Science: Gibeon’s Great Days

Bibleland archaeologists have long suspected that the tiny Arab village of el-Jib eight miles northwest of Jerusalem hides fascinating secrets. The village stands on an oval man-made mound, and the experts think that it may cover Gibeon, an ancient city whose inhabitants, according to the Book of Joshua, made a deal with the invading Israelites and so were not slaughtered, only enslaved. For four years, Professor James B. Pritchard of Church Divinity School of the Pacific, whose passion is checking the historical accuracy of the Old Testament, dug at el-Jib. He found many interesting things, including the pool of Gibeon, a well where the men of David fought the men of Saul.* He proved by inscriptions that the town had been called Gibeon. But he did not prove that this Gibeon was old enough to have been captured by Joshua’s Israelites. It could have been a more recent city whose history had been lengthened by later mythmakers.

Last week Dr. Pritchard told how he found positive proof of Gibeon’s great age. After the University of Pennsylvania expedition that he headed had a spell of unfruitful digging, an Arab woman named Umm Azzat offered to sell him two old pots. One look told Dr. Pritchard that the pots belonged to the middle Bronze Age well before Joshua and the Israelites invaded the Holy Land about 1200 B.C. Dr. Pritchard not only bought the pots but hired the woman as his “consultant.” After a little coaxing she took him to her tomato patch on top of the mound, showed him a hole leading to a rifled Bronze Age tomb. More coaxing persuaded her to probe with an iron rod (a traditional tool of grave robbers) and show the archaeologist a series of circular stones covering more tombs.

All told, twelve tombs were excavated, and from them came more than 400 earthenware objects. All were older than Joshua’s late Bronze Age, and they proved beyond doubt the statement in the Book of Joshua 10:2 that “Gibeon was a great city” when the Israelites came raging out of the wilderness.

-II Samuel 2:12-17.