up until now we've been heavily reliant on the bible as our primary guide to understand
the earliest history of the jewish people but as the jews begin to enter the land of israel
slowly the archaeological record reveals more and more details that in many ways
corroborate the accounts that we have in the bible in other ways they pose fascinating questions and
we're just going to have a quick look at some of the references that we have in the archaeological
record to the biblical text and try to understand what we can about this early period of jewish
history so let us recall first of all that we can't think in modern terms about the earliest
settlement of the jews in israel it's not like uh they established a modern state with firm borders
that clearly delineated what was their territory and so on uh we should recall that for centuries
after the exodus the land of israel was clearly under egyptian sway egypt egypt was the
major geopolitical power and uh you know although the jews had certainly some autonomy
but they continued to have conflict and moments of coexistence with non-jewish peoples living in
the land of israel one of the most fascinating early bits of archaeological evidence that we
have regarding this period is a piece left behind by the pharaoh marimbta also pronounced mernepta
who was the son of ram says ii and the the second is most likely the unnamed pharaoh
that's described in the book of exodus have a look at this map here which shows you one of
marampta's forays into the land of israel and as he made his way north he described the various
cities that he destroyed and laid waste to and dominated and so on and when he gets to the north
there's one fascinating thing that he records in this big stone obelisk which is called a steely
also pronounced steel mernepta left behind a record of his exploits in the land of israel
in this steely which was in the fifth year of his reign 1209 before the common era and
fascinatingly as he goes through his map of the various places he destroyed he left behind this
fascinating little passage that says israel is wasted its seed is no more this is the first
non-jewish or non-biblical reference to the existence of the jewish people now there's
been a lot of debate over what exactly does this mean uh it it might mean a place but that seems
unlikely given the larger context it seems to be referring to a group of people uh it the term c
does that mean literally grain in the sense of like burning down the fields in a particular
region more likely within the context it seems it's referring to the progeny of israel that is
the children of israel and i have to say there's a certain delicious irony here because
you know it's funny that the very first time the jewish people are described in history other than
by their own account uh they're described as being totally defeated and you know jewish
children thank god are still doing very well knee nahara as they say let there be no evil eye
on the other hand they discovered pharaoh neptu's mummy and i have to tell you he is not looking so
good i would show you a picture here but that's perhaps a little bit tasteless at any rate uh
this is his first description of the jewish people which tells us that there is something in israel
in the land of israel referred to as the people of israel dating from the year 1209. so if we
back date from that let's say that as per dr kitchen's analysis uh if he has destroyed the
jewish people in the year 1209 oh i should mention in passing by the way that this is just another
example of you know the egyptian and especially pharaonic historical distortion where clearly they
didn't destroy the jewish people but nevertheless they'll they'll mention this in their monumental
architecture we saw by the way last week when we talked about the battle of kadesh which
the pharaohs describe as having been a complete route in favor of egypt but in fact the hittites
would disagree and we know that the uh the region remained basically stable even after
the egyptians leave so anyway let's back date if israel was so to speak destroyed in the year 1209
before the common era that would mean they would have had to have been there let's say at least
no later than the year 1210 so that means that the jewish people israel was in this region in the
late 13th century and that actually works pretty well if you look at the exodus as it's counted in
the jewish tradition we spoke a little bit about that a few videos ago that is recorded in the year
2400 of ano mundi meaning the since creation according to the jewish count uh which equivalents
which which equals 1312 before the common era and uh again working with the biblical account of 40
years wandering the desert that means that the entry into the land of canaan the land of israel
would have been in the year 1272 before the common era so it actually lines up pretty
well and up until now i've been very very vague about dates because you know we're relying on
so much different contradictory evidence and it's really hard to pin it down but beginning with the
steely of mernepta we begin to see a pattern that we can actually get a lot firmer we can even post
date some events based on dr kitchen's analysis we can say that judges would have heard let's say
a rounded number about the year 1200 before the common era and extending for about 160 odd years
that would mean that king saul would have begun his reign somewhere around the year 10
42 before the common era you'll note of course that these numbers get smaller because we're
bce before common era moving up to the year zero um david around the year 1010 and solomon
[ __ ] around the year 970. but we're gonna catch up with that as we go into later lectures
at any rate now we have the jews definitely in the land of israel in the late 13th century
but it remains to be seen what kind of conquest are we talking about what kind
of settlement does this refer to in the popular imagination we tend to think of the jews coming
into the land of israel and having a series of phenomenal military successes that eventually
pushes out all of the indigenous peoples and establishes the permanent jewish presence there
permanent at least until the first exile which would occur you know some 500 years later but
if we go back and we actually read the text of the book of joshua and judges in particular you'll see
that that's not entirely what happened we tend to work with this idea of conquest which implies
