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Bryant G. Wood is an evangelical biblical archaeologist and Creationist Director of the Associates for Biblical Research. He is known for his 1990 redating of the destruction of Jericho to accord with the biblical chronology of c. 1400 BC - the proposal was later (1995) questioned, and Kathleen Kenyon's dating of c. 1550 BC remains the accepted chronology for the site.

Biography

Wood attended Syracuse University, graduating with a B.S. in mechanical engineering, later earning a M.S. in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy NY. He later pursued Biblical and archaeological studies and received an M.A. in Biblical History from the University of Michigan in 1974 and a Ph.D. in Syro-Palestinian archaeology from the University of Toronto in 1985. Wood is a specialist in Canaanite pottery of the Late Bronze Age. He is author of The Sociology of Pottery in Ancient Palestine: The Ceramic Industry and the Diffusion of Ceramic Style in the Bronze and Iron Ages (1990), as well as numerous articles on archaeological subjects. In addition, Wood serves as editor of the quarterly publication Bible and Spade.

Wood received international attention for his proposed redating of ancient Jericho, arguing for the historicity of the Biblical account of the capture of the city by the Israelites. He has also written on entry of the Philistines into Canaan and on historicity of the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Jericho

According to the well-known story in the biblical book of Joshua, Jericho was the first Canaanite city to fall to the Israelites as they began their conquest of the Promised Land - an event which the bible's internal chronology places at around 1407 BC. In the early 1930s John Garstang found a destruction layer at Jericho corresponding to the termination of City IV which he identified with the biblical story of Joshua and accordingly dated to c. 1400 BC. It was therefore a shock when Kathleen Kenyon in the 1950s, using more scientific methods than had been available to Garstang, redated Jericho City IV to 1550 BC and claimed to have found no signs of any habitation at all for the period around 1400 BC. Wood's 1990 reversion of City IV to Garstang's original 1400 BC therefore caused a considerable stir. Wood's arguments, based on on a reanalyis of pottery shards (a method which can provide highly accurate dates in the context of the ancient Near East), stratigraphic considerations, scarab evidence, and a single radiocarbon date, failed to convince some archaeologists, one of whom wrote in a subsequent issue of Biblical Archaeology Review:

"Wood has attempted to redate the destruction of Jericho City IV from the end of the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1550 B.C.) to the end of the Late Bronze I (c. 1400 BC). He has put forward four lines of argument to support his conclusion. Not a single one of these arguments can stand up to scrutiny. On the contrary, there is strong evidence to confirm Kathleen Kenyon's dating of City IV to the Middle Bronze Age. Wood's attempt to equate the destruction of City IV with the Israelite conquest of Jericho must therefore be rejected."

Wood responded that he had produced evidence to back his conclusions, and that any counter-claims should also be backed by fresh evidence. In 1995 additional C measurements were made on previously recovered samples from Jericho's City IV. The analysis of these samples was not made specifically to test the controversy surrounding Wood's dating, but were an effort to establish an independent radiocarbon chronology for Near Eastern archaeology (the existing chronology, initally established by William F. Albright in the 1930s, is based largely on changes in pottery types); the results were published by Bruins and van der Plicht (Radiocarbon 37:2,1995), who concluded that "the fortified Bronze Age city at Tell es-Sultan (Jericho City IV) was not destroyed by ca.1400 BC, as Wood (1990) suggested." However, the weighted average C date of the short-lived grains was 3306 ± 7 BP. When calibrated using the current version of OxCal 4.0, this produces a 2-sigma age range (95% probability) of 1620-1530 BC. This date is difficult to reconcile with the Late Bronze I ceramics found by both Garstang and Kenyon (cooking pots with an internal lip and round-sided bowls with concentric painted rings inside, in particular), and the existence of 20 different layers recorded by Kenyon between the beginning of the MBIIc (Phase 32, c. 1650 BC)and the last phase of City IV.

Khirbet el-Maqatir

Wood directs excavations at Khirbet el-Maqatir, a city which he contends may be the biblical city of Ai. The traditional location of Ai, et-Tell, was excavated most recently by Joseph Callaway and was found to have been abandoned during the entirety of the Middle Bronze and Late Bronze Ages. Khirbet el-Maqatir has produced pottery of the Early Bronze, Middle Bronze, Late Bronze I, Iron Age I, late Hellenistic/early Roman, and Byzantine periods. Based on initial finds, including a small Late Bronze I fortress in areas A, D, E, and G, Wood's "preliminary conclusion is that the LB I fortress meets the Biblical requirements to be tentatively identified as the fortress 'Ai, referred to in Josh. 7-8." Nearby Khirbet Nisya has also been suggested, by excavator David Livingstone, as an alternative location for Ai.

Notes

1. www.biblicalchronologist.org
2. Bruins & van der Plicht, "Tell es-Sultan (Jericho): Radiocarbon Results of Short-Lived Cereal and Multiyear Charcoal Samples from the End of the Middle Bronze Age," Radiocarbon 37:2, 1995: p218
3. Abstract for Bruins and van der Plicht available here
4. Wood (2000), 29.

References

• Bryant G. Wood, "Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho? A New Look at the Archaeological Evidence," Biblical Archaeology Review 16(2) (March/April 1990): 44-58.
• Bryant G. Wood, "Dating Jericho’s Destruction: Bienkowski Is Wrong on All Counts, Biblical Archaeology Review 16:05, Sep/Oct 1990.
• Bryant G. Wood,"The Walls of Jericho," Bible and Spade 12:2 (1999), also available
• Bryant G. Wood, The Philistines Enter Canaan, Biblical Archaeology Review 17:06, Nov/Dec 1991.
• Bryant G. Wood, "Khirbet el-Maqatir, 1995-1998," Israel Exploration Journal 50 no. 1-2 (2000): 123-30.

References and external links

• The Bible vs. Modern Scholarship; Interview by John Elliott
• Wood's interpretation of the Jericho evidence
• Is Bryant Wood's chronology of Jericho valid? A critical examination

• Articles with topics of unclear notability from September 2007
• American archaeologists
• Biblical scholars
• Biblical criticism
• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute alumni