The Story of Ai in Real-World History

Jennifer:
Wrapped up in our content today, we have some stories to tell you that you have probably never heard before. They are true stories of adventure, intrigue and heartbreak, but we see God's purposes going forward in the midst of it all, and once again, we see the Bible coming to life in the real world.

Steve:
You may recall a story from the Old Testament about a great heap of stones being raised over the body of a dead king. We're going to take you to that very heap of stones today found in real world history.

Welcome to The BC Messenger podcast. This is December 2024, episode number 29 of the BC Messenger. My name is Steve Hall. I'm here with my wife, Jennifer Hall. We are so glad to have you with us this month.

Jennifer:
It's Christmas time as the podcast is going out around the 1st of December and the whole world is turning into a magical fairy tale land. I'm loving seeing the Christmas lights popping up in the small towns around where we live. I think I'm becoming converted over to the mentality of decorating for Christmas actually before Thanksgiving. I used to really be against that, but...

Steve:
I'm against it still. Well, the Christmas music. I love Christmas music, but you start playing that stuff in November, early November. How many times can you go rocking around the Christmas tree? It's just like...

Jennifer:
Not that song. There's a lot of better ones than that. I think we're going to lose that battle because one of our daughters this year, I mean, she is adamant. She is playing the Christmas music. She started the day after Halloween.

But Christmas is such a magical time of year and there are so many stories tied in with it that are heartwarming and precious to us in their own way. Songs about flying reindeer, dancing snowmen. And then we sit beside the fire and we read other stories about a little baby king, who was born of a virgin of all things, and whose birth was announced to the world by angels. All of this is wrapped up in the magic of the season that we are entering into.

Steve:
So how do we know what is a real story and what isn't? We can enjoy all the stories, of course, but as we have talked about many times in our podcast, real stories are found in real world history. And the one about that baby being born, where Christmas comes from, the whole Christmas story, of course, is a real story. We have a picture in our show notes that is a really...

Jennifer:
It's a painting. Yeah. I hope our listeners will click on the show notes if you haven't already seen them on the email. Look at that painting.

Steve:
It just demonstrates the reality of this Christmas story. It's not all of the frills and trills. It's showing emotion in the faces of Joseph and Mary.

Jennifer:
Yeah. You don't have the magical moments there. I mean, you have a stone doorway, a cold floor stone building. Mary is leaned over asleep barefoot and Joseph is sitting there looking down at that baby and he looks rugged. He looks exhausted. You can just sense the confusion and him just trying to figure out what to do now.

Steve:
And it's a fantastic, unbelievable, the most wonderful story of all, but it happened in the real world. God's centerpiece of redemption, the redemption plan. But it's more than just a heartwarming, sacred story, like you're saying.

Jennifer:
It reminds us that the real world and real life as we follow God is often difficult and painful and confusing. But in the middle of it all, we find God with us. And in that painting, you see Joseph, he's leaned over and he's looking down at that little baby.And  how much that speaks to our hearts. The truth that God is with us is so much more than just a heartwarming story. It's so much more. It's world changing. So much more than just Santa pulling his sleigh on Christmas Eve. And that truth of the centerpiece of history when God sent the Redeemer into the world is flowing out of thousands of years of Old Testament history that lead up to that moment. As we have demonstrated on this podcast many times over, that history is real... about as real-world as it gets.

Steve:
That's right. And when we go back into that Old Testament history that you're talking about there, maybe you can recall back in Sunday school the story of a great heap of stones that was raised over a dead king after a battle in the Old Testament. We're going to talk about that today. We're going to go to that story today and show you the real world aspect, that we can find that heap of stones in the real world today. It's the story of a place called Ai, and that is where we're headed. But before we get there, Jennifer, go ahead and give us our bullet points, our rundown for the podcast today.

Jennifer:
Our featured topic is the story of Ai in real world history. Then we have "As a Matter of Fact", are dinosaurs actually mentioned in the Bible as is often claimed? Then we have our aging research section. We're going to read to you a portion of the preface to the book, "Aging: Cause and Cure". There's a lot in there to think about; a lot of important statements right there, even in the preface. And then we have "Helen's View" and she will be sharing a writing called "A time to gather stones and a time to scatter them." An interesting behind the scenes glimpse at the research work here.

Steve:
In Joshua chapter 8, we have the account of the battle of Ai. Last month on our podcast, we entered into the Promised Land. We began to talk about the conquest and we saw the children of Israel defeating the city of Jericho. We showed that in real world history. Today we're going to carry on and go to the next battle that the Bible describes and see if we also, through the missing millennium theory, putting things in its proper time frame, having the proper chronology, can we find the next battle after Jericho? You may not be as familiar with this one. Let me just give a brief rundown of what took place there in the biblical account.

Jennifer:
I think every Sunday school kid hears the story of Jericho and that is one of the most well known. But it's so interesting that right after that there is another fascinating account of a battle and a defeat by Israel there. But this one is just not as familiar. 

Steve:
And it's a shame because it's such a fascinating story. And what took place after Jericho, you may remember that God told the people when they defeated Jericho in the amazing way that they defeated it, don't take anything from the city. Remember that? All of that was an offering to the Lord. They were not allowed to take any of the spoil, but there was one man that did. His name was Achan. Now we all remember the story of Achan, how the children of Israel, after the success at Jericho, they go forward. And then there's this other city that they come to called Ai. Now you may have heard it pronounced Ai. It is spelled Ai, but it is actually in Hebrew, the correct pronunciation is Ai. Well, they go into battle with that city. They're very confident, the children of Israel. They don't take very many men with them, and they do not defeat that city. Those people drive the children of Israel back. A number of the children of Israel are killed in that battle.

Jennifer:
They were defeated because of Achan's sin.

Steve:
Right. Joshua and his men and his people are very upset. They don't know what's going on. You know the story. They find Achan. They find what he had done. They kill Achan and his family and all of that. And then the children of Israel go back to defeat Ai and they have success at this point.

