Giants in Scripture and in the world

 

by

 Damien F. Mackey

  

“The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—

when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown”.

 Genesis 6:4

  

As the above text indicates, giants have existed both before and after the great Flood.

 

Evidence for giants can be found throughout the world – though one always has to be on guard against fakes:

Were There Giants? What the Evidence Actually Shows - ScienceInsights

“By the 1800s, public fascination with giants was so intense that it became profitable to fake them. The most famous case is the Cardiff Giant, unearthed on October 16, 1869, on a farm in Cardiff, New York. Two laborers digging a well hit stone three feet down, cleared the soil, recognized the shape of a foot, and eventually uncovered a ten-foot-tall stone figure of a man. Crowds paid to see it, and many believed it was a petrified ancient giant.

The whole thing was a setup. The farm’s owner, William Newell, had buried the statue the year before. His cousin George Hull, an atheist and amateur science enthusiast, had carved it to make a point about the tension between science and religious faith. Hull wasn’t wealthy, and the scheme was also designed to make money, which it did. The giant became so popular that P.T. Barnum offered to buy it. When the owners refused, Barnum simply made a replica and displayed that instead, claiming his was the real one. The owners tried to sue, but the judge reportedly said, “Bring your giant here, and if he swears to his own genuineness, you shall have your injunction.” By December 1869, Hull confessed, and the hoax collapsed”.

 

President Abe Lincoln, himself of unusual configuration, which some call “gigantism”, is purported to have been interested in the discovery of giants in North America.

 

 

The ancestors of the giants, the Anakim, about whom the Israelite spies reported (Numbers 13:33), had apparently survived from the raid of the four northern kings at the time of Abram - about half a millennium earlier - when giant peoples such as the Rephaïtes (Deuteronomy 3:11), the Zuzites (Deuteronomy 2:20 links them with the Zamzummim, another clan of great stature) and the Emites, “a people great, numerous, and tall” (Deuteronomy 2:10-11), were overcome (Genesis 14:5).  

Later, as the army of Israel will make its way through Transjordania (Dr. Osgood distinguishes this region, as IV, from the Early Bronze III civilisations in Canaan), they will encounter, and defeat, the fearsome Og, giant king of Bashan.

(The account of Og’s defeat is recorded in several passages, including Numbers 21:33-35, Deuteronomy 3:1-11, and Joshua 12:4-5). 

 

“Og king of Bashan”, we read, “was the last of the Rephaïtes. His bed was decorated with iron and was more than nine cubits long and four cubits wide. It is still in Rabbah of the Ammonites”. Og’s bed was about 14 feet long and 6 feet wide or about 4 meters long and 1.8 meters wide.

Now, that’s a giant!

 

While some ancient Jewish legends can be helpful to the point of being vital, I think that we can take with a grain of salt the one that has King Og clinging to Noah’s Ark:

The Amazing Story of Og, the Giant King of Bashan | Mayim Achronim

“Midrashic texts famously record that Og was the only survivor of the Great Flood, aside from Noah and his family. When the torrential rains began, Og jumped onto the Ark and held on tightly (Zevachim 113b). He swore to Noah that he would be his family’s eternal servant if Noah would allow him into the Ark (Yalkut Shimoni, Noach 55). The Talmud (ibid.) states that the rain waters of the Flood were actually boiling hot. Yet, the rain that fell upon Og while he held unto the Ark was miraculously cool, allowing him to survive”.

 

Was Og the original Procrustes?

 

As Einstein would have said, it is all relative. (Or, as a football guru once remarked: ‘You don’t have to be Norman Einstein to …’).

 

Therefore, when speaking of giants, it needs to be noted that human beings were on average somewhat smaller, or shorter, than are those of our own era.

The Neanderthals, perhaps the long-lived antediluvians, who continued on for a time after the Flood, were not necessarily tall, but they were apparently very strong, with marvellous eyesight far surpassing our own, and with a much longer life expectancy.

 

Again, the walled cities in Canaan that Israel’s spies described as being “fortified and very large” (Numbers 13:28), would be miniscule by comparison with our own cities. But to an invading people lacking siege weaponry, even a relatively small, walled city would loom as formidable.

 

One does not need to be a giant to be very strong.

 

There is no indication, for instance, that the immensely powerful Samson was an actual giant – except in his faith (cf. Hebrews 11:32).

