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JERICHO

(Heb. yĕrîḥô)

Pre-pottery Neolithic fortifications at Jericho (Tell es-Sulṭân) (Jericho Excavation Fund, photo Kathleen M. Kenyon)

A town ca. 16 km. (10 mi.) N of the Dead Sea near a crossing of the Jordan River. Israelite Jericho has been associated with Tell es-Sulṭân (192142) and Roman Jericho with Tulûl Abū el-{Alayiq (191139). Archaeological evidence has recorded occupation near the spring ({Ain es-Sulṭân) and at Tell es-Sulṭân and Abū el-{Alayiq from as early as the Mesolithic period (ca. 9000 b.c.e.), with occasional gaps, through the modern era.

Old Testament and Apocrypha

The name Jericho appears in Hebrew Scripture frequently in geographical references (e.g., Num. 22:1; 26:3, 63; Deut. 34:1, 3; also 1 Chr. 6:78[MT 63]) from beyond the Jordan. Jericho figures prominently only in the book of Joshua, which reports its miraculous conquest (Josh. 5:13–6:23); in Judges it appears as an outpost of Eglon of Moab (Judg. 3:13). David’s abused emissaries recuperated at Jericho (2 Sam. 10:51 = 1 Chr. 19:5). According to 1 Kgs. 16:34 Hiel of Bethel “built Jericho,” at the cost of two sons in correspondence to the curse in Josh. 6. In 2 Kgs. 2:4-18 Jericho is noted as seat of a school of prophets. Judahite captives of war were repatriated there (2 Chr. 28:15). 2 Kgs. 25:5 = Jer. 39:5 = 52:8 records the capture of the fleeing king Zedekiah near Jericho. Ezra 2:34 = Neh. 7:36 refers to a postexilic settlement (population 345) at Jericho.

Jericho regained importance in Hellenistic times. The town was fortified by Bacchides (1 Macc. 9:50) and was later the scene of the death of Simon (16:14-16). Sir. 24:14 mentions Jericho in a metaphor for wisdom.

New Testament

Jericho appears in the account of Jesus’ ministry only in the Synoptic Gospels. It is the setting for the story of Zacchaeus, apparently chief tax collector for the town (Luke 19:1-10), and figures in the parable of the Good Samaritan (10:30). In Matt. 20:29; Mark 10:46; Luke 18:35 Jericho is the setting for the healing of a blind beggar(s).

Tell es-Sulṭân

Tell es-Sulṭân, first excavated by Ernst Sellin and Carl Watzinger (1907-09), later by John Garstang (1930-36) and by Kathleen M. Kenyon (1952-58), has yielded some of the most important information concerning the beginnings of urbanization. Mesolithic remains (ca. 9000), similar to Natufian artifacts, were found in a deep sounding. This narrow exposure detected a rectangular “platform” of clay purposely preserved on bedrock, interpreted by Kenyon as a shrine; however, objects tentatively understood as sockets for totems have since been identified as stone mortars.

In the succeeding four Neolithic levels (ca. 8500-4000) Tell es-Sulṭân became a large (4 ha. [10 a.]) town. The Pre-pottery Neolithic A settlement, successor to “Proto-Neolithic” villages, expanded and organized to the point that occupants constructed a large stone wall around the town. The perimeter/defense wall included in all three phases at least one tower, round in plan (8.5 m. [28 ft.] wide, surviving 7.7 m. [25 ft.] high) with an interior staircase. In the perimeter wall’s second phase a ditch 9.5 m. (31 ft.) wide × 2.25 m. (7.4 ft.) deep was cut into bedrock along the outer face, a feature which provided deeper protection. Pre-pottery Neolithic B Tell es-Sulṭân, also a walled town, is most notably represented by the discovery of human skulls which had been retrieved from primary burial and onto which facial features had been molded. The skulls, examples of which have been discovered at other Neolithic sites, were kept within houses; a group of nine were found in collapsed debris of one house. Kenyon suggested that these skulls point to an ancestor cult. In the uppermost PPN B levels humanlike clay figurines, similar to those found at ʿAin Ghazal, were discovered; these Kenyon characterized as a continuation of the ancestor cult, an imitation of the decorated human skulls. Others, however, understand the figurines to represent deities.

The destruction of PPN B Tell es-Sulṭân was followed by a gap in occupation and eventually by another Neolithic settlement of the Pottery Neolithic culture. PN A consisted largely of pit-dwellings. PN B dwellings were initially built in the ruins of the PN A pits, but later tended to be constructed above ground and freestanding. PN B Tell es-Sulṭân was apparently also surrounded by a town wall. Material remains support the view that occupants were herders and hunters.

