- 5 weeks ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:07In the north of modern-day Israel, archaeologists uncover precious objects buried in the rubble
00:15of a destroyed city.
00:16It's a mother of pearl within a mudbrick.
00:18That's quite unique.
00:21They unearth ancient idols.
00:25It's a head of a figurine, and it's painted in red.
00:28And broken statues from another land, Egypt.
00:35It seems that someone really smashed those statues and then just threw the pieces in all directions.
00:43Discoveries here could shed light on the truth behind one of the most famous stories in the Bible,
00:52Exodus and the mysterious world of the Ark of the Covenant.
01:13The stories in the Bible are famous across the world.
01:17They tell of great battles between good and evil, earth-shaking catastrophes, and epic heroes.
01:31One of the most famous stories in the Bible is the Exodus, the Israelites' flight from captivity in Egypt.
01:42This saga includes the creation of the Ten Commandments, the construction of the Ark of the Covenant,
01:52and the use of this holy object to conquer what the Bible calls the Promised Land.
01:58The biblical stories of the Exodus from Egypt are great stories, but they do have a problem when you confront
02:06them with archaeological record.
02:14How far might real people and historical events lie behind them?
02:22Now, new archaeological discoveries, buried in the Middle East for thousands of years, could shed light on the world that
02:30gave rise to these legends.
02:33We have some fragments of a mother of pearl within a mud brick.
02:39International teams of experts dig through centuries of earth to piece together the age of the Exodus and the secrets
02:48of the Ark.
02:56At the northern tip of modern-day Israel lies the ancient site of Tel Hatzor.
03:04Archaeologist Igor Krymerman leads a team of 50 investigating an enormous ancient settlement here.
03:12It's a great excitement to be in the field. It's fascinating to solve all the riddles that come up as
03:18we excavate.
03:19And we are always surprised by the finds and by the sites.
03:27Tel Hatzor is one of the largest archaeological sites in Israel.
03:33According to the Old Testament, it was the greatest city in a land called Canaan.
03:40The region which the biblical authors called the Promised Land and believed that their ancestors had fled to from Egypt.
03:51Victoria, what have you found here?
03:55Igor wants to find out more about the age of the Canaanite city and if it can shed any light
04:02on the biblical tale.
04:04So today, he and his team are digging inside one of its buildings.
04:09We have here some stones of a wall and then we have a layer of plaster, right?
04:13Yes.
04:14Wow. This is very impressive.
04:17The preservation of this wall, with its plaster work still in situ, is a rare find.
04:24If you think about these walls, they should be two meters high and if we have already plastered the top,
04:29probably it will continue all the way down.
04:31Way down. Yes.
04:32The tall, plastered walls tell Igor that this may have been a palace.
04:41As they dig deeper, more evidence emerges.
04:46Papa, what is this?
04:48Yeah, yeah, yeah.
04:49Wow.
04:50What is it?
04:50A mother of pearl?
04:52Possibly.
04:52Yeah.
04:54Also some pieces here.
04:55Yeah.
04:56We have here some fragments of a mother of pearl.
04:59These are basically fragments of a type of a seashell that we find.
05:03It's quite interesting because in this complex, we found quite a few fragments of those seashells.
05:08The crushed pieces of mother of pearl offer little hint to what object they once belonged.
05:14But the fact they're here at all, 30 miles from the coast, implies this was a wealthy and sophisticated city.
05:24Naturally, there are no shells in this area.
05:26It's just that they were brought here from somewhere, probably to create some sort of jewelry or inlays and so
05:33on.
05:35Discoveries here tell Igor that this palace dates to a time known as the Late Bronze Age.
05:43This was a period that began around 1600 BCE, roughly 1,000 years after the construction of Egypt's Great Pyramid.
05:53This is a Late Bronze Age structure.
05:55It was constructed probably during the 14th century BCE.
06:00This is one of the biggest and most impressive structures that we have from the Late Bronze Age in the
06:04region.
06:07The Late Bronze Age is a period of particular interest for experts investigating the Exodus story.
06:15The Bible seems to put the arrival of the Israelites in Canaan around 1405 BCE.
06:24This would place it right in the middle of the Late Bronze Age.
