What the Bible Does Not Tell Us

The books of the Bible were not organized in a systematic way. The Old Testament was not even collected at the same time. It is more like a family library, passed down through generations and added to when one descendant or another had an opportunity.

In the fifth century B.C., Ezra knew only the Torah, Genesis to Deuteronomy. In the second century B.C., two Jewish writers speak of the Torah and the Prophets, as well as “other books of our ancestors.” Perhaps these were Psalms and Proverbs, or maybe Chronicles.

At the end of the first century, the Jewish priest Josephus talks of a 22-volume canon of the Hebrew Bible; the present Hebrew Bible, which is equivalent to the Protestant Old Testament, has 24 books. The rabbis in the early third century echo Josephus, revealing uncertainty about Esther and Song of Songs. Ultimately, they decided to include the two books.

This haphazard procedure was guided largely by theological concerns, and not by any sense of history or linguistics. Those who made the choices did so because they believed the books revealed and explained important theological beliefs, religious practices or pious behavior.

The resulting picture of the Israelites, therefore, is incomplete. It leaves out key information. To gain a fuller understanding of the ancient Hebrews, then, we must supplement the Bible with knowledge gained from archaeology and writings from other ancient cultures.

Some of the missing information is linguistic. The average American adult has a vocabulary of 20,000-30,000 words. The Old Testament contains only 8,000 distinct words. Not a complete language by any means.

Its books use the word for nephew, for example, but not niece. They speak of sewing but never of needles. They mention knives and forks but never spoons. They talk about combing one’s hair, but never use the word for comb. Since needles, spoons and combs appear regularly in the archaeological record, the failure to mention them in these books does not mean the Israelites lacked them.

The biblical books also left out important historical information.

For instance, during the four centuries before Joshua and the Israelites conquered the land of Canaan, it was controlled by Egypt. The books describing the Israelites’ entrance into Canaan never indicate that Israelites fought Egyptians, or even mention Egyptians, even though the Egyptians controlled Canaan longer than the United States of America has been a country.

The Merneptah Stele, erected by Pharaoh Merneptah in 1207 B.C., describes his military expedition to Canaan during which he conquered a people called “Israel,” along with other opponents. This battle goes without remark in the biblical books.

Once the Israelites were in Canaan, biblical books widely report that Israelites used horses. Chariots were a frequent mode of transportation, at least among the nobility and the military. But what the books do not reveal is that Israel’s chariotry made the Israelites a military powerhouse in the eighth century B.C.

It was not until the 1861 discovery of the Kurkh Monolith, a carved stone stela written by the Assyrian emperor Shalmaneser III, that this became apparent.

Shalmaneser spent much of his reign trying to break through to the eastern Mediterranean coast from Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq). The Kurkh Monolith states that, in 853 B.C., Shalmaneser defeated a coalition of 11 smaller countries at Qarqar, along the northeastern Mediterranean coast. Among these was Israel, under the leadership of King Ahab.

To make the size of his victory clear, Shalmaneser listed the number of soldiers, cavalry and chariots each country brought to the battle. Israel brought 2,000 chariots, far more than the next country, Damascus, which brought only 1,200.

Two thousand chariots represented enormous military strength and required a large support system. Chariots were expensive and required regular maintenance. Each chariot would have had three horses assigned to it: two to pull it and one in reserve. That would mean 6,000 horses would have gone north to the battle.

At the site of Megiddo, one of King Ahab’s largest cities, archaeologists found remains of a large stable near the main gate. This suggests that the Jezreel Valley, with its large fields, was a key location for managing such large herds.

So, while the Old Testament provides some indication of Israel’s language and history, we need to look to archaeology and the written records of other countries to understand more fully the Israelites and the books they wrote.

The Christian Memory of “Armageddon”

A T-shirt spotted on the street in Jerusalem said it all. On the back it read, “I survived Armageddon 2010.” 2010? Wasn’t Armageddon supposed to be the end of the world? It is now 2017; apparently, we all survived.

A glance at the T-shirt’s front clarified matters. It read, “Tel Megiddo Excavations.”

You see, the word “Armageddon” is a Greek attempt to render the Hebrew place name “Har Megiddo” which, in English, means “Mount Megiddo.” Ancient Greek manuscripts did not indicate the “H” sound, so the “H” was lost.

Megiddo is an ancient city located on the western edge of Israel’s Jezreel Valley. It was first occupied in the Chalcolithic period and, by the time the Israelites arrived in Canaan around 1200 B.C., the Canaanites had already lived there for more than two millennia. That is roughly 10 times the length of time the USA has been a country.

During that time, Megiddo became a “tell”: a human-built mountain created from centuries of building and rebuilding in the same spot, with new houses and buildings being placed directly on the ruins of older ones.

Megiddo was abandoned in the early sixth century B.C. By the time of Jesus, the first century, Megiddo and its surrounding territory had been without significant populations for more than half a millennium. This large hill overlooked a large valley and key nearby roads, but no nearby settlements.

This was the “Mount Megiddo” that found its way into the New Testament. In Revelation 16, it is designated as the site for the “battle on the great day of God the Almighty,” the final battle in this book’s highly symbolic narrative of God’s triumph over his spiritual and earthly enemies.

The passage recalls Megiddo as a place through which the world’s travelers passed and where armies frequently fought. Even though the city of Megiddo had been long abandoned, Revelation’s author identified these two characteristics with Megiddo. And, historically speaking, this is generally accurate.

