Joe Callaway, the excavator of Ai, is dead. Another of the great ones has fallen. Joe was stricken by a massive heart attack on August 23. He was 68.
Joseph A. Callaway excavated not only the great mound of Ai, but also the more modest site of nearby Raddana. Both sites are critical to an understanding of that still unsolved conundrum, the emergence of Israel in Canaan during the period archaeologists call Iron Age I (1200–1000 B.C.).
The evidence from Ai was mainly negative. There was a great walled city there beginning about 3000 B.C., more than 1,800 years before Israel’s emergence in Canaan. But this city was destroyed about 2400 B.C., after which the site was abandoned.
Despite extensive excavation, no evidence of a Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 B.C.) Canaanite city was found. In short, there was no Canaanite city here for Joshua to conquer. In Iron Age I (1200–1000 B.C.), a small unwalled village of squatters, apparently early Israelites, was established on the site.
Joe Callaway was a man of great faith and devotion. He was also a scientist, dedicated to uncovering historical facts based on the evidence, regardless of where that evidence might lead. He faced the facts unflinchingly:
“Archaeology has wiped out the historical credibility of the conquest of Ai as reported in Joshua 7–8. The Joint Expedition to Ai worked nine seasons between 1964 and 1976 … only to eliminate the historical underpinning of the Ai account in the Bible.”
This conclusion didn’t make him popular with some members of his own church. He was a leading scholar at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. From 1978 to 1980, he served as its Director of Graduate Studies. He took the flack and tried to explain that a commitment to scientific truth did not adversely affect his faith commitment.
If the Biblical account of the conquest of Ai was not historically accurate, Callaway found in it new theological riches—faithfully preserved ancient traditions, expanded and interpreted, and in the end containing “layers of interpretation, like strata in a tell.”
The early Israelite villages at Ai and Raddana helped him to understand the conditions under which Israel came to occupy the land and the nature of Israelite life at that time. He was a pioneer in this effort to understand early Israelite life, and many of his insights underlie currently fashionable theories of early Israel’s emergence. Regardless of what theory any particular scholar may espouse, the evidence from Ai and Raddana occupies an important part in the scholarly construct.
Callaway was a careful excavator and was widely respected among his colleagues for the reliability of his work. Moreover, he was assiduously devoted to publishing the results—in full detail. In many ways, the two volumes of his final reports on Early Bronze Ai are models. But, alas, he died before the work was complete; additional volumes were in preparation at the time of his death. The profession must now face the obligation of assuring that the work of its fallen soldier will be completed.
Joe Callaway was not only one of the world’s leading archaeologists. He was also a wise and gentle human being. He was one of the most popular teachers in the Biblical Archaeology Society’s vacation seminars, where he was a frequent lecturer. (He also served on BAR’s editorial advisory board.) He knew how to relate to people, both scholars and interested lay people.
Barely two weeks before he died, he was presented with a bound copy of a nearly 500-page festschrift, containing 22 scholarly papers written by his friends, students and colleagues in his honor.a
Unfortunately, he did not live to see a copy of BAS’s new Ancient Israel, A Short History from Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple, to which he contributed a seminal chapter on the emergence of Israel, and which appeared only in October.
Joseph Callaway lived a rich, full life. He contributed significantly to his faith and to his profession. But he died too young.
Joe Callaway, the excavator of Ai, is dead. Another of the great ones has fallen. Joe was stricken by a massive heart attack on August 23. He was 68.
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Benchmarks in Time and Culture, An Introduction to Palestinian Archaeology [The Joseph A. Callaway Festschrift], ed. by Joel F. Drinkard, Jr., Gerald L. Mattingly and J. Maxwell Miller (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1988).