06:31The impressive Bronze Age settlement at Tel Hatzor resembles the one described in the Bible.
06:38But the historical truth of the Exodus and the Ark of the Covenant story is one of the most controversial
06:45questions in Biblical archaeology.
06:48So what more do archaeologists know about the land of Canaan at this time?
06:58More than 120 miles away, in central Israel, lies the ancient site of Tel Es-Safi.
07:08Archaeologist Aaron Mayer leads a small team investigating another people who lived in Canaan, the Philistines.
07:17According to the biblical text, there are five major Philistine cities.
07:23This was the site of Philistine God.
07:28The Bible says the Philistines were fierce warriors who lived in southern Canaan, close to Egypt.
07:38It tells how the Israelites took a detour into the Sinai desert so they could avoid them.
07:46Christina, you want coffee?
07:49Today, Aaron and the team have a rare opportunity to learn more about the Philistines by excavating one of their
07:56tombs.
07:58What are these crazy archaeologists doing?
08:04The team covers up to guard against ticks as they prepare to head into the tomb inside a narrow cave.
08:16Ticks carry a virus known as cave fever, and other dangers may be lurking in the dark.
08:24So you work this way, Christina.
08:26You work over here, I'm going to work over here.
08:29Oh, that's Aaron.
08:30Give me the snake area, thank you.
08:32Okay.
08:35Aaron has been digging at Gath for almost 30 years.
08:39There are very few intact Philistine burials.
08:42So tombs like this one are particularly important.
08:50We're digging in this specific location, in this cave, because we're looking for Philistine burials, because how people buried their
08:59dead,
08:59and what we sometimes call the death scape, is a very, very important part of understanding a culture.
09:07The Philistines appear to have had a different culture to that of their neighbors in Canaan.
09:15Aaron wants to understand why.
09:19Nowadays, with modern bioarchaeological techniques, such as DNA and isotope and other methods,
09:25we can learn a lot about their genetics, their origins, their health, their diet, and all kinds of other aspects.
09:35Oh, nice.
09:36A big one.
09:39Their first find is not human remains, but a piece of pottery.
09:45It's a fragment of a juglet, and hopefully it means that there's going to be more soon.
09:52You can excavate a tomb to be fortunate and find very well-preserved remains.
09:57And it could also be that you won't find it.
09:59And there's really no way of knowing until you excavate the tomb.
10:03That's the nature of archaeology.
10:06Even small bits of pottery are important.
10:10They can help archaeologists to date a tomb.
10:15Most of the pottery here comes from a period known as the Iron Age.
10:21What do you got there?
10:24Burnished pottery.
10:25Yep. This seems to be some sort of a chalice.
10:30And based on its decoration, it seems very nicely dated to the late Iron I, early Iron IIa.
10:37Yeah, now let's just find the rest of it.
10:39Okay. Keep working.
10:42Pottery like this confirms that the Philistines did live in southern Canaan, just as the Bible says.
10:50But it reveals that the city of Gath was at its height much later than the commonly supposed biblical date
10:56of the Exodus.
11:00From what we have found so far, it indicates that we have a rather limited amount of time in which
11:07there was extensive activity in this tomb.
11:10Probably during the 11th and 10th century BCE.
11:15The earliest mention of a people believed to be the Philistines dates to the 12th century BCE, at least 200
11:25years after the Bible implies the Exodus took place.
11:31It would mean the Israelites took a detour to avoid a people who were not even here.
11:39This is a hint that the archaeology may not align with the biblical narrative.
11:45So how did the Israelites and the Ark end up in what the Bible calls the Promised Land?
11:57According to the Bible's Book of Genesis, the ancestors of the Israelites traveled to Egypt to escape a famine in
12:05Canaan.
12:08Here, they settled in the Nile Delta, encouraged by Joseph, who had risen to become the Pharaoh's most trusted advisor.
12:18Joseph prophesied that one day the Israelites would return home.
12:23A story that would eventually form the basis for Exodus.
12:29What evidence is there for its setting in Egypt?
12:38Egyptologist Chris Norton investigates one possible historical lead, an inscribed amulet known as a scarab.
