Parrot of Paris,
President Nelson Glueck of Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, Ohio,
Professor John Trevor of Morris Harvey College, Charleston, West Virginia,
Professor Ernest Lacheman of Wellesley College and Mr. E. G. Howland
of Troy, Ohio, also kindly permitted the use of cuts and photographs, as
well as the British Museum, the British Academy and the Trustees of the
late Sir Henry Wellcome.
Permission to quote briefly from copyrighted publications was given
by the University of Chicago Press, the American Schools of Oriental Re-
search, Charles Scribner’s Sons, Ventnor Publishers, Harper and Brothers,
the Johns Hopkins Press, the Princeton University Press, the Muehlen-
berg Press, the Pacific Press Publishing Company, the Baker Book House
and others.
To all who have helped in any way to make Archeology and the Old
Testament possible, especially the publisher, the Zondervan Publishing
House of Grand Rapids, the author is profoundly grateful.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Peet ste OLheel AR
Castes Sete Cee «Ti Moiktc nal she eden. o-ianardeoe cae, A 17
Stratification of the Mound of Tell Beisan ............ccccccccccccccccececeeeeveeeeeeees 20
Cuneiform writing on clay tablet; ancient Mesopotamian seal; seal
depicting fight between god and dragon ........0....0.c0cccccccccceceeeeeseesen 26
Seal found at Tell Asmar; seal from Ur; four Syrian seals from
OME EG BRE) Levee
VicesBy0 Rp eoa eR aoe Ee Ea nec PY ry
Fight between god and monster; the god Marduk; drawing of
Cherubun guantimp the “Lree-of Life io ccscc. casavevcoeeusvhetvecssco
teas:42
Stele of Ur-Nammu; tablet from Nippur; stele of Mesha; fourth
ESTSS SOMLOTTete greFS | en ol ee OG A er ER 43
Amorite, Philistine, Hamite, Hittite, Hebrew .............0..cccccccccccccsseceseeesteees 78
Syrian ship ca. 1400 Buc. ........ et sl eet Re tee nara Ra tee MRR Shit Sau ie 91
Hele gOScok IS OES 9lr? Reipar os eraser ae Pent ea rams We ee oe 106
Remains of ziggurat at Ur; model of late Babylonian ziggurat;
type of idol from Nuzu; adoption tablet from Nuzu .................... 106
Lamgi-Mari, early king of Mari; goddess in Mari palace; Assyrian
Demon (rear view); Assyrian Demon (front view) ............0:c0008 107
peer teeter Aa JOrtata VAMC is ce ata ofc etme isein kage ee 115
Reset alae een PNIINL fectag oe fi cdende seo cntearti actin Ieree Ans eee ee 121
Egyptian painting in tomb of Vizier Rekhmire; painting of cara-
So a aeoesbasWMS ACNG gee coe iu tet scincdens Aone PR OO Te 122
Head of Amenhotep II; head of Thutmose III; head of Raamses II;
painting of “Asiatics arriving tin Rgypt is... Acre. wean. waadieiee 123
iatTa Os TS 8) a2g 6)Aa an eet er TO ee Ly etry. 130
See rre ISOS INS PP ICRTEPGPY BABA aoc. zetia eee. vankes She haagtsnsaracua conten ata 131
dayksca pottery: trom: sotichior (City JID)! csr akataernreccrtoionectuesi
scene coe 134
Scarab showing the pharaoh as archer; Hyksos vase from Jeri-
ra roe 4G1 24hI Dc 6 coe Rese ehecerace ceric mecca rette eee ree ert 146
Bearab oienets orethe last kings OF Jeri, .ci..ci.cesaveisasennoncoos soucaricctsiruse 148
[OUCERTVSIOS ate SE PCZC i [IR Bs Oe a Dn nr er, One e eed otarth 150
Barrie GES POA aCHICE trance ccs eecir cen en tare harcbanasurhcerenaestntdnneabencrucning) 152
Phoenician battle ship and trading S/ESSE LR Ren tr aa ee ince iat 159
List oF ILLusTRATIONS (cont.
Scarab signets of the last kings of Jericho. io vcnescenesamcvenpesennre

soe!160
Types of Late: Bronze <age: potteny iis. .ssccecsenravenperertver
oars Peete pa eae161
Phoenician before the sacred candelabrum; Phoenician god on
cherub throne; scene engraved on cup from Ras Shamra-Ugarit......168
Sample of Ufgaritic alphabet cuneiform writing............0.0.000ccccee 169
Drawings of gold pendants of fertility goddess..........0.0...0c ccc 173
@oronationmcartouchemotmiamesesayl | eece ea eerereteee: eee en ere eee 184
Philistine warriors m time’ of Sennacherib ....c2s ners oe 193
Modern village of Aqabah; Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem...................... 202
The Gezer Calendar; statuette of Baal; memorial stone of Esarhaddon;
COCE) Obs FamninitaDb ty oak ne al Soe aacaesa a ea eer ee 203
Hammurabi’s. name in cuneiform: writing: .oc.0.<.,ieics4c.
ssccesnctesncoyunounmauein 203
The Tabernacle in the Wilderness; Howland-Garber model of
Solomon’s Temple; plan of a Canaanite Temple of Bethshan.......... 218
Stele of Canaanite storm-god Baal; Ras Shamra stele............0..0.0cccceee 219
Cherubim in Howland-Garber Temple model; capitals of pillars at
entrance of Solomon’s Temple; capital of column found at
Megiddo; replica of Solomon’s copper “Sea”; replica of
UNbtay, (OF »BUUraN OMe
rI Ge ore ace recat tesa ale etree ters inte Ne eta 219
Engraved bronze bands, palace gate of Shalmaneser IIL... 250
Panel of Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III; sotne winged bull,
Palacec Ob, OargOn aLL 2 arr eee eee erecta k. Sere eee eee 251
Assyrian man-headed «winged (bull, ..v.cu.. deacces anemia 254
ree im glazed Abrick;craw in glazedy brick, fcc astern eee 260
Winged-genius in: glazed brick )..cectiessccte setietera cer ghee 262
Assyrian «plow™ in. «elazed® brick: scniconc.seucss-scctenn
sce atamaener ceee aereeee 265
eliefs< trom. palace: Of Sennacherib.4:.\. cc. ace eee eee ee266
Lachish letter IV; seal of the “servant” of Ahaz; sketch of Seal
of Eliakim; Melcarth Stele of Benhadad; Sargon IL.........0.0.000000... 267
Oriental Institute Cylinder of Sennacherib; the Nash Papyrus; the
Siloam ‘Inseription sce. c.ccccsaartrea
ee ane ee ee 282
Ancient Babylonian tribute bearer; ancient Syrian tribute bearer;
Babylon: reconstructed... ...<iis caersdcrct-
ee ee sal 283
Reconstruction drawing of palace of Sargon II; tomb of Cyrus............ 298
Relief from Portico 21, Treasury at Persepolis; ruins of Persepolis;
tombs of ‘Persian kings): ..s5cceeeee
ei eee 299
LIST OF MAPS AND PLANS
Maps
USS HEE EROSTARTS Es 27 RG nnREC rs 72
TUSSI LEYS
EG FORCES 20 SR a SO SOO pa SORE ERE tee co 0 EO ee 95
LaffSPREE OTEYGDA eC: Sean Re oO PEAR
ECO CBREEAE iT 116
EES My BSA 2 ose 1a Re oe aE ees a 137
CEN POST PEaaa a BO ce EE Re a er On 188
PLANS
ISSO ARAN Sc Us) 2) Ui o-oo
En Ee AS eT 110
Walls of Jerusalem at the time of David and Solomon..................0.0... 207
Nineveh ............. NE rnin AS Me iret: We 2 Wk AUT OTT een 264
Perusalem at the: time Ob Meveliats co). sscncsc scent sseances hens gerononeetynene 273
[edavee Mga ogee oT VS OREN Ce cee RAPE rr 295
errsalemny at: the: tiie Or INeneriiala <5... {icc cdots vestrpncterors fave Soeesex ao inient313
Archaeology and the
Old Testament
CHAPTER [|
THE ROLE OF ARCHEOLOGY IN THE STUDY OF THE

OLD TESTAMENT
General archeology as a scienc avation,

deciphering and critical evaluation of records of the past is
a perennially fascinating subject. Of even greater interest is
the more restricted field of Biblical archeology. Dealing with
the excavation, decipherment and critical evaluation of ancient
records of the past that touch directly or indirectly upon the
Bible and its message, Biblical archeology is attracting the at-
tention of larger and larger numbers of enthusiastic investigators,
students and Bible readers in general.
The reason for the growing enthusiasm for Biblical archeology
is not difficult to find. It lies in the supreme importance of the
message and meaning of the Bible itself. The Scriptures by
virtue of their character as the inspired revelation of God to
man, meeting man’s deepest needs, today as in the past, have
inevitably held a paramount place in the interest and affection
of mankind. No other book can approach Holy Writ in com-
manding man’s attention or in ministering to man’s need.
Biblical archeology, shedding light upon the historical back-
ground and the contemporary life out of which the Holy Scrip-
tures came, and illuminating and illustrating its pages with its
truly remarkable discoveries, of necessity borrows much of the
interest that attaches to it from its connection with the Bible.
In fact, a sure way to fame as an archeologist is to make some
discovery which has significant bearings on Biblical studies.
No field of research has offered greater challenge and promise
than that of Old Testament archeology. Up to the beginning
of the nineteenth century exceedingly little was known of Bibli-
cal times except what appeared on the pages of the Scriptures
themselves or what happened to be preserved in the writings
of classical antiquity. This was considerable for the New Testa-
9
10 ARCHEOLOGY AND THE OLp TESTAMENT
ment era, but was practically nil insofar as the Old Testament
was concerned, since Greek and Latin historians catalogued very
little information prior to the fifth century B.c. As a consequence
knowledge of the Old Testament period was confined to the
Bible itself, and this, from the point of view of contemporary
secular history, was sparse indeed. The result was that before
the advent of modern archeology there was practically nothing
available to illustrate Old Testament history and literature.
One can imagine the fervor aroused among serious students
of the Bible by illuminating discoveries in Biblical lands espe-
cially from about 1800 to the present. Modern archeology may
be said to have had its beginning in 1798 when the rich an-
tiquities of the Nile Valley were opened up to scientific study
by Napoleon’s Expedition. The treasures of Assyria-Babylonia,
however, were not uncovered until toward the middle of the
nineteenth century as a result of the work of Paul Emile Botta,
Austen Henry Layard, Henry C. Rawlinson and others. With
the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone, which unlocked Egyp-
tian hieroglyphics, and the decipherment of the Behistun In-
scription, which furnished the key to Assyrian-Babylonian cunei-
form, a vast mass of material bearing on the Old Testament was
released. The discovery of the Moabite Stone in 1868 created
a veritable sensation because of its close connection with Old
Testament history and excited widespread interest in Palestinian
excavations.
However, many of the most notable discoveries affecting the
Bible and particularly the Old Testament were not made until
within approximately the last half century. Such finds as the
Code of Hammurabi (1901), the Elephantine Papyri (1903),
the Hittite monuments at Boghazkeui (1906), the tomb of Tu-
tankhamun (1922), the Sarcophagus of Ahiram of Byblus (1923),
the Ras Shamra texts (1929-1937), the Mari Letters and the
Lachish Ostraca (1935-1938), and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1947)
are famous in large measure because of their close connection
with the literature and history of the Old Testament. Since this
is true, it may be asked, What is there in the character and mean-
ing of the Old Testament which has insured its preservation
throughout the centuries and enshrined it in the heart of hu-
manity with an interest that is communicated to whoever or
whatever aids in expounding and clarifying its perpetually
timely and much-needed message to mankind?
ROLE oF ARCHEOLOGY IN StuDY oF OLp TESTAMENT 11
I. THe MEANING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

What the Old Testament is and what it ‘accomplishes in its
ministry to mankind is the secret of its perennial interest. Too
frequently the technical scholar and the professional archeologist
focuses his attention so absorbingly upon the foundations and
structure of the Old Testament and occupies himself so scruti-
nizingly with examining the individual stones that make up its
construction that he loses sight of or fails altogether to see it
as a whole and as the magnificent temple of spiritual truth that
it is.
The ideal combination will always be the careful scientific

and technically trained investigator, who will also have an ade-
quate view of what the Old Testament is in its meaning for
ancient Israel, the Christian Church and for mankind at large.
Indeed, archeology can only make its best contributions to the
study of the Old Testament as the general student_as well as
é technical scholar keeps clearly in mind what the Old Testa-_~
ment is,
“TI. The Old Testament is the Inspired Revelation of God to.
Man... The clear witness of the New Testament concerning the
Old Testament is that “all” of it is “inspired” or “God-breathed”
and “profitable” (II
Tim,3:16)-and.that it came into existence
“not by the will of man” but in writing it “men spake from God,
being moved by the Holy Spirit” (II Pet. 1:21, A:R.V.). Careful
exegesis of these key New Testament passages discloses that
they teach not only that inspiration extends equally to all parts
of Holy Scripture but that it also embraces each word. This
“plenary verbal” view is almost universally disclaimed by critics
at the present time, despite the clear claims of the Bible.
However, everywhere in the Old Testament there are abun-
lip) ARCHEOLOGY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT
i es at
mien t declarase
dant evidences ta-heat-out theNew“Testamen
the ancient Hebrew. Scriptures were of divine origin, intoto
verbally inspi God The sacre
penmen were prophets in a most emphatic sense. They received
the divine Word immediately and spoke it directly to the people.
Time and again they prefix their messages with such authori-
tative expressions as, “Thus saith the Lord” (Exod. 4:22) or
“Hear the Word of the Lord” (Isa. 1:10). Frequently they were
commanded to write down their oracles (Ex. 17:14; 24:4, 7; Jer.
30:1, 2). Prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah and Daniel, who spoke
of future events, had their predictions authenticated by time.
A corollary proof that the Old Testament is the-inspired reve-
the centuries. is fact is unique among facts about books in

general. Evidently from a ieeoea ae of high caliber,
of which there are echoes from ancient Israel (Josh. 10:13; Num.
s, which were
_vicissitudes
Divine interposition was manifested not only in the preservation

of the divine oracles from destruction, but from contamination
by intrusion of non-inspired writings into the Jewish-Christian
canon.
The Old Testament, however, is not only a divine book. It
is no less a human book, because, like all Scirpture, it was
given by the Holy Spirit through human instrumentality for
men as they are, where they are. As God’s book for man it
meets the deepest needs of the human soul, and as such, pos-
sesses the quality of universality and omnitemporality. How-
ever, failure to appreciate the divine-human aspects of the Bible
has often resulted in the valuable light shed upon its pages by
history and archeology being thrown out of focus, so that his-
torical and archeological data have been misinterpreted and
misapplied.
2. The Old Testament is the Indispensable Introduction to
the New Testament Revelation. Although consisting of two
testaments and sixty-six individual books, the Bible is never-
ROLE OF ARCHEOLOGY IN StupyY oF OLD TESTAMENT 13
theless one book. The two testaments no more detract from

its unity than do the sixty-six different books of which it is
composed. The Old Testament is a vital and inseparable part
of that one book. It is the foundation upon which the entire
structure of New Testament truth is erected. It is the prepara-
tion for all that is unfolded there. It is the introduction which
Judaism furnished to the full and final revelation of Christianity.
Without the Old Testament there could have been no New
Testament, and apart from it the New Testament would have
been meaningless. One is the counterpart of the other. To
separate the two and to deal with them as isolated unconnected
units has resulted in irreparable harm not only religiously, but
historically and archeologically. Religiously, a superseded sys-
tem like Judaism has been perpetuated upon the error of re-
jecting the New Testament. Historically and archeologically,
failure to see the precise relationship of the Old Testament to
the Bible as a whole is the prolific cause of serious misinter-
pretation and misapplication of historical and archeological
findings.
3. The Old Testament is a Highly Specialized History of Hu-
man Redemption. Although they contain all types of literature
of varying character and teaching, the Hebrew Scriptures are
to a large extent commonly classified as history. But these so-
called historical sections are not history in the commonly ac-
cepted use of the term as the systematic record of past events.
They are to be defined broadly as the highly specialized history
of human redemption. In the highest sense they are more pre-
cisely a philosophy of history, interpreting the selective events
in the story of redemption from the point of view of the promised
line through which Messiah was to come, and later from the
standpoint of the nation Israel’s relation to Jehovah and His
redemptive program for the world.
But the “historical” portions of the Old Testament are more
_| than a specialized history of redemption or a philosophy of that
history. They are redemptive history wedded to prophecy. Al-
though there are, of course, distinctive prophetic portions of the
Hebrew Scriptures in contrast to historical sections, prophecy
in its important element of Messianic prediction by promise, type
and symbol is so intimately interwoven in the fabric of Old
Testament redemptive history that it is impossible to separate
_ it from that history. Failure to see the Old Testament in its pre-
14 ARCHEOLOGY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT
cise character as Messiah-centered history wedded to Messiah-

centered prophecy and failure to comprehend its unique purpose
in preparing the way for the coming Redeemer has led many
critics to misapply archeological discoveries and to depreciate
the historical reliability of the Old Testament.
II. THe ContTrRIBUTIONS OF ARCHEOLOGY TO THE
STuDY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
Archeology in the hands of the Biblical scholar may either
be of great use or abuse. The result will be determined largely
by the investigator’s attitude toward the meaning of the Old
Testament itself. If he is purely a scientific technician, devoid
of spiritual equipment, and rejects the unique features which
belong to the Bible as a divine-human book, accepting only the
human features, archeological data in his hands are continuously
in peril of being misinterpreted and made the basis of erroneous
theories when he attempts to apply them to the Old Testament.
If, on the other hand, as a scientific technician, the investigator
has a sympathetic led ea of the spiritual meaning and
message of the Old Testament, his application of archeological
findings will yield vast benefit in the illustration and elucidation
of the ancient oracles to a modern world. Legitimately handled,
the contributions archeology is making to Old Testament study
are vast and far-reaching.
1. Archeology Authenticates the Bible. The study of the
material remains of the ancient past is often useful in “proving”
the Bible to be true and accurate, and quite frequently the apolo-
getic employment of archeological data is necessary, especially
in dealing with rationalistic skepticism and destructive criticism.
But it is a mistake to view this as the most important use of
archeology, or for the student to make it the principal object of
his inquiry. The subordinate nature of archeology’s ministry in
authenticating the Bible will appear from several considerations.
In the first place, the Bible, when legitimately approached,
does not need to be “proved” either by archeology, geology or
any other science. As God’s revelation to man, its own message
and meaning, its own claims of inspiration and internal evidence,
its own fruits and results in the life of humanity are its best
proof of authenticity. It demonstrates itself to be what it claims
to be to those who believe its message. Since God has made the
realization of spiritual life and the apperception of spiritual truth
on the basis of faith and not sight (II Cor. 5:7; Heb. 11:6), what-
ROLE oF ARCHEOLOGY IN StuDY oF OLD TESTAMENT 15
ever contributions archeology or any other science might make

toward corroborating the reliability of the Bible can never take
the place of faith. Scientific authentication may act as an aid
to faith, but God has so ordained that simple trust (which glori-
fies Him) shall always be necessary in dealing with Him or His
revealed truth.
For this reason many scholars devoid of faith still reject the
revealed meaning and message of the Old Testament in spite
of numberless archeological proofs of its authenticity. For the
same reason it is utter folly for anyone to postpone faith in the
Bible until all the problems it contains are solved. It is just as
impossible that God will cease dealing with man on the basis
of faith as it is that archeology or any other science will ever
solve all Biblical problems. In dealing with the Bible faith is
as essential in the learned scholar, if he would correctly inter-
pret and evaluate the results of his research, as it is in the il-
literate savage, if he would find spiritual regeneration through
the Word of God preached by the missionary.
Archeology’s role in confirming the Bible accordingly is second-
ary since the spiritual benefits of Biblical truth are not appro-
priated by mere knowledge and external proofs of reliability,
but on the basis of faith in its internal claims and evidence as
God’s Word. Nevertheless archeology in confirming the Bible
has performed an important function in dealing a fatal blow
to die-hard radical higher critical theories, which have especially
plagued Old Testament study.
Before the advance of research in Biblical lands, especially in
the last half century, reams of what has been subsequently
proved by archeology to be sheer nonsense were written by
scholars who viewed the Bible as legend, myth, or at best un-
reliable history. Acting as a corrective and a purge, archeology
has exploded many of these erratic theories and false assump-
tions that used to be paraded in scholarly circles as settled facts.
No longer can higher critics, for example, dismiss the Hebrew
patriarchs as mere legendary figures or deny that Moses could
write. Archeology has shown the falsity of both these and nu-
merous other extreme contentions. Illuminating evidence is now
available that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob a RTT
as Genesis describes them.' As for Moses, not only could he have
1R. P. DeVaux, “Les Patriarches hebreux et les decouvertes modernes,” Revue Biblique,
LIII (1946) no. 3, pp. 321-328; LV (1948), pp. 32f; LVI (1949), pp. 5ff. H. H. Rowley
in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, XXXII (1949), pp. 3-38.
written documents in Egyptian hieroglyphics, as his early resi-

dence in Egypt would indicate, or in Akkadian, as the Amarna
Letters of the fourteenth century B. c. show, but in ancient He-
brew as well, as the discovery of the Ugaritic literature at Ras
Shamra in North Syria (1929-1937) demonstrates.
Regarding authentication of the Bible, such confirmation may
be general or specific. Examples of general confirmation are
innumerable. For instance, excavations at Shiloh, Gibeah, Me-
siddo, Samaria and other Palestinian sites have fully
oe
corroborated
tion, while, of course, not s as those of general cor-

roboration, are nevertheless more striking.
The case of Belshazzar, the last king of Babylon, jis in point.
For a long time the fact that the Book of Daniel makes Belshaz-
zar king at the time of the fall of Babylon (Dan. 5) instead of
Nabonidus, as the cuneiform records show, was held as strong
evidence against the historicity of the sacred account. The solu-
tion of this so-called discrepancy was apparent when evidence
was uncovered not only indicating Belshazzar’s_association with
Nabonidus_on_the
throne’ butalso_amonsteating-that_during
the last part of his reign the latter _resided_in Arabia_and left.
Cie eeacductob ieKingdom
ofthe eldest sonBel
eee
aby omtohis
ofBabylon
aecomiret
shazzar.
Similar to the case of Belshazzar in Daniel 5 is what used to
be an enigmatic reference to a certain “Sargon the king of As-
pans in Isaiah 20:]. Previous to the advent of modern arche-
ology with its remarkable recovery of the civilization of ancient
Babylonia-Assyria from its grave in the mounds of Mesopotamian
cities, the name of Sargon did not occur in any source except in
this sole passage in Isaiah. As a result the Biblical reference
was commonly dismissed as completely worthless historically.
The discovery of Sargon’s palace at Khorsabad_(Dur-Sharrykin
or Sargonsburg ) in 1843 by Paul Emile Botta and further ex-
lorations of.the site in more recent years by the Orienta
picture.* With the recovery of the palace, e royal annals and

2 Raymond P. Dougherty, Nabonidus and Belshazzar: A Study of the Closing Events of
the Neo-Babylonian Empire (New Haven, 1929), pp. 93-104.
3 [bid.. pp. 105-137.
4 Gordon Loud, Khorsabad I, Excavations in the Palace and at a City Gate. Oriental
Institute Publications, XXXVIII (1936); G. Loud and Charles B. Altman, Khorsabad II,
The Citadel and the Town. Oriental Institute Publications, XL (1938).
ROLE OF ARCHEOLOGY IN StuDY oF OLp TESTAMENT 17
other records gf Sargon’s reign (722-705 3.c.), he is now one

e bes 7 ssyrian monarchs, particularly as the king
who finally took Samaria in 722-721 3B.c. after its three-year
siege by Shalmaneser V and thus effected the fall of the Northern
Kingdom of Israel.*
y & as
TY
f
yy—m® re
J
|
|
%
My
vey
Bull in glazed brick from the palace of Sargon II (722-705 B.C.). (From Victor
Place, Ninive, plate 30.)
Another instance of minute and extraordinary confirmation of

the sacred record is found among some three hundred cuneiform
tablets unearthed near the Ishtar Gate in the Babylon of Nebu-
chadnezzar II and dating between 595 and 570 3B.c. In the
lists of rations paid to craftsmen and captives who lived in or
near the capital at that time occurs the name of “Yaukin, king
of the land of Yahud’—none other than “Jehoiachin, king of
Judah” (II Kings 25:27-30), who was taken captive to Babylon
after Nebuchadnezzar’s first conquest of Jerusalem, taken out of
confinement by Nebuchadnezzar’s successor, Evil-merodach, and
5 Daniel David Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia (Chicago, 1927),
Vol, II, secs. 4, 55.
given a daily allowance of food all the days of his life.® The five
sons of Yaukin are mentioned three times in the tablets and
are described as being in the hand of an attendant having the
Jewish name Kenaiah. No doubt several or all of these sons
lived to be included in the list of the seven sons of Jehoiachin
given in I Chronicles 3:17, 18.‘
2. Archeology Illustrates and Explains the Bible. Making the
sacred Scriptures_mor j igible i
archeological light to make it understandable and spiritually vital

any more than it needs to be proved authentic or true. Multi-
tudes were spiritually regenerated and made fully apperceptive
of the treasures of divine wisdom contained in Scripture long
before the advent of modern archeology. Yet, it must be re-
membered that the Bible is not only a divine book, but a
human book as well.
As the product of God’s revelation communicated to and
through man, on the human side the Bible may be rendered
more fully understandable as a result of light shed upon it from
external sources — whether it be ancient history, modern arche-
ology, or any other branch of learning. And anyone who would
understand the Bible as fully as possible has no right to neglect
light that may be obtained from extra-Biblical sources. As W. F.
Albright aptly observes: “It is only when we begin to appreciate
the Bible adequately in its human side that we can fully appre-
ciate its greatness as the inspired revelation of the Eternal Spirit
of the universe.”®
Examples of archeological illustration and explanation of the
Old Testament are exceedingly numerous and are continually
increasing as new archeological discoveries are being made. A
case in point is the long lives of the antediluvian patriarchs re-
counted in Genesis 5. It has been customary for critics to treat
this feature of the Biblical narrative as obviously legendary or
mythical, in keeping with the alleged unhistorical character of
Genesis 1-11.
The problem involved, however, is cast in an entirely dif-
ferent light when it is realized that such an extended life span
8 Ernst F. Weidner in Melanges Syriens offert a Monsieur Rene Dussaud, Il (1939),
pp. 923-927; W. F. Albright in Biblical Archeologist, V. 4 (Dec. 1942), pp. 49-55.
T Jack Finegan, Light From the Ancient Past (Princeton, 1946), p. 188.
ee Old Testament and Archeology,” in Old Testament Commentary (Philadelphia,
1948), p. 168,
ROLE OF ARCHEOLOGY IN STuDY oF OLD TESTAMENT 19
for the lives of antediluvian celebrities is revealed by archeology

to be a familiar feature in the traditions of the ancient Near
East. What is striking indeed is that the longevity attributed
to the patriarchs before the flood in the Hebrew Bible is ex-
ceedingly modest in comparison with the Babylonian kings of
the same period,® who ruled in such ancient cities as Eridu,
Larak, Sippar and Shuruppak and whose average reign was from
thirty thousand to forty-five thousand years.!° In contrast, the
oldest descendant in the line of Seth, Methuselah, lived to be
only 969 years, and the average life span, counting Enoch who
was translated without dying at the age of 365, was slightly
over 857 years.
There is no decisive reason for not believing that the Scrip-
tural representations are literally true.
He... who is duly impressed by the excellence of man’s original
estate, will have no difficulty in accepting the common explanation
that even under the curse of sin man’s constitution displayed such
vitality that it did not at first submit to the ravages of time until
after many centuries had passed. Besides—a fact established by fos-
sil finds—there are ample indications of a more salubrious climate
in the antediluvian days. Nor should we forget that here is the race
of godly men who lived temperately and sanely.}!
The value of the archeological evidence in the case of original
longevity does not lie in the conclusion that the Hebrews hap-
pened to hand down with more restraint than the Babylonians
the primitive traditions of the original stock of which both
peoples were descendants. There is no valid reason why they
should have done so. The manifest soberness of the Hebrew ac-
count is an indication of its inspiration as divine truth. The
Babylonian lists are illuminating as representing an independent
and confirmatory, though grossly exaggerated, tradition of that
which appears in Genesis 5 as authentic historical fact given by
divine revelation.
Another example of illumination is furnished by the reference
to a “tell” or “mound” (Hebrew tel) in Joshua 11:13. “But as
for the cities that stood on their mounds [‘al tillam], Israel
burned none of them, save Hazor only; that did Joshua burn.”
9 For the lists of these kings and their reigns see Stephen Langdon, Oxford Editions of
Cuneiform Texts, Vol. I] (Oxford, 1923) and Thorkild Jacobsen, The Sumerian King
List. Assyriological Studies, XI (Chicago, 1939).
10 Ww. F. Albright, “Recent Discoveries in Bible Lands,” in Young’s Analytical Con-
cordance (20th ed., New York, 1936), p. 24.
11H. C. Leupold, Exposition of Genesis (Grand Rapids, 1950), Vol. I, p. 234.
The very word tell, now employed so widely in Arabic place

names in the Near and Middle East and in Egypt, is the one
used here and correctly translated “mounds.” Examples of place
names are very numerous. In Palestine, for example, occur Tell
en Nasbeh, Tell el Ful (Gibeah), et Tell (Ai), Tell Jezer
(Gezer), Tell ed-Duweir (Lachish), etc. In Egypt occurs the
well-known Tell-el Amarna. In Mesopotamia are found Tell
Abib, Tell Melah, Tell Arpachiyeh and numerous others.
The translators of the Authorized Version, not in possession
of the light archeology has shed upon the ee in Joshua
11:13, erroneously rendered the text, “But as for the cities that
stood in their strength, Israel burned none of them, save Hazor
only; that did Joshua burn.” Moreover the correct reference to
Canaanite “cities that stood on their mounds” has acquired new
significance through the discovery of the process by which the
ancient tell was formed.
I 330AD
Ir 30! BC.
Iz 1224 BC
PE NOG IPN
V1i3i3 BC
WW j4il Ba
Ym 1447 BC
MiGOuae os=
NINE MORE LEVELS:
Illustration of the occupational levels (strata) of a mound (tell). This is Tell Beisan,
ancient fortress city of Bethshan (I Sam. 31:10), which guarded the eastern approaches
to the Valley of Esdraelon. (Courtesy of J. Free, Archeology and Bible History, p. 8.)
When a site has been occupied for many centuries, the re-
mains from the successive periods of its occupation lie one above
another “in such a way as to suggest a gigantic layer cake.”
Stratigraphic digging, which is the basis of modern scientific
excavation, means digging in such a manner that the super-
imposed occupational levels are kept distinct. The remains found
in each layer, particularly pottery, must be exactly and meticu-
lously recorded, so that comparative study with other similar
levels in other sites will yield correct dating and accurate con-
clusions.*
12 Millar Burrows, What Mean These Stones? (New Haven, 1941), p. 12.
13 Cf. Cyrus H. Gordon, The Living Past (New York, 1941), pp. 51-91.
RoLE oF ARCHEOLOGY IN STuDY oF OLD TESTAMENT SA
The building up of the various occupational levels was not

merely a question of gradual accumulation of debris. This was
a factor, but some disaster such as war, earthquake or fire was
also necessary. This catastrophe destroyed the city, and when
it was rebuilt the new settlers simply levelled the remains and
built upon them. Thus the ground level of the new city was
several feet higher than the old one, and the remnants of the
old lay under the new. This process kept repeating itself till
numerous strata were formed and the tell gradually rose higher
and higher, and its area became smaller.
After the final abandonment of the site, if it was finally
abandoned, the winds and rains of many years levelled off the
top and eroded its sides, except where the process was arrested
by a city wall. Hence the common form of a mound is a trun-
cated cone, and almost all the important ancient sites in Biblical
lands have this characteristic shape. However, stratigraphic ex-
cavation is not just a matter of uncovering layer upon layer of
occupational history. The excavator often has to wrestle with
the problems of intrusion of objects from one level to another,
either downward to a lower level or upward to a higher level.*
“The rule we must always bear in mind,” as Cyrus Gordon
points out, is “ ‘that one swallow does not make a summer,’ and
that the fact that an isolated object is found at a certain level
means little or nothing in itself. Inferences from individual ob-
jects must be made with the greatest caution, and only when
many facts corroborate one another, can we be justified in draw-
ing broad conclusions from their context.”*°
3. Archeology Supplements the Bible. Since the human au-
thors of Scripture writing under divine inspiration were not in-
terested in profane history, geography, ethnology and other fields
of human knowledge except incidentally as they chanced to
touch upon the history of redemption, it was natural that from
a modern scholar’s point of view there should be great gaps in
the Old Testament in these branches of learning. While again
from the divine side, as far as the spiritual comprehension of
the divine message is concerned, there was no need of further
knowledge of these and kindred subjects. Yet from a human
standpoint light from these spheres of research is of incalculable
value in extending Biblical horizons, increasing knowledge of
14 [bid., pp. 92-112.
15 [bid., pp. 92f.
Biblical backgrounds and giving a fuller understanding of the

message and meaning of the Old Testament.
An interesting instance of supplementation is the destruction
of Shiloh, Israel's first sanctuary in Palestine, where the Taber-
nacle was set up and the ark of the Lord was kept during the
long period of the Judges. Nowhere is the fall of the city nar-
rated in the Bible, although Jeremiah refers to the place as
having been destroyed (Jer. 7:12-15; 26:6,7). Excavations by
the Danish Expedition’® have uncovered pottery and other evi-
dence demonstrating that this destruction occurred around 1050
B.C., presumably at the hands of the Philistines. In the era of
the collared store jar-rim, a type of ware characteristic of all
central Palestine in the twelfth and early eleventh century, there
was a very extensive occupational level at Shiloh. This settle-
ment came to an end before the introduction of a new style of
store jar-rim characteristic of the period after the middle of
the eleventh century and found at Gibeah of Saul and contem-
porary deposits at Bethel.‘’ Excavators found evidence also of
a conflagration.
The conclusion is clear that Shiloh must have been destroyed
by the Philistines after the battle of Ebenezer or somewhat later
in the neighborhood of 1050 B.c., since the Tabernacle was
thereafter moved to Nob and later to Gibbon. Jeremiah’s
reference to the destruction of Shiloh over four and a half cen-
turies after the event loses any singularity in the light of the
fact that Shiloh was regarded by the Israelites as their great
intertribal focal point in the extended period before its fall
(Judg. 21:19; I Sam. 1:3). Its destruction presented a special
divine warning, the solemnity of which centuries could not
erase.
Other nations of the ancient Near East had their great cen-
tral sanctuaries, to which pilgrimages were made. Nippur was
the religious Mecca in Babylonia and Nineveh in Assyria during
the third quarter of the second millennium.1* The temples of
Sin in Haran-and Belit-ekalli in Qatna are revealed by the Mari
Letters as places of extensive religious resort in the eighteenth
century B.c."” The temple of Baaltis in Gebal (Byblus) received
votive offerings from far-off Egypt all through the second mil-
16H. Kjaer in Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society (1930), pp- 87-114.
17 Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, LXVIII, p. 25, and note 11.
18 W. F. Albright, Archeology and the Religion of Israel (Baltimore, 1942), pp. 104f.
19G. Dossin, Melanges Syriens offerts a M. R. Dassaud, II (1939), p. 986.
ROLE OF ARCHEOLOGY IN STupy oF OLp TESTAMENT 23
lennium B.c. The cultic image of Asherah, the Tyrian goddess,

enjoyed wide distribution in amuletic form in the period 1500-
1200 8. c.”° Shiloh in Israel, modest and unpretentious in com-
parison to the great heathen sanctuaries, was nevertheless dis-
tinctive as the religious rallying point of the Israelitish tribes,
who possessed the knowledge of the one true God.
Similar to the example of Shiloh, the important fortress city
of Bethshan, which commanded the eastern approaches to the
plain of Esdraelon and guarded the road to Syria and Trans-
jordan, offers another instance of archeology’s ability to supple-
ment the Biblical narrative by supplying illuminating details
passed over in the sacred account. Excavations at the ancient
citadel reveal that it was destroyed not long after Shiloh. Since
it appears in connection with the death and ignominious treat-
ment of King Saul (I Sam. 31:10, 12; II Sam. 21:12), its de-
struction was certainly the work of David as a reprisal against
the city for the outrage.”
Illustration of the Old Testament, however, is by no means
confined to the earlier periods of Hebrew history. Archeology
has shed a flood of light on later periods as well. For instance,
contemporary Assyrian records of the ninth and eighth centuries
B.C. fill in many gaps in the Hebrew historical narratives and
greatly enrich our knowledge of such Israelite kings as Ahab
and Jehu. The former, as Assyrian Ahabbu, appears prominently
in the Monolith Inscription of the great Assyrian conqueror,
Shalmaneser III (858-824 B.c.), as one of the important mem-
bers of a military coalition, who furnished two thousand chariots
and ten thousand soldiers to resist the Assyrian advance at Kar-
kar on the Orontes River in 853 B.c.” Jehu, the usurper and
the ruthless extirpator of the house of Omri, actually appears
on the Black Obelisk which Austen Layard found in 1846 in
Shalmaneser III’s palace at Nimrod.** Jehu is shown kneeling
before the Assyrian monarch, and the following words accom-
pany the picture: “Tribute of Iaua [Jehu] son of Omri [mar
Humri]. Silver, gold . . . lead, staves for the hand of the king,
javelins, I received from him,
The appearance of the name of Omri in the Assyrian records
20 Albright, Archeology and the Religion of Israel (Baltimore, 1942), p. 105.
21 Burrows, op. cit. Cf. W. F- Albright, The Archeology of Palestine and the Bible
(New York, 1932-1935), p. 40.
| 22 Luckenbill, op cit., Vol. I, sec. 611.
23 Austen H. Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains (1849), Vol. I, p. 282.
24 Luckenbill, op. cit., Vol. I, sec. 590.
in connection with Jehu, who did not enter the historical scene
until more than a century after the death of the founder of the
important Omride dynasty in Israel, illustrates the political repu-
tation Omri enjoyed, at least among the Assyrians, which is
doubtlessly intentionally passed over in the Old Testament (cf.
I Kings 16:23-28) because of the king’s negative religious in-
fluence (Mic. 6:16). The Moabite Stone set up by King Mesha
of Moab (II Kings 3:4) about 830 B.c. and discovered in 1868
likewise supports the fact that Omri enjoyed great political
prestige. The king of Moab’s own testimony to this fact appears
as follows: “As for Omri, king of Israel, he humbled Moab many
years [literally, days]” and “occupied the land of Medeba, and
[Israel] had dwelt there, in his time and half the time of his
son [Ahab] 23.9
Beside the Moabite Stone the Lachish Ostraca are of particu-
lar importance among Palestinian inscriptions. Discovered in
1935 and 1938 in the ruins of the latest Israelite occupation of
Tell ed-Duweir (Lachish) in southern Palestine, these twenty-
one letters possess unusual philological significance, since they
form the only known corpus of documents in classical Hebrew
prose. Besides they shed valuable light on the time of Jeremiah,
just preceding the fall of Jerusalem (587 B.c.), being generally
dated in the autumn of 589 or 588 B.c., shortly before the com-
mencement of the Chaldean siege of Lachish.”®
The ability of archeology to clear up a widely misunderstood
period of Biblical history is demonstrated by the discovery of
the votive Stele of Benhadad I of Aram set up about 850 B.c.
and discovered in 1941 just north of Aleppo in Syria. The Ara-
maic royal inscription engraved on the Stele points to the fact
that Benhadad I, the contemporary of Asa and Baasha, was
the same individual as the so-called Benhadad II, the contem-
porary of Elijah and Elisha. This important bit of information
removes one of the most serious embarrassments to the correct
understanding of the whole period of the history of the Northern
Kingdom from the division of the Monarchy about 922 8. c. to
the rise of Jehu in 842 B. c.,?” and at the same time authenticates
25.w. F. Albright in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, ed. by
James B. Pritchard (Princeton, 1950), p. 320.
26 James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament
(Princeteon, 1950), pp. 321. For complete text, photographs, translations, etc., see Lachish I
(The Lachish Letters) by Harry Torczyner, Lankester Harding, Alkin Leurs, J. L. Starkey
(London, 1938), pp. 1-223.
27E.g. T. K. Cheyne in Encyclopedia Biblica, Vol. I, p. 531f.-
ROLE OF ARCHEOLOGY IN STuDY oF OLD TESTAMENT 25
the dynastic list of Aramean kings, who reigned at Damascus,

as given in I Kings 15:18.*8
Then, too, it ought to be added that archeology has in a most
astonishing manner rediscovered whole nations and resurrected
important peoples of antiquity known heretofore only from ob-
scure Biblical references.
It is no exaggeration to say that on the human side and as
far as its historical and linguistic aspects are concerned, the Old
Testament has become a new book as archeology has made it
more understandable by setting it against the illuminating back-
ground of its environment and by correlating it with the life
and customs out of which it sprang. This is the distinctive role
of archeology in the study of the Old Testament. Archeology
has yielded momentous results up to the present and gives fair
promise of even greater contributions in the future as research
in Biblical lands goes forward.
LITERATURE ON THE ROLE OF ARCHEOLOGY IN THE
STUDY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
Driver, S. R., E. A. Gardner, and others, Authority and Archeology Sacred

and Profane, edited by David G. Hogarth (London, 1899).
Driver, S. R., Modern Research As Illustrating the Bible (London, 1909).
Peters, John P., Bible and Spade (New York, 1922).
Albright, W. F., The Archeology of Palestine and the Bible (New York,
1932).
Grant, Elihu, ed., The Haverford Symposium on Archeology and the
Bible (New Haven, 1938).
Kenyon, Sir Frederic, The Bible and Archeology (New York, 1940),
pp. 1-30.
Robinson, George L., The Bearing of Archeology on the Old Testament
(New York, 1941).
Burrows, Millar, What Mean These Stones? (New Haven, 1941), pp.
250-292.
Marston, Charles, The Bible Comes Alive (6th ed., rev., New York, 1944).
Rowley, H. H., The Rediscovery of the Old Testament (Philadelphia,
1946), pp. 31-82.
MacRae, Alan A., “The Relation of Archeology to the Bible” in Modern
Science and Christian Faith (Wheaton, Ill., 1950), pp. 196-237.
Free, J. P., Archeology and Bible History (Wheaton, III., 1950), pp. 1-10.
Barrois, A. G., Manuel D’Archeologie Biblique, Vol. I (1939), Vol. II
(1953).
28w. F. Albright, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, LXXXVII

(Oct., 1942), pp. 23-29.
CHAPTER II
THE BIBLICAL AND BABYLONIAN ACCOUNT

OF CREATION
As an ancient Semitic book, the Old Testament naturally bears

a close relationship to the environment out of which it sprang.
The scene of the first eleven chapters of Genesis, which record
the primeval history of mankind, is laid in the cradle of civili-
zation, the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. There human life began
and the earliest sedentary culture developed. From thence
sprang the earliest traditions of the beginning of the world and
of mankind, which, as would be expected, bear close resemblance
to the Bible.
I. THe DISCOVERY OF THE CREATION TABLETS
The recovery of a huge store of ancient documents from Meso-
potamia, preserved in the wedge-shaped or cuneiform characters
of the language of Babylonia-Assyria and written on clay tablets,
has been one of the triumphs of modern archeology. Before
the discovery of the trilingual Behistun Inscription in 1835 by
a young English officer in the Persian Army, an inscription proved
to be the key that unlocked the strange cuneiform script, the
Assyrian-Babylonian valley was a vast cemetery of buried na-
tions and ancient civilizations. But with the decipherment_ of
the language and consequent renewed zeal in digging up buried
cities and long forgotten cultures, the Tigris-Euphrates region,
where human history was born, became one of the most dra-
matic areas of the earth’s surface.
The decipherment of Babylonian-Assyrian cuneiform and the
opening up of the antiquities of those lands where the earliest
Biblical history began produced ardent expectation among Old
Testament scholars that excavations of buried cities would yield
records containing significant Biblical parallels. Their hopes
were not disappointed.
26
te fh a :
a eee Mersin stiORB setts Z sill stiles ie 3 4
Upper: Cuneiform writing on clay tablet with a stylus. Above the script the soft
clay has been impressed with an old seal in the manner of the ancient Mesopotamia
scribe. (Courtesy E. R. Lacheman, Wellesley College, Mass., and The _ Biblical
Archeologist. )
Center: An ancient Mesopotamian seal depicting a religious scene. A_ reed shrine
(left) and an altarlike structure supported on the back of a bull with two symibols
of the goddess Innina above the altar are transported on a boat. A priest faces the
bull-supported altar. (H. Frankfort, Cylinder Seals, plate III, e. Courtesy the Mac-
millan Co., London.) al ; ¥p
Lower: Seal impression depicting fight between god and dragon. Original in British
Museum. (Courtesy British Museum.)
SR RNY
Upper: Destruction of seven-headed serpent dragon by two deities. Four heads are
dead; three continue to fight. The scene, from an impression of a cylinder seal found
at Tell Asmar in Mesopotamia, probably connects with creation versions which became
popular in Canaan, in which Leviathan, the seven-headed Monster of Chaos, was
slain at the beginning of the world’s history. (Courtesy Oriental Institute, Univ. of
Chicago. )
Second from top: Impression of a cylinder seal from Ur. Ea, god of wisdom and
water, appears on right sitting in his chamber in midst of deep or primeval ocean.
The sun god, with rays darting from his shoulders, ascends a mountain to the gate
of heaven. Immediately to the left, the sun god brandishes a weapon in the midst of
Tiamat, the dragon of Chaos, whom he has slain, according to H. Frankfort’s inter-
pretation, in the creation of the world. (C. Leonard Woolley, The Royal Cemetery at Ur.)
Lower four: Four Syrian seals from the second millennium B. C. Cylinder seals left
their impression by being rolled over a_ soft surface. Preceding the invention of
writing, they had their origin in the 4th millennium B.C., and had a demonstrable
history of more than 3,000 years. They were supplanted by the stamp seal of
Persian times.
BIBLICAL AND BABYLONIAN ACCOUNT — CREATION Dale
1. Finds at Nineveh. Between the years 1848 and 1876, as a

result of excavations at Nineveh, the ancient capital of the As-
syrian Empire, Austen H. Layard, Hormuzd Rassam, and George
Smith recovered from the library of Ashurbanipal (668-626 B.c.)
the first tablets and fragments of tablets of the great Creation
Epic current among the Babylonians and Assyrians. Because of
its bearing upon the opening chapters of Genesis, few Semitic
inscriptions have awakened greater general interest. The epic,
recorded in cuneiform on seven clay tablets, consists of ap-
proximately one thousand lines, and was known to its ancient
readers from its two opening words, Enuma elish (“When
above”).
2. Other Creation Fragments. As a result of other discoveries
of new tablets and parts of tablets since 1876 the epic has been
almost completely restored. The only considerable portion which
is still lacking occurs in Tablet V.
3. Date of the Tablets. Although the bulk of the epic, being
from Ashurbanipal’s library, is in its present form late (seventh
century B.C.), it was composed much earlier in the days of
the great Hammurabi (1728-1686 3.c.). It was at this time
Babylon rose to political supremacy and Marduk, the hero of
Enuma elish, became the national god. One of the main pur-
poses of the creation epic is to show the pre-eminence of Baby-
lon over all the other cities of the country, and especially the
supremacy of Marduk over all the other Babylonian gods.’
Thus given the mold of political propaganda in which it was
to be told for the next thousand years, it has come down to us
in this version. However, the poem itself, though one of the
literary masterpieces of the Babylonian Semites, goes back to
much earlier times. It is clearly based upon the earlier traditions
of the Sumerians, the non-Semitic precursors of the Babylonian
Semites in lower Babylonia. These people entered the plain of
Shinar in southern Babylonia very early (perhaps as early as
4,000 B.c.) and developed a high civilization, including cunei-
form writing evolved from pictographs. The Babylonians be-
came heirs of the religion and culture of the Sumerians.
1 For latest translations and discussions of Enuma elish see Erich Ebeling in Hugo Gress-
mann’s Altorientalische Texte xum Alten Testament (Berlin, 1926), pp. 108-129; Stephen
Langdon, The Babylonian Epic of Creation (Oxford, 1923); E. A. Wallis Budge, The
Babylonian Legends of the Creation (London, 1931); Anton Deimel, Enuma elish und
Hexaaemeron (Rome, 1934); Rene Labat, Le Poeme babylonien de la creation (Paris,
1935); Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis (Chicago, 1942).
SSS—=
Il. Tue BaByLONIAN ACCOUNT OF CREATION

Tablet I in the opening scene presents the primitive age when
only living uncreated world matter existed, personified by two
mythical beings — Apsu (male), representing the primeval fresh
water ocean and Tiamat (female), the primeval salt water
ocean.? This original pair became the parents of the gods.
When above the heavens had not [yet] been named,
[And] below the earth had not [yet] existed as such,
[When] only Apsu primeval, their begetter, [existed],
cee mother [mummu] Tiamat, who gave birth to them all;
When] their waters [yet] intermingled,
[And] no dry land had been formed [and] not
[Even] a marsh could be seen;
When none of the gods had been brought forth,
Then were the gods created in the midst of them [Apsu and
Tiamat].
Lahmu and Lahamu [deities] they [Apsu and Tiamat] begat.?
The brood of gods, which Apsu and Tiamat begat, became so
annoying in their conduct that their father, Apsu, made up
his mind to do away with them. In this decision, however, he
was frustrated by the great god Ea, “who fathoms everything”*
and who discovered the plan and was thereby able to fetter and
slay Apsu. Then Ea begat Marduk, the city god of Babylon,
and the real hero of the myth. Meanwhile Tiamat, at the insti-
gation of the gods, prepares to avenge the death of her hus-
band, Apsu. She creates gruesome monsters and appoints Kingu,
one of her own offspring, as commander-in-chief of her armies.
Tablets II and III recount how Marduk was chosen by his
father Ea as champion to fight against the raging Tiamat and
how the gods assembled at a banquet for the council of war
to accouter and commission him for battle. In Tablet IV Marduk
is elevated to supremacy among the gods, the power to destroy
and create being made the basis of his exaltation. He destroys
and creates a garment. He is declared king and goes to battle
against Tiamat with bow, arrow and club. The formal defeat
of chaos and the victory of order are described graphically in
the mighty contest:
Tiamat and Marduk, the wisest of the gods, took their stands op-
posite each other,
They pressed on to the battle, they drew near in combat.
The lord spread out his net and enmeshed her,
2 Deimel, op. cit., p» 22.
3 Enuma elish, Tablet I, lines 1-10.
4 Ibid., line 60.
BIBLICAL AND BABYLONIAN ACCOUNT — CREATION 29
The evil wind, following after, he let loose in her face.

When Tiamat opened her mouth to devour him,
He drove in the evil wind, so that she could not close her lips.
As the raging winds filled her belly,
Her belly was distended, and she opened wide her mouth,
He shot off an arrow, it tore her belly,
It cut through her vitals, it pierced [her] heart.
When he had subdued her, he destroyed her life.
He cast down her carcass [and] stood upon it.®
The helpers of Tiamat attempt to flee, but are captured and
cast into prison. Meanwhile Marduk returns to Tiamat, to create
the cosmos out of her corpse.
The lord rested, to look at her dead body, [to see]
How he might divide the colossus [and] create wondrous things
[therewith].
He split her open like a mussel into two parts;
Half of her he set in place and formed the sky,
He fixed the bar and posted guards.®
Then Marduk issued an order not to let the “water” escape
which was in the half of Tiamat’s body and which he used in
the construction of the sky. Next he established the earth, po-
etically designated Esharra, in the form of a great canopy and
placed it over Apsu, the fresh water ocean underneath the
earth. The god Anu he placed in the sky, the god Enlil in the
air, and Ea in the ocean beneath the earth.
He commanded them not to let her water escape,
He crossed the heavens and examined [its] regions.
He placed himself opposite the Apsu...
The lord measured the dimensions of the Apsu,
And a great structure, its counterpart, he established, [namely, ]
Esharra,
The great structure Esharra, which he made as a canopy,
Anu, Enlil, and Ea he [then] caused to establish their residence.‘
In Tablet V, which is fragmentary, Marduk sets up the con-
stellations and indicates the days and months of the year by
causing the moon to shine forth in its various phases to mark
the principal time unit of Babylonia.
Tablet VI is important in that it describes the creation of
man. Marduk declares:
Blood I will form and cause bone to be;
Then I will set up Jullu,® “Man” shall be his name,
Yes, I will create Jullu: Man!
5 Ibid., Tablet IV, lines 93-104.
8 Tbid., lines 135-139.
7 Ibid., lines 140-146.
8 Sumerian word for man.
30 ARCHEOLOGY ‘AND THE OLD TESTAMENT
[Upon him] shall the service of the gods be imposed that they may
FESt ches”
In the assembly of the gods guilt for Tiamat’s rebellion is laid
at the door of Kingu, the commander-in-chief of Tiamat’s forces.
Thereupon Kingu is slain, and the god Ea at the instruction of
his son Marduk, creates man from the blood let out of Kingu’s
arteries.
They bound him [and] held him in prison before Ea;
They inflicted punishment upon him by cutting open [the arteries
of] his blood,
With his blood they fashioned mankind;
He [Ea] imposed the service of the gods [upon man] and set the
gods free.
After Ea, the wise, had created man
[And] had imposed the service of the gods upon him,
That work was past [human] understanding.?°
After the creation of man, the Annunaki (gods) themselves
labored for a year, burning brick to construct Esagila, the temple-
tower of Marduk at Babylon. Then the gods gathered at a fes-
tive banquet in honor of Marduk. Tablet VII relates how Marduk
is finally advanced from the chief god of Babylon to headship
over the entire pantheon. Upon him are conferred fifty names
representing the power and attributes of the various Babylonian
deities.
In the Eridu story of creation,’ discovered by Hormuzd Ras-
sam in 1882 in the ruins of ancient Sippar in the northern part
of Babylonia called Akkad, man’s creation is also attributed to
Marduk, with the assistance of the goddess Aruru. It is colored
by the same political propaganda as Enuma elish, justifying
Marduk’s position as king among the Babylonian gods:
He [Marduk] created mankind.
[The goddess] Aruru created the seed of mankind together with him.
He created the beast of the field [and] the living things of the steppe
He created the Tigris and the Euphrates and set [them] in their place.
Their names he appropriately proclaimed.
He created the grass, the rush of the marsh, the reed, and the woods.
He created the green herb of the field.!?
Other creation fragments with various versions of creation
have been found, the most important of which recounts that the
® Enuma elish, Tablet VI, lines 5-8.
10 7did., lines 31-37.
11 See L. W. King, The Seven Tablets of Creation (London, 1902) Vol. I, pp. 130-139;
R. W. Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (New York, 1926), pp. 47-50;
Erich Ebeling in Gressmann, op. cét., pp. 130f.
oeLines 20-26; cf. Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis (2nd ed.; Chicago, 1951),
p- 63.
gods formed mankind with the blood of certain other gods. In

other accounts flesh and blood of a slain god are said to have
been mixed with clay to form man.®
III. Comparison OF THE BIBLICAL AND THE
BABYLONIAN ACCOUNT
It is commonly recognized by scholars that there are numer-
ous interesting parallels between the account of creation given
in Babylonian literature, particularly Enuma elish, and that
given in Genesis 1:1-2:3. Although these similarities are gen-
uine, they are commonly exaggerated and erroneous conclusions
are frequently drawn from them.
1. The Resemblances: (1) Both accounts know a time when
the earth was waste and void. In both there is an etymological
equivalence in the names used to denote the dark, watery chaos,
which was later separated into heaven and earth. In Enuma elish
it is a proper name, the mythical personality Tiamat. In Genesis
1:2 it is tehom, a common noun with no mythological connota-
tions, but describing the vast watery mass from which the
waters above the firmament were separated on the second day
and out of which the dry land emerged on the third day. But
while Hebrew tehom represents the entire chaotic watery mass,
Tiamat represents only part of it, the other part being repre-
sented by Apsu.
Although Babylonian Tiamat and Hebrew tehom are cognate
words in the two Semitic languages, the latter is not a deriva-
tive of the former, which would indicate dependence of the
Hebrew upon the Babylonian account. As the different gender
of the words and other factors indicate, both rather go back to
a common proto-Semitic form. On the other hand the Hebrew
word for “firmament,” raqia’‘, signifies “what is spread out” and
corresponds to the crude Babylonian idea that the half of Tiamat
was used by Marduk to construct the vault of heaven.
(2) Both accounts have a similar order of events in creation.
Both open with the existence of divine spirit. In Enuma elish
divine spirit consists of the primeval deities Apsu and Tiamat,
who give birth to the first gods. In Genesis it is the one eternal
God. Both narratives also begin with a watery chaos and end
with the gods or the Lord at rest. In the sequence of creative
acts there is a remarkable similarity between the two narratives,
18 Cf. Heidel, op. cit., pp 61-81.
although light is apparently created in Genesis and merely

emanates from the gods in the Babylonian version. The creation
by Marduk of the firmament, the dry land, the celestial lumi-
naries and man follows the identical order of creation by God
in Genesis.
(3) Both accounts show a predilection for the number seven.
The Babylonian epic is arranged in seven tablets or cantos. The
Hebrew creative events are grouped in seven periods called
days. This likeness, which at first glance might appear singular,
is in reality quite superficial. There is no evidence at all, how-
ever, to attribute the seven days of creation in Genesis to the
influence of the seven creation tablets of Enuma elish. The
number seven had a common significance in ancient Semitic
thought reflected in Babylonian literature as well as throughout
the Old Testament.1* Besides there is little correspondence be-
tween the seven tablets and the seven creative days of Genesis.
Tablets II and III do not deal with any phase of creation, neither
do most of Tablets I and IV. In Genesis, however, creative
activity took place on all of the first six days, while the seventh
is devoted to God’s rest.
Taking all factors into consideration, it may be concluded
that the similarities between Enuma elish and the Genesis ac-
count of creation are in some respects striking. But in the over-
all picture the likenesses serve to accentuate the differences,
which are much more radical and significant.
2. The Differences: (1) One account is intensely polytheistic,
the other strictly monotheistic. The Babylonian myth begins
with a plurality of gods, Apsu and Tiamat, who as male and
female deities give birth to the first gods. Genesis opens with
that incomparable word: “In the beginning God . . .” (Gen. 1:1).
As a result of this salient difference in the basic concept of deity,
the religious ideas of the two accounts are completely divergent.
The Babylonian story is on a low mythological plane with a
sordid conception of deity. The offspring of Apsu and Tiamat
are so ill-behaved that their father plans to destroy them. The
great gods themselves plot and fight against one another. Ea
clashes with Apsu. Marduk fights with Tiamat and her fol-
lowers and conquers only after a severe struggle.
Genesis, in striking contrast, is lofty and sublime. The one
God, supreme and omnipotent, is in superb control of all the
14Cf. Alfred Jeremias, The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient East, Vol. I
(London, 1911), pp. 198-203.
BIBLICAL AND BABYLONIAN Account — CREATION 33
creatures and elements of the universe. There is an infinite

gap between Him as Creator and the creature or the creation.
Although there is rebellion among the angelic creatures, re-
vealed elsewhere in Scripture (Isa. 14:12-17; Ezek. 28:12-19)
and a fall of mankind (Gen. 3), yet God is in perfect control,
the manifestation of evil being foreseen and a remedy provided
(Gen. 3:15).
The crude polytheism of the Babylonian creation stories mars
the record with successive generations of deities of both sexes
proceeding from Apsu and Tiamat and produces a confusing
and contradictory plurality of creators. This is true because
Apsu and Tiamat are not merely the progenitors of divine be-
ings, but since these divine beings in turn personify various
cosmic spaces and natural forces, the parents of the gods directly
partake of the role of creators as well.
But other creators enter the confused picture. In war among
the gods, Ea, the father of Marduk, kills Apsu and from the
carcass of Apsu forms the subterranean sea, upon which the
earth rests. Marduk in turn in conflict with Tiamat brings cos-
mos out of chaos, and as the chief creator makes the heaven
and earth, the heavenly bodies, grain and legumes, and together
with Ea is credited with fashioning man.
Other fragmentary inscriptions add contradictory elements
to the perplexing account in Enuma elish. One found by George
Smith at Nineveh speaks of “the gods in their totality” as having
created the world and its contents.’° Another from the ancient
Assyrian capital city, Ashur, lists “the great gods” Anu, Enlil,
- Shamash and Ea as creators of the universe and, together with
the divinities called the Annunaki, as having formed the first
two human beings, named Ulligarra (“the establisher of abun-
dance”) and Zalgarra (“the establisher of plenty”).** Another
tablet from Babylon asserts that Anu created the heavens and
that Ea created various lesser deities and mankind.’* Another
inscription ascribes the creation of the sun and moon to Anu,
Enlil and Ea. The Eridu story of creation ascribes mankind’s
creation to Marduk assisted by a goddess,” while a mutilated
and weather-worn tablet from the First Dynasty of Babylon
15 For translation see King, op. cit., pp. 122-125; Ebeling in Gressmann, op. cit., p. 136.
16 Heidel, op. cit., pp. 68-71. ;
17 For translation see A. Ungnad, Die Religion der Babylonier und Assyrer (Jena, 1921),
pp. 544.
18 Ebeling in Gressmann, op. cit., p. 136.
19 Jbid., p. 130f.
ascribes man’s creation to a goddess who mixed clay with a

slain god’s blood.”
In the greatest possible contrast to the confusion and con-
tradiction of these polytheistic narratives the Genesis account
with chaste beauty and simplicity, which are eloquent evidences
of its divine inspiration, presents the one Eternal God as Creator
and Sustainer of all things. He creates all things out of nothing.
By His omnipotent word He speaks worlds into being. As Cre-
ator He exerts supreme control over all the elements of the
universe.
(2) One account confounds spirit and matter, the other care-
fully distinguishes between these two concepts. Not only is
the Babylonian version religiously unsound in being polytheistic
rather than monotheistic, but what is closely connected to this,
it is philosophically unsound as well. It hopelessly confuses
divine spirit and cosmic matter by an irrational and mythological
identification of the two. Apsu and Tiamat, the parents of the
gods, are personifications of cosmic matter (the primordial sweet
and salt water oceans respectively) and their offspring in turn
personify cosmic spaces and natural forces. This leads to the
false assumption underlying Babylonian thought that divine
spirit and cosmic matter are coexistent and coeternal.
The Babylonian idea of the eternity of matter is, of course,
foreign to Old Testament thought and at variance with the
idea of an infinite Creator who Genes the universe into being
out of nothing, which is the clear implication of Genesis 1:1.
The sublime and philosophically sound concept of an infinite
Eternal Spirit creating cosmic matter and existing indepen-
dently of it, as the Genesis account sets forth, was utterly be-
yond a polytheistic mold of thought and man’s reasonings
unaided by divine revelation.
One of the sublimest features of the Genesis account is the
power of the spoken word of the Creator. “And God said”
(Gen. 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26) is the divine fiat that majesti-
cally brings the universe and all it contains into existence (cf.
Heb. 11:3). A suggestive parallel, though on a much lower
plane, is the spoken word of Marduk, which tests his creative
power before the gods:
He commanded with his mouth, and the garment was destroyed,
Again he commanded, and the garment was restored.
20 Stephen Langdon, Sumerian Epic of Paradise, the Flood and the Fall of Man (Phila-
delphia, 1915), pp. 25¢,
When the gods, his fathers, beheld the efficacy of his words
They rejoiced [and] did homage, [saying] ‘Marduk is king!’’24
But this instance of creative activity by the efficacy of the
spoken word is unique in Babylonian creation literature. The
gods are consistently portrayed as craftsmen who create by
physical toil as on the human level.
IV. EXPLANATION OF THE BIBLICAL PARALLELS
A comparison between the Babylonian epic of creation and
the opening chapters of Genesis reveals that the similarities
on the whole are not particularly striking when the close affilia-
tion between Hebrews and Babylonians during the course of
their history is taken into consideration. The differences are, in
fact, much more important and the similarities no more than
one would naturally expect in two creation narratives more or
less complete. Both have substantially the same phenomena
to account for; and since men customarily think along similar
lines, no dependence of one upon the other need be assumed.
However, in one aspect the similarity is of such a nature that
it could hardly be accidental. This is in the matter of the se-
quence of events in creation. The order might easily have
been altered with regard to the creation of the firmament, the
dry land, the luminaries and man. It seems certain that there
is some connection between the two accounts. Four possibilities
exist. The Genesis account is drawn from the Babylonian tra-
dition. The Babylonian is drawn from the Genesis narrative.
These traditions arose spontaneously. The two accounts go
-back to a common source.
1. The Genesis Account is Drawn from the Babylonian
Tradition. Although this view has enjoyed widespread ad-
herence and has certain historical, archeological and religious
factors in its favor, the simplicity and sublimity of the Biblical
account in contrast to the complexity and crudity of the Baby-
lonian version offer weighty reasons against it. The Scriptural
record sets forth the authentic facts of creation given in their
purity by inspiration. Moses, of course, may have been con-
versant with these traditions. If he was, inspiration enabled
him to record them as authentic facts, purged of all their crass
polytheistic incrustations and made to fit the elevated mold of
truth and pure monotheism. If he was not, the Holy Spirit
could have imparted the revelation of these events to him apart
21 Tablet IV, lines 25-28.
from any need of oral or written sources. In either case inspira-

tion was just as necessary whether to purge the crude account
and to refine it to fit the mold of monotheism, or to give the
original authentic story without oral or written sources.
The use of oral or written sources is not at variance with
Biblical inspiration as is evident from the prologue to the third
Gospel (Luke 1:1-3). Moreover, some Old Testament writers
were acquainted with the literature of surrounding nations and
modeled some of their inspired compositions after their literary
masterpieces. This fact is clearly shown, for instance, by striking
parallels between some of the earlier psalms and the epic litera-
ture discovered at Ras Shamra (1929-1937).?? In addition the
Amarna Letters from Egypt and the Hittite documents from
Boghazkeui in Asia Minor show that Mesopotamian commerce
had widely disseminated Babylonian writing and literature
around 1400 B.c., so that it was entirely possible that Moses
who was “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Acts
7:22) knew the masterpieces of Babylonian literature, such as
the myths of Adapa and Ereshkigal, which were current in the
Egypt of his day.
Accordingly, it is not impossible from a historical and archeo-
logical point of view or from the standpoint of Biblical inspira-
tion to assume that Genesis might in a measure be dependent
upon Enuma elish. This, however, is not the true explanation
of the parallels, we believe, and, while the doctrine of Biblical
inspiration does not rule out the possibility of the dependence
of the Genesis account, it renders such dependence wholly un-
necessary. It seems inconceivable that the Holy Spirit would
have used an epic so contaminated with heathen philosophy
as a source of spiritual truth. The employment of a poetical
form or a certain type of meter as a vehicle for the expression
of spiritual truth, of which there are clear Old Testament ex-
amples taken from contemporary literature, is an entirely dif-
ferent matter.
2. The Babylonian is Drawn from the Genesis Narrative. This
view is extremely unlikely, if not historically impossible. Enuma
elish antedates Genesis by almost four centuries, since the epic
in the days of Hammurabi of Babylonia (1728-1686 Bs. c.) almost
certainly received the form in which it was discovered nearly
22 See John Hastings Patton, Canaanite Parallels in the Book of Psalms (Baltimore, 1944),
pp. 1-48; W. F. Albright, “The Old Testament and Archeology” in Old Testament Com-
mentary (Philadelphia, 1948), pp. 156-159.
BIBLICAL AND BABYLONIAN ACCOUNT — CREATION oT
a millennium later, and much of its thought goes back to earlier

Sumerian times. However, there is a possibility that the Hebrew
account in one form or another may have been current centuries
before.
3. These Traditions Arose Spontaneously. They are the
natural tendencies of the human mind in a process of evolution,
it is contended. Like ways of thinking about and accounting
for the universe and man spontaneously produced them. But
this is not an explanation. It simply refuses to account for the
facts in a rational way.
4. The Two Accounts Go Back to a Common Source. The
Babylonian inscriptions and the records of Genesis evidently
give us two forms of primitive traditions and facts concerning
the beginning of the universe and man. These are not traditions
peculiar to Semitic peoples and religions, which have developed
out of their common characteristics. They are traditions common
to all civilized nations of antiquity. Their common elements
point to a time when the human race occupied a common home
and held a common faith. Their likenesses are due to a common
inheritance, each race of men handing on from age to age re-
cords, oral and written, of the primeval history of the race.
Early races of men wherever they wandered took with them
these earliest traditions of mankind, and in varying latitudes
and climes have modified them according to their religions and
mode of thought. Modifications as time proceeded resulted in
the corruption of the original pure tradition. The Genesis ac-
count is not only the purest, but everywhere bears the un-
_mistakable impress of divine inspiration when compared with
_ the extravagances and corruptions of other accounts. The Bibli-
cal narrative, we may conclude, represents the original form
_ these traditions must have assumed.
LITERATURE ON THE BIBLICAL AND BABYLONIAN
ACCOUNT OF CREATION
Smith, George, The Chaldean Account of Genesis (London, 1876).
_ Sayce, A. H., The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments
(London, 1894), pp. 61-107. |
Jensen, Peter, Assyrisch-babylonische Mythen und Epen (Berlin, 1900).
King, L. W., The Seven Tablets of Creation, Vols. I, Il (London, 1902).
, Legends of Babylon and Egypt in Relation to Hebrew Tradition
| (London, 1918).
| Jeremias, Alfred, The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient East,
Vol. I (London, New York, 1911), pp. 142-219.
Pinches, Theophilus G., The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical
Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia (London, 1903), pp. 9-84.
Ebeling, E., Das babylonische Weltschoepfunslied in B. Meissner’s Alto-
rientalische Texte und Untersuchungen, II, 4 (Breslau, 1921).
Peters, J. P., Bible and Spade (New York, 1922), pp. 49-68.
Langdon, Stephen, The Babylonian Epic of Creation (Oxford, 1923).
Budge, E. A. Wallis, The Babylonian Legends of the Creation (London,
1951),
Deimel, Anton, Enuma elish und Hexameron (Rome, 1934).
Labat, René, Le Poéme babylonien de la creation (Paris, 1935).
Barton, George A., Archeology and the Bible (7th ed.; Philadelphia, 1946),
pp. 275-310.
Sanden, O. E., The Bible in the Age of Science (Chicago, 1946), pp. 47-66.
Short, A. Rendle, Modern Discovery and the Bible (Chicago, 1949), pp.
88-117.
Heidel, Alexander, The Babylonian Genesis (2nd ed.; Chicago, 1951).
CHAPTER III
PRIMITIVE TRADITIONS AND BIBLICAL BEGINNINGS
The first eleven chapters of Genesis, which are concerned

with the questions of the creation of the world, the early life
of man on the earth, the great deluge and the pre-patriarchal
life after the flood, contain very ancient material. A large pro-
portion of this matter can now be demonstrated to have been
brought from Mesopotamia by the ancestors of the Hebrews.’
It can also be shown to reflect authentic local coloring and to
be conspicuously free from Egyptian analogies. There are a
few Canaanite parallels, but the latter are almost all of a verbal
nature, consisting in the employment of the same or closely
related words. On the other hand there are a great many striking
Babylonian parallels, although not always as close as is some-
times stated.
Such alleged parallels as the Sabbath and the fall of man
have frequently been overdrawn. Although the seventh day and
the number seven in general had special significance in ancient
Oriental thought both in the Bible and on the monuments,”
_radical critics have labored in vain to prove the Biblical seventh
day of rest and sanctity (Gen. 2:3) was derived from the Baby-
lonians. The lack of a clear parallel to the fall of man recorded
in Genesis 3 will be demonstrated presently. However, such a
detail as the “cherubim” placed “eastward of Eden” (Gen. 3:24)
is now abundantly illustrated by ancient Near Eastern iconog-
raphy to have been a winged lion with human head, or sphinx.
I. PrimirivE TRADITIONS AND THE FALL
The third chapter of Genesis, which portrays the temptation
and the fall of man, who is pictured as living blissfully and
innocently in a delightful environment, is of immense theologi-
1Cf. Journal of Biblical Literature (1939), pp. 99-103.
21Ira Price, The Monuments and the Old Testament (Philadelphia, 1925), pp. 108-110.
39
cal importance. It furnishes the basis and supplies the need

for the divine redemptive activity in behalf of the human race.
Consequently alleged parallels to this pivotal passage in Baby-
lonian literature, with frequent assertions of alleged borrowings
on the part of the sacred account, demand careful consideration.
1. Location of the Garden of Eden. Biblical notices locate
the garden of Eden, where the temptation and the fall occurred,
somewhere in the Tigris-Euphrates country, evidently in the
easternmost third of the Fertile Crescent. “And a river went out
of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted,
and became four heads. The name of the first is Pishon . . .
And the name of the second river is Gihon. . . . And the name
of the third river is Hiddekel. . . . And the fourth river is the
Euphrates” (Gen. 2:10-14). The Hiddekel is the ancient name
of the Tigris (Babylonian Idigla, Diglat). The Pishon and the
Gihon are presumably canals (called rivers in Babylonia) which
connected the Tigris and the Euphrates as ancient river beds.
Although Friedrich Delitzsch* located the site of Eden just
north of Babylon where the Euphrates and Tigris come close
together and A. H. Sayce* and others located it near Eridu,
anciently on the Persian Gulf, it is futile to try to determine
the exact site now. Shifting river beds and the changing con-
figuration of the country in the course of millenniums, a result
of the accumulation of enormous deposits of river silt, render
such a task virtually impossible. The important thing is that
Genesis locates the beginning of human life in the very region
which archeological research has demonstrated to be the cradle
of civilization. Says W. F. Albright:
Archeological research has thus established beyond doubt that there
is no focus of civilization in the earth that can begin to compete in
antiquity and activity with the basin of the Eastern Mediterranean
and the region immediately to the east of it — Breasted’s Fertile
Crescent.5
2. The Myth of Adapa. This ancient legend, which has been
commonly interpreted as the Babylonian parallel to the fall of
man in Genesis 3, was discovered on four cuneiform fragments,
three from King Ashurbanipal’s library in Nineveh (seventh
century B.c.) and the fourth from the archives of the Egyptian
kings Amenhotep III and IV at Amarna (first half of the four-
3 Wo Lag das Paradies? (Leipzig, 1881).
reHigher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments (2nd ed.; London, 1894), pp.
95-101.
5 From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore, 1940), p. 6.
PRIMITIVE TRADITIONS AND BIBLICAL BEGINNINGS 4l
teenth century B.c.). It is a story, like the Epic of Gilgamesh,

of man’s failure to seize the opportunity of gaining eternal life.
Adapa was a man to whom the god Ea had given wisdom, but
not eternal life. As the administrator of Ea’s temple at Eridu
he was out on the Persian gulf fishing when the south wind
rising suddenly upset his boat and plunged him into the sea.
Enraged, he broke “the wing of the south wind,” pictured as
some sort of birdlike creature. Thus crippled, the south wind
was unable to blow cooling breezes over the torrid land.
For this violent deed Adapa is called to answer before Anu,
the great god of heaven. Before ascending to the ethereal re-
gions, Ea, his father, instructs Adapa to dress in mourning as a
token of reverence to the two gatekeepers who have recently
left the land of the living and not to eat the food of death or
drink the water of death which will be offered him. His mourn-
ing for the gatekeepers secures their goodwill. They intercede
for him so successfully that, instead of punishing him, Anu
decides to bless him, and thus gives command:
“. . The food of life
Bring him that he may eat.” The food of life
They brought him, but he did not eat. The water of life
They brought him, but he did not drink. A garment
They brought him, and he clothed himself [with it]. Oil
They brought him, and he anointed himself [with it].
Anu looked at him and laughed at him.
“Come here, Adapa! Why hast thou not eaten, not drunken?
Now thou wilt not live. Woe [to] ... mankind.” Ea
My lord,
Said: “Do not eat, do not drink!”
“Take him and bring him back to his earth!’’®
Sent back to earth to die like all other men, Adapa forfeited
the chance of eternal life. But it is clear from Fragment IV that
he is a representative of mankind, for his refusal to partake of
the bread and water of life not only lost him eternal life, but
involved mankind in illness and disease, and evidently also lost
immortality for the human race as well.
. .. And whatsoever of ill he has brought upon men
And the disease which he has brought upon the bodies of men,
These the goddess [of healing] Ninkarrak will allay.’
3. The Myth of Adapa and Genesis 3. Whatever correspond-
ences there are between the myth of Adapa and the third chapter
6 Fragment II, lines 60-70. Cf. Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis (2nd ed.;
Chicago, 1951), p. 151.
7 Fragment IV, lines 15-17.
of Genesis, the Babylonian legend manifestly does not offer a

parallel to the Biblical account of the fall of man, and scholars
are unwarranted in making such an application. Nor is the fall
pictured, as has often been claimed, on the so-called “temptation
seal,”® which portrays two persons sitting beside a fruit-bearing
tree, and behind one the upright form of a serpent. Both figures
are clothed, whereas the innocence of the first pair is shown by
the statement introducing the temptation scene: “And they were
both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed” (Gen.
9225):
halen there is not the slightest reason to look for the
fall in the literature of the Babylonians, as it is contrary to their
whole system of polytheistic speculation. In Genesis man is
created in the image of a holy God. But the Babylonians, like
other heathen peoples, notably the Greeks and Romans, created
their gods good and bad in the image of man. Such gods who
schemed, hated, fought and killed one another could not be ex-
pected to create that which was morally perfect. Neither could
man who was formed out of the blood of such deities possess
anything but an evil nature. No fall was possible, because man
was created evil, and had no state of innocence from which to
fall.
However, certain elements in the legend of Adapa are striking
by way of similarity or contrast. The “food of life” corresponds
to the “fruit” of “the tree of life” (Gen. 3:3, 22). The two ac-
counts accordingly agree in the thought that eternal life could be
obtained by eating a certain kind of food or fruit. However,
Adam forfeited immortality for himself because of a wrong desire
to be “like God” (Gen. 3:5). For this reason he was expelled
from the garden lest he should eat of the “tree of life... and
live forever” (Gen. 3:22). Adapa was already endowed with
wisdom by the gods and failed to become immortal, not on ac-
count of disobedience or presumption like Adam, but because
of his obedience to his creator, Ea, who deceived him.
Like the Biblical narrative of the fall, the Adapa story deals
with the perplexing question why man must suffer and die. In
contrast, however, the answer is not that man fell from his moral
integrity and that sin into which he fell involved death, but that
man lost his chance to obtain eternal life as a result of being
deceived by one of the gods. The origin of human sin is not at
8 Cf. Price, op. cit., pp. 115f.
5D
pre
3P1
Upper left: Fight between a god and a monster. Original in British Museum. (Courtesy
British Museum.)
Upper right: The God Marduk. (Courtesy British Museum.) ,
Lower: Drawing of Cherubim guarding the ‘“‘Tree of Life,” as conceived by artist
from representations on ancient Phoenician ivory collections. In Gen. 3:24 the Cherubimn
appear placed at east of Eden to guard the “Tree of Life.’”’ They form a popular
decorational motif throughout the ancient Near East. (Courtesy The Biblical Archeolo-
Wists Vilen lay tie) .5.).
Upper left: Stele of Ur-Nammu (obverse), builder of early ziggurat at Ur. The
king stands in prayer at top. In the first panel he stands before the goddess Nin-Gal
(left) and before the god Nannar (right), receiving the command to build them a
house. In the next panel the king sets forth to build, bearing the tools of the
architect and builder. On the third panel little remains but the workmen’s ladder.
(Courtesy Museum, Univ. of Penn.)
Upper right: Lower portion of a tablet from Nippur giving an account of creation,
the founding of principal cities of Babylonia, and the Deluge, Ca. 2000 B.C. (Courtesy
Museum, Univ. of Penn.)
Lower left: Stele of Mesha, king of Moab. Found at Dhiban, Palestine, and dating
from around 850 B.C. This monument sheds important light on Moab’s subjection to
Israel in the days of Omri and Ahab, and the subsequent revolt (II Kings 3).
Original in Louvre, Paris. (Courtesy Oriental Institute, Univ. of Chicago.)
Lower right: Part of the fourth tablet of Enuma elish. Original in British Museum,
(Courtesy British Museum.)
PRIMITIVE TRADITIONS AND BrBLicAL BEGINNINGS 43
all in view in the Adapa story, while this is basic in the Genesis
account. The two narratives, therefore, despite superficial re-
semblances, are poles apart.
II. MopErRn EXCAVATIONS AND THE EARLIEST CIVILIZATION
The Bible connects the beginning of human civilization with
Cain and Abel, the two sons of Adam. Although a good parallel
between the Biblical story and the monuments is as yet lacking,
continued excavations in Mesopotamia and the publication of
old tablets, particularly the records of the ancient Sumerians,
will doubtless yield illuminating points of contact.
1. The Beginnings of Agricultural Life. Man, as he very early
had to become a food producer, began to control nature by simple
farming and cattle raising. Both of these activities are closely
related and are doubtless practically coeval in their development.
While some human groups were beginning to cultivate the soil,
others were domesticating animals. This view in the light shed
on this question by the fourth chapter of Genesis seems prefer-
able to that which holds that cultivation of the soil is older than
cattle raising. “Abel was a keeper of sheep but Cain was a tiller
of the ground” (Gen. 4:2). It is possible that the farmer Cain
was considerably older than the shepherd Abel, and if so, farm-
ing may have preceded sheep raising. But it is better to think of
these developments as progressing side by side. Men were cul-
tivating barley and wheat (spelt) while they proceeded to do-
mesticate animals.
2. The Beginnings of Urban Life. The line of Cain is connected
with the establishment of the earliest city and with the develop-
ment of the arts and crafts of urban life (Gen. 4:16-24). Jabal
is connected with the development of pastoral and Bedouin life
(Gen. 4:20). His brother Jubal is associated with the art of music
and the invention of the first musical instruments—the harp and
the pipe (Gen. 4:21). Tubal-cain is mentioned in connection with
the science of metallurgy and craftmanship in bronze and iron
(Gen. 4:22).
Modern excavations reveal the presence of urban life at a very
early period with evidences of the arts and crafts mentioned in
Genesis 4:16-24. The earliest village settlements yet discovered
are in northern Mesopotamia at Tell Hassuna,* south of modern
9 Seton Lloyd and Fuad Safar in Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 1V (1945), pp. 255-
9.
4A, ARCHEOLOGY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT
Mosul, and at Nineveh (the lowest level) ?° and at Tepe Gawra,

“The Great Mound” northwest of Nineveh. These sites belong
to the Neolithic Age, about 5,000 B.c. or earlier, and show stone
tools and weapons, pottery and rude buildings. Stratum XIII at
Tepe Gawra, for example, dating hundreds of years before the
discovery of metal tools, displays pottery of beauty and delicacy
as well as architectural remains of skill. These discoveries “no
longer permit us to regard the men of the Stone Age as uncivil-
ized,”12
Around 4500 B.c. copper came into use alongside of stone, and
by 3000 s.c. had displaced it as the dominant material for making
tools and weapons.” To this “copper-stone” or Chalcolithic Age
belong such sites as Tell Halaf’* in northwestern Mesopotamia,
where a superb type of pottery was discovered showing a high
degree of civilization around 4000 s.c. or earlier. Remains of the
same culture have also been found at Tell Chagar Bazar, 50 miles
to the east of Tell Halaf, and at Tell Arpachiya, 175 miles to the
west.
Tell Obeid, a short distance northwest of Ur, reveals the earliest
clearly defined culture in lower Babylonia, showing that around
4,000 s.c. the marsh lands of the lower Tigris-Euphrates area were
being drained and occupied.* The Tell Obeid culture underlies
nearly all the oldest cities of the country such as Ur, Erech, La-
gash and Eridu and seems to be related to the contemporaneous
Iranian Highland civilization to the east at Susa (Elam), one of
the most ancient centers of civilization.
Whether Cainite civilization originated in the north or in the
east (Elam) and spread north and east is uncertain. But the
results of modern excavations elucidate the succession of the
earliest cultures in this prehistoric epoch, and the Biblical repre-
sentation of the progress of the arts and crafts is well borne out
by archeology. The potter’s wheel, the sailing boat, wheeled
vehicles, production and use of copper and bronze, bricks and
cylinder seals are among man’s discoveries as revealed by the
excavations of the earliest sites.
Iron ores were occasionally smelted in Mesopotamia at a very
10M. E. L. Mallowan in Annals of Archeology and Anthropology, issued by the Uni-
versity of Liverpool, XX (1933), pp. 127-177.
11 George A. Barton, Archeology and the Bible (7th ed.; Philadelphia, 1946), p. 47.
12 Albright, op. cit., p. 96.
13 Baron Von Oppenheim, Der Tell Halaf, eine neue Kultur im aeltesten Mesopotamien
(Leipzig, 1931).
14 Albright op. cit., p. 99.
PRIMITIVE TRADITIONS AND BIBLICAL BEGINNINGS 45
early date. Henri Frankfort in excavations at Tell Asmar (ancient

Eshnunna) discovered evidence of an iron blade from a level
dating about 2700 B.c.!° Other objects of iron have also been
found, such as a small steel axe from Ur.1*° The discovery of iron,
for some reason, was not followed up, and on an industrial scale
did not come into general use till after 1200 B. c. The period from
1200-300 8. c. is known in archeology as the Iron Age. But the
excavations indicate some knowledge of metal in early times, as
Genesis 4:22 states.
LITERATURE ON PRIMITIVE TRADITIONS AND BIBLICAL
BEGINNINGS
Jensen, P., Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, ed. by E. Schrader (Berlin, 1900),
VI, I, pp. 92-101.
Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna-Tafeln (Leipzig, 1915), Part I, pp. 965-69.
Rogers, R. W., Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (New York &
Cincinnati, 1912), pp. 69-76.
Barton, George A., Archeology and the Bible (7th ed.; Philadelphia,
1937), pp. 311-316.
Speiser, E. A. in Ancient Near Eastern Texts ed. by James B. Pritchard
(Princeton, 1950), pp. 101-103.
Heidel, Alexander, The Babylonian Genesis (2nd ed.; Chicago, 1951), pp.
147-153.
LITERATURE ON MODERN EXCAVATIONS AND THE EARLIEST
CIVILIZATION
Rogers, R. W., History of Babylonia, Assyria and Chaldea (New York,
1915), Vol. II, pp. 1-72.
Woolley, C. Leonard, The Sumerians (Oxford, 1928).
Albright, W. F., From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore, 1940),
. 88-118.
Sees Jack, Light From the Ancient Past (Princeton, 1946), pp. 9-61.
Frankfort, Henri, The Birth of Civilization in the Near East (Blooming-
ton, 1951).
15 Oriental Institute Communications, XVII, pp. 59-61.

