Archæology and the Bible

by George A. Barton

All Palestinian cities of importance were situated near perpetual springs. There are at Jerusalem but two unfailing sources of water—the Ain Sitti Miriam (the ancient Gihon) and the Bir Eyyub (Biblical En-rogel). These are both in the Kidron valley, the former just under the brow of the eastern hill some 400 yards from the southern point of the hill, the latter at the point where the valley of Hinnom and the Kidron unite. Of these two sources of supply, the Gihon is pre-eminently fitted to attract an early settlement. It is almost under the hill, whereas the other is out in the midst of the open valley. Gihon, too, is at the base of a hill that can be defended easily on three sides, whereas a town built on a hillside above En-rogel, as the modern Silwan is, could be easily attacked from above. These conditions determined the situation of the earliest settlement, which was near Gihon.

2. Gihon.—The Parker expedition of 1909-1911 revealed by its excavations the fact that the source of the spring of Gihon is a great crack in the rock in the bottom of the valley far below the present apparent source.[230] This crack is about 16 feet long, is of great depth, and runs east and west. The western end of it just enters the mouth of the cave where the apparent source is today, but the eastern end passes out into the bed of the valley. All the water would discharge into the valley but for a wall at the eastern end of the rift, built in very ancient times, which confines the water and compels it to flow into the cave. This wall was constructed by some of the earliest inhabitants of the place. The spring thus produced is intermittent. Its flow is not ceaseless. The water breaks from the hole in the rainy season, three to five times a day; in the summer but twice a day; and after the failure of the spring rains, less than once a day. This fact indicates that the waters collect in some underground cavern from which they are drained by a siphon-like tunnel. The “troubling” of the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:4) is thought by some scholars to have been due to the action of such a siphon-like spring.

3. Cave-dwellers.—About this spring the Parker expedition found large caves and rooms excavated in the rock, and indications that these had once been inhabited. A great deal of pre-Israelite pottery was also found around the spring. These indications seem to show that the site was inhabited for at least a thousand years before David, and perhaps for two thousand, and that its first inhabitants were cave-dwellers. One naturally thinks in this connection of the cave-dwellers of Gezer. It is possible that the first Jerusalemites belonged to the same period and were of the same race. One thinks, too, of the sacred cave and the stone altar on the next peak of the eastern ridge to the north, where the temple afterward stood, and wonders whether it may not have been the sanctuary of this early cave-dwelling race. A definite answer cannot be given to this question. One can only recognize that it may possibly be true.

4. The El-Amarna Period.—The next knowledge we have of Jerusalem comes from the letters of Ebed-Hepa, which were written to Amenophis IV of Egypt between 1375 and 1357 B. C. At that time it was already a walled city, for Ebed-Hepa speaks of “throwing it open.”[231]

The fortified city of Ebed-Hepa was, no doubt, identical with the later Jebusite city. It was situated on the eastern hill just above the spring of Gihon. Probably in the period just before this time it had, like Gezer, been surrounded by a massive wall. In connection with this fortification the rock near Gihon had been scarped (cut to a perpendicular surface) in order to increase the difficulty of scaling the wall.[232] As the wall of Gezer lasted for a thousand years, so this Egyptian wall continued to the reign of David.

It is privately reported that Weil in his excavation in 1913-14 found on the eastern hill remains of a wall with a sloping glacis similar to that belonging to the earliest period of Megiddo. This would not only confirm our inference that Jerusalem was a walled city in the time of Ebed-Hepa, but indicate that its wall had been built at a much earlier time. It was also in the fourteenth century B. C. the capital of a considerable kingdom which Ebed-Hepa ruled as a vassal of the king of Egypt. This kingdom extended as far west as Beth-shemesh and Keilah (1 Sam. 23:1), including, perhaps, Gezer. Aijalon seems to have been included in it on the north, and Carmel in Judah (1 Sam. 25:2) on the south.

When the letters of Ebed-Hepa were written, his kingdom was being attacked and apparently overcome by the Habiri, a people who may have been the first wave of the Hebrew conquest.[233] The letters of Ebed-Hepa cease without telling us whether or not the Habiri captured his city. If they did and they were really Hebrews, they did not hold it long, for, when the Biblical records lift the veil that hides so much of the past, Jerusalem was in the hands of the Jebusites. (See Josh. 15:63; Judges 1:21.)

5. Jebusite Jerusalem.—The Jebusites held it all through the period of the Judges (Judges 19:10, 11). Israel did not capture it until the reign of David. (See 2 Sam. 5:6-8.) At some earlier period of the history of Jerusalem an underground rock-cut passage similar to the one at Gezer[234] had been made, so as to permit the inhabitants in case of siege to descend to the spring for water without going outside the walls; (see [Fig. 241]). The natural slope of the hill had been reinforced at this point by the escarpment of the rock, and the Jebusites felt so secure that they taunted the Hebrews from the top of the walls. Joab, however, discovered the way to this underground passage through the cave back of the spring, Gihon, and, leading a band of men up through it, appeared suddenly within the city, taking the Jebusites by surprise, and captured it.

6. The City of David.—David then took up his residence at Jerusalem, thus making it the capital of the kingdom of Israel. Thus the city of the Jebusites, situated on the eastern hill, which was called Zion, became the “city of David.”

A few modern writers still insist that the “city of David” was on the western hill, which since 333 A. D. has been called Zion. This, as most scholars have seen, is an impossible view. Solomon built a palace for Pharaoh’s daughter near his own on the temple hill, and, when she moved into it, she went up out of the city of David (1 Kings 9:24). As the western hill is higher than the eastern, she must have gone from a point on the eastern hill lower than the temple. When the temple was completed, Solomon brought the ark up from the city of David to the holy of holies in the new temple (2 Chron. 5:2). Scripture thus confirms the inferences from the pottery and the water supply, that the “city of David” was on the eastern hill, and that that hill was Zion. It was a small town, since the space it could occupy was not more than thirteen acres, and may have been less.