I read 40,000 men (Joshua 4.13) but I don't see that as the basic point.
The smaller the area, the easier it is to walk around it. One does not
have to walk right at the side of it. They can march as many abreast as
they want to and as far away from the walls as is necessary. It does not
make sense to me say that smallness would be limit.
If you have 40,000 men spaced (say) 10 abreast and 3 feet apart in the
column. The length of the column would be 1333 feet. The perimeter of 9
acres should be somewhere around 2400 feet if I computed it correctly.
Even if it were 600,000 as you say, the column is 15 times as long. I
could describe a several ways for them to march around this small city
in the time specified - so long they do not have to rub up against
the wall.
I am not trying to be "concordist" * but I just don't understand why
this is impossible -- or even difficult.
An interesting jewish site by the way is
http://www.foigm.org/IMG/conquest.htm it discusses some of the
archaeological finds at Jericho. (It does not address the issue that you
raised.)
Walt
* I taught my dictionary to recognizing these ASA words. Pretty soon
I'll begin to think that are real words also ;)
Jan de Koning wrote:
>
> At 10:19 PM 02/05/02 -0400, Walter Hicks wrote:
> >Jan de Koning wrote:
> >
> > > My uncle showed in his study about the El Amarna
> > > tablets and the OT (in Dutch, published in 1942), that numbers
>in the early
> > > books of the Bible do not make sense in a modern sense. To
>illustrate that
> > > he took the size of Jericho when Israel invaded Canaan. That size is
> > > available through the excavations. He compared it with the number of men
> > > that had to walk each day around the city, and the seventh day seven
> > > times. That is clearly impossible, if we take the modern sense of the
> > > numbers used. Even when we replace "thousand" by "clan" it appears to be
> > > impossible.
> >
> >What little I have read indicates that Jericho was a fairly small place.
> >How would that make marching around it impossible? Was it really large
> >and I have been misinformed?
> >
> >Walt
> No, the fact that it was small would make marching of 600.000 times 7 is
> four million two hundred thousand nen in a day around it impossible.
>
> Jan
-- =================================== Walt Hicks <wallyshoes@mindspring.com>In any consistent theory, there must exist true but not provable statements. (Godel's Theorem)
You can only find the truth with logic If you have already found the truth without it. (G.K. Chesterton) ===================================
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