hinar built a great tower, so God confounded their speech. And that tower, most probably a ziggurat, can best be dated according to our current archa

as “Assyrian” (Smith 1876:160), the legend tells of the destruction of a building on a mound in Babylon by a god. The god also confounded the speech of the builders (Boscawen 1877:303; Smith 1880:166). The badly damaged tablet has been translated as follows:... he the father of all the gods had repudiated; the thought of his heart was evil. ... of Babylon he hastens to the submission (?), [small] and great he confounded (on) the mound. ... of Babylon he hastens to the submission, [small] and great he confounded (on) the mound. Their walls all the day he founded; for their destruction (punishment) in the night ... he did not leave a remainder. In his anger also (his) secret counsel he pours out; [to] confound (their) speeches he set his face. He gave the command, he made strange their counsel ... (as revised by Sayee in Smith 1880:164; cf. Smith 1876:160–61; Boscawen 1876:131–132, 1877:304–308).A strong link between the Assyrian tradition and the Biblical Tower of Babel account is the use of the word uballu, translated “confounded.” This is the same word as Hebrew balal used in Genesis 11:7, meaning to confound, confuse, or mix (Boscawen 1877:311; Smith 1880:166).In the conclusion, what is important to note here is that when we theorize and do research on historical problems we need to take the biblical account of history seriously, rather than ignoring it or attempting to explain it away. In many cases, such as the Sumerian Problem, the Bible can provide solutions to otherwise vexing difficulties of historical interpretation.(Reprinted by permission from the Spring 1993 issue of Artifax, with new material added.)Editorial Footnote:1. It is ABR's view that there is no such thing as pre-history in the modern, long-age, evolutionized sense of the term. Mankind has been able to write since Adam, and was created at "the begininning of creation," as Jesus himself affirmed (Mark 10:6). Additionally, ABR does not accept all of the conventional dates attributed to the early cultures of Mesopotamia. All cultural artifacts are post-Flood, and should probablybe dated to around 3000 BC or later. Notes: 2. On these cultures, see the first volume of the Cambridge Ancient History; Perkins 1949; Mellaart 1965; Nissen 1998; Roux 1992.BibliographyBoscawen, W. St. Chad1876 The Legend of the Tower of Babel. Records of the Past 7:129–32.1877 The Legend of the Tower of Babel, Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 5:303–12.Cohen, Sol1973 Emmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Jacobsen, Thorkild1997 Emmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (1.170). Pp. 547–50 in The Context of Scripture vol. 1: Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World, ed. William W. Hallo, Leiden. The Netherlands: Brill.Jones, Tom B.1969 The Sumerian Problem. New York: John Wiley and Sons.Kramer, Samuel N.1968 The “Babel of Tongues”: A Sumerian Version, Journal of the American Oriental Society 88:108–111970 Enki and His Inferiority Complex, Orientalia 39:103–10.Mellaart, James1965 Earliest Civilizations of the Near East,



