How did Joshua capture Jericho?
Did he in fact do so?
In the Book of Joshua within the Hebrew Bible, we are told that Joshua and the Israelites captured the city of Jericho as part of their overall conquest of the land of Canaan. The most familiar version of the story is that Joshua and his men marched around the city with the Ark of the Covenant for seven days in a row; on the seventh day, they knocked down the city’s walls by blowing their trumpets.
The Bible states that Joshua took over as the leader of the Israelites after Moses died on Mount Nebo, within sight of the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 34:1-9). Joshua’s accession to the leadership marked a change in the fortunes of the Israelites, as they ended their 40 years of wandering through the wilderness and finally entered the land of “milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8). It also signified a change in strategy on the part of the Israelites, as they shifted from a fairly passive existence in the desert to an active military campaign designed to wrest the land from the Canaanites.
We do not need to repeat the entire story of Joshua’s capture of Jericho, because it is most likely familiar to the readers of this book. Instead, we will focus on two of the most mysterious parts of the tale. These are of greatest interest to archaeologists and subject to the fiercest debates. The first episode we are specifically interested in comes at the beginning of the story, after Moses’ death, when Joshua and his men enter the land of Canaan and begin their conquest. First, they needed to cross the Jordan River. Yet just as the Red Sea parted long enough for the Hebrews to escape from Egypt, so now the Jordan River miraculously ceases flowing long enough for the Israelites to cross into Canaan. Later in the chapter, we will examine this event using archaeological and geological evidence. But, before we do so, let us read the biblical account:
When the people set out from their tents to cross over the Jordan, the priests bearing the ark of the covenant were in front of the people. Now the Jordan overflows all its banks throughout the time of harvest. So when those who bore the ark had come to the Jordan, and the feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped in the edge of the water, the waters flowing from above stood still, rising up in a single heap far off at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan, while those flowing towards the sea of the Arabah, the Dead Sea, were wholly cut off. Then the people crossed over opposite Jericho. While all Israel were crossing over on dry ground, the priests who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan, until the entire nation finished crossing over the Jordan. (Joshua 3:14-17)
Once they are safely on dry land, the 40,000 armed warriors who have crossed over with Joshua and are now encamped on the plains of Jericho (4:13) begin their preparations for the upcoming battle.
This now brings us to the second episode: the walls of Jericho. In the sixth chapter of Joshua, we are told that the Israelites have surrounded the city of Jericho and placed it under siege. God then gives Joshua further instructions:
Now Jericho was shut up inside and out because of the Israelites; no one came out and no one went in. The Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have handed Jericho over to you, along with its king and soldiers. You shall march around the city, all the warriors circling the city once. Thus you shall do for six days, with seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. On the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, the priests blowing the trumpets. When they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, as soon as you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and all the people shall charge straight ahead.” So Joshua son of Nun summoned the priests and said to them, “Take up the ark of the covenant, and have seven priests carry seven trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark of the Lord.” To the people he said, “Go forward and march around the city; have the armed men pass on before the ark of the Lord.” (Joshua 6:1-7)
Trumpets made of rams’ horns were used in the ancient Near East. The use of shofars in Judaism continues the tradition today. (Illustration Credits 5.1)
The Bible tells us that it came to pass just as God had commanded. Joshua and his army marched around Jericho on six consecutive days, blowing their trumpets continuously. On the seventh day, after marching around the city seven times, they blew mightily on their trumpets, and Joshua said to the people, “Shout! For the Lord has given you the city” (6:8-16). The biblical account continues: “As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpets, they raised a great shout, and the wall fell down flat; so the people charged straight ahead into the city and captured it” (6:20).
In this chapter, we will investigate the following questions: Did Joshua and his men really knock down the city walls with a blast of their trumpets? Or as some have suggested, did an earthquake help Joshua capture the city? Did he even capture the city at all? If he did capture Jericho, was it inhabited at the time?
These questions are still being fiercely debated by archaeologists, ancient historians, and biblical scholars. Unfortunately, before we can attempt to answer them, we need to ask an even bigger set of questions: Can we believe the biblical account of the Israelite conquest of Canaan? Did it really take place as we are told?
TO BEGIN, WE SHOULD note that an earlier story with similar elements to the biblical account of Joshua and the battle of Jericho comes to us from the city of Ugarit, in northern Syria. In the Legend of Keret, probably dating to the 14th century B.C., we are told that King Keret marched his army to the city of Udum, ruled by King Pabel, and then waited six days. At dawn on the seventh day, King Keret attacked, accompanied by a tremendous noise. The walls of Udum did not fall down—and we are not told that the invaders specifically used any trumpets—but the city did surrender to King Keret. The legend states:
Tarry a day and a second;
A third, a fourth day;
A fifth, a sixth day.
Thine arrows shoot not into the city,
[Nor] thy hand-stones flung headlong.
And behold, at the sun on the seventh [day],
King Pabel will sleep
Till the noise of the neighing of his stallion,
Till the sound of the braying of his he-ass,
Until the lowing of the plow ox,
[Until] the howling of the watchdog.
