Roymond

Ah, but they've served as plot points in a number of fun novels!

Actually there are rivers cutting that fast; it doesn't really take much. The only unusual thing about the Grand Canyon is that the land above it is so roughly level; most rivers that cut fast are in very rough territory, e.g. the Himalayas. Makes me wish I'd taken the next hydrology course in the geology sequence.

Wait a minute -- it flowed the opposite direction? That's intriguing!

A healthy warrior at the time of Joshua would have been about 5' 2", several inches taller than an ordinary 'peasant'.

Depending on where and when, the length of a cubit often changed with the crowning of a new king: the new king's arm measure determined the length of the cubit for his reign! Just imagine trying to keep standardized weights and measures.....

As I recall, the Kings List works out to a Creation date something like 24o,000 B.C.

IIRC there's another Hebrew text that puts Goliath at 6' 9". Given that a typical ANE warrior of the time would have been 5' 2" or so, 6' 9" would have been more than a little scary since the spear someone wielded tended to be 20% longer than their height, making for a deadly difference in reach of weapon.

That's a silly attitude; it prevents learning. Ashkelon had maybe 15,000 people, so what has been found is just a scratch and thus probably doesn't tell us anything about how truly important people were buried. I can't remember if Ahekelon was recorded as having any; I know Gath was. If it wasn't recorded that Ashkelon had giants, then the archaeology won't tell us anything about giants anyway. Assuming the Anakim were 9' tall, which is physiologically possible if they weren't ordinary humans, then by the time of Numbers their DNA would likely have dropped them down to about 7' tall since they would have had to marry ordinary women. And 7' tall warriors when the typical Hebrew warrior at the time was probably about 5'2" would be giants -- easily tall enough to frighten the scouts into regarding themselves as "grasshoppers". What's fascinating is that the peoples in the land whom the Israelites were ordered to exterminate all are recorded as having at least partly descended from the Anakim, and if you read between the lines plus look at some of the literature from outside the Bible (especially the Book of Enoch, that several biblical writers quote on occasion) they descended from the "Watchers", mighty angels God appointed to guide and "watch" the nations of the ancient near east who weren't supposed to get involved in mundane human affairs but did so anyway, and for the sake of humanity all their descendants needed to be eliminated. The really big bones are hoaxes. If you separate out those there are skeletons 7' tall from about the time of Joshua, which would point to people 9' tall centuries earlier -- who would have been nearly twice as tall as most ordinary people back then, especially if they wore gear to increase their height. It would be like someone today who was 5' 8" tall encountering someone a full 10' 6" in height -- more than a little intimidating.

Not at that dig, anyway, which is at Ashkelon, the wrong town for Goliath. I'd have to dig to find the location where the 7' skeletons were found, but I think it was at what archaeologists think was Gath -- Goliath's town.

They've also been demonstrated to be fraudulent. That's sad, especially since actual discoveries have found skeletons as tall as 6'9" and possibly 7', which may not seem giant to us (think NBA players) but given that someone 5'5" back then was tall and 5'2" was normal would have been towering! I'm 5'10" and I've met someone who was 7'2", and he seemed like a giant; to someone only 5'2" 7'2" would be terrifying.

I heard about that. I'm wondering if there's any kind of connection to the ancient altar found near there and identified as possibly being an altar erected by Joshua.

Is he one of the people who think this drawing: https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/mount-sinai-02.jpg depicts the Ten Commandments? That's a hilarious claim given the ignorance behind it: that drawing is a horned altar, not a sketch with one spot for each commandment! OTOH, not everyone back then used horned altars; it might be worth a look to see if Israel did that early -- and whether such altar were used in the Egyptian calf-cult behind the Golden Calf. If so, this could be an indication of Israel's idolatry....

The Ark of the Covenant shouldn't exist any longer. Its function was to provide a place where God's presence would deal mercy to Israel, and that function was ended the moment Jesus declared "It is [now and forever, totally] finished!" Just as the curtain in the Temple tore in two, so the Ark of the Covenant would have shattered at that very moment as it became useless -- in fact not just useless, but false because Jesus is the true Ark of the Covenant. As for this amateur archaeologist . . . he should have gone to a graduate school for a degree in archaeology before setting out and making a fool of himself.

It's strange that people keep bringing up YEC and evolution when neither has any bearing on the matter. It's as thought they can't conceive that someone is interested in the text and not anything outside it.

Yeah. Not only does he not know Hebrew and/or Greek (as has been admitted) yet tell those who do that they are wrong, it's now plain he doesn't know how to do basic research. He's making the error of treating secondary sources as authoritative when the primary sources are available. Doing that just once on a paper when I was in grad school was sufficient to have the paper tossed in the trash -- and get told to start over from the beginning. I'd work through another couple of dozen but it's a bit late at night for me to keep track of what information I've got open on which browser tab.... I will comment that it is so much easier to have the Masoretic and other texts online instead of the way I did it in grad school, having to have the actual books (or a LOT of photocopies!) spread out across a dining room table!