narratives of Joshua and Judges: the defeat of cities (Josh 11:12; Judg 11:33), the extermination of peoples (Josh 11:20), and the acquisition of land

the service of Moses and Joshua. In the introduction to the king list, a common type of record kept by Ancient Near Eastern (hereafter ANE) conquerors, the text notes that “these are the kings of the land, whom the sons of Israel killed, and whose land they possessed” (Josh 12:1). For the biblical writer of Joshua, the smiting of a king is inextricably bound to the acquisition and possession of his land. Should the writer of Judges be expected to depart from this standard? Surely the territorial land controlled by Hazor was the prize that Israel won, and it could not have been acquired without “military action against Hazor itself.”Thus Wood is exactly correct when stating, “The destruction of Jabin implies the destruction of his capital city Hazor,”[22] unless one were to theorize that the Israelites somehow frightened the entire city’s population into fleeing in panic, never to return. Undoubtedly, Hoffmeier’s aversion to this reality is due to his need to reconcile the archaeological remains at Hazor with the late-Exodus theory, since a destruction under Deborah and Barak would require the archaeology of Hazor to reveal two later destructions—one at the end of the Late Bronze Age, and a subsequent one before the first Israelite occupation—if this theory were to remain credible. Yet as the spade has shown, Hazor—after the destruction of the final Bronze Age city in a massive conflagration—remained completely abandoned until the initial Israelite settlement of the 12th century BC.As for the destruction under Joshua, Josh 11:11 clearly states that “he [Joshua] burned the city [of Hazor] with fire.” Most archaeologists who accept the historicity of the biblical account thus link the massive conflagration of the final Late Bronze Age city of Hazor to the fiery destruction accomplished under Joshua. Moreover, they commonly connect the later story of the seemingly independent defeat of Hazor’s King Jabin, which is recorded in Judges 4, to the destruction described in Joshua 11. Yadin betrays his commitment to this conclusion when he notes that “[t]he narrative in the Book of Joshua is therefore the true historical nucleus, while the mention of Jabin in Judges 4 must have been a later editorial interpolation.”[23] Therefore, at least according to Hazor’s principal excavator, only one Israelite destruction by fire is commonly theorized.[24]However, the picture painted in the biblical text does not allow for such a link between the great conflagration described in Joshua 11 and the destruction of the Late Bronze IIB (ca. 1300–1200 BC) city of Hazor. As biblical chronologist Rodger Young firmly established, 1446 BC is the correct year of the Exodus,[25] and as the present writer demonstrated elsewhere, the Exodus can be dated even more precisely to 25 April, 1446 BC.[26] Thus, the conquest of the Promised Land began in 1406 BC, 40 years after the Exodus (Num 32:13).III. TEXTUAL OBJECTIONS TO JOSHUA 11 AND JUDGES 4 DESCRIBING THE SAME ATTACK1. The Lengthy Gap between Narratives. The first textual objection to the theory that Joshua 11 and Judges 4 describe the same attack is that a large and undeniable gap in time separates the two narratives. The destruction of Hazor under Joshua transpired in ca. 1400 BC, given that the conquest of Canaan—to the extent that it actually was carried out as divinely outlined—required six years to complete.[27] With this date secured, the account of Hazor’s demise in Judges 4 must be dated, even if only approximately, because unquestionably the dating of the period of the judges is one of the most intriguing challenges related to biblical chronology.To begin the determination of the dating, Joshua seemingly died in ca. 1384 BC, and the Israelites’ faithfulness to God extended only to the time of the deaths of the elders who survived him (Josh 24:29, 31).[28] Given that the exact survival-span of these faithful elders cannot be quantified precisely, this period will not be included in the measurement of time between Joshua’s death and the victory over Hazor’s king during the days of Deborah and Barak (Judg 4:24).[29] Assuming that the unfaithful, subsequent generation began immediately after the deaths of the elders of Joshua’s generation who outlived him, the first chronological reference is to eight years of oppression (Judg 3:8), followed by 40 years of rest (Judg 3:11).A second oppression, this one of 18 years (Judg 3:14), was followed by 80 years of rest (Judg 3:30). A third oppression and period of rest, related to Shamgar (Judg 3:31), is not documented as to its duration. This undefined number also may be ignored safely for the purpose of the present study. The final number necessary is 20 years (Judg 4:3) for the period of oppression under “Jabin, King of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor” (Judg 4:1). When all of these numbers are added, the total comes to 166 years. The imprecision of this length of time, already obvious from the above discussion, is further complicated by how the required length of the period of the judges—which totals 341 years, if using Joshua’s death (ca. 1384 BC) for its inception, and the conservative date of ca. 1043 BC for the start of Saul’s reign—does not match evenly with the 410 years derived when adding together all of the years of oppression and rest that transpired throughout the narrative of Judges.[30]This apparent contradiction is resolved simply by understanding that the oppressions and periods of rest, which transpired throughout Israel and at various times, did not run consecutively but concurrently (i.e. with unspecified overlaps).[31] However, another problem arises: the 166 years must be both lengthened by the undefined years of the faithful generation that survived Joshua and by Shamgar’s judgeship, and shortened by the unspecified overlapping of the judgeships. Assuming that the adjustment for the overlapping of the judgeships is somewhat lengthier, 150 years may be used as a rough number for the time between Joshua’s death and the events of Judges 4. This would mean that the latter event occurred in ca. 1234 BC, which matches well with Yadin’s dating of the destruction of the final Bronze Age city. Because the Hazor of Joshua 11 was destroyed in ca. 1400 BC, in this scenario the difference between the two destructions of Hazor would be ca. 166 years.[32] Thus with such a lengthy interval between the events of these two narratives, the demises of Hazor in Joshua 11 and Judges 4 are chronologically far too distant from one another to be fused into a single event.2. The Identification of “Jabin” as a Dynastic Title. The second textual objection to the theory that Joshua 11 and Judges 4 record the same attack on Hazor is that the name “Jabin, King of Hazor” in these independent narratives does not refer to the same king. Yadin asks, “If Joshua, who lived before Deborah, had already destroyed Hazor and killed Jabin, how is it possible that (at least) several decades later, Jabin was still alive and his commander in chief engaged in battle as far away from



Hazor as the valley of Megiddo?
Rosetta Stone Chinese