Numerous scholars have already commented on the similarities between the Legend of Keret and the story of Joshua’s capture of Jericho. Moreover, other scholars have noted that stories in which actions are repeated for six days and then culminate on the seventh, as in Joshua’s storming of Jericho, are a standard, and usually a religious or divine, motif in earlier Mesopotamian literature. Tales such as these are often repeated in Canaanite and Ugaritic literature and in the Hebrew Bible as well. Also, there are additional instances in the Hebrew Bible of military actions that took seven days. For instance, the biblical account states that when Ahab and the army of the northern kingdom of Israel fought against Ben-Hadad and the Arameans in the ninth century B.C., “They encamped opposite one another seven days. Then on the seventh day the battle began” (I Kings 20:29).
Moreover, there are numerous historical accounts of armies marching around cities, blowing their trumpets to signal an attack. The famous Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin noted in his 1963 book, The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands, that Joshua’s tactics at Jericho could be compared with later Roman tactics, because the Romans also marched repeatedly around besieged cities in order to lull and confuse the enemy, and then blew their trumpets to sound the attack. We should note, however, that Flavius Josephus, the Jewish general turned Roman historian who wrote in the first century A.D., says absolutely nothing about the trumpets of Joshua’s army causing the walls of Jericho to fall. He says instead, “When they [Joshua’s troops] had gone round it [Jericho] seven times, and had stood still a little, the wall fell down, while no instruments of war, nor any other force, was applied to it by the Hebrews” (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 5.1.6).
The oasis of Jericho has provided water, food, and shelter for weary travelers since time immemorial. (Illustration Credits 5.2)
It seems very likely that we can cite the story of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho either as one more possible example of an earlier Canaanite or Mesopotamian story (or elements thereof) that was transmitted through the centuries and incorporated into the later biblical account, or as an example of a story that incorporates religious or divine elements and ritual. In either event, we must keep in mind these comparable (and in some cases, earlier) tales and understand that, as a result, many scholars discount the apparent miracles or mysteries connected with Joshua’s capture of Jericho.
FORTUNATELY, THERE IS a lot more archaeological data available in connection with this mystery than for the other biblical stories we have examined. But this data is also the subject of fierce debates, because there are major problems surrounding the archaeology connected to Joshua and his capture of Jericho. The dilemma revolves around when Jericho was inhabited, destroyed, and abandoned. Therefore, it is also connected to the question of when the Israelite conquest of Canaan actually took place—which in turn is related to the question of when the Exodus occurred.
British engineer Charles Warren first excavated the ancient site of Jericho, today known as Tell es-Sultan, in 1867 and 1868. Some 40 years later, an Austro-German team led by archaeologists Ernst Sellin and Carl Watzinger excavated at the site from 1907 to 1909 and again in 1911. John Garstang next excavated parts of Jericho from 1930 to 1936, followed by Dame Kathleen Kenyon from 1952 to 1958.
Sellin and Watzinger believed that Jericho had been destroyed about 1550 B.C. and was then uninhabited for the remainder of the Late Bronze Age, through 1200 B.C. British archaeologist John Garstang did not agree with their interpretation, however, and launched his own excavations at the site. Ultimately, he believed his data showed that the fourth city (City IV) in the tell (the artificial mound that was created by building city after city on the same location for hundreds or thousands of years) at Jericho had been destroyed about 1400 B.C., more than a century later than Sellin and Watzinger had claimed. He based this destruction date in part on an absence of imported Mycenaean pottery (from Greece) at the site, because such Mycenaean pottery is commonly found at Canaanite sites from the 14th and 13th centuries B.C. According to Garstang, the fact that there wasn’t any Mycenaean pottery found at Jericho meant that the city must have been destroyed before this period—that is, by 1400 B.C.
Garstang also believed that the city wall had fallen as the result of an earthquake at that time and that the Israelites had simply taken advantage of the catastrophe and destroyed the city. The city was essentially uninhabited after that date, except for a large “palace or residency”—Garstang called it the “Middle Building”—that was constructed on the eastern side of the now-unfortified tell during the second half of the 14th century B.C. According to Garstang, the palace, along with a few small, related buildings, was abandoned after only a generation or so, by 1300 B.C. at the latest, leaving the site empty and completely uninhabited.
Not all scholars were swayed by his data and interpretations, so Garstang asked the young British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon to reexamine his data and come to her own conclusions. She did so, to his ultimate chagrin, for she concluded that Garstang was incorrect about the date for the destruction of City IV and that Sellin and Watzinger had been correct after all. Some years later, she began her own excavations at the site, which yielded additional data confirming her suspicions that City IV at Jericho had been destroyed about 1550 B.C., perhaps by the Hyksos following their expulsion from Egypt in 1570 B.C., or by the Egyptians pursuing those fleeing Hyksos.
According to Kenyon, Jericho was essentially abandoned after the destruction of City IV, except for the small area that Garstang had shown was occupied by the Middle Building during the 14th century B.C., when the city was apparently unfortified. As for the city wall that Garstang had found, it may well have been destroyed by an earthquake, Kenyon said, but it did not belong to City IV. In fact, its destruction had taken place a thousand years earlier during the Early Bronze Age, at about 2400 B.C.—not 1400 B.C., as Garstang claimed.
Kenyon’s excavations therefore implied that, if Joshua and the Israelites had invaded Canaan during the Middle or Late Bronze Age, between 1550 B.C. and 1200 B.C., they would have found Jericho almost totally, if not completely, deserted and without any of its vaunted fortifications still present. If Kenyon was correct, then the biblical account of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho cannot be believed. Moreover, we could even perhaps call into question the entire biblical account of the Israelite conquest of Canaan, because if the conquest and capture of the first significant city could be questioned, then why should we believe the rest of the account?