And this man in the 1930’s, who pulled a full bus with his teeth, was certainly no giant.

 

 

The Philistines, not included in the report of the spies - but figuring at the time of Abram, and then, again, at the time of kings Saul and David - appear to have been a tall race, including various giants, such as Goliath.

 

Also needing to be taken into account is the fact that the reluctant spies exaggerated the truth, so that, now: “All the people we saw there are of great size” (Numbers 13:32). 

 

And, again (13:33): ^“We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim)”.

 

Any mention of the Nephilim, either then, or today, is bound to attract interest. 

What is the significance of the fact there were giants in those days (Genesis 6:4)? | GotQuestions.org
Genesis 6 records the expansion of the human race and its descent into further corruption. The writer records that there were “giants on the earth in those days” (Genesis 6:4, NKJV) and offers a brief explanation of how that came to be.

 

As humanity multiplied and began to be numerous on the earth (Genesis 6:1), the “sons of God” took wives (Genesis 6:2), and they began to increase. In light of the rapid multiplication of humanity and its evil, God limited the human lifespan to one-hundred, twenty years (Genesis 6:3). Prior to that time, people lived a very long time—even up to around nine hundred years (see Genesis 5). Though lifespans were decreasing on their own, God intervened to limit them greatly. Despite this significant limitation, there were giants (Hebrew, Nephilim) in those days—in the days of Noah. These were mighty men of renown and were apparently the products of relationships between the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men” (Genesis 6:4).

 

The giants in those days were extraordinary, leading some to suppose that the “sons of God” in Genesis 6:2 and Genesis 6:4 are fallen angels and not merely regular people. In that theory, these fallen angels took on physical form and procreated with women. The demon-human hybrid DNA resulted in giant size and, apparently, enhanced physical abilities.

 

There are three objections to this theory: First, there is nothing in the text that suggests the “sons of God” are angels. While the phrase can be used of angels (as it is apparently in Job 1:6, 2:1, and 38:7), it is also regularly used of people (e.g., Matthew 5:9 and Luke 20:36). Second, there is no indication that angels are physiologically compatible with women and can procreate with them (unless this is the only instance).

 

Third, the theological implications are significant enough that one might expect some further explanation. Instead, we only see the offspring referred to as “giants” (Nephilim) and mighty, but nothing beyond that.

 

Others have suggested that the sons of God might be people possessed by demonic beings. As in the other view, the phrase sons of God would still refer to fallen angels. While this view would resolve the physiological implications, there is nothing in the text that would suggest this possibility.

 

A third view is that there were giants in those days simply because humanity hadn’t been fully genetically corrupted—everyone was big and tall and mighty—and God intervenes to shorten human lifespans. This theory takes the biblical account at face value, that these sons of God were simply men. In any case, there were giants in the land at this time before the flood and “afterward” (Genesis 6:4). There were still giants during the time of Israel’s conquest of Canaan (Numbers 13:33) and David’s time (1 Samuel 17:4–7). If these Nephilim were superhumans resulting from demonic and human cohabitation, it seems they would have died in the flood (Genesis 7:21–23). The fact that they were still around after the flood is either evidence that the fallen angels performed the same act again at some point after the flood, or it is another indicator in support of the third view that these giants on the earth from time to time were exceptional, but not superhuman. ….

[End of quote]

 

The view that (fallen) angels are able to have offspring with human beings seems metaphysically ridiculous. However, it is apparent from the story of Sarah in the Book of Tobit, that these malevolent entities are not beyond lusting after human persons. Asmodeus, described as “the worst of demons”, and jealous of the beautiful Sarah, will bump off seven consecutive of her husbands, until young Tobias, guided by the healing archangel Raphael, will come and save the day.

 

The girl had been driven to the verge of suicide (Tobit 3:10).

 

Dried-up branch of the Nile ran alongside ancient pyramids and capital of Memphis

 

 

“The discovery may explain why pyramid fields were concentrated along this strip

of desert near the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis, as they would have been easily accessible via the river branch at the time of their construction”.

