101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

250
yth #88:
Joshua fought King Jabin of Hazor.
The Myth: And it came to pass, when Jabin king of Hazor had heard those things,
that he sent to Jobab king of Madon, and to the king of Shimron, and to the king of
Achshaph, … And Joshua at that time turned back, and took Hazor, and smote the
king thereof with the sword: for Hazor beforetime was the head of all those kingdoms.
And they smote all the souls that were therein with the edge of the sword, utterly
destroying them: there was not any left to breathe: and he burnt Hazor with fire. ( Josh.
11:1, 10–11)
The Reality: Historically reliable passages of the Bible show that Jabin and Hazor
dominated northern Canaan after the time of Joshua.
After the incidents at Gibeon and the capture of the cities belonging to the coalition
of kings, Joshua moved north against King Jabin of Hazor, who organized the
northern Canaanite kings in defense against Israel. Joshua eventually won the battle
and burned the city of Hazor to the ground. Archaeological evidence, however, indicates
that Jabin’s capital had been destroyed shortly after Joshua’s time, and other portions
of the Bible also indicate that Jabin and Hazor continued to flourish and
dominate northern Canaan after the time of Joshua.
Judges 5 contains a poem called the Song of Deborah. It tells about a mighty battle
between several tribes in Israel and a coalition of Canaanite kings. Judges 4 contains
a prose version of the same story and identifies the leader of the Canaanite coalition as
Jabin, King of Hazor, who ruled over most of northern Canaan. Israel won the battle,
defeated Jabin and destroyed his kingdom, although it doesn’t say that they
destroyed Hazor itself.
The Song of Deborah may be the oldest passage of original biblical text to survive
in the present version of the Bible and it probably originated contemporaneously with
the events described therein, sometime in the twelfth to eleventh century B.C. In terms
of biblical chronology, the events described in the Song of Deborah take place not long