12:49So scarabs like this one are little objects which take the shape of a dung beetle.
12:58For the Egyptians, it was used to represent the sun god.
13:01They observed dung beetles rolling balls of dung across the desert and associated that with the idea of the sun
13:08disk moving across the sky.
13:11Scarabs carry inscriptions on their underside, often bearing the name of a pharaoh or royal figure.
13:18The important bit is in the central column.
13:21I can see the very top part of a shepherd's crook, which is part of the Egyptian word hekar, which
13:30means ruler.
13:32The end of the inscription is missing.
13:35But similar scarabs have been found, which are complete.
13:39They allow Chris to work out that part of the lost text once said foreign lands.
13:47So we've got ruler of foreign lands, and that phrase in the Egyptian is hekar kasut, and that becomes the
13:54Greek word hyksos.
13:57The hyksos are among Egypt's most mysterious rulers.
14:01Inscriptions like this scarab reveal they were pharaohs, but their ancestors had migrated to Egypt from Canaan.
14:10It's very much an Egyptian object.
14:12It's an Egyptian inscription, but clearly relating to somebody who is foreign and yet has enough power to take over
14:20at least the north of Egypt and probably beyond.
14:253,700 years ago, the hyksos settled in Egypt's northern delta.
14:32They brought powerful new ideas from the Near East, horses and light chariots that changed Egyptian warfare.
14:44They held power for over 100 years and ended up ruling northern Egypt from their capital at Avaris.
14:57Eventually, the southern Egyptian kings sought to reclaim Egypt, besieging the hyksos stronghold and driving them out.
15:10The story of the hyksos intrigues biblical investigators, because it bears remarkable similarities with the events leading up to the
15:20Exodus.
15:21The idea of the hyksos coming from Canaan is very interesting from the point of view of the Bible narrative,
15:30because, of course, there are crucial parts of the Bible story that involve the passage of people from Canaan into
15:40Egypt and back out again.
15:43To find out more, Chris takes a closer look at the scarab.
15:48It displays the name of a hyksos king.
15:51It's followed by signs which spell out the name Hian, who was one of the kings of the 15th dynasty.
16:04Egypt's 15th dynasty was overthrown around 1530 BCE.
16:11This is more than 100 years before the biblical chronology of Exodus.
16:18So could the Exodus be a cultural memory of the expulsion of the hyksos, only retold slightly later?
16:31A clue may lie to the north, at Tel Hatzor.
16:36As the dig team continues to reveal the mammoth Bronze Age ruins of this Canaanite city,
16:44Igor examines an intriguing find.
16:48We found right over here this fragment of the statue.
16:52You can see that it is made of granite.
16:54You see all the sparks of the inclusions of the granite.
16:58Granite is not local to the region.
17:00It suggests this statue was made elsewhere.
17:05We know that normally artifacts that were produced from granite come from Egypt.
17:09This is not the first statue piece the team has found.
17:15In the ruins of Canaanite Hatzor,
17:18archaeologists uncovered one of the oldest Egyptian artifacts ever found outside of Egypt.
17:26The feet of a lion carved from rock.
17:31Inscribed with the cartouche of Pharaoh Menkaure,
17:35the builder of the third pyramid at Giza.
17:39This was once part of a sphinx.
17:42A lion's body fused with a king's face.
17:46The symbol of royal power and divine protection.
17:52Why is this ancient Egyptian beast in Canaanite Hatzor?
18:02Igor thinks the answer could lie in the age and identity of the sphinx.
18:10Menkaure, the pharaoh whose head once adorned it,
18:13lived more than 1,000 years before the palace here.
18:19What's quite unique about Egyptian statues at Hatzor
18:22is that we find them in late Bronze Age context.
18:25But nonetheless, they were produced much earlier.
18:30So that would suggest that perhaps those statues were traded
18:33not for whom they represented,
18:36because those people were long deceased,
18:38but probably for their aesthetic value.
18:42These statues would have been worthless to the Egyptians.
18:47But their presence at Tel Hatzor
18:49could be a clue to the relationship between Canaan
18:53and its powerful neighbour, Egypt.
18:56They are of much higher quality.
18:58They are very impressive.
