The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) officially announced details Oct. 6 on a major archaeological project in northern Israel south of Haifa near present-day Harish. The inland En Esur site has remains of a town that covered 160 acres, indicating that an estimated 6,000 residents lived there in the Early Bronze Age 5,000 years ago.
This remarkably early date for such a large settlement is an unprecedented find not only within Israel but for the entire region. Without later technological developments, that’s about as big as a municipality could have been. Not only that. The archaeologists found another settlement lying underneath En Esur that dates back 7,000 years. These towns were strategically located along an ancient trade route and with access to fresh-water springs.
The IAA team reports that the Bronze Age settlement demonstrates careful urban planning, with streets, drainage and public spaces that included a notable temple with a sizable basin that contains burned animal bones signaling ritual sacrifices, a town square, storage facilities and a mausoleum. There are many figurines, showing artistic culture and a possible religious purpose. Tools on the site are identified as Egyptian. Huge stone blocks for construction were somehow hauled from a quarry a half-mile away.
The site has long been known, but was only excavated in earnest starting in 2017 by a team led by Itai Elad, Yitzhak Paz and Dina Shalem. Work was funded by Netivei Israel, the transport infrastructure firm that is building a highway interchange at the site. Some 5,000 students volunteered to help with the massive archaeological dig.
The En Esur announcement was carried by many media in Israel and picked up by AFP, UPI, Britain’s Daily Mail, CNN, and newsweek.com, but will be fresh news for most North American readers and viewers. And the coverage to date leaves a king-size hole for enterprising journalists to fill.
Most people will have mild interest in evidence of very early urban settlement. There would be far more excitement about what all this might tell us about the familiar narratives in the Bible, an aspect that is left unmentioned in the initial flow of articles.
The Guy notes without comment that the archaeologists’ chronology cannot be reconciled with the version of biblical history offered by the literal-minded “creationists” at Answers in Genesis, whose reading of the Bible says the earth is a mere 6,000 years old or so.
En Esur was apparently not a Hebrew town but a Canaanite one, an identification reinforced by the presence of pig bones, and it existed before the era of the biblical patriarchs beginning with Abraham, who lived some 4,000 years ago at the most -- or, according to biblical "minimalists," never existed at all.
What might be the impact of En Esur on our understanding of the primordial events recorded in Genesis prior to Abraham, such as the building of the Tower of Babel, the Flood and Noah’s descendants, those mysterious “sons of God” (6:1-4) or going way back to Cain building a town named for Enoch (4;17). And then, Abraham and his successors are depicted as semi-nomadic herders, not city dwellers, so how would they relate to such early urbanization in the Holy Land?
The starting point for developing this theme will be news articles from an Internet search and avideo with material IAA provided to the Lost History Channel. Next, you’ll interview your favorite sources on biblical history.
Journalists tap not only their own sources but sources on sources, people who can refer them to other experts regarding the topic at hand. Since archaeology is involved, The Guy proposes checking in with Biblical Archaeology Review. Since 1975, this magazine has interpreted the latest Mideast historical discoveries with scholarly credibility yet written for ready understanding by non-experts who will scratch heads reading academic journals. A subscription is strongly recommended for full-time religion writers.
The editor of BAR since 2017 is Robert Cargill, who teaches Jewish and early Christian history at the University of Iowa and is the author of "The Cities That Built the Bible" (2016, HarperOne), reachable at robert-cargill@uiowa.edu and 319–335-1996.
The Guy also recommends a chat with a favorite source on sources, BAR’s ever-quotable founding editor Hershel Shanks. He can be contacted in retirement via the magazine’s D.C. office at editorial@bib-arch.org or 800-221-4644.