Battle of Jericho
Biblical Narrative
Jericho guards the Jordan crossing — the gateway to Canaan. Before the assault, Joshua sends two spies who are sheltered by Rahab, a prostitute of Jericho, who ties a scarlet cord in her window as the agreed signal that her household will be spared. The scarlet thread is one of the Bible's small emblems: an outsider woman, by an act of faith and hospitality, saves herself and her family, and joins the lineage of Israel. Matthew's genealogy of Jesus includes Rahab among his ancestors.
The battle, if it can be called that, is unlike any other in Scripture. No catapults, no siege ramps, no battering rams. Seven priests bearing seven ram's horns march around the city once a day for six days, followed by the Ark of the Covenant and the Israelite army. On the seventh day they march seven times, the priests blow the horns, all the people shout — and the walls fall flat. Israel enters from every direction, destroys everything in a total sanctification (cherem), and burns the city.
The theological point is unmistakable: Canaan is not being conquered by military strategy or human ingenuity. It is being given, and the giver is demonstrating that the gift is his to give by making the method impossible — seven priests, seven days, seven circuits, one shout. The conquest begins with a miracle because the narrative wants it understood as covenant fulfillment rather than military conquest.
Archaeological reality complicates this. Excavations at Tell es-Sultan — ancient Jericho — have found evidence of a large Bronze Age city, but the dating of its destruction layer has generated decades of controversy. John Garstang in the 1930s found a destruction layer he dated to the conquest period; Kathleen Kenyon's re-excavation in the 1950s-60s redated the destruction to the Early Bronze Age, nearly a thousand years too early. The site appears to have been largely unoccupied in the Late Bronze Age — the most likely period for the biblical conquest.
And it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat.Joshua 6:20
Archaeology · History · Genetics
Tell es-Sultan, the site of ancient Jericho in the Jordan Valley 8 km north of the Dead Sea, has been excavated repeatedly since the 1870s. The debate over the 'walls of Jericho' is one of the most prolonged in biblical archaeology. John Garstang (1930–36) found a collapse of walls he dated to c. 1400 BCE. Kathleen Kenyon (1952–58) revised this to c. 2300 BCE, the Early Bronze Age — meaning the walls Garstang thought were from the conquest period actually predated it by nearly a millennium.
Subsequent analysis by Bryant Wood (1990) re-examined Kenyon's pottery evidence and argued for a Late Bronze Age destruction (c. 1400 BCE) after all, reviving a date compatible with the biblical narrative. This re-revision is itself contested. The current academic consensus, following Kenyon and Israel Finkelstein, is that Jericho was largely unoccupied during the Late Bronze Age (c. 1550–1200 BCE) — the period most scholars assign to the conquest — and that any city walls had eroded away by then.
If the biblical conquest of Jericho is historical, the most likely scenario is a small settlement taken during the early Iron Age I (c. 1200–1000 BCE), consistent with the highland village expansion of this period. The elaborate narrative of miraculous wall-collapse may reflect theological elaboration of a more modest military event, or may preserve the memory of a natural collapse (earthquakes are common in the Jordan Valley) associated with the Israelite arrival.
Jericho's extraordinary deep antiquity — continuous occupation for 10,000 years — is itself remarkable. The Pre-Pottery Neolithic site (c. 8000 BCE) includes the world's oldest-known stone tower (the 'Jericho Tower'), 8.5 meters high, which predates agriculture in some regions.
The evidence for Late Bronze Age Jericho is vanishingly thin. The Bible's most dramatic conquest narrative may be about a city that was not there.Kathleen Kenyon (paraphrased)