After the destruction of Jericho, Joshua turned attention to the Canaanite city of Ai. The story of the capture and destruction of this city is recounted in Chapters 7 and 8 of the Book of Joshua. In an earlier article in this series, we learned that this is one of the events recorded in Joshua which seems to be contradicted by Canaanite archaeology. In this article, we will be retreading our steps and making the same arguments as before.
Ai
Immediately after the burning of Jericho, Joshua sends spies to reconnoitre the city of Ai (העי):
And Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is beside Bethaven, on the east of Bethel, and spake unto them, saying, Go up and view the country. And the men went up and viewed Ai. (Joshua 7:2)
Following the advice of his spies, Joshua dispatches a contingent of troops to capture the city, but things do not go as planned:
And they returned to Joshua, and said unto him, Let not all the people go up; but let about two or three thousand men go up and smite Ai; and make not all the people to labour thither; for they are but few. So there went up thither of the people about three thousand men: and they fled before the men of Ai. And the men of Ai smote of them about thirty and six men: for they chased them from before the gate even unto Shebarim, and smote them in the going down: wherefore the hearts of the people melted, and became as water. (Joshua 7:3-5)
This humiliating defeat is attributed to the sins of Achan, an Israelite who pillaged gold and silver from Jericho against the express command of the Lord. Achan is duly punished and his sins expiated. Only then does Joshua resume the campaign against Ai. The following day, he attacks the city with a much larger force and captures it with the help of a stratagem:
And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai ... And Joshua burnt Ai, and made it an heap for ever, even a desolation unto this day. (Joshua 8:25 ... 28)
The Location of Ai
In the text, we are told explicitly where Ai is located:
Ai, which is beside Bethaven, on the east of Bethel ... (Joshua 7:2)
This agrees with Genesis 12:
And [Abram] removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west, and Hai on the east: and there he builded an altar unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord. (Genesis 12:8)
The location of the Biblical Bethel is still a matter of scholarly dispute. The modern Palestinian village of Beitin (Baytin) is the most popular choice, but both Beit El and El Bireh have their supporters. According to Joshua 18:13 and Judges 1:23, the Canaanite name for Bethel was Luz. According to Joshua 16:2, however, Luz lay beyond Bethel. The location and identity of both Bethaven and Shebarim are also unknown. If Bethel is identified with Beit El or El Bireh, this leaves open the possibility that Beitin is the same place as Bethaven.
The identification of Beitin with the Biblical Bethel goes back to 1838, at least:
There is little room for question, that both the name and site of Beitin are identical with those of ancient Bethel. The latter was a border city between Benjamin and Ephraim; at first assigned to Benjamin, but conquered and afterwards retained by Ephraim. According to Eusebius and Jerome, it lay twelve Roman miles from Jerusalem, on the right or east of the road leading to Sichem or Neapolis (Nâbulus).From Beitin to el-Bîreh we found the distance to be forty-five minutes, and from Bîreh to Jerusalem three hours, with horses. The correspondence therefore in the situation is very exact; and the name affords decisive confirmation. The Arabic termination în for the Hebrew el, is not an unusual change; we found indeed several other instances of it entirely parallel. (Robinson & Smith 449)
Ai is most commonly identified with Et-Tell, a ruined settlement which lies just to the east of Beitin. There is no evidence, however, that Et-Tell was occupied during the Middle or Late Bronze Age:
Ai is enigmatic, even simply in the biblical text, before going anywhere else. It alone is given a locating phrase in the list of Josh. 12, there described as “near Bethel” (12:9). And also, when the men of Ai turned to pursue an apparently retreating Israel, we suddenly read: “not a man remained in Ai or Bethel who did not pursue Israel” (8:17). Why? Could not the Ai warriors manage on their own? Or were they (and their chief) in truth only a dependency of Bethel? The men of Ai are described as “few” in 7:3. The archaeology has merely underlined the enigma. Ha-‘ai (Ai) is commonly taken to mean “the ruin,” being compared with the noun ‘iy, plural ‘iyyim, “ruin(s).” And then this is compared with the modern name of a ruin mound a few miles from Bethel, Et-Tell in Arabic, meaning “ruin mound.” However, Kaufmann objected that Ai meant “(stone)heap,” not “ruin.” This Et-Tell has long been identified with ancient Ai. Excavation (so far) has failed to find any occupation there after the destruction of the strong, walled, Early Bronze Age town at about 2400 [BCE], until a renewed settlement appears at about 1220/1200 or soon after. It is hard to believe that anybody founded a township and named it “Ruin,” so the original third-millennium settlement may have borne a different, proper name that was forgotten. Hence, later occupants called it “the Ruin” or (better?) “(Stone)heap.” Maybe! (Kitchen 188)
