Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah – Part 67

Part 1

Joshua and the Vanquished Kings (Marc Chagall)

The twelfth chapter of the Book of Joshua contains a list of thirty-one cities or petty kingdoms whose kings were slain by the Israelites during Joshua’s Conquest of Canaan:

And these are the kings of the country which Joshua and the children of Israel smote on this side Jordan on the west, from Baalgad in the valley of Lebanon even unto the mount Halak, that goeth up to Seir; which Joshua gave unto the tribes of Israel for a possession according to their divisions; In the mountains, and in the valleys, and in the plains, and in the springs, and in the wilderness, and in the south country; the Hittites, the Amorites, and the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites:

The king of Jericho, one; the king of Ai, which is beside Bethel, one;
The king of Jerusalem, one; the king of Hebron, one;
The king of Jarmuth, one; the king of Lachish, one;
The king of Eglon, one; the king of Gezer, one;
The king of Debir, one; the king of Geder, one;
The king of Hormah, one; the king of Arad, one;
The king of Libnah, one; the king of Adullam, one;
The king of Makkedah, one; the king of Bethel, one;
The king of Tappuah, one; the king of Hepher, one;
The king of Aphek, one; the king of Lasharon, one;
The king of Madon, one; the king of Hazor, one;
The king of Shimronmeron, one; the king of Achshaph, one;
The king of Taanach, one; the king of Megiddo, one;
The king of Kedesh, one; the king of Jokneam of Carmel, one;
The king of Dor in the coast of Dor, one; the king of the nations of Gilgal, one;
The king of Tirzah, one: all the kings thirty and one. (Joshua 12:7-24)

The Conquest of Canaan

Several of the cities in this Summary List have already been mentioned (eg Jericho and Ai), while others have not (eg Hormah and Tappuah). What makes this roster of slain kings particularly interesting, however, are the discrepancies between it and the preceding account of the Conquest. For instance, Joshua 10:3 referred to Debir king of Eglon, whereas Joshua 12:12-13 refers to The king of Eglon ... The king of Debir. Assessing the historicity of this list is further compounded by the uncertainty surrounding the identities of many of these Canaanite cities:

This list includes more than twice as many cities as those mentioned in the preceding narratives, indicating how selective the narratives are. Of the total of thirty-one cities, only twenty have been securely identified with excavated sites. (Berlin & Brettler 485)

Ai and Bethel

In an earlier article—Part 61—we examined the archaeological evidence relating to Ai, an ancient city close to Bethel, and we hypothesized that the account of Joshua’s conquest of this city (Joshua 7:1-8:29) is a corrupt account of the actual conquest of Bethel. Ai, itself, was already an abandoned ruin in Joshua’s day. The narrative account of the Conquest (Joshua 5-11) does not mention the capture of Bethel, but the Summary List (Joshua 12) does include Bethel. This supports the hypothesis that Bethel and Ai have been confused.

Hilltop Ruin at Adullam

Debir, Eglon and Adullam

In Part 64, we discussed the discrepancies surrounding the names Debir and Eglon: Are these the personal names of kings or are they the toponyms of Canaanite cities?

In Joshua 10, the King of Eglon is called Debir. But Debir was also the name of a city, and Eglon was also the name of a Moabite king. In fact, the place Eglon is not mentioned anywhere else in the Bible, and the personal name Debir only occurs in Joshua 10:3. This curiosity has led some scholars to suspect that the source for Joshua 10:3 was corrupt and the phrase ought to read Eglon King of Debir:

The name ‛Debir king of Eglon’ (Joshua 10.3) appears very odd, since Debir is a familiar city name and Eglon prominent as a king’s personal name. Moreover, the LXX has the city name Adullam where MT has Eglon. Various explanations are reviewed. It seems likely that Debir was indeed the city name and that it was transformed into a personal name in the course of redactional processes. (Barr 68)

To sum up: the phrase ‛Debir king of Eglon’ is, most probably, not the product of mere scribal miswriting but the product of a complicated process of combination, harmonization and revision of traditions, a process of which this part of the book of Joshua shows many signs, as commentators have seen. There were more relevant cities than the scheme of ‛five kings’ had room for. There was probably a serious tradition that took Adullam rather than Eglon as the place referred to several times. The variety of traditions still existing in the time of the LXX is shown by the list of (just over or under) thirty kings in ch. 12. The activity of creating names for persons of past history, sometimes using names of places for the purpose, is very likely. The very peculiar phrase ‛Debir king of Eglon’ is a result, and a sign, of these processes. (Barr 66)

All three names are included on the Summary List, where they are identified as royal cities which were conquered by Joshua and whose kings were slain. This leads me to doubt the historical accuracy of the Summary List.