Kenyon’s findings, of course, caused consternation in some parts of the archaeological and biblical communities, as had Sellin and Watzinger’s. Since Kenyon’s day, the debate has continued to rage, for archaeological evidence by its very nature is frequently open to interpretation. This renewed battle for Jericho has most recently been taken up in the pages of Biblical Archaeology Review magazine by Bryant G. Wood, director of the Associates for Biblical Research, and Piotr Bienkowski, former curator of Near Eastern and Egyptian antiquities at National Museums in Liverpool, England.
Their arguments are quite detailed and do not need to be repeated here. Suffice it to say, Wood argued on the basis of his restudy of the pottery found by both Kenyon and Garstang that the destruction of City IV at Jericho should indeed be dated to 1400 B.C., as Garstang believed, and that it therefore can be attributed to Joshua and the Israelites. His statement, of course, assumes that the Exodus occurred according to the biblical chronology, about 1450 B.C., and that Joshua’s capture of Jericho would have occurred some 40 or more years later, in approximately 1400 B.C.
Bienkowski, however, stood firm with Kenyon, and with Sellin and Watzinger as well. He rejected each of the arguments Wood used to redate the destruction of City IV from 1550 to 1400 B.C., stating, “There is strong evidence to confirm Kathleen Kenyon’s dating of City IV to the Middle Bronze Age.” He concluded, “Wood’s attempt to equate the destruction of City IV with the Israelite conquest of Jericho must therefore be rejected.”
If Bienkowski (and Kenyon, Sellin, and Watzinger before him) is correct, then the destruction of City IV at Jericho could not be attributed to Joshua, because virtually no one is willing to date the Exodus to the 16th century B.C. If, however, Wood (and Garstang before him) is correct, then the destruction of City IV at Jericho could be attributed to Joshua and the Israelites, but only if the biblical chronology is followed, which would place the Exodus in about 1450 B.C. and Joshua’s subsequent conquest of Jericho around 1400 B.C.
The scholarly arguments between Bryant Wood and Piotr Bienkowski perfectly encapsulate the debate over the date of the destruction of Jericho. So who is right? And, in the end, does any of this matter? Why should we care whether Jericho was destroyed in 1550 B.C. or in 1400 B.C.? And why should we care if there were a gap in occupation at the site between 1550 and 1400 B.C.? Furthermore, does it matter that the site was apparently unfortified when it was partially reoccupied during the 14th century B.C.? And what happens if the biblical chronology is not correct and the Exodus took place in 1250 B.C., rather than 1450 B.C.? Then all of the debate is moot, because if Joshua and the Israelites came rampaging through the area around 1210 B.C., they would have found Jericho completely unfortified, and probably not even inhabited.
As we shall see, Jericho might not be the only ancient site to fall into this category, because if the Exodus did take place in 1250 B.C., or if it were a process that took place over two or more centuries, then modern archaeology indicates that the biblical account is incorrect about the sites it says Joshua and his men destroyed. Specifically, archaeologists have shown that the sites that the Bible says were destroyed by the invading Israelites either were not destroyed or were not even inhabited at that time, while a number of other sites that were destroyed at that time are not even listed in the Bible.
IN THE EVENT that Garstang and Wood are correct that Joshua and the Israelites captured Jericho in about 1400 B.C., it is worth considering the most intriguing part of the biblical account—that the walls came tumbling down.
The only persistent scientific suggestion that attempts to explain the collapse of the walls of Jericho is one that states that it may have been caused by a fortuitous earthquake, since shouting and the blowing of trumpets alone will not bring down a wall. It is frequently pointed out that Jericho is located in a zone that is still seismically active, since the Great Rift Valley where Jericho is situated straddles the boundary between two tectonic plates: the Arabian plate and the African-Sinai plate. As the two plates rub against each other, the resulting stress is released in the form of earthquakes, both today and in antiquity.
Could an earthquake have blocked the Jordan River, as shown here, and allowed the Israelites to cross over and attack Jericho? (Illustration Credits 5.3)
In addition, we should remember that just as the Red (Reed) Sea parted long enough for the Hebrews to escape from Egypt, so the Jordan River miraculously ceased to flow just long enough for the Israelites to cross over into Canaan, right before the battle at Jericho. The biblical account says, “The waters flowing from above stood still, rising up in a single heap far off at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan, while those flowing towards the sea of the Arabah, the Dead Sea, were wholly cut off” (Joshua 3:14-17).
An earthquake at Jericho that occurred less than a century ago, in the early afternoon of July 11, 1927, is frequently cited to prove that an earthquake could have affected Jericho and caused the Jordan River to cease flowing. This quake measured 6.5 on the Richter scale; its epicenter was said to have been about 19 miles north of Jericho in the Jordan Valley, by the modern Damiya Bridge.
The quake created cracks and fissures in the ground and buildings of modern Jericho. More important, it reportedly caused a mudslide near the Damiya Bridge when the 150-foot-high embankment on the western side of the Jordan River collapsed, stopping the river’s waters from flowing south until cleanup crews could remove the earth some 21 hours later. Moreover, Damiya is generally identified with ancient “Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan.” In other words, the 1927 earthquake supposedly resulted in the exact same situation as that described in the Hebrew Bible. Similar earthquakes with similar results have been reported at least six times in the past thousand years: in 1906, 1834, 1546, 1534, 1267, and 1160.