CHAPTER IV
THE FLOOD IN SUMERIAN AND BABYLONIAN

TRADITION
The extended period from the creation of man to the Noahic

Deluge is traced very briefly in the Biblical record. Except for a
short generalized sketch of the first civilization under Cain’s
descendants (Gen. 4:16-24), the thread of narrative to the time
of the Flood consists only of a genealogical table which traces
the descendants of Adam through Seth to Noah (Gen. 5:1-31).
So rapid was the moral degeneration of the race that there was
little of value, insofar as the history of redemption was concerned,
to be catalogued concerning the antediluvian world. The judg-
ment of the Flood, however, both historically as an instructive
warning to mankind, and typically, as a foreshadowing of God’s
plan of redemption in Christ, was of immense importance, and
is accorded extended treatment (Gen. 6-9), commensurate with
its spiritual significance.
I. THE FLooD AND THE SUMERIAN KING LIsT
Besides affording a wealth of parallel material dealing with
the Flood, archeology sheds light on the little-known antediluvian
period so largely passed over in the Biblical account. According
to the ancient Sumerian King List, preserved onthe Weld-Blundell
prism’ eight antediluvian rulers reigned over the lower Mesopo-
tamian cities of Eridu, Badtibira, Larak, Sippar and Shuruppak
for such a phenomenally long time (the shortest reign is 18,600
years, the longest 43,200) that the period of their combined rule
totals 241,200 years. Berossus, a Babylonian priest writing much
later (third century B. c.), gives ten names in all, instead of eight,
and further exaggerates the length of their reigns.”
1In S. Langdon, Oxford Edition of Cuneiform Texts (Oxford, 1923), Vol. II, No. 1923,
444, pp. 13f, Plates I-IV; Thorkild Jacobsen, The Sumerian King List. Assyriological
Studies, XI (Chicago, 1939),
2 Jack Finegan, Light From the Ancient Past (Princeton, 1946), p. 25
46
FLoop IN SUMERIAN AND BABYLONIAN TRADITION 47
Attempts to establish authentic connection between Berossus’

ten antediluvian kings and the Hebrew record of ten patriarchs
from Adam to Noah have failed. But the names as preserved by
the Sumerian King List and Berossus evidently represent a cor-
rupted tradition of the historical facts as preserved in the fifth
chapter of Genesis, besides giving extra-Biblical indication of the
greater length of human life before the Flood.
The tradition of the Flood itself was persistent among the
people from whom the Hebrews sprang. In Lower Mesopotamia,
anciently known as Sumer and Akkad, the ancestral home of
Abraham, the Deluge was remembered as a great crisis in human
history and preserved through oral tradition and upon cuneiform
tablet. The Sumerian King List, after recording the eight ante-
diluvian kings, interrupts the sequence with the following signi-
ficant statement before proceeding with the post-diluvian rulers:
“[Then] the Flood swept over [the earth]. After the Flood
had swept over [the earth] [and] when kingship was lowered
Lagain] from heaven, kingship was [first] in Kish.”®
In ancient times floods were prevalent in the Tigris-Euphrates
Valley. The two great rivers, whose beds gradually rose higher
and higher, often overflowed in times of rising water, and fre-
quently carved out new channels for themselves. Evidence of
such a flood was found by Sir Leonard Woolley at Ur in an eight-
foot stratum of clean clay which interrupted the occupational
levels of the site, and which he mistakenly identified with a
deposit left by the Noahic Flood.* Capt. E. Mackay and Stephen
Langdon, excavating at the location of ancient Kish, found a
similar layer, which they likewise construed as a deposit of the
Biblical Deluge.*
But as George Barton correctly notes:
. . there is, in reality, no evidence that these deposits of silt mean
more than that for a time the Euphrates and Tigris changed their
beds and flowed for a time over parts of Ur and Kish that had
previously been inhabited. . . . Henri Frankfort, indeed, has since
shown that, from the evidence of the pottery found above and below
the strata of silt on the two sites, the two inundations did not occur
at the same time, and were not even in the same century! They
could not then, have been the Biblical flood. They are evidences of
8 Translation by A. Leo Oppenheim in Ancient Near Eastern Texts, ed. by James B.
Pritchard (Princeton, 1950), p. 265.
4Ur of the Chaldees (New York, 1930), p. 29.
5 George A. Barton, Archeology and the Bible (7th ed.; Philadelphia, 1937), p. 41.
a temporary submergence of the two sites by changes in the course

of the rivers.®
Il. Tue SUMERIAN ACCOUNT OF THE FLOOD
The most remarkable parallels between the Old Testament and
the entire corpus of cuneiform inscriptions from Mesopotamia
occur in connection with the story of the Flood as preserved in
the recovered literature of the ancient inhabitants of this region,
the non Semitic Sumerians, and the successors to their culture
and traditions, the later Semitic Babylonians and Assyrians. If
the Old Testament were dependent upon Babylonian sources,
here, if anywhere, evidence might be expected to be found to
prove such a contention. Because of close resemblances, a study
of the cuneiform accounts of the Deluge and the Biblical ac-
count is of special interest.
The story of the Flood was well-known in Mesopotamia and
enjoyed great popularity, as the different forms of it, either alone
or attached to other literary compositions, which have survived,
indicate. “At least one Sumerian and four Akkadian (Assyro-
Babylonian) recensions are known to us, if we include the
Greek account of Berossus among the latter.”7
The oldest version of the Flood is the Sumerian, recorded on
the fragment of a tablet discovered at ancient Nippur, midway
between Kish and Shuruppak in north central Babylonia. Dating
most probably before 2,000 B.c. and inscribed on both sides
with three columns to the side, the first column tells of a previous
destruction of mankind and how mankind and animals were
created. The second column relates how a deity founded five
cities, including Eridu, Sippar and Shuruppak, and assigned to
each a tutelary god and established irrigation canals. The third
column introduces the Flood, which made the goddess Ishtar
(Ninhursag) groan for her people. At that time Ziusudra (Ziu-
suddu) was king-priest. At the frightening news of the Deluge
Ziusudra made an idol of wood, representing the chief deity,
and daily worshiped it.
In the next column Ziusudra is instructed to stand by a wall
where he is to receive a divine communication concerning the
impending disaster. Thereupon the purpose of the gods to de-
stroy mankind is made known to him.
In column five the Deluge has begun and Ziusudra is riding
8 Ibid. Cf. Millar Burrows, What Mean These Stones? (New Haven, 1941), pp. 26, 27.
TW. F. Albright, “The Old Testament and Archeology” in Old Testament Commentary
(Philadelphia, 1948), p. 137.
it out in a huge boat when the broken tablet resumes the nar-
rative:
The rain storms, mighty winds all of them, they sent
The Floods came upon the .. .
When for seven days and seven nights
The Flood had raged over the Land
And the huge boat had been tossed on the great waters by the storms,
The Sun-god arose shedding light in Heaven and on Earth.
Ziusudra made an opening in the side of the great ship.
Ziusudra, the king,
Before the Sun-god he bowed his face to the ground.
The king slaughtered an ox, sheep he sacrificed in great numbers.8
The fearful storm having passed, column six ends with Ziu-
sudra receiving the gift of immortality and being taken to a
paradise-like abode, called “the mountain of Dilmun,” to live
forever.
Ziusudra, the king,
Before Enlil bowed his face to the earth,
To him he gave life like a god,
An eternal soul like that of a god he bestowed upon him.
At that time Ziusudra, the king,
Named, “Savior of living things and the seed of humanity”
They caused to dwell in the inaccessible mountain, mountain of
Dilmun.®
III. THe BaByLONIAN ACCOUNT OF THE FLOOD
Based upon the earlier Sumerian tradition, but much more
fully developed, the Babylonian version of the Deluge consti-
tutes the eleventh book of the famous Assyrian-Babylonian Epic
of Gilgamesh. The text in its extant form comes from the library
of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (669-626 B.c.), but it was
transcribed from much older originals. The Flood tablets were
unearthed at Kuyunjik (Nineveh) by Hormuzd Rassam in 1853,
but not identified until 1872 when George Smith, who was then
engaged in studying and classifying the Kuyunjik cuneiform
finds, first recognized them.
Of all ancient traditions which bear upon the Old Testament
the Babylonian Flood story as incorporated in the Epic of Gil-
gamesh manifests the most striking and detailed similarity to
the Bible. The Sumerian Noah, Ziusudra, appears in the Baby-
lonian translation of his name as Utnapishtim, “Day of Life.”
8 Jack Finegan, Light From the Ancient Past (Princeton, 1946), p. 27.
®Cf. S. N. Kramer, Sumerian Mythology (1944), pp. 9Zf.; S. Langdon, Semitic Myth-
ology (1931), pp. 206-208 Kramer shows that Dilmun was belicved to be in southwestern
Iran (Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, XCVI [Dec. 1944], pp. 18-20).
50 ARCHEOLOGY AND: THE OLD TESTAMENT
The exciting adventures of Gilgamesh and his eventual search

for eternal life bring him at length to Utnapishtim, the immortal.
The latter, in explaining to Gilgamesh the manner in which
he obtained immortality, gives a full account of the Deluge.
It is this feature of the Epic of Gilgamesh together with the
view it gives of the ancients’ belief in life after death that gives
it special interest to students of the Bible.
In the Epic, which is recognized as the longest and most
beautiful Babylonian poem yet unearthed in Mesopotamia, the
great hero Gilgamesh appears as the legendary and partly divine
king of Uruk, Biblical Erech (Gen. 10:10), modern Warka in
southwestern Sumer. Gilgamesh has a friend named Enkidu,
who is his faithful companion in numerous adventures and dif-
ficulties. When Enkidu presently dies, Gilgamesh is thrown into
such a desperately disconsolate state of mind that he undertakes
a hazardous journey across untraversed mountains and danger-
ous waters of death to find Utnapishtim the immortal, to learn
from him the nature of life beyond death and the possibility
of obtaining immortality.
In the eleventh book of the Epic, Utnapishtim explains his
immortality to Gilgamesh by giving him an account of the
Deluge. In this remarkable story the so-called “Babylonian Noah”
connects his possession of eternal life with the gift of one of
the gods as he is conducted out of the ship after the catastrophe.
The circumstances furnished the occasion for the fullest and
most striking account of the Flood to be found anywhere out-
side the Bible.
Utnapishtim said to him, to Gilgamesh:
“T will reveal to thee, Gilgamesh, a hidden matter
And a secret of the gods will I tell thee:
Shuruppak —a city which thou knowest,
[And] which on Euphrates’ [banks] is set—
That city was ancient, [as were] the gods within it,
When their heart led the great gods to produce the flood.”1°
After the gods determined to send the Deluge upon the earth,
warning was dispatched to Utnapishtim through Ea, the god
of wisdom. The flood hero is addressed, presumably through the
walls of his home, which are viewed as a barrier between him
and the voice of deity:
10 XI, lines 8-14. Quotations from The Epic of Gilgamesh are taken from E. A.
80) translation in Ancient Near Eastern Texts, ed, by James B. Pritchard (Princeton,
Reed-hut, reed-hut! Wall, wall!

Reed hut, hearken! Wall, reflect!
Man of Shuruppak, son of Ubar-tutu,
Tear down [this] house, build a ship!
Give up possessions, seek thou life,
Despise property and keep the soul alive!
Aboard the ship take thou the seed of all living things.12
According to divine directions Utnapishtim constructed the
huge boat in the form of a cube which measured 120 cubits
each way and having six stories. On the exterior he divided
it into seven parts and on the interior into nine parts, pitching
it within and without with bitumen. Oil was taken aboard for
food and libation. He also took gold, silver, his family, craftsmen
and beasts of the field.
I watched the appearance of the weather.
The weather was awesome to behold.
I boarded the ship and battened up the gate.!?
To batten up the [whole] ship to Puzur-Amurri, the boatman,!®
I handed over the structure together with its contents.!4
The fierce storm gathered “with the first glow of dawn” as
a black cloud rose up from the horizon. Adad, the god of tempest
and rain, roared. The Annunaki gods lifted up their torches,
“setting the land ablaze” with lightning.
The gods were frightened by the deluge,
And shrinking back, they ascended to the heavens of Anu.15
The gods crouched like dogs.1®
Ishtar, the sweet-voiced mistress of the gods, especially be-
wails her part in assenting to the destruction of mankind by
the Flood:
“The olden days are alas turned to clay,
Because I spoke evil in the Assembly of the gods.
How could I bespeak evil in the Assembly of the gods,
Ordering battle for the destruction of my people!
When it is I myself who give birth to my people!
Like the spawn of the fishes they fill the sea!’’!”
At the dreadful destruction wrought all the deities mourn:
11 XT, lines 21-27.
12 Alexander Heidel renders this line: “I entered the ship and closed my door.” The
Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels (Chicago, 1946), p. 84.
13 Following Ebeling in Archiv fuer Orientforschung, VIII, 231 and Friedrich Delitszsch,
Assyrische Handavoeterbuch (Leipzig, 1896), p. 519, Heidel renders “For the naviga-
tion (?) of the ship to Puzur-Amurri .. .” etc. (op. cit.).
14 XT, lines 91-95.
15 The highest of several heavens in the Mesopotamian view of the world. Anu was
the sky god.
16 XI, lines 113-115.
47 Tbid., lines 118-123.
The gods, all humbled, sit and weep,

Their lips drawn tight,—one and all.18
The cessation of the brief but decimating storm is graphically
recounted:
Six days and six nights
Blows the flood wind, as the south-storm sweeps the land.
When the seventh day arrived, y
The flood [-carrying] south-storm subsided in the battle,
Which it had fought like an army.
The sea grew quiet, the tempest was still, the flood ceased.1®
Utnapishtim then surveys the melancholy scene:
I looked at the weather: stillness had set in,
And all mankind had turned to clay.
The landscape was as level as a flat roof.
I opened a hatch, and light fell upon my face.
Bowing low, I sat and wept,
Tears running down on my face. 20
Utnapishtim looks in all directions for the sight of land amidst
the limitless boundaries of the sea. At length he discerns a
stretch of earth as the ship strikes ground on a mountain:
I looked about for coast lines in the expanse of the sea:
In each of fourteen [regions]
There emerged a region [-mountain].?1
On mount Nisir2? the ship came to a halt.?8
As Mount Nisir held the ship fast, Utnapishtim sent out a dove
on the seventh day. This was followed by a swallow and a raven.
When the seventh day arrived,
I sent forth and set free a dove
The dove went forth, but came back;
There was no resting place and she turned round.
Then I sent forth and set free a swallow,
The swallow went forth, but came back;
There was no resting place for it and she turned round.
Then I sent forth and set free a raven.
The raven went forth and, seeing that the waters had diminished,
He eats, circles, caws, and turns not round.
Then I let out [all] to the four winds and offered a sacrifice.24
18 Jhid., lines 125-126.
19 Jbid., lines 127-131.
20 Ibid., lines 132-137.
21 Heidel renders: “At (a distance of) twelve (double-hours) there emerged a stretch
of land” (op. cit., p. 86).
22 Commonly identified with modern Pir Omar Gudrun, situated south of the Lower Zab
River in the territory east of ancient Assyria and having an altitude of about 9,000 feet
(E. A. Speiser in the Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, VIII [1928],
pp. 17,18, 31. A Heidel, op. cit, pp. 250f.).
28 XI, lines 138-140.
24 Ibig., lines 145-155.
FLOoD IN SUMERIAN AND BABYLONIAN TRADITION 53
The gods respond in a most undignified way to the sacrifice

gratefully offered by Utnapishtim:
I poured out a libation on the top of the mountain.
Seven and seven?® cult-vessels I set up,
Upon their plate-stands I heaped cane, cedarwood, and myrtle.
The gods smelled the savor,
The gods smelled the sweet savor,
The gods crowded like flies about the sacrificer.?®
Thereupon a quarrel ensues among the gods concerning re-
sponsibility for the Flood. Apparently contradicting her former
confession that she had concurred with the other gods in send-
ing the catastrophe upon mankind,”’ Ishtar now fixes the blame
on Enlil, one of the great gods.
“Let the gods come to the offering;
[But] let not Enlil come to the offering,
For he, unreasoning, brought on the deluge
And my people consigned to destruction!’78
Ea, the god of wisdom, also lays the guilt on Enlil:
“Thou wisest of gods, thou hero,
How couldst thou, unreasoning, bring on the deluge?
On the sinner impose his sin,
On the transgressor impose his transgression!
[Yet] be lenient, lest he be cut off,
Be patient, lest he be dislodged!”®
“It was not I who disclosed the secret of the great gods.
I let Atrahasis?® see a dream,
And he perceived the secret of the gods.
Now then take counsel in regard to him!”
Apparently greatly impressed by Ea’s reproof and his explana-
tion of Utnapishtim’s survival, Enlil undergoes a thorough change
of attitude. Lately enraged upon his arrival at the sacrifice to
see that a few human beings had escaped the Deluge, whose
destruction was decreed to decimate the race,*! Enlil, instead
of destroying Utnapishtim, takes him and his wife into the ship
and bestows immortality upon them:
Thereupon Enlil went aboard the ship.
Holding me by the hand, he took me aboard.
He took my wife aboard and made [her] kneel by my side.
25 “seyen and (yet) seven” (Heidel, op. cit., p. 82).
26 XI, lines 156-161.
27 Ibid., lines 117-122.
28 Ibid., lines 166-169.
29 Tbid., lines 178-182.
80 “Exceeding Wise,” an epithet of Utnapishtim.
81 XI, lines 170-174,
Standing between us, he touched our foreheads to bless us:

“Hitherto Utnapishtim has been but human.
Henceforth Utnapishtim and his wife shall be like unto us gods.
Utnapishtim shall reside far away, at the mouth of the rivers!’’®?
This concludes the Babylonian account of the Flood as it is
woven into the Epic of Gilgamesh.
LITERATURE ON THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH
Jensen, Peter, Assyrisch-babylonische Mythen und Epen (Berlin, 1900).
Ungnad, A. and H. Gressmann, Das Gilgamesch-Epos (Goettingen, 1911).
Ebeling, E. in Gressmann’s Altorientalische Texte zum Alten Testament
(Berlin and Leipzig, 1926).
Thompson, R. Campbell, The Epic of Gilgamesh (Oxford, 1930).
Schott, A., Das Gilgamesh-Epos (Leipzig, 1934).
Contenau, G., L’ Epopée de Gilgamesh (Paris, 1939).
Boehl, F. M. Th., Het Gilgamesj-Epos (Amsterdam, 1941).
Heidel, Alexander, The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels
(Chicago, 1946).
33 [hid., lines 189-195.

CHAPTER V
THE BIBLICAL AND BABYLONIAN ACCOUNT OF

THE FLOOD
It is quite apparent to the student of the Old Testament who

is acquainted with the Epic of Gilgamesh that the Hebrew ac-
count of the Flood has much in common with the Babylonian
version. Numerous features of detail are indeed remarkable,
and when the tablets were first deciphered, the similarity ap-
peared nothing short of sensational. In fact, even today, after
decades of study of the tablets and the addition of numerous
other archeological discoveries from the ancient world to an
ever-increasing fund of material that has a close bearing on
the Bible, it still can be said that of all the many traditions that
have come down to us through the cuneiform inscriptions and
that closely parallel the Scriptures, the most striking is the
Babylonian account of the Deluge.
A record of this great event is contained in the works of
Josephus and Eusebius, but in all its vigor and details, the Baby-
lonian account stands next to the Biblical.
I. THe RESEMBLANCES
Traditions of such a stupendous event as a world-engulfing
Deluge would naturally be expected to persist in the human
race and to bear some affinity to the inspired Biblical record,
as the Babylonian account does.
1. Both Accounts Hold that the Deluge Was Divinely Planned.
The Babylonian version declares that the decree of “the great
gods” was the cause of the Flood. Specifically mentioned as
participating in the decision to destroy mankind are Anu, father
of the gods, Enlil, their counselor, Ninurta, their representative,
Ennugi, their messenger and Ea, the wise benefactor of man-
kind.! Other deities, however, were evidently included in the
1 XI, lines 14-19. Translations from the Epic of Gilgamesh are taken from E. A. Speiser’s
translation in Ancient Near Eastern Texts, ed. by James B. Pritchard (Princeton, 1950).
55
decision, for Ishtar, the goddess of propagation, specifically la-

mented her part in commanding “evil in the Assembly of the
gods” when she saw the destruction which had been wrought
by the disaster.? After the calamity Ea and Ishtar disclaim re-
sponsibility for it and fasten guilt upon Enlil as the real author
of what they considered to be an unwarranted catastrophe. In
similar fashion the Sumerian account represents the Deluge as
decreed by the assembly of the gods, and evidently approved
by all, but only formally and not wholeheartedly by some of
the members of the pantheon.
The Book of Genesis likewise attributes the Flood to divine
intervention. But, in accordance with its strict monotheism, it
is the result of the decision of the one and only true God, acting
in accordance with His infinite holiness, wisdom and power. “And
I, behold, I do bring the flood of waters upon the earth, to
destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under
heaven; everything that is in the earth shall die” (Gen. 6:17).
Although Mesopotamian accounts agree with the Bible that the
cause of the Flood was divine, there is not the slightest trace
in the Genesis account of the confusion and contradiction oc-
casioned by the numerous divinities engaged in bringing about
this terrifying cataclysm.
2. Both Accounts Agree that the Impending Catastrophe Was
Divinely Revealed to the Hero of the Deluge. In the Gilgamesh
Epic Ea, the god of wisdom, apprizes Utnapishtim of the ap-
proaching peril by means of a dream.’ Through this medium
the god addresses the sleeping hero in his reed hut, warning
him to tear down his house and build a ship.* Similarly, in the
Sumerian version Ziusudra has a dream. In his exercise of soul
to know its meaning he hears a voice which, bidding him to
stand beside a wall, tells him of the impending cataclysm.®
Although Noah is similarly divinely notified of the Flood, the
manner in which he is warned of the threatening disaster differs
widely from that contained in the Mesopotamian versions. In the
Biblical account Noah is said to have “walked with God” (Gen.
6:9) and to have “found grace in the eyes of Jehovah” (Gen.
6:8). In this state of intimate fellowship with Deity he received
a direct communication of the divine purpose without the agency
2X1, lines 118-121.
8 Ibid., lines 185-186.
4 Ibid., lines 21-27.
5 Columns III, IV.
BIBLICAL AND BABYLONIAN ACCOUNT — FLOOD 57
of a dream or any other intermediation. Jehovah Himself dis-

closed His plan to His faithful servant by informing him of the
coming destruction and by ordering him to build an ark. “And
God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me;
for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold,
I will destroy them with the earth. Make thee an ark of gopher
wood .. .” (Gen. 6:13, 14).
3. Both Accounts Connect the Deluge with Defection in the
Human Race. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, although a moral ele-
ment does appear as the cause of the Deluge, it is so blurred that
one at first sight might conclude that the cataclysm was dic-
tated by pure caprice “when their heart led the great gods to
produce the flood.”* That this is not the case appears singularly
enough as the result of a later circumstance in the story which
is itself the result of the feeble moral element. The gods, who
in the earlier part of the poem are said to have decreed the
Flood, after its fearful destruction is wrought not only disclaim
responsibility and attempt to fix the blame for it on Enlil, their
counselor, but are in utter disagreement concerning the necessity
or justice of it.’ The same confusion is apparent in the attempt
to determine the human responsibility. The sin of man is men-
tioned as the reason for the Flood,’ but the nature or extent of
the offense is left wholly obscure. What is more serious, the
catastrophe is intended for all, just and unjust alike, without any
exception whatever. Had Ea not intervened and urged that “on
the sinner lay his sin, on the transgressor lay his transgression,®
Enlil would have wiped out the entire race without discrimina-
tion.
The answer to the question regarding the nature of man’s de-
fection given in the fragmentary so-called Atrahasis Epic’ is
scarcely more satisfactory morally than the reference in the
Gilgamesh Epic and may well be a later mythographer’s explana-
6 XI, line 14.
7 Ibid., lines 168-188.
8 Ibid., lines 178-185.
9 Ibid., line 180.
10 Only four small fragments of this legend are extant, the first two dating from the
reign of Ammizaduga, tenth king of the First Dynasty of Babylon, the last two belonging
to the Assyrian recension and found in the ruins of Ashurbanipal’s library (7th century 3.c.).
The name Atrahasis (meaning “Exceeding Wise”), although associated with other heroes in
the epic literature of Mesopotamia, such as Etana and Adapa, more specifically is connected
with Utnapishtim (Epic of Gilgamesh, XI, 196), and the “cycle dealing with man’s sins
and his cons. quent punishment through plagues and the deluge” (Pritchard, op. cit., p. 104).
tion of it.1 According to this account Enlil sent the deluge to

wipe out mankind because people were multiplying very rapidly
and their noisy commotions, which disturbed the god’s rest, could
not be quelled by lesser punishments.”
Although the Genesis account also connects the Deluge with
man’s sin, there is not the slightest evidence in the narrative of
the moral ambiguity that so saliently characterizes the Baby-
lonian tradition. The Biblical episode possesses the highest di-
dactic and spiritual value because of its complete ethical sound-
ness. God, in accord with His infinite holiness, sends the Deluge
as a just retribution for the outrageous sin of the ungodly. Only
the wicked are destroyed. Righteous Noah who was “perfect
in his generations” and “walked with God” (Gen. 6:9) is spared.
On the other hand, while it is true that the Babylonian flood
hero is saved by a friendly deity because of his piety, yet this
is accomplished by trickery against the decrees of the gods in
council.
In the presentation of the Flood as a moral judgment upon
the wicked, in which the righteous are delivered, and in the
serious view it takes of the depravity of the antediluvian race
(Gen. 6:5, 12, 13), the Biblical account displays its ethical
grandeur. No grief is displayed over those who were destroyed
in the cataclysm, in contrast to the tears in the cuneiform ac-
counts.’* Theirs was a just and deserved punishment. So pro-
nounced is the ethical motive in the Biblical account, that so
far from being sorry for the diluvial cataclysm, as is the case
with practically all the deities in the Babylonian account,’* God
is described as regretting the actual creation of man (Gen. 6:6).
4, Both Accounts Tell of the Deliverance of the Hero and
His Family. Utnapishtim of the Gilgamesh Epic is a free
Babylonian rendering of Ziusudra of the earlier Sumerian ac-
count, the latter meaning something like “he who laid hold on
life of distant days,” and referring to the immortality which
was granted the hero after the Flood. In Genesis the Flood
hero’s name appears as Noah, meaning “rest,” which, however,
has no etymological connection with the Babylonian names, nor
ae reoeet Heidel, The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels (Chicago, 1946),
p- :
12 Fragment I, Column 1, lines 1-19. For translation see Heidel, op. cit., pp. 107-108;
A. T. Clay, Yale Oriental Series, V, 3 (1922), Plates I-II, with photographs on Plates V-VI
13 XI, lines 116-125; 136-137.
14 Tbid., lines 119-126. Cf. lines 170-174.
15 Heidel, op. cit., p. 227.
BIBLICAL AND BABYLONIAN ACCOUNT — FLOop 59
any evident relationship to the circumstances of the Biblical

narrative.
Mesopotamian diluvial traditions are in general similar to the
Biblical narrative in the matter of the human beings, animals,
fowls and provisions taken aboard the ship. Utnapishtim, for
example, laded the craft with gold, silver, “all the living beings,”
“family and kin, beasts of the field and wild creatures,” “all the
craftsmen” (technicians)!* and a boatman.’7 The main differ-
ence in the Biblical story is the much smaller number of people
saved — only eight persons, Noah, his wife, and his three sons
and their wives (Gen. 7:1, 7; I Pet. 3:20).
5. Both Accounts Assert that the Hero of the Deluge Was
Divinely Instructed to Build a Huge Boat to Preserve Life. The
ancient Sumerians called the boat magurgur, meaning “a giant
boat,”* a term which corresponds to the Semitic term elippu
rabitu, “a great ship,” which occurs in the Babylonian deluge
fragment from Nippur. The Gilgamesh version calls it simply
elippu, “ship” or “boat,” once ekallu,” meaning “great house”
or “palace,” the latter being “an indication,” as Jastrow correctly
notes, “of its size, with its many stories and compartments.””°
Although the Hebrew account presents a similar idea of a
huge boat, there is no etymological connection between teba
meaning “ark” or “chest” (Gen. 6:14; 7:1, etc.) and the Baby-
lonian designations for the same vessel. The Hebrew word is
to be connected with Egyptian db’at, signifying a “chest,” “box”
or coffin, commonly applied to the ark of the covenant (Ex.
25:10; Num. 3:31, etc.).?* Evidently the Hebrew writer wished
to stress “the peculiar character of the construction on which
Noah [took] refuge and, therefore, with intent avoided the term
shin.
ee chen of the Biblical and the Babylonian account dis-
closes a decided variance between the shape and dimensions
of the huge seafaring craft. The ark was a flat-bottomed rec-
tangular construction, “the length . . . three hundred cubits,
the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits”
(Gen. 6:15). The cubit mentioned is probably the Hebrew
16 XI, lines 80-85.
17 [bid., lines 94-95.
18 Arno Poebel, Historical Texts (Philadelphia, 1914), p. 58.
19 XJ, line 95.
20 Morris Jastrow, Jr., Hebrew and Babylonian Traditions (New York, 1914), p. 330, n. 1.
21 Cf. Heidel, op. cit., p. 233, and references in A. Salonen, Die Wasserfahrzeuge in
Babylonien (Helsinki, 1939), p. 48, n. 2.
22 Jastrow, op. cit. p. 360, n.2.
measurement of 18 inches (the approximate distance between

the tip of the middle finger and the elbow). Under this cal-
culation the ark was 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet
high, with a displacement of some 43,300 tons.7”
Utnapishtim’s vessel, on the other hand, was a cubical con-
struction, the length, width and height each measuring 120
cubits.2* Since the unit of measurement was the larger Baby-
lonian cubit of 20 inches, the ship had a displacement of about
228,500 tons, about five times that of the ark. Moreover, it had
seven stories and was divided vertically into nine sections,
thus containing sixty-three compartments.” It also had a door
(gate)** and at least one window.”
The ark, on the contrary, only had three stories and consisted
of an unspecified number of compartments (Hebrew “nests”)
or cells (Gen. 6:14). It had a door in the side (Gen. 6:16),
and a “window” (Hebrew hallon, Gen. 8:6) for light and ven-
tilation, which is evidently a part of the larger aperture men-
tioned in Genesis 6:16 and there called a sohar. This latter term
is scarcely a reference to the “roof” of the vessel, but to an
opening for light and air constructed in the sides, completely
around the ark.?®
In both the Babylonian and Hebrew accounts bitumen or
pitch for calking the ship to make it watertight figures promi-
nently. Utnapishtim poured pitch and asphalt into the furnace
or pitch-pot obviously to melt it to close up the seams of the
vessel.” Noah likewise pitched the ark “within and without
with pitch” (Gen. 6:14). Singularly enough the word used for
pitch or bitumen in this passage is kofer, corresponding to the
Babylonian and Assyrian word kupru, whereas elsewhere in the
Old Testament a different word is used (hemar in Gen. 11:3;
14:10; Ex. 2:3; zefeth in Ex. 2:3; Isa. 34:9).
The explanation seems to be that the bitumen industry orig-
inated in Babylonia, where the most important deposits of this
23 On the size ofthe ark cf. Alfred M. Rehwinkel, The Flood in the Light of the Bible,
Geology and Archeology (St. Louis, 1951), pp: 68f.
24XI, lines 30; 57-58.
25 [bid., lines 60-62.
26 Tbid., lines 88, 93.
27 Tbid., line 135.
28 Cf. Heidel, op. cit., pp. 234-5; August Dillmann, Genesis (Edinburgh, 1897), Vol. I,
p- 272; S. R. Driver, The Book of Genesis (New York, 1904), p. 88.
29 XI, lines 65-66.
BIBLICAL AND BABYLONIAN ACCOUNT — FLOOD 6]
substance known in antiquity were found,® and spread to other

parts of the ancient world, the name of the substance spreading
with its use. As Heidel says:
If bitumen were spoken of more frequently in the Old Testament
(only in five passages), or if we had more Hebrew literature of the
Old Testament period, we might perhaps find the word kofer in
numerous passages outside the flood story and utterly unrelated to
it. Had the biblical account been derived from the Babylonian and
had the term under discussion not been known to the Hebrews from
any other source, they would in all probability have replaced kupru
by a_word with which they were familiar, choosing for this purpose
either hemar or zefeth.*}
6. Both Accounts Indicate the Physical Causes of the Flood.
The Gilgamesh Epic lists torrential rains and destructive winds
accompanied by lightning and thunder as the natural causes
of the Flood.* In addition, the breaking of dikes, canals and
reservoirs as a result of the seven-day cloudburst is referred to.**
The Sumerian story likewise lists violent rains and winds as the
cause of the Deluge.
The Biblical notices describing the physical causes of the
Flood, although brief, are much more comprehensive than the
Babylonian and suggest a world-engulfing cataclysm, involving
not only a complete change in atmospheric and climatic con-
ditions that produced a continuous forty-day downpour, but
also including vast geologic transformations. Gigantic land up-
heavals** and shiftings of the earth’s crust evidently lowered
land levels, raised ocean beds, and broke up their existing huge
stores of subterranean waters,** so that dry areas were violently
inundated and the entire structure of the antediluvian world
radically altered. Nothing less than such a cataclysmic disaster
can satisfy the scope of the Genesis passage. “All the fountains
of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven
were opened” (Gen. 7:11).
The expression “the fountains of the great deep,” as Dillmann
correctly observes, refers to that “part of the primitive water
driven downward” (Gen. 1:2, 9), so that it lay beneath the
80 Cf. R. J. Forbes, Bitumen and Petroleum in Antiquity (Leiden, 1936), Salonen, op.
cit., pp. 146-149; J P. Harland in the Biblical Archeologist, V (1942), pp. 21f., Heidel,
op. cit. pp. 265-267.
31 Op. cit., p. 267.
32 XI, lines 96-131.
33 Jbid., lines 90-131.
34 Cf, S. R. Driver, who says the Hebrew expression “were cleft asunder’? implies “some
terrestrial convulsion” (op. cit., p. 90).
5 The eminent geologist Eduard Suess included earthquake as an important factor in
the Flood (The Face of the Earth [English translation, Oxford, 1904], Vol. I, pp. 17-72).
earth and communicated water by secret fountains to the solid

land and to the sea.** “By the bursting of these fountains, which
at other times were closed up, or flowed only moderately, the
primitive waters poured out and immoderately swelled the
oceans, rivers, etc. as if chaos were come again.”*”
The displacement of vast subterranean waters (certainly by
earthquake), automatically involving the sinking of the land
levels and the raising of sea bottoms, is mentioned first in the
Genesis passage and is thereby doubtlessly intended to be con-
sidered as the chief cause of the Flood. Violent precipitation,
accordingly, was only a contributary source of the vast quantities
of water needed, and was occasioned by the radical climatic
changes. Up to that time the earth had apparently been watered
by these subterranean fountains and an ascending mist (Gen.
2:5, 6), so that atmospheric conditions did not yet exist to pro-
duce rain nor a rainbow (cf. Gen. 9:13) as in the changed post-
diluvian world.
George McCready Price thus describes the antediluvian cli-
mate:
For those acquainted with the geological facts, there is no need of
presenting evidence in favor of the earth’s having once enjoyed an
ideal climate from pole to pole. The corals and the coal plants of
the arctic regions are objective evidence which tell a complete story
that can not be misunderstood.38
That the antediluvian era, described by Peter as “the world
that then was,” was obviously different climatically and geologi-
cally from the “heavens” and “the earth . . . that now are”
(II Pet. 3:7) is clearly implied in the Apostle’s stern warning
to naturalistic skeptics, who mock at the idea of Christ’s super-
natural Second Advent on the ground that “all things continue
as they were from the beginning of the creation” (II Pet. 3:4).
Against this false naturalistic theory of uniformity the Apostle
urges the truth of supernatural catastrophism®® as evidenced
by the Noahic Flood:
For this they willingly forget, that there were heavens from of old,
and an earth compacted out of water and amidst water, by the word
36 Dillmann, op. cit., p. 278.
37 Tbid,
afsae New Geology (Mountain View, Calif., 1923), p. 682. See also Rehwinkel, Op cit.,
pp. 1-23.
39 For the theory of uniformity versus catastrophism in geology see Price, op. cit., pp. 600.
643. Price’s conclusion is stated thus: “Future discoveries may emend and clarify, some of
the details of this hypothesis of the new catastrophism. They are not likely to require any
material change in its essential features.” p. 692.
BIBLICAL AND BABYLONIAN AccouNT — FLoop 63
of God; by which means the world that then was, being overflowed
with water, perished (II Pet. 3:5, 6).
7. Both Accounts Specify the Duration of the Flood. In the
Gilgamesh Epic the violent rain and wind storm lasted only
six days and nights. On the seventh day the Flood ceased. After
an unspecified period Utnapishtim and his company quit the
boat.*° The Sumerian version asserts that the Flood raged for
seven days and nights.**
Although both accounts specify the length of the Flood, the
duration of the disaster is much longer in the Biblical narrative
than that indicated in the Babylonian story and is far more con-
sonant with the fact of the universality of the catastrophe.
Modern criticism views the Biblical account as composite and
contradictory, particularly in the data it presents concerning the
duration of the Flood. However, if the narrative is considered
as a unit, the numerical indications are capable of reasonable
and harmonious explanation, and count up to one year and
eleven days (371 days) as the total length of the Flood.
The forty days and forty nights of Genesis 7:11 describe
the period of violent downpour, called the mabbul or “flood” (7:
17). But nowhere is it intimated that after this forty-day period
the rain stopped altogether. On the contrary, doubtless as a
result of new atmospheric conditions created by the dissolving
of the protective envelope of water which was responsible for
the uniform and ideal antediluvian climate and which seemingly
furnished the immense quantity of water for the forty-day down-
pour, evaporation and condensation as ordinary rain continued
to the one hundred and fiftieth day (Gen. 7:24). During this
time the flood waters kept rising, or at least kept their maximum
height. After that time the waters began to recede. First be-
cause a wind swept across the waters, greatly increasing evapo-
ration. Then the “windows of heaven were stopped,” which
kept the evaporated waters from precipitating again. Finally
the “fountains of the deep were stopped” (Gen. 8:1-3), which
“can mean only one thing; the land level ‘was shifted again, so
that the sea went back to its former place, or nearly so.”*
8. Both Accounts Name the Landing Place of the Boat. In
the Gilgamesh Epic Utnapishtim’s vessel is said to have grounded
on Mount Nisir, commonly identified with Pir Omar Gudrun
40 XI, lines 90-156.
41 Column V.
42 See Heidel, op. cit., pp. 245-248.
48 Harry Rimmer, The Harmony of Science and Scripture (Grand Rapids, 1936), p. 240.
east of the Tigris and south of the Lower Zab River, about four
hundred miles from the Persian Gulf.4* Genesis somewhat more
indefinitely mentions the landing place “on [Lone of] the moun-
tains of Ararat” (Gen. 8:4). The name is identical with Assyrian
Urartu and signifies the general mountainous territory of Ar-
menia, (cf. II Kings 19:37; Jer. 51:27; Isa. 37:38), west of the
Caspian Sea and southeast of the Black Sea.
9. Both Accounts Include Similar Striking Details. Especially
remarkable is the episode of the sending out of the birds to as-
certain the decrease of the waters. In the cuneiform account
a dove is sent out on the seventh day after the landing of the
ship on Mount Nisir. Finding no resting place, it returns. A
swallow likewise is dispatched but returns. Finally a raven is
let out, but does not return.*®
In the Biblical.record there is no swallow, but a raven is sent
out first, forty days after the tops of the mountains had _be-
come visible (Gen. 8:6, 7). Then a dove is released on three
occasions, making four trials, instead of three, as in the Baby-
lonian tradition. The raven’s flying back and forth from the
ark and its failure to return inside were useful in showing that
although the waters had declined to some extent, and the out-
side world was not too inhospitable for a sturdy carrion-eating
bird, yet it was still very unfriendly. In the Babylonian story
the sending out of the ravens last instead of first is pointless.
The sending of three doves at intervals of seven days showed
that the waters were rapidly subsiding. The dove, being a gentle,
timid bird, which does not feed on carrion, and which dislikes
mountains and delights in the valleys (Ezek. 7:16) was an ideal
bird for the purpose at hand. The return of the first showed
that the lowlands were still covered. The return of the second
with a fresh plucked olive twig, showed that the valleys where
the olive grows were almost dry, but that the dove still preferred
the hospitality the ark afforded. The failure of the third dove
to return showed that it found a comfortable night’s lodging in
the lowlands and that the time for disembarkation for the oc-
cupants of the ark was drawing near.,
10. Both Accounts Describe Acts of Worship by the Hero
After His Deliverance. Utnapishtim offered sacrifice, poured
44 Cf, E. A. Wallis Budge and L. W. King, Anmals of the Kings of Assyria, I (London,
1902), pp. 305f., and E. A. Speiser, Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research.
VIII (1929), pp. 18 and 31.
45 XI, lines 145-154.
out a libation, and burned “. . . (sweet) cane, cedar, and myrtle”

after he left the boat. The purpose was partly, it seems, to ap-
pease the wrath of those gods who had decreed the complete
extermination of mankind and partly to express his gratitude
to Ea, who, notwithstanding, had spared him.** Similarly Noah
offered “burnt offerings on the altar” which he had built (Gen.
8:20), with the predominant purpose, however, not of pro-
pitiating an angry Deity, since he is typical of a redeemed child
of God, but of gratefully worshiping the Beloved One who had
saved him and his family. Accepting his humble gratitude, Je-
hovah “smelled the soothing fragrance” (Gen. 8:21, Moffatt’s
rendering).
11. Both Accounts Allude to the Bestowment of Special Bless-
ings upon the Hero after the Disaster. In the Epic of Gilgamesh
divinity and immortality are granted Utnapishtim and his wife,
and they are made to dwell “in the distance at the mouth of the
rivers.”*7 In the Sumerian account the immortalized Ziusudra
is transported to a distant abode, which is there called Dilmun.*®
The Bible narrative also speaks of blessing imparted to the
flood hero. But the benefit bestowed is of an entirely different
nature. The power to multiply and to replenish the earth and
to exercise dominion over the animals which was originally
given at creation, is bestowed anew upon Noah and his pos-
terity, together with permission to eat meat without the blood
(Gen. 9:1-5). In addition the law of capital punishment is for-
mulated.to protect man’s life and the rainbow set in the sky as
a token of God’s covenant that no more would a flood destroy
the earth (Gen. 9:5-17).
II]. THe DIFFERENCES
Despite the fact that there are numerous similarities between
the Babylonian and the Biblical account of the Flood, in some
cases startling similarities, the divergencies in the stories are
much more significant and fundamental. These differences are
all the more apparent because they are set in bolder relief by
their connection with the likenesses. Even where the parallels
are most striking, the radical underlying differences of theology,
morality, and philosophy of religion remain the salient features
46 Ihid., lines 156-188.
47 Thid., lines 193-195.
48 Identified with the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf (S. N. Kramer, Bulletin of the
American Schools of Oriental Research, XCVI [Dec. 1944], pp. 18-28). W. F. Albright
connects it with the Bahrein Islands in the Persian Gulf (American Journal of Semitic
Languages and Literatures, XXXV [1918/19], pp. 182f.).
beside which the resemblances, though numerous as we have

seen, are quite superficial. It will be amply sufficient, therefore,
in the light of the many differences which have already appeared
in the discussion of the likenesses, to summarize the far-reaching
contrasts under three heads — the theological, moral and philo-
sophical.
1. The Two Accounts Are in Diametrical Contrast in Their
Theological Conceptions. Their idea of deity is completely di-
vergent. This is the basic consideration that places the two
stories poles apart. The Hebrew account is imbued with a chaste
monotheism that refines and ennobles every aspect of the Flood
story, while the cuneiform versions are honeycombed with a
crude and gross polytheism that by contrast vitiates and de-
grades the narrative at every turn, whether it is a question of
the cause of the Flood or the divine reaction to the sacrifice
of the hero after the Deluge.
For instance, instead of attributing the Flood to the one in-
finitely holy, wise and all powerful God, as the Genesis story
does, the Babylonian account includes a multitude of disagree-
ing, quarreling, self-accusing deities, who, crouching in fear
“like dogs” while the cataclysm is going on, childishly disclaim
responsibility for the terrific destruction when it is over and
attempt to fasten the guilt on one another.*® The one deity
evidently most responsible for the catastrophe and angry that
any human being had escaped, capriciously changes his attitude
to great'kindness toward Utnapishtim and his wife, without any
sufficient reason and grants them eternal life.°°
Another striking instance of the degradation of the Babylonian
story because of its crass polytheism occurs in the reaction of
the Babylonian deities toward the sacrifices presented by the
Flood hero after the catastrophe. This reaction is in sharp con-
trast to God's attitude towards Noah’s offering. Although the
Biblical parallel is, it is true, confessedly anthropomorphic, it is,
nevertheless, elevated and completely consonant with Hebrew
monotheism. “And Jehovah smelled the sweet savor .. .” and
determined to bear with the sins of mankind and never again
to visit the earth with a universal flood or set aside the natural
laws of its operation as long as it lasted (Gen. 8:21, 22).
The Babylonian account, on the other hand, is “steeped in
49 XI, lines 113-125; 162-188,
50 [hid., lines 189-195,
the silliest polytheism”*! and presents a repugnant scene. When

“the gods smelled the sweet savor,” they “crowded like flies about
the sacrificer.”** Hungry as a result of not being fed for a pro-
tracted period, since through the destruction of mankind all
sacrifices had ceased, with the exception of those of the oc-
cupants of the ark, they now crowd around the sacrificial food
in a most unseemly manner. In the prospect of feasting once
more they quickly forget their grievances against erring man-
kind and are glad enough that Utnapishtim has survived.
Whether crouching in fear “like dogs” or crowding in greed “like
flies,” the low conception of deity places an impassable gulf
between the polytheistic cuneiform accounts and the lofty mono-
theistic narrative of the Bible.
Moral Conceptions. It is inevitable that a low estimate of deity
should produce a faulty idea of morality. This is the reason
for the completely blurred ethical element in the cuneiform
stories. With mixed standards of conduct on the part of the
deities and a hazy view of sin, the Babylonian account quite
naturally confuses the moral causes of the Flood, compromises
the justice of it, and presents it more as the result of the caprice
of the gods than as a necessary punishment of outrageous sin.™
In consequence, the Babylonian Flood stories are of very doubt-
ful ethical and didactic value.
The Biblical account, on the other hand, presents the Flood
as distinctly a moral judgment
sent by the one omnipotent God, who is just in all his dealings
with the children of men, who punishes the impenitent sinner, even
if it means the destruction of the world, but who saves the just with
his powerful hand and in his own way.®4
The result is an account of the highest didactic and spiritual
purpose, which is perennially effective in arousing the con-
science of the world by warning the wicked of wrongdoing
and giving hope and comfort to the God-fearing.
Philosophical Conceptions. Babylonian thought was not only
vitiated by an unsound theology, but also by that which is closely
connected with an unsound theology —a false philosophy. Not
being able to conceive of an infinite transcendental Deity, who
51 Dillmann, op. cit., p. 262.
52 XI, lines 159-161.
53 7bid., lines 158-185.
54 Heidel, op. cit., p. 269.
had His being when nothing else whatsoever existed, Babylonian

speculation hopelessly confused spirit and matter, and made
both eternal.® Failure thus to differentiate between spirit and
matter, and finite and infinite Spirit, moreover, inevitably re-
sulted in ignorance of the first principles of causation. Instead
of positing an Eternal Spirit who created and controls all matter
and uses the natural forces of His creation to accomplish His
purpose, as in Genesis, the Babylonian version naively attributes
the various physical phenomena of the Deluge to separate causes
in the form of deities. It is Adad, the god of storm and rain,
who thunders. It is Ninurta, god of the wells and irrigation
works,"® who “causes the dikes to give way.” It is the Annunaki,
judges of the underworld, who raise their torches “lighting up
the land with their brightness.”
In the Biblical record by striking contrast it is God alone,
as Creator and Sustainer of all His creation who rules and over-
rules the natural phenomena of His universe to accomplish His
all-wise purpose. Having punished man’s sin by the use of the
natural forces of His creation, and at the same time having
temporarily set aside the ordained laws He Himself placed upon
the world He had made, He covenants with Himself that He
will “not again curse the ground for man’s sake . . . neither . .
again smite any more every living thing” (Gen. 8:21), nor
again set aside the normal ongoing of an orderly universe (Gen.
8:22).
IiI. ExPLANATION OF THE SIMILARITIES
That there is some genetic relationship between the cunei-
form versions and the Genesis account, in view of the numerous
parallels, is quite obvious. As in the case of the creation stories
three general possibilities exist. Either the Babylonians bor-
rowed from the Hebrew narrative, or vice versa, the Hebrews
borrowed from the Babylonian story, or what is, we believe, the
correct view, both go back to a common source of fact which
originated in an actual occurrence. .
1. The Babylonians Borrowed from the Hebrew Account.
This explanation is extremely unlikely and finds little support
55 Cf. Enuma elish, Tablet I, lines 1-8, where Apsu and Tiamat are presented as original
matter and divine spirit united and coexistent, who contained all the elements out of which
the universe was subsequently made and from whom were descended the multitudinous deities
of the Assyrian-Babylonian pantheon. Cf. Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis (2nd
ed.; Chicago, 1951), pp. 88-89.
56 Knut Tallqvist, Akkadische Goetterepitheta (Helsinki, 1938), pp. 424426.
57 XI, lines 98-106.
in scholarly quarters since the earliest known tablets are con-

siderably older than the Book of Genesis, upon any considera-
tion of the date of the latter. The earliest written Babylonian
accounts of the Flood probably go back to the third millennium
B.C. It is possible, on the other hand, that the deluge version
which now constitutes the Hebrew account may have existed
in some form or other, centuries before it assumed its present
form.
2. The Hebrew Borrowed from the Babylonian Account. This
is the most widely accepted explanation at the present, but has
little attraction for the conservative Bible student. Aware of the
sublimity of the Biblical account compared with the extreme
crudity of the Babylonian version, he is acutely conscious of
the utter incongruity of positing dependence of the former upon
the latter, especially in the light of the Bible doctrine of in-
spiration (II Tim. 3:16; II Pet. 1:20-21). The conservative
student is still less impressed with this explanation when he
considers the fact that, although confessedly plausible,°* the
theory cannot be proved.
One of the principal arguments advanced for the contention
that the Hebrews borrowed the Flood story from the Babylonians
is the supposed Babylonian coloring of the Hebrew Flood story.
In its “very essence” it is said to “presuppose a country liable,
like Babylonia, to inundations.”*® However, this view is desti-
tute of confirmation so far as the Biblical account is concerned.
Genesis names the bursting of subterranean fountains and tor-
rential rains from heaven as the physical causes of the Flood.
But Palestine and not Babylonia is a land of subterranean foun-
tains (Deut. 8:7), while the average rainfall of Palestine is about
four times that of Babylonia. Furthermore, this argument de-
rived from the supposed Babylonian coloring of the Hebrew
narrative ignores the world-engulfing extent of the cataclysm,
plainly indicated in various Biblical passages, according to
which the story need not by any means be indigenous to Baby-
lonia. It may have had a western or Amorite origin, as Clay
58 Cf. Driver, who says that “the Hebrew narrative must be derived from the Babylonian”
(op. cit., p. 107). In refutation of this view see Heidel, The Gilgamesh Epic and Old
Testament Parallels (Chicago, 1946), pp. 261-264. Cf. A. T. Clay, who posits an Amorite
origin of the Flood stories (The Origin of Biblical Traditions. Yale Oriental Series, XI,
1923), pp. 150-160.
59 Driver, op. cif., p. 107.
insists, and have been transported both to Palestine and Baby-

lonia from the west.®
The statement in Genesis 8:21: “And Jehovah smelled the
sweet savor” is also commonly claimed to be virtually a ver-
batum quotation from the Babylonian account and to prove
dependence of the Hebrew narrative on the Babylonian. Care-
ful examination of the passages in question, which undoubtedly
constitute a close parallel, shows, however, that not only can
one not be regarded as a word-for-word quotation of the other,
but there “is not a single etymological correspondence between
the terms employed in the one version and those used in the
other.”*! What is even more important, the thought and ex-
pression contained in the idea of God smelling a sweet odor is
one that is common in the Old Testament and not by any means
foreign to it (Cf. Lev. 26:31; I Sam. 26:19; Amos 5:21).
Similarly, the argument based on such a striking parallel as
the pitching of the vessel “within and without with pitch” (Gen.
6:14), where the Babylonian loan word kofer (from kupru) is
used rather than hemar or zefeth, the words used for pitch or
bitumen elsewhere in the Old Testament (Gen. 11:3; 14:10;
Ex. 2:3; Isa. 34:9), is commonly considered as decisive proof of
Babylonian borrowing. However, it is quite possible that the
bitumen industry originated in Babylonia where this substance
was found and had large use in antiquity, and spread to other
parts of the Semitic world, its original commercial Babylonian
name spreading with it.”
3. Both the Hebrew and the Babylonian Account Go Back
to a Common Source of Fact, Which Originated in an Actual
Occurrence. This view seems clearly the correct explanation
of the genetic affiliations between them. A. T. Clay’s conclusion
is significant:
Assyriologists, as far as I know, have generally dismissed as an im-
possibility the idea that there was a common Semitic tradition, which
developed in Israel in one way, and in Babylonia in another. They
have unreservedly declared that the Biblical stories have been bor-
rowed from Babylonia, in which land they were indigenous. To
me it has always seemed perfectly reasonable that both stories had
a common origin among the Semites, some of whom entered Baby-
lonia, while others carried their traditions into Palestine.®
80 Clay, The Origin of Biblical Traditions. Yale Oriental Series, XII (1923), je, UD
61 Heidel, The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels (Chicago, 1946), p. 265,
62 Cf. Clay, The Origin of Biblical Traditions. Yale Oriental Series, XII (1923), p. 164;
Heidel, The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels (Chicago, 1946), pp. 266-267.
63 [bid., p. 150,
Archeological excavations have not only revealed that Meso-

potamia had well-known traditions of a universal flood, but evi-
dence uncovered from Syrian-Palestinian sites and from the
Amarna Letters show that when the Israelites entered Canaan
they found people there in close touch with the Babylonian
civilization out of which Abraham their progenitor came and
using the Babylonian language and script as a lingua franca.
The Hebrews scarcely lived an isolated life, and it would be
strange indeed if they did not possess similar traditions as other
Semitic nations.
These common traditions among the Hebrews are reflected
in the true and authentic facts given them by divine inspira-
tion in their sacred writings. Moses very likely was conversant
with these traditions. If he was, inspiration enabled him to
record them accurately, purged of all their crude polytheistic
incrustations and to adapt them to the elevated framework of
truth and pure monotheism. If he was not, the Spirit of God
was able to give him the revelation of these events apart from
the need of any oral or written sources. In either case super-
natural inspiration was equally necessary, whether to purge the
perverted polytheistic tradition and refine it to fit the mold of
monotheism or to give an original revelation of the authentic
facts apart from oral or written sources.
LITERATURE ON THE FLOOD
Miller, Hugh, The Testimony of the Rocks (New York, 1857).
Davis, John D., Genesis and Semitic Tradition (New York, 1894).
Dawson, Sir William, The Historical Deluge in Relation to Scientific
Discovery (New York, 1895).
Rogers, R. W., Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (New York
and Cincinnati, 1926).
Finn, A. H., The Creation, Fall and Deluge (London, n.d.).
Budge, E. A. Wallis, The Babylonian Story of the Deluge and the Epic
of Gilgamesh (1920).
Clay, A. T., 4 Hebrew Deluge Story in Cuneiform (New Haven, 1922).
, The Origin of Biblical Traditions (New Haven, 1923), pp. 146-
188.
Riem, Johannes, Die Sinflut in Sage und Wissenschaft (Hamburg, 1925).
Price, George McCready, Evolutionary Geology and the New Catastrophism
(Mountain View, Calif., 1926).
Peake, Harold, The Flood, New Light on an Old Story (New York,
1930).
ae Byron C., The Deluge Story in Stone (Minneapolis, 1931).
Rimmer, Harry, The Harmony of Science and Scripture (Grand Rapids,
1936), pp. 213-247.
Rehwinkel, A. M., The Flood in the Light of the Bible, Geology and
Archeology (St. Louis, 1951).
SHL 31aVL
4O SNOILVN
OTT Cl
CHAPTER VI
THE TABLE OF THE NATIONS AND THE JAPHETIC

PEOPLES
Genesis as a book of beginnings not only recounts the origin

of the physical cosmos, including all plant, animal and human
life, as well as the commencement of human sin and redemp-
tion, but it also describes the rise of all human institutions and
social relationships. Ethnically, in an amazing fashion, it cata-
logues the beginning of the nations (Gen. 9:18-10:32).
In studying the Biblical account of the origin of the nations,
however, it is of the utmost importance to bear in mind that
the Bible, in presenting this subject, as well as other subjects
in general, does not outline the necessary facts in the form
of mere history — the systematic record of past events. Rather
it presents these facts in the framework of a highly specialized
history of human redemption. And what is even more important
to remember, it interprets them in the mold of a philosophy
of history, which is more precisely “the philosophy of Israel's
history.”*
This does not mean, on the other hand, that the Hebrew ac-
count of the origin of the nations is not authentic history, but
simply that it is more than history. Centering in divine re-
demption and in the nation Israel, through which that redemp-
tion was ultimately to bé realized, it contains that element which
is inseparably connected with all redemptive history — the ele-
ment of prophecy.
Accordingly, Genesis 9:18-27, which is to be inseparably con-
nected with the Ethnographical Table of Chapter 10 and fur-
nishes an indispensable introduction to it, contains both history
and prophecy, the history furnishing the occasion for the proph-
ecy. The history embraces the fact that the antediluvian earth
was repopulated by the descendants of Noah’s three sons, Shem,
1Cf. Herbert C. Alleman, “The Book of Genesis” in Old Testament Commentary (Phila-
delphia, 1948), p. 171.
73
Ham and Japheth (Gen. 9:18, 19) and includes the episode of
Noah’s drunkenness. The latter incident, besides teaching that
the saintliest men, if unwatchful, may fall into sin, reveals the
general moral character that was to be manifested in the de-
scendants of Noah’s sons (Gen. 9:20-24).
I. THe PropHecy oF THE Mora AND SPIRITUAL
History OF THE NATIONS
The prophecy growing out of the history recounted in Genesis
9:18-24 is contained in verses 25-27. This passage constitutes
one of the most remarkable predictions to be found in all
Scripture. From a redemptive standpoint it presents in pan-
oramic sweep the whole spiritual career of the nations in rela-
tion to God’s ways of grace. Noah in an unguarded moment
dishonors himself. In turn his son Ham, revealing the licentious
bent of his character, shamefully dishonors his father. The pa-
triarch, by the Spirit of prophecy, foretells the inevitable out-
working of this lascivious tendency in the curse that lights upon
Ham’s “son” (rather, “descendant” ) Canaan, who represents the
progenitor of that branch of the Hamitic peoples which later
occupied Palestine before Israel’s conquest (Gen. 10:15-20).
The curse does not involve the infliction of a grievous dis-
ability upon a large portion of the human race either by God
or Noah. It is rather an expression used prophetically to describe
the natural outworking of the sensuality characteristic of Ham
which, although it would doubtless be manifested throughout
the various Hamitic peoples, would be fully developed with
its disastrous results in the posterity of Canaan. That this is
the case is shown by the fact that neither Ham, the son actually
guilty of shameful license, nor his sons Cush, Mizraim and Put
come either directly or indirectly under the prophesied male-
diction, but only Ham’s fourth son, Canaan (Gen. 10:6).
The purpose of this prophecy is clearly to show the origin
of the Canaanites and to set forth the source of their moral
pollution, which centuries later was to lead to their destruction
by Joshua and their enslavement by Israel. As H. C. Leupold
notes,
. . . The descendants of Canaan, according to 10:15-20, are the
peoples that afterward dwelt in Phoenicia and in the so-called land
of Canaan, Palestine. That they became races accursed in their moral
impurity is apparent from passages such as 15:16; 19:5; Lev. 18 and
20; Deut. 12:31. In Abraham’s day the measure of their iniquity
was already almost full. By the time of the entrance of Israel into
TABLE OF NaTIONS AND JAPHETIC PEOPLES 75
Canaan under Joshua the Canaanites, collectively also called Amorites,
were ripe for divine judgment through Israel, His scourge. Sodom
left its name for the unnatural vice its inhabitants practiced. The
Phoenicians and the colony of Carthage surprised the Romans by
the depth of their depravity. Verily cursed was Canaan!2
In their religion the Canaanites were enslaved by one of the
most terrible and degrading forms of idolatry, which abetted
rather than restrained their immorality. That Canaan’s curse
was basically religious has been amply demonstrated by arche-
ology, particularly by the discovery of the Canaanite religious
texts from ancient Ugarit in North Syria, 1929-1937. These texts
fully corroborate the estimate of such older scholars as Lenor-
mant, who said of Canaanite religion, “No other people ever
rivalled them in the mixture of bloodshed and debauchery with
which they thought to honor the Deity.”®
Says W. F. Albright:
Comparison of the cult objects and mythological texts of the Ca-
naanites with those of the Egyptians and Mesopotamians forces one
conclusion, that Canaanite religion was much more completely centered
on sex and its manifestations. In no country has so relatively great
a number of figurines of the naked goddess of fertility, some distinctly
obscene, been found. Nowhere does the cult of serpents appear so
strongly. The two goddesses Astarte (Ashtaroth) and Anath are
called the great goddesses which conceive but do not bear! Sacred
courtesans and eunuch priests were excessively common. Human
sacrifice was well-known. .. .4
Conceding a certain amount of aesthetic charminthe Canaanites’
literary and artistic portrayal of these goddesses, Albright comes
to the conclusion, which thoroughly substantiates the Biblical
portrayal of Canaanite ee “At its worst, however, the erotic
aspects of their cult must have sunk to extremely sordid depths
of social degradation.”®
That Canaan’s curse was basically religious is not only evi-
denced by archeology but by the fact that Shem’s contrasting
blessing was religious. “Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Shem
...” (Gen. 9:26).
The patriarch’s fervent outburst of thanksgiving was a presage of
the hallelujahs that were to arise unto God from all mankind for the
birth of that son of Shem in whom all nations were to be blessed.®
2H. C. Leupold, Exposition of Genesis (Grand Rapids, 1950), Vol. I, pp. 350f.
3 Manual of the Ancient History of the East, Vol. Il, p. 219.
4 “Recent Discoveries in Bible Lands,” in Young’s Analytical Concordance to the Bible
(20th ed.; New York, 1936), p 29.
5 Archeology and the Religion of Israel (Baltimore, 1942), p. 27. Ibid., pp. 68-94 for
a full sketch of Canaanite religion as portrayed by the Ugaritic texts.
6R. Payne Smith in A Bible Commentary for English Readers, ed. by C. J. Ellicott
(New York, n.d.), Vol. I, p. 42.
Likewise, Japheth’s blessing was also religious. “God enlarge

Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem. . .” (Gen. 9:
97). “To dwell in the tents of one” implies friendly sharing of
one’s hospitality and so of one’s blessings.
The Japhethites have now very largely come in to share Shem’s bless-
ings, for as Gentiles they have been grafted on the good olive tree.
Shem’s spiritual heritage is ours. Abraham has become our father in
faith and we are his‘true children.”
... Japheth means enlargement: the grace of God has reached out,
and the very fulness of God’s thoughts has been brought out in con-
nection with the Gentiles, “In thy seed all nations shall be blessed,”
was said to Abraham, and God is persuading or enlarging Japheth
now by bringing him into the tents of Shem; there is no blessing
anywhere else . . . all blessing is connected with Christ.®
The abject servitude of Canaan to Shem and later to Japheth,
thrice repeated in Noah’s prophecy (Gen. 9:25, 26, 27), was
realized not only in the partial extermination of the Cee
by Joshua and the subjection of those who still remiained to
slavery, for example, by Solomon (I Kings 9:20, 21), but also
in such later events as the capture of Tyre by Alexander the
Great and the Roman conquest of Carthage.
Although, it is true, the prophetic curse was expressly pro-
nounced upon Canaan alone, yet, as Keil and Delitzsch note,
“the fact that Ham had no share in Noah’s blessing, either for
himself or his other sons, was a sufficient proof that his whole
family was included by implication in the curse.”® To a lesser
degree the moral turpitude, religious degeneracy and social
bondage which were to characterize the Canaanites in a pre-
eminent sense, were also to characterize the Hamitic nations
in general. Egyptian religion, for example, while not evincing
the moral crudity of Canaanite cults, was nevertheless a con-
fused and utterly bewildering system of the grossest polytheism,
as philosophically irrational as present-day African paganism
with its witch doctors and morbid fear of demons.
The prophecy of the moral and spiritual history of the na-
tions in Genesis, Chapter 9, furnishes an indispensable intro-
duction to the principle that underlies the Table of the Nations
in Chapter 10. The principle is that in divine dealings the
moral character of a thing cannot be understood unless its source
is known. Israel was in God’s mind the medium of redemptive
7 Leupold, op. cit., p. 353.
8C. A. Coates, An Outline of the Book of Genesis (Kingston-on-Thames, n.d.), p. 84.
» Bible Commentary on the Old Testament, Vol. I: The Pentat h int
Rapids, 1949), p. 158, ; Se es
TABLE OF NATIONS AND JAPHETIC PEOPLES Tt
blessing to the world, and it was necessary for the nation to

understand the source from which the various nations that sur-
rounded her sprang, in order that she might have an insight
into their character, thereby to guide her attitude and conduct
toward them. This moral and spiritual principle underlying
Genesis 10 makes it unique.
But this ancient document describing the distribution of the
nations is unique from a literary standpoint as well. W. F. Al-
bright says:
It stands absolutely alone in ancient literature, without a remote
parallel even among the Greeks, where we find the closest approach
to a distribution of peoples in genealogical framework. But among
the Greeks the framework is mythological and the peoples are all
Greeks or Aegean tribes.?°
Commenting on its accuracy, Albright says:
In view of the inextricable confusion of racial and national strains
in the ancient Near East it would be quite impossible to draw up a
simple scheme which would satisfy all scholars; no one system could
satisfy all the claims made on the basis of ethnic predominance, eth-
nographic diffusion, language, physical type, culture, historical tradi-
tion. The Table of Nations remains an astonishingly accurate docu-
ment.?
[It] shows such a remarkably “modern” understanding of the ethnic
and linguistic situation in the ancient world, in spite of all its com-
plexity, that scholars never fail to be impressed with the author’s
knowledge of the subject.?”
Although numerous names of places and peoples included in
the Table were known from ancient literary sources, notably
Greek and Roman, many have been discovered for the first time
by modern archeology. Now nearly all the names in this chapter
may be elucidated by the archeological discoveries of the past
century.
II. THe JAPHETIC NATIONS
The descendants of Japheth, the youngest son of Noah, are
given first, those of Ham next, and those of Shem, the eldest
son, last. This is in accord with the plan of the book of Genesis,
in which the families which branched off the main line are
noticed first. When these have been dealt with, the writer re-
turns to the family in the main line to describe it more elabo-
rately and to carry forward the redemptive history.”*
10In Young’s Analytical Concordance to the Bible, p. 25.
11 bid.
12 “The Old Testament and Archeology,” in Old Testament Commentary (Philadelphia,
1948), p. 138.
18 C, F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, op. cit., pp. 37, 162.
PHILISTINE
AMORITE
HITTITE
HAMITE CEGYPTIAN >
SS
ES
HEBREW
TABLE OF NATIONS AND JAPHETIC PEOPLES 79
The Japhetic or northern peoples, fourteen in number, origi-
nally concentrated in the Caucasus region between the Black
Sea and the Caspian Sea, thence ae east and west to form
the great Indo-Germanic family.
1. The Descendants of Japheth. Gomer, Assyrian Gimirraya,
represents the Cimmerians of classical antiquity.44 With Togar-
mah, Gomer is listed by Ezekiel as residing “in the uttermost
parts of the north” (Ezek. 38:6). Coming into Asia from the
regions beyond the Caucasus, the Cimmerians settled in the gen-
eral region of Cappadocia and are known from the Assyrian
records as Gimirrai. Esarhaddon (681-668 z. c.) defeated them."®
Ashurbanipal (668-625 B.c.) mentions their invasion of the
kingdom of Lydia, in the days of the famous King Gugu
(Gyges ),*® whose name is perhaps preserved in Scripture’s Gog
(Ezek. 38:2).
Magog is a land and a people in the “uttermost parts of the
north” whose ruler Gog, prince of “Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal,”
has Gomer and Togarmah among his allies (Ezek. 38:2; 39:6).
Josephus identified them with the Scythians,’” but it is more
likely a comprehensive term for northern barbarian hordes.
Madai represents the Medes who peopled the mountainous
country east of Assyria and south of the Caspian Sea. They are
well known in the Old Testament (II Kings 17:6; 18:11; Isa.
21:2, etc.) and their history is further elucidated by the Assyrian
Inscriptions from the ninth century B.c. onward till the fall of
the Assyrian Empire in the late seventh century B.c. It was
Cyaxares, the Mede, in alliance with Nabopolassar of Babylon,
who besieged and destroyed Nineveh in 612 B.c.
Javan was the name of the Greeks, more exactly the Ionians
of Homer, and more particularly the Asiatic Ionians who dwelt
on the coasts of Lydia and Caria, and whose cities were im-
portant commercial emporiums two centuries before those of the
Peloponnesus. Javan was the name under which the Hebrews
first became acquainted with the Greeks. It remained the name
by which they are known in the Old Testament (Ezek. 27:13;
Isa. 66:19; Joel 3:6; Zech. 9:13; Dan. 8:21; 10:20). In the As-
syrian records they are first mentioned by Sargon II (721-705
14 Odyssey, XI1:14.
a2.) Faun0 On ) A 2
16 Jbjd., pp. 298, 352,
1? Antiquities, 1:6:1.
B.c.), who encountered them in a naval battle,* and they are

prominent in subsequent centuries in Jewish history.
Tubal and Meshech (Ezek. 27:13; 32:26; 38:2; 39:1; Isa.
66:19) are the Tabali and Mushki of the Assyrian records. The
Tabali are first mentioned in the frontier campaigns of Tiglath-
pileser I (c. 1100 8.c.) and Mushki by Shalmaneser III (860-
825 s. c.), and both names occur prominently later.’” The notices
of them in the Assyrian period place their home northeast of
Cilicia (Hilakku) and east of Cappadocia (Gimirrai), but by
Herodotus’ time they had removed farther north to the moun-
tainous region southeast of the Black Sea.”
Tiras perhaps represents the Tursenoi, a people dwelling
anciently on the north shores and islands off the Aegean Sea
and greatly dreaded by the Greeks as pirates."
2. The Descendants of Gomer. Ashkenaz is equivalent to As-
syrian Ashkuz, the Scythians.” In the time of Jeremiah they
dwelt in the vicinity of Ararat and Minni (the Mannai of the
Assyrian inscriptions southeast of Lake Van). They were rude
and unadvanced in civilization and periodically overran extensive
territories, so that they came to signify barbarians.
Riphath occurs in I Chronicles 1:6 as Diphath, which is ex-
plained by the fact that the two Hebrew letters resh (r) and
daleth (d) were quite similar in form in certain stages of their
development and were quite easily confused when not carefully
written. The name is evidently preserved in the Riphaean
Mountains, supposed by the ancients to skirt the north shore of
the world.” Josephus identifies Riphath with the Paphlago-
nians.”*
Togarmah is Tegarama in southwestern Armenia.”> Following
ancient Greek authorities, Dillmann identifies this northern
country with the Armenians (cf. Ezek. 27:14; 38:6).
3. The Descendants of Javan. These, four in number, em-
brace the most southerly and westerly peoples of the Japhetic
group who occupied the important ancient stations of com-
merce on the Mediterranean Sea.
18 Luckenbill, op. cit., p. 61.
19 Thid., index.
20S. R. Driver, The Book of Genesis (London, 1904), p. 115.
21 Tbid.
22 Albright in Old Testament Commentary, p. 138.
oa D. Davis, Dictionary of the Bible, rev. by H. S. Gehman (Philadelphia, 1944),
Y
24 Antiquities, 1:6:1.
25 Albright, in Old Testament Commentary, p. 138,
TABLE OF NATIONS AND JAPHETIC PEOPLES 81
Elishah is Kittim or Cyprus,”* the Alashia of the Amarna

Letters.” In Ezekiel 27:7 purple stuffs are said to have been
brought to Tyre from the isles (or coasts) of Elishah, which
with the Peloponnesus and the islands and coasts of the Aegean
were rich in purple shells. Dillmann, however, connects Elishah
with Sicily, since Kittim is connected with Cyprus.”®
Tarshish apparently represents the name of the Phoenician
smelting center located at Tartessus in southern Spain near Gi-
braltar, less probably the one situated in Sardinia.2° It was a
rich mining district and city, whence the Tyrians secured silver,
iron, tin and lead (Ezek. 27:12). It marked the farthest western
limit named for Tyrian seacraft.
Kittim denotes the Kitians, the people of Kit or Kiti, as it is
termed in the Phoenician inscriptions.*° The name is connected
definitely with Cyprus, chiefly through Kition, an ancient city
on the southern coast of the island, present-day Larnaka.
Dodanim may be the Dardana (Dardanians) of Asia Minor.
However, the Septuagint and the Samaritan text of Genesis
10:4 as well as the Masoretic text of I Chronicles 1:7 have Roda-
nim, which is apparently the correct reading, especially since
the “d” and “r” in Hebrew were quite similar in form, and easily
confused. In such a case the people of the island of Rhodes
and of the adjacent islands of the Aegean Sea are indicated.
LITERATURE ON THE TABLE OF THE NATIONS
Lange, John P., Genesis (New York, 1869), pp. 335-357.
Dillmann, A., Genesis, transl. by W. B. Stevenson (Edinburgh, 1897),
Vol. I, pp. 300-384.
Driver, S. R., The Book of Genesis (London, 1904), pp. 108-132.
Skinner, John, Genesis, in The International Critical Commentary (New
York, 1910), pp. 181-223.
Gunkel, H., in Handkommentar zum Alten Testament (Sth ed.; 1922),
in loc.
Koenig, E., Die Genesis (Guetersloh, 1919).
Jeremias, Alfred, The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient East
(New York, 1911), Vol. I, pp. 275-302.
Price, Ira, The Monuments and the Old Testament (Philadelphia, 1925),
pp. 131-145.
26 G, E. Wright and F. Filson, Westminster Historical Atlas to the Bible (Philadelphia,
1945), p. 109.
27 33:2; 34:1, 39, etc. See S. A. B. Mercer, The Tell El-Amarna Tablets (Toronto,
1939), Vol. II, p. 892.
28A Dillmann, Genesis (Edinburgh, 1897), Vol. I, p. 138.
29 Cf. Wright & Filson, op. cit., pp. 26, 112.
80S. R. Driver, op. cit., p.- 116.
81 Albright, in Old Testament Commentary, p. 138.
Childe, V. Gordon, New Light on the Most Ancient East (1934).

Kappers, C. V. A., An Introduction to the Anthropology of the Near East
(Amsterdam, 1934). See Ch. 4 for races in Syria-Palestine.
Albright, W. F., “The Old Testament and Archeology,” in Old Testa-
ment Commentary (Philadelphia, 1948), pp. 138f.
Keil, C. F., and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testa-
ment, Vol. I: The Pentateuch (reprint; Grand Rapids, 1949), pp.
155-172.
Leupold, H. C. Exposition of Genesis (Grand Rapids, 1950), Vol. I,
pp. 343-380.
CuaptTer VII
HAMITES AND EARLIEST EMPIRE
The descendants of Ham comprise the eastern and southern

people who settled originally in lower Mesopotamia
and subse-
quently in south Arabia, Ethiopia, Egypt and Canaan (Gen.
10:6-14). As the youngest son of Noah, Ham is regarded as
the eponymous ancestor of the African peoples, as Japheth his
brother is of the Indo-Europeans, and Shem of the Semites.
In the Hamitic line is traced the rise of earliest imperial
world power, first under Nimrod in Babylonia and later in such
seats of ancient empire as Asshur and Nineveh on the upper
Tigris. Egypt, too, founded by these people, very early became
a center of powerful centralized authority.
I. THe Hamitic Nations
Although the account of the Hamitic line remains replete with
many difficult problems as yet unsolved, modern archeology has
shed much light on many of the names and places mentioned
in the passage.
1. The Descendants of Ham. Cush is presented first and
originally was connected with Babylonia (Gen. 10:8-12) and
only later with Egyptian Kosh or Nubia. The Babylonian con-
nection is very likely to be sought in the exceedingly ancient
city-kingdom of Kish in lower Mesopotamia, resurrected by
modern archeology. From Kish the Babylonian emperors of the
third millennium B. c. took their royal title as kings of the world."
The home of the original Cushites was clearly on the lower
Tigris and Euphrates, where Nimrod raised them to great power.
Thence they spread into the southern peninsula of Arabia and,
eventually crossing the Red Sea, colonized African Nubia and
Abyssinia. Original Asiatic Cush, however, was watered by the
Gihon River in Babylonia (Gen. 2:13).
1 w. F. Albright, “Recent Discoveries in Bible Lands,” in Young’s Analytical Concordance
to the Bible (20th ed.; New York, 1936), p. 32.
83
84. ARCHEOLOGY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT
Mizraim is ancient Egypt. Its splendid civilization dates back

to the Early and Predynastic periods (c. 5000-c. 2900 3.c.). But
especially from the period of the union of the Upper and Lower
parts of the country in the First Egyptian Dynasty under Menes
(c. 2900 s.c.) modern archeology has resurrected the glories
of ancient Egypt’s past, and thus has given birth to a whole
new science of Egyptology. The Protodynastic Period covering
the first two dynasties, extends from c. 2900-c. 2700 B.c. The
powerful Old Kingdom, to which belong the colossal pyramids
and the famous pyramid texts, extends from c. 2700-c. 2200 B. c.
After an Intermediate Period (seventh to eleventh dynasties,
c. 2200-c. 1989 B.c), the strong Middle Kingdom (twelfth dy-
nasty) ruled (c. 1989-c. 1776 B.c.). The Hyksos Period of for-
eign domination (thirteenth to seventeenth dynasties) extends
from c. 1776 B. c. until the rise of the resplendent New Kingdom,
when Egypt ruled the East (eighteenth to twentieth dynasties,
c. 1570-c. 1150 B.c.). This great period of Egyptian power and
influence was followed by decline (twenty-first to thirtieth dy-
nasties, c. 1150-332 B.c.).?
According to the Amarna Tablets the Canaanites called Egypt
Mizri. The Hebrew name Mizraim, which has the same root, is
normally construed as a dual, preserving the ancient divisions of
the country, Upper Egypt (above Memphis) and Lower Egypt
(the Delta).
Phut (R.V. Put) has been commonly identified with ancient
Punt, located south or southeast of African Cush, and corre-
sponding with present-day Somaliland. However, Phut occurs
as Put(a) in the inscriptions of the Persian Monarch Darius I
the Great (522-486 B.c.), and its location in Cyrenaica, the
region about Cyrene in North Africa west of Egypt, is now
certain.®
Canaan denotes the descendants of Ham (Gen. 9:18, 22) who
settled in the land later known as Palestine and from whom the
country took its original name. Thus originally Hamitic, accord-
ing to the Table of the Nations, the Canaanites, settling in a tiny
country that furnished a bridge between Egypt and the great
Semitic empires that flourished on the Fertile Crescent, at an
early date must have succumbed to the pressure of racial and
2 For a survey of the entire span of ancient Egyptian history see Jack Finegan, Light From
the Ancient Past (Princeton, 1946), pp. 62-116.
3 WwW. F. Albright, “The Old Testament and Archeology,” in Old Testament Commentary
HAMITEs AND Earuiest EMPIRE 85
linguistic intermixture with Semites to the loss of their own

ethnic predominance. This is doubtless the correct explanation
why the sciences of anthropology and ethnology based on in-
tensive excavation give evidence that the Canaanites were pre-
dominantly of Semitic rather than Hamitic strain. Efforts to
solve this difficulty on the contention that such nomenclature
as is employed in Genesis 10 “expresses not race but empire
or civilization”* or that Canaan is called a son of Ham “on ac-
count of the long domination of the land of Canaan by Egypt”®
are scarcely satisfactory, especially in view of the stress laid
upon the Hamitic origin of Canaan (Gen. 9:22-27).°
As a geographical designation, Canaan, the Hebrew name,
probably derived from Hurrian, meaning “belonging to the land
of red purple,” as early as the late fourteenth century B.c. came
to be employed of the country in which the “Canaanites” or
Phoenician traders exchanged their most important merchan-
dise — red-purple, derived from murex shells on the sea shore —
for other wares.”
2. The Descendants of Cush. Seba is mentioned first and is
connected with south Arabia through the southwestward migra-
tion of the original Cushites from lower Mesopotamia, “the land
of Shinar” (Gen. 10:8-12). According to the Assyrian inscrip-
tions this people had migrated to northwest Arabia in the eighth
century B.c. Seba, a dialectic variation of Sheba, is closely as-
sociated with the latter as a remote country of the south (Ps.
72:10) and also with Egypt and Ethiopia in Africa, where many
Cushites had migrated (Isa. 43:3; 45:14). Strabo, the noted
Greek geographer and traveler (c.63 B.c.-c.21 a.p.), located
a harbor Saba and a town Sabai on the west coast of the Red
Sea.®
Havilah is a district of central or southern Arabia peopled in
part by Cushites and in part by Joktanites, a Semitic people
(Gen. 10:7, 29; I Chron. 1:9, 23). Sabtah is generally identified
with Shabwat, the ancient metropolis of Hazarmaveth (Gen.
10:26) in south Arabia which is still called Hadramaut by the
4J. A. Montgomery, Record and Revelation (Oxford, 1938), p. 2.
5H. S. Gehman, The Westminster Dictionary of the Bible (Philadelphia, 1944), p. 89.
6 For discoveries in anthropology see V. Gordon Childe, New Light on the Most Ancient
East (1934); C. U. A. Kappers, An Introduction to the Anthropology of the Near East
(Amsterdam, 1934). See Ch. 4 for races in Syria-Palestine.
7Cf. B. Maisler, “Canaan and the Canaanites,” in Bulletin of the American Schools of
Oriental Research, CII (April, 1946), pp. 7-12.
8 XVI:4, 8-10,
Arabs and which corresponds etymologically to the older name,

meaning “village of death.”
Raamah, Sabteca, and the descendants of Raamah, Sheba and
Dedan, all represent Cushite tribes of the Arabian peninsula.
Sheba notably was in southwest Arabia, well known from its
own records and classical geographers. The Sabeans were a great
commercial people and spread widely, appearing in northwest
Arabia in Assyrian times and in the northern desert along with
the Nabataeans. They consequently became mingled with other
tribes and are also classified as a Semitic people descended
through Joktan (Gen. 10:28). Like Dedan, with whom they
are closely associated, they are said to be descended from Abra-
ham through Jokshan (Gen. 25:3).
Having listed the Hamitic peoples descended through Cush
(vv. 6,7), the Table of the Nations almost abruptly interrupts
the stereotyped political-geographical enumerations to center
upon one notorious personal descendant of Ham through Cush.
“And the sons of Ham: Cush. . . . and Cush begat Nimrod: he
began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter
fee Jehovah. . . . And the beginning of his kingdom was
Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar”
(Gen. 10:6-10). In one sense a digression,® in another sense
vitally connected with the immediate context and the whole
ethnological portrait of the ancient world in which the chosen
nation, Israel, was placed, this passage is of immense religious
as well as historical importance.
II. Hamiric ImMpertaL POWER
Religiously Genesis 10:8-10 portrays the character in which
earthly imperial power first appears in human history. That this
character is evil is suggested by several considerations. First,
earthly kingship is first found among the Hamites, upon one
branch of which there exists a prophetic curse, and in the
entire family an absence of divine blessing (Gen. 9: 25-27).
Secondly, Nimrod is the founder of the kingdom of Babylon
(Gen. 10:8, 9), which is invariably presented as a morally,
religiously and governmentally evil system in Scriptural type
and prophecy (Isa. 21:9; Jer. 50:24; 51:64; Rev. 16:19;
17:5; 18:3, ete.). Thirdly, the name Nimrod “no doubt sug-
gested to the Israelites the idea of ‘rebel’ . . . against God.”
®So construed by S. R. Driver, The Book of Genesis (London, 1904), p. 120.
10 A. Dillmann, Genesis, transl. by W. B, Stevenson (Edinburgh, 1897), Vol. I, p. 350.
HAMITES AND Earuiest EMPIRE 87
As descriptive of the character of this first world empire-builder,

the name Nimrod is certainly meant to indicate this concept
in the inspired account, despite the fact that the original name
in the Hamitic speech did not have this meaning.
It is interesting to note that the name Nimrod has been plaus-
ibly explained as Sumerian (early non-Semitic Babylonian) Nin-
Maradda, “Lord of Marad,” a town southwest of Kish.“ If, on
the other hand, Babylonian Cush is to be traced in the ex-
ceedingly ancient city-kingdom of Kish, founded about 3200-
3000 B.c., from where the Babylonian emperors of the third
millennium 8. c. took their royal titles as kings of the world,
archeological light is thrown on this primeval imperial period,
preserved in the name Nimrod.” Moreover, it is significant that
the Sumerian King List names the dynasty of Kish with twenty-
three kings first in the enumeration of Mesopotamian dynasties
which reigned after the Flood."
That the character of earthly imperial power as it is introduced
through the Hamitic branch of the human family is evil is
demonstrated by another consideration. Nimrod is said to have
been “a mighty hunter before Yahweh” (Gen. 10:9). The simple
meaning of the passage, so commonly misinterpreted, is that
Yahweh took note of his royal character as that of a “hunter,”
which was the exact opposite of the divine ideal of a king—
that of a shepherd (cf. II Sam. 5:2; 7:7; Rev. 2:27; 19:15).
“A hunter gratifies himself at the expense of his victim, but a
shepherd expends himself for the good of the subjects of his
care.”14
The beginning of Nimrod’s kingdom is said to be “Babel, and
Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar” (Gen.
10:10).
The cities of Babel, Erech and Akkad are now well known
through archeological discoveries to have been among the ear-
liest great capitals of the civilized world. These ancient centers
of population and empire, said to be “the beginning” of Nimrod’s
kingdom, are described as being “in the land of Shinar.” The
term, as it is here employed in the Hebrew Bible, denotes the
entire alluvial plain of Babylonia between the Tigris and the
11 w. F. Albright, in Old Testament Commentary, p. 138.
12 For excavations at Kish see George Barton, Archeology and the Bible (Philadelphia,
1937), pp. 39, 42f.
18 Cf. Finegan, of. cit., p. 31. Cf. Thorkild Jacobsen, The Sumerian King List. Assyrio-
logical Studies, XI (Chicago, 1939).
14, A. Coates, An Outline of the Book of Genesis (Kingston-on-Thames, n.d.), p. 86.
Euphrates, in approximately the last two hundred miles of the

course of these great rivers as they flowed in ancient times.’
In the cuneiform inscriptions the region is divided into a north-
ern portion, called Akkad, in which Babel (Babylon) and the
city of Akkad (Agade) were situated and a southern portion
called Sumer in which Erech (ancient Uruk) was located.
Babel (in Akkadian, bab-ilu, signifying “gate of God”) dates
from prehistoric times. It did not itself, however, become the
capital of a great empire until in the old Babylonian Period
(c. 1830—c. 1550 B.c.). Under Hammurabi (1728-1686 B.c.) of
the first dynasty of Babylon, the city became mistress of all
Babylonia, and as far northwestward as the powerful city of
Mari on the middle Euphrates. But its history goes back far
beyond this period to the earliest pre-Semitic era in the lower
Tigris-Euphrates Valley.
Erech, Akkadian Uruk, is represented by modern Warka, sit-
uated about a hundred miles southeast of Babylon in a marshy
region east of the Euphrates. Here was discovered the first zig-
urat or sacred temple-tower and evidence of the first cylinder
seals.7®
Akkad was the name given to northern Babylonia from the
city of Agade*’ which Sargon brought into great prominence as
the capital of a new Semitic empire dominating the Mesopo-
tamian world from about 2360-c. 2180 B. c.
Calneh has not been clearly elucidated by archeology. At-
tempts have been made to identify it with Nippur, one of the
oldest cities of central Babylonia. It is also thought by some
that the shorter form of Hursagkalama (Kalama), a twin city of
Kish, is meant.’* Others identify it with the Calno of Isaiah 10:9
on the basis of the Septuagint text.’
An account of the founding of Assyria by the Hamitic Cushites
of Babylonia is appended to the notice of the establishment of
their imperial power in Babylonia. Out of Babylonia it is said
Nimrod “went forth into Assyria, and builded Nineveh, and
15 The Tigris and Euphrates have not only shifted their beds in the course of centuries,
but have built up a stoneless alluvial plain by their silt. Eridu, Ur and Lagash, once on the
Persian Gulf, are now well over 125 miles inland. See Finegan, op. cit., pp. 9f.
16 Finegan, op. cit., pp. 19-23.
17 Barton, op. cit., p. 64. W. F. Albright, From she Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore,
1940), pp. 107f.
18 Gehman, op. cit., p. 85.
19 W. Payne Smith, A Bible Commentary for Englishglish Read i
Readers, ed. by C. J. Ellicott, (N
York, n.d.), Vol. I, p. 50. sig ao 5
HAMITES AND EARLIEST EMPIRE 89
Rehoboth-Ir, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah

(the same is the great city)” (Gen. 10:11, 12).
... That Babylonia was the oldest seat of civilization in the great
plain of the two rivers, and that Nineveh was (so to say) colonized
from it, are indeed in harmony with what we learn from the monu-
ments: politically as well as in its whole civilization, writing, and
religion. Assyria in early times was dependent upon Babylonia.2°
But the fact that these verses of Genesis apparently connect the
foundation of Babylonian civilization and its extension to Assyria
with a single man,”! and associate the four Babylonian cities
(Babel, Erech, Akkad and Calneh) with four Assyrian cities
(Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah and Resen) as yet remains un-
illustrated by the monuments.
However, Babylonian and Assyrian monuments illustrate al-
most completely the geographical data of this passage. The city
of Ashur, strategically located on the west bank of the Tigris
above the Little Zab tributary and about sixty miles south of
Nineveh, was the most ancient capital and center of Assyrian
power. The city, which gave its name to the country and later
empires of which it formed the hub, itself took its designation
from its national god, Ashur.”? The location of the ancient cita-
del, now called Qalat Sharqat, was excavated by a German ex-
pedition under Walter Andrae in 1903-19148 and showed evi-
dence of occupation from the early third millennium B. c.
Nineveh (modern Kuyunjik) was the great capital of the
late Assyrian Empire, located about sixty miles north of Ashur
on the east bank of the Tigris. So completely was it obliterated
according to its prophesied destruction by Hebrew seers that
the departed city became like a myth until its resurrection by
Sir Austen Layard and others in the nineteenth century With
occupation levels going back as far as prehistoric times,”* the
actual walled city has been traced to indicate an area three miles
in length by less than a mile and a half in breadth. But the
Hebrews (and perhaps other foreigners) were accustomed to
include under the name Nineveh (like the complex of cities
that forms modern New York), Calah, 18 miles south, Resen,
between Calah and Nineveh proper, and Rehoboth-Ir, which
20 Driver, op. cit.. p. 122.
21R. Payne Smith contends: “It is not necessary to suppose that this spread of Hamite
civilization: northward was the work of Nimrod personally; if done by his successors, it
would, in Biblical language be ascribed to its prime mover.” (Op. cit., p. 50).
22A. T. Olmstead, The History of Assyria (New York, 1923), p. 1.
23 W. Andrae, Das wiederestandene Assur (1938).
24 Finegan, op. cit., p. 13.
“must be Rebit-Ninua, west of the capital, since the names are

not only etymologically related but have the same meaning.’”°
These are the four places which are enumerated in Genesis
10:11, 12 as composing “the great city,” but other towns, such
as Tarbisu, Dur-sharrukin or Sargon’s burg, added to the ag-
gregate size of “Nineveh” in the heyday of Assyrian empire.
Although Resen was a suburb of Nineveh and a part of the
complex of towns known as “the great city,” it remains obscure
as far as the monuments are concerned. Calah, on the other
hand, has been discovered and excavated in the mound of
Nimrod, and has yielded a rich store of sculptures, bas-reliefs
and inscriptions. According to Ashurnasirpal II (885-860 B. c.),
Calah was built or rebuilt, embellished and fortified by Shal-
maneser I (1280-1260 3.c.). By the time of Ashurnasirpal it
had fallen into decay. This famous conqueror restored it as a
royal residence, and it remained the residence of Assyrian kings
for more than 150 years.
III. Orsger Hamiric Nations
After the digression (Gen. 10:8-10) the Table of the Nations
continues the enumeration of the Hamitic line.
1. The Descendants of Mizraim. Ludim elsewhere occurs
mostly in the singular Lud, mentioned as archers in the Egyp-
tian or Tyrian army (Jer. 46:9; Ezek. 27:10; 30:5) and as a
remote people (Isa. 66:19). Yet unidentified, but doubtless a
tribe bordering upon Egypt, Albright thinks Ludim is a copyist’s
error for Lubim, the Libyans,” tribes to the west of the Delta.
As Hamitic tribes bordering Egypt the Anamim, Lehabim,
Naphtuhim, and Casluhim remain obscure. The Pathrusim, how-
ever, are clearly the inhabitants of Pathros, Egyptian Ptores,
Upper Egypt. The Caphtorim are the inhabitants of Caphtor,
now identified with the recently discovered cuneiform Kaptara
or Crete.
The Philistines (Heb. Pelishtim) are said to have come from
Caphtor (Amos 9:7; Jer. 47:4; cf. Deut. 2:23). For this reason
the clause “whence went forth the Philistines” is usually regarded
as misplaced by a copyist and to belong after “Caphtorim” in
Genesis 10:14. The monuments indicate that the Peleste (Philis-
tines) invaded Palestine with other “sea peoples” during the
reign of Rameses II of Egypt (1195-1164 B.c.), who repulsed
26 Ibid. p. 138.
HaAMITES AND EaruiEst EMPIRE 91
them in several encounters. But some of the invaders remained

in Syria and eventually reached southeastern Palestine, where
they settled, and eventually gave their name to the country—
Philistia (Joel 3:4), from which in turn came the Greek term
Palestine (he Palaistine) .?7
However, since Philistines were in the region around Gerar
and Beersheba as early as the patriarchal age (Gen. 21:32;
26:1) and before the Mosaic era settlers from Crete had de-
stroyed the original inhabitants of the region of Gaza and settled
there (Deut. 2:23), apparently scattered groups of these people
existed for centuries in southwestern Palestine before the arrival
of the main body in the first quarter of the twelfth century B. C.
After this period however, their power developed rapidly, so
that by the time of Samuel and Saul they constituted a serious
threat to the national life of Israel.
ae te eet jae counted

“ss ecempp eae, Ob Bh a sea
vere CHIE Ot at os ene oot
Drawing of a painting. Syrian ship unloading in an Egyptian harbor (ca. 1400 B.C.).
(Courtesy of The Biblical Archeologist, I, 2, fig. 9.)
2. The Descendants of Canaan. Sidon, the oldest Phoenician

city, hence called Canaan’s “firstborn,” was located on the Medi-
terranean seacoast, twenty-two miles north of Tyre. It repre-
sents the Phoenicians, who were called Sidonians from the
eleventh to eighth century B.c. Its early importance is at-
tested by Homer, who often mentions Sidon, but never Tyre,
and who employs the names as synonymous with Phoenicia and
Phoenicians. Later, however, it was eclipsed by Tyre, but the
Phoenicians generally continued to be called Sidonians (I Kings
5:6; 16:31) as if in recollection of Sidon’s ancient pre-eminence.
Heth is the putative head of the Hittites, a people mentioned
sporadically in the Old Testament. Until the amazing recovery
of Hittite civilization by modern archeology, the Biblical refer-

ences to this otherwise unknown people were commonly viewed
with critical suspicion. William Wright, a missionary at Damas-
cus, and Professor A. H. Sayce were among the first to recon-
struct the outlines of the history of the ancient Hittite empire.”
Then in 1906-1907 and 1911-1912 Professor Hugo Winckler of
Berlin discovered about ten thousand clay tablets at Boghazkeui,
the site of ancient Hattushash, an important Hittite capital. This
vast store of inscriptional material revealed the Hittites to be not
only an important people of the ancient world, but a people of an
extended empire.
Two chief periods of Hittite power are distinguished — the first
going back to about 1900 B.c. and the second extending from
1400-1200 s. c., the era of the new Hittite kingdom in Asia Minor
and Syria. The latter kingdom was consolidated at Boghazkeui
by the powerful Emperor Subbiluliuma (c. 1395-1350 3.c.).
Hittite power is referred to prominently in the Amarna Letters,
in the correspondence of Subbiluliuma with Amenhotep IV
(Akhnaton) about 1375 3. c.”® After the fall of Hittite imperial
power, around 1200 B.c., however, small Hittite kingdoms con-
tinued to exist at Carchemish, Senjirli and Hamath and other
centers in north Syria.*° In fact, the Hittite tradition survived
longer in Syria than in Asia Minor, the center of the Hittite
empire, and the Assyrians were in the habit of calling Syria-
Palestine mat Khatti, “the land of the Hittites.”*
The Jebusite settled in Jebus, the name borne by Jerusalem
while the city was held by this Palestinian tribe (Josh. 15:36;
Judg. 19:10, 11; I Chron. 11:4) both before and after the Con-
quest. Their king was slain by Joshua (Josh. 20:23-26), their
territory assigned to the tribe of Benjamin (Josh. 18:28), and
later their city was taken by the men of Judah (Josh. 15:8;
Judg. 1:8). However, either the Jebusites never lost the citadel*®?
or recovered the city in whole or in part, because they still held
the fortress of Zion till expelled at the beginning of David’s reign
(II Sam. 5:6,7). Solomon subjected the remaining Jebusites to
bond service (I Kings 9:20).
28 Wright, The Empire. of the Hittites (1884); Sayce, The Hittites, The Story of a
Forgotten Empire (rev. ed., 1925).
29 J. A. Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna Tafeln (1908-1915), no. 41.
30 For a recent account see L. Delaporte, “Hittites,” in Vigouroux’s Dictionnaire de la
Bible (Paris, 1949), supplement Vol. I, pp. 31-110.
32 Josephus, Antiquities, V, 2, 2.
HAMITES AND EARLIEST EMPIRE 93
In the Amarna Letters Jerusalem and its environs are referred

to by its King Abdi-Hiba as “the land of the city of Ursalim.”*
Mercer says: “This is a Hittite idiom, and as such points to a
Hittite origin for the people of Jerusalem. . . .”** Albright con-
strues the evidence of the Amarna Tablets to point to the con-
clusion that the Jebusites were of Anatolian (Asia Minor) stock.**
The Amorite, next to the Hittite, was the most powerful race
in Palestine, holding the hill country of Judah, where they had
five kings (Josh. 10:5) and a large district on the eastern side
of the Jordan (Deut. 3:8; Judg. 11:22). For their wickedness
they were devoted to destruction, but a strong remnant remained
in the land after the Conquest (Judg. 1:35; 3:5; I Sam. 7:14)
who, with all of the earlier inhabitants, were made bondservants
by Solomon (I Kings 9:20, 21).
The name Amorite is a Babylonian word meaning “Westerner,”
used of Syria-Palestine*® in the sense of “alien” (from the Baby-
lonian point of view). This name came to be applied to these
people much as Welsh is now applied to the inhabitants of
Wales, though “Welsh” in Anglo-Saxon and Early English meant
simply “foreigner.” The language of the Amorites was a cross
between Hebrew and Aramaic, and racially the people were
a mixture of Northwest Semitic elements combined with Horite
(Hurrian).
The Girgashite as a tribe of Canaan (Gen. 15:21; Deut. 7:1;
Josh. 3:10; 24:11; Neh. 9:8) remains archeologically obscure
as well as the Hivite (Gen. 10:17; Ex. 3:17; Josh. 9:1, etc.), al-
though in several instances (e.g. Gen. 34:2; Josh. 9:7) the latter
name is rendered “Horite” in the Septuagint and scholars are
inclined to accept this reading (e.g. Gen. 34:2; Josh. 9:7).° The
Horites have been rediscovered by archeology during the past
three decades, as the Hittites were during the last seventy-five
years, and they turn out to have been one of the most important
peoples of Western Asia for more than a millennium and a half
and to have played a decisive role as intermediaries of culture
835. A. B. Mercer, The Tell El-Amarna Tablets (Toronto, 1939), Vol. II, p. 287,
line 25, p. 711
84 Mercer, op. cit., p. 711. Cf. A. Jirku, Orientalistische Literaturzeitung (1924, 5),
pp. 252f.
35 In Old Testament Commentary, p. 138.
36 Ludwig Koehler, W. Baumgartner, Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti Libros (Grand
Rapids, 1951), p. 65.
87 Cf. Albright, in Old Testament Commentary, p. 139. In Hebrew there was scarcely
any difference in appearance between “r” and “vy” (w) for many centuries.
94, ARCHEOLOGY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT
between the Babylonians in the east and the Hittites and

Canaanites in the west.*®
The Arkite is represented by the present-day Tell Arka,
about eighty miles north of Sidon at the foot of Lebanon. Ar-
kantu mentioned by Thutmose III (fifteenth century B.c.) may
be the same place. It was called Irkata in the Amarna Tablets
and was captured by Tiglathpileser III of Assyria in 138° Be.
The Sinite is also illustrated by the monuments. Sin in north-
ern Phoenicia (Assyrian Siannu) is mentioned by Tiglathpileser
III as a city on the seacoast.*® The Arvadite denotes the inhabi-
tants of Arvad about twenty-five miles north of Arka, the most
northerly of the great Phoenician towns. It occurs as Arwada
in the Amarna Letters.*? It is also mentioned frequently in the
annals of the Assyrian kings. The Semarite refers to the people
of the city-fortress of Simura (Simuros) six miles south of Arvad,
a place also mentioned very frequently in the Amarna corre-
spondence as Sumur.*?
The Hamathite represents the inhabitants of the city-state of
Hamath on the Orontes, the Epiphaneia of the Greek period,
now Hama, often mentioned in the Old Testament and in the
Egyptian and Assyrian monuments. The excavation of the city
by Harold Ingholt and a Danish expedition (1932-1939) brought
to light a checkered history and revealed particularly the Hittite
character of the earlier site as shown by its yield of large num-
bers of Hittite inscriptions.
LITERATURE ON EARLY EMPIRES
Garstang, John, The Land of the Hittites (London, 1910).
Breasted, James Henry, A History of Egypt (New York, 1912).
Rogers, Robert William, 4 History of Babylonia and Assyria (New York,
1915), 2 vols.
ei Morris, The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria (New York,
1915)c
Bury, J. B., S. A. Cook, and others, editors, The Cambridge Ancient
History (1923-1939), 12 vols.
Olmstead, A. T., History of Assyria (New York, 1923).
es H., The Hittites, The Story of a Forgotten Empire (rev. ed.;
Goetze, Albrecht, Hethiter, Churriter und Assyrer (1936).