Gedera from Tel Qatra

Geder

Geder has been identified with the city of Gedera, which is mentioned in Joshua 15:36 and 1 Chronicles 4:23, and with the Gader of Eusebius’s Onomasticon. The Biblical Gedera is currently identified with Khirbet Judraya, which lies about 20 km southwest of Jerusalem and 26 km southeast of the modern Gedera, but this is far from certain. Tel Qatra, in the northern outskirts of the modern Gedera, has also been identified with the ancient Canaanite city. The name means Stone Pen and it now appears probable that there were several different settlements with this name or some variant of it:

Gederah: Khirbet Judraya? Tel Qatra? Khirbet Jedîreh? Tell Judeideh?
Gederoth: Khirbet el-Ḥamideh? Tell el-Akraʿ?
Gederothaim: Beit Nattîf? A dittography for Gederah?

Gederah has been identified with several different ruins. Albright identified the site with Tell Judeideh ... and Cross and Wright pointed to Khirbet Jedireh in the Aijalon Valley ... However, most scholars have identified the site with Khirbet Jûdraya in the Elah Valley just east of modern Kibbutz Netiv HaLamed Heh following Alt’s initial suggestion ... The presence of Iron Age (IIB) remains at the site over an area of 10 dunams ... and its close proximity to the large amount of Iron II sites surrounding Beit Nattîf ... would seem to make this identification probable. (McKinny 184)

I place Joshua’s Conquest of Canaan at the very beginning of the Late Bronze Age, so Iron Age remains are too late to support the claim that Joshua conquered this city. But there is one city of similar name that has Bronze Age remains:

Gederoth (תוֹרֵדְ ג; Γαδηρωθ) may be mentioned in the Philistine attack against Ahaz in 2 Chronicles 28:18, although this is likely a reference to a different Gederah or Gederoth in the northern Shephelah ... The site can hardly be associated with Qâtra, the location of modern Gederah, since this is located well north of the district in question ... There are several significant ruins located south of Lachish that would have been most likely included in the Zenan district. One such ruin is Tell el-Akraʿ (Tel Agra). Investigations at Tell el-Akraʿ revealed remains from the Early Bronze II (majority), Late Bronze, Iron II, Roman and Byzantine ... Dagan describes the ruin as being badly eroded, but showing evidence of a fortification wall 4-8 m high that surrounds the tell. (McKinny 202)

Tel Qatra was also settled throughout the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, but hitherto the only significant archaeological excavations carried out at the site have concentrated on the much later Byzantine settlement.

Tell Beit Mirsim

Hormah

Hormah is another site of uncertain identity, making it virtually impossible to confirm or refute the account in the Book of Joshua:

The enigmatic town of Hormah (הָמ ְרָח; Ερμα) is one of the more prevalent towns mentioned in association with the southern part of the country ... The town has been identified with various sites including Tell el-Khuweilfeh ... and Tell el-Meshash ... Using the same logic one might be able to identify Hormah with the unidentified Tell Beit Mirsim, which is 8 km north of Tell el-Khuweilfeh ... In any case, Tell Beit Mirsim is the only significant Canaanite and monarchical site in the region that has not been positively identified, which makes it a plausible candidate for biblical Hormah. Although it should be noted that scholars have noted the possibility that Hormah may be related to multiple sites in connection with the process of “abandonment and resettlement” in the Negeb ... Tell Beit Mirsim, like Tell el-Ḥesi, is one of the foundational excavations for the modern archaeological method. Albright’s excavations from 1926-1932 revealed a Bronze-Iron Age site with no later activity after the Babylonian destruction (Iron IIC) of the site. Albright uncovered a series of strata spanning from the Late Bronze Age (Stratum C) to the Iron I (stratum B) to the Iron II (stratum A). Albright and Greenberg identified Shishak as the destroyer of the stratum B fortified town. (McKinny 101-102)

There is nothing here that is particularly supportive of Joshua 12, though McKinny’s Table 3-6 confirms that Tell Beit Mirsim was settled during the Middle Bronze Age (McKinny 132). The situation is further complicated by the relationship between Hormah and Arad (see below).

Curiously, Numbers 14 relates a story is which the Israelites disobey Moses and try to invade Canaan from the south immediately after the return of the spies sent out by Moses to reconnoitre the land:

And Moses said, Wherefore now do ye transgress the commandment of the Lord? but it shall not prosper. Go not up, for the Lord is not among you; that ye be not smitten before your enemies. For the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you, and ye shall fall by the sword: because ye are turned away from the Lord, therefore the Lord will not be with you.