 

Sean McShee  

 

A new branch of the Nile discovered in Egypt - Africa, Middle East, News, Uncovering the Past, World

 

A new branch of the Nile discovered in Egypt

 

By Sean McShee  | July 10, 2024

 

TWH –  The science journal, Communications Earth, and Environment, published evidence of an ancient, now dried-up and silted-over branch of the Nile. The research is from the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of North Carolina – Wilmington. The authors of that study, Eman Ghoneim et al., named this branch the “Ahramat Branch.” In Arabic, “Ahramat” means “pyramids.” The discovery may explain why pyramid fields were concentrated along this strip of desert near the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis, as they would have been easily accessible via the river branch at the time of their construction.

 

During the age of pyramid building, construction supplies moved along this branch. That waterway also brought people to perform the rituals of the Cult of the Dead Pharaoh. Ghoneim and her colleagues found that many of the pyramids had causeways ending at the proposed riverbanks of the Ahramat Branch, suggesting the river was used for transporting construction materials.

 

The Ahramat Branch helps to explain why the Egyptians built the pyramids where they did.

 

The height of the water in that branch varied over time, as did the locations where the pyramids were built. The distance between the banks of that branch and the pyramids also varies.

 

Ghoneim et al. discussed the changes in land and water in North Africa. These changes influenced the Ahramat as well as ancient Egypt.

 

The Cult of the Pharaoh

 

No pyramid was merely the beautifully decorated final resting place of a dead Pharaoh. Pyramids formed parts of ceremonial complexes, which were key elements of the Cult of the (Dead) Pharaoh. Next to the pyramid stood the mortuary temple, where the Pharaoh’s cult continued after death. Egyptians built valley temples on waterways, and a causeway linked the valley temple with the mortuary temple.

 

Many of these causeways ended at and ran at right angles to the bank of the Ahramat Branch. Ghoneim et al. argued that the valley temples functioned as river harbors.

….

“The Ahramat Branch borders a large number of pyramids dating from the Old Kingdom to the 2nd Intermediate Period and spanning between Dynasties 3 and 13.” via Communications Earth, and Environment

 

Climate change in ancient North Africa

 

As the last Ice Age ended around 10,000 B.C.E., [sic] sea levels rose, and the area now known as the Sahara began to transform from an arid desert to a savannah-like environment with large river systems and lake basins. Scientists have labeled this period as the African Humid Period (12,500 to 3000 B.C.E.).

 

….

 

The Old Kingdom of Egypt began around 2700 B.C.E. [Mackey: More like 2000 BC]

 

The Great Sphinx and Pyramids of Gizeh (Giza), 17 July 1839,

by David Roberts [public domain

 

The Ahramat Branch

 

The Nile had a much greater water volume during the African Humid Period, which lessened during the Old Kingdom. This period saw the Nile frequently branching off, including the Ahramat Branch. As northeastern Africa became more arid, the Nile and its branches carried less water. The desert expanded, water levels dropped, and some branches dried up.

 

In the developed world, rivers seldom run free and are often managed, like the Colorado River, which functions as a de facto water management system. The developed world keeps tight control over waterways. Before humans had such control, rivers meandered, branched off, flooded, and changed course naturally.

 

The Ahramat Branch was not a small creek. Before humans began to control rivers, their length, depth, and width varied significantly.

 

Mackey: For the massive technological and infrastructural innovations, dams and waterways, created during the time of Joseph of Egypt’s Famine, see e.g. my article (esp. Part Two):

 

Imhotep Enigma, his pharaoh was not Djoser, and proof for Egypt’s Third Dynasty Famine

 

(1) Imhotep Enigma, his pharaoh was not Djoser, and proof for Egypt’s Third Dynasty Famine

 

Ghoneim et al. reported that the Ahramat had a depth between 2 and 8 meters (6.6 to 26.2 feet), a length of 64 kilometers (39.8 miles), and a width between 200 to 700 meters (656.2 to 2,296.6 feet).

 

Egyptian civilization developed in the context of declining rainfall, which meant less water in the Nile and its branches. As the Sahara grew larger, the risk of sandstorms increased, causing branches of the Nile to silt up. Its banks grew more solid, and marshlands disappeared. The Nile itself and its branches began to move eastward, marking the beginnings of the Old Kingdom ….

 

From west to east, Egypt can be described as three regions: the Western Desert Plateau, the Nile floodplain, and the Eastern Desert. The Western Desert Plateau lies between the western border and the Nile floodplain, which bisects Egypt and provides the main water source. The Eastern Desert lies between the Nile floodplain and the Red Sea.

