The Jericho Walls Debate Is Not What You Think

For most of the 20th century, Jericho was held up as the textbook example of archaeology contradicting the Bible. The famous British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon excavated the site in the 1950s and concluded that Jericho had been unoccupied during the period when Joshua was supposed to have conquered it. No people, no walls, no destruction. The Bible was wrong.

Her conclusion became standard. For 40 years, every introductory archaeology textbook cited Jericho as a case where the spade contradicted Scripture. Skeptics had a clean win.

Then in 1990, an American archaeologist named Bryant Wood published a reanalysis of Kenyon's own pottery and stratigraphy in the journal Biblical Archaeology Review. Wood's conclusion: Kenyon had made a major dating error. The destruction layer she found at Jericho was not from 1550 BC (the date she assigned). It was from around 1400 BC — exactly when the Bible says Joshua destroyed the city.

Suddenly the textbook example flipped.

Set aside the dating debate for a moment and look at what Kenyon (and earlier excavator John Garstang) actually found. The findings are striking even if the dating is contested:

1. The walls collapsed outward. The mudbrick city wall fell down, forming a ramp of debris up against the base of the inner stone retaining wall. This is unusual — walls typically fall inward toward the city when battered from outside. The collapsed mudbrick at Jericho had fallen the other way. Compare to Joshua 6:20: "the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city." A fallen-outward wall is exactly what you would need to "charge straight in" without ladders.

2. The city was burned. A thick layer of ash and charred material covers the destruction layer. Joshua 6:24: "Then they burned the whole city and everything in it."

3. The grain stores were intact. This one is the most remarkable. Archaeologists found large jars of grain that had been carbonized but not eaten. In ancient Near Eastern warfare, grain was the most valuable possession of a captured city — invading armies almost always took it. The fact that the grain at Jericho was burned with the city instead of carried off is bizarre. It matches Joshua 6:17-18 perfectly: "The city and all that is in it are to be devoted to the Lord. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall be spared... But keep away from the devoted things, so that you will not bring about your own destruction by taking any of them."

4. The siege was short. The grain stores being mostly full indicates the city did not endure a long famine before falling. Long sieges deplete grain. Joshua 6 describes a seven-day siege.

5. Part of the wall did not fall. Garstang noted that a portion of the city wall on the north side was preserved and unaffected by the collapse. Joshua 2:15 says Rahab's house was "built into the city wall." She was on the wall and survived, while the rest collapsed.

You could not write a more biblical scenario into an archaeological site.

So the question becomes: when did this destruction happen?

Kenyon dated the destruction to around 1550 BC based on the absence of a specific type of imported Cypriot pottery (Late Bronze IIA "bichrome ware") that she expected to see in any city occupied around 1400 BC.

Wood examined her pottery archives and made several observations:

1. Kenyon was looking for the wrong pottery. The Cypriot bichrome ware was an imported luxury good. It would only be found in major trading centers. Jericho was a small, isolated frontier town. Most contemporary sites of Jericho's size do not have the bichrome ware either. Its absence does not indicate the city was empty — it indicates the city was not on the trade route.

2. The pottery that was found at Jericho dates to the right period. The local pottery types found in the destruction layer match other sites known to be inhabited around 1400 BC. The pottery argues for an occupation in the very century the Bible describes.

3. Carbon dating supports the later date. Wood pointed to carbon-14 dates from the destruction layer that clustered around 1400 BC, not 1550 BC. Subsequent radiocarbon studies have produced mixed results, with some pulling earlier and others supporting Wood's range. The dating is no longer considered settled.

4. Egyptian scarabs found at Jericho span the right kings. Scarabs (royal seals) bearing names of pharaohs from the 18th Egyptian dynasty (15th-14th centuries BC) were found at the site, showing continuous occupation through the period Kenyon claimed was empty.

The cumulative argument was strong enough that even some scholars who had previously sided with Kenyon began rethinking the chronology.

The current state of play is roughly: most secular archaeologists still date the destruction to around 1550 BC (Kenyon's date), while a smaller but vocal group of scholars — including evangelical and some non-evangelical archaeologists — argue for the 1400 BC date Wood proposed.

What is not in dispute:

• Jericho was destroyed.
• The walls fell.
• The destruction matches a sudden, violent assault followed by burning.
• The grain stores were left full and burned with the city.
• The destruction layer is consistent in many details with the biblical account.

What is in dispute:

• The exact date.
• Whether the destruction matches a 1400 BC Joshua or some earlier event.

The "Bible got it wrong" version of the story — the version that dominated for decades — is no longer tenable. The most you can argue today is that the destruction happened earlier than the Bible says. You cannot argue that nothing happened.

"Wood is an evangelical, so his dating is biased." Wood does work in evangelical institutions, so his motivations can fairly be questioned. But the same standard should apply to Kenyon, whose framework was shaped by her own pre-existing chronology of Late Bronze Age Canaan. The argument has to be settled on the merits of the evidence — pottery, scarabs, carbon dates, stratigraphy — not the religious affiliation of the people analyzing it. On the merits, Wood has made specific, testable claims that other archaeologists have engaged with seriously.

"Even if the dating is right, it does not prove the supernatural elements." True. Walls collapsing outward could in principle be caused by an earthquake (and seismologists have noted the Dead Sea region is prone to them). What archaeology can confirm is what happened. It cannot adjudicate how it happened. But the cumulative match between the destruction layer and the biblical narrative — the burning, the intact grain, the fallen-outward walls, the spared section — is too detailed to dismiss. Whether you attribute the cause to an earthquake or to divine intervention, the events match.

"The conquest of Canaan as a whole is still controversial." Yes. Many scholars argue that the conquest of Canaan was more gradual than the book of Joshua suggests, and the dating of the broader Israelite settlement remains debated. But Jericho specifically is one of the sites where the archaeology lines up most clearly with the biblical account, even if other sites are more contested.

The Jericho case is a study in how archaeological consensus can shift when new evidence is examined honestly. For 40 years, "Jericho disproves the Bible" was the accepted line. Then someone went back to the original notes and asked whether the dating was actually right. It wasn't.

The walls fell. They fell outward. The city burned. The grain was untouched. A section of wall was spared. All of it matches Joshua 6. The only remaining question is when, and even that question is now wide open.

Sometimes the Bible's harshest critic is the spade. Sometimes the spade changes its mind.