One theory that has been proposed is that Ai was mistaken for the nearby Canaanite city Luz, which later bore the Israelite name Bethel:
Bethel, ancient city of Palestine, located just north of Jerusalem. Originally called Luz and in modern times Baytin, Bethel was important in Old Testament times and was frequently associated with Abraham and Jacob. Excavations, carried out by the American School of Oriental Research and the Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary, suggest that Bethel may have been the actual scene of the events described in the Old Testament as having taken place at Ai during the Israelite conquest of Canaan. (Encyclopaedia Britannica Online)
That the authors of the Book of Joshua were unsure of the correct name of this settlement is supported by Joshua 16:2, which distinguishes between Bethel and Luz. Note also that they distinguish between Bethel and Bethaven (Joshua 7:2), whereas the Prophet Hosea seems to imply that Beth-Aven [House of Iniquity] was a derogatory name for Beth-El [House of God] after the introduction there of the idolatrous golden calves:
BETH-AVEN: A city on the border of Benjamin in the wilderness (Josh, xviii. 12), east of Bethel (Josh. vii. 2) and west of Michmash (I Sam. xiii. 5). It was the scene of a battle between Saul and the Philistines, in which the latter were defeated (I Sam. xiv. 23).
In Hosea iv. 15, v. 8, x. 5, Beth-aven is probably a disguise for Beth-el, particularly in x. 5, .where calves of Beth-aven as objects of idolatry are mentioned. (Singer 119)
Unlike Et-Tell, Beitin has an abundance of archaeological remains from the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, and even evidence of destruction by fire at the end of the Middle Bronze Age:
MB II B-C Beitin was a strong, well-fortified city with the NW gate area being occupied by a gate which led out toward the E. This gate was never rebuilt. There was some evidence of burning at the end of the MB II city (Pithom, citing William F Albright & James L Kelso’s The Excavation of Bethel).
An alternative solution to the problem is to seek both Bethel and Ai elsewhere. David Palmer Livingston of Andrews University has championed the view that Ai is to be found at Khirbet Nisya (Psagot), about 3 km SSW of Beitin. According to this hypothesis, Bethel is identified with El Bireh, 1 km NW of Khirbet Nisya. But while Bronze Age finds have been made on this site, no walls or buildings have been discovered, and there is no indication of burning or destruction (Livingston 96 ff).
Another candidate for Ai is Khirbet el-Maqatir, a hilltop site which lies about 2 km SE of Beitin. Khirbet el-Maqatir lies to the east of El-Bireh. If the latter is Bethel, then this accords with Genesis 12:3, which places Ai to the east of Bethel. Bryant believes that he has found evidence of a conflagration on the site at the end of LB I, which he dates to 1406 BCE. He interprets this as confirmation of the Biblical account of Joshua’s conquest.
The problem with all of these candidates for the Biblical Ai is that none of them remained an heap for ever, even a desolation unto this day (Joshua 8:28). Beitin, Beit El and El Bireh are still inhabited today. Et Tell was resettled in the Iron Age after having been abandoned at the end of the Early Bronze Age. Khirbet Nisya was occupied continually throughout the Biblical period.
Khirbet el-Maqatir comes closest to fitting the Biblical account. It appears to have been abandoned for a few centuries from the early part of the Late Bronze Age until the beginning of the Iron Age (IA). Although it was resettled in IA I, the archaeological evidence indicates that this was merely a squatter occupation. It is quite possible that the site was abandoned and desolate during the pre-Exilic era, when the Book of Joshua was written. Those who seek to place the Conquest near the end of LB I can certainly cite the archaeology of this settlement in support of their hypothesis.
Et Tell, too, was apparently unoccupied when the Book of Joshua was compiled. According to the conventional chronology, it was abandoned around 1050 BCE, more than four centuries before the composition of Joshua.