 

The Ahramat Branch flowed between the Nile and the Western Desert Plateau. According to Ghoneim et al., the volume of water in the Ahramat varied over time. When it carried more water, it overflowed its main banks and covered more ground. The distance between the Ahramat and the pyramids under construction also varied.

 

When the water in the Ahramat rose higher, the Egyptians built the pyramids further west. When the water fell lower, they built the pyramids closer to the Ahramat Branch.

There is no consensus on why the Old Kingdom collapsed. One theory suggests that failures of the Nile to flood adequately over several years led to famine, which in turn led to the collapse of the Old Kingdom.

 

Soil cores extracted from the area around Memphis show 3 meters (9.8 feet) of sand, likely deposited by sandstorms from the growing desert. This sand would have pushed the Nile and its branches eastward, potentially overwhelming the Nile’s low-lying branches.

 

Like political boundaries, rivers can change. In 2007, John K. Hillier et al. estimated that at Luxor in southern Egypt, the Nile had migrated 2 to 3 kilometers (1.2 to 1.9 miles) per 1,000 years.

 

Two factors drove the eastward migration of the Nile and its branches: continued desertification of the Sahara, which increased the amount of windblown sand, and a low volume of water in the river and its branches, which caused more silting. When sandstorms and low water occurred together, the process accelerated. Additionally, northern Egypt sits on a fault line and is prone to earthquakes. Over time, fault line movements caused a relative tilt downwards to the northeast, contributing to the drying up of the Ahramat Branch.

 

The Ahramat Branch disappeared during the New Kingdom, roughly 1550 to 1070 B.C.E. [sic].

 

An early photograph of the Great Pyramid,

taken by Frédéric Goupil-Fesquet in 1839 [public domain]

 

The zone of interest

 

In ancient Egypt, the major cities and monuments straddle the banks of the Nile. The ancient Egyptians built their monuments at the margins of the Nile floodplain. As the volume of water in the Nile and its branches changed, so did those margins.

 

Eman Ghoneim et al. examined a zone of interest west of the Nile, extending from the Lisht Pyramid complex northward to the Giza Pyramid complex. This zone contains the largest concentration of pyramids (31) in Egypt. The Egyptians built these pyramids from the Old Kingdom to the Second Intermediate Period, roughly from 2700 to 1650 B.C.E.[sic]. Memphis, the capital of the Old Kingdom, is located on the Nile across from this zone. Until now, the reason for this dense concentration had never been clear. The Ahramat Branch would have provided transit for building those ceremonial complexes.

“Many of us who are interested in ancient Egypt are aware that the Egyptians must have used a waterway to build their enormous monuments, like the pyramids and valley temples, but nobody was certain of the location, the shape, the size or proximity” to the pyramids, says lead author Eman Ghoneim in a statement. “Our research offers the first map of one of the main ancient branches of the Nile at such a large scale and links it with the largest pyramid fields of Egypt.”

 

The Ahramat branch could have provided transport to major pyramid sites. Those sites include the Giza, Abusir, Saqqara, Dahshur, and Lisht pyramid complexes. That article quoted lead archaeologist Ghoneim. She said the Nile served as a “lifeline in a largely arid landscape.” It provided both sustenance and easy transport of goods and building materials. She continued “For this reason … most of the key cities and monuments were in close proximity to the banks of the Nile and its peripheral branches.”

….

 

 

Faithless Israelites scared of a few giants

 

by

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

‘We saw Nephilim there. (The descendants of Anak are Nephilim.) We felt as small as grasshoppers, and that’s how we must have looked to them’.

 

Numbers 13:33

 

Only Jesus Christ can lead us into the Promised Land (Acts 4:12): “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved”.

 

Metaphorically speaking, the Israelites would be led into the Promised Land by a Jesus - at least, by a warrior with a Jesus name, Joshua (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ), meaning “The Lord will save”. The name Jesus (יֵשׁוּעַ) means, similarly, “He will save”.

 

Metaphorically, again, it would not have been fitting for Moses to have led the Israelites into the Promised Land because Moses embodied the Law (Torah), and the Law alone was never sufficient to save Israel (cf. Romans 7:13-24).

 

As Ike Clanton said to Wyatt Earp, ‘Law don’t go around here, Kansas Law Dog’.