18:59Everyone would identify them as Egyptian.
19:01So probably the king of Hatzor would like to brag.
19:04Well, look at the statues in my palace, how impressive they are.
19:10Archaeologists are not sure what happened to the Hyksos after their defeat.
19:16But the evidence from Tel Hatzor reveals that during the succeeding 18th dynasty,
19:21the people of Canaan became part of the Egyptian Empire.
19:27The Egyptian had strongholds in Canaan to supervise tax collection,
19:33and Canaan was basically part of the Egyptian Empire in this sense.
19:38The story of the Hyksos has many intriguing similarities with that of Exodus.
19:44But it differs in one critical respect.
19:48At the time the Bible implies the Exodus took place,
19:52Canaan was no safe refuge from the power of the pharaohs.
20:00Why would the Israelites flee from Egypt to a region that was controlled by Egypt?
20:13At Tel Es-Safi in central Israel, the site of ancient Gath,
20:19the team continues searching the cave tombs for clues to how and when
20:24Philistine culture emerged in Canaan.
20:32The Bible refers to the Philistines as invaders, coming from a land known as Kaphtor,
20:40which some suggest may be modern-day Crete in the Aegean Sea.
20:46The problem is that the Bible says little else about them,
20:51and focuses on their later conflicts with the Israelites.
20:57The Bible tells us limited information about the interaction between the Israelites and the Philistines.
21:03The big question, of course, is what is the historicity of these descriptions?
21:08Aaron's team found what could be a clue in another part of the site.
21:14And in area D, we found a large temple that was used over a period of about 200 years.
21:23And in the innermost part of the temple, there was a very interesting stone altar.
21:31The stone altar has horns, a type that was used by various cultures in the region.
21:39But the one at Gath has a key difference in its appearance.
21:44Most Levantine altars have four horns.
21:48And what's unique about this altar, as opposed to most altars that are depicted
21:53and found archaeologically that have four horns, this one only has two in the front, one and two.
22:03Altars with two horns are found more commonly on Cyprus and the Greek island of Crete.
22:11Aaron thinks this unusual altar points to the Philistines being a foreign people who migrated to Canaan.
22:20This one has two because it also combines traditions coming from the Aegean and from the Cypriot cult traditions.
22:31The Philistines first appeared in Canaan during the early 12th century BCE.
22:37This was a time known as the Late Bronze Age Collapse,
22:42when many different civilizations fell across the region.
22:46Some archaeologists believe that the Philistines began life as seaborne raiders from the Aegean,
22:53who settled in Canaan around this time before eventually integrating with the local population.
23:01The Philistine culture is a culture that is comprised of many different groups that came to this region
23:08at the transition between the Late Bronze and the Iron Age.
23:11And there were people who came from the Aegean region, from Cyprus, Fanatolia,
23:15side by side with people who came from Levant, Canaanites.
23:18And this is what we call an entangled culture.
23:21The arrival of the Philistines at this troubled time,
23:24much later than the Bible implies they were here,
23:29raises an intriguing possibility.
23:32Could the story of the Exodus also be a folk memory of the Bronze Age collapse?
23:42In the north, at Tel Hatzor,
23:46Igor is exploring the Canaanite city's ultimate fate.
23:50He wants to know how and when it came to an end.
23:53The destruction of Hatzor is one of the most puzzling questions that we have regarding the city.
23:59Inside the palace, one wall looks very different to the fine plaster he discovered earlier.
24:05Here we can see the mud brick courses and also the cement between the courses.
24:10The mud bricks are burnt due to the fierce destruction at the end of the Late Bronze Age.
24:16The intense fire is not the only evidence of destruction here.
24:22Igor takes a closer look at the broken statue fragment.
24:26The damage appears to be intentional.
24:32On it, he can make out what look like chisel marks.
24:40They found that you have chisel marks and someone really put energy into destroying those statues,
24:46shows that it was deliberate.
24:48Not only that we find only fragments,
24:51most of the fragments have not really been even attached one to the other.
24:55So it seems that someone really smashed those statues, chiseled them,
25:00and then just threw the pieces in all directions.
25:07Igor believes the destruction of Tel Hatzor was no accident.