Located on the Jezreel Valley’s west side, Megiddo guarded two passes that brought trade from the Mediterranean coast into the Jordan Valley and beyond. This was a west-east route that began in Dor (on the coast), crossed the mountains north and south of Megiddo, then traversed the Jezreel Valley to the ancient city of Beth Shean in the Jordan Valley.

This important trade route was heavily guarded by the Canaanites. When the Israelites settled the land, they were not able to conquer this route even though they controlled the territory to the south and to the north. At least that is what the books of Judges and Joshua state.

And, this failure caused the area of the Jezreel Valley in front of Megiddo to become such a battleground. Judges 4 and 5 relate two stories of a massive battle during which the Israelites seem to have finally conquered Megiddo, perhaps 150 or 200 years after their arrival. This timeframe roughly corresponds to the archaeological evidence indicating an Israelite presence on Megiddo’s tell.

Megiddo also was on an important north-south land route along the Mediterranean’s east coast. The northern end of the Carmel mountain range stretches down to the sea north of Megiddo where it makes travel difficult. Caravans and armies moving along the coast avoided it by cutting inland through the passes near Megiddo.

That is what happened when Pharaoh Necco brought his army north during the reign of King Josiah, whom the books of Kings present as a greater, more God-fearing king than either King David or King Solomon. As Necco’s army passed through the Jezreel Valley in front of Megiddo, King Josiah met him with the Israelite army to fight him.

Unfortunately, Josiah was killed during the battle, weakening Israel’s ruling class. Within two decades, his kingdom was conquered by the Babylonians who deported the royal family and the court.

So, the sense given by the New Testament’s book of Revelation that Megiddo is a crossroad of the world and place echoes the reality of the previous 1,200 years. This echo persisted despite Megiddo’s centuries-long neglect to resurface in Revelation’s spiritual symbolism of Christianity’s ultimate triumph delivered by God.

Building a Nation by Giving Thanks

The Thanksgiving holiday is here again. What will we do? We will get together with family and friends and will eat a big meal. And what is the meaning of this activity?  Well, the quick answer is that this is a harvest festival; it celebrates the bountiful crops that have been brought in from the fields during the fall. In other words, we eat to celebrate the harvest that provided the food being eaten.

If this is so, then Thanksgiving is little more than the equivalent of the ancient harvest festivals celebrated three millennia and even longer ago. The ancient Israelites, for example, celebrated a harvest festival called the Feast of Booths that is recorded in the earliest portions of the Bible (Exodus 23).

The parallel with the Feast of Booths suggests that Thanksgiving is not just a harvest festival, but contains multiple layers of meaning. The description in Leviticus 23:42 links the Feast of Booths to the story of the Israelites’ origins, namely, the Exodus from Egypt and their sojourn in the wilderness with God.  It reads: celebrate the feast “so your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt.”

A second point appears in the phrase, “that your generations may know.” The scriptural instructions are designed to help the descendants of the Exodus participants remember this founding event. Since dwelling in booths is what the Israelites did when they traveled from Egypt to the land of Israel, the repetition of this action in the Feast causes the celebrants to recall the origins story. It was in these years of wandering with God that the Israelites became God’s chosen people, a nation under God. So the Feast of Booths celebrates not just a harvest but also reminds the celebrants who they are by recalling their beginnings as a group.

This theme of unity was an important feature of the holiday in its early centuries. During the period of the Israelite tribal confederacy (sometimes known as the Judges period), roughly 1200-1000 B.C., the Israelites had no all-Israel government. Each of the tribes had a governing structure, but the only pan-tribal connection lay in the religion. Festival celebrations such as the Feast of Booths bound them together as a people.

Our Thanksgiving holiday functions in the same way.  It is as much a recollection of American origins as it is a harvest festival. Our annually repeated feast recalls their first feast of thanksgiving. By retelling the Pilgrim story and recalling that first feast of thanksgiving at our Thanksgiving time, we remind ourselves of the origins of our nation and our identity as Americans.

Although Thanksgiving did not become a legal American holiday until 1941, from Lincoln’s time onwards US presidents made a proclamation for the celebration of the holiday every year.  In part, this annual attention to Thanksgiving was due to Sara Josepha Hale, who decided in the mid-1800s that Thanksgiving should be a national celebration and not just a local New England feast.  Hale edited the influential women’s magazine Godey’s, a competitor to the Ladies Home Journal, and every year used her position to write editorials, letters, and feature articles encouraging the adoption of Thanksgiving.

Over the decades, increasing numbers of “thanksgivers” joined in the campaign. Originally, Hale’s conception of the holiday united rural and urban America. Cities and their populations were increasing and losing touch with the rural life. Hale’s holiday emphasized plain, wholesome, country food, featuring products native to America: turkey, squash, potatoes, cranberries, and pumpkin. This unsophisticated fare reminded city dwellers of farms and the source of their food, at least once a year.

Following the Civil War, Thanksgiving was celebrated in both North and South and became a healing festival that helped unify the post-war nation. As immigration increased in the 1880s and following, it served as a means of integrating the new-comers into the nation. People whose ancestors may not even have heard of America identified with the pilgrims and made the story of their new nation into their own story. So in the end, a simple harvest festival became a vehicle of national unity.

Note: Thanks to Anne Blue Wills, “Pilgrims and Progress: How Magazines Made Thanksgiving,” Church History (March 2003), pp. 138-158.
November 2016