Joseph A. Callaway, 1920–1988

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.”