 

However, before Joshua can even begin his assault on the fortified Early Bronze III (EB III) cities of the land of Canaan, he will encounter the real leader of the army of Israel, a prefigurement of Jesus Christ – the Old Testament ever seeking its fulfilment in the New (Catechism of the Catholic Church, # 129): “Christians therefore read the Old Testament in the light of Christ crucified and risen”.

 

Joshua 5:13-15:

 

When Joshua was near the town of Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with sword in hand. Joshua went up to him and demanded, ‘Are you friend or foe?’

‘Neither one’, he replied. ‘I am the commander of the Lord’s army’.

At this, Joshua fell with his face to the ground in reverence. ‘I am at your command’, Joshua said. ‘What do you want your servant to do?’

The commander of the Lord’s army replied, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy’. And Joshua did as he was told.

 

Joshua and Caleb

 

All but two persons from amongst the horde of adult Middle Bronze I (MBI) people who had departed from the land of Egypt under the leadership of Moses will ultimately enter into the Promised Land: namely, Joshua and Caleb.

The number of those who had marched off into the desert wilderness appears to have been wildly exaggerated, due to a rigid interpretation of the Hebrew word, elef (אֶלֶף), as “thousand”. Assuredly “thousand” is one of the word’s various meanings - but when a translation leads to a situation that greatly stretches common sense, one ought to consider searching for a different meaning.

Sadly though, as we well know, ‘common sense is not so common’ (Voltaire).

 

The usual estimation of two million Israelites, 600,000 fighting men, wandering in a moon-scape like, waterless, desert, is well beyond the realms of likelihood.

 

The number was probably closer to 60,000 in total - still a great horde.

 

Had Israel really been able to boast of 600,000 fighting men, the same size as Napoleon’s Grande Armée, then they would have been able to laugh at any opposition – giants included.

 

Moses, stationed at Kadesh-barnea, had selected 12 men to enter into, and to spy out, the Promised Land - one man from each of the 12 tribes of Israel (Numbers 13:1-29).

 

Like the 12 Apostles commissioned by Jesus Christ, these chosen leaders of Israel were meant to prepare the way for the ultimate Conquest of the land.

 

However, the faithless spies - all but Joshua and Caleb - returned quaking in their sandals. Yes, here was a land flowing with milk and honey, with abundant grapes, too, pomegranates and figs, but we saw the Anakim, giants who made us seem as small as grasshoppers.

 

These giants had turned our Hebrew warriors into a heap of worriers.

 

(Vv. 27-29): “This is what they reported to Moses: ‘We went to the land where you sent us. It really is a land flowing with milk and honey. Here’s some of its fruit. But the people who live there are strong, and the cities have walls and are very large. We even saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites live in the Negev. The Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the mountain region. And the Canaanites live along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and all along the Jordan River’.

 

Joshua (from Ephraim) and Caleb (from Judah), though, were having none of it.

They, like the young David when confronted with the giant Goliath, were convinced that they could win the victory with the Lord on their side. Big is not always better.

They had sufficient faith - the ten other Israelite spies did not.

 

(Vv. 30-33) “Caleb told the people to be quiet and listen to Moses. Caleb said, ‘Let’s go now and take possession of the land. We should be more than able to conquer it’.

But the men who had gone with him said, ‘We can’t attack those people! They’re too strong for us!’ So they began to spread lies among the Israelites about the land they had explored. They said, ‘The land we explored is one that devours those who live there. All the people we saw there are very tall. We saw Nephilim there. (The descendants of Anak are Nephilim.) We felt as small as grasshoppers, and that’s how we must have looked to them’.”

 

Owing to their faith, the pair, Joshua and Caleb, incredibly, would be the only ones amongst the whole mass of adult people that had departed from Egypt who would ultimately enter the Promised Land, after 40 years of wandering. For the Lord had concluded a marvellous dialogue with Moses (and Aaron) by declaring (v. 34): ‘For 40 days you explored the land. So for 40 years—one year for each day—you will suffer for your sins and know what it means for Me to be against you’. 

 

That ‘wandering’, though, needs to be put into perspective.

