Dear friends:
Please click the embedded You Tube video for a fascinating journey of Dr. Bryant Wood.
or click this You Tube link below for full screen viewing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=16&v=e5Fjth9T12U
You may also get into more details of Jericho Chronology dispute by clicking the link below
http://www.conservapedia.com/Jericho_chronology_dispute
In the biblical version of the event, Joshua and his men lay siege on the fortified city for seven days. On the seventh day, they blow their trumpets and its walls come crashing down. The Israelites raze the city, killing every man, woman and child. Today, the city of Jericho lays claim as one of the oldest cities in the world. Here, archaeologists have unearthed the remains of over twenty settlements, including an ancient city dating to the late Bronze Age that shows clear signs of destruction.
However, the widely accepted scholarly opinion was that it was destroyed in 1550 BC—long before the time of the Israelite conquest. If there was no city at the time of Joshua, is the story mere fiction? For Bryant Wood, Jericho is an archaeological puzzle waiting to be solved. On re-examining the evidence that was excavated, Wood, an expert in Canaanite pottery, dated its destruction to ca. 1400 BC—the time of the Israelite Conquest.
Critique of Wood's research
Wood's landmark 1990 BAR article called for a new evaluation of the date for Jericho's City IV based on the four considerations: pottery, stratigraphy, scarab evidence from the tombs, and the radiocarbon dating from a sample excavated by Kenyon. The first three considerations continue to be viable and have never been adequately refuted.[4] But Wood's fourth argument, the radiometric, is now rejected. Wood correctly reported that the British Museum dated the wood sample from Jericho City IV at 1410 BC. However, it was later found that the calibration system and instrumentation of the British Museum's radiocarbon apparatus were giving wrong answers. This, of course, was no reflection on Wood's scholarship; he was reporting the results that everyone assumed to be correct when he wrote the BAR article. These radiocarbon results were superseded by a later study that examined various pieces of wood from Jericho and, more importantly, samples taken from the grain supply. The results of this later analysis now provide the main reason that the majority of scholars reject the Garstang/Wood date for Jericho City IV, even though this contradicts the other three types of evidence. Is there any explanation for this seeming contradiction between the date derived from archaeological evidence and that given by radiocarbon (C14) analysis?
...
Either solution—that of the Egyptologists or that of the physicists—cannot be supported by Kenyon's conclusion that Jericho fell at about the time of the beginning of the New Kingdom, whether that was in the middle of the 16th century BC (unadjusted date) or 160 years earlier (adjusted date). This is the consequence that seems inescapable once the dilemma posed by the current controversy over C14 dating in the middle of the 2nd millennium BC is fully grasped. Kenyon's conclusion that Jericho fell at about the time the 18th Dynasty began cannot be reconciled with either solution to the dilemma. Currently the only solution that seems to have any semblance of credibility is the Biblical solution: Jericho fell to the armies of Israel in the latter part of the 15th century BC, and the C14 evidence, properly interpreted and adjusted, now supports the Biblical account.
No comments:
Post a Comment