If such an earthquake did take place some three millennia ago, and was sufficiently strong enough to dam up the Jordan River at Adam/Damiya, then it would also have affected the buildings and walls of the city of Jericho, just as the 1927 earthquake did. It is certainly possible that an earthquake may have leveled the massive fortification wall of Jericho, just as a similar earthquake may have hit the city of Troy in ancient Turkey. In fact, the earlier excavators at Jericho pointed to cracks in the walls and other evidence of what appeared to be earthquake damage at the site. It is not out of the question that an invader such as Joshua might have been able to take advantage of a catastrophe caused by Mother Nature (or God) and capture a city that he and his men would not otherwise have been able to take.
However, in 1993, a team of earthquake specialists, including Amos Nur, professor of geophysics at Stanford University and an expert on both modern and ancient earthquakes, published an article reestimating the epicenter of the 1927 Jericho earthquake, placing it about 12 miles south of Jericho, rather than 19 miles north. According to Nur and others, the epicenter of the quake was, then, somewhere in the northern end of the Dead Sea, opposite modern Kibbutz Mitspeh-Shalem, and not up by the Damiya Bridge.
In 2002, the team published a second article confirming its original findings. The team also cited both its own studies and those of other researchers who believe the story of the damming of the Jordan River can be traced back to a 1931 book published by John Garstang. The book is, as the article stated, “the only source reporting about the Jordan’s damming at Damiya.” The team of earthquake experts strongly suggests that Garstang’s testimony is unreliable, especially since he was not even in the country at the time and since no other sources, including official police reports or press releases, mention a damming of the Jordan River. They speculate that Garstang’s desire to prove that Damiya is the biblical “city of Adam” and his desire to show that the Jordan could have stopped flowing as a result of an earthquake affected his reporting.
If this team is correct, then the 1927 earthquake must be removed from consideration as a modern parallel for what happened at Jericho during the time of Joshua and the Israelites. Even so, there are other instances and photographs in which it appears that a modern collapse of the banks of the Jordan River caused a severe constriction, if not an outright damming, of the river. One such picture that is frequently shown depicts a 1957 landslide, which looks as if it almost completely cut off the flow of the river. So even if we remove the 1927 earthquake from consideration, we could still suggest that a seismic episode took place in antiquity that both caused the Jordan River to temporarily cease flowing and caused the “tumbling down” of the walls of Jericho.
Regardless, speculation that the walls collapsed as a result of an earthquake may be a completely moot point—or even a red herring—if the event occurred in 1550 B.C., during the Middle Bronze Age, as we have discussed. And, if Kenyon is correct that the earthquake damage dates even earlier, to 2400 B.C. (during the Early Bronze Age), then the walls would have collapsed at least a thousand years before the Israelites are said to have captured Jericho.
ACCORDING TO THE Hebrew Bible, Joshua’s capture of Jericho was merely the first battle he and his men fought during their conquest of Canaan. Unfortunately, the Bible seems to present contradictory statements about the people and places Joshua and his men both did and did not conquer. In the Book of Joshua, we are told in great detail about the battles fought by Joshua and the Israelites in their capture of Canaan. These include the total destruction of Ai and the complete slaughter of all of its inhabitants (8:1-29); the battle at Gibeon, where the sun stood still and Joshua defeated a coalition of five kings and their armies, including Adoni-zedek, the king of Jerusalem (10:1-27); the capture of the cities of Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, Eglon, Hebron, Debir, and the complete destruction of all their people (10:28-39); the great battle at the waters of Merom, where Joshua and the Israelites defeated a huge coalition army headed by King Jabin of Hazor (11:1-9); and finally the capture of the city of Hazor itself, the “head of all those kingdoms,” and the Israelites’ annihilation of its inhabitants, so that “there was no one left who breathed” (11:10-11).
Did Joshua and the Israelites conquer the land of Canaan in a lightning campaign that annihilated the inhabitants, as depicted in this 19th-century painting by Gustave Doré? (Illustration Credits 5.4)
The book also gives us a summary of Joshua’s southern campaign, saying: “So Joshua defeated the whole land, the hill country and the Negeb and the lowland and the slopes, and all their kings; he left no one remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded. And Joshua defeated them from Kadesh-barnea to Gaza, and all the country of Goshen, as far as Gibeon. Joshua took all these kings and their land at one time, because the Lord God of Israel fought for Israel” (10:40-42).