Jennifer:
We are going to tell a story here today. This retelling of the story of Ai was born out of the archaeological work done at the site of Ai in Israel called Et-Tell. That is the name of the archaeological mound that was excavated and was documented in French. Even the story of the archaeologist is intriguing. We'll get to that later. But this re-telling of the story of Ai is putting together the archaeology with the biblical account. The archaeology is pointing to the date expected by the new biblical chronology, modern biblical chronology done by Dr. Aardsma, which is 2400 BC. And that is when the city of Ai was destroyed. But the archaeology has told us so much about those people, about their way of life, about their city. And so we have a retelling. We did not do the retelling of the story. We're going to read it to you. The retelling was done in 2002. So 22 years ago by my brother, Mark, who was employed by Aardsma Research and Publishing at the time. And he did a fine job of piecing all of this together and writing this story, which brings it to life. We have the archaeology. We have the biblical account. And then we have additional details which were supplied by my brother Mark's imagination as he was piecing all of this together. This retelling of the story of Ai is from the perspective of the king of Ai as the Israelite army is coming in. So gather round and listen as Steve shares this story with us.

Steve:
The king of Ai took his seat in the grand room. He was eager to hear the latest news about the swarm of foreigners who were camped on the other side of the Jordan River. There had been news from various sources that these foreigners had produced quite a path of destruction behind them across the Jordan. He was well aware of what had happened to Egypt when they left there 40 years previously. Most recently, he'd heard that a couple of their spies had been seen in Jericho, but had somehow disappeared. It seemed that they were intent on crossing the Jordan. He was getting concerned about the safety of his city.

As he waited for the messenger from Jericho to arrive, reports about the ongoing crop harvest were presented, but his thoughts drifted to a mental review of Ai's fortifications. They were impressive, no doubt about it. The massive walls had been built long before his time, but he had seen to it that they were skillfully maintained to a height of over 15 feet. The few gates and the walls were securely constructed and well guarded. Ai was built on a hill, giving it an intrinsic advantage over any adversary. Their gods and these walls had protected them for over 300 years. What did they have to be afraid of?

The breathless messenger was shown in and gave his news. The Jordan had magically run dry when the foreigners began to cross it, and 40,000 of them were equipped for battle and on the move in the plains near Jericho. When the king heard the news, he was relieved. Let Jericho fend for itself. At least his city wasn't under attack.

Over the next week, the reports continued to arrive. The foreigners were acting strangely, marching around Jericho once a day. After nearly a week of that, the bad news came. Jericho had fallen to the foreigners and was completely destroyed in a great massacre. Then the king's worst fears began to come true. One of his lookouts thought he saw foreigners lurking around, probably spies. He sent his own spies to the foreigners camp, and the report came back that attack appeared to be imminent.

That evening, after a day filled with preparations for battle, the king of Ai made his way through the town to the temple. The city was crowded with field hands and residents of the surrounding countryside who had come inside the walls for protection. Children played games in the crowded streets as mothers watched from doorways. The king climbed the ramp to the temple entrance, walking through the thick smell of incense in the outer chamber and into the altar room. The citizens of Ai watched nervously as a thin column of smoke rose from the temple. It made a faint silhouette in the western sky still glowing with the sunset. They hoped their gods, their walls, and their men would protect them from the attack that they knew was coming.

The watchman saw nothing to disturb the peace that night, but the king did not sleep. The next morning, an army of about 3,000 could be seen marching toward the city. That was strange. 40,000 men had marched on the plain at Jericho, and Ai was a city of 12,000. Why had they sent only 3,000 soldiers? As the foreigners marched toward the city, the army inside waited in a hubbub of nervous excitement. The 3,000 foreigners continued their approach. The king and his army poured out of the gate into the plain before the city to meet them. Everyone knew battle was only minutes away.

As the battle was joined, confusion spread in the front ranks of the foreign soldiers. They were fleeing. The king ordered a full pursuit. Even his soldiers stationed inside the walls to guard the city streamed through the gate and down the hill on the heels of the desperately scrambling foreign soldiers. A few did not scramble fast enough and were speared to death by the king's men. All over the city, fear turned to pride and excitement. Their men, their walls, their gods, and their king had protected them once again.

That evening, after a day of celebrating, the king of Ai again made his way through town to the temple. Again, the children stopped their games. The people watched as the sacrificial smoke rose against the western sky. The unstoppable foreigners had been stopped. The king knew the significance of that, but he also knew that there were many more soldiers where those 3,000 had come from. It would only be a matter of time before they tried it again.

Sure enough, just a few days later, the entire foreign army was on the move. They came up and camped north of Ai. Only a broad valley separated them from Ai. It took nearly all day for the foreign army to move into position. As night fell, the king attended the sacrificial ceremony he had attended so many times before, and the people of Ai saw the smoke rise as it always did. They knew that outside the walls, the foreign army could see it too.

The next morning, the king of Ai led his army out to meet the foreigners in battle. As the moment of battle drew near, the king noticed confusion in the foreigners' battle lines just like before. They were fleeing again, and again the king ordered a full pursuit. All the men of Ai rushed to join in this second victory. The foreigners ran, and the men of Ai chased them just like before.

As fear turned once again to familiar pride, the king turned to look at his city. But his pride turned instantly to panic. Huge clouds of smoke were rising from the city. Ai was burning. He realized too late that part of the foreign army had been hiding in the ravine behind his city. He had been baited and ambushed. His city, which had sat on that hill much longer than anyone could remember, was going up in smoke. Soon his whole army realized what was happening, and they started to panic. The king watched in shock as things went from bad to worse. The foreigners seized the moment of panic and turned on the men of Ai, killing them one after another. Then foreign hands grabbed him, and he was carried away.