38 For a recent discussion of the Horites (Hurrians) see G. Contenau in Vigouroux’s
Dictionnaire de la Bible (Paris, 1949), supplement L. Pirot, Vol. IV, pp. 127-138.
Vol. I, secs: 770; 772, 815.
40 Cf. Mercer, op. cit., Vol. Il, p. 893 for references.
41 [bid., see p. 899 for references.
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CuaptTer VIII
SEMITES AND BABEL BUILDERS
The Semitic peoples occupied such a conspicuous place in

southwestern Asia and played such a prominent role in the
history of redemption that they claim special attention in the
Table of the Nations. Occupying the general territory south
of the Taurus range and the country of Armenia and the region
west of modern Iran, they constitute a definite linguistic group
and to some extent a racial unit.
In the east, Semites spoke Akkadian (Babylonian and As-
syrian); in the north, Aramaic and Syriac; in the northwest,
Phoenician, Ugaritic, Hebrew and Moabite; in the south, Arabic,
Minaean, Sabaean and Ethiopic.
I. THe Semitic NaTIons
The special importance of the sons of Shem in redemptive
history is shown by the double introduction to that section of
the Table of the Nations which deals with their genealogy and
by the peculiarly solemn and emphatic tone of the language in
this passage (Gen. 10:21, 22). Curiously enough this portion of
the politico-geographical table offers more archeologically ob-
scure names than the other two.
Shem is said to be “the father of all the children of Eber”
(v.21). This expression includes, of course, all the Arabian
tribes (vv. 25-30), as well as the descendants of Abraham, that
is, Israelites (11:16-26), Ishmaelites, Midianites (25:2) and
Edomites. It is evident, however, that the writer has his own
nation in the focus of interest as being in the line of the Promised
Redeemer. Eber, the ancestor of the Hebrews, means “the other
side, across,” and is usually explained as denoting those who
have come from “the other side of the River (the Euphrates),”
that is, from Haran (Josh. 24:2,3). The connection, if any, of
the Hebrews with the Habiru (‘Apiru), who play a very curi-
96
SEMITES AND BABEL BUILDERS 97
ous role in cuneiform documents of the nineteenth and eigh-

teenth centuries as well as in Nuzian, Hittite and Amarna docu-
ments of the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries, still remains
obscure.
1. The Descendants of Shem. Elam is Susiana, the land and
a people east of Babylonia, of which the capital was Susa (He-
brew, Shushan, Neh. 1:1; Esth. 2:8; 3:15; etc.), which has been
excavated and whose earliest occupational levels go back to
about 4,000 s.c. It was still a great city in the twelfth century
A.D. It was explored by a French expedition 1884-1886. There
Jacques de Morgan discovered the Code of Hammurabi in 1901.
The Elamites racially were distinct from the Semites, but in
very early times Elam was peopled by Semitic stock; however,
later non-Semitic Elamites gained mastery over the country.”
Asshur is the great nation of the Assyrians. They were Semites,
and their language belongs to the eastern branch of the same
Semitic family to which Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic and Phoe-
nician belong in the west and Arabic and Ethiopic belong in
the south. Asshur and Nineveh were founded by Hamites (Gen.
10:11), but Semites who early settled in the Tigris-Euphrates
Valley finally conquered the whole country.
Arpachshad remains archeologically enigmatic. It was long
identified with the mountainous country and people in the upper
Zab River north and northeast of Nineveh, called by the Greek
geographers Arrapachitis.
Lud is believed to denote the Lydians, occupying, however,
a wider territory than Lydia in western Asia Minor. The Semitic
connection seems established by a dynasty of Akkadian princes
of Asshur, which rose to power after the fall of Ur (c. 2000 B. c.)
and founded colonies in west Asia Minor. From the descendants
of these colonists have come the Cappadocian Tablets (c. 1920-
1870 B. c.), which consist of several thousand business documents
and letters, written in Old Assyrian and forming part of the
commercial archives of the Assyrian merchant colony at Kanish
(modern Kul-tepe) in eastern Asia Minor.? According to Her-
odotus (1:7), the first king of these colonists was a son of Ninus
and a grandson of Belus, that is, he was descended from the
Assyrians.
Aram is the name of the great Aramaean people who spread
lw. F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore, 1940), pp. 182f.
25. R. Driver, The Book of Genesis (London, 1904), p. 128,
widely in Syria and Mesopotamia. Their prominent role in the

Old Testament is well illustrated by the monuments. Abraham
migrated to Palestine from the region around Haran in “Aram
of the two Rivers,” in the region of the Habur River in north-
eastern Mesopotamia. Aram-Damascus became a powerful seat
of Aramaean strength and a dread foe of Israel from about 900
to 750 s.c. Aramaean states such as Zobah, Maacah, Geshur
and Beth-rehob were conquered by David.
The Aramaic tongue eventually became the international lan-
guage of trade and diplomacy (II Kings 18:26). The Persian
Empire employed Aramaic as a lingua franca in the administra-
tion of its Semitic territories from the East to Egypt. The of-
ficial documents in the Book of Ezra appear in Aramaic, and
Hebrew rapidly gave way to Aramaic after the close of the
canonical period of the Old Testament Scriptures.
2. The Descendants of Aram. Uz is a land and its people
located somewhere in the Syrian desert between the latitudes
of Damascus on the north and Edom on the south. The land
is best remembered as the home of Job (1:1), who was exposed
to attacks by the Chaldeans and the Sabeans (1:15-17). In
Jeremiah’s day, Edomites dwelt there (Lam. 4:21).
Hul and Gether are unknown. Mash is obscure, but evidently
refers to some part of the great Syro-Arabian desert, as mat
(country of )Mash is used in this sense in the Assyrian records.*
3. The Descendants of Arpachshad. Shelah is listed as the
son of Arpachshad, who begat Eber, the progenitor of the He-
brews through his son Peleg and of thirteen Arabian tribes
through Joktan (Arabia). .
4. The Descendants of Joktan. Almodad and Sheleph are un-
certain. Nearly all the names of the tribal descendants of Joktan
are archaic, not having hitherto been found in the inscriptions
of the first millennium from south Arabia. “Moreover,” says
Albright, “several of the names belong to types known as per-
sonal names only in the early second millennium, though they
may have continued as tribal names for many centuries there-
after.”®
Hazarmaveth occurs in the Sabaean inscriptions, and is now
Hadramaut, a district in south Arabia, somewhat east of Aden.
4Cf., Driver, op. cit., pp. 129f.
5w. F. Albright, “The Old Testament and Archeology,” in Old Testament Commentary
(Philadelphia, 1948), p. 139,
Strabo names it as one of the four chief tribes of south Arabia.®

Jerah, Hadoram and Diklah are unidentified. Obal is uncertain,
and Abimael is of a genuine Sabaean type, but otherwise un-
known.
Sheba is often mentioned in the Old Testament as a distant
people of great wealth, trading in gold, frankincense, precious
stones and perfumes (I Kings 10:1, 2, 10; Jer. 6:20; Ezek. 27:22;
Isa. 60:6; Ps. 72:10). Sabaean inscriptions which have been
discovered show that these people were a settled and highly
civilized people of southwest Arabia with their capital at Mari-
aba (Saba) about two hundred miles north of modern Aden.
Ophir is prominent in the Old Testament as a region cele-
brated for its gold (Job 22:24; Ps. 45:9; Isa. 13:12) and as the
distant place to which King Solomon and Hiram of Tyre sent
their navy from Ezion-geber (I Kings 9:28) to fetch almug
trees, gold, silver, ivory and other commodities. However, the
location of Ophir is quite uncertain. It is placed variously in
India and on the African coast.
Havilah is evidently different from that of verse 7. If the
two are the same, however, the Hamites held this country
previous to its possession by the Semitic Joktanites.
II. THe Baset BumLDERS
If the brief account of post-diluvian mankind (Gen. 9:18-
10:32) was to be sufficiently complete for its purpose in the
history of human redemption, it had to deal with all the major
factors that help to explain the present state of the world. The
origin and distribution of the various nations of antiquity having
been outlined and prefaced with a prophetic survey of the gen-
eral moral relation of these peoples to God’s purposes of re-
demption, one necessary consideration remains: How and why
did the many languages and dialects that are found in the
world originate? When this item of essential background ma-
terial is disposed of, the author of Genesis will be free to
leave the general history of mankind, which for his purpose
must of necessity be only incidental, and concentrate on the
line of redemptive promise in Shem.
1. The Confusion of Tongues. It is evident that it was the
author’s intention all along to treat this subject, as appears from
Genesis 10:25, where in connection with Peleg, the son of Eber,
it is noted that “in his day the earth was divided.” This division
6 XVI, 4, 2,
of the earth into different nations of various languages and dia-

lects is recounted in Chapter 11, and chronologically is to be
laced before the distribution of the nations. The reason it is
placed after this event is that its insertion before the Table of
Nations would have obscured the introduction to that Table
(Gen. 9:18-27) and its insertion within the Table itself would
have marred its obvious symmetry.
If all the inhabitants of the post-diluvian world are descend-
ants of Noah, they must of necessity have possessed one and
the same language. The writer of Genesis clearly sets forth this
fact. “And the whole earth was of one language and one speech”
(Gen. 11:1). Noah’s family and their descendants are, more-
over, pictured as moving nomadically eastward, till “they found
a plain in the land of Shinar; and . . . dwelt there” (Gen. 11:2).
Since “eastward” includes southeastward, and as the alluvial
plain of Babylonia (Shinar) lay southeast of “the mountains of
Ararat” (Gen. 8:4) in Armenia, it was natural for these Bedouins
to settle down in “the rich lowlands,” famous in antiquity for
their extreme fertility, “which lent themselves admirably to ir-
rigation.”?
After perhaps more than a century after their settlement in
Babylonia, which perhaps occurred prior to 4,000 B.c., the
human race had multiplied sufficiently and developed industries
and arts to such a degree as to contemplate building a city, and
especially a tower whose top should reach “unto heaven” (Gen.
11:4). The phrase “a tower (with) its top in heaven” is not
mere hyperbole, but an expression of the pride and rebellion
manifested by the Babel-builders. Both Babylonian and Assyrian
kings greatly prided themselves upon the height of their temples
and boasted of having made their tops as high as heaven.®
Defiance of divine authority not only appears in the foolish
imagination of the Babel-builders that heaven as a vault might
be reached (cf. Isa. 14:12-14), at least by a bold effort, but it
is also patent in their desire for self-glory and their striving for
a human unity to take the place of the oneness they had forfeited
in abandoning the fear of God. “. . . And let us make us a
name; lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole
earth” (Gen. 11:4). They desired to make themselves famous
by their own works. No effort must be spared. If stones are not
7 Madeleine S. and J. Lane Miller, Encyclopedia of Bible Life (New York, 1944), p> 421.
8 Morris Jastrow, Religion of Assyria and Babylonia, p. 613; George L. Robinson, The
Bearing of Archeology on the Old Testament (New York, 1941), p. 82.
available, they must make mud bricks. The city and its famous
tower were to form the center of their self-glorifying enterprise,
the rallying point in a godless confederacy that would hold man-
kind together. The divine command had been to scatter: “Be
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth’ (Gen. 9:1).
Their human determination was to concentrate and strengthen
themselves in opposition to God’s program.
Such rebellion against divine authority and assumption of
imperial power, which belongs to God alone, is the spirit of
idolatry. This element, so abundantly illustrated in the grossly
polytheistic cuneiform literature of the ancient pre-Semitic in-
habitants of lower Babylonia, the Sumerians and their later
Semitic successors, came in with the Babel-builders (Josh. 24:2)
and became thereafter an essential feature not only of historical
Babylon, but of that of which the historical is a type — political
and religious Babylon as an evil system, figuring so prominently
throughout Scripture (cf. Rev. 17-18).
Such apostasy of early post-diluvian man demanded divine
judgment. This took the form of that which would disrupt the
plans of the Babel-builders and effect their dissemination over
the face of the earth —the confusion of their language. Since
this was a divine act and the details of how it was accomplished
are not given, it is futile to speculate. It seems reasonable to
conclude, however, that the Shemites, Japhethites and Hamites,
who, like the tribes of Israel in the wilderness, must have pre-
served their identity, were each either given a new and distinct
language or languages, or each left in utter confusion to scatter
immediately and begin the laborious process of developing their
own tongue with its dialectal variations.
It is at least unwarranted to conclude with S. R. Driver that
the Biblical narrative
can contain no scientific or historically true account of the origin of
different languages . . . for the narrative, while explaining ostensibly
the diversity of languages, offers no explanation of the diversity of
races. And yet diversity of language .. . is dependent upon diversity
of race.®
Chapter 10, dealing with diversity of races, cannot be sepa-
rated from Chapter 11. The events of Chapter 11:1-9 are very
much earlier than critics commonly suppose and go back to
the earliest nomadic and sedentary civilization of Babylonia far
beyond 2501 8. c. (Septuagint 3066 8. c.), which Driver alleges
9 Op. cit., p. 133.
is the Biblical date of the Flood and rightly protests that pre-
Semitic Sumerian, Babylonian and Egyptian are three distinct
languages that antedate this period.”
But does the Hebrew Bible place the Flood at 2501 8.c. or
thereabouts? Only if the genealogies of Genesis 5 and ll are
used unwarrantedly for chronological purposes. These genealo-
gies are obviously abbreviated and cannot be used to calculate
either the age of the human race or the time of the Flood."
The Deluge certainly took place long before 4,000 3. c., and the
ancient scene depicted in Genesis 11:1-9 doubtlessly belongs to
a period not more than a century and a half after that world-
engulfing event.
It may be added that the Biblical account of the origin of
eee in the confusion of tongues at Babel remains thus far
without parallel in ancient cuneiform literature. Alleged parallels
are all much later, after the close of the Old Testament period,
and are hence valueless.” However, “since Babylon was prob-
ably one of the most polyglot cities in the world in most periods
of its history, the localization of the confusion of languages there
is very effective.”** Incidentally, and this is important from an
archeological standpoint, Genesis 11 correctly places the cradle
of civilization in Mesopotamia rather than in other known early
centers of culture, such as Egypt.
2. The Tower of Babel. The structure which the Babel-
builders attempted to erect and which became the symbol of
their God-defying disobedience and pride is brightly illuminated
by Mesopotamian buildings, particularly the sacred temple-towers
called ziggurats. The Assyrian-Babylonian word ziqquratu de-
notes a “pinnacle” or “mountain top,” and the ziggurats were
“gigantic artificial mountains of sun-dried bricks.”'* The oldest
recovered ziggurat is that at ancient Uruk, Biblical Erech (Gen.
10:10), modern Warka,” dating from the latter part of the fourth
century B.C.
But it must be carefully noted that nothing in the Biblical
10 Ibid.
11 See the author’s discussion, Introductory Guide to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids,
1951), pp. 192-194.
12 Cf. Alfred Jeremias, The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient East (New York,
1911), Vol. I, pp. 310-313.
138 Ww. F. Albright, “Recent Discoveries in Bible Lands,” in Young’s Analytical Con-
cordance (20th ed.; New York, 1936), p. 25.
14 Thorkild Jacobsen in The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man by H. and H. A.
Frankfort, John A. Wilson, Thorkild Jacobsen and W. A. Irwin (Chicago, 1946), po2gs
15 Jack Finegan, Light From the Ancient Past (Princeton, 1946), p. 19f,
SEMITES AND BaBEL BurmLpERS 103
narrative indicates that the tower described in Genesis 11:4 was

a temple-tower. It is not called a ziqquratu but simply a “tower”
(migdal).
Besides everything seems to indicate that this is the first tower ever
attempted. It would, then, seem as though all these later towers,
in spite of the divine judgment upon the first, are imitations of the
first to an extent; but at the same time they appear to constitute an
attempt to deflect any possibility of divine punishment by consecrating
them to the guardian divinity of the city.18
At Ur, the birthplace of Abram, that divinity was Nannar, the
moon god, and his most sacred shrine was located on the top-
most stage.’’ At Borsippa (Birs-Nimrud) some ten miles south-
west of Babylon, the divinity was Nebo, the god of knowledge
and literature.
As a-tower, later as a temple-tower, the ziggurat spread over
Babylonia and became a characteristic feature of temple archi-
tecture in Mesopotamia, so that the locations of more than two
dozen of such structures are known today. Variegated in color
and built in stages, steplike, the highest ziggurat was seven
stories. The more common form was three stories in height.
It was not every temple which had one of these towers, ziggurats, or
pinnacles, as they were called, but there were enough of them to be
in striking evidence all over the Babylonian plain, and their remains
still stand, visible oftentimes almost a day’s journey away, great
masses of unburned brick, as a rule.1®
The ziggurat at Uruk was a vast mass of clay, stamped down
hard and buttressed on the outside with layers of brick and
asphalt. Similar structures at Ur, Babylon, Borsippa and other
Mesopotamian sites furnish background for the words of the
ancient Babel-builders as well as emphasize the contrast between
the building methods familiar to the Israelites on the rocky
central plateau of Palestine and those in use in the stoneless
alluvial plain of Babylonia:
Come, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had
brick for stone, and slime [bitumen] had they for mortar. And they
said, Come, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach
unto heaven, and let us make us a name; lest we be scattered abroad
upon the face of the whole earth (Gen. 11:3, 4).
It was, as already noted, in godless opposition to the divine
command to “replenish the earth” that the defiant Babel-builders
chose to settle down in the fertile alluvial plain of the lower
16H. C. Leupold, Exposition of Genesis (Grand Rapids, 1950), Vol. I, p. 385,
17, Leonard Woolley, Abraham (London, 1936), p. 81.
18 John Peters, Bible and Spade (Edinburgh, 1922), p. 74.
Tigris-Euphrates basin and build up a self-glorifying civilization

affording ease and wealth. Sir Leonard Woolley, however, inter-
prets their attitude as one of “piety,” which, he insists, “is in-
deed misrepresented as a threat against the gods — but the mis-
representation,” he adds, “is eloquent, for it rests on the mis-
understanding of the name of the Babylonian ziggurat, ‘the link
between earth and heaven.’ ”?®
But the Genesis account neither misrepresents the attitude of
the tower-builders nor misunderstands es name of the tower,
for the simple reason that the tower portrayed was not a later
development — a temple-tower or “high place” called “the hill
of heaven” or “the mountain of God, on whose topmost stage
the shrine and the image of the city’s patron deity was wor-
shiped. It was, rather, as indicated, the first tower attempted,
and, as such, the symbol of man’s revolt ages God and his
determination to promote and glorify himself. The polytheistic
use of later towers, doubtless copied after it, was the result
of a more complete apostasy and the outworking of that pride
and rebellion against God so manifest in the spirit that prompted |
the original Mesopotamian tower.
LITERATURE ON THE BABYLONIAN ZIGGURAT
(New York, 1911), Vol. I, pp. 303-313.
Gressmann, Hugo, The Tower of Babel (1928).
Woolley, C. L., The Sumerians (Oxford, 1928), pp. 132, 135, 141f., 177.
, Ur of the Chaldees (New York, 1930), pp. 112-145.
, Abraham: Recent Discoveries and Hebrew Origins (London,
1936), pp. 80-117.
Pinches, T. G., “Tower of Babel” in International Standard Bible En-
cyclopedia (1939), Vol. I, pp. 355-358.
Lenzen, H. J., Die Entwicklung der Zikurrat (Leipzig, 1942).
Parrot, André, Ziggurats et Tour de Babel (Paris, 1949).
19 Op. cit., p. 163.

CHAPTER IX
ABRAHAM AND HIS AGE
The figure of Abraham emerges from the ancient Mesopo-

tamian world of his time with such remarkable vividness and
assumes a role of such importance in the history of redemption
that he is not overshadowed by even Moses, the great emanci-
pator and lawgiver of Israel. Throughout the Old Testament and
especially in the New Testament the name of Abraham stands
for the representative man of faith (cf. Rom. 4:1-25). Has the
Bible left the date of Abraham’s life completely uncertain or
may he be placed rather precisely in the general historical en-
vironment in which he lived?
I. ABRAHAM IN THE FRAME OF CONTEMPORARY HISTORY
Despite the discovery of numerous bodies of inscriptional
material which illuminate the patriarchal age, there has, as yet,
turned up no decisive evidence to establish a precise link in the
lives of the patriarchs with extra-Biblical history. As a result,
critics who do not take the figures underlying the Biblical
chronology seriously, at least as they affect this matter, regard
the dates of the patriarchal period as extremely flexible, and
place Abraham’s migration from Ur anywhere from 1900 to
1750 s.c., and the patriarchal period itself most probably be-
tween 1750 and 1500 s.c.t On the other hand, the Biblical
chronology, which has neither been found correct or incorrect
by archeology, does enable the date of the patriarchal age to
be fixed within fairly precise limits.
1. The Biblical Date of Abraham’s Migration from Ur. Ac-
cording to scattered chronological notices given mainly in the
books of Genesis and Exodus Abraham left Mesopotamia (Ha-
ran) on his way to Palestine 645 years before the Israelites left
1Cf, W. F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore, 1940), p. 150.
105
Egypt. This figure is made up of the actual patriarchal period

consisting of 215 years, plus the Egyptian sojourn lasting 430
years.
The period of 215 years as
the duration of the actual patri-
archal period in Palestine is ar-
rived at from the following Bib-
lical data. According to Genesis
KKK OS
12:4, Abraham was seventy-five
years old when he left Haran,
and according to Genesis 21:5
“one hundred years old, when his
son Isaac was born unto him.”
Since Isaac was “sixty years old”
when Jacob was born (Gen. 25:
26 ) and Jacob was “a hundred Pottery from Tell el-Obeid near Abrar
and thirty years” old when he 2*45.ci,."" (Gourtesy
"of the“Musou,
stood before the Pharaoh of University of Pennsylvania.)
Egypt (Gen. 47:9), the total is to be computed by adding 25

years for Abraham, 60 years for Isaac, and 130 years for Jacob,
giving 215 years as the length of the period from Abraham's
arrival in the country till Jacob’s exit from it.
According to Exodus 12:40,41 the entire period of Israel's
sojourn in Egypt was 430 years.
Now the time that the children of Israel dwelt in Egypt was four
hundred and thirty years. And it came to pass at the end of four
hundred and thirty years, even in the self-same day it came to pass,
that all the hosts of Jehovah went out from. the land of Egypt.
However, the Septuagint reading of Exodus 12:40 allows only
215 years for the Egyptian sojourn. “Now the time that the
children of Israel dwelt in Egypt and in the land of Canaan
was 430 years.” But the Masoretic Text is the reliable one and
not the Septuagint tradition, as is plain from the emphatic lan-
guage of Exodus 12:41 and the round number (or actual period
when oppression first began) of 400 years given in Genesis 15:13
and Acts 7:6.
If we thus accept the Biblical figures as they stand, the pa-
triarchs spent 215 years in Canaan and the Israelites 430 years
in Egypt. Abraham, accordingly, entered Canaan 645 years be-
fore the Exodus. Further, accepting the synchronism of I Kings
6:1 which places the Exodus 480 years before the fourth year
of Solomon’s reign (c.961 3.c.) the date of the Exodus is
HU
tut
Upper: Remains of ziggurat at Ur, showing northeast face with central stairway.
(Courtesy Museum, Univ. of Penn.)
Center: Model of a late Babylon.an ziggurat or temple tower which stood at Babylon
at the time of Nebuchadnezzar II. These ancient Mesopotamian structures, like the
much older one at Ur and Uruk (Erech. Gen. 10:10), apparently were later de
velopments of the earlier tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9). (Courtesy Oriental Institute,
Univ. of Chicago.)
Lower left: Type of idol from Nuzu. ‘The teraphim Rachel stole from Laban (Gen. 81:19,
30-35) were objects of this sort. (Courtesy The Biblical Archeologist.)
Lower right: An adoption tablet from ancient Nuzu (ca. 1500-1400 B.C.). The Nuzu
tablets are important in illustrating customs that were still in vogue in the Near East
since patriarchal days. (Courtesy Oriental Institute, Univ. of Chicago.)
Upper left: Lamgi-Mari, one of the early kings of Mari on the middle Euphrates.
(Courtesy M. Andre Parrot, Palais du Louvre, Paris.)
Upper right: Goddess with flowing vase, worshiped in the palace at Mari. (From
Syria [1937] plate XIII. Courtesy M. Andre Parrot, Palais du Louvre, Paris.)
Lower left: An Assyrian Demon (rear view). The ancient Semitic world was popu-
lated with these creatures, who were thought of as causing every conceivable kind of
trouble. Cuneiform literature dealing with omens, charms and incantations against
these evil spirits abounds. (Courtesy Oriental Institute, Univ. of Chicago.)
Lower right: An Assyrian Demon (front view). This bronze representation of the demon
Pazuzu was made to insure the efficacy of a charm or incantation: uttered against
his baneful activity as “the evil spirit of the southwest wind.’’ (Courtesy Oriental
Institute, Univ. of Chicago.)
ABRAHAM AND His AGE 107
1441 B.c.? Adding 645 to 1441, the date 2086 B. c. marks Abra-
ham’s entrance into Canaan, and 2161 8. c. the date of his birth,
since he was seventy-five years old when he left Haran for
Canaan (Gen. 12:4). The patriarchal period, then, would ex-
tend from 2086 B. c. to 1871 B. c. and the Egyptian sojourn from
1871 to 1441 B.c.
The Biblical chronology would thus place Abraham, insofar
as his early Mesopotamian connections are concerned, under the
new Sumero-Akkadian empire of Ur-Nammu, the founder of the
famous third dynasty of Ur (c. 2135-2025 s.c.), who took the
new title “King of Sumer and Akkad,” and whose mightiest work
was the erection of the great ziggurat at Ur, which is happily
the best preserved of all monuments of this type and therefore
best fitted to give an impression of their character. The Hebrew
patriarch accordingly would have emigrated from the famous
city when it was just entering the heyday of its power and
prestige under a strong dynasty that lasted over a century.* He
would, moreover, be leaving Haran for Canaan when his native
city had reached the height of its influence in southern Meso-
potamia. The patriarchal age in Palestine would, on the other
hand, witness numerous smaller Elamite and Amorite states in
Mesopotamia with Elamite princes at Isin and Larsa, and Am-
orites at Eshnunna, who between 2100 and 1800 s.c. took over
the heritage of the Third Dynasty of Ur after its collapse, and
the destruction of the capital city, Ur.*
As far as Egypt is concerned the patriarchal period in Palestine
was coeval with the strong Middle Kingdom in Egypt under
the twelfth dynasty (2000-1780 3.c.). Joseph became prime
minister of, and Jacob stood before, one of the powerful pha-
raohs of this dynasty (Amenemes I-IV or Senwosret I-III).
Israel, moreover, was in Egypt during the Hyksos period of for-
eign domination (1780-1546 B.c.), was oppressed by the great
Thutmose III (1482-1450 3.c.) of the New Kingdom (eight-
eenth dynasty) and quitted the country under Amenhotep II
(1450-1425 B.c.).°
2. Ur in the Abrahamic Era. The Old Testament is quite clear
2 Or taking Albright’s date of 1290 3. c. for the Exodus (op. cit., pp. 194f., which, how-
ever, disregards I Kings 6:1), the date 1935 3.c. is the date of Abraham’s entrance into
Palestine. ;
8 Cf. Albright, op. cét., p. 108; J. Finegan, Light From the Ancient Past (Princeton,
1946), pp. 42f.
4 Cf. Albright, op. cit. p. 109; Finegan, op. cit., p. 45.
5 Steindorf and Seele’s dates, See When Egypt Ruled the East (Chicago, 1942), p. 274.
in its statement that Abraham’s home was originally in lower

Mesopotamia, specifically in the city of Ur and that he subse-
quently emigrated to Haran in upper Mesopotamia on his way
to Canaan (Gen. 11:28-31; 12:1-4; 15:7; Neh. 9:7). Singularly
enough Abraham’s native city is referred to not simply as Ur
in the Old Testament (Gen. 11:31, etc.) but “Ur of the Chaldees
[Chaldeans].” The qualifying phrase “of the Chaldeans” is not
an anachronism as many critics hold,® but as in the case of
numerous archaic place names, is a later scribal gloss to explain
to a subsequent age, when Ur and its location had utterly per-
ished, that the city was located in southern Babylonia. There
after 1000 B. c. the race of the Chaldeans became dominant and
eventually established the Neo-Babylonian or Chaldean Empire,
and it was, of course, quite natural for the Hebrew scribe to
define the then incomprehensible foreign name by an appella-
tion customary in his own day.
The polytheistic eastern ancestry of the Hebrews is indicated
in Joshua 24:2: “Your fathers dwelt of old time beyond the
River, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of
Nahor: and they served other gods.” This idolatrous environ-
ment out of which the Hebrew patriarchs came has been brightly
illuminated by the excavations of Ur. Until 1854 this site was
completely unknown, as far as being the location of the ancient
city of Ur was concerned. The Arabs called it al Muqayyar, “the
mound of bitumen.” In that year J. E. Taylor conducted some
simple excavations which yielded cuneiform cylinders stating
that Nabonidus of Babylon (556-539 B.c.) had there restored
the ziggurat of Ur Nammu. Further excavations by H. R. Hall
in 1918, and notably by C. L. Woolley (1922-1934) have made
Ur one of the best-known ancient sites of southern Babylonia
and have revealed that it was one of the largest and wealthiest
cities of that area, particularly at the time Biblical chronology
mee Abraham quitted it in obedience to the divine com-
mand.
The ziggurat of Ur-Nammu of Abraham’s day was probably
erected on top of a smaller structure which may have been as
old as the reign of Mes-Anne-pada of the First Dynasty of Ur
(c. 2800-c. 2600 B. c.),” but its upper part was the work of Na-
bonidus. The bulk of the great artificial mountain, however, had
6 Cf. Finegan, op. cit., p. 57, note 28. The fourteenth chapter of Genesis (vy. 2, 3, 7, 8,
17) offers a good example of scribal glosses to explain archaic place names.
7 Finegan, op. cit., pp. 33, 43.
been constructed by Ur-Nammu, and his name and title were

discovered stamped on the bricks. The tower was a solid mass
of brickwork, 200 feet long, 150 feet wide and about 70 feet
high. The facing, covering the inner core of unbaked brick,
consisted of baked brick set in bitumen, eight feet in thickness.
The ziggurat was thus a mountain of brickwork, a “high place”
or artificial hill made by men who had once worshiped their
gods on mountain tops. Finding nothing of the sort in this flat
alluvial plain, they had set to work to build one. They called
it “the hill of heaven” or the “mountain of God.” They planted
trees and shrubs on its stages, in imitation of the real hills of
their native home. The whole design was a masterpiece, the
lines of the walls being built on calculated curves to give the
appearance of lightness and strength.
Originally the shrine of Nannar, the moon god, stood on the
uppermost stage, for Ur was dedicated to this deity. Numerous
other gods were worshiped in Babylonia, but at Ur Nannar was
supreme. Other deities might have their temples, but at Ur
a whole quarter of the city was set apart for him.’ He was
called “the Exalted Lord,” “the Crown of Heaven and Earth,”
“the Beautiful Lord who Shines in Heaven,” and similar epithets.
The city walls enclosed a rough oval comprising an area some
two and a half miles in circuit. Within this tract, in the north-
west part, was a second enclosure, consisting of a rectangular
space about four hundred yards in length and approximately
two hundred yards in width. This was the temenos or sacred
area of Nannar.’ Originally it was a platform raised above the
general level of the town. But gradually it had been dwarfed
by the constant rise of the residential district, where dilapida-
tion and reconstruction upon preceding debris and ruins were
much more common than in the carefully kept temple enclosure.
The great wall that encircled the sacred precinct rose high
above its surroundings and set off the temenos as a holy place.
The whole city was somewhat like a medieval castle. The old
wall was like the outer bailey, and the temenos, the inner bailey.
Inside of this, in the northwest corner, was the keep, the last
line of defense in times of disaster. There arose a higher plat-
form, girded by a yet more massive double wall, whose intra-
8 Cf. C. L. Woolley, Abraham: Recent Discoveries and Hebrew Origins (London, 1936),
pp. 72-117.
9 Ibid. p. 79.
mural chambers were stocked with weapons of defense and whose

flat top served as a vantage point for its last-ditch defenders.
Nannar was not only the god of Ur, but also its king. So it
Ur in the Abrahamic Age, showing Temenos area and harbors of the busy em-
porium on the Euphrates River. (From James Breasted’s Ancient Times, courtesy of
Ginn and Co.)
was fitting that his house should be the city’s ultimate strong-
hold. It was indeed designed as an inner fortress, but it was
nonetheless the temple of the moon god. Moreover, the walled
platform or temenos was the moon god’s terrace and on it stood
also the ziggurat, the chief splendor of the city and the center
of its cult. On its uppermost stage was the shrine of Nannar

containing the statue of the god and his bedchamber. Upon
this ziggurat Abraham often looked as later Joseph gazed upon
the mighty pyramids of Egypt.
In front of the ziggurat, set between its stairways, were twin
temples, the day houses of the moon god and his consort, the
goddess Nin-Gal, in which were the shrines of the lesser gods
who formed their retinue.’ Abutting these were the sacred
kitchens where the daily food of the gods, offered in connection
with their worship, was prepared.
In front of the ziggurat and on a lower level was a large open
court surrounded by many chambers, which was a sort of market
place where the populace of the city and surrounding country
brought their gifts and paid their taxes to the moon god, for
Nannar was the great landlord of his people. He owned their
farms, their shops and their wealth. Their gifts and paynients
were in kind, and were recorded on wet clay tablets and de-
posited in the archives of the temple.
The ziggurat and the open court at its base, however. did
not taka up all the area of the temenos. On one side of the
court arose another temple called “The House of Great Plenty.”
This was the harem, as it were, of the moon god. Here in twin
shrines, one devoted to Nannar and the other to his spouse,
a secret ritual was conducted befitting the privacy of a harem.
In adjacent apartments were housed the priestess-prostitutes. The
House of Great Plenty faced on the Sacred Way, a broad thor-
oughfare running through the temenos from northeast to south-
east.
The Sumerian temple was much more than a place of wor-
ship. The sacred area of Ur with its multitudinous activities
was like a monastery: of the Middle Ages. Arranged around a
building called “The Great House of Tablets” were factories,
workshops and offices. In a theocratic state the moon god was
king as well as god. He needed civil servants as well as priests.
Much of the activity in the temenos was devoted to the secular
business of the priesthood and doubtless the worship of Nannar
at Ur, like the worship of Caesar Augustus at Rome, was a
demonstration of loyalty to the state rather than the expression
of religious need. But that did not diminish its importance. “We
have to think of Ur in Abraham’s time as dominated by a cult
10 Jbid., p. 82. Cf. Ur Excavations, Vol. V: The Ziggurat and Its Surroundings, 1939.
shy ARCHEOLOGY AND THE OLp TESTAMENT
the essence of which was its material magnificence, a cult ab-

solutely inseparable from the city.”™
Il. ABRAHAM AT HARAN AND IN CANAAN
Despite the remarkable discoveries made in the course of the
systematic excavations at Ur, especially the royal tombs,”” no
direct evidence has been found of Abraham’s residence there,
and such evidence could scarcely be expected, since Ur was a
very large city and Terah and his sons inconspicuous citizens
who emigrated from it. However, the case is quite different in
the region of Haran to which the patriarch went. In this region
of northwest Mesopotamia there is unmistakable evidence of
the extended Hebrew residence in the vicinity of the Balikh
and Habur Rivers, two tributaries of the Euphrates east of the
great bend south of ancient Carchemish.
1. Abraham’s Sojourn at Haran. The town of Haran (Gen.
11:31; 12:5) is still in existence on the Balikh River sixty miles
west of Tell Halaf. It was a flourishing city in the nineteenth
and eighteenth centuries B.c., as is known from frequent refer-
ences to it in cuneiform sources.’* The name appears in Assyrian
documents as Harranu (“road”) likely because here the trade
route from Damascus joined the highway from Nineveh to
Carchemish. Singularly enough, like Ur, Abram’s birthplace, it
was also the seat of worship of the moon god from very ancient
times. Whether Terah chose Haran as a place to settle because
he had not made a clean break with the idolatry of his youth
or perhaps for commercial reasons, can, of course, only be sur-
mised.
The city of Nahor, which was Rebekah’s home (Gen. 24:10),
occurs often as Nakhur in the Mari tablets, discovered in 1935
and belonging to the eighteenth century B.c. To judge from the
Mari references and Assyrian records of the seventh century B.c.,
where Nahor occurs as Til-Nakhiri (“the Mound of Nahor”),
it seems to have been located in the Balikh Valley below Haran."
Beside the definite location of the partriarchal cities Haran and
Nahor in northwestern Mesopotamia, hardly less clear indica-
tions of Hebrew residence in this region appear in the names
of Abraham’s forefathers, which correspond to the names of
towns near Haran: Serug (Assyrian Sarugi), Nahor, and Terah
11 Woolley, Abraham, p. 95.
12 See Woolley’s Ur Excavations, Vol. II: The Royal Cemetery (1934).
14 7éid., p. 180.
(Til Turakhi, “Mound of Terah,” in Assyrian times). Other im-

mediate ancestors and relatives of Abraham listed in Genesis
11:10-30 have left traces in this territory, called Paddan-Aram
(Aramaic paddana, “field or plain” of Aram) in Genesis (25:20;
26:6, 7; etc.). Reu also corresponds to later names of towns in
the Middle-Euphrates valley.” Peleg, for example, recalls later
Paliga on the Euphrates just above the mouth of the Habur.'*
Beside definite geographical links between the Hebrew pa-
triarchs and their earlier residence in northwest Mesopotamia,
a number of the early patriarchal narratives indicate a formative
influence from this region. Terah not only died in Haran (Gen.
11:31, 32) from which city Abram then migrated to Canaan
(Gen. 12:4), but a wife for Isaac was fetched from “the city of
Nahor” (Gen. 24:10). Jacob fled to Haran (Gen. 27:43) from
Esau’s wrath, and sojourned in Paddan-Aram at least twenty
years while in Laban’s employ (Gen. 29:1-31:55).
2. Abraham in Canaan. At the age of seventy-five and after
the death of Terah, Abraham left Haran and came into Canaan
(Gen. 12:4,5). In this age Palestine was still thinly populated.
Linguistically the bulk of its inhabitants belonged to the same
family as the Hebrews, though their racial composition and cul-
tural traditions were different. Virtually all the Canaanite towns
were then located in the Coastal Plain, the Plain of Esdraelon,
and the Valley of the Jordan and of the Dead Sea.
The hill country was in the main still unoccupied by sedentary popu-
lation, so the Biblical tradition is absolutely correct in making the
patriarchs wander over the hills of central Palestine and the dry
lands of the south, where there was still plenty of room for them.17
This general situation which prevailed in the Middle Bronze
Age (2000-1500 3.c.) in Palestine is in thorough agreement
with the semi-nomadic life of the patriarchs as pictured in the
Genesis narratives. On the other hand it is completely out of
perspective for a later period, particularly after 1200 3.c., and
its origin as a late invention would be most difficult to explain.
In the Bronze Age the mountains of Palestine were heavily
forested on the watershed ridge and the western slope, so that
there was little arable land. Cisterns, moreover, had not then
15 Jbid., Journal of Biblical Literature, KLIII (1924), pp. 385-88.
16 w. F. Albright, “Recent Discoveries in Bible Lands,” Young’s Analytical Concordance
(20th ed.; New York, 1936), p. 26; The Archeology of Palestine and the Bible (New York,
1935), p. 210, note 29.
17 w. F. Albright, “The Old Testament and Archeology” in Old Testament Commentary
(Philadelphia, 1948), p. 140. Cf. Archeology of Palestine and the Bible, p. 131-133.
come into general use. Consequently there were no settlements

except where good springs were located just under a low hill,
suitable for defense, with meadows or valleys near at hand, to
insure a supply of food. Between such fortified towns, most of
which were located on the watershed ridge or near it, there was
plenty of room for seminomadic tribes, whose existence is at-
tested by the remains of Middle and Late Bronze Age pottery
in cemeteries which were too far from towns to have been used
by the sedentary population.*®
It is significant, too, in this connection that the topographical
allusions in the patriarchal stories fit the archeological indica-
tions of the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 3B.c.) extremely
well.!® In fact so many corroborations of detail have come to
light in the last several decades that “most competent scholars
have given up the old critical theory according to which the
stories of the Patriarchs are mostly retrojections from the time
of the Dual Monarchy (9th-8th centuries B. c.).””° For instance,
places which appear in connection with the movements of the
patriarchs are not the towns and holy sites of later periods, such
as Mizpah or Gibeah, but are nearly all known from recent
archeological explorations to have been inhabited in the patri-
archal age, such as Shechem, Bethel, Dothan, Gerar, Jerusalem
(Salem) and likely Beersheba. Hebron however, as a city,
was not in existence in Abraham’s day. It was not founded until
“seven years before Zoan in Egypt” (Num. 13:22), that is,
about 1700 3.c. Earlier the site was called Mamre, and the
mention of Hebron (Gen. 13:18; 23:19) is an explanatory note
to indicate where Mamre was.?!
The five cities of the plain (circle) of the Jordan, Sodom,
Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar, also belong to the early
partriarchal age. The Biblical notices that the district of the
Jordan, where these cities were located, was exceedingly fertile
and well-peopled around 2065 8. c. but that not long afterwards
was abandoned, are in full accord with the archeological facts.”
It is now known that these cities were situated in the Vale of
18 Cf. Albright, Archeology of Palestine and the Bible, pp. 130-133.
19 First emphasized by Albright in Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research,
XXXV (1929), pp. 10ff., and now by numerous writers as new material points to the same
conclusion. Cf. The Old Testament and Modern Study (Oxford, 1951), pp. 5ff.
20 Albright, From Stone Age to Christianity, p. 183.
21G. E. Wright and F. Filson, Westminster Historical Atlas to the Bible (Philadelphia,
1945), p. 26a.
22 Albright, The Archeology of Palestine and the Bible, pp. 133ff.
Siddim (Gen. 14:3), and that this was the area at the southern
end of the Dead Sea, now covered with water.
The great site of Bab ed-Dra‘ on the Dead Sea probably belongs
to the age of Sodom and Gomorrah; its remains date from about
the last third of the third millennium, when occupation here came
to an abrupt close.?8
View of the rift in the Jordan Valley

\ Wy, 2
showing
UA
the Dead Sea. (Courtesy of

PUR
CREE
John
Garstang, The Story of Jericho [London, 1948,] fig. 1.)
Sometime around the middle of the twenty-first century B. c.

the Vale of Siddim with its cities was overwhelmed by a great
conflagration (Gen. 19:23-28). This region is said to have oe
“full of slime [asphalt] pits” (Gen. 14:10), and petroleum de-
posits are still to be found in the area. The entire region is on
the long fault line which formed the Jordan Valley, the Dead
Sea and the Arabah. Throughout history it has been the scene
of earthquakes, and although the Biblical account records only
the miraculous elements, geological activity was doubtless an
accompanying factor. The salt and free sulphur in this area,
which is now a burnt out region of oil and asphalt, were mingled
by an earthquake, which resulted in a violent explosion. The
salt and sulphur were carried up into the sky red hot, so that
literally it rained fire and brimstone over the whole plain (Gen.
19:24, 28). The account of Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar
of salt is certainly to be connected with the great salt mass in
the valley, Jebel Usdum (“Mountain of Sodom”), a hill, some
five miles long, stretching north and south at the southwestern
end of the Dead Sea. Somewhere under the slowly rising water
of the southern part of the lake, in this general vicinity, the
Cities of the Plain are to be found. In classical and New Testa-
ment times their ruins were still visible, not yet being covered
with water.”*
The most pivotal chapter in the patriarchal narratives from a
historical standpoint and from the point of view of furnishing
a potential link in the life of Abraham with contemporary secular
23 Albright in Young’s Analytical Concordance, p. 27a.
24 Tacitus, History, V:7; Josephus, Wars of the Jews, IV:4.
history is Genesis 14. Regarding the genuineness of the account

of the invasion of the Jordan Valley by the coalition of four
Mesopotamian kings and their defeat by Abraham, it may be
said that archeology is continually amassing evidence pointing
to the essential historicity of this chapter, until recent years
“TONGUB")
ay of the Lower Dead Sea Area showing the cities of ‘the plain of Jordan’? (Gen.
13:10).
regarded almost universally as pure legend from a critical view-

point. The high antiquity of this document and the accuracy
of the names referred to in it are being constantly corroborated
as new background material becomes available.”* A very re-
markable fact about this chapter, demonstrating its great age
and authenticity, is its use of archaic words and place names,
often appended with a scribal explanation to make them com-
25 Cf. F. M. Th. Boehl, Das Zeitalter Abrahams (Leipzig, 1930); W. F. Albright, Jour
nal of the Society of Oriental Research (1926), pp. 231-269, King Hammurabi of Babylon
in the setting of his time (Amsterdam, 1946).
ABRAHAM AND His AGE A hg
prehensible to a later generation, when the name had changed.

Examples are “Bela (the same is Zoar)” in verse 2; “the vale
of Siddim (the same is the Salt Sea)” in verse 3; “Enmishpat
(the same is Kadesh)” in verse 7; “the vale of Shaveh (the same
is the King’s Vale)” in verse 17.
Interesting examples of the confirmation of place names occur
in connection with the opening of the campaign of the invading
army. “And in the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer, and the
kings that were with him, and smote the Rephaim in Ashteroth-
karnaim, and the Zuzim in Ham...” (Gen. 14:5). The cities of
Hauran (Bashan), Ashtaroth and Karnaim, were both occupied
at this early period, as archeological examination of their sites
has demonstrated. Ham was first surmised to be identical with
a modern place of the same name in eastern Gilead. Around
1925 and in 1929 A. Jirku and W. F. Albright investigated the
antiquities of the place and found a small but very ancient
mound going back to the Bronze Age.*® The name is also listed
among the towns conquered by the great Egyptian empire
builder, Thutmose III, in the first quarter of the fifteenth cen-
tury B.C.
Another interesting feature of the historicity of Genesis 14
is the authentication of the general line of march followed by
the invading kings. The fact that the account represents the
invaders as marching down from Hauran through eastern Gilead
and Moab to the southeastern part of Palestine used to be con-
sidered the best proof of the essentially legendary character of
the narrative. However, the discovery of a line of Early and
Middle Bronze Age mounds, some of considerable size, skirting
the eastern edge of Gilead, between the desert and the forests
of Gilead,?’ and running on into eastern Moab, where the Early-
Middle Bronze city at Ader was discovered in 1924,”* has shown
how natural such a route would have been in that era. Called
later “The King’s Highway,” the road does not, however, appear
to have ever been used by an invading army in later Israelite
times after 1200 B.c. Considering that the prize aimed at by
the eastern kings was doubtless the important copper, manganese
and other mineral deposits of Edom and Midian and perhaps
the asphalt of the Dead Sea area, which was a product much in
demand in Babylonia, the account appears all the more authentic.
26 Jirku, Zeitschrift des deutschen Palaestina-Vereins (1930), p. 151f.
27 Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, XXXV, p. 10ff.
28 Ibid., XIV, p. 10.
Despite the fact that archeology has furnished much back-

ground evidence pointing to the general historicity of Genesis 14,
and the patriarchal narratives as a whole, it has not yet pro-
duced evidence concerning the historicity of the actual content
of these stories,?® nor as yet established any definite link with
the contemporary historical scene. If, for instance, the four in-
vading kings could be identified with historical persons, the
chronology of the patriarchal period could immediately be stabi-
lized. As the matter now stands, it oscillates anywhere from the
late seventeenth century to the twentieth or nineteenth cen-
tory BAG!
The new material, on the other hand, is narrowing to some
degree the possible margin of oscillation. The Mari finds at
least rule out the period between about 1750 and 1680 B.c.
(low chronology ).** However, the Biblical chronology points to
a period around the middle of the twenty-first century B.c., and
unless some of the numbers involved have suffered serious cor-
ruption in transmission, we believe this date will be verified when
present or future finds are correctly analyzed and interpreted.
LITERATURE ON ABRAHAM AND His AGE
Dhorme, P., “Abraham dans le cadre de l’histoire,” Revue Biblique,
Snel (1928), pp. 367-386, 481-511; XL (1931), pp. 364-374,
Speiser, E. A.. Annual of American Schools of Oriental Research, XIII

(1933), pp. 13-54.
Albright, W. F., The Archeology of Palestine and the Bible (New York,
1935), pp. 129-151.
Woolley, Leonard C., Ur of the Chaldees (New York, 1930).
, Abraham: Recent Discoveries and Hebrew Origins (London, 1936).
Caiger, Stephen L., Bible and Spade (Oxford, 1936), pp. 30-55.
Gordon, Cyrus H., The Living Past (New York, 1941), pp. 156-178.
29Cf. H. H. Rowley, “Recent Discoveries and the Patriarchal Age,” Bulletin of the
John Rylands Library (Manchester), XXXII (Sept. 1949), p.- 79
- ee is Albright’s margin of oscillation (The Old Testament and Modern Study, p. 7).
Ibid.
CHAPTER X
THE HISTORICITY OF THE PATRIARCHS
Under the influence of the Wellhausen School of Biblical

criticism it was very common among scholars in the first part
of the present century to deny the historicity of the Hebrew
patriarchs. Various theories were advanced to dissolve these
Biblical characters into mythical or legendary creations. They
were sometimes viewed as lunar or astral figures, sometimes as
ancient Canaanite divinities, sometimes as mythical heroes or
personifications of clans and tribes or sometimes as fictitious
characters in cycles of legends.’ Julius Wellhausen himself was
inclined to view Abraham “as a free creation of unconscious
art;-
I. CriticaL View oF THE PATRIARCHAL NARRATIVES
The patriarchal narratives scarcely fared better than the pa-
triarchs themselves. Wellhausen’s dictum was docilely followed
by the majority of critical scholars:
From the patriarchal narratives it is impossible to obtain any histori-
cal information with regard to the Patriarchs; we can only learn
something about the time in which the stories about them were first
told by the Israelite people. This later period . . . was unintentionally
projected back into hoary antiquity, and is reflected there like a
transfigured mirage.®
This “later period” which Wellhausen and his disciples im-
agined was projected into the patriarchal narratives was the
eighth and ninth centuries B.c., when these narratives were al-
leged to have been composed. But were the Biblical description
of the patriarchs’ lives a late invention, there would exist the
greatest difficulty in finding an adequate explanation of its origin,
since it does not agree at all with conditions in any part of
1Cf. R. P. DeVaux, “Les patriarch hebreux et les decouvertes modernes,” in Revue
Biblique LIII (1946), pp. 321-328. S. R. Driver, The Book of Genesis (London, 1904),
pp. 55f.; J. Skinner, Genesis (New York, 1910), pp. 19f.
2 Prologomena to the History of Israel (English translation, 1885), p. 320.
3 Prolegomena (3rd ed.), p. 331.
ibe)
Palestine from 1200-900 B.c., to say nothing of a later period.*

“Wellhausen and his followers did not even recognize the dif-
ficulty, because of their ignorance of modern Palestine and ad-
joining lands.”®
Although die-hard radical theories echoing Wellhausen’s skep-
ticism have persisted till quite recently,° discoveries, particularly
of the last quarter of a century, have dealt a fatal blow to ex-
treme views. “It is safe to say that the general effect of the
discoveries of the last decade has been to confirm the substantial
accuracy of the picture of life in Canaan in the second millen-
nium B. c. as described in the patriarchal narratives of Genesis.”*
The great service archeological research is performing in this
early period of Biblical history is to demonstrate that the pic-
ture of the patriarchs as presented in Genesis fits the frame of
contemporary life; that the momentous role they play (from the
point of the story of redemption) dovetails into the larger drama
of secular history. Today archeology compels a more general
respect for the historical quality of the patriarchal stories.
II. THe PATRIARCHAL NARRATIVES AND RECENT
ARCHEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES
As a result of archeological research, particularly that of the
last three decades, a large quantity of inscriptional material is
now available to scholars, which has an important bearing on
the patriarchal age. This material is of the greatest importance.
The bulk of it is as yet unpublished, but that which has been
analyzed and interpreted has had a momentous role in dealing
a fatal blow to radical critical theories and in compelling a
greater respect for the historical worth of the partriarchal nar-
ratives.2 This does not mean, however, that the new material
has proved the accuracy of the Old Testament narratives in
any direct way, but what is perhaps more significant, it does
mean that it has furnished a great deal of indirect evidence
showing that the stories fit into the background of the age, as
that age can now be recovered from the new sources of knowl-
4 For discussion see W. F. Albright, The Archeology of Palestine and the Bible (New
York, 1935), pp. 130.
5 Ibid., p» 131.
8 Cf. R. Weill, “La legende des patriarches et Vhistoire,” Revue des Etudes Semitiques,
(1937), pp. 145-206; L. Wallis, The Bible Is Human (1942), p. 146.
7S. H. Hooke, “Archeology and the Old Testament,” in Record and Revelation, ed. by
H. W. Robinson (Oxford, 1938), p. 372.
8R. P. DeVaux, Revue Biblique, LIII (1946), pp. 321-348; LV (1948), pp. 321-347;
LVI (1949), pp. 5-36. H. H. Rowley, “Recent Discoveries and the Patriarchal Age,” in
Bulletin of the John Rylands Library (Manchester), XXXII (Sept. 1949), p. 79.
THE HiIstToriciry OF THE PATRIARCHS 121
edge available, and that customs which appear in the stories

prevailed in the world in which the patriarchs are set. So far
no references to the patriarchs themselves have been discovered,
and none could reasonably be expected, considering the situa-
tion as a whole. Neither has there occurred any clear allusion
in the sources to any event mentioned in the patriarchal nar-
ratives. “That the evidence concerns the background of the
stories and not their content does not make it less significant.”®
As Albright says,
It is now becoming increasingly clear that the traditions of the
Patriarchal Age, preserved in the book of Genesis, reflect with re-
markable accuracy the actual conditions of the Middle Bronze Age,
and especially of the period between 1800 and 1500 B.c.?°
1. Abraham and the Discoveries at
Nuzu. Excavated between 1925 and
1941 this ancient site southeast of Nine-
veh and not far from modern Kirkuk
has yielded severa] thousand documents
of first rate importance to the student of
the Old Testament. These tablets pro-
vide numerous illustrations of the cus-
toms which figure in the patriarchal
narratives,"
Adoption. At Nuzu a childless couple
frequently adopted a freeborn person
or a slave to look after them when they
grew old, bury them when they died
and inherit their property.’ Abraham,
Horite vase from Nuzu, The Who had no prospect of any children of
longiinct: Honites “ofthe ola his own, refers to Eliezer as his heir, and
Testament. This is a good ex-
ample of their art. Their ar-S Calls: him “son of; my C house,” thatP is,
. <4 »»> .
chives bee close ey hi ; 15 9

Patriarchal customs catalogue a : =
in Genesis. (Courtesy of The 1S eir presumptive ( en. : 2 re
Biblical
fig. 1.)
Archeologist, III, 1, sumably Abraham had legally adopted
9 Rowley, op. cit., p. 79.
10 Cf. Proceedings of the Americam Philosophical Society, LXIX (1930), pp. 446f., Cf.
Rowley, op. cit., p. 79.
11 Cyrus H Gordon, The Living Past (New York, 1941), pp. 156-178; “Biblical Cus-
toms and the Nuzi Tablets,” Biblical Archeologist, III (Feb. 1940), pp. 1-12. R. T.
O’Callaghan, “Historical Parallels to Patriarchal Social Custom,” The Catholic Biblical
Quarterly, VI (1944), pp. 391-405.
12 Gordon, The Living Past, pp. 159f. E. A. Speiser in Annual of the American Schools
of Oriental Research, X (1930), pp. 7-13.
this trusted slave in accordance with prevailing custom,

to the mutual advantage of both. But the divine word to
the patriarch is, “This man shall not be thine heir” (Gen.
15:4). If he was a legally adopted heir, how could his
rights be set aside as long as he fulfilled his filial duties? The
Nuzu texts give the answer. There provision is made that if
the adopter should afterward beget a son of his own, the
adopted son must yield to him the place of the chief heir.”
Another tablet parallels to some extent the relationship which
existed between Jacob and Laban (Gen. 29-31), although the
element of adoption, which is present in the Nuzu document,
is absent in the Biblical story. In this instance a man adopts an-
other as his son, giving him his daughter to wife and making
him and his children heirs, unless the adopter should later beget
a son of his own, in which case the adopted son was to re-
ceive an equal share of the estate with the actual son. However,
the adopted son’s children would in this circumstance forfeit
any right.’* It is also stipulated that the adopted son would
not be entitled to take another wife, in addition to the daughter
of his adopted father.
Marriage laws. Nuzu marital customs illustrate Sarah’s action
in giving her Egyptian servant Hagar to her husband as her
substitute when she despaired of becoming a mother herself
(Gen. 16:1-16). Later Rachel follows the same course with her
servant Bilhah and her example is followed by Leah, but for
a different reason (Gen. 30:3,9). Nuzu marriage regulations
stipulate that if a wife is barren, she must furnish her husband
with a slave wife.’* Interestingly, the Nuzu documents specify
that the slave must come from Lulluland, in the mountains in
the north, whence the best slaves (called Lullians) were ob-
tained. In the case of Hagar the slave is an Egyptian.
Later, when Sarah had herself given birth to Isaac, and de-
manded that Hagar and her child should be expelled and dis-
inherited, the patriarch’s reluctance to comply with her demand
is readily understandable in the light of common practice at
Nuzu. There the law provides that in the event the slave wife
should bear a son, that son must not be expelled.’” It is clear,
oNee ris Archeologist, III (Feb. 1940), pp. 2f.
15 Cf. C. H. Gordon, Reoue Bibligue, XLIV (1935), p. 35.

16 Gordon, The Living Past, pp. 160f.
17 Speiser, op. cit., p. 63.
ERE waaas Sket
ae bae lacs
Upper: An Egyptian painting on the wall of the tomb of the Vizier Rekhmire, show-
ing captives making bricks ca. 1450 B.C. (Courtesy The Biblical Archeologist, XIII, 2,
fig. 1.)
Lower: A caravan of nomads entering Egypt ca. 1900 B. C. Trade between Meso-
potamia and surrounding countries and the land of the Nile flourished from early
times as the partriarchal narratives indicate (cf. Gen. 37:25).
Lhe IATL
& a
Upper left: Red granite head of Amenhotep II. Made from Oriental Institute cast.
Original in Turin Museum. (Courtesy Oriental Institute, Univ. of Chicago.)
Upper right: Granite head of Thutmose III, made from Oriental Institute cast. Original
in Turin Museum. (Courtesy Oriental Institute, Univ. of Chicago.)
Center: Head of Ramses II, made from an Oriental Institute cast. (Courtesy Oriental
Lower: Asiatics arriving in Egypt. From a tomb painting at Beni Hassan (ca. 2000-
1900 B.C.). Foreigners readily went ‘‘down into Egypt’? as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
are represented as having done in Genesis. (Lepsius, Denkmaeler, II, 133.)
THe Historiciry OF THE PATRIARCHS 123
in the light of Nuzian parallels, why Abraham was reluctant

to agree to Sarah’s illegal demand, and doubtless would have
ane to do so, had not a divine dispensation overridden the
aw.
Rights of Primogeniture. Esau’s sale of his birthright (Gen.
25:27-34) is also illustrated. At Nuzu a legal arrangement existed
whereby the privileges of the firstborn were transferred to an-
other.** In one instance they were transferred to one who was
not actually a brother, but who was adopted as a brother.
In another case actual brothers were involved, and the one
who surrendered his rights received three sheep in return,”
to some extent a comparable recompense to the meal which
Esau got.
The Teraphim. Rachel's theft of Laban’s teraphim (Gen. 31:
34) is much better understood in the light of the Nuzu evidence.
Evidently the possession of these household gods implied leader-
ship of the family and in the case of a married daughter assured
her husband the right to the property of her father." Since
Laban evidently had sons of his own when Jacob left for Canaan,
they alone had the right to their father’s gods, and the theft
of these household idols by Rachel was a serious offense (Gen.
31:19, 30, 35),?? aimed at preserving for her husband the chief
title to Laban’s estate.”8
It is of the greatest importance to note that in these cases
customs are interwoven in the narratives which do not recur
in the Old Testament in later periods. Concerning the patri-
archal stories H. H. Rowley says:
Their accurate reflection of social conditions in the patriarchal age
and in some parts of the Mesopotamia from which the patriarchs
are said to have come, many centuries before the present documents
were composed, is striking.?4
But the fact that the patriarchal narratives correctly reflect cus-
toms that would long since have become obsolete in the age
when the critics contend these documents were first reduced to
writing (ninth and eighth centuries 3.c.) is only “striking”
under such an artificial theory of their composition. Taking them
as authentic documents written in the Mosaic Age (fifteenth
18 Jbid., XIII (1933), p. 44.
19 Cf, Gordon, The Biblical Archeologist, III (1940), p. 5.
20 bid.; The Living Past, p. 177.
21 Gordon, Revue Biblique, XLIV (1935), pp. 35f.
23 Cf, Jack Finegan, Light From the Ancient Past (Princeton, 1946), p. 55.
28 Rowley, op. cit., p. 76.
24 bid.
century B.c.), such authenticity of local color and detail is per-

fectly natural and what one would normally expect. Yet despite
artificial theories of literary composition which are still almost
universally foisted upon the patriarchal narratives, their increas-
ing archeological vindication is forcing scholars to treat them
with more respect than used to be the case until quite recently.
2. Abraham and the Discoveries at Mari. This ancient city on
the middle Euphrates is represented today by Tell Hariri about
seven miles north of modern Abou Kemal. Excavations under-
taken there since 1933 by Andre Parrot have brought to light
more than twenty thousand tablets from the archives of the
royal palace and uncovered a temple of Ishtar and a ziggurat.”°
In the time of Abraham (c. 2100 B.c.) Mari was one of the
most flourishing and brilliant cities of the Mesopotamian world,
and the patriarch and his father, Terah, must have passed through
this metropolis on their way to Haran.
The large number of the tablets discovered represent diplo-
matic correspondence between Zimri-Lim, the last king of Mari,
with his ambassadors and agents and with Hammurabi, king
of Babylon (c. 1728-1686 s.c. )** and promulgator of the famous
code of laws that bears his name.
Abraham’s migration from Ur, according to the Biblical chron-
ology, however, took place some four hundred years before the
period of the Mari letters and the reign of Zimri-Lim. At this
time “the region about Harran was probably under the control
of Mari.”** The city of Nahor (Gen. 24:10) is mentioned quite
frequently in the Mari letters. One letter from Nahor is sent
by a lady of that town to the king, and reads as follows:
To my lord say: Thus Inib-sharrim, thy maidservant. How long
must I remain in Nahor? Peace is established, and the road is un-
obstructed. Let my lord write, and let me be brought, that I may
see the face of my lord from whom I am separated. Further, let
my lord send me an answer to my tablet.28
In the light of the interesting fact that Abraham is the first
person in the Bible to bear the name Hebrew, ‘Ibri, (Gen.
14:13), the occurrence of the term “Habiru” in the Mari letters
(eighteenth century B.c.) and earlier in the Cappadocian texts
(nineteenth century B.C.) as well as in the later Nuzian, Hittite,
25 Cf. G. E. Mendenhall, “Mari,” in The Biblical Archeologist, XI (Feb. 1948), pp. 2f.
Andre Parrot, Mari, une ville perdue (4th ed.; Paris, 1946), pp. 1-24.
26 Albright’s low chronology, see Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research,
LXXXVIII (Dec., 1942), pp. 28-36.
27 Mendenhall, op. cit., p. 15.
28 Ved oh 16.
THE Histroriciry OF THE PATRIARCHS 125
Amarna and Ugaritic texts (fifteenth-fourteenth centuries B.C. )

is significant, since the philological equation Hebrew-Habiru
seems assured. The wide occurrence of the term Habiru (the
‘Apiru of the Egyptian sources) shows that the term
is not an ethnic designation, for the Habiru of these various texts
are of mixed racial origin, including both Semitic and non-Semitic
elements, but its fundamental meaning seems to be “wanderers,”
“those who pass from place to place.”29
While full solution of the problems involved is not yet in sight,
it is possible
to see in the patriarchal movements of Genesis, and in the Hebrew
conquest of Canaan, parts of that larger movement which is re-
flected in the archeological record of the whole movement of the
various groups designated by the term Habiru.?°
Placing the Habiru in a much wider context as a result of
archeological discoveries is not an embarrassment to the Biblical
representations. Eber as an ancestor of the Hebrews (Gen. 11:
16f.) included more than Abraham and his descendants through
Isaac and Jacob. Some of his posterity were evidently left in
Babylonia when Terah migrated with his family, and some were
left in northern Mesopotamia when Abraham migrated from
Harat,~
An interesting appearance of a Biblical name in the Mari
letters which can scarcely, however, have a Biblical reference,
occurs in the Banu-Yamina, Benjaminites, “Sons of the Right,”
that is, “Sons of the South.” These were a fierce tribe of nomads,
who, originally, to judge from their name, roved the fringes of
the desert south of the Euphrates, but had long since pushed
their way into the regions farther north. Although some scholars
are tempted to connect these Bedouins with the Biblical Ben-
jaminites,*? and chronologically it would be possible, yet for other
reasons it would be extremely unlikely.
The name Benjamin, “Son of the South,” was a name likely
to occur in various places, especially so at Mari, where the cor-
responding term “Sons of the Left,” that is, “Sons of the North,”
is found. Moreover, in the Biblical story Benjamin is said to have
been born in Palestine, after Jacob’s return from Laban, and
never to have been in Mesopotamia at all. The characterization
of Benjamin as “a marauding wolf” (Gen. 49:27) fits the descrip-
29 Hooke, op. cit., p. 359.
30 Jbid.
31 Cf. Rowley, op. cit., p. 63.
82.4. Parrot (Journal of Biblical Literature, LXVI [1947], p. xxviii) and A. Alt
(Palaestinajahrbuch, XXXV [1939], p. 52) allow the possibility of this connection.
tion of the tribe at Mari remarkably well, but any connection

is extremely dubious.
An interesting sidelight, however, from the account of the Ben-
jaminites in the Mari letters is the new light on the etymology
of the name David, famous in later Israel. The word translated
“chieftain” in the references to the plundering Benjaminites is
dawidum (“leader”), which seems to be the original form of
the name of Israel’s most famous king.**
Reference in the Mari letters to the common Oriental custom
of making a treaty between individuals or nations by “killing
an ass” sheds important light on customs which prevailed in
patriarchal times and later. The idiom “to kill an ass,” khayaram
gatalum, is not Akkadian at all, but both words occur in He-
brew and indicate the sacrifice which accompanied the oath of
alliance. Thus an official writes to Zimri-Lim:
I have sent that message to Bina-Ishtar, [and] Bina-Ishtar replied
as follows: “I have killed the ass with Tarni-Lim, and thus I
spoke to Tarni-Lim under the oath of the gods: ‘If you despise [?]
Zimri-Lim and his armies, I will turn to the side of your adver-
Sate ce
The connection between sacrificing an ass and concluding a
covenant seems to have been preserved by the Shechemites, with
whom Jacob and his sons had such unpleasant dealings (Gen.
33:19; 34:1-31). Called the Bene Hamor, “sons of the ass” (Josh.
24:32), their tribal deity was Baal-Berith, “Lord of the covenant”
(Judg. 9:4). Later, at the time of the Conquest, the Bene Hamor
of Shechem were, it seems, like the four towns of the Gibeonite
confederacy (Josh. 9:1ff.), added to Israel by treaty, to judge
from various early references to them and their god Baal-Berith.*°
Another interesting feature of life at Mari, in contrast to the
monotheistic patriarchs themselves, but in striking agreement
with the polytheistic inhabitants of Canaan, was the widespread
practice of divination. At Mari the diviner had an important
role in all phases of daily life. The techniques for predicting
future events were reduced to an empirical system by collecting
and preserving in various ways the omens which preceded great
events of the past, so that future diviners might know what to
expect if they found similar omens. Especially important were
omens in connection with military movements. Each section of
troops had its own diviner. “The diviner is assembling the
34 Georges Dossin, Syria (1938), p. 108.
85 W. F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore, 1940), pals:
THE HistToriciry OF THE PATRIARCHS 127
omens,” reads one text. “When the omens appear favorable, 150
troops sortie, and 150 troops retire.”*®
The patriarchs, sojourning in the midst of polytheism with its
divination and other forms of occultism, were constantly in
danger of corruption. The teraphim of Rachel (Gen. 31:19),
“the strange gods” which Jacob ordered put away from his
household (Gen. 35:2) and hid under an oak in Shechem (v. 4),
are indicative of contamination. However, the patriarchs were
remarkably free from the divinatory methods of surrounding
pagan peoples.
3. Abraham and Other Archeological Finds. The so-called
“Execration Texts” add their evidence to attest the authentic
background of the patriarchs as presented in Genesis. These
curious documents are statuettes and vases inscribed in Egyp-
tian hieratic script with the names of potential enemies of the
Pharaoh. If threatened by rebellion the Egyptian king had only
to break the fragile objects on which were written the names
and accompanying formulae, to the accompaniment of a magical
ceremony, and forthwith the rebels would somehow come to
grief. The group of vases from Berlin, published by Kurt Sethe
(1926), probably date from the end of the twentieth century B.c.,
while the collection of statuettes from Brussels, published by
G. Posener (1940), date from the late nineteenth century.*’
These texts show that “both Eastern and Western Palestine were
largely occupied by nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes in the
late twentieth century B.c.”** and earlier, and thus they cor-
roborate the general background of the patriarchal narratives
of Genesis.
The name Abraham, moreover, has been found in Mesopo-
tamia in the second millennium B.c. under the forms A-ba-am-
ra-ma, A-ba-ra-ma, and A-ba-am-ra-am.*® This shows that it was
actually a name in use at an early date. The name Jacob,
which stands for Ya‘qub-el, “May El Protect,” occurs not only
as a place name in Palestine in the fifteenth century B.c. (Thut-
mose III’s list), but also as Ya-ah-qu-ub-il in tablets of the eigh-
teenth century B.c. from Chagar Bazar in northern Mesopo-
tamia.*® Both Isaac and Jacob are abbreviated theophorous
names whose full form would be Yitshaq-el and Ya‘qub-el, and
87 w. F. Albright, The Archeology of Palestine (1949), p. 83.
38 [bid., p. 82.
89 DeVaux, Revue Biblique, LIII (1946), p. 323,
40 C. J. Gadd, Irag (1949), p. 38, n. 5.
belong to types known in the environment from which the early

Hebrews came.‘! Similarly, names closely resembling the short-
ened forms Laban and Joseph appear in documents of the nine-
teenth century B.C.
On the other hand, recent attempts to find patriarchal names
in the important texts discovered at Ras Shamra (ancient Ugarit)
in north Syria (1929-1937) have proved unsuccessful. The claim
that the Hebrew God Yahweh figures in these texts and that
Terah, the father of Abraham, appears there as a moon god is
totally unsupported by facts. Neither does a proto-Israelite tribe
of Zebulon or Asher appear in these religious poems from the
fourteen century B. C.
LITERATURE ON THE HISTORICITY OF THE PATRIARCHS
Gordon, Cyrus H., “Biblical Customs and the Nuzi Tablets,” The Biblical
Archeologist, III (Feb. 1940), pp. 1-12.
pp. 179-189.
, The Archeology of Palestine (1949), pp. 80-109.
Parrot, Andre, Mari, Une Ville Perdue (Nouvelle edition; Paris, 1945).
aed nal G. E., “Mari,” The Biblical Archeologist, XI (Feb. 1948),
pp. 1-19.
DeVaux, R., “Les patriarches hébreux et les découvertes modernes,” Revue
Biblique, LIII (1946), pp. 321-348; LV (1948), pp. 321-347; LVI
(1949), pp. 5-36.
O’Callaghan, R. T., Aram Naharaim (Rome, 1948), pp. 37-44.
, “Historical Parallels to Patriarchal Social Custom,” The Catholic
Biblical Quarterly, V1 (1944), pp. 391-405.
Rowley, H. H., “Recent Discoveries and the Patriarchal Age,” Bulletin
of the John Rylands Library (Manchester), XXXII (1949-50), pp. 44-79.
41 Cf. DeVaux, Revue Biblique, LIIT (1946), pp. 321-328.