This statement is later repeated almost verbatim as a summary of Joshua’s northern campaign:
So Joshua took all that land: the hill country and all the Negeb and all the land of Goshen and the lowland and the Arabah and the hill country of Israel and its lowland, from Mount Halak, which rises towards Seir, as far as Baal-gad in the valley of Lebanon below Mount Hermon. He took all their kings, struck them down, and put them to death. Joshua made war a long time with all those kings. There was not a town that made peace with the Israelites, except the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon; all were taken in battle. For it was the Lord’s doing to harden their hearts so that they would come against Israel in battle, in order that they might be utterly destroyed, and might receive no mercy, but be exterminated, just as the Lord had commanded Moses. (Joshua 11:16-20)
The Bible also gives us a list of 31 kings who were conquered by Joshua and the Israelites. These include the kings of Jericho, Ai, Bethel, Jerusalem, Hebron, Lachish, Gezer, Arad, Aphek, Hazor, Taanach, Megiddo, and a host of other well-known and well-excavated cities and sites (12:9-24). However, the Book of Joshua then goes on to state that, while the kings might have been conquered, the Canaanites within these cities were not defeated. This is strange, especially given the book’s lengthy descriptions of Joshua’s victories, and the insistence in each of the accounts that all of the Canaanites in a number of cities had been slaughtered so that no one was left alive. For instance, Joshua 15:63 says, “But the people of Judah could not drive out the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem; so the Jebusites live with the people of Judah in Jerusalem to this day,” while Joshua 16:10 says, “They did not, however, drive out the Canaanites who lived in Gezer: so the Canaanites have lived within Ephraim to this day but have been made to do forced labour.” And Joshua 17:11-13 says, “Manasseh had … the inhabitants of Taanach and its villages, and the inhabitants of Megiddo and its villages.… Yet the Manassites could not take possession of those towns; but the Canaanites continued to live in that land.”
Obviously, there are two tales within the biblical account: One in which Joshua and the Israelites were able to conquer the land of Canaan completely, and one in which they conquered the land but did not totally kill and suppress its inhabitants. The two tales do not actually contradict each other, though. In every case where the biblical account says that a city was besieged and that everyone in that city was killed, it does not later say that the inhabitants of that city could not be subdued.
Nevertheless, it is clear that the account in the Book of Joshua is guilty of hyperbole and that the Israelites did not actually succeed in conquering—and nearly exterminating—all of the Canaanites in the land. In fact, we are told at length in the Book of Judges just who survived, including the Jebusites in Jerusalem; the Canaanites in Beth-shean, Taanach, Dor, Ibleam, Megiddo, Gezer, Kitron, Nahalol, Acco, Sidon, Ahlab, Achzib, Helbah, Aphik, Rehob, Beth-shemesh, and Beth-anath; and the Amorites in Har-heres, Aijalon, and Shaalbim (Judges 1:21, 27-35).
If we can show there is exaggeration within the biblical account, we may well ask how much of the account can be trusted at all. Here is where we can try to correlate the biblical account with archaeology, since many of those sites identified in the Book of Joshua have felt the bite of the archaeologist’s trowel over the course of the past century or more.
Let us concentrate, however, solely on the eight sites that the biblical account specifically states were either completely destroyed or burned, besieged and captured, or simply captured, by the invading Israelites (Joshua 8:18-28; 10:28-39; 11:10-11, 13), because if the account is true, we should be able to find archaeological evidence for the destruction and/or capture of these sites. These are: Ai (completely destroyed); Hebron (besieged, captured, and utterly destroyed); Hazor (captured and burned); Lachish, Eglon, and Debir (besieged and captured); and Makkedah and Libnah (captured).
The ancient city of Ai has been identified with the site of et-Tell ever since the days of the early explorer Edward Robinson in 1838. The identification was supported by William F. Albright, among others, in part because both “Ai” and “et-Tell” can be translated into English as “the ruin.” Unfortunately, although et-Tell was indeed a ruin, it was apparently ruined long before Joshua and his men invaded the area, as archaeology has now shown. A number of different expeditions have excavated at the site during the past century and have documented that it was an important city during much of the Early Bronze Age, during the third millennium B.C. But it was destroyed and abandoned by 2400 B.C., more than a thousand years before the Israelites could have possibly been in the region.
A new city did not rise upon the ruins at et-Tell until about 1200 B.C. This new city—which was both small and unfortified—may well have been founded by the Israelites, but it would not have taken a genocidal battle for them to capture the abandoned and uninhabited mound. Some scholars have suggested that the tale of the city’s capture was made up at that time, or later by the biblical writers to explain the presence of the ruins.
Hazor, pictured above, was described as the leading Canaanite city in the land at the time of Joshua’s conquests, and was later one of Solomon’s royal cities and trading posts. (Illustration Credits 5.5)
Yet this theory is not universally accepted. In fact, in an effort to attempt a better correlation between archaeology and the biblical account, some archaeologists and biblical scholars have suggested that et-Tell is not the site of biblical Ai after all. For instance, Bryant Wood has been conducting excavations since 1995 at the nearby site of Khirbet el Maqatir, just one mile from et-Tell. There, he claims to have found evidence of both occupation and destruction dating to the 15th century B.C., which he attributes to Joshua and the invading Israelites.
As for the other cities in the biblical account that were captured or destroyed by Joshua and his army? We have little luck with Hebron, Makkedah, Libnah, Eglon, and Debir. Most of these have either not been satisfactorily identified to date, or have not yet been extensively excavated, or both; the few that have yielded some evidence do not support the biblical account—for instance, Debir and Makkedah—for they either have no evidence of destruction that can be dated to the Late Bronze Age, or were not even occupied until the Early Iron Age, well after the arrival of the Israelites. Our best chances lie with Hazor, which the Bible describes as having been captured and burned by Joshua, and with Lachish, which the account describes as having been besieged and captured by Joshua.
Excavations were first conducted at Lachish between 1932 and 1938 by James L. Starkey, but were brought to an abrupt end when he was “murdered by Arab bandits while traveling from Lachish to Jerusalem for the dedication of the Palestine Archaeological Museum.” Renewed excavations were conducted from 1973 to 1994 by David Ussishkin, emeritus professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University. As Ussishkin notes, Starkey’s excavations had identified the sixth stratum (Level VI) at the site as the last Canaanite city. Most archaeologists, including William F. Albright, had long believed that this city was destroyed in about 1230 B.C. and could therefore be used as evidence that archaeology and the biblical account could be corroborated.