That evening, as the sun set, the king's body swung lifeless from a tree. Columns of smoke still rose from the smoldering ruins of Ai. No children played in the streets, no mothers watched from the doorways. No men patrolled the walls, and no priests offered sacrifices in the temple. The men, the mothers, the children were dead. The houses in the temple were ashes, stone rubble. The walls were broken through and useless now. The king's body was removed from the tree and thrown down near the temple. As darkness fell, swarms of victorious Israelite soldiers ran back and forth carrying stones, which they threw onto a growing heap. Eventually the heap covered the king's body, the temple, and the thickest part of the wall. And that was the end of Ai.

The army of foreigners moved on to other battles, and the city sat in ruins with its heap of stones, still marking the demise of its king. The heap of stones sat undisturbed for 4,340 years, until Judith Marquet Krause hired 100 men to move it so that she could see what of archaeological interest might be found beneath it. It took those 100 men one month of hard work to remove the heap of stones, but Judith was not disappointed. Underneath she found the ruins of an ancient temple, and a strongly fortified section of an ancient city wall.

Jenifer:
What a story we have there as we think back on what happened at Ai. So in light of all of that, now let's just pick apart, take apart some of the different aspects of the work that was done archaeologically there at Et -Tell, and the person who did it. And then we'll see some conclusions flowing out of all of that.

First of all, the archaeological work gives us a look at the lives of the people that lived there at Ai, as you heard being told in that story. The Bible doesn't tell us much about those people or anything about them. It just says Israel slew them until no one was left. But their everyday lives of course have been lost, forgotten, lost to history. But you might be surprised really how much has been brought back to light by the careful work of the archaeologists who went in. And we can find out, who were these people and how did they live and work and worship? And in all of that, it brings it home so much to relating it, you know, these were real people with real lives, just like we have today.

Steve:
And now let me just mention here that what we are talking about, the archaeological finds that we are going to be discussing of these people and their lives are found at, and you mentioned this earlier I believe, around 2400 BC. Not at the traditional biblical dates of 1400 BC. We get into all kinds of problems when we are a thousand years off from where we should be when looking for the biblical accounts. And that's what we mean when we talk here about the missing millennium theory.

Jennifer:
Similar to Jericho that we discussed last month. If you go looking at 1400 BC at what was found for the city of Ai, you won't find anything. Once it was destroyed at 2400, it really was never rebuilt, certainly not as the fortified city that it was back in the day there. And so once again, we find a major problem. If you try to put Joshua and his army at 1400 BC, then they are defeating imaginary cities at that point.

Steve:
There is no city. Dr. Aardsma has a little chart on his website of Ai just like he did with Jericho. And if you look at 1400 in history, there is no city Et-Tell. There's nothing there. And so this is why for a number of decades now, we've had a problem in biblical history. We cannot find these accounts in real world history because we are off on the dates.

Jennifer:
And this is great with Ai because it was a city only one time in history. It was for hundreds of years, but it ended at 2400 BC and that was it. It was never again resurrected. And so if you're looking for, "when did Joshua and his army defeat the city of Ai and burn it?" then it's not hard to pinpoint that on the timeline if you see that it was a fortified city for a long time and then it was defeated at 2400 BC. And oh, lo and behold, that is the date predicted by the new biblical chronology.

Steve:
And what if you go and you find a great heap of stones? We're going to get to that in a second.

Jennifer:
Hey, don't give it away. No spoilers.

Steve:
I mean, this is like home run. I mean, boom. Anyhow. Okay. So hang with us there on that. So let's get back to what you were saying. Yes. So we're going to talk about the people. When we get into the archaeology, Judith Marquet Krause, I'm going to have trouble saying her name through this because it's French.

Jennifer:
She was French. Yes.

Steve:
She died very young. We'll get into that. But she recorded all of these amazing things that we now have that we can look at the way of life of these people in the real world that we now see connected to this Bible story.

Jennifer:
First of all, we could take out a world map, we could pinpoint where we live in the U.S. We could draw a line straight across the Atlantic Ocean all the way over to the spot in Israel where Ai is. And of course we love maps. We love timelines because they're anchored to the real world. This was not an imaginary city. It was a very real city. But of course it's not in our neighborhood. We don't look out our windows and see where the ancient city of Ai was. It is there over in Israel in an area called Deir Dibwan. That is where this archaeological site is. So we have the map. Now we need to talk about the timeline, which we already did.

Steve:
We already mentioned it, but if you look at a timeline, the city of Ai did not start out as a city. It was a campsite. This is all coming from archaeology. It was then an unwalled village. Now we're going way back here, 3000 or so BC. And then around 3000 it became a walled city and remained that for about 550 years. It was conquered a number of times. About four and a half thousand years ago, Ai was destroyed by Joshua's army. And then after that it was just in ruins for 1200 years. And just a village was set up on that mound after that. And Ai again, as we said, was never again a walled city.

Jennifer:
I think it's amazing that it was a walled city for 550 years. You know, how long has America been a nation? Since the war for independence? 1776. Well, I just turned 48 and I was a bicentennial baby. I was born on the 200th anniversary year of the U.S. So therefore the U.S. now is 248 years old. And you know, it's amazing how just a little look at history can put you in perspective, put things in perspective. That, you know, we feel so big and so invincible. And like, you know, the things going on here in America are really the only things that have ever mattered in the history of the world. But yet here's the city of Ai where people lived, where they had an ongoing civilization for 550 years. That is basically twice the length of time that America has been its own country. So even that just helps us to see ourselves in the grand scheme of things in a little bit more of a proper light.

Steve:
Right. And again, understanding that there is no city in archaeology after 2400 BC. Now some have tried to say, well, that's not actually Ai. Ai is in a different place, but it just does not work. It doesn't work with dating methods. It doesn't work with topography of the area. Everybody, all scholars admit and know that this Et-Tell is obviously Ai.

Jennifer:
It's related where Jericho is. It's related where Bethel was. The Bible alone pinpoints the location pretty, pretty closely.

Steve:
And there's a great heap stones.

Jennifer:
Stop. You're spoiling it.

Steve:
I know I know. We're getting there.

