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Joshua

Successor to the famous leader, Moses, Joshua is the Bible's most famous warrior.

Joshua and the walls of Jericho

The story of the walls of Jericho is one of the most violent episodes in the Bible. An army of nomads emerges from the desert and destroys a heavily fortified city... not by force, but by faith.

Joshua sent scouts to spy out the enemy city ©

The story is set in the Middle East, some 3000 years ago. Even then, the area was plagued by war. The story begins with Joshua and his army preparing an attack in the mountains to the north-east of the Dead Sea.

From the mountains, Joshua looks west across the river Jordan toward his destination. According to the Bible, this was the territory God once pledged to Abraham and his descendants. At Joshua's command are some 40,000 Israelite men, descendants of the Hebrew slaves who fled Egypt. There is one problem: the country is already inhabited by Canaanites.

Like any good military commander, Joshua's first requirement is to gather military intelligence. He sends out two spies across the Jordan River ahead of time. They go immediately to an inn that's run by a prostitute. In the ancient world, brothels and taverns were obvious places to gather information. The spies meet a prostitute called Rahab. But things soon go wrong. No sooner have they come to her house than the King of Jericho sends his men, because he knows that the spies have arrived. Rahab takes charge of the whole situation. She hides the spies in the stocks of grain on her roof.

When the King's guards come, Rahab says to them: "Some men came, you're right, but they left a long time ago when the city gate closed. If you rush ahead and go down to the Jordan, I think you'll find them there." Having thus diverted the pursuers, she goes up to the roof and tells the spies that she knows that Israel will conquer the land. She knows that God has promised the land to them.

The Bible tells how the army walked around the walled city of Jericho once a day for six days. Each time they walked priests blew trumpets. On the seventh day they circled seven times and the walls of the city came crashing down. Joshua and his army conquered the city, massacring every person they found. Only Rahab and her family were saved. The once mighty city of Jericho had been set alight. Joshua and his people then continued to destroy other towns and cities and Joshua succeeded in conquering Canaan.

Evidence

The walls came crashing down ©

Many archaeologists have struggled to find evidence of a historical battle at Jericho at the time the story takes place in the Bible. Through their quests they have uncovered many intriguing facts about the Canaanites and Israelites which challenge many assumptions.

Archaeologists have discovered that a series of earthquakes swept through the Eastern Mediterranean, including where Jericho stood, in around 1250 BC, and certainly brought walls crumbling down. However, the dates don't match with the time Joshua was supposedly conquering the land. Maybe the memory of the destruction of the towns inspired scribes to write about a great warrior who conquered cities with God's will. Or perhaps the catastrophic collapse of the old world through the earthquakes gave way to opportunism and Israelite groups took advantage of the destruction of the existing Canaanite cities and began to settle in Israel.

There is a twist to the story. Recent DNA research shows that the Canaanites and Israelites were not just similar in their cultures, they were genetically identical. Perhaps the Israelites did not conquer the land at all - they were there all along.

Is then, the story of Joshua and the walls of Jericho complete fiction? Well, perhaps not. Joshua's military tactics are plausible and it is possible that some Israelites did travel across from Egypt. Authors could have embellished stories of their ancestors. The story is most probably a culmination of separate oral traditions. Maybe there as a historical figure called Joshua who travelled with his people to a new land.

Whatever is the truth behind the bloody story of Joshua and the tumbling walls, it is fair to say that the issues behind the conflict still resonate today. One man's liberation is another man's oppression.

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• Moses