But they presumed to go up unto the hill top: nevertheless the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and Moses, departed not out of the camp. Then the Amalekites came down, and the Canaanites which dwelt in that hill, and smote them, and discomfited them, even unto Hormah. (Numbers 14:41-45)

In the opening chapter of the Book of Judges, we are further told that after the death of Joshua, the Tribe of Judah conquered and destroyed the Canaanite city of Zephath, which then became known as Hormah—“broken rock”. Clearly, the authors of the Hebrew Bible were drawing on competing and contradictory sources.

Not surprisingly, the various candidates identified with Hormah are all in southern Canaan. We have already had reason to doubt the historicity of Joshua’s Southern Campaign. In my opinion, it is more likely that Hormah was first conquered by the Judahites sometime after the death of Joshua.

Tell ‛Arad (Israelite Fortress and Lower City)

Arad

The identity of the Biblical Arad with Tell ‘Arad seems secure. It is also thought that the Eder of Joshua 15:21 refers to the same place:

Most scholars consider Eder (רֶדֵ ע; Εδραι) to be a misspelling of Arad (דָרֲע) ... In fact, the reading of Αραδ is a variant of the LXX. The site of Iron Age Arad is perfectly preserved in the Arabic name Tell ‘Arad. Tell ‘Arad has a stratigraphic sequence from the Iron I until the destruction of the kingdom of Judah at the end of the Iron IIC. On account of this, it would seem very unlikely that such an integral site in the Beersheba Valley would be absent from the Judahite town list. (McKinny 113)

No Bronze Age strata have been discovered at Tell ‛Arad. This has called into question the identification of Tell ‛Arad with the Canaanite city of Arad:

The findings unearthed by the excavations again raise the question of whether this site is to be identified with ancient Arad. Since no remains of the city were found dating from the Middle and Late Bronze ages, it is impossible to identify the site with Canaanite Arad. Two theories have been proposed to solve this problem, one by B. Mazar and one by Y. Aharoni.

It has been suggested by Mazar that Canaanite Arad was not a city but rather the name of the entire district, which would account for the designation “in the south of Arad” in Judges 1:16. We are also told that the king of Arad smote the children of Israel in Hormah. According to Mazar, Hormah was the city where the “king of Arad” resided. It should probably be identified with Tel Malḥatah (Tell el-Milḥ), 12 kilometers ... southwest of Tell ‛Arad ...

Aharoni assumes, however, that Canaanite Arad was situated on Tel Malḥatah. Hormah is to be identified with Tel Masos (Khirbet el Meshash), 6 kilometers ... west of Tel Malḥatah. (Avi-Yonah & Stern 1:88)

Yohanan Aharoni, the Israeli archaeologist who wrote the above account, believed that Tell ‛Arad is the later Israelite city of Arad and that it is to be distinguished from the older Canaanite city (Avi-Yonah & Stern 1:89). The archaeology of Tel Masos does not support a Joshuan Conquest at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, but the current uncertainty surrounding the identity of Arad makes it impossible to draw any firm conclusions.

Tel Adullam

Adullam

As we have seen, in Joshua 10:3, where the Hebrew Bible speaks of the Canaanite city of Eglon, the Greek Septuagint has Adullam. The Summary List in Joshua 12 includes both. Adullam is now identified with Tell Sheikh Madkhur (Khirbet esh-Sheikh Madkur), ... Another tell, Khirbet ‘Id el Minya (Khirbet ‘Eid al-Miah), lies at the foot of the mountain on which Tell Sheikh Madkhur is located. It is thought that ‘Id el Minya is an Arabic corruption of the Hebrew Adullam (עֲדֻלָּם), but the Biblical Adullam is still identified with the upper tell:

Eusebius describes the site as a “very large village” that he locates ten Roman miles from Eleutheropolis (Onom. 24.12) near Chasbi (Onom. 172.3) ... Adullam has been positively identified with a tell based upon an Arabic toponymic connection. In this case, Adullam is related to Khirbet Tell Sheikh Madhkûr, which sits beside ʿîd el-Mâ or ʿîd el-Mîyā whose name preserves Adullam ... Dagan’s survey of the site produced remains from the Chalcolithic, Early Bronze, Middle Bronze, Late Bronze, Iron IIA (10 dunams), Iron IIB, Iron IIC, and Persian-Byzantine ... The archaeological, toponymic, and geographic (Tell Khirbet Sheikh Madhkûr is about 10 Roman miles from Eleutheropolis) evidence make this identification certain. (McKinny 178)

Adullam, then, existed at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, but more than this we cannot say. The Septuagint’s confusion between Eglon and Adullam is also found in Eusebius’s Onomasticon, as McKinny notes:

Eusebius seems to have confused Adullam with Eglon (Onom. 84.7) and Eglaim (Isa 15:8) (Onom. 140.8).