25:12Someone deliberately destroyed this palace.
25:16The question is, who?
25:19A clue could lie with the statues.
25:22The destruction of statues represent disrespect, first and foremost, to the Egyptian culture.
25:28In this case, all the Egyptian statues were obliterated in an act of complete disrespect to the Egyptians.
25:37In the mid-12th century BCE, Egyptian power declined in Canaan during the Late Bronze Age collapse.
25:44One possibility is that its people might have risen up against their Egyptian overlords.
25:51But mixed into the destruction debris, Igor and the team also find another damaged statue.
26:00Oh, wow.
26:01A tiny figurine of a calf god.
26:05This figurine is not Egyptian per se. It's also very typical to Canaanite culture.
26:11So I think it's more related to Canaanite culture rather than to Egyptian.
26:16But it still was found in the same context.
26:20Igor thinks whoever destroyed this city was an outsider and had no respect for its gods.
26:28We know the destruction was ideologically driven because both Egyptian statues and Canaanite statues were shattered to pieces during the
26:38destruction.
26:38Therefore, it is clear that whoever destroyed Khatzor did not see himself neither as Egyptian nor Canaanite.
26:48Some archaeologists believe the recently arrived Philistines or other seaborne raiders could be to blame.
26:56But there is another possibility.
27:00The biblical authors say Tal Hatzor was one of the cities destroyed by the Israelites.
27:07Did an army of invading Israelites conquer Canaan?
27:17At Tal Hatzor in northern Israel, Igor takes a closer look at the damaged Canaanite figurine of a calf.
27:26You can see here the horns, and this is the face, and it's all painted in red.
27:31Here you see two of the legs. It's of course broken on this side.
27:37The figure of a calf as an object of worship plays an important role in the next part of the
27:43story of Exodus.
27:48After escaping Egypt, Moses led the Israelites through the desert to Mount Sinai.
27:55He climbed the mountain and stayed for forty days and nights, where God gave him two stone tablets carved with
28:04the Ten Commandments.
28:09While Moses was on Mount Sinai, the Israelites felt abandoned and used their gold to make an idol.
28:18They formed a golden calf and began to worship it.
28:26The biblical story never identifies the name of the idol.
28:31But other chapters do mention a popular Canaanite deity called Baal, who was often associated with a calf.
28:39The calf normally represented the storm god, and that's the animal associated with the storm god.
28:45And we know that the storm god was the main deity of the city.
28:49The Old Testament calls Baal a false god and a rival of the Hebrew god Yahweh.
28:59Intriguingly, the rejection of false gods is the very first commandment.
29:08When Moses descended from Mount Sinai and saw the idol, he smashed the tablets with the commandments in anger and
29:16destroyed the calf.
29:18Moses climbed Mount Sinai once more, carrying two new blank stone tablets, and pleaded with God until he inscribed them
29:27again.
29:31So might the Israelites have smashed the Egyptian and Canaanite statues at Tel Hatzor?
29:43At Oxford in the UK, Lara Bamfield is an expert in ancient texts.
29:52She's examining the links between the Israelites' Ten Commandments and another ancient set of laws, the law code of Hammurabi.
30:03It is written in the ancient script of Mesopotamia called Cuneiform.
30:11This is the law code of Hammurabi.
30:14And it is a tall, black stele made of hard stone.
30:20And at the top, we have an image, followed by the cuneiform script, which is split between an epilogue and
30:27then lines of laws.
30:32The laws are named after King Hammurabi, a ruler of ancient Babylon.
30:37They set out what his subjects should not do, and the punishments if these rules are broken.
30:45Some bear intriguing similarities with the additional laws given by God to Moses in Exodus.
30:52The law code of Hammurabi sets out some laws which are actually quite similar.
30:57There are a couple of lines that are almost identical.
31:01For example, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or a bone for a bone.
31:04The dating of the Hammurabi stele makes the similarities between these two codes puzzling.
31:12The code of Hammurabi was written about 1700 BCE, whereas the first record of the Israelites was about 1200 BCE.
31:25Lara's work explores ways in which common texts and ideas can spread between cultures.
31:31Cuneiform was an international script, which meant lots of different people would have used it.
