uo;s final Asiatic campaign, along with the archaeological evidence both of a large gap in time between the destruction of Hazor at the end of Late Br

e that relates both to Late Bronze I and the transition into Late Bronze II. The Israelites were the first occupants of the city after the close of the Late Bronze Age, so the destruction of the final Late Bronze Age city cannot be associated with the destruction of Joshua 11, as another Canaanite occupation and destruction followed that of Joshua’s day, which is made abundantly clear by the narrative in Judges 4. As Wood put it, “The simple (and biblical) solution is that Joshua destroyed an earlier city at Hazor in ca. 1400 BC, while Deborah and Barak administered the coup de grâce in ca. 1230 BC.”[95]This conclusion, borne out by the evidence presented in the preceding discussion, strongly supports the chronological framework of the early-Exodus position, and thus the literal interpretation of numbers such as “480th” in 1 Kgs 6:1. Biblical scholars and teachers would do well to give the biblical text its full day in court before acquiescing to the interpretations of archaeologists or other scholars who use arguments from silence (e.g. the complete lack of material evidence for the Israelite inhabitation of Canaan from 1400–1200 BC) to make claims such as the Israelites’ inability to have occupied the Promised Land before the 13th century BC, especially since such conclusions fan the flames of non-inerrantist, liberal scholars determined to undermine the historicity of the Bible. As Aharoni warned, “Don’t reject the historicity of the Biblical text so easily.”[96] The Bible should be interpreted literally, whenever possible, even though popular scholarship may tempt biblical scholars to take the easy road by reverting to allegorism when interpretive difficulties are encountered or when the pressure to fall in line with the consensus of the scholarly world seems too daunting to overcome.No cuneiform tablet has yet emerged at Hazor—nor may one ever surface, even if an archive is found—that reads, “Joshua has arrived!” But realistically, none should be expected, as the Israelites’ blitzkrieg may not have given Hazor’s residents time to write memorials for posterity or compose many words of outrage, even if they did know their attackers by name. The lack of immediate Israelite inhabitation of Hazor after the destruction under Joshua, implied in the biblical text and confirmed with the spade, also prohibits the expectation that Israelite artifacts will be extracted from the stratum associated with the destruction under Joshua. Finding the archive of Late Bronze I Hazor certainly may reveal more about the city’s demise in ca. 1400 BC, but much also could be learned from the excavation of larger portions of the lower city, since the destruction under Joshua undoubtedly is preserved far more extensively there than atop the tel, where rebuilding ventures invariably included the destruction of earlier levels.Footnotes:1.For example, see the debate between James Hoffmeier and Bryant Wood in JETS (James K. Hoffmeier, “What Is the Biblical Date for the Exodus? A Response to Bryant Wood,” JETS 50:2 [Jun 2007], 225–47; Bryant G. Wood, “The Biblical Date for the Exodus Is 1446 BC: A Response to James Hoffmeier,” JETS 50:2 [Jun 2007], 249–58), as well as an attempt by Ralph Hawkins to support the late-exodus theory by means of datable scarabs from Samaria (Ralph K. Hawkins, “Propositions for Evangelical Acceptance of a Late-Date Exodus-Conquest: Biblical Data and the Royal Scarabs from Mt. Ebal,” JETS 50:1 [Mar 2007], 31–46).2. James K. Hoffmeier, “Out of Egypt,” BAR 33:1 (Jan/Feb 2007), 36.3.BryantG. Wood, “The Rise and Fall of the 13th-Century Exodus-Conquest Theory,” JETS 48:3 (Sep 2005), 489.4. Manfred Bietak, “The Volcano Explains Everything—Or Does It?,” BAR 32:6 (Nov/Dec 2006), 61. Late-exodus proponents should remember that there was also an “invisibility of the Israelites in the archaeology of Canaan between ca. 1200 and 1000” BC (Alan Millard, “Amorites and Israelites: Invisible Invaders—Modern Expectation and Ancient Reality,” in The Future of Biblical Archaeology: Reassessing Methodologies and Assumptions, ed. James K. Hoffmeier and Alan Millard [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004], 152–53). In light of this later invisibility, an earlier invisibility for the two centuries before this period should not be precluded as a possibility, either. While Bietak is on track when noting the significance of the Merneptah Stele to the presence of the Israelites in Canaan, even this critical Egyptian landmark does not remove the Israelites’ occupational invisibility. In fact, the Merneptah Stele even pronounces the existence of the occupational invisibility of the Israelites, an indisputable point, because the stele dates to a time that is 25 years or more before the archaeologically demonstrable presence of settlements in the Judean hill country.5. Hoffmeier, “What Is the Biblical Date?,” 255.6. For the best and most thorough treatment of Ai’s disputed location, see Bryant G. Wood, “The Search for Joshua’s Ai,” in Critical Issues in Early Israelite History, ed. Richard S. Hess, Gerald A. Klingbeil, and Paul J. Ray Jr. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 205–240. References to valuable resources on Jericho can be found in a subsequent footnote.7. Yigael Yadin and Amnon Ben-Tor, “Hazor,” in The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, vol. 2, ed. Ephraim Stern (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society & Carta, 1993), 595. The upper city was established first, during the Early Bronze Age of the middle of the second millennium BC, while the lower city was founded in the middle of the 18th century BC (Middle Bronze IIB Age), but forever abandoned during the middle third of the 13th century BC (Late Bronze IIB Age), when the final Canaanite city was destroyed (Ibid. 595, 599, 603). The existence of the lower city during the Late Bronze Age, in addition to the expected city on the tel, was unusual for this period, as southern



Levantine sites with more than 12 acres in area
are the exception to the rule (Anson F. Rainey and R. Steven Notley, The Sacred Bridge [Jerusalem: Carta, 2006], 63).8. The final city of the Late Bronze (IIB/III) Age (ca. 1300–1200 BC) is designated Stratum 1A in the lower city, and Stratum XIII on the tel. Yadin progressed slightly in his thought as to the dating of this destruction, but he seems to have settled on the second third of the 13th century BC. For example, he stated in a 1972 publication that “it seems most probable that 1A was destroyed during the second third of the thirteenth century” BC (Yigael Yadin, Hazor: The Head of all those Kingdoms, The 1970 Schweich Lectures of the British Academy [London: Oxford University Press, 1972], 108). In a 1993 publication, this statement is virtually repeated, with the addition that this destruction and dating applies both to the upper and lower city, and that conflagration was the cause (Yadin, “Hazor,” in New Encyclopedia, 603). Kitchen prefers lowering the date to at least Rosetta Stone French