The Taking of Ai
The curious relationship between Ai and Bethel is not really taken into account by any of these different theories. Initially, the Biblical account simply locates Ai by telling us that it is beside Bethaven, on the east of Bethel (Joshua 7:2). When the Israelites first try to take Ai, the inhabitants—who are described as few (Joshua 7:3)—defeat them and chase them from before the gate even unto Shebarim (Joshua 7:5). The latter—השברים—literally means the ruins (Strong’s Hebrew 7671), which is exactly what Ai is thought to mean (Strong’s Hebrew 5857 and 5856). The only significant difference in meaning is that shebarim is plural, while ‘ay is singular. Note that both Ai and shebarim are preceded by the definite article, ha (ה):
Let us accept that Ai does indeed mean the ruin or the stone heap. But who would bestow such a name on their city? As Kenneth Kitchen surmised, does it not make more sense that this was the name a later generation gave to the ruins of a long-abandoned settlement, one whose real name had been forgotten? It is surely significant that every time this name occurs in the Book of Joshua, it is preceded by the definite article.
I conclude that Ai (hai) is the same place as hashebarim, the stone heap or ruins towards which the defeated Israelites fled from Bethel (Beitin), which was the true target of their attack.
In the following chapter, Joshua leads a much stronger force against Ai and devises a stratagem to draw the defenders away from the city, while thirty thousand men of valour ambush the undefended city from the west:
Joshua chose out thirty thousand mighty men of valour, and sent them away by night ... Joshua therefore sent them forth: and they went to lie in ambush, and abode between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of Ai. (Joshua 8:3 ... 9)
The following morning, Joshua and the rest of his forces approach the city:
And all the people, even the people of war that were with him, went up, and drew nigh, and came before the city, and pitched on the north side of Ai: now there was a valley between them and Ai. (Joshua 8:11)
At this point, the text contradicts itself:
And he took about five thousand men, and set them to lie in ambush between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of the city. (Joshua 8:12)
Clearly, the compilers of the Book of Joshua had two different accounts of the ambush. In one, 30,000 men lie in ambush overnight. In the other, Joshua sends 5,000 men to lie in ambush on the morning of the attack. Both figures are highly questionable:
Thirty thousand men, an impossible number for an ambush, possibly means “thirty, a man from each contingent,” or “thirty contingents.” The word translated “thousand” [אלף = ’eleph] can also denote a small military unit, ranging from five to fifteen men per contingent. (Berlin & Brettler 476)
In an earlier article in this series, Numbers and the Exodus, we came across a similar case of this word being possibly mistranslated as thousand. This led to the claim that more than half a million Israelites took part in the Exodus, when the true figure was probably no more than a few thousand.
Joshua’s ruse works. The King of Ai and his forces sally forth to engage the main force of Israelites, which draws them away from the city, leaving it undefended. But then we are told:
And there was not a man left in Ai or Bethel, that went not out after Israel: and they left the city open, and pursued after Israel. (Joshua 8:17)
This is the first indication we are given that troops from Bethel were involved in the engagement, although only one city is left open to attack. Bethel is not mentioned again in this chapter, but in the summary list of thirty-one petty kings defeated by Joshua (Joshua 12), the second and the sixteenth items in the list are:
the king of Ai, which is beside Bethel, one; (Joshua 12:9)
the king of Bethel (Joshua 12:16)
The account of the capture and destruction of Ai is confused and in places self-contradictory. A case could be made that Bethel was the city Joshua attacked, and that somehow the nearby ruins—known as hashebarim (the ruins) or hai (the ruin)—came to be mistaken for the true target.
Beitin
If we accept this emendation of the text—Joshua 7 and 8 represent a corrupted account of the capture and burning of Bethel, not Ai—then we must ask ourselves whether there is any archaeological evidence that Bethel was burned at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, which is where I place Joshua’s Conquest of Canaan. If we accept the common identification of Beitin with the Biblical Bethel, then the answer to this question is a resounding Yes. As we have already seen above, there is evidence of a conflagration at the end of MB II.
