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The Fundamentals. available material may result in the production of similar pot tery in two very different civilizations arising one thousand years or more apart. This civilization of pots, as a deciding criterion, is not quite adequate, and is safe as a criterion at all only when carefully compared with the testimony of loca tion, intertribal relations, governmental domination, and liter ary attainments. These are the things, in addition to the pots, which help to determine—indeed, which do determine—how much of a break in culture is required by the Bible account of the Con quest, and how much is shown by excavations. Since the Israelites occupied the cities and towns and vineyards and olive orchards of the Canaanites, and their “houses full of all good things”<28), had the same materials and in the main the same purposes for pottery and would adopt methods of cooking suited to the country, spoke the “language of Ca naan” (30), and were of the same race as many of the people of Canaan, intermarried, though against their law(31), with the people of the land, and were continually chided for lapses into the idolatry and superstitious practices of the Canaan- ites(32), and, in short, were greatly different from them only in religion, it is evident that the only marked, immediate change to be expected at the Conquest is a change in religion, and that any Other break in culture occasioned by the devastation of war will be only a break in continuance of the same kind of culture, evidence of demolition, spoliation, and reconstruc tion. Exactly such change in religion and interruption in cul ture at the Conquest period excavations show. RELIGION AND CULTURE. (a) The rubbish at Gezer shows history in distinct layers and the layers themselves are in distinct groups(33). At the bottom are layers Canaanite, not Semitic; above these, layers Semitic, Amorite giving place to Jewish; and higher still, lay ers of Jewish culture of the monarchy and later times. ,
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