4 DESCRIBING THE SAME ATTACK1. The Lengthy Gap between Narratives. The first textual objection to the theory that Joshua 11 and Judges 4 describe the same attack is that a large and undeniable gap in time separates the two narratives. The destruction of Hazor under Joshua transpired in ca. 1400 BC, given that the conquest of Canaan—to the extent that it actually was carried out as divinely outlined—required six years to complete.[27] With this date secured, the account of Hazor’s demise in Judges 4 must be dated, even if only approximately, because unquestionably the dating of the period of the judges is one of the most intriguing challenges related to biblical chronology.To begin the determination of the dating, Joshua seemingly died in ca. 1384 BC, and the Israelites’ faithfulness to God extended only to the time of the deaths of the elders who survived him (Josh 24:29, 31).[28] Given that the exact survival-span of these faithful elders cannot be quantified precisely, this period will not be included in the measurement of time between Joshua’s death and the victory over Hazor’s king during the days of Deborah and Barak (Judg 4:24).[29] Assuming that the unfaithful, subsequent generation began immediately after the deaths of the elders of Joshua’s generation who outlived him, the first chronological reference is to eight years of oppression (Judg 3:8), followed by 40 years of rest (Judg 3:11).A second oppression, this one of 18 years (Judg 3:14), was followed by 80 years of rest (Judg 3:30). A third oppression and period of rest, related to Shamgar (Judg 3:31), is not documented as to its duration. This undefined number also may be ignored safely for the purpose of the present study. The final number necessary is 20 years (Judg 4:3) for the period of oppression under “Jabin, King of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor” (Judg 4:1). When all of these numbers are added, the total comes to 166 years. The imprecision of this length of time, already obvious from the above discussion, is further complicated by how the required length of the period of the judges—which totals 341 years, if using Joshua’s death (ca. 1384 BC) for its inception, and the conservative date of ca. 1043 BC for the start of Saul’s reign—does not match evenly with the 410 years derived when adding together all of the years of oppression and rest that transpired throughout the narrative of Judges.[30]This apparent contradiction is resolved simply by understanding that the oppressions and periods of rest, which transpired throughout Israel and at various times, did not run consecutively but concurrently (i.e. with unspecified overlaps).[31] However, another problem arises: the 166 years must be both lengthened by the undefined years of the faithful generation that survived Joshua and by Shamgar’s judgeship, and shortened by the unspecified overlapping of the judgeships. Assuming that the adjustment for the overlapping of the judgeships is somewhat lengthier, 150 years may be used as a rough number for the time between Joshua’s death and the events of Judges 4. This would mean that the latter event occurred in ca. 1234 BC, which matches well with Yadin’s dating of the destruction of the final Bronze Age city. Because the Hazor of Joshua 11 was destroyed in ca. 1400 BC, in this scenario the difference between the two destructions of Hazor would be ca. 166 years.[32] Thus with such a lengthy interval between the events of these two narratives, the demises of Hazor in Joshua 11 and Judges 4 are chronologically far too distant from one another to be fused into a single event.2. The Identification of “Jabin” as a Dynastic Title. The second textual objection to the theory that Joshua 11 and Judges 4 record the same attack on Hazor is that the name “Jabin, King of Hazor” in these independent narratives does not refer to the same king. Yadin asks, “If Joshua, who lived before Deborah, had already destroyed Hazor and killed Jabin, how is it possible that (at least) several decades later, Jabin was still alive and his commander in chief engaged in battle as far away from
Hazor as the valley of Megiddo?
This is indeed one of the most irksome questions of Biblical research.”[33] Yadin, therefore, pondered how one king could have ruled for so long, though the archaeologist’s “several decades” should be corrected to “150 years.”The tension dissipates, however, once the reader understands that the term “jabin” is not the name of the king, but rather is a royal, dynastic title. Oddly enough, earlier in the same volume Yadin answers his own question, when he writes, “Scholars have suggested that the form of the name of the king of Hazor mentioned in the Bible—Yabin (Jabin being the Anglicized version)—is indeed short for the full theophoric formula. If this is true, then Yabin may have been a royal dynastic name of the kings of Hazor for quite a time.”[34] In fact, as Kitchen points out, the use of this ancient name dates back to the Mari archives of the 18th century BC, where Yabni-Adad is mentioned as the king of Hazor.[35] The proposal of a dynastic use of “jabin” for the king of Hazor in both Joshua and Judges thus has sufficient merit, and precedent for this use does occur in the biblical text.An example of this practice of using dynastic titles superfluously, which was common for both biblical and non-biblical authors of antiquity, is drawn from Egypt. The Egyptian dynastic title, “pharaoh,” derives from the word that literally means “great house.”[36] During Egypt’s Old Kingdom (ca. 2715–2170 BC), the word was used of the royal palace. Not until the middle of the 18th Dynasty (ca. 1575–1307 BC), slightly before the reign of Thutmose III (ca. 1506–1452 BC), was it used as an epithet for the Egyptian monarch.[37] The biblical text itself confirms the notion of the pharaonic title as having a dynastic use equivalent to “king.” Moses writes in Exod 5:4, “the king of Egypt said to them,” signifying that the Egyptian king spoke directly to Moses and Aaron. After recording the words of the king, Moses writes in Exod 5:5, “Then pharaoh said,” as the speech to the Israelite leaders continued. Pharaoh even used a verb in the second person plural (~T,B;v.hi), clarifying that he still was speaking to Moses and Aaron. Since the terms “king of Egypt” and “pharaoh” are used interchangeably by Moses in this narrative, the biblical author of the 15th century BC views “king” and “pharaoh” as synonyms.Concurrent with this innovation in Egyptian onomastics, the standard practice of Thutmose III’s time was to leave enemy kings unnamed on official records. This revered pharaoh’s1st Asiatic campaign was highlighted by his military response to a rebellious coalition at Megiddo, which was instigated by the empire of Mitanni and fomented by the king of Kadesh (on the Orontes River), who—in The Annals of Thutmose III—was called “that wretched enemy of Kadesh.” Moreover, when Egyptian scribes lis
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