Ussishkin’s renewed excavations showed, however, that while Level VI is indeed the last Canaanite city at Lachish, and that it was indeed destroyed by a violent fire, it was not destroyed about 1230 B.C. During his excavations, Ussishkin found a bronze plaque that contained a cartouche of Ramses III, the Egyptian pharaoh who ruled from 1182 to 1151 B.C. With this plaque, it is now clear that the Canaanite city of Lachish was destroyed at least half a century later than anyone previously thought, at about 1150 B.C. Unless Joshua’s conquests are dated later than most biblical scholars have suggested—around 1150 B.C., rather than 1210 B.C. or even 1410 B.C.—the destruction of Lachish is unlikely to be the result of a conquest by Joshua and his army of Israelites.
Intriguingly, Ussishkin’s excavations also uncovered an earlier Canaanite city—Level VII—that Starkey had essentially missed. Judging from the pottery and other finds, this city was also destroyed violently, probably at the end of the 13th century B.C. This new discovery could potentially be used by archaeologists who believe that Joshua’s conquests took place during the late 13th century B.C. (40 years after an Exodus that began around 1250 B.C.). But evidence shows that the site was reoccupied instantly, and the Canaanite city of Level VI quickly flourished, only to be destroyed about 1150 B.C. If the Israelites had caused the destruction of Level VII at Lachish, we would expect the city of Level VI to exhibit characteristics of an Israelite settlement, rather than a Canaanite settlement.
Thus, Ussishkin’s renewed excavations at Lachish have broken what once seemed to be a firm link between archaeology and the biblical account of Joshua’s conquest of the city. But what about Hazor? Yigael Yadin, professor of archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and perhaps the best-known Israeli archaeologist, began excavating at Hazor in the 1950s. He quickly found what he thought was evidence for Joshua and the Israelites’ destruction of the Canaanite city, which he dated to “not later than 1230 B.C.” However, as eminent archaeologist Amnon Ben-Tor has noted, not everyone was convinced by Yadin’s evidence, and it has been debated and disputed ever since.
Ben-Tor, Yigael Yadin’s former student and now the Yigael Yadin Professor in the Archaeology of Eretz Israel at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has been in charge of the renewed excavations at Hazor since 1990 and has tremendously increased the amount of data available. Ben-Tor has shown that the destruction of the Canaanite city at Hazor can be dated roughly to the 14th or 13th century B.C., based on pottery found in the destruction debris. While Ben-Tor says that he is unable to confirm “Yadin’s overly confident date of 1230 B.C.” for the destruction of Hazor, he is confident that the city was still flourishing about 1290 B.C., for the Egyptian Pharaoh Seti I (who ruled from 1291 to 1278 B.C.) mentions Hazor in the account of a campaign he led against various Canaanite cities at that time.
Even so, it is difficult to identify who was actually responsible for the destruction of Canaanite Hazor. It would be nice to be able to attribute it to Joshua and the Israelites, since the Hebrew Bible says specifically that the Israelites burned Hazor to the ground:
Joshua turned back at that time, and took Hazor, and struck its king down with the sword. Before that time Hazor was the head of all those kingdoms. And they put to the sword all who were in it, utterly destroying them; there was no one left who breathed, and he burned Hazor with fire. And all the towns of those kings, and all their kings, Joshua took, and struck them with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them, as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded. But Israel burned none of the towns that stood on mounds except Hazor, which Joshua did burn. (Joshua 11:10-13)
As Ben-Tor notes, though, there are several other possible culprits besides the Israelites, including the Egyptians, rival Canaanites, and a group of foreign invaders the Egyptians collectively referred to as the Sea Peoples (whom we shall discuss further in a moment).
But Ben-Tor presents several persuasive arguments for why the destruction of Canaanite Hazor cannot be attributed to the Egyptians, including the fact that he found defaced Egyptian statues among the debris, an act of sacrilege that Egyptian soldiers would never have committed. He presents similar arguments for why the destruction cannot be attributed to rival Canaanites, for he also found defaced Canaanite statues among the debris, something Canaanite soldiers would not have done either. More important, he notes that Hazor is described as the head of all the Canaanite kingdoms; most likely, no other city would have been able to challenge Hazor, let alone attack it.
His arguments against the Sea Peoples, and specifically the Philistines within this larger group, are less persuasive. He says only, “Hazor is located too far inland to be of any interest to those maritime traders,” which is debatable, and that “among the hundreds of thousands of potsherds recovered at Hazor, not a single one can be attributed to the well-known repertory of the Sea Peoples.” As we have noted, an absence of evidence does not necessarily mean evidence of absence—but at the same time, we do not have any evidence that the Sea Peoples destroyed Hazor.
Perhaps most important is that the succeeding city at the site—the one built upon the ruins of Canaanite Hazor—is an Israelite city. This does not necessarily mean that the Israelites destroyed the Canaanite city and then built their own city upon the still-smoldering ruins, but it is a good possibility. It is also possible that another group, such as the Sea Peoples, torched Hazor and that the Israelites came along afterward and reaped the benefits of this destruction by building their own city on top of the ruins. We shall come back to this point in a moment.