CHAPTER XI
ISRAEL'S SOJOURN IN EGYPT
The patriarchs’ quiet pastoral life in Canaan came to an end

in the circumstances that followed the sale of Joseph to the
Ishmaelites and his subsequent exaltation in Egypt. Ac-
cording to the Biblical chronology preserved in the Masoretic
text of the Hebrew Bible, Jacob and his family emigrated to
Egypt somewhere in the neighborhood of 1871 s.c. under the
Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom (2000-1780
B.C.). This strong centralized government had capitals in Mem-
phis and in the Fayyum, and carried on extensive intercourse
with western Asia.
Abraham, earlier in the history of this splendid dynasty, had
gone down into Egypt in time of famine (Gen. 12:10-20) as the
aged Jacob and his sons did at this later period under similar
stringent circumstances (Gen. 46:6). Moreover, such trade re-
lations of Asiatics with Egyptians as those of the Ishmaelites to
whom Joseph’s brethren sold him and of Joseph’s brethren them-
selves when they procured grain from Egypt during the period
of dearth, were common under the Middle Kingdom. The Ish-
maelites are described as a “caravan . . . coming from Gilead,
with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to
carry it down to Egypt” (Gen. 37:25). In addition to money
(uncoined silver) as a medium of exchange, Jacob’s sons traded
“the choice fruits [products]” of the land of Canaan, which are
listed as balm, honey, spicery, myrrh, pistachio nuts and almonds
(Gen. 43:11).
A fine archeological parallel is the representation of the en-
trance of a party of West-Semitic immigrants into Middle Egypt
about the year 1900 B.c. The scene appears in the form of a
sculpture on the tomb of an Egyptian official of Senwosret I
1 Cf. George Steindorff and Keith C. Seele, When Egypt Ruled the East (Chicago, 1942),
p. 274
V8,
named Khnumhotep at Beni Hasan.? Apparently bringing the

products of their country in barter for the grain of Egypt, the
train consists of thirty-seven Syrians, men, women and children
under the leadership of their chieftain, who bears a good Hebrew
name, “Sheik of the highlands, Ibshe.”* Their faces are clearly
Semitic. Their thick black hair falls to the neck and their beards
are pointed. They wear long cloaks and carry spears, bows and
throw-sticks. The accompanying inscription reads, “The arrival,
bringing eye paint, which thirty-seven Asiatics bring to him.”*
I. Evwences or IsraEL’s SOJOURN IN EGYPT
Despite sporadic attempts of some more radical critics to deny
that the Hebrews ever sojourned in Egypt,’ the experience of
the Egyptian sojourn and servitude in the land of the Nile is
so deeply interwoven in the historical record of God’s ancient
people that it is virtually ineradicable. This unforgettable epoch
Winged Sun-disk of Egypt, symbol of the sun-god, with Uraeus, the sacred snake on
each side of the falconlike wings.
in the early life of the Chosen People is such a vital part of their
historical perspective that it “cannot be eliminated without leav-
ing an inexplicable gap.”® Besides there are a great many evi-
dences of the contact of Israel with the land of the Nile stamped
upon the Egyptian narratives in Genesis and Exodus.
1. Egyptian Personal Names of Levites. Perhaps the most
unanswerable bit of testimony that part of Israel (the tribe of
Levi at least) resided in Egypt for a long time is the surprising
number of Egyptian personal names in the Levitical genealogies.’
For example: Moses, Assir, Pashhur, Hophni, Phinehas, Merari, and
2W. F. Albright, “Recent Discoveries In Bible Lands,” in Young’s Analytical Con-
cordance to the Bible (20th ed.; New York, 1936), p. 27. S. Caiger, Bible and Spade
(Oxford, 1936), p. 43.
3 James Henry Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol. I, p. 281, d.
5 Cf. for example, Leroy Waterman, “Some Determining Factors in the Northward
Progress of Levi,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, LVI, pp. 375-380; “Jacob
the Forgotten Supplanter,” American Journal of Semitic Languages, LV, pp. 25-43.
Sw. F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore, 1940), pp. 183f.
7™Cf. Theophile Meek, “(Moses and the Levites,” The American Journal of Semitic Lan-
guages and Literqtures, LVI, pp. 117f.
IsRAEL’s SOJOURN IN Ecypt 131
Puti-el in its first element, are all “unquestionably Egyptian.°

I Samuel 2:27 gives further corroboration of this fact. “And
there came a man of God unto Eli, and said unto him, Thus
saith Jehovah, Did I reveal myself unto the house of thy father,
when they were in Egypt in bondage to Pharaoh’s house?” The
“house of thy father” can be none other than the house of Levi
as all scholars agree.®
If it was a new tradition that the author was initiating here, he
would have been more explicit in his reference and actually named
Levi, but he is clearly giving expression to a generally accepted fact
and so did not need to be too explicit.!@
ae Q
CY
8 @
Scarabs of the 17th century B.C. These ornaments or amulets in the form of a
beetle (Scarabaeus sacer) and bearing the name of a god or king were common among
the ancient Egyptians. They were thought to bring protection and good luck, (From
J. and J. B. E. Garstang, The Story of Jericho, plate 15.)
Most critical scholars grant that the proportion of Egyptian

names among the Levites is surprisingly large and could scarcely
be accidental. Accordingly, they readily agree that the tribe
of Levi in whole or in part sojourned in Egypt for several gen-
erations. Some, however, on the basis of the fact that Egyptian
names are apparently confined to Levites unwarrantedly deny
that the other eleven tribes sojourned in the land of the Nile.”
But if it is really true that Egyptian names are not found out-
8 Ibid., p. 118; Hebrew Origins (rev. ed.; New York, 1950), p. 32. A. H Gardner in
Journal of the American Oriental Society, LVI (1936), pp. 191-197.
® See e.g., E. Dhorme, Les Livres de Samuel (1910), p. 39.
10 Meek, Hebrew Origins, p. 32.
41 Ibid. p. 33,
side the Levites, this by no means proves that the other tribes
were not resident in Egypt. Moreover, the persistent tradition
that all the tribes had been there, must have had some solid
basis in fact, and other lines of evidence support it.
2. Authentic Egyptian Coloring. There are, moreover, a great
many correct local and antiquarian details in the Egyptian nar-
ratives in Genesis and Exodus which, like the general fact of
the sojourn of Jacob’s twelve sons and their posterity in the land
of the Nile, would be inexplicable as later inventions. The story
of Joseph, which is one the finest and most dramatic stories in
all literature, furnishes an example. In this moving narrative
there are “many bits of Egyptian coloring . . . which have been
fully illustrated by Egyptological discoveries.”? When the writer,
for instance, has occasion to mention the titles of Egyptian
officials, “he employs the correct title in use and exactly as it was
used at the period referred to, and, where there is no Hebrew
equivalent, he simply adopts the Egyptian word and trans-
literates it into Hebrew.” The titles of “chief of the butlers”
and “chief of the bakers” (Gen. 40:2) are those of palace
officials mentioned in Egyptian documents.**
When Potiphar made Joseph “overseer over his house” (Gen.
39:4), the title employed in the narrative is a direct translation
of an official position in the houses of Egyptian nobility. More-
over Pharaoh gave Joseph an office with a similar title in the
administration of the realm (Gen. 41:40), which corresponds
exactly to the office of prime minister or vizier of Egypt, who
was the chief administrator in the country, second in power to
the Pharaoh himself. In Egypt there was also an office of “su-
perintendent of the granaries.” This was of special significance
since the stability of the country lay in its grain, and Joseph
may have exercised this function in view of the approaching
famine, in addition to his duties as prime minister. The Pharaoh’s
gifts to Joseph upon the latter’s induction into office would be
quite in accord with Egyptian custom:
And Pharaoh took off his signet ring from his hand, and put it upon
Joseph’s hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put
a gold chain around his neck; and he made him ride in the second
chariot which he had; and they cried before him, Bow the knee
(Gen. 41:42, 43).
12 Ww. F. Albright, in Young’s Analytical Concordance, p. 27.
13 Garrow Duncan, Mew Light on Hebrew Origins (London, 1936), pp. 174f.
14G, Wright and F. Filson, The Westminster Historical Atlas to the Bible (Philadelphia,
1945), p. 28b,
Other striking instances of authentic local color in the story

of Joseph are numerous. There is, for example, ample evidence
of famines in Egypt (cf. Gen. 41). At least two Egyptian of-
ficials, giving a synopsis of their good deeds on the walls of
their tombs, list dispensing food to the needy “in each year of
want.” One inscription written about 100 B. c. actually tells of
a seven-year famine in the days of Pharaoh Zoser of the Third
Dynasty (c. 2700 B. c.).25
The narrative of Joseph is paralleled to a very limited extent
by the Egyptian Story of the Two Brothers, Anubis and Bitis.
This romance is contained in the Papyrus d’Orbiney, and the
episode with which the story begins, the attempted seduction
of Bitis by his brother’s wife, bears a superficial resemblance to
the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. Both Bitis and Joseph
resist the temptress, suffer ignominy, and in the case of Bitis,
physical mutilation. The rest of the story, obviously mythologi-
cal and in striking contrast to the Joseph story, nevertheless
bears some faint reminiscences of the life of Joseph.’* The tale
belongs to the period of Seti II, near the close of the thirteenth
century B.C., long after the time of Joseph.
Dreams were regarded by Egyptians as extremely important,
as in the Biblical narrative. The monuments also indicate that
magicians played an important role in Egyptian affairs (cf. Gen.
41:8), that Asiatic shepherds were indeed “an abomination unto
the Egyptians” (Gen. 43:32; 46:34), that Joseph’s life span of
110 years (Gen. 50:22) was the traditional length of a happy and
prosperous life in Egypt and that the mummification of Jacob
and Joseph (Gen. 50:2, 26) was according to Egyptian practice
in preparing the bodies of distinguished people for burial.”
The family of Jacob, seventy in number (Gen. 46:26, 27),
settled in Egypt in the land of Goshen (Gen. 46: 26-34), identi-
fied with the area around the Wadi Tumilat in the eastern part
of the delta of the Nile. This narrow valley, about thirty-five
miles in length joins the Nile River with Lake Timsah. In both
ancient and modern times the area around this Wadi, especially
to the north of it, was one of the richest parts of Egypt, “the
best of the land” (Gen. 47:11). Besides the piece of sculpture
showing the entrance of the family of Ibshe into Egypt about
15 [hid.
16 Albright, in Young’s Analytical Concordance, pp. 5f. Cf. Caiger, op. cit. pp. 113f.
17 Wright and Filson, op. c#t., p. 28b,
1900 B.c.,!8 another Egyptian inscription indicates that it was

customary for frontier officials to allow people from Palestine
and Sinai to enter this section of Egypt in periods of dearth.
Dating about 1350 B.c., this document is written from frontier
officials to the Pharaoh, telling him such a group “who knew
not how they should live, have come begging a home in the
domain of Pharaoh ..., after the manner of your [the Pharaoh’s]
fathers’ fathers since the beginning Rae
3. Canaanite Place Names in the Delta. A long Semitic oc-
cupation of the northeastern Delta before the New Egyptian
Empire (1546-1085 B.c.) is certain from the Canaanite place
names found there in the New Empire, which include Succoth
(Ex. 12:37), Baal-zephon (Ex. 14:2), Migdol (Ex. 14:2), Zilu
(Tell Abu Seifah) and very likely Goshen itself (Ex.8:22;9:26).”°
4, Israel and the Hyksos. The story of Joseph according to
the Biblical chronology is to be placed in the neighborhood of
1871 B.c., that is, during the Twelfth Dynasty. Many scholars
place Joseph’s rise to power during the Hyksos period about
1700 B.c., however, under the unnecessary supposition that it
would be an “historical misinterpretation”*! to imagine that a
young Semitic foreigner would have been elevated to such power
under native Egyptian dynasties like the twelfth or the eigh-
teenth, but that such an event would be unlikely under the
Semitic conquerors of Egypt called the Hyksos. Unfortunately,
the period from 1780-1546 B.c. is one of great obscurity in
Egypt, and the Hyksos conquest is very imperfectly understood.
Although the Joseph story, as
a result, cannot as yet be set
precisely in the frame of known
Egyptian history, nor can pre-
cisely what connection so-
journing Israelites sustained to
the Hyksos invaders be deter-
mined, one thing is certain. Is-
WD rael was in Egypt during this
period of confusion and turmoil,
and the notice of the rise of
city TL (Courtesy“of Jo anda. Bo's, aN oppressive Pharaoh, called a
Garstang, The Story of Jericho, fig. 15.) “new king tS who knew not
18 Cf. notes 2 and 3 of this chapter.
19 Wright and Filson, op. cit., p. 29a.
20 Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity, p. 184.
210 Alexis Mallon, “Les Hebreux en Egypte,” Orientalia, III, (1921), p. 67.
Joseph” (Ex. 1:8), has reference to one of the Pharaohs of the

New Empire, after the expulsion of the hated Asiatics from
Egypt. With this agrees the fact that the Israelites were settled
around the Hyksos capital of Egypt in the “plain of Tanis,”
called “the field of Zoan” (Ps. 78:12).
II. MoskEs THE DELIVERER
The account of the four-hundred-and-thirty year sojourn of
Israel in Egypt is largely passed over in silence in the Biblical
record except that the events of the age of Joseph and his
brethren and the period of severe captivity at the end are re-
counted. The long interval between these events is summed
up in a single verse stressing the numerical increase of the
Israelites in Egypt: “And the children of Israel were fruitful,
and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceed-
ing mighty; and the land was filled with them” (Ex. 1:7).
1. Archeology and Moses’ Birth. The name of Moses, the
great deliverer and lawgiver, dominates the last forty years of
Hebrew residence in Egypt. The story of how the Egyptian
princess found him in the ark of papyrus among the flags by
the riverside has many parallels in ancient lore. To the classical
instances of Romulus and Remus, Bacchus, and Perseus, Sargon I
of Akkad (c. 2400 B. c.) may now be added. A cuneiform legend
of the ninth century B.c. thus speaks of Sargon:
My humble mother conceived me; she bore me in secret, placed me
in an ark of bulrushes, made fast my door with pitch and gave me
to the river which did not overwhelm me. The river lifted me up
and carried me to Akki the irrigator . . . Akki the irrigator hauled
me out... took me to be his son and brought me up.??
As Caiger says:
There is no need to postulate a common origin for such simple and
natural romances, but if one must do so, the episode of Moses (six-
teenth century B.c.) may have been the inspiration of them all.?%
2. Moses’ Egyptian Name. That Moses was born in Egypt
and reared under strong Egyptian influence is independently
attested by his clearly Egyptian name supported by the Egyp-
tian names current among his Aaronid kinsmen for two cen-
turies. The name itself is apparently nothing more than Egyptian
Mase, pronounced Mose after the twelfth century B.c., “the
22 Hugo Gressmann, Altorientalische Texte und Bilder sum Alten Testament (1909),
Vol. I, p. 79.
23 Op. cit., p. 68.
child,” a word preserved in composites like Ah-mose (“son of

Ah,” the god of light), Thutmose (“son of Thots)
It is, in fact, quite probable that Pharaoh’s daughter did not
give a special name to this unknown infant, a child of an alien
race, and that she contented herself simply to name him “the
child.” The interpretation given by the sacred writer, on the
other hand, by a peculiar coincidence of sound and a circum-
stance in the story is connected with the Hebrew root masha,
“to draw out,” because Pharaoh’s daughter drew the infant out
of the water (Ex. 2:10).
Another fact in the life of Moses beside his birth and educa-
tion in Egypt that is attested by his own name and those of
his kinsmen, is the presence of a Nubian element in his family.
“And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the
Cushite [Ethiopian or Nubian] woman he had married; for he
had married a Cushite woman” (Num. 12:1). The name of
Moses’ brother Aaron’s grandson, Phinehas, is also Egyptian,
meaning “the Nubian,” and “is interesting as providing an in-
dependent (and absolutely reliable) confirmation” of this cir-
cumstance.”°
3. The Egyptian Plagues. The account of the ten plagues,
like the story of Joseph, abounds in authentic local coloring. The
miracles consisted of events that were natural to Egypt, the
supernatural element consisting in the great augmentation of
their normal intensity and their introduction in unusual se-
quence. There is, in other words, no importation of natural
phenomena from remote countries into the Nile Valley.
4. The Route of the Exodus. Israel’s exit from Egypt as out-
lined in the Biblical narrative formerly excited a great deal of
skepticism and debate among scholars. Many contended that
the route described in the Book of Exodus was impossible, and
that the Exodus itself was, accordingly, legendary or at least
historically unreliable. Others insisted on the northern passage
along the Mediterranean, despite definite Biblical assertion to
the contrary (Ex. 13:17,18). Advocates of the southern route
have the decided advantage, and the ranks of the skeptics
have been seriously depleted ‘by the recantation of their most
distinguished representative, the celebrated Egyptologist, Alan
Gardner.
24° Cf. Alan H. Gardner in Journal of Egyptian Archeology, V (1918), p. 221. Mallon,
op. Cit., P- 133. Cf. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity, p. 193.
25 Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity, p- 193f.
IsRAEL’s SOJOURN IN EcyptT 137
The initial stages of the Exodus are described as follows:

And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth...
(Ex. 12:37). And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the
people go, that God led them not by the way of the land of the
Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure
the people repent when they see war, and return to Egypt: But God
led the people about, by the wilderness of the Red Sea... . And they
took their journey from Succoth, and encamped in Etham, in the
edge of the wilderness (Ex. 13:17, 18,20). And Jehovah spake unto
Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they turn back
and encamp before Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, over
against Baal-zephon: over against it shall ye encamp by the sea (Ex.
1421.2):
ROUTE ofEXODUS
EAE
the //
MILES sees
In tracing this itinerary on the map it is important first to

observe that the translation of the Hebrew name Yam Suph by
“Red Sea” is plainly incorrect, for the word obviously means
“Reed” or “Marsh Sea.” That this can scarcely denote the Red
Sea or even its northwestern arm (the Gulf of Suez) is indicated

by the fact that there are no reeds in the Red Sea and that the
body of water they actually crossed formed a natural barrier
between Egypt and the Sinai Wilderness, whereas the Israelites
would have had to traverse a long expanse of desert to get to
the Red Sea or its arm, the Gulf of Suez. On the contrary, how-
ever, the account unquestionably implies the proximity of the
Reed Sea to Succoth, modern Tell el-Mashkutah some thirty-
two miles southeastward of their starting point from Rameses
(Ex. 12:37).
The Reed or Papyrus Sea which the Israelites miraculously
crossed “may reasonably be supposed to be the Papyrus Lake
or Papyrus Marsh known from an Egyptian document of the
13th century to have been located near Tanis.”** The topography
of this region has been changed to some extent since the Suez
Canal was dug. At least one body of water, Lake Ballah, has
disappeared. In the fifteenth century B.c. the region in the
vicinity of Lake Timsah, between Lake Ballah and the Bitter
Lakes, may well have been more marshy than it is at present,
and the crossing of the “Reed Sea” was doubtlessly in the area
around Lake Timsah or just to the south of it.’
The location of Rameses (earlier Avaris-Zoan, later Tanis) has
given Biblical geographers a starting point in verifying the ac-
curacy of the Biblical route of the Exodus. Leaving Rameses-
Tanis, the escaping Israelites began their roundabout journey
toward Canaan. The direct military route lay before them past
the Egyptian frontier fortress of Zilu (Thel) and then along the
coast by “the way [road] of the land of the Philistines” (Ex.
13:17). This being the well-traveled and carefully guarded high-
way to the Egyptian-Asiatic Empire in Palestine and Lower
Syria, the Israelites, as yet only a disorganized mob of liberated
slaves and encumbered with a “mixed multitude” (Ex. 12:38)
were in no position either from the point of view of morale or
military organization to wage the war such a route would have
almost immediately precipitated (cf. Ex. 13:17).
Leaving Succoth, which is located some ten miles in an east-
erly direction from Pithom (Ex. 1:11), now identified with Tell
Retabeh, the Israelites encamped on the borders of “the wilder-
ness of the Red [Reed] Sea” (Ex. 13:18, 20), that is, in the
26 Albright, “The Old Testament and Archeology,” in Old Testament Commentary
27 Cf. Wright and Filson, op. cit., p. 38.
IsRAEL's SOJOURN IN EGYPT 139
general region of Lake Timsah. Pi-hahiroth, which is said to be

“between Migdol and the [Reed] sea” and “in front of Baal-
zephon” (Ex. 14:2), seems clearly to be Egyptian Pi-Hathor
in the general vicinity of Tanis.
Although Migdol and Baal-zephon bear Semitic names, which
are perfectly normal for this part of Egypt, and are attested by
the inscriptions, their exact location as yet has not been deter-
mined. For this reason it is possible that the Israelites in their
circuitous journey at this point (Ex. 13:18) may have wandered
farther northward than is commonly supposed and crossed the
water in the region of Lake Ballah. At any rate the Biblical route,
as outlined in Exodus, bears every indication of authenticity.
LITERATURE ON ISRAEL'S SOJOURN IN EGYPT
(New York, 1911), Vol. II, pp. 64-82.
Mallon, Alexis, “Les Hébreux en Egypte,” Orientalia, III (1921), pp.
1-209.
Duncan, Garrow, New Light on Hebrew Origins (London, 1936), pp.
73-179.
Rowley, H. H., “Israel’s Sojourn in Egypt,” The Bulletin of the John
Rylands Library, XXII (1938), pp. 243-290.
pp. 193-207.
Meek, Theophile, J. M., Hebrew Origins (rev. ed.; New York, 1950),
pp. 1-48
CHAPTER XII
THE DATE OF THE EXODUS
Although up to the present no direct archeological evidence

has been found of Israel’s sojourn in Egypt, nevertheless in the
light of considerable indirect testimony, it is practically im-
possible with any show of reason to deny either the historicity
of Moses or the fact of the Exodus. As scholars generally con-
cede, an event which impressed itself so ineradicably on the
consciousness of a people as to control all its later thinking, to
be the foundation of its national history and to ratify its religion,
could by no stretch of the imagination have been a mere in-
vention. The real problem is, therefore, not, Did it happen?
But, When did it happen?
The date of the Exodus is, however, a peculiarly elusive prob-
lem and has occasioned almost endless controversy. Beside ex-
treme views like those of Gardner, Hall, Wreszinski, etc., who
consider the Exodus story a garbled form of the Egyptian saga
of the Expulsion of the Hyksos, or like those of Petrie, Eerdmans,
Rowley, etc., who place it very late in the reign of Merneptah
or even somewhat later,’ only two principal views exist. The
first places the event around 1441 B.c. in the reign of Amen-
hotep II of the Eighteenth Dynasty; the second places it about
1290 s.c. in the reign of Rameses II of the Nineteenth Dynasty.
I. THE BreuicaL DaTE
Although any view of the Exodus is vexed with difficulties
so that many critics insist “that complete harmonization” of the
Biblical account “and our extra-Biblical material is quite im-
possible,”? it is nevertheless true on the basis of many con-
siderations that the early-date view (1441 B.c.) is the Biblical
one. Many deny this on the basis of Exodus 1:11 and other
1 For the various theories see H. H. Rowley, “Israel’s Sojourn in Egypt,” The Bulletin
of the John Rylands Library, XXII (1938), pp. 243-290.
2 Ibid., p. 258.
140
THE DaTE OF THE Exopus 141
evidence. But it is quite clear from a careful survey-of all the

Scriptural evidence, including the whole time scheme under-
lying the Pentateuch and the early history of Israel through
the period of the Judges to the time of Solomon, that the
Old Testament places Moses and the period of the Exodus
around the middle of the fifteenth century B.c. rather than a
full century and a half later in the first half of the thirteenth
century B.c. Biblical and extra-Biblical evidence in support of
this is not easily set aside.
1. Explicit Scriptural Statement Places the Exodus c. 1441 3.c
And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after
the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt, in
the fourth year of Solomon’s reign . . . he began to build the house
of Jehovah (I Kings 6:1).
The fourth year of Solomon’s reign, although the chronology of
this period still oscillates about a decade, would be about 961
B.c. W. F. Albright® gives 922 B.c. as the date of Solomon’s
death, Edwin R. Thiele 931 3.c.,* Joachim Begrich 926 B.c.°
And since Solomon ruled forty years (I Kings 11:42), the fourth
year of his reign would be variously computed — 958 3. c. (Al-
bright), 967 B.c. (Thiele) and 962 B.c. (Begrich). Taking the
year 961 3. c., which cannot be far wrong, we arrive at 1441 B.c.
as the date of the Exodus, and 1871 B.c. as the time of the en-
trance of Israel into Egypt, since the sojourn there lasted 430
years (Ex. 12:40, 41).
Scholars, such as Albright, who argues for a date of the
Exodus a century and a half later (1290 B. c.),° and H. H. Rowley,
who places it over two centuries later (1225 3B.c.),’ are com-
pelled to reject I Kings 6:1 as late and completely unreliable,
despite the fact that the chronological note it contains bears
evidence of authenticity and obviously fits into the whole time
scheme underlying the Pentateuch and the books of Joshua and
Judges.* Those who thus, by a century and a half or two cen-
turies, shorten the period of the Judges, which the Biblical
figures place about 1400-1050 B.c., virtually rule out the possi-
bility of fitting the Biblical chronology into the frame of con-
temporary history. Consequently they are forced to reject or
3 Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, C (Dec. 1945), p. 17.
4 The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (Chicago, 1951), pp. 254f.
5 Die Chronologie der Koenige von Israel und Juda (1929), p. 155.
6 From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore, 1940), p. 194f.
7 Op. cit., p. 263.
8 Cf. J. W. Jack, The Date of the Exodus (Edinburgh, 1925), pp. 200-216.
drastically alter virtually all the numerous chronological notices

contained in a book like Judges and to telescope the period, at
least insofar as the Biblical chronological framework is con-
cerned.
2. Contemporary Egyptian History Permits a Date for the
Exodus c. 1441 B.c. This date falls very probably in the open-
ing years of the reign of Amenhotep II (1450-1425 B.c.), son
of the famous conqueror and empire builder, Thutmose III
(1482-1450 B. c.)® One of the greatest of all the Pharaohs, Thut-
mose III furnishes an ideal figure for the Pharaoh of the Op-
pression. According to the Biblical record Moses waited for the
death of the great oppressor before returning to Egypt from
his refuge in Midian (Ex. 3:23). The Exodus took place not
very long afterward in the reign of Amenhotep II, who evi-
dently was the king who hardened his heart and would not let
the children of Israel go.
In the contemporary records of Amenhotep II no references,
of course, occur to such national disasters as the ten plagues
or the loss of the Egyptian army in the Red (Reed) Sea, much
less to the escape of the Hebrews. But this circumstance was
to be expected. The Egyptians were the last people to record
their misfortunes. Nor is there any sign upon the mummy of
Amenhotep II, discovered in 1898 in the Valley of the Kings,
to show that he was drowned at sea. The Bible, indeed, does
not state that he was, or that he personally accompanied “his
horses, his chariots, and his horsemen into the water” (Ex. 14:
23-31).
If Amenhotep II was the reigning Pharaoh of the Exodus,
his eldest son was slain in the tenth plague, “which smote all
the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh
on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the
dungeon...” (Ex. 12:29). It is plain from the monuments that
Thutmose IV (1425-1412 B.c.), who excavated the sphinx, was
not the eldest son of Amenhotep II. The so-called “Dream In-
scription of Thutmose IV” recorded on an immense slab of red
granite near the sphinx at Gizeh states that while yet a youth
the future Pharaoh had fallen asleep under the famous monu-
ment and dreamed. In his dream the sphinx appeared to him,
startling him with a prophecy that one day he would become
9 The dates are those of George Steindorff and Keith C. Seele, When Egypt Ruled the
East (Chicago, 1942), p. 274, and are approximate.
THE DaTE oF THE Exopus 143
king of Egypt and bidding him clear the sand away from her
feet in token of gratitude.
It is clear from this ancient record that Thutmose IV was not
Amenhotep’s eldest son, since his hopes of succession to the
throne were apparently remote as the law of primogeniture
was in force in Egypt at this time. In short the possibility is
at least open that the heir apparent died in the manner recounted
in the Bible.
The general historical situation made the Exodus possible
toward the beginning of the reign of Amenhotep II. At the
death of the great Thutmose III the whole of the outlying
parts of the Empire in Syria-Palestine revolted. The new Pha-
raoh moved against the insurrectionists and crushed them, but
it may well be that the distractions of this campaign created a
diversion, the advantage of which Moses was not slow to seize.
The picture of Thutmose II as the great oppressor of the
Israelites is quite credible. He was a great builder and em-
ployed Semitic captives in his vast construction projects. Many
of his building operations were supervised by his vizier, named
Rekhmire. This important official or prime minister exercised
powers as extensive as those of his earlier colleague, Joseph.’
His tomb near Thebes is covered with scenes depicting his
career. In one of these representations Rekhmire leans upon
his staff and inspects stonecutters, sculptors, brickmakers and
builders who toil before him.
A portion of the scene on Rekhmire’s tomb depicts the brick-
makers. Brickmaking in ancient Egypt was a process which
involved breaking up the Nile mud with mattocks, moistening
it with water, and mixing it with sand and chopped straw (Ex.
5:6-19). Afterwards it was formed in molds and baked in the
sun. Semitic foreigners are significantly found among the brick-
makers and bricklayers on Rekhmire’s tomb. The accompany-
ing inscription refers to the “captives brought by his majesty
for the works of the temple of Amun.” The bricklayers are
quoted as saying, “He supplies us with bread, beer and every
good sort,” while the taskmasters warn the laborers, “The rod is
in my hand; be not idle.”™
In the course of time Joseph died and was embalmed and
laid in a tomb according to the custom of the Egyptians (Gen.
10 J, Finegan, Light From the Ancient Past (Princeton, 1946), p. 90.
11 Pp, E. Newberry, The Life of Rekhmara (1900), p. 38; James Henry Breasted, Ancient
Records of Egypt, Vol. Il, sect. 758f.
50:26). Eventually “there arose a new king over Egypt, who

knew not Joseph” (Ex. 1:8). Thus began the long years of
oppression. This new king seems to have been the founder or
an early king of the powerful Eighteenth Dynasty (1546-1319
B.C.). Since the Hyksos invasion of Egypt was led by Semites,
and not by Hurrians or Indo-Aryans, as recent studies have
shown, it appears that the expulsion of the Hyksos around the
middle of the sixteenth century B.c. was the important event
that resulted in the oppression of the Israelites.
The Seventeenth Dynasty, with a kingdom established at
Thebes, became the powerful rivals of the foreign Hyksos rulers,
who since about 1750 s.c. had intrenched themselves in the
Delta. In the war of liberation Kamose (c. 1570 B.c.) defeated
the invaders and Ahmose completed the expulsion of the Hyksos
from Egypt. Very likely under the kings of the Eighteenth
Dynasty who preceded Thutmose III—Amenhotep I (1546-
1525 s.c.), Thutmose I (1525-1508 B.c.) and Thutmose II
(1508-1504 B.c.) —and under Queen Hatshepsut (1504-1482
B.c.), the Hebrews were becoming more and more enslaved.
Moses was born about 1520 B.c., probably during the reign of
Thutmose I, whose daughter, the famous Hatshepsut, may well
have been the royal personage who discovered the infant
among the flags by the riverside (Ex. 2:5-10).
Since Thutmose I left no surviving legitimate male heir to the
throne, his daughter Hatshepsut was in line for succession. But
being prevented by her sex from succeeding as king, she pos-
sessed no more than the right to convey the crown by marriage
to her husband and to secure the succession to her children.
To circumvent a dynastic dilemma and to prevent the loss of
the crown to another family, Thutmose I was obliged to marry
his daughter to her younger half-brother, a son by a lesser mar-
riage, who took the throne as Thutmose II.
But the legitimate marriage of Thutmose II, like that of his
father, failed to supply a male heir to the throne. Again steps
had to be taken to safeguard the survival of the dynasty. Thut-
mose II, accordingly, named as his successor a young son by
a minor wife. Appointing the lad as coregent and strengthening
his claim to the throne by marrying him to his half-sister, Thut-
12 Cf. H. E. Winlock, The Rise and Fall of the Middle Kingdom in Thebes (New York,
1947); Hans Stock, Studien xur Geschichte und Archaeologie der 13. bis 17. Dynastie
Aegyptens (Glueckstadt, 1942); W. F. Albright, The Old Testament and Modern Study,
ed. by H. H. Rowley (Oxford, 1951), p. 44.
THE DaTE oF THE Exopus 145
mose II's daughter by Hatshepsut, the young prince ascended

the throne and was crowned as Thutmose III. But he was not
destined for some time to assume the reins of office. Hatshepsut,
his stepmother and mother-in-law (by marriage to Hatshepsut’s
daughter),not only assumed the kingship during Thutmose III’s
minority, but refused to surrender her regency even after the
king became of age.
From the first the energetic queen announced her intention
of reigning as a man. Her brilliant reign was characterized by
remarkable prosperity and great building enterprises and did
not come to an end until about 1486 B.c., when, upon her death
the restive and jealous Thutmose III ascended to the throne
and forthwith obliterated or destroyed all her monuments. If
the plaster with which he covered them had not fallen away,
much less would be known of his remarkable stepmother.
The death of Hatshepsut and the accession of Thutmose III
doubtless inaugurated the last and most severe phase of the
oppression of Israel. The new monarch was one of the greatest
foreign conquerors in Egyptian history. In numerous victorious
campaigns in Syria-Palestine, he pushed the frontiers of Egypt
to the Euphrates River. Lists of his conquests in Asia include
many familiar Bible names such as Kadesh, Megiddo, Dothan,
Damascus, Hamath, Laish, Geba, Taanach, Carmel, Beth-She-
mesh, Gath, Gerar, Ekron, Gezer and Bethshan.* Little must
the powerful empire builder have realized that in despoiling
Palestine and breaking down the strongholds of the Amorites,
he was preparing them for the conquest of the land by the
humble Hebrew slaves, who were even then toiling under the
fierce lash of his taskmasters by the Nile.
3. Contemporary Events in Palestine Suggest a Date for the
Exodus c. 1441 8.c.. If the Israelites came out of Egypt around
1441 B.c. and sojourned forty years in the desert (Num. 32:13;
Deut. 2:7; Josh. 5:6), they entered Canaan around 1401 B.c.
The important question is whether there is any such invasion
of central and southern Palestine hinted at in contemporary
records that would suggest the Israelite conquest under Joshua.
That there is such an invasion of outsiders recounted in the
famous Amarna Letters, which deal with this very period from
about 1400-1366 s.c., has been known virtually since their dis-
covery in 1886. These invaders, called Habiru, are etymologically
13 Breasted, op. cit., sect. 402.
actually equatable with the Hebrews and, although many prob-

lems are involved and the best scholars are divided on the matter,
the statement of J. W. Jack is still pertinent, especially in the
light of plain statement and clear intimations of the Old Testa-
ment concerning the date of the Exodus. “Who were these in-
vaders of southern and central Palestine? . . . Who else could
they be but the Hebrews of the Exodus, and have we not here
the native version of their entry into the land?”
Abdi-Hiba, governor of Jerusalem, wrote numerous letters to
the Pharaoh Akhnaton (1387-1366 B.c.) beseeching Egyptian
aid against the encroaching Habiru, if the country were to be
saved for Egypt:
The Habiru plunder all lands of the king.
If archers are here
this year, then the lands of the king,
the Lord, will remain; but if the archers are not here,
then the lands of the king, my lord, are lost.!®
See eA ea
|
WV
a RD
Left: The pharaoh as an archer. From a scarab.

Right: Example of Hyksos art at Jericho, City III. Courtes f
Story of Jericho, figures 22 and 15 respectively.) : itt tonic ot
4. Archeological Evidence From the Fall of Jericho Favors

a Date for the Exodus c. 1441 8. c. Excavations at the site of the
ancient town point to the fall of the city around 1400 s.c. Old
Testament Jericho was the chief fortress of strategic importance
14 Op. cit., p. 128. For a full discussion see ibid., pp. 119-198.
15 Samuel A. B. Mercer, The Tell El-Amarna Tablets (Toronto, 1939), Vol. II, no. 287
lines 56-60. ;
THE DATE oF THE Exopus 147
commanding the entrance to Canaan from the east. Represented

now by the modern mound known as Kom el-Sultan, the an-
cient city rose above an oasis and springs now called Ain el-
Sultan, which yield the most plentiful water supply in the whole
vicinity. In the background the hills of the western highlands
rise abruptly, and a mile distant rises the bold fifteen-hundred-
foot-high ridge called Jebel Kuruntul. This was evidently the
mountain to which the spies of Joshua fled from Rahab’s house
(Josh. 2:22). As steep and impassable as the western barrier
to the hills appears, it is actually pierced by gorges which give
access to the interior plateau of Palestine.
As a result of excavations of Ernst Sellin and the Deutsche
Orientgesellschaft (1907-1909)'® and particularly those of John
Garstang (1930-1936)"? the occupational history of the ancient
city has been outlined. The site was occupied, it was found,
as early as Neolithic times, before 4500 B.c., and in the Chalco-
lithic era (4500-3000 B.c.) a series of successive cities stood
there. Later cities, assigned alphabetic names by Professor Gar-
stang, occupied the site. City A was dated 3000 B.c. City B
was founded about 2500 B.c. and was in existence in the days
of Abraham and fell about 1700 B.c. City C was larger than
its predecessors, and contained a splendid palace and was sur-
rounded by stout walls with a stone glacis and outer moat. The
city belonged to the Hyksos era and many scarabs of this
period were uncovered in its ruins. Dating from about 1700 B.c.
it suffered destruction around 1500 B. c.
City D was that which was taken by Joshua and the invading
Israelites. It was constructed about 1500 s.c. At this time the
old palace of the preceding city was rebuilt and the new city
protected by a double wall of brick. A massive six-foot-thick
wall was erected on the edge of the mound. The inner wall
was separated from it by a space of from twelve to fifteen feet,
and was itself twelve feet thick. The wall originally reached
perhaps a height of about thirty feet. The size of the city was
very small, its area comprising only about a half dozen acres.
The crowded condition led to the erection of houses over the
space between the inner and outer walls. Thus Rahab is said
to have let the spies down “by a cord through the window: for
16 Ernst Sellin and Carl Watzinger, Jericho (1913).
17 J. Garstang in Annals of Archeology and Anthropology, issued by the Institute 0}
Archeology, University of Liverpool, IXX (1932), pp. 3-22; XX (1933), pp. 3-42; XXI
(1934), pp. 99-136; XXII (1935), pp. 143-168; XXIII (1936), pp. 67-76; J. and J. B. EB.
Garstang, The Story of Jericho (London, 1940).
her house was upon the side of the wall, and she dwelt upon
the wall” (Josh. 2:15).
Jericho’s walls (City D) showed evidence of violent destruc-
tion. The outer wall had tumbled forward down the slope of
the mound, and the inner wall with the houses erected on it,
had fallen into the intervening space. Reddened masses of stone
and brick, together with ashes and charred timbers, showed
that a conflagration accompanied the fall of the city. The na-
tural conclusion to be drawn from the excavations is that this
destruction of Jericho’s walls is that which is so graphically
recounted in Joshua 6. This identification is strengthened by
the fact that after this complete destruction, Jericho lay in ruins,
and was not rebuilt until the time of City E, which belongs to
the time of Ahab (c. 860 B.c.), when Hiel of Bethel rebuilt the
city (I Kings 16:34).
Garstang dates the destruction of Jericho (City D) around
1400 3.c., which certainly agrees with the Biblical representa-
tions of the time of its fall and the Conquest of Canaan. How-
ever, it is only natural that much opposition should develop
against this date by advocates of late-date theories of the Exodus.
G. E. Wright and W. F. Albright claim to have disproved Gar-
Royal Egyptian scarab signets of the last kings of Jerich

Garstang, The Story of Jericho, fig. 18.) ates iaieeh cite Set es
stang’s date. But the fact remains that much confusion and un-
certainty remain among those who, like Albright, would place
the destruction of Jericho about 1300 B.c. In which case it
neither fits into their date of the Exodus (now 1280 B. c.)!® nor
can be connected historically with the destruction of City D
as recounted in Joshua 6; whereas Pere Vincent’s date (c. 1250
B.C.), which could be fitted into Albright’s date of 1290 B.c.
(now 1280 s.c.) for the Exodus, the latter confesses, “remains
possible, though extremely difficult.”
18In The Old Testament and Modern Study, p. 11.
19 Ibid.
THE DaTE OF THE Exopus 149
II. OBJECTIONS TO THE BrBuicaL Date

Those who freely set aside Old Testament chronological
notices as frequently of little historical value would strenuously
object to calling the early (1441 s.c.) date of the Exodus the
Biblical one. They would contend that placing the Exodus later
in the thirteenth century 8.c. under the Nineteenth Egyptian
Dynasty rather than in the fifteenth century B.c., under the
Eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty, is more in line with the Biblical
evidence. This claim, however, is made unwarrantedly on the
basis of the data contained in Exodus 1:11, as will be shown.
Archeological evidence is also adduced in support of the late-
date theory. According to this general theory Israel entered
Egypt about 1710 B.c., left Egypt about 1280 B. c. and entered
Palestine about 1240 s.c. Consequently, the following objec-
tions to the early (1441 B.c.) date of the Exodus are commonly
offered:
1. Explicit Scriptural Statement, It Is Contended, Places the
Exodus c. 1280 s.c. Rather Than c. 1441 s.c. Exodus 1:11, ac-
cording to which the enslaved Israelites “built for Pharaoh store
cities, Pithom and Raamses,” is employed as the basis of the late-
date theory. I Kings 6:1, on the other hand, which dates the
Exodus about 1441 B.c., is supposed to be a conflicting and in-
ferior “tradition,” and accordingly rejected. But properly in-
terpreted Exodus 1:11 is not in disagreement with I Kings 6:1
and is explainable under the 1441 3.c. date of the Exodus.
Archeology has located Pithom at Tell er-Retabeh and Raamses
at Tanis and indicated that these cities were (allegedly at least)
built by Raamses II (c. 1290-1224 s.c.).”° But in the light of
Raamses II’s notorious practice of taking credit for achievements
accomplished by his predecessors, these sites were most certainly
merely rebuilt or enlarged by him. Moreover, since it is true
that Tanis was called Per-Re’emasese (the House of Raamses)
for only a couple of centuries (c. 1300-1100 B.c.), the reference
in Exodus 1:11 must be to the older city, Zoan-Avaris, where
the oppressed Israelites labored centuries earlier." Accordingly,
the name Raamses is to be construed as a modernization of an
archaic place name like Dan (for Laish in Genesis 14:14). Since
20 Latest revised dates of this Pharaoh. See Albright in The Old Testament and Modern
Study, p. 11.
21 See the present writer’s Introductory Guide to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, 1951),
pp. 197-200, and Jack, op. cit., pp. 22-32.
Zoan-Avaris was once a flourishing city before the expulsion

of the Hyksos (c. 1570 s.c.), there was ample time for the
enslaved Israelites to have built the earlier city, for they entered
Egypt about 1870 B.c.
It is difficult, too, to imagine that such
renowned conquerors and builders like
Thutmose III and Amenhotep II would
have abandoned all interest in the Delta
area, especially the rich region of Goshen
situated so near their Asiatic domains. It
was natural after the expulsion of the Hyk-
sos that the chief center of administration
should be located at Thebes, but it is
highly probable that the old capital was
not abandoned by the Pharaohs of the
Eighteenth Dynasty. Owing to the vast
expansion of Egyptian influence in Asia,
it was necessary that there should be a
seat of power in the northeast Delta. It
is known from a scarab that Amenhotep II
was born at Memphis, not far from Go-
Cartouche of Rameses 11 shen, showing that the Pharaoh’s court
(Raamses-Meriamon, a- . : c n
amses, the beloved of yesided there sometime in his father’s
Amon’’), the great Egyp-
pee
tian cong Ukf the IN
13th pate
i 22 In view
i of thisi fact, there must
many, totobebe the thepharaoh
pharaoh ofofhave been a royal residence
i and a seat of
lion, the early French government in this locality during the
Egyptologist, gave the name
“cartouche” to these ovals reigns of Thutmose III and Amenhotep II.
titles of kings. It is certainly with good reason that the
Exodus narrative assumes the Pharaoh’s residence to have been
not far from the land of Goshen.
2. It Is Contended That Israel Would Not Very Unlikely Have
Entered Egypt Before the Hyksos Period. The original entry,
if we reckon from the Exodus around 1441 B.c., allowing a so-
journ of 430 years in Egypt (Ex. 12:40, 41), would be 1870 z. c.
under the strong Middle Kingdom, and would have taken place
a century and a half before the Hyksos period, which now must
be dated within the period c. 1720 to c. 1550 3. c.28 While the
Hyksos movement was led by Semites, and would undeniably
have been a propitious time for Israel's entry, yet the supposition
22 Jack, op. cit., p. 250.
23 Albright’s dates, in The Old Testament and Modern Study, p. 44. For recent literature
on the Hyksos question see sbid., note 2.
Tue Date or THE Exopus 15]
that their going down into Egypt must of necessity have occurred
during that period, is entirely groundless. Abraham had resorted
thither and moved freely in high circles much earlier in the
Middle Kingdom (Gen. 12:10-20), and there is no valid reason
why Joseph may not have done so at a later period, especially
when his abasement and exaltation in Egypt are represented
as entirely providential. In addition, the details of the story have
a strong Egyptian and not a Hyksos (Semitic) coloring. Had
the reigning king been Hyksos the Hebrew shepherds would
not have been segregated in Goshen and the point stressed that
baa shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians” (Gen.
46:34).
3. It Is Maintained That the Identification of the Biblical
Hebrews With the Habiru of the Amarna Letters Is Unlikely.
Abdi-Heba represents Jerusalem as in imminent danger of being
taken. This and other details, it is said, do not fit the Biblical
picture, since it is known that the Israelites did not take Jeru-
salem until the time of David (II Sam. 5:6-10). Although there
are difficulties of detail, this particular one is a tenuous objection.
As is known from the Old Testament, the fear of the victorious
Israelite invaders fell on all the inhabitants of Canaan (Josh.
6:27; 10:1, 2) and there is no reason why Abdi-Heba should not
have been thoroughly alarmed and utterly pessimistic in his
report concerning the situation to the Pharaoh of Egypt.
4. Archeological Evidence Allegedly Disproves the Fifteenth
Century Date of the Exodus. Nelson Glueck’s surface explora-
tions in Transjordan and in the Arabah are supposed to show
that there was a gap in the sedentary population of this region
from about 1900 to c. 1300 B.c., so that had Israel come up out
of Egypt around 1400 s.c., there would have been no Edomite,
Moabite, Ammonite kingdoms to resist their northward ad-
vance.” There would have been only scattered nomads living
in the region, it is claimed, and the situation presupposed in
Numbers 20:14-17, could not have existed. But there is nothing
in the passage in Numbers which would demand a developed
urban life in Edom or require the building of stout fortresses.
Besides, was not Israel a roving, tent-dwelling nation at the
time, and yet capable of war and conquest? Why may not the
Edomites have had a simple agricultural economy at this early
period of their history, which left little or no material remains?
24 The Other Side of the Jordan (New Haven, 1940), pp. 125-147.
Moreover, it seems in the light of the fact that the validity

of Glueck’s methods of surface exploration have been questioned
by several archeologists (although defended by Albright, who,
however, confesses that “this or that detail” of Glueck’s conclu-
sions “will doubtless have to be modified”), it would be the
part of wisdom to be extremely cautious on the matter, especially
when, as H. H. Rowley so wisely warns, “undue weight should
not be given to archeologists’ estimates of dates, since they
depend in part, at any rate, on subjective factors, as the wide
differences between them sufficiently prove.””*
Archeologists’ disagreement over the
date of the fall of Jericho is a good il-
lustration of the timeliness of Rowley’s
admonition. The same may be said of
the interpretation of the archeological
evidence of the date of the Exodus
turned up in Palestine, particularly at
Lachish and Debir (Kirjath Sepher).
Here again, as interpreted by advocates
of the late-date theory of the Exodus,
yFainted iar from the clty vevidence seems to favor the tall-ar these
(On ge 5 eesl Sheries
rcheologist, 245)
cities. ta the Israelites in the latter half
of the thirteenth century B.c. rather
than in the early fourteenth century B.c. The problems, as
the archeological situation now stands, are admittedly great, but
future discoveries and increased evidence will doubtless demand
a reinterpretation of the whole situation and result in the clear-
ing up of the confusion.
LITERATURE ON THE Exopus
(New York, 1911)), Vol. II, pp 83-106.
Jack, J. W., The Date of the Exodus (Edinburgh, 1925), pp. 1-282.
Se H., A History of Israel (Oxford, 1932), Vol. I,
Pp. “Ol.
Albright, W. F., Bulletin of the American Schools LVIII, pp. 10-18;
DXV IE, pp.22-26 CX IV poe 12s
Be Millar, What Mean These Stones? (New Haven, 1941), pp.
Montet, Pierre, Le Drama D’Avaris (Paris, 1941), pp. 1-224.

Rowley, H. H., The Rediscovery of the Old Testament (Philadelphia,
1946), pp. 59-68.
, From Joseph to Joshua. Schweich Lectures, 1948 (London, 1950).
25In The Old Testament and Modern Study, p. 4.
26 Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, XXII (1938), p. 258.
CHAPTER XIII
MOSAIC AND ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN LAWS
There has been considerable debate concerning the precise

route of Israel after entering the wilderness, since Mount Sinai
or Horeb (both names are applied to it) has not been identified
with certainty. The Sinai Peninsula is a huge triangle, 260 miles
long and 150 miles wide at the north. At the apex of the penin-
sula there is a mass of granite mountains, some of which reach
an elevation of eight thousand feet above sea level. Among these
mountains were the ancient copper and turquoise mines of the
tes and here is the traditional location of Mount Sinai,
where Moses received the law and before which Israel en-
camped. The chief peak is Jebel Musa, “Mountain of Moses.”
I. Mosaic Laws AND OTHER CODES
Archeology has uncovered many ancient bodies of law and
shed much light on Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Hittite and
Canaanite codes through the excavations of the past three
decades. As a result Mosaic legislation appears in a much clearer
perspective than ever before. Since its discovery at Susa in 1901-
1902, the Code of Hammurabi (c.1700B.c.) has remained classic
in illustrating and illuminating Mosaic laws. To this code, how-
ever, must now be added the earlier laws of Lipit-Ishtar, king
of Isin,’ in central Babylonia (c. 1875 B. c.) and the even earlier
laws of Eshnunna,” an ancient city northeast of modern Baghdad.
Hammurabi’ famous Code, accordingly, appears as a com-
parative latecomer in Babylonia, where codes of law evidently
had been published in succession for centuries. It is noteworthy,
moreover, that the Eshnunna Code, which antedates Hammur-
abi’s laws by almost two centuries, contains the first exact par-
allel to any early Biblical law. This parallel concerns the division
of oxen after a fatal combat between the animals (Ex. 21:35).
This parallel is of particular significance since the Code of Esh-
1See Francis R. Steele in American Journal of Archeology, III (1948), pp. 425-450.
2See Albrecht Goetze in Sumer, IV (1948), pp. 63-102; P. A. Pohl in Orientalia,
XVIII (1949), pp. 126-129 and Plates ‘X-XX.
153
nunna is at least five centuries earlier than that section of the

Mosaic legislation commonly known as the Book of the Cove-
nant (Ex. 20:23-23:19), which scholars now recognize must
go back substantially to the Mosaic Ages:
Knowledge of ancient Near Eastern jurisprudence has been
also greatly increased during the past generation by the exca-
vation and publication of Old Babylonian and Assyrian tablets
from Kanish in Cappadocia belonging to the nineteenth century
p.c. Added to this is the wealth of legal material of the fifteenth
century B. c. recovered at Nuzu near modern Kirkuk since 1925.
Assyrian legal practice has been illuminated by the publication
of the cuneiform treasures excavated by the Germans at the
city of Assur on the Tigris, including especially the laws from
the period of Tiglathpileser I (c. 1100 3.c.), which laws are
likely based on earlier codes. They were first published in 1920.*
Hittite laws, which show interesting contrasts to early Baby-
lonian jurisprudence, date a century or two earlier than the laws
of Tiglathpileser. Compared with these various laws “the Book
of the Covenant exhibits a combination of simplicity in economic
life and ethical humanitarianism in human relations which could
have arisen only in early Israel.”®
II. Mosaic Laws AND THE CODE OF HAMMURABI
This slab of black diorite over seven feet tall and some six
feet wide contains engraved upon it almost three hundred para-
graphs of legal provisions dealing with the commercial, social,
domestic and moral life of the Babylonians of Hammurabi’s
time (1728-1676 B.c.). At the top of the round-topped stele the
king is shown receiving the laws from the sun god Shamash,
patron of law and justice. At some time when Babylon was
weak, an Elamite conqueror carried away the monument to Susa.
Its discovery there by Jacques de Morgan in the early twentieth
century constitutes one of the most startling legal finds in history.
In comparing the Code of Hammurabi with the Pentateuchal
laws the fact of the priority of the former (by well over three
centuries under any calculation) has disposed of some untenable
theories and given rise to others. For instance, the old critical
view that detailed codes of laws like those found in the Penta-
teuch are anachronistic for so early a period has been exploded
3w. F. Albright, in The Old Testament and Modern Study, ed. by FE. UW. Rowley
(Oxford, 1951), p. 39; cf. Albrecht Alt, Die Urspruenge des israelitischen Rechts (Leipzig,
1934); Henri Cazelles, Etudes sur le Code de PAlliance (Paris, 1946).
4Cf. G. R. Driver and J. C. Miles, The Assyrian Laws (Oxford, 1935).
5 Albright, op. cit., pp. 39f.
Mosaic AND ANCIENT Near EAsteRN LAws 155
by the discovery of Hammurabi’s laws and much earlier codes

of Mesopotamia. Again, higher critical views which have placed
the origin of many of the laws ascribed to Moses in the ninth,
eighth, or seventh century B.c., or even later, have had to be
Y
DET. HA —-:
ra % EET
AM MU = RA - Bl
Hammurabi’s name in cuneiform writing. The first sign is a determinative denoting
a man’s name.
drastically revised or entirely rejected. On the other hand, the

discovery of the early extra-Biblical legal material has led many
to adopt an equally faulty view that Hebrew legislation is merely
a selection and adaptation of Babylonian law. The valid posi-
tion, which a careful study of the two bodies of material will
disclose, is that the Mosaic code is neither borrowed from nor
dependent upon the Babylonian, but is divinely given, as it
claims to be, and unique in those features that met Israel’s
peculiar need as an elect theocratic nation.
1. The Resemblances Between the Mosaic Laws and the Code
of Hammurabi are Clearly Due to Similarity of Antecedents and
General Intellectual and Cultural Heritage. It is only natural
that in codes dealing with peoples in somewhat similar condi-
tions, related racially and culturally, there should be some like-
ness in the incidents leading to litigation and likewise in the
penalties imposed for infringement of common statutes. Striking
differences, however, even in cases where there is similarity in
the matter at issue, demonstrate that there is no direct borrowing
and that the Mosaic is not dependent on the Babylonian. The
Biblical law of divorce (Deut. 24:1), for instance, permits the
man to put away his wife, but does not extend the same right
to the wife as the Babylonian Code does.®
Early Israelite laws were quite clearly divided into two groups,
civil laws of customary origin (mishpatim), which are mainly
contained in the Book of the Covenant (Ex. 20:23-23:33), and
moral and ethical injunctions. As might naturally be expected,
most of the former resemble similar laws in force among Israel’s
precursors and neighbors throughout the Near East, whereas
the latter are a distinct product of the high moral and spiritual
8 Section 142.
standards of Yahwism, which might be paralleled elsewhere

singly but never in wholesale fashion.
Exodus 21:23-25 and Deuteronomy 19:21 state concisely the
same principle of retaliation upon which a number of Ham-
murabi’s laws are based: “Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for
tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound
for wound, stripe for stripe.”* This, the so-called Lex Talionis,
is a primitive Semitic custom that naturally would be expected
to be reflected in various Semitic legal codes.
2. The Mosaic and Hammurabi Codes Are Different in Con-
tent. The Hebrew Code contains many purely religious injunc-
tions and ritual regulations. The Code of Hammurabi is civil.
However, the priestly laws of Leviticus contain many points of
contact with corresponding priestly ritual and practice in West-
ern Asia, whether in Canaan and Phoenicia or in Mesopotamia.
But the divine institution of Israelite ritual practice made direct
borrowing unnecessary. In some cases similar cultic practice
among surrounding people was divinely given to Israel and at
the same time invested with special significance for the wor-
ship of Yahweh.
3. The Two Codes Regulate a Different Type of Society.
Hammurabi’s laws are adapted to the irrigation-culture and the
highly commercialized urban society of Mesopotamia. The Mo-
saic injunctions, on the other hand, suit a simple agricultural,
pastoral people of a dry land like Palestine, much less advanced
in social and commercial development, but keenly conscious
in all phases of their living of their divine calling.
4. The Two Codes Are Different in Their Origin. The Baby-
lonian code is alleged to have been received by Hammurabi from
the sun god, Shamash. Moses received his laws directly from
God. Hammurabi, despite his purported reception from Sham-
ash, takes credit for them in both the prologue and epilogue of
the Code. He, not Shamash, established order and equity
throughout the land. Moses, in contrast, is only an instrument.
The legislation is, “Thus saith Yahweh.”
5. The Two Codes Differ in Their Morality. From the ethi-
cal and spiritual standpoint the Mosaic legislation, as would be
expected, offers a considerable advance over the Babylonian
Code. For instance, Hammurabi’s laws name at least ten vari:
eties of bodily mutilation prescribed for various offenses. If a
TW. W. Davies, The Codes of Hammurabi and Moses (1905).
Mosaic AND ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN LAWS 17
doctor performs an operation that is unsuccessful, his hand is

to be cut off. There is, however, one instance of mutilation in
the Pentateuchal laws, where a wife’s hand is to be severed
(Deut. 25:11, 12). In the Hebrew laws a greater value is set
upon human life, a stricter regard for the honor of womanhood
is discernible, and a more humane treatment of slaves is en-
joined. Moreover, the Babylonian Code has nothing in it cor-
responding to that twofold golden thread running through the
Mosaic legislation —love to God and love to one’s neighbor
(Matt. 22:37-40).
Alfred Jeremias summarizes the essential difference in spirit
between the Israelite Torah and the Babylonian Code as follows:
1. There is no control of lust. 2. There is no limitation of selfishness
through altruism. 3. There is nowhere to be found the postulate of
charity. 4. There is nowhere to be found the religious motif which
recognizes sin as the destruction of the people because it is in op-
position to the fear of God. In the Hammurabi Code every trace
of religious thought is absent; behind the Israelite law stands every-
where the ruling will of a holy God; it bears throughout a religious
character.®
LITERATURE ON Mosaic AND ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN LAW
Cook, S. A., The Laws of Moses and The Code of Hammurabi (1903).
Davies, W. W., The Codes of Hammurabi and Moses (1905).
Kent, C. F., Israel’s Laws and Legal Precedents (1907).
Johns, C. H. W., The Relations Between the Laws of Babylonia and the
Laws of the Hebrew People. Schweich Lectures, 1912 (London, 1914).
Jirku, A., Das Weltliche Recht im Alten Testament (1927).
Smith, J. Powis, The Origin and History of Hebrew Law (Chicago, 1931).
Alt, Albrecht, Die Urspruenge des israelitischen Rechts (Leipzig, 1934).
Driver, G. R. and J. C. Miles, The Assyrian Laws (Oxford, 1935).
Barton, George A., Archeology and the Bible (7th rev. ed.; Philadelphia,
1937), pp. 378-440.
Finegan, Jack, “The Code of Hammurabi,” in Light From the Ancient
Past (Princeton, 1946), pp. 47-50.
Cazelles, Henri, Etudes sur le Code de l’Alliance (Paris, 1946).
Myers, Jacob M., “Law in the Old Testament,” in Old Testament Com-
mentary (Philadelphia, 1948), pp. 43-52.
Meek, T. J., “The Origin of Hebrew Law,” in Hebrew Origins (rev. ed.;
New York, 1950), pp. 49-81.
Pritchard, James B., ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Princeton, 1950),
pp. 159-198.
8 The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient East (New York, 1911), Vol. II,
ap AS
CHAPTER XIV
THE CONQUEST OF THE CANAANITES
The Canaanites were the inhabitants of Canaan, the older

native name of Palestine. As a geographical designation, the
Hebrew form of “Canaan” seems to be derived from “Hurrian,”
meaning “belonging to the land of red purple.” As early as the
fourteenth century B.c., this term came to be used of the
country in which the “Canaanites,” or Phoenician traders, ex-
changed for their wares their most important commercial com-
modity, red purple dye, which was obtained from the murex
shells found on the shores of the Mediterranean.’ Accordingly,
in the Amarna Letters “the Land of Canaan” is applied to the
Phoenician coast,? and the Egyptians called all western Syria
by this name.
By the time of the Conquest, however, the term Canaan was
in vogue as the general designation of the territory later called
Palestine. Canaanites dwelt in both the eastern and western
part of the country (Josh. 11:3). According to Judges 1:9, 10,
they were practically everywhere, in the hill country, the Negeb,
the Shephelah, and Hebron. “The language of Canaan” (Isa.
19:18) refers principally to Hebrew, but embraces the general
West Semitic languages spoken in this territory, of which Phoe-
nician and Moabite were also dialects.
The name Palestine, as a geographical term, is of later origin
and is derived from the Philistines (Peleste) who settled in
large numbers along the southern coast in the twelfth century
B.C. The area where they settled became known as Philistia
(Joel 3:4), from which, in turn, the Greek name (he Palaistine)
was derived.* The land of Canaan (Palestine) was situated
1 Cf. B. Maisler, “Canaan and the Canaanites,” in Bulletin of the American Schools of
Oriental Research, CII (April, 1946), pp. 7-12.
2 Cf. Samuel A. B. Mercer, The Tell El-Amarna Tablets (Toronto, 1939), Vol. I, p- 26.
158
THE CONQUEST OF THE CANAANITES 159
between the great ancient empires of the Tigris-Euphrates and

Halys Rivers, on the one hand, and the great Egyptian Empire
of the Nile, on the other. It was eminently providential that
the nation Israel with the knowledge of the one true God and
with a corresponding obligation to be a testimony to that fact
should inherit a country that formed a geographical bridge
between the great Egypto-Mesopotamian civilizations.
I. Tue INVASION OF CANAAN
In the great pagan centers on the Nile and the Tigris and
the Euphrates Rivers there was always an active movement of
religious and cultural elements which tended to create an almost
Ae
OYOST
re
Drawing of a Phoenician battle ship and trading vessel, copied from a representation
on the wall of the Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh (700 B.C.). This type of vessel
was common after 1000 B.C. For the breadth and wealth of Phoenician trade see
Ezekiel 27. (Courtesy of The Biblical Archeologist, I, 2, fig. 10.)
imperceptible synthesis. Throughout the many centuries pre-

ceding the Israelite conquest this syncretizing process had been
operative upon the pre-Israelite inhabitants of Syro-Palestine, so
that by the time of Israel’s entrance into the land the Canaanites
were grossly enslaved by a morally degenerate paganism.
1. Israels Opportunity and Peril in the Conquest. In this
moral and religious situation, which confronted Israel on the
eve of the Conquest, lay the Hebrew nation’s greatest oppor-
tunity for witness to its distinctive calling and mission and at
the same time its greatest peril. If the nation would remain
loyal to its call to separation and resist incessant pressure from
all sides to yield to moral and religious syncretion with surround-
ing paganism, the discharge of its high and holy task of world-
blessing would be assured (Ex. 19:5-7).
If, however, the nation compromised its moral and spiritual

separateness, its witness was doomed, its role of blessing for-
feited. This is the reason the Israelites were divinely com-
manded not only utterly to destroy the Canaanites, who by their
gross idolatry and wickedness had forfeited their rights to the
land of Canaan, but also to possess their land and to keep them-
selves in rigid and uncompromising separation from the idolatry
that led to their corruption and downfall (Gen. 15:16; Josh.
6:17,.21; Judg. 271-33 ete.):
2. The Biblical Resume of the Conquest. After signal vic-
tories in Transjordan over Sihon, king of the Amorites and Og,
king of Bashan, Israel after the death of Moses and under
Joshua’s leadership, passed over Jordan and began the Con-
quest. The story of the Conquest is told in Joshua 1 to 12, and
the allocation of the land to the various tribes is recounted in
Joshua 13 to 22. After the destruction of Jericho and Ai (Josh.
6:1-8:29), the conquest of southern Canaan (Ch. 10) and north-
ern Canaan (Ch. 11:1-5) is described. In Joshua 11:16 to 12:24
the Conquest is summarized.
The events recorded in
the Biblical account are
evidently highly selec-
tive. Summary state-
ments (cf. 21:43-45)
seemingly embrace other
: feks cat eel scarab signets of the last kings
conquests not specifically
oO ericho.
an
rom J. and
Story of Jericho, fig.
J. B. E. Garstang, The
described
7
in
1
;
the book.
Those which are in-
cluded were considered sufficient to accomplish the author’s
purpose of proving God’s faithfulness to His people to give
them the land of Canaan for their possession.
II. THe Date oF THE CONQUEST
The vexed question of the date of the Conquest is of a piece
with the vexed problem of the date of the Exodus. Both as
yet contain many unsolved difficulties and are subject to limit-
less disagreement among scholars. As Millar Burrows says, “It
must be acknowledged that archeology has not simplified the
problems of the date of the Conquest, but has rather introduced
new complications.” *
1. Biblical Account of the Conquest Abbreviated. The quite
4 What Mean These Stones? (New Haven, 1941), p. 79.
detailed account of certain phases of Israelite victories, particu-

larly the initial successes at Jericho and Ai, and the extremely
abbreviated report of some of the other campaigns, for example,
that in northern Canaan (Josh. 11:1-5), with apparently some
important battles unmentioned, have combined to give the im-
pression of simplicity and have thus obscured to some extent
the original complexity, which in turn is undoubtedly being re-
vealed by archeology. However, the account in Joshua does
indicate that the problem is complicated by the fact that the
Conquest did not take place all at once, but in stages.
Types of Late Bronze Age pottery in use at the time of the Israelite conquest of
Jericho. From Jericho, City IV; ca. 1425 B.C. The jug to the left, found with
scarabs of Amenhotep, is from tomb 4. (Courtesy of J. and J. B. E. Garstang, The
Story of Jericho, fig. 20.)
It is clear, for example, that Transjordan was conquered by

Moses, much of eastern and central Palestine by Joshua, and
the remaining portions by the tribes either before or after the
death of Joshua (Judg. 1:1-36), while individual towns like
Gezer (Judg. 1:29; I Kings 9:16), Dor, Megiddo, Taanach and
Bethshan (Judg. 1:27, 28) were not subdued until much later.
2. Biblical Chronology and the Conquest. If the Biblical nar-
ratives are accepted as reliable sources and the Biblical chron-
ology followed, the Exodus, as noted,® must be placed about
1441 3.c., and the fall of Jericho about 1401 s.c. With this
5 See preceding chapter.
agrees the view of the British excavator of Jericho, Professor

John Garstang. The chronological notices in Judges 11:26 and
I Kings 6:1 support this, as well as the evident time scheme
underlying the Old Testament historical books to the Solomonic
era. In addition, this position has the distinct advantage of
allowing at least a partial equation of the Habiru of the Amarna
letters with the Israelites led by Joshua.® This view is, without
doubt, the position that Old Testament Scriptures support.
3. Alleged Conflicting Archeological Data at Ai. However,
the 1401 B.c. date of the beginning of the Conquest is supposed
to violate the assured results of archeological findings in Pales-
tine, notably at Ai, Lachish and Debir (Kirjath-Sepher). The
problem of Ai is indeed acute, if the mound of et Tell is ac-
tually the Biblical city. Excavation of the site by Mme. Judith
Marquet-Krause in 1933 and 1934 has shown that there was
an occupational gap in the history of the mound from about
2200 B. c. till after 1200 B. c., so that supposedly there was noth-
ing but a ruin there when Joshua and Israel are said to have
captured and destroyed it (Josh. 8).7
Some critics, like Martin Noth, attempt a solution to the prob-
lem by radically dismissing the Biblical story as an aetiological
legend, which supposedly explains how the place came to be
in ruins and to be called “Ruin,” the meaning of “Ai” in Hebrew.®
A less radical explanation, but one which scarcely accords much
more historical reliability to the Biblical account, is that of W. F.
Albright, who assumes that the narrative in Joshua 8 originally
referred to the destruction of Bethel in the thirteenth century
B.C., but that the aetiological interest in the ruins of Ai caused
the story to be attached to this site instead of Bethel.® But this
assumption, besides being objectionable in that it reflects upon
the genuine historicity of the Biblical account, is extremely un-
likely because the Biblical narrative carefully distinguishes be-
tween the two cities (Josh. 8:12) and there is not the slightest
hint of any destruction of Bethel at this time.
However, the destruction of Bethel in the thirteenth century
B.C. by a tremendous conflagration, shown in the excavation of
the site in 1934 by a joint expedition of the Pittsburgh-Xenia
6 A fact as difficult to deny as to fit into later-date theories of the Conquest (see Bur-
rows, op. cit., p. 271).
T American Journal of Archeology, XL (1936), p. 158.
8 Palaestina Jahrbuch (1938), pp. 7-20.
® Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, LXXIV, pp. 16f.
Theological Seminary and the American Schools of Oriental Re-

search, under the leadership of Professor Albright, undoubtedly
is to be connected with the later destruction of the city by the
me “4Joseph quite some time after Joshua’s death (Judg. 1:
-26).
More reasonable is the explanation of Father Hugues Vincent
that the inhabitants of Ai had merely a military outpost at Ai
of such modest proportions and temporary nature that it left
no remains to give a clue of its existence to the archeologist.’
However, the narrative clearly indicates an inhabited city.
Whatever the explanation, further investigation and excava-
tion in the vicinity will doubtless yield the correct solution. It
is still barely possible as Vincent suggests, that there was a settle-
ment there in Joshua’s day, although no trace of it has as yet
been found. The Biblical narrative stresses the smallness of the
then-existing city (Josh. 7:3), which may have been nothing
more than a fortress guarding Bethel. Then, too, it should be
remembered, as Sir Frederic Kenyon observes, “that the trans-
ference of a name from a ruined or abandoned site to another
nearby is a common phenomenon in Palestine.”*! Future re-
search may establish the actual site of the late Bronze Age city
which fell to Joshua not at et-Tell at all, but somewhere in the
immediate or more remote vicinity of the ancient ruin, and
discover that the name of the older city was transferred to it.
4, Alleged Evidence from Lachish. Archeological findings at
Lachish (Tell ed-Duweir), the capture of which by Joshua and
all Israel is related in Joshua 10:31-33, show that the city suf-
fered violent destruction by fire about 1230 B.c. A thick layer
of ash containing a scarab of Rameses II, an inscribed bowl and
several other details combine to establish the date! But the
question may fairly be broached, Is this destruction to be at-
tributed to the invading Israelites under Joshua? Advocates of
late-date theories of the Conquest readily assume this to be the
case. But besides being completely out of focus with the find-
ings at Jericho and the general Biblical datings, the fact must
be faced that the Biblical record says not a word about the
city itself being burned or destroyed when taken by Joshua.
Rather in the light of Joshua 11:13 it is clearly intimated that
10 Revue Biblique (1937), pp. 231-266.
11 The Bible and Archeology (New York, 1940), p. 190.
12 Cf. W. F. Albright in Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, LXVIII
(Dec. 1937), pp. 23f; (April 1939), pp. 20-22.
in the case of “cities that stood upon their mounds,” it was

Joshua’s later military policy, with few exceptions, to burn none
of them.
5. Alleged Evidence from Debir. The city of Debir, earlier
known as Kirjath-sepher, offers a similar example. Now identi-
fied with Tell Beit Mirsim, thirteen miles southwest of Hebron,
the mound was excavated in 1926 by a joint expedition of the
Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary and the American Schools
of Oriental Research at Jerusalem under the direction of Mel-
vin Grove Kyle and W. F. Albright.* Here, too, at the end
of the Late Bronze Age there is a great burned layer, above
which are Israelite remains. But is this destruction of the
Canaanite city shortly before 1200 B. c.** to be connected with
Joshua’s conquests? The conqueror is not said to have destroyed
the city itself (Josh. 10:38, 39) but only its inhabitants, and it
must have been reoccupied by Canaanites and subsequently re-
captured for Judah by Caleb’s nephew, Othniel (Josh. 15:15-17;
Judg. 1:11-13), unless two variant and contradictory accounts
are assumed.
6. Necessity of Caution in Using Archeological Data. It is
thus apparent that investigators must be extremely careful of
the ever-present temptation to misuse archeological evidence
to support a theory. Scholars also must be extremely wary of
attaching undue authority to archeologists’ estimates of dates
and interpretation of data. That the fixing of dates and the
conclusions drawn from archeological findings often depend on
subjective factors is amply demonstrated by the wide diver-
gences between competent authorities on these matters.’
On the question of the twin problems of the date of the
Exodus and the Israelite Conquest of Canaan the conservative
student is warranted in moving very slowly before abandoning
the date c. 1441 s.c. for the former and c. 1401 3.c. for the
latter in favor of a period a century and a half or more later
under the plea that archeological evidence demands it.
13 The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, XII (1930-31); XIII
(1931-32), pp. 55-128; XVII (1936-37); XXI—XXII (1941-43).
14 Albright, Annual, XVII (1936-37), p. 79; M. G. Kyle, Excavating Kirjath-sepher’s
Ten Cities (Grand Rapids, 1934), p. 192.
15 For example, Garstang dates the fall of Jericho c. 1400 s.c. (Cia jand JaBabe
Garstang, The Story of Jericho [London, 1940], pp. 120ff.); Albright subscribes to the
date c. 1290 B.c. (From the Stone Age to Christianity [Baltimore, 1940], p. 195); Hugues
Vincent, the celebrated Palestinian archeologist, holds to the date 1250 s.c. (cf. Millar
Burrows, What Mean These Stones? p. 76); while H. H. Rowley views Rameses II as the
Pharaoh of the Oppression, and the Exodus as having taken place under his successor
Marniptah about 1225 s.c. (Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, XXII [1938], p. 263)
III. THe Extent oF THE CONQUEST

In the account of the invasion of Canaan under Joshua (Josh.
1-12) it is apparent that, although the power of the Canaanites
was broken by the destruction of Jericho and Ai (Josh. 6-8),
as a result of the southern (Josh. 10) and northern campaigns
(Josh. 11:1-5), yet the inhabitants were not wholly exterminated
(Judg. 1:1-36).
1. Extermination of the Canaanites Not Complete. Although
the Canaanites were completely massacred when a city was
taken, yet in many cases the city itself was not destroyed (Josh.
11:13), and not a few of the people who had escaped by flight
or were in hiding returned (Josh. 10:43) to the conquered
cities, and years afterward, when the tribes of Israel scattered
to settle, they met with sporadic resistance. Accordingly, places
once conquered like Debir (Josh. 10:38, 39) had to be subse-
quently reconquered (Judg. 1:11-15). Among other similar
cases is Hebron (Josh. 10:36, 37; Judg. 1:10).
2. Joshua's Political Mistakes. Three political blunders were
committed by Joshua. He made a treaty with the Gibeonites
(Josh. 9); he allowed the Jebusites to hold Jerusalem (Josh.
15:63); and he failed to dispossess the Philistines and control
the country to the sea. As a result, Judah and Simeon were cut
off from the rest of the nation. The Jebusite stronghold at Jeru-
salem commanded the main road north and was skirted for
some ten miles on the west by settlements of the Gibeonites.
Between Jerusalem and Jericho was a tract of rocky land cut
by impassable gorges running east and west. From Jerusalem
westward to the Mediterranean Sea was a strip of territory
occupied by foreigners — first Gibeonites, then Canaanites in
Dan and then Philistines as far as the sea. This situation was
to have serious repercussions affecting subsequent Israelite his-
tory.
But Joshua and Israel failed to drive the Canaanites
out of
various other sections of the country
—notably out of Gezer
(Josh. 16:10) and out of Bethshan, Ibleam, Dor, Endor,
Taanach and Megiddo in and about the Plain of Esdraelon
(Josh. 17:11); out of Beth-shemesh in the Shephelah (Judg.
1:33); and out of the region of Accho, and Sidon in the north-
western coastal territory (Judg. 1:31). Wherever the Canaan-
ites were allowed to remain they were to prove a snare to the

Israelites, according to the divine warning (Judg. 3:6, 7).
LITERATURE ON THE CONQUEST OF CANAAN
Garstang, John, Joshua Judges (London, 1931).
Burrows, Millar, What Mean These Stones? (New Haven, 1941), pp.
t2-19% 211-21);
Finegan, Jack, Light From the Ancient Past (Princeton, 1946), pp.
129-151.
Albright, W. F., “The Old Testament and Archeology,” in Old Testa-
ment Commentary (Philadelphia, 1948), pp. 144.
, “The Israelite Conquest of Canaan in the Light of Archeology,”
Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, LX XIV, pp.
1-23.
Robinson, T. H., 4 History of Israel (reprint; Oxford, 1948), pp. 112-
170.
Elmslie, W. A. L., How Came Our Faith (New York, 1949), pp. 91-111.
Flight, John W., The Drama of Ancient Israel (Boston, 1949), pp. 3-58.
Rowley, H. H., From Joseph to Joshua (London, 1950). With extensive
bibliography.
Meek, T. J., Hebrew Origins (rev. ed.,; New York, 1950), pp. 1-48.
CHAPTER XV
THE RELIGION OF THE CANAANITES
Was the command to exterminate the Canaanites a justifiable

act on the part of God, who ordered it, or on the part of man,
who partially, at least, obeyed it? Was the episode at variance
with the character of God and His people? That it was incon-
sistent and unjustified both on God’s side and man’s has been
so often asserted, that a consideration of the moral and religious
character of the Canaanites is a question of utmost importance
in solving the supposed theological difficulties that are com-
monly adduced.
Professor H. H. Rowley, for example, claims that the divine
command to destroy the Canaanites in general, or Jericho and
its inhabitants in particular, and similar episodes in the Old
Testament are contrary to the New Testament revelation of
God in Christ, and involve merely the erroneous thoughts of the
writers or characters in question about God, which we can now
no longer accept as true.’ Moreover, Rowley claims that such
incidents of wholesale destruction contain that which is “spir-
itually unsatisfying” and involve “dishonoring God.”?
Fortunately, the conservative theologian is greatly strength-
ened in his reply to criticism of this sort by the recent remark-
able contributions of archeology to present-day knowledge of
the character and religion of the Canaanites, which fully cor-
roborate the Biblical notices of their depravity and demonstrate
the full culpability of this ancient people, at the same time vin-
dicating the divine justice in ordering their extermination and
the human commendability in exterminating them.
I. Oxtp anp New Sources OF KNOWLEDGE
Despite the paramount import of Canaanite morality and re-
ligion in the realm of theology and general Biblical studies, little
1 Rediscovery of the Old Testament (Philadelphia, 1946), p. 187; Relevance of the Bible
(New York, 1944), pp. 32f.
2 Relevance of the Bible, pp. 32.
167
was known of this subject twenty-five years ago, except that

which, on the one hand, could be gleaned from the Bible, which,
however, was ample enough for faith, and on the other hand,
that which was preserved in the Graeco-Roman authors, which
was meager enough from the scholar’s viewpoint.
Artist’s drawing of the scene of a lion

attacking a gazelle engraved on a golden
cup from Ras Shamra—Ugarit. Found in
ruins southwest of the temple of Baal. The
Left: A Phoenician before the sacred scene illustrates the mixed style of art at
Ugarit, an art composed of Mycenaean,
See re Egyptian and Syrian elements. (Courtesy
Right: A Phoenician god on the cherub of Claude F. A. Schaeffer, The Cuneiform
throne. Texts of Ras Shamra-Ugarit, p. 22, fig. 6.)
1. Philo of Byblus. The main source of knowledge about Ca-

naanite religion before the new sources became available since
1930 was Philo of Byblus, the Greek name for ancient Gebal
on the Mediterranean (Josh. 13:5; I Kings 5:18), forty-two
miles north of Sidon. Philo lived about 100 a.p. He was a
native Phoenician scholar and gathered data for a historical
work called Phoinikika or “Phoenician Matters,” designated
“Phoenician History” by later Greek scholars. According to
Porphery and Eusebius, Philo translated the writings of an
earlier Phoenician named Sanchuniathon, who was supposed to
have lived at a very remote age, whom W. F. Albright places be-
tween 700-500 8. c.? Sanchuniathon in turn supposedly got his
material from one Hierombalus under Abibal, king of Berytus,
who is said to have flourished before the Trojan War.
2. Ugaritic Poetry. The abstract of Phoenician mythology
which has been preserved from Philo through Eusebius (like
the Biblical notices on the same subject) used to be commonly
regarded with suspicion by critical scholarship and considered
as mostly an invention by Philo, without any independent value
as a source of knowledge of Phoenician religion. This skeptical
8 Archeology and the Religion of Israel (Baltimore, 1942), p. 70. Journal Biblical
Literature (1941), pp. 209f.
THE RELIGION OF THE CANAANITES 169
attitude has been completely disproved by one of the most

important archeological discoveries of the first half of the
twentieth century — the recovery of the religious epic literature
at the site of Ras Shamra (the ancient Ugarit of the Egyptian
and Hittite Documents and the Amarna Letters) on the north
Syrian coast (1929-1937).*
a AAAI lee vee TTTTor PY

Neem deen aes OT nits
HE
esteem
KT REET
ts bu GV
FeiT
= e - e
A sample of Ugaritic alphabet cuneiform writing:

“He decides the suit of the widow,/ He judges the case of the orphan.’-—The Legend
of Daniel, II, V, 7b-8. (Courtesy of The Biblical Archeologist, II, 7, fig. 5.)
These significant poetical texts discovered by C. F. A. Schaef-

fer in a series of campaigns® have shown that the gods of Philo
bear names in large part now well-known from Ugarit as well
as from other contemporary and later Canaanite sources. The
Philo myths are characterized by the same moral abandon and
primitive barbarity with fondness for descriptive names and
personifications that are found at Ugarit.
The new sources of knowledge indicate little change in the
content of Canaanite mythology between c. 1400 and c. 700 B.c.
Many details of Philo’s account, not only in the matter of the
names of deities, but in the mythological atmosphere as well,
are in complete agreement with the Ugaritic myths and later
Phoenician inscriptions. Scholars are, therefore, justified in ac-
cepting, at least provisionally, all data preserved by Philo that
do not involve subjective interpretation on his part.
Il. THe CANAANITE PANTHEON
Canaanite deities, on the one hand, present remarkable fluidity
of personality and function, so that it is often extremely difficult
to fix the particular domain of different gods or to define their
kinship to one another. Physical relationship and even sex change
4 Cyrus H. Gordon, Ugaritic Handbook (Rome, 1947); Ugaritic Literature (Rome, 1949);
H. L. Ginsberg’s translation of Ugaritic Myths, Epics and Legends in Ancient Near Eastern
Texts, ed. by J. B. Pritchard (Princeton, 1950), pp. 129-155.
5 Cf. his numerous articles in Syria from 1929-1939 and his The Cumeiform Texts of
Ras Shamra-Ugarit (1939).
with disconcerting ease. This is one of the grossly irrational

aspects of Canaanite religion, indicative of its corrupt nature.
On the other hand, Canaanite deities have for the most part
etymologically transparent names, a fact which seems to point
to the Canaanite pantheon as representing a cruder and more
primitive type of polytheism.
Miscellaneous epigraphic and literary sources reveal the names
of the chief gods and goddesses of numerous Canaanite cities
in various periods. The Ugaritic deities are now best known
because of the hundreds of religious texts dating from the fif-
teenth and early fourteenth century B.c. which were found in
a library housed in a building situated between Ugarit’s two
great temples, one dedicated to Baal and the other to Dagon.°
The divinities which figure in the mythological texts from Ugarit
were evidently not peculiar to the city, but were current among
all Canaanites, since they bear only a vague relationship to the
most popular deities worshiped in the city itself.
1. El is the name by which the supreme Canaanite deity is
known. This is also a name by which God is called in the Old
Testament — El, the God (Elohim) of Israel (‘el ’elohe yisrael,
Gen. 33:20).7 In prose it occurs more often with adjunct— El
Elyon (“The Most High God,” Gen. 14:18), El Shaddai (“God
Almighty,” Gen. 17:1), El Hai (“The Living God,” Josh. 3:10)
and very commonly in the plural of majesty, Elohim. In Hebrew
poetry El is much more frequent, where it stands quite often
without any adjunct (Ps. 18:31, 33, 48; 68:21; Job 8:3).°
The word el is a generic name for god in Northwest Semitic
(Hebrew and Ugaritic) and as such it is also used in the Old
Testament for heathen deities or idols (Ex. 34:14; Ps. 81:10;
Isa. 44:10). The original generic term was ’ilum, which drop-
ping the mimation and the nominative case ending (wu) became
‘el in Hebrew. It was almost certainly an adjectival formation
(intransitive participle) from the root “to be strong, powerful”
(wl),° meaning “The strong (powerful) One.”
In Canaanite paganism the el, par excellence, was the head
of the pantheon. As the god, El was, in accordance with the
general irrationality and moral grossness of Canaanite religion,
TCf. Gen. 46:3; Josh. 22:22.
8 Samuel P. Tregelles, Gensenius? Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, p. 45,
9Cf. Ludwig Koehler and W, Baumgartner, Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti Libros
(Leiden, 1951), Vol. I, p. 47.
THE RELIGION OF THE CANAANITES val
a dim and shadowy figure, who, Philo says, had three wives,
who were also his sisters, and who could readily step down
from his eminence and become the hero of sordid escapades
and crimes. Philo portrays El as a bloody tyrant, whose .acts
terrified all the other gods, and who dethroned his own father,
Uranus, murdered his favorite son, and decapitated his own
daughter. The Ugaritic poems add the crime of uncontrolled
lust to his morbid character and the description of his seduction
of two unnamed women is the most sensuous in ancient Near
Eastern literature.?°
Left: Stele of the Canaanite storm-god Baal brandishing a club and wielding a
stylized thunderbolt.
Right: Ras Shamra stele, with
the great Canaanite god El receiving homage from the
King of Ugarit (14th century B. C.). (Drawn from plates XXXII and XXI respectively,
Cuneiform Texts of Ras Shamra-Ugarit. Courtesy of Claude F. A. Schaeffer.)
Despite these enormities, El was considered the exalted “father

of years” (abu shanima), “the father of man” (abu adami), and
“father bull,” that is, the progenitor of the gods, tacitly likened
to a bull in the midst of a herd of cows. Like Homer’s Zeus he
was “the father of men and gods.”
2. Baal was the son of El, and the reigning king of the gods,
10 Albright, Archeology and the Religion of Israel, p. 73.
dominating the Canaanite pantheon. As El’s successor he was

enthroned on a lofty mountain in the far northern heavens.
Often he was considered as himself being “the Lord of heaven”
(Baal-shamem); but sometimes distinguished from the latter
as in Philo, Baal was.the god of the rain and storm, whose voice
could be heard reverberating through the heavens in the thunder.
He is pictured on a Ras Shamra stela brandishing a mace in his
right hand and holding in his left hand a stylized thunderbolt
ending in a spear head."
In Ugaritic literature Baal is given the epithet Aliyan, “the
one who prevails.” As the giver of rain and all fertility, he figures
prominently in Canaanite mythology in his struggle with Mot
(Death), the god of drought and adversity. In his grapple with
Mot, he is slain. As a consequence, a seven year cycle of scarcity
ensues. Thereupon the goddess Anath, the sister and lover of
Aliyan, goes in search of him, recovers his body and slays his
enemy, Mot. Aliyan Baal is then brought back to life and
placed on Mot’s throne so that he may insure the revival of
vegetation for seven years.’? This is the central theme of the
great Baal Epic of Ugarit.
Besides the king of the gods and the storm god, Baal was the
god of justice, the terror of evildoers. He was also called “the
son of Dagon,” the grain god, who was the chief deity of Ashdod
(I oan 5:1-7) and who had temples at Ugarit and Gaza (Judg.
16:23):
At Ugarit Baal’s consort was his sister Anath, but at Samaria
in the ninth century B. c. Asherah appears in that role (I Kings
18:19). Different places at different periods arranged the pan-
theon somewhat differently, but the picture by and large was
fairly stable. The name Baal itself in Northwest Semitic (He-
brew, Phoenician and Ugaritic) is the common noun for “master”
or “lord,” and accordingly, like ’el, “strong one,” could be applied
to various gods. Actually, however, from an early period (by
at least the fifteenth century B. c.) the ancient Semitic storm-god
Hadad (Akkadian Adad) became “the lord” par excellence.
3. Anath, a combination of the sister and spouse of Baal,
was one of a galaxy of three Canaanite goddesses whose char-
acter gives a hint of the depths of moral depravity to which
12 For text of the Baal and Anath Cycle see Gordon, Ugaritic Literature, pp. 9-56;
For a refutation of the idea that Baal is a seasonal god, see ibid., pp. 4f.
the Canaanite cults sank. The other two are Astarte and Asherah.
All three were patronesses of sex and war — sex mainly in its
sensuous aspect as lust, and war in its evil aspect of violence
and murder.
Singularly enough from our point of view, Anath was given
the epithet of “virgin” and “the Holy One” (qudshu) in her
invariable role of a sacred prostitute — another illustration of the
utter irrationality and moral indiscrimination of Canaanite re-
if! Sins
Left: Artist’s drawing of gold pendant of the nude goddess of fertility from Ras
Shamra. The sacred prostitute stands on a lion. The serpents symbolize her fecundity.
Her spiral locks and general posture identify her cult.
Right: Another drawing of a gold pendant of the fertility goddess. The rams evidently
portray sexual vigor. (Courtesy of Claude F. A. Schaeffer. From The Cuneiform Texts
of Ras Shamra-Ugarit.)
ligion. Such a contradictory combination of virginity and fer-

tility not only appears in Canaanite goddesses but emasculation
and fecundity appear as contradictory features of Canaanite
gods, and sacred prostitution of both sexes was a concomitant
of the cult of the Syrian and Phoenician goddess.
The goddess was called Qudshu, “the Holiness,” that is, “the
Holy One,” in the perverted moral sense, and representations
of her as a nude woman bestride a lion with a lily in one hand
and a serpent in the other, point her out as a divine courtesan.
14 Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore, 1940), p. 1Z8.
In the same sense the male prostitutes consecrated to the cult

of the Qudshu and prostituting themselves to her honor, were
called gadesh, usually translated “sodomites” (Deut. 23:18;
I Kings 14:24; 15:12; 22:46). The feminine gedeshah is also
found (Deut. 23:18; Hos. 4:14).
The lily and the serpent are characteristically Canaanite. The
former bespeaks the grace and sex appeal of the bearer and
the latter symbolizes her fecundity.” At its best the erotic as-
pects of this cult must have sunk to extremely sordid depths of
social degradation.
As a patroness of war Anath appears in a fragment of the
Baal Epic in an incredibly bloody orgy of destruction. For some
unknown reason she fiendishly butchers mankind, young and
old, in a most horrible and wholesale fashion, wading delightedly
in human gore up to her knees — yea, up to her throat, all the
while exulting sadistically.’*
4. Astarte, goddess of the evening star, was like Anath and
Asherah concerned with sex and war and was not always clearly
distinguished from them. In Egypt Anath and Astarte were
even fused into one deity Antart, while in later Syria their cult
was displaced by that of a composite deity — Anat-Ashtart
(Atargatis)..7 Like Anath, Astarte was both a mother goddess
and a divine courtesan, and she shares all the latter’s moral
turpitude.
5. Asherah, the wife of El] in Ugaritic mythology, is the god-
dess who is called Athiratu-Yammi, “She Who Walks on (in)
the Sea.” She was the chief goddess of Tyre in the fifteenth
century B.C. with the appellation Qudshu, “holiness.” In the
Old Testament Asherah appears as a goddess by the side of
Baal, whose consort she evidently became, at least among the
Canaanites of the south. However, most Biblical references to
the name point obviously to some cult object of wood, which
might be cut down and burned, possibly the goddesses’ image
(I Kings 15:13; II Kings 21:7). Her prophets are mentioned
(I Kings 18:19), and the vessels used in her service referred
to (II Kings 23:4). The existence of numerous symbols, in
each of which the goddess was believed to be immanent, led
to the creation of numerous forms of her person, which were
described as Asherim. The cult object itself, whatever it was,
16 Gordon, Ugaritic Literature, 11:2-40; pp. 17f.
17 American Journal of Semitic Languages, XLI, pp. 73f, 283; XLIII, pp. 233
THE RELIGION OF THE CANAANITES 17/5
was utterly detestable to faithful worshipers of Yahweh (I Kings

15:13), and was set up on the high places beside the “altars
of incense” (hammanim) and the “stone pillars” (masseboth).
The translation of asherah by “grove” follows a singular tradi-
tion preserved in the Septuagint and the Vulgate which ap-
parently connects the goddess’ image with the usual place of
its adoration.
Other Canaanite deities besides El, Baal, Anath, Astarte (Ash-
toreth) were Mot (Death), Baal’s enemy; Reshep, the god of
pestilence and the lord of the underworld; Shulman or Shalim,
the god of health; Koshar (Hothar), the god of arts and crafts,
and others.
Il]. THe GENERAL CHARACTER OF CANAANITE CULTS
The Ugaritic epic literature has helped to reveal the depth
of depravity which characterized Canaanite religion. Being a
polytheism of an extremely debased type, Canaanite cultic prac-
tice was barbarous and thoroughly licentious. It inevitably
had a most serious retarding and debilitating effect on every
phase of Canaanite cultural and community life. It was in-
escapable that people should gravitate to the moral level of
the sordid gods they worshiped. “Like gods, like priest; like
priest, like people” expresses a law that operates unfailingly.
1. Canaanite Cults Utterly Immoral. The brutality, lust and
abandon of Canaanite mythology is far worse than elsewhere
in the Near East at the time. And the astounding characteristic
of Canaanite deities, that they had no moral character what-
ever, must have brought out the worst traits in their devotees
and entailed many of the most demoralizing practices of the
time, such as sacred prostitution, child sacrifice and snake wor-
ship.
2. Canaanite Cults Effete and Corrupt. Such an effete and
corrupt religion could have no other than a devitalizing effect
upon the population. So vile had the practices of the Canaanites
become that the land was said to “vomit out its inhabitants”
(Lev. 18:25) and the Israelites were warned by Yahweh to
keep all His statutes and ordinances “that the land,” into which
He was about to bring them to dwell, “vomit” them not out
(Lev. 20:22). The character of Canaanite religion as portrayed
in the Ugaritic literature furnishes ample background to illus-
trate the accuracy of these Biblical statements in their char-
acterization of the utter moral and religious degeneracy of the
inhabitants of Canaan, who were accordingly to be decimated

and dispossessed.
3. The Character of Canaanite Cults Completely Justifies the
Divine Command to Destroy Their Devotees. It is without sound
theological basis to question God’s justice in ordering the exter-
mination of such a depraved people or to deny Israel's integrity
as God’s people in carrying out the divine order. Nor is there
anything in this episode or the devotion of Jericho to destruc-
tion that involves conflict with the New Testament revelation
of God in Christ, as H. H. Rowley insists.**
God’s infinite holiness is just as much outraged by sin in the
New Testament as in the Old, and the divine wrath is not one
whit mitigated against the sin of those who do not accept the
forgiveness provided in Christ, as the apocalyptic judgments of
the Book of Revelation, directed against Christ-rejecting men
of the end-time, amply testify.
The principle of divine forbearance, however, operates in
every era of God’s dealings with men. God awaits till the
measure of iniquity is full, whether in the case of the Amorite
(Gen. 15:16), or the wicked antediluvian race, which He de-
stroyed by the flood (Gen. 6), or the degenerate dwellers of
Sodom and Gomorrah, whom He consumed by fire (Gen. 19).
In the case of the Canaanites, instead of using the forces of
nature to effect His punitive ends, He employed the Israelites
as the ministers of His justice. The Israelites were apprized of
the truth that they were the instruments of the divine justice
(Josh. 5:13, 14). In the light of the total picture the extermina-
tion of the Canaanites by the Israelites was just and the em-
ployment of the Israelites for the purpose was right. It was a
question of destroying or being destroyed, of keeping separated
or of being contaminated and consumed.
4. Canaanite Cults Dangerously Contaminating. Implicit in
the righteous judgment was the divine intention to protect and
benefit the world. When Joshua and the Israelites entered
Palestine in the fourteenth century B.c., Canaanite civilization
was so decadent that it was small loss to the world that in parts
of Palestine it was virtually exterminated. The failure of the
Israelites to execute God’s command fully was one of the great
18 Rediscovery of the Old Testament, p. 16; Relevance of the Bible, pp. 32f.
blunders which they committed, as well as a sin, and it re-

sulted in lasting injury to the nation.’
In the ensuing judgment the infinite holiness of Yahweh, the
God of Israel, was to be vindicated saliently against the dark
background of a thoroughly immoral and degraded paganism.
The completely uncompromising attitude commanded by Yah-
weh and followed by the leaders of Israel must be seen in its
true light. Compromise between Israel’s God and the degraded
deities of Canaahite religion was unthinkable. Jehovah and
Baal were poles apart. There could be no compromise without
catastrophe.
W. F. Albright’s summary of the situation is remarkable for
its eloquent insight:
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 re-
placed by Israel, with its nomadic simplicity and purity of life, its
lofty monotheism, and its severe code of ethics. In a not altogether
dissimilar way, a millennium later, the African Canaanites, as they
still called themselves, or the Carthaginians, as we call them, with
the gross Phoenician mythology which we know from Ugarit and
Philo Byblius, with human sacrifices and the cult of sex, were crushed
by the immensely superior Romans, whose stern code of morals and
singularly elevated paganism remind us in many ways of early Israel.?°
LITERATURE ON CANAANITE RELIGION
Virolleaud, Charles, in Syria, XIII (1932) and following years.
Marston, Sir Charles, New Bible Evidence (New York, 1934), pp. 184-197.
Kyle, Melvin Grove, Excavating Kirjath-Sepher’s Ten Cities (Grand
Rapids, 1934), pp. 137-148.
Dussaud, René, Les découvertes de Ras Shamra (Ugarit) et Ancien Tes-
tament (1937).
Schaeffer, Claude F. A.. The Cuneiform Texts of Ras Shamra-Ugarit
(London, 1939).
, in Syria, X (1929) through XIX (1938).
Albright, W. F., Archeology and the Religion of Israel (Baltimore, 1942),
pp. 68-94.
19 Cf. Henry S. Gehman, ed. The Westminster Dictionary of the Bible (Philadelphia,
1944), p. 89.
20 From the Stone Age to Christianity, p. 214.
, “The Canaanites and Their Culture,” in Young’s Analytical

Concordance (20th ed.; New York, 1936), pp. 28f.
Gordon, Cyrus H., The Loves and Wars of Baal and Anat and Other
Poems From Ugarit (Princeton, 1943).
, Ugaritic Handbook (Rome, 1947).
, Ugaritic Literature (Rome, 1949).
Obermann, Julian, Ugaritic Mythology (New Haven, 1948).
Elmslie, W. A. L., How Came Our Faith (New York, 1949), pp. 141-
ewe,
Ginsberg, H. L., in Ancient Near-Eastern Texts, edited by J. B. Pritchard
(Princeton, 1950), pp. 129-155.
CHAPTER XVI
THE PERIOD OF THE JUDGES
The era of the Judges, which extends from the death of Joshua
to the time of Saul and the establishment of the Monarchy,
was a time of disorder and apostasy. The anarchic conditions,
which to a large extent prevailed, are emphasized in the Scrip-
tural narrative. “In those days there was no king in Israel:
every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judg.
17:6; 21:25). Canaanite idolatry, which the conquering Isra-
elites failed to extirpate completely, proved a continual snare,
as Moses and Joshua had solemnly forewarned. The people ac-
cordingly frequently lapsed into paganism, and worship at the
central sanctuary, where the ark was, was rendered difficult
by the distracted state of the country.
During this long period when the tribes had settled in their
allotted portions of the land, special leaders were divinely raised
up and empowered to free the oppressed Israelites, when depar-
ture from Mosaic Yahwism led to the chastisement of the people
in the form of domination by some invading foreign power.
These so-called charismatic or specially endued deliverers were
styled judges, shophetim. The name shophet or “judge,” is an
old Canaanite word, found later among the Carthaginians in
the sense of “magistrate,” called in Latin sufes (plural sufetes),
and corresponding to the Roman consul. Having freed the na-
tion or part of the nation and thereby having demonstrated his
call by God, the deliverer was looked to by the people as the
champion of their legal and political rights.’
The roster of Judges numbers twelve, exclusive of Abimelech,
Gideon’s son, who was a petty king. It is quite clear from the
Biblical narrative that the Judges did not constitute an unbroken
line of rulers, but appeared sporadically, as occasion arose. More-
over, they were often only local heroes, performing exploits in
1¢Cf. W. F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore, 1940), pp. 216f
172
restricted districts or in certain tribes. It is certain also that

some who are listed ruled at least in part simultaneously in
different parts of the country.
I. THe CHRONOLOGY OF THE PERIOD
The date allocated to the period of the Judges is, of course,
dependent upon the date assigned to the Exodus from Egypt
and the Conquest of Palestine. Following the early date 1441
.c. for the Exodus and 1401 s.c. for the fall of Jericho, and
allowing thirty years for Joshua and ten years for the elders
who outlived him, the period would extend from about 1361
to about 1020 3. c., the time of Saul. Following the later theories
the period would be placed from about 1200-1020 B. c.’ This
latter dating, although considered inescapable in the light of
certain alleged archeological findings,’ is nevertheless fraught
with grave problems and much confusion, and is not in focus
with the Biblical data. It not only clashes with the time scheme
of the earlier period from Abraham to Moses, but also necessi-
tates telescoping the era of the Judges, if one follows the Biblical
chronological notices contained in the book even in a general
way.
1. Detailed Chronological Notices in the Biblical Account.
Although the numerous indications of time which are found in
the Book of Judges do not permit this period of Israelite history
to be dated by this medium, a careful collocation of the various
chronological elements found in the book and a comparison with
other pertinent chronological elements in other books of the
Old Testament show that the time scheme underlying the Bibli-
cal narrative is quite consistent with the early or 1441 B.c. date
for the Exodus and in keeping with I Kings 6:1, according to
which the fourth year of Solomon, in which he began building
the temple, was 480 years after the children of Israel came up
out of Egypt. However, this underlying time plan of the Book
of Judges is -quite irreconcilable with the late-date theories of
the Exodus and must be almost completely rejected or largely
explained away by advocates of these late-date theories.
Chronological notices dealing with the length of the various
oppressions, judgeships and periods of peace as given in the
Book of Judges run thus: Israel serves Cushan-Rishathaim 8
2Cf. G. E. Wright and Floyd Filson, Westminster Historical Atlas to the Bible (Phila-
delphia, 1945), p. 43.
3 Cf. W. F. Albright, Archeology and the Religion of Israel (Baltimore, 1942), pp. 110-
113; From the Stone Age to Christianity, p. 212.
THE PERIOD OF THE JUDGEs 181
years (3:8); deliverance is wrought by Othniel and the land

is peaceful 40 years (3:11); Israel is enslaved by Eglon of Moab
18 years (3:14); Ehud breaks the yoke, and the land is peace-
ful for 80 years (3:30); Jabin of Canaanite Hazor oppresses
Israel 20 years (4:3); Deborah frees Israel, and the land is at
rest 40 years; the Midianites oppress Israel 7 years (6:1); Gideon
routs the invaders, and peace ensues 40 years (8:28); Abimelech
reigns as petty king 3 years (9:22); Tola judges Israel 23 years
(10:2); Jair judges Israel 22 years (10:3); Ammonites oppress
Transjordan 18 years (10:8); Jephthah judges Israel 6 years
(12:7); Ibzan 7 years (12: 9); Elon 10 years (12:11); Abdon
8 years (12:14); Philistines oppress Israel 40 years (13:1);
Samson judges Israel 20 years (15:20; 16:31).
If the total of these figures is computed, 410 years is the result
for the length of the period of the Judges. But this is obviously
far too great an interval, for the much more extended period
from the Exodus (1441 B.c.) till Solomon’s fourth year about
962 B.c. is only 480 years (I Kings 6:1). The answer to this
problem is qvite evident from the narrative. Individual judges,
like Shamgar, who has no chronological notation connected with
his name (3:31), Tola (10:2), Jair (10:3), Ibzan (12:9), Elon
(12:11), Abdon (12:14), who are listed in the barest possible
manner without any detail and perhaps others whose careers
are described more fully were merely local chieftains whose
activity was strictly confined to some limited district and
who doubtless ruled simultaneously with other judges, at least
for part of their regime. For instance, the period of Ammonite
oppression (18 years) was almost completely confined to Trans-
jordan and doubtless overlapped the era of Philistine aggression
during Samson’s long judgeship of two decades (15:20; 16:31).
2. General Chronological Notice in the Biblical Account. In
addition to these detailed chronological elements a very im-
portant general notation of time occurs which gives the extent
of the period from Israel’s sojourn at Heshbon, shortly before
the invasion of Canaan, to about the second year of Jephthah’s
judgeship, as 300 years. The words are those of Jephthah to
the encroaching Ammonites: “While Israel dwelt in Heshbon
and her towns and in Aroer and her towns and in all the cities
that are along by the side of the Arnon, three hundred years,
wherefore did ye not recover them within that time?” (Judg.

