Deus Artefacta: Timeline of the Judges

Timeline of the Judges

Entering the Promised Land (Josh 2:1; 3:1)

Abel-Shittim (Heb. meaning “Accacias of Mourning”),[1] which is the location of Israel’s encampment prior to entering the Promised Land (Num 25:1, Deut 34:9; Josh 2:1; 3:1), is identified by most scholars as the Late Bronze Age area around Tall el-Ḥammâm (fig. 41 and 44). However, only recently has the site been excavated.[2] It is significant that no Late Bronze occupation was discovered at TeH.[3] Collins reports that after eight seasons of excavation at TeH and thousands of sherds “Late Bronze Age sherds are extremely rare in the area, and there is no discernable LBA architecture thus far (the only LBA sherds from around the site were found in a tomb).”[4]

One might conclude from the “Late Bronze Gap,”[5] as it is called, that Moses and the Israelites were never in the region. However, in the Late Bronze Age, Moses described the area around Abel-Shittim, below Mount Pisgah (beside Mount Nebo), as a desert, wasteland, and as uninhabited (Num 21:20; 22:1), and nomadic tent dwellers would not have built permanent structures that would have survived. What have survived are several LBA shaft tombs identified from the pottery remains.[6] Also among the items uncovered in the area is a “highly detailed steatite seal [scarab] of Hyksos [Egyptian Amenhotep III] design from the second half of the Middle Bronze Age.”[7] One wonders if it was brought during the Exodus from Egypt among the belongings of the Israelites.

The absence of evidence in this case is significant. While Moses described the area around Abel-Shittim as uninhabited in the LBA (Num 21:20; 22:1), the Israelite presence at Abel-Shittim is corroborated by the identification of LBA tombs containing Egyptian possessions and a small free-standing LB guard tower on the acropolis of Tall el-Ḥammâm (identified as Abel-Shittim).[8]

[1] Selah Merrill, “Modern Researches in Palestine,” Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York 9 (1877): 117; “Modern Researches in Palestine,” PEFSt. 11, no. 1 (1879): 144; Thomson, Land and the Book: Lebanon, Damascus, and Beyond Jordan, 3:3:669; Nelson Glueck, Explorations in Eastern Palestine IV. Part 1, AASOR 25-28 (New Haven, CT: ASOR, 1945), 378; “Some Ancient Towns in the Plains of Moab,” OR 91 (1943): 15; J. Maxwell Miller and Gene M. Tucker, The Book of Joshua, The Cambridge Bible Commentary of the English Bible (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 199; R. K. Harrison, “Shittim,” in NIDBA, 413; Khouri, Antiquities of the Jordan Rift Valley, 76; Burton MacDonald, East of the Jordan: Territories and Sites of the Hebrew Scriptures, ed. Victor H. Matthews, ASOR Books 6 (Boston, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2000), 90; Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. and Duane Garrett, eds., NIV Archaeological Study Bible: An Illustrated Walk Through Biblical History and Culture (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 233.

[2] Kay Prag, “The Excavations at Tell Al-Hammam,” Syria 70, no. 1–2 (1990): 271–73; “Preliminary Report on the Excavations at Tell Iktanu and Tall el-Hammam, Jordan 1990,” Levant 23 (1991): 55–66; “Tell Iktanu and Tell Al-Hammam. Excavations in Jordan,” Manchester Archaeological Bulletin 7 (1992): 15–19; Collins et al., “Tall el-Hammam, Season Eight, 2013.”

[3] Collins, Hamdan, and Byers, “Tall el-Hammam: Preliminary Report on Four Seasons of Excavation (2006–2009),” 388; Collins and Scott, Discovering the City of Sodom, 95, 98, 144, 157–58.

[4] Collins et al., “Tall el-Hammam, Season Eight, 2013,” 4.

[5] Flanagan, McCreery, and Yassine, “Tell Nimrin: Preliminary Report on the 1993 Season,” 207, 219; Flanagan, McCreery, and Yassine, “Tall Nimrin,” 286.

[6] Collins et al., “Tall el-Hammam, Season Eight, 2013,” 4.

[7] Collins and Scott, Discovering the City of Sodom, 33, 175.

[8] Collins, “Tall el-Hammam Is Sodom,” 8.; Steven Collins et al., “Tall El-Hammam Season Ten, 2015: Excavation, Survey, Interpretations And Insights,” BRB 15, no. 1 (2015): 4.