Thus, out of the eight sites mentioned in the biblical account as having been captured, burnt, and/or destroyed by Joshua and the invading Israelites, the current archaeological evidence suggests only one site, Hazor, that might demonstrate a destruction level that would correlate with the biblical account (if we date Joshua’s conquest to the 13th century B.C.), and only one other city, Lachish (which has a destruction date of about the mid-12th century B.C.), that might correlate with a late destruction by the Israelites. In short, the data that we currently possess does not inspire confidence in the biblical account of the Israelite conquest of Canaan.
Our current situation is in stark contrast to the period from 1920 to 1970, when William F. Albright, the so-called father of biblical archaeology, dominated the field. A professor at the Johns Hopkins University, Albright confidently asserted through his “Conquest” model that the Israelite conquest of Canaan had taken place as told in the Hebrew Bible, and that archaeology had confirmed the biblical account. It was in this atmosphere that the German journalist Werner Keller wrote The Bible as History. Called “the ultimate Bar Mitzvah book of the 1950s,” Keller’s book euphorically discussed the archaeological discoveries that “proved” the Bible.
Yet even during this period, several alternate hypotheses were put forward by biblical scholars, ancient historians, and archaeologists who disagreed with Albright’s interpretation. These hypotheses are known as the “Peaceful Infiltration” model and the “Revolting Peasants” model, whose names reflected their basic premise. And in recent years, an additional hypothesis was put forward: the so-called “Invisible Israelites” model, which suggests that the Israelites were a seminomadic subset of the Canaanites, who came into prominence after the collapse of Canaanite culture, which occurred when the Egyptians withdrew from the region in the 12th century B.C. In each of these alternate scenarios, biblical writers then made up the story of Joshua’s invasion.
German scholar Albrecht Alt, followed by Martin Noth, first proposed the “Peaceful Infiltration” model in the 1920s. This hypothesis suggested that seminomadic Israelites had left Egypt in small groups, peacefully infiltrated unoccupied areas of the hill country in Canaan, gradually built settlements, and eventually became sedentary. Alt thought that the Israelites became tied to the land and only later displaced the Canaanites in the cities. He believed that the military encounters in which the Israelites fought against the Canaanites only took place after the Israelites began expanding out of these central highlands, long after they had first arrived peacefully in the region.
In the 1960s and 1970s, American scholars George Mendenhall and Norman Gottwald suggested that the Israelites were already present in Canaan and had been for quite some time (if not always). They speculated that the Israelites were an underclass of peasants who overthrew the Canaanite overlords as part of a revolutionary social movement. This hypothesis, affectionately referred to as the “Revolting Peasants” model by scholars, is essentially a Marxist approach to the problem of the Israelite conquest of Canaan. Working in this model’s favor is the fact that no mass killing of the Canaanites is required, nor is any mass invasion from the outside.
The fourth possibility is the “Invisible Israelites” model proposed by Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University. This model suggests that the Canaanites and the Israelites were one and the same people—that the Israelites were a seminomadic segment of the Canaanite population who had always been present. The theory posits that the Israelites did not take over via a formal revolution but rather through a general and gradual inheritance of the land. This took place, according to Finkelstein, when the political and economic networks in Canaan collapsed after Egyptian rule ended in the 12th century B.C. At that time, the big cities on the coast deteriorated and the smaller sites in the hill country and desert fringes began to multiply. In his book The Bible Unearthed, co-authored with Neil Asher Silberman, Finkelstein concludes: “The emergence of early Israel was an outcome of the collapse of the Canaanite culture, not its cause.”
IN THE END, when discussing Joshua’s capture of Jericho, we are left with more of a dilemma than a mystery. Did Joshua really capture Jericho, as the biblical account says? Did the walls really come tumbling down? Was the site fortified at the time Joshua came through? Was it even inhabited?
As far as whether City IV of Jericho was destroyed in 1550 B.C. or in 1400 B.C., I believe it is a moot point. Joshua and the Israelites did not cause the city’s destruction, regardless of when it took place. I say this because, as I stated at the end of chapter 4, I am inclined to believe that the archaeological and textual evidence trump the biblical chronology, and they indicate that the Exodus did not take place until approximately 1250 B.C., if it happened at all.
The simple fact is that there is no mention of the Hebrews or Israelites in any texts from Canaan, Egypt, or elsewhere in the Near East before 1207 B.C. And yet there should be if the Exodus took place in 1450 B.C. and the Israelite conquest of Canaan took place in 1410 or 1400 B.C., because there are plenty of Canaanite and Egyptian texts that could have mentioned them if they were present. The biblical account of the capture and destruction of Jericho also seems rather unbelievable to me if no one was living in Jericho during the second half of the thirteenth century B.C. (between 1250 and 1200 B.C.) and no walls were protecting the ruins at that time.
The Sea Peoples are depicted in great detail in this relief at Medinet Habu, the mortuary temple of Pharaoh Ramses III, in Thebes, Egypt. (Illustration Credits 5.6)
Of the major suggestions that have been made concerning the coming of the Israelites, I find it unlikely that they were “Revolting Peasants”—in part because I see no way they would have been able to effect an overthrow on their own. I also do not embrace the “Peaceful Infiltration” model that suggests the Israelites simply wandered in over time and eventually took over, again because there is no mention of them in the texts (unless the Israelites are the Habiru, an idea that scholars have slowly discounted over the past several decades). I am also not particularly fond of the suggestion that they were always there as “Invisible Israelites,” and eventually took over the land from the others living there, because I don’t think that theory sufficiently explains how they were physically able to do so. However, I do think that the “Invisible Israelites” model can be used in tandem with other suggestions.