11:26 ).*
Seana of Numbers 21:25 discloses that the sojourn at
Heshbon preceded Joshua’s appointment by a year or two at
the most. If, then, 40 years are allowed for Joshua and the
period of the elders, 8 years for Cushan-rishathaim’s oppression
(3:8); 40 years for Othniel’s deliverance and era of peace (3:
11); 18 years for Eglon’s oppression (3:14); 80 years for Ehud’s
deliverance and an extended quiet period (3:30); 20 years for
Jabin’s oppression (4:3); 40 years for Deborah and a peaceful
interval (5:31); 7 years for the Midianite oppression (6:1); 40
years for Gideon’s judgeship (8:28); 3 years for Abimelech
(9:22) and 1 year for the Ammonite oppression at the time of
Jephthah, a total of 298 years is reached, which accords well
with the 300 years specified in Judges 11:26.
It is quite evident, moreover, that Judges 11:26 is in general
agreement with the time scheme underlying Joshua-Judges, also
with the 480 years of I Kings 6:1 and the early (1441 3. c.) date
of the Exodus. If the computation is carried forward to Solo-
mon’s fourth year, this fact becomes apparent. Allowing 5 years
for the remainder of Jephthah’s judgeship (12:7); 40 years for
Samson and the Philistines (13:1; 15:20); 20 years for the judge-
ship of Eli (cf. I Sam. 4:18 which has 40 years where the LXX
has 20 years, the difference being attributed to the period of
Philistine domination); 20 years for Samuel (I Sam. 7:2, 3); 15
years (estimated) for Saul; 40 years for David (I Kings 2:11);
and 4 years for Solomon (I Kings 6:1), these figures approxi-
mate 144 years. When this period is added to the 38 years from
the Exodus to Heshbon and the 300 years from Heshbon to
Jephthah, a total period of 482 years from the Exodus until
Solomon’s fourth year is the result, as against the 480 years of
I Kings 6:1.
IJ. Tue Events oF THE Periop FIxED IN THE CHRONOLOGY
In placing the era of the Judges (including Joshua and the
period of the elders) from about 1401-1020 B.c., it is possible
to fit the events recorded in the Book of Joshua and the Book
4 Critics commonly regard this passage (like I Kings 6:1) as late and unreliable. C. F.
Burney views it as the late insertion of a priestly redactor, artificially computed (The Book
of Judges [London, 1918], p. 304). J. Garstang agrees that the words are an insertion,
but says that they were inserted early, not later than the pre-exilic redaction, “if not as
early as the seventh century 3. c.,” when, he says, the older documentary sources (J E) were
combined (Joshua-Judges [London, 1931], p. 59).
THE PERIOD OF THE JupcEs 183
of Judges into the broad contemporary historical scene without

strain, wholesale rejection of chronological notices, or general
telescoping of the Biblical perspective, as must inevitably be the
case under late-date theories of the Exodus. Allocation of spe-
cific events in the framework of extra-Biblical history, however,
by the nature of the data available must be only approximate
and to some extent tentative. On the other hand, such a setting
down of events in sequence is valuable in demonstrating the
chronological consistency of the Biblical account and in furnish-
ing proper perspective for the entire era.
1. Era of Joshua (30 years) and the Elders (10 years)
(c. 1401-1361 3.c.). The important events of this period are
the invasion of Canaan with the fall of Jericho, Ai, the defeat
of the Jerusalem League with conquests in south and north
Palestine, and the settlement of the tribes. In Egypt Amenhotep
IIf (c. 1412-1375) was apathetic and aging and content to leave
Syrian affairs under the management of vassals and under his
son Amenophis IV, Akhnaton (c. 1387-1366, coregency). The
Egyptian Empire in Syria-Palestine was temporarily lost, and
the country fell away to the Habiru, as the Amarna Letters in-
dicate. The second half of the period coincides with the ad-
vance of the Hittites from the north, which helped to neutralize
Egyptian influence.
2. Oppression by Cushan-Rishathaim for Eight Years (c. 1361-
1353 B. c.). This is the invasion of an obscure Hittite conqueror,
who having annexed Mesopotamia (Mitanni) penetrated south-
ward and entered Palestine (Judg. 3:7-10), leaving traces at
Bethshan, which commanded the western gateway to the Valley
of Jezreel, and elsewhere.® The event falls within the latter part
of the reign of Tutankhamun (c. 1366-1357 3.c.) and the first
years of the regime of his general Harmhab, who eventually
ruled (c. 1350-1314 B.c.) for an extended period when Egyp-
tian influence in Palestine-Syria was negligible.
3. Deliverance by Othniel and Period of Peace for Forty
Years (c. 1353-1313 8. c.). In Egypt Harmhab established firm
authority, reorganized the government, and effectually main-
tained Egyptian supremacy, so that political stability was pos-
sible in Palestine (Judg. 3:11).
5 Samuel A. B. Mercer, The Tell El-Amarna Tablets (Toronto, 1939), Vol. II, pp. 707-
709, etc.
6 Cf. Garstang, op. cit. pp. 62, 364f.
4. Oppression by Eglon of Moab for

Eighteen Years (c. 1313-1295 B. c. ie
This event falls mainly in the reign of
Seti I (c. 1314-1295 8. c.) and synchro-
nizes with a coalition among Asiatic
Bedouins, who were reported to be
gaining a foothold in Palestine. Follow-
ing these disturbances punitive expedi-
tions visited Accho on the Phoenician
coast, Bethshan in western Esdraelon
near the Jordan, as far north as Ha-
math on the Orontes and eastward to
Pahel (Fahil) beyond the Jordan, re-
storing order.
5. Era of Peace After Ehud for Eighty
Years (c. 1295-1215 B.c.). This period
(cf. Judg. 3:12-30) comprises the latter
part of the reign of Seti I, who re-
established order in Transjordania and
Cononation
Rameses
capiouchetitleof
II, containing
Palestine, and covers completely athe
Usermare-Setepnere, “Strong in
truth, the Chosen of Re.’”’
Jong reign of Raamses II (c. 1295-
1223 B. c.). This latter great Pharaoh
maintained his authority in southern Syria by treaty with the
Hittites and effective administration. His son and successor
Merenptah was already advanced in age when he came to the
throne. There was a minor revolt in Palestine which he put
down with little difficulty. It is commemorated by a song of
victory in which the Pharaoh’s power is eulogized and the boast
made that “Israel is laid waste and has no seed.” This is the
only reference to the actual name of Israel in any Egyptian in-
scription."
The portion of the triumphal ode which mentions Israel runs
thus:
The princes are prostrate, while they say, “peace!”
There is no one who raises his head among the Nine Bows.
Libya is ruined, Khatti is pacified;
The Canaanite land is despoiled with every evil.
Ascalon is carried captive, Gezer is conquered;
Yanoam is made as though it did not exist.
The people of Israel is desolate, it has no offspring:
Palestine [Khuru] has become a widow for Egypt.
Be George Steindorff and Keith C. Seele, When Egypt Ruled the East (Chicago, 1942),
p. ‘
THE PERIOD OF THE JupcEs 185
All lands are united, they are pacified;

Everyone that is turbulent is bound by King Merenptah,
Given life like Re, every day.8
6. Oppression by Jabin for Twenty Years (1215-1195 B.c.).
After Merenptah a series of ephemeral kinglets on the throne
of Egypt were too weak to maintain a powerful state. Among
these were Amenmose, Siptah and Seti II. Around 1200 B.c.
civil war developed. The period was ideal for Jabin, king of
Hazor, the capital of a Canaanite kingdom in North Palestine,
identified by J. Garstang with E] Kedah, four miles west from
the foot of Lake Huleh and the Jordan,® to overrun some of the
tribes of Israel (Judg. 4:1-24).
7. Deliverance by Deborah and Era of Peace for Forty Years
(1195-1155 B. c.). Around 1200 B. c. a new dynasty was founded
in Egypt and Raamses III (1198-1167 B.c.), son of the founder,
was a strong king who maintained order in Asia and made
possible a period of stability in Palestine under a leader like
Deborah.
Deborah herself was a prophetess, fourth in order of the
Judges. She is said to have judged Israel under a palm tree
“between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim”
(Judg. 4:4). With the assistance of Barak of Kadesh-naphtali,
located some four miles northwest of the Waters of Merom,?®
an army of ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zebulun was
mustered on the slopes of Mt. Tabor, where Jabin’s “nine hun-
dred chariots of iron” (Judg. 4:13) under Sisera’s command were
at a disadvantage in the attack. A heavy rain (Judg. 5:21)
made the Canaanite chariotry a liability rather than an asset,
and resulted in the utter rout of the Canaanites.
8. Oppression by the Midianites for Seven Years (c. 1155-
1148 3.c.). Decline in Egyptian power under his successors
Raamses IV and V followed the reign of Raamses III. This
period of Egyptian weakness was ideal for the eruption of desert
Bedouins such as the camel-riding, tent-dwelling Midianites, who
pressed into the Valley of Jezreel and overran the country in
the days of Gideon (Judg. 6, 7). Bethshan, which guarded the
western entrance to the Valley of Esdraelon, no longer presented
an effective barrier as a fortress, since no Egyptian garrison had
8 Found written on a victory stele in the Pharaoh’s mortuary temple at Thebes (James
Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol. III, sec. 167).
9 Annals of Archeology . .. University of Liverpool, XIV, pp. 35f., 183f.
10 Cf. J. Garstang, Joshua-Judges, p. 195; pp. 390f.
been maintained there since the reign of Rameses III.” Taking

advantage of the breakdown of Egyptian authority the invaders
overflowed into the fertile areas to the south, particularly around
Ophrah,” in the territory of Manasseh.
9. Era of Peace Under Gideon for Forty Years (c. 1148-1108
B.c.). The decline of Egyptian power with the loss of its
stabilizing influence in Palestine now begins to find expression
in the growing need for a kingship.
10. Abimelech King at Shechem for Three Years (c. 1108-
1105 n.c.). Son of Gideon by a concubine, Abimelech in the
region of Shechem attempted to secure succession to the unique
position held by his father Gideon (Josh. 9). Shechem was
located in the pleasant valley between Mount Ebal and Mount
Gerizim at the site of modern Nablus. It was protected by a
fortified tower, the tower of Shechem, which Abimelech de-
stroyed. The would-be king came to an early end, and his in-
fluence could hardly have extended beyond the western part
of Manasseh.
11. Oppression by the Ammonites (c. 1105 B.c.) and Jeph-
thah’s Judgeship for Six Years (c. 1105-1099 s.c.). The oppres-
sion of Israel began in Transjordania, in which region the Am-
monites oppressed the Israelites for eighteen years (Judg. 10:8).
This period overlaps in the chronology, and only at its end,
perhaps around 1105 8. c. did the Ammonites cross the Jordan
to harass all Israel. The period of national oppression, accord-
ingly, lasted only one year, being terminated apparently in the
second year of Jephthah’s leadership (Judg. 10:5; 11:4, 5, 32,
33), who judged Israel six years (Judg. 12:7).
12. The Philistine Ascendency for Forty Years (c. 1099-1059
B.c.) and the Judgeship of Samson Twenty Years (c. 1085-1065
B.c.). The consecutive narrative of the Book of Judges closes
with the well-known story of Samson (Judg. 13-16). The Valley
of Sorek, the scene of some of Samson’s exploits, is recognized
today in the Wadi el Seirar (Judg. 16:4). The wady emerges
from the Judaean hills some fifteen miles west of Jerusalem and
opens upon the valley. Upon its left bank the old Canaanite
city of Beth-Shemesh guarded the pass and faced northward a
small plain, where the sites of Zorah and Eshtaol were located,
and which may be recognized today in the villages of Surah
and Eshua.
AL Tide pe ST
12 Precise location unknown.
THE PERIOD OF THE JUDGES 187
Eli the Judge (c. 1065-1045 3.c.) followed the events cata-
logued in Judges. Then Samuel the last of the Judges and the
first of the prophets came on the scene around 1045 B.c., and
Saul appears by 1020 B.c. or a little earlier to lay the founda-
tions of the Monarchy. Thus the period of the Judges to Saul
is to be dated about 1401-1020 bB. c. and fits well into the frame-
work of contemporary history.
LITERATURE ON THE PERIOD OF THE JUDGES
Burney, C. F., The Book of Judges (London, 1918).
Price, Ira, The Monuments and the Old Testament (Philadelphia, 1925),
pp. 233-248.
Kittel, Rudolf, Great Men and Movements in Israel (New York, 1929),
pp. 44-112.
Noth, Martin, Das System der Zwoelf Staemme Israels (1930).
Garstang, John Joshua-Judges (London, 1931).
Marston, Sir Charles, The Bible Comes Alive (New York, 1937), pp.
59-107.
Adams, J. M., Ancient Records and the Bible (Nashville, 1946), pp.
Albright, W. F., The Archeology of Palestine (1949), pp. 110-122.

Mould, Elmer, W. K., Essentials of Bible History (rev. ed.; New York,
1951), pp. 137-164.
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CHAPTER XVII
ISRAEL ON THE EVE OF THE MONARCHY
On the whole the period of the Judges was a time of great

disorder and weakness in Israel. Loyalty to Yahweh and the
Mosaic institutions would have resulted in drawing the tribes
together in a common bond of unity and strength. But inter-
mittent lapses into the sensuous nature worship of the Ca-
naanites, with resultant divine chastisement, kept the nation
weak and divided and at the mercy of one foreign invader after
another.
Meanwhile ambitious neighboring nations were growing
stronger and becoming more and more a threat to the loose
confederation of Israelite tribes, whose only real tie was a
theocratic bond, the essential meaning and requirements of
which they were continually forgetting. There was little won-
der that it seemed that the only way out of the sad condition
of the preceding three and a half centuries was to have a king
like the surrounding peoples.
I. Contrast BETWEEN ISRAEL AND ADJACENT NATIONS
There was a striking difference in political organization be-
tween Israel and the various peoples in Palestine and southern
Syria in the eleventh century B.c.’ The high ideal of a purely
theocratic rule, with the people looking to God alone to lead
them, proved impractical because of weakness on the human
side, manifest in frequent apostasy and lapses into idolatry dur-
ing the period of the Judges.
1. Israel a Loose Amphictyony. While neighboring nations
such as Edom, Moab and Ammon were highly organized king-
doms, Israel was a mere scantily set-up confederation or am-
phictyony, depending on guidance from spontaneously arising
1 Albrecht Alt, Die Staatenbildung der Israeliten in Palaestina (Leipzig, 1930), pp. 31-36.
189
leadership and maintaining a bond of national unity around

a central sanctuary. This central religious institution of a com-
mon shrine around which were grouped the Twelve Tribes has
close parallels in other Mediterranean lands.”
Numerous amphictyonies and groupings of amphictyonic char-
acter are mentioned by classical authors from both Greece and
Italy. A number of them are explicitly stated to have contained
twelve tribes.? The most famous is the Pylaean or Delphic am-
phictyony of the eighth century B.c. The Etruscans also had
a cultic league centering about the temple of the goddess Vol-
tumna, to which representatives of the Etruscan communities
gathered annually at springtime to celebrate games in honor
of the goddess.
2. Israel's Central Sanctuary. Shiloh in the hill country of
Ephraim appears uniformly as Israel's first central sanctuary,
although there were local sanctuaries at such places as Bethel,
Gilgal, Gibeon, Dan, Hebron, etc.* Considering all factors, Shilo
was a wise choice from the point of view at least of a central
location. Repeatedly it is said to have been the place where
Joshua set up the Tabernacle and where the Israelites were
assigned their future homes (Josh. 19:51). There once a year
families came to celebrate an important feast of Yahweh at
harvest time (Judg. 21:19). There Hannah, Samuel's mother,
came up to worship (I Sam. 1:3). To this central sanctuary she
and her husband brought their young son to be trained for the
priesthood under Eli.
Moreover, Israel was not the only country in the ancient Near
East which had its great central sanctuary to which pilgrimages
were made. Nippur in Babylonia and Nineveh in Assyria (early
second millennium B.c.) served such purpose in their respective
countries, as is known from contemporary documents. At Haran
the temple of Sin, at Qatna the shrine of Belit-ekalli and at
Byblus the Sanctuary of Baaltis performed similar functions.®
While the sanctuary at Shiloh was the focal point of the am-
phictyony, the high priest enjoyed important political as well
as religious powers. Phinehas, the son of Aaron, and Eli were
2 This has been effectively emphasized by Martin Noth, Das System der Zwoelf Staemme
Israels (1930), pp. 39-60.
3.Ww. F. Albright, Archeology and the Religion of Israel (Baltimore, 1942), p. 103.
oe R. Brinker, The Influence of Sanctuaries in Early Israel (Manchester, 1946), pp.
6-178.
® Albright, op. cit., pp. 104f.
IsRAEL ON THE EVE OF THE MONARCHY 191
such priestly leaders. After the establishment of the Monarchy,

however, the political powers of the priesthood declined.
3. Neighboring Nations Strong Kingdoms. On the other hand,
adjacent nations offered a striking contrast to the loose amphic-
tyonic tribal organization of Israel. Edom, Moab and Ammon
were governed by kings who were much more than tribal emirs,
as is apparent from such monuments as the Baluah stele of the
twelfth century and the Mesha stone of the ninth, both from
Moab.° Coastal city-states bordering Israel, like Tyre, Sidon
and Byblus, had grown great through expanded commerce and
had powerful centralized authority vested in a king. Growing
Aramaean states to the north and northeast had strong rulers
and were becoming a threat. The Philistines were governed by
bee (seranim), who were apparently tyrants after the Aegean
model.
These well-organized neighbors were becoming an increasingly
ominous peril to the more or less disorganized Israelite tribes.
No aid against their encroachments could be looked for from
the ancient empires of the Near East. Egyptian influence in
Asia had diminished to virtually nothing by the middle of the
eleventh century B.c. and the Assyrian Empire, after Tiglath-
pileser I (1113-1074 8. c.), who had briefly subjugated northern
Syria and the Phoenician coast, withdrew to the Euphrates Valley
once more.
II. IsrRAEL’s NEIGHBORS IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY B. C.
Had Assyria or Egypt been in the ascendancy in the pre-
monarchic period in Israel, the Davidic-Solomonic Empire would
not have been possible. As it was, the amphictyonic tribes, in-
stead of having to confront a major power, faced a number of
smaller but dangerous kingdoms, which surrounded them and
began to show their hostility when Israel began to consolidate
and expand under the leadership of a king. A study of these
various peoples is essential to an understanding of the founding
of the Monarchy.
1. The Ammonites, the descendants of Lot (Gen. 19:38),
dwelt in territory between the Arnon and the Jabbok north of
Moab and eastward of the Transjordanic tribes of Reuben, Gad
and the half tribe of Manasseh. They showed their inveterate
hostility to Israel in the time of the Judges by aiding Eglon,
king of Moab, in subjugating a part of Israel and by their
®w. F, Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore, 1940), p. 221.
oppression of the East Jordanic tribes in the time of Jephthah

(Judg. 10:6,9). They were a formidable power just before
the establishment of the Israelite kingdom and were defeated
by Saul (I Sam. 11:1-11). David defeated the confederate
Syrians and Ammonites (II Sam. 10) and later his army took
the Ammonite capital (II Sam. 12:27).
2. The Moabites, closely akin to the Ammonites and also
descendants of Lot (Gen. 19:37), occupied the territory south
of Ammon and north of Edom, between the brook Zered and
the river Arnon. Moab harassed Israel in the early days of the
Judges (Judg. 3:12-30), and Saul had to war against them in
order to lay the foundations of the kingdom (I Sam. 14:47).
David overcame them and put a large number ef them to death
(II Sam. 8:2).
3. The Edomites, descendants of Edom or Esau (Gen. 36:
1-19), dwelt in the region south of Moab and the Dead Sea.
First ruled by tribal chieftains, who were evidently on the
order of Arab sheiks (Gen. 36:15-19, 40-43), they were later,
before the rise of the Hebrew Monarchy, governed by kings
(Gen. 36:31-39). Their hatred of the Israelites was manifest
in their refusal to allow them passage through their country on
the way up from Egypt (Num. 20:14-21). Saul was compelled
to fight them (I Sam. 14:47) and David conquered and gar-
risoned the country (II Sam. 8:13, 14).
4. The Philistines, said to have come from Caphtor or Crete’
(Jer. 47:4; Amos 9:7), had increased in power so formidably
that by the time of Saul they threatened to reduce Israel to
hopeless servitude. Occupying the fertile Maritime Plain of
southwestern Canaan, which lies between Joppa and Gaza, some
fifty miles in length and fifteen in breadth, the main body of
them arrived in the first quarter of the twelfth century B.c.
during a great invasion of sea peoples in the reign of Rameses
III of Egypt.® However, scattered groups of them, evidently as
the result of a much earlier and smaller emigration, had oc-
cupied the region around Gerar on the southern border of
Palestine as early as patriarchal times (Gen. 26:1, 14, 18).°
7 Cf. George A. Barton, who offers the possibility that Caphtor may mean Asia Minor
(Archeology and the Bible [7th ed.; Philadelphia, 1937], p. 156)
8 James Henry Breasted, A History of Egypt (New York, 1912), p. 512.
® Most critics consider this reference, however, an anachronism, and the reference, as far
as extra-Biblical evidence is concerned, is still an unsolved problem. (See eg., J. Garstang,
Joshua-Judges (London, 1931], p. 287.)
IsRAEL ON THE EVE OF THE MONARCHY 193
The phenomenal expansion of Philistine

power in the eleventh century B.c. resulted
in the destruction of Israel’s central sanctu-
ary at Shiloh, which had been the rallying
point of the Israelite tribes for almost three
and a half centuries. This epochal event,
with the capture of the ark of the covenant,
which took place around 1050 s.c. (cf. I Sam.
4:1-21), as the Danish excavations at Shiloh
have shown,!® sounded the death knell to
the old amphictyonic organization and must
have made the institution of the kingship
seem absolutely mandatory to all Israelites
who could not see any practicality in the old
theocratic ideal of sole dependence upon
Yahweh’s leadership (I Sam. 8:19-22).
After the disaster at Aphek and Ebenezer,
Philistine garrisons are mentioned in the hill
Later Philistine war. COUntry itself (I Sam. 13:3). What is even
ee nore indicative of Philistine prowess as the
Layard, Monuments. of infant Israelite kingdom was struggling for
; 9) "ats very life, is the fact that the ‘strategic
fortress of Bethshan was held by Philistine hands, and on
its walls ironically enough, the bodies of Saul and his sons
were ignominiously nailed after Israel’s humiliating defeat at
Mt. Gilboa (I Sam. 31:10-12). David, when king, repelled in-
vasions of the Philistines and also fought against them in their
own country and effectually subdued them (II Sam. 3:18; 5:
17-25; 8:1; etc.).
5. The Aramaeans, a Semitic people (Gen. 10:22, 23), in the
century or two before the establishment of the Hebrew Mon-
archy had gradually occupied the plain extending from northern
Mesopotamia around Haran westward to the Lebanon moun-
tains and to the Taurus mountains on the north and beyond
Damascus on the south. Throughout the last quarter of the
period of the Judges Aramaean influence spread south into Syria
to the very borders of Israel, so that when Saul and David be-
gan to retrieve Israelite fortunes they came in almost immediate
collision with Aramaeans established in a number of kingdoms
10 See H. Kjaer, Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society (1930), pp. 87-174; Millar
Burrows, What Mean These Stones? (New Haven, 1941), p. 281.
north and northeast of Palestine."! Several different districts

are to be distinguished.
Aram Naharaim or “Aram of the (Two) Rivers” may con-
ceivably refer to the territory between the Tigris and the Eu-
phrates, but more likely to the general region of Mesopotamia
with its center in the Euphrates-Khabur region. In this district
Paddan-Aram or “Field of Aram” (Gen. 24:10; 28:5) and the
city of Harran were located, where the patriarchs dwelt before
emigrating to Canaan. The designation Aram Naharaim was
eae geographic and no doubt extended westward
considerably beyond the Euphrates as far as Aleppo and south-
ward perhaps as far as Kadesh on the Orontes.”* From this ter-
ritory Aramaeans gradually spread south to form later king-
doms that appeared almost contemporaneously with the estab-
lishment of the Hebrew kingdom.
Aram Zobah is to be located north of Damascus and very
likely included the city until Rezon renounced allegiance to
Zobah at the time of David’s conquest of the country (I Kings
11:23-25). It thus appears that Friedrich Delitzsch,’* who long
ago maintained that Zobah was a place on the edge of the
desert, north of Damascus in the region of Hums and the An-
tilibanus, was substantially correct over against the contentions
of Hugo Winckler** and Hermann Guthe,’® who placed it in
the land of Hauran, the Biblical Bashan south of Damascus, or
Sina Schiffer*® and Emil Kraeling,’’ who narrowly fixed it in
Coelesyria, the territory between Lebanon and Antilebanon. The
latest studies in Assyrian provincial organization, which was
erected on older foundations, prove conclusively that Delitzsch’s
original position was correct, and that Zobah, Assyrian Subatu,'®
was situated north of Damascus and not south of it.
In the days of Saul and David, Zobah was the most powerful
of the Aramaean states of Syria. The general situation in the
Near Eastern world with the wane of Egyptian and Assyrian
power and the passing of Hittite sway, so propitious for the
11 Emil G. H. Kraeling, Aram and Israel (New York, 1918), pp. 38-45. Cf. Sina
Schiffer, Die Aramaeer (Leipzig, 1911).
12 Cf. Roger O’Callaghan, Aram Naharim (Rome, 1948), pp. 143f.
13 Wo Lag Das Paradies?, Vol. I, p. 141.
srl the third edition of Schrader’s Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament (1902),
pp- ff.
15 Bibelatlas (2nd ed.; 1926), map 3.
18 Op. cit., p. 145.
17 Op. cit., p. 41.
18 w. F. Albright, Archeology and the Religion of Israel, p. 211. Cf. E. Forrer, Die
Provinzeinteilung des assyrischen Reiches (1921), pp. 62, 69,
IsRAEL ON THE EVE oF THE MONARCHY 195
rise of the Davidic Empire, was no less opportune for the ex-
pansion of the kingdom of Hadadezer of Zobah. His realm
was extensive. At its zenith it stretched to the Euphrates River
(II Sam. 8:3), and must have dominated Damascus on the south,
for the Aramaeans there are not said to have had their own
king, as was the case at Hamath farther north (II Sam. 8:5, 9),
and consequently must have been subordinate to Zobah. More-
over, it is easy to see how Hadadezer’s power developed to such
an extent as to reach to the country east of the Jordan, where it
clashed with the ambitions of Saul (I Sam. 14:47, Septuagint).
With David’s defeat of Hadadezer it is significant that Zobah
vanishes from the stage of Hebrew history, its place presently
being taken by Damascus.
Several other smaller Aramaean states to the southeast of
Damascus, states which had acquired considerable strength by
the time of David’s ascendancy, are mentioned also in a some-
what later period. These are Maacah, Geshur and Tob, located
on the northern and northeastern borders of Palestine. These
states show the extent of Aramaean penetration southward in
the century and a half preceding the Hebrew Monarchy.
Maacah lay east of the Jordan within the contemplated bounds
of Israel in close proximity to Mt. Hermon on the north (Josh.
12:15; 13:11). Close to Maacah lay Geshur (Deut. 3:14; Josh.
12:5; 13:11), evidently on the south from Huleh to the southern
extremity of the Sea of Galilee. From this Aramaean kingdom
David obtained a wife, and hither his own son Absalom fled
after the murder of Amnon (II Sam. 3:3; 13:37).
Tob was also east of the Jordan, and is probably identifiable
with et-Taiyibeh, ten miles south of Gadara. Thither Hanun,
king of Ammon, drew soldiers to fight against David (II Sam.
10:6, R.V.).
It is thus apparent that the Aramaean expansion westward
and southward during the twelfth and eleventh centuries B. c.
continued unabated throughout the period of the Judges. By
the end of that period the strong Aramaean states of Zobah,
Beth-Rehob, Maacah, Geshur and Tob had grown up in north
and east Palestine, forming a strong wall to thwart any sudden
expansion on the part of the Israelite tribes. There was, it seems,
no strong Aramaean pressure on the Hebrews themselves, ex-
cept in such districts as Bashan eastward and northeastward of
the Lake of Galilee and Naphtali north and northwest of it,
which were overrun during this period. There was little danger
of clash between Israel and Aram so long as Israel had no strong
central government and no aggressive leader. But with David’s
succession to the throne, the situation changed. The subjugation
and incorporation of these peoples into the Israelite state was
one of the prime factors in making possible the empire of David
and Solomon.
6. The Phoenicians or Canaanites were forming maritime states
in the northwest along the Mediterranean coast while the
Aramaean states were crystallizing in the north and northeast.
By the time of David (1000 B.c.) the Canaanites in the Tyre-
Sidon area had been united in a strong state with its capital
at Tyre. It offered little opposition to David’s empire building
for a definite reason. Instead of seeking to expand its territories
by force of arms it endeavored to spread its influence and its
raw materials throughout the Mediterranean world by trade and
treaty. David found the Tyrian king, Hiram I (c. 969-936 B.c.),
who appears in Phoenician records as both a conqueror and
a builder,’® responsive to his overtures of friendship and won
him as a valuable ally, and the ties of amity continued through
Solomon’s reign (I Kings 9:10-14).
LITERATURE ON ISRAEL ON THE EVE OF THE MONARCHY
Meyer, E., Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstaemme (Halle, 1906).
Schiffer, Sina, Die Aramaeer (Leipzig, 1911).
Macalister, R. A. S., The Philistines: Their History and Civilization
(London, 1913).
Kraeling, Emil, Aram and Israel (New York, 1918).
ae R., The Influence of the Sanctuary in Early Israel (Manchester,
O’Callaghan, R., Aram Naharaim (Rome, 1948).

Elmslie, W. A. L., How Came Our Faith (New York, 1949), pp. 91-111.
Free, Ua Archeology and Bible History (Wheaton, IIl., 1950),
pp. 138-145.
19 Albright, Archeology and the Religion of Israel, p. 132 and in Leland Volume
(Menasha, 1942), pp. 43f., n. 101.
CuaptTer XVIII
SAUL AND THE MONARCHY
There was other strong pressure to change the government

of Israel to a kingship besides the threat of Israel’s neighbors,
especially the Philistines, whose victories had resulted in the
destruction of the central sanctuary at Shiloh and the disintegra-
tion of the amphictyonic organization. Although Samuel, as a
Judge and a prophet, had signally distinguished himself, he was
now old, and his sons displayed none of his honesty nor com-
petency (I Sam. 8:1-9). Accordingly the elders of Israel came
to the aging prophet-judge and demanded that a visible king
be appointed over them, so that they might be like the well-
organized nations surrounding them and that they might have
a leader who could conduct them to victory over their pressing
foes.
Although the ultimate organization of the Hebrew kingdom
with an earthly monarch as the representative of Yahweh had
long been envisioned prophetically and in the divine foreknowl-
edge (Gen. 17:6, 16; 35:11; Deut. 17:14-20), yet the people
were not guiltless in demanding a king at this crisis. The spirit
in which they did so was plainly irreligious. They lacked abiding
faith in God, without which the rule of Yahweh as a theocratic
king was impossible. Under the circumstances their action in
asking for a human ruler was tantamount to turning away from
faith in the invisible God to confidence in a visible leader. The
moral problem connected with what they did is consequently
not to be explained as the result of divergent and contradictory
sources indicative of the composite character of I Samuel, each
source giving a “diametrically opposed attitude to the mon-
1 Henry S. Gehman, The Westminster Dictionary of the Bible (Philadelphia, 1944),
mh RE
197
archy.”? Any divine approval or permission of their choice of

a king was a mere accommodation to human weakness and sin.
I. THe Earty ForTuNES OF THE KINGDOM
Saul the Benjaminite (c. 1020-1000 s.c.) was chosen as Israel's
first ruler. As king he was unable to advance beyond a loose
political confederacy, mainly because of his innate weakness
of character,? and he left an unfinished task to be completed
by his brilliantly successful successor, David.
1. Saul’s Early Exploits. Saul’s initial victory at Jabesh Gilead*
over the Ammonites (I Sam. 11:1-14) was of great importance
in establishing him in the minds of the people as God’s chosen
leader, as one “capable of taking up the mantle of the old
Judges, one inspired of the Spirit, who could fight and win
battles for Israel.”®
Saul not only pushed back the Ammonites in Transjordan,
but by his victories over the Philistines, notably as a follow-up
of Jonathan’s brilliant rout of the Philistine garrison at Mich-
mash (I Sam. 14:1-46), he also broke the Philistine monopoly on
iron. The Philistines did their best to see that the Israelites did
not learn how to forge this new metal.* “Now there was no
smith to be found throughout all the land of Israel; for the
Philistines said, ‘Lest the Hebrews make themselves swords or
spears, but every one of the Israelites went down to the Philis-
tines to sharpen his plowshare, his mattock, his axe, or his sickle”
(I Sam. 13:19, 20, R.S.V.).
In the eleventh century B. c. iron was just coming into general
use in Palestine, as excavations have shown,’ and the iron mo-
nopoly was not only an incalculable help to Philistine superiority
in arms, but a valuable commercial consideration as well, as the
Hittites, who seemed to have started the monopoly, discovered
two centuries earlier. The fact that the Israelites had to go
cae is Robert H. Pfeiffer’s view, Introduction to the Old Testament (New York, 1941),
p. :
3 Cf. W. F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore, 1940), p. 222.
4 For the location of Jabesh Gilead see Nelson Glueck, The River Jordan (Philadelphia,
1946), pp. 159-167.
5 Theodore H. Robinson, A History of Israel (Oxford, 1948), p. 181.
8 John A. Wilson, The Burden of Egypt (Chicago, 1951), p. 260.
7 George Ernest Wright in American Journal of Archeology, XLIII (1939), pp. 458-563.
That iron was known long before it became common in the so-called Iron Age (1200-300
B.c.) is well attested by an iron dagger of Tutankhamun (c. 1360 3. c.) and a steel battle
axe at Ras Shamra (c. 1400 3.c.). Traces of iron are very early in Mesopotamia at Tell
Asmar and Ur, but it is commonly considered to have been made from meteorites (Oriental
Institute Communications, XVII, pp. 59-61),
SAUL AND THE MOoNARCHY 199
to Philistia to have iron tools made or repaired was incon-

venient enough, but it was even more expensive. The charge
for sharpening is said to have been “a pim for the plowshares
and for the mattocks, and a third of a shekel for sharpening the
axes and for setting the goads” (I Sam. 19:21, R.S.V.). The
weight in question “a pim” (p-y-m) “had been completely for-
gotten even in antiquity, but pre-exilic Jewish weights were
inscribed p-y-m, i.e., ‘two-thirds of a shekel.’ It is needless to
say that two-thirds of a shekel of silver was a pretty stiff price
to pay for a single plow tip (not ‘mattock, with the English
Bible) not over eight or ten inches long.”®
Throughout the period of the Judges the Israelites remained
comparatively poor because of a lack of iron for farming im-
plements, nails and weapons of war. They were unable to drive
the Canaanites out of the plains because the latter had chariots
of iron (Josh. 17:18; Judg. 1:19; 4:2,3) and certainly weapons
of iron. Excavations have shown that the Philistines possessed
iron weapons and jewelry, while the Israelites apparently did
not.’° Even as late as the time of Saul it is emphasized that
“on the day of battle there was neither sword nor spear found
in the hand of any of the people with Saul and Jonathan; but
Saul and Jonathan his son had them” (I Sam. 13:22, R.S.V.).
When Saul and David broke the power of the Philistines, the
iron-smelting formula became public property, and the metal
was popularized in Israel.‘ The result was an economic revo-
lution, making possible a higher standard of living. The struggle
against the Philistines was, accordingly, a war of survival, justly
celebrated in song and story.
2. Saul’s Fortress at Gibeah. Of particular interest is Saul’s
home town, Gibeah of Benjamin, which figures prominently in
the narratives of his reign in I Samuel. It is located in the hill
country about four miles north of Jerusalem and about two
miles south of Ramah. The present site is called Tell el-Ful,
which long ago was identified with Saul’s city by the brilliant
pioneer Palestinian explorer, Edward Robinson, and was exca-
vated by W. F. Albright in 1922 and 1933."
10 Cf. Wright, op. cit., pp. 458-463.
11 Cf, Albright in Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, IV (1922-23),
p. 17; Jack Finegan, Light From the Ancient Past (Princeton, 1940), p. 128.
12 See Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, IV (1922-1923); Bulletin
of the American Schools of Oriental Research, LII (1933), pp. 6-12; Archeology of
Palestine (1949), pp. 120ff.
At the bottom of the mound was found the first fortress of

Gibeah, which showed traces of a destruction by fire and is
probably the one mentioned in Judges 20:40."* Just above this
fortress were the remains of a second, the most elaborate struc-
ture discovered in the mound. Its outer wall was about six
feet thick and was defended by a glacis or sloping base. It was
furnished with two stories and contained a massive stone stair-
case.'* This is identified with Saul’s stronghold. The structure,
measuring 170 by 155 feet, with its casemated walls and sep-
arately bonded corner towers, illustrates the construction of this
period.
On the top of Saul’s structure was a third and somewhat
smaller fortress, characterized by a series of stone piers. These
piers connect it with the time of the Monarchy. Some’ connect
it with the building activity of King Asa at Geba of Benjamin
(I Kings 15:22). But in the light of Isaiah 10:29 Geba and
Gibeah of Saul are not identical. At any rate, this citadel suffered
destruction by fire, perhaps in the Syro-Ephraimite War (cf.
Isa. 7). After a further lapse of time, another fortress was built
on the ruins of all these. This is to be dated in Maccabean times
as the pottery shows.
3. The Rustic Nature of Saul’s Reign. The principal build-
ing at Gibeah, from Saul’s era, with massive stone construction
and deep walls, “was like a dungeon rather than a royal resi-
dence, in comparison with the Canaanite masonry with which
Solomon later graced Jerusalem.”’* Saul’s general cultural back-
ground is similarly evaluated by Albright: “ Saul was
only a rustic chieftain, as far as architecture and the amenities
of life were concerned.”** Moreover, what was true of Saul was
in a general way culturally true of all the Israelite tribes through-
out the period of the Judges and up to the efflorescence of in-
dustry and the arts and sciences in the prosperous Davidic-
Solomonic era. Israelite poverty and rusticity of life in the pre-
13 W. F. Albright, “Recent Discoveries in Bible Lands,” in Young’s Analytical Con-
cordance (20th ed.; New York, 1936), p. 32. Millar Burrows, What Mean These Stones?
(New Haven, 1941), p. 281.
1¢ George A. Barton, Archeology and the Bible (Philadelphia, 1937), p. 115.
15 [bid.
16 Madeleine S. and J. Lane Miller, Encyclopedia of Bible Life (New York, 1944), p.
176. Cf. J. Garstang also in Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, IV
(1924).
17 From the Stone Age to Christianity, p. 224.
SAUL AND THE MONARCHY 201
monarchic period are fully demonstrated by Palestinian excava-

tions.
II. Saun’s Famure as KInG
William A. Irwin aptly characterizes King Saul as “of the
independent spirit that would not be servile to any priest-prophet
however revered.”'® This disposition, however, was diametrically
opposed to the Oriental concept of the king as the representative
of the national deity (in Israel’s case, of Yahweh, the one and
only true God).
1. Saul’s Self-will. As a leader, it was Saul’s first concern
to ascertain the will of Yahweh through the ordained means of
His honored prophet, Samuel, and, having clearly apprehended
it, to execute it fully. This is precisely what Saul failed to do
and thereby demonstrated clearly his unfitness to be God’s rep-
resentative.
The king’s first example of self-will was his intrusion into the
priest’s office. Severely pressed by the Philistines, restive under
Samuel's delay to meet him at Gilgal, and threatened by the
desertion of a great number of his followers, Saul committed a
very grave offense in offering a burnt offering, which only a
priest might do, according to the law of God. This flagrant act
of disobedience was the first step in his rejection as the founder
of a dynasty (I Sam. 13:13, 14).
Later after Saul’s victory over the Philistines, which was oc-
casioned by Jonathan’s signal valor at Michmash (I Sam. 13:15-
14:46), Samuel directed Saul to wage a war of extermination
against the Amalekites. Saul undertook the war, but failed to
exterminate the enemy. For this second act of disobedience, by
which he further proved he could not be trusted to act as God's
instrument, but was dominated by his own will in God’s king-
dom, he was emphatically rejected from being king (I Sam.
15:1-35), and Samuel was sent to Bethlehem to anoint David
(I Sam. 16:1-13).
2. Saul’s Recourse to Occultism. The final step in the king’s
downfall was his recourse to the so-called “witch” (spiritistic
medium ) of Endor (I Sam. 28:3-25). The seriousness of this, the
king’s final plunge into ruin, is manifest in the fact that he was
resorting to an illegitimate means of ascertaining the future,
which was characteristic of the polytheistic nations surrounding
Israel, and utterly at variance with Yahwism. As such, occult
18 Jbid., p. 223.
19In The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (Chicago, 1948), pp. 279f.
traffic in Israel was under the most severe interdict and punish-
able by death (Lev. 19:31; 20:6, 27; Deut. 18:10, 11). The fact
that Saul himself had outlawed occult practices and that he
dared to have recourse to them himself when he was cut off
from communication with God (I Sam. 28:6) clearly indicates
his own doom.”
Deciphering and interpretation of the Hittite texts discovered
by Hugo Winckler in excavations begun in 1906 at Boghazkeui,
the site of the old Hittite capital situated in the great bend of
the Halys River, ninety miles east of Ankara,” has shed light
on this interesting Biblical episode. It is now known from
these cuneiform texts that in ancient Asia Minor of the second
millennium B.c. (and later) magical ritual and occult practices
were the special province of old women. A number of magical
rituals are said to have been recorded from the utterances of
these sibyls or seers.”? Several centuries later old women also
appear among the Assyrians as instruments of oracles. Among
the Canaanites of Ugarit in North Syria in the fourteenth cen-
tury B.c., the word, which is translated “familiar spirit,” evi-
dently had the meaning of “spirit of the dead.””*
Occult practices, with widespread belief in demons* or evil
spirits, and the manifestation of various demonological phe-
nomena such as divination, magic and necromancy (consulting
the supposed spirits of the departed dead) were characteristic
of the environment of ancient Israel” and offered the perpetual
peril of contamination to the faithful follower of Yahweh.
The Old Testament “witch” (Ex. 22:18; Deut. 18:10), cor-
rectly rendered “sorceress” in the Revised and Revised Standard
Versions, is a term used to describe women who trafficked in
occult practices in general. The so-called “witch,” correctly
“medium,” is described as “one who has a familiar spirit (’ob),”
that is, “one in whom there was (or was thought to be) a
divining demon” (cf. Lev. 19:31; 20:6; 20:27). The woman
whom Saul consulted is said to have been “a woman who was
20 For a full discussion of the implications of Saul’s visit to the medium of Endor see
the present author’s Biblical Demonology: A Study of the Spiritual Forces Behind the
Present World Unrest (Wheaton, Ill, 1952), pp. 148-152.
21 Ue Ohetfaas The Land of the Hittites (London, 1910), pp. 26-33; Finegan, of.
cét., p. 165.
22.w. F. Albright, in Old Testament Commentary, p. 149.
23 Ibid.
24G. Ernest Wright, The Old Testament Against Its Environment (Chicago, 1950),
pp. 41, 83ff., 934.
25 Cf. T. W. Davies, Magic, Divination and Demonology Among the Hebrews and Their
Neighbors (London, 1898).
Upper: Modern brick village of Aqabah near Ezion-geber (Elath). The ancient city
was built of bricks, like those the enslaved Hebrews in Egypt made for the reigning
Pharaoh of the time (Ex.1:7-14). Brick-making in the ancient world was 4 highly
developed skill. The bricks of modern Aqgabah are far inferior to those of the ancient
city. (Courtesy Nelson Glueck, Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati.)
Lower: The Dome of the Rock of present-day Jerusalem, in the ancient temple area.
(Courtesy J. C. Trevor, Morris Harvey College, Charlestown, W. Va.)
Upper left: The Gezer Calendar. The earliest extant written document of ancient
Israel, 11th-10th cent. B.C. (Courtesy The Biblical Archeologist, XIII [Dec. 19501,
Ae.)
Upper right: Statuette of Baal (front and back view). The weather god, standing in
the act of hurling a thunderbolt. A superb work of art, the body is of bronze, the
high helmet of polished stone and the two horns of electrum. The god was called the
“rider of the clouds” (cf. Ps. 68:4) and ‘‘Zabul [Prince], Lord of the Earth”
(cf. II Kings 1:2). (Courtesy The Biblical Archeologist, II, 1, fig. 1.)
Lower left: A memorial stone of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (680-669 B.C.). Agri-
cultural scenes are depicted with plow and seed drill in the middle register, evidently
in the midst of a worship scene. (Guide to Babylonian and Assyrian Antiquifies in the
British Museum [1922], p. 228.)
Lower right: Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1700 B.C.), recording laws similar to the
Mosaic code (ca. 144¢ B. C.). The legislation is sufficiently dissimilar, however, to pre-
clude any contention that Moses merely borrowed. Original in the Louvre. (Courtesy
Oriental Institute, Univ. of Chicago.)
SAUL AND THE MONARCHY 203
mistress of a divining demon” (I Sam. 28:7), that is, an ancient

necromancer (same as the modern “spiritualist”) who professed
to give clandestine information from the spirits of the departed
dead.”®
According to the narrative Saul’s doom is announced by
Samuel by means of a post-mortem appearance of the venerable
prophet in spirit form; not, however, through the instrumentality
of the medium of Endor but by special interposition of God
Himself (I Sam. 28:11-25). The monarch’s resort to a source
of information that was by evil power and the antithesis of
being directed by Yahweh, was as complete a denial as was
possible of the essential meaning of what the Hebrew king
was intended to be as a representative of the divine will, and
accordingly merited the king’s destruction on the battlefield of
Gilboa. ,
LITERATURE ON SAUL AND THE MONARCHY
Kittel, Rudolf, Great Men and Movements in Israel (New York, 1929),
pp. 86-112.
Alt, Albrecht, Die Staatenbildung der Israeliten in Palaestina (Leipzig,
1930).
Robinson, Theodore H., 4 History of Israel (Oxford, 1948), Vol. I,
pp.178-199.
Noth, Martin, Geschichte Israels (Goettingen, 1950), pp. 120-155.
Gordon, Cyrus H., Introduction to Old Testament Times (Ventnor, N. J.,
1953), pp. 137-153.
26 For a full discussion see the present author’s Biblical Demonology, pp. 143-164.
CHAPTER XIX
THE REIGN OF DAVID
Later Hebrew history looked back upon David as the ideal

king, and regarded his reign, and that of his son Solomon, as
the golden age of the Hebrew kingdom. In the esteem of the
nation David was accorded a place only second to Moses him-
self. Whereas Moses had led the tribes out of ‘bondage and
merged them into a nation at Sinai, giving them a common
faith and laying down for them their civil and ecclesiastical law,
David was the real founder of the Hebrew Monarchy. It was
he who “carried into effect the whole system, civil and ecclesi-
astical, which had been foreshadowed at Sinai.”?
Moreover, in contrast to Saul, who, although noble in his
strictly national aspirations, was nevertheless rough and repel-
ling, David possessed a singularly gentle and winsome person-
ality and showed a remarkable gift for attracting friends. This
pre-eminent element in his character not only eventually won
for him the kingship which was entirely unsought, but assured
him the fullest success in it when once he was chosen to the
high office. It is quite certain that Jonathan, being heir to the
throne after Saul, would not have been such an ardent friend
and supporter of David in everything had the latter from the
beginning conspired to bring about Saul’s downfall and had
possessed selfish plans to assume the royal title.”
David’s magnanimity was remarkably displayed toward Saul
upon numerous occasions. After he became king of Judah,
similar tactics of patience and moderation in national affairs
won for him the kingship over all Israel and in international
affairs enabled him to carve’ out a substantial empire to be-
queath to his son Solomon. This feat of empire building he
1 Oesterley and Robinson, A History of Israel (Oxford, 1948), Vol. 1 jos, PAIL
2 Cf. Rudolf Kittel, Geschichte Israels, Vol. LI; pala2:
204
THE REIGN oF Davip 205
was able to accomplish largely without resorting to wars that

were waged for conquest. By simply fighting in defense of the
Israelite nation when it was threatened by those who refused
his overtures of friendship and who were jealous of his expand-
ing power, he was able to extend his domains apart from actual
military aggression.
David's policy as king seems clearly to have been “to be strong
at home, but to live side by side with other nations as his allies.”®
Ties of amity accordingly were established with Hiram, king
of Tyre (II Sam. 5:11) and Toi, king of Hamath (II Sam. 8:9,
10). David’s proposed alliance with the Ammonites, on the
other hand, was contemptuously rejected (II Sam. 10:1-5). This
affront not only compelled him to war against Ammon, but
brought him into inevitable clash with the Aramaeans, whom
the Ammonites hired to fight against Israel (II Sam. 10:6-19).
Likewise the warlike advance of the Philistines, when they
heard that David had been anointed king over Israel, made
peaceable agreement with them impossible and opened up the
occasion, as in the case of his other enemies, for their conquest
(II Sam. 5:17-25). Similarly David's attitude toward the Mo-
abites (cf. I Sam. 22:3,4) and the Edomites, to whom he con-
ceded a measure of independence after he conquered them,
suggests the same policy.*
I. Davm’s Earty Activiry as Kinc
The death of Saul precipitated a crisis in the political history
of Israel, and a period of civil war followed. Meanwhile David
had gone up to the city of Hebron situated in the hill country
of Judah some nineteen miles in a southwesterly direction from
Jerusalem. Well-known in Biblical history since the days of
the patriarchs, Hebron was now to come into special prominence
as a royal city.°
Not long after David and the men who were with him had
taken up their residence at Hebron, he was anointed king over
the house of Judah and reigned seven and one half years over
that tribe (II Sam. 2:1-11). In the interim the long civil war
between the house of Saul and the house of David eventuated
in the gradual weakening and final extermination of the house
3 Frederic Thieberger, King Solomon (London, 1947), p. 78.
4 Ibid.
5 Madeleine S. and J. Lane Miller, Encyclopedia of Bible Life (New York, 1944), p. 156
of Saul, and David’s being anointed king over all Israel (II Sam.
2:8-5:5).
1. Capture of Jerusalem. As soon as he was chosen king over
all the tribes, David set himself to the task of establishing the
kingdom. One of his first and most important accomplishments
was his conquest of the Jebusite stronghold at Jerusalem, which
he made his new capital. Situated on a plateau of commanding
height twenty-five hundred feet above the Mediterranean and
thirty-eight hundred feet above the Dead Sea, the Jebusite for-
tress, scarped by natural rock for defense, with stout walls, gates
and towers, was considered impregnable. So secure did the na-
tive Jebusite defenders consider themselves that they taunted
David and the Israelite besiegers with the words: “You will not
come in here, but the blind and the lame will ward you off —
thinking, David cannot come in here” (II Sam. 5:6, R.S.V.).
Despite the formidable defenses of the place David took the
stronghold. On the day when the citadel was stormed David
said: “Whoever would smite the Jebusites, let him get up the
water shaft to attack the lame and the blind, who are hated by
David's soul” (II Sam. 5:8, R.S.V.). This puzzling passage in
the light of more recent evidence must be rendered: “Whoso-
ever getteth up (hiphil not gal) with the hook (not ‘water shaft’
or ‘gutter’) and smiteth the Jebusites . .. .” As Albright
observes:
The word is now known to be typically Canaanite and the sense
“hook” has been handed down through Aramaic to modern Arabic.
The hook in question was used to assist besiegers in scaling ramparts.®
The common interpretation of the word now translated “hook”
has been that it constitutes a reference to the ancient water
shaft inside the Virgin Fountain at Jerusalem.” But this view
is now no longer possible. However, early research of the
Palestine Exploration Fund at Jerusalem, under the direction
of Sir Charles Warren, yielded important knowledge of the
Jebusite water system. The city was naturally deficient in water
supply. All water had to be caught in cisterns during the rainy
season or brought in from a distance by aqueducts, since there
were no springs on the hill. Two springs in the valley supply
water. One, situated at the foot of the eastern hill in the
Kidron Valley below Ophel, the hump or hill, south of the
6 W. F. Albright, “The Old Testament and Archeology,” in Old Testament Commentary
™M. S. and J. L. Miller, op., cit, p. 158; cf. Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. Ill, p. 343.
Temple area, was anciently called Gihon (I Kings 1:40-45; II

Chron. 32:30) and is mentioned by Josephus.’ Today it is known
as Saint Mary’s Well or the Virgin’s Fountain. The other foun-
tain, Enrogel, now called Job’s Well, is located southeast of
the city at a point just below the junction of the valleys of
Hinnom and the Kidron (Josh. 15:1; II Sam. 17:17).°
=e WALL AT TIME OF
DAVID.
~-- PROBABLE WALL,
TIME OF SOLOMON F~-~~
>
PO eR
:
|
i
3
|; —
ge
*GIHON |
\ {
\ to
KiDrRo
Map of Jerusalem at the time of David’s conquest.

As a result of his excavations Warren discovered that the in-
habitants of Jerusalem about 2000 B.c. had made a rock-cut
passage, similar to the one at Gezer and at Megiddo,” to enable
them to secure water from the Gihon spring without having to
go outside the city walls. From the cave into which the Gihon
spring entered, a horizontal tunnel had been driven back into
8 Antiquities, VIII, 14, 5. . .
9Cf. G. E. Wright and F. V. Filson, Westminster Historical Atlas to the Bible (Phila-
delphia, 1945), Plate XVII, p. 101.
10 Chester McCown, The Ladder of Progress in Palestine (New York, 1943), p. 230.
the hill some thirty-six feet west and twenty-five feet north. This
conduit brought the water back into an old cave, which thus
served as a reservoir. Running up from this was a forty-foot
vertical tunnel (now known as Warren’s Shaft), at the top of
which was a platform where the women could stand to lower
their buckets and draw up water. From this a sloping passage
ran up with its entrance within the city walls.*
Although David’s men evidently scaled the walls of Jerusalem
and did not gain entrance to the Jebusite fortress, as hereto-
fore thought, by means of the city’s underground water system,
archeology has shown conclusively that the ancient citadel which
David took called “the stronghold of Zion” and subsequently the
“city of David” (II Sam. 5:7), which the king built, were lo-
cated on the eastern hill above the Gihon Fountain and not on
the so-called western hill of Zion, separated by the Tyropoean
Valley. This is clear from excavations and from the fact that
the water supply determined the earliest settlement in Jerusalem.
In the Old Testament times the eastern hill was considerably
higher and more commanding in appearance than in later times.
The Hasmoneans of the second century B. c. removed the crest
of this area that it might not rival the Temple area in height.
This accentuated the prominence of the western hill, which
was naturally larger and higher. As a result, since as early
as the beginning of the Christian era, ancient Jebusite Jerusalem
has been popularly but erroneously associated with the southern
portion of the western hill, a tradition which has been corrected
only by more than three quarters of a century of archeological
research, extending from De Saulcey’s first search for the Tombs
of the Kings of David and his successors in 1850 to the discovery
of the location and limits of the City of David in 1927.1
The actual uncovering of the City of David, although made
possible through the previous labors of such men as Sir Charles
Warren, Clermont-Ganneau, Hermann Guthe, Frederick Bliss
and Captain Raymond Weill, was due to the research of John
Garstang and his colleagues, together with his successor, J. W.
Crowfoot, which extended over the years 1922-1927. As a result
of these fruitful researches the modest limits of the City of
David were determined. Portions of the Jebusite city wall and
fortification were uncovered, including the great western gate.
11 Sir Frederic Kenyon, The Bible and Archeology (London, 1940), p. 176.
12 McCown, op. cit., pp. 227-239.
Evidence brought to light showed that the city which David

captured was shaped like a huge human footprint about 1250
feet long and 400 feet wide and was situated some distance
south of the temple area. At most its total walled space could
not have exceeded eight acres, comparable to the same area
within the walls of Tell en-Nasbeh, the six acres of Canaanite
Jericho and the thirty acres of contemporary Megiddo.’* How-
ever, its stout walls and elevated position made it virtually im-
pregnable to foes. Nevertheless, by superhuman courage David's
valiant men took it by storm.
2. Jerusalem Made the Nation’s Capital. David’s conquest of
Jerusalem was an exceedingly important event, making possible
the choice of the city as his capital. Moreover, he displayed
great wisdom in his selection of the conquered city as the focal
point of his new government. He realized its strategic impor-
tance and doubtless had it in mind as his new capital before
conquering it. The city stood on the border of Judah and Israel
and its neutral location tended to allay the jealousy between
the northern and southern portions of his kingdom. Its libera-
tion from the Canaanites opened the highway between Judah
and the North, expedited commercial and social intercourse,
and helped further to unite the kingdom.*
3. Subjugation of Neighboring States. David's establishment
as king over a united Israel provoked the fear and jealousy of
the Philistines, who twice invaded Israelite territory to attack
David and who were twice decisively defeated near Jerusalem
(II Sam. 5:17-25). David wisely followed up these victories by
invading Philistia. The capture of Gath (I Chron. 18:1) and
additional conquests in subsequent brief campaigns (II Sam.
21:15-22) so completely subjugated the Philistines that the power
of this inveterate enemy of Israel, which had continuously threat-
ened to overwhelm the young Hebrew kingdom since the days
of Saul, was effectually nullified.
In similar fashion to counteract attack, to avenge insult, to
insure the safety of the nation and to keep it from idolatrous
contamination, David waged war with other surrounding na-
tions including the Moabites, Aramaeans, Ammonites, Edomites
and Amalekites (II Sam. 8:10; 12:26-31). By these conquests
and by skillful diplomacy, he was able to build up a substantial
18 Ibid., p. 239.
14. Cf, Henry Snyder Gehman, The Westminster Dictionary of the Bible (Philadelphia,
1944), p. 132.
empire for his son Solomon which extended from Ezion-Geber,

on the Gulf of Aqabah in the south, to the region of Hums, on
the border of Hamath in the north.”
II. Davm’s PouiricAL AND RELIGIOUS INNOVATIONS
Although the shepherd-king’s colorful personality, his skillful
diplomacy and his brilliant military strategy have overshadowed
his administrative ability, this aspect of his talent must not be
overlooked. His name, evidently derived from the title dawidum,
denoting “leader,” which is found centuries earlier in the Mari
letters from Tell el Hariri on the middle Euphrates,’® speaks of
the remarkable gifts of leadership and administration which Is-
rael’s great king possessed.
1. Organization of the Kingdom. That his administrative
achievements were extensive in contrast to those of Saul, who
was little more than a rustic chieftain, is clearly reflected in the
strong kingdom he left behind him and in the preservation of
accounts of its efficient organization (cf. I Chron. 22:17-27:34).
David’s officialdom, moreover, has been shown to have been
organized in part at least on Egyptian models.’ Among Egyp-
tian official institutions which he copied, doubtless not directly
but through Phoenician or other intermediaries, was the division
of functions between the “recorder” or “chronicler,” mazkir, and
the “scribe” or “secretary,” sopher (II Sam. 8:16,17) and the
council of thirty (cf. I Chron. 27:6). His army was a well-
organized and efficient fighting machine (II Sam. 8:16) and
included a select personal body guard of foreign mercenaries,
evidently of Philistine extraction, called Cherethites and Pel-
ethites (II Sam. 8:18).
2. Allocation of Levitical Cities. As another important ele-
ment in the political organization of his realm many scholars
ascribe to David the actual allocation of Levitical cities.18 Al-
though these cities, including the cities of refuge (Num. 35),
were provided for by Moses before entrance into the land and
appointed by Joshua after the Conquest (Josh. 20:1, 2; 21:2),
it was impossible before the time of Saul or David for many
of these places, such as Gezer, Ibleam, Taanach, Rehob in Asher,
Joknean and Naholal (cf. Josh. 21), to have been actually al-
15 W. F. Albright, Archeology and the Religion of Israel (Baltimore, 1941), p. 131.
16 Cf. George E. Mendenhall, “Mari,” in The Biblical Archeologist, XI (Feb. 1948), p. 17.
Albright, Archeology and the Religion of Israel, p. 120.
=o Cf. Max Loehr, Asylwesen im Alten Testament (1930); S. Klein, “Cities of the
Priests and Levites,” in Mehqarim Eretz-Yisraeliyim, Vol. III, part 4.
Tue REIGN oF Davip 211
lotted to the Levites since they were not Israelite at all before
that time.
Other towns such as Eltekeh and Gibbethon were under
Philistine control until the time of David, and such small hamlets
as Anathoth and Alemoth in the tribe of Benjamin can scarcely
have become Levitic towns before the removal of the tabernacle
to Nob in the time of Saul. It is more likely that they were
allotted to the Levites after David took Jerusalem and made
it the capital of Israel, since there is no doubt that he planned
some kind of administrative reorganization of the Israelite con-
federation.’®
3. Allocation of Cities of Refuge. It is quite certain that the
six cities of refuge, as well as the forty-eight Levitical cities,
figured prominently in David’s reorganization of his realm. In
his time there was a very real need for an institution that would
provide asylum to which one unjustly accused of a crime might
flee, as Loehr has pointed out. The idea, common throughout
the ancient Mediterranean world, would contribute to the sta-
bility of the Monarchy and would not be overlooked by a wise
administrator like David.
During the period of the Judges, private, clan and tribal
vendettas flourished, and were commonly very destructive, as
is illustrated by Ephraim’s jealousy of Gideon’s victories over the
Amalekites (Judg. 8:1-4), Jephthah’s successes over the Am-
monites, and the bitter civil war between the various tribes and
Benjamin over the slaying of the Levite’s concubine (Josh. 19:1-
21:25). As a wise statesman David was fully aware that a stable
monarchy could not tolerate blood feuds, and he was quick to
see the advantage of employing the Mosaic provision of six
Levitic towns, three on each side of the Jordan, for the pur-
pose of helping to consolidate his kingdom and of contributing
to its tranquillity.
4, Removal of the Ark to Jerusalem. As soon as he had es-
tablished his kingdom, as a loyal worshiper of Yahweh, David
turned his attention to the moral and spiritual needs of his
people and sought to make his new capital at Jerusalem the
religious as well as the political center of his expanding empire.
His most important single act in this direction was the re-
20 Loehr, op. cit,
moval of the ark to Jerusalem from Kiriath-jearim,”* where

Israel’s sacred chest had remained, except for a very brief period
at Beth-shemesh, after the Philistines, in whose territory it had
been kept since its capture at the battle of Ebenezer (c. 1050
s.c.), had restored it to Israel.
But David's first attempt to bring the ark to Jerusalem proved
abortive, owing to his unwitting, though serious, neglect to follow
the divine instructions concerning the transportation of the
sacred object (II Sam. 6:1-15; I Chron. 15:13). Instead of first
having the chest covered by the priests and then borne by the
Levites by means of its staves in accordance with prescribed
Mosaic regulations (Num. 4:5, 15,19), his resort to the Philis-
tine expedient of a new cart drawn by oxen (cf. I Sam. 6:7, 8)
led to the death of Uzzah, who put forth his hand to steady the
ark and thus committed a sacrilege for which the law stipulated
death (Num. 4:15).”
As a result of this mishap, the ark remained at Perez-Uzzah
for three months, after which David with great religious cele-
bration brought it up to the City of David (II Sam. 6:12-15).
During the elaborate ceremonies of music, pageantry and _sac-
rifices, David is said to have “danced before the Lord with all
his might . . . girded with a linen ephod” (II Sam. 6:14).
Archeology has shed considerable light on the tabernacle and
the ark, and the Israelite priesthood and ritual. Old Assyrian
cuneiform tablets of the nineteenth century B. c. and the Ugaritic
texts of the fifteenth, for example, show that an “ephod” (epadu),
such as David wore on the occasion of the bringing up of the
ark, such as Samuel is said to have been “girded” with as a boy-
priest at Shiloh (I Sam. 2:18), and such as is mentioned in the
Pentateuch as an important part of the holy attire of the Leviti-
cal priesthood, was formerly an ordinary garment, worn espe-
cially, it would seem, by women. Not until later centuries did
the ephod come to be restricted to religious and subsequently
to priestly use. In Israel, however, it early came to be a dis-
tinctive part of the sacred dress of the Levitical priesthood. Its
use by David on the occasion of the bringing up of the ark
21 Tdentified with Kiriath-baal or “city of Baal” (Josh. 15:60), an ancient center of
Canaanite worship, situated on the western part of the boundary between Judah and Ben-
jamin (Josh. 15:9; 18:14,15), now identified with Tell el-Azhar, about six miles north-
ee of Jerusalem (cf. Westminster Historical Atlas to the Bible, p. 42, Plate Vis palo
For an unwarranted interpretation of this incident that severely criticizes the morality
of the reason assigned by the narrative in Kings and Chronicles see H. H. Rowley, The
Relevance of the Bible (New York, 1944), pp. 28-31.
THE REIGN oF Davi ATES
to Jerusalem was evidently in his capacity as Israel’s anointed

king, for as such he was a special representative of Yahweh.
The ark of the Lord which David brought up to Jerusalem
was “set in its place, in the midst of the tent that David had
pitched for it, and David offered burnt-offerings and _peace-
offerings before the Lord” (II Sam. 6:17). This construction of
a new tabernacle to house the ark of the Lord when it was
brought up to Jerusalem was necessitated by the destruction
of the original Mosaic tent, evidently when the Philistines over-
ran Shiloh about 1050 8. c. and carried away the ark (Josh. 18:
10; I Sam. 3:3; 4:10,11).
A structure, doubtless copied after the specifications of the
Mosaic prototype, had existed at Nob to which the priests ap-
parently fled with the ephod (I Sam. 21:1,9) after the ark had
been taken by the Philistines. But without the ark the taber-
nacle had lost its value and glory (Ps. 78:60) until David con-
structed a new tent to house the sacred symbol of God’s covenant
presence with His people.
Modern criticism shows a tendency to deny the historicity of
the original tabernacle described in the Pentateuch and the
Book of Joshua and to make it essentially a reflection of the later
allegedly more ornate and complex Davidic tent” or a concoc-
tion of exilic and post-exilic priestly writers. Modern criticism
supposes that the elaborate construction and appurtenances of
the Mosaic institution were unsuitable to the life of migrants.”
However, archeology has shown that the description of the con-
struction of the tabernacle offers nothing which would have
been difficult for the craftsmen of the Mosaic era to make,”
and technical terms employed of the tabernacle and its parts
have recently been found in records dating from the fourteenth
to the eleventh centuries B.c.”®° The tent which David pitched
for the ark accordingly may be safely taken as a faithful replica
of the Mosaic tent and not as largely a Davidic innovation.
Moreover, from ancient Arabic tradition and modern Bedouin
practice it is well known that it was customary for nomadic
desert tribes to carry their sacred tent-shrines with them much
23 Frank M. Cross, “The Tabernacle,” in The Biblical Archeologist, X, 3 (Sept. 1947).
Lae and J. L. Miller, Harper’s Bible Dictionary (New York, O52) separ ee
25 Cf. Albright in Old Testament Commentary, p. 143.
26 Ibid.
in the manner of Israel in the wilderness.?” From fragments of

the Phoenician history of Sanchuniathon (c. 650 B.c.) there is
a reference to a portable shrine of much earlier date, which was
drawn by oxen.”® Diodorus, the Greek historian of the first
century A.D., tells of a sacred tent pitched in the center of a
Carthaginian battle camp with an altar nearby.”®
Of particular significance in the archeology of the tabernacle
is the ancient miniature red leather tent with domed top, called
the qubbah. In the pre-Islamic period some of these tents were
suitable for mounting on camel back. Others were larger. The
tent frequently contained the local idols (betyls )and was deemed
capable of guiding the tribe in its wanderings, and by virtue
of its presence on the battlefield, was regarded as efficacious to
protect from the enemy and to give victory. Accordingly, it
was commonly set up near the chieftain’s tent. As an object of
peculiar sacredness the qubbah was thus a palladium affording
general protection. It was also a place of worship, where priests
gave forth oracles.*°
Since black tents were characteristic from most ancient times,
the red leather of which they were made is most extraordinary,
especially since the color tended to expose the camp and the
station of the chieftain. This strange custom implies a deep-
rooted conservative religious practice,** and is illustrated by a
number of representations of the qubbah from Syria and a spe-
cific reference to the institution in an Aramaic inscription.*
The temple of Bel in Palmyra, which dates from the third to
the first century B.c., interestingly portrays the qubbah in a
bas-relief, with remnants of paint still clinging to it.*
The qubbah is mentioned in Numbers 25:8 in connection with
Phinehas who “went into the tent” (qubbah) and slew the “man
of Israel” and the Midianitish woman whom he had married.
The passage is usually construed as a reference to the tabernacle
or to the sacred enclosure.
These ancient Semitic parallels lend striking confirmation to
27 Julian Morgenstern, “The Ark, The Ephod, and The Tent” in Hebrew Union College
Annual, XVII (1943), pp. 153-265; XVIII (1944), pp. 1-52.
28 Cf. I Sam. 6:7; II Sam. 6:6.
29 Cross, op. cit., pp. 60f. Cf. I Sam. 4:3-5.
30 Cross, op. cit., p. 60.
31 Cf. Henri Lammen’s valuable study of the pre-Islamic history of the gubbah in
Zeitschrift fuer das Altestamentliche Wissenschaft, XXXVII, (1919), pp. 2098.
32 Cross, op. cit., p. 61.
33 For photograph see Figure 2, The Biblical Archeologist, X, 3 (Sept. 1947), p. 49,
the fact that the Mosaic tabernacle had a “covering ... of rams’
skins dyed red” (Ex. 26:14; 36:19), and the institution of the
qubbah among ancient Semites doubtless sheds light on the
origin of the tabernacle. The portable red leather tent appears
to be one of the oldest motifs in Semitic religion and furnishes
additional evidence that the Israelite tabernacle and ark have
historical connections with their Semitic past. Parallels must not
be unduly pressed, as some scholars have done,** but the fact
must nevertheless be kept in mind that Israel’s religious cus-
toms were rooted in general Semitic practices, which, however,
under divine revelation through Moses, were transformed to suit
the purposes of Yahwism. ;
As the ancient Semitic tent-shrine was radically reinterpreted
by Mohammed at a later date, so doubtless it had been trans-
formed at a much earlier time under Moses to fit the mould of
Israelite monotheism. Moreover, David’s tent went back to the
Mosaic pattern, although it doubtless elaborated some features,
as was certainly the case in the Solomonic temple.
5. Organization of Sacred Music. There has been a marked
tendency on the part of modern criticism to deny or drastically
minimize David’s activity in organizing Hebrew sacred music.
The common theory is that the formal establishment of classes
of temple musicians is strictly post-exilic. Their alleged found-
ing in the early monarchic period (I Chron. 16:4-6, 37-43) is
assumed to be aetiological or purposive, the Chronicler (about
400 s.c.) attributing to David (around 990 s.c.) the organiza-
tion of the temple musical guilds because he was anxious to
magnify the role of the singers’ and doorkeepers’ guilds which
were striving for a higher rank (I Chron. 23-25).°°
Until recent times this fallacious position was not easy to re-
fute because of a lack of external evidence. Now, however, ar-
cheology has illuminated the subject to such an extent to show
that there is nothing incongruous in the light of the conditions
existing in the ancient Near Eastern world around 1000 B.c.,
in the Biblical representation of David as the patron saint of
Jewish hymnology and “the organizer of the Temple music.”*°
Egyptian and Mesopotamian sources give ample evidence
that Palestine and Syria were well-known in antiquity for their
34 Cf, Morgenstern, loc. cit.
85 Robert H. Pfeiffer, Old Testament Introduction (New York, 1941), p. 801.
36 Cf. M. S. and J. L. Miller, Harper's Bible Dictionary, p. 467.
musicians.** The knowledge of music and musical instruments

among the early Hebrews and their prediluvian ancestors in
extremely early times is reflected in the account of Jabal, Jubal
and Tubal-cain (Gen. 4:20-22). In the early nineteenth century
B.C. Semitic craftsmen carried musical instruments with them
when they went down into Egypt, as is depicted on the famous
relief from Beni-Hasan, 169 miles above Cairo.**
From the epic religious literature discovered at Ras Shamra,
ancient Ugarit in north Syria, it is now known that the “singers’
(sharim) formed a special class of temple personnel there as
early as 1400 B.c.*® The records of the New Empire in Egypt
(c. 1546-1085 B.c.), the period of the heyday of Pharaonic
splendor, contain a number of references to Canaanite music
and many representations of Canaanite musicians and instru-
ments. King Hezekiah of Judah in the eighth century B.c. sent
Sennacherib of Assyria male and female musicians, who are
listed as part of a valuable tribute, indicating that these per-
formers had considerable reputation for talent.*° Moreover, the
Greeks are known to have borrowed several musical instruments
along with their names from the musically talented Phoenicians.
External evidence thus offers every reason to suppose that the
institution of temple musicians goes back to an early date.
The Scriptural narratives themselves, on the other hand, offer
strong evidence attesting David’s musical interests and abilities.
Coupled with his pious devotion to Yahweh, David’s interest
in music presents an ideal background for the Chronicler’s as-
sertion that he organized the guilds of temple musicians. David
is repeatedly represented as a skillful performer on the lyre
(I Sam. 16:14-23) and a composer of beautiful poetry (II Sam.
1:17-27). He is said to have danced before the ark (II Sam.
6:5, 14). A large number of the Psalms are attributed to him by
a persistent tradition reflected in many of the superscriptions.**
However, there are not only strong indications of the exist-
ence of temple music early in Israel, but there is incontrovertible
archeological evidence for the antiquity of the musical guilds
37 Cf. O. R. Sellers, “Musical Instruments of Israel,” in the Biblical Archeologist (Sept.
1941), pp. 33-47. Cf. John Garstang, The Heritage of Solomon (London, 1934), pp.
384-388.
38 See J. Finegan, Light From the Ancient Past (Princeton, 1946), p. 83 and Figure 30.
39 Albright, Archeology and the Religion of Israel, p. 209, note 934,
40 Daniel David Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, Vol. II (Chicago,
1937), sec. 240, p. 121.
41 Cf, the superscription of Psalm 88:
THE REIGN oF Davip Ai lrg
themselves. The Phoenicians (Canaanites) outshone their con-

temporaries in music, and the Israelites were early influenced
by them. Musical guilds of the Hebrews may be traced back,
in some instances, to old Canaanite families whose designations,
such as Heman the Ezrahite (I Chron. 2:6), became a part of
later Hebrew family names.
In addition, such terms as “Asaph,” “Heman” and “Ethan” or
> «<<
“Jeduthun” are evidently used by the Chronicler to designate

musical guilds, and in the case of “Heman” and “Ethan” are
closely paralleled by scores of abbreviated names found at
Ugarit and elsewhere, and are characteristically Canaanite and
early, not appearing in later Hebrew lists of contemporary
names.*”
Other names occurring in connection with the musical guilds
are Chalcol and Darda (I Chron. 2:6), which with Ethan and
Heman appear in the lists of wise men in I Kings 4:31. This
classification is quite appropriate, since a great musician was
commonly also a seer (I Chron. 25:5) or a prophet (I Chron.
25:2, 3), as well as a wise man. Chalcol and Darda are desig-
nated “sons of Mahol” or “members of the orchestral guild,”
and seem to reflect a class of plant or flower names applied to
musicians.** The equivalent of “Chalcol” significantly appears
on several ivories found at Megiddo in the hieroglyphic form
Kulkul, as a singer attached to the temple of Ptah in the Ca-
naanite city of Ashkelon, dated about the thirteenth century B.c.
Hebrew temple music was accordingly recognized in Israel
as going back to early pre-Israelite sources, and, although ar-
cheological evidence does not prove that David organized the
first religious music in Israel, it does show that the Chronicler’s
attribution of such activity to Israel’s shepherd king contains
nothing inconsistent with the spirit of the times or at variance
with the contemporary historical scene.
Moreover, with regard to the Davidic authorship of the Psalms,
a similar conclusion may be reached. Although archeological
evidence does not prove that any of the Psalms go back to
David, it does demonstrate that it is not only possible, but highly
robable that many of them are as early as David or earlier.
Abundant light shed on the Hebrew Psalter by the religious
literature from Ugarit shows that many of the Psalms, such as
43 Ibid., p. 127, and note 96, p. 210.
44 Ibid., note 100, p. 210.
18, 29, 45, 68, 88, 89, etc., are saturated with Canaanite stylistic
and literary parallels and even with direct quotations.** Just as
the Israelites borrowed their music from their precursors, so
they borrowed the metric form, vocabulary and style of their
sacred lyrics from their Canaanite predecessors.
Although the Canaanite material in many of the Psalms does
not necessarily prove an early date, since strong Canaanite color-
ing can be shown to have taken place in two distinct periods —
the eleventh-tenth centuries or in the sixth-fourth centuries B.c.—
yet the Canaanite context of such a Psalm as 68 and its striking
parallels with such an obviously ancient poem as the Song of
Deborah (Judg. 5), which cannot be dated under any con-
sideration later than the early eleventh century, show that this
Psalm (and certainly many others) may well go back to David's
time or earlier. In fact archeological evidence points to the high
probability that the entire Psalter spans the whole of Old Testa-
ment history from Moses to Malachi, as its internal evidence
would lead us to conclude, and supports the traditional role
of David as a musician, poet and the organizer of sacred music
in Israel.
LITERATURE ON THE Davipic ERA
aa sea Preserved, The Books of Samuel (New York, 1904), pp.
143-393.
oreo eats L., The Books of Chronicles (New York, 1910), pp.
Kittel, poet Great Men and Movements in Israel (New York, 1929),
pp. = :
Oesterley and Robinson, 4 History of Israel (Oxford, 1948), Vol. I,
pp. 200-238.
Sellers, Ovid, “David the Singer,” in From the Pyramids to Paul (New
York, 1935), pp. 242-250.
pp. 119-129.
McCown, Chester C., The Ladder of Progress in Palestine (New York,
1943), pp. 226-243.
Mould, Elmer W. K., Essentials of Bible History (rev. ed.; New York,
1951), pp. 185-195.
Miller, Madeleine S., and J. Lane, Harper’s Bible Dictionary (New York,
1952): pp. 152-4674.
Gordon, Cyrus H., Introduction to Old Testament Times (Ventnor, N. J.
1953), pp. 145-168.
45 For a discussion and illustration of these parallels see Albright, in Old Testament
Commentary, pp. 156-159.
Upper: The Tabernacle in the Wilderness as pictured by Dr. Conrad Schick. This
furnished the prototype for the Dandie tent, which was, however, considerably more
elaborate. Then tent at Shiloh was probably not much more advanced than the Mosaic
structure. (C. Schick, Die Stifshuette, 1896, p. 27.)
Center: The Howland-Garber model of Solomon’s Temple as it appeared at its first
public showing at Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Ga., Oct. 17, 1950. (Courtesy The
Biblical Archeologist, XIV, 1, fig. 2.)
Lower: Plan of a Canaanite temple of Bethshan (12th cent. B.C.). The special room
or cubicle at rear, raised above main room and reached by steps, was the place
the divine statute was set up. This is the ‘“‘holy of holies’ feature, present also in
temples in Egypt and Mesopotamia. (Rowe, Topography and History of Bethshan,
plate 56:2.)
Upper left: Cherubim with palm and lily decoration, made of gold and _ used
to adorn the lower part of the interior walls of the Howland-Garber Temple model.
(Courtesy The Biblical Archeologist, XIV, 1, fig. 7.)
Upper right: Artist’s conception of the chapiters or capitals of the free-standing pillars,
Jachin and Boaz, at the entrance of Solomon’s Temple. (Courtesy The Biblical Arche-
olegist, XIV, 1, fig: .5.)
Lower left: The capital of a column found at Megiddo before World War I. This
chapiter has the essential elements of a bowl member, a leaf member with the proper
“lily work’ decoration. It has been suggested as a suitable design for the Jachin and
Boaz chapiters of Solomon’s Temple. (G. Schumacher, Tell el-Mutesellim [ Leipzig, 1908],
I, frontispiece.)
Second from top, right: Replica of Solomon’s copper ‘‘Sea’’ with its ‘“‘lily’’ cup-brim.
The original huge basin held about 10,000 gallons of water, presumably for use in
priestly ablutions. (Courtesy The Biblical Archeologist. XIV, 1, fig. 3.)
Lower right: A _ reconstruction of the Altar of Burnt Offering, according to Ezekiel’s
representation. (Courtesy The Biblical Archeologist, XIV, 1, fig. 3.)
CHAPTER XX
THE EMPIRE OF SOLOMON
David had subdued neighboring nations which showed them-

selves hostile to the Israelite monarchy, so that Solomon’s long
rule of forty years was threatened by no formidable enemies
and became celebrated as an era of almost unbroken peace.
David named his son Solomon, signifying “peaceable,” in antici-
pation of the tranquility of the latter’s reign.
The wide extent of David’s conquests (II Sam. 8:1-18) and
the greatness of Solomon’s empire are emphatically indicated
in the Biblical notices (I Kings 4:21). Yet in the light of the
great empires of Assyria on the Euphrates, the Hittites on the
Halys and Egypt on the Nile, which had existed during cen-
turies of Old Testament history, nothing would seem more un-
likely than that such a splendid and sprawling kingdom as
Solomon’s would have been built up or maintained. Yet ar-
cheological discoveries plainly show that precisely during this
period from about 1100-900 s. c. the power of all of these great
nations was providentially either in eclipse or abeyance, so
that Solomon could rule with the splendor and wisdom divinely
promised him (I Kings 3:13).
Against the city-state of Hamath on the Orontes River in the
extreme north of his kingdom, a very insignificant power in com-
parison to the great Assyrian, Hittite and Egyptian empires,
Solomon went to war. He was obliged to do so to secure this
portion of his frontier. Accordingly he took Hamath and built
store cities in this region (II Chron. 8:3, 4).
Excavations and discoveries at the ancient location of Hamath,
120 miles north of Damascus, have demonstrated that the city
had a long and interesting occupation, particularly as a Hittite
center, as evidenced by the recovery of a large number of Hittite
219
inscriptions from this site as early as 1871.1 Toi, its king in the
time of David, established ties of amity with Israel, and con-
gratulated David on his defeat of Hadadezer of Zobah, a com-
mon enemy (II Sam. 8:9; 10:1).
Rezon of Damascus (I Kings 11:23-25) and Hadad the Edom-
ite (I Kings 11:14-22) were also enemies of Solomon, but neither
was strong enough to cause serious trouble to the rich and
powerful Israelite monarch. However, Rezon, in seizing Damas-
cus and making it a center of Aramaean might, laid the founda-
tions of a strong power that was to prove a deadly antagonist
to the Northern Kingdom for a century and a half after Solo-
mon’s death and the break-up of the United Monarchy.
To hold Damascus in check Solomon fortified Hazor, evidently
to control the crossing of the upper Jordan, and built cities for
his horsemen and chariots in the Lebanon region (I Kings 9:
15,19). He was also compelled to guard the road south past
Edom to Ezion-geber to prevent interruption in the flow of
copper and other wares from his key port on the Red Sea by
the unfriendly Hadad, who had returned from Egypt to plague
the Israelite monarch. Outside of these difficulties, Solomon’s
relations with neighboring kings were amicable. As a result
he was able to devote himself to the organization of his king-
dom and to the cultivation of the arts of peace, activities which
brought an unprecedented era of prosperity to his realm.
I. THe REMARKABLE PROSPERITY OF THE SOLOMONIC ERA
The rapid expansion of Israel’s economic life under Solomon
was due to a number of reasons, among which the political was
of great importance. Either by treaties of amity or subjugation
David had extended the sphere of Israel’s influence so that by
the time Solomon succeeded to the throne the nation possessed
a vast potential for expanding trade and inflow of tribute. Solo-
mon, displaying political and administrative sagacity like his
father, showed himself equal to taking full advantage of the
unparalleled opportunity for economic expansion that presented
itself to him, and “in his relations with other peoples . . . main-
tained his father’s policy.”?
1. Solomon's Foreign Diplomacy. Israel's great commercial
king carefully cultivated the ties of amity which had existed
between Israel and the important maritime kingdom of Tyre
and which had great economic advantages. In addition he pre-
1Cf. W. F. Albright, Archeology and the Religion of Israel (Baltimore, 1942), p. 54.
2 Oesterley and Robinson, A History of Israel (Oxford, 1948), Vol. I, p. 246.
THE EMPIRE OF SOLOMON Oo
served at least the outward loyalty of subject peoples, except

those of Damascus and Edom in the latter part of his long
reign when decadence in his administration had set in. This
he accomplished largely by royal marriages, which bound his
satellites to him but led to grave religious evils (I Kings 11:1-8).
Foremost among these royal alliances was that with E gypt, which
was cemented by his marriage to the daughter of the reigning
Pharaoh (I Kings 3:1,2). This ruler possessed considerable
power, since he was able to claim and partially enforce authority
over Palestine.®
The important and strategic Canaanite city of Gezer in the
Shephelah near the Maritime Plain, with an occupational history
going back to about 3000 B.c.,* is said to have revolted against
Pharaoh, and after being destroyed, to have been handed over
to Solomon as a dowry with Pharaoh’s daughter when she was
given in marriage to the Hebrew king (I Kings 9:16). The ex-
cavated ruins of the site confirm the statement of the Book of
Kings and show that Solomon did not actually rebuild the
city, but erected a fortress on a neighboring site (I Kings 9:17).°
2. Solomon's Domestic Economy. Within his own realm the
Israelite monarch took important administrative steps both to
further prosperity and to siphon a considerable portion of the
vastly augmented national income into the royal treasury to
finance his luxurious style of living and his ambitious building
and commercial ventures. His division of the country into
twelve districts, which to a large extent ignored the old tribal
boundaries (I Kings 4:7-20),° is specifically mentioned and must
have been only, the skeleton of a highly efficient organization,
presided over by important officials, two of whom were married
to daughters of Solomon.
One of the main sources of the enormous revenue required
to support Solomon’s splendid reign was direct taxation in the
form of money, goods or unpaid labor furnished for his vast
building projects. Weighed silver was the medium of exchange,
3 Undoubtedly one of the latter kings of the twenty-first dynasty, since Sheshonq (Biblical,
Shishak), founder of the twenty-second dynasty and well-known to archeology from his
inscriptions on the south wall of the temple at Karnak, reversed the policy of his pre-
decessors and did all in his power to weaken Solomon (Robinson, of. cit., p. 246. I Kings
res eee Macalister, Bible Side-Lights From the Mound of Gexer (London, 1906),
‘ eee and Robinson, op. cit., p. 246, note 1.