This article is quite long as it is, so let's take a break here and resume our study in the next article.

And that’s a good place to stop.

References

William Fox Albright, Bronze Age Mounds of Northern Palestine and the Hauran: The Spring Trip of the School in Jerusalem, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Number 19, Pages 5-19, American Schools of Oriental Research, University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1925)
Michael Avi-Yonah, Ephraim Stern (editors), The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, Volumes 1, 2, 3, 4, Prentice-Hall Incorporated, Englewood Cliffs, NJ (1975)
Ian Barnes, The Historical Atlas of the Bible, Quantum Publishing, London (2014)
James Barr, Mythical Monarch Unmasked? Mysterious Doings of Debir King of Eglon, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Volume 15, Issue 48, Pages 55-68, Sheffield Academic Press Limited, Sheffield (1990)
Amnon Ben-Tor, Doron Ben-Ami, & Ariella Livneh, Yoqne’am III: The Middle And Late Bronze Ages—Final Report of the Archaeological Excavations (1977–1988), Qedem Reports, Volume 7, Pages 1-436, Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem (2005)
Adele Berlin & Marc Zvi Brettler (editors), The Jewish Study Bible, Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1999)
Alan E. Brooke & Norman McLean (editors), The Old Testament in Greek: According to the Text of Codex Vaticanus, Volume 1, Part 4, Joshua, Judges and Ruth, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1917)
Samuel Holmes, Joshua: The Hebrew and Greek Texts, Cambridge University press, Cambridge (1914)
Saint Jerome, Liber De Situ Et Nominibus Locorum Hebraicorum, Patrologia Latina, MPL023, Jacques-Paul Migne, Paris (1845)
Eero Junkkaala, Three Conquests of Canaan, Åbo Akademi University Press, Turku (2006)
Kenneth A Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids MI (2003)
Ferdinand Larsow, Gustav Parthey (editors), Eusebii Pamphili Episcopi Caesariensis Onomasticon Urbium et Locorum Sacrae Scripturae [A Gazetteer of Cities and Places in Holy Scripture by Eusebius Pamphili], Friedrich Nicolai, Berlin (1862)
Gunnar Lehmann, Phoenicians in Western Galilee, in Amihai Mazar (editor), studies in the Archaeology of the iron Age in Israel and Jordan, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series 331, Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield (2001)
Chris McKinny, A Historical Geography of the Administrative Division of Judah, Bar-Ilan University (Dissertation), Ramat Gan (2017)
James Monson, H T Frank, Student Map Manual: Historical Geography of the Bible Lands, Pictorial Archive (Near Eastern History) Est, Jerusalem (1979)
Lorenzo Nigro, Chiara Fiaccavento, Mohammed Jaradat, Jehad Yasine, Archaeology from A to Z: Abu Zarad, an Ancient Town of Palestine, Vicino Oriente, Issue 19, Pages 139-183, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome (2015)
Edward Robinson, Eli Smith and Others, Later Biblical Researches in Palestine and the Adjacent Regions: A Journal of Travels in the Year 1852, John Murray, London (1856)
Ephraim Stern (editor), The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, Volume 2, Simon & Schuster, New York (1993)

Image Credits

Joshua and the Vanquished Kings (Marc Chagall): Marc Chagall (artist), Josué et les Rois Vaincus, Heliogravure on Paper, Fair Use
The Conquest of Canaan: © Quantum Publishing, Cartographica Press (cartographers), Ian Barnes (author), The Historical Atlas of the Bible, Page 61, Quantum Publishing, London (2014), Fair Use
Tell Beit Mirsim: Excavations at Tell Beit Mirsim (Kirjath-Sepher), 1926, Great High Place, Library of Congress, Matson Collection, Public Domain
Tell ‛Arad (Israelite Fortress and Lower City): Assaf.C (photographer), Public Domain
The Sharon Plain: IsraelMap360°, Public Domain
Tell Abu Hawam: William Henry Bartlett (artist), Ford of the River Kishon, Bay of Acre, Israeli National Maritime Museum, Haifa, Public Domain
Plan of Tell Ta’annek: G Schumacher, Ephraim Stern, Volume 4, Page 1140, Public Domain

Joshua: The 31 Vanquished Kings - Part 1