Jennifer:
All right. Now we're going to talk about the archaeologist. And here is the other fascinating story that we alluded to at the beginning. Judith Marquet Krause, she was a young archaeologist and she is the one who made it her mission to go into Et-Tell and carefully excavate. Now this was way back in the early 1900s that she lived. She did the first major excavation at Ai. And really it's her that we have to thank for much of what we know about it as an ancient city. As Steve alluded to, there is a heartbreaking part of the story that is a sad aspect, that she died when she was only 30 years old before her excavations at I were even completed. And she died of a sudden and unrelenting illness as she was obviously brilliant, full of promise and her life was cut very short.

Steve:
The story of Judith's life is very fascinating. Her ambition, her initiative, her diligence are very inspiring. She literally gave her life to uncover the historical treasures at Et-Tell of what the Bible calls Ai. It's an amazing thing to study.

Jennifer:
Now the other intriguing part of this of her story after she died, her husband undertook to publish all of her notes and all of her findings. And because of the world wars, her works almost did not make it to ever being published. The printing presses were being melted down for like war time activities there in that part of the world. And so I'm just going to read this. It's translated directly out of the French so the wording is a little bit funny. "The present work would have appeared at the beginning of 1940." This is her work there at Et-Tell. "The last test was the editing of the books at the eve of the declaration of war. But fate unleashed on the whole world fell upon the passing of the explorer. Having survived the catastrophe of May to June of 1940, the proofs disappeared. Meanwhile, the inhumanity of the occupants was exercised against the residents. The administration made them melt down the printers type for transformation into ammunition. By chance, a first proof along with all the photographic plates was saved. This book goes therefore at last to see daylight specifically due to the overthrow of the Nazis."

That's fascinating. What a story.

Steve:
We almost lost it. All of this research, due to the war, due to the Nazis.

Jennifer:
You really do sense that there is a spiritual battle against this truth, against this information going out. I mean, what a fight. She even had to conclude her initial foray there into Et-Tell due to a Muslim war that had broken out in the area. And she and her workers had to remove themselves.

Steve:
Yeah, and another obstacle that has had to be overcome is that all of this is in French. Dr. Aardsma did not have English versions, translated copies of the originals of her writings to be able to study. So they had to translate this themselves. Mark and Dr. Aardsma translated this out of the French.

Jennifer:
Mark did it. Because Dr. Aardsma, my father, readily admits he is very poor with anything to do with languages. But of course, this was back in 2002. We didn't have Google translate that, you know? So Mark undertook with his language aptitudes to do a direct translation of the French.

Steve:
So what a blessing to have this now in the English language to be able to read. But that has been, I'm sure, an obstacle that had to be overcome to get this information.

Let me read you something here about her. Again, this is translated from French. "Born at Sedera in 1906 in that enchanted part of Galilee from where one can see the mountains of Nazareth on one side and Mount Tabor on the other. There she spent her earliest years." So Judith was born in Israel. "There she received her first moral and intellectual education. And in the house of her father was instilled with a sense of honor and love of work. She received her brilliant secondary schooling at the Tel Aviv High School, where in addition to Hebrew, the assigned language, she delved deeply into French, which was her mother language, and learned Arabic, English, and German. At the age of 17, she returned to France to do her higher studies." It goes on to talk about how she had higher learning. I'll skip some of this, studying cuneiform studying archaeology. "God gifted her with a high superiority of an exceptional nature whose mystery was full of promise. He had focused her thoughts toward a single ideal, scientific research. In spite of her great love for her parents and for her husband, her work had first priority. Nothing was more important to her than biblical history work, and she devoted herself to it with enthusiasm. It is more than certain that she had an intimate contact with the soil. She saw treasures there."

And again, that is translated out of French, descriptions of Judith Marquet Kraus, written by those who loved her.

Jennifer:
I read that she initially worked in archaeology at Jericho with one of the leading archaeologists there, and then went and started her own excavation at Et-Tell and hired local workers and found men who were very good at fitting in to the different tasks that needed to be done there.

So let's talk about now the people at Ai. What kind of houses did they live in? What did we learn? Typical houses in the early Bronze Age, the time period during which Ai was a city, had one main room and sometimes a small adjoining storage room. The main room was usually rectangular with a single door set in one of the long walls. And this characteristic gives this type of house the name Broad House, a rectangle shape, a door in the long side of the wall.

Steve:
All this is coming from the work of Judith and her archaeological work that she was able to do in her young life.

Jennifer:
Each family unit apparently designed and built their own house, so there are many variations on the basic Broad House design. The floors of the houses, this is interesting, were below street level. So a few steps led down from the street. The door turned on a stone socket, so they had a type of a hinge opened inward and to the left. So cool.

Steve:
They all followed each other like that. I remember hearing Dr. Aardsma, we were having a conversation somewhere, and he was telling me about in the ancient world what a trick a door would have been. An entrance in and out of a dwelling.

Jennifer:
You can go back in virtual history far enough that you see houses where they had to use a ladder to get over the wall because they had not actually invented a door yet. You think about it. So cool. So interesting.

Steve:
Things we take so for granted. Yeah.

Jennifer:
Furniture included stone benches along the walls. This is the houses in Ai. and stone slabs set on the floor. The roof was supported by wooden poles. They apparently did not have many windows, probably to keep the hot sun and wind blown sand out. Another type of house, which was common is at this time is known as the front room house. These houses had an open courtyard in the front where a hearth or a silo was located. And you can just imagine the city on top of this hill, this fortified city with all these different similar yet unique houses designed by the families.

Steve:
Yes. And another thing that Judith and other archaeologists have found are the military defenses of these cities. When you go to the Bible accounts, they're right there. The Bible presents its stories as real world history, not as fairy tales. And sure enough, when we go into the Promised Land, when we see the conquest, we see cities that are fortified by walls. And when we dig in the dirt and we go to these places in the ancient world, these cities were fortified by ancient walls. Of course, that world sometimes was a very unfriendly place. Cities were attacked. They were conquered. They were burned by invading enemies. Safety in times of danger was one of the reasons you would live in a city.

