101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

yth #83:
Joshua tumbled the walls of Jericho.
The Myth: So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: 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, so that the people went up into
the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. ( Josh. 6:20)
The Reality: Archaeological data shows that the walls of Jericho were destroyed
over three hundred years before Joshua arrived.
Joshua’s destruction of Jericho stands as one of the most famous battle stories in all
history. For six days, Joshua’s warriors marched each day once around the city, as seven
priests continually blew long blasts on their ram’s horns and a retinue of priests carried
the Ark of the Covenant around the city walls. Then on the seventh day, the priests
marched seven times around the wall. As trumpets blared, Joshua commanded the
Israelites to shout loudly and the powerful reverberations caused the walls to collapse.
Joshua’s troops marched into the city and utterly destroyed what remained, putting to
the sword all the men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses.
It’s a pretty gruesome picture and quite a testament to the power of Israel’s god.
Despite the obvious fantasy nature of the battle, many people determined to preserve
the Bible’s integrity argue that the continuous noise created enough vibrations to
weaken the walls and that the story has some scientific plausibility. Even if we wanted
to stretch our imagination to allow for such an unlikely possibility, archaeological evidence
shows that at the time of Joshua, Jericho had neither walls nor residents. The
city had been vacated centuries earlier.
Jericho was one of the earliest and most ancient cities of the world. Archaeological
data suggests an inhabitation going back to the eighth millennium B.C. Evidence for a
destruction of the walls dates to about 2300 B.C., but inhabitants rebuilt the town and
erected new fortifications. Jericho appears to have been thoroughly destroyed by fire
during the sixteenth century B.C., and, at best, only sparsely populated thereafter. Prior
239