The Walls of Jericho
This article was first published in the Spring 1999 issue of Bible and Spade.When one hears the name “Jericho” one naturally thinks of Israelites marching, trumpets sounding and walls falling. It is a wonderful story of faith and victory that we enjoy reading and telling in Sunday School class, but did it really happen? The skeptic would say no, it is merely a folk tale to explain the ruins at Jericho. The reason for this negative outlook is the excavation carried out at the site in the 1950s under the direction of British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon. She concluded, It is a sad fact that of the town walls of the Late Bronze Age, within which period the attack by the Israelites must fall by any dating, not a trace remains.…The excavation of Jericho, therefore, has thrown no light on the walls of Jericho of which the destruction is so vividly described in the Book of Joshua (Kenyon 1957: 261–62). Thomas A. Holland, who was editor and co-author of Kenyon’s excavation reports, summarized the apparent results as follows: Kenyon concluded, with reference to the military conquest theory and the L[ate] B[ronze Age] walls, that there was no archaeological data to support the thesis that the town had been surrounded by a wall at the end of LB I (ca. 1400 BCE...) (Holland 1997: 223). H.J. Franken, a member of the Jericho excavation staff, stated, Miss Kenyon’s work has presented scholars with the hard fact that if Joshua was active with the incoming Israelites either c. 1400 or c. 1200 B.C. he would not have been able to capture a great walled city of Jericho, because there was no city of Jericho in these periods…the huge ruins of the Hyksos city gave rise to the folktale attached to the hero Joshua (1965: 190, 200). According to Kenyon’s dating, there was no city for the Israelites to conquer at the end of the 15th century BC, the Biblical date for the event. The Jericho of Joshua’s time could not be found-it was lost! Through our research, however, we have found the lostas “Assyrian” (Smith 1876:160), the legend tells of the destruction of a building on a mound in Babylon by a god. The god also confounded the speech of the builders (Boscawen 1877:303; Smith 1880:166). The badly damaged tablet has been translated as follows:... he the father of all the gods had repudiated; the thought of his heart was evil. ... of Babylon he hastens to the submission (?), [small] and great he confounded (on) the mound. ... of Babylon he hastens to the submission, [small] and great he confounded (on) the mound. Their walls all the day he founded; for their destruction (punishment) in the night ... he did not leave a remainder. In his anger also (his) secret counsel he pours out; [to] confound (their) speeches he set his face. He gave the command, he made strange their counsel ... (as revised by Sayee in Smith 1880:164; cf. Smith 1876:160–61; Boscawen 1876:131–132, 1877:304–308).A strong link between the Assyrian tradition and the Biblical Tower of Babel account is the use of the word uballu, translated “confounded.” This is the same word as Hebrew balal used in Genesis 11:7, meaning to confound, confuse, or mix (Boscawen 1877:311; Smith 1880:166).In the conclusion, what is important to note here is that when we theorize and do research on historical problems we need to take the biblical account of history seriously, rather than ignoring it or attempting to explain it away. In many cases, such as the Sumerian Problem, the Bible can provide solutions to otherwise vexing difficulties of historical interpretation.(Reprinted by permission from the Spring 1993 issue of Artifax, with new material added.)Editorial Footnote:1. It is ABR's view that there is no such thing as pre-history in the modern, long-age, evolutionized sense of the term. Mankind has been able to write since Adam, and was created at "the begininning of creation," as Jesus himself affirmed (Mark 10:6). Additionally, ABR does not accept all of the conventional dates attributed to the early cultures of Mesopotamia. All cultural artifacts are post-Flood, and should probablybe dated to around 3000 BC or later. Notes: 2. On these cultures, see the first volume of the Cambridge Ancient History; Perkins 1949; Mellaart 1965; Nissen 1998; Roux 1992.BibliographyBoscawen, W. St. Chad1876 The Legend of the Tower of Babel. Records of the Past 7:129–32.1877 The Legend of the Tower of Babel, Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 5:303–12.Cohen, Sol1973 Emmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Jacobsen, Thorkild1997 Emmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (1.170). Pp. 547–50 in The Context of Scripture vol. 1: Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World, ed. William W. Hallo, Leiden. The Netherlands: Brill.Jones, Tom B.1969 The Sumerian Problem. New York: John Wiley and Sons.Kramer, Samuel N.1968 The “Babel of Tongues”: A Sumerian Version, Journal of the American Oriental Society 88:108–111970 Enki and His Inferiority Complex, Orientalia 39:103–10.Mellaart, James1965 Earliest Civilizations of the Near East,



The Walls of Jericho
This article was first published in the Spring 1999 issue of Bible and Spade.When one hears the name “Jericho” one naturally thinks of Israelites marching, trumpets sounding and walls falling. It is a wonderful story of faith and victory that we enjoy reading and telling in Sunday School class, but did it really happen? The skeptic would say no, it is merely a folk tale to explain the ruins at Jericho. The reason for this negative outlook is the excavation carried out at the site in the 1950s under the direction of British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon. She concluded, It is a sad fact that of the town walls of the Late Bronze Age, within which period the attack by the Israelites must fall by any dating, not a trace remains.…The excavation of Jericho, therefore, has thrown no light on the walls of Jericho of which the destruction is so vividly described in the Book of Joshua (Kenyon 1957: 261–62). Thomas A. Holland, who was editor and co-author of Kenyon’s excavation reports, summarized the apparent results as follows: Kenyon concluded, with reference to the military conquest theory and the L[ate] B[ronze Age] walls, that there was no archaeological data to support the thesis that the town had been surrounded by a wall at the end of LB I (ca. 1400 BCE...) (Holland 1997: 223). H.J. Franken, a member of the Jericho excavation staff, stated, Miss Kenyon’s work has presented scholars with the hard fact that if Joshua was active with the incoming Israelites either c. 1400 or c. 1200 B.C. he would not have been able to capture a great walled city of Jericho, because there was no city of Jericho in these periods…the huge ruins of the Hyksos city gave rise to the folktale attached to the hero Joshua (1965: 190, 200). According to Kenyon’s dating, there was no city for the Israelites to conquer at the end of the 15th century BC, the Biblical date for the event. The Jericho of Joshua’s time could not be found-it was lost! Through our research, however, we have found the lost