Jennifer:
Yeah, this little sentence here in this summary on the biblical chronologist site. Ai existed in a world that was sometimes rather unfriendly. Yes. I mean, that's somewhat of an understatement. But when you study these ancient cultures and the way of life. One of my sons said to me once that the more he learned about ancient history, the more he looked at the big picture on the timeline, he said, the next time someone says to me that the world is worse today than it's ever been, he said, I'm going to say to them, have you read the book of judges? You haven't.... But I mean, it's the truth! You see the way these people lived and the hostility and just barbaric types of activities that went on. It does put in perspective, again, where we are today and where the world has come from. But yes, they had to be protected. They had to live in cities. They had to have walls. They were up on a hill so that they had the advantage against any enemy coming on them.

Steve:
So we go to Judith's drawings, her research, and we see retaining wall. There it is. Fortification walls. There they are. City buildings. How this was all laid out, by the way, 2400, not 1400. There's nothing there at 1400. The people of Ai built massive walls to make it easier to defend their city. These walls, to give you some perspective, were over 15 feet high in some spots, built of field stones. They probably would have had mud brick walls built on top of them to make them even higher. So that's part of what they found when they uncovered this at 2400 at Et-Tell.

Jennifer:
Now, what about the religion? We know they were religious. We don't know a lot about what cult they would have practiced there. Some finds suggest that it was the Dumuzi cult, which was involved, the god of vegetation. According to Sumerian ancient texts, when the hot summer came and if the vegetation died, then they would mourn the death of Dumuzi, the god that they worshiped. This could have been the cult that Ai practiced, or other and varied elements, but they did excavate a temple where incense was burned, sacrifices were offered. It was next to an especially thick part of the inner fortification wall, is where this temple was and they found remains of poultry, cattle, sacrifice victims, knife handles, pottery that was used there in the worship in that cult and that temple.

Steve:
And of course, in the biblical account, we see that God brings his nation, his people in to wipe out these pagan and heathen nations.

Jennifer:
They certainly did not worship Jehovah, but they were fearful. They knew what these people had done only 40 years before coming out of Egypt, and now here they are coming, advancing against their very own city.

Steve:
Well, Judith also uncovered all kinds of pottery from this Et-Tell or Ai, and most of the artifacts uncovered by archaeologists at this place were pieces of pottery. Pottery, we've talked about before, is a very important material or was a very important material in the daily life of ancient peoples, and it would have been the case here as well with the people of Ai, used for cooking, used for storage, used for transportation. And of course, pottery doesn't decay like other items do and it's there for thousands of years and it can be found and dated. They would have used pottery in their cult practices and their burial customs.

Jennifer:
Another interesting feature of the work done there was, a cemetery was on the hillside outside the walls of Ai. And this is where the deceased were laid, into caves. The caves were partly natural, partly manmade caves. The dead body was generally laid in a curled up position. Food was left for their nourishment in the afterlife. So symbolic. You see the same kind of thing in Egypt where they buried them with food, because that was such a huge part of their daily lives. What are we going to eat? And then weapons were buried with the men and jewelry with the women. And that just brings it to life. I mean, these were real ladies, real women that liked pretty things, fancy things just like ladies do today.

Steve:
Well, that's a bit of what was found archaeologically at Et-Tell. Fascinating stuff. And then of course we have the biblical account to put alongside of the archaeology in the real world. And we just mentioned briefly there at the beginning, the story. This story of Ai really is fascinating. It is a story of military strategy. I believe I've heard in the past that some great military leaders in America have pointed to this story of Ai and talked about what an amazing military strategy it was when God sent, after that first failed attempt, you know, he sent part of the people in as a decoy, as a lure to bring the people out of the city again, having an ambush set back behind the city that came in after they left, and burned it down and then caught them in the middle and destroyed them.

Jennifer:
In Joshua chapter eight, we read the details of the setting and the battle getting ready to happen. It says, "Then all the people of war who were with him went up, drew near, arrived in front of the city and camped on the north side of Ai. Now there was a valley between him and Ai." And there's a picture of the valley. Right there. There's a picture of all these things we're describing right there on the appropriate side of Ai. And if and when we make our trip to Israel, I certainly hope we have time to visit this spot.

Steve:
You can also see a picture of the ravine to the west that the Bible describes where the 5000 man ambush hid. And Judith Marquet Krause has pictures taken of these places right there in Israel that you can visit, as Jennifer said.

Jennifer:
All right. So we're getting down to our clincher here. It fell to Joshua as we heard in the story as the king turns around and his city is burning behind him. They took the city, they burned the city, they killed all the people. They took alive the king of Ai and brought him to Joshua. And then in verses 28 and 29, he hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening and at sunset Joshua gave command and they took his body down from the tree, through it at the entrance of the city gate. Some translations use other words there. They threw it down, raised over it a great heap of stones that stands to this day, which would have been the time of the writing of the book of Joshua.

Steve:
Now in this location, Judith and her team found a great heap of stones. You can see a picture on Dr. Aardsma's website of that great heap of stones before it was removed. They have taken and put a little stickman on top just to show how big this great heap of stones was. And Judith wanted to have the stones removed so that they could find what was underneath it. As we read earlier, they were not disappointed when they found this remnant of this temple and the outer wall. So right there in this very location at the very place at the very time expected, we find agreement between archaeology and what the Bible tells us. What are the odds that you're going to find a great heap of stones?

Jennifer:
Here's what Judith Marquet Krause said in her report on this part of the excavation. "The discovery of the sanctuary was the unexpected result of a long and difficult labor. Situated to the southwest of the palace on a less elevated piece of ground, the site completely disappeared beneath a six meter over 19 feet high heap of stones." And she used those words herself, "heap of stones," "covering a more or less circular area of about .5 acre." Half an acre. "This heap made me think of a tower dominating the view," she says to the southwest, "until most of the other remains were found almost at the surface of the soil. It was difficult to foresee if the transport of that heap of stones would reward our effort. But during the previous work, one characteristic attracted our attention. All heaps of stones cover over some intact ancient remains. With an average of 80 to 100 men lasting one long month, we were relentless to transport the stones. Cleared of the rubbish, a 5,000 year old sanctuary associated with a citadel offered itself to our eyes with its set of religious furniture scattered on the ground." So they threw the king's body down, they covered him with stones, and it was left until Judith came in. Now I don't know if those archaeologists were moving the stones like super, super carefully, so they didn't disturb anything.

