Jericho and the argument about its walls
Jericho has fallen walls and a burn layer; the date of that destruction, and whether anyone was living there when Joshua is set, is disputed.
DisputedExcavated siteBronze Age
One of the oldest walled towns on earth, dug four times over a century. Garstang found collapsed walls and a burnt layer and dated them to about 1400 BC. Kenyon re-dug the site with tighter method and dated that destruction some 150 years earlier, concluding the town was small or empty at the time Joshua is usually placed.
So the people shouted… and the wall fell down flat.
- Found
- Tell es-Sultan (Jericho), West Bank, 1907 — Sellin and Watzinger; then Garstang (1930s), Kenyon (1950s), Italian–Palestinian expedition
- Now held at
- In place
- How it reached us
- Dug up, or still standing where it was built.
What it shows
This is a real disagreement, not a settled case either way. Kenyon's dating is the majority position; a minority argues from pottery and radiocarbon for the earlier reading. We include it because leaving out the hard sites would make the rest less trustworthy.
How historians use it
A textbook case in archaeological method — how stratigraphy and ceramic typology can overturn an earlier excavator's conclusions.
In Scripture
Connects to
Sources
- Kenyon, Digging Up Jericho (1957)
- Wood, "Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho?", BAR 16 (1990), and Bienkowski's reply
These summaries are written in English for now. Translations follow.