Biblical Archaeology: Looking into Joshua’s tomb

Traditional site of Joshua’s tomb (photo by Shuki)

The Temple Institute had the following in its newsletter:

Av 29, 5782/August 26, 2022 …

First Archaeological Dig Begins At Site Believed To Be Joshua’s Tomb “And Joshua sent the people away, every man to his inheritance. And it was after these things, that Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of HaShem, died, being a hundred and ten years old. And they buried him in the border of his inheritance in Timnat-serah, which is in Mount Ephraim, on the north side of the hill of Gaash. And Israel served HaShem all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua, and who had known all the works of HaShem, that He had done for Israel.” (Joshua 24:28-31) Khirbet Tibnah is located on a hill in the southwest of the Samaria region, east of Shoham near Halamish. The site was populated from the Bronze Age until the beginning of the Ottoman period.

The Temple Institute had more on this at its Facebook page:

Khirbet Tibnah is located on a hill in the southwest of the Samaria region, east of Shoham near Halamish. The site was populated from the Bronze Age until the beginning of the Ottoman period.

Archaeologists have begun digging at Khirbet Tibnah in the West Bank, a site where humans have settled for about 4,000 years and which is believed to be where the biblical Joshua lived and was buried, the excavation project at the site announced on Monday.

The dig is being led by Dr. Dvir Raviv and students from Bar-Ilan’s Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, alongside volunteers from Israel and abroad.

Khirbet Tibnah is located on a hill in the southwest of the Samaria region, east of Shoham near Halamish. The site was populated from the Bronze Age until the beginning of the Ottoman period, according to Bar-Ilan.

The site is also identified as Timnath-heres or Timnath-serah, a town which, according to the Book of Joshua, was given by the Israelites to the prophet and was where he lived and was buried. The tomb of Caleb is also believed to be at the site.

The site was surveyed in the 1800’s and is mentioned in a number of historical documents. https://www.facebook.com/templeinstitute/posts/10151729391479969

Here is some of what the Bible tells about Joshua and his burial:

29 Now it came to pass after these things that Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died, being one hundred and ten years old. 30 And they buried him within the border of his inheritance at Timnath Serah, which is in the mountains of Ephraim, on the north side of Mount Gaash.

31 Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had known all the works of the Lord which He had done for Israel.

32 The bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel had brought up out of Egypt, they buried at Shechem, in the plot of ground which Jacob had bought from the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for one hundred pieces of silver, and which had become an inheritance of the children of Joseph.

33 And Eleazar the son of Aaron died. They buried him in a hill belonging to Phinehas his son, which was given to him in the mountains of Ephraim. (Joshua 24:29-33)

This is interesting as we get closer to the end that some archeologists continue to look for more evidence of biblical locations, figures, and events.

On the other hand, biased secular sources such as Wikipedia have chosen to push an anti-biblical narrative. Here is a section from its article of Joshua:

Historicity

See also: The Exodus § Historicity, and History of ancient Israel and Judah

The prevailing scholarly view is that Joshua is not a factual account of historical events.^[29]^[30] The apparent setting of Joshua is the 13th century BCE^[31] which was a time of widespread city-destruction, but with a few exceptions (Hazor, Lachish) the destroyed cities are not the ones the Bible associates with Joshua, and the ones it does associate with him show little or no sign of even being occupied at the time.^[32] Given its lack of historicity, Carolyn Pressler in her commentary for the Westminster Bible Companion series suggests that readers of Joshua should give priority to its theological message (“what passages teach about God”) and be aware of what these would have meant to audiences in the 7th and 6th centuries BCE.^[33] Richard Nelson explained that the needs of the centralised monarchy favoured a single story of origins, combining old traditions of an exodus from Egypt, belief in a national god as “divine warrior,” and explanations for ruined cities, social stratification and ethnic groups, and contemporary tribes.^[34]

In the 1930s Martin Noth made a sweeping criticism of the usefulness of the Book of Joshua for history.^[35] Noth was a student of Albrecht Alt, who emphasized form criticism and the importance of etiology.^[35]^[36] Alt and Noth posited a peaceful movement of the Israelites into various areas of Canaan, contra the Biblical account.^[37]

William Foxwell Albright questioned the “tenacity” of etiologies, which were key to Noth’s analysis of the campaigns in Joshua. Archaeological evidence in the 1930s showed that the city of Ai, an early target for conquest in the putative Joshua account, had existed and been destroyed, but in the 22nd century BCE.^[35] Some alternate sites for Ai have been proposed which would partially resolve the discrepancy in dates, but these sites have not been widely accepted.^[38] In 1951 Kathleen Kenyon showed that Jericho was from the Middle Bronze Age (c. 2100–1550 BCE), not the Late Bronze Age (c. 1550–1200 BCE). Kenyon argued that the early Israelite campaign could not be historically corroborated, but rather explained as an etiology of the location and a representation of the Israelite settlement.^[39]^[40]