6 Cf. W. F. Albright, “The Administrative Divisions of Israel and Judah,” The Journal
of the Palestine Oriental Society, V (1925), pp. 17-54
if money was employed, since coins did not come into use until
centuries later. But archeological evidence points to the fact
that money was not common and that the Israelite paid his
taxes in staple produce of the land, such as corn, wine and oil.
Even as late as the ninth century B. c. the tribute rendered Israel
by Mesha of Moab, of archeological fame, whose stele was dis-
covered in 1868, was paid in lambs and wool, products of a
pastoral country (II Kings 3:4).
Besides taxes in money and produce Solomon required large
donations of free labor from the remnants of the original non-
Israelite inhabitants of the land, whom he pressed into practical
slavery (I Kings 9:20,21). He also raised a special levy from
“all Israel” apparently for the construction of the temple (I Kings
5:13-18).
3. Solomon’s Commercial Expansion. Another important source
of revenue for the royal treasury was from the king’s remarkable
expansion of industry. He is renowned as “the first great com-
mercial king of Israel.’ Taking full advantage of peculiarly
favorable conditions which existed both by land and by sea,
he expanded trade to a remarkable extent. The domestication
of the Arabian camel from the twelfth century B.c. onward, as
Albright has noted,* brought with it a tremendous increase in
nomadic mobility. Caravans could now travel through deserts
whose sources of water might be two or three days apart. There
is ample archeological evidence that by Solomon’s time caravan
trade between the Fertile Crescent and south Arabia was al-
ready well developed.®
Solomon’s control of the frontier districts of Zobah, Damascus,
Hauran, Ammon, Moab and Edom meant that he monopolized
the entire caravan trade between Arabia and Mesopotamia from
the Red Sea to Palmyra (“Tadmor,” II Chron. 8:4), an oasis
140 miles northeast of Damascus, which he built (I Kings 9:
18).° By thus exercising control over virtually all the trade
routes both to the east and to the west of the Jordan, the
Israelite monarch was able substantially to increase the revenue
flowing into the royal coffers by exacting tolls from the mer-
chants passing through his territories (I Kings 10:15).
4. Trade in Horses and Chariots. This prosperous enterprise,
T Robinson, op. cit., p. 256.
8 From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore, 19409, pp. 120f.
9 Albright, Archeology and the Religion of Israel, pp. 132f.
10 Cf, Frederic Thieberger, King Solomon (London, 1947), pp. 150, 275f.
THE EMPIRE OF SOLOMON 293
developed by Israel’s industrially minded monarch and made

possible because of his control of the trade routes between Asia
Minor, Mesopotamia and Egypt, is recounted in an enigmatic
passage in I Kings 10:28, 29: “And the horses which Solomon
had were brought out of Egypt; and the king’s merchants re-
ceived them in droves; each drove at a price. And a chariot
came up and went out of Egypt for six hundred shekels of
silver, and a horse for a hundred and fifty; and so for all the
kings of the Hittites, and for the kings of Syria, did they bring
them out by their means” (A.R.V.).
Modern scholars through the light shed upon this passage
by archeology, and following the Septuagint and the Vulgate
are inclined to render the expression translated “in droves,”
“each drove” (A.V. “fine linen”) not as a common noun, but
a place name Qwh. “And the horses which Solomon had were
brought from Egypt and from Qwh, and the king’s merchants
received them from Qwh at a price.”"' In Assyrian records Kue
is Cilicia, the country between the Taurus mountains and the
Mediterranean Sea in Asia Minor,’* according to Herodotus
famous in the Persian Period for its fine horses.'* Accordingly,
Hugo Winckler emended Mizraim (Egypt) of the Hebrew text
of I Kings 10:28, 29, to read Musri, which denotes Cappadocia,
north of Cilicia, making both the horses and the chariots imports
from Cappadocia and Cilicia.
Albright, partly following Winckler in his emendation of the
first reference to Egypt, yet, because of the well-known fact
that the Egyptians of this period were expert in the manufacture
of chariots, retains as genuine the reading of “Egypt” in I Kings
10:29. “And Solomon’s horses were exported from Cilicia: the
merchants of the king procured them from Cilicia at the
current price and a chariot was exported from Egypt .. .”™
This reading and interpretation of the text would make Solo-
mon the commercial middleman between Egypt and Asia Minor,
having a complete monopoly on the horse and chariot trade,
four Cilician horses being exchanged for one Egyptian chariot.
But inasmuch as the interpretation rests upon a plausible emen-
dation, and inasmuch as Solomon was evidently mainly con-
11 Cf. Millar Burrows, What Mean These Stones? (New Haven, 1941), p. 39.
12 A, T. Olmstead, History of Palestine and Syria to the Macedonian Conquest (New
York, 1931), pp. 341, 375, etc.; Emil G. Kraeling, Aram and Israel (New York, 1918),
p- 70.
13 JIT:90.
14 Archeology and the Religion of Israel, p. 135.
cerned with the purchase of horses and chariots for himself for
military purposes, he must have bought the horses, or the bulk
of them, from the country that had the best chariots, as the
Hebrew text indicates, and as the Chronicler clearly states: “And
they brought horses for Solomon out of Egypt, and out of all
lands” (II Chron. 9:28). But since Solomon did control the
trade routes across his extensive realm and since he was in a
position to supply his northern neighbors with these necessary
commodities, he turned the Egyptian horse-and-chariot industry
into a lucrative source of income for himself, as well as a means
of augmenting his military power.
5. Construction of Chariot Cities. Solomon is said to have
built up a powerful standing army of chariotry (I Kings 4:26),
which was stationed in a number of chariot cities, among which
Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer are mentioned (I Kings
9:15-19). “And Solomon gathered together chariots and horse-
men: and he had a thousand and four hundred chariots, and
twelve thousand horsemen that he bestowed in the chariot cities
and with the king at Jerusalem” (I Kings 10:26).
Archeological excavations at Megiddo, Hazer and Gezer have
illustrated the Biblical notices of Solomon’s building operations
there. Especially at Megiddo, the great thirteen acre mound in
the Valley of Esdraelon and the headquarters of Solomon’s fifth
administrative district, notable discoveries dating from the Solo-
monic era have been made. A group of stables, capable of
housing at least 450 horses and about 150 chariots, have been
uncovered. The plan and mode of construction of these build-
ings are definitely Solomonic,” as well as other structures, such
as the “Great House,” which was used by the commandant dur-
ing this period. They display Tyrian skill and may well have
been designed by the architects of Hiram of Tyre, as was the
temple at Jerusalem.
Similar groups of stables from Solomon’s time at Hazor and
Tell el Hesi add other evidence of Solomon’s splendor and mili-
tary power. The Biblical evidence, substantiated by archeology,
is that Solomon was the first king of Israel to employ horses
and chariots in fighting. David “hamstrung all the chariot horses”
(II Sam. 8:4).
6. Voyages to Ophir. Solomon’s navy and his maritime trad-
19 Ww, F, Albright, “The Old Testament and Archeology,” Old Testament Commentary
ing projects in collaboration with Hiram of Tyre constitute an-

other source of his proverbial prosperity. “And king Solomon
made a navy of ships at Ezion-geber, which is beside Eloth,
on the shore of the Red Sea in the land of Edom. And Hiram
sent in the navy his servants, shipmen that had knowledge of
the sea, with the servants of Solomon. And they came to Ophir,
and fetched thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and
brought it to king Solomon” (I Kings 9:26-28). “Once every
three years came the navy of Tarshish, bringing gold, and silver,
ivory and apes, and peacocks” (I Kings 10:22).
Ophir, which is usually associated with the production of fine
gold in the Old Testament (I Kings 10:11; Job 22:24; Ps. 45:9;
Isa. 13:12), included not only the region of southwest Arabia
(modern Yemen) on the Red Sea adjacent to Sheba and Havilah
(Gen. 10:29), but since the expeditions are said to have taken
three years, it must have embraced portions of the African Coast
as well. The expression “three years,” however, may indicate
merely one entire year and parts of two others, or about a year
and a half in our terms. In earlier Hebrew antedating practice,
for instance, a three year reign of a king might actually only
mean one full year and portions of two others.’® The navy ac-
cordingly probably set sail in November or December of the first
year, returning in early spring of the third year, to avoid as
much summer heat as possible. Babylonians more than a mil-
lennium earlier similarly allowed three years for a voyage to
Melukhkha, in the same general vicinity and approximating the
same distance.*"
The products of the voyage which are listed are of genuine
African or possibly south Arabian provenience: gold, silver, ivory
and two kinds of monkeys, with Egyptian names, and to be
rendered perhaps “apes and baboons” rather than “apes and
peacocks.” "*
The “navy” or “fleet of Tarshish” (‘oni tarshish) has also been
illuminated from ancient Oriental sources. A better rendering
of Solomon’s merchant marine in the light of increased knowl-
edge of early Phoenician trading activities in the Mediterranean
would be “smeltery” or “refinery fleet,” which brought smelted
16 Cf, Albright, Archeology and the Religion of Israel, p. 134, and note 17, p, 212.
17 Jbid., p. 134, and n. 18, p. 212f.
18 Cf. the marginal reading of the Revised Standard Version; cf. Albright, in Old Testa-
ment Commentary, p. 150; “Recent Discoveries in Bible Lands,” in Young’s Concordance,
pi 33.
metal home from the colonial mines. Phoenician boats used to

ply the sea regularly, transporting smelted ores from the mining
towns in Sardinia and Spain. Although such colonizing and com-
mercial activity previous to the eighth century B.c. was com-
monly denied the Phoenicians by writers on the history and
archeology of the western Mediterranean world until quite re-
cently,!® inscriptions recovered from Nora and Bosa in Sardinia
prove that as early as the ninth century B. c. Phoenicians were
colonizing and trading in the western Mediterranean. One of
these inscriptions from Nora contains the name Tarshish im-
mediately before the name Sardinia, evidently indicating that
the Phoenician name of Nora was Tarshish, meaning “the Re-
finery.”°
The name Tarshish also occurs in an inscription of Esarhad-
don, king of Assyria in the seventh century B.c., and refers to
a Phoenician land at the opposite end of the Mediterranean from
the island of Cyprus.?’ In the light of the archeological evidence
available there is not the slightest reason to doubt that at the
time of Hiram I of Tyre (c. 969-936 B. c.) Phoenician commerce
was already widespread in the Mediterranean, and that Tyrian
seamen were able to assist Solomon in building his fleet and
furnish the skill to operate it.
7. Copper Mining and Refining. Archeology not only attests
the historical reasonableness of the fact that Phoenician seamen
and artisans aided Solomon in building and operating his fleet
in the Red Sea, but clearly illustrates an additional point. Phoe-
nician technicians built the seaport of Ezion-geber for him. An
important copper smeltery discovered there by Nelson Glueck
(1938-40), the first ever found, was certainly He work of Phoe-
nician craftsmen who were widely experienced in the art of
setting up copper furnaces and refineries at the smelting settle-
ments in Sardinia and in Spain (the later Tartessus) which were
called Tarshish, after which the ships specially equipped for
transporting such ore and metal cargoes were called Tarshish
ships.”
The construction of the copper refinery at ancient Ezion-geber
(modern Tell el-Kheleifeh) is unusually good, as Glueck has
19 Cf. Solomon Reinach, Le mirage oriental (1893) and Julius Beloch, Griechische
Geschichte (1913), Vol. I, Chs, 7 and 22.
20w. F. Albright, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, LXXXIII
(Oct. 1941), p. 21.
22 Thieberger, op. cit. p. 206.
THE EMPIRE OF SOLOMON Dae
noted,”* and points to practical knowledge and skill which were

the result of long experience. The inescapable conclusion is that
Hiram’s technicians, who were expert in the business, were re-
sponsible for the construction of the smeltery and that it dates
from the tenth century B.c. and was rebuilt at various later
periods. Tell el-Kheleifeh was, therefore, a tarshish, or metal
refinery like the Phoenician stations of the same name in Sar-
dinia and Spain.
The discovery of the copper refinery at Tell el-Kheleifeh il-
lustrates the brief but important Biblical reference to copper
smelting and casting in the Jordan Valley (I Kings 7:46) and
points to another prolific source of Solomon’s wealth. As Glueck
says, it was Solomon “who was the first one who placed the
mining industry in the Wadi Arabah upon a really national
scale.”** As a result copper became the king’s principal export
and his merchants’ main stock in trade.” Putting out from
Ezion-geber laden with smelted ore, his fleet brought back in
exchange other valuable goods obtainable in Arabian ports or
from the nearby coasts of Africa.
8. The Visit of the Queen of Sheba. Solomon's ships plied
the Red Sea. His caravans penetrated far into Arabia. In his
wide commercial outreach he must have been doing business
with, and at the same time necessarily competing with, the
famous Queen of Sheba. Her strenuous journey (I Kings 10)
to Jerusalem by camel, traversing over twelve hundred miles
of inhospitable terrain, almost certainly was dictated by busi-
ness reasons as well as by the pleasure of seeing Solomon’s
splendor and hearing his wisdom.
The visit must have involved delimitation of spheres of in-
terest and the arrangement of trade treaties which regulated
the equitable exchange of the products of Arabia for the products
of Palestine and particularly the copper of the Wadi Arabah.
The Queen’s diplomatic visit and conversations with the Israelite
monarch were evidently highly successful (I Kings 10:1, 2, 10,
13).
Although the Queen of Sheba of the Solomonic era has not
been attested as yet in south-Abrabian inscriptions, there is
no valid reason for denying the historicity of either her or her
visit to the Israelite monarch. It is true that the oldest inscrip-
23 Nelson Glueck, The Other Side of the Jordan (New Haven, 1940), p. 98.
24 Ibid., p. 84.
25 Ibid., p. 85.
tions of Saba (Sheba) reach back only to the seventh or eighth

century and Assyrian inscriptions do not begin to mention names
of Sabaean kings until toward the end of the eighth century.
However, there is no warrant to doubt that Sheba was an im-
portant kingdom or tribal confederacy two or three centuries
earlier. Nor is there any reason to dismiss the whole account
of the Queen’s visit “as a romantic tale,” as generally used to
be done.”* Although queens played little part in the later history
uf south Arabia, they ruled large tribal confederacies in north
Arabia from the ninth to the seventh centuries B.c., as the cunei-
form inscriptions relate.”
9. Solomon’s Matrimonial Alliances. To insure the future
peace and security of his realm, Solomon yielded to the custom
of the times and made many domestic alliances with subject
races and tribes by marrying foreign women. From the Amarna
Letters of the fourteenth century B.c. and numerous other
sources there is ample illustration of this practice of royal inter-
marriage for political and other reasons. Kings of Egypt, for ex-
ample, gave their daughters in marriage to the kings of the
Hittites and the princes of Mitanni in the fourteenth and thir-
teenth centuries B.c. Ahab of the royal house of Omri married
into the royal house of Tyre in the ninth century B.c.
Instead of securing the kingdom this evil expedient led to
spiritual decline and gross idolatry, and the eventual disruption
of the nation. Of the numerous deities to which his foreign
wives turned his heart, perhaps the best known in the ancient
world was Ashtoreth, called “the abomination of the Sidonians”
(I Kings 11:5, 33), since her cult was early established among
the Phoenicians. She was a fertility goddess, known as Astarte
among the Greeks, and as Ishtar in Babylonia. Various types
of immorality were the concomitant of her degrading cult. This
goddess of sexual love and also of war in Babylonia and As-
syria is pictured on a seal impression found at Bethel, and her
name is given in hieroglyphic characters.?8
II. SoLtomon’s TEMPLE
Archeology has furnished testimony that Solomon’s building
and industrial activities were even more extensive than might
be concluded from the vivid account in the Book of Kings. There
is, however, every evidence to substantiate the Biblical notices
26 Cf. James A. Montgomery,
27 Tbid., pp. 1808. :
Arabia and the Bible (Philadelphia,
Phia, 1934 ), p. 1 180.
28 Burrows, op. cit. p. 230.
that Israel’s monarch drew heavily upon Phoenician skill not

only in his maritime ventures, but particularly in the construc-
tion of the magnificent temple at Jerusalem and other buildings.
Excavations by Albright at Gibeah (Tell el-Ful), the site of
Saul’s capital, have revealed the strength but extreme crudity
of the royal buildings in comparison to the architectural skill
displayed at Solomonic Megiddo and required by the temple
and royal palace at Jerusalem.”
At the time of David and Solomon, both of whom maintained
ties of amity with Hiram I of Tyre (c. 969-936 B.c.), southern
Phoenicia was consolidated under one king who ruled at Tyre,
but who bore the official title of “King of the Sidonians.”*°
From the twelfth to the seventh centuries B.c. Tyre and Sidon
existed as one political entity. Only before and after this
period were there two separate states, so that Hiram was a
rich and powerful ruler, in winning and maintaining whose
friendship Solomon gave a demonstration of his proverbial wis-
dom. Moreover, the name Hiram (originally, Ahiram) was a
common Phoenician royal name, as is attested by the inscrip-
tions, notably that found on the sarcophagus of Ahiram at Byblus
(Biblical Gebal, Ps. 83:7; Ezek. 27:9), discovered in 1923-1924
by a French expedition under M. Montet and dating probably
from the eleventh century.**
1. The Plan of the Temple. Despite the fact that no archi-
tectural or constructional remains found in Jerusalem can be
attributed to Solomon, numerous archeological finds in the
ancient Near East have cast a great deal of indirect light upon
the construction of the temple. It is now known that the plan
of the edifice was characteristically Phoenician, as would be
expected, since it was built by a Tyrian architect (I Kings
7:13-15). Similar ground plans of sanctuaries of the general
period 1200-900 s.c. have been excavated in northern Syria,
especially by the University of Chicago at Tell Tainat in 1936,
and the findings have demonstrated that the specifications of
the Solomonic structure outlined in I Kings 6-7 are pre-Greek
and authentic for the tenth century B.c. and not to be denied
historical genuineness and assigned to the period of Hellenic
29M. S. and J. L. Miller, Encyclopedia of Bible Life (New York, 1944), p. 176.
30 Cf. the expression “Zidonians” in I Kings 11:1, 33.
31 Albright, Archeology and the Religion of Israel, p. 40; cf. George A. Barton, Arche-
ology and the Bible (7th ed.; Philadelphia, 1946), pp. 128f.
influence after the sixth century B.C., as some critics were ac-
customed to do.*?
Like Solomon’s temple the shrine at Tell Tainat was rec-
tangular, with three rooms, a portico with two columns in front,
a main hall, and a cella or shrine with a raised platform. It
was two thirds as long as Solomon’s temple and was in all like-
lihood lined with cedar.
The proto-Aeolic pilaster capital was extensively used in Solo-
mon’s temple, and examples of this construction have been dis-
covered at Megiddo, Samaria, at Shechem, in Moab and near
Jerusalem dating from before 1000, or as at Megiddo, from the
eighth century B.c.°? The decorations of the temple, such as
lilies, palmettes and cherubim, were likewise characteristically
Syro-Phoenician, the latter being a winged lion with human
head, that is, a winged sphinx. This hybrid animal, however,
was not a Solomonic innovation, but was inherited from the
tabernacle and appears hundreds of times in the iconography
of western Asia between 1800 and 600 B.c. Many representa-
tions are found with a deity or king seated on a throne supported
by two cherubs. In Israel the Deity and His throne — both in-
visible — were similarly supported by symbolic cherubim.**
Archeology thus greatly illuminates the meaning of the cher-
ubim in Solomon’s temple and the earlier tabernacle and enables
us to translate I Samuel 4:4 thus: “. . . the ark of the covenant
of the Lord of hosts who is enthroned above the cherubim.”
2. Jachin and Boaz. Like the north Syrian shrine at Tell
Tainat Solomon’s edifice had two columns which stood in the
portico. Such pillars flanking the main entrance of a temple
were common in the first millennium B.c. in Syria, Phoenicia
and Cyprus. They spread eastward to Assyria where they are
to be found in Sargon’s temples at Khorsabad (late eighth cen-
tury B.c.) and westward to the Phoenician colonies in the
western Mediterranean. In Solomon's temple, following a com-
mon Oriental custom, they bore the distinctive names “Jachin”
and “Boaz.” It has been convincingly demonstrated that the
names of the two columns represented
the first words of dy-
32 Cf. Gabriel Leroux, Les origines de Vedihts bypastyle (1913), pp. 159-162.
33. W. F. Albright, “Recent Discoveries in Bible Lands,” in Young’s Analytical Con-
cordance (New York, 1936), p. 33a.
34 Albright in Old Testament Commentary, p. 148; Archeology and the Religion of
Israel, p. 216, n. 65; Graham and May, Culture and Conscience (1936), pp. 195f., 2494.
nastic oracles which were inscribed upon them.** The “Jachin”

formula may have been, “Yahweh will establish (yakin) thy
throne forever,” or the like, and the “Boaz” oracle may have
run, “In Yahweh is the king’s strength,” or something similar.
Jachin and Boaz have been frequently interpreted as sacred
obelisks, like those which stood beside the great Egyptian
temples at Heliopolis and Thebes, or beside the temple of Mel-
carth at Tyre, and it is possible, of course, that Solomon might
make concessions to the architectural fads of his day. Sometimes
they have been viewed as stylized trees or again as cosmic
pillars, like the pillars of Hercules. The best interpretation
seems to be that which Robertson Smith put forth long ago,
who regarded them as gigantic cressets or fire altars.°°
W. F. Albright adopts Robertson Smith’s essential view that
Jachin and Boaz were huge cressets or fire altars, using proof
from the painted tombs of Marisa in southern Palestine, where
similar incense burners appear. Corroborating evidence is also
drawn from the Egyptian Djed Pillar, a sacred emblem of
Osiris, which bears certain similarities to these columns. Most
important, Albright stresses the fact that each of the shafts of
the two pillars is clearly said to be crowned with a gullah or
oil basin of a lampstand (I Kings 7:41; cf. Zech. 4:3).*"
Thus following Phoenician models these lofty incense stands
graced and illuminated the magnificent facade of the temple
on Moriah. No doubt, as they caught the first glint of the Jeru-
salem sunrise or were wrapped in the mists that at night floated
up from the Kidron Valley, while their wicks blazed and
smoked, they reminded worshipers of the pillar of fire and
cloud that of old led Israel through the wilderness wanderings.**
3. The Furnishings of the Temple. Archeology has also shed
a great deal of light on the equipment of the temple, which in
part at least was modelled after Syro-Phoenician copies, and
which in turn went back to much earlier borrowings from Meso-
potamia. The altar of burnt offering, for instance, from the
measurements of that in Ezekiel’s temple (Ezek. 43:13-17),
which was certainly the same shape as Solomon’s altar, if not
35 R. B. Y. Scott, Journal of Biblical Literature, LVIII (1939), pp. 143f. Cf. Paul L.
Garber, “Reconstructing Solomon’s Temple,” The Biblical Archeologist, XIV (Feb. 1951),
pots
PP 36 Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (new edition, 1894), pp. 487-490.
37 Albright, Archeology and the Religion of Israel, pp. 144-148; Bulletin of the American
Schools of Oriental Research, LXXXV (1942), pp. 18-27. Cf. a refuting view —J. L.
Myres, Palestine Exploration Quarterly (Jan.-April, 1948), pp. 27f.
88 Cf, Garber, op. cit., p. 10.
Dae ARCHEOLOGY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT
the same size,®® was a miniature temple-tower (Babylonian, zig-

gurat), after which it was partly designed.*” Ezekiel’s descrip-
tion of this altar is important and exceedingly interesting from
an archeological point of view because it preserves some of the
current terminology which used to be applied to its various parts.
According to Ezekiel’s account the foundation was called
symbolically “the bosom of the earth” (heq ha aretz, Ezek. 43:
14) and the top, “the mountain of God” (har el, Ezek. 43:15, 16);
Both of these expressions are literal translations of the corre-
sponding Babylonian terms for the base and summit of the
common staged temple-tower or ziggurat of the ancient Baby-
lonian world, as is known from cuneiform tablets.** In this
connection a further striking parallel appears in the fact that
the summit of the ziqquratu (literally “mountain peak”), like
the Hebrew altar of burnt offering (Ex. 27:2; Ezek. 43:15),
was also ornamented with four “horns,” as is known both from
inscriptions and monumental representations.”
It is interesting to note in addition that the word for “temple”
in Hebrew (hekal) had been taken over by the Canaanites from
the non-Semitic Sumerians, the precursors of the Semitic Baby-
lonians in the lower Tigris-Euphrates Valley, at least a millen-
nium and a half earlier.“* Such borrowings are common as in
the case of the cherubim and other features both of the taber-
nacle and temple, and do not in the least imply that the Hebrews
attached any pagan significance whatever to them. In fact, as
in the tabernacle where every item of construction and equip-
ment was divinely ordered, each detail was at the same time
divinely invested with a meaning consonant with the worship
of the one true God and endowed with a rich symbolism typical
of the coming future Messianic Redeemer.
However, Solomon went far beyond the chaste divinely-
ordered simplicity of the tabernacle and its symbolic ritual and
furniture. An instance of this is not only furnished by the twin
obelisks gracing the threshold of the temple, but also by the
great copper sea set on twelve bulls, and orientated toward the
four quarters of the compass, a new feature of the sanctuary
39 Cf. Kurt Galling in Bertholet, Hesekiel, pp. xix-xxi.
40 For a description of the ziggurat see Chapter VIII of this book. See also H. Gressmann,
The Tower of Babel (New York, 1928), pp. 1-19.
41 Albright, Archeology and the Religion of Israel, pp. 150-152.
pice e.g. The Rassam Cylinder of Sardanapalus, VI:29; Cf. L. H. Vincent, Canaan,
p. 14 .
43 See A. Poebel, Zeitschrift fuer Assyriologie. XXXIX (1929), p. 145; Journal of
American Oriental Society, LVII, (1937), p. 71, note 95.
THE Emre or SOLOMON 233
court (I Kings 7:23-26). This immense basin, taking the place

of the laver of the tabernacle, was ornately decorated with
bunches of flowers in high relief and served, as did its simple
precursor, for ceremonial washings. In the name given to it
by Solomon (“sea”) and in its construction, both doubtless
the result of Syro-Phoenician influence, clear cosmic significance
is apparent.
In the ancient Near East the “sea” was universally recognized
as possessing cosmic significance, ** and in name and function
Solomon’s “molten sea” can scarcely be separated from the Meso-
potamian “sea” (apsu), a term used both as the designation of
the subterranean fresh water ocean, the source of all life and
fertility, and as the name of a basin of holy water set up in
the temple.*® Moreover, these various cosmic sources of water
were conceived in mythological terms as dragons both in Ak-
kadian (Apsu and Tiamat), Canaanite (“sea,” yammu and
“river,” naharu) and in Biblical Hebrew (“sea,” yam, “rivers,”
neharoth).** The term “sea,” meaning the source of life among
the Syrians and the Phoenicians, came to denote the Mediter-
ranean, the main source of Canaanite livelihood, as in Meso-
potamia it had denoted the putative subterranean source of
the great life-giving rivers of that land.
The relation of the “sea” to the portable lavers that Solomon
made (I Kings 7:38), which correspond to Phoenician portable
lavers found on the island of Cyprus, was similar to that between
the “sea” (apsu) and “the portable basins of water” (egubbe)
in Babylonian temples.*
In going beyond the chaste, divinely ordered simplicity of
the tabernacle, the temple with its elaborate organization and
its heavy indebtedness to Syro-Phoenician religious architecture
and practice presented the peril of religious syncretism, which
was to manifest itself in intermittent conflict between religious
assimilators and separatists in subsequent centuries. Solomon
himself evidently first succumbed to the dangerous precedent
in allowing shrines and altars of foreign deities to be built in
the immediate environs of Jerusalem itself, perhaps partly as
a political expedient. But the practice, whatever its motive,
441, Benzinger, Hebracische Archaeologie (3rd ed.; 1927), p. 329.
45 Albright, Archeology and the Religion of Israel, pp. 148f., p. 217, n. 67. Cf. G. E.
Wright in The Biblical Archeologist, VII (Dec. 1944), p. 74.
46 “Seg (Isa. 51:10; Ps. 74:13); “rivers” (Ps. 74:15; Hab. 3:8, 9).
encouraged relapse into paganism on the part of the masses, and

this relapse is evident in the history of Judah down to the
Babylonian captivity.
LITERATURE ON THE SOLOMONIC ERA
pp. 239-265.
Moehlenbrink, K., Der Tempel Solomos (1932).
Watzinger, Carl, Denkmaeler Palaestinas (Leipzig, 1933), Vol. I, pp.
88-95.
Montgomery, James A., Arabia and the Bible (Philadelphia, 1934), pp.
175-184.
Garstang, John, The Heritage of Solomon (London, 1934), pp. 332-394.
Scott, R. B. Y., Journal of Biblical Literature, LVIII (1939), pp. 143f.
Glueck, Nelson, The Other Side of the Jordan (New Haven, 1940), pp.
50-113.
, “The Excavations of Solomon’s Seaport: Ezion-geber,” The Smith-
sonian Report for 1941 (Washington, D.C., 1941), pp. 453-478.
Wright, G. E., “Solomon’s Temple Resurrected,” The Biblical Arche-
ologist, IV, (May, 1941).
pp. 130-155. ”
, Bulletin of American Schools of Oriental Research, LXXXV
(Feb. 1942), pp. 18-27.
Barton, George, Archeology and the Bible (7th ed.; Philadelphia, 1946),
pp. 233-239.
Thieberger, Frederic, King Solomon (London, 1947).
Wylie, C. C., “On King Solomon’s Molten Sea,” The Biblical Archeolo-
gist, XII (Dec. 1949), p. 86.
peor P., Archeology and Bible History (Wheaton, IIl., 1950), pp.
162-174.
Montgomery, James A., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the
Book of Kings (New York, 1951), pp. 67-248.
Garber, Paul L., “Reconstructing Solomon’s Temple,” The Biblical Arche-
ologist, XIV (Feb. 1951), pp. 2-25.
1953), pp. 167-174.
CHAPTER XXI
ISRAEL AND THE ARAMAEANS
Solomon’s elaborate building operations and the lavish scale

of his personal life led to forced labor, burdensome taxation
and other oppressive measures that produced increasing unrest
among his subjects. His religious apostasy in the latter part
of his reign further sowed the seeds of internal rebellion. Of
special significance among the foreign enemies, which were
divinely raised up to chasten Solomon, is mentioned “Rezon,
the son of Eliada” (I Kings 11:23). This ambitious military
leader, who as a young officer in the army of Zobah, had es-
caped when Hadadezer’s kingdom had fallen to David, had
subsequently established himself in the important city of Da-
mascus, and as the founder of an important Aramaean kingdom,
which was later to prove an inveterate enemy of the Northern
Kingdom of Israel for more than a century and a half, was
a troublesome enemy of Solomon in the latter years of the
United Kingdom (I Kings 11:23-25).
The rapid growth of this powerful hostile kingdom on the
northern borders of Israel, which at times threatened to ex-
tinguish its national life, was made possible largely by the
breakup of the United Monarchy under Solomon’s son and
successor, Rehoboam. The folly of this young king in failing
to heed the demands of the people to reduce the heavy yoke
Solomon had imposed upon them led to the disruption of the
kingdom at Shechem, where all Israel had assembled to con-
firm Rehoboam in the succession (I Kings 12:1-19). This su-
preme tragedy brought in its wake numerous ills, internal as
well as external, that centuries could not erase.
I. IsraEL UNDER JEROBOAM I
The man who was destined to be the first ruler to occupy
the throne of the Northern Kingdom initially appears in the
235
Biblical record as an Ephraimite chief in charge of Solomon’s

conscripted labor gangs working on the Millo section of the wall
at Jerusalem. Being a man of pre-eminent courage, he opposed
Solomon’s tyranny and was compelled to take asylum in Egypt
(I Kings 11:26-40). After hearing of Solomon’s death, he re-
turned to his native land, apparently prepared to support Solo-
mon’s son, Rehoboam, on the throne (I Kings 12:4). The latter's
foolhardy decision at Shechem, however, alienated the ten
northern tribes from the house of David, which in turn chose
Jeroboam as their king.
1. Jeroboam’s Apostasies. The new king in order to bolster
his political position immediately upon his accession took steps
to lead his subjects away from the faith and the worship of
their fathers. He feared that pious Israelites, who were ac-
customed to make pilgrimages to the temple at jerusalem, would
turn toward the Southern Kingdom not only in religious matters
but in political affairs as well (I Kings 12:27). He therefore
built two shrines to Yahweh —one at Bethel in the southern
part of his kingdom, a bare dozen miles north of Jerusalem, and
famous as a place of worship since patriarchal times, when
Abraham had built an altar there (Gen. 12:8), and another in
the far north at Dan, likewise an ancient cultic center (Judg.
18:30). By erecting a sanctuary at Dan, he attempted “to de-
velop friendlier relations with the tribes farther to the north
who always had held themselves more or less aloof.”?
To make the worship more attractive in the sanctuaries he
built at Bethel and Dan, since these temples could obviously not
be compared to the splendid temple at Jerusalem, Jeroboam
introduced a daring and dangerous innovation. He “made two
calves of gold; and he said unto them, It is too much for you
to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought
thee up out of the land of Egypt. And he set the one in Bethel,
and the other put he in Dan” (I Kings 12:28, 29).
Although it has commonly been assumed that the -“golden
calves” were direct representations of Yahweh as bull-god, it is
scarcely conceivable that Jeroboam would have resorted to such
a crude and violent departure from Yahwism, especially when
his design was to consolidate his newly gained and somewhat
precarious authority. Besides, such a gross conception is other-
wise unparalleled in Biblical tradition, and is opposed to ar-
1 Paul Heinisch, History of the Old Testament (Collegeville, Minnesota, 1952), p. 224.
IsRAEL AND THE ARAMEANS 237
cheological evidence. Among Israel’s immediate neighbors —

Canaanites, Aramaeans, and Hittites — deities were “nearly al-
ways represented as standing on the back of an animal or as
on a throne borne by animals—but never as themselves in
animal form.”* For example, the storm god of Mesopotamia is
pictured on seal-cylinders of the second millennium B.c. in the
form of a bolt of lightning set upright on the back of a bull.’
Although conceptually there is little difference between repre-
senting the invisible Deity as enthroned on the cherubim (I Sam.
4:4; II Kings 19:15) or as standing on a bull, except that the
former represent beings of the supernatural realm which guard
the holiness (Gen. 3:24) and the throne of God (Ezek. 1:5;
Rey. 4:6-9), nevertheless Jeroboam’s innovation was extremely
dangerous. The bull affiliations of Baal, lord of heaven, were
too closely connected with the more degrading aspects of pagan
cults to be safe, and there is every indication that the Northern
Kingdom fell a prey to idolatrous pollution as a result. Time
and again Old Testament writers denounce Jeroboam as one
who “made Israel to sin.” Moreover, “the calves associated with
Yahwistic worship at Bethel and Dan are repeatedly mentioned
as abominations,’* and Jeroboam is referred to in connection
with other apostasies (I Kings 12:31-33). The subsequent spirit-
ual declension in the Northern Kingdom with the introduction
of fertility-cult groves (II Kings 13:6), high places for the. li-
centious rites of Canaanite agricultural gods (I Kings 12:31),
and every type of gross idolatry, testify to the baneful effects
of Jeroboam’s apostasy (II Kings 17:7-18).
2. War and Invasion Under Jeroboam. The serious weaken-
ing of the Israelite tribes by the division of the Monarchy was
further accentuated by the exhausting wars between the two
separate kingdoms which began under Jeroboam and Rehoboam
and continued intermittently under successive rulers. Specific
and repeated notice is given of the fact that “there was war
between Rehoboam and Jeroboam continually” (I Kings 14:30;
15:6). This sad state of affairs exposed both kingdoms to the
danger of common external foes. While Aramaean power in
Syria was steadily increasing during this period, it was not
yet strong enough to take advantage of Israel’s weakness. How-
ever, Sheshonq I of Egypt (Biblical Shishak), (c. 935-914 B.c.)
2w. F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore, 1940), p. 229.
3 Ibid.
4 Cyrus H. Gordon, Introduction to Old Testament Times (Ventnor, N. J., 1953), p. 180.
founder of the Twenty-second Dynasty, was able to avail him-

self of the unsettled conditions in Palestine to launch a tull-
scale invasion in the fifth year of Rehoboam and to seize Solo-
mon’s golden shields and other temple and royal treasures
(I Kings 14:25-28).
The Egyptian records do not give the date of Shishak’s ex-
pedition and with the uncertain chronology of the early kings
of the Davidic line scholars are not agreed on the precise date.
Albright places the accession of Rehoboam about 922 s.c. and
accordingly his fifth regnal year would be about 917 B.c.°
Other scholars vary within a decade or so earlier.®
The gold-masked body of Shishak was discovered in his in-
tact burial chamber at Tanis in 1938-1939." His triumphal in-
scription at Karnak (ancient Thebes) gives a long list of his
conquests, which include towns in all parts of Judah and ex-
tend up the coastal plain, across the Plain of Esdraelon into
Gilead, “showing that he invaded the Northern Kingdom as
well, in spite of his previous friendship for Jeroboam ( I Kings
11:40).”® A part of Shishak’s stela has been excavated at Me-
giddo, proving that he actually did take and occupy this im-
portant city, as recounted in his Karnak inscription.
II. IsRAEL AND THE RISE OF ARAMAEAN POWER
The disruption of the Israelite Monarchy at the death of
Solomon and the subsequent wars between the two divided
kingdoms not only permitted Shishak to plunder Palestine, but
also furnished the Aramaeans of Damascus with an unparalleled
opportunity to consolidate their power and to make their king-
dom the dominant Syrian state. The kingdoms of Israel and
Judah, on the other hand, were so involved in mutual hostilities
that they had little time to devote to the formidable threat of
an unfriendly and increasingly powerful state forming so dan-
erously near at hand.
1. The Early Kings of Damascus. The succession of Syrian
kings who reigned at Damascus and lifted the city-state to the
apogee of its power to become the inveterate foe of Israel for
a full century and a half has been remarkably illuminated by
5 Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, LXXXVII (1942), p. 28;
CXXX (Apr. 1953), p. 7.
6 James A. Montgomery, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Kings
(New York, 1951), p. 269, n. 1.
7 Madeline S. and J. Lane Miller, Harper's Bible Dictionary (New York, 1952), p. 678.
archeology. Veiled in obscurity and plagued with problems,

this general period is now much better understood as a result
of the discovery of the inscribed stele of Benhadad I, discovered
in north Syria in 1940.° This important royal inscription in
general confirms the list of early Syrian kings as given in I Kings
15:18, where “Benhadad” is said to be “the son of Tabrimmon,
the son of Hezion, king of Aram, who dwelt in Damascus.” Ac-
cording to W. F. Albright’s rendering of the Benhadad monu-
ment (with the somewhat uncertain restoration of a partly un-
decipherable portion), the sequence is identical: “Birhadad, son
of Tab-Ramman, son of Hadyan, king of Aram.”!° Birhadad is
equivalent to Barhadad, Hebrew Benhadad, and Tab-Ramman
and Hadyan are equatable with Hebrew Tabrimmon and Hezion.
Although the correct name of the first king of Damascus has
been settled by archeological evidence, the problem of the iden-
tity of Rezon, who seized Damascus during Solomon’s reign and
apparently ruled there (I Kings 11:23-25), is still unsolved. Is
Hezion identical with Rezon? If so, the form Rezon is secondary
and is to be regarded as a corruption of Hezion. If this is not
the case, which appears unlikely, Rezon must be excluded from
the dynastic list of I Kings 15:18, which is improbable in view
of the fact that he was clearly the founder of the powerful
Damascene state,'' and imparted to it that temper of hostility
toward Israel which was to become hereditary in the kings
who followed and which was to make it one of the most ag-
gressive and dangerous of enemies.
2. Benhadad I. By the time Benhadad I entered into the
succession of Syrian kings (c. 890 B.c.), Syria had grown so
formidably in power that it was the strongest state in this
region of western Asia and ready to seize any opportunity to
expand its domains. Such an occasion presented itself when
the hard-pressed Asa, king of Judah (c. 917-876 B.c.), sent an
urgent appeal to Syria for aid against Baasha, king of Israel (c.
900-877 8.c), who, pushing his frontier southward to within
five miles of Jerusalem, proceeded to fortify Ramah as a border
fortress commanding the capital of Judah (I Kings 15:17).
In desperation the king of Judah sent what was left of the
9Cf. W. F. Albright’s reconstruction of the Benhadad inscription, Bulletin of the Ameri-
can Schools of Oriental Research, LXXXVII (Oct. 1942), pp. 23-29; XC (Apr. 1943),
pp. 32-34.
10 Jbid., LXXXVII, p. 26.
11 §. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, U1, 2 (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1931), p. 269; Rudolf
Kittel, Geschichte des Volkes Israel (Gotha, 1909), Vol. I, p. 221.
temple and royal treasure plundered so recently by Shishak to

Benhadad as a bribe to lure Syria into an alliance with himself
against Israel. In resorting to this expedient Asa followed a
policy which Abijam his father had inaugurated of resorting to
an alliance with Damascus whenever Israel’s aggression toward
the south became dangerous (I Kings 15:19).”
Asa’s strategy was at least immediately successful for Ben-
hadad invaded northern Israel and forced. Baasha to abandon
Ramah and retire to his capital city Tirzah (I Kings 15:20-22).
But the cost was more than the king of Judah bargained for.
In courting the favor of Damascus against Israel, he gave an
unparalleled opportunity for aggrandizement to what was in
reality a common threat and placed both Hebrew kingdoms in
the position which was actually that of semi-subservience to a
mutual foe. With Israel and Judah in deadly struggle the rise
of Damascus to power was virtually unhindered.
3. Benhadad I and II. Before the discovery of the inscribed
stele of Benhadad, scholars were almost universally accustomed
to distinguish between Benhadad I, son of Tabrimmon, son of
Hezion, the contemporary of Asa and Baasha (I Kings 15:18)
and Benhadad, the contemporary of Elijah and Elisha.’* Only
occasionally did a Biblical scholar, such as T. K. Cheyne, recog-
nize the possibility that the two might be identical.1* The
majority, however, assumed that the so-called Benhadad I died
during the early years of the reign of Omri or Ahab (c. 865
B.c.), and was succeeded by Benhadad II.*
However, evidence furnished by the stela of Benhadad strongly
argues for the identity of Benhadad I and Benhadad II."* In
addition, careful researches in the vexing problems of the chron-
ology of the Israelite and Judahite kings of this period have
resulted in the reduction in the regnal years, notably of Israelite
kings, and have obviated any serious objection to the equation
on the ground of an impossibly long reign for Benhadad I.1*
A further argument of moment commonly urged against the
identification of Benhadad I with Benhadad II is the word of
sla12 ote seas :
eae :
of Palestine and Syria: to the Macedonian
;
Conquest (New
13 Cf. I Kings 20:1; II Kings 8:7.

14 Encyclopedia Biblia, Vol. I, pp. 531f.
15 Cf. Emil Kraeling, Aram and Israel (New York, 1918), p. 50.
16 W. F. Albright in Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, LXXXIII,
pp. 14-22; XC, p. 32.
at Ibid., C, pp. 16-22. Cf. Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew
Kings (Chicago, 1951), pp. 2544.
the vanquished Syrian monarch to King Ahab of Israel after

the latter's notable victory at Aphek,’* recorded in I Kings 20:34:
“The towns which my father took from thy father, I will restore;
and thou shalt set up markets for thyself in Damascus, as my
father did in Samaria.”
This reference can scarcely be to Ahab’s father Omri (c. 876-
869 B. c.), who founded the metropolis of Samaria as the capital
of the Northern Kingdom, for available sources do not lend
the least support to the theory that the latter suffered a defeat
in a clash with Syria. The term “father,” especially when used
of royalty, must frequently be construed as “predecessor,” as
is clearly illustrated by the monuments."
Doubtless towns wrested from Israel by early Syrian kings
such as Hezion or Tabrimmon during the reign of Jeroboam I
(c. 922-901 B.c.) or his son Nadab (c. 901-900 3B. c.), concern-
ing which, however, there is no Biblical record, are intended.
This period, though extremely obscure concerning events in
Damascus, certainly witnessed a formidable expansion in Syrian
might. There is ample reason to conclude that the hard-pressed
Jeroboam had to make important concessions to Syria at this
time.”°
Benhadad’s use of the expression “Samaria” was evidently
formulaic. The city had been so strategically situated and en-
joyed such a prosperous growth that very early after its found-
ing by Omri its name was popularly transferred to the whole
Northern Kingdom of which it was the capital, and many paral-
lels from western Asia may be cited where the name of a
country and its capital city became identical.”* The Syrian king
was simply using a newer designation of Israel for the older
one, and the commercial privileges to which he alludes may
well have been established in Tirzah, Shechem, or some other
towns of the Northern Kingdom before, of course, it was styled
“Samaria.”
III. IsRAEL AND ARAM IN CONFLICT
Since his invasion of northern Israel in the reign of Baasha
(c. 900-877 B.c.), Benhadad I had gained control of the rich
caravan routes westward to the Phoenician ports. The result
18 Modern Fig, some three miles east of the Sea of Galilee (G. E. Wright and F. Filson,
The Westminster Historical Atlas to the Bible [Philadelphia 1945], Plates VI and VIII).
19 Albright in Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 1LP@.@.4G jo, Pall
20 Kraeling, op. cit., p. 48. ;
21 For example Asshur (Assyria); Hatti (Hittite Land); Damascus, Hamath, etc.
was that immense wealth flowed into Damascus, which enabled

it to amass great strength for its important role as the dominant
Syrian state. It was natural for Aramaean merchants to take
advantage of this circumstance to seek to monopolize Phoenician
commerce and to attempt to capture the Israelite trade market.
However, Benhadad now faced a different situation after the
death of Baasha and the founding of a new Israelite dynasty
under Omri. Never before had the Syrian monarch been called
upon to deal with such dangerous rivals as Omri and his son
Ahab proved to be.
1. Benhadad I and Omri. The reign of Omri (c. 876-869 B.c.)
ushered in a new era of Israelite power and influence in Syro-
Palestinian affairs. Diplomatically Omri took steps to establish
close ties of affiliation with Phoenicia to offset the threat of
Syrian commercial monopoly, which resulted in the marriage
of his son and successor to Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, king
of the Sidonians (I Kings 18:18).
In other directions Omri showed vigor in dealing with foreign
powers. The famous Moabite stone set up by King Mesha of
Moab at Dibon (modern Diban), north of the Arnon, about
840 B.c., discovered in 1868, discloses that it was Omri who
gained control of northern Moab, occupying its cities and exact-
ing a heavy tribute. The inscribed stele which is archeologically
of great importance, runs:
I am Mesha, son of Chemosh. . . king of Moab, the Dibonite...
Omri, king of Israel . . . oppressed Moab many days because Chemosh
was angry with his land. And his son succeeded him, and he also
said, I will oppress Moab. . . . Now Omri annexed all the land of
Madeba, and Israel occupied it, his days and half his sons’ days,
forty years, and Chemosh restored it in my days.??
Omri’s choice of Samaria as a strategic new site for a capital
and his elaborate building operations and fortifications there
greatly strengthened his kingdom against the increasing Syrian
menace. Modern excavations at the site have verified the great-
ness of the ancient city** and the stratigraphy of Israelite times
shows that periods I and II belong to Omri and Ahab; III to the
time of Jehu (II Kings 10:17); and periods IV to VI to the
eighth century B.c. when the city reached its acme of pros-
perity.** Remains of stout walls and numbers of large cisterns
22 Jack Finegan, Light From the Ancient Past (Princeton, 1946), pp. 157f.
23 G. A. Reisner, C. S. Fisher, and D. G. Lyon, Harvard Excavations at Samaria 1908-
1910, 2 vols. (1924).
wer W. Crowfoot, Kathleen M. Kenyon, and E. L. Sukenik, The Buildings at Samaria
are mute evidences of Samaria’s ability to hold out to terrible

lengths against protracted siege, first by the Syrians (II Kings
ee and then finally by the mighty Assyrians (II Kings
LTO).
The virile measures adopted by Omri to cope with Benhadad’s
growing prestige were assisted by a new factor on the political
horizon. The advance of Assyria, although it brought a new
source of anxiety to Israel, acted as a further restraint upon
the Aramaeans. This is doubtless the reason there is no evidence
of a Syrian invasion of Israel during Omri’s reign or that the
Israelite king was ever a tributary to Benhadad I.”
However, whether merely by virtue of his foreign reputation
as a founder of a new dynasty and a ruler of energy or in some
more direct way, the initial contact between Israel and Assyria
evidently occurred during Omri’s day, for from that time on
Israel appears in cuneiform records as Bit-Humri (“House of
Omri’). This official Assyrian appellation was applied to Sa-
maria, the capital city. Moreover, the designation of an Israelite
king became mar-Humri (“son,” i.e. “royal successor of Omri” ).”°
Tiglathpileser III’s reference to the land of Israel over a cen-
tury later by its official name Bit-Humria*’ evidences the signifi-
cance of Omri as a ruler in the history of Israel.
2. Benhadad I and Ahab. Omri’s son Ahab (c. 869-850 B. c.)
assiduously continued the general policies of his father, strength-
ening his kingdom within and without against the day of even-
tual dealing with the Aramaeans. To this end he continued to
develop Samaria as an imperial bastion and royal residence,
besides building and fortifying many other places, including
Jericho (I Kings 16:34; 22:39). He also endeavored to improve
greatly his diplomatic position. To his treaty with Tyre, ce-
mented by royal marriage and the introduction of the Tyrian
cult of Baal-Melcarth into Israel, he added a protective alliance
with the Southern Kingdom, sealed by another royal union when
he gave his daughter, Athaliah, in marriage to Jehoram, the
crown prince of Judah (II Kings 8:18, 26).
The long-threatened attack from Syria came some five or so
years before the end of Ahab’s reign. At the head of a coalition
of thirty-two vassal kings Benhadad suddenly appeared before
25 Cf. Alfred Jepson, Archiv fuer Orientforschung, XIV (1942).
26 Cf. Daniel David Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia (Chicago,
1927), Vol. I, sec. 590.
27 Ibid., sec. $16,
the gates of Samaria (I Kings 20:1). Ahab’s brilliant strategy

not only won this battle, on this occasion but also the one dur-
ing the following year, when he won an even more decisive
victory over the Syrians at Aphek, east of the Sea of Galilee, on
the road from Damascus to Bethshan (I Kings 20:26-43).?
The next year, however, the appearance on the horizon of a
powerful Assyria marching toward Syria-Palestine compelled
Ahab and his hereditary foe, Benhadad, to ally themselves in a
general coalition of neighboring kings to block the ambitious
Assyrian move southward. Ashurnasirpal II, (883-859 B.c.),
whose formidable fighting machine had extended Assyrian power
to the Mediterranean, kept clear of Damascus and Israelite ter-
ritory.2? His son Shalmaneser III (859-824 3. c.), however, di-
rected Assyrian might southwestward in repeated campaigns
against Syria and Palestine. The Monolith Inscription, now in
the British Museum, records the military expeditions of the
king during the first six years of his reign and includes a de-
scription of his clash with the Syrian coalition headed by “Ha-
dadezer [Benhadad], of Aram [Damascus]” in 853 B.c. The
battle took place at Karkar, north of Hamath in the Orontes
Valley, a strategic fortress city, which guarded the approach
to all lower Syria.®°
Conspicuously mentioned along with Hadadezer (Benhadad),
called also Adadidri in the monuments,*! is “Ahab, the Israelite.”
The Israelite ruler’s prominence is indicated by the large num-
ber of chariots he is said to have furnished the coalition — two
thousand as compared with only twelve hundred of Hadadezer,
and seven hundred of “Irhuleni of Hamath,” mentioned third.
But Hadadezer furnished twice as many soldiers as Ahab,
twenty thousand against his ten thousand.*?
In extravagant terms Shalmaneser claims a great victory, which
can well be doubted, since he did not press on to Hamath,
which he certainly would have done had his victory been de-
cisive. Nor was he able to report any further successes, nor did
he resume his attack on Hamath or Damascus until some half
dozen years later.**
3. Benhadad and Joram. According to available documents,
28 F. M. Abel, Geographie de la Palestine (Paris, 1938), Vol. II, p. 246.
29 Tra M. Price, The Monuments and the Old Testament (Philadelphia, 1925), pe 207.
30 Luckenbill, op. cit., sec. 611.
31 Albright, Bulletin of the American Schools, LXXXVII, p. 28, note 16.
32 Luckenbill, loc. cit.
33 Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, II, 2 (1931), pp- 333f.
Ahab was the last ruler to be listed in the Assyrian records as

a foe of Shalmaneser. The Israelite king met his untimely death
(c. 850 B.c.) in his attempt to recover Ramoth in Gilead from
the Syrians, when the old hostility flared up as the Assyrian
menace abated after the battle of Karkar (I Kings 22:1-51).
The revolt of Moab upon Ahab’s death occupied his weak and
sickly son Ahaziah (c. 850-849 B.c.) and Joram (c. 849-842 3.c.).
In 848 3. c., in the eleventh year of his reign, Shalmaneser III
made another thrust into Syria. In this campaign he was met
by a confederation of “twelve kings of the seaboard,” again
headed by Adadidri (Benhadad I) of Damascus and Irhuleni
of Hamath. On this occasion, however, no mention is made
of Israel’s participation in the coalition. The same is true in
his fourteenth regnal year (845 B.c.), when he made a supreme
effort to invade central and southern Syria, as the Bull Inscrip-
tion records.?° Ahab’s death at the hands of the treacherous
Syrian in attempting to recover Ramoth in Gilead, which Ben-
hadad perfidiously failed to return to Israel in accordance with
the treaty of Aphek (I Kings 20:34), doubtless was reason
enough that his sons decided rather to face the Assyrian menace
than join the Syrian coalition in 848 and 845 B. c. with Damascus
in the old place of leadership.
4. Hazael and Jehu. Benhadad I’s long and energetic reign
came to an end about 843 B.c. or slightly later. By 841 B.c.
Hazael, an official of influence in the service of the court at
Damascus, had already usurped the throne. On a pavement
slab from Nimrud (Calah) Shalmaneser records his crossing the
Euphrates River for the sixteenth time in the eighteenth year of
his reign (841 s.c.) and his attack upon Hazael (Hazailu) of
Damascus.** A text from Asshur describes this significant change
in the dynasty at Damascus and strikingly confirms the Biblical
account (II Kings 8:7-15).** “Adadidri forsook his land (i.e.
died violently or was murdered).** Hazael, son of nobody,
seized the throne.”®®
35 Recorded on two large bull-colossi recovered from the center of the mound at Calah
(Nimrud), Luckenbill, op. cit., sec. 658f.
87 Evidence from the stele of Benhadad from the region of Aleppo in North Syria 1n-
dicates that Benhadad in the Biblical account is neither an error nor a gloss for Adadidri,
as E. Kraeling surmises, Aram and Israel, p. 77; note 1, p. 79, but the same person
(Albright in Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, LXXXVII, p. 26).
38 Weidner, Archiv fuer Orientforschung, XIII, pp. 233f.
391. Messerschmidt, Keilschrifttexte aus Assur historischen Inhalts (Leipzig, 1911)
No. 30:25; Millar Burrows, What Mean These Stones? (New Haven, 1941), p. 281;
Luckenbill, op. cit., sec. 681.
Hazael’s contacts with Joram, who in the confusion incident

upon the shift of dynasty at Damascus, evidently recovered Ra-
moth Gilead (II Kings 8:28; 9:14), were destined to be short-
lived. Not many months elapsed before the new Syrian king
was confronted by a new Israelite ruler, a usurper like himself.
Jehu (c. 842-815 3. c.), initiating a violent political and religious
purge in Israel, incurred the implacable hatred of Hazael by
submitting to Shalmaneser III in his invasion of 841 s.c. rather
than joining Syria in resisting the Assyrian advance.
The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, which Austen Layard
found in 1846 in the imperial palace at Nimrud,*® shows Jehu
actually kneeling before the Assyrian emperor. Following the
prostrate king come Israelites bearing gifts. The inscription
reads: “Tribute of Iaua [Jehu], son of Omri. Silver, gold, a
golden bowl, a golden beaker, golden goblets, pitchers of gold,
lead, staves for the hand of the king, javelins I received from
hime
Hazael, single-handed, withstood the Assyrian attack in 841
B.c. and was able at least to ward off a crushing blow. But
Damascus took a terrific pummeling in the attack from “the
giant among the Semites.” For several more years Hazael was
occupied with the peril of imminent aggression by Assyria, but
after Shalmaneser’s final effort to subdue central and southern
Syria, in the twenty-first year of his reign (837 B.c.), he was
compelled to abandon his Syrian campaigns to attend to more
pressing problems in the north. Neither he nor his son Shamsi-
Adad V (824-815 B.c.) was able to undertake a new campaign
against middle or southern Syria.
Hazael, at last set free for ambitious plans of his own for
territorial expansion, began relentlessly to harass Israel, espe-
cially in the East Jordanic country. As the Aramaeans pitilessly
“threshed” Gilead and Bashan “with threshing instruments of
iron” (II Kings 10:32, 33; Amos 1:3, 4) and more and more
encroached upon Israelite territory, Jehu must have realized
how badly he had gauged the international situation in placating
Assyria.
5. Hazael and Joahaz. At Jehu’s death in 815 B. c. a renewal
of Hazael’s relentless attacks on Israel soon reduced his son
40 Nineveh and Its Remains (New York, 1849), Vol. I, p. 282.
42 Luckenbill, Op. cit., sec. 672.
Joahaz (815-801 3.c.)* to such an extreme stage of abasement

that the Israelite king became little more than a retainer of
the Aramaeans (II Kings 13:1-9, 22, 25). By imposing rigid
military restrictions on Israel, whose territory had shrunk to
include not much more than the hill country of Ephraim,**
Syrian armies were free to pass at will through Joahaz’s realm.
Soon Hazael found himself in possession of the Philistine plain.
Destroying Gath, he was in a position to attack Jerusalem. He
was warded off only by the payment of a large sum raised
by stripping the temple (II Kings 12:17-18).
As far as the extension of his sway toward the south is con-
cerned, Hazael appears as the greatest of the Aramaean con-
querors, who ruled at Damascus. Although there is no concrete
evidence of any extensive conquests of his in the north, his
reign brought his country to the position of the chief power
in all Syria and embraced the period of its greatest territorial
control. The reappearance of Assyria in the west under Adad-
nirari IIT (805-782 B.c.), however, proved that Hazael’s empire,
built up by brute force and coercion, lacked intrinsic solidarity.
Whereas a unified Syria had met and checked Shalmaneser’s
career at the time of Benhadad I, Adadnirari’s westward march
gave no evidence at all of such unity. Granting that Damascus
escaped actual destruction, it apparently did so by its own re-
sources, which, however, were insufficient to save it from an
oppressive tribute. According to the Saba’a stele discovered in
1905 and now in the Constantinople Museum, Adadnirari says:
To march against Aram I gave command. Mari’ [Hazael] I shut
up in Damascus, his royal city, 100 talents of gold, 1,000 talents
of silver . . . I received.*®
Even such countries which Hazael is known to have taken,
such as Bit Humri (Israel) and Palastu (Philistia), revolted in
the crisis and sent tribute to Assyria. From the upper portion
of a slab found at Nimrud (Calah) an inscription of Adadnirari
lists among other countries “Tyre, Sidon, Humri [Omriland,
Israel], Edom, Palastu [Philistia]” as lands, he says, “ I brought
in submission to my feet. Tribute and tax I imposed upon
them.”*¢
After a long reign of at least forty years, like David, Solomon,
43 Throughout, W. F. Albright’s revised “Chronology of the Divided Monarchy of Israel”
has been used (Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, C, pp. 20-22).
44 Meyer, op. cit., p. 341f.
45 Luckenbill, op. cit., sc.e 735.
Asa and Uzziah in Judah and like Jeroboam II in Israel, Hazael

died in 801 s.c. or slightly later. The fact that Adadnirari III
for the year 802 B.c. (and perhaps several years earlier) names
Mari’ as king of Damascus must be explained under the sup-
position that this term is a second name of Hazael, and is
merely a popular title of the kings of Damascus, and likely
an abbreviation of a name like Mari-Hadad. “Hadad is my
lord.”#7
Doubtless significant in this connection is the inscription
found on one of the ivories from the site of Arslan Tash in
north Syria, which carries the name “our lord Hazael” and
dates from the era of this famous Syrian king.** Other similar
ivories found at Nimrud, ancient Calah, are dated somewhat
later, since an Assyrian tablet of inventory lists them as booty
from Damascus in the time of Hazael’s successor.*®
LITERATURE ON ISRAEL AND THE ARAMAEANS
Kittel, Rudolf, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, Vol. I1 (Gotha, 1909).
Schiffer, Sina, Die Aramaeer (Leipzig, 1911).
Kraeling, Emil, 4ram and Israel (New York, 1918).
Meyer, Eduard, Geschichte des Altertums, Vol. II, Part 2 (Stuttgart
and Berlin, 1931).
Olmstead, A. T., History of Palestine and Syria to the Macedonian Con-
quest (New York, 1931).
Albright, W. F., “A Votive Stele Erected by Ben-hadad I of Damascus
to the God Melcarth,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental
Research, LXXXVII, (Oct. 1942), XC (Apr. 1943).
Jepsen, Alfred, “Israel und Damascus,” Archiv fuer Orientforschung,
XIV (1942).
O'Callaghan, R. T., Aram Naharaim. Analecta Orientalia, XXVI
(Rome, 1948).
Thiele, Edwin R., The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings
(Chicago, 1951).
Montgomery, James A., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the
Book of Kings (New York, 1951).
oe? Paul, History of the Old Testament (Collegeville, Minnesota,
1952).
47 Albright in Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, LXXXVII, p. 28,

note 16.
coe ae A. Barrois, G. Dossin, M. Dunaud, Arslan Tash (Paris, 1931),
pp. -138.
49C. C. McCown, The Ladder of Progress in Palestine (New York, 1943), p. 198.
CHAPTER XXII
ISRAEL AND THE ASSYRIANS
From the disruption of the Israelite Monarchy (c. 922 8. c.)

until the fall of the Northern Kingdom two centuries later, two
primary factors influenced the history of Syria-Palestine. One,
as discussed in the preceding chapter, was the rapid rise to
power of the Aramaeans of Damascus. The other, seen to be
partly concomitant with it, was the ominous advance of a newly
awakened Assyria, whose encroachments upon the west led to
the most perplexing changes in the state of affairs in Syria.
Now the Aramaeans were engaged in bitter warfare against the
Israelites, now in alliance with them against the Assyrians. Now
Israelites or Aramaeans were in league with Assyria or with
one another against the Southern Kingdom of Judah.
In the period following Hazael’s death (c. 801 3.c.) Israel
was able in an astonishing manner not only to regain the former
prestige and power it had enjoyed under the Omrides, but also
to reach the acme of its wealth and the period of its greatest
territorial expansion. This remarkable feat was made possible
by signal victories over the Aramaeans and an extended hiatus
in the Assyrian advance in the west. But the Assyrian lull was
only the stillness that preceded the storm, which was eventually
to break with such violence as to sweep away both Damascus
and Israel as well.
I. IsRAEL AND THE DECLINE OF DAMASCUS
However, before Assyria’s protracted withdrawal from central
and south Syria, Adadnirari III (805-782 8. c.) was able to strike
a terrific blow at Damascus which was sufficiently crippling
to enable the Israelites to throw off the shackles the Aramaeans
had fastened upon them and to regain their former boundaries.
On the inscribed stele of this Assyrian king discovered in 1905
Adadnirari says:
249
Against Aram [Syria] I marched. Mari’, king of Aram, in Damas-

cus his royal city, I shut up. The terrifying splendor of Assur [the
national god of the Assyrians] . . . overwhelmed him and he laid
hold of my feet, he became my vassal. 2,300 talents of silver, 20
talents of gold, 3,000 talents of copper, 5,000 talents of iron, colored
woolen and linen garments, an ivory bed, an ivory couch . . . his
property and his goods, in immeasurable quantity, in Damascus, his
royal city, in his palace, I received.’
By the enigmatic appellation Mari’ (“My Lord”) the Assyrians
evidently refer to Hazael toward the latter end of whose reign
there was a decisive weakening of Aramaean power, rather than
to his son and successor, Benhadad II.? In any case there are
no grounds to insert another king, Mari’, either before or after
Benhadad II. The name is rather to be construed as “the title
which had replaced the royal name in current language”® and
which in this instance was employed by Adadnirari III for
Hazael, since it is difficult to place Hazael’s decease earlier than
801 B. c.
1. Joash and Benhadad II. The task of restoring Israelite
fortunes was reserved for Joash, the son of Joahaz, the twelfth
king of Israel (c. 801-786 B. c.), who “took again out of the hand
of Benhadad, the son of Hazael, the cities which he had taken
out of the hand of Joahaz his father by war. Three times did
Joash smite him, and recovered the cities of Israel” (II Kings
13:25).
Benhadad II, accordingly, signally failed to protect the Syrian
conquests his father Hazael had won in the south. Joash’s vigor-
ous restoration of the Israelite state, indicated not only by his
Aramaean successes but also by important victories won in a
war with Amaziah of Judah (II Kings 13:12; 14:12), clearly put
Benhadad II on the defensive, at least insofar as Israel was
concerned.
2. Benhadad II and Zakir of Hamath. Although Aramaean
power suffered in southern Syria, the prestige of Benhadad II
displayed remarkable vitality in the north, as shown by the
important stele of Zakir, king of Hamath, discovered in 1903
at modern Afis southwest of Aleppo in northern Syria. This
important monument, published by the discoverer H. Pognon
1 Daniel David Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia (Chi
Vol. I, secs. 735, 740. mie cet ia
es II Kings 13:22, 24.
James A. Montgomery, The Book of Kings in International Critical C t
York, 1951), p. 437. Roc ka pee
Upper: Engraved bronze band from a_ gate to the palace of Shalmaneser III of
Assyria (859-824 B.C.). In the upper relief the Assyrian monarch is depicted leading
his chariotry in an attack against the city of Hamath in Syria. In the lower register
captives are seen being conducted out of the city under military escort. (King,
Bronze Reliefs from the Gates of Shalmaneser, British Museum, 1915.)
Lower: Another engraved bronze band from a gate to the palace of Shalmaneser III
ot Assyria. The upper register portrays a battle with the Armenians; tribute is being
paid to the victorious king in the lower scene. (King, Bronze Reliefs. Courtesy The
Biblical Archeologist, IX, 4, fig. 6.)
Upper: One of the panels of the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III recording the
tribute of Jehu, son of (i.e., successor) of Omri. This important monument gives
us additional facts concerning Jehu not recorded in the Bible. (Courtesy Oriental
Lower: Stone winged bull from the palace of Sargon II at Khorsabad. Creatures
part human and part animal (lion, bull or eagle) were set up by Assyrian and
Hittite kings to protect entrances to their palaces. (Courtesy Oriental Institute,
Univ. of Chicago.)
IsRAEL AND THE ASSYRIANS 251
in 1907,* makes a significant reference in lines four and five to

Benhadad II. Under the Aramaic form of the name, “Barhadad,
son of Hazael, king of Aram,” is presented as heading a coalition
of twelve to eighteen kings® against “Zakir king of Hamath and
Lu’ash.” The operations of the confederacy, in which only seven
of the kings take part, as Zakir expressly mentions, are directed
against Hazrek (Biblical Hadrach of Zechariah 9:1), the capital
city of Lu‘ash, a north Syrian principality southwest of Aleppo,
and north of Hamath on the Orontes.®
The real cause of the attack of the hostile coalition under
Benhadad II was the merger of two powerful and independent
states, Hamath and Lu‘ash. This political move so upset the
balance of power in Syria, and was attended with such a
serious threat to the autonomy of Damascus and other Syrian
states, that they were ready to go to war in order to break it
up. Benhadad II especially had reason to be made sensitive
to any added threat to Syrian power since his losses to Israel
in the south had seriously curtailed his sway in that direction.
Moreover, Zakir’s victory over the coalition, in the celebration
of which he set up his stele, furnishes another indication of
declining Aramaean might.
3. Jeroboam II and the Subjugation of Damascus. The suc-
cesses of Joash against Syria were continued with uninterrupted
achievement by his son Jeroboam II (c. 786-746 3B.c.). This
notable era of Israel's expansion and prosperity was made pos-
sible as much by Assyria’s comparative weakness and inaction
in the west during Jeroboam II’s long reign as by the rapid de-
clension of Damascus.
In the brief notices in the Book of Kings the “might” of
Jeroboam is stressed and “how he recovered Damascus and
Hamath, which had belonged to Judah, for Israel” (II Kings
14:28) and how “he restored the border of Israel from the
entrance of Hamath unto the sea of the Arabah” (II Kings 14:
25). This meant the conquest of Damascus and the extension
of Israelite sway at least to the southernmost extremities of
Hamath to the north, called “the approaches to Hamath.” Since
the days of the conquest, this point had been recognized as the
4 Inscriptions semitiques de la Syria, de la Mesopotamie et de la region de Mossoul,
LXXXVI (1907-08).
5 Cf. Martin Noth, Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palaestina-Vereins (Leipzig, 1929), p. 132,
n. |.
6 Herman Guthe, Bibelatlas (2nd ed.; leaf 5). Noth, op. cit., p. 134.
accepted northern boundary of the promised land (Josh. 13:5),

realized in the period of Israel’s greatest territorial control in
the Davidic-Solomonic era (II Sam. 8:5-11) and restored as
a result of Jeroboam II’s military successes.
In the case of Damascus, Jeroboam’s victories embraced the
actual subjugation of the city and not a mere tributary relation-
ship, as Alfred Jepsen supposes.’ The Biblical notices dealing
with Jeroboam’s military prowess plainly imply such a conquest,
and it is supported by other lines of evidence proving the ex-
traordinary prosperity of Jeroboam’s reign.
Excavations at Samaria® have confirmed the splendor of the
Israelite capital in the eighth century B.c. Jeroboam II reforti-
fied the city with a double wall, reaching to as much as thirty-
three feet in width in exposed sections, comprising fortifications
so substantial that the Assyrian army took three years to cap-
ture the city (II Kings 17:5).° The more splendid palace, built
of limestone and boasting a strong rectangular tower and an
extensive outer court, which has hitherto been assigned to
Ahab, almost certainly belongs to Jeroboam II.’° The jasper seal
of “Shema, servant of Jeroboam,” discovered by Schumacher
at Megiddo, is to be identified with Jeroboam IJ, as is now
epigraphically certain. The lifelike and magnificently executed
lion, which appears on it, furnishes evidence of the efflorescence
of art in this era."
In addition to archeology Amos’ prophecies shed light on the
vastly increased commerce and wealth of Jeroboam’s realm with
consequent luxury and moral decline. Tribute from a greatly
augmented territory flowed into the coffers of Samaria and
created a very wealthy class, consisting largely of the ruling
strata and court favorites. Glaring social and economic in-
equalities were fostered by the selfish and unscrupulous conduct
of the rich (Amos 2:6; 8:6).
Simple dwellings of unburned brick gave way to “houses of
hewn stone,” and Ahab’s ivory palace (decorations only are
meant) was imitated by many of the wealthy of the land (Amos
7 Archiv fuer Orientforschung, XIV (1942), p. 141.
8 Cf. J. W. Crowfoot, Kathleen M. Kenyon, and E. L. Sukenik, The Buildings at
Samaria (1942).
i E. Wright, F. Filson, Westminster Historical Atlas to the Bible (Philadelphia, 1945),
p. 49a.
10 J, Finegan, Light From the Ancient Past (Princeton, 1946), Demos
11 George Barton, Archeology and the Bible (7th ed.; Philadelphia, 1937), p. 456, cf.
ge Fig. 27. A. T. Olmstead, History of Palestine and Syria (New York, 1931),
p. 420.
3:15; 5:11; I Kings 22:39). Luxurious feasts were the order of

the day (Amos 6:4-6). Religion degenerated into mere ritualism
devoid of righteousness and morality (Amos 4:4; 5:5; 8:14).
As Amos had foreseen, this unhealthy prosperity, engendering
a false sense of security and erected upon a flimsy foundation
of moral and social injustice, was not destined to be permanent.
The house of Jeroboam was to be visited with the sword (Amos
7:9) and the people were to be carried into captivity (Amos
5:27), predictions which the next quarter of a century was to
justify fully. Somewhere around 746 3.c. Jeroboam died a
natural death, but after a brief reign of only six months his son
and successor, Zechariah, was murdered by a usurper. This
initiated a period of sharp decline and destructive civil strife.
II. IsRAEL AND THE ADVANCE OF ASSYRIA
After the reign of the famous queen Semiramis and her son
Adadnirari III (810-783 B.c.), the power of Assyria declined.
Shalmaneser IV (782-773 B.c.), Ashurdan III (772-755 B.c.)
and Ashurnirari V (754-745 B.c.) were weak rulers and offered
no peril to the west. Under their preoccupation with problems
at home, Jeroboam II of Israel was able to extend his power in
Syria almost unchallenged.
1. Menahem and Tiglathpileser III. Precisely about the time
of Jeroboam II’s death and the assassination of his son shortly
afterward, momentous events were transpiring in Assyria. A
great warrior and statesman, Tiglathpileser III (745-727 B.c.),
usurped the throne. Like his famous predecessor Tiglathpileser I
(c. 1114—c.1076 3B. c.), a mighty conqueror whose name he as-
sumed and who first lifted Assyria to the status of a great power,
Tiglathpileser III brought the moribund Assyrian Empire to
rigorous life.
In Babylon where he was also recognized as king, the new
mpire builder was known as Pulu, perhaps his original name
iefore he assumed the grander title of Tiglathpileser.” It was
s Pul that he was popularly known to the Israelites. Under this
ame he is mentioned as exacting tribute from Menahem (c. 745-
38 B.c.), who succeeded to the throne of Israel after Shallum,
he murderer of Jeroboam II’s son Zechariah, had reigned only
ne month. The Biblical account runs thus: “There came against
he land Pul the king of Assyria; and Menahem gave Pul a
12 Edwin R. Thiele, “The Chronology of the Kings of Judah and Israel,” Journal of
lear Eastern Studies, III (July, 1944), p. 156.
254, ARCHEOLOGY AND THE OLp TESTAMENT
thousand talents of silver, that his hand might be with him

to confirm the kingdom in his hand” (I Kings 15:19).
It is interesting to note that this same event is mentioned in
the annals of the great Assyrian king: “As for Menahem, ter-
ror overwhelmed him, like a bird, alone he fled and submitted
Example of Assyrian art. Man-headed winged bull; part man, part lion or bull,
part eagle. This creature was set up by Assyrian and Hittite kings to protect en-
trances. (From Perrot and Chipiez, Histoire de L’Art dans L’Antiquite, Tome IJ, opp.
p. 542.)
to me. To his place I brought him back and . . silver, colored

woolen garments, linen garments . . . I received as his tribute.”*
2. Rezin and the Resurgence of Aramaean Power. The civil
confusion and weakness incident upon the death of Jeroboam
gave Damascus opportunity to shake off Israelite control and to
assume sufficient importance to appear once more in contempo-
rary sources. Rezin (c. 750-732 B.c.), the last Aramaean king
to rule at Damascus, appears in the Annals of Tiglathpileser ITI

as “Rasunnu of Aram.” With “Menihimmu” (Menahem) of
“Samerina” (Samaria) and the kings of Tyre, Gebal (Byblus),
Carchemish, Hamath, etc. Rezin is mentioned as paying tribute
to his Assyrian overlord early in the reign of Tiglathpileser III,
evidently in his third year (742 B.c.)."
3. Azariah of Judah and the Assyrian Peril. Tiglathpileser’s
westward advance in 743 B.c., as a result of which both Mena-
hem of Israel and Rezin of Damascus eventually had to pay
tribute, had called forth a new Syrian-Palestinian coalition to
stem the tide. The natural leader of such an alliance was Judah
under Azariah (c. 783-742 B.c.), who headed by far the strong-
est and most influential state in Syria-Palestine at the time."
Tiglathpileser, moreover, makes clear reference in his Annals
to Azriyau of Yaudu (genitive Yaudi) in connection with what
is obviously such a coalition.’®
Azariah’s disappearance from the Assyrian records with no
mention of his fate, except that the far-reaching coalition he
headed was smashed by the military prowess of Tiglathpileser
III, would indicate that he died shortly thereafter, probably not
later than 742 B.c., and in any case before the Assyrians could
take punitive action against him.
4. Pekah and Rezin’s War Against Ahaz. The speed with
which the defeated allies came to terms with the invading As-
syrians and the subsequent events of the reign of Ahaz (c. 735-
715 B.c.) show that Israel and Damascus on the one hand and
Judah under Azariah on the other had merely been foul-weather
friends, as Ahab and Benhadad I more than a century before.
When _burdensome Assyrian tribute in the intervening years
necessitated the formation of a new coalition to throw off the
oppressors yoke under Pekah of Israel (c. 737-732 B.c.), the
Israelite king found a ready ally in Rezin of Damascus, if in-
deed the latter was not the real promulgator of the new com-
bination, as Alfred Jepsen plausibly argues.’’
A breathing spell was afforded for the consolidation of a
15 Cf, II Kings 14:21,22; II Chron. 26; Stanley Cook et al, The Cambridge Ancient
History, UWI, p. 378; Ira M. Price, The Monuments and the Old Testament (7th ed.;
Philadelphia, 1925), p. 288; D. D. Luckenbill, American Journal of Semitic Languages
(July, 1925), pp. 2244f.
16 Luckenbill in Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, Vol. I, sec. 770; Edwin R.
Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (Chicago, 1951), p. 78,
17 Archiv fuer Orientforschung, XIV (1942), p. 171.
Syrian-Palestinian coalition by Tiglathpileser’s campaign in Urar-

tu in Armenia (737-735 B.c.). Under pressure from Israel and
Syria such Palestinian states as Philistia and Edom joined the
new alliance. Ahaz of Judah, however, remained adamant. To
cripple the Southern Kingdom as an effective opponent or to
force Ahaz into the anti-Assyrian league, Pekah and Rezin in-
vaded Judah and besieged Jerusalem (II Kings 16:5; Isa. 7:1-9).
Reduced to dire extremity and ignoring the encouraging an-
nouncement of the impending doom of Damascus and Samaria,
Ahaz dispatched an embassy with tribute to summon the aid
of Tiglathpileser (II Kings 16:7,8). In an inscription recording
the payment of tribute by various vassal states of Syria-Palestine,
including the kings of Hamath, Arvad, Moab, Gaza, Ashkelon,
Edom and others, occurs “Iauhazi [Jehoahaz, i.e., Ahaz] of
Judah.” Tribute is mentioned as consisting of “gold, silver, lead,
iron, tin, brightly colored woollen garments, linen, the purple
garments of their lands . . . all kinds of costly things, the products
of the sea and the dry land . . . the royal treasure, horses, mules,
broken to the yoke, ...°*°
Jehoahaz (“possessor of the Lord”), the more formal name
employed by the Assyrians, was evidently considered by pious
Judahites to be entirely inappropriate for so weak a character,
noted for his idolatry. Accordingly they preferred to style their
wicked ruler merely “Ahaz” (“possessor”). Besides “making his
son to pass through the fire,” and practicing other heathen rites
(II Kings 16:3,4), Ahaz’s bent toward paganism is illustrated
by his importation of the type of altar he saw when he went
to pay homage to Tiglathpileser at Damascus (II Kings 16:10-16).
5. Tiglathpileser III and the Fall of Damascus. Ahaz’s plea
for aid against Israel and Damascus must have fitted in well
with Tiglathpileser’s own ambitions in Syria-Palestine. His re-
sponse, certainly dictated by self-interest, took the form of a
campaign to Philistia in 734 B.c. It was a move evidently aimed
at splitting the allies, isolating Damascus, opening a way through
es Israel to the coastal plain, and effecting contact with
Ahaz.
In all probability it was on this expedition to the Philistian
plain that Tiglathpileser overran Israel, taking “Ijon, and Abel-
beth-maacha and Janoah, and Kadesh, and Hazor, and Gilead
and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali. . .” (II Kings 15:29), and
18 Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, Vol. I, sec. 801.
IsRAEL AND THE ASSYRIANS O51
deported the inhabitants to Assyria. However, the emperor’s

own record of the event obviously included in a summary of
several campaigns, including that of 734 B.c., leaves the exact
date uncertain. His claim is:
. . . the wide land of Naphtali, in its entirety, I brought within the
border of Assyria. My official I set over them as governor.2®
Again he says: “The land of Bit-Humria . . . all of its people,
together with their goods I carried off to Assyria.”
Bit-Humria or “House of Omri” had been the common As-
syrian name for the country of Israel ever since the days of
King Omri, founder of a famous dynasty over a century pre-
viously. Such a wholesale deportation of peoples to prevent
future uprisings was a notorious feature of Tiglath-pileser’s
ruthless administration, as is well known from other of his
extant records. On one occasion he boasts of carrying off
“30,300 people . . . from their cities” and placing them in
another province. On another occasion he speaks of displacing
1,223 persons.”*
With Israel duly castigated by the loss of its northern terri-
tories, Tiglathpileser now turned to Damascus to punish the
other prominent rebel, Rezin. Events center there in the next
two years (733 and 732 B.c.) when punitive military action
is mentioned “against the land of Damascus”” in the Assyrian
Eponym Lists.”
Despite the mutilated and fragmentary condition of Tiglath-
pileser’s records dealing with the siege and fall of Damascus,
the salient facts stand out clearly. The Assyrian achieved the
overthrow of the city and the Aramaean state of which it was
the capital, a feat his predecessors had vainly tried to accom-
plish for more than a half century. The clash with Rezin clearly
resulted in the shattering of Aramaean power.
In the long siege of Damascus, of which little is known, for
not even Tiglathpileser’s description of it is extant, King Panam-
mu of Samal, a loyal Syrian tributary of the Assyrian monarch,
sacrificed his life.2* This fact supplies a hint of how intense the
19 Jbid., sec. 815.
20 Ibid., sec. 816.
21 Jbid., sec. 770.
22 Tbid., Vol. II, p. 436.
23 These important chronological records name each year in order from a high official,
and from 860 x.c. to 703 8. c. include also an important event of that year. Cf. A. T.
Olmstead, History of Assyria (New York, 1923), p. 77; R. W. Rogers, A History of
Babylonia and Assyria (6th ed.; New York, 1915), Vol. I, p. 502.
24 Emil Kraeling, Aram and Israel (New York, 1918), pp. 121; 125-127.
struggle was. The city finally fell in 732 B. c. Making due allow-
ance for hyperbole on the part of the Assyrian records, the
destruction of the Damascene region must have been terrific.
Some 591 towns of the “sixteen districts of Aram,” the Assyrian
says, “I destroyed like mounds left by a flood.””* “Hadaru, the
father’s house of Resin of Aram [where] he was born, I be-
sieged, I captured. 800 people, together with their possessions
.. 2 bearried offi7°
The concise but comprehensive Biblical notice closely links
the fall of Damascus with Ahaz’s appeal and payment of tribute
to Tiglathpileser. “And the king of Assyria hearkened unto him
. and went up against Damascus and took it, and carried the
people of it captive to Kir, and slew Rezin” (II Kings 16:9).
The death of this the last of the Aramaean kings who ruled for
almost two centuries at Damascus was reported on a tablet of
Tiglathpileser found and read by one of the early pioneers in
Assyriology, Sir Henry Rawlinson. Unfortunately, however, this
important document was lost without leaving a trace of its fate,
when it was left behind in Asia.?*” With Rezin’s death the Ara-
maic kingdom of Damascus passed away forever.
III. IsRAEL AND THE TRIUMPH OF ASSYRIA
Tiglathpileser’s far-reaching conquests and ruthless admin-
istration made him master of all the Westland. In a list of his
western tributaries he mentions among many others the kings
of Gebal (later Byblus) and Arvad on the Mediterranean coast;
the kings of Hamath, Ammon, Moab, Ashkelon, “Iauhazi [Je-
hoahaz] of Judah, Kaush-malaku of Edom .. . [and] Hananu
[Hanno] of Gaza.”28
Tiglathpileser also controlled Israel. When Pekah was assas-
sinated, the Assyrian emperor placed Hoshea on the throne
(II Kings 15:30), obligating him to pay heavy tribute to As-
syria. This also was duly recorded in the imperial inscriptions.
“Paqaha [Pekah] their king they deposed and I placed Ausi’
[Hoshea] over them as king. Ten talents of gold . . . talents
of silver, as their tribute I received from them and to Assyria
I carried them.””®
oeae Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, Vol. I, sec. 777.
27 ae Schrader, The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament (London, 1885),
Voll epa zor.
28 Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, Vol. : I, se Oy DHE
29 Thid., sec. 816. pees ;
1. Shalmaneser V and the Siege of Samaria. Tiglathpileser III

died in 727 B.c. and was succeeded by his son Shalmaneser V
(726-722 B.c.). On a fragment of a small cylinder in the British
Museum is recorded the only text extant concerning this mon-
arch’s reign. The inscription is evidently a memorial cylinder
placed in Nabu’s temple at Borsippa in Babylonia to commemo-
rate Shalmaneser’s restoration of the edifice after it had been
severely damaged by flood. “. . . Its damage I repaired and
strengthened its structure.”*°
In the Old Testament, on the other hand, there are two
prominent references to Shalmaneser V and to the part he
played in the final overthrow of Samaria during the reign of
Hoshea. The first recounts that “Shalmaneser king of Assyria,”
after imprisoning Hoshea for conspiracy with So (Sibe), a petty
king on the eastern frontier of the Delta,* “went up to Samaria
and besieged it three years” (II Kings 17:3-6).
The second Biblical notice connects the beginning of Shal-
maneser’s siege of Samaria with the fourth year of Hezekiah’s
reign in Judah. “And at the end of three years they [the As-
syrians] took it [the city] .... And the king of Assyria carried
Israel away unto Assyria, and put them in Halah, and on the
Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes” (II
Kings 18:9-11). It is noteworthy that neither of these two
passages states that Shalmaneser himself actually took the city.
2. Sargon II and the Collapse of Samaria. Israel’s capital-
fortress held out stubbornly for three years under the relentless
pressure of Assyrian arms. Before the overthrow was actually
accomplished, Shalmaneser V had been succeeded on the throne
of Assyria by Sharrukin II (721-705 B.c.), a usurper and a
general in the army, who assumed the ancient and venerable
name of Sargon.*” Mention of him in Isaiah 20:1 in connection
with his capture of Ashdod, an event recorded in his annals,”
was, until the advent of modern archeology, the only place in
extant literature where his name was known.
Now, however, thanks to Paul Emile Botta, the French con-
sular agent at Mosul, who discovered Sargon’s palace at Khor-
sabad (Dur-Sharrukin or “Sargonsburg”) in 1843, and more
30 Thid., sec. 830.
81 Apparently not the actual reigning Pharaoh, the Ethiopian Shabaka.
32 Sargon of Agade, founder of a great Semitic empire in Babylonia in the 24th
century B.C. ‘
83 Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, Vol. II, sec. 30,
recent explorations at the site by the Oriental Institute of the

University of Chicago, Sargon II is one of the best known
of Assyrian emperors. In the Khorsabad annals of his regime,
the monarch lists the fall of Samaria as the outstanding event
of the first year of his reign.
At the beginning of my rule, in my first year of reign... Samerinai
[the people of Samaria] . . . 27,290 . . . who lived therein, I carried
aWAaVr
In Sargon’s so-called “Display Inscription” at Khorsabad, which
summarizes the principal events of the first fifteen years of his
reign, he says:
I besieged and captured Samaria, carrying off 27,290 of the people
who dwelt therein. 50 chariots I gathered from among them, I
caused others to take their [the deported inhabitants’] portion, I
set my officers over them and imposed upon them the tribute of the
former king.®®
With the fall of Samaria the Northern Kingdom came to an
abrupt end. Assyria was triumphant in the Westland.
AL ee
Left: Tree in glazed brick from the palace of Sargon II.
Right: Crow in glazed brick from the palace of Sargon II. (Plates 31 and 30 re-
spectively, Nineve by V. Place.)
LITERATURE ON ISRAEL AND THE ASSYRIANS

McCurdy, James F., History, Prophecy and the Monuments (New York,
1896), Vol. I, pp. 303-358.
Rogers, Robert W., Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (New
York, 1912), pp. 288-332.
= e History of Babylonia and Assyria (New York, 1915), Vol. II,
s. 5-7.
34 Thid., sec. 4.
35 Jbid., sec. 55.
Olmstead, A. T., History of Assyria (New York, 1923), pp. 175-220.

