CHIASMS IN JOSHUA

This post accompanies Gospel Doctrine lesson 18, "Be Strong and of a Good Courage". Please see my article, Chiasms in Joshua.

In an earlier post I mentioned the false notion that Moses had horns, and how strange it is that literally hundreds of paintings and sculptures depict this mistranslation. It is equally interesting to discover there are hardly any paintings of the Battle of Jericho, arguably the most famous Old Testament battle. There are lots of Bible Art illustrations, but almost nothing you'd call art. See the Wikimedia collection, which has two Tissot paintings and a panel from the front doors of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, which are replicas of Lorenzo Ghiberti's doors in the Florence Baptistry.

Instead of a painting, here is a timeline of the Conquest of Canaan. There are lots of these online to choose from, and the dates, as I've repeatedly pointed out, tend to differ from one to the next. Just pick the timeline that tickles your fancy.

YEAR	EVENTS	CHAPTERS
1406 BC	God Commissions Joshua	1
1406 BC	Rahab Welcomes the Spies	2
1406 BC	The Israelites Cross the Jordan	3-5
1406 BC	Conquest of Jericho and Ai	6-8
1405 BC	Kings Join Against Israel	9
1405 BC	The Sun Stands Still	10
1405 BC	Northern Palestine Defeated	11-12
1399 BC	Land Allotted Among the Tribes	13-22
1375 BC	Joshua's Farewell Address	23-24

Jericho has been occupied since about 9,000 BC, almost at the beginning of the Holocene. Abundant water springs in and around the city made it an attractive place to live. Wars, earthquakes, and accidental conflagrations repeatedly knocked everything down and people rebuilt on top of the rubble. A mound or "tell" slowly grew at the site. At the time of the Conquest, the total area enclosed by the upper mudbrick walls—the citadel or fortress—was only about 325 feet by 800 feet, much smaller than most people probably think, and would have housed about 1,200 people. When threatened, people living in the surrounding areas would have fled to the fortress for protection. See Answers in Genesis and Wikipedia for more information.

Watch Dr. Fink's interesting Tell es Sultan video.

Read a chapter or two from the Book of Mormon.