The Battle At Shiloh

Was there a battle in Shiloh, in the Hills of Efraim, after the Philistines defeated the Israelites near the lower hill country?

The battle at Even HaEzer was lost.  The Ark of the Covenant fell into the hands of the Philistines and the two sons of Eli the High Priest, Chofni and Pinchas, were killed.   As described in I Samuel 4:-

17 And he that brought the tidings answered and said: 'Israel is fled before the Philistines, and there hath been also a great slaughter among the people, and thy two sons also, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and the ark of God is taken.'

But there's no direct reference to the fate of the city.

We need to read Jeremiah 7  to learn of a hint:

12 For go ye now unto My place which was in Shiloh, where I caused My name to dwell at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of My people Israel.

So, was Shiloh destroyed?

We do know that when Yerovam's son, Aviyha, fell sick, the king sent his wife to Shiloh, to have the prophet Achiyah intercede as written in I Kings 14:-

2 And Jeroboam said to his wife: 'Arise, I pray thee, and disguise thyself, that thou be not known to be the wife of Jeroboam; and get thee to Shiloh; behold, there is Ahijah the prophet, who spoke concerning me that I should be king over this people.

What happened at Shiloh?  Was it destroyed and rebuilt?

And later on, we read in Jeremiah 41:

4 And it came to pass the second day after he had slain Gedaliah, and no man knew it, 5 that there came certain men from Shechem, from Shiloh, and from Samaria, even fourscore men, having their beards shaven and their clothes rent, and having cut themselves, with meal-offerings and frankincense in their hand to bring them to the house of the LORD. 6 And Ishmael the son of Nethaniah went forth from Mizpah to meet them, weeping all along as he went; and it came to pass, as he met them, he said unto them: 'Come to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam.' 7 And it was so, when they came into the midst of the city, that Ishmael the son of Nethaniah slew them, and cast them into the midst of the pit, he, and the men that were with him. 8 But ten men were found among them that said unto Ishmael: 'Slay us not; for we have stores hidden in the field, of wheat, and of barley, and of oil, and of honey.' So he forbore, and slew them not among their brethren.

Science in service of archaeology is problematic:

As much as we had all hoped that radar and resistivity would help identify key areas or rooms associated with the area at the tell where the Tabernacle had stood, the radar records were a hopeless jumble of reflections we could not sort out. Most of the tell was too rough and uneven to use the cart radar. However, as excavation proceeds it is entirely possible that limited radar studies might be of value from time to time. Tells can be enormously complicated structures. We were all impressed with the painstaking efforts required of the archaeologist who seeks to unravel their mysteries.

Israel Finkelstein who excavated Tel Shiloh 1980-1984 has now published some very interesting information though:-

The Iron I settlement at Shiloh – Stratum V – came to an end in a violent conflagration that can be observed throughout the site (Kjaer 1930; Finkelstein 1993). This destruction layer yielded several organic samples. Large quantities of charred grain were unearthed in two silos in Area D (Lederman and Finkelstein 1993, 48) and charred raisins and seeds were found in Area C (Kislev 1993). In the early 1980s, these finds had been stored in a laboratory at Bar Ilan University and were not submitted to 14C measurement. With the growing interest in absolute dating of Iron I-IIA assemblages, several samples have recently been cleaned and sent for 14C dating. The results are published here for the first time.

All 14C dates for samples retrieved from Stratum V at Shiloh are presented in Table 1. The first measurement of charred grain (Table 1: 1) was done in a conventional radiometric Liquid Scintillation Counting (LSC) method (Aitken 1990) at the Weizmann Institute of Science laboratory. The other measurements (Table 1: 2–4) were analyzed in the Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) system (Kutscera et al. 1999). They were prepared by the Weizmann laboratory and measured at the AMS facility of the University of Arizona.1 The dates in the table are mean, averaged from a number of consistent measurements done on sub-samples. The uncertainties correspond to one standard deviation; the full probability distribution can be seen in Fig. 2. It is clear that the charred grain found in the two silos in Area D (Table 1: 1–2) represents the destruction date of the site in a margin of a few years. The charred raisins from Area C (Table 1: 3) were found in a group and therefore may also be evaluated in the same way. Yet, the fact that they were found intact seems to indicate that they had been stored as a dry commodity before being charred (Kislev 1993, 354–355); in other words, they do not necessarily represent the final days before the destruction. The seeds from Area C (Table 1: 4) come from flotation of debris above a floor in the pillared storage building; they could have originated from bricks and therefore cannot be used for determining the destruction date (see Note 3).

The destruction date of Shiloh V can accordingly be calculated from the charred grain reported in Table 1: 1–2. But since the dates yielded from the two grain samples and the raisins are consistent with each other, we can also combine the items in Table 1: 1–3. The uncalibrated date for the destruction, reported in conventional radiocarbon years, is 2873±13 BP. This date was obtained by a fit to a constant (see Fig. 1), assuming (for the sake of caution caution) that all these samples are contemporary, representing the destruction time. Using the 1998 calibration curve (Stuiver et al. 1998)2 by means of the 1999 OxCal v.3.3 computer program of Bronk Ramsey (1995) one gets a one standard deviation absolute date of 1050-1000 BCE (Table 1: 1–3, c=0.9), or 1050–975 (Table 1: 1–2, c2=0.2) for this destruction.3

First of all, the was a destruction. The structures were disassembled and fired.