once and for all but in fact it seems that was not the case uh this is especially so when we look at
things like the conquest of the city of eureka of jericho which is certainly one of the most
dramatic early conquests of joshua and his armies the famous story they they surround the walls
of jericho their mighty walls and they blow the shofar and things like that and the walls come
coming down so obviously since we know where jericho is located there is a tremendous amount
of archaeological interest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in particular about
what exactly happened there and can we line it up with the biblical account perhaps one of the most
important archaeologists working on jericho is the great kathleen kenyon who did some phenomenal work
in the region let's have a look at jericho itself here's an aerial view of the tel meaning the the
actual mound left behind by the ancient site of jericho and and it's been dug over and over again
you can see it's quite scarred by many specific digs the nature of the wall is not like let's say
for example look hotel the uh the western wall of the temple where you have a a 90 degree vertical
structure that is dramatically distinct from the surrounding territory rather this kind of ancient
wall and as kenyan described it goes back way way before the advance of the jews into israel
is really something like a massive kind of ramp where most of the wall is actually kind of like
piled up dirt and uh there's like kind of like this uh ramp like structure that
is separated by two distinct walls an upper wall and a lower wall it appears that although
this wall was definitely destroyed it was likely destroyed far earlier than the 13th century now
that doesn't line up very well with the biblical account and there have a lot of approaches to this
some of the minimalist historians have seen you see therefore it was destroyed and much
earlier than jericho and that would argue that the bible's description of joshua's attack on jericho
is really borrowing from an earlier tradition others such as dr kitchen for example who leaned
towards a maximal school would say no the wall was destroyed and then it was built up
again and erosion has taken its toll and in fact erosion is a fairly good argument for losing a lot
of the archaeological data so it's hard to say exactly what would have happened much of this
remains an archaeological conundrum to try and fit it together with the biblical text so a lot
of archaeologists have scratched their heads at this and and look at what other kinds of evidence
indicates this massive scale of jewish settlement many have looked at the style of pottery used in
ancient israel which have which argues for some significant shifts in change right around the
13th century and this would argue that perhaps it was a major population that moved into the region
and brought different styles with them but again as you can imagine it's hard to argue exclusively
from things like pottery finds others have focused on the architectural style specifically looking at
something called the four-roomed house which seems to be very evident in israel around the period
of time that we're looking at with an argument that the four-roomed house was distinctly jewish
and still others have said that uh you know we know that there's things interesting things like
the lack of pig bones in those settlements which we estimate to have been jewish
also fascinating but none of these things are kind of like knockout blows for the uh corroboration
of the biblical text however recent finds have discovered some fascinating remnants that suggest
that there's clearly a very strong connection with the jewish people living in this region
okay i'm joking with that but you know you have to forgive me i wanted to show you a
picture of my nepta at least i can show you a picture of the chinese food joke
at any rate these jars and rooms arguments and things like that are fascinating but
what do we know in the end we know for certain that the jews are in this region but we have to
go back to the actual biblical text and try to understand what was the nature of that conquest
we tend to work with a sort of cartoon caricature of that period if you go back and read carefully
as dr kitchen suggests very strongly the books of joshua and judges and ruth that deal with this
period it's very clear that the advance of the jewish people was not like kind of like conquer
a territory and settle there there a lot of the the battles are described are sort of like sorties
where you know something will happen uh regarding friction between jewish people and non-jewish
people living there joshua or another general will go out with an army and conquer a territory
and then they retreat and then there's a similar pattern where there's a threat from another region
they'll go out they'll fight a big battle they'll win and then they will retreat and it seems like
the ebb and flow of jewish settlement the region is not so much one in which the jews are like
inching further and further towards the sea as most of these maps indicate and this is by the way
largely based on reading earlier parts of the bible such as the book of numbers where the land
of israel is apportioned to the 12 tribes and if you look at the regions that are apportioned to
the tribes that may not correspond to the regions that were effectively conquered under joshua and
his successor judges in fact when you try to map out the regions where we estimate that jews
had control over the land of israel it looks something like this and this is not a map that is
widely reproduced but it's much more historically valid in the sense of you can see that it's kind
of a blob and the jews are largely denied access to the very important coastal region uh largely
because the philistines the recently arrived sea peoples and so on but it does give you a sense
of a newly implanted people that have come into the land they have significant uh conflicts with
the local population they also have significant conflicts with each other and in fact that's
where we're going to have to pick up the story in the next video where we speak about the united
monarchy under king saul which represented a dramatic political and military leap forward for
these scattered tribes in israel okay i hope you found that interesting and thank you for watching