31:38This would have helped spread the knowledge about Babylon, about King Hammurabi, and about his laws.
31:45It seems very likely that the Israelites would have copied some of these ideas through exchange and trade from the
31:54Mesopotamians.
31:58Cuneiform tablets found at Tel Hatzor reveal that Canaanite laws might also have drawn upon the code of Hammurabi or
32:07similar Mesopotamian traditions.
32:11But what set them apart from the Israelites was the rivalry between their gods.
32:18So what evidence is there that a people called Israel were even here at the time this city was destroyed?
32:27The answer could lie with the next chapter of the saga.
32:33The conquest of Canaan and the Ark of the Covenant.
32:44The Bible's book of Exodus portrays the Israelites as nomads, who conquered the land of Canaan by force.
32:54They used a sacred object of great power.
32:59The Ark of the Ark of the Covenant.
33:04The Bible says the Ark was constructed to hold the Ten Commandments.
33:09It represented God's presence among the Israelites,
33:14who carried it with them as they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.
33:22It's said the Ark parted the waters of the river Jordan, allowing the Israelites to cross into Canaan.
33:30And it helped to bring down the walls of Jericho, the first Canaanite city to fall.
33:39Discoveries reveal that this city, like Tel Hatzor, was destroyed in the Late Bronze Age.
33:47So how does the biblical story match up with the archaeology?
33:55In central Israel lies the ancient settlement of Bet Shemesh.
34:04Archaeologist Danny Herman investigates clues that might reveal more about the story of the conquest.
34:12The role of the Ark of the Covenant in the conquest of the land is quite pivotal.
34:17The early history of Bet Shemesh is not well understood, but its name hints at Canaanite origins.
34:26Bet Shemesh, whose name means house of the sun, that alone is quite interesting.
34:31Possibly preserving a vague memory of Canaanite worship here of the sun.
34:37The Bible says that Bet Shemesh was part of the Canaanite territory assigned to the tribe of Judah after the
34:45conquest.
34:48Archaeology reveals that an Israelite settlement had developed here by the 10th century BCE.
34:56It's quite clear, both from the book of Joshua and from archaeology, that the Canaanites who lived here in this
35:03lower level were replaced with an upper level of Israelites.
35:09Bet Shemesh also features in a story about the Ark of the Covenant being carried into battle.
35:20Hundreds of years after the Exodus, the Israelites used the Ark once more, this time against the Philistines, who defeat
35:29them and capture it.
35:31The Philistines put the Ark in a temple next to a statue of their god.
35:36But the next day, the statue had fallen and broken into pieces.
35:42Wherever the Philistines take the Ark, disaster befalls them.
35:48Tumors strike the people, and mice consume the land.
35:53Struck with fear, they place the Ark on a cattle-drawn cart and return it to the Israelites at Bet
36:01Shemesh.
36:04Danny explores a discovery by a team of archaeologists in one of Bet Shemesh's buildings.
36:10They uncover this area.
36:13Behind it, a stone was found.
36:16And not just any stone, not round, but rectangular.
36:23And it's in the same dimensions as the Ark of the Covenant.
36:29The Bible describes the Ark in incredible detail.
36:33It tells how the Ark was made from acacia wood, two and a half cubits long by one and a
36:39half cubits high, and covered in gold.
36:42A cubit is an ancient measurement of length, equivalent to a human forearm.
36:49This is a cubit and a half, and the length is one, two, almost three cubits.
36:59Just a bit bigger than the size of the Ark, which makes sense.
37:03You want it to be a bit bigger to hold it in a stable way.
37:08The idea that the Ark might have rested here is an intriguing, if ultimately unprovable, theory.
37:17But the archaeology does show that the Israelites were here in Canaan by the 10th century BCE, when this story
37:25was set.
37:27The key question is whether they were here even earlier, when cities like Tel Hazor were destroyed.
37:38A famous historical text could shed light on the biblical narrative.
37:44The first time that the Israelites are mentioned in a source outside the Bible is in this famous stela, this
37:51stone monument of Marneftah.
37:55In the early 1200s BCE, the Egyptian pharaoh, Marneftah, waged a military campaign up into Canaan.