In 1955, G. Ernest Wright discussed the correlation of archaeological data to the early Israelite campaigns, which he divided into three phases per the Book of Joshua. He pointed to two sets of archaeological findings that “seem to suggest that the biblical account is in general correct regarding the nature of the late thirteenth and twelfth-eleventh centuries in the country” (i.e., “a period of tremendous violence”).^[41] He gives particular weight to what were then recent digs at Hazor by Yigael Yadin.^[41]

The Book of Joshua holds little historical value.^[42] The archaeological evidence shows that Jericho and Ai were not occupied in the Near Eastern Late Bronze Age.^[43] The story of the conquest perhaps represents the nationalist propaganda of the 8th century BCE kings of Judah and their claims to the territory of the Kingdom of Israel,^[29] incorporated into an early form of Joshua written late in the reign of king Josiah (reigned 640–609 BCE). The book was probably revised and completed after the fall of Jerusalem to the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE, and possibly after the return from the Babylonian exile in 538 BCE.^[44]

(Joshua, Wikipedia, accessed 08/26/22)

So, Wikipedia is pushing the false narrative that Joshua was a made up legend.

And it is not just Wikipedia. After first listing Wikipedia, a Google search pushes the following next:

As with the overwhelming majority of people mentioned in the Bible, there is no non-biblical evidence to show that Joshua existed. https://www.quora.com/Did-Joshua-from-the-Bible-exist accessed 08/26/22

Now, the Bible teaches:

4 … Indeed, let God be true but every man a liar. (Romans 3:4)

13 But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. 14 But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, 15 and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. (2 Timothy 3:13-15)

And the so-called editors at Wikipedia are deceived and deceiving in many of their reports about biblical matters. As are biases from sources like Google.

But the Bible can be trusted. There is a God and that is provable (see also the free online book: Is God’s Existence Logical?).

One of the MANY mistakes that Wikipedia makes is claiming that the Exodus was supposed to be in the 13th century BC, then it says there is no evidence it was then, so it concludes that the Exodus is a myth.

Yet, the Exodus was in the 15th century BC. But Wikpedia tries to downplay that. Furthermore, it tends to not show proof from those who believe the Bible, and hence seems to push its anti-biblical perspective by trying to imply that the Bible cannot be trusted.

The Book of Proverbs teaches:

17 The first one to plead his cause seems right, Until his neighbor comes and examines him. (Proverbs 18:17)

But Wikipedia does not really want to be examined and often removes information that supports the biblical view as I can personally attest to as I have been a volunteer editor at Wikipedia and have seen factual and documented statements removed.

As far as travel related to the Exodus and some information related to Joshua, notice:

If the dating of archaeological sites should be based on pottery and other historical considerations (such as the chronology of Egypt’s pharaohs), then all of the evidence from Tell Jericho argues for its destruction and burning around 1401-1406 B.C. All of the evidence from Jericho at this time (ca. 1401-6 B.C.) fits the biblical record in an amazing way, from the details about the city being burned along with everything in it [offered to God as a burnt offering] (see Joshua 6), to the walls having dwelling places [houses] where Rahab helped the Jewish spies enter the city to spy its defenses (Joshua 2).

Continuing research at Jericho and now new research at Tel-el Maqatir (biblical Ai?) is yielding results that confirm the biblical record of Joshua’s conquest in amazing ways. Most critical scholars place Ai at et-Tell but there is no archaeological evidence of a destruction there which fits the biblical description. However, just one kilometer west is another site (Tel el-Maqatir) which very well could be the biblical site of Ai. This conclusion is based, once again, not on opinion but on hard evidence. (see, Bryant Wood’s, ‘The Search for Joshua’s Ai,’ in Richard S. Hess, Gerald A. Klingbeil and Paul K. Ray Jr., Editors, Critical Issues in Early Israelite History (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 205-40.) (Wright T. Was There an Exodus & Conquest? July 20, 2013. http://crossexamined.org/was-there-an-exodus-conquest/#_ftn11 viewed 03/01/15)

I would add if the Exodus did take place in 1446 B.C., forty years of wilderness wandering would bring us to 1406 B.C. as a likely time for the destruction of Jericho. I actually watched a so-called documentary about Jericho recently and while it admitted that there was evidence that the city was destroyed like the Book of Joshua stated, it then concluded that it happened centuries before the claimed Exodus, hence the Bible was wrong. But that televised documentary also pointed to the Exodus as occurring in the 13th as opposed to 15th century BCE.

Satan does not want people to believe the word of God or to act on it.

The deceived associated with Wikipedia and many other places function as his minions.

That said, notice the following from Robert M. Bowman, Jr.:

I will highlight three pieces of evidence that support the historicity of the account found in the Old Testament.