Between 1934 and 1968, William Foxwell Albright carried out four archaeological excavations at Beitin. His and James L Kelso’s subsequent report on The Excavation of Bethel was published in The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research in 1968:
- The collective evidence of the four campaigns shows that Bethel was occupied at least in part during MB II A and the whole site was continuously inhabited throughout MB II B and C. The town continued to increase in importance until its fall at the very end of MB II C. The town’s defenses which were erected at the beginning of MB II B were so effective that they served Bethel through most of her long history ... The section of the town excavated along the N wall showed traces of enormous fires within MB II B as well as one at its close. In MB II C the same area produced an excellent patrician house. About halfway through the period it was destroyed by a great conflagration but was quickly rebuilt with little change of plan, suggesting that there was no change of population. This building was again destroyed by fire at the close of MB II C, but no similar destruction was found in any of the other areas we excavated ... 116. Bethel seems to have been unoccupied in LB I (Albright & Kelso 27-28)
Albright and Kelso interpret the history of Bethel in the latter part of the Middle Bronze Age in terms of the conventional chronology:
- Bethel became a major town in MB II B. The new city wall, built c. 1650 B.C., gave Bethel such excellent defense that it continued to be used throughout its long history with only slight modifications until the Samaritan revolts c. A.D. 500 ... Two major periods of house construction mark the MB II B era ... MB II C also had two phases of good building. A new section of the city’s west wall was the last major construction work shortly before the city’s capture, probably by the Egyptians c. 1550 B.C. ... 184. The site then seems to have been unoccupied until c. 1400 B.C. when the city made an excellent comeback ... (Albright & Kelso 46-47)
In the conventional chronology, 1650 BCE corresponds to the beginning of the Second Intermediate Period, when Egypt was invaded and conquered by the Hyksos. In the Short Chronology, to which I subscribe, the Hyksos were the Assyrians, and their conquest of Egypt actually took place sometime during the 9th century BCE.
In the conventional chronology, 1550 BCE corresponds to the very beginning of the 18th Dynasty, whose founder Ahmose I expelled the Hyksos from Egypt. In the Short Chronology, the expulsion of the Hyksos is dated to 763 BCE and coincided with the Biblical Exodus.
Albright and Kelso attributed the destruction of Bethel at the end of the Middle Bronze Age to the Egyptians—probably—because they could think of no other suspects. In the conventional chronology, 1550 BCE is too early for Joshua’s Conquest of Canaan, but coincides with Ahmose’s campaign against the Hyksos. So the Egyptians are blamed, even though there is not the slightest bit of evidence that Ahmose ever campaigned in this area. In the preceding article in this series, we saw how mainstream archaeologists also blamed the Egyptians for the destruction of Jericho, which occurred at precisely the same time as the destruction of Bethel.
But in the Short Chronology, the end of the Middle Bronze Age, which occurred in Canaan around 760 BCE, is precisely where Joshua’s Conquest of Canaan belongs. The destruction of Bethel, with evidence of localized burning, at the close of MB II C is another piece of striking confirmation not only of the Biblical account but also of the Short Chronology—if, that is, we reinterpret Joshua 7-8 as an account of the capture and sack of Bethel rather than of Ai.
It is true that the Bible says that Joshua burnt Ai to the ground, whereas in Bethel there was only localized burning at the end of MB II C, and the city was rebuilt in LB II:
And Joshua burnt Ai, and made it an heap for ever, even a desolation unto this day. (Joshua 8:28)
But if the Biblical account was written by later scholars who mistakenly thought that Ai was the city attacked by Joshua, then these details make perfect sense. Admittedly, much of this is speculative, but that is the best I can do.
And that’s a good place to stop.
To be continued ...
References
- Adele Berlin & Marc Zvi Brettler (editors), The Jewish Study Bible, Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1999)
- William Foxwell Albright, James Leon Kelso, et al, The Excavation of Bethel, The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Volume 39, The American Schools of Oriental Research, Cambridge, MA (1968)
- Kenneth A Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids MI (2003)
- David Palmer Livingston, Khirbet Nisya 1979-1986: A Report on Six Seasons of Excavation, Dissertations 85, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, MI (1989)
- Edward Robinson, Eli Smith, Biblical Researches in Palestine, and in the Adjacent Regions: A Journal of Travels in the Year 1838, Volume 1, Crocker and Brewster, Boston (1856)
- Isidore Singer (editor), The Jewish Encyclopedia, Volume 3, Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York (1902)
- James Strong, Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary, in The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Eaton & Mains, New York (1890)
Image Credits
- Joshua Attended by Death at the Battle of Ai: John Trumbull (artist), Yale University Art Gallery, Public Domain
- The Capture of Ai by Joshua: Circle of Juan de la Corte (artists), Colección Fundación Banco Santander, Madrid, Public Domain
- Map of the Environs of Bethel and Ai: © Survey of Israel, Fair Use
- Bethel: Daniel B Shepp, The Photographs of the Holy Land, p 72, Globe Bible Publishing Company, Chicago (1894), Public Domain
- Et Tell and Deir Dibwan: © Bukvoed, Creative Commons License
- William Foxwell Albright: Charles H Weber (photographer), Public Domain
- James Leon Kelso: Public Domain