Steve:
You would assume they didn't bring big machinery in there or anything to move because they're excavating. Right. They have to do it by hand and they have to be careful. But I mean, Joshua had thousands. He had like 40,000 men to bring those stones in, maybe in one night.

Jennifer:
Yeah. I love this little sentence again and understatement on the BC website, "This heap of stones is a most exciting and persuasive piece of evidence." Period. Sure is. We don't even get an exclamation point out of that.

Steve:
I know if you've been listening to the podcast, you're probably sick of hearing me say this, but I'm going to say it again. How many times does the puzzle keep having to be put together? Right? I mean, if you still can't see the reality of this, then as was said by Dr. Aardsma to another individual in a conversation, what particular kind of blindness is this? I mean, how many times do we have to see the evidence piling on top of each other over and over again to finally admit, you know, yeah, let's take this step outside the box of this missing thousand years and let's get this thing in order. Let's show the reality of these events in real world history by getting the dates right, by admitting there is a missing thousand years and overcoming that obstacle, and finding these events. They really did happen as described to real people in a real place. You can visit the scene of the battle. You can see the excavations that were made, the remains of Ai in Israel today. This skilled archaeologist, Judith Marquet Krause, she dedicated her life to this. We have this wealth of information. We now have it, thanks to Mark, translated out of French into English.

Jennifer:
And it's amazing to me that we're sitting here recording this podcast, giving this information that needs to be like, you know, a viral YouTube video. I mean, pray for us because we've got so much we can do with the content we have here that has not been known by evangelical Christians in our world today, and needs to be known. This whole story needs to be told. Everything we just shared here today, and it needs to be visualized with images and Christians, grade school kids, all the way up to college students and church members need to see this. They need to see the Bible come to life in this way, and they need to take home the same kind of impact, you know, that it's had on me, and that it had on my brother Mark as he put down three concluding thoughts here.

Steve:
Well, another thought here too is, yes, pray for us, but maybe you can help. Maybe there's something you can do. Maybe you make videos. Maybe you do a podcast. And you can take this information and begin to spread the word and make a viral video to go out to show people this reality as well. This is exciting stuff. Maybe you teach a class.

Yes, there's three points. I've already given two of them, but the third one is this, you know, God did act in judgment. And an entire city of real people, soldiers, fathers, mothers, children were mercilessly slaughtered when God gave the word, and we ought to take him and his words very seriously. These are lessons we learn from the Bible. Very, very important lessons. And when we see the reality, this is not a fairy tale, this is God, and this is God acting in judgment. 

Jennifer:
All right. So that wraps it up for our featured topic on Ai, and 29 episodes into the podcast, we have finally gotten to some of these initial just breathtaking discoveries. Thank you for sharing that with us.

And now we will move on into our section, changing gears, different topic... As A Matter of Fact.

Was behemoth a dinosaur? The Bible talks about a creature named behemoth. And you may have heard it said that dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible because of examples like behemoth, who is mentioned in the book of Job, which is a perfect description of a dinosaur, some groups will claim and have made statements like this. They'll say that verses like Job 40:18 help confirm the fact that dinosaurs did live within the past several thousand years.

Steve:
Well, as a matter of fact, as we discussed last month, dinosaurs went extinct millions of years ago. Now, that's in what we call "virtual history." The time period of the dinosaurs extinction is well confirmed by secular science and by dating methods. We cannot say for sure which animal behemoth refers to. However, proper chronology does show us that it was not a dinosaur. However, although we can't say for sure what animal it was, there is a very plausible explanation for behemoth, that it is actually a hippopotamus. Dr. Aardsma explained the reason for this "hippopotamus hypothesis" in an email that he wrote to his grandson, which is our son, 12 years ago.

Jennifer:
You said proper chronology shows that it wasn't a dinosaur that Job was referring to. And of course, if you put these things on a timeline, when did the dinosaurs go extinct? When was the book of Job written? They were nowhere near each other there. So Job was not describing a dinosaur. We did have a listener to the podcast bring this up recently. He was asking the question, what do you mean virtual history? What do you mean millions of years? What about Job being able to see behemoth or leviathan? The descriptions are clearly dinosaur-like. And of course, that is taught by many groups today, creationist groups.

Steve:
Trying to get away, of course, from millions of years. Right. Okay, so...

Jennifer:
If it wasn't a dinosaur, do we have a good explanation? And that's what you're going to share here.

Steve:
Right. So let me just give you at least parts of what grandpa Aardsma wrote to his grandson a number of years ago. He said, "I think it is talking about a hippopotamus. Here's why I think this. There are two clues to work from. The first clue is the description which God gives to Job in Job 40. And the second clue is the root meaning of the word behemoth. The description of the animal and its habitat seems to fit the hippopotamus very well. They are very large animals. For example, weighing as much as five tons when full grown. This makes them immediately impressive. As a further example, the Encyclopedia Americana says that they can walk on the bottom of lakes and streams. This fits well with quote, 'Under the lotus plants, he lies down.' And quote, 'The lotus plants cover him with shade.' Lotus plants are water lilies whose leaves or pads grow flat on the surface of the water. So that seems to be describing an animal which is at home even when completely under the water. You can look up hippopotamus in an Encyclopedia or on the internet to learn more about them. I have heard someone say that the tail doesn't work out too well because the Bible says it's quote, 'like a cedar,' which is a tree, while the hippopotamus' tail is relatively small compared to the size of the animal. But I think they weren't being careful enough. The Bible doesn't say the tail is like a cedar. Rather, it says behemoth quote, 'Bends his tail like a cedar.' The idea seems to be how strong even the tail is, not how big it is. And the second clue comes from the root of the Hebrew word for behemoth. Scholars who spend their lives learning about where words come from suggest that this word comes from the Egyptian word, "pehemau." Notice the similarity in sound between the word "pehemau" and the word "behemoth." "pehemau" means "ox of the water." The quote, "ox of the water" in ancient Egypt was what we today call a hippopotamus.