After another gap of several centuries, in the Chalcolithic/Early Bronze I era (Kenyon’s “Proto-Urban”), humans again centered activities on Tell es-Sulṭân, a conclusion based on the discovery of a group of shaft tombs, all containing multiple burials. Architecture reappeared on the mound in EB IA and IB in the form of apsidal-ended houses, along with suggestions of a fortification wall and a semi-circular tower. A broad-room building, named a sanctuary by Garstang and to which he attributed several stone cultic artifacts, is included in EB I. Kenyon attributed both tombs and settlement to nomadic or semi-nomadic groups newly arrived at the site.

In Early Bronze II-III, the age of major urbanization of Palestine, Tell es-Sulṭân was again fortified, in this instance with the large brick Walls B (EB II) and C (EB III) that underwent as many as 17 phases of construction. Several hundred EB II-III tombs and houses were excavated by Garstang and Kenyon; artifact evidence depicts prosperity and trade contacts with Egypt, Anatolia, and Syria. The destruction by fire of the final EB III town, preceded by a gradual decline in the economy and the culture of EB III, once again left Tell es-Sulṭân largely abandoned for several centuries. Some 350 shaft tombs for individual burials around Tell es-Sulṭân, plus remains of a few houses on the mound, reflect the only human activity in EB IV. Most of the burials contained disarticulated skeletal remains, an indication of secondary burial practices. Kenyon interpreted the burials as reflecting a tribal organization consisting of seven affiliated groups, all of which viewed the region as a traditional locale for burial.

The Middle Bronze (Canaanite) occupation at Tell es-Sulṭân was again a well-fortified town, complete with three successive plastered ramparts. Houses and shops were set out in a town plan near the city gate. However, the fullest evidence of MB II life (and ideas of afterlife) derived from tombs on the nearby necropolis, whose preserved remains included wooden furniture, textiles, baskets, mats, scarabs, decorative ivory carvings, and even food. MB II Tell es-Sulṭân ended in destruction, probably at the hands of Egyptian forces.

The Late Bronze settlement at Tell es-Sulṭân has received much attention by biblical scholars, largely because of the account of the conquest of Jericho in Joshua. However, LB occupation appears to have been restricted to a nonfortified village in the 15-14th centuries. Kenyon’s discoveries of fragmentary domestic architecture, plus limited LB remains recovered by Garstang (who had mistakenly identified an EB III fortification wall as the one in Josh. 6), fail to correspond to the story of siege and destruction of a walled Jericho. Attempts to identify archaeological remains at Tell es-Sulṭân with Jericho depicted in Josh. 6 flounder on the absence of archaeological data.

Only with the first Iron Age stratum may the name Jericho be applied successfully to Tell es-Sulṭân. From the end of the 15th to the 10th-9th centuries Tell es-Sulṭân lay unoccupied, at which time it was rebuilt, presumably by Hiel of Bethel (1 Kgs. 16:34), though artifacts from one of five known LB tombs date as late as the opening of the 14th century. By the 7th century Jericho had become an extensive settlement, which was destroyed in the 6th-century Babylonian conquest of Judah. This late Iron II settlement was the last on the mound of Tell es-Sulṭân, and occupation during the Persian through Hellenistic historical periods is little attested in the region.

Tulûl Abū el-{Alayiq

During the Hasmonean-Roman period occupation at the oasis moved to Tulûl Abū el-{Alayiq, a group of low mounds both north and south of Wadi Qelt. Excavation at these sites was done by Charles Warren (1869), Sellin and Watzinger (1913), James L. Kelso and Dimitri C. Baramki (1950), James B. Pritchard (1951), and Ehud Netzer (1973-1987). These extensive excavations exposed a two-story palace built by Hyrcanus I on the north bank of Wadi Qelt, and a large complex of buildings, complete with swimming pools, constructed by Herod the Great as a winter palace with wings connected by a bridge on both sides of Wadi Qelt. Netzer’s excavations also found remains of a theater, a racing course, and a possible gymnasium built by Herod at Tell es-Samarat (1917.1413) S of Tell es-Sulṭân. Little of the town associated with NT Jericho has been discovered.

Bibliography. J. R. Bartlett, Jericho (Grand Rapids, 1983); P. Bienkowski, Jericho in the Late Bronze Age (Warminster, 1986); J. Garstang and J. B. E. Garstang, The Story of Jericho (London, 1940); J. L. Kelso and D. C. Baramki, “The Excavation of New Testament Jericho (Tulul Abu el-Alayiq),” in Excavations at New Testament Jericho and Khirbet en-Nitla. AASOR 29-30 (New Haven, 1955): 1-19; K. M. Kenyon, Digging Up Jericho (New York, 1957); E. Netzer, “The Hasmonean and Herodian Winter Palaces in Jericho,” IEJ 25 (1975): 89-100; J. B. Pritchard, Excavations at Herodian Jericho. AASOR 32-33 (New Haven, 1958).

Paul F. Jacobs

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

JERICHO

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)