Oesterley and Robinson, 4 History of Israel (Oxford, 1932), Vol. II,
pp. 372-384.
Heinisch, Paul, History of the Old Testament (Collegeville, Minnesota,
1952), pp. 226-245.
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CHAPTER XXIII
JUDAH AND THE HEYDAY OF ASSYRIA
Sargon II, who raised Assyria to new heights of prestige, fell

in battle and left his vast power to his son, Sennacherib (704-
681 B.c.). Because of his contacts with Judah, Sennacherib
figures prominently in the Biblical narrative and his records of
his own campaigns and cruelties agree with the character at-
tributed to him in II Kings and Isaiah.
The new monarch made his capital the famous and ancient
city of Nineveh on the east bank of the Tigris opposite the site
where the modern city of Mosul now stands. He strongly for-
tified the metropolis and splendidly adorned it with temples
and palaces, making it the chief city of the empire (II Kings
19:36). By “Nineveh, the great city,” the Hebrews designated
both the city itself and its adjacent towns (Gen. 10:11, 12; Jonah
1:2; 3:2-4: 4:11).
Sennacherib constructed a massive wall forty to fifty feet in
height, stretching two and a half miles along the Tigris and
eight miles around the inner city. The moats and defenses of
the capital can still be traced. Sennacherib also constructed a
water system containing the oldest aqueduct in history at Jer-
wan over the Gomer River, which brought water from the
mountains thirty miles away. Austen Henry Layard did the
first really successful digging at Nineveh (modern Kuyunjik)
in 1847 and discovered the huge palace of Sennacherib. During
Layard’s second expedition (1849-1851), this splendid royal
residence was unearthed. It contained no less than seventy-one
rooms with walls lined with sculptured slabs.’
The vast size of the city and its environs is mute testimony
of the power and glory of Assyria under Sennacherib and his
1 Nineveh and Its Remains (1849); The Monuments of Nineveh (1853); Discoveries
Among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon (New York, 1875).
263
successors, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal. The mound of Ku-

yunjik not only covers the vast palace of Sennacherib, but also
the palaces and the great library of Ashurbanipal. The nearby
smaller mound of Nebi Yunus (“Prophet Jonah”), which got
its name from the tradition that the Hebrew prophet was buried
NINEVEH
One of the greatest of ancient cities and long-time capital of the mighty Assyrian
Empire. The mound of Kuyunjik yielded palaces of Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal.
The city is prominent in the Old Testament. Compare Nahum’s prophecy and the
Book of Jonah.
beneath its mosque, contains the palace of Sennacherib’s son

and successor, Esarhaddon.
I. HEZEKIAH AND SENNACHERIB’S WESTERN CAMPAIGN
Hezekiah, the twelfth king of Judah, inherited the Assyrian
menace, and from the beginning of his own independent rule
JUDAH AND THE Heypay or AssyRiA 265
(c. 715 B. c.) was faced with a series of Assyrian invasions which
formed a marked feature of his reign. However, long before the
death of his father, Ahaz (c.715 B.c.), Hezekiah was actually
king, since the latter was evidently incapacitated for active
participation in the affairs of state (II Kings 18:9).
1. Hezekiah’s Preparations for Self-Defense. As a wise and
godly ruler, Hezekiah bent every effort to build up his country
against the day when he might throw off the Assyrian yoke
which his father had saddled upon it by alliance with Assyria
(II Kings 16:7-9). To accomplish Judah’s liberation from op-
pressive tribute and to enable his realm to withstand Assyrian
might, the young king with keen insight realized that his na-
tion’s first line of defense was a return to right relationship with
Yahweh. Accordingly, early in his reign he initiated a series
of sweeping reforms. Repairing and cleansing the temple, he
eliminated certain Canaanite serpent-fertility rites and other
idolatrous corruptions that had swept in, particularly during
Ahaz’s reign (II Kings 18:4). He also celebrated a great Pass-
over (II Chron. 29:1-30:27).
Under divine blessing Hezekiah’s reign was marked by the
material prosperity of the nation. Under his leadership control
of the cities of the Philistine plain was re-established (II Kings
18:8), a national system of defense was inaugurated (II Chron.
32:5-7), agriculture and trade expanded by the establishing
of warehouses and stockyards at strategic places (II Chron. 32:
28,29), and an adequate water supply in case of siege provided
for the capital (II Chron. 32:30).
faa) 3 b ® Ample warning was given
Judah of impending danger.
In Hezekiah’s fourth regnal
year (724 B.c.) — undoubtedly
his regency is meant — Shal-
maneser V had commenced
and by the beginning of 721
B.C. Sargon II had completed
the siege of Samaria (II Kings
18:9-11). In the intervening
years the Assyrian moved
~ closer and closer. In the sum-
Assyrian plow in glazed brick from the wal
;mer of 711 sB.c. Sargon
of the palace of Sargon II. (From V. Place, claimed the credit of the
Ninive, plate
campaign against Ashdod, but the Biblical record correctly

states that it was the Assyrian commander-in-chief “tartan”
(Assyrian turtannu, “second in rank”) who actually con-
ducted the campaign (Isa. 20:1).2 Meanwhile the prophet
Isaiah walked the streets of Jerusalem “naked and_ barefoot”
as a sign that Assyria would conquer Egypt and Ethiopia
and as a warning to those who were tempted to lean upon
these nations for help against the Assyrian (Isa. 20:2-6).
2. Sennacherib and Merodach-baladan. Early in the reign
of Sennacherib Hezekiah revolted against Assyria. The new
Assyrian ruler’s preoccupation with quelling scattered uprisings
which broke out upon his accession, as well as Hezekiah’s con-
sciousness of his own prosperity and strength, were doubtless
prime factors in Judah’s revolt. The early activities of Sen-
nacherib, in fact, were confined to his eastern and southern
borders, where he put down the irrepressible Chaldeans of the
Sea-lands under Merodach-baladan, king of Babylon, as he him-
self relates:
In my first campaign I accomplished the defeat of Merodach-
baladan, king of Babylonia, together with the army of Elam, his ally,
in the plain of Kish. In the midst of the battle he forsook his camp,
and made his escape alone; [so] he saved his life. The chariots,
horses, wagons, mules, which he left behind-at the onset of battle,
my hands seized. Into his palace, which is in Babylon, joyfully I
entered.
It was this same Merodach-baladan who, pretending to con-
gratulate King Hezekiah upon his recovery from a serious ill-
ness, tried, with messengers and lavish gifts, to win Judah into
a great confederacy which was being secretly formed against
Assyria (Isa. 39:1-8). This Merodach-baladan was twice ruler
of Babylon (722-710 and 703-702 B. c.), and his embassy to Judah
was apparently sent in the latter part of the earlier period of his
rule. He initiated an ambitious policy of strengthening Chaldea,
which eventually made it the most influential state in the Neo-
Babylonian Empire, when its great ruler Nebuchadnezzar II
took Jerusalem and carried Judah into exile. Foreseeing this
development of affairs, Hezekiah’s egotistic folly in showing
Merodach-baladan’s emissaries all his treasures drew from the
prophet Isaiah one of his most stinging rebukes (Isa. 39:5-8).
3 Daniel David Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib (Chicago, 1924), p. 24. Oriental
Prism Inscription, Col. I, lines 20-28.
Ea
Pees
Cree
s
Upper: Relief from the palace of Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.) at Nineveh. Workmen
(slaves) are pulling a winged-bull to the top of an artificial mound. (Paterson, The
Palace of Sennacherib.) ’ :
Lower: <A portion of the Sennacherib relief, depicting Judean captives being led peg
captivity after fall of Lachish in 701 B.C. (Courtesy The Biblical Archeologist,
4, fig. 4.)
iL
w:i sii
Upper left: Lachish letter IV, dating probably from the summer of 589 B.C., shortly
before collapse of Judah before the powerful Babylonian army. (Courtesy Wellcome-
Marston Research Expedition to the Near East. Copyright: by permission of the
Trustees of the late Sir Henry S. Wellcome.)
Upper right: Seal of the “servant” of Ahaz greatly enlarged. In this type of seal the
word “servant’’ is regularly followed by the word “the king’’ or the name of the
king. (Courtesy Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 79 [Oct. 1940],
Deizo)
Second from top, right: A sketch of the Seal of Eliakim, steward of Yaukin (Jehoiachin),
the Judean king carried captive to Babylon (II Kings 25:27-29). The characters are
old Hebrew script, in which most of the Old Testament is written. (Courtesy The
Biblical Archeologist.)
Lower left: Melcarth Stele of Benhadad of Damascus. (Courtesy American Schools
of Oriental Research, New Haven, Conn.)
Lower right: Sargon II, King of Assyria (722-705 B.C.), conqueror of Samaria. (Victor
Place, Ninive, plate 27.)
Jupau AND THE Heypay or AssyRIA 267
3. Sennacherib and Hezekiah. The early years of Sennacherib,
accordingly, seemed to Hezekiah propitious for rebelling against
Assyria, and the strong and godly ruler of Judah did not hesitate
to do so. The Assyrian king in 701 3.c. launched his great
western campaign to punish Hezekiah and other recalcitrants
and bring them back under the Assyrian yoke. This important
undertaking is not only graphically described in the Bible but
is also recorded in the annals of Sennacherib which were re-
corded on clay cylinders or prisms.
The final edition of these annals is found on the so-called
Taylor prism of the British Museum and a copy on a prism in
the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. In detail
Sennacherib describes his third campaign, which was directed
against Syria-Palestine and embraced the siege of Jerusalem.
After the conquest of the Phoenician cities along the coast, the
Philistine strongholds farther south and Moabite, Edomite and
other towns, he describes a victorious battle near Altaku (Elte-
keh) where Palestinian forces were reinforced by Egyptian bow-
man and chariotry. Then Sennacherib makes a lengthy reference
to his attack on Hezekiah’s realm:
As for Hezekiah, the Jew, who did not submit to my yoke, 46 of
his strong walled cities, as well as the small cities in their neighbor-
hood, which were without number,—by escalade and by bringing up
siege engines, by attacking and storming on foot, by mines, tunnels
and breaches, I besieged and took. 200,150 people, great and small,
male and female, horses, mules, asses, camels, cattle and sheep, with-
out number I brought away from them and counted as spoil. Him-
self, like a caged bird, I shut up in Jerusalem, his royal city. Earth-
works I threw up against him — the one coming out of his city gate
I turned back.to his misery. The cities of his, which I had despoiled,
I cut off from his land and to Mitinti, king of Ashdod, Padi, king
of Ekron, and Silli-bel, king of Gaza, I gave them. And thus I
diminished his land. I added to the former tribute, and laid upon
him as their yearly payment, a tax in the form of gifts for my majesty.
As for Hezekiah, the terrifying splendor of my majesty overcame him
and the Urbi [Arabs] and his mercenary [picked] troops which he
had brought in to defend Jerusalem, his royal city, deserted him.
In addition to 30 talents of gold and 800 talents of silver, there were
gems, antimony, jewels, large sandu-stones, couches of ivory, house
chairs of ivory, elephant’s hide, ivory, maple, boxwood, all kinds of
valuable treasures, as well as his daughters, his harem, his male and
female musicians, which he had them bring after me to Nineveh,
my royal city. To pay tribute and to accept servitude he dispatched
his messengers.*
4D. D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia (Chicago, 1927), Vol. II,
sec. 240.
4. The Biblical and Assyrian Account of Sennacherib’s In-

vasion Compared. Seemingly the account of Sennacherib’s west-
ern campaign recorded in the Taylor Prism is the same as that
described in II Kings 18:13-19:37; II Chronicles 32:1-12 and
Isaiah 36:1-37:38. A great deal of light is shed on the Biblical
narrative by the monuments and there are numerous striking
points of agreement, proving that the campaign of 701 B.c. is
the one described in the Bible.
For example, when Sennacherib invaded Palestine he is said
to have taken many of the fortified cities of Judah (II Kings
18:13) and to have threatened Jerusalem with a great army
dispatched thither from Lachish® under “Tartan and Rabsaris
and Rabshakeh” (II Kings 18:17). These details not only fit
in well with Sennacherib’s own account, but it is now known
from the monuments that Tartan (Assyrian turtannu, “second
in rank”) Rabshakeh (Assyrian rab-shaqu, “chief officer”) and
Rabsaris (Assyrian rabu-sha-reshi, originally, “chief eunuch”)
were titles of high Assyrian officials and not personal names at
all.®
Hezekiah’s tribute is placed at thirty talents of gold in both
sources, but at only three hundred talents of silver in II Kings
18:14 as compared with eight hundred talents of silver which the
Assyrian king claims to have received. Sennacherib may quite
possibly have reckoned some other payment or valuables in his
figure. George Barton suggests that the divergence is due to
textual corruption.” Eberhard Schrader reconciles the two on
the basis of the difference between the Babylonian light and
the Palestinian heavy talent.®
While it is generally agreed that the inscription of Sennacherib,
though differing from the Biblical account in some particulars,
really confirms it at virtually every point,’ some scholars mag-
nify the difficulties, and maintain that there were two campaigns
rather than one, and that the Biblical compiler “telescoped two
5 A sculpture recovered at Nineveh shows Sennacherib sitting upon his chair-throne at
Lachish and receiving rich spoils while hapless prisoners are tortured (Layard, Discoweries
Among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon), pp. 126-128.
6 Albright, op. cit., pp. 161f. Millar Burrows, What Mean These Stones? (New Haven,
1941), pp. 43f.
7 Archeology and the Bible (7th ed.; Philadelphia, 1937), p. 473.
8 Cf. George L. Robinson, The Bearing of Archeology on the Old Testament (New
York, 1941), p. 100.
® This view was first expressed by E. Schrader, Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament
(1872), pp. 168f. Cf. Cyrus H. Gordon, who also correctly maintains that “the Biblical
and Assyrian accounts refer to the same invasion” (Introduction to Old Testament Times
[Ventnor, N. J., 1953], p. 228).
JupaH AND THE HeEypay oF AsSsyYRIA 269
parallel campaigns.”!° The mention of “Tirhakah, king of Ethi-
opia” (II Kings 19:9; Isa. 37:9) is supposed to necessitate a
second and later campaign toward the end of Sennacherib’s
reign (between 689-686 8. c.). An Ethiopian dynasty was ruling
Egypt at this time in the person of Shabaka not Taharka (Tir-
hakah), who did not ascend the throne till about 689 B. c., some
dozen years later. This detail, however, scarcely warrants as-
suming a second invasion for which there is no concrete evi-
dence either in the Bible or in the Assyrian records.
The difficulty can scarcely be completely solved under present
sources of knowledge. The probable explanation, however, is
that Taharka actually opposed Sennacherib in 701 3.c., but as
a high military commander under his uncle Shabaka, who was
the ruling Pharaoh." Whether the nephew had the status of a
regent at the time, or whether the Judaean annalist wrote pro-
leptically, is not known. Difficulties of this sort are frequently
solved by further archeological discoveries.
The destruction of Sennacherib’s army, which was besieging
Jerusalem, by divine intervention (II Kings 19:35; Isa. 37:36)”
offers an adequate reason why the king never returned to the
region of Palestine. Sennacherib’s own records, moreover, give
ample evidence that he never took Jerusalem. Had he done so,
he would not have been silent on so great an achievement. Since
he was unable to take the capital of Judah (as the Bible in-
dicates), “he made as good a story out of the siege as possible,
and reported that he had shut up poor Hezekiah ‘like a bird in
a cage. Actually, Hezekiah was reposing quite safely in his
5. Sennacherib’s End. Like his great predecessors Ashur-

nasirpal II of the ninth century B.c. and Tiglathpileser of the
eighth, Sennacherib was a fiendishly cruel and inhuman ruler,
guilty of impaling and flaying his foes alive and other incredible
atrocities. He died, as he lived — a victim of violence and treach-
ery. The Bible tells us he met his end at Nineveh at the hands
10w. F. Albright, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, CXXX
(Apr. 1953), pp. 8-11.
11], L. Honor, Sennacherib’s Invasion of Palestine (New York, 1926), p. 34, n. 112.
12 Perhaps by a plague, for pestilence and disease elsewhere in the Bible are regarded
as a smiting by an angel of God (II Sam. 24:15-17; Acts 12:23). Herodotus’ story of
the field mice devouring the quivers, bows, and handles of the shields of the Assyrians (II,
141) points to the same conclusion, “since mice are a Greek symbol of pestilence and
since rats are carriers of the plague” (J. Finegan, Light From the Ancient Past |Princeton,
1946], pp. 178f.).
18 J, P. Free, Archeology and Bible History (Wheaton, Ill., 1950), p. 209,
of his own sons. “And it came to pass, as he was worshipping

in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech [Assyrian
Adadmilki] and Sharezer [Shar-usur] his sons smote him with
the sword: and they escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esar-
haddon his son reigned in his stead” (Isa. 37:38; cf. II Kings
19:37):
Esarhaddon (681-668 B.c.), Sennacherib’s son and successor,
relates this very event in an inscription:
In the month of Nisanu, on a favorable day . . . I made my joyful
entrance into the royal palace, the awesome place wherein abides the
fate of kings. A firm determination fell upon my brothers. They
forsook the gods and turned to their deeds of violence, plotting evil.
... To gain the kingship they slew Sennacherib their father.1*
An interesting reference to the story of this famous assassina-
tion occurs some years later in an inscription of Ashurbanipal,
son and successor of Esarhaddon:
The rest of the people, alive, by the colossi, between which they
had cut down Sennacherib, the father of the father who begot me,—
at that time, I cut down those people there as an offering to his shade.
Their dismembered bodies I fed to the dogs. . . .2°
6. Light on Assyrian Conquests in Syria. When Sennacherib,
laying siege to Libnah, had sent messengers to intimidate Heze-
kiah, the proud Assyrian referred to a number of Syrian and
Mesopotamian towns, which had been conquered by the might
of Assyrian arms. These places, until quite recently obscure,
are now, thanks to modern archeology, virtually all identified
as well as the date of their subjugation to Assyria. “Have the
gods of the nations delivered them, the nations, which my fathers
destroyed, Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who
were in Telassar? Where are the king of Hamath, the king of
Arpad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, the king of Hena,
or the king of IvvahP” (Isa. 37:12, 13).
Gozan (Assyrian Guzanu) is modern Tell Halaf in north-
western Mesopotamia situated on the Habur River, west of Haran.
The site is of great importance archeologically. It was excavated
by Baron Max Von Oppenheim (1911-1913 and again in 1927
and 1929), and disclosed a distinctive culture dating back to
the fifth millennium s.c.1* It was one of the cities to which
Assyrian forces deported the Israelites after the fall of Samaria
(II Kings 17:6; 18:11).
14 Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, Vol. II, secs. 501, 502.
15 Jbid., sec. 795,
16 Cf, Baron Von Oppenheim, Tell Halaf, a New Culture in Oldest Mesopotamia (1931).
JUDAH AND THE Herypay or AssyYRIA pag |
Rezeph is Assyrian Rasappa, long residence of an Assyrian

governor, and probably is the modern Rusafah, some miles west
of the Euphrates on the road to Palmyra. Haran is the important
North Mesopotamian commercial city, on the Balikh River,
prominent as a caravan center from patriarchal to Assyrian times,
and still surviving today as a small village. The “people of
Eden” were the inhabitants of Bit Adini of the Assyrian docu-
ments, a small kingdom situated on both sides of the Euphrates
north of the Balikh River. Tellassar was a district or city in the
same general region.
Hamath is the city-kingdom on the Orontes River, about 120
miles north of Damascus, prominent in the Old Testament from
the time of David onward and well-known from .the Assyrian
monuments. Its site has been excavated and shows a distinctive
Hittite occupation. Arpad (Tell Erfad, thirteen miles north of
Aleppo) is generally coupled with Hamath in the Old Testa-
ment from which it consequently was not far distant. It figures
prominently in the Assyrian records, being taken by Tiglath-
pileser III (742-740 B.c.).
Sepharvaim is Assyrian Shabarain™ near Riblah in Syria. Hena
and Ivvah are not certain, but are certainly located in the
same general area.
II. HEZEKIAH AND THE SILOAM INSCRIPTION
The reign of Hezekiah is important archeologically not only
because of its prominence in the Assyrian documents, but also
by virtue of its connection with Hebrew palaeography. The in-
scription cut by some unknown engineer on the walls of the
Siloam tunnel in the days of Hezekiah is of major significance
in the study of ancient Hebrew writing.
1. The Siloam Tunnel. Hezekiah did not revolt against the
king of Assyria unadvisedly. Throughout his reign the continual
advance of the enemy goaded him on to take every measure
possible to protect his capital from being taken. Not least among
these preparations to withstand siege were the steps he took to
assure a supply of fresh water within the walls of Jerusalem.
“He made the pool, and the conduit, and brought water into
the city” (II Kings 20:20). The Chronicler adds that “this same
Hezekiah also stopped the upper spring of the waters of Gihon
and brought them down on the west side of the city of David”
(II Chron. 22:30).
Ziz ARCHEOLOGY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT
Gihon, the intermittent spring which constituted Jerusalem’s

most ancient water supply was situated in the Kidron Valley
just below the steep eastern hill (Ophel). Accordingly it was
exposed to an attacking enemy. This abundant source of water
was completely covered over and concealed from without, but
was conducted by a specially constructed conduit to a pool with-
in the walls, where a beleagured population could get all the
water they needed. In this way the attackers were deprived
of water while at the same time the besieged city was assured
an ample supply. “Why should the kings of Assyria come and
find much water?” they asked as they made the water outside
the walls inaccessible to an invader (II Chron. 32:2-4).
The great conduit of Hezekiah, 1777 feet long and hewn out
of the solid rock, is “one of the most amazing devices for water
supply in the Biblical period, comparable to tunnels at Megiddo
and Gezer.”1® Workmen, employing hand picks, operating in
zigzag fashion from opposite sides and finally meeting in the
middle, excavated a conduit that averages six feet in height,
and which constitutes a remarkable engineering feat.
2. The Siloam Tunnel and Jerusalem’s Previous Water System.
Early excavations at Jerusalem by the Palestine Exploration
Fund under the direction of Sir Charles Warren (1867) resulted
in the discovery of a forty-foot shaft cut through the rock above
the Gihon Spring.’ By this device, now known as Warren’s
Shaft from its modern discoverer, the ancient Jebusites, prob-
ably as early as 2,000 B.c., could obtain water without going
outside the city walls.”° The shaft, through which buckets could
be lowered, ended in a cave reservoir into which the waters
of Gihon ran by means of a horizontal tunnel driven back into
the hill some thirty-six feet west and twenty-five feet north.
Thirty-three rock-cut steps led down to the platform on the
bastioned height from which the Jebusite women could lower
their jars to draw water from a basin roughly eleven feet square.
Early, perhaps under the Jebusites or under David or Solo-
mon, a surface canal, discovered by Conrad Shick in 1891, con-
veyed water from the Gihon Spring to the Old Pool of Siloam
located just within the southeast extremity of the ancient city.
Isaiah apparently had reference to the gently flowing waters
18 Madeleine S. and J. Lane Miller, Harper’s Bible Dictionary (New York, 1952), p. 683.
19. C. McCown, The Ladder of Progress in Palestine (New York, 1943), pp. 228-230.
20 Cf. Sir Frederic Kenyon, The Bible and Archeology (New York, 1940), pp. 176f.
JupaH AND THE Heypay or AssyRIA 273
of this channeled brook when he spoke poetically of “the waters

of Shiloah that go softly” (Isa. 8:6).
3. The Siloam Reservoir. In addition to his rock-hewn con-
duit, Hezekiah constructed a new and larger reservoir called
the Pool of Siloam. The Pool into which the tunnel leads
measures about thirty by twenty feet. In the time of Jesus the
Jerusalem at the time of Hezekiah (ca. 700 B.C.).
blind man who was healed was instructed to go and “wash”

in this pool (John 9:7-11). Ae
The Ae is identical with the “Pool of Shelah by the king’s
garden” (Neh. 3:15) and is sometimes called the King’s Pool,
because there was a royal garden in a fertile area at the mouth
of the Tyropoean Valley, which was watered by the overflow
of the reservoir. |
4. The Siloam Inscription. Archeologically the most interest-
ing thing about Hezekiah’s tunnel is the six-line inscription in

classical Hebrew beautifully cut on the wall of the conduit about
nineteen feet from the Siloam end of the aqueduct. This re-
markable inscription, accidentally discovered in 1880 by a boy
wading in the pool,” commemorates the completion of the
arduous task of excavating through the solid rock, as work-
men with wedge, hammer and pickax, digging from opposite
ends, finally met.
The inscription is translated as follows:
The boring through is completed. Now this is the story of the boring
through. While the workmen were still lifting pick to pick, each
toward his neighbor, and while three cubits remained to be cut
through, each heard the voice of the other who called his neighbor,
since there was a crevice in the rock on the right side. And on the day
of the boring through the stone-cutters struck, each to meet his fellow,
pick to pick; and there flowed the waters to the pool for a thousand
and two hundred cubits, and a hundred cubits was the height of the
rock above the heads of the stone-cutters.??
Professor A. H. Sayce first deciphered the inscription by
candle light, sitting in mud and water for hours to accomplish
his task. Hermann Guthe of the German Palestine Association
later removed lime deposits, which obscured the lettering and
recovered the writing in full.* The inscription was subsequently
chiseled out of the rock and taken by the Turkish government
to the Imperial Ottoman Museum in Constantinople, now called
the Turkish Archeological Museum of Istanbul.”
5. Importance of the Siloam Inscription. Because of the great
paucity of contemporary documents written in ancient Hebrew,
the Siloam inscription possesses unusual paleographic value. As
C. C. McCown notes:
It is remarkable that the land which cradled the alphabet and the
people whose literature has become one of civilization’s chief treasures
should have left so few contemporary documents.?5
Indeed, apart from the stele of Mesha of Moab, who was not
a Hebrew at all, dating from the ninth century, and the Gezer
Calendar of the tenth century, the Siloam Inscription is the only
contemporary document of any length in Hebrew surviving from
the eighth century B.c. or earlier.
The Hebrews certainly wrote on parchment and papyrus,
21 A. H. Sayce, Records of the Past, New Series I, pp. 168-175.
22M. S. and J. Lane Miller, op. cit., p. 683.
23 Stephen L. Caiger, Bible and Spade (Oxford, 1947), ye, SE).
24 Finegan, op. cit., p, 160; M. S. and J. L. Miller, op. cit., p. 683:
25 Op, cit., p. 116,
JUDAH AND THE Heypay oF AsSYRIA Zip
which unfortunately are perishable. They apparently did not

write on stone. However, potsherds, called ostraca, containing
receipts, letters and lists written in ink with a reed pen have
come to light, particularly at Samaria and Lachish. In addition
numerous seals, seal impressions and graffitti on pottery, and
a few other fragments of writing have served gradually to build
up a corpus of material sufficient for the expert in this field to
trace the course of development of Hebrew and to give the
paleographer valuable criteria of no inconsiderable value for
dating.*® But with material precariously sparse, especially be-
fore 700 B.c., the palaeographic importance of the Siloam In-
scription is quite obvious.”
The Siloam Inscription is written in Old Hebrew (Canaanite)
characters somewhat pronglike in shape. The original Scrip-
tures of the Hebrews were inscribed in this same Canaanite-
Phoenician alphabet, which had reached a fairly stable form
before the Conquest, but which continued to undergo certain
changes in style and writing in the course of the centuries.
Eventually in the post-exilic period the Holy Scriptures were
put into the antique Aramaic alphabet. When that alphabet
assumed the square form, the Hebrew Bible found itself with
that style of letter already characteristic of the second century
B.C. Isaiah manuscript of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in
Palestine in 1947. This shape of the letters of the alphabet
has been preserved in present-day printed editions of the He-
brew Scriptures, since the sacred text, which the Masoretic
scholars edited and “froze” in the period from 600 to 900 a. p.,
was inscribed in the round open-bosom type of letter. Accord-
ingly the Hebrew Bible has come down to the Christian world
through a process of previous development stretching over more
than two millenniums.
LITERATURE ON JUDAH AND THE HEYDAY OF ASSYRIA
Smith, G., The History of Sennacherib (London, 1878).
Schrader, E., The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament (London,
1888), Vol. I, pp. 278-310.
Olmstead, A. T., “Western Asia in the Reign of Sennacherib,” Annual
Report, American Historical Association (Washington, 1911).
26 McCown, op. cif., p. 117.
27 Cf. Gesenius-Kautzsch, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, rev. by Kautzsch, translated by
A. E. Cowley (Oxford, 1910), pp. 9f.
28 See The Dead Sea Scrolls of St. Mark’s Monastery, ed. by Millar Burrows (New
Haven, 1950), Vol. I, Plates I—LIV.
Rogers, Robert W., 4 History of Babylonia and Assyria (New York,

1915);,. Vol; 11) pp. 352-393.
Honor, L. L., Sennacherib’s Invasion of Palestine (New York, 1926).
pp. 385-410.
Caiger, Stephen L., Bible and Spade (London, 1936), pp. 151-162.
1953), pp. 225-234.
Albright, W. F., ‘““New Light From Egypt on the Chronology and History
of Israel and Judah,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental
Research, CXXX (Apr. 1953), pp. 4-11.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE LAST YEARS OF JUDAH
After the reign of Hezekiah there is no record in the Assyrian

inscriptions of any further raid on Judah. Till Assyria’s end in
612 B.c., no king of Judah apparently dared defy the mighty
power on the Tigris. From the archeological point of view this
fact is regrettable, since it means that henceforth the Assyrian
records have virtually no occasion to mention the Jews. Ac-
cordingly, the important Manasseh-Amon-Josiah era (687-609
B.C.) is almost a blank as far as archeology is concerned.
However, Assyria had two of its greatest kings after the death
of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon (680-669 B.c.), Sennacherib’s son,
and Ashurbanipal (669-633 B.c.) his son’s son, the last great
Assyrian monarch. Esarhaddon, a famous conqueror who de-
feated Taharka, Pharaoh of Egypt, was the first Assyrian ruler
to add to his grandiose array of titles, “King of the kings of
Egypt.’ Esarhaddon’s brilliant victory over Taharka was cele-
brated with a victory stele set up a Senjirli in north Syria
and discovered in 1888 by a German expedition. Esarhaddon is
undoubtedly the “cruel and fierce king” of Isaiah 19:2, who
realized the highest ambition of all Assyrians — the conquest of
Egypt. Esarhaddon is also referred to several times explicitly
in the Old Testament. In Ezra 4:2 he is mentioned as the king
who colonized Samaria.
Ashurbanipal was also a renowned conqueror, but is best re-
membered for his culture. The large royal library, which he
established at Nineveh, was discovered in 1853, notably contain-
ing Assyrian copies of the Babylonian creation and flood stories.
However, only once is he referred to in the Bible, and then
1D. D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia (Chicago, 1927), Vol. Ik
secs. 577, 583.
277
under a Hebraized rendering of his name “the great and noble

Osnappar,”? who is also said to have colonized Samaria.
9
I. Tue DEcLINE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY

During the zenith of Assyrian power there was a sharp de-
cline in the moral stability of the occupants on the throne of
Judah. Separation from the contaminating practices of surround-
ing pagan nations had always been the glory and strength of
the Hebrew Monarchy. When that separation was broken down,
Judah’s doom was not far distant.
1. Manasseh and Judah’s Idolatrous Orgy. Hezekiah’s son,
Manasseh (687-642 8. c.), was a complete contrast to his father.
Whereas the former had sought to root out idolatry and strength-
en the kingdom of Judah morally and spiritually, the latter bent
every effort to introduce a thorough-going religious syncretism
that utterly perverted Yahwism and earned him the reputation
of being “the most wicked king of Judah” (II Kings 21:1-15;
II Chron. 33:1-20).3 The reign of Manasseh, one of the longest
in the Davidic line,* opened wide the door to Canaanite pagan-
ism and did more to demoralize the nation and drag it inevitably
toward the maelstrom of the Babylonian captivity than per-
haps any other single factor in the history of Judah.
Archeology has shed a great deal of light on the religious
syncretism of Manasseh. Baal, to whom he is said to have
“reared up altars” (II Kings 21:3), is now well-known as the
chief god of the Canaanite pantheon and identified with the
storm god Hadad. The Baal cult included worship and gay
licentious dances on wooded hilltops called “high places.” Ma-
nasseh “built again the high places which Hezekiah his father
had destroyed, and made an Asherah” (II Kings 21:3).
Asherah, as is now well-known from the Ras Shamra epic
literature of the fourteenth century B.c., was the consort of the
chief Canaanite deity El. But by the ninth century and later in
Palestine she was regarded as the wife of Baal. The “Asherah”
which Manasseh made was an image of this pagan goddess.®
Asherah and her colleagues, Anath and Astarte (Ashtoreth),
as patrons of sex and war, were often represented as pregnant
2A. V., “Asnapper,” “but the best Hebrew form is Asenapper,” Madeleine and J. Lane
Miller, Harper's Bible Dictionary (New York, 1952), p. 510.
3 Cf. M. S. and J. L. Miller, op. cit, p. 416.
4 Fifty-five years according to II Kings 21:1; Albright places it as forty-five years
(Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, C, p. 22, note 30).
5 For a study of the fluid meaning of Asherah see W. L. Reed, The Asherah in the
Old Testament (Ft. Worth, Texas, 1949).
THe Last YEARS oF JuDAH 279
“virgins.” Moreover, their temples were centers of legalized

vice and their cultic representations and ritual were a glorifica-
tion of prostitution in the name of religion.
Manasseh also cultivated star and planetary worship (II Kings
21:3,5) and the cult of Moloch, an Ammonite deity, whose
worship was closely connected with astral divination (Amos
5:25, 26; Acts 7:41-43) and whose ritual was characterized by
parents’ sacrificing their children by compelling them to pass
through or into a furnace of fire. Excavations in Palestine have
uncovered piles of ashes and remains of infant skeletons in
cemeteries around heathen altars, pointing to the widespread
practice of this cruel abomination.
An interesting reference to idolatry and Moloch worship and
their connection with demonism is found in Psalm 106:36, 37.
The Hebrews are said to have “mingled themselves with the
nations . . . learned their works and served their idols . .
yea they sacrificed their sons and _ their daughters unto de-
mons. ... In fact, Manasseh’s idolatries were the result of
a gigantic outburst of demon-energized occultism. He is said
to have practiced augury, and used enchantment, and dealt with
them that had familiar spirits (divining demons) and with
wizards (those possessed of occult knowledge because under
the control of a divining demon) (II Kings 21:6; II Chron. 33:6).°
Archeology has uncovered a vast quantity of evidence of the
prevalence of demonic phenomena among the ancient peoples
of Bible lands. Tablets containing incantations, augural prog-
nostications and exorcistic rituals show how rife belief in and
enslavement to evil spirits were and prove that magic, divination,
necromancy and every variety of occultism were practiced in
the ancient Biblical world. Indeed, it is from Mesopotamia “that
our richest sources for the study of early magic and divination
come.”
2. Manasseh and the Assyrian Monuments. The light shed
upon Manasseh’s reign by archeology is for the most part of an
indirect nature. However, there is one direct reference in the
inscriptions of Esarhaddon to the Judean king that is of con-
6 For the connection of these heathen practices with demonism see Merrill F. Unger.
Biblical Demonology (Wheaton, Ill., 1952), pp. 107-164.
7G. Ernest Wright, The Old Testament Against Its Environment (Chicago, 1950), p. 80;
cf. pp. 80-92. Cf. also A. Guillaume, Prophecy and Divination (New York, 1938); R. C
Thompson, The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia (London, 1903, 1904), Vols. I, I.
Semitic Magic (London, 1908); Cyrus Gordon, The Living Past (New York, 1941),
pp- 196-217.
siderable interest, particularly because it illuminates the account

of Manasseh’s being carried away captive to Babylon, his re-
pentance and subsequent restoration to his throne. According
to the account in II Chronicles 33:10-13 (omitted in II Kings
and frequently rejected by critics), Jehovah brought upon the
idolatrous and unrepentant Manasseh and his people “the cap-
tain of the host of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh with
hooks and bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon.”
On the Senjirli Stele of Esarhaddon, Baalu, king of Tyre, is
shown lifting manacled hands in supplication to Assyria and
beside him Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, is portrayed with a
hook through his lips and tied by a rope to Esarhaddon’s hands.®
As far as the fact of Manasseh’s Babylonian captivity is con-
cerned, there is no confirmation of this notice of the Chronicler.
But the inscriptions of Esarhaddon do speak of the compulsory
visit of Manasseh to the great Assyrian capital, Nineveh, about
the year 678 B. c.
At that time the older palace of Nineveh, which the kings who
went before, my fathers, had built . . . had come to seem too small
to me... and the people of the lands my arms had despoiled I made
to carry the basket and the hod... . That small palace I tore down
in its totality. ... And I summoned the kings of Syria and those
across the sea— Baalu, king of Tyre, Manasseh, king of Judah,
Kaushgabri, king of Edom, Musurri, king of Moab... Milki-ashapa,
king of Gebail [Byblos], etc. etc. . . . twenty kings in all. I gave
them their orders.®
The reference to Manasseh’s captivity in Babylon was once
commonly regarded as a mistake on the part of the Chronicler
for Nineveh. However, the inscriptions prove that Esarhaddon
did in fact rebuild the ancient city destroyed by his father
Sennacherib:
... At the beginning of my rule, in the first year of my reign,
when I took my seat upon the royal throne in might, there appeared
favorable signs in the heavens and on earth. . . . Through the sooth-
sayers’ rites encouraging oracles were disclosed, and for the rebuild-
ing of Babylon and the restoration of Esagila [temple of the gods],
they caused the command [oracle] to be written down.!®
Esarhaddon continues his description of the rebuilding of
Babylon:
I summoned all of my artisans and the people of Babylonia in
their totality. I made them carry the basket and laid the headpad
8See S. Caiger, Bible and Spade (Oxford, 1947), p. 164; cf. p. 163, Fig. 22.
9 Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, sec. 690.
10 Tbid., sec. 646.
Tue Last Years or JupAH 281
upon them .. . I raised the hod to my head, and carried it... I

moulded brick . . . Babylon I built anew, I enlarged, I raised aloft,
I made magnificent. °
With such a splendid achievement as the rebuilding of Baby-
lon to his credit, it is not likely that Esarhaddon would have
allowed Manasseh and the other more than a score of kings,
whom he summoned to Nineveh, to return to their countries
without seeing this magnificent evidence of his glory and ac-
complishment.
3. The Reformation of Josiah. As a young lad of eight Josiah
came to the throne when his father Amon, son of Manasseh, was
murdered, after a brief reign of only two years (c. 642-c. 640
B.C.). Josiah’s long and godly rule lasted from c. 640-609 B. c.
The outstanding event of his reign was the discovery of the
“book of the law” in the course of extensive repairs to the temple.
The reading of this book led to a great revival and reforma-
tion (II Kings 22:3-23:37).
Whether the “book of the law” was the Pentateuch or only
the book of Deuteronomy, archeology throws interesting light
on the possible reason for the repairmen’s finding this docu-
ment in their work on the temple. The discovery is closely
linked with the activity of the stonemasons and carpenters,
and it is entirely possible this copy of the Pentateuch had been
placed in the cornerstone of the temple when it was erected by
Solomon (c. 966 B.c.). Doubtless the masonry had so cracked
that this stone had to be replaced and so the documents came
to light.
This is a far more reasonable explanation of the discovery
than that of prevailing criticism which views the “book of the
law” as essentially Deuteronomy and as a late concoction of the
seventh century B.c., which was not so much “discovered” as
foisted upon a credulous king and people as an ancient Mosaic
document. Archeology has demonstrated that it was customary
in ancient times to place documents in the foundations of build-
ings, as is done even to the present day.
Nabonidus, a Babylonian king of the sixth century B.c., for
example, delighted to dig into foundations of buildings ancient
in his day to recover documents deposited there centuries earlier.
This he did at the temple of Shamash at Sippar in lower Meso-
potamia.
11 Jbid., sec. 647.
12 J,'P. Free, Archeology and Bible History (Wheaton, Ill., 1950), pp. 215f.
When I had brought out Shamash from within it, and made him
dwell in another house, that house I tore down, and made a search
for its old foundation record; and I dug to a depth of eighteen
cubits and the foundation record of Naram-Sin the son of Sargon,
Shamash . . . permitted me, even me, to behold.'*
4. The Death of Josiah. Archeology has facilitated a correct
translation of the passage dealing with Josiah’s death and re-
vealed the reason for Pharaoh-necho’s advance toward the Eu-
phrates. “In his [Josiah’s] days Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt
went up to the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates. King
Josiah went to meet him; and Pharaoh Necho slew him at Me-
giddo, when he saw him” (II Kings 23:29, R.S.V.). Heretofore,
in the absence of an archeological clue the phrase “Pharaoh
Necho went up to the king of Assyria” has been wrongly trans-
lated “went up against the king of Assyria” (A.V. and A.R.V.).
While it is true the Hebrew preposition ‘al here employed may
mean “against,” the historical context shows that in this pas-
sage it has one of its more specialized meanings.
Historians used to be perplexed why Josiah advanced “against”
Necho when the Pharaoh was on his way to fight Assyria, the
ancient enemy of the Hebrews. The Babylonian Chronicle pub-
lished by C. J. Gadd in 1923 has put the whole matter in a
new light and shows that Pharaoh-necho did not advance against
the Assyrian at all, but went to his aid.
Upon Ashurbanipal’s death in 633 B.c., the Assyrian Empire
declined rapidly. In 612 3.c. Nineveh fell under attack by a
coalition of Babylonians, Medes and Scythians. A remnant of
the Assyrian army fled west to Haran and made it a temporary
capital."* The king of Egypt, Pharaoh-necho, accordingly, came
to help the Assyrian remnant and their King Ashuruballit, who
stood at bay for several years at Carchemish under the com-
bined attacks of the Medes and the Babylonians.
Josiah, no lover of Assyria, and not wishing any aid to reach
the hard-pressed Assyrians, went to Megiddo to stop Necho,
but was killed by the Egyptian. Necho, in turn, was overwhelm-
ingly defeated when he eventually clashed with Nebuchadnez-
zar at Carchemish on the Euphrates in 605 Bs. c.
With the battle of Carchemish two ancient empires fell. As-
syria passed away forever, and Egypt never again became a
13 Tra Price, The Monuments and the Old Testament (Philadelphia, 1923), p. 364.
14 Ira M. Price, The Dramatic Story of Old Testament History (New York, 1935), p. 341.
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4
Upper left: Oriental Institute Cylinder of Sennacherib recounting the Assyrian’s

attack on Jerusalem under Hezekiah and indirectly confirming the fact that the haughty
foe did not take Jerusalem (II Kings 19:82-34). (Courtesy Oriental Institute, Univ.
of Chicago.)
Upper right: The Nash Papyrus (ca. 100 B.C., containing the Ten Commandments with
Deuteroncmy 6:4 and showing the development of Hebrew writing by the early lst
cent. B.C. (Courtesy The Biblical Archeologist, XI, 2, fig. 1.)
Lower: The Siloam Inscription. Early Hebrew monumental script, dating about
700 B.C. from the Siloam Tunnel. The Tunnel was constructed in Hezekiah’s reign
to bring water into the city of Jerusalem. (Courtesy The Biblical Archeologist,
SIT, 45) fig: 4.)
Upper left: An ancient Babylonian tribute bearer from Persepolis, Iran. (Courtesy
Upper right: An ancient Syrian tribute bearer from Persepolis, Iran. (Courtesy
Lower: Babylon reconstructed on the basis of the excavations. The famous Ishtar
Gate appears in foreground. The hanging gardens and the ziggurat appear to right
of the wide Processional Street. This is how the metropolis looked to the Hebrew
captives of Nebuchadnezzar II. (Courtesy Oriental Institute, Univ, of Chicago.)
Tue Last Years oF JupAH 283
first-rate power.’® The magnificent city of Carchemish, with a

long and brilliant career behind it, was utterly destroyed by
Nebuchadnezzar and lay buried under desert dust until modern
pee snore brought its interesting monuments to the light of
ay.
5. The Hebrew Monarchy Under Egyptian Control. With
the death of Josiah in 609 3. c., the throne of Judah temporarily
passed under the domination of Egypt. Jehoahaz, son of Josiah,
was made king, but reigned only three months when he was
deposed by Necho (II Kings 23:33), who took him to Egypt,
where he died (II Kings 23:34). After he deposed Jehoahaz,
Pharaoh-necho made Eliakim, another son of Josiah, king and
changed his name to Jehoiakim (609-598 B.c.). This king paid
tribute to his Egyptian overlord (II Kings 23:35).
6. The Hebrew Monarchy Under Babylonian Control. In the
gigantic three-cornered contest for world supremacy between
Assyria, Egypt and Babylon which characterized the latter part
of the reign of Josiah and was coeval with the ministry of Jere-
miah in Judah, Babylon won out as the great prophet of Judah
had foretold. When Nebuchadnezzar became master of Pales-
tine, Jehoiakim shifted his allegiance to him (II Kings 24:1),
and from then on, the kings of Judah were vassals of the Baby-
lonian king, and paid dearly when they attempted to cast off
their new yoke.
Jehoiakim, the bitter enemy of Jeremiah and of religious and
moral reform, was an opportunist who attempted to throw off
Babylonian control as he had thrown off his Egyptian allegiance
when the time seemed favorable. Doing so, however, he found
the might of Babylon moving against his capital. In the course
of events that followed he was evidently assassinated, and was
given the shameful “burial of an ass” (Jer. 22:18, 19).
With the death of Jehoiakim in 598 B.c. his son Jehoiachin
succeeded to the throne. His reign lasted only three months
when he was carried away captive to Babylon. There he was
a political prisoner for thirty-seven years, being released by
Nebuchadnezzar II’s successor, Evil-merodach, who gave him
a daily allowance of food for the rest of his life (II Kings 25:
27-30). This interesting detail of Biblical history has been
singularly confirmed by Babylonian records which list Yaukin
of the land of Yahud, that is Jehoiachin of Judah, as one of the
16 Caiger, op. cit.. p. 170.
17C. L. Woolley, Wonders of the Past, ed. by J. A. Hammerton (1934), p. 727.
284, ARCHEOLOGY AND THE OLp TESTAMENT
recipients of the royal rations.’* Moreover, the name of Jehoi-

achin has been authenticated in excavations by W. F. Albright
and Melvin Grove Kyle at Tell Beit Mirsim (Kirjath-sepher)
and by Elihu Grant at Bethshemesh.”
IJ. THe Fait or JERUSALEM
Jeremiah, by means of a long and faithful ministry which ex-
tended through the last forty years of the death agony of the
nation and the tragic end of Judah as a monarchy, tried des-
perately to save Jerusalem and Judah from destruction by call-
ing the people back to God. But prince as well as peasant be-
came more and more hopelessly and fanatically addicted to
idolatry. Refusing to heed the prophet’s ceaseless warning that
if they repented they would be delivered from Babylon, judg-
ment terrible and pitiless, finally fell upon the apostate city.
1. Zedekiah and the End of the Monarchy. After removing
Jehoiachin from the throne of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar made
Jehoiachin’s uncle Mattaniah king and changed his name to
Zedekiah (II Kings 24:17). As a puppet of Nebuchadnezzar,
Zedekiah was continually under pressure from his advisors and
subjects to seek the help of Egypt and to revolt against Babylon.
Despite Jeremiah’s solemn warnings against this foolish course
of action, Zedekiah turned to Pharaoh-hophra (Apries) (c. 588-
569 B.c.) for aid and revolted against Nebuchadnezzar.
The Chaldean army, as a result, moved on Jerusalem, fired
by pitiless rage and bent on complete destruction. In the hor-
rifying siege that followed, pestilence, famine and even canni-
balism prevailed (II Kings 25:1; Jer. 32:24). The appearance
of the Egyptian army gave only a brief respite to the besieged
capital (Jer. 37:5). The city fell in 587 s.c. Zedekiah tried to
escape, but was captured by the Chaldeans at Jericho and
brought to trial before the king of Babylon at Riblah, on the
Orontes, fifty miles south of Hamath (Jer. 39:5-7).
Zedekiah saw his own sons put to death. Then his own eyes
were put out, and he was fettered and carried captive to Babylon,
where he was imprisoned until his death (II Kings 25:1-7; Jer.
52:11). Jerusalem was mercilessly sacked and razed to the
ground (II Kings 24:17-25:10). Thus “the year 587 s. c. marked
the end not only of a dynasty but of an age: =
18 W. F. Albright, “King Jehoiachin in Exile,” in The Biblical Archeologist, V (1942),
pp. 49f.
19 Free, op. cit., pp. 220f.
20M. S. and J. L. Miller, op. cit, p. 838.
THE Last YEARS oF JuDAH 285
2. The Age of Jeremiah and the Lachish Letters. The life

and times of Jeremiah have been vividly illustrated by the dis-
covery in 1935 by J. L. Starkey of eighteen ostraca inscribed in
Hebrew in the ancient Phoenician script.” These priceless docu-
ments were uncovered in the guard room adjoining the outer
gate of the city of Lachish (Tell ed-Duweir), an ancient for-
tress of Judah, some twenty-five miles southwest of Jerusalem.
Three additional ostraca, raising the total inscribed potsherds
to twenty-one, were found in the last campaign at Lachish in
1938.??
These ostraca are composed of letters and name lists from
the period just preceding the final fall of Jerusalem. Nearly
all of them apparently date from the autumn of 589 B.c., just
two years before the destruction of the city in August 587 B.c.,
since they belong to a layer of ash which represents the final
destruction of Lachish, which Nebuchadnezzar accomplished
before the final siege of Jerusalem.
Jeremiah, in one of his prophecies addressed to Zedekiah,
makes a reference to Judah’s fortified cities which is strikingly
illuminated by the Lachish Letters. He mentions “when the
king of Babylon’s army was fighting against Jerusalem, and
against all the cities of Judah that were left, against Lachish
and against Azekah, for these alone remained of the cities of
Judah as fortified cities” (Jer. 34:7).
Letter Number IV contains this passage: “We are watching
for the signal stations of Lachish, according to all the signals
you are giving, because we cannot see the signals of Azekah.”*
Interestingly, the same term here employed for “[fire] signal”
occurs in Jeremiah 6:1: “Flee for safety, ye children of Ben-
jamin, out of the midst of Jerusalem, and blow the trumpet in
Tekoa, and raise up a signal on Beth-haccherem; for evil looketh
forth from the north, and a great destruction.”
Although the Mari Letters of the eighteenth century B. c.
have recently shown that signalling by fire was practiced in the
Euphrates Valley twelve centuries before Jeremiah’s time, yet
this letter from Lachish sheds much light on the system of signal
telegraphy used by the Jewish army in the last days of the
21 Harry Torczyner, Lachish I, The Lachish Letters (Oxford, 1938). Originally eighteen
ostraca.
22 Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research, LXXX (Dec. 1940), pp. 11-13;
LXXXII (Apr. 1941), p. 24.
23 Torczyner, op. cit., p. 79.
kingdom of Judah.** In addition, it strikingly illustrates Jere-

miah’s reference to Lachish and Azekah as fortified cities of
Judah.
Both of these sites have been identified. Azekah (Tell Za-
kariya) in the Shepelah was excavated by Frederick J. Bliss of
the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1898 and its strong fortifica-
tions authenticated. The same is true of Lachish itself, excavated
by the Wellcome-Marston Archeological Expedition in 1933 till
1938 under the direction of J. L. Starkey and continued after his
death by Charles Inge and Lankester Harding.
Letter Number III is one of the most significant of the entire
collection from a Biblical point of view. Like most of the others
it was written by a certain Hoshaiah, who was stationed at some
military outpost, to a man named Jaosh, who apparently was
the high commanding officer at Lachish. The text runs thus:
The servant Hoshaiah hath sent to inform my lord Jaosh: May
the Lord Yhwh cause my lord to hear tidings of peace! And now
thou hast sent a letter but my lord hath not enlightened thy servant
concerning the letter which thou didst send to thy servant yesterday
evening, for the heart of thy servant hath been sick since thou didst
write to thy servant. And as for what my lord, hath said, “Thou
dost not know it!—read [any] letter,” as the Lord liveth no one
hath undertaken to read me a letter at any time, nor have I read
any letter that may have come to me nor would I give anything for
it!—And it hath been reported to thy servant saying, ‘““The com-
mander of the host, Coniah son of Elnathan, hath come down in
order to go into Egypt and unto Hodaviah, son of Ahijah, and his
men hath he sent me to obtain supplies from him.’”—And as for the
letter of Tobiah, servant of the king,?® which came to Shallum
son of Jaddua through the prophet, saying, “Beware,” thy servant
hath sent it to my lord.?®
Hoshaiah, like a number of names in the various letters, is
Biblical and occurs in Jeremiah 42:1 and Nehemiah 12:32. Jaosh
is an abbreviated form of the name Josiah. All words and phrases
are characteristically Biblical, and God is refezred to by the
tetragiammaton Yhwh (the consonants of the name Yahweh or
Jehovah). Many of the names, too, are good Biblical compounds
of Yahweh.
The wordiness of the first part of the letter is due largely to
the polite and idiomatic use of “my lord” (adoni) for “you”
24.w. F, Albright, “The Old Testament and Archeology,” in Old Testament Commentary
25 “The king” can be none other than Zedekiah, always referred to by title alone in
these texts.
26W. F. Albright in Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, LXXXII,
pp. 20f.
THE Last Years oF JuDAH 287
and “thy servant” for “I” or “me.” The latter part of the epistle
seems clearly to refer to a visit of the commanding officer of the
Jewish army to Egypt for military conferences with the officials
of Pharaoh Psammetichus II (594-588 3. c.), in preparation for
the threatening Chaldean invasion. The resultant expeditionary
force is mentioned by Jeremiah. “The army of Pharaoh had come
up out of Egypt; and when the Chaldeans who were besieging
Jerusalem heard news of them, they withdrew from Jerusalem”
(SRS
One of the most significant details of all is the reference to
“the prophet.” While it is not impossible this might be an actual
reference to Jeremiah himself, and is so construed by some,”
yet, since there were a number of prophets active at the time,
“he was perhaps a prophet with essentially the same message as
Jeremiah, but who left no book behind him.”?* What is im-
portant is not the identification of “the prophet” but the intimate
contact here made with the inner life of Israel and that “here
for the first time outside the Old Testament we find mention
of a ‘prophet’ of the class which played so large a part in Hebrew
history.”*°
Letter Number VI is highly reminiscent of Jeremiah 38:4,
where the prophet, proclaiming the wisdom of surrendering to
the Chaldeans, is thus accused by the princes before the king:
“Let this man be put to death, for he is weakening the hand of
the soldiers who are left in this city, and the hand of all the
people, by speaking such words to them.” The letter in question
runs thus:
To my lord Yaosh, May Yahweh cause my lord to see this season
in good health! Who is thy servant but a dog that my lord hath
sent the letter of the king and the letters of the princes, saying, “Pray,
read them!’’? And behold the words of the princes are not good,
but to weaken your hands and to slacken the hands of the men who
are informed about them [?] ... And now [?] my lord, wilt thou
not write to them, saying, “Why do ye thus even [?] in Jerusalem?
Behold unto the king and unto his house [?] are ye doing this
thing!’ And as Yahweh thy God liveth, since thy servant read the
letters, there hath been no peace [?] for thy servant. .
In the letter the alleged discouragement comes from the
princes rather than the prophet. Evidently, however, the patriot
at the front is of one mind with the prophet at Jerusalem, re-
27 J. W. Jack in Palestine Exploration Quarterly (1933), pp. 165-187.
28 Cyrus H. Gordon, op. cit., p. 189.
29 Caiger, op. cit., p. 194.
alizing that reliance on the glittering promises of Egypt was

luring Judah to her doom and that true patriotism was encourag-
ing the people to face the certainty of a Babylonian victory.
Few books of the Bible have been more vividly illustrated by
archeological discoveries than the Book of Jeremiah and few
discoveries have had more direct connection with the Bible
than the Lachish Letters. They furnish what is without exag-
geration a virtual “supplement to Jeremiah.”**
LITERATURE ON THE LasT YEARS OF JUDAH
Cheyne, T. K., Jeremiah: His Life and Times (New York, 1888).
Skinner, Prophecy and Religion: Studies in the Life of Jeremiah (Cam-
bridge, 1922).
Smith, G. A., Jeremiah (London, 1923).
Gadd, C. J., The Fall of Nineveh (London, 1923).
Welch, A. C., Jeremiah: His Time and His Work (Oxford, 1928).
Kroeker, J., Jeremiah (Giessen, 1937).
Herntrich, V., Jeremiah der Prophet (Guetersloh, 1938).
May, H. G., “The Chronology of Jeremiah’s Oracles,’ Journal Near
Eastern Studies (Oct., 1945).
LITERATURE ON THE LACHISH LETTERS
Albright, W. F., “The Oldest Hebrew Letters, The Lachish Ostraca,”
Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, LXX (Apr.
1938); LXXX (Dec. 1940), pp. 11-13.
, The Lachish Letters After Five Years,’ Bulletin LXXXII
(Apr. 1941).
Haubert, R. S., ‘“Lachish—Frontier Fortress of Judah,” Biblical Arche-
ologist (Dec. 1939).
Torczyner, Harry, Lachish I (The Lachish Letters) (Oxford, 1938).
Gordon, Cyrus, The Living Past (New York, 1941), pp. 179-195.
May, H. G., “Lachish Letter IV,” Bulletin American Schools, XCVII
(Feb. 1945), pp. 22-25.
Thomas, Winton, Journal of Theological Studies, XL, pp. 1-15.
Marston, Sir Charles, The Bible Comes Alive (6th ed.; New York, 1947),
pp. 78-178.
ao S. Haubert, “Lachish-Frontier Fortress of Judah,” Bidlical Archeologist (Dec., 1938),

p- 30.
CHAPTER XXV
JUDAH IN EXILE
Judah had ample and extended warning both by precept and

by example that continuance in apostasy and idolatry would
eventuate in national destruction and exile in a foreign land.
At the threshold of their national existence God had warned
His people in the clearest terms that if they did not observe His
law, their cities would become ruinous heaps and their fields
a desert. Isaiah and Micah had predicted the captivity of Judah
a century and a half before its occurrence (Isa. 6:11; 12:11, 12),
announcing Babylonia as the place (Isa. 11:11; 39:6; Mic. 4:10),
while the prophet Jeremiah had actually declared that it would
last seventy years (Jer. 25:1, 11, 12).
The progressive captivity of the Northern Kingdom beginning
under Tiglathpileser (745-726 B.c.) and eventuating in the fall
of Samaria and the end of Israel in 721 3. c., with subsequent
deportations by later Assyrian kings, Esarhaddon and Ashur-
banipal, furnished actual illustrations of the teachings of the
Judaean prophets. Even Sennacherib’s invasion and his removal
of 200,150 captives from Judah (cf. IT Kings 18:13) failed to
arouse the people to heed the warnings of the prophets. Judah’s
stubborn attachment to idolatry, despite Yahweh's patient for-
bearance and ominous warnings, must eventually bring the
rigors of the Babylonian exile.
The swift-moving events after the destruction of Nineveh
and the fall of Assyria in 612 B.c. prepared the international
stage for the drama of Judah’s chastisement in Babylon. The
rise of the Neo-Babylonian Empire (605-539 B. c.) was as rapid
as its demise. When its divine mission of chastening God’s
people was accomplished, it was quickly destroyed.
I. NEBUCHADNEZZAR II AND THE JEWISH CAPTIVES
Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 B.c.), one of the most powerful
and autocratic of ancient rulers, adopted essentially the same
289
policy of displacing whole populations as that inaugurated by

the Assyrian kings of the eighth century. With regard to the
deportation of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar’s plan accomplished two
purposes. It guaranteed, for a period at least, the respectful
submission of this western district, that had amply proved how
stubbornly recalcitrant it could be. Moreover, it supplied the
ambitious monarch with skilled artisans and craftsmen for the
execution of elaborate building projects in Babylonia.’
1. The First Deportation. According to the Biblical account
the Babylonian king accomplished three deportations of Judah,
one “in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim” (605 B.c.), in
which Daniel and other royal personages were carried away
(Dan. 1:1-4), the second in 597 B. c., when King Jehoiachin and
others including Ezekiel were taken (II Kings 24:14-16) and
the third in 587 8. c., when the city and temple were destroyed
(II Kings 25:9, 10).
Critics do not seriously question the second and third depor-
tations, but customarily dismiss the first carrying away mentioned
by Daniel as unhistorical. However, extra-Biblical confirmation
is not entirely lacking to support Daniel’s testimony. Josephus,
a Jewish historian of the first century a.p., has preserved the
important witness of the Babylonian priest, Berossus, of the
third century B.c. to such a campaign.”
Josephus quotes Berossus to the effect that when Nabopolassar
heard that the governor he had appointed over the west had
revolted against him, he sent his young son Nebuchadnezzar
against the rebel, conquered him and brought the country back
under the dominion of Babylon. During this campaign, Nebu-
chadnezzar received news of his father’s death. Committing
the Jewish, Syrian and other captives to his officers, he hurried
back to Babylon to assume the kingship.
Spring or summer of 605 38. c., when the rainy season would
be avoided, would have been the natural time for the campaign
of Nebuchadnezzar referred to by Daniel and Berossus.* The
Babylonian evidence supports this date. The last two tablets of
Nabopolassar are dated May and August 605, while the first two
of Nebuchadnezzar are inscribed August and September of the
ate M. Price, The Monuments and the Old Testament (Philadelphia, 1925), p. 355.
Against Apion, I, 19; Antiquities, X, 11, 1.
oe R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (Chicago, 1951),
pp. :
4 Ibid., p. 159,
JupAaH In EXILe 291
same year. There is, therefore, no valid reason to reject the

historicity of the first deportation, mentioned in the Book of
Daniel, despite the fact that such a campaign is passed over in
silence in the Book of Kings.
2. The Second and Third Deportations. Nebuchadnezzar’s
later advances on Jerusalem are told in detail in the Scriptural
narratives. In the siege of 597 B. c. King Jehoiachin surrendered,
and the Babylonian king carried him, the princes, the warriors
“even ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths”
to Babylon (II Kings 24:10-17). At the same time he stripped
the temple of its remaining treasures (II Kings 24:13), part of
which had been carried away in the first deportation (Dan. 1:2),
took other booty, and placed Jehoiachin’s uncle, Mattaniah, on
the throne of Judah, changing his name to Zedekiah.
Zedekiah’s revolt in the ninth year of his reign brought about
the complete destruction of the city and the temple.
In the nineteenth year of king Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon,
came Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard, a servant of the king
of Babylon to Jerusalem. And he burnt the house of Jehovah and
pts a house, and all the houses of Jerusalem ... (II Kings
Nebu-zar-adan, captain of the guard, was the Babylonian Nabu-

zer-idinna, the chief baker (a title which had come to have no
functional significance ).°
Everything of value in the city was carried off, including the
elaborate cultic paraphernalia of Solomon’s temple. The chief
priests were put to death and Zedekiah was blinded, and carried
in fetters to Babylon (II Kings 25:1-21). Over the people who
still remained in the land, Nebuchadnezzar placed a governor
named Gedaliah, who appears to be the high official “who was
over the house” named on a seal of this period found at Lachish.*
3. The Desolation of Palestine. Excavations at Jerusalem and
in Palestine in general show how thorough was the damage
and destruction wrought during the Chaldean invasions. Not
a trace of the Solomonic temple nor of the palaces of the Davidic
kings has remained.* Diggings at Azeka, Beth-Shemesh and
Kirjath-sepher and surface examinations elsewhere furnish mute
evidence of the terrific desolation.? At Lachish two destructions
5R. Parker and W. H. Dubberstein, Babylonian Chronology (Chicago, 1942), p. 9.
Albrecht Goetze in Journal of Near Eastern Studies, III (1944), pp. 43ff.
6 w. F. Albright, “The Old Testament and Archeology,” in Old Testament Commentary,
7 Ibid.
8 Cf. Stephen Caiger, Bible and Spade (Oxford, 1947), p. 172.
® Millar Burrows, What Mean These Stones? (New Haven, 1941), p. 107.
occurring near the same time are doubtlessly to be connected

with Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of 597 and 587 s. c., the Lachish
Letters having been recovered from the ruins of the second of
these destructions.?°
4. The Ministry of Ezekiel. As Jeremiah was a prophet to
the people in Jerusalem and Judah, Ezekiel his younger con-
temporary, performed the same role to the Jews in exile. He
lived and prophesied to the Jewish community “in the land
of the Chaldeans, by the river Chebar” (Ezek. 1:1,2). “The
river Chebar” is now known from cuneiform records to be the
Babylonian canal Kabar in central Babylonia, running between
Babylon and the city of Nippur sixty miles to the southeast.
The same word to denote both rivers and canals was employed
by the Babylonians.
Nippur, excavated by an American expedition under Peters,
Haynes and Hilprecht (1880-1900), yielded several thousand
clay tablets, including a Sumerian account of the flood. It is
not known how close to Nippur the colonies of deported Jews
to whom Ezekiel ministered were located. But Ezekiel’s resi-
dence, Tel-abib (Ezek. 3:15), is now known to be Babylonian
til-abubi, “mound of the Deluge,” a term used in Akkadian cu-
neiform to designate the low mounds scattered throughout
Mesopotamia. Moreover, names compounded with the element
tel (tell), “mound,” were common in Babylonia at this era,
during which old abandoned sites were being reoccupied.™
In a land that was far richer economically than Judah, the
exiles enjoyed many privileges, and there was nothing to hinder
them from rising to positions of prominence and wealth (Dan.
2:48; Neh. 1:11). The captives who were settled in and near
Nippur enjoyed the opportunities afforded by a large commercial
center, and even during the period of captivity must have ac-
quired great riches. Later under the Persian kings Artaxerxes I
(465-424 B.c.) and Darius II (424-405 s.c.), a famous mart was
located there operated by “Murashi and Sons,” with which a
great many individuals with Jewish names were associated.”
But not all the exiles adapted themselves to their new en-
vironment. Many were poor, discouraged and afflicted with
nostalgia. Accordingly, Ezekiel was commissioned to bring them
10 Harry Torczyner, Lachish I, The Lachish Letters (Oxford, 1938).
11 Albright, op. cit, p. 165.
12 Paul Heinisch, History of the Old Testament (Collegeville, Minn., 1952), pe ole
H. Gressmann, Altorientalische Texte zum Alten Testament (Berlin, 1926), p. 4344,
JupaH IN EXILE 293
a message of hope that reached on into the future to the time
of Israel's earthly kingdom under Messiah (Chaps. 40-48).
5. Authenticity of Ezekiel's Prophecies. Archeology is doing
much to counteract radical theories concerning the authorship
and date of the Book of Ezekiel. Until comparatively recently
the prophecy was regarded as a genuine work of the sixth cen-
tury B.c. and written by Ezekiel, the prophet to the Hebrew
exiles. This is now being denied by such critics as C. C. Torrey,
who makes the prophecy essentially a pseudepigraph, mainly
the work of the late third century B.c., and not the work of
Ezekiel at all.8
One of C. C. Torrey’s chief arguments against the genuineness
of the prophecy is the dating of events by “king Jehoiachin’s
captivity.” Since this monarch reigned only three months and
was carried captive to Babylon, such a procedure is confessedly
unusual. However, archeology has turned the tables on the
critic in this matter and has presented this feature of the prophecy
as “an inexpugnable argument in favor of its genuineness.”
Jar-handles discovered at Tell Beit Mirsim and Bethshemesh
in 1928-1930 staraped “Eliakim steward of Yaukin (Jehoiachin)”
give clear evidence that this Eliakim was the steward of the
crown property belonging to Jehoiachin and that the exiled king
was still recognized as rightful sovereign by the people of Judah.
Zedekiah was merely regarded as regent for his exiled nephew
(cf. Jer. 28:4). The Jews desired to acknowledge their rightful
king, yet did not dare to date events by his reign “since that
actual rulership had been terminated by the Babylonians.”** On
the other hand, it was quite natural for Jews in Babylon to date
by the year of their sovereign’s captivity.
That Jehoiachin was still considered “king of Judah,” even
by the Babylonians themselves, was proved in 1940 by the
publication of tablets from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, enu-
merating the recipients of royal bounty, and including “Yaukin,
king of the land of Yahud [Judah].”*° In addition to this
striking confirmation of the authenticity of Ezekiel’s prophecy,
the book is replete with “archeologically accurate allusions,
which could scarcely be explained if Torrey were right.””’
13 Cf, Pseudo-Exekiel and the Original Prophecy (New Haven, 1930), p. 102.
14 Albright, op. cit, p. 164.
15 Jack Finegan, Light From the Anctent Past (Princeton, 1946), p. 189.
16 Cf. Albright in Biblical Archeologist, V, 4 (Dec. 1942), pp. 49-55.
A case in point is the reference to Persia (Paras) as a country

which was strong enough to dispatch troops to fight in the
armies of Tyre and Gog (Ezek. 27:10 and 38:5). “How could
Ezekiel make this casual mention of the Persians,” says Torrey,
“before that people had made its appearance on the stage of
history?”*® Archeology has likewise furnished the answer to
this question.
In 1930-1931 Ernst Herzfeld and E. F. Weidner published
inscriptions showing that Persia was an important independent
country under Achaemenian kings as early as the seventh cen-
tury B.c., several generations before Ezekiel’s time. In addition
to this evidence the Assyrian cuneiform records of the ninth
century B.C. already mention “Persia” as a country in western
Iran. It is true that Persia did not become a world power until
Cyrus conquered Astyages, king of Media (c. 550 B.c.), a little
more than two decades after the close of Ezekiel’s ministry.
However, the prophet’s reference requires only a land of rela-
tive importance before the time of Cyrus.
6. The Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar II. The splendors of the
Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar II are now quite well-known as
the result of modern excavations. From 1899 onward the
Deutsche Orientgesellschaft under the leadership of Robert Kol-
dewey excavated at the site of the ancient city and uncovered
remains of the vast building projects with which the king’s own
inscriptions largely deal.’® The Book of Daniel significantly re-
cords the proud Babylonian monarch’s boast of the magnificence
of his capital city, which receives ample illustration from the
monuments. “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built for
the royal dwelling-place, by the might of my power and for the
glory of my majesty?” (Dan. 4:30).
Archeology shows “that the city did indeed owe most of its
immortal reputation for magnificence to this monarch. . . .”?°
Among the vast ruins rises the Ishtar Gate, leading through a
massive double wall of fortifications and oramented with bulls
and dragons done in enamelled colored brick.2! The Ishtar Gate
gave access to the city’s great processional street, whose walls
were also adorned with enamelled lions, as was also the throne
room in Nebuchadnezzar’s palace.
18 Torrey, op. cit., p. 84.
19 R. Koldewey, Das wieder erstehende Babylon (4th ed.; Leipzig, 1925).
20 Caiger, op. cit., p. 177.
21 R. Koldewey, Das Ishtar-Tor in Babylon (1918).
JUDAH IN EXILE 295
In the temple area only the ground plan now remains of

Nebuchadnezzar’s ziggurat, but according to Herodotus, it tow-
ered to a height of eight stages. Not far distant was Marduk’s
temple, which the king restored, built with step-backs like a
modern skyscraper. In the general area, but now no longer
identifiable, were the most famous of all Nebuchadnezzar’s con-
structions, the hanging gardens, which the king built in terraces
to compensate his, Median queen for the absence of her beloved
mountains, and which the Greeks viewed as one of the seven
wonders of the world.
Babylon of the Chaldean Age as reconstructed from excavations and clay-tablet maps
recovered from the ruins of the great metropolis. After E. Unger. (From James
Breasted, Ancient Times, courtesy of Ginn and Co.)
The East India House inscription, now in London, devotes

six columns of Babylonian writing to a description of the huge
building projects of Nebuchadnezzar in his zeal to enlarge and
beautify his capital city. He rebuilt more than twenty temples

in Babylon and Borsippa, executed a vast system of fortifica-
tions, and made great quays for the shipping industry.”
Most of the bricks found in the excavations of Babylon carry
his stamp: “Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, supporter of
Esagila and Ezida, exalted first-born son of Nabopolassar, king
of Babylon.”* Esagila (“House whose top is Lofty”) was the
Babylonian name of Marduk’s (Bel’s) temple at Babylon.”
Ezida (“The Enduring House”) was the temple of Nebo, patron
of culture, at Borsippa. One of Nebuchadnezzar’s records re-
calls his boast mentioned in Daniel 4:30: “The fortifications of
Esagila and Babylon I strengthened and established the name
of my reign forever.””°
Daniel’s allusion to Nebuchadnezzar’s building activities is
important in reference to the common critical view of the book,
which gives it a Maccabean date (c. 167 B.c.). But the prob-
lem is, How did the supposed late writer of the book know that
the glories of Babylon were due to Nebuchadnezzar’s building
operations? R. H. Pfeiffer, though defending the critical view,
confesses that “we shall presumably never know.””* But if one
accepts the genuineness of the Book of Daniel, in this instance
notably supported by archeology, the critics’ problem vanishes.
7. Evidence of the Jewish Exile. The interesting question to
the Biblical archeologist is whether or not any concrete archeo-
logical evidence is available proving that the Jews were really
captives in Babylon. The discovery of some three hundred
cuneiform tablets in a vaulted building near the Ishtar Gate
in Babylon now makes possible an affirmative answer to this
query. These tablets, upon careful study, were found to date
betwen 595 and 570 B.c., the period virtually coterminous with
Ezekiel’s dated ministry to the exiles, and to contain lists of
rations of food paid to craftsmen and captives who resided in
or near Babylon during this period.
Among the recipients of these rations are people from various
subject nations — such as Egypt, Philistia, Phoenicia, Asia Minor,
Persia and Judah. The Jews enumerated have names that are
characteristic and some that are Biblical as Semachiah, Gaddiel
and Shelemiah. It is in these tablets, associated with five other
22 Price, op. cit. Figure 104, p. 356.
23 Tbid., Figure 102, p. 358.
25 J. P. Free, Archeology and Bible History (Wheaton, IIl., 1950), p. 228.
26 Pfeiffer, Old Testament Introduction (New York, 1941), pp. 758f.
Jupau in ExiLe 297
royal princes, that the mention of King Jehoiachin of Judah

occurs, whose name, as we have seen previously in this chapter,
has important bearing on the authenticity of the Book of
Ezekiel.
Jehoiachin, written Yaukin (Yaukinu), obviously an abbre-
viated form of the name, is specifically said to be “king of the
land of Yahud.” “Yahud” is also simply a shortened form of
Judah, perfectly familiar in the period after the exile, when the
small Jewish state stamped official jar handles and also silver
coins with the legend “Yehud” (“Judah”).?7
One of the documents mentioning Yaukin is specifically dated
592 B.c. At this time the captive Judean king seems to have
been free to move about the city, as suggested by the distribu-
tion of rations to him. Seemingly, it was not until at a later
time that he was cast into prison, from which in the thirty-seventh
year of his exile he was liberated and restored to favorable and
even preferential treatment.”
II. Later Events IN THE NEO-BABYLONIAN EMPIRE
The New Babylonian Empire was destined to fall upon com-
pletion of its task of chastising idolatrous Judah. After Nebu-
chadnezzar’s long reign and uncurbed power, decline set in
rapidly. The powerful monarch was succeeded on the throne
by his son Amel-Marduk, Akkadian, “man of Marduk” (562-560
B.c.), called Evil-merodach in II Kings 25:27. Archeological
corroboration of this king was found on a vase discovered at
Susa in the course of the French excavations there, bearing the
inscription, “Palace of Amil-Marduk, King of Babylon, son of
Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon.””
Evil-merodach was soon slain by his brother-in-law Nergal-
shar-usur (Neriglisar), who in turn reigned only four years
(560-556 B.c.). Thereupon his son Labashi-Marduk was mur-
dered after reigning only a few months.
1. Nabonidus as King. One of the conspirators who made
away with Labashi-Marduk was a Babylonian noble named
Nabonidus (Akkadian Nabunaid, “the god Nabu, i.e., Nebo is
exalted”), who then ruled as the last monarch of the Neo-
Babylonian Empire (556-539 s.c.). Nabonidus was a man of
great culture and religious interest. He was an archeologist
27 E. L. Sukenik in Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society, XIV (1934), pp. 178-184.
29 Jacques de Morgan, Delegation en Perse, XIV, p. 60.
and a builder and restorer of temples. He sought for inscrip-

tions, which even at that time were ancient, and had names
and lists of kings copied out, which proved useful for historians
and antiquarians of later ages. His mother seems to have been
a priestess in the temple of the moon god Sin at Harran, and
he himself had an ardent interest in the shrines of Sin both
at Haran and at Ur.
Nabonidus’ own daughter was dedicated to the great temple
of Sin at Ur, and the king’s devotion to the moon god to the
neglect of Marduk evidently aroused the priests against his
religious program. When Babylonia was threatened by Cyrus
invasion, the pious king collected the various gods at Babylon
for safekeeping, but these were subsequently restored to their
native shrines by the conqueror.*?
Nabonidus spent many years of his reign at Tema in Arabia,
a healthful region which had many commercial and military
advantages. When Cyrus threatened to overrun Babylonia, the
king returned home in the seventeenth year of his reign (539
B.c.). After the fall of Babylon, Nabonidus was kindly treated
by Cyrus, who gave him Carmania in southern Persia to rule,
or perhaps simply as a domicile.**
2. The Coregency of Belshazzar. According to contemporary
Babylonian records Belshazzar (Akkadian Bel-shar-usur, “Bel
protect the king”) was the eldest son and coregent of Naboni-
dus, the last sovereign of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The
following passage explicitly states that before Nabonidus started
on his expedition to Tema, he entrusted actual kingship to
Belshazzar:
He entrusted a camp to his eldest, first-born son; the troops of
the land he sent with him. He freed his hand, he entrusted the
kingship to him. Then he himself undertook a distant campaign, the
power of the land of Akkad advanced with him; towards Tema in
the midst of the Westland he set his face. . . . He himself established
his dwelling in Tema. . . . That city he made glorious. . . . They
made it like a palace of Babylon. . . .3?
According to Babylonian records, Belshazzar became coregent
in the third year of Nabonidus’ reign (553 3. c.) and continued
in that capacity till the fall of Babylon (539 s. c.). The Nabunaid
Chronicle reports that in the seventh, ninth, tenth and eleventh
30 John D. Davis in Westminster Dictionary of the Bible, rev. by H. S. Gehman (Phila-
delphia, 1944), p. 415.
31 Josephus, Against Apion, I, 20.
32 Finegan, op. cit., pp. 189f,
Upper: Darius I (522-486 B.C.) on his throne receiving a foreign dignitary. Behind
him stands crown prince Xerxes (Biblical Ahasuerus). Relief from Pertico 21, Treasury
of Persian government, Persepolis, Iran. (Courtesy Oriental Institute, Univ. of
Chicago. )
Center: The ruins of Persepolis. This city was established by Darius I and destroyed
by Alexander the Great. A corner of the palace of Darius is seen in left foreground.
The columns of the Apadana (Audience Hall) appear in center background. (Courtesy
Lower: Tombs of the Persian kings at Naash-i-Rustam, Iran. The tomb of Darius I
appears at right. This humane monarch gave special permission to the Jews in Judah
under Zerubbabel to preceed with the building of the Temple. Other Fiblically prorni-
nent Persian monarchs are buried in tombs to the left and nearhy. (Courtesy Oriental
Jupau in ExILe 299
year “the king was in the city of Tema. The son of the king,
the princes and the troops were in the land of Akkad (Baby-
lonia}.*
While Nabonidus was absent in Tema, the Nabunaid Chron-
icle expressly says the New Year's Festival was not celebrated,
but was observed in the seventeenth year when the king re-
turned home. It is thus clear that Belshazzar actually exercised
the coregency in Babylon and that the Babylonian records in
a remarkable manner supplement the Biblical notices (Dan. 5;
7:1; 8:1), which are not in error in representing Belshazzar as
the last king of Babylon, as negative criticism was once so sure.
Nor can the Book of Daniel be said to be wrong in-calling Bel-
shazzar “the son of Nebuchadnezzar” (Dan. 5:1). Even if Bel-
shazzar was not lineally related to Nebuchadnezzar, which is
doubtful since his mother, Nitocris, was evidently Nebuchad-
nezzars daughter,** the usage “son of,” being equivalent in
Semitic usage to “successor of” in the case of royalty, would
in this case still not be inaccurate.*°
3. The Fall of Babylon. Cyrus II, “the Great,” founder of the
Persian Empire, succeeded his father Cambyses I to the throne
of Anshan (c.559 B.c.) and thereafter began a lightning-like
conquest of the ancient Semitic world. By 549 B.c. he had
conquered the Medes and by 546 z.c. had subdued Lydia. In
539 B. c. Babylon fell to him. The Nabunaid Chronicle tells that
the Persian forces took Sippar shortly before and that the great
conqueror soon thereafter entered Babylon:
In the month of Tashritu, when Cyrus attacked the army of Akkad
in Opis on the Tigris, the inhabitants of Akkad revolted but he
[Nabonidus] massacred the confused inhabitants. The 15th day,
Sippar was seized without battle. Nabonidus fled. The 16th day
Gobryas [Ugbaru], the governor of Gutium and the army of Cyrus
entered Babylon without battle. Afterward Nabonidus was arrested
in Babylon when he returned [there]. . . . In the month of Arah-
shamnu, the 3rd day, Cyrus entered Babylon. Green twigs were
spread in front of him—the state of “Peace” [shulmu] was imposed
upon the city. Cyrus sent greetings to all Babylon. Gobryas, his
governor, installed [sub-] governors in Babylon. . . . In the month
of Arahshamnu, on the night of the 11th day, Gobryas died. In the
month [Arahshamnu, the .. . th day, the wi]fe of the king died
From the 27th day of Arahshamnu till the 3rd day of Nisanu an
83 Ibid., p. 190.
384R. P. Dougherty, Nabonidus and Belshazzar (New Haven, 1929), pp. 59ff., 194.
35 M. F. Unger, Introductory Guide to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, POSIN)ps O98.
official “weeping” was performed in Akkad, all the people [went

around] with their hair disheveled.*¢ :
The Nabunaid Chronicle thus relates that the joyful acclama-
tion of Cyrus by the Babylonians was followed quickly by the
death of a prominent royal personage. Unfortunately, however,
the mutilated condition of the text renders it impossible to de-
cide whether it was “the king” (Pinches), “the wife of the king”
(Winckler, Schrader) or “son of the king” (Hagen, Caiger ).*’
Dougherty favors the view that the reference is to “the wife
of the king,” Belshazzar’s mother. “Grief on account of the
death of her son and the passing of Babylon into foreign hands
may have hastened the death of Nabonidus’ queen. Like him
she was probably advanced in years.”**
Dougherty’s explanation would also give significance to the
period of official mourning for her who was evidently Nebu-
chadnezzar’s daughter. Daniel 5 and Xenophon* agree that
Belshazzar’s death occurred in connection with the actual cap-
ture of Babylon. This event must have occurred when Gobryas,
Cyrus’ general, took the city without general resistance on the
sixteenth day of the month Tishri (October).
Although no document of Babylonian origin affirms that Bel-
shazzar was actually present at the fall of Babylon, there is,
on the other hand, no positive evidence against his participation
in the events of 539 8. c. Indeed, “of all non-Babylonian records
dealing with the situation at the close of the Neo-Babylonian
Empire the fifth chapter of Daniel ranks next to cuneiform
literature in accuracy so far as outstanding events are con-
cerned.”*® “The matter concerning Belshazzar, far from being
an error in the Scriptures, is one of the many striking confirma-
tions of the Word of God which have been demonstrated by
archeology.”**
LITERATURE ON THE EXILE
Cornill, C. H., Das Buch des Propheten Ezechiel (Leipzig, 1886).
Wilson, R. D., Studies in the Book of Daniel (Series I, New York, 1917;
Series II, New York, 1938).
36 Leo Oppenheim in Ancient Near Eastern Texts, ed. by J. Pritchard (Princeton, 1950),
p. 306.
37 For a discussion see Dougherty, op. cit., pp. 173f. and Caiger, op. cit., p. 179.
38 Op. cit., pp. 174f.
39 Cyropaedia, VII, 5, 30.
40 Dougherty, op. cit., p. 200.
41 Free, op. cit., p. 235.
Jupan IN EXILE 301
Wardle, W. L., Israel and Babylon (2nd ed.; London, 1925).

Rogers, R. W., Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (New York,
1926).
Koldewey, R., Das wieder erstehende Babylon (Leipzig, 1925).
Montgomery, James A., The Book of Daniel in International Critical
Commentary (New York, 1927).
Dougherty, R., Nabonidus and Belshazzar (New Haven, 1929).
Charles, R. H., 4 Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of
Daniel (Oxford, 1929).
Buttenwieser, M., ‘“The Date and Character of Ezekiel’s Prophecies,”
Hebrew Union College Annual, VIII (1930).
Harford, J. B., Studies in the Book of Ezekiel (Cambridge, 1935).
Ginsburg, H. L., Studies in Daniel (New York, 1948).
Young, E. J., The Prophecy of Daniel (Grand Rapids, 1949).
Heinisch, Paul, History of the Old Testament (Collegeville, Minnesota,
1925), pp. 308-319.
1953), pp. 257-268.
CHAPTER XXVI
JUDAH UNDER PERSIA
With the fall of Babylon to Cyrus, the Aryan, the way was
opened for the return of the Jews to their homeland. The He-
brew prophet ecstatically envisioned the glad restoration and
sang of Cyrus as the deliverer whom Jehovah would raise up.
Thus saith Jehovah to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand
I have holden, to subdue nations before him, and I will loose the
loins of kings; to open the doors before him, and the gates shall not
be shut. I will go before thee, and make the rough places smooth;
I will break in pieces the doors of brass, and cut in sunder the bars
of iron; and.I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden
riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that it is I, Jehovah,
who call thee by thy name, even the God of Israel. For Jacob my
servant’s sake, and Israel my chosen, I have called thee by thy name:
I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me (Isa. 45:1-4).
While the Hebrew seer saw the great conqueror anointed
by Jehovah for the special task of releasing the Jewish captives
and restoring them to their homeland, Cyrus claimed to be sent
by the god Marduk. The famous inscription of the victor, re-
corded on a clay barrel, relates the amazing story of the con-
quests of him who plainly regarded himself as a man of destiny,
and vividly illustrates the prophetic message of the Hebrew
seer:
Marduk .. . sought a righteous prince, after his own heart, whom
he took by the hand. Cyrus, king of Anshan, he called by name,
to lordship over the whole world he appointed him. . . . To his city
Babylon he caused him to go, he made him take the road to Babylon,
going as a friend and companion at his side. His numerous troops,
in number unknown, like the water of a river, marched armed at
his side. Without battle and conflict he permitted him to enter Baby-
lon. He spared his city Babylon a calamity. Nabunaid, the king,
who did not fear him, he delivered into his hand.?
1 Robert W. Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (New York, 1912), p. 381,
302
Jupan Unper PErsia 303
I. PERSIA AND THE RESTORATION OF JupAH

The mighty Persian Empire which arose upon the collapse
of Neo-Babylonia lasted from its founding by Cyrus the Great
in 539 B. c. until its conquest by Alexander the Great in 333 B.c.
At the height of its power it stretched from India on the east
to the Grecian Archipelago on the west and from the Danube,
the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea on the north
to the Arabian and the Nubian deserts on the south (Esth. 1:1;
10:1). It was nearly three thousand miles long and five hundred
to fifteen hundred miles wide, with an area of some two million
square miles. In this huge kingdom Judah was a tiny depend-
ency, virtually lost in the stretch of immense empire. The
importance of the little Jewish state in the moral and spiritual
history of the world, however, was far greater than its territorial
insignificance would suggest.
1. Cyrus’ Decree and Contemporary History. Cyrus’ edict,
recorded in II Chronicles 36:22, 23 and Ezra 1:2, 3, permitted
the Hebrew exiles to return to Palestine and rebuild their temple:
Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth
hath Jehovah, the god of heaven, given me: and he hath charged
me to build him a house in Jerusalem which is in Judah. Whoever
there is among you of all his people, his God be with him, and let
him go up to Jerusalem ... and build the house of Jehovah... .
This royal proclamation, separated of necessity from its de-
tailed historical context as it is in the Bible, has seemed strange
to many critics, and, as a result, its authenticity has been seriously
questioned. However, archeology has demonstrated that Cyrus’
concession to the Jewish exiles was not an isolated act, but the
general policy of a remarkably humane leader of conciliating
his new subjects by showing favor to their religions.
After Cyrus had taken Babylon, one of his first acts was to
restore all the gods to their native cities. Among these was
the moon god of Ur. At that site a gate of the sacred en-
closure was found to have been repaired by bricks bearing
Cyrus’ name and on a broken inscription the conqueror says:
“Sin (the moon god), the illuminator of heaven and earth, with
his favorable sign delivered into my hands the four quarters of
the world, and I returned the gods to their shrines.” And on
the bricks of the repaired gateway he says, “The great gods have
delivered all the lands into my hand; the land I have caused
to dwell in a peaceful habitation.”?
2 Sir Frederic Kenyon, The Bible and Archeology (New York, 1940), p. 141.
The famous cylinder of Cyrus, discovered by Hormuzd Ras-

sam in the nineteenth century, is also in full agreement with
the royal edict as recorded in the Bible and shows that Cyrus
reversed the inhuman policy of deporting whole populations
practiced by Assyrian and Babylonian conquerors.
From ... to Ashur and Susa, Agade, Ashnunnak, Zamban, Me-
turnu, Deri, with the territory of the land of Gutium, the cities on
the other side of the Tigris, whose sites weré of ancient foundation—
the gods, who dwelt in them, I brought back to their places, and
caused them to dwell in a habitation for all time. All their inhabi-
tants I collected and restored them to their dwelling places. .. . May
all the gods, whom I brought into their cities, pray daily before Bel
and Nabu for long life for me. . .
2. The Return of the Remnant. The decree of Cyrus is dated
in Scripture in the conqueror’s first year 539-538 B. c. (Ezra 1:1)
and by 537 s.c. the actual return must have gotten under way.
But there was no rush on the part of the majority of the Jews,
now comfortably settled in prosperous professions and trade in
Babylonia, to join a pioneer band of exiles to face the physical
and economic rigors of rebuilding their desolated homeland.
Despite substantial gifts to aid those who would return (Ezra
1:6), and even the restoration by Cyrus of the vessels which
Nebuchadnezzar had taken from Jerusalem (Ezra 1:7,8), a
small band of less than fifty thousand was all that set out on
the trek back to the national homeland (Ezra 2:64, 65).
Prominent among the leaders who conducted the band of
returning exiles back to Palestine were Sheshbazzar (Ezra 1:11)
and Zerubbabel (Ezra 2:2). These names, as is now known
from discoveries in this area, are good Babylonian formations,
as would be expected of men born in Babylonia, Zerubbabel
(zer-Babel), meaning “offspring of Babylon” and Sheshbazzar
(Shin-ab-usur), signifying apparently, “O moon god, protect the
father.”*
When some of the more prominent heads of families came to
the temple site in Jerusalem and saw the remains of the havoc
wrought by Nebuchadnezzar’s army more than a half century
before, they gave to the treasury of the work “sixty one thousand
darics of gold and five thousand minas of silver” to rebuild the
house of God (Ezra 2:68).
The “daric” (“dram” A.V.) is actually the Hebrew word for
3 Rogers, op. cit., p. 383.
4Cf. W. F. Albright, “Recent Discoveries in Bible Lands,” in Young’s Analytical Con-
cordance to the Bible (New York, 1936), p. 36. R. D. Wilson in International Standard
Bible Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids, 1939), p. 2766.
Jupau Unper PEeErsIA 305
the Greek drachma. Under an erroneous notion that use of

this Greek coin would not have been current in Palestine and
non-Greek lands until after the conquests of Alexander the Great
(c. 330 B.c.), C. C. Torrey and other scholars have employed
this reference to the drachma and also that in Nehemiah 7:70
to support the theory that Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles were
all written by one man, “the Chronicler” who did not live till
about 250 B.c.®
Archeological evidence now shows that the Attic drachma was
in use as a standard coin in Palestine from the middle of the
fifth century B.c. on.* In the excavations at Beth-zur,’ several
miles south of Jerusalem, six drachmas belonging to the Persian
level were unearthed in 1931,* and in the fourth century the
Attic drachma became the official coinage of the Jewish state,
now known from several recently discovered ancient imitations
of Attic coins, inscribed with “Yehud,” the Aramaic name of
Judah.°
3. The Beginning of Work on the Temple. Before actual
work on the temple was begun, the altar of burnt offering was
set up at Jerusalem and part of the ancient worship at least,
was resumed in the seventh month of the first year of the
return (Ezra 3:1-6). Meanwhile funds were being raised for
the construction of the temple. Masons and carpenters were
hired and “cedar trees from Lebanon” ordered from the Tyrians
and Sidonians to be floated by sea to Joppa and transported
overland to Jerusalem, as in the days of Solomon (Ezra 3:7).
From earliest times the Lebanon region supplied cedar for
temple building. Gudea, a king in the Mesopotamian city of
Lagash, as early as the twenty-second century B.c. sent to the
Amanus mountains in the general Lebanon region to obtain
cedar wood to rebuild a temple.’ About 1080 8. c. a man named
Wenamon was sent from Egypt to Lebanon to obtain fine timber
to construct a sacred barge.'’ Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon
left record of his visit to Lebanon and his impression of the
5 R. Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old Testament (New York, 1941), pp. 812f, 830.
7 Ovid R. Sellers, The Citadel of Beth-zur (Philadelphia, 1933), pp. 69ff.
8w. F. Albright, Archeology of Palestine and the Bible (New York, 1935), p. 227.
9 Albright in Old Testament Commentary, p. 154; and in The Old Testament and
Modern Study, ed. by H. H. Rowley (Oxford, 1951), p. 21.
10 J, P. Free, Archeology and Bible History (Wheaton, IIl., 1950), p. 239.
11 George Barton, Archeology and the Bible (7th ed.; Philadelphia, 1937), pp. 449-453.
“mighty cedars . . . tall and strong, of wonderful beauty, whose

dark appearance was remarkable. . . vu
In the second year of the return the foundation of the temple
was laid (Ezra 3:8-13) and prospects were fair for the rapid
completion of the edifice. But unexpected events postponed
work for some fifteen years. Trouble came from the inhabitants
of the land, descendants of peoples deported into Palestine from
foreign countries by the Assyrian emperors Esarhaddon (680-
669 B. c.), son and successor of Sennacherib, and “the great and
noble Asnapper” (668-633 B.c.), evidently the famous Ashur-
banipal from whose library, discovered at Nineveh, came the
Babylonian Creation and Flood stories (Ezra 4:2, 10).% This
half-pagan population offered to help in the construction of
the temple. When such aid was wisely refused, doubtless on
the basis of the danger of idolatrous contamination, the people
became deadly foes of the young Jewish state and did every-
thing in their power to hinder the construction of the temple
and the city walls.
4. Ezra-Nehemiah and the Elephantine Papyri. The adver-
saries of the land went so far in their opposition as to write
letters to the Persian monarch falsely accusing the Jews. In
this way they succeeded in stopping the work on the temple
temporarily. Cyrus, the great benefactor of the Jews, was killed
in battle in 530 B.c. and was succeeded by his son Cambyses,
who reigned ‘from 530-522 B.c. It was to this monarch (ap-
parently called Ahasuerus in Ezra 4:6 and Artaxerxes in Ezra
4:7, 11, 23) the opponents of Judah and Jerusalem wrote their
incriminating charges.
The letters recorded in Ezra 4, representing the correspond-
ence between the adversaries of the Jews and the Persian king,
are written in Aramaic and their authenticity has commonly
been denied by scholars.* But archeology has once again ren-
dered a verdict against the critical view in the evidence furnished
by the now-famous Elephantine papyri. These are letters in
Aramaic, the language of diplomacy and trade throughout
western Asia in the Persian Period. They date from the period
500-400 B.c. Written by Jews living in the military colony on
the island of Elephantine located at the First Cataract of the
12 Ibid., p. 478.
13 See Chapters II and IV of this book.
14 Cf. C. C. Torrey, The Composition and Historical Value of Exzra-Nehemiah (Giessen
1896) and Ezra Studies (Chicago, 1910),
JupAuH UNpER PErRsIA 307
Nile in Egypt and discovered in 1903, these documents constitute

the most important archeological source for the books of Ezra
and Nehemiah.!*
The most valuable single result of the papyri finds in Egypt,
besides shedding a great deal of light on matters of detail, is
to demonstrate that the Aramaic employed in Ezra is character-
istic of the fifth century B. c. and that the letters recorded in the
fourth chapter of Ezra show the same general style and are
written in the same language as the Elephantine papyri and
other more recently discovered letters of the same period."®
5. Darius the Great and the Completion of the Temple. The
appearance of Haggai and Zechariah, urging the returned rem-
nant to finish the temple, work upon which had been stopped
by the Jews’ enemies since the laying of the foundation in 535
B. C., is dated in the second year of Darius (520 8. c.). Likewise,
the completion of the house in hearty response to the prophets’
message is dated on the third day of the month Adar in the
sixth year of Darius (March 12, 515 s.c.).17
This Persian ruler is the famous Darius I, The Great (522-
486 z.c.), of the monuments, whose exploits in saving the realm
of Cyrus from destructive civil war are graphically portrayed
on the trilingual Behistun Inscription, one of the most important
archeological monuments ever to be discovered, and which
proved the key to the decipherment of Babylonian-Assyrian
cuneiform.'® Darius continued the beneficent policy toward the
Jews, permitting and encouraging them to complete the restora-
tion of the temple at Jerusalem. When complaints were lodged
against the project by the governor, Tatnai, and others (Ezra
5:3), Darius ordered a search of the well-kept archives of Cyrus,
and at Achmetha (Ecbatana), the summer capital of the Persian
kings, found the original decree-roll authorizing the work (Ezra
6:1-5). Whereupon Darius issued a new edict, forbidding
hindrance to the Jewish project and ordering a magnanimous
contribution toward its completion and upkeep (Ezra 6:8).
6. Xerxes and the Book of Esther. Darius was succeeded on
the throne of Persia by his son Xerxes (486-465 3. c.), the better
known Greek form of the Persian Khshayarsha, rendered in
15. Sachau, Aramaeische Papyrus und Ostraka aus einer juedischen Militaer-K olonie
zu Elephantine (2 vols. 1911); A. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C,
(Oxford, 1923).
18 See Chapter II of this book,
Hebrew as Ahasuerus (Esth. 1:1), as G. F. Grotefend’s decipher-

ing of inscriptions at Persepolis, the main capital of Persia from
the time of Darius I on, indicates. Xerxes attempted to conquer
Greece but suffered reverses at Thermopylae, was defeated in
a naval battle at Salamis, and humiliated at Plataea (479 B.c.).
The Book of Esther opens in the third year of Ahasuerus’
reign (Esth. 1:3), but Esther was not made queen till his
seventh year of rule (Esth. 2:16), evidently after the king had
returned from Greece (479 B.c.), when Herodotus specifically
relates that he paid attention to his harem.’® However, because
the events of the story and the characters, except the King
Ahasuerus, are as yet unknown from secular history, numerous
critics deny the historicity of the book, except as history may
be woven into fiction. A. Bentzen, for example, calls it a “his-
torical novel.”?°
Although it is true that archeology as yet cannot prove the
actual historicity of the book, it supplies ample illustrative evi-
dence pointing to its genuineness. There is a notable absence
in it of Hellenistic coloring or of Greek words, suggesting a
date at least before the late fourth century B.c. A. Bentzen,
despite his contention that the book is nothing more than his-
torical fiction, is forced to confess that “the story teller knows
something of the administration of the Persian kingdom, and
especially of the construction of the palace at Shushan.””
It is now well-known from excavations that “Shushan the
Palace” (Esth. 1:2) refers to the acropolis of the Elamite city
of Susa, on which site magnificent ruins remain of the splendor
of the Persian kings. The French excavators between 1880-1890
uncovered Xerxes’ splendid royal residence covering two and
a half acres. “The finds at Susa from the period of Xerxes were
so astonishing that the Louvre in Paris devoted two large rooms
to the exhibition of these treasures.”?? In fact, “there is no event
described in the Old Testament whose structural surroundings
can be so vividly and accurately restored from actual excavations
as ‘Shushan the Palace.’ ”?*
Although the names Vashti and Esther have not been found
in contemporary sources, both have satisfactory Persian ety-
19 1X, 108.
ayso Bentzen, Introduction to the Old Testament (Copenhagen, 1948), Vol. II, p. 192
22 Free, op. cit., p. 245.