Second, we know when. Between 1050 and 975 Before the Common Era.

This was published too:

...Since Shiloh fell to the Philistines ca. 1100 B.C. or a little later...

Fall of Shiloh (l Sam. 1-4)

Significant architecture from the Iron Age I, the time of Eli, has been excavated at Khirbet Seilun, ancient Shiloh, 17 km south of Shechem. All traces of Iron Age and earlier occupation on the summit of the site unfortunately were removed by later building activity. On the slopes, however, enough material from the Iron Age I period has been found to determine that the settlement at that time was 2 1/2 to 3 acres in size.120

The best-preserved remains from the time of Eli are on the west slope of the site. There, a three-room structure 27 x 11 m, containing a rich assem­blage of pottery, was uncovered. Over 20 pithoi in the complex suggests it functioned as a storage facility. Sophisticated building techniques were employed, such as slope terracing to provide two levels, well-made floors, stone-drum columns, and a rock-cut plastered cistern.121 Israel Finkelstein, the excavator, concluded, "In their plan, constructional method and adap­tation to the slope these structures represent the peak of early Israelite ar­chitecture."122 Because of the advanced technology, Finkelstein believes the structure could not have been built prior to the mid-twelfth century B.C.,123 approximately the beginning of Eli's judgeship.124 He theorizes it was an auxiliary building for the Tabernacle that originally stood on the summit.I25

Psalm 78:60 and Jeremiah 7:12-14; 26:6, 9 indicate that Shiloh was destroyed and abandoned as a result of God's judgment. The archaeological findings dramatically demonstrate that Iron Age I Shiloh was terminated in a fiery destruction:

These buildings were destroyed in a fierce conflagration. Burnt floors were found all over. Collapsed burnt bricks accumulated on these floors to a height of more than three feet. Some of the bricks had been baked by the blaze that had raged here. Roof collapse was discernible in many places. All this dramatic evidence of fire must be associated with the destruction of Shiloh by the Philistines after they defeated the Israelites near Ebenezer in the mid-eleventh century B.C.126

The published date for the destruction, ca. 1050 B.C., is based on pottery chronology, which is very imprecise, particularly for the Iron Age I period. A date anywhere from ca. 1104 B.C., Merrill's estimated date for the battle of Ebenezer,127 to ca. 1050 B.C. would accommodate the pottery types found in the destruction level.

120. Israel Finkelstein, ed., "Excavation at Shiloh 1981-1984," Tel Aviv 12 (1985): 168; idem, "Shiloh Yields Some, but Not All, of Its Secrets," BAR 12, no. 1 (January-February 1986): 40; idem. "Seilun, Khirbet," in ABD, 5:1072; idem, "Shiloh: Renewed Excavations," in NEAEHL 4:1369; Israel Finkelstein, Shlomo Bunimovitz, and Zvi Lederman, Shiloh: The Archaeology of a Biblical Site, Tel Aviv University Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology Monograph Series 10 (Tel Aviv: Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, 1993), 384.
121. Finkelstein, "Excavation at Shiloh," 131-38; idem, "Shiloh Yields Some...of Its Secrets," 37-39; Finkelstein, Bunimovitz, and Lederman, Shiloh: The Archaeology of a Biblical Site, 20- 31.
122. Finkelstein, "Excavation at Shiloh 1981-1984," 169; cf. Finkelstein, Bunimovitz, and Lederman. Shiloh: The Archaeology of a Biblical Site, 385.
123. Finkelstein, "Excavation at Shiloh," 168; cf. Finkelstein, Bunimovitz, and Lederman, Shiloh: The Archaeology of a Biblical Site, 383.
124. Merrill estimates the battle of Ebenezer and the death of Eli took place ca. 1104 B.C. (Kingdom of Priests, 176). Since Eli judged Israel forty years (1 Sam. 4:18), he began his judgeship ca. 1144 B.C.
125. Finkelstein, "Excavation at Shiloh," 169; idem, "Shiloh Yields Some...of Its Secrets," 41; idem, "Seilun, Khirbet," in ABD, 5:1072; cf. Finkelstein, Bunimovitz, and Lederman, Shiloh: The Archaeology of a Biblical Site, 384-85.
126. Finkelstein "Shiloh Yields Some…of Its Secrets," 39; and idem, "Shiloh: Renewed Excavations," in NEAEHL, 4:1368.
127. Cf. Merrill, Kingdom of Priests, 176 n. 83.
128. K. A. Kitchen, "The Patriarchs Revisited: A Reply to Dr. Ronald S. Hendel," NEASB 43 (1998): 55-56.

And as it is generally considered that King David's lifetime was in the area of 1000 BCE, we have a very good match of scientific evidence matching the Biblical narrative and confirming the reality that was Shiloh.

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