(1) The list of cities in the Transjordan region through which the Israelites passed on their way into the land in Numbers 33:45-50 includes Iyim, Dibon-gad, Abel-shittim, and Jordan. A list of places through which Egyptian armies passed in their military incursions dating from the same general period include these four places in the same order. Ian Wilson in his book The Bible Is History quotes archaeologist Charles Krahmalkov on this point: “The biblical story of the invasion of Transjordan that sets the stage for the conquest of all Palestine is told against a background that is historically accurate. The Israelite invasion route described in Numbers 33:50 was…an official, heavily trafficked Egyptian road through the Transjordan in the Late Bronze Age.”³ By itself, this piece of information does not prove that the Conquest happened, but it does lend some credibility to the account.

(2) Although most archaeologists today think that the story of Joshua’s conquest of Jericho cannot be true, their reasoning is likely based on a mistaken chronology. As Time magazine recently put it, “Did Joshua conquer the city of Jericho? The walls of this Canaanite city did come tumbling down, say most historians, but centuries before Moses’ protégé could have arrived.”⁴ This assessment is based on the conclusions of Kathleen Kenyon, who in the 1950s dated Jericho’s fall to around 1500 BC while assuming a late date of around 1200 BC for the Conquest. The issue here, then, is one of chronology. The bottom line is that “the walls” did, in fact, “come a tumblin’ down,” just as the Bible says, although the current archaeological convention does not date the event to the period indicated by the Bible. Similar chronological difficulties attend the events of the Exodus: there are records of Egypt being devastated by the kinds of plagues recorded in the Book of Exodus, but modern archaeology dates this devastation to a period hundreds of years earlier than the Bible indicates.⁵ One should not underestimate the extreme complexities and difficulties of calibrating archaeological finds across the region with the chronological information found in ancient written sources.

(3) Scientists have discovered evidence that provides remarkable confirmation of one of the miracles of the Conquest: the crossing of the Jordan River. The book of Joshua reports that when the Israelites began to cross the Jordan opposite Jericho, the waters of the Jordan “rose up in one heap a great distance away at Adam” as they flowed down toward the Dead Sea (Josh. 3:14-17). This damming of the river allowed the Israelites to walk across the riverbed on dry ground. Critics of the Bible routinely claim that no such event occurred, and suggest that the book is crediting Joshua with a miracle similar to the crossing of the Red Sea in order to portray him as Moses’ true successor. However, we have good evidence, both internal and external, supporting the historicity of the account of Joshua’s crossing of the Jordan.

Adam was a village some fifteen or twenty miles upstream (north) from where the Israelites crossed the river. (They crossed directly across from Jericho.) There is nothing historically or religiously significant about this village other than its role as a “footnote” in this account that would explain why the book of Joshua specifies it as the place where the waters were stopped. Furthermore, a writer composing a “pious fiction” about Joshua stopping the waters of the Jordan would surely have had the waters stop right in front of the Israelites, not miles upstream. This incidental detail clearly indicates that the story is at least based on fact. https://www.namb.net/apologetics/resource/joshua-s-conquest-did-it-happen/ accessed 08/26/22

Of course, for those of us who believe the Bible, no further proof related to Joshua is needed. But for some who have heard statements from pseudo-archaeologists that deny the biblical accounts, it may be helpful for them to realize that as time goes on, more and more archaeological evidence surfaces that supports the Bible.

Many of the so-called educated have claimed many fraudulent positions, like that the biblical David was a myth. Now, notice the following:

Here is a link to that July-September 2017 edition of Bible News Prophecy magazine. Its front cover shows an ancient stela that mentions King David, and contains more information about why true science supports the Bible.

The Bible is true, but many do not want it to be believed.

Much of the world’s claimed knowledge is false.

The Apostle Paul warned:

20 … Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge — 21 by professing it some have strayed concerning the faith. (1 Timothy 6:20-21)

Be careful not to accept ‘knowledge’ from those who are contradicting the Bible.

Notice also:

9 The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, 10 and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 11 And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, 12 that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. 92 Thessalonians 2:9-12)

Do you really love the truth?

Then do not fall for their lies.

Remember to “let God be true but every man a liar” (Romans 3:4).

There was a Joshua and some are looking for even more evidence to prove that is so.

UPDATE 08/28/22: We just uploaded the following video:

16:34

Did Joshua of the Bible Exist?

The Temple Institute out of Jerusalem reported that the first archaeological dig has started at the site many believe was the tomb of Joshua of the Bible. What does the Bible say about Joshua’s burial? Why do places like Wikipedia and Google point to sources who say that Joshua did not exist, but instead was a national myth? Are they looking at the wrong time (13th instead of 15th century BCE)? What about archaeological evidence that points to place the Book of Judges mentions? What about the destruction of ancient Jericho? Should we trust the biblical account or those who claim to have scholarly knowledge? Steve Dupuie and Dr. Thiel go over these matters.