The “Conquest” model still makes the most sense to me, but only if it is substantially altered, because I do not see how it possibly could have happened as the Bible tells us it did. If I were proposing my own model, I would add a missing piece of the puzzle that the Bible leaves out entirely and link the Israelite conquest of Canaan to an invasion of the Sea Peoples.
We know of the Sea Peoples from Egyptian inscriptions left to us by Pharaoh Merneptah in 1207 B.C. and Pharaoh Ramses III some 20 years later. These Sea Peoples, who probably originated in such lands as Sicily, Sardinia, and Italy, swept through the Aegean area and the Near East, reaching as far as Egypt. En route, they destroyed numerous cities and civilizations and brought the lively international world of the Late Bronze Age to a crashing halt all across the Aegean and Mediterranean regions.
I am not implying that the Israelites were among these Sea Peoples, because we know they most certainly were not. Rather, I am suggesting—using what I might call the “Piggyback” model—that the Israelites may have taken advantage of the havoc the Sea Peoples caused in Canaan and elsewhere in the Near East, and moved into areas they could not have taken over and occupied under their own power. Thus, the late 13th and early 12th century B.C. destructions at Hazor, Lachish, and perhaps even Megiddo in Canaan may not have been caused by the Israelites, as the Bible states. Instead, they might have been caused by the much more fierce and battle-proven Sea Peoples, who had already brought an end to the Mycenaeans in Greece, the Minoans in Crete, the Cypriots in Cyprus, and the Hittites in Anatolia.
Whether languishing in the Sinai for several decades, or already present in the land but “invisible,” or toiling as an underclass, or infiltrating the land slowly over centuries, according to my model, the Israelites would have simply been the beneficiaries of these destructions. By “piggybacking” on the success of the Sea Peoples, they finally would have been able to take over all or most of Canaan in the first half of the 12th century B.C., including the still smoldering ruins of cities such as Hazor and Megiddo. This would provide the “how” that I believe is missing in most of the other hypotheses. How could the Israelites have possibly attacked and successfully captured the imposing Canaanite cities? The answer is they didn’t; the Sea Peoples did. But once the Sea Peoples had brought the Canaanite culture to its knees, the Israelites may have been able to take over some of the lesser towns by themselves, thus completing the conquest of Canaan.
I do not see any other way to accommodate the archaeological and textual data currently available to us. How the biblical narrative then came to be, with its stories of the capture of towns that were not even inhabited at the time, is anyone’s guess. Finkelstein and Silberman have suggested that it was created, embellished, or heavily edited in the seventh century B.C., and that may well have been what happened, just as Homer may have edited and embellished the tale of the Trojan War when writing about it five centuries later. At the very least, I would suggest that the later biblical writers gave complete credit for the capture and destruction of the Canaanite cities to the Israelites without even mentioning the role of the Sea Peoples, perhaps because they only knew of them as the biblical Philistines who caused such trouble for Saul and David.
The fact is that we have at least two different tales within the biblical account, particularly when comparing the details in the Book of Joshua and the Book of Judges about which towns and peoples Joshua captured. And this alone is a good indication that more than one story was being told about Joshua and his exploits, and that the biblical writers tried their best to weave these different stories into a coherent narrative that may or may not have reflected reality. The Book of Judges may give a slightly more accurate historical account of what actually happened than the Book of Joshua does, since it states that the Israelite conquest of Canaan was not completed easily as opposed to claiming that the land was conquered in a lightning series of campaigns.
Apart from Hazor, however, there is little archaeological evidence from any of the Canaan sites that can be used to support either of the biblical accounts of Joshua and the conquest of Canaan, regardless of whether we date Joshua’s conquest to the 15th century B.C. (per the biblical chronology) or to the 13th and 12th centuries B.C. (as many modern scholars suggest). I agree completely with William G. Dever, emeritus professor of Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona, who recently wrote: “But what about the conquest and settlement of Canaan as depicted in the books of Joshua and Judges? As we have seen, there is little that we can salvage from Joshua’s stories of the rapid, wholesale destruction of Canaanite cities and the annihilation of the local population. It simply did not happen; the archaeological evidence is indisputable. It is conceivable that there was a military chieftain and folk hero named Joshua, who won a few skirmishes here and there. But there was simply no Israelite conquest of most of Canaan.”
Dever is not alone in this assessment; he is simply giving voice to what the vast majority of archaeologists now believe. And a majority of biblical scholars and ancient historians concur. Esteemed scholar Nadav Na’aman, professor of Jewish history at Tel Aviv University, wrote: “It is commonly accepted today that the majority of the conquest stories in the Book of Joshua are devoid of historical reality.”
So there is no evidence that Joshua ever “fit the battle of Jericho” or that “the walls came a tumblin’ down” from a blast from his men’s trumpets, to quote the traditional African-American gospel song. In short, it would seem that the only mystery still remaining about the story of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho is how it came to be written in the first place.
We shall see if we have better luck with our next case, which involves the Ark of the Covenant, another mystery for the ages.