Battle of Jericho - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Battle of Jericho is an incident in Bible's Book of Joshua

Book of Joshua

The Book of Joshua is the sixth book in the Hebrew Bible and of the Old Testament. Its 24 chapters tell of the entry of the Israelites into Canaan, their conquest and division of the land under the leadership of Joshua, and of serving God in the land....

, the first battle of the Israelites during their conquest of Canaan. According to the narrative, the walls of Jericho

Jericho

Jericho ; is a city located near the Jordan River in the West Bank of the Palestinian territories. It is the capital of the Jericho Governorate and has a population of more than 20,000. Situated well below sea level on an east-west route north of the Dead Sea, Jericho is the lowest permanently...

fell after Joshua

Joshua

Joshua , is a minor figure in the Torah, being one of the spies for Israel and in few passages as Moses's assistant. He turns to be the central character in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Joshua...

's Israelite army marched around the city blowing their trumpets.

Spying on Jericho

Before crossing into the land west of the River Jordan, Joshua sent two spies to look over the land. The king of Jericho heard that two Israelite spies were within his city and ordered them to be brought out to him. The spies were charged with ascertaining where the guards were placed, whether anyone disliked the king and could help them, what weaponry and armour the guards had, when the guards changed shifts, how much food, water, and other supplies the city had, and the height and width of the walls so as to determine how to overcome the city.

The woman with whom the spies were staying was named Rahab

Rahab

Rahab, was, according to the Book of Joshua, a woman who lived in Jericho in the Promised Land and assisted the Israelites in capturing the city...

and she protected them by hiding the two men on her roof. She tells them how the citizens of Jericho had been fearful of the Israelites ever since they defeated the Egyptians via the Red Sea miracle (some 40 years prior), and agrees to cover for them on condition that she and her family are spared in the upcoming battle. The spies agree provided three conditions are met:

She must distinguish her house from the others so the soldiers will know which one to spare
Her family must be inside the house during the battle, and
She must not later turn in the spies.

Rahab agrees to the conditions: she hangs a scarlet rope outside her window to distinguish her house from the others.

Safely escaping the city, the two returned to Joshua and reported that the "whole land was melting with fear."

The Battle

The biblical account describes the Israelites being led by Joshua

Joshua

Joshua , is a minor figure in the Torah, being one of the spies for Israel and in few passages as Moses's assistant. He turns to be the central character in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Joshua...

and crossing the Jordan into Canaan where they laid siege to the city of Jericho. There God spoke to Joshua telling him to march around the city once every day for six days with the seven priests carrying ram's horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day they were to march around the city seven times and the priests were to blow their ram's horns. This Joshua did, and he commanded his people not to give a war-cry until he told them to do so. On the seventh day, after marching around the city the seventh time, the priests sounded their ram's horns, and Joshua ordered the people to shout. The walls of the city collapsed, and the Israelites were able to charge straight into the city. The city was completely destroyed

Herem

Herem or cherem , as used in the Hebrew Bible, means ‘devote’ or ‘destroy’. It is also referred to as the ban. The term has been explained in different ways by scholars...

, and every man, woman, and child in it was killed. Only Rahab and her family were spared, because she had hidden the two spies sent by Joshua. After this Joshua burned the remains of the city and cursed any man who would rebuild the city of Jericho would do so at the cost of his firstborn son. It is generally accepted that the biblical date for the fall of the walls is the 28th of Nisan

Nisan

Nisan is the first month of the ecclesiastical year and the seventh month of the civil year, on the Hebrew calendar. The name of the month is Babylonian; in the Torah it is called the month of the Aviv, referring to the month in which barley was ripe. It is a spring month of 30 days...

, according to the Hebrew calendar

Hebrew calendar

The Hebrew calendar , or Jewish calendar, is a lunisolar calendar used today predominantly for Jewish religious observances. It determines the dates for Jewish holidays and the appropriate public reading of Torah portions, yahrzeits , and daily Psalm reading, among many ceremonial uses...

Historicity

The first scientific investigation of the site of Jericho was carried out by Charles Warren

Charles Warren

General Sir Charles Warren, GCMG, KCB, FRS was an officer in the British Royal Engineers. He was one of the earliest European archaeologists of Biblical Holy Land, and particularly of Temple Mount...

in 1868, but amounted to no more than a site-survey (Warren's prime interest was in establishing the modern equivalents of Biblical locales). In 1907-09 and again in 1911 digging was carried out by two German archaeologists, Carl Watzinger

Carl Watzinger

Carl Watzinger was a German-born archaeologist that was part of a team that worked on uncovering the site of the ancient city of Jericho from 1907 to 1908. His partner was the German theologian Ernst Sellin....

and Ernest Sellin. Watzinger and Sellin believed that they would be able to validate the Biblical story of Jericho's destruction by Joshua and the Israelites, but concluded instead that the data indicated that the city was unoccupied at the time which the Bible indicated for the Conquest.

These results were tested in 1930-36 by John Garstang

John Garstang

John Garstang was a British archaeologist of the ancient Near East, especially Anatolia and the southern Levant....

, at the suggestion of William F. Albright

William F. Albright

William Foxwell Albright was an American archaeologist, biblical scholar, philologist and expert on ceramics. From the early twentieth century until his death, he was the dean of biblical archaeologists and the universally acknowledged founder of the Biblical archaeology movement...

, the doyen of Palestinian archaeology at the time. Garstang discovered the remains of a network of collapsed walls which he dated to about 1400 BCE, the time he believed the Israelites were on their conquest, that had apparently fallen in a dramatic fashion as opposed to being ruined by abandonment or decay from natural forces. Garstang's work thus reversed the conclusions of the earlier diggings.

By the post-war period a revolution had occurred in archaeological methodology, and Albright accordingly asked Kathleen Kenyon

Kathleen Kenyon

Dame Kathleen Mary Kenyon , was a leading archaeologist of Neolithic culture in the Fertile Crescent. She is best known for her excavations in Jericho in 1952-1958.-Early life:...

, one of the most respected practitioners of the new archaeology, to excavate bacon at Jericho once more. Kenyon dug at Jericho over the seasons between 1952-1958. Kenyon traced the entire history of the city from the earliest Neolithic settlement. She did this by digging a narrow deep trench maintaining clean, squared off edges, rigorously examining the soil and recording its stratification, and thus building up a cross-section of the tell

Tell

A tell or tel, is a type of archaeological mound created by human occupation and abandonment of a geographical site over many centuries. A classic tell looks like a low, truncated cone with a flat top and sloping sides.-Archaeology:A tell is a hill created by different civilizations living and...

. When presented with an area that would require wider areas to be excavated - the floor plan of a house for example - she carefully dug in measured squares while leaving an untouched strip between each section to allow the stratification to remain visible. Kenyon reported that her work showed Garstang to have been wrong and the Germans right - Jericho had been deserted at the accepted Biblical date of the Conquest. Her result was confirmed in 1995 by radiocarbon tests

Radiocarbon dating

Radiocarbon dating is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to estimate the age of carbon-bearing materials up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years. Raw, i.e. uncalibrated, radiocarbon ages are usually reported in radiocarbon years "Before Present" ,...

which dated the destruction to 1562 BCE (plus/minus 38 years) with a certainty of 95%.

Spying on Jericho

The Battle

Historicity

See also