Jennifer:
Fascinating. I did not remember or recall this email conversation until recently, and "pehemau" being so similar to the word behemoth. So it's actually not laughable, although some groups will put up a picture of a hippopotamus with a tail the size of a cedar tree and say, see, it wasn't a hippopotamus. Must have been Tyrannosaurus rex or whatever they say, Brontosaurus or something. So anyhow, when we really look into it and consider what all the Bible is describing there, which you could read for yourself in Job chapter 40, and of course, in America, we are not familiar with hippopotamuses. We do not have them dwelling in lakes and rivers here, but they are a fierce animal. And again, look it up, read about it, and educate yourself and consider it in light of what the Bible is saying there.

Steve:
Yes, let's continue on as we get into our aging research section this month. We are going to read the preface of the latest edition of Aging: Cause and Cure, Dr. Aardsma's book that documents the aging discovery, Aging: Cause and Cure, third edition, which offers many valuable thoughts to ponder, to think on.

Jennifer:
I'm only going to read about half of the preface as we turn our thoughts now to the aging research that has been done here and the outflow that is recorded in this groundbreaking book, Aging: Cause and Cure. On the communication side of the work here, we are still breaking ground with helping people's mindset get shifted to seeing aging as a disease and as not God's original intent for mankind. So let's read the preface here, or at least part of it. It starts out with a quotation from The Lord of the Rings.

"So at last Faramir and Eowyn and Meriadoc were laid in beds in the houses of healing, and there they were tended well. For though all lore was in these latter days, fallen from its fullness of old, the leech craft of Gondor was still wise, and skilled in the healing of wound and of hurt, and all such sickness as east of the sea, mortal men were subject to. Save old age only. For that, they had found no cure." Then we move into the preface. "I am a research scientist. I have spent most of my life researching at the interface of science and the Bible. My science specialty is physical dating methods such as radiocarbon. My earliest full-time Bible science research effort centered around the question of why nobody had ever been able to pin a functional historical date on Noah's Flood. This led eventually to the discovery that exactly one thousand years had been accidentally dropped from traditional Biblical chronology due to an inadvertent copy error in a number found in 1 Kings 6:1. This rapidly led to answers to other Bible science questions I had not even set out to investigate. For most of the final decade of the 20th century, I was immersed in research connected to the Exodus of Israel from Egypt, the ensuing conquest of Canaan, and the much earlier in time Flood of Noah. I found that the Exodus was a real historical event and that the Biblical description of it was simply historical. Many scholars were saying the opposite, but that was because they had their Biblical chronology wrong by a thousand years. You cannot find an object if you spend all your time looking for it a thousand miles from where it is located, and you cannot find a historical event if you spend all your time looking for it one thousand years from when it happened.

Also severely in conflict with mainstream scholarship, I found that the Flood too was a real historical event, and that the Biblical record of it too was simply historical. Mainstream scholarship has held for some decades that the Flood is mere legend," and he quotes from a volume 1 of the Ancient Near East saying, "The lengths of rain of the earliest kings of the Sumerian king list are immense and clearly belong to purely legendary time, an assumption being confirmed by the fact that they are presented as ruling 'before the Flood.'" That was from the Ancient Near East talking about things that are purely legendary. Dr. Aardsma goes on to say, "In sharp contrast, I found that the Genesis record of the Flood was of such accuracy that it had to have been written by an eyewitness of that event." And he references the book he published on "Noah's Flood Happened, 3520 BC." "Concurrent with all of this research, I pursued a lifelong interest in why, according to Genesis, humans had lived so much longer before the Flood than we do today. I began to tackle that question full-time with the advent of the new millennium." 24 years ago for us now. "The first edition of this book shared what I had found during the first 17 years of all-out, strenuous research effort on that question. The second edition added an additional four years of research to the story, and this third edition adds yet another two years. Once again, I have found that mainstream scholarship is lost at sea with respect to aging. This is not coincidental. It is inevitable. To understand what aging is and how aging is to be cured, the history of our planet and of our species found in Genesis is indispensable, as the pages of this book will show. You cannot be wrong about the historicity of Genesis and have any hope of being right about aging. Like the second edition, the need for this third edition arises out of both, one, the ethics of research into human aging, and two, the pace of research discovery since publication of the first edition. The ethics of aging research demands unusually rapid publication and application of research findings when those findings promise to save lives with little to no attached risk. Normally, a scientist has the luxury of checking results via duplicated experiments to be certain of his conclusions before moving on to their publication and practical application. Prudence, protection of his reputation and his career demands that he do so. But no such luxury exists in the present case. Over 100,000 people die of aging every day. If it is evil to allow even one person to die who might have been helped by a new potential cure of a disease just to protect one's reputation or career, then it is surely a monstrous evil to allow over 100,000 people per day to do so for this reason. The fact that such behavior is evil has been recognized by moral philosophers for a very long time. Proverbs 24 verses 11 to 12," he quotes here, "Deliver those who are being taken away to death, and those who are staggering to slaughter, O hold them back." If you say, 'See, we did not know this,' does he not consider it weigh the hearts and does he not know it who keeps your soul and will he not render to man according to his work?" And we will stop there.

Steve:
Very good and very fascinating. You have free access to this material. If you would like to read this book, read portions of the book, you can purchase it on our podcast website. We will have a link.

Jennifer:
There's a link to shop, store. In the main menu of our TheBCMessenger.com website. And we'll put a link in the show notes as well.

Steve:
You can also download the book for free on thebiblicalcronologist.org website if you just need to have free access to it.