 

Israel was not constantly roaming aimlessly around the Sinai and Negev deserts, but was situated, for the most part, at the oasis of Kadesh Barnea (Tell el-Qudeirat), where, not surprisingly, there is to be found a large concentration of MBI sites:

 

… there is a large concentration of sites along the geomorphic line that runs from the Kadesh-Barnea region to north of Dimona. ….   

….

The concentration of MBI sites in the relatively fertile district east of Kadesh-Barnea recalls the tradition that the Israelites encamped near this oasis for 38 of their 40 years of wandering after leaving Egypt (Deuteronomy 1:46).

(Rudolph Cohen, “The Mysterious MBI People”, BAR, July/August 1983).

 

 

 

Middle Bronze I nomads came up from the south hence they could not have been Abraham’s family

 

 

by

Damien F. Mackey

 

“On the basis of my research, I would suggest that they were a people

who migrated slowly, from the south or southwest,

into the Central Negev of Palestine”.

Dr. Rudolph Cohen

  

What Dr. Rudolph Cohen wrote here, in his article:

Home > Magazines > BAR > July/August 1983

 

The Mysterious MBI People

Does the Exodus tradition in the Bible preserve the memory of their entry into Canaan?

 

is an improvement, both geographically and archaeologically, on the views of the American rabbi-archaeologist, Nelson Glueck - who had believed that the nomadic Middle Bronze I (MBI) people belonged to the age of the patriarch Abraham - and of those who have identified them as the family of Abraham. Their progression into the Negev from the S or SW is geographically opposite to that of the Abraham-ites, who had entered the land of Canaan from the north, coming from Haran (from the NE).

 

Moreover, the MBI sites are far too substantial and widespread to represent the incipient Abrahamic family.  

 

Dr. Cohen wrote:

 

In his Negev surveys, Glueck found that small MBI settlements had flourished all over the Central Negev, while the area was largely uninhabited during the prior and following periods. …. Since Negev sites like Beer-Sheva and Gerar figure prominently in the patriarchal narratives, Glueck concluded that this age must have been that of the patriarchs and that the MBI people included the patriarchal Hebrew tribes. Glueck’s hypothesis was soon adopted by Albright in his famous and controversial essay, “Abram the Hebrew.” …. 

Albright argued in this essay that the Biblical stories concerning the patriarch had their natural setting in the wide-ranging donkey caravans that conducted trade in the ancient Near East in MBI, which he dated to the early second millennium B.C.

 

The gross mis-dating of Palestinian archaeology – almost a millennium too early – by W.F. Albright and Fr. Louis-Hugues Vincent (OP), had brought the MBI people into chronological range of Abram (Abraham).

 

Dr. Cohen, while rejecting Glueck’s Abraham hypothesis, will, in his article, date the MBI to that approximate early era, to “… 2200 B.C. to about 2000 B.C.”. Yet, despite that, Dr. Cohen was able to convince Australian tour guide, Dr. David Down - who had correctly dated the MBI nomads to “about 1405 BC” - that the two were on the same page. Thus Dr. David Down (“Egal and the Exodus”):

Archive: Egal and the Exodus

 

It all started the previous year when I talked with Dr Rudolph Cohen, then head of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who holds the same view as I do on the identification of the Middle Bronze I people with the Israelites who invaded Palestine under Joshua about 1405 BC.

 

Drs. Down and Cohen were not entirely saying the same thing, however.

How could they have been, if one (Down) had accepted the MBI as the Exodus Israelites according to a close biblical estimation (1405 BC), whilst the other (Cohen) had dated those same people to half a millennium or more earlier?

 

What Dr. Cohen and Egal Israel are really saying, as one finds with deeper probing, is that the biblical Israelites are a dim memory of the real, historical MBI people. These experienced Israeli archaeologists never appear to have (had) any intention whatsoever of re-adjusting the MBI to where Dr. David Down knows they actually belong, to “about 1405 BC”.

 

I have to say at this stage that those archaeologists, who, using the same chronological system as Dr. Cohen and Egal Israel, outright deny that the Exodus ever happened, that Joshua ever existed, biblical minimisers such as emeritus professor Israel Finkelstein and his allies, are the more logical.

 

They know that there is nothing in their (albeit faulty) c. 1400 BC period that would accord with the Joshuan Conquest of Canaan. And they are prepared to admit it - whereas Dr. Cohen (and, presumably, Egal Israel) pushes the distant memory line.