38:05He brags about conquering Canaanite cities, and in between he tells us he also decimated a tribe, not a city,
38:13but a nomadic tribe that is called the Israelites.
38:18The Egyptian inscription dates to around 1208 BCE, and confirms that a people known as the Israelites were in this
38:29landscape at the time of the late Bronze Age collapse.
38:35How long had they been here?
38:40Could the answer reveal the real story of the Exodus?
38:53At Tel Hazor, Igor hunts for evidence that might reveal who destroyed this city.
39:00After the late Bronze Age destruction, first of all, we have an occupation gap of about 100 years when the
39:06mound was abandoned.
39:09According to the Bible, the Israelites under the leader Joshua defeated a Canaanite alliance led by the king of Tel
39:17Hazor, whose city was burned to the ground.
39:24Excavations reveal that this city was a powerful center in Canaan, that was destroyed by fire, perhaps by someone who
39:34had no regard for its gods.
39:39Egyptian records also confirm that a people called Israel were in the region at this time.
39:46The problem is that a critical part of the story is missing from the Old Testament.
39:53When we look at the Egyptian control of Canaan, we don't see any evidence, any memory, any remnant of that
40:00picture in the Hebrew Bible.
40:02It is as if it has never happened.
40:07The complete absence of the Egyptians in the conquest story is puzzling.
40:13One possibility is that it was intentionally omitted from the history of early Israel.
40:19But I would not see any reason for doing so, because if the Israelites conquered the land from the Egyptians
40:26and not the Canaanites, why not say that?
40:29It would show that the Israelites are actually much stronger than if they just conquered the land from those local
40:35Canaanites.
40:39Igor believes the answer may be that a people who came to be known as the Israelites did destroy cities
40:46like Tel Hatzor, but not when the Bible says they did, and not in a single swift campaign.
40:54It seems that Hatzor was one of the sites that was brought down by the early proto-Israelites, if we
41:00wish.
41:00But in contrast to the biblical narrative, they probably did not come from Egypt, they did not conquer the land
41:09from the east, but they emerged from the Canaanite culture and eventually brought it down.
41:14They probably at some point disregarded Canaanite ideology, left the urban system, and eventually formed outside.
41:23And once they had the chance, and once Hatzor was in decline, that was their chance to bring down one
41:30of the largest Canaanite cities, one of the most powerful kingdoms of the Canaanites.
41:39Many biblical scholars believe the stories of the Exodus were written hundreds of years after the events they describe.
41:48Perhaps by the descendants of the people who destroyed Tel Hatzor.
41:54They saw the ruins of the old city, and had only vague memories of what had happened.
42:02It goes without saying that the people of Israel at Hatzor developed their own stories about this structure, what was
42:09it, who built it, and probably also who destroyed it.
42:12And it is possible that from generation to generation, the story got told again and again, and eventually that turned
42:19out to be the story that we hear in the Book of Joshua about the conquest of massive Hatzor.
42:28The idea that the people of the Exodus never left, but instead came from within Canaan, is a controversial conclusion.
42:38For many people of faith, the stories of the Bible are the literal word of God.
42:44Many believe that the key evidence for the Exodus may still be out there.
42:51The fact that we can't find evidence of an event that happened 3,000 years ago means it didn't happen.
42:58No, archaeology has its limits.
43:01One has to admit to the problem, to the gap between the narratives and the lack of archaeological evidence in
43:06some cases.
43:08But now, archaeology reveals a new perspective on the story of Exodus.
43:14Of an ancient world that collapsed at the end of the late Bronze Age, and the rise of a new
43:21one.
43:22The biblical story tells of a people who endured hardships, pursued a journey from a belief in many gods to
43:31a belief in one,
43:33and built a new religious doctrine, symbolized by a holy relic, the Ark of the Covenant.
43:42The story of the Exodus is not just intended to be history.
43:46It is a promise.
43:48It explained to the Israelites who they were, where they had come from, and how, if they kept the faith,
43:57their covenant with God would always bring them home.
44:00The truth, the truth won't be.
44:03The truth, the truth will be theCausemate in the SacjÄ™!
44:04You
Comments