23 Ira Price, The Monuments and the Old Testament (Philadelphia, 1925), p, 408.
Jupan UnNpeEr PErsIA 309
mologies and there can be no reasonable doubt that they are

historical. The name Mordecai is Babylonian Mardukai, occur-
ring quite frequently in late Babylonian inscriptions, and is
derived from the name of the god Marduk. The names of the
chamberlains and other Persians in the book cannot as yet be
proved authentic, but since many of them are apparently Elamite,
the recent discovery of numbers of Elamite administrative tab-
lets from the reign of Artaxerxes I bids fair to illuminate the
problem.
Especially illuminated by the discoveries at Susa is Haman’s
method for fixing the date for the destruction of the Jews by
casting dice (Esth. 3:7). M. Dieulafoy, the excavator of Susa,
actually recovered one of these quadrangular prisms on which
were engraved the numbers one, two, five and six. The word
for “die” at Susa at this time was pur, now known to be derived
from Assyrian puru, with the same meaning. “They cast Pur,
that is, the lot” (3:7), is an explanation added for the Jews,
to indicate that the ceremony at Susa answered to the same
practice of “casting the lot” among them.”
II, JUDAH AND THE END OF THE OLD TESTAMENT PERIOD
After tracing the history of the post-exilic community up to
the completion of the temple at the beginning of 515 B.c., the
Book of Ezra passes over the following fifty-seven years in si-
lence. The sequence of events is resumed in chapter seven with
the account of the arrival of Ezra and his company from Baby-
lon (458 B.c.) in the seventh year of the reign of Artaxerxes.
This is undoubtedly Artaxerxes I Longimanus (465-423 B.c.),
although some scholars” insist it is Artaxerxes IT Memnon (404-
359 B.c.), the seventh year of whose reign would place Ezra
after Nehemiah (398 s.c.).?* Future archeological discoveries
will doubtless corroborate the earlier date of Ezra, which
represents the present Scriptural sequence.
1. Ezra’s Religious Reform. Belonging to a_high-priestly
family and a “ready scribe in the law of Moses” (Ezra 7:1-6),
Ezra and his company belonged to those exiles who cherished
thoughts of their distant temple and the sacred institutions and
traditions of their people. Accordingly, they were willing to
24 Ibid.
25 Oesterley and Robinson, A Flistory of Israel (Oxford, 1932), Vol. II, pp. 114-118.
26 Cf, Finegan, op. cit., p. 200.
leave the ease and financial security of Babylon and undertake

the hazardous four-month journey to their homeland.
With the aid of influential Jewish courtiers and availing him-
self of the tolerant policy of the Persian monarchs, Ezra was
able to enlist the help of Artaxerxes. Imperial edict and royal
aid (Ezra 7:11-26) made possible the venture, which was to
prove of incalculable benefit to the restored Jewish state.
Ezra conducted a great reform and revival. He restored the
separation of those who had intermarried with the people of
the land, requiring that they put away their strange wives
(Ezra 7-10). He also expounded and enforced the injunctions
of the law of Moses (Neh. 8:1-10:39). Tremendous moral and
spiritual undergirding of the post-exilic community was the
result.
2. Nehemiah’s Return to Jerusalem. Belonging to a family
which originally came from Jerusalem, since he refers in his
memoirs to his father’s sepulchres in that city (Neh. 2:3, 5),
Nehemiah had a deep love for the home of his ancestors. At
the court of Artaxerxes Longimanus, he came to occupy the
important and trusted position of cupbearer to the king (Neh.
2:1). In the winter of the year 445 B. c., when the court resided
in Shushan, Nehemiah received information from some Pales-
tinian Jews of the sad state of Jerusalem’s defenses. Being a
favorite of the king, he was given the governorship of Judaea,
with guarantees of safe conduct and credentials to Persian au-
thorities in Syria to provide the materials necessary for the city’s
reconstruction (Neh. 2:7-9).
That the Persian king under whom Nehemiah served as cup-
bearer and who aided him in his work on behalf of Jerusalem
was Artaxerxes I, and not Artaxerxes II, is indicated by the Jew-
ish papyri from Elephantine. These papyri written in the gen-
eration after Nehemiah (about 408-407 3B.c.) mention several
personalities named in the Book of Nehemiah, such as Nehe-
miah’s brother Hanani (Neh. 7:2), Sanballat “the governor of
Samaria” (Neh. 2:10) and the high priest Johanan (Neh. 12:22).
The mention of Sanballat is particularly significant because
he is named in the Bible as one of the chief adversaries of Nehe-
miah in the latter’s plans to restore the walls of Jerusalem, to
which task he set himself shortly after his arrival in the city
(Neh. .2:11-20). Moreover, it is important to have this extra-
Biblical authentication of the name of the Persian governor of
Jupau Unper Persia 311
Samaria about the third quarter of the fifth century 3.c. in

strict agreement with the Biblical notice that Nehemiah came
to Jerusalem in 444 B.c.
It is also interesting to discover that, despite his Assyrian
name, Sanballat was a Jew by religion, known now from the
fact that his two sons, who succeeded their father, were given
such good Jewish names as Delaiah and Shelemiah and that
the Jewish residents of Elephantine dispatched messages to
them, soliciting their assistance in rebuilding the temple of
Yahweh there, which had been destroyed by the Egyptians
in an anti-Jewish program around 411 B. c.??
The letter referring to Sanballat’s sons is dated in “the 17th
year of Darius the King” the date being 407 B.c., since Darius II
(423-404 B.c.) is meant. This is decisive evidence that San-
ballat himself was governor some time previously, in the time
of Nehemiah’s governorship, as the Bible indicates.
Among the other prominent leaders of the opposition to
Nehemiah’s restoration of the walls of Jerusalem the Bible names
“Tobiah, the Ammonite” and “Geshem, the Arabian” (Neh. 2:
19). These names are also authenticated by archeology. One
of the so-called Zeno Papyri found at Gerza in the Faiyum,
coming from the archives of an Egyptian official named Zeno
of the era of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-246 B.c.), and fre-
quently dealing with Palestinian affairs, is a letter from “Tobias,
the governor of Ammon,” doubtless a descendant of Nehemiah’s
foe.”®
Transjordania itself has also yielded evidence of the family
of Tobiah. At Araq el emir near present-day Amman are the
ruins of the palace of this prominent Ammonite dynasty with
the ancestral tombs of the Tobiads nearby.”® The name of Tobiah
is cut deep in the rock and written in an archaic Aramaic script,
which Pere Vincent assigns to Tobiah II in the third century
B.C.,°° but which Albright points out may date as early as
400 s.c. and be actually identified with Tobiah I.”
The name of “Geshem, the Arabian,” the third prominent
opponent of Nehemiah (Neh. 6:1), called Gashmu (Neh. 6:6),
27 A. Cowley, op. cit., pp- 113f; James C. Muir, The Spade and the Scriptures (Nashville,
1940), p. 179.
29 Jbid., p. 133.
80 Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society, II, pp. 55ff.
31 Archeology of Palestine and the Bible, pp. 171, 222.
eh PA ARCHEOLOGY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT
is also authenticated extra-Biblically. It is now known from a

recently interpreted Lihyanic inscription that Geshem the Ara-
bian was Persian governor of northwest Arabia.”
3. Nehemiah’s Restoration of the Walls. After surveying the
pitiable state of Jerusalem’s defenses on a night tour three days
after his arrival in Jerusalem, Nehemiah with persuasive appeal
and great success urged the people to build the walls. His
evident knowledge of engineering was coupled with fine organi-
zational skill. Priests, tradesmen, goldsmiths, apothecaries, as
well as those who were skilled artisans (3:15) were assigned
their portion of the wall. Women, too, aided in the work (3:12).
So great was the patriotic appeal of this project that volun-
tary workers from the nearby countryside and such towns as
Jericho, Gibeon and Mizpah left their summer harvesting to
work on the defenses of Jerusalem.** After fifty-two days of con-
certed effort the walls were completed, and consecrated with
great pomp and ceremony (12:27-43).
Jerusalem’s present-day walls with their two-and-one-half mile
circuit of masonry, containing eight gates and thirty-four towers
and variegated construction, tell much of the city’s more than
three millenniums of history. The walls still convey much of
the atmosphere of the typical walled city of the ancient Near
East and of Nehemiah’s day, despite the fact that most of what
is now standing is of sixteenth century Moslem construction.
The wall Nehemiah restored apparently had nine important
gates — the Sheep gate on the northeast (Neh. 3:1), the Fish
gate on the north (3:3), the Old gate on the northwest (3:6),
elsewhere called the Corner gate, the Valley gate on the south-
west (3:13), the Dung gate on the south (3:13), the Fountain
gate on the southeast (3:15), the Water gate on the east (3:26),
the Horse gate on the east leading to the royal palace (3:28)
and the gate of the Guard on the northeast (3:31).
4. Nehemiah’s Later Reforms. Nehemiah did not remain at
Jerusalem indefinitely after his activities in connection with the
building of the walls. He placed his brother, Hanani, and Hana-
niah in charge over Jerusalem (7:2) and he returned to his im-
portant duties at the Persian court at Susa. But in the thirty-
second year of Artaxerxes (433-432 B.c.), Nehemiah returned
32 Albright in Old Testament Commentary, p. 154; cf. Ludwig Koehler, Lexicon in
Veteris Testamenti Libros (Grand Rapids, 1951), p. 196.
33 Madeleine S. and J. Lane Miller, Harper's Bible Dictionary (New York, 1952), p. 484.
JupaAH UnpeER Persia 313
to Jerusalem to initiate some urgent reforms that had become
necessary.
_ The high priest Eliashib had committed a grave impropriety
in forming some sort of alliance with Tobiah the Ammonite and
eee . Jerusalem at the time of the restoration of the walls by Nehemiah (ca.
in turning over one of the sacred apartments of the temple to

this proven foe of the Jews for his use when he visited Jerusalem
(Neh. 13:4-7). Nehemiah expelled Tobiah, cleansed the temple,
set aright certain other temple irregularities, and initiated needed
reforms regarding sabbath observance and intermarriage with
pagan peoples (Neh. 13:15-28).
But of far greater significance was the discovery that one of
the grandsons of the high priest Eliashib had married the
daughter of Sanballat, governor of Samaria, the most prominent
antagonist of the work of Nehemiah (Neh. 13:28). Nehemiah
forthwith expelled the offender. This event apparently led to

the final rupture between the Jews and Samaritans. Tension
had been steadily mounting toward this climactic break under
the earlier vigorous reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah.
It is now generally agreed that this incident furnishes the
historical background of the Samaritan schism. Josephus, who
misplaces the story a century later in the time of Alexander the
Great, actually names the expelled priest as Manasseh, and adds
that he took with him a copy of the Torah when he fled to
Samaria and headed the rival worship established in the temple
built on Mount Gerizim.**
Josephus’ story undoubtedly reflects a correct tradition, which
is the basis of the religious aspect of the Jewish-Samaritan hos-
tility, so prominent in the New Testament times (John 4:9, 20).
It is also the explanation of the origin of the Samaritan Penta-
teuch and the almost incredible fact that this independent text
of the five books of Moses had its own distinct transmission by
scribes from the fifth century B.c. until its discovery in modern
times without any known contact with the transmitted Hebrew
text.
5. Malachi's Message and the Close of the Old Testament.
The concluding book of the Old Testament in our English order
fits into the period of Nehemiah or slightly later. The period
of Nehemiah’s absence at the Persian court just before his final
return and reform in 432 B.c. would be a likely time, as the
same abuses touched upon by Ezra and Nehemiah are inveighed
against by Malachi. The book very improbably, in any case,
dates after 400 B.c.
With Malachi’s prophecy the Old Testament came to an end
about 400 s.c. During the intervening four centuries, when
divine inspiration in its canonical aspect was in abeyance in the
period between the Old and New Testament revelation, sacred
writings called Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha appeared. These
writings, however, were not divinely inspired in the same sense
of the canonical Scriptures, and hence never attained canonicity.
During this extended interim, sometimes called the “Inter-
Testamental Period” or the “Four-Hundred Silent Years,” the
Persian Empire ran its course, crumbling with the rise of Alex-
ander the Great’s Greek Empire in 333 B.c. Various Hellenistic
kingdoms emerged from Alexander’s Empire, notably Egypt
34 Antiquities of the Jews, VIII, 3.
Jupan Unper Perrsta 315
under the Ptolemies and Syria under the Seleucids (c. 323-63
B.c.). About 63 B.c. Rome came into world ascendancy and
dominated the scene throughout and beyond New Testament
times. But the voice of inspired prophecy was silent after the
Old Testament canon was closed in the late fifth century B.C.
A number of sound reasons support the traditional and con-
servative view that the Old Testament was completed some-
time before 400 s.c. When the ancient writings are accepted
for what they are and what they claim to be, this position is
found to be reasonable and consonant with the internal evi-
dence of the books themselves. Moreover, tradition assigns the
completion of the Old Testament canon to the period of Ezra;
and the character of the great reformer and “ready scribe in
the law of Moses” (Ezra 7:6) and the nature of his time and
ministry make him an ideal figure to collect the sacred books
of his people. In addition, Josephus gives weighty testimony,
which cannot easily be set aside, that the canon of the Jewish
sacred literature was completed during the reign of Artaxerxes
Longimanus (465-423 B. c.).%°
5. Archeology’s Witness to the Close of the Old Testament
Canon. Numerous critics have held that a number of the books
of the Old Testament were written later than 400 s.c. Robert
Pfeiffer, following Bernhard Duhm and Paul Haupt and repre-
senting many modern scholars, holds that the great majority of
the Psalms were written between 400 and 100 B.c. and ex-
presses doubt that any of the contents of the Psalter is pre-
exilic.8® Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles are placed about 250
B.c.,27 Daniel about 167 B.c.,°® and Esther about 125 B.c.*?
With regard to the Psalms, comparative material from Ugaritic
poetry of the fourteenth century B. c. and other sources show
that “there is not the slightest valid reason to date any of the
Psalms below the fourth century B.c. at the latest.”*° Despite
the fact that archeology has vindicated the early date and his-
toricity of the books of Daniel and Esther in a number of im-
portant points, the large element of miracle and minute pre-
dictive prophecy in the former will perhaps never suffer liberal
85 Against Apion, I, 8.
36 Op. cit., p. 629.
87 jbid., pp. $12, 830.
88 Jhid., p. 765.
39 Jbid., p. 742.
scholarship to assign it a date that will grant it the full pro-

phetic sweep it claims for itself.
There are hopeful prospects, however, that discoveries will
continue to illuminate the Ezra-Nehemiah era and purge out
radical views such as those of C. C. Torrey, Stanley Cook and
Robert Pfeiffer, who would assign a late date of about 250 B.c.
for the author of these books and Chronicles, known technically
as “the Chronicler.”
Indeed, numbers of recent finds, in addition to the older
material from Elephantine, are rapidly disposing of such radi-
cal hypotheses as archeology enormously increases the knowl-
edge of the Aramaic of Ezra and of the life of the Diaspora
during the period of the restoration of Judah.
An Aramaic letter from King Adon of Ascalon, written to
Pharaoh-necho of Egypt about 600 3. c. demonstrates that Ara-
maic had already become the lingua franca of Palestine before
the Chaldean conquest, as implied in II Kings 18:26.** In ad-
dition to this, there are numerous recent finds of Aramaic papyri
of the late fifth and sixth centuries B. c. published by G. R. Driver
as well as a number of papyri from Elephantine in the Brooklyn
Museum published by E. G. Kraeling. Several hundred ostraca
from Elephantine, excavated long ago by Clermont-Ganneau,
will add their help in reconstructing the Biblical background
of the period of Ezra-Nehemiah.
These and future archeological discoveries will undoubtedly
have a beneficent and far-reaching ministry of illuminating the
sacred narative, as finds in the past have had. What is more
important perhaps is that they will continue to render invaluable
service in purging out extravagant views and radical theories
that have so seriously impeded the progress of sound and con-
structive Old Testament scholarship in the modern era. This
corrective service archeology is able to perform constitutes one
of the bright spots in the future of Old Testament studies.
LITERATURE ON JUDAH UNDER PERSIA
Torrey, C. C., Ezra Studies (Chicago, 1910).
Ungnad, A., Aramaeische Papyrus aus Elephantine (1911).
Weissbach, F. H., Die Keilinschriften der Achaemeniden (1911).
Wilson, R. D., “The Title ‘King of Persia’ in the Scriptures,” Princeton
Theological Review, XV (1917), pp. 90-145.
41 Semitica, I (1948), pp. 43-68; H. L. Ginsberg in Bulletin of the American Schools
of Oriental Research, III (1948), pp. 24-27; John Bright in Biblical Archeologist, XII
(1949), pp. 46-52.
Jupan UnNpER PERSIA 317
Albright, W. F., “The Date and Personality of the Chronicler,” Journal

of Biblical Literature, XL (1921), pp. 104-124.
Hoschander, J., The Book of Esther in the Light of History (Philadelphia,
1923).
Sanders, Frank K., History of the Hebrews (New York, 1928), pp. 225-
291
Herzfeld, Ernst, Archeological History of Iran (1935).
Schmidt, Erich F., The Treasury of Persepolis and Other Discoveries in
the Homeland of the Achaemenians. Oriental Institute Communica-
tions, XXI (1939).
Muir, James C., The Spade and the Scriptures (Nashville, 1940), pp.
161-181.
Wright, J. S., The Date of Ezra’s Coming to Jerusalem (London, 1946).
Olmstead, A. T., History of the Persian Empire (Chicago, 1948).
1953), pp. 257-287.
SCRIPTURE INDEX
DISD =leper e e 65
OES Sete a: nee 62
OIG alni Meenetnn iseet 84
SMe te US) arerna niet 8) 74
Os) 822) Ae ost heee 74
JEP sccecasaee 73, 100
Da Ms ORP scmmosor 73, 99
S520 4a meer reed 74 1492 ee LUS, Lay
OP a Meo nome ae ees 85
ODD] ce he ae 85
O72 Dine, wie hence hee re76
OND =2] teed. eater 86
O26 tere ee te, Tae 76
2 ee 76
OOM er eee 74, 86
LO eee e ee 85, 86
LORS SRO mere e lesen e.86
103810 meee 86, 90
lO? 3-12 meee 83, 85
Ose Ae eae e eee 87
ORs Oterepemstn hsRena ee50
AOEiUea 97, 263
TOR Sarl 2 eee 89, 90
263
TOSS eek acne 90
MORESO sdosogsbon ces:74
VO y/aartere ss cee 93
LO2 [ee eee 96
TOS2IRE 28 Gea eee 96
O32 2523 eres 193
O22 eens eink a99
1O225=30 Seen eee 96
VOS26 ty wey cect eos 85
OED Sas nate tet nee 86
O20 ern sreneneen 85
1G ee Re ee ne rey eat 102
ASHES eee eae haseinet221
1 Pe Ta 101
Uy Le Ie eens eee er100
IT Bao eh aie nenarsoo100
GS Beek cee 60, 70
Del Sete ees: 100, 103
O23 O eee rena 113
INEST PAS,” Ss casaniemochoics 96
2923 lene ee ee 108
ADTs 3\] mecihe108, 112
ILLS Pe oh aa 113
320 Scripture INDEX
DO Sige cate eet cniee ek 194 12:37 ....134, 137, 138 FM ee oe eae 93
PASE ESM NESS). Eazspennacee 113 1238S ea fee oe 138 OeJeel, Reser 69
UOee EM Dorr ne ala122 12:40,41 ....106, 141, 1283 ly ec 74
3 ORIN ea toni 122 150 Le7AD One ee 197
NSO Weerr UB WAT 124 eee een oe 106 LS 102 eee 202
SAS Ole ee ener 123 WENN,ICY noel BO, LIS, 19:2)8 sete keee 156
BIS As weitere 123 138 D3 Rs eee awe 174
SSS Pee Re ea ae 123 132 20% ete 137, 138 DAVE he sant eee 155
38 19 tetend aiteee 126 LACUS coe eeeee 137
3392 Om oe 170 1432) eee 134, 137 JOSHUA
She ketotllaMaceepee Aceeos 126 1423-3) eee eee 142 1212 Fe Ae ee 165
EONS te Weer eR RE ad 93 PSA en ee eee 12 PsNee ae eS HARES: 148
EACoe Dehee serene err 127 O57 erent 159 DDD ieneeee 147
STORINY e eeaenenes 197 DiAlG23=2 Dike ee 156 SG raf chert eee 166
SOM NO ee 192 Die3 Sieh xed he emer 153 3] Olean eeae 93, 170
3 Onl OMe ae 192 DDB Siren eens ee202 Sy aoe ene 145
3631-39 ene 192 DRT Coad Gamera entrar: 12 SI he ed eee eras: 176
36:40-43 oe. 192 DLO he aren ek 59 631-8329 eee 160
See me 129 ZO 4 hacnceeheere eee 215 CopUy ameter
teSRB re 160
SONA Merete eeret me162) DHAED BIER WR Re 232 6221 sakesee 160
AO Deere ea toren ae IBZ SAC AR ce eae ee170 62270 ee eee 151
ANG emebed tenner stent 133 SOx Oe ae eee 215 ES arte ace 163
rN ie lhAe ee ee re 129 See rae ee 162
LEVITICUS 8212 eee ee 162
Le ae WyNeeDe Rape eivre nen 4 oe 133
TO eee, eecoeeee 74 Oe eee eee 93, 126
AGS eerie te 170
T2252 ras cee ke 175 Qi]: A A ee ee93
4G Oot ene teat 129
1933 ences 202
AG) Game tener ect re 133 10:1 2a ee 151
Oe en Meee iets AO ee 74
AG i/o eee 133 1025) sack 93
PAOD peicernah eae 53 202
AGB 4 es: 2%}, Sy 103130 12
QOS 22 re aay cee 175
CUPS Jeera a ean Re 106 LOS3653//eeeee 165
PORN ie ieee ee 202
S/nUDea eR Ere 133 10:38, 39 164, 165
26311 Bee ee eee 70
CS ac eee Reeeee cote 125 Vs| Saee eee 160
SOD eee en eres 133 NUMBERS 133 eee een 158
5 22 epee to ee 133 SiGe i hear Ace aL ea 59 NRIs sn ISL, as
50:26 ....133, 143, 144 Cos We dec hetnam
te, AU ax!212 11:16-12:24 ........ 160
CSSSs ae sera a Sa PAPA 125 ene 195
EXODUS AO ee eee ae ee a 22 1215 eee eee 195
pes ee iss sch atl Cc a 135 UPAR seh tanh Teme ce me 136 NISSAOY Ae ae 168, 252
1a ee eee 135, 144 ZOMTAS 7m veer Sy)! i ing8 Lee Oe 195
Net cascas 138, 140, 149 LO D4-2 1 192 15] cater ce eee 207
DISS pee ele NL 60, 70 POGesPaes eae aR Ed 12 15:8 tte eee 92
ORS etantencseichcs: 144 Dio! Seer nets 182 LQ re ee ee 212
DANO Serene espeers 136 DIVOC es 214 15236 bey 92
SciUefe ee erea ets NM, 93 Py Ueine tape haere 145 1SS60 isnt as coe PAW
EIRP enatte Neen Re RTe 142 LO OSne ee een 165
CO), Se ered cee A ete st 12 DEUTERONOMY L630 Ne eee 165
Dsl Oder ke. ene 143 Di] Die een ae 145 Vi a eee 165
S20 ep ets arnt 134 D2: 3a ters teiy 90, 91 17s Loa 199
D265 re 134 it MN eR orcs 93 13210 sates eee 213
125295 See 142 Sl 4: ae ae eee 195
Scripture INDEx 321
PON2G eet yet 92 1 oe een aeRO 186 PASTOR aexaplnen

te tenes as202
IBS)RaePANPS a sann Pale Lele5te te eee, pom os186 DOF) eee e aoe tn eee 203
LOSS eee haloes 190 TelD2 Warts 93 74555 HlPAS yee ty A203
OOD ieee ee 210 12:7 181, 182, 186 HoeKOR) Ie eee 22
23-2 Om eeassaee 92 spas Na Meet ce hone eat 181 Si OS1 2 aeeee 193
PANVEOA a oe BORE ae Me, 210 GOSI ta Bod ae 181
DAS 45 ec cocaceee 160 E38 [erga eas Weed, lisse II SAMUEL
PIL Ar ae eee 170 Lok2 Oe ee: 181, 182 les] t/<2; Seer eee 216
PA) a: 96, 101, Osa ere eee 186 Dla eam Goes 205
108 NGS230y eee ne 172 DRESSY. orshase satnbaacise 206
DAs iLara ete etn io sage 93 G3 Geer ee ae 181 3S ireeS iyIere ee 195
DVI Oe Pie nee 126 IWANGsMee Pema eynetics: 179 Se Sime tee. et ance 193
18:33Ogee ere a ek eee236 SG Aleta nent Seeks 87
JUDGES OOM Ty Bente tape 92 SILbaka ceecme: aX206
etl=SGe et rein 161 DOEAO eee atne ae200 DS One meen 92, 206
SO mete cee 3 92 PHI IS: RO 22, 190 DG=1 Ogee ee werent SSI
Ore Omer eens 158 PHOAs y etn aanOR 179 Deets PL eee 208
Thad WES WSie ieee. 164
Di WPA teeRinte oo206
Ae Saercee ee 165 I SAMUEL SG TyWe edehehe nee me ee 205
LELOMMErA Tron eon ate 199 NES Gee ee erent 198 Dialb/=2 > ates 1935205.
NE Tie) OMe reteset 161 LSS ence tester 22, 190 209
SANS Tee A emcee ee 161 De BY a ae cern arte 212) Oot = oar teenee Die
eso tener tee ween otha 165 DET tak nee eee ees 13] Gs 4 eke. caren 216
ES One ee Te es 93 Ce ye alicia Mt sped 213 (SOU IPAS ION oes oe atten 212
DiOleSimeon crepe aatko ae 160 2) EP) iil eee eee 193
Gallager e eee 212
BS MM eh Sate cok Biel 93 PSs a ot teleee 230237 CE ee oe ee PRIS}
SiGe wnr caso tekor 18, 182 CASIO) olUP ee sesbese 213
YA Aone oN Ace can 87
Bol seanblishil, WUsyA, 1teys! 2. ote Aa ent le a 182
SJB MENES unguoncschnos nave219
Se PERO) asc 184, 192 Syl eames hee 172
pope) Laas ackape a sateen eh 193
Sul ame ak ui 181, 182 Cigna Mimeoree Paeshe Dip
Bi DUe adn eecteee 192
SEO). necntakedeen US1ee SZ. BSE oe ae 182
Ge cea ae ee eter cerete 195
EO ON i Ren ee eee 199 ENA ee oes ee 93
be Pe ecreir eer 224
ATO NN eee Te 181, 182 See Oe ter mere re197
ISO teat Anetra hee 115
AL me AMER DR Ba 185 SiG meee ee ecu 210
S52Nie eee eee 252,
PENGTE ee dle SO ge 185 SIO =22 meen tee 193
oe) oth, BAO, 2X0
Dee eh ioe 218 ERG Mee tess ceeatae 192
SPULOM ate Naeger etre 209
yee ee he 185 eT EAs el ceeae 198
Cols waa ey ees 112
ByeHh Aken eae een anaes 181 IESG sareeeee 8ee193
SiliGre/a te ee 210
(G ginal Wo Acacemansnbe, 185 IBe eu 4ie ceeoe 201
tohthet Ream ale Reem pol 210
(Gigs Ree Pe eae ee 181, 182 13215214246) 201
LOST cee eo 220
(2)|r ae oe ee ee ALI TSO? Olen eae 198
KORA eh ioe asaana 205
SO Se erties 181, 182 SoD 2 echt Aer avet 199
106-19 eee 205
OR ay a ods soci 186 WA Ay ee case 192, 195
OSGi et tee 195
OAs. anemia 126 MESS So eee lee 201
Te 4-2 De ere ee220
Dut rains stines Silo W5e NETS ay sencsaaenens 201
ED S250 eco 220
NORE ree ee 181 6S 4o2 3 ears 216
12E2.6-3:11) eee ee 209
NOMS Em ene Cees 181 MOND Thats eran 199
CDi ee eer 192
Oe as eck 186 PANGNee 1S eR nesses ROmee 2138
SEDC SU ee eette 205 Rae ip,Se ted arate 195
ORGS me nuiar oe ener 192
DOr d ee cae es 70 ASN einai cer nO207
TOUS perce tee 181, 186
Scripture INDEX
2S eee 239
|
PPA 8 UE ie mame ane ae PEM
LARS Sanne ee eel nna 1/4
TAG2D-2o eemruaen 238
Ey ee 148, 243
TS einenen tema 242
1S ae ee genres ohoeWe
POET Te esse oe eri ee ote 244
2026-435 244
2 O'53A ee het hace ot245
225 llaueee 245
20) °3 Oe te 243, 253
DO SHO cate tg caeenene 174
DAIS eee eee oe291
WO
10
WW
NI
SI
STI
1
KINGS
Si a ee aha, Re, DP
622453 Olea eee 24
Sol Dime nee ae 245
BSTEd “esRemedy xls Pi 240
a Dises Maumee
Anwo urs 243
2 Ope ey itertare ees 243
PO)See ee.enedoa 246
BDi, ae eee Fat £ 246
OPSle deere cee eae242
NOE SP SS ocverweansn 246
12 eae S eee 247
EON) eo aseaue tanner 247
TESiN) eae ee 237)
IUCRPACA re ne pent Sate 250
13290 wee eee 247, 250
382 ae eee 250
SE2 Dieta, ater 247, 250
{esOe wee ete eee 250
RPP PIP a EI 255
TSS Sec te ee Doll
WESPDs Veen necs Dol
LO 29 Ae eee 256
Scripture INDEx
COT eptestee)
Pele tee en Oe306
Ae Aree eke ee 306
LES [erm eaten te tm, 306
I CHRONICLES ERD DR ES Meneh TER 306
SSRI atbeeneare aan 307
Gil Oaaeemr
mnt Ue 307
GUOmar er tater eee 307
alco ha ec eines 309
Esl 26 mene eee BAG)
TANG DA onCote eeeeeea 310
NEHEMIAH
1B leSeer = Sa ee eeeae 97
LGR Tak gee aiice 292
PII Aa phere ha dean A310
PES NaSee cis oe Re. 310
yesOe ete sine racesnt310
PRECIO edetsennntutec: 310
DrOM ery sea eas ail
CHRONICLES Sir le tensa cea pene ee tet one
De Apa peste Aa Pet oh AOE BaD
Op eeee ees eon Si
Sule aioeeres gee keSy
SFOS LThe Meet peasy«eee 312
Sc Alc aera Oem at DS
BP 8Eee a ha eee Sale
HOA oitia ct erate eon SD
Si Clr Se aan 312)
SHOT crcheatertenet Meeae Ble
(ot le ere ae 311
GEG mae etic ckane Sylel
WigOT RAPES Ta heSOs
EE OSES RB Sina eneBS
VEC Baten merce nee 305
ST SIMOREKS) oa aagoanose 310
STA) apa at he ae ae 108
DG Re een uh eae 93
BOER ATEN: Tee aaa oul
ORDO Serena ete) 310
|ROMEO 4atte acs on ant arer 286
heseAS rr nat Sil
WES ASS oa tbaneaan Sills
PO QPOs ni ceee pile
ESTHER
Teale ee etare 303, 308
Oy ae Ae mere 308
UGYS Beir ce meee he:308
DNS MRNenterr
tint tehaNc cat 97
324 Scripture INDEX
BYARUISSWIBSYS: | oobsonosce 268 DTD Chee conte a 818 MICAH

SIS Oe meetin hs ame 269 DVO Meee 79, 80 ATi Mee ee 289
SysWad elNSE ieier 270 DisOD ee eh eee 99 G6GOe eee 24
SiS Omen 269 DS 1Q219'— cee ee es 33 ZECHARIAH
STS OF ee ante 64, 270 DG ret eraee 80 yee Sn ee Oe TER a 231
SORES Ue be. aden 266 3 SD oe ee eee 79, 80 OS Ga. eease tee 79
BORD= Gi weenienee266 3856) Lit ue eee79
SONG Meee nee 289 SOUT We eee eee ae 80 MATTHEW
BORG aan eee ere 79 223 7/-4 O eeee 157
ASS Ae Mei eres 85
Ad SOL sit eee 170 A048 eel tae 293 LUKE
AS le 4 rete 302 AS meee eee 231 jd(es ee
re Ed 36
A'S S| Aart ae nae 85
DANIEL JOHN
GOS6 mer ek a nee 99
Lesley vate eee 290 i Othe Ger can eee 314
(fois dS) ae ene reseenes 79, 80
DA Oe ere a tree: 292 4:20) eee 314
AS leer creat 294 TAS) lle an Be eonse.273
JEREMIAH
Osler Ars ate 285 Sh Ren REA 16, 299 ACTS
G20 Methane 99 cH hae REL ben er 299 TiO Mekae ee eee 106
TSO) Sy areeeen eran ie 22 LEAR, cate Ps sateshoa:299 1 2h tae tn 36
2221S Oe eee 283 Slip ee 299 T4143)" fees 279
D Sine er aay ie ce 289 FS) lap ie Mince mi er oe 79 12¢23> 420 eee 269
NN Maananen eer eee 289 LOS20 ee heer en 79
ROMANS
PAS ON OX, Fee a eee 289 POEMS) sassasdaagovseens 105
HOSEA
ORSCy BeRape ir Bc ye ee 22
COIF ie ee Ree ee Ae 174 II CORINTHIANS
Dare ee ee Aa 293
SOM SED ee ia ree ee 12 Diy MPT ren, Sk 14
JOEL is
S224 mein haaee 284 SE HO a a a ae 158 Il TIMOTHY
Se], We ee NETS 285 YO CIM ER eee ete th Fe 79 Gece lil, 2)
EN/GDYo crcaannine 284, 287
I PETER
holies Ne Rt oes ess tee 287 AMOS 310.0 Seon ee 59
3 OD carer er Ar emere 294 is 3 a eee ere 246
SO See Lee eee 284 Dolo name otc cre tae 252 II PETER
cfDeira ead Creek 286 IPGisWea ny aie eneee 253 )7X0 ane nme eated 69
CRC Tate ae an 90, 192 os 2 NR a tench 253 te Dai ea eee eee 11, 69
50524 are, reeae 86 SOS er ey Mate eal253 Beh ot eet eee 62
StI iat en eee en 64 SN ae eee anyOh hea 8 253 35s 6 yar eeeee 63
eAcy Rie eee, 86 DD eee eer 70 Bios Ott each, See 62
525 49) On eee 279
LAMENTATIONS HEBREWS
24) Mee ene ae hee253
GASP WNs ee a Anema 6 98 LASS RL oe eee 34
GR426 ware eee 253
TItGy ee ee 14
TED ee ee 253
EZEKIEL
G2Gickcee cee ee Dow, REVELATION
VRAD een eee 292 Bel a ed ae eee MSs DES Matceac ae ee 87
WAS PE ee ee sty ee tee 2317)
Oa eee eee 90, 192 4629 eco cca eae 237
STO Sieeres ee Ale 292 LGOSEON ee ee 86
eal Ole ea tices ae 64 JONAH l/arancdael|o aera 101
OT er ee ey eee 81 Ae pn eerie
Rea ace f263 1 abr gee oe ee 86
DF: Omran aor aes eee 229 Ong Wee spans 263 18333 ee 86
BATSONOi uns Reed ererks ae 294 2.FO0 aeaaltRe
k At f263 ARS aloye cape Res 87
GENERAL INDEX
A Akkad, 30, 47, 87-88, Andrae, Walter, 89
Abdi-Hiba, 93, 146, 135, 298-299 Ankara, 202
>i Akkadian, 16, 96 Annals of Tiglathpile-
Abdon, 181 Akki, 135 ser III, 255
Abel, 43 Alashia, 81 Annunaki, 30, 33, 51,
Abel Beth-maacah, 256 Albright, W. F., 18, 68
Abel, F. M., 244 40 OD Ds or OO, Anshan, 299, 302
Abibal, 168 98, 117, 141, 148, Antart, 174
Abijam, 240 162, 164, 168, 177, Anthropology, 85
Abimael, 99 199, 284 Antilibanus, 194
Abimelech, 179, 181 Aleppo, 24 ‘Nit, PAS, Se. Zhi, Sul
Abou Kemal, 124 Alexander the Great, ap
Abraham, 15, 47, 71, 703930355 305 Anubis, 133
74, 76, 86, 96, 105- Aliyan Baal, 172 Apes, 225
118; in cuneiform, Alleman, Herbert C., Aphek, 193, 241, 244
127 73 Apocrypha, 12, 314
Abyssinia, 83 Almodad, 98 Apries CHophra), 284
Accad, 86 Al Muqgayar, 108 Apsu, 28-35, 68, 233
Achmetha, 307 Alt, A., 125, 154, 189 Agabah, 210
Adad, 51, 68, 172 Altman, Charles, 18 Arabah, 115, 151
Adadidri, 244-245 Amalekites, 201 Arabia, 83, 85, 86, 98
Adadnirari III, 247, Amarna Letters, 16, 36, Arabic, 96, 97
249-250, 253 36, 71, 84, 92, 97, Aram, 97, 98
Adam, 42, 43, 46 145, 228 Aram Damascus, 98
Adapa, 36, 40-43, 57 Amenemes I-IV, 107 Aram Naharaim, 104
Aden, 98 Amenhotep I, 144 Aram Zobah, 194, 195
Ader, 117 Amenhotep II, 107, Aramaeans, 97-98; 193-
Admah, 114 140, 142, 143, 150 194
Adon of Ascalon, 316 Amenhotep III, 40, 183 Aramaic, 96, 97
Adrammelech (Adad- Amenhotep IV, 92, 183 Araq el-Emir, 311
milki), 270 American Schools of Ararat, 64, 80, 100,
Aegean Sea, 80, 81 Oriental Research, 270
Aegean Tribes, 77 163 Arashamnu, 299
Afis, 250 Ammizaduga, 57 Archeology, definition
Agade, 88, 304 Ammonites, 186, 191- of, 9;
Ah, 136 192 Biblical, modern, 10;
Ahab, 23, 148, 228, Amon, 28 confirmation of the
243-245 Amorite, 69, 75, 93 Bible, 14-18; illus-
Ahasuerus, 306-308 Amos, 253 tration and explana-
Ahaz, 255-258 Amphictyony, 189-191 tion of the Bible,
Ahaziah, 245 Amun, 143 18-21; supplementa-
Ahiram, 10, 229 Anamim, 90 tion of the Bible,
Ahmose, 136, 144 Anath, 75, 172-174, 21-25
Ai, 20, 162 278 Ark, 59-60
Akhnaton, 92, 146 Anathoth, 211 Arka, 94
325
326 GENERAL INDEX
Arkantu, 94 Astarte 75, 174, 228, Barton, George A., 44,

Arkite, 94 278 47, 87
Armenia, 64, 80, 96, Astyages, 294 Bashan, 194
100 Atargatis, 174 Baumgartner, W., 93,
Amon, 191, 192 Athaliah, 243 170
Arpachshad, 97, 98 Athiratu Yammi, 174 Bedouin, 100, 125
Arpad, 270 Atrahasis, 53 Beersheba, 90, 114
Arrapachitis, 97 Atrahasis Epic, 57 Begrich, Joachim, 141
Arslan Tash, 248 Augury, 279 Behistun Inscription,
Artaxerxes, 292, 306, Azariah, 255 10, 307
309 Azekah, 285-286, 291 Bel, 214, 296, 304
Aruru, 30 Bela (Zoar), 117
Arvad, 94 Beloch, Julius, 226
Arvadite, 94 B Belshazzar, 16, 298-
Arwada, 94 Baal, 171-172 300
Asa, 239 Baal-Berith, 126 Belus, 97
Asaph, 217 Baal Cult, 278 Bene Hamor, 126
Ashdod, 172, 266 Baal Epic, 172, 174 Benhadad I, 24, 238,
Asherah, 23, 174-175, Baal Melcarth, 243 245; his inscribed
278 Baal-shamen, 172 stele, 239
Asherim, 174 Baaltis, 22, 190 Benhadad II, 24, 240-
Ashkenaz, 80 Baalu, King of Type, 241; 250-251
Ashkuz, 80 280 Beni Hasan, 10, 216
Ashnunnak, 304 Baal-zephon, 137 Benjaminites, 125
Ashtaroth, 75 Baasha, 239 Bentzen Aage, 308
Ashteroth-karnaim, 117 Bab ed-Drac‘, 115 Benzinger I, 233
Ashtoreth, 175, 228 Babel, 86, 87, 100-104 Berlin, 127
Ashur, 33, 89, 97, 154, Bab-ilu, 88 Berossus, 46, 48, 290
304 Baboons, 225 Berytus, 168
Ashurbanipal, 27, 40, Babylon, 16, 17, 27, Bethel, 1, 22, 190,
AO Die 9210, 2075 280, 281, 295, 300 236
289 Babylonia, 27, 83, 89, Beth-haccherem, 285
Ashurdan III, 253 100 Beth-rehob, 98
Ashurnasirpal II, 90, Babylonian Chronicle, Bethshan, 20, 23, 145,
244 282 161, 184
Ashurnirari V, 253 Babylonian Language, Beth-Shemesh, 145,
Ashuruballit, 282 96 284
Asnapper, 278, 306 Babylonian Noah, 50 Beth-zur, 305
Assembly of the gods, Bacchus, 135 Bina-Ishtar, 126
5,56 Badtibira, 46 Birs Nimrud, 103
Assir, 130 Baghdad, 153 Bit Adini, 271
Assyria, 89 Bahlikh River, 112 Bit Humri (a), 243,
Assyrian Empire, 78, Bahrein Islands, 65 257
89-90, 191 Baluah Stele, 191 Bitis, 133
Assyrian Inscriptions, Banu-Yamina, 125 Bitter Lakes, 138
85 Barak, 185 Bitumen, 51, 60f., 70,
Assyrian language, 96 Barhadad (Birhadad), 103
Assyrian laws, 153f. 239 Black Obelisk, 23, 246
Assyriologist, 70 Barrois, A., 248 Black Sea, 64, 79, 303
GENERAL INDEX S27,
Bliss, Frederick, 208, name, 158; conquest Cherub Throne, 230

286 of, 159-166 Cheyne; Ta Ks 240
Boaz, 230-232 Canaanites, 74-76 Child sacrifice, 175
Boehl, F. M., Th., 116 Canaanite cults, 175- Childe, V. Gordon, 85
Boghazkeui, 10, 36, WZ, Chosen People, 13
91, 202 Canaanite music, 216 Christianity, 13
Book of the Covenant, Canaanite Pantheon, Chronicler, 305, 316
154-155 169-175 Cilicia, 80
Borsippa, 103, 259, Canaanite religion, 75, Cimmerians, 79
296 NOM, WH Cities of Refuge, 211
Bosa, 226 Cane, 53, 65 Cities of the Plain, 115
Botta, Paul Emile 10, Canon, 12, 315 City of David, 208
16, 259 Canzelles, Henri, 154 Clay. Aw l.,3535.09,
Breasted, James H., Caphtor, 90, 192 70
130, 143 Caphtorim, 90 Clermont-Ganneau,
Brickmaking, 143 Cappadocia, 50, 79, 208, 316
Bright, John, 316 223 Coastal Plain, 113
Brinker, R., 190 Cappadocian Texts, 98, (@oatesun Cue rae LOMm on,
British Museum, 244, 154 Coelesyria, 194
Dy), Pew Carchemish, 92, We, Confusion of Tongues,
Bronze, 43 282 99-102
Bronze “Age, 113,..117 Carmania, 298 Conquest, 92; 158-165
Brook Zered, 192 Carmel, 145 Contenau, G., 94
Brussels, 127 Carthage, 75, 76 Cook, Stanley, 316
Budge, Ee-A. W527; Carthaginians, 177, Copper mining, 226-
64 179 227
Bull affiliations of Baal, Casluhim, 90 Corer Gate, 312
237 Caspian Sea, 64, 79, Covenant, 126
Bull-god, 236 303 Cowley, A., 307
Bull Inscription, 245 Cattle Raising, 43 Cradle of Civilization,
Burney, C,-F,, 182 @aucasus, 79, 302 40
Cedars of Lebanon, Creation, order of, in
Burrows, Miaillar, 20,
305-306 Babylonian literature,
160
Cedarwood, 52, 65, 31f.; in Genesis, 32
Byblus, 10, 190
305 Creation ‘Tablets, 26;
Central Sanctuary, 190 discovery of, 26; date,
CG Chagar Bazar, 127 27; Babylonian, 28-
Chaleol, 217 31; comparison with
Caesar Augustus, 111
Chalcolithic Age, 44 the Biblical account,
Caiger, S., 135, 280, Chaldeans, 98, 108, 31-35; explanationof
300 266 parallels, 35-37
Cain, 43, 46 Chaldean Empire, 108 Crete, 99
Calah, 89, 245 Champollion, F., 150 (Grosse eran kel ema
Calneh, 86, 88 Chariot Cities, 224 Crowfoot, J. W., 208,
Calno, 88 Chebar, 292 242
Cambyses, 299, 306 Chedorlaomer, 117 Cubit, 60
Camel caravans, 224 Chemosh, 242 Cult objects, 75
Cana, 79 Cherethites, 210 Cult of serpents, 75
Canaan, 71, 74, 75; Cherubim, 39, 230 Cult-vessels, 53
328 GENERAL INDEX
Cuneiform, 10, 27, 47 Dedan, 86 Drachma, 305

Cush, 74, 83, 85 Deimal, A., 27 Dram, 304
Cushan-Rishathaim, Delaiah, 311 Dream Inscription of
180-183 Delaporte, L., 92 Thutmose IV, 142
Cushites, 83 Delitzsch, Franz, 76 Driver, G. R., 316
Cyaxares, 79 Delitzsch, Friedrich, 40, Driver, S. R., 60, 69,
Cylinder of Cyrus, 304 194 80, 101
Cylinder Seals, 44, 88 Delphic Amphictyony, Dual Monarchy, 114
Cyprus, 81 190 Dubberstein, W. H.,
Cyrenaica, 84 Delta, 84, 90, 133, 134 291
Cyrene, 84 Demonism, 279 Duhm, B., 315
Cyrus II, 294, 298- Demons, 202 Dunand, M., 248
300; 302-305 De Morgan, Jacques, Duncan, Garrow, 132
Cyrus’ decree, 303-304 97, 154, 297 Dung Gate, 312
Deportation of Judah, Dur-Sharrukin, 16, 90
290-291 Dynasty of Kish, 87
D Deri, 304
Dagon, 172 De Saulcey, 208
Damascus, 25, 98, 112, Deuteronomy, 281 E
145 2202225 255, Deutsche Orientgesell- Ea, 28, 33, 41, 50; 53;
238-248; fall of, 256- schaft, 147, 294 65
258 DemVaux hak el. East India House
Dan, 149, 190, 236 LO S27 Inscription, 295
Daniel, Book of, 16, Dhorme E., 131 Ebal, 186
296, 299; person, Diaspora, 316 Ebenezer, battle of, 22,
290 Dibon (Diban), 242 193
Danish Expedition, 22 Dieulafoy M., 309 Eber, 96, 99, 125
Darda, 217 Diglat, 40 Ecbatana, 307
Dardana, 81 Dikhah, 99 Eden, 39, 40, 270
Daric, 304-305 Dillmann, A., 60, 61, Edom, 98, 117
Darius I, 84, 307 80, 81 Edomites, 96, 192
Darius II, 292 Dilmun, 49, 65 Eglon, 181, 184, 191
David, 23, 126; his Diodorus, 214 Egypt, 83-85
reign, 204-218; his Diphath, 80 Egyptian Army, 90
capture of Jerusalem, Display Inscription of Egyptian Dynasties, 84
206-209; makes Je- Sargon, 260 Egyptian Religion, 76
trusalem his capital, Divination, 126, 202, Egyptology, 84
209-210; his political 279 Ehud, 181, 184
and religious innova- Diviner, 126-127 Eighteenth Dynasty,
tions, 210-218 144
Djed Pillar, 231
Davidic Empire, 195 Ekallu, 59
Dodanim, 81
Davies, T. W., 202 Ekron, 145
Davies W.W., 156 Dor, 161
El, 170-171
Davis, John D., 298 Dossin, George, 126, Elam, 44, 97
Dawidum, 126, 210 248 Elamites, 97
Dead Sea, 113, 117 Dothan, 114, 145 El Elyon, 170
Dead Sea Scrolls, 10 Dougherty, R. P., 16, Elephantine Papyri,
Debir, 162, 164 299, 300 10, 306-307
Deborah, 181, 185 Dove, 64 El Hai, 170
GENERAL INDEX 329
Eli, 187, 190 Eunuch priests, 75 68; explanation of

Eliakim, 283, 293 Euphrates, 40, 83, 88, likenesses, 68-71
Eliashib, 313 96, 145 Food of Life, 41-42
Elishah, 81 Eusebius, 55, 168 Forbes, R. J., 61
El Kedah, 185 Evil-merodach, 17, Forrer, Emil, 194
Ellicote, C..Ji,. 75 283, 297 Fountain Gate, 312
Elohim, 170 Execration Texts, 127 Fountain of the Great
Elon, 181 Exodus, 106; route, Deep, 61-62
Eloth, 225 136-139; various Frankfort, Henri, 45,
El] Shaddai, 170 views of, 140; date 47, 102
Eltekeh, 211, 267 of, 140-148; objec- Free, Joseph P., 281,
Enchantment, 279 tions to the Biblical 296
Endor, 201 date, 149-152
Enkidu, 50 Exorcistic rituals, 279 G
Enlil, 29, 33, 49, 53, Ezekiel, 79, 292; Book Gadd) GC. J., 127, 282
55 of, 293 Gaddiel, 296
Ennugi, 55 Ezida, 293 Galling, Kurt, 232
Enoch, 19 Ezion-geber, 99; Solo- Garber, Paul L., 231
Enuma elish, 27-28 mon’s port, 224-226; Gardner, Alan, 136
Ephod, 212 copper refining there, Garstang, J., 131, 147,
Epiphaneia, 94 226-227 148, 162, 182, 208
Eponym Lists, 257 Ezra, 309-310 Gate of the Guard,
Erech, 44, 50, 86, 87- 312
88, 102 Gath, 145
Ereshkigal, 36 F Gaza, 91
Eridu, 19, 40, 41, 44, Faith, 14 Geba, 145
46 Fall of man, 39-43 Gebal, 22, 168
Eridu Story of Crea- Familiar spirits, 202 Gedaliah, 291
tion, 30, 33 Farming, 43 Gehman, H.S., 85, 197
Esagila, 30, 280, 296 Fayyum, 129 Genesis, Book of, 69,
Esarhaddon 79, 226, Fertile Crescent, 40, 84, We
264, 270, 277-281, 222; Gerar, 91, Li4, 7145,
289 Fertility cult groves, 192
Eshnunna, 45, 107, 153 237 Gerizim, 186
Eshtaol, 186 Figurines, 75 German Palestine As-
Eshua, 186 Filson, Floyd, 81, 114 sociation, 274
Esther, 307-308 Finegan, Jack, 46, 84, Gerza, 311
Etana, 57 102 Geshem the Arabian,
Eternal Life, 41 Fig, 241 alll
Etham, 137 Fire altars, 231 Geshur, 98, 195
Ethan, 217 First Dynasty of Baby- Gether, 98
Ethbaal, 242 lon, 33, 57 Gezer, 145, 161, 184,
Ethiopia, 85 Fish Gate, 312 2NO 22224
Ethiopic, 96, 97 Fisher, C. S., 242 Gezer Calendar, 274
Ethnology, 85 Flood, Sumerian ac- Gibbethon, 211
Etruscan Amphictyony, count, 48-49; Bibli- Gibeah, 16, 20, 22,
190 cal and Babylonian 114, 199-200, 229
et-Taiyibeh, 195 accounts compared, Gibeon, 190
et-Tell, 20, 162 55-65; contrasted,
65- Gibeonites, 165
330 GENERAL INDEX
Gibraltar, 81 Habur, 98, 112 Haupt, Paul, 315

Gideon, 181 Hadad, 172 Hauran, 117, 194
Gihon, 40, 83, 207, Hadad the Edomite, Havilah, 85, 99, 225
271-272 220 Hazael, 245-248
Gilboa, 193, 203 Hadadezer, 195, 4220, Hazarmaveth, 85, 98
Gilead, 117 235 Hazor, 181, 220, 224
Gilgal, 190, 201 Hadadezer of Aram, Hazrek, 251
Gilgamesh, Epic of, 41, 244 Hebrew alphabet, 275
49-71 Hadaru, 258 Hebrew Bible, 102,
Gimirrai, 79 Hadoram, 99 275
Ginsburg, H. L., 169, Hadrach, 251 Hebrew language, 96,
316 Hadramaut, 85, 98 M5 NUVAD)
Girgashite, 93 Hagar, 122 Hebrew Text, 314
Glueck, Nelson, 151- Halafian pottery, 44 Hebrews, 96, 125
152 935226 Halah, 259 Hebron, 114, 158,
Gobryas, 299 Hall, H. R., 108 190, 205
Goddess of fertility, 75 Halys River, 159, 202, Heidel, A., 27-28, 52,
Goetze, Albrecht, 153, 219 61
291 Ham (city), 117 Heinisch, Paul, 236,
Gog, 79 Ham, son of Noah, 74 292
Golden calves, 236 Hama, 94 Heliopolis, 231
Gomer, 79, 80 Haman, 309 Heman the Ezrahite,
Gomer River, 263 Hamath, 92, 94, 145, 2d
Gomorrah, 114 LS4e219 Dole 27) Hena, 270
Gopher wood, 57 Hamitic nations, 83-94 Herodotus, SO; 497;
Gordon, Cyrus, 20,21, Hammurabi, 27, 36, 223,295
121,.7169;. 237 88, 124 Herzfeld, Ernst, 294
Goshen, 133 Hammurabi, Code of, Heshbon, 181
Gozan, 259, 270 10, 97, 153-157 Heth, 91
Grafftti, 27 Hanani, 310 Hezekiah, 264-266;
Graham W. C., 230 Hananiah, 312 271-275
Grant, Elihu, 284 Hananu CHano) of Hezion, 239, 241
Great gods, 53, 55 Gaza, 250 Hiddekel, 40
Greeks, 77, 79 Hanging Gardens of Hiel of Bethel, 148
Gressmann, Hugo, 135, Babylon, 295 Hieroglyphics, 16
232 Hannah, 190 Hierombalus, 168
Grotefend, G. F., 308 Hanun, 195 High Places, 278
Gudea, 305 Haran, 22, 96, 98) Hilakku, 80
Gugu, 79 106, 112-113, 124, Hilprecht, H. V., 292
Guillaume, A., 279 2DOmarial Hiram I of Tyre, 99,
Gulf of Suez, 138 Harding, Lankester, 196, 205, 224, 226,
Guthe, Herman, 194, 286 229
208, 274 Harland; J.P 61 Hittite Empire, 92
Gutium, 299, 304 Harmhab, 183 Hittite laws, 153f.
Gypes, 79 Harranu, 112 Hittite monuments, 10
Hasmonaeans, 208 36, 97, 202 oe
H Hatshepsut, 144-145 Hittites, 91-92, 219 a
Habiru, 96, 124-125, Hattushash, 91 Hivite, 93
145, 150 Haubert, R. S., 288 Homer, 79, 91, 171
Genera INDEX 331
Honor, L. L., 269 Iron, 43, 44-45; 198- Jehoiakim, 283, 290,
Hooke, S. H., 120, 199 291
ean Iron Age, 198 Jehoram, 243
Hophni, 130 Irrigation culture, 156 Jehu, 23, 242, 245-
Hophra, 284 Irwin, William A., 246
Horeb, 153 102, 201 Jephthah, 181, 192
Horite, 93 Isaiah Manuscript, 275 Jepson, Alfred, 243,
Horse and chariot Ishtar, 48, 51, 53, 56, 220295
trade, 222-223 124, 228 Jerah, 99
Horse Gate, 312 Ishtar Gate, 17, 294, Jeremiah, 22, 24, 80
Horses, 223 296 Jeremias, Alfred, 32,
Hoshaia, 286 Isin, 107, 153 ODF Sy7;
Hoshea, 258-260 Israelite laws, 153f. Jericho, 146-148, 243
House of Omri, 243 Israelites, 96 Jeroboam I, 235-238
House of Plenty, 111 Ivvah, 270 Jeroboam II, 251-253
Hul, 98 Jerusalem, 92, 114;
Hums, 194, 210 capture by David,
Hurrians, 93, 144 J 206-209; capital of
Hursagkalama, 88 Jabal, 43, 216 Israel, 209-210
Hyksos period, 84, 107, Jabbok, 191 Jerusalem League, 183
134-135, 144, 147, Jabesh-Gilead, 198 Jerwan, 263
150 Jabin, 181, 185 Jezebel, 242
Jachin, 230-232 Jezreel, 183, 185
Jack, J. W., 141, 146, Jirku, A.;, 93; 117
I 287 Joahaz, 246-247
Ibleam, 210 ‘jacob, 0107," 12255 the Joash, 250
Ibshe, 130, 133 name in cuneiform, Job, 98
Ibzan, 181 127 Job’s Well, 207
Ijon, 256 Jacobsen, Thorkild, 19, Johanan, 310
Imperial Ottoman Mu- 87, 102 Joknean, 210
seum, 274 Jair, 181 Jokshan, 86
Indo-Aryans, 144 Janoah, 256 Joktan, 86, 98
Indo-Europeans, 83 Jaosh, 286 Joktanites, 85, 99
Indo-Germanic family, Japheth, 73-81 Jonathan, 198, 204
79 Japhetic Peoples, 73-81 Joppa, 305
Inge, Charles, 286 Jar handles, 297 Joram, 244-245
Ingholt, Harold, 94 Jastrow, Morris, 59, Jordan, 93
Inib-sharrim, 124 100 Jordan Valley, 115-117
Inspiration, 11, 12, Javan, 79-81 Joseph, 55, 80, 115,
iT Bie bePeer | Jebel Kuruntul, 147 207, 290, 314-315
Intermediate Period in Jebel Musa, 152 Joshua, 74, 76
Egypt, 84 Jebel Usdum, 115 Josiah, 281-283
Intertestamental Period; Jebus, 92 Jubal, 43, 216
314 Jebusites, 92-93; 165, Judah in Exile, 289-
Tonians, 79 206-209 300; under Persia,
Tran, 96 Jeduthun, 217 302-316
Irhuleni of Hamath, Jehoahaz, 256, 283 Judaism, 13
244-245 Jehoiachin, 17, 283, Judges, Period of, 22;
Irkata, 94 290, 291, 293 179-182; events placed
ae2 GENERAL INDEX
in the chronology, Klein, S., 210 Levites, 130-132; cities

182-187 Knudtzon, I. A., 92 of, 210
Knumhotep, 130 Lex Talionis, 156
K Koehler, Ludwig, 93, Libnah, 270
Kabar Canal, 292 170 Libyans, 90
Kadesh, 117, 145, 194 Koldewey, R., 294 Lipit-Ishtar, 153
Kalama, 88 Kom el-Sultan, 147 Little Zab River, 89
Kamose, 144 Kosh, 83 Loehr, Max, 210, 211
Kanish, 97, 154 Koshar (Hothar), 175 opm lot
Kappers, C. U. A., 85 Kraeling, Emil G., 194, Loud, Gordon, 16
Kaptara, 90 223, 240, 316 Lower Egypt, 84
Karkar, 23, 244 Kramer, S. N., 49, 65 Lower Zab River, 52,
Karnak, 221, 238 Kuewe223 64
Kaushgabri of Edom, Kulkul, 217 eawashee2)l
280 Kul-tepe, 97 Lubim, 90
Kaush-malaku of Edom, Kuyunjik, 49, 89, 263- Luckenbill Da Dale
258 264 79
Keil, ©. B., 76 Kyle, M. G., 164, 284 ud a 902897
Kenaiah, 18 Ludim, 90
Kenyon, Kathleen M., 6 Lullu, 29
242 Laban, 122, 128 Lulluland, 122
Kenyon, Sir Frederic, Labashi-Marduk, 297 Lydia, 79, 97, 299
163, 208, 303 Labat, René, 27 Lydians, 97
Khatti, 184 Lachish, 20, 24, 162- Lyon, D>G., 242
Khorsabad, 16; 2:30; L6Sen2638se2souecol
259 Lachish Ostraca, 10, 24 M
Khorsabad Annals, 260 285-288 “Maachah, 98, 195
Khurru, 184 Lagash, 44, 305 Mabbul, 63
Kidron Valley, 206 Lahamu, 28 Macalister, R. A. Ste-
King L. W., 30, 64 Lahmu, 28 wart, 22]
King of the Sidonians, Laish, 145, 149 Mackay, Capt. E. 47
Deg) Lake Ballah, 138 Madai, 79
King’s Highway, 117 Lake Timsah, 133, 138 Magic, 202, 279
King’s Pool, 273 Lake Van, 80 Magicians, 133
King’s Vale, 117 Lammens, Henri, 214 Magog, 79
Kingu, 28, 30 Langdon, ©S,, 19) 27, Magurgur, 59
Kir, 258 33, 47 Mahol, 217
Kiriath-baal, 212 Language of Canaan, Maisler, B., 85, 158
Kirjath-jearim, 22 158 Malachi, 314, 315
Kirjath-sepher, 162, Larak, 19, 46 Mallon, Alexis, 134
291 Larnaka, 81 Mallowan, M. E. L.,
Kirkuk, 121, °154 Larsa, 107 44
Kish, 47, 48, 83, 87- Layard, Austen Henry, Mamre, 114
88 0 Beis Ais SO, QA Manasseh, 278-281;
Kit (Kiti), 81 263 314
Kition, 81 Lehabim, 90 Mannai, 80
Kittel, R., 204 Lenormant, 75 Marad, 87
Kittim, 81 Leroux, Gabriel, 230 Marduk, 27-35, 298,
Kjaer, Ay. 22 Leupold, H. C., 19, 74 302, 309
GeEngeRAL InpEx 333
Marduk’s Temple, 295 Mesopotamia, 71 meaning his name,

Mar-Humri, 243 Messerschmidt, L., 245 135-136; compared
Mari’, 247-248; 250 Messianic prediction, to David, 204
Mari, 88, 118, 124-127 13 Mosul, 44, 259, 263
Mari-aba, 99, 210 Methusaleh, 19 Mot, 172
Mari Letters, 10, 22, Meturnu, 304 Mound, 19f.
2; e265 Meyer, Eduard, 239, Mount Gerizim, 314
Marisa, 231 244 Mount Hermon, 195
Maritime Plain, 192 Michmash, 198
Marquet-Krause, Ju- Middle Bronze Age, N
dith, 162 113 Nabataeans, 86
Marriage laws at Middle Kingdom in Nablus, 186
Nuzu, 122 Egypt, 84, 107, 129 Nabonidus, 16, 108,
Mash, 98 Midian, 117, 142 281, 297-300
Mat Khatti, 92 Midianites, 96, 181, Nabopolassar, 19, 290,
Mattaniah, 284, 291 185 296
Matter and spirit in Migdal, 103 Nabu, 259, 297, 304
Babylonian thought, Migdol, 134, 137 Nabunaid, 297-300
34-35; 68 Milki-ashapa of Gebal, Nabunaid Chronicle,
May, H. G., 230 280 298-299
McCown, Chester, Miller, M. and J. Nadab, 241
207, 274 Lane, 100 Naholal, 210
Medes, 79, 299 Millo, 236 Nahor, 108, 112, 124
Mediterranean Sea, 80 Minnaean, 96 Nakhur, 112
Meek, Thophile, 130, Minni, 80 Nannar, 103, 109-112
131 Mitanni, 183, 228 Naphtali, 257
Megiddo, 16, 145, Mitinti, 267 Naphtuhim, 90
161, 209, 224 Mizpah, 114 Napoleon’s Expedition,
Megiddo ivories, 217 Mizraim, 74, 84, 90, 10
Megiddo stables, 224 223 Naram-Sin, 282
Melcarth, 231 Mizri, 84 Navy of Tarshish, 225
Melukhkha, 225 Moab, 24 Nebi Yunus, 264
Memphis, 84, 129 Moabite Stone, 10, 24, Nebo, 103, 296, 297
Menahem, 253-254 19], 242 Nebuchadnezzar II, 17,
Mendenhall, 124, 126, Moabites, 192 266, 289-297
210 Moloch, 279 Nebuzaradan, 291
Menes, 84 Monolith Inscription, Necho, 282
Merari, 130 23, 244 Necromancy, 202, 279
Mercer, S. A. B., 81, Montet, P., 229 Negeb, 158
93 Montgomery, J. H., Nehemiah, 310-314
Mermeptah (Merenp- 85)" 228 Neo-Babylonian Em-
tah), 140, 184; his Moon god, 109-112 pire, 108, 289-300
triumphal ode, 184 Mordecai, 309 Neolithic Age, 43
Merodach-Baladin, Morgenstern, Julian, Neriglisar, 297
266 214 Newberry, P. E., 143
Mes-anne-pada, 108 Mosaic Age, 123 New Kingdom of
Meschech, 79, 80 Mosaic institutions, 189 Egypt, 84, 107, 134
Mesha, 24, 191, 222, Mosaic Yahwism, 179 New Year's Festival,
242 Moses, 15, 35, 71, 130; 299
334 GrenerAL INDEX
New York, 89 Old Gate, 312 Patriarchal Period, 106-

Nile, 133 Old Kingdom in 107
Nile Valley, 10, 136 Egypt, 84 Patton, J; H.,36
Nimrod, 23, 83, 86-89 Old Testament, mean- Pekah, 255
Nimrud, 245, 246, 248 ing, 11-14, contribu- Peleg, 98, °99, 113
Nineveh, 22, 27, 33, tions of archeology to Peleste, 90, 158
44, 49, 88-90, 190, its study, 14-25 Pelethites, 210
263-264, 289 Olmstead, A. T., 89, Pelishtim, 90
Nin-Gal, 111 223 Peloponnesus, 79, 81
Ninhursag, 48 Omri, 23, 24, 228, Pentateuchal Laws,
Ninkarrak, 41 241, 242-243 153f,
Nin-Maradda, 87 Omrides, 249 Perez-Uzzah, 212
Ninurta, 55, 68 Ophel, 206, 272 Persepolis, 308
Nippur, 22, 48, 59, Ophir, 99, 224 Perseus, 135
88, 190, 292 Ophrah, 186 Persia (Paras), 294
Nisanu (Nisan), 270 Opis, 299 Persian Gulf, 64, 65,
Nisir, Mount, 52, 63, Oppenheim, Leo, 47 88
64 Oriental Institute, 16, Peters, John, 103
Nisroch, 270 260, 267 Pfeiffer, Robert H.,
Nitocris, 299 Orontes River, 23 198, 215, 296,.315;
Noah, 46, 56f., 58, Orontes Valley, 244 316
65f., 74 Osiris, 231 Pharaoh-Necho, 282,
Noah’s prophecy, 74-77 Osnapper, 278 316
Noahic Deluge, 46f. Othniel, 181, 183 Philistia, 90, 158
Nob, 22, 211 Philistines, 22, 90-91;
Nora, 226 P 158, 165, 192-193
Northern Kingdom, Paddan-Aram, 113, 194 Philo of Byblus, 168
289 Padi, 267 Phinehas, 130, 136,
Noth, Martin, 162, Pahel (Fahil), 184 190
190 Palestine, 74, 84, 90, Phoenicia, 74, 91
Nubia, 83 158-159 Phoenicians, 75, 91,
Nubian, 136 Palestine Exploration 196
Nuzu, 121-124, 154 Fund, 206, 272, 286 Phoenician Inscrip-
Nuzian Tablets, 97 Paliga, 113 tions, 81
Palmyra, 214, 222, Phoenician language,
271 96, 97
O Panamu of Samal, 257 Phoenician traders, 85,
Obal, 99 Paphlagonians, 80 158
Obelisks, 231 Papyrus d’Orbiney, 133 Phut, 84
O’Callaghan, Roger T.., Papyrus Marsh, 138 Pi-hahiroth, 137
121, 194 Papyrus Sea, 138 Pi-Hathor, 139
Occultism, 201-203, Parker, R., 291 Pillars of Hercules,
279 Parrot, A., 124, 125 231
Odyssey, 79 Pashur, 130 Pim, 199
Oesterley, W. O. E., Pathros, 90 Pinches, T. G., 300
309 Pathrusim, 90 Pirot, L., 94
Og, 160 Patriarchs, 15, 16 Pir Omar Gudrun, 57,
Old Babylonian Period, Patriarchal longevity, 63
88 18, 19 Pishon, 40
GENERAL INDEx 355
Pitch, 51, 60, 61, 70 Q Resen, 89

Pithom, 138, 149 Qalat Shargat, 89 Resheph, 175
Pittsburgh-Xenia Theo- Qatna, 22, 190 Reu, 113
logical Seminary, Qubbah, 214 Rezeph, 270, 271
162-163, 164 Queen of Sheba, 227- Rezin, 254-255
Plain of Esdraelon, 113 228 Rezon, 194, 220, 235
Plataea, 308 Rhodes, 81
Poebel, Arno, 59, 232 R Riblah, 271, 284
Pognon, H., 250 Raamah, 86 Rimmer, H., 63
Pohl, P. A., 153 Rabsaris, 268 Riphaean Mts., 80
Polytheism, 66 Rabshakeh, 268 Riphath, 80
Pool of Shelah, 273 Rachel, 123 River Chebar, 292
Pool of Siloam, 273 Rahab, 147 Robinson, G. L., 100
Porphery, 168 Rainbow, 62 Robinson, Theodore
Portable Shrines, 214 Ramah, 199 H., 198, 204
Posener, G., 127 Rameses, 137, 138, Rodanim, 81
Potiphar, 132 149 Rogers, R. W., 30
Pottery (Late Bronze Rameses II, 140, 163, Romans, 75
Age), 161 184 Rome, 315
Price, George M., 62 Rameses III, 90, 185, Romulus, 135
Price, Ira, 39, 244 192 Rosetta Stone, 10
Primogeniture, 123 Rameses IV and V, Rosh, 79
Pritchard, J. B., 169 185 Rowley, H. H., 15,
Promised Redeemer, 96 Ramoth Gilead, 245 LISS 22S eel 2;
Prophecy, 13f., 73 Rassam Cylinder, 232 167, 176
Prophet, 287 Rassam, H., 27, 30, vie Matrimonial Al-
Psalter, 217; Davidic 49, 304 iances, 228
authorship, 217; Ca- Ras Shamra Texts, 10, Rusafah, 271
naanite influence 16, 36, 75, 128,
upon, 218; date of 168-169, 278 S
composition, 315 Raven, 64 Saba, 85, 99, 228
Psammetichus II, 287 Rawlinson, Henry C., Saba’a Stele, 247
Pseudepigrapha, 12, 10, 258 Sabaean Language, 96
314 Re, 185 Sabaeans, 86, 98
Ptah, 217 Rebit-Ninua, 90
Sabai, 85
Ptolemies, 315 Redemption, 13, 99
Sabbath, 39
Ptolemy II Philadel- Red (Reed) Sea, 83,
Sabtah, 85
phus, 311 tio). 118374, kee
Ptores, 90
Sabteca, 86
Reed, W. L., 278
Pul, 253 Sachau, E., 307
“Refinery Fleet,” 225
Pulu, 253 Sacred courtesans, 75,
Rehob in Asher, 210
Pur (puru), 309 Rehoboam, 236 173
Put, 74, 84 Rehoboth-Ir, 89 Sacred music, 215
Puti-el, 131 Rehwinkel, A. M., 60 Saint Mary’s Well, 207
Puzur-Amurri, 51 Reinach, Solomon, 226 Salamis, 308
Pylaean Amphictyony, Reisner, G. A., 242 Salonen, A., 59, 61
190 Rekhmire, 143 Salt Sea, 117
Pyramids, 84 Remus, 135 Samaria, 17, 241; ex-
Pyramid Texts, 84 Rephaim, 117 cavations at, 242-
336 GENERAL INDEX
243, 252; siege of, Seth, 19, 46 Shushan, 97, 308

259; fall, 259-260 Seven, the number, 32 Siannu, 94
Samaritan Pentateuch, Scarabs, 160 Sibyls, 202
314 Schaeffer, Claude F. Sicily, 81
Samaritan Schism, 314 A., 168, 169 Sidon, 91
Samson, 181, 186 Scythians, 79, 80 Sidonians, 91, 229,
Sanballat, 310 Sethe, Kurt, 127 305
Sanchuniathon, 168, Seti I, 184 Sihon, 160
214 Seti II, 133, 185 Silli-bel, 267
Sarah, 122 Shabaka, 259, 269 Siloam Inscription,
Sarcophagus of Ahiram, Shabarain, 271 271-275
229 Shabwat, 85 Siloam Tunnel, 271-
Sardanapalus, 232 Shalim, 175 273
Sardinia, 81 Shallum, 253 Sin, 190, 298, 303
Sargon I of Agade, Shalmaneser I, 90 Sinai, 133, 153
135, 259 Shalmaneser III, 80, Sinai Peninsula, 153
Sargon II, 16, 17, 79, 244 Sinite, 94
230, 259-260 Shalmaneser IV, 253 Sippar, 19, 30, 46, 281
Sargonsburg, 16 Shalmaneser V, 17, 23, 299
Saul, 23, 91, 197-203 259 Siptah, 185
Sayce, A. H., 40, 91, Shamash, 33, 154, 281 Sisera, 185
274 Shamgar, 181 Skinner, J., 119
Schiffer, Sina, 194 Shamsi-Adad V, 246 Smith, George, 27, 33,
Schrader, E., 258, 268, Sharezer (Shar-usur), 49
300 270 Smith, R. Payne, 75
Schumacher, G., 252 Sheba, 85, 86, 99, Smith, W. Robertson,
Scott, P. B. Y., 231 225-227 231
Sea peoples, 90 Shechem, 114, 186 Snake Worship, 175
Seba, 85 Shechemites, 126 So (Sibe), 259
Seele, Keith, 107, 129 Sheep Gate, 312 Sodom, 75, 114
Seleucids, 315 Shelah, 98 Sodomites, 174
Sellers, O. R., 216, Shelemiah, 296, 311 Solomon, 219-228;
305 Sheleph, 98 prosperity of his
Sellin, Ernst, 147 Shem, 73-74 reign, 220-228; the
Semachiah, 296 Shema, Servant of Jer- temple, 228-233
Semarite, 94 oboam, 252 Solomon’s Sea, 232-233
Semiramis, 253 Shephalah, 158 Somaliland, 84
Semites, 79, 96-99 Sheshbazzar, 304 Song of Deborah, 218
Senjirli, 92 Shick, Conrad, 272 Speiser, E. A., 52, 64,
Senjirli Stele of Esar- Shiloh, 16, 22f., 190- 121
haddon, 277, 280 191, 193 Spelt, 43
Sennacherib, 263-269 Shinar, 27, 85, 86-88, Sphinx, 39, 142, 230
289 100 Spirit, 68
Senwosret I-III, 107, Shishak (Sheshonq), Star worship, 279
129 221, 237, 240 Starkey, J. L., 285-
Sepharvaim, 270, 271 Shophetim, 179 286
Septuagint, 106 Shulman, 175 Steele, Francis R., 153
Seranim, 191 Shuruppak, 19, 46, 48, Steindorf, G., 107,
Serug, 112 51 129, 142
GENERAL INDEX Sor
Stock, Hans, 144 Tarni-Lim, 126 Temple musicians, 216

Stone Age, 44 Tarshish, 81, 224-227 Temptation seal, 42
Story of the Two Bro- Tarshish ships, 226 Tent-shrine, 215
thers, 133 Tartan (Turtannu), Tepe Gawra, 44
Strabo, 85, 99 266, 268 Terah, 108-113, 124,
Stratigraphy, 20f. Tartessus, 81 128
Stronghold of Zion, Tatnai, 307 Teraphim, 123
208 Taurus range, 96 Tetragrammaton, 286
Subatu, 194 Taxation, 221-222 Thebes, 143, 144, 150,
Subbiluliuma, 91 Taylor, J. E., 108 231, 238
Succoth, 134, 138 Taylor prism, 267, 268 Thel, 138
Suez Canal, 138 Tegarama, 80 Thermopylae, 308
Sukenik, E. L., 242. Tehom, 31 Thieberger, Frederic,
297 Tekoa, 285 205
Sumer, 47, 50, 88 Tell, 19-20 Thiele, Edwin R., 141,
Sumerian King List, Tell Abib, 20, 292 240
46-48, 87 Tell Abu Seifeh, 134 Third Dynasty of Ur,
Sumerian temple, 111 Tell Arka, 94 107
Sumerians, 27, 43, 101 Tell Arpachiya, 20, 44 Thompson, R. C., 279
Sumero-Akkadian Em- Tell Asmar, 45, 198 Thoth, 136
pire, 107 Tell Beit Mirsim, 284 Thureau-Dangin F.,
Sumur, 94 Tell Chagar Bazar, 44 248
Sun-god, 49 Tell-ed-Duweir, 20, Thutmose I, 144
Surah, 186 163 Thutmose II, 144, 145
Susa, 44, 97, 153, Tell el-Amarna, 20 Thutmose III, 94, 107,
154, 297, 304, 312 Tell el-Azhar, 212 117, 127, 142, 143,
Susiana, 97 Tell el Ful, 20, 199- 144, 145, 150
Swallow, 64 200, 229 Thutmose IV, 142, 143
Syriac, 92 Tell el Hesi, 224 Tiamat, 28-35, 68, 233
Syria-Palestine, 92, 93 Tell el Keleifeh, 224- Tiglathpileser I, 80,
Syro-Phoenician art and 227 154, 191, 253-259
architecture, 229-231 Tell el Mashkutah, Tiglathpileser III, 94,
138 243, 253, 271, 289
T Tell en Nasbeh, 20, Tigris, 40, 64, 83, 88
Taanach, 145, 161, 209 Tigris-Euphrates
210 Tell Erfad, 271 Valley, 47, 97
Tabali, 80 Tell Halaf, 44, 112, Til-Nakhiri, 112
Table of the Nations, 270 Til-Turakhi, 113
73-99 Tell Hariri, 124, 210 Tiras, 80
Tabor, 185 Tell Hassuna, 43 Tirhakah (Taharka),
Tabrimmon (CTabram- Tell Jezer, 20 269, 280
man), 239, 241 Tell Melah, 20 Tirzah, 240, 241
Tacitus, 115 Tell Obeid, 44 Tishri, 300
Tadmor, 222 Tell Ratabah, 138, 149 Tob, 195
Taharka, 277 Tell Tainat, 229-231 Tobiah the Ammonite,
Tallqvist, Knut, 68 Tell Zakariya, 286 311-313
Tanis, 135, 138, 149, Tellassar, 270 Togarmah, 79, 80
238 Tema, 298, 299 Toi of Hamath, 205,
Tarbisu, 90 Temenos, 109-112 220
338 GENERAL INDEX
Tola, 181 Ursalim, 93 cheological Expedi-

Tombs of the Kings of Uruk, 50, 88, 102 tion, 286
Judah, 208 Utnapishtim, 49f., 66 Wellhausen, Julius,
Torah, 157, 314 Uz, 98 119
Torczyner, H., 285, Uzzah, 212 Welsh, 93
292 Wenamon, 305
Torrey, C. C., 293, Vv Wilson, John A., 102,
305, 306, 316 Vale of Shaveh, 117 198
Tower of Babel, 102- Vale of Siddim, 115- Wilson, Robert Dick,
104 117 304
Transjordan, 151, 160, Valley Gate, 312 Winckler, Hugo, 91,
161, 181 Valley of Hinnom, 194, 202, 223, 300
Tree of Life, 42 207 Winlock, H. E., 144
Tregelles, S., 170 Valley of Sorek, 186 “Witch” of Endor, 201-
Tribute, 221, 222 Valley of the Jordan, 203
Trojan War, 168 113 Wooley, C. L., 47,
Tubal, 79, 80 Vashti, 308 103, 104, 108, 283
Tubal-cain, 43, 216 Vincent, L. H., 232 Waght,G: E782
Turkish Archeological Vincent, P., 148, 163, 114, 148, 198, 202,
Museum, 274 311 279
Tursenoi, 80 Virgin’s Fountain, 207 Wright, William, 92
Tutankhamun, 183, Voltumna, 190
198 Von Oppenheim, Ba- X
Twelfth Egyptian ron, 44, 270 Xenophon, 300
Dynasty, 129, 134 Voyages to Ophir, 224- Xerxes, 307-308
Type, 76, 81, 91, 174, 225
196
Tyrian Army, 90 W Mg
Tyrians, 81, 305 Wadi Arabah, 227 Yahud, 17, 283, 298
Tyropoean Valley, 208 Wadi el Surar, 186 Yahweh, 75, 155, 201
Wadi Tumilat, 133 Yahwism, 156, 201,
U 236, 278
Wales, 93
Ubar-tutu, 51 Wallis, L., 120 Yam Suph, 137
Ugarit, 75, 128, 168- Warka, 50, 88, 102 Yanoam, 184
175, 202 Warren, Sir Charles, Yaukin, 17, 283, 293,
Ugaritic, 16, 96, 97 206-208
298
Ugaritic poetry, 168- Warren’s Shaft, 208, Yehud (Judah), 297,
169 Die, 305
Ugbaru, 299 Water Gate, 312 Yemen, 225
Ulligarra, 33 Water of life, 41 Yhwh, 286
Ungnad, A., 33 Waters of Merom, 185
Upper Egypt, 84, 90 Waters of Shiloah, 273 Z
Ur 44, 47, 97, 103, Watzinger, Carl, 147 Zab River, 97
107-112, 198, 298 Weidner, Ernst F., 18, Zakir of Hamath, 250
Uraeus, 30 294 Zalgarra, 33
Uranus, 171 Weill, R., 120, 208 Zamban,
Urartu, 64, 256 Weld-Blundell Prism, Zeboiim,
Urbi, 267 46
Ur-Nammu, 102, 108 Wellcome-Marston Ar-
GENERAL INDEx 339
Zedekiah, 284, 286, Ziggurat at Ur, 107 Zoar, 114

291, 293 Ziggurat of Ur Nam- Zobah, 22, 98, 194,
Zeno Papyri, 311 mu, 108 235
Zerrubabel, 304 Zilu, 134, 138 Zorah, 186
Zeus, 17] Zimri-Lim, 124, 126 Zoser, 133
Ziggurat, 88, 102-104, Zion, 92, 208 Zuzim, 117
232 Ziusudra, 48f., 56f.,
Ziggurat at Babylon, 58, 65
295 Zoan, 114, 135, 149
DIACK
igoa
di
/ ah
Med iterranea n Se S
ee ABOUT THE AUTHOR—
MERRILL F. UNGER, Th.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Unger has been, since 1948, Pro-

fessor of Old Testament and Chairman
of that Department in the Dallas Theo-
logical Seminary. He holds the A.B. de-
gree from Johns Hopkins and the Th.D.
from Dallas Theological Seminary. Both
degrees were won with honors. He also
holds the Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1909,

iS he pastored a church in Buffalo, New
: York, from 1934 to 1940 before entering
Dallas Theological Seminary. In 1945 he
entered the Oriental Seminary of the
School of Higher Studies of the Faculty
Se | of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins. He later
DESERT taught at Gordon Divinity School, Boston.
(OF He is widely recognized and acclaimed for
ARABIA his work in the field of Bible archaeology.
@
A Striking Companion Volume . .
ARCHAEOLOGY and the NEW TESTAMENT

y
MERRILL F. UNGER
North Star Baptist: “It is delightfully illustrated, vital and scholarly; well in-
dexed and prolifically documented. Having the New Testament scene as its subject,
this perhaps has an interest advantage over the books that deal with Old Testament
or academic archaeology, yet it seems to breathe, over and above, an atmosphere of
personal contact with the sights and situations of the days of Jesus and the early
church. This heightens its homiletical value and commends it urgently to preachers
and teachers as a wealthy source of background and illustrative material.
Arkansas Baptist: “Unlike Old Testament archaeological research, New Testa-
ment archaeology concerns itself with a much shorter period of time — one century
instead of several centuries — and with small groups of individuals, rather than a
whole nation (Israel). Dr. Unger bases his study on the premise that the New Testa-
ment is the capstone and consummation of Old Testament revelation and is insepar-
ably connected with the Old Testament, recording God’s full and final message for
sinful men.”
The Telescope Messenger: “Includes bibliography and a good general index.
After an illuminating chapter on the role of archaeology itself in Biblical research
and study, the balance of the book consists of valuable and usable reference materials
for the Bible student and teacher.”
The Standard: “Dy. Unger has done a commendable piece of research in bring-
ing new archaeological evidences to support and illuminate the New Testament
period. Up-to-date facts from Dead Sea Scroll investigation makes this a valuable
volume for both pastor and teacher. Interesting and informative photos and sketches
help the reader visualize the material.”
Concordia Publishing House: “This is a fine contribution which is worthy of a
wide circulation. Drawing on a vast array of resources, Dr. Unger provides much
information on the total background of New Testament sites and events which will
help to make the study of the Word much more meaningful for the reader.”
The Baptist Record: “A fascinating and exciting record of what the archaeolo-
gist’s spade and research have done to authenticate, explain and enrich the meaning
of the New Testament narrative. The reader has a new concept of the land where
Jesus lived and the places where the Gospel spread. He sees the proofs that reveal
the accuracy of the New Testament as a divine revelation. Ancient serclls and other
discoveries show hcw that God has preserved His Word. The author presents his
material with skill and reverence. There are numerous drawings and photographs,
with attractively colored maps.”
Christian Home and School “Dr. Unger . . . has proved that archaeology need
not be “dry as dust.’ This volume is written in a captivating style... . can i read
with pleasure and profit.”
Lutheran Synod Quarterly: “By carefully blending the Scriptural account with
historical facts and the finds of archaeology, Dr. Unger has created a book which is
a valuable Bible commentary in its own right . . . . basically covers the material of
the intertestamental period, the time of Christ, and the time of St. Paul. One could
do well to add this conservative book to his library to have current information.”
Christian Observer: “. . . a work to strengthen one’s faith . . . . throws a great
deal of light on the New Testament, especially the book of Acts and the epistles of
Paul . . . . many photographs, drawings and maps add to the work’s interest and
value .... A happy combination of history and archaeological discovery.”
Christian Bookseller: “. . . a wealth of material dealing with the New Testament
era. Profusely illustrated with informative photographs and authenticated drawings.”
Gospel Banner: “As a reference source the book is well supplied with about 140
illustrations. Among these are photo-reproductions, recently taken, of scenes and sites
in Palestine. Some of these are full-page and most are at least half-page size. Clear
line drawings and maps further add to the usefulness of the book. Dr. Unger, who is
Professor of Old Testament and Chairman of this Department in the Dallas Theologi-
cal Seminary, has produced a book that will be of real value to students and teachers
in Bible institutes and Christian colleges. It will make good supplementary readin
for courses in ancient history, as well as any Bible course calling for backgroun
knowledge. Any Christian worker who studies his Bible will find this book an in-
valuable aid.”
No. 10930

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Dr. Wilbur M. Smith describes this

-” Archaeology and the Old Testament

THIS BOOK-BEL ONGSTO

Archaeology and the

ZONDERVAN PUBLISHING HOUSE

First printing...... 1954

Printed in the United States of America

THE Roe OF ARCHEOLOGY IN THE Stupy OF

PEE ACItIy L RETAREGITE G2 oc e8s ayo ae ee oe

Il. Primitive TRADITIONS AND BrBLicaAL BEGINNINGS ........

IV. Tue Froop In SuMERIAN AND BABYLONIAN

Tue BreticAL AND BABYLONIAN ACCOUNT OF THE

VI. Tue TaBLe oF THE NATIONS AND THE JAPHETIC

VII. HAMITES AND EARLIEST EMPIRE ooi.s.ccccaccceeeecscerseseeeeene

VUI. SEMITES AND: DABEL. BUILDERS s2.ctreace- ee

- JIABRAHANE AND. FITS GAGE cocci

‘Tue Hisrorierry or ‘rie PATRIARCHS 255.2...

OS ISKAET S*SOJOLIRNGIN CYP I0c) tt. g80 onaneee

XII. vet DATE Orrin: EPxODUGse 4 ie Aree

ep lae ConouEsT OF THE CANAANITES

. Tue RELIGION OF THE CANAANITES

XVI. Tun: PERiop oF (rHEy)UDGES. yee ee

XVUI. BAtG AND THE MONARCHY ~ 2005. 6 fotici nth arcsoncrun

XIX. Pere Tete 08 LPAI be cepa Stes nse dead wikeseweeen

‘Die EMP Gn SOLOMON "00.2 eae ee

SHISRAEE AND SHE, ARAMARANS: 0CGae eo ee

XXII. [epatd~ AND. “THE DASSYRIANE odds

. JuDAH AND THE HeEypay OF ASSYRIA ............00:::0:cee

BP Tae VERN S 0 NUTT cece ha ria seerin. commouaane

The author owes a debt of gratitude to many groups and individuals

Scarab signets of the last kings of Jericho. io vcnescenesamcvenpesennre

THE ROLE OF ARCHEOLOGY IN THE STUDY OF THE

General archeology as a scienc avation,

I. THe MEANING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

The ideal combination will always be the careful scientific

the centuries. is fact is unique among facts about books in

Divine interposition was manifested not only in the preservation

theless one book. The two testaments no more detract from

cise character as Messiah-centered history wedded to Messiah-

ever contributions archeology or any other science might make

written documents in Egyptian hieroglyphics, as his early resi-

tion, while, of course, not s as those of general cor-

picture.* With the recovery of the palace, e royal annals and

other records gf Sargon’s reign (722-705 3.c.), he is now one

Another instance of minute and extraordinary confirmation of

archeological light to make it understandable and spiritually vital

for the lives of antediluvian celebrities is revealed by archeology

The very word tell, now employed so widely in Arabic place

The building up of the various occupational levels was not

Biblical backgrounds and giving a fuller understanding of the

lennium B.c. The cultic image of Asherah, the Tyrian goddess,

the dynastic list of Aramean kings, who reigned at Damascus,

Driver, S. R., E. A. Gardner, and others, Authority and Archeology Sacred

28w. F. Albright, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, LXXXVII

THE BIBLICAL AND BABYLONIAN ACCOUNT

As an ancient Semitic book, the Old Testament naturally bears

1. Finds at Nineveh. Between the years 1848 and 1876, as a

Il. Tue BaByLONIAN ACCOUNT OF CREATION

The evil wind, following after, he let loose in her face.

gods formed mankind with the blood of certain other gods. In

although light is apparently created in Genesis and merely

creatures and elements of the universe. There is an infinite