Jennifer:
So I just read you the beginning of the book, which gives all of the theory. But we have an interesting duplicity here, I guess is the right word. We have the theory and we have the practical outflow. There are lots of groups that are very comfortable with theory and fancy language and equations and all of that. But you start talking about the practical outflow and they are very resistant. Of course, what is the practical outflow? We're talking about the supplement called Dr. Aardsma's Anti-Aging Vitamins, which sounds quacky at first. We know that. But it is the practical outflow of the research in this book. And it is the real world aspect of this podcast in one sense. So we have this theory, we have this supplement. And just to be honest, one of our biggest challenges is getting this information in front of new people, getting the availability of this supplement in front of new people. I have been working at doing that for like seven years now. And I have found that many people are very receptive to it. Not everybody, some are very resistant. But many people want the information. And so how can we get it in front of new people? We have just started a referral program where those who are interested can earn a little bit of commission by helping to put this information in front of new people, helping spread the word about this discovery for the very reasons we just read in this preface. Because it has life-saving potential. And because we do not want to hold back, as it says in Proverbs, information from people when it can be of benefit to them. So we will link to that in the show notes.

Steve:
All right. At this time, we are going to have our monthly "Helen's View." And Helen picked a very interesting topic this month. I don't know if she knew we were going to be talking about Ai and the great heap of stones. But the title of her Helen's View this time is "A Time to Gather Stones and a Time to Scatter Them."

Helen:
A Time to Gather Stones and a Time to Scatter Them. When we first bought the old Loda Grade School, the new home both for Aardsma Research & Publishing and for Mulberry Lane Farm, in 2019, we had some big decisions to make regarding the floors in the building. Most of the floors were made of solid maple wood strips. Most had been destroyed by water from leaking roofs during the 20 years the building had remained empty prior to our purchase. Such a shame. The floors would have been wonderful to restore. Under the old floors was a base of rough-poured concrete, badly cracked and uneven in places. Obviously, the old wooden floors had to be removed, a big job in and of itself. And then the concrete base had to be removed as well.

But what to do with all the concrete we took out? It would cost plenty to have it hauled away, and we didn’t want big piles of concrete in our backyard either. Gerald, the mastermind of everything around here, suggested that we buy a rock crushing machine and make our own gravel out of the concrete. (Gerald usually does his Bible/Science research in the mornings, when his brain is fresh, and hands-on projects in the afternoons.) We could then mix the gravel aggregate with Portland cement, sand, and water and make our own concrete to pour the new floors. Well, I wasn’t so sure. Gerald did the cost analysis, including labor costs, and showed me that it would save us a lot of money if we did it this way. The rock crushing machine would pay for itself in less than a year.

So we bought a rock-crushing machine to crush up the old concrete. We set up our rock-crushing operation on the back slab behind the school. This is the ultimate in recycling and repurposing!

First, the concrete had to be removed from the old floors. Then, we added to that pile a bunch of large concrete bases that had once held up the old scoreboard for the school’s football field. The broken-up pieces then needed to be sorted into types depending on what we were going to use the gravel for. The pieces also had to be small enough to fit into the rock crusher. That meant the large pieces of concrete had to be broken down to about basketball size. We did this with jackhammers. When I say “we” I really mean the strong guys!

We can make four types of gravel. Each type goes into separate piles on the slab. The first type is crusher run, straight from the rock crusher. We use this to make concrete for the floors in the building or for outside sidewalks or driveways. The pieces must have no paint or tar on them since that would weaken the finished concrete floor.

The second type is sifted gravel from the crusher run. We set up to do the sifting when this type of rock is needed for the current project we are working on. At present, we are using the sifted rock for a landscaped drainage bed just north of our large, newly built garden shed. To do the sifting, Gerald designed a shaker machine using a small vibrating motor and metal screen hardware cloth.

The large pieces of gravel roll off the sifter and fall down into the tractor bucket which we then dump into the drainage bed. The sand and pebbles that fall into the wheelbarrows become our third type of gravel.

The third type of gravel has quite a bit of dirt in it so we use this for road pack on our gravel driveways. We have a gravel driveway that goes from the front of our building to the back of our building which gets a lot of traffic. We use lots of our road pack on that driveway to keep pot holes from forming.

The fourth type of gravel is also used for our driveways. This type of “rock” is any old clay pipes, bricks, blocks, tiles, slate, concrete with paint or tar on it, etc. We crush this separately from everything else.

We are thinking about starting a small gravel operation (ARP Gravel Company?) to sell recycled concrete to the public, making it easy for folks who just need a tractor bucket load or two for their small projects. We also would like to be able to take people’s old concrete and recycle it, as it is hard for people to find a place to get rid of it. Who knows? Maybe this will happen in 2025.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. I am profoundly grateful for my excellent health and high energy and for my devoted and loving husband, Gerald. Thanks for following along on our journey here at The Biblical Chronologist.

Jennifer:
As we close out today, I want to give you a little teaser for the January podcast. Now your brain may already be kind of exploding with all the information we've given you today. It's been an information heavy podcast, but it's been fascinating. As far as I'm concerned, as the host, I hope you have shared in that. A lot of good topics. But next month, we are going to talk about Imhotep, a well-known figure in secular Egyptian history. Why he is most likely the Biblical Joseph, very, very likely. Of course, founded on correct chronology. We will explain the reasons for correlating Joseph with Imhotep. And then we are going to share some current news, this will blow your mind, which relates Imhotep to a possible modern day cure for cancer. News, breaking news today. We're relating the ancient Imhotep to a possible modern day cure for cancer. Stay tuned. Join us in January.

Steve:
This is not our research. We are going to present to you other research that's going on concerning this cure for cancer in relation to Imhotep.

Jenifer:
Right. This has come up in some news reports. And of course, the work here connects Joseph to Imhotep. So it'll be fascinating.

Steve:
Well wrapping it up for another year. Hard to believe. The next time we are with you, it will be 2025. So we will see you next year. And we do wish you a very Merry Christmas.