 

Let us follow Dr. Rudolph Cohen through parts of his article, with some comments added wherever deemed appropriate:

 

….

One of the most obscure periods in the history of Palestine is the Middle Bronze I period (commonly referred to as MBI) which extended from about 2200 B.C. to about 2000 B.C. Who were the MBI people? We really don’t know.

 

Mackey’s comment: And you are really going to have no hope of finding out if you mis-date the MBI to c. 2000 BC.

 

On the basis of my research, I would suggest that they were a people who migrated slowly, from the south or southwest, into the Central Negev of Palestine. I would further suggest that the dim, historical memory of their journey powerfully influenced the Biblical author who described Israel’s entry into Canaan. In fact, these MBI people may be the Israelites whose famous journey from Egypt to Canaan is called the Exodus.

 

Mackey’s comment: The Biblical author was influenced by a “dim, historical memory”.

 

On one thing scholars are agreed: The pottery, the settlements, and other aspects of the material culture of the MBI people that have been uncovered over the last 50 years differ significantly from what went before in the Early Bronze period and from what followed in the Middle Bronze II period. The Early Bronze Age (c. 3150 B.C.–2200 B.C.) was characterized by a flourishing urban civilization. The same was true of the Middle Bronze Age II (c. 2000 B.C.–1550 B.C.). In MBI, however, there was a notable absence of urban settlements, although such settlements continued to flourish on the seacoast of Lebanon and Syria.

 

Mackey’s comment: Just the scenario that one would expect from a newly-arrived nomadic people.

 

….

Nelson Glueck, the American rabbi-archaeologist, believed MBI was the age of the patriarch Abraham.

 

In his Negev surveys, Glueck found that small MBI settlements had flourished all over the Central Negev, while the area was largely uninhabited during the prior and following periods.² Since Negev sites like Beer-Sheva and Gerar figure prominently in the partriarchal narratives, Glueck concluded that this age must have been that of the patriarchs and that the MBI people included the patriarchal Hebrew tribes. Glueck’s hypothesis was soon adopted by Albright in his famous and controversial essay, “Abram the Hebrew.”³ ….

 

….

 

I have been studying the MBI sites in the Central Negev for almost two decades now. The result of this study can, I believe, elucidate some of the outstanding issues. My own conclusion is that the MBI culture must be differentiated from those both preceding and following it. MBI is, in this sense, intermediate. But I also agree with Dever that some MBI pottery types represent a continuation of Early Bronze types. In this sense I see clear connections between the MBI and the Early Bronze Age which preceded it. But other new aspects of MBI culture, including burial customs and social structure, imply a new ethnic element.

 

Thus, the MBI culture is also intrusive; migrating peoples who destroyed the existing urban centers must be involved.

 

Mackey’s comment: This reads like a description of the Joshuan Conquest, the “new ethnic element”.

 

But this new ethnic element was neither Amorite nor “Kurgan” peoples who supposedly came from the north and east. In my view, the new MBI population came from the south and the Sinai, the route of the Israelites on that journey known as the Exodus. This is a new hypothesis published here for the first time. I think the latest evidence supports it. Let us look at this evidence, especially the geographic and archaeological discoveries of the last five to ten years.

 

Literally hundreds of MBI sites have been surveyed in the Central Negev¹⁰; many have been recently excavated. As a result, certain generalizations can now be made. The MBI sites in the Central Negev were regularly established on the summits or slopes of high hills, and sometimes on comparatively low hills. Rarely are remains of settlements found in valleys. The sites are widely scattered throughout the Central Negev. Nevertheless, there is a large concentration of sites along the geomorphic line that runs from the Kadesh-Barnea region to north of Dimona. ….

….

 

In 1973, I conducted three weeks of further excavations at this site. …. I was principally concerned with clarifying the relationship between the two strata uncovered by Kochavi and with determining whether a pre-MBI settlement had occupied the site. ….

….

We were able to determine almost the entire settlement groundplan: it consists of some 150 circular rooms. The basic building type is a unit comprising round and rectangular dwelling rooms and smaller installations arranged around a common central courtyard.

 

A single room can serve as an example of the Be’er Resisim groundplan. It is round (about ten feet across) with a central pillar that apparently supported the roof. The roof itself was formed by spanning wooden beams radially from the top of this pillar to the encircling walls, and then placing flat stone slabs over the scaffolding. The slabs were covered with mud or lime. Scattered on the floor made of small stones and beaten earth were typical MBI potsherds. Beneath this floor-level, on the natural rock, we found sherds from the Early Bronze Age II in a thin ash layer, again a critical finding. We found rooms like this, with minor variations, over and over again. Between the units were open-air enclosures used principally for food preparation, as we know from the remains of cooking pots and animal bones, mostly sheep and goat.

 

Apart from pottery, the other artifacts included grinding stones (sometimes of Aswan granite), fragments of ostrich egg shells, Red Sea conches (and the ornaments fashioned from them), “Canaanean” blades … and innumerable flint chips, and (in one building) a hoard of two copper ingots and a copper dagger. Smaller individual buildings as well as cairns (stone piles) were excavated in the area.

 

Mackey’s comment: Note the Egyptian elements, Aswan granite, ostrich shells.

 

….

The basic architectural arrangement, comprising round and rectangular rooms around a common central courtyard, repeats that found in the other two major sites and is generally characteristic of the Middle Bronze Age I. The excavations conducted here also confirm a general pattern I had previously noted from other excavations I conducted at MBI sites. …. The MBI structures had been erected over the remains of EBII settlements.

….

Who were these MBI people? How is their culture to be understood? I would like to suggest an answer.

….

 

The MBI peoples apparently had few technical traditions of their own and adapted those they found in use among the settled population they conquered. Naturally, they adapted the EBII forms to their own way of life, and the result was the characteristic MBI vessels, which recall the earlier models but employ different techniques and decoration.

This hypothesis, of course, contradicts the prevailing assessment, which describes the MBI sites in the Central Negev as a movement that came from the north. It is interesting, however, to note that this migratory drift, as I have reconstructed it, bears a striking similarity to that of the Israelites’ flight from Egypt to the Promised Land, as recorded in the book of Exodus. The concentration of MBI sites in the relatively fertile district east of Kadesh-Barnea recalls the tradition that the Israelites encamped near this oasis for 38 of their 40 years of wandering after leaving Egypt (Deuteronomy 1:46). If the EBII communities were still flourishing in the Negev and Sinai at the time of this MBI incursion, then the capital city of EB Arad with its satellites in the desert no doubt formed a kind of league like that of the Canaanite king of Arad, described in Numbers 21:1, and like that of the Amalekites in Exodus 17:8–13. Both no doubt offered fierce resistance to the northward-advancing MBI Israelites. The establishment of the MBI settlements directly over the ruins of the EBII–EBIII sites in the Central Negev is consistent with the tradition that the Israelites dwelled in the area previously inhabited by their Amalekite foes (Deuteronomy 25:17–19). The northeastward migration of the MBI population into Transjordan has parallels in the Biblical recollection that the Israelites remained in Moab before crossing the Jordan River and laying siege to Jericho (Deuteronomy 3:29). In this connection, it is interesting to note that Early Bronze Age Jericho was destroyed by a violent conflagration, and the site was thinly reoccupied by MBI newcomers, who were apparently unaccustomed to urban dwellings.

 

In the central and northern parts of Israel, the EBIII urban culture flourished. The MBI invaders in the south overwhelmed this urban Canaanite civilization and destroyed their cities but thereafter persisted in a semi-nomadic way of life. This bears a striking similarity to the tradition of Joshua’s devastating campaign against the Canaanite centers in central Palestine and his ban on rebuilding some of them (e.g., Joshua 8:28).

 

Both Jericho and Ai were fortified cities at the end of the Early Bronze Age. According to the Biblical account, they were both destroyed by the Israelites; God specifically instructed that these cities should not be rebuilt.

 

Interestingly enough, after the EBIII destruction of Jericho and Ai, both cities lay in ruins for hundreds of years.

 

Having successfully taken over Palestine, the MBI tribes were profoundly influenced by the mores of the people they conquered, and many of their artifacts and customs have their origin in the Early Bronze Age.

 

I do not necessarily mean to equate the MBI people with the Israelites, although an ethnic identification should not automatically be ruled out. But I am suggesting that at the very least the traditions incorporated into the Exodus account may have a very ancient inspiration reaching back to the MBI period. ….

 

Mackey’s comment: That “dim, historical memory” again.